Lan Jiang: How to Eliminate Greedy Capitalist Gluttons—An Interpretation of Nancy Fraser's Cannibal Capitalism
Nancy Fraser's 2022 book Cannibal Capitalism indeed carries a quite terrifying title. Etymologically, "cannibal" is not a standard English root but originated during the Age of Discovery when the Spanish encountered the Taíno people in the Caribbean. The Spanish discovered that the Taíno practiced anthropophagy; the indigenous pronunciation for this act was caniba, which the Spanish transformed into the Spanish caníbal, eventually evolving into the English "cannibal." It refers to an animal eating its own kind, and of course, when applied to humans, it becomes "man-eating." But for the reader, the question remains: why, in Nancy Fraser’s view, is contemporary capitalism—especially capitalism in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic—"cannibal capitalism"? How does contemporary capitalism "eat people"? These are the questions Fraser’s book seeks to answer for us.
In an interview, Nancy Fraser expressed great satisfaction with the cover designed by Verso Books. The cover features the image of an Ouroboros [1]—a serpent devouring its own tail, implying it is consuming its own body. In other words, through the image of the Ouroboros, Fraser intends to convey that the greedy desires of capitalism move from one crisis point to another—from ecological destruction to the collapse of democracy, from racial violence to the devaluation of care work—all of which culminated during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Fraser’s own words: "For a system to be cannibalistic is for it to be devouring its own social, political, and natural conditions of existence—the very things that also happen to be our conditions of existence."
Clearly, through the imagery of cannibalism and the Ouroboros, Fraser tells us that in the face of massive financial and social crises, and the enormous social problems brought to Western capitalist societies by the raging pandemic, she must once again seize the critical edge of anti-capitalism that was once discarded. The idealism of using feminist identity politics to reform the inequalities and injustices of capitalist society has ultimately given way to taking up the weapons of critique and aiming them squarely at the capitalist system itself. Standing behind her are the masters of capitalist critique: Marx, Engels, the Frankfurt School, and Karl Polanyi. Today, she once again uses the critique of capitalism to penetrate the symptoms of capitalist crisis—the fact that capitalism is an Ouroboros constantly devouring its own body and foundations. If we continue to rely on this cruel and inhuman system, the whole of humanity will perish with it. However, to clarify the basic trajectory of Fraser's Cannibal Capitalism, we must return to the developmental history of her own thought.
I. From Recognition to Redistribution
Born in 1947, Nancy Fraser is, of course, first and foremost a feminist thinker. During the era in which she lived and studied, feminist theories by the likes of Beauvoir, Irigaray, and Kristeva were in vogue. Even in the United States, Fraser was accompanied by feminist thinkers such as Judith Butler and Iris Marion Young. At the same time, however, Fraser considers herself an inheritor of the spirit of the Frankfurt School’s critical theory. Although she never studied in Frankfurt, she has long taken Frankfurt School critical theorists such as Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, Habermas, and Honneth as her spiritual guides. It is precisely this that shaped Fraser’s unique early writing style. She upheld a distinct feminist stance, insisting on rethinking problems of political philosophy and economic systems from the perspective of gender equality and justice. Consequently, she responded to the neoliberal political philosophy represented by figures like John Rawls, arguing that the equality of women’s status constitutes a refutation and attack on Rawls's principle of the "priority of the right over the good." As Fraser herself critically pointed out: "The result is the emergence of a new phase of feminist politics in which gender justice is being reconstructed. A key aspect of this phase is the challenge to the interlocking injustices of maldistribution and misrecognition." Within this space, Fraser discovered that the framework of neoliberal political philosophy contains inherent biases and discrimination against gender justice, which inevitably leads to the inequality of women’s status within the framework of neoliberal multiculturalism.
In this regard, Fraser has a specific interlocutor: Axel Honneth, a representative of the third generation of the Frankfurt School and a prize pupil of Habermas (who advocated for the merger of critical theory with Rawlsian neoliberal political philosophy). Relative to Habermas’s concept of communicative rationality, Honneth realized that while the models of communicative rationality and intersubjectivity are inherently good, there is a precondition prior to the intersubjectivity of participating in dialogue and consultation: what kind of person can participate in the dialogue? What kind of subject can become one of the subjects of intersubjectivity? By rereading Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, Honneth explicitly proposed the concept of identity politics centered on "recognition" (Anerkennung). He pointed out: "In order to reveal how subjects are capable of resolving conflicts independently on the basis of law even under conditions of hostile competition... the theoretical focus must shift to the communicative relationship of intersubjectivity, which often already guarantees a minimum of normative consensus. For only in these pre-contractual relations of mutual recognition (which determine social competitive relations) can the moral potential within the individual will—which limits each person’s sphere of freedom through reciprocity—be actively manifested." [2]
Honneth’s meaning is clear: before we participate in dialogue and consultation to reach an agreement, there is a necessary condition—we must mutually recognize each other as subjects. We can only enter the dialogue and resolve intersubjective conflicts if we possess the status of a subject. However, in the long process of historical development, the recognition of subjective status has not been a natural process. As Nancy Fraser observed, for a long time, Black people were not considered subjects; only white plantation owners were. For a long time, women were not recognized as subjects, because only the adult males of the household were qualified. Therefore, humans are not born with the status of a subject; only when a subject becomes a certain identity, representing the interests of a political group behind that identity, do they qualify for intersubjectivity.
But once Black people or women are recognized as subjects, is inequality in the field of political philosophy resolved? Fraser clearly saw a chronic ailment in Honneth’s theory of recognition. On the surface, Honneth attempted to use the problem of recognition to solve the issue of Black people, women, LGBT+ individuals, and other ethnic minorities lacking rights and being unable to participate in true political dialogue. But the identity politics of recognition also causes another problem. In Redistribution or Recognition?—a collection of dialogues in which she goes head-to-head with Honneth—Fraser points out with penetrating insight: "Let me explain. To view recognition as a matter of justice is to treat it as a matter of social status. This means examining institutionalized patterns of cultural value and their effects on the relative standing of social participants. If participants are recognized as peers by these patterns, capable of participating as equals with one another in social life, then we can speak of reciprocal recognition and status equality. Conversely, when institutionalized patterns of cultural value constitute some actors as inferior, excluded, wholly other, or simply invisible—and hence as less than full partners in social interaction—then we should speak of misrecognition and status subordination."
In short, Fraser argues that recognition depends on institutionalized patterns of cultural values. This mode of mutual recognition does not construct participants as equal individuals, but rather involves them in the pattern based on a certain cultural identity. Certain identities, such as Black, female, or LGBT, may be recognized for participation in dialogue and consultation, but they already carry certain symbolic "markers"—for example, that Black people are "savage" or women are "emotional" or "hysterical." Rather than saying those participating in dialogue and action are subjects, it is more accurate to say they enter the dialogue wearing certain symbolic identity masks. If a female member of parliament enters the chamber, she must speak for women; a Black interlocutor naturally cannot say anything outside of a Black standpoint. On the surface, the theory of recognition grants various individuals an identity and allows them to participate in dialogue, consultation, and intersubjective social interaction through that identity. But in reality, they are not themselves; they are merely their identities. Identity politics, while granting them political rights, also imprisons their souls and bodies within that symbolic identity.
However, during this period, Fraser did not negate the political value of recognition; she still acknowledged that identity politics under the theory of recognition is progressive. But this identity politics of recognition easily falls into a kind of "reductionism"—that is, reducing living individuals to a projection of a fixed identity within established patterns of cultural value. To avoid this "bad reductionism," one must perform a "critique of recognition." In Fraser’s view, the most important thing is not to completely overthrow the public reason of dialogue and consultation built up by recognition politics, but rather to use the critique of recognition to correct the unequal patterns of cultural value behind recognition. That is to say, recognition itself is not the problem; the problem lies in the underlying cultural value patterns. These patterns cause inequalities in status. If there were a more equal pattern of cultural value that distributed various values equally and justly, then the theory of recognition would play a greater role. In other words, before a theory of recognition can work, a more equal model of redistribution and a more just system of cultural values must be established. This is "redistribution."
In Fraser’s own words: "As I already noted, the normative core of my conception is the notion of parity of participation. According to this norm, justice requires social arrangements that permit all (adult) members of society to interact with one another as peers. For participatory parity to be possible, I claim, at least two conditions must be satisfied. First, the distribution of material resources must be such as to ensure participants' independence and 'voice.' This I shall call the objective condition of participatory parity. It precludes forms and levels of economic dependence and inequality that impede parity of participation... The second condition requires that institutionalized patterns of cultural value express equal respect for all participants and ensure equal opportunity for achieving social esteem. This I shall call the intersubjective condition of participatory parity. It precludes institutionalized norms that systematically depreciate some categories of people and the qualities associated with them." That is to say, if recognition is the prerequisite for intersubjective interaction, then the redistribution of a more equal institutional pattern of cultural values is the prerequisite for recognition. Recognition is always recognition under a certain distribution of material resources and cultural values. Because once recognition is obtained, the subject participates in the capitalist system with a certain identity; but if this system is flawed, the identity politics of recognition only deepens the miserable fate of grassroots democracy.
In other words, the critique of recognition against Honneth necessarily leads toward a critique of redistribution within the capitalist system. The early Nancy Fraser—
Fraser did not initially realize this problem. At first, she only intended to use the concept of "redistribution" to supplement Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition, just as Habermas believed that the project of capitalist modernity remained unfinished and that a modern capitalist civilization based on the intersubjective communicative rationality could still be established through the repair offered by discourse ethics and deliberative politics. Honneth’s theory of recognition was a revision and supplement to the theory of communicative rationality, and Nancy Fraser herself only used redistribution theory to revise and supplement Honneth. In this regard, Fraser did not anticipate that her emphasis on redistribution would inevitably sow the seeds for an exhaustive critique of the capitalist system. When her "redistribution" directed its theoretical spearhead toward a more egalitarian model of cultural values and institutions, it implicitly suggested that capitalism could not resolve this issue from within its own framework. The greed and profit-seeking of capitalism are increasingly destroying the social foundations that allow it to exist—a problem Fraser only gradually came to recognize after experiencing the financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, and one she fully realized after publishing the Feminist Manifesto in 2018. That is to say, only by returning to the question of class and the discourses of Marx and Polanyi, and by conducting an exhaustive critique of the capitalist system, can one find a more egalitarian "redistribution." Recognition theory cannot solve this problem; only the most thorough critique of capitalism can find a hopeful future for humanity.
II. Bidding Farewell to Identity Politics, Moving Toward a Critique of Capital
Turning to the frontispiece of Cannibal Capitalism, Nancy Fraser writes: "For Rahel Jaeggi." Generally, a book dedication is reserved for one's closest relatives, mentors, or figures who have had a major influence on one’s thought; yet Rahel Jaeggi is a full twenty years younger than Nancy Fraser and a student of Honneth, with whom Fraser once engaged in dialogue. Why would Fraser dedicate such a new book to a junior colleague in both academic standing and age? Below the dedication is the sentence: "She is an indispensable interlocutor and close friend." What made Fraser and Jaeggi kindred spirits across generations was perhaps a dialogue that shifted Fraser's previous thinking. Regarding Jaeggi’s teacher, Honneth, Fraser was diametrically opposed, using a critique of capitalist redistribution to revise Honneth's critique of recognition. But toward Rahel Jaeggi, Fraser shows none of this sharp edge, instead expressing gratitude through a tender dedication. Furthermore, in Cannibal Capitalism, Fraser mentions Jaeggi’s contributions multiple times. So, what kind of influence did Jaeggi exert on Fraser?
In 2016, given that both Rahel Jaeggi and Nancy Fraser shared backgrounds in critical theory and Western Marxist theory, John Thompson, an editor at Britain’s Polity Press, invited the two to hold a conversation on "Capitalism under Critical Theory." The results of this dialogue, after being compiled by editors, were published in 2018 under the title Capitalism: A Conversation in Critical Theory. Although Jaeggi is a student of Honneth, she does not follow Honneth in upholding Habermas's "communicative turn" [3] or attempting to use recognition theory to revise the intersubjective foundations of discourse ethics. Instead, Jaeggi seems to have no intention of continuing to wrestle within the realms of communicative rationality and neoliberal political philosophy. Rather, through a reinterpretation of the concept of "alienation," she has returned to the critical tradition of the first generation of the Frankfurt School; she is closer to Horkheimer, Adorno, and Benjamin than to Habermas and Honneth. Consequently, Jaeggi continued this intellectual tradition of capitalist critique in her dialogue with Fraser. For example, Jaeggi noted: "This is precisely my definition of alienation. I view alienation as a kind of powerlessness and lack of freedom, and this powerlessness and lack of freedom is precisely caused by the human 'disconnection' [4] and subjugation that created alienation and set it in motion. But we should also discuss the 'structural power' exercised by the market in capitalist society. This may be another unique feature distinguishing capitalism from non-capitalist societies. I am thinking specifically of the claim that under capitalism, the structure of commodity exchange is deeply infused into social life. There are different versions of this claim, but the basic idea is that treating something as a commodity produced for sale changes our relationship to it and to ourselves. This involves depersonalization or indifference, and determining a relationship with the world via instrumental rather than intrinsic value. In this way, the market exercises a qualitative structural force: it shapes the 'worldview,' the 'grammar' of our lives." Regarding such views, Nancy Fraser praised them, saying: "That is a very Frankfurt School perspective!" In other words, Jaeggi proposed her own critique of "forms of life," which means she no longer focuses on the intersubjective communicative patterns between individuals, but rather on the institutionalized pattern of capitalism centered on economy and production. Regarding the shaping of our worldviews and lifestyles, Habermas’s communicative rationality still takes the capitalist commodity exchange structure as its prototype. To a certain extent, this determines that the communicative rationality critiques, intersubjectivity theories, and recognition theories of Habermas and Honneth cannot truly break free from the capitalist framework. At most, they can be considered revisionist theories within capitalism; they fail to see the global disasters brought about by capitalist greed and hegemony, and they fail to see the capitalist mode of production’s plundering and devouring of the non-capitalist.
Nancy Fraser was clearly deeply moved during her dialogue with Jaeggi. Here, some of her remarks already foreshadowed the germs of the later Cannibal Capitalism. For instance, Fraser remarked: "Marx was very insightful on this point. He said that in a capitalist society, capital itself becomes the subject. Humans are its pawns, reduced to figuring out how to get what they need in the cracks [5] by feeding the beast." Like Jaeggi, Fraser no longer views all people as subjects. Under the capitalist system, capital becomes a monster that needs to survive, needs to expand, and needs to spread its power across the globe. Therefore, this capital-as-subject necessarily and continuously devours what it can; eventually, even those things it cannot devour, including itself, are inevitably consumed by capital. Before capital, human subjectivity is weak; the human subject and the capital subject are simply not on the same level. Humans are the pawns of the capital subject, and this beast of capital is ruthless, devouring any object or life at will, turning humanity into the food that nourishes capitalism. In this regard, Jaeggi clearly recognizes the logic of cannibalistic capitalism: "Economic practices are always already embedded in forms of life. Taking this into account, the effort to define capitalism as a system that can exist independently of them becomes complicated—especially if we want to avoid the rigid distinction you yourself have criticized between an innocent 'lifeworld' and the free-flowing 'system' of economic dynamics. Such a division treats capitalism as a self-perpetuating 'machine' that feeds on people but is by no means driven by them."
It was precisely this new direction of thought that Jaeggi provided to Nancy Fraser during their dialogue, which, to a certain extent, allowed Fraser to step out of the traditional critique of identity politics. This is because such a critique (even a revised "redistributive" identity politics) cannot truly touch the monster of capital lurking behind, devouring human life and creativity; even if an institutional model of equality for all identities were created conceptually, it could not be implemented at the level of reality. What truly drives the realistic problems of capitalism is precisely a hidden force of "Capitalist Realism." This is the "Capitalist Realism" of the American [6] leftist critic Mark Fisher. In Fisher’s words: "Capitalism is an ultra-abstract impersonal structure, and it would be nothing without our cooperation. Capital is an abstract parasite, an insatiable vampire and zombie-maker; but the living flesh it converts into dead labor is our flesh, and the zombies it makes are us. In a sense, the political elites are our servants; the wretched service they provide for us is to launder our libidos, obligingly re-presenting to us our unacknowledged desires as if they had nothing to do with us." When such a gluttonous [7] beast of capital sits enthroned above us, true liberation (regardless of the negotiations or agendas employed) is impossible. This is perhaps one of the reasons Nancy Fraser chose to awaken. Therefore, at the beginning of Cannibal Capitalism, she cries out: "Where capital depends on the plunder of wealth, what is threatened is the universality of the system—and thus its legitimacy—and the ability of its ruling class to exercise hegemony through a mix of consent and force. In every case, the system has an inherent tendency toward self-stabilization. By failing to compensate or repair its hidden abodes, capital constantly devours the supports it relies on. Like a snake eating its own tail, it consumes the conditions that make its own existence possible." As Fraser repeatedly emphasizes, capitalism is a system, and the root of this system does not lie in a stable or balanced structure. Capitalism has only one true rule: let the insatiable beast of capital continuously devour everything it can. Today's ecological crises, crises in the relations of production, gender crises, and political crises are not abnormal states of capitalism; on the contrary, they are the inevitable results of the development of the capitalist system. Politics, class, gender, and ecology are all food that it can devour. Until the "greedy snake" of capital is dealt with, the various crises of humanity cannot be eradicated at the root. Thus, we need to conduct the most thorough critique of capitalism and its gluttonous beast of capital.
III. Returning to Marx and Karl Polanyi
If the reason for the critique of capitalism cannot remain at the level of identity politics, then the critique must return to its most original weapons. For leftist critical theory, the two most effective weapons are Marx’s critique of political economy and the problem of the "embedding" of the economy in society mentioned by Karl Polanyi in his book The Great Transformation. Let us see how Nancy Fraser returns to Marx and Karl Polanyi respectively.
In fact, during her dialogue with Jaeggi, Nancy Fraser had already re-realized the importance of Marx for the contemporary critique of capitalism. In the Feminist Manifesto of 2018, she realized that the tragedy of identity politics lay in choosing a few elite figures as representatives of a certain identity, allowing them to participate in politics as if everyone possessing that identity had been liberated. For example, in the face of the 2016...
In the 2016 general election, when Hillary Clinton ran against Donald Trump, liberal feminism seemed to believe that Clinton becoming the President of the United States would represent the liberation of all women. However, even when Obama became president, the dire situation of Black Americans did not improve in the slightest; likewise, had Clinton become president, the conditions of women at the bottom of society—especially Hispanic women and working-class women—would not have seen any improvement. Thus, Fraser emphasizes: "The aim of liberal feminism is meritocracy, not equality. They do not seek to abolish social hierarchy, but rather propose a feminized version of hierarchy, ensuring that women and men at the top belong to the same noble class. Clearly, the beneficiaries are those who already possess substantial social, cultural, and economic status. Consistent with massive inequalities in wealth and income, liberal feminism provides a progressive gloss for neoliberalism, masking the increasingly regressive nature of their policies on liberation. Liberal feminism is a fellow traveler of Islamophobia in Europe and global financial hegemony in the US." In this sense, Fraser realizes that the issue of class or equality takes precedence over gender issues, because there are elites and bourgeois among women and Black people—there are servants of capital among them—but those in subordinate positions, regardless of race, color, or gender, are unable to make their voices heard in the public sphere. Therefore, the solution to the exploitation and oppression of the lower classes by capitalism is not identity politics or a cultural politics of political correctness, but Marx’s critique of political economy.
In Cannibal Capitalism, Nancy Fraser devotes a chapter to discussing Marx’s theories of exploitation and oppression, extending Marx’s critique of political economy to the predatory position of major Western capitalist countries toward non-Western colonies and peripheral states. The latter can be seen entirely as Fraser’s extension of the critique of political economy within a Marxist framework. After analyzing Marx’s Capital, Fraser offers an interpretation: capitalist equal exchange is built upon a foundation of unequal exchange; this is a trick of the capitalist exchange system, namely, using the post-exploitation price as wages to exchange for the worker's labor power. Thus, Fraser asserts: "Marx’s theory has many merits, one of which is beyond doubt. By viewing capitalism through the lens of exploitation, it exposes what is hidden under the perspective of exchange: the structural basis of class rule over the (doubly) free worker in capitalist society." However, this is not Fraser’s only reason for discussing Marx’s political economy in Cannibal Capitalism. She is more concerned with the fact that the internal exploitation of worker labor power within capitalism is predicated on the external "expropriation" [8] of the non-capitalist world system. That is to say, when capitalist production begins, it needs not only to exploit domestic workers but also to expropriate resources from various non-capitalist systems. These resources include direct plunder from colonies and peripheral structures, the expropriation of the domestic labor of ethnic minorities and women (care work), and the expropriation of natural resources that capitalism regards as inanimate. In short, only through expropriation can workers be made to produce in factories with large machinery; only through expropriation can the financial mechanisms of Wall Street run without pause; and only through expropriation can Western capitalist countries establish a hegemonic imperialist order, thoroughly legitimizing the capitalist plunder of the Third World or peripheral countries. Fraser writes in a tone of deep distress:
Expropriation works by confiscating the powers and natural resources of others and plundering them into the circuits of capital expansion. This may be through overtly violent confiscation, such as New World slavery; or it may be cloaked in commerce, such as predatory lending and debt foreclosures in the present era. The subjects of expropriation may be rural or indigenous communities on the capitalist periphery, or members of subject or subordinate groups in the capitalist core. Once expropriated, these groups may eventually become exploited proletarians if they are lucky—or if they are unlucky, they may decline into paupers, slum dwellers, sharecroppers, "natives," or slaves, becoming objects of sustained expropriation outside the wage contract. The confiscated assets may be labor power, land, animals, tools, mineral deposits, or energy, but they may also be people, their sexuality and reproductive capacity, their children and body organs. Crucially, however, the expropriated capacities are incorporated into capital’s process of valorization. Simple theft is not enough. Unlike the kind of plunder prior to the rise of capitalism, what I call expropriation here is confiscation-plus-plunder used for capital accumulation.
In other words, while Fraser identifies with Marx’s forms of internal exploitation and the basic conclusions of his critique of political economy, she believes it is insufficient for the critique of political economy and capitalism to remain solely within the internal sphere of capitalism. Therefore, in Cannibal Capitalism, she argues for an "expanding" perspective of capitalist critique—extending the pure critique of political economy into the capitalist economic system's expropriation of the non-capitalist systems of social life. This indicates that the capitalist politico-economic system and the non-capitalist system actually belong to two different systems, and capitalism realizes capital valorization not only through exploitation and oppression within its own system but also sustains and develops itself by continuously expropriating external non-capitalist social systems. Yet, in reality, these so-called external non-capitalist social systems are the necessary preconditions that make the capitalist politico-economic system possible. Once capitalism greedily devours these social systems, it means capitalism is devouring its own body and foundation, becoming the metaphor of the Ouroboros on the cover of Cannibal Capitalism.
In fact, the distinction Fraser makes between the capitalist economic system and the social system comes less from Marx than from the Hungarian-born British thinker Karl Polanyi. Polanyi did not write much in his lifetime, but he left behind a major work, The Great Transformation. In this book, Polanyi points out that capitalist society consists not only of an economic system but also of a social system. Polanyi used the concept of embeddedness to critique the neoliberal school of economics led by Hayek, which holds that the government only needs to play the role of a night-watchman while the market can achieve the optimal allocation of society under the action of the "invisible hand." But Polanyi insisted that such an idealized market society has never existed. Contrary to Hayek’s judgment, Polanyi argued that prior to the 19th century, human economic activities, including markets, were always embedded within social systems. However, after moving toward a capitalist society, a fundamental shift occurred: "Fundamentally, this is precisely why the control of the economic system by the market would have lethal consequences for the whole organization of society: it means to allow the running of society to be subordinated to the market. Instead of the economy being embedded in social relations, social relations are embedded in the economic system. The vital importance of the economic factor to the existence of society precludes any other result. For once the economic system is organized through separate institutions based on specific motives and conferred with a special status, society must be shaped in such a manner as to allow that system to function according to its own laws." In short, unlike Hayek’s advocacy for the economy and market to control all aspects of social life, Karl Polanyi advocated using social values and systems to resist the devouring power of the economic system and the market, ensuring that the social system is not completely digested by the market.
In Cannibal Capitalism, another influence of Karl Polanyi on Nancy Fraser is reflected in the historical periodization of The Great Transformation. In fact, Fraser establishes a complete "cannibalistic capitalism coordinate system" in the book. There is a horizontal axis involving various social and non-capitalist systems engulfed by the capitalist economic system, including the expropriation of colonies, the Third World, and peripheral countries; the expropriation of domestic and care work by women and other family members; the wanton extraction of so-called inanimate nature; and the discourse hegemony over the traditional public political sphere. On the vertical axis, however, Fraser significantly adopts Polanyi’s historical periodization directly, dividing the stages of capitalist development into three periods: (1) the 16th–18th century form of commercial capitalism or mercantile capitalism, which was the embryonic stage of capitalism; (2) the 19th-century liberal-colonial capitalism period, during which external expropriation began, along with the "internal colonization" of women, children, and other minority groups; and (3) the post-WWII state-capitalist stage. In fact, Polanyi’s The Great Transformation only went up to this stage, as the struggle between his work and Hayek’s market theory emerged during this period. However, if Fraser had merely followed in Polanyi's footsteps [9] by only discussing the state-capitalist stage, Cannibal Capitalism would not manifest its specific value. To a certain extent, Fraser extends Polanyi’s conclusions, arguing that today we face a new stage of capitalism, which she names the "financialized capitalism" stage.
Why is this "financialized capitalism" stage so important? What is the difference compared to the state-capitalist stage? For Nancy Fraser, the primary difference lies not in the means by which capitalism profits and exploits, but in how it utilizes different methods to devour non-economic social systems. Take family care and concern as an example: in the state-capitalist stage, because of the need for wives to perform domestic care work, women were molded into the image of "virtuous wives and good mothers" [10] in middle-class families—raising children, doing housework, and caring for the elderly. That is to say, the husband’s exploitation within the capitalist economic system was predicated on the wife sacrificing herself to undertake capitalist reproduction and care work. In the financialized capitalism stage, however, it appears on the surface that the feminist struggle has given wives and other women the right to work alongside men. But this is precisely the type of worker financialized capitalism requires. Housework and care work have already been commodified by capitalism; domestic service companies hire Latina and Black women so that women in white middle-class families can strive for capitalist profit just like their husbands. Furthermore, to attract these elite female employees, large corporations even attempt to replace previously irreplaceable services with commercialized ones. In her book, Fraser cites companies like Apple and Meta; in order to retain female employees with strong technical capabilities, they offer to reimburse employees for surrogacy and egg-freezing services, so they are not delayed in creating profits for high-tech capitalist enterprises by childbirth and child-rearing. When large capitalist enterprises reimburse women for these types of expenses, it is not an expression of a "discovery of conscience" by capitalists or concern for female employees. Rather, it is because these fields—which were originally unable to be commercialized and capitalized—have been swallowed by capitalism (providing capitalized surrogacy and egg-freezing services). Women then have no further reason to reject their employer’s judgment, binding all aspects of their social lives to the chariot of capitalism and becoming part of the massive body of the capital glutton. This is a crisis of capitalism, but not a temporary one, because this crisis was already established in the image of capitalism as the Ouroboros devouring its own body; it cannot be overcome within capitalism itself. Therefore, Fraser cries out: "In this stage, runaway financialization has flooded the socio-political sphere, reducing its power to the point where it cannot resolve urgent problems, including those that jeopardize the prospects for long-term capital accumulation."
Conclusion: Transcending Cannibal Capitalism
Although Cannibal Capitalism is a new book released in 2022, only the "Afterword" was written after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, as Nancy Fraser says, the pandemic itself is not the problem; when a society is healthy, the impact of COVID-19 should not lead to the collapse of the entire society. However, in 2020...
In 2020, Nancy Fraser observed that the U.S. government failed to adequately manage the COVID-19 crisis. However, this pandemic did not so much expose human vulnerability in the face of nature as it did the fact that cannibal capitalism was devouring the very foundations upon which it relies for survival, thereby dragging everyone within the capitalist system toward extinction. Consequently, the problems exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the financial crisis are not issues that can be resolved within the capitalist system. Rather, these problems result from the inherent nature of capitalism; unless the capitalist system is abolished, these issues cannot truly be resolved. In Fraser’s words, "this pandemic is the intersection of all the contradictions of cannibal capitalism: here, the cannibalizing of nature and care work, of political capacity and marginalized populations, merge together in a lethal bacchanal. This is a Veritable Orgy of Capitalist Dysfunction, and without a doubt, COVID-19 has established once and for all the necessity of abolishing the capitalist social system."
In this sense, Nancy Fraser demonstrates through Cannibal Capitalism that she has completely moved beyond her earlier reliance on the political philosophy of feminist identity politics and redistribution. She has realized that only by thoroughly abandoning the capitalist system and establishing an institutional model based on more egalitarian cultural values can the crisis of cannibal capitalism be transcended and a more egalitarian society be conceived. Perhaps we may conclude with the final sentence of Cannibal Capitalism:
It is time to starve the Great Glutton [11] and finish off cannibal capitalism once and for all!
(Notes omitted) (Author's affiliations: Department of Philosophy, Nanjing University; Center for the Study of Marxist Social Theory, Nanjing University) Web Editor: Zhang Jian Source: China Book Review, Issue 3, 2023