In fact, a key aspect of what makes capitalism capitalism is the way it establishes institutionalized ‘divisions’ between the economic front-story and these various non-economic back-stories, while concealing the ways the former is dependent on the latter. Behind it are several ‘back-stories,’ which involve spheres of activity that we do not typically describe as economic, but are just as essential to capitalism as wage labor. Using the classical Marxian conception of the capitalist economy as a foil, Fraser argues that the economy and the various features we associate with it, including markets, capital accumulation, worker exploitation, and class conflict, are but the ‘front-story’ of capitalism. The first chapter lays out Fraser’s overall approach. But Fraser also has a theoretical message: if we want to understand capitalism, we need to understand that it is not simply an economic system, but an ‘institutionalized social order’ that encompasses-and cannibalizes-multiple spheres of social life. There is no anti-capitalist class struggle without co-equal struggles for racial, gender, ecological, and democratic justice, and no struggle for racial, gender, ecological, and democratic justice can afford to ignore the root culpability of capitalism. Long insistent that social justice demands attention to both redistribution and recognition, she shows why any notion that progressive politics must choose between class or identity rests on a false dichotomy. ![]() ![]() At one level, Fraser’s message is that various left movements have more basis for common cause than they sometimes think. 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. ![]() Those familiar with Nancy Fraser’s work know her fondness for Marx’s 1843 definition of critical theory as ‘the self-clarification of the struggles and wishes of the age’ (Marx, 1975, p.
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