The promise of a capitalist green economy is to transform ecological constraints on development into business opportunities. This may sound appealing but proves problematic on closer inspection. Emanuele Leonardi explains how this reasonable ideology fails by drawing on the work of Andre Gorz, the militant communist, editor of Les Temps Modernes, and journalist at Le Nouvel Observateur. The result connects degrowth thinking to Marxism. Labour, Nature, Value is a programmatic horizon for the socio-ecological conflicts proliferating internationally. The aim is to reduce pressure on the biosphere while facilitating an ever-wider diffusion of care activities and knowledge production.

Degrowth and Marxism are natural allies in the fight for a fair and sustainable world.

Emanuele Leonardi works at the Department of Sociology and Business Law, University of Bologna (Italy). He is the co-editor of the Handbook of Critical Environmental Politics (Elgar, 2022). Articles of his have been published by prominent journals such as Globalizations, Ecological Economics, Radical Philosophy and South Atlantic Quarterly.