Academics
Will green capitalism save the planet? Is it even trying? \nNot when the very logic of the capitalist system pits it against Earth's life-support systems, as the Japanese philosopher Kohei Saito demonstrates in this astonishing international bestseller. \nDrawing on cutting-edge research across multiple disciplines, Saito shows how nothing but a transformation of our economic life can save us from climate collapse. Karl Marx himself reached this breakthrough at the \nend of his life, long before climate change had even begun. It radically altered his vision of proletarian revolution. Now that we are entering our own end-game, we must grasp Marx's final lesson before it is too late. \nIf we are to avoid the most terrible political prospects of of climate change, the future must belong to degrowth communism, a fair and humane existence within the limits of nature. There is no alternative: the endless \nacceleration of capital has run out of road. We must slow down.
Kohei Saito is an associate professor at the University of Tokyo and the youngest ever winner of the Deutscher Memorial Prize for scholarship in the Marxist tradition. He is an editor on MEGA, an ongoing project to publish critical editions of the complete writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Slow Down was a huge bestseller on publication and has been credited for inspiring a resurgence of interest in climate economics in Japan. Brian Bergstrom is a lecturer and translator who has lived in Chicago, Kyoto, and Yokohama. His writing and translations have appeared in publications including Granta, Aperture, Lit Hub, Mechademia, Japan Forum, positions: asia critique, and The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories. He is the editor and principal translator of We, the Children of Cats by Tomoyuki Hoshino (PM Press), which was longlisted for the 2013 Best Translated Book Award. His translation of Trinity, Trinity, Trinity by Erika Kobayashi (Astra House, 2022) won the 2022 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission (JUSFC) Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. He is currently based in Montr?al, Canada.
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