John Bellamy Foster: Breaking the Bonds of Fate: Epicurus and Marx: Review
Originally published: Marx & Philosophy on February 3, 2026 by Alex Adamson (more by Marx & Philosophy) | (Posted Feb 05, 2026)
John Bellamy Foster’s new book Breaking the Bonds of Fate: Epicurus and Marx completes a trilogy of works that includes Marx’s Ecology and The Return of Nature. While it is the most recent book in the series, Breaking the Bonds of Fate is conceptually primary in the trilogy as it lays the philosophical foundation for Marx’s materialism and ecological perspective. The book situates Marx’s materialism in continuity with Epicurus’s materialist philosophy, while also connecting the ethical and political implications of Epicurus’s work with Marx’s revolutionary political philosophy.
Marx completed a PhD in philosophy with a dissertation entitled The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature. The primary philosophical debate was on the possibility of freedom in the face of a form of materialism that appeared to be fully deterministic. Rather than abandon materialism, Epicurus introduced the ‘swerve’ and opened the door for human agency. Marx’s dissertation has generally been characterized as a text of Marx’s ‘idealist’ Hegelian phase and not as a foundational text for Marx’s materialist conception of history. Foster reveals this mischaracterization to be faulty in two key ways: First, Marx’s dissertation is explicitly arguing againstHegel’s reading of Epicurus (and the general scholarship on Epicurus of the time); and second, while employing the language and methodology of Hegelian speculative philosophy, the dissertation is actually the inaugural moment of Marx standing Hegel’s philosophy on its feet precisely through Epicurus’s materialism. Not only are the claims about pernicious Hegelian idealism in Marx’s dissertation refuted, but Marx’s then heretical analysis of Epicurus is now in alignment with contemporary scholarship.
The book is made up of a Preface, Introduction, and four chapters. The first chapter ‘Epicurus and Hellenistic Athens’ contextualizes Epicurus’s life and philosophy against an ahistorical Eurocentric understanding of Greek philosophy. Epicureanism was one of the most popular and expansive Greek philosophies categorically against dominant patriarchal and elite views, freeing philosophy from the aristocracy in a time of social and ecological collapse. Epicurus ‘sought to generate an alternative praxis– reuniting theory and practice at the level of the community rather than the polis– in a way that circumvented the dominant struggle for wealth and power.’ (66) As Foster points out, Epicurus’s school stands out for its inclusion of women who were to achieve the full status of philosopher.
Living in the fallout following the death of Alexander that threw the Hellenistic world into chaos, the wars of the Diadochi created a situation of precarity and uncertainty. Within these uncertain times and famines caused by war, Epicurus’s school was called ‘the Garden,’ in part because of the necessity for planting vegetables to sustain their community. Food was grown both for self-sufficiency as well as to provide for those in need- one could say Epicurus was one of the first to perfect the anarchist bean-stew for his comrades. Given current climate crises and devastation of the earth by imperialist wars and capitalist agriculture, this grounding of Marxism within the soil of Epicurus’s garden is a welcome contribution to the history of ecological philosophy.
The second chapter focuses on the revolutionary nature of Epicurus’s philosophy as a revolt against Platonic idealism, determinism, and forms of Skepticism that deny humans the responsibility to live an ethical life defined against excess that only a minority can enjoy. Critical is Epicurus’s development of emergentist materialism that ‘does not deny the physicalist basis of reality,’ but posits that from all levels, atoms to consciousness, ‘result from the organization of that physical basis, such that new emergent powers arise that are irreducible to the levels below them.’ (95-6) Against the determinism of Democritus, Epicurus introduced the concept of the swerve of imperceptible atoms. The swerve allowed atoms to collide with each other and thus be moved by repulsion and attraction. Without the swerve, atoms would never meet and there would be no explanation of human volition, which is what ‘breaks the bonds of fate.’ As a staunch critic of creationism and the idea that gods interfere with human affairs, Epicurus brings heaven down to earth in favor of human agency and social responsibility. Epicurus’s philosophy anticipates the modern scientific concept of emergence, which understands matter to be creative and autopoietic. Analyzing Epicurus’s materialism as emergentist connects him to contemporary Marxist philosophers of science like Roy Bhaskar, Richard Lewontin and Richard Levins, but also anti-colonial Africana scholars like Sylvia Wynter working on the concept of autopoiesis.
The third chapter covers the ‘rediscovery’ of Epicurus in Renaissance and Enlightenment European philosophy and Marx’s study of Epicurus within the context of German Idealism. Foster’s intervention is to argue that what became Marx’s revolutionary philosophical intervention was already present in his dissertation. Marx revealed Epicurus to be a critic of crude materialism, cosmic determinism, including ‘aleatory materialism’ that would eliminate a meaningful subject of change. Epicurus’s introduction of the swerve to atomic motion allows for the introduction of human agency as continuous with nature, rather than above it, showing matter in motion to be ‘embodied time, the existing reflection of the sensuous world itself.’ (198) This chapter offers a novel and trenchant critique of Althusser’s analysis of Marx and the significance of Epicureanism for Marxists. Rather than revealing a ‘break’ in Marx’s philosophy attributable to ‘practical’ political work turning him away from idealism, it is actually his philosophical study of Epicurus that is the philosophical ground for his dialectical materialist critique of Hegel. It turns out that Marx’s uncritical Hegelian ‘idealist’ phase is itself a myth.
Hegel reproached Epicureanism in Lectures on the History of Philosophyclaiming that his philosophy amounted to a mere understanding of sense perception, going as far as to say that he had no respect for Epicurus. For Marx, on the contrary, Epicurus’s metaphysics was a prime example of Hegelian dialectical method made material. The swerve of atoms in his metaphysics represented ‘the negation of the negation’ making possible new movement. Through motion one arrives at the concept of self-determination, and as Marx would write in his dissertation, repulsion as the law of the atom can actually be seen as the first form of ‘self-consciousness.’ Following from Epicurus’s materialist philosophy is the idea that ethical life calls us to live in accord with nature and all other forms of life. To achieve ataraxia (freedom from emotional distress and anxiety) as the goal of philosophical wisdom ‘was thus the realization of contentment among a community of friends, one rooted in reciprocity.’ (153)
A second novel argument put forth in the third chapter is about Marx’s decision to submit his dissertation to the University of Jena and not the University of Berlin. Contrary to what other scholars have contended, Foster argues that rather than Marx’s dissertation being too Hegelian and thus ‘out of favor’ in Berlin following the new Prussian king, Marx’s dissertation was actually too non-Hegelian and even anti-Hegelian to be accepted in Berlin. Meanwhile the philosophy faculty in Jena were all thoroughly anti-Hegelian and thus fine with Marx’s trenchant critiques of Hegel’s through his reading of Epicurus. Foster argues that only from today’s standpoint do we read his dissertation as substantially a ‘Hegelian’ text because of its use of Hegelian language and categories. However from the perspective of Marx’s contemporaries, Marx’s dissertation would have been seen in opposition to Hegel as Marx sided with Epicurean empiricism. It turns out that Epicurus is also the originator of the critique of Skeptics and idealists as the ones who have ‘stood with his own head where his feet belong,’ (198) which Marx then famously reiterates about his philosophy vis-a-vis Hegel. These connections, however, are only revealed in a sustained study of Epicurus as a philosopher on his own and within his own time.
In chapter four ‘Marxism and Epicureanism,’ Foster outlines the ways in which different Marxists have read Marx’s dissertation and assessed the impact of Epicurus on Marx, as well as the relationship between Marx’s Hegelianism and Epicurus. Foster forcefully argues that understanding how Marx further developed Epicurus’s materialism is critical to understanding the continuities between the philosophy of the ‘young’ and ‘mature’ Marx. Foster resurrects a lineage of Marxist classicists and philosophers of science who have taken seriously Epicureanism alongside Marxism, while he refutes many other Marxists along the way about Marx’s humanism and its relationship to nature and history (e.g. Plekhanov, Mehring, Sartre, and Althusser). Foster is here closer to Marxist humanist scholars like Kevin Anderson and Raya Dunayevskaya who have argued for a transformation in Lenin’s materialist philosophy from a reductionist materialism to a properly dialectical one through a study of Hegel and Marx’s work on Epicurus. Marx’s critique of Hegel’s account of labor and alienation, and his ethical and economic critiques of capitalism, directly flow from his humanism and development of the materialist conception of history. Foster’s work is especially useful in clarifying some of Marx’s more cryptic comments in the 1844 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts around humanism as a naturalism.
Foster’s book renders Marx’s transformation of Hegelian philosophy for revolutionary ends clear in unprecedented ways. It entails an ethical responsibility to forge a sustainable way of life in accord with the flourishing of all forms of organic and inorganic nature. Human existence is not fated and is not guaranteed to exist forever, and whatever happens next is in part our responsibility to shape. Giving up the idea of fate, whether pessimistically or optimistically read, is very difficult. As news articles appear every day claiming ‘breaking points’ and moments of ‘no return’ with respect to ecological disaster and imperialist wars, Breaking the Bonds of Fate reminds usthat regardless of the appearance of imperialist capitalism and settler colonialism as inevitable phenomena- it is our responsibility to abolish them and reconcile humanity and nature for the ‘disalienation of the world.’ (204) While this is a daunting task, as indigenous scholar and activist Nick Estes has put it ‘our history is the future.’ Decolonial struggles for indigenous sovereignty and land back movements have continually put the disalienation of human life and nature at the forefront. However, what we might not expect is that even within the so-called ‘Western’ cannon there are anti-capitalist ecological philosophies. While Marxism has an infamously uneven record of recognizing this critical dialectic of human and nature as central to the overthrow of capitalism, re-centering Epicurus’s legacy in Marx is a step in the right direction for Marxists to develop a scientific humanist philosophy ‘made to the measure of the world,’ to borrow the words of anti-colonial poet and politician Aimé Césaire.
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