Fraser uses the term ‘boundary struggles’ to describe these expanded realms of conflict that occur around these front-story/back-story divisions, and a further feature of her approach is to show that these divisions have never been static. Capitalism relies on exploitation (waged labour) and expropriation (enslavement, territorial conquest, annexation, etc.

At the same time, ‘capitalist production is not self-sustaining, but free rides on social reproduction, nature, political power, and expropriation; yet its orientation to endless accumulation threatens to destabilize these very conditions of its possibility’ (p. The reliance of capitalism on social-reproductive activity constitutes the second contradiction as it is detailed in Care Guzzler: Why Social Reproduction Is a Major Site of Capitalist Crisis. Every historical iteration is punctuated by outbreaks of crisis and conflict, as all turn out to be ridden with tension and contradiction. In each of these binaries, the former sphere distinguishes itself from the latter even as it draws resources from the latter, all the while disavowing any responsibility for the resources it draws.This book covers far more than is suggested by the sub-title, which is no surprise given that Nancy Fraser has written widely on the philosophical conceptions of justice and injustice; and is a long-standing critic of liberal feminism, and of how identity politics displace a structural critique of capitalism. 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.

Capital is currently cannibalizing every sphere of life–guzzling wealth from nature and racialized populations, sucking up our ability to care for each other, and gutting the practice of politics. A brilliant synthesis of Fraser's many pathbreaking contributions to a Marxian theory of capitalism for the twenty-first century, beautifully written. It looks past the traditional class struggle argument and takes Black Marxism, decolonial perspectives, and feminist and gender theory into consideration, combining them all to create a complete analysis of our current predatory system. Capitalism is cannibalistic, not just in the way it devours other areas of social life, but in ultimately devouring itself. In disavowing responsibility, capitalism invites the destabilization of these latter spheres and, in doing so, jeopardizes essential facets of society and life on which it itself is dependent.Her point is not to reduce these conflicts to questions of capitalist economics, in the way some orthodox Marxists in the past sought to reduce all other social struggles to matters of class conflict; rather, she seeks to promote an expanded conception of capitalism that encompasses not just the economy, but an array of social domains, each of which is the site of social struggles concurrent with and co-equal to the class struggle that has been the traditional focus of anti-capitalist critique. Chapter 3, ‘Care Guzzler: Why Social Reproduction is a Major Site of Capitalist Crisis’, is perhaps of most immediate interest to readers of this journal.