Marx in the Anthropocene
Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism

The book reveals unknown aspects of Marx's vision of post-capitalism that is adequate to the Anthropocene.

Kohei Saito (Author)

9781009366182, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 2 February 2023

0 pages
22.8 x 15 x 1.8 cm, 0.47 kg

'After his brilliant essay on Marx's ecology, Kohei Saito shows in his new pathbreaking book how different Marxist thinkers tried to deal with the environmental, challenges, from an anti-capitalist perspective. As in his previous essay, Saito is able to grasp Marxism as thought in movement, and not as a closed system. His courageous appeal for a 'degrowth communism' is a decisive contribution for an ecological Marxism of our times, a communism for the Anthropocene' Michael Löwy, author of Ecosocialism: A Radical Alternative to Capitalist Catastrophe

Facing global climate crisis, Karl Marx's ecological critique of capitalism more clearly demonstrates its importance than ever. This book explains why Marx's ecology had to be marginalized and even suppressed by Marxists after his death throughout the twentieth century. Marx's ecological critique of capitalism, however, revives in the Anthropocene against dominant productivism and monism. Investigating new materials published in the complete works of Marx and Engels (Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe), Saito offers a wholly novel idea of Marx's alternative to capitalism that should be adequately characterized as degrowth communism. This provocative interpretation of the late Marx sheds new lights on the recent debates on the relationship between society and nature and invites readers to envision a post-capitalist society without repeating the failure of the actually existing socialism of the twentieth century.

Dedication
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
Part I. Marx's Ecological Critique of Capitalism and its Oblivion: 1. Marx's theory of metabolism in the age of global ecological crisis
2. The intellectual relationship of Marx and Engels revisited from an ecological perspective
3. Lukács's theory of metabolism as the foundation of ecosocialist realism
Part II. A Critique of Productive Forces in the Anthropocene
4. Monism and the non-identity of nature
5. The revival of utopian socialism and the productive forces of capital
Part III. Towards Degrowth Communism: 6. Marx as a degrowth communist
7. The abundance of wealth in degrowth communism
Conclusion
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Political economy [KCP], Economics [KC], Marxism & Communism [JPFC], Social theory [JHBA], Social & political philosophy [HPS], History [HB]