Book Review: Kohei Saito, Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto. Translated by Brian Bergstrom. Astra House. 2024.

It has been decades now since links between capitalism and ecological crisis have been the subject of the direct and sustained attention of radical theorists within anarchist and Marxist milieus. Today, it is finally easy to see how far advanced writers like Murray Bookchin and James O’Connor were in their basic sensibilities about the relationship between capitalism and ecology. In fact, our slowness to grasp their insights has even been part of the problem of ecology. One would like to say, “if only we were faster to recognize the incompatibility of capitalism with ecology,” but perhaps recognizing that fact sooner would not have made it any easier to abolish capitalism and its deadly logic in the world.