Marx in the Anthropocene

by Kōhei Saitō

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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Ecology, Theory, Environment

292 pages, Paperback

Published February 2, 2023

About the author

Kohei Saito received his Ph.D. from Humboldt University in Berlin. He is currently associate professor of political economy at Osaka City University. He has published articles and reviews on Marx’s ecology, including “The Emergence of Marx’s Critique of Modern Agriculture,” and “Marx’s Ecological Notebooks,” both in Monthly Review. He is working on editing the complete works of Marx and Engels, Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA) Volume IV/18, which includes a number of Marx’s natural scientific notebooks.

Reviews

[Kai · Rating 4 out of 5]

it's kind of funny that this book seems to have captured the zeitgeist in a substantial way, given that major portions of the text itself are given to extreme close readings and comparisons of passages within marx, and particularly within the most esoteric passages and texts: various letters, unpublished notebooks, drafts and revisions, and notes on the texts of others (what is sometimes derogatorily termed 'marxicology'). such a reading is not without its academic pleasures. two chapters in particular stand out in this regard: the opening reading of the multiplicity and second order metabolism in chapter one (building on Meszaros, surprisingly and compellingly), and the comparison of marx's study of science and pre-capitalist land tenure in chapter six (including but going beyond Kevin Anderson's well-known work). here Saito's work mostly shines. i will frequently be returning to chapter six's main point that marx's study of non-capitalist agricultural communes was motivated by an interest in revising *both* his prior eurocentric teleology or developmentalism *and* his prior productivist tendencies in order to understand communism as a kind of return to a revised 'archaic' type.

these useful chapters are interspersed in some alternatingly dry and somewhat bad readings. two early chapters distinguish between marx and engels' different positions in late life, and lukacs' humanist shadow on western marxism. not altogether interesting, but also not immediately political--it's difficult for me to think of something less immediately useful than mining unpublished lukacs books! the next chapter is a critique of ontological and methodological monism, particularly in neil smith, noel castree, and jason w moore. it tries to make them all out to be latourians, flat ontologists, etc. this chapter is largely a disaster. the argument overstates the importance of ontology in politics, fails to disaggregate the varieties of environmentalism or ecology, overstates the difference between "production", "construction", and "metabolism." it truly feels like an academic dustup--which saito almost admits to be a contest of "popularity" (114)! The critique of full automation (bastani, mason, etc) in the following chapter is not as hard hitting as it could be, but the reading of the chapter of Capital on co-operation as a revision of the "fragment on machines" in the Grundrisse felt really innovative.

overall, much as i enjoyed this book, i remain somewhat confused and suspicious of the work that this kind of return to capital-m Marx does. it is argued that attending to such unpublished fragments can challenge the assumptions and assessments of marx as a "promethean" "productivist" and "eurocentric" thinker, and the politics that are derived from, or in opposition, to these versions of his thought. the reading, however, is sometimes presented as if the "late marx" finally completed his ecological assessment of the world, an assessment that is superior to his prior works (even here presented as a kind of ecological version of Althusser's epistemological break). such a position seems at odds from the referenced project of neue marx lekture which instead suggests that marx's project is not just "unfinished" but "unfinishable"--it is contradictory, and in fact insufficient on its own to the present. more affirmatively, our readings of marx change as history changes, our production of communism must change with our understanding of each other and the planet, and thus we should never be afraid of critiquing the limitations or contradictions of Marx's various positions. to me, we don't need to exaggerate Marx's two mentions of 'rift' into an entire version of 'his theory of ecosocialism', or his scattered assessments of russian and german agricultural communes into a full-fledged support of 'sustainability' or 'steady-state' economics--'degrowth communism' can be *our* theory and no less powerful.

[Kyrill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Saito is a good writer and historian/marxologist and there is a lot I learned from this book, but he is a sloppy philosopher and unfortunately does not provide the level of granularity needed for his strong theses. The central thesis is that Marx abandoned “productivism” (bad thing) and embraced “degrowth communism” (good thing) late in his life. The first problem with this is how undialectical it is. The second problem is that Saito never elaborates what “degrowth” and “growth” are. For most of the book he defines this in terms of economic growth, growth of GDP - but don’t all communists want to move beyond a society organised around economic growth? In the last chapter he contrasts growth with the wealth and abundance of a communist society. Wealth comes from bringing resources into the commons (what communist would disagree?) and nature is its source (a basic point made by Marx to talk about societies that don't rely on labour power to structure production). If common ownership and democratic control are the defining features, why not support 3D printers in the commons? I worry that Saito is prey to the ideology Fisher and the other left accelerationists he criticises were trying to draw attention to: the assumption that innovation and technological progress is synonymous with economic growth and market exchange.

Ultimately, degrowth communism for Saito comes down to not producing more technology. He is right to illuminate a shift from technological determinism to a more realist view of technology in Marx but this does not necessitate throwing out the whole of historical materialism and an appreciation of technology as a tool for social change and management. Saito’s suggestion is that technology is too caught up in oppressive systems and that a communist society would need to start from scratch with technology. But what could it mean to start from scratch and when will we know when we’re doing it? Without historical materialism we are left with rather naïve voluntarism. What would a communist society do with the knowledge of Amazon if not appropriate it? Bury the code? Imprison those who reproduce it? Round up everyone’s iPhone? Saito does not offer any mechanisms by which we might get to degrowth communism other than developing an ethic of puritan self-restraint that we as individuals feel a duty to adhere to.

If we are living in a society with no wage relation, what counts as “growth” of technology? That there is more of it than before? That we are creating new technology? With Saito’s uncritical nature/society dualism it is also unclear what counts here. We're clearly no longer talking about GDP (which is good! but not acknowledged). It seems strange not to differentiate production by sectors or at least the realm of necessity and freedom. Should we halt our production of forks? trains? medication?

I feel like the very valid criticisms about systems of production would have more explanatory power if he let go of the universal “more” or “less” growth focus e.g. developing the technology for collective local ownership of solar panels would support the metabolism better than simply reducing the production of new energy infrastructure. Saito does not want to stop all production but for it to be in a “steady state”, but how do we discern such steadiness if we are in a democratically controlled communist society with no wage relation? We need more analytical tools than Saito provides here.

Saito is confused about what monism and dualism are and the philosophical history of these terms. He would have been better off using Aristotle’s “second nature”, Marx’s “humanised nature” or Ilyenkov’s “Ideal”. He does fall into dualism but unintentionally, by not considering the dynamic relations between the distinctions he draws. I know he's responding to Moore's annoying New Materialist Marxism but why let your opponent frame the debate?

Besides all this, I’m not sure Saito actually does much to prove that Marx rejects core tenants of historical materialism, embracing this new thing Marx himself never mentions. Saito provides an early Marx quote to argue that historical materialism and productivism (he doesn’t really distinguish between them) entails eurocentrism. He then dedicates many pages to showing that Marx rejected eurocentrism in his later work. This is all helpful but it does not follow that he therefore rejected historical materialism, since Saito does not establish that eurocentrism is necessary for HM. Saito is just generally arguing that Marx rejected bad things.

Finally, a pedantic point but Saito refers to Paul Mason’s Clear Bright Future several times in criticising left accelerationism / prometheanism, but he has clearly not read more than the book’s title. He assumes it is a sequel to Mason’s accelerationist “Postcapitalism”. In fact, the book is series of moral panics about modern philosophy. In the book, Mason explains that he is no longer a Marxist because Marxism entails relativism and does not take the environment seriously – a thesis Saito’s book is a great rebuttal to.

[Noritaka Hara · Rating 1 out of 5]

There are some interesting ideas in the book, but too many logic jumps/flaws, and unexplained nor tested superficial concepts - so not up to any hype (in my opinion). Basic his idea is that capitalism is the source of climate change, and most of the current measures against it (like a green new deal, SGDs, etc) are built on capitalism and thus will not solve the issue (nothing new). Capitalism externalizes cost and creates scarcity to make more money, thus creating inequality (like what Piketty said). Since current election-based democracy is controlled by capital, democracy has to change. To solve this, he cited de-growth communism, which is an idea of Marx late in life. It basically aims at equality with distributed power based on abundance through commons. Commons is like a coop or association which is owned and run by producers (like Spain has) and produces "essential products", and bullshit jobs which create unnecessary products to make money will disappear.

Many of his arguments are very weak and not thorough, and lack concreteness (he cites many foreign researchers and cases, which is sadly typical tactics to convince the Japanese audience). He thinks capitalism is the sole fuel/force that drives people to seek endless consumption. But I think it could be the opposite - capitalism is just a engine run also by some essential human desire, being currently expressed as endless consumption. Thus, without taking into account that, just replacing current system based on capitalism (aside from its feasibility) with his hypothetical de-growth communism does not seem plausible path especially for addressing climate change.

[Simon B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kohei Saito's Capital in the Anthropocene has become a bestseller in his native Japan, selling half a million copies. This book - Marx in the Anthropocene - is not the same book. Capital in the Anthropocene is yet to be translated into English. Whereas Marx in the Anthropocene is a quite heavy, theoretical work. However, it presents a fascinating re-reading of some traditional Marxist concepts. Overall I think it's a very important work and will be prove to be influential. Key parts that stood out for me include:

a) Saito's insistence that Marxism is an unfinished and open project (i.e. not a collection of sacred texts)
b) a very clear elaboration of Marx's theory of metabolic rift and its ecological significance
c) a compelling assessment of various productivist, left accelerationist, utopian, Promethean, ecomodernist and 'fully automated luxury communist' approaches to social transformation
d) a provocative critique of outdated 'traditional Marxist' concepts associated with 20th century socialism that presume the never-ending 'development of the productive forces' is the path to socialism and say that unlimited material abundance is the goal of socialism. Key to this critique is Saito's elaboration of the ways in which the mature Marx had come to question these ideas, causing him to significantly revise his own theory of historical materialism.

Perhaps Saito's most provocative argument - based on a close reading of the mature Marx's notebooks - is that Marx also became a 'degrowth communist', endorsing a post-scarcity, steady-state economy as essential for ecosocialism. The biggest difficulty Saito has in justifying this is that Marx never said so himself. But I don't think you have to be 100% convinced that Marx became a degrowth communist in the 1880s (I'm not) to agree that degrowth communism builds on some fascinating insights of Marx and - most critically - provides an answer to the present crisis (I do).

I recommend this book, but as an aside I'm not so convinced of Saito's criticisms of Frederick Engels, who is charged with distorting and concealing Marx's ecological ideas after Marx's death. There is just not enough textual evidence presented to substantiate this claim.

*****

“However, the productive forces developed under capitalism are tightly connected to the uniquely capitalist way of organizing the collaborative, cooperative and other social aspects of labour. If so, the transcendence of the capitalist mode of production must be a much more radical and thoroughgoing one than the mere abolition of private property and exploitation through the re-appropriation of the means of production by the working class. It requires the radical reorganization of the relations of production for the sake for freedom and autonomy among associated producers, so that the productive forces of capital disappear. Otherwise, despotic and ecologically destructive forms of production will continue in post-capitalist society.”

******

"“When Marx argued that humans can organize their metabolic interaction with the environment in a conscious manner, it means that they can consciously reflect upon their social needs and limit them if necessary. This act of self-limitation contributes to a conscious downscaling of the current ‘realm of necessity’ which is actually full of unnecessary things and activities from the perspective of well-being and sustainability. They are only ‘necessary’ for capital accumulation and economic growth and not for the ‘all-round development of the individual’.”

[Rhys · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marx in the Anthropocene offers a very interesting discussion of 'methodological dualism' in analysis to address the climate boundaries being crossed by capital and, more importantly, a defense of degrowth within the communist worldview. Saito is a clear writer.

I tend to agree with John Bellamy Foster's critique (Monthly Review, June 2023) on Saito's effort to oppose the positions of Engels and Marx on 'nature', and the resulting long-term impact on Marxist thought and practice. On the other hand, this discussion was secondary and probably unnecessary - and may simply be quibbling, as Foster tries to rehabilitate Engels' reputation. Foster might have acknowledged the strength of this book overall.

Saito, more than any of the 'degrowth' advocates writing over the past number of years, captures the importance/necessity of this movement while anchoring it in political theory. It is really a remarkable achievement.

[L. A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am going back and forth between 3 and 4 stars. On one hand I think it makes some useful arguments against people i think are extremely annoying and also wrong (although these are partially attributed to people like Malm, who I guess i should read at some point) but also the actual points it makes are severely stunted by the subject matter.

The things I think are useful are arguments against both "promethean marxists" e.g. aaron bastani and his FALC as well as against a certain kind of (neoliberal imo) monism that often comes with flat ontologies etc such as latour's. These are generally made very clearly and I think it's valuable that these exist, and I can tell Saito has thought about how annoying all of these people are at leas as much as I do and this makes me a least a bit more sympathetic to his project. So I am rating this 4 due to this sympathy.

However. The actual positive points made in the book are all marxology and no marxism. i was shocked by the extent to which it was possible to avoid discussion of class struggle so completely in a book about the necessity of degrowth communism. the book presents itself as discussing necessary ideas that must shape degrowth communism, but what is actually proposed is often quite empty. for example, there is a discussion of considerable length about the notions of real vs formal subsumption in the development of capitalism, and the topic is treated in some nuance when discussing how it concept has been deployed by whatever saito calls his version orthodox/traditional/etc marxists. then when, not too much later, saito brings up the question of technology under degrowth communism I hoped for some reasoning around a similar historical dialectic of formal and, later, real subsumption of remaining capitalist means of production would take place during the onset of degrowth capitalism. instead the discussion of technology ends up more or less taking the form "well, there are some useful technologies and some bad ones" with really no more insight than that. disappointing.

I could go on longer but this is sort of the schematic of the other complaints as well so it kind of feels superfluous.

[Emmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was excellent. Going in, I was concerned I'd find this tedious. I typically find arguments about Marx's process tedious - who really cares about when Marx did or didn't introduce a concept or what he said in this or that letter. Saito mostly avoids the very tedious Marxological exegesis.

The book is broadly split into two sections. In the first, Saito evaluates Marx's theoretical development as can be seen in his newly-translated notebooks tracking his investigation of natural science. This section also explores the post-Marx development of political ecology in Marxist theory and practice. In the second part, Saito makes more direct arguments. He claims that Marx's evolving thought after the publication of volume I of Capital, as seen in his abandonment of Eurocentric and productivist theories of historical development, constitute an abandonment by Marx of historical materialism itself. Saito concludes by arguing that the late Marx's concept of communism itself constituted what Saito calls 'degrowth communism,' and that this steady-state society based on production for need and the controlled regulation of economic activity should be the goal of an ecosocialist politics.

I do not think that Marx ever ceased to be a historical materialist merely because he stopped being racist. Saito's argument on this point is very weakly supported. The late Marx clearly argues that capitalism works to collectivise and socialise production, and that future communist society would harness the productive base of capitalist society with the yoke of socialist relations of production. Those socialist relations of production may come from the non-capitalist social order of agrarian communes, the Russian mir, or precolonial Indigenous communist societies, but nothing about Marx's reasoning on this point departs from a historical and materialist analysis. I have no idea why Saito claims that it does. Other than on this glaring, crucially important point, Saito is extremely persuasive and this is a very good book.

[Max · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gets really good in the last two chapters

[Yens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interessant boek. Persoonlijk vond ik het argument dat Marx in zijn latere leven zijn 'Eurocentrische' ideeën achterliet zeer overtuigend aangetoond. Dat hij zogezegd een 'degrowth communist' werd, vind ik dubieuzer. Er wordt wel goed aangetoond dat hij meer rekening begon te houden met de natuur in zijn kritiek op de politieke economie. Saito wil hiermee bewijzen dat Marx een post-kapitalistische samenleving ziet zonder groei, maar ik denk eerder dat de fragmenten die Saito aanhaalt uit Marx zijn latere werk eerder aantonen dat hij een 'ecosocialist' was. Saito gebruikt deze term om de aanhangers van groene groei onder het socialisme aan te duiden.

[Andrea · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel like my problem with this book was an expectation mismatch: I read this because I wanted to see how Marx's theory could be applied in a postcapitalist, ecosocial setting, as per this author. This was absolutely not what I got, and the only reason I finished this treatise was simply out of pure stubbornness.

What I got was basically Saitō airing all of his grievances in what could arguably be considered quite a petty way. Marx can do no wrong in the author's eyes, so he spent over 200 pages going "This Person™ was wrong over their Marxist critique because Marx one time in a mumble semi-awake said this that could maybe be interpreted this way" over, and over, and over again, about every single topic imaginable, and about the breath and width of Marxist scholars from all over. John Bellamy Foster: if I were you, I would run away and hide. I'm saying this seriously.

This was overall quite dense, veeery specific, not particularly accessible, and definitely not for the faint of heart. I would recommend reading this with pen, paper, and the Internet at hand –everyone who hasn't spent the past 30 years of their life intensively studying Marx is going to need some deep breaths to get through this because, regardless of how well argued everything was or wasn't (not my place to say), this is hardcore Marxist theory and nothing else. I didn't see one single original thought in here.

One should note, says Saitō in the conclusion, almost at the very end, "that digging into unpublished writings of Karl Marx through the MEGA is not yet another attempt to deify his omnipotent worldview that perfectly predicted the environmental catastrophe in the Anthropocene."

Well, honestly, this entire book felt... Just like that. It says something that the author feels the need to defend himself, does it not? 2/5.

[Marte Ekker Kristiansen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Et nyttig grunnkurs i klimaaspektet ved Marx’ skrifter og teorier. Ikke til å legge skjul på at dette var ei ganske tung bok, men til gjengjeld får man etter min mening mye ut av å pløye seg gjennom den (for øvrig noen kapitler jeg anser som viktigere å lese enn andre).

Saito skriver tankevekkende om hvordan Engels’ bearbeidelse av særlig Kapitalen III har påvirka synet på Marx’ ‘metabolic rift’-begrep, og fått kjipe konsekvenser i form av at denne delen av hans politiske teori er blitt oversett/nærmest avskrevet av den grønne bevegelsen (helt til nå, for håpentligvis!). Boka er også krydra med referanser til andre verker og teoretikere som blir spennende å utforske videre.

[blank · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential reading

[Milo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great book which I very much enjoyed. It puts Marxist theory in conversation with other contemporary left-leaning takes on ecological issues and more generally on the ontology of the society-nature relationship (above all with monist positions such as Jason Moore’s), showing what one can learn from that dead-dog some sometimes wish to make out of Marx by taxing him with “productivism”, “prometheanism” and “teleological eurocentrism”. As always, the specter of Marx won’t keep still.
The general theorization, in chapter 1, of the “shifts” capitalism induces to displace the “rifts” emanating out of its contradictions is also very synoptic and useful.
Particularly interesting – in the philosophical-ontological battlefield – is the concept of “methodological dualism” I think in chapter 4 (perhaps earlier already, I've been reading this book for a while, so forgive the imprecisions). As much as the therein perhaps implicit quibble against some superficially flat (!) anti-negativity/anti-limitation discourses some people have thought possible and necessary to spin out of Spinoza + Deleuze/Guattari, which comes to fruition in chapter 7. I think a perfectly clear argument as the following should and is common sense, even beyond the left, and a Genosse must therefore be capable of making it without shame or fear of someone calling the anti-totalitarian philosophical police or other “nature is production” ontological ones:

When Marx argued that humans can organize their metabolic interaction with the environment in a conscious manner, it means that they can consciously reflect upon their social needs and limit them if necessary.This act of self-limitation contributes to a conscious downscaling of the current ‘realm of necessity’ which is actually full of unnecessary things and activities from the perspective of well-being and sustainability.They are only ‘necessary’for capital accumulation and economic growth and not for the ‘all-round development of the individual’. Since capital drives us towards endless consumption, especially in the face of ‘the total absence of identifiable self-limiting targets of productive pursuit admissible from the standpoint of capital’s mode of social metabolic reproduction’ (Mészáros 2012: 257; emphasis in original), self-limitation has a truly revolutionary potential. (p. 235)

I read someone here implicitly trashing the chapter on Lukács stating something of the sort of there being nothing more useless than mining unpublished work by Lukács. I will allow myself a moment of pettiness here and disagree. First of all, because saying Ontology of Social Being is an unpublished manuscript is misleading; it is posthumous, but its a finished book. Second, because reflecting on the fact – and its consequences – that maybe you’ve read or at least heard about History and Class Consciousness but almost certainly not Ontology of Social Being is actually quite useful for reconstructing the destinies of Marxist thought in the 20th and 21st centuries (which are obviously an important subject of this book), particularly for understanding why indeed Western Marxism had such difficulties in dealing with issues relating to natural science (ecology and climate science being obviously one of them), and the scientifically fueled forces of production. Thirdly because let’s be honest there’s almost nothing less immediately useful than writing a book (!) on critical theory (!) anyways and even less so a review, but we do it anyway because I suppose we hope it shall perhaps have mediate and long term usefulness and if not well at least we tried to further class struggle in philosophy or what have you, but immediate usefulness is just out of the picture my friends try tik-tok and youtube video-columns for that maybe or good old organizing (really, no disrespect intended, at all, on the contrary, obviously).

That stated, situating the discussion sort of on academic terrain (i.e. extending the pettiness), I think Saito sometimes overstates his case of the supposed conflict between “red” and “green” – in Marxism in general as much as in Marx himself. There are two ways of understanding this overstatement, both sort of problematic – but really it’s also not such a big deal either, I guess, since, actually, they seem to me to stem precisely from the fact that this book is quite academic and written for academia (as Saito himself states; I believe other of his books are intended for a more “general” public, but can’t testify to it, I haven’t read them). I will briefly expound on these two ways of understanding what I take to be the reasons for Saito’s overstatement of the conflict between red and green which subtends some important chapters of the book, since it’s one of the few things that seemed to me a bit irritating in what is otherwise a very rewarding reading, particularly as an academic text on Marx.

The first way of understanding this overstatement is to conceive it as a rhetorical strategy consisting in conceding in advance as much as possible to possible critics of Marxism (productivist! eurocentric! teleological! promethean!) in regard to the latter’s supposed “blindness” towards green issues – – in order to then prove that even if that were true, this definitely doesn’t apply to Marx himself. For, according to Saito (and he makes a compelling case), Degrowth Communism – two of whose paroles might be that the “rehabilitation of communal abundance does not have to negate natural scarcity” and that “abundance is not a technological threshold, but a social relationship” (231f.) – is the name of Marx’s true theory.
Or rather – and this is the second point – late Marx’s true theory – and by late we mean like really late, so late that it doesn’t quite seem to include even Capital (not to speak of the Grundrisse!) itself – or maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t? In the first six chapters it seems like it does not, in the last it seems like it sort of doesn't but sort of maybe does. So it seems to me Saito hesitates and this gets a bit confusing, inasmuch as the very difference between Marx’s ecosocialism in Capital and his degrowth communism after that also, having been somewhat overstated, gets sort of of blurry (compare for example pages 209 and 234). In any case, we would thus apparently be mostly talking about the unpublished notes, scattered letters, side-notes, emendations of prefaces, epilogues, and so on, which Marx wrote mostly in the 1870’s until his death, and which Saito has assiduously and masterfully dissected and yet brought to life.

Both points, nonetheless, seem to me rather exaggerated.
Certainly ecological concerns raised by the multifarious destruction implicit in the capitalist forces of production seem to have become for Marxism and Marx himself in a (perhaps not so?) curious parallel, ever more pressing and central the deeper their understanding of capitalism came to be. But it just doesn’t seem necessary to me to imply that something as radical as an “epistemological break” after Capital would’ve happened whereby Marx would finally have come to grapple with ecology. Not only inasmuch as it seems obvious to me that Marx’s thought, as much as that of his inheritors, was and has always been characterized by its capability to evolve according to circumstances. Something which is necessitated by its being a critical, open, and thus indeed never completely finished theory – as one commentator rightly says, our readings of Marx as much as our Marxist and communist theories change as history changes. It also (or thus) seems to me quite obvious that Marx’s thought has always been, as its been inherited to us even with Engels's "meddling", robust enough that it can naturally be extended towards centrally including ecological concerns – as indeed Marx’s own late work, according to Saito, proves beyond doubt.
Thus, it’s seems also evident to me that this extension of Marx’s thought can very much be done without recurse to Marx’s unpublished manuscripts. As an illustration – hoping this won’t get anyone stamped out as one of those who would defend Capital as if it were the Bible, but honestly indeed just for the heck of quoting Marx – what are the very first and the very last words of the longest, literally central chapter of Capital, which deal with machinery and industry in capitalism?

“John Stuart Mill says in his Principles of Political Economy: 'It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have light­ened the day's toil of any human being.' That is, however, by no means the aim of the application of machinery under capitalism. […] The machine is a means for producing surplus-value.”

and

“In modern agriculture, as in urban industry, the increase in the productivity and the mobility of labour is purchased at the cost of laying waste and debilitating labour-power itself. Moreover, all progress in capitalist agricul­ture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil ; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time is a progress towards ruining the more long­ lasting sources of that fertility. The more a country proceeds from large-scale industry as the background of its development, as in the case of the United States, the more rapid is this process of des­truction. Capitalist production, therefore, only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth – the soil and the worker.”

Not to say that everything is there, but I believe even these lines are robust enough to get a good idea of where Marx stands regarding the relations between green and red.
That is of course not to say that the unpublished manuscripts Saito has studied and edited serve no purpose or are negligible: they definitely enrich our understanding, give us more “philological certainty” and might even perhaps help us in (re)articulating some theoretical issues.
But it just doesn’t quite ring true that, to state it rather crudely, we would be blind or lost or burdened with a contradictory theory of history, capitalism and the basics for its overcoming, if Marx hadn’t “corrected” himself in his last decade.
Of course Saito doesn’t state as much, and in the last pages he reflects on this very issue, but I at least had this weird impression from time to time and don't have the impression of being the only one...
In this sense I think Saito sometimes does a disservice to his very commendable cause to sort of re-instate the contemporaneity of Marx by helping to clean his name, by overstating the indispensability of his late work for this matter – as if not only the green seeds (and of course much more than that) of this late work weren’t to be found in the earlier, better known work of Marx, but virtually contradicted it.

But inasmuch as some (perhaps lots of) people – particularly in academia – would indeed seem to think or in any case more or less readily welcome – as much as they would welcome any other presently available ammunition for the unending quest to discredit Marxism as a stand-in for a systematic critique of capitalism as a stand-in for Communism – the idea that there is an insuperable contradiction between “red” and “green” (on which see Saito’s excellent “Conclusion”) – comrade Saito: we do thank you for your patient and dedicated theoretical work of what I'm sure you wouldn't call refutation of revisionism but advancement of that unfinished critical project called Marxism!

(No, for real, comrade Saito is an outstanding scholar. Very serious, thorough and matter-of-fact. Who also writes extremely well – transparently – which is a great thing to have, specially as a communist).

[Rebecca Boliandi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ho trovato interessanti le sue constatazioni riguardanti l'economia attuale e la crisi ambientale che ne deriva. Per molti, saranno considerazioni troppo estremiste ed idealiste, però devo dire che sono ben supportate da fatti reali.

[Edgar Moreno Martínez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Combina unos primeros capítulos francamente flojos donde describe que estamos muy mal, pero de forma tan informal que desconvence más que convence (aunque si que aporta alguna cosa interesante en contradicciones, externalizaciones, como más eficiencia no implica menores emisiones...) con unos últimos capítulos más prepositivos que se pueden resumir en "viva el valor de uso y no el valor de cambio", gobernémonos en vez de que nos gobiernen los mercados para que nuestros hijos todavía puedan vivir, realmente te sale a cuenta trabajar 40 horas para comprarte camisetas en el bershka o sería mejor trabajar 20 y pasarte las otras 20 haciendo el pino... que la verdad son bastante excitantes.

[Daniel Torren · Rating 3 out of 5]

what is the point of this book. who cares about the technicalities of what Marx said, just make the argument yourself

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

my policy is to read the zeitgeisty communist books about a year after the discourse surrounding them fades out, meaning that i finally got to this one (up next: mute compulsion). found it to be far more of an attempt to find a basis for non-productivist marxism in the writings of late marx than any kind of extensive degrowth manifesto, but if you can’t connect those dots after reading this book then that’s on you brother. surprised me with how dry and conventionally marxological it was; not a bad thing for me, a freak, but even i rolled my eyes at the utterly trivial lukacs chapter, which readers who come for the degrowth stuff can absolutely skip. enjoyed it overall though—books like this aren’t usually written so clearly and accessibly, and i finished it faster than i would a novel of the same length. reminds me that i really need to read meszaros.

[Toby Crime · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some interesting ideas around metabolic rift etc. wrapped in a bizarre amount of obscure Marxology. Would love to agree or disagree with an argument relating to the world, rather than if the coward Engels deliberately misinterpreted a sentence in Marx's highschool dream journal

[Eli · Rating 5 out of 5]

pathbreaking book. incredibly insightful discourse on the final post-capitalist vision of Marx. degrowth leading us to fix the social and natural courses of uneven development.

[Harooon · Rating 2 out of 5]

In the Earth’s 4.5 billion years, the Anthropocene is that tiny 300,00 year slice of it in which humans have left their unmistakable mark everywhere. Beset by rising sea levels, floods, droughts, and wildfires, human activity has destabilised the Earth’s biophysical systems to the point of collapse. How do we move forward, recognising and respecting our natural limits, so that we may renew them? Degrowth is one answer, and Kōhei Saitō believes that Marxism can give it an intellectual basis. Marx in the Anthropocene draws upon a collection of Marx’s letters and journal entries that have only become available in the last decade or so with the publication of MEGA. Through them, Saitō attempts an ambitious recasting of Marx as an ecological thinker, and interprets Marxism as the ecologically sound philosophy that we desperately need today.

(The Collected Publications of Marx and Engels, known in German as the Marx-Engels Gesamteausgabe (MEGA), is a compilation of everything the pair ever wrote. MEGA² is a collection of their ecological writings, which Kōhei Saitō helped to prepare.)

Marx’s best known book Das Kapital, was published in three volumes in 1867, 1885, and 1894. Volumes 2 and 3 only appeared after his death. It was his friend and colleague, Friedrich Engels, who finished them up and published them for him. Core to Saitō’s argument is that the new writings of Marx reveal how his thinking was moving in different directions after 1868, some of which overturn or clarify earlier assumptions made in Volume 1.

In his studies of non-western societies, Marx came to reject the Eurocentric assumptions of his historical materialism, namely that all societies must develop and pass through the same stages on the road to communism. Saitō points to a notable letter that Marx wrote to Vera Zasulich in 1881, in which he agreed that the ideas of Das Kapital may not be entirely relevant to the Russian context. There the Narodniks argued that the mir, a traditional kind of peasant commune, could become the nucleus of a uniquely Russian socialism that would altogether bypass the industrialised, capitalist stage of history.

Marx was also highly influenced by the writings of Justus von Liebig, a German agricultural chemist who made the observation that plants need minerals like nitrogen and potassium in order to grow. Liebig was concerned with how urban centres were disrupting the circulation of nutrients back to the soil. The growing urban/rural divide created a situation in which food was exported to the cities, but organic waste was not returned back to the countryside, implying the slow depletion of soil fertility. In other words, he identified a disruption in a biophysical process, brought about due to the way in which human society was organised.

Marx captured the essence of this disruption in his idea of metabolism [Stoffwechsel]. In certain traditions of Marxism, this idea mainly referred to the circulation of materials and energy within human society, such as the labour and power and resources used to create and distribute goods or services. Because society also depends on natural resources, there is an obvious ecological reading to the concept. Saitō gives a detailed (but ultimately not very interesting) genealogy of the idea, starting with Engels, who unwittingly modified the phrase “natural metabolism” to omit the word “natural”. Later, György Lukács, another influential Marxist philosopher, wrote a work called History and Class Consciousness, which spawned its own lineage called “Western Marxism.” Despite invoking Marx’s concept of metabolism, reception of what Lukács’ wrote often understood him as saying that the dialectical method should only be applied to human activities, not nature, thereby stripping the idea of metabolism from its ecological implications.

The word “metabolism” is borrowed from biochemistry, where it refers to the ways in which energy circulates in a given system. Human metabolism, for example, is the totality of ways in which our body ingests, absorbs, transforms, breaks down, uses up, and excretes nutrients. If we think of nature and society as two co-dependent parts of a systematic whole, then we also can understand them as a collection of metabolic processes, some social, others natural, operating according to their own parameters. The concentration of minerals in the soil gives rise to our ability to farm it in order to produce food, which in turn impacts the composition of minerals in the soil. With more workers or slaves, or better tools, I could bring in the harvest faster. If I had a combine harvester, I could do it in a few days. On the other hand, the manufacturing and use of a combine harvester requires an entire system of resource extraction and industrial production, as well as natural deposits of petrol and coal and metal, which only form in the earth according to biophysical processes that are thousands of years longer than the agricultural season.

Although we may compensate for the limits of a biophysical process, humans really only have control over the social processes. In a capitalist economy, those social processes are reconstructed and accelerated in the pursuit of private wealth accumulation, exacerbating the imbalance between social and biophysical processes. Modern ecosocialists call this “metabolic rift”. By annihilating “spatial and temporal distance” and “speeding up in favour of a shorter circuit of capital” (28), capitalism improves production and turnover, but uses up natural resources faster than they can be replenished. Although capital may get around this by cutting costs, expanding production, offloading the negative externalities, or otherwise finding new ways to achieve the same thing, the rift is never definitely solved, only shifted elsewhere.

Going back to the example of soil fertility, Europe initially solved its problems by importing guano from South America. When that ran out, chemists like Liebig discovered how to manufacture fertiliser from ammonium, which required the burning of even more fossil fuels; the problem shifted from the scarcity of guano to the scarcity of petrol and gas.

That Marx is actually a bike-riding, sandal-wearing greenie came as something of a shock to me. Saitō is the first to admit Marxism’s stereotypical association with fire and industry, and the movement’s historic coupling of social and technological progress. In the present day, “Promethean Marxists” continue to accuse ecosocialists like Saitō of things like “Malthusianism” and “ontological dualism”, terms which I imagine to be uttered in the same tone of voice as an inquisitor bringing forth a charge of heresy. The middle section of this book takes up a pre-emptive defence of Saitō’s reading of Marx against its Promethean alternatives.

There is a directly Marxist appeal for a Promethean solution to climate change. It goes something like this. One of the irrationalities Marx identified in capitalism is the fact that the pursuit of private wealth does not always result in the optimal production and allocation of goods. Arriving at a sustainable, “net-zero” economy is an example of this. It will require a transition away from fossil fuels towards alternate sources of energy, such as solar or nuclear. It means the insulation of houses, the installation of heat pumps, the building of walkable cities, the discovery of less carbon-intensive, plant-based food sources. It may mean ambitious projects, like the capture and sequestration of carbon, or the outright re-engineering of Earth’s biophysical systems to accommodate human needs. In today’s world, which largely operates on the capitalist assumptions of private property, vested wealth depends on the exploitation of fossil fuels. It is unlikely to make any sudden moves against its own economic interests. Here, the Promethean argues, is the case for socialism. By overthrowing capitalism, central planning can remove the “fetters on the forces of production”, redirecting human effort and ingenuity into those enterprises which are most likely to help humanity adjust to a life without fossil fuels.

Such arguments always strike me as a bit naive and optimistic. They rest on the assertion that human tenacity will always overcome what ever it encounters—as if an outright collapse of the whole sclerotic mess were simply impossible. An economy based on solar or nuclear is not without its own formidable social and technical challenges, including the storage and long-distance transmission of electricity, as well as the human cost of mining the blood metals necessary to do this. New technology is already emerging which will cut down on the amount of cobalt necessary for rechargeable batteries, which will hopefully mean less exploitation of child and forced labour in the Congo. This is but one example. The damage to homes and habitats and people, however, has already been done. Even if the immediate problem in front of us seems to have a solution, as Saitō points out, the rift is only ever moved, never eliminated. The second-order consequences of what we do is never clear.

If central planning were to work, then climate change, being a global issue, would require a global consensus. Will it arrive in time? I do think that Marxism, by emphasising the social and historical laws that attend human history, neglects its more personal and agentive dimensions. Conflicting interests are not always synthesised and sublated into some rational whole, but sometimes only resolved through outright violence. On the world stage there will always be room for misunderstanding and disagreement, for ego and ill-will. We might conclude that a functional world government is impossible, even before we get to the logistical nightmare of planning for the entire world. Local problems can’t always be understood with global reasoning.

Answers to climate change which seek to exploit the productive forces of capitalism may only ratify its social inequities. “Technocratic visions, despite their bold claims of emancipation, reproduce the non-democratic and consumerist relations of domination and subjugation…” (171) Vast, capital-intensive projects like carbon capture or space exploration are only possible when there is a vast concentration of wealth and power, whether that be in the capitalist’s top-hat or the UN secretary’s manila folder.

Marxists and Socialists, fearful of endorsing any position which might be seen as giving cover to the idea that the developing world should not have the same wealth and luxury as the first world, have been reluctant to endorse degrowth. Enthusiasm for the idea that social planning can overcome any natural limits sometimes crosses over into the denial of physical reality. Natural resources are finite. They cannot be “arbitrarily utilized for satisfying unlimited human desires.” (288) The rift can only be shifted so much. One way or another, the world economy will eventually experience a contraction, and it will be the poorest countries which suffer most.

There has been a persistent conflation between emancipation and equality on the one hand and material abundance on the other. A good deal of our material desires are themselves the product of an artificial scarcity brought on by the social relations of late consumer capitalism. No-one cares about having beautiful clothes or the latest iPhone or visiting the most exotic holiday destination before the insecurity of not having those things is placed in our heads by the aggressive sales and advertising tactics of the attention economy. Degrowth is old-fashioned in its anti-consumerist, anti-materialist message. It rejects the false dichotomy of luxury or poverty by the simple recognition that even the most refined, sumptuous consumer is neither free nor happy.

If it is not already clear, this is a book more about Marx than about degrowth. Saitō’s interest is mostly in the reception and lineage of Marxism, and how it can be reconciled with modern degrowth and ecosocialist ideas. What you take out of this book will largely be determined by your patience in wading through the tedious minutiae of those debates. I am not that interested in Marxism, hence I found it quite dull.

A few things have to be said about Saitō’s attempt to reconstruct Marxism. Drawing on previously unavailable sources may yield new insight into Marx’s intellectual journey, but it’s not at all clear that this is of general interest to the argument. Saitō falls into the trap of reading too much of the man into his work. We can’t always take letters or journals as conclusive evidence of belief, and if we are going to argue from lacunae, one has to wonder how long it will be until something else comes out which overturns everything we thought we knew about Marx in 2024. Maturation or change in a person’s world view is to be expected, but we can’t take the mere fact of change as proof that the earlier beliefs were wrong. At this point, Marxism is bigger than just Marx, so an appeal to his ultimately unknowable intentions are not very convincing.

Although I feel great sympathy for Saitō and for degrowth, I wasn’t persuaded by this book. It may formulate an abstract acceptance of natural limits from Marxist first principles, but despite covering so much theoretical ground, it achieves remarkably little in the way of a concrete philosophical or political framework. It’s not clear anyway why Marxism is uniquely placed to understand and resolve the issues of the Anthropocene. If greening Marx requires abandoning historical materialism as a law of historical progress, we seem to have lost one of the main reasons for accepting it in the first place, namely its claims to universality and predictability.

It must also be said that metabolic rift is not exclusive to the emergence of capitalist society: urbanisation, the division of labour, and environmental collapse all predate it. It is a tautology to say that human activity uses up the stock of finite resources. The relevant point is where we draw the line. What should we take and how much? Despite rightfully excoriating first-world living conditions as “an imperial mode of living”, Saitō never comes close to saying what we would have to give up to achieve some sense of proportion.

Marxism seems like a poor basis for degrowth. It is not intrinsically joined to the hip of ecological politics. Historical examples of actually existing socialism(s) did not correct their ecocidal tendencies, as with the shrivelling up of the Aral sea. We could interpret Marxism as implying a form of degrowth communism. But why? The whole activity struck me as convoluted and contrived. Degrowth and Marxism neither need each other, nor strengthen each other’s case, and that may be my most important takeaway from this book.

[Keith Akers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marx nerds, rejoice! Here’s a book that actually adds to our knowledge of Marx’s ideas, with research that wasn’t possible before the 21st century, based on Marx’s notebooks. And it shows that actually, Marx really was concerned about the environment, and this is based on more than just obscure mutterings about the “metabolic rift” between humans and nature. It’s not in his early writings, e. g. The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, but in his later notebooks, with much research done only after he had published volume 1 of Capital, which Saito explains in clear, mostly nontechnical language.

Along the way, Saito also explains a number of other Marx puzzles, most notably, why didn’t Marx ever finish Capital? Between the publication of volume 1 and his death in 1883 there was well over a decade. Surely that was enough time. But it remained for Friedrich Engels to bring out volumes 2 and 3. Marxists have generally assumed that after Marx’s death, Engels just picked up some dusty manuscripts in Marx’s possession, made a few editorial adjustments for clarity, and published them.

The reality seems to be more complicated. Saito suggests an intriguing reason for Marx not finishing. Marx may have realized that environmental issues would force him to do more than just finish up volumes 2 and 3; he was going to have to revisit a lot of what was in volume 1 as well. Including (gasp!) the basis of the whole thing, the labor theory of value (exchange value and money, not “use value”). That’s because nature also seemed to be a source of value in certain respects.

Marx was very aware of soil erosion and read Justus von Liebig on the subject, as well as fossil fuel depletion — he’d read Stanley Jevons on The Coal Question. In the 21st century, two hot environmental issues are both the degradation of natural resources and depletion of natural resources. Climate change is basically degrading the atmosphere, and many things in nature are being depleted, for example “peak oil,” groundwater, and minerals. Marx therefore had to integrate the idea of destruction of nature with his ideas about capitalist accumulation and exploitation.

According to Saito (p. 246-247), “Marx’s project of political economy essentially remains unfinished, and Capital did not explain everything. . . . his notebooks offer useful hints that enable us to speculate how Marx would have developed his critique further if he were able to integrate recent scientific findings into his critique of political economy.” He then goes through a lengthy, and to Marx nerds (or aspiring nerds) fascinating exposition of all the tensions in Marx’s writings that could point to a more degrowth point of view. He shows that Engels, for example, did not always reflect the same understandings that Marx did (chapter 2). Marx never completed volumes 2 and 3 of Capital, leaving it to Engels to do so. The reason he didn’t, despite having well over a decade to do so, may be because he couldn’t quite integrate his insights into nature into the rest of this thought.

To me, it is fairly clear how to do this. “Exploitation” is a concept that applies both to exploitation of humans (slavery, wage slavery, etc.) and exploitation of nature (destruction of the rainforest, death of animals, etc.). Capitalism utilizes both, as it is convenient to the process of capitalist accumulation.

Next (chapter 3), he looks at one of the 20th century’s foremost Marxist thinkers, Georg Lukács. Time to dust off that copy of History and Class Consciousness that’s sitting in your basement, guys! Saito also refers to a later unpublished work by Lukács that has only recently come to light, Tailism and the Dialectic.

Saito then goes on to discuss such topics as philosophical monism (or lack of it) in Marx, utopian socialism (perhaps not quite so bad after all), his turn to Russia because of the pre-capitalist traditions there of communalism, his correspondence with Vera Zasulich, and the possibility of seeing the true Marx—the Marx that would have been, had he had time to work out all of his theories to his satisfaction—as a degrowth communist.

All in all, this is quite a bit to take in. It’s quite different from the “orthodox Marxism” of the Soviet era—unless, of course, with Lukács, you conclude that “orthodox Marxism” consists not in your conclusions, but in your method.

If this is your very first exposition to Marx or Marxism, it may be too much. Even if you’re somewhat familiar with Marx, this is quite a bit to digest, but in any event will certain stimulate a lot of thoughts about our current crisis in both the economy and the environment. Capitalism has overexploited both. A true revolution requires that we handle both crises simultaneously.

[Trevor · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book after reading a Friday Essay in the Conversation ‘could a reinterpreted Marxism have solutions to our unprecedented environmental crisis?’

I was intrigued. The argument here is based on lots of scholarship, but I’m still not sure what to make of it all. A big part of the problem is that I worry that a Marxist is trying to make Marx some 1860’s environmentalist. Some of his references did make me think twice about whether Marx had given up on historical materialism and that this might have explained why he was struggling to finish the second and third volumes of Capital.

Okay, so, the argument. Early Marx believed in historical materialism. That is, that once capitalism had exhausted itself (which it seemed to be doing with repeated regularity in the mid-19th century with crisis after crisis) then socialism would remove the fetters imposed on the development of society by the fundamental contradiction of capital being removed – that is, between the social nature of production and the private means of accumulation of wealth. Then labour would be able to be managed in a way that would be to the benefit of all and could be rationally deployed so that we would be able to spend less time doing crap work and more time fully realising our human potential. All of which would happen while greatly speeding up the development of the productive capacity of society.

And therein lies the problem, as we are fast learning today. Speeding up economic development also means speeding up the destruction of the environment. We seem to be caught in a paradox that likewise seems impossible to resolve. How do we reap the benefits of a better world if that better world inevitably destroys our ability to live in that world?

The author says that this is why Marx spent the last 20 years or so of his life studying natural sciences. He wanted to see if there was a way to have a fairer society but also one that didn’t destroy nature. The author says he was working towards a kind of ‘de-growth communism’.

Like I said, I’ve no idea if this is an accurate description of what Marx was up to, and I’m not even sure I care. I figure it is okay for someone writing in the 1800s to be wrong about stuff that is going on in the 2020s. But I also think it is important to remember that Marx didn’t really spend a lot of time talking about the wonderful society that was going to exist very soon or whenever. Rather, he spent most of his time criticising capitalism. If someone has a dream for the future that doesn’t come about, that doesn’t really mean we can ignore what they had to say about the present. His criticism of capitalism still seems chillingly accurate. Not only does capitalism seem to rely on making life a drudgery for the overwhelming majority of the population, but it also looks like it can only ‘progress’ by making the planet ultimately uninhabitable. As such, something needs to change. It might not be in finding hints of eco-socialism in the late writings of Marx – but the world can’t go on like this for much longer and whether you are able to twist Marx into a prescient superhero with wonderful green credentials or not seems beside the point to me. The task at hand feels very much to me to be a 2020s one, and we really do need to get on with it.

[Dominik · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading Marx for approval of your thesis is, especially for self-proclaimed Marxist, worldwide celebrated and bestselling scholar, simply pathetic.

This is augmented, more scholar and better written (or with more courageous editor) version of Capital in the Anthropocene - it is more precise book, but with the basically the same points, and the general critique of growth is cut off.

I would lie if I would say that I didn't enjoy the first part of the book while it focused on potential differences between Engels and Marx, evaluation of 'metabolic rift' term and some discussion with acclaimed marxist classics like Luxemburg or Lukács. But the second part of it, the main one, where it is aimed at critique and making its point, it starting to be simply terrible.

To cut it short:
1. Saito states that Marx has abandoned historical materialism and dialectical thinking. Big thing, isn't it? But his proof is, to say it bluntly, very small if non-existent - one of them is badly intepreted famous letter to Russian revolutionary Vera Zasulich. The other - two notes on books about natural science and Indigenous people read by Marx, who said that they have 'socialist tendencies'. Sometimes Saito is intepreting some words like 'nature' in Capital, Grundrisse and notebooks for his point, but that's it.
2. I am by now completely sure that degrowth's critique of left accelerationism is impotent. Paradoxically, now the degrowth seems more 'wishful thinking' (Saito's evaluation of it from Capital in the Anthropocene) and 'utopian socialism' (from this book), because it is basically anti-technology. That's because for Saito pro-technological is equated with anti-ecological. To say we are going to have nice life without capitalism's technology is to create antic idyll and primitivist anarchism, even if it won't admit it.
3. This is incredible undialectical in its technophobia - and even if we're going to assume that socialism can be created without capitalism, the history, especially of Soviet Union, tells us otherwise.
4. It is rich guy's guilt driven theory, so there is not any mention of working class - the key motor of change for Marx. This is unaccebtable to erase something that is through history driving, according to Marx, world toward change.

There are many other points, but these are crucial. For more precise texts, I guide you to:
Žižek critique of Saito's anti-dialectical approach (for him naturally, it's anti-hegelian):
https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/whe...
And longer version here:
https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/RPU...

Rafael Bernabe's great text on how Saito's reading is horrible and there is no basis for his thesis:
https://climateandcapitalism.com/2023...

And, in my eyes, devastating article in Jacobin that blows all Saito's books and brings a serious questions for all degrowth scholars and their well-wishers, including me:
https://jacobin.com/2024/03/kohei-sai...

[Ana · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a piece that attempts to be a re-interpretation of late Marx, and his move away from eurocentrism and productivism. However, it is much more than that. It brings together the most relevant discussions in the environmental left, and forgotten 20th century authors in order to create a clear storyline that shows a few things:

1. Marx and Engels were not always in agreement, and the rift grew as they grew older.

2. Although the dualist view of nature and society have been criticised by authors such as Moore, for falling into Cartesian understandings of the world, Saito makes the point for a methodological dualism where we can explore nature and society interactions in a more clear way, while still recognising our mutual dependence and inseparability ontologically.In this way, the idea of metabolic rift is recovered and put at the center of the debate.

3. A whole chapter is dedicated to techno-centrism among the left, and Saito concludes that "the ideology of technology is one of the reasons for the poverty of imagination that pervades contemporary capitalism".

4. In his late work, Marx explores non-western texts and recognises that capitalism is not a necessary step to a communal life. Saito understands that a revoltion may not be inevitable, and that certain forms of organisations, with some improvements, can fit in with our current socio-ecological needs.

5. Towards the end, Saito concludes that the late Marx was advocating for a sort of degrowth socialism, that will communalise goods and services, and will lead to a steady state economy.

6. While some scholars position degrowth as an alternative to capitalism and communism, degrowth has been recently labelled as anti-capitalist, while the door for alliances with socialists is left open.

7. The last chapter reads a bit like a manifesto, where Saito argues for communism as a better option to repair the metabolic rift. He argues: a) the aim of social production shifts from profit to use-value; b) reduction of the working day and the elimination of bullshit jobs will allow for a steady state economy without reducing welfare; c) workers will become more autonomous when we abolish the excessive division of labor; d) the abolition of market competition for profits will slow down the economy.


Saito calls for better dialogue and understanding of the links between the emerging degrowth movement, and the Marxism(s) of the 21st century.

A very good read.

[Tom Booker · Rating 4 out of 5]

One for Marx nerds! But very important ideas and contribution to the field.

As far as academic writing goes, it is relatively accessible. But being well-versed or at least familiar with Marxist terminology and concepts would be helpful. Really I would only recommend the last two chapters and the conclusion, since the rest is quite nerdy and more difficult for anyone without a degree in sociology/Marxism.

The biggest contribution of this book comes from the following arguments:
1. Marx shifted from a productivist and Eurocentric view of post-capitalism to 'degrowth communism' after studying natural science and non-Western and pre-capitalist societies, which showed the interdependence between environmental sustainability and social equity. Saito grounds this in evidence from Marx's unpublished notebooks from after Capital Vol I was published.
2. Degrowth communism is the third and essential way beyond capitalism (necessarily pro-growth) and (eco)socialism (potentially pro-growth), since endless economic growth is destructive to the environment and ultimately is an existential threat to humanity.
3. Marx's analysis (while incomplete, as is anyone's) is useful for thinking about how we can move to degrowth communism.

To be clear, this is not a book about degrowth communism, but more about how Marx came to advocate for degrowth communism and why this is important for interpreting his theories.

[Rishab jagetia · Rating 3 out of 5]

A dense book that had a lot of good tidbits. I will say that as someone who's inexperienced in Marx and not an academic, 150 of the 250 pages were not very applicable to me, as Saito spends much of the book putting Marx in conversations with other political economy thinkers and justifying his ecological tendencies towards the end of his life.

However, if I am to summarize my takeaways from the book, they are the following:
Even Marx came around to the idea that linear technological progress would not deliver the fruits of a post-capitalist future. If society actually wants to progress, we have to think deeply about labour reclaiming ownership over the commons instead of profitable enterprise. The individual is implicated in a degrowth communist future, where they have the freedom to self-govern in community the public wealth that nature provides. Capital accumulation will always seek to exploit social forces and natural resources, and socialism can never move fast enough to stay productive while planning. We need to slow down, and we need to finally understand how nature’s signaling to us that we should fix the metabolic rift through resource governance and commons’ abundance rather than capitalist scarcity.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

O Kohei Saito κάνει μια επισκόπηση της οικολογικής σκέψης του Μαρξ, ιδιαίτερα όπως αυτή εξελίχθηκε αργά στην καριέρα του, και την αντιπαραθέτει με παραδοσιακές μαρξιστικές ερμηνείες που συχνά αγνοούν ή διαστρεβλώνουν τις οικολογικές του ανησυχίες. Συζητά την μεταβολική ρήξη ως κεντρική έννοια στην κριτική του Μαρξ για τον καπιταλισμό, τονίζοντας πώς η καπιταλιστική παραγωγή διαταράσσει τη σχέση ανθρώπου-φύσης και δημιουργεί τεχνητή σπανιότητα. Το κείμενο εξετάζει επίσης την πνευματική σχέση Μαρξ και Ένγκελς, υποστηρίζοντας ότι η επεξεργασία του Ένγκελς των έργων του Μαρξ απέκρυψε τις οικολογικές πτυχές της σκέψης του Μαρξ. Τέλος, προτείνει μια επανερμηνεία της κομμουνιστικής απελευθέρωσης του Μαρξ μέσω του degrowth και της κοινής αφθονίας, απομακρυνόμενη από τις προμηθεϊκές, παραγωγιστικές ερμηνείες που επικεντρώνονται στην απεριόριστη ανάπτυξη των παραγωγικών δυνάμεωνΣυνολικά, ο Μαρξισμός επαναπροσδιορίζεται για να προσφέρει μια πιο ρεαλιστική και οικολογικά συνειδητή απάντηση στην κρίση του Ανθρωπόκαινου, υπερβαίνοντας παλαιότερες προϊοντιστικές αντιλήψεις και προτείνοντας ένα όραμα κοινωνικής ισότητας και βιωσιμότητας μέσω της αποανάπτυξης και της κοινοτικής αφθονίας, βασισμένο στην επανεξέταση των ύστερων γραπτών του Μαρξ

[Yves]

This one took me a while but definitely good to get back into the swing of academic writing before I start my MSc.

This is not to the detriment of Saito’s well-researched book, but I struggled to maintain my interest in the middle parts which seem to meander around reinterpreting arbitrary turns of phrases in the Grundrisse and Kapital. There’s also a lot of bickering over ecosocialist vs productivist vs prometheanists which I do not find compelling. It is only at the end where a concrete blueprint for ‘degrowth communism’ comes to fruition - something I wish had been established earlier to formally fix the philosophical & economic arguments to Saito’s points.

How interesting though that the single way out of the mess that capitalism has created is surely to convince the Western world to give up the spoils of commodity. The sheer unrealism of that is cause to make any ecologically-minded person of my generation sick to their stomach. I’m going to have a cup of tea.

[atito · Rating 3 out of 5]

seriously great, seriously pedantic ! i don't really know what we gain from differentiating marx's thought from engel's edits--the attempt is to illuminate the neglected corners of marx's thinking but i think it remakes Capital into a bible which Saito purportedly disavows. i feel similarly about the chapter on ontology. i think the methodological necessity of a dualism makes sense but the way it is positioned as a response to "monism" feels at once overstated & not that crucial. even the point about how marx himself was changing his thinking in its development (of course he was !) seems not as pressing bc why wd we need marx's "permission" to rethink these categories? that said, this book answered tons of my questions including about the intricacies of real subsumption & "wealth" & abundance...
genuinely lovely i guess this shd be higher than three stars but yeah

[Gabriel Marangoni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Esse livro me impactou profundamente. Apresenta ideias radicais de abundância compartilhada em desafio ao crescimento ilimitado.

Argumenta ainda que o "keynesianismo climático" que prega um crescimento sustentável, é impraticável, pois o decoupling relativo não traz mudanças no ritmo necessário para frear as mudanças climáticas, e o decoupling absoluto é uma fantasia capitalista.

Expõe ainda a contradição presente em tecnologias geoclimáticas, como os NETs, que conseguem extrair carbono da atmosfera e inseri-lo no subsolo (criando problemas ambientais subsequentes).

Assim, como solução, ele traz uma releitura de Marx em seus últimos dias, revelando as descobertas que o autor realizou estudando mineralogia, antropologia e agricultura, em especial olhando para o Sul global, que o levou a elaborar a teoria da fissura metabólica, que é fundamental nessa análise.