At first glance, they appear determined by some sort of functionalist logic; however, Fraser insists they are maintained institutionally, as the outcomes of boundary struggles (pp. One can even add a third axis distinguishing ‘core’ and ‘periphery,’ as Fraser continuously stresses how the iterations of each division play out differently for (neo)colonial regions and among racialized minorities than for ethnic majority members of North Atlantic powers. This helps explain the many erudite references – from Rosa Luxemburg, Marx, Engels, and Polanyi, to William Morris, and exponents of Black Marxism such as W. Every historical iteration is punctuated by outbreaks of crisis and conflict, as all turn out to be ridden with tension and contradiction.

Capital is currently cannibalizing every sphere of life-guzzling wealth from nature and racialized populations, sucking up our ability to care for each other, and gutting the practice of politics. Even so, it is hard to get away from the impression that her divisions are defined more via a retrospective understanding of capitalism’s systemic needs and their normative stakes than via the perspectives of historical struggles’ actual participants. What follows is the ‘desperate scramble to transfer carework to others’, frequently migrant workers (p.Of course, migrant care work is also commonplace across the global South, especially in countries characterised by vast inequality, from Brazil to Guatemala, from India to South Africa. At a compact 165 pages, Cannibal Capitalism pulls together and synthesizes a breath-taking amount of material. Aimed at activists and scholars alike, Cannibal Capitalism shows how an array of pressing social problems—struggles over racism and (neo)colonialism, time-poverty and crises of care, the looming climate crisis, and the hollowing out of democratic institutions—all trace back to a more general crisis of capitalism. Climate breakdown and the loss of animal and plant species are a manifestation of ‘a nature that “bites back”’ (p. Governments are reluctant to rein them in, for fear that they will pack up and go to a more lenient jurisdiction.

Ultimately, it has revealed what eventuates when vital public infrastructures are abandoned for the benefit of capital. It looks past the traditional class struggle argument and takes Black Marxism, decolonial perspectives, and feminist and gender theory into consideration, combining them all to create a complete analysis of our current predatory system. Fraser captures how gender oppression, racial domination, and ecological destruction are not incidental to capitalism, but structurally embedded in it. The ravaging of nature to flourish capital accumulation, capitalism´s third contradiction, is tackled in Nature in the Maw: Why Ecopolitics Must Be Trans-environmental and Anti-capitalist.

The second chapter, ‘Glutton for Punishment’, focuses on the structural racism that is inherent in capitalism. Hence an image Fraser often raises, and that graces the cover of the book, is the ouroboros: a snake eating its own tail.

Fraser uses the term ‘boundary struggles’ to describe these expanded realms of conflict that occur around these front-story/back-story divisions, and a further feature of her approach is to show that these divisions have never been static.Each arrangement represents an attempt to acclimate the needs of social reproduction to the needs of capitalism, but each ends up proving itself unsustainable because capitalism, in the long run, is inherently parasitic on social reproduction. The scars of every colonised country, and enslaved peoples – and, in a different way, of the former colonial powers – still shape contemporary economies, politics, societies, and lives. Cannibal capitalism: how our system is devouring democracy, care, and the planet—and what we can do about it.