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 ²õ³ó´Ç³Ü±ô»å²Ô’t be commodified, but the economic puzzle of why they ³ó²¹±¹±ð²Ô’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 domain: 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.
Alyssa Battistoni is assistant professor of political science at Barnard College. She is the coauthor of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal. Her writing has appeared in The Nation, The Guardian, Boston Review, n+1, Dissent, The New Statesman, Jacobin, and New Left Review.
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"[A] stimulating treatise. . . . Battistoni is a rigorous and skilled polemicist; she showcases her original close readings of classic texts without veering too far into the weeds. Her investigation adds up to a fascinating look at how a 'free' nature functions, ironically, to restrict human freedom to make ethical and socially responsible decisions. . . . [An] insightful theoretical approach to the climate crisis."—Publishers Weekly
"A remarkable, important work of sophisticated Marxist theory informed by spectacularly detailed analysis of our actually-existing capitalist world—and beautifully written at that. It’s about nature but also everything."—Daniel Denvir
"A truly wonderful book. . . . It’s a very thorough reconstruction of how capitalism operates, generally and in relation to nature. . . . It’s enormously erudite, incredibly wide-ranging in its readings. It’s written in a lively prose. . . . . It’s developing, in my view, a very original synthesis of value form analysis and existential philosophy that I haven’t seen before. . . . [and] it also is very conceptually creative and comes up with concepts that I find very useful. . . . This is the most important work in ecological Marxism in a very long time."—Andreas Malm, Historical Materialism
"Free Gifts is itself a gift for those in the environmental humanities, political theory, and feminist thought. . . . [and] a deeply rewarding (and worrying) perspective on our ecological and political situation. . . . I very much look forward to the life of this book as it enters our midst."—Jordan Daniels, Spectre
"An original contribution. . . . I have nothing but admiration for the ambition on display in Battistoni’s work. Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature is appropriately a book that is very much alive."—Matt McManus, Damage
"I love this book. It's a great analysis of one of capitalism's core assumptions. . . . Super thought-provoking and wide-ranging."—Jeffrey Church, The Political Theory Review
“What a stunning book! As scholarly as it is urgent, sweeping as it is detailed, gorgeously written as it is analytically precise, Free Gifts asks and answers a question fundamental to a future for earthly life: Why can't capitalism value nonhuman nature, and how does this failure imbricate exploitative productive work, subordinated reproductive work, and ecological destruction?”—Wendy Brown, author of In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West
“Free Gifts is a vital, transformative work of political theory. Battistoni turns the question of what capitalism does to the natural world inside out by focusing our attention on what capitalism cannot do: put an economic value on nonhuman nature or human labor. Not commodification, but its shadow—what cannot be commodified—is the secret to our epoch of repetitive crisis and threatening catastrophe. This is gripping, urgent scholarship that eschews both polemics and platitudes.”—William Clare Roberts, author of Marx’s Inferno: The Political Theory of Capital
“This is a terrific book, demonstrating the highest standards of scholarship and intellectual ingenuity, on a topic of pressing importance to political societies the world over. Cogently argued, meticulously sourced, and beautifully written.”—Sharon Krause, author of Eco-Emancipation: An Earthly Politics of Freedom
“Anthropogenic climate change forces political theory out of its grooves. Battistoni understands this as an opportunity for helping us to think and live otherwise in the world. Free Gifts is a truly brilliant work of political philosophy, written in the spirit of Marx while upending the most basic assumptions of orthodox and heterodox economics.”—Melinda Cooper, author of Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance
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