Sketches communities of life as a radical alternative to capitalist devastation
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Offers a comprehensive account of capitalism’s life-sapping processes, and a hopeful guide on how to expand upon existing social practices to build radical alternatives
Develops the concept of communities of life to motivate resistance to capitalist devastation
Engages with philosophy across the analytic-continental divide, as well as with critical theory
Draws on diverse literatures including the natural sciences, decolonial and indigenous studies, eco-socialism, public health, and political economy
This book explores how capitalism uses and abuses life, and presents communities of life as a practical means of resistance. In particular, the book shows how capitalism exploits life’s capacity for self-production across myriad species, enlists us in environmentally damaging behaviour, inflicts immense physical and mental suffering in unjust and avoidable ways, and undermines the ethical quality of life for all.
The best chance to find meaning in this context, James A. Chamberlain argues, is resistance, and the affirmation of communities of life. The book proposes eight theses on communities of life, including: the orientation of communities of life to satisfy the needs of all beings that constitute them, and to the growth of life rather than economic growth; the abolition of private property in favour of various forms of shared ownership; post-work politics; and the need to recognize the interdependence of life to enact multi-species communities.
Introduction: Living Through Capitalism—Between Despair and Naive Optimism Chapter 1. Capitalism as Exploitation Chapter 2. Life as Self-production: How Capitalism Uses Life and Inhibits Its Development Chapter 3. Oblivion and Productivism: Capitalism and Environmental Crisis Chapter 4. Vital Siphoning: Capitalism and Global Health Injustice Chapter 5. The Good Life? A Husk of Meaning and Complicity in Injustice Conclusion: Eight Theses on Communities of Life
This is an expansive and ambitious book. Working productively across traditions, including analytic Marxism, Marxist feminism, eco-socialism, continental philosophy, and critical theory, Chamberlain makes a compelling case for the myriad ways that capitalism undermines and destroys human and non-human life and charts a hopeful path for resistance and social transformation.
The vantage point of life. This is the emergency perspective Chamberlain gives us in Living Through Capitalism – a vantage point that anchors thinking on what matters: how capitalism degrades life, but also where hope lies – in what he calls ‘communities of life’. At this historical juncture where humanity is equipped equally well for self-destruction and renewal, this book steers the critical imagination away from many of the traps that have made progress untenable and even unthinkable.
James A. Chamberlain is Associate Professor of Political Science at Mississippi State University. He is the author of Undoing Work, Rethinking Community: A Critique of the Social Function of Work (Cornell University Press, 2018) and co-editor, with Albena Azmanova, of Capitalism, Socialism, Democracy: Critical Debates (Springer, 2022). Also with Azmanova, he co-founded and co-edits the open access journal Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis. He has published several articles on borders, migration, and cosmopolitanism in journals such as Political Theory, Contemporary Political Theory, and Constellations.
