Cannibal Capitalism: How our System is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet—and What We Can Do About It by Nancy Fraser

Cannibal Capitalism: How our System is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet—and What We Can Do About It Reviews

• 
  Steffi

  I was really looking forward to (and pre-ordered) this new book ‘Cannibal Capitalism. How Our System Is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet—and What We Can Do About It’ (it came out about 3 weeks ago) by Nancy Fraser - for me one of the most relevant contemporary (Marxist) theorists. In her previous books she also said everything there is to say about identity politics, can't thank her enough for this :-)
  
  The book is great (and an amazing intro or 101 for those less familiar with the genesis and specific nature of 21st century financialized capitalism) but I guess there’s only so much one can say about capitalism and the, indeed cannibalizing, state of today’s capitalism. As such, the book walks the (already depressed, I guess) reader through kind of four areas devoured by capital: racial/imperial dynamics of capitalism’s expropriation/exploitation division which feed the glutton’s hunger for populations it can punish with impunity (chapter 2); the gendered dynamics of its reproduction/production couple, which stamp the system as a guzzler of care (chapter 3); the eco-predatory dynamics of its nature/humanity antithesis, which puts our planetary home in capital’s maw (chapter 4); and the drive to devour public power and butcher democracy, which is built into the system’s signature division between economy and the political.
  For each of these four dimensions she provides a historic perspective, tracking the present from crisis point to crisis point throughout the various stages (regimes) of capitalism – 16-18th century mercantile capitalism; 19th century liberal-colonial regime, 20th century state managed capitalism and the current 21st madness of financialized capitalism (kind of providing two axes of race/gender/ecology/politics versus historic periods). Much of this is a culmination of earlier works or the standard VERSO bookshelf on the various evils of capitalism. Of course, these dimensions are linked, for instance “oil-fueled social democracy at home rested on militarily imposed oligarchy abroad”.
  
  The bottom line is very, very simple: we are in a state of general crisis of financialized capitalism, we cannot ‘green deal’ our way out (I appreciated the book’s reckoning with the green-capitalist imaginary).What is needed is a “new common sense that must transcend the “merely environmental.” Addressing the full extent of our general crisis, it must connect its ecological diagnosis to other vital concerns, including livelihood insecurity and the denial of labor rights; public disinvestment from social reproduction and the chronic undervaluation of care work; ethno-racial-imperial oppression and gender and sex domination; dispossession, expulsion, and exclusion of migrants; and militarization, political authoritarianism, and police brutality.” In other words: it’s capitalism. There is no technological or otherwise fix within capitalism. It’s the logic of capitalism (as it is the logic of war which you cannot overcome within itself).
  
  Sadly, at the present stage, I don’t have any hope whatsoever. And as the final chapters chart actions to build a ‘wide-ranging socialist movement that can recognize the rapaciousness of capital - and starve it to death’ I am like ‘you go, girl’ as I am going to read love novels or watch trash TV. I hope this is temporary and once hope comes back, this razor sharp analysis of how we go into this shit (including a new world war of sorts) and how we could get out will be very useful ☭ ❤
  
• 
  sologdin

  Eminently reasonable, this text seeks out further 'hidden abodes' of capitalism beyond the exploitation of wage labor, in the non-economic realms of gender-dominated carework, environmental extractivism, racial expropriation of those marked out as homo sacer, and the political processes of democratic governance--all of which are its conditions of possibility and each of which capitalism has a tendency to consume destructively. Many astute observations and useful historical schema. Ends with a useful reconception of socialism as well as a coda regarding the pandemic.
  
  Verso sent this as the main selection for its September 2022 book club. Good on them.
• 
  Morgan Blackledge

  GREAT BOOK.
  
  So….
  
  Critical analysis of capitalism is back.
  
  And….
  
  Now it’s being integrated with green ecology, feminism, queer theory and anti-racism.
  
  And…
  
  We’re having a little moment with it.
  
  It’s feeling VERY 90’s (in this regard).
  
  The kids are digging theory and burning cop cars again.
  
  Now if y’all can PLEASE MAKE SOME GOOD MUSIC.
  
  Anyway.
  
  Anticapitalism is a thing again.
  
  And…
  
  Here ya go!
  
  THE CRISIS:
  
  - ecological collapse
  - financial boom and bust
  - patriarchy
  - racism
  - LGBTQ-phobia
  - addiction
  - global pandemic
  - for profit healthcare
  - affordable housing crisis
  - inflation
  - unlivable wages in the gig economy
  - student debt
  
  THE GAME:
  
  - get on top
  - let wealth generate passive profit
  - let China make all the stuff with essentially salve labor
  - borrow all the money from China
  - don’t pay it back
  - buy all the oil from the Middle East
  - save ours for later
  - let BIPOC and LGBTQ have live action role play (LARP) with MAGA whites on CNN and FOX while the rich get richer.
  - exploit cheap (care) labor.
  - build a wall.
  - let the rest of the world become a desert
  - duke it out with Russia in the end of time
  
  In other words, LATE CAPITALISM.
  
  So what (precisely is) late capitalism.
  
  POWER, PRIVILEGE AND POLLUTION:
  
  According to my interpretation of Fraser’s argument, late capitalism is at essence a LAND, CARE and NATURE guzzling LEVIATHAN.
  
  Essentially one big MLM PYRAMID SCAM, with a (Vegas odds) stacked deck, and WHITE, upper class heterosexual men as the house, and everyone else (BIPOC, women and LGBTQ gambling with their lives e.g. TIME, ENERGY CREATIVITY and CARE, hoping to hit a jackpot, or at least a livable wage, a home, and some security in old age. But probably (in the literal/statistical sense of the word) won’t.
  
  In the meantime the ENTIRE GLOBE dries, warms and BURNS. As all of the earths resources (including HUMAN) are CONSUMED and CONVERTED to WEATLH of a FEW.
  
  Hens the addition CANNIBAL to CAPITALISM and the image or the OUROBOROS, the oft recycled archetypal image of the SANKE EATING IT OWN TAIL.
  
  Fraser asserts, quite convincingly, that there is no reforming capitalism into a GREEN, SOCIALLY JUST, RACIALLY EQUITABLE, QUEER AFFIRMATIVE RAINBOW.
  
  If you remove ecological, and human exploitation from the mix.
  
  Than capitalism disappears.
  
  NEW WORLD ORDER:
  
  Fraser RESISTS the notion that capitalism is simply an ECONOMIC model.
  
  Fraser reconceives capitalism as an institutionalized SOCIAL ORDER that includes: COLONIALISM, RACISM, SEXISM, HOMOPHOBIA, EXPLOITATION OF NATURE, MASS INCARCERATION, BOOM AND BUST and BIG MONEY BAILOUTS as non-economic conditions for a capitalist economy to exist.
  
  THE FOUR HORSEMEN:
  
  Fraser lists the 4 “non-economic preconditions of capitalism as follows:
  
  CONDITION 1: COLONIALISM & RACISM
  
  Fraser states that the first non-economic precondition for capitalism “is a large fund of wealth expropriated from subjugated peoples, especially from racialized peoples, consisting above all in land, natural resources, and dependent unwaged or under-waged labor. Effectively stolen, this wealth serves as an ongoing stream of free or cheap productive inputs for which capital pays little or nothing.”
  
  Capitalism converts stolen LAND and stolen (or underwater) PEOPLE into PROFITS.
  
  In other words: capitalism needs stolen/colonized land, and subjugated/enslaved or otherwise disempowered people (BIPOC and poor whites) for free or cheep labor.
  
  CONDITION 2: SUBJUGATION OF WOMEN
  
  Fraser states that the second non-economic precondition for capitalism “a sizeable fund of unwaged and labor devoted to social reproduction, labor that is mostly performed by women. This carework, which “makes” human beings, is indispensable to what the system calls production, which makes things in order to make profits.”
  
  Capitalism GUZZLES care.
  
  In other words: capitalism also needs caretakers (mostly women) to make babies, raise children, and take care of men… for free or for cheep if you hire “help”.
  
  CONDITION 3: EXPLOITATION OF NATURE
  
  Fraser states that capitalism needs “a large fund of free or very cheap inputs from nonhuman nature. These supply the indispensable material substratum of capitalist production: the raw materials that labor transforms; the energy that powers machines; the foodstuffs that power bodies; and a host of general environmental prerequisites such as arable land, breathable air, potable water, and the carbon-carrying capacities of the earth’s atmosphere.”
  
  Capitalism CONSUMES nature.
  
  In other words: capitalism also needs natural resources to exploit and consume.
  
  CONDITION 4: JAILS AND BAILOUTS
  
  Fraser states that capitalism needs “a large body of public goods supplied by states and other public powers. include legal orders, repressive forces, infrastructures, money supplies, and mechanisms for managing systemic crises.”
  
  In other words: capitalism needs police and prisons, a military industrial complex, big banks and fat bailouts for when they tank.
  
  Capitalism imprisons BIPOC and poor people, TAXES the FUCK out of the middle class, and BAILS OUT rich the white men at the TOP when the BUBBLES POP and the BANKS TANK.
  
  Fraser asserts that by identifying these background conditions for capitalism, we arrive at a definition of Capitalism that is not simply an economic model , but a type of social order, with colonialism, exploitation of nature, racism, and subjugation of women at its foundation.
  
  As such, Fraser further asserts that there is no way to reform capitalism to be green, socially just, and racially equitable. That’s like trying to reform a house by eliminating the possibility of having a floor, walls, doors and a roof. You take all that away, and you’re left with nothing but a FAT MORTGAGE AND PROPERTY TAXES.
  
  THE SOLUTION:
  
  Fraser is the first to admit, that there probably isn’t one. But if there was. Then it would probably look an awful lot like SOCIALISM.
  
  But not your grandma’s SOCIALISM.
  
  And hopefully not Hitter, Stalin or Mao’s either.
  
  What Fraser is envisioning is something like the following.
  
  Trans-socialism: is an intersectional mode of socialist politics, economy, sexuality, and ecology.
  
  Eco-socialism: is an egalitarian economic, political, and social structure that aims to harmonize human society with non-human ecology and meet human needs. Eco-socialists believe that eco-socialism is the only sufficient solution to the current ecological crisis.
  
  Global trans-ecological-socialism: is a smash up of the two.
  
  Put simply.
  
  We need:
  - a socially just
  - queer affirmative
  - feminist
  - antiracist
  - sustainable
  - definancialized
  - anticapitalist social order
  - with growth in tech, goods and services
  - without passive wealth accumulation
  
  And it HAS to be GLOBAL.
  
  Or we’re ALL (or most of us) GOING TO DIE.
  
  If any of this seems interesting.
  
  I URGE you to give this one a go.
  
  It’s not an easy read.
  
  It’s got a post modernist academic, Marxist (dis-mat) queer theory (Frankfort school) linguistic flare. But it’s TOTALLY doable.
  
  And TOTALLY worth it.
  
  Good fun.
  
  5/5 stars ⭐️
• 
  Andrew

  The central premise of this excellent new book is that capitalism is not an economic system, but a social system that exists by devouring “non-economic” resources such as the free human care provided mostly by women, wealth expropriated from racialised others, our much-cherished democracies, and of course nature.
  
  It’s a great way of connecting the dots between different struggles such as environmentalism, racial justice, feminism, and the fight to preserve democracy. By cannibalising all of these things it depends on, capitalism is like an ouroboros—a snake eating its own tail. It’s a thought-provoking analysis, and I’d strongly recommend it!
• 
  Greg

  This is a hard-hitting, non-nonsense overview of how capitalism continues to ravage not only the lives of multiple millions of people, but also is a primary contributor to ecological plunder and global warming.
  There is among many, Ms. Fraser says, “a growing awareness that the heterogeneous ills – financial, economic, ecological, political, social – that surround us can be traced to a common root; and that reforms that fail to engage with the deep structural underpinnings of these ills are doomed to fail.”
  Her central thesis – captured in the title of this short book (only 165 pages) – is that unchecked or unregulated capitalism exploits everything. What I regard as the most important of her contributions is that capitalism is not “just an economic mechanism,” as it has become interwoven in every aspect of our lives: the way “the system” works – and it is a sprawling, complex system – is that it influences not just wages, benefits, and working conditions, but also family life, social interactions, and our political system. In keeping with her title image, it eats up everything in order to feed its bottomless insistence on expansion of wealth for the relative few. Like the classical cardinal sin of greed, its voraciousness knows no end.
  In her book, she shows in detail both just how this system works and how it has evolved over time.
  It is precisely because “the economy” has become so interwoven with all aspects of our lives – and, thereby, rendering its operations upon us effectively invisible – that we so often fail to “put the pieces together.”
  Just to illustrate a few of the ways “the system” – and its various social and political enablers – act upon every aspect of our lives, consider:
   Despite the huge increase in wealth disparity between the 1% and “the rest of us” – not just in the US but around the world – real wages for the majority have largely stalled for the past 30 years in terms of purchasing power
  
   Since the “new economics” embraced by figures such as Reagan and Thatcher, government policies throughout most of the West have moved toward supporting the unrestricted operation of “the economy” while dropping the post-war focus on building and maintaining a solid and growing middle class
  
   The power of those outside the executive suits and boardrooms has been greatly diminished, in large measure because of the decades-long war being waged against unions by corporations and their well-funded, non-neutral “think tanks”
   All of this has disrupted family life as it has become much more difficult for one partner to earn enough to support a family, and this in turn has had important impacts on provisions for raising and educating children
  
   Corporate balance sheets do not properly measure or quantify the true cost of inputs and outputs, disguising for the rest of us the real “cost of doing business”; think of how so many industries “use” natural resources as being “cost-free” to themselves, even though they diminish the existence and availability of these same resources for the larger community! Even with a more recent type of “environmental consciousness,” it is questionable how much of the cost (damage) they inflict is somehow repaid to the larger community.
  o In our daily lives we drive right by examples everywhere, and yet do not notice: plants located along rivers, for example, using their waters for their processes, yet paying minimal prices for both water extraction and the fouled waters they pump back into the rivers when they have served their purposes.
  o Factories consuming vast amounts of electricity or other fuel sources and then pumping their effluents into our air, including vast amounts of global warming causing emissions.
  o Some of the most damaging consequences can be seen in states that were once colonies of the West where their once largely sustaining economic structures were transformed in order to serve the needs of the industrial West.
  
   The cost of running for, and staying in, public office has allowed those with the greatest monetary resources the ability to control not just who runs for office in the first place, but also over the kinds of policies allowed to be considered after they are elected. This is why so many governments at all levels in the US have frustrated efforts to protect and improve their environmental systems, including the purity of land, water, and air.
  
  Solutions?
  In sum, a desperate need for a reawakened democratic policy that is designed to promote and protect all of us – including the only home we have in the universe. In one sense, this means regulated capitalism and not laissez-faire or hands-off “free market,” globalism fantasies. But the extent to which we must tackle “the system” in effect would bring about a significant transformation of our society in many ways.
  
  In Ms. Fraser’s words:
  “The struggle to resolve the present democratic crisis, like that crisis itself, cannot be limited to one sector of society, or one strand of the overall crisis. Far from concerning political institutions alone, it poses the most fundamental and general questions of social organization: Where will we draw the line delimiting economy from polity, society from nature, production from reproduction? How will we allocate our time among work and leisure, family life, politics, and civil society? How will we use the social surplus we collectively produce? And who exactly will decide these matters? Will the profit-makers manage to turn capitalism’s contradictions into new opportunities for the accumulation of private wealth? Will they co-opt important strands of rebellion, even as they reorganize social domination? Or will a mass revolt against capital finally be, as Walter Benjamin wrote, ‘the act by which the human race travelling in [this runaway] train applies the emergency brake’?”
  
• 
  Don

  
  Fraser provides a helpful resume of Marx's 'core features' of capital which she presents as:
  1/ Private property in the means of production;
  2/ A market in free labour (ie not enslaved)
  3/ A systemic thrust in the form of the compulsion to accumulate capital
  4/ The distinctive role of markets in allocating the inputs into commodity producti0n and also in determining how the social surplus will be invested.
  
  She views the latter as its 'most perverse characteristic' in that it hands over crucial decisions about the development of society to ther expansion of monetrised value. But in putting it in this way she also challenges the idea that markets in and of themselves lead towards the total commodification of society. What is central to her argument is her insistence on the tendency within capitalism to create 'semi-proletarianised' arrangements which preserve non-capitalist features, though always requiring them to function as adjuncts to capitalist accumulation. The most striking example here is the form of the private household, which utilises labour and allocates inputs into its reproduction in ways which are not analogous to profit-seeking.
  
  She counters the idea that the fate of all and everything under capitalism is to be transformed into a commodity, each occupying a space as allocated by the market. Capitalism cannot do this without undermining an essential condition of its own existence – namely the capacity to plunder other systems of life which have been constituted by non-market means. Semi-proletarianisation is not a transitional phase to full-prolerianisation but rather a reversion to a mode in which workers are unable to sustain themselves on the basis of a wage and come to subsist on a variety of strategies which involves some waged work supplemented by petty trading and gift-giving exchanges. This trend has been under-scored by neoliberalism which has an accumulation strategy based on “expelling billions of people from the official economy into informal grey zones, from which capital syphons off wealth.” Her crucial point is that “marketised aspects of capitalist society coexist with non-marketised aspects.” In fact capitalism would not be able to live without the sustinance it draws from its parasitic dependence on the non-market world - a relationship which she likens to cannibalism, and hence the title of the book.
  
  This framing of the story of capitalism brings the concept of expropriation into full focus, taking its place alongside exploitation as a driving force of capital accumulation. As considered in Marx’s Capital in volume one, expropriation mainly features as a force that operated back at the dawn of the capitalist period in during the time of ‘primitive accumulation’. The destruction of common land during the time of enclosure and the eviction of peasant farmers formed the basis of this period, with colonial expansion and the annihilation of non-capitalist modes of production in order to create space for markets forming another element. Fraser joins Harvey and others who have approach the subject through the lens of geography to insist that expropriation is not a largely spent historical force but an ongoing process of active eternal reconstitution of capitalist society. It shows up particularly acutely in the relationship between capitalism and the natural world, with the plunder of resources across the biosphere, minerals, energy and climate. Without the effectively free lunches that the natural world provides to capitalist society in the form of land, energy, water, animal power, they system would not be able to function.
  
  This means that we have to think of capitalism as something more than just a type of economy: rather as a society in fact. In her argument this becomes important because the instance on its economic character leads to error Lukasc made in seeing commodification reified to the point where it becomes the consciousness of the entire people. Fraser’s instance on the maintenance of non-economic-capitalist zones within capitalist society mean that other forms of consciousness exist besides those sustained by market relations. The existence of public space tends to support democratic aspirations, for example. The scientific understanding of the human relationship with the natural world allows ecology and green politics to get a hearing on the political spectrum. Even the violence of expropriation, or rather resistance to it, sustains consciousness of the human need for re-integration and equality.
  
  For Fraser capitalist society isn’t so different from feudalism, in that both are made up of structured segments with each being governed by its own set of values and norms, but which become coherent through the exercise of hegemonic power. The boundaries between the structural zones are not fixed permanently and continuously tense under the stress of specific historical conjunctures – mercantile capitalism, liberal-imperial capitalism, state monopoly capitalism and financialised capitalism becoming “four historically specific ways of demarcating the various realms that comprise capitalism. But this is not to imply that the non-economic segments are totally subordinate to capital accumulation. “Each of these ‘hidden abodes’ harbours distinctive ontologies of social practice and normative ideals…” which give rise to ‘boundary struggles’ which play a constitutive role in shaping the structure of capitalist society.
  
  Boundary struggles also generate deeper problems which go beyond deciding what type of capitalism capitalist society might be at any particular time. Fraser sees them as expressing the contradiction which exists between capitalist accumulation and the background conditions for its existence – “between production and reproduction, society and nature, economy and polity, exploitation and expropriation.”
  
  “Their effect … is to incite a broad range of social struggles, narrowly defined, at the point of production, political power and expropriation [and] boundary struggles over ecology, social reproduction, political power and expropriation.”
  
  From this perspective social struggles in any of these areas might acquire an anti-capitalist character if they have the effect of sealing off a particular segment from the deprivations of capital accumulation. Trade union struggles to fully compensate workers for the effect of inflation on their living standards; of Black and ethnic minority people to liberate the socialisation of their children into a subordinate place in society; of a green new deal to effect a socially just transition to zero carbon would all demonstrate this tendency to move beyond capitalism. But, just as capitalism owes its continued existence to it success to date in containing anti-capitalist logics in each of these sub-structures, so the success of a post-capitalist politics will depend not just on success in any one area, but in significant advance across all segments.
  
  The theoretical shape of Fraser’s argument is set out in the opening essay in this collection, each of which has appeared before in leftist and academic journals. Following chapters illustrate its key points by considering concrete case studies with regard to the role racism plays in capitalist society, the crisis of social reproduction under capitalism and its struggle for emancipation from the logic of capital accumulation, and similar with regard to green/environmental politics and democracy itself. A book I would place alongside Mike Davis’s ‘Old Gods, New Enigmas’ as a deeper dive into the contradictions of late capitalism which returns the reader to Marx in order to go quite a few paces beyond him.
  
• 
  David

  "...the pandemic is the point where all of cannibal capitalism’s contradictions converge: where cannibalization of nature and carework, of political capacity and peripheralized populations, merge in a lethal binge. A veritable orgy of capitalist dysfunction, COVID-19 establishes beyond all doubt the need to abolish this social system once and for all."
  
  Nancy Fraser
• 
  dia rya диа ря 代日 ديا ريا 디아 리아 די א ריא

  Nothing new about back nuance stories of capital-social study, but using cannibalism as a metaphor is bit ahistorical to our ancestors who survived through eating each other (prion and gene), when the author is clearly living off exploitative mass agricultural system, that is excluded in the book but clearly is one of the underlying fundamentals on feminist, black, labour and migrant activism.
• 
  Macho

  Yet another "ADJECTIVE Capitalism" book, but finally one unabashedly calling for the end of capitalism as a system, instead of just calling to rein in some perceived recent excess or "perversion". Fraser goes beyond the classical labour vs. capital socialist dichotomy to focus on four other pillars that she says the system couldn't maintain itself without: (1) expropriation, which is a huge category that more or less covers various types of theft, generally from people of colour, including theft of indigenous lands, slave-like labour in the periphery and in the context of mass incarceration, etc., (2) unremunerated social reproduction work, largely done by women, (3) free riding on the environment to the grave detriment of ecosystems and the climate, and (4) the hollowing out of the political state/power and of democracy. In Fraser's telling, capitalism's reliance on these "non-economic" pillars is done unsustainably so that the pillars are being eaten away in a "Marxist contradiction"-type of way, although she remains fairly cagey about whether that means the edifice will collapse on itself. She closes by calling for an expanded view of socialism to mirror her expanded one of capitalism, but as best I could tell she essentially says the socialist should not lose sight of the need to take down each of those four pillars because they're unjust. I personally am a fan of grand metanarratives so it was refreshing to read a book with the ambitious goal of describing not just capitalism as an economic system, but as an even broader social system, and there's a lot to like about the analysis provided, although the one drawback is that inevitably there's a lot of key stuff that's just completely glossed over (e.g. what exactly do you envision by "democracy"?, to name one of many).
• 
  Ghofrane

  Brilliant! 👌🏼
• 
  Emily Bradshaw

  Honestly understood so little of this book I don’t even know if I’m allowed to say I read it x I like the central metaphor though
• 
  Joe Olipo

  Aaron shall take the two he-goats and let them stand before the LORD [...] He shall then slaughter the people’s goat of sin offering, [...] [He] shall [then] lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat and confess over it all the iniquities and transgressions of the Israelites, whatever their sins; and it shall be sent off to the wilderness.
  —Leviticus 16:7-21

  
  
  On "Levitical Socialism":
  
  When did the major theoretical work of Marxist intellectuals become the coining of new pejoratives? ("We only have the followers we deserve," true, but I won't hold this against Marx.) We have progressed from "Late Capitalism" to "End Stage Capitalism" to "Neoliberalism" to, now, "Cannibal Capitalism." (Good for Capitalism that it has recovered from end-stage disease and now appears to be taking food.) This last one won't stick either. As the music of Cannibal Corpse has demonstrated, making something wicked also confers a certain cachet.
  
  Whenever "Capitalism" is hypostatized, we must be mindful of dangerous "Hypostatic Electricity" which threatens to short-circuit our forward charge (political movement) into the Ground. At any point in the space of Fraser's investigation where we encounter friction, we are tempted to zap it away using the Ground of "Abolish Capitalism." Therefore, we should not be surprised when Fraser's multipolar intersectional analysis is threatened by a monopolar short-circuit. When the task of using antiracism to end Capitalism begins to encounter friction (we must court the "white working class" after all), we are satisfied merely to end Capitalism, which has the side benefit of ending racism (we'll get around to it later), a short-circuit which functions to defer the task indefinitely. After all, Capitalism has not been so easy to Abolish as we had once believed. (Aren't we already living in the age of "Zombie Capitalism?") With this in mind, the gregarious work of enumerating the members of our coalition is already the counting of the cost of contingents we are preparing to sacrifice (but which, by virtue of the absurd, we will recover in Revolution (Eternity)).
  
  In a world in which everyone is Exploited and Expropriated, where is the guilty party to be found? Fraser's text almost makes us forget we once heard, "Wrong life cannot be lived rightly," and that, "There is no ethical consumption under capitalism." When these phrases had not yet lost their salt, they recalled that every Exploited-Expropriated person is responsible, more or less, for the Exploitation-Expropriation of another. This Differance between "more" and "less" is precisely the space of action of a tenuous Resistance which must be won in each moment. To pave over the fact that everyone possesses, to varying degrees, "Guilt of Socialist Impiety," is to have these lapses and spaces continue to undermine collective action (is it possible to recall a Leftist movement which has not been destroyed by infighting?), whereas these faults and inadequacies could have been put to use as a tactical and strategic resource. These phrases, of course, have since been dis-armed, and now give permission for those with bad conscience to behave badly. Meanwhile we have "sent off our sins into the wilderness" where they now dwell with the Truly Responsible (The 1% AKA The Billionaire Class AKA The Megacorporations AKA The He-Goat), and the current "Socialist" task is to capture and destroy them. (This reaches a ridiculous apogee in certain sections of left-wing Climate Discourse, 'did you know that 10 corporations produce 90% of all emissions!?')
  
  So rather than "Cannibal Capitalism" it appears this text is really about "Levitical Socialism," which performs the double-movement in the quotation from Leviticus above. Among those who use the phrase "scapegoat," few recall his brother who is to be sacrificed. Levitical Socialism wishes to draw, again, upon the power of this ritual. It is prepared to make the sacrifice, and, perceiving that the sacrifice is insufficient, wishes to repeat it with a doubling gesture - a piety and a purification. But both of these movements are made with the facility which no longer even believes in the Pentateuch, and should be viewed in the agnostic light of the 21st century. There is no piety to be gained in the sacrifice, rather it condemns itself, and sins do not leave the body when they are sent with the goat off into the wilderness, rather they conceal themselves deeper. A tremor passes through her body when the knife is drawn to exsanguinate the goat, and she realizes she is no longer safe in the movement. A sigh passes his lips who witnesses his sins led into the wilderness and feels finally free from the duty of self-inquiry. Some books have the power to make you more stupid. Following the ritual of the goat we are almost ready to join the cadre of meat-eating far-thinking Socialists who do not even vote.
• 
  La Hyène

  Nancy Fraser, economista marxista americana, in questo saggio denso dal titolo attraente, cerca di correlare la nascita e lo sviluppo del capitalismo ad alcuni temi fondamentali, fortemente discussi negli Stati moderni, come la condizione della donna nella società, il razzismo e l’indiscriminato sfruttamento delle risorse naturali . Ne deriva una disamina attenta delle problematiche appena enunciate che però fin dall’inizio, ha qualcosa che non funziona totalmente dal punto di vista logico. In primo luogo l’economista prende in esame la questione improntando una critica marxista al capitalismo, mescolando tra loro gli assunti dei diritti umani che possono essere stati calpestati e disconosciuti per agevolare il profitto. Di per sé questa operazione equivale a mischiare le mele con le pere, poiché è indubbio che il capitalismo si sia avvantaggiato anche di particolari condizioni come il colonialismo o in epoca industriale, dell’arrivo delle donne nel mondo del lavoro, ma è altrettanto vero che il presupposto perseguito da un sistema economico è appunto il profitto, non il disciplinare lo sfruttamento o meno di certi soggetti all’interno della società, cosa che dovrebbe essere appannaggio dello Stato. Sbagliate le basi, diventano sbagliate anche le deduzioni non considerando inoltre che il capitalismo non è più un sistema caratteristico dei paesi ricchi, ma al contrario esso, con sfumature ed intensità diverse, ha fagocitato tutto il globo, creando semmai grave arretratezza e danni ai paesi che invece ne sono stati tagliati fuori, vedi Cuba.
  
  In definitiva lo consiglierei a chi non ha almeno un’infarinatura di economia, poiché solo la parte iniziale sulla suddivisione dei vari tipi di capitalismo, così com’è affrontata, scoraggerebbe anche Marx a continuare la lettura.
  
  Il libro ha tuttavia il pregio di far riflettere ed approfondire argomenti portando alla conclusione a cui sono arrivati tutti quelli che hanno studiato economia, perdendo tempo e notti insonni, districandosi tra le varie correnti economiche e formule matematiche a non finire e cioè che l’economia senza un’ interrelazione con altre discipline come storia, sociologia e diritto è del tutto inutile!
• 
  Lowarn Gutierrez

  This is a precise and carefully constructed analysis of capitalism beyond its scope as just an economic system: instead, the book details how capitalism reaches into different aspects of society and politics and the consequences that has.
  
  Each chapter has a different intersection as its focus - race, gender/sex, nature and the environment, and politics - although Fraser stresses that everything is tightly intertwined, and goes into that, too. The book then ends with some thoughts on what socialism should mean for the current era as a response to how capitalism presents: the pitfalls that a theoretical new system should avoid, and the ways that it could help mend things that capitalism damaged.
  
  It's really interesting and I admire how Fraser articulates her arguments. With that said, it is frustratingly academic to read, which isn't a crime, but I've seen this book promoted a fair bit in standard bookshops, and I can only imagine how many people who have just started wanting to learn about political theory will be running for the hills within the first few paragraphs. I like wordy writing and I know at least a little socialist theory and I still had to stop and reread bits frequently because of all the -isations and -isms being thrown around. So much thought was put into breaking down all of these complex interactions and intersections and yet the writing itself only obscures them again! It's a shame.
  
  Still, this is a fantastic analysis, in my opinion, and I do recommend it if you're looking for some insight on how we got to our current state of affairs - albeit only if you've the energy and stomach for a LOT of political jargon.
• 
  YHC

  资本主义的贪婪欲望，从一个危机点到另一个危机点，从生态破坏到民主崩溃，从种族暴力到护理工作的贬值，这些危机点都在新冠疫情发生中达到了顶点。用南希· 弗雷泽自己的话来说：“对于一个系统来说，它就是在吞噬自己的社会、政治和自然基础——被吞噬的这些东西也是我们社会的基础。
  序..言..食人资本主义：我们被烤焦了吗？.// 001
  第一章. 杂食：我们为什么扩展我们的资本主义概念.// 001
  第二章. 贪食的惩戒：为什么资本主义在结构上是种族主义者.// 044
  第三章. 护理消耗者：为什么社会再生产是资本主义危机主要场所？.// 089
  第四章. 胃中自然：为什么生态政治学必须超环境和反资本���义？.// 126
  第五章. 屠戮民主：为什么政治危机是资本的红肉？.// 191
  第六章. 思想的食物：在21世纪社会主义应该意味着什么？.// 230
  后..记. 巨噬细胞：为什么新冠是一场食人资本主义的狂欢？.// 258
  (以下節錄 蓝江：如何干掉贪婪的资本饕餮——解读南希·弗雷泽的《食人资本主义》)
  对于南希· 弗雷泽来说，主要的区别并不在于资本主义通过何种手段来牟利和剥削，而是在于它们如何利用不同的方式来吞噬非经济的社会体系。以家庭护理和关怀来说，在国家资本主义阶段，由于需要妻子充当家庭护理和关怀的工作，因此，女性被塑造成中产阶级家庭的贤妻良母的形象，妻子养育孩子，做好家务，照顾老人等，也就是说，丈夫在资本主义经济体系中受剥削是以妻子牺牲自己承担资本主义的再生产和护理工作为前提的。但在金融资本主义阶段，表面上看女性主义斗争让妻子和其他女性拥有了和男性一起工作的权利，但这正是金融资本主义所需要的类型，家庭和护理工作业已被资本主义商品化，家政公司通过雇佣拉丁裔和黑人女性，从而让白人中产阶级家庭的女性可以和丈夫一样为资本主义的利润而奋斗。此外，大型公司为了吸引这些优秀的女性员工，甚至试图通过商业化服务取代原先不可能被取代的服务。
  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
  《食人资本主义》是一本批判21世纪资本主义的书，它用三个词来形容资本主义的特点：杂食、贪食和护理消耗者。¹ 杂食是指资本主义不仅是经济制度，还是社会制度，它涉及到生产、再生产、政治和生态等多个层面。¹ 作者认为，我们需要扩展我们的资本主义概念，以揭示它的全面危机和破坏性。²
  
  这本书的作者是南希·弗雷泽（Nancy Fraser），她是美国新学院哲学与政治学系教授，当代著名的政治哲学家和马克思主义女性主义者。¹ 她在本书中提出了一种新的社会主义政治，旨在解决资本主义的四重危机：民主危机、社会再生产危机、生态危机和种族危机。² 她认为，我们需要建立一个以公共财富为基础，以社会正义为目标，以民主参与为手段的社会主义社会。²
  
  这本书是一部深刻而激进的著作，它对当今世界的问题提出了尖锐的批判和有力的对策。它也是一部具有启发性和挑战性的著作，它邀请我们重新思考我们所处的社会类型和我们所追求的社会理想。³ 如果您对资本主义的批判和社会主义的探索感兴趣，我建议您阅读这本书。
  
  來源: 與 Bing 的交談， 2023/9/2
  (1) 食人资本主义 (豆瓣).
  https://book.douban.com/subject/36206....
  (2) Cannibal Capitalism (豆瓣).
  https://book.douban.com/subject/35481....
  (3) 揭露资本主义危机，提出社会主义出路（食人资本主义）书评 - 豆瓣读书.
  https://book.douban.com/review/15161149/.
• 
  Jim

  A brilliant assessment of Capitalism and its insidious and destructive capacities. Anyone who thinks Capitalism is the best we can do should read this. Anyone who thinks Capitalism is merely an economic system should read this. Anyone who wants to know how entangled all of humanity's systems are with Capitalism should read this. Anyone who thinks Capitalism can be fixed or reformed should read this. And anyone who is ready, willing, and able to push for a full revolution of society should read this. Extremely intellectual, well-researched, and devastatingly accurate. Not overly hopeful, more realistic in its conclusions, which I loved. There is a long road ahead to overthrow the mess Capitalism/Capitalists have wrought on everyone and everything, and we may just have waited too long, since the despoilation of the planet and its resources may not be correctable, regardless of what the best minds can do to arrest it. A powerful argument for a New Socialism.
• 
  John Mihelic

  This is the first book I’ve read by Fraser, and I think I read it at the right time. I had just read Delong’s “Slouching Towards Utopia,” which was a decent history of the past 150 years but was too optimistic about the future – especially in ignoring climate change. Fraser’s text was a good counterpoint to that, in showing the challenges we face, and that the current political and economic system that we have, and which delivered it, is not up to the task of solving the problems it created. Will we be able to deliver on the promise of reorganization before it is too late though? I am skeptical but would like to be surprised.
• 
  Kieran

  Fraser is so clear in her analysis of capitalism that this was kind of a breeze to read. I was surprised to find that there were no points where the book felt too heavy or difficult to understand. The main points and takeaways are solid and intuitive, though I wish there was more supporting evidence for some claims (though these unsourced claims are mostly just common knowledge tbf so it's no biggie, just wanted more places to read about some of this stuff).
• 
  Betsy

  A very important book that examines our current crises from a global perspective. Like fish swimming in a warming ocean, we can't see how our economic/social/political system is endangering our future. I certainly wish the author had spent more time describing the possibilities of an expanded socialism. And her message would have been clearer with a tighter editing job. Otherwise, though, this is one of the four or five books to take an unvarnished look at our predicament.
• 
  Alberto Pilotto

  Più che una analisi, Fraser fa una "sintesi", mettendo assieme conoscenze, osservazioni e teorizzazioni già presenti e derivandone l'idea del "Capitalismo cannibale". Nulla di troppo innovativo, ma di tratta di un ottimo sunto tramite cui comprendere le dinamiche attualmente in atto, tra crisi climatica, disuguaglianze di genere, razzismo e crisi politica democratica.
• 
  Ietrio

  on the surface this book seems to be just another evangelic act from an useful idiot for his cult: using all the key words : capitalism, democracy, care. it turned out to be the delirium of a very sick person who believes capitalism is a person who eats humans, hence the cannibal part. the febrile work of a weak mind living in a virtual world where gods are alive and human-like.
• 
  Ryan Ward

  Both a breathless polemic against capitalism as well as an extremely necessary reenvisioning of what capitalism actually is, this book provides a needed diagnosis of society’s greatest ills and a framework for fighting back. Fraser contends that capitalism is not an economic system, it is a social system that accumulates profit by expropriating and exploiting. She shows how racism, sexism, erosion of democracy, poverty, food scarcity, and environmental destruction are all caused by the founding ideology of capitalism: neverending expansion and accumulation. Her contribution is in extending her analysis beyond class conflict and showing how capital depends on extra-economic sources for its expansion, but due to its voracious appetite, it cannibalizes the very supports it needs to survive. Thus, it is an inherently unstable system and can be turned against itself to establish and realize a new socialist order that rejects subordination of humanity and the world to the accumulation of capital.
• 
  Joseph

  Must Read!
• 
  Graham

  The last chapter (chapter 6) lays out her socialism. It’s wonderfully laid out.
  
  I love her method in both detail and scope.
  
  I listened to an interview with Nancy Fraser about this book, relistened to the podcast interview, and then read the book.
• 
  David Healy

  Socialism is anti-viral now. Interesting.