Marx in the Anthropocene

This new book (published in 2022) is one of the most important contributions to the ever-growing body of literature on the ecological crisis that has appeared to date.

It argues that the destruction of the natural environment is inseparable from the growth dynamic that defines capitalism’s hunger to increase economic value, money, and profit as end in itself. Breaking totally new ground, it argues that Marx’s writings on how capitalism degrades the metabolic interaction between labor and the environment illuminates the exact process we are living through today.

As against the standard narrative that Marx viewed the development of the… show more.

Kohei Saito has become a media sensation in Japan, where one of his books on degrowth is a bestseller.

This one, Marx in the Anthropocene, argues that successful degrowth must be communist, i.e. with a democratic sharing of resources as its foundation. Saito’s other aim is to challenge a common preconception about Marxism.

For a hundred years, most Marxists were gung-ho about economic growth. But Saito has been researching in Marx’s unpublished notebooks. They reveal that in his final years the German communist was moving toward a degrowth politics. This is a revelation.

Together with other eco-Marxists writing over the… show more.