Free Gifts
Capitalism and the Politics of Nature
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Princeton University Press
Published:14th Oct '25
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A timely new critique of capitalism’s persistent failure to value nature
Capitalism is typically treated as a force for relentless commodification. Yet it consistently fails to place value on vital aspects of the nonhuman world, whether carbon emissions or entire ecosystems. In Free Gifts, Alyssa Battistoni explores capitalism’s persistent failure to value nature, arguing that the key question is not the moral issue of why some kinds of nature shouldn’t be commodified, but the economic puzzle of why they haven’t been. To understand contemporary ecological problems from biodiversity collapse to climate change, she contends, we have to understand how some things come to have value under capitalism—and how others do not. To help us do so, Battistoni recovers and reinterprets the idea of the free gift of nature used by classical economic thinkers to describe what we gratuitously obtain from the natural world, and builds on Karl Marx’s critique of political economy to show how capitalism fundamentally treats nature as free for the taking. This novel theory of capitalism’s relationship to nature not only helps us understand contemporary ecological breakdown, but also casts capitalism’s own core dynamics in a new light.
Battistoni addresses four different instances of the free gift in political economic thought, each in a specific domain: natural agents in industry, pollution in the environment, reproductive labor in the household, and natural capital in the biosphere. In so doing, she offers new readings of major twentieth-century thinkers, including Friedrich Hayek, Simone de Beauvoir, Garrett Hardin, Silvia Federici, and Ronald Coase. Ultimately, she offers a novel account of freedom for our ecologically troubled present, developing a materialist existentialism to argue that capitalism limits our ability to be responsible for our relationships to the natural world, and imagining how we might live freely while valuing nature’s gifts.
"[A] stimulating treatise. . . . Battistoni is a rigorous and skilled polemicist; she showcases her original close readings of classic texts without veering too far into the weeds. Her investigation adds up to a fascinating look at how a 'free' nature functions, ironically, to restrict human freedom to make ethical and socially responsible decisions. . . . [An] insightful theoretical approach to the climate crisis." * Publishers Weekly *
"A remarkable, important work of sophisticated Marxist theory informed by spectacularly detailed analysis of our actually-existing capitalist world—and beautifully written at that. It’s about nature but also everything."---Daniel Denvir
"A truly wonderful book. . . . It’s a very thorough reconstruction of how capitalism operates, generally and in relation to nature. . . . It’s enormously erudite, incredibly wide-ranging in its readings. It’s written in a lively prose. . . . . It’s developing, in my view, a very original synthesis of value form analysis and existential philosophy that I haven’t seen before. . . . [and] it also is very conceptually creative and comes up with concepts that I find very useful. . . . This is the most important work in ecological Marxism in a very long time."---Andreas Malm, Historical Materialism
"Free Gifts is itself a gift for those in the environmental humanities, political theory, and feminist thought. . . . [and] a deeply rewarding (and worrying) perspective on our ecological and political situation. . . . I very much look forward to the life of this book as it enters our midst."---Jordan Daniels, Spectre
"An original contribution. . . . I have nothing but admiration for the ambition on display in Battistoni’s work. Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature is appropriately a book that is very much alive."---Matt McManus, Damage
"I love this book. It's a great analysis of one of capitalism's core assumptions. . . . Super thought-provoking and wide-ranging."---Jeffrey Church, The Political Theory Review
"Free Gifts offers an exceptional intellectual contribution in times of crisis, arming us with a deeper understanding of capitalism’s logic in the Anthropocene era. It reveals that environmental destruction is not merely an 'external cost,' but a direct consequence of the way capitalism generates value—by ignoring everything that cannot be subordinated to the wage relationship. . . . [An] essential intellectual tool for anyone seeking to understand a world being devoured by capitalism—and to change it toward a future grounded in genuine freedom and responsibility toward our planet and the fragile forms of life we share it with."---Said Mohammad, Al-Akhbar
"A book that I absolutely love. It was a joy cover-to-cover, so thought-provoking, so many ideas. I just describe this book as political theory at its finest."---Jathan Sadowski, This Machine Kills
ISBN: 9780691263465
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
328 pages