Labour, Nature, Value

Degrowth and Marxism—two sides of the same fight for a fair and sustainable world.

Through an original reinterpretation of André Gorz’s work Emanuele Leonardi stages the fundamental encounter between degrowth and Marxism, namely a programmatic horizon for the socio-ecological conflicts that are proliferating on a global scale, aimed at reducing pressure on the biosphere (shrinking social metabolism) and at the ever-wider diffusion of care activities and knowledge production (multiplication of negentropic work). A veritable strategy for climate justice movements around the world.

The book poses a key question: How was it possible for ecological limits to be transformed from constraints on development (as they looked like in 1970s) into putative business opportunities (as sustainable finance postulates)? From pure costs for companies to foundation of the green economy, i.e. a new strategy of capitalist accumulation in the era of global warming?

A central figure in exploring this question from the perspective of a labour-based political ecology is militant communist André Gorz – editor of Les Temps Modernes, journalist at Le Nouvel observateur and ruthless critic of cognitive capitalism.Emanuele Leonardi works at the Department of Sociology and Business Law, University of Bologna (Italy). He is the co-editor of the Handbook of Critical Environmental Politics (Elgar, 2022). Articles of his have been published by prominent journals such as Globalizations, Ecological Economics, Radical Philosophy and South Atlantic Quarterly.