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Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature
A timely new critique of capitalism’s persistent failure to value nature
Capitalism is typically treated as a force for relentless commodification. Yet it consistently fails to place value on vital aspects of the nonhuman world, whether carbon emissions or entire ecosystems. In Free Gifts, Alyssa Battistoni explores capitalism’s persistent failure to value nature, arguing that the key question is not the moral issue of why some kinds of nature shouldn’t be commodified, but the economic puzzle of why they haven’t been. To understand contemporary ecological problems from biodiversity collapse to climate change, she contends, we have to understand how some things come to have value under capitalism—and how others do not. To help us do so, Battistoni recovers and reinterprets the idea of the free gift of nature used by classical economic thinkers to describe what we gratuitously obtain from the natural world, and builds on Karl Marx’s critique of political economy to show how capitalism fundamentally treats nature as free for the taking. This novel theory of capitalism’s relationship to nature not only helps us understand contemporary ecological breakdown, but also casts capitalism’s own core dynamics in a new light.
Battistoni addresses four different instances of the free gift in political economic thought, each in a specific natural agents in industry, pollution in the environment, reproductive labor in the household, and natural capital in the biosphere. In so doing, she offers new readings of major twentieth-century thinkers, including Friedrich Hayek, Simone de Beauvoir, Garrett Hardin, Silvia Federici, and Ronald Coase. Ultimately, she offers a novel account of freedom for our ecologically troubled present, developing a materialist existentialism to argue that capitalism limits our ability to be responsible for our relationships to the natural world, and imagining how we might live freely while valuing nature’s gifts.
Capitalism is typically treated as a force for relentless commodification. Yet it consistently fails to place value on vital aspects of the nonhuman world, whether carbon emissions or entire ecosystems. In Free Gifts, Alyssa Battistoni explores capitalism’s persistent failure to value nature, arguing that the key question is not the moral issue of why some kinds of nature shouldn’t be commodified, but the economic puzzle of why they haven’t been. To understand contemporary ecological problems from biodiversity collapse to climate change, she contends, we have to understand how some things come to have value under capitalism—and how others do not. To help us do so, Battistoni recovers and reinterprets the idea of the free gift of nature used by classical economic thinkers to describe what we gratuitously obtain from the natural world, and builds on Karl Marx’s critique of political economy to show how capitalism fundamentally treats nature as free for the taking. This novel theory of capitalism’s relationship to nature not only helps us understand contemporary ecological breakdown, but also casts capitalism’s own core dynamics in a new light.
Battistoni addresses four different instances of the free gift in political economic thought, each in a specific natural agents in industry, pollution in the environment, reproductive labor in the household, and natural capital in the biosphere. In so doing, she offers new readings of major twentieth-century thinkers, including Friedrich Hayek, Simone de Beauvoir, Garrett Hardin, Silvia Federici, and Ronald Coase. Ultimately, she offers a novel account of freedom for our ecologically troubled present, developing a materialist existentialism to argue that capitalism limits our ability to be responsible for our relationships to the natural world, and imagining how we might live freely while valuing nature’s gifts.
328 pages, Hardcover
Published August 19, 2025
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716 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 20, 2025
easily the most refreshing intervention in the ecological left in many years. though i've heard bits and pieces of Battistoni's argument in talks over the years, the argumentation is *so precise* that it really invites a massive step forward from 2010s ecomarxism and feminism.
there are at least two critical inteventions concerning how and why nature is treated as a "free gift" under capitalism. the first concerns whether and under what condtions capital appropriates, commodifies, or destroys aspects of the natural world. the rhetorical move Battistoni frequently makes is that the problem isn't so much that capital grows to encompass everything, but that it doesn't. this is not good for everything unencompassed by the capital relation -- or those within it. rather, that which is not subsumed is rendered unimportant and thus largely unvaluable and thus unimportant. these range from nature-based industries in which petty freedoms can be easier than direct control, to ecosystem services which ultimately are not in this system, to the "externalities" of pollution which are calculated (or not) by political economists. "capitalism is a humanism" -- it is, in fact, reliant on surplus value. the more nature, the more constant capital, the less surplus.
the second argument concerns an intervention in readings of possible human and nonhuman freedom under socialism. freedom has long been imagined as either *based* on the necessity of nature, or *freed* from it by the social world. here, the argument appears is a fresh intervention into neorepublicanism by way of Sartre and Beauvoir. I am less certain as to whether I found these arguments convincing, but either way I did find them refreshing.
what makes the text especially helpful is that along the way, Battistoni is unafraid to cite the theorists whose work, in juxtaposition, appears quite sloppy. nowhere is this more the case than in the chapter which reads varieties of (eco)feminism and social reproduction theory, in which it increasingly appears slipshod analogy between women and nature stands in for analytic clarity. I appreciate too how many of the more unsteady arguments about capitalism and nature in the discipline of geography are put under scrutiny, given how easy it often seems to be for political theorists to ignore us. that these arguments are unfolded by way of close reading of major theorists across so many traditions is what will make it a lasting analysis.
there are at least two critical inteventions concerning how and why nature is treated as a "free gift" under capitalism. the first concerns whether and under what condtions capital appropriates, commodifies, or destroys aspects of the natural world. the rhetorical move Battistoni frequently makes is that the problem isn't so much that capital grows to encompass everything, but that it doesn't. this is not good for everything unencompassed by the capital relation -- or those within it. rather, that which is not subsumed is rendered unimportant and thus largely unvaluable and thus unimportant. these range from nature-based industries in which petty freedoms can be easier than direct control, to ecosystem services which ultimately are not in this system, to the "externalities" of pollution which are calculated (or not) by political economists. "capitalism is a humanism" -- it is, in fact, reliant on surplus value. the more nature, the more constant capital, the less surplus.
the second argument concerns an intervention in readings of possible human and nonhuman freedom under socialism. freedom has long been imagined as either *based* on the necessity of nature, or *freed* from it by the social world. here, the argument appears is a fresh intervention into neorepublicanism by way of Sartre and Beauvoir. I am less certain as to whether I found these arguments convincing, but either way I did find them refreshing.
what makes the text especially helpful is that along the way, Battistoni is unafraid to cite the theorists whose work, in juxtaposition, appears quite sloppy. nowhere is this more the case than in the chapter which reads varieties of (eco)feminism and social reproduction theory, in which it increasingly appears slipshod analogy between women and nature stands in for analytic clarity. I appreciate too how many of the more unsteady arguments about capitalism and nature in the discipline of geography are put under scrutiny, given how easy it often seems to be for political theorists to ignore us. that these arguments are unfolded by way of close reading of major theorists across so many traditions is what will make it a lasting analysis.
October 30, 2025
It can be difficult to review an academic book like Alyssa Battistoni's Free Gifts - Capitalism and the Politics of Nature as a non-academic- or at least as someone who never specialized in this particular field. I feel the need to make the caveat that as a result I may have missed or misunderstood something. I would say that this book is fairly dense and somewhat jargony, but still readable if one is able to take the time and focus denser texts require. The amount of literature that the author reviews throughout the text is impressive. She introduces several new terms. At times I had to go back to bookmarks or to reread things to figure out what was the author's argument and what was an assessment of another writer. That is less a criticism of the writing style and more and acknowledgment of my own stressed out attention span while reading this.
Battistoni's assessment and summation of capitalism and its history taught me some things that I don't often see in discussions about the topic. The author frames the ability to refuse pollution or to impose pollution on others is a form of class rule. She also discusses past feminist movements' attempts to argue against the idea that labor associated with women (child rearing, housework, etc) being "natural" or nature oriented is inaccurate, and thus said work should be paid. (The author also acknowledges the BIPOC women doing said labor for white women.) Battistoni turns this argument on it's head by acknowledging that something being natural should not mean that it's exploitable.
There is also much discussion about the struggle to categorize nature. Some neoliberal solutions (sometimes seen as a necessary evil) to convince capitalists to believe that respecting nature is in their favor can backfire when they run into a part of nature that resists exploitation, or where the "profit" being discussed is not solely monetary and immediate. There are pieces of the natural world that are capitalized upon and exploited to extinction and others that resist commodification. There will always come a point we're nature is not seen as profitable by capitalists even if it IS infinitely more "profitable" to the human race and the more than human world to protect. It is too costly to capitalism to exploit everything, therefore the socialization of nature as a public source (the public here includes other species,) is a better alternative even for neoliberal and further conservation proponents. Another argument I appreciated is the author's discussion of how many across the political spectrum argue that to protect or respect the natural world would mean destroying our own lives and luxuries. There is a sort of black and white thinking that we are either in this high waste capitalist dystopia or complete primitivism. The author offers ideas that show how one can reduce destruction and exploitation without necessarily taking away quality of life and in fact can often improve quality of life.
Battistoni's language is often on point, such as saying things like "more than human world" or "other than human animals." Yet, at times it's still feels like the author is looking at other animals through a lens of product and capitalism alone. I found that the author focused a bit more on nature as a homogeneous whole for the sake of argument which is advantageous in some ways and disadvantageous in others. There are sections where I felt very engaged by her discussion about how capitalism affects other than human animals, ecosystems, etc. However, more than once, said discussions focusing on those victims were often cut short to return to centering the effects on humans. Perhaps this is an unfair criticism given the broader topic of the book, but it seems like a missed opportunity to treat other animals as an important category of beings with a variety of conscious experiences who are very much active members of systems of exploitation. I also felt that the book missed the opportunity throughout multiple sections to engage with the idea that animals are part of the working class. Battistoni occasionally references thinkers who are more in line with animal liberation but in my opinion doesn't engage enough with their ideas. She also discusses power imbalances between humans and other animals deftly, but still needs to push a little further in my opinion.
This lack of inclusion can cause other problems when one is making an argument about whether or not certain actions would be effective and combating capitalism. There's is occasionally a worn dichotomy made between individual change (portrayed as useless or capitalistic) and systematic change (confronting those at the top) which tires me to no end on the left. Harm to ecosystems and other animals have occurred since long before capitalism ever existed. The death of the ocean and ecosystems worldwide are not solely capitalist issues. Extinctions, exploitation, cruelty, etc have all occurred throughout human existence even back to the most primitive of times. So, one can claim that organizing workers in these industries would be combating capitalism, but by conveniently leaving out the animals victimized by said industries, it makes it seem that combating capitalism would solve the problem whereas avoiding harm to animals when possible would not. I do not think there is a fair dichotomy that actually exists in the world between individual change and systemic change. Furthermore, many systemic changes are a bunch of individuals making changes together.
The author does acknowledge that we can never return to a planet of the past, which is an important distinction often missing from some leftists assessments of the world. The author does not see through rose colored glasses nor does she make the argument that an anti-capitalist framework would suddenly solve all of the problems with society. She makes the far more grounded argument that a more socialized system offers more options to confront problems head on. Many collective liberation, (animal inclusive) anarchist, and indigenous authors' texts support this author's thesis that we must move forward from where we are and incorporate decolonial knowledge without assuming that we can undo everything that has been done and return to a mythical pristine nature harmony that never existed. We must envision and create something new.
The author also encourages the reader not to fall into despair. While things are very bad and they have continued to get worse, that is not a reason to give up entirely. This is another test where I have encountered the "hope without hope" idea that basically fuels me daily- even if only due to the reality that things can and will get even worse than they are now without intervention. The author holds on to some hope that there are still some things that can be healed, some things that can be prevented, and some things that can be overcome
Overall this was a heavy book with a lot of information that took me a long time to read. I have my criticisms but also believe that it adds a lot of important points of discussion and examples of what a better and more cooperative world could look like.
This was also posted to my storygraph and blog.
Battistoni's assessment and summation of capitalism and its history taught me some things that I don't often see in discussions about the topic. The author frames the ability to refuse pollution or to impose pollution on others is a form of class rule. She also discusses past feminist movements' attempts to argue against the idea that labor associated with women (child rearing, housework, etc) being "natural" or nature oriented is inaccurate, and thus said work should be paid. (The author also acknowledges the BIPOC women doing said labor for white women.) Battistoni turns this argument on it's head by acknowledging that something being natural should not mean that it's exploitable.
There is also much discussion about the struggle to categorize nature. Some neoliberal solutions (sometimes seen as a necessary evil) to convince capitalists to believe that respecting nature is in their favor can backfire when they run into a part of nature that resists exploitation, or where the "profit" being discussed is not solely monetary and immediate. There are pieces of the natural world that are capitalized upon and exploited to extinction and others that resist commodification. There will always come a point we're nature is not seen as profitable by capitalists even if it IS infinitely more "profitable" to the human race and the more than human world to protect. It is too costly to capitalism to exploit everything, therefore the socialization of nature as a public source (the public here includes other species,) is a better alternative even for neoliberal and further conservation proponents. Another argument I appreciated is the author's discussion of how many across the political spectrum argue that to protect or respect the natural world would mean destroying our own lives and luxuries. There is a sort of black and white thinking that we are either in this high waste capitalist dystopia or complete primitivism. The author offers ideas that show how one can reduce destruction and exploitation without necessarily taking away quality of life and in fact can often improve quality of life.
Battistoni's language is often on point, such as saying things like "more than human world" or "other than human animals." Yet, at times it's still feels like the author is looking at other animals through a lens of product and capitalism alone. I found that the author focused a bit more on nature as a homogeneous whole for the sake of argument which is advantageous in some ways and disadvantageous in others. There are sections where I felt very engaged by her discussion about how capitalism affects other than human animals, ecosystems, etc. However, more than once, said discussions focusing on those victims were often cut short to return to centering the effects on humans. Perhaps this is an unfair criticism given the broader topic of the book, but it seems like a missed opportunity to treat other animals as an important category of beings with a variety of conscious experiences who are very much active members of systems of exploitation. I also felt that the book missed the opportunity throughout multiple sections to engage with the idea that animals are part of the working class. Battistoni occasionally references thinkers who are more in line with animal liberation but in my opinion doesn't engage enough with their ideas. She also discusses power imbalances between humans and other animals deftly, but still needs to push a little further in my opinion.
This lack of inclusion can cause other problems when one is making an argument about whether or not certain actions would be effective and combating capitalism. There's is occasionally a worn dichotomy made between individual change (portrayed as useless or capitalistic) and systematic change (confronting those at the top) which tires me to no end on the left. Harm to ecosystems and other animals have occurred since long before capitalism ever existed. The death of the ocean and ecosystems worldwide are not solely capitalist issues. Extinctions, exploitation, cruelty, etc have all occurred throughout human existence even back to the most primitive of times. So, one can claim that organizing workers in these industries would be combating capitalism, but by conveniently leaving out the animals victimized by said industries, it makes it seem that combating capitalism would solve the problem whereas avoiding harm to animals when possible would not. I do not think there is a fair dichotomy that actually exists in the world between individual change and systemic change. Furthermore, many systemic changes are a bunch of individuals making changes together.
The author does acknowledge that we can never return to a planet of the past, which is an important distinction often missing from some leftists assessments of the world. The author does not see through rose colored glasses nor does she make the argument that an anti-capitalist framework would suddenly solve all of the problems with society. She makes the far more grounded argument that a more socialized system offers more options to confront problems head on. Many collective liberation, (animal inclusive) anarchist, and indigenous authors' texts support this author's thesis that we must move forward from where we are and incorporate decolonial knowledge without assuming that we can undo everything that has been done and return to a mythical pristine nature harmony that never existed. We must envision and create something new.
The author also encourages the reader not to fall into despair. While things are very bad and they have continued to get worse, that is not a reason to give up entirely. This is another test where I have encountered the "hope without hope" idea that basically fuels me daily- even if only due to the reality that things can and will get even worse than they are now without intervention. The author holds on to some hope that there are still some things that can be healed, some things that can be prevented, and some things that can be overcome
Overall this was a heavy book with a lot of information that took me a long time to read. I have my criticisms but also believe that it adds a lot of important points of discussion and examples of what a better and more cooperative world could look like.
This was also posted to my storygraph and blog.
August 27, 2025
Battistoni has a super strong argument about how resource allocation through indirect market rule, market domination, and the power of capital, class rule, distort the ability for us to make decisions about how we want to value nature, and take responsibility for those decisions. Here she leans heavily on existentialism to redefine freedom contra capitalism. This redefinition of the harms of capitalism is invigorating, but I was surprised by her unneeded rejection of past struggle.
I was troubled by where she leans on existentialism to criticize, primarily, the romantic socialist tradition and Marxist feminism. It felt like she needed to “intervene,” and the “intervention” was dehistoricizing as much as it was “materializing.” For example, her relatively long form criticism of “commons romanticism” boils down to “capitalism distorts accumulation incentives and subsumes the products of the commons indirectly.”
Sure! But, she acts as if commons preexist capitalism and are subsumed, neutralizing their resistant potential. This argument is surprisingly Lockean, assuming that commons are natural and unimproved. The flip side of the ‘new enclosure historians’ (Linebaugh, Federici, Witgen?) is that commoning is often a reaction to accumulation by dispossession. I think the best example is Linebaugh’s history of London dockworkers in London Hanged, but also Tera Hunter’s work on customary takings among formerly enslaved women in Reconstruction Atlanta in To ‘Joy My Freedom. Sure, these are not “natural” commons, but is not the provocation of the book that things being natural ought not be the criteria of political evaluation? Moreover, I am interested in how natural commons are constructed in moments of enclosure - ALL the peasants pulling down a fence, treaty usufructt rights creating commons out of previously chiefly hunting/fishing rights. This is reminiscent of EP Thompson’s argument in Customs in Common that paternalism often draws on imagined pasts. Battistoni leaves us somewhat helpless in constructing just ecological relations, as past moments where free decisions were attempted are castigated as either moribund (“suprasubsumption”) or not up to the task of planetary level thinking.
Her criticism of Marxist feminism felt misplaced as well, revolving around the claim that reproduction is unpaid bc it is resistant to the wage form, as other forms of nature-based work are. Therefore, it should not have a privileged place in struggle nor be thought of as constructed actively by capitalists. However, the history of family discipline that Silivia Federici and Leopoldina Fortunati base their work on demonstrates conclusively that enclosures of time and space were required to create the nuclear home. This is not the ideological mystification thesis, but a historical documentation about how abortion, midwifery, common pasture and non-nuclear forms of urban planning were not subsumed but actively intervened in. The implication of this is that struggles around the allocation of housework are struggles against the wage as the primary arbiter of value. Care as positive good, something Battistoni criticizes by name, is a way of referring to the loss of care that happens when capital intervenes in patterns of reproduction that were achieved through struggle, whether it’s Marx’s work on soil ecology or Fortunati’s argument about the loss of life expectancy in the English Industrial Revolution. Is not a living baby and rich soil the result of work, and its loss a form of non-natural disaster?
This review is long and critical, but I am amazed by Battistoni’s analytical precision. It’s a credit to her, and her scholarly contributions, to produce a book of this caliber. I wrote a long review but am unsure I am at all correct. It is cause this book matters and should be struggled with that I wanted to expose my thoughts. I hope to work in this tradition of critical solidarity, a concept Battistoni’s work and scholarly output embodies.
I was troubled by where she leans on existentialism to criticize, primarily, the romantic socialist tradition and Marxist feminism. It felt like she needed to “intervene,” and the “intervention” was dehistoricizing as much as it was “materializing.” For example, her relatively long form criticism of “commons romanticism” boils down to “capitalism distorts accumulation incentives and subsumes the products of the commons indirectly.”
Sure! But, she acts as if commons preexist capitalism and are subsumed, neutralizing their resistant potential. This argument is surprisingly Lockean, assuming that commons are natural and unimproved. The flip side of the ‘new enclosure historians’ (Linebaugh, Federici, Witgen?) is that commoning is often a reaction to accumulation by dispossession. I think the best example is Linebaugh’s history of London dockworkers in London Hanged, but also Tera Hunter’s work on customary takings among formerly enslaved women in Reconstruction Atlanta in To ‘Joy My Freedom. Sure, these are not “natural” commons, but is not the provocation of the book that things being natural ought not be the criteria of political evaluation? Moreover, I am interested in how natural commons are constructed in moments of enclosure - ALL the peasants pulling down a fence, treaty usufructt rights creating commons out of previously chiefly hunting/fishing rights. This is reminiscent of EP Thompson’s argument in Customs in Common that paternalism often draws on imagined pasts. Battistoni leaves us somewhat helpless in constructing just ecological relations, as past moments where free decisions were attempted are castigated as either moribund (“suprasubsumption”) or not up to the task of planetary level thinking.
Her criticism of Marxist feminism felt misplaced as well, revolving around the claim that reproduction is unpaid bc it is resistant to the wage form, as other forms of nature-based work are. Therefore, it should not have a privileged place in struggle nor be thought of as constructed actively by capitalists. However, the history of family discipline that Silivia Federici and Leopoldina Fortunati base their work on demonstrates conclusively that enclosures of time and space were required to create the nuclear home. This is not the ideological mystification thesis, but a historical documentation about how abortion, midwifery, common pasture and non-nuclear forms of urban planning were not subsumed but actively intervened in. The implication of this is that struggles around the allocation of housework are struggles against the wage as the primary arbiter of value. Care as positive good, something Battistoni criticizes by name, is a way of referring to the loss of care that happens when capital intervenes in patterns of reproduction that were achieved through struggle, whether it’s Marx’s work on soil ecology or Fortunati’s argument about the loss of life expectancy in the English Industrial Revolution. Is not a living baby and rich soil the result of work, and its loss a form of non-natural disaster?
This review is long and critical, but I am amazed by Battistoni’s analytical precision. It’s a credit to her, and her scholarly contributions, to produce a book of this caliber. I wrote a long review but am unsure I am at all correct. It is cause this book matters and should be struggled with that I wanted to expose my thoughts. I hope to work in this tradition of critical solidarity, a concept Battistoni’s work and scholarly output embodies.
September 22, 2025
A masterpiece, a patient and dispassionate example of why you cannot think clearly about our world without Marxism's theoretical resources. At the same time, however, it is a rigorous immanent critique of Marxist theory which doesn't descend from capitalism as an "ideal average" to see how its tendencies collide with a recalcitrant material world. This will rightfully become a classic.
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December 18, 2025Åbenbart all the rage blandt antikontinentale marxister. Måske den kan bruges
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