Slow Down: the Degrowth Manifesto

Slow Down is the English translation of the Japanese best-seller Capital in the Anthropocene, which sold over 500,000 copies during the pandemic in Japan alone, and turned Saito into what The New Yorker calls "a rare academic celebrity."The book builds on and expands previous arguments Saito made in his dissertation, published in 2017 as Karl Marx's Ecosocialism.Capital, Nature and The Unfinished Critique of Political Economy (Monthly Review Press) and his 2023 book Marx in the Anthropocene.Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism (Cambridge University Press).In accessible and nontechnical language that will perhaps appeal more to readers unfamiliar with red and green theory than to experts, Saito makes a strong case for the contemporary relevance of what he claims was the later Marx's vision of "degrowth communism."The overall goal of Saito's project is to combine these two terms into a coherent vision: communism aims to shut down the systemic imperative of capitalism to externalize burdens onto nature and future generations, while degrowth commits communism to the goal of sustainable living within planetary boundaries.Degrowth is necessary because, as the Soviet Union shows (p.121), a productivist communism by itself could still aim at overall growth in productivity and economic progress, failing to recognize ecological limits.Chapter 4, "Marx in the Anthropocene" summarizes the core thesis of Saito's homonymous 2023 book.The argument is that,