Cannibal Capitalism

How Our System Is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet - and What We Can Do about It

Abstract

Nancy Fraser has established herself as one of the principal leaders of feminist and intersectional thought, solidly based in Marxist theory, with a string of books and other publications that have appeared since the late 1980s. Here, in Cannibal Capitalism, she has created an overarching model of contemporary capitalism and pictured it, effectively, as a monster that is in the process of devouring democracy and, indeed, everything on earth. This means expanding the common conception of capitalism as residing within the economic dimension to one which incorporates “… all the oppressions, contradictions, and conflicts of the present conjuncture (p.xv).” This is achieved through understanding the role of gender and racial structuring, as well as the ecological dimension, as having been subordinated into the pre-eminent capitalist system, particularly that form which has been brought into being by neoliberalism (which she terms the age of ‘corporate bingeing (p.xvi)’).