John Bellamy Foster opens Breaking the Bonds of Fate with a refusal that is at once philosophical and political: the refusal to accept that human history, human suffering, or human defeat are governed by immutable laws. The phrase that gives the book its title—“breaking the bonds of fate”—is not rhetorical flourish. It names an ancient and ongoing ideological battle, one in which ruling classes repeatedly dress their power in the costume of necessity, while materialists insist that what is presented as destiny is in fact the product of historically specific social relations. Foster’s wager is simple and dangerous: that Marxism, properly understood, belongs to a much older insurgent lineage that has always fought against fatalism, fear, and the naturalization of domination.