Notes on exhaustionism, the latest moment of the global organic crisis

Abstract

This essay seeks to build on the concept of exterminism developed by E. P. Thompson in his 1980 New Left Review essay ‘Notes on exterminism, the last state of civilization’. Thompson’s polemical focus on weapons systems in his analysis was the product of a particular moment in history; one where the most precipitous threat to human security was the Cold War. The concept of exhaustionism developed in this piece describes the governance ideologies and frameworks found within advanced capitalist state/societal complexes in response to the present ‘organic crisis’ of post-Cold War global capitalism; one accelerated by the 2008 financial crisis and Covid-19 pandemic. The exhaustionism of political leadership within the contemporary world order has contributed to widely held assumptions that the collapse of civilisation and the planet is either occurring or imminent. Moreover, it is also implied that it is too late for a novel or fundamental transformation in governing ideology, global governance and political economy to reverse the current predicament. This exhaustionism in many ways mirrors the absurdity and cynicism of the Cold War military technicians and nuclear regimes described by Thompson’s concept of exterminism, but with notable differences related to the host of actors involved, temporal horizon, and emphasis on class, imperialism and supremacism.