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

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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. Every historical iteration is punctuated by outbreaks of crisis and conflict, as all turn out to be ridden with tension and contradiction.

Chapter 3, ‘Care Guzzler: Why Social Reproduction is a Major Site of Capitalist Crisis’, is perhaps of most immediate interest to readers of this journal. Using the classical Marxian conception of the capitalist economy as a foil, Fraser argues that the economy and the various features we associate with it, including markets, capital accumulation, worker exploitation, and class conflict, are but the ‘front-story’ of capitalism. Long insistent that social justice demands attention to both redistribution and recognition, she shows why any notion that progressive politics must choose between class or identity rests on a false dichotomy.Governments are reluctant to rein them in, for fear that they will pack up and go to a more lenient jurisdiction. The ravaging of nature to flourish capital accumulation, capitalism´s third contradiction, is tackled in Nature in the Maw: Why Ecopolitics Must Be Trans-environmental and Anti-capitalist. I invite everyone to read this book, to sit down and process and produce strategies on how we can redeem these wrongs. Yet, there is a tension between public policy and capital accumulation – as witnessed today by consumers having to choose between ‘eating and heating’ in the face of soaring inflation; while the oil companies have hauled in unprecedented profits, which they are busy distributing among shareholders and bonuses for already spectacularly overpaid CEOs.

However, in this instance, the tables are turned, it is the colonialist, the capitalist class, that shows cannibalistic tendencies as it feeds off the rest to survive. Aimed at activists and scholars alike, Cannibal Capitalism shows how an array of pressing social problems—struggles over racism and (neo)colonialism, time-poverty and crises of care, the looming climate crisis, and the hollowing out of democratic institutions—all trace back to a more general crisis of capitalism.One can even add a third axis distinguishing ‘core’ and ‘periphery,’ as Fraser continuously stresses how the iterations of each division play out differently for (neo)colonial regions and among racialized minorities than for ethnic majority members of North Atlantic powers. These origins might also explain, to my ears, the occasional clash between Fraser’s profoundly serious intent and compassionate vision, set out in demanding arguments, and the popular tone as if to leaven the text: ‘Capitalism is back! Nor is the gendered division of every labour market, and the gender pay gap, which consign most women to lower-status and often part-time work and, hence, to economic dependence on men. Each arrangement represents an attempt to acclimate the needs of social reproduction to the needs of capitalism, but each ends up proving itself unsustainable because capitalism, in the long run, is inherently parasitic on social reproduction. Despite the essential character of reproductive work to maintain an exploitable workforce, it is made subordinate and subjugated to production, considered non-valuable.