Labour, Nature, Value

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.

• Preface to the English EditionIntroductionI. Political Ecology as MethodAnalytical Premises and New Political Stakes of Social Transformation1. The divorce between wealth and value2. André Gorz's political ecology3. Further considerations: the concept of nature, the theoretical status of the theory of value, and class compositionII. Nature in Classical Political Economy and Its CritiquePrimitive Accumulation, Valorisation and Abstract Social Nature1. Marx: nature as capital2. Nature and political economy3. Moore: abstract social natureIII. An Entropic DeviceThe Rise of the Labour-Nature-Value Nexus from Fossil Capitalism to the Fordist Pact1. Resisting value theory: struggles against and within valorisation2. The 'classic' labour-nature-value nexus as entropic deviceIV. The Twofold Crisis of the 'Classic' Labour-Nature-Value NexusSocial Struggles and Physical Limits to Growth at the Root of the First Oil Shock (1968-1973)1. Gorz's theory of the twofold crisis (1968-73)2. The environmental causes of the twofold crisis: the physical limits to growth3. The social causes of the twofold crisis: feminist revolution and liberation of work / liberation from labourV. Nature as a Direct Element of ValorisationCognitive Labour and Financialization in the Green Economy1. Ecology and class composition2. Cognitive capitalism and the becoming productive of social reproduction3. Financialisation of the economy and ecological crisis4. Green Economy: exploitation and manipulation of cognitive labour in biomimicryVI. For a Critique of Carbon MarketsHistorical and Economic Notes on the Peculiar Commodification of the Climate1. Carbon Trading in actu: the Kyoto Protocol (1997)2. Productive failure of carbon markets and climate rent3. How to produce a Certified Emissions Reduction: in the lab of carbon commoditiesVII. Between Marxism and DegrowthShrinking Social Metabolism and Liberating Negentropic WorkConclusion

This is a beautiful piece of intellectual work. Via the theories of Andre Gorz, Leonardi generates an original interpretation of the logic driving the encounter of Marxist and Degrowth thought, and a compelling argument for the importance of this unexpected rendezvous.