The title of the book is an indirect comparison to what the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm refers to as the "age of destruction" in his book "The Age of Extremes," between 1914 and 1945, marked by two world wars, the Great Depression, and the Holocaust.

Kallinikos argues that today the world lives in the shadow of destruction and humanity faces new existential threats: the Covid-19 pandemic, uncontrolled wildfires and other extreme weather events caused by accelerating climate change, the risk of a nuclear war following the NATO-Russia "proxy" war in Ukraine, the genocidal attack of Israel against the Palestinian people. The exception, he says, becomes the norm. Destruction is no longer something rare; it has become a regularity.

All these, he emphasizes, have a common cause: a multidimensional crisis of the capitalist system which is reaching its limits, leading to a social collapse. Aspects of this dynamic trajectory towards destruction include the increasing destruction of nature and the degradation of labor, a global economy in stagnation since the period of the financial crisis, intensifying imperialist rivalries among the USA, China, and Russia, the escalation of sexist oppression and racist attacks, state repression, the rise of the far right, and the threat of fascism.

Building on Marx's analysis and utilizing the contributions of Lenin, Gramsci, Trotsky, Luxemburg, Adorno, Lukács, Althusser, Sartre, Harman, Foucault, and others, he connects all aspects of today's "polycrisis." And he insists that through our collective action, we can determine the response to the dilemma of Socialism or Barbarism.