Cannibal Capitalism | Socialism & Democracy

Reviewed by Mariah

Wakefield

Nancy Fraser, Cannibal Capitalism (New York: Verso, 2022) 208 pp., $19.95

As the complications of post pandemic life converge with existing threats from economic instability, fractured social groups, clima,te change and political unrest, one doesn’t have to look very hard to find evidence of a broken system. And as more of the population faces disruptions to their daily lives and standards of living, there is a renewed public interest in locating the source of these problems. The term “capitalism”, usually evoked by Marxists, has now re-entered the popular lexicon. But while the term gains traction, mobiliz-ing new generations of activists and scholars, the definition itself becomes increasingly abstract. Even within progressive currents, con-tradictory interpretations of both “capitalism” and “anti-capitalism” spark division and undermine collaborative efforts. Without a theoreti-cal grounding or a shared understanding of what we are opposing, there is little hope for meaningful critique or lasting change. In her book Cannibal Capitalism, renowned Marxist feminist theorist Nancy Fraser addresses these issues with compelling clarity, offering a reinvi-gorated theory of capitalism for the 21st century.

Fraser has garnered extensive praise for her contributions to Marxist feminist scholarship, and she is perhaps uniquely suited to undertake a project of this magnitude. Cannibal Capitalism achieves what often seems impossible: it unifies outwardly disparate social issues/agendas under a nuanced and comprehensive theory of capital-ism. Fraser broadens the analysis of the capitalist system, probing deeper into the inherent nature of its structure. She thoughtfully teases out the meaning behind both “capitalism” and “cannibalism”, creating a shared terminology that is accessible for readers of all back-grounds. “Capitalism” is generally defined as an economic system that features wage labor, production for profit, market exchange and private property. This definition underscores economic attributes, but offers very little insight into the system’s nature or its dependence on a larger societal order. Fraser suggests that “capitalism” is not a type of economy, but rather a type of society – one where the designated economy devours non-economic processes and disregards long termsustainability. Capitalism is reconceptualized as a social order that necessitates the cannibalization of areas outside the economic sphere. In this way, Fraser reclaims “cannibalism” from its racialized history, using it as a poignant metaphor for the ways that the capitalist system greedily gorges on its own resources. This thoughtless feeding frenzy characterizes the logic of capitalism.

The COVID-19 pandemic, “a veritable orgy of capitalist irrational-ity and injustice”, has laid bare the systemic inequities of capitalism(164). Fraser is hopeful that a renewed interest in capitalist critiques will generate more collaborative forms of critical theory, which are needed now more than ever. “The upshot is that we are living through a capitalist crisis of great severity without a critical theory that clarifies it – let alone points us towards an emancipatory resol-ution” (2). Cannibal Capitalism is Fraser’s response to that deficit. She proceeds to detail theoretical pitfalls in the existing scholarship and develops her own expanded conception of capitalism. Established theoretical models have overly prioritized labor struggles at the point of production, ignoring non-economic areas and their importance to both the history of capital and to resistance. A successful analysis of capitalism must extend even further than Marx’s “hidden abode” of production. Although Fraser’s survey of Marx is fairly orthodox up until this point, her analysis of capital challenges perceptions of the capitalist system. Marx describes primitive accumulation as the histori-cal precondition for capital accumulation, but Fraser reframes it as an ongoing process wherein expropriation continues as an unofficial (but vital) means of accumulation. Expropriation, or appropriation without exchange, enables exploitation and makes it economically viable. Therefore, expropriation (despite its position outside the pro-ductive process) can be identified as a structural feature of capitalism. This informs Fraser’s thesis in several ways. The structural significance of expropriation provides new insights into the nature of capitalism. Additionally, expropriation demonstrates how the capitalist system must cannibalize non-commodified areas to survive. These areas suggest potential sites of future resistance and reform. By outlining how expropriation is necessary for the genesis and the continuation of capitalism, Fraser creates a link between the productive processes and social factors. This expands our conception of capitalism exponen-tially. Although capitalism might masquerade as a mere economic system, it is predicated on four crucial background conditions that con-tinue to the present day. These conditions – racial oppression, gen-dered dynamics in production/reproduction, predatory ecological practices, and the tension between polity and economy – are detailed respectively, in subsequent chapters.

Cannibal Capitalism draws from the existing canon of Black Marxist scholarship to question the entanglement of racial oppression and capitalism. Is this enmeshment contingent or structural? Using the enlarged scope of capitalism set up in previous sections, Fraser blurs demarcations between structure and history, revealing a more complex relationality between capitalism and racism. Returning to exploitation and expropriation, she examines new forms of capitalism wherein exploited/expropriated populations are no longer drastically segmented. This discovery partially supports the emancipatory aim of the book, suggesting a means for resistance. But Fraser still believes that capitalism has a structural need for racial oppression. She describes the system’s impetus to racialize and then cannibalize mar-ginalized populations. Expropriation, often abetted by the color line, is a hidden condition of possibility for the “freedom” of those it exploits.

Fraser further elucidates the cannibalization of non-productive spheres by analyzing care work, yet another sector that is being eaten alive by capitalism. Activities such as reproduction, domestic care and social connectivity are essential to society. “In capitalist societies, moreover, they assure the supply of commodified labor power from which capital sucks surplus value” (53). But as we remem-ber from earlier chapters, capitalism pays little attention to longevity. The resources that should go to sustaining the population are instead diverted to the productive sphere. Fraser doesn’t mince words here: we are in the midst of a massive crisis of care work. She goes on to sketch a historical overview of social reproduction’s fraught relation-ship with production. It becomes clear that we can only mitigate the cannibalization of social reproduction via deep structural transform-ations. Fraser reminds us again that this will require a new understand-ing of capitalism and the way it organizes the relation of production/ exchange to non-economic conditions of possibility.

While issues of race and gender have been alternatively showcased and obfuscated, there is little doubt that climate politics have become the crisis du jour. Climate politics have galvanized a new generation of activists who champion sustainability, responsibility and even degrowth strategies. Under the umbrella of climate change, many social agendas form cross-threads of activism. Ecological threats have been highlighted by feminist groups, indigenous populations and the Black Lives Matter movement. The sites of cannibalization that Fraser details in previous chapters converge here as well. The accumulation of capital relies heavily on natural resources, but capital-ism also uses the natural world as a receptacle for waste from pro-duction. In this way, nature is the clearest illustration of the toxic capitalist cycle that cannibalizes to the point of self-obliteration. Fraser gestures to the unique structural character of the interchange between capitalist society and ecological crisis. Of all the social systems, “… capitalist societies are primed to generate recurrent environmental crises throughout their history” (81).

By this point, Fraser has successfully expanded the definition of capitalism beyond the parameters of economic processes – untangling expropriative social dynamics that are both foundational and ever evolving. But she also pushes into the political sphere, seeking out the intrinsic relationality between capitalism and democratic polity. We are in the midst of yet another crisis – the crisis of democracy, which is firmly implanted in a societal matrix. Much as capitalism cannot solely be understood via economics, democracy and its detrac-tors can only be conceptualized through a larger social totality. Many of Fraser’s contemporaries would cite neoliberalism as the current totality. But while Fraser acknowledges neoliberalism as a significant threat to democracy, she insists that the problem is buried still deeper. Neoliberalism after all, is just another form of capitalism. Her alternate view frames democratic decline as symptomatic of the cracks and contradictions in the institutional bedrock of financialized capitalism. Indeed, all of the issues mentioned herein should be ana-lyzed as subsets of the continual, pervasive crisis of our social order. This is a difficult task to be sure. But allowing capitalism to divest itself of its social involvement, to hide out in the economic sphere, limits collective resistance and our ability to construct a new order. "What should appear as well are the outlines of a socialism that differs sharply from Soviet-style Communism, on the one hand, and from social democracy, on the other – a socialism for the twenty-first century” (142).

Readers will recognize early on that Fraser’s meticulous theoretical analysis is underpinned by a hopeful agenda that she calls the heart and soul of her book. “Reimagining the structural divisions that have historically constituted capitalist societies would then represent the major task of social actors and critical theorists who are committed to emancipation in the twenty-first century” (26). If capitalist resistance encompasses a much wider social terrain than previously imagined, there is a chance for new intersections, a more universal socialist move-ment, and true emancipatory potential on the horizon. In an epoch marked by unprecedented levels of division, fragmentation and crisis, Cannibal Capitalism offers much needed unification and clarity. Nancy Fraser provides us with a rigorous theoretical foundation for capitalist critique and a groundbreaking expansion of the traditional conception of capitalism.

mwakefie@masonlive.gmu.edu https://doi.org/10.1080/08854300.2024.2374599