Author(s): Nancy Fraser

Economics | Politics | Climate Change and Enviromental Politics

Capitalism has come, in the twenty-first century, to dominate nearly every sphere of life, from ecology and race to the organization of care and the practice of politics. In this tightly argued but 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, and from the devaluing of care work to racial injustice. These crisis points all come to a head in the perfect storm of Covid-19, which Fraser argues can help us envision the kind of resistance we must build to stop capital from cannibalizing our whole world. What we need, she argues, is a broad and wide-ranging socialist movement that can recognize capital’s appetite-and starve it to death.

Review: 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! -- Cornel West, author of Race Matters
A brilliant synthesis of Fraser's many pathbreaking contributions to a Marxian theory of capitalism for the twenty-first century, beautifully written. -- Wolfgang Streeck, author of How Will Capitalism End?
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. -- Sue Ferguson, author of Women and Work
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. -- Andreas Malm, author of How to Blow Up a Pipeline
Praise for Feminism for the 99%:
A prospective programme for the global women's movement, a feminist manifesto for the 99% * Socialism Today *
A treatise for an intersectional, socialist feminism that centers collective power over power for just a few. * Jezebel *
The feminism they describe is universalist and collaborative, in solidarity with antiracist, queer, environmental, migrant, and labor rights movements also endangered by capitalism. * Publishers Weekly *

Contents: Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface: Cannibal Capitalism: Are We Toast?

Ch. 1: Omnivore: why we need to expand our conception of capitalism

Ch. 2:Glutton for Punishment: why capitalism is structurally racist

Ch. 3: Care-Guzzler: why social reproduction is a major site of capitalist crisis

Ch. 4: Nature in the Maw: why ecopolitics must be trans-environmental and anti-capitalist

Ch. 5: Butchering Democracy: why political crisis is capital's red meat

Ch. 6: Food for thought: what should socialism mean in the 21st century?

Epilogue: Macrophage: why Covid is a perfect storm of capitalist irrationality and injustice

Author Biography: Nancy Fraser is Henry and Louise A. Loeb Professor of Philosophy and Politics at the New School for Social Research. She is the author of Fortunes of Feminism and The Old is Dying and the New Cannot be Born, and co-author of Capitalism: A Conversation and Feminism for the 99%.