Free 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 ""Battistoni’s book is one of the most worthwhile to have been published in the planetary turn, and it carries great relevance for readers across many academic fields. Despite its deep theoretical engagements with highly specialized literatures, Free Gifts is also written in impressively clear prose. Battistoni’s combination of political theory with a historicization of the intellectual underpinnings of the dominating climate framework is also highly engaging as intellectual history.""---Julia Nordblad, Modern Intellectual History ""Brilliant. . . . [A]s a guide to many of the most important issues in political philosophy this book is worth careful study. Each chapter builds on previous chapters to present a coherent and compelling vision.""---Bart Hawkins Kreps, An Outside Chance ""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 ""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 ""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 ""[Free Gifts'] bold aim is to reintegrate nature into politics and economics and it is undoubtedly a powerful gesture in that direction. It is a valuable and generative addition to the burgeoning literature of Marxist ecology. In the most real sense it strives to restore the non-human world to its rightful place at the centre of human existence, and to imagine a place where humans have the freedom to value nature.""---Henry Bell, Morning Star ""Free Gifts is an incisive critique of both mainstream and heterodox approaches to the political economy of climate change, as well as a state-of-the-art conspectus of contemporary critical theory. . . . Battistoni avoids the mistake of tendering an abstract and formulaic answer to the question of what is to be done; we can look to actual struggles taking place right now for inspiration and instruction. And her emphasis on freedom—and the conditions that make the exercise of freedom possible and meaningful—is not only refreshing but necessary.""---Rob Hunter, LPE Blog ""Free Gifts succeeds at the rare accomplishment of not just asking the right questions and answering them convincingly, but of also spurring a whole series of further questions left for us all to reckon with as we stare deeper down the abyss. This spectacular book should be mandatory reading for students . . . while substantively carrying forward the project of the critique of political economy in our cursed era of genocide and ecological catastrophe.""---Lukas Slothuus, Contemporary Political Theory