Cannibal Capitalism (how Our System Is Devouring Democracy, Care, And The Planet – And What We Can Do About It)

By (author) Fraser Nancy
Short description/annotation:
A trenchant look at contemporary capitalism''s insatiable appetite - and a rallying cry for everyone who wants to stop it from devouring our world
Description:
Shortlisted for the Deutscher Memorial Prize 2023

Capital is currently cannibalizing every sphere of life-guzzling wealth from nature and racialized populations, sucking up our ability to care for each other, and gutting the practice of politics. In this tightly argued and urgent volume, leading Marxist feminist theorist Nancy Fraser charts the voracious appetite of capital, tracking it from crisis point to crisis point, from ecological devastation to the collapse of democracy, from racial violence to the devaluing of care work. These crisis points all come to a head in Covid-19, which Fraser argues can help us envision the resistance we need to end the feeding frenzy.

What we need, she argues, is a wide-ranging socialist movement that can recognize the rapaciousness of capital - and starve it to death.
Table of contents:
Preface: Cannibal Capitalism: Are We Toast?

1. Omnivore: Why We Need to Expand Our Conception of Capitalism
2. Glutton for Punishment: Why Capitalism Is Structurally Racist
3. Care Guzzler: Why Social Reproduction Is a Major Site of Capitalist Crisis
4. Nature in the Maw: Why Ecopolitics Must Be Trans-environmental and Anti-capitalist
5. Butchering Democracy: Why Political Crisis Is Capital''s Red Meat
6. Food for Thought: What Should Socialism Mean in the Twenty-First Century?

Epilogue: Macrophage: Why COVID Is a Cannibal Capitalist Orgy
Review quote:
Nancy Fraser is a legendary radical philosopher grounded in the best of the Marxist and feminist traditions yet whose genuine embrace and profound understanding of Black, ecological, immigrant and sexual freedom movements make her a unique figure on the contemporary scene! Cannibal Capitalism is not only a singular gem - it is an instant classic for our bleak times!
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A brilliant synthesis of Fraser''s many pathbreaking contributions to a Marxian theory of capitalism for the twenty-first century, beautifully written.
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Cannibal Capitalism conjures up a monster that voraciously consumes the very land, labor and natural world upon which it thrives. With characteristically clear and inventive prose, Nancy Fraser unpacks capitalism''s historically shifting, interlaced dynamics, revealing the interrelations between seemingly disparate crises and social violences. Throughout, we see the powerful potential of an anti-racist, eco-social reproduction critique. And we see why the future of the planet and humanity depend upon the socialist left building anti-capitalist struggles that reach across workplaces, streets, forests and oceans.
Review quote:
Nancy Fraser has produced the most elegant theory yet of capitalism in our age - capitalism not in the narrow economic sense, but capitalism in the sense of a total omnivore, a system that cannot stop devouring everything around it, destroying the lives of people and nature. This is Marxist theory for our age of crisis - and, we shall hope, of reckoning.
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Should serve to remind ... that capitalism remains a guzzler of care, and this is an unsustainable position
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An explicit plea for a political project. The parallels between care and ecology are instructive.
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Fraser captures how gender oppression, racial domination, and ecological destruction are not incidental to capitalism, but structurally embedded in it.
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Succinct, thoughtful and eminently readable.
Biographical note:
Nancy Fraser is Henry and Louise A. Loeb Professor of Philoso