Slow Down

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2024 'ACCESSIBLE AND CONVINCING' - SALLY ROONEY
Capitalism by its very nature puts us at odds with the environment. Therefore, argues award-winning Japanese philosopher Kohei Saito, the future must belong to a new form of communism, the only fair and humane existence the limits of nature can support. Drawing on a revelatory new reading of Karl Marx's enigmatic final writings, Saito shows us how nothing but a transformation of our economic life can save us from climate collapse. There is no alternative: the endless acceleration of capital has run out of road. If we can't slow down, we will crash.

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.