John Favini interrogates the assumptions implicit in the notion of an "invasive species." The narrow concept muddles the real factors behind environmental crises and exonerates profit-seeking human activity.

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The invasive species is one concept among many inculcated by capitalist ideology, sublimating our intertwined social and ecological crises, transforming them into problems amenable to various kinds of security regimes. From border walls to fish dams, from militarized police departments to invasive species eradication campaigns, the capitalist state can only do so much to tamp down the mounting symptoms of an economic order at war with the planet’s ecology, and therefore its own survival. Consigned to leaving the roots untouched—that is, to ensure the reproduction of capitalism at all costs—the masters of humankind are vigorously pruning the branches that support their own weight.

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