Close
SLOW DOWN - the UK launch
15 April 2025, 6:00 pm–7:00 pm
The UCL Centre for Capitalism Studies presents Kohei Saito in conversation with Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou
Event Information
Open to
- All
Organiser
-
Centre for Capitalism Studies
Location
-
Logan HallUCL Institute of Education, 20 Bedford WayLondonWC1H 0AL
Slow Down: How Degrowth Communism Can Save the Earth
by Kohei Saito (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2024)
A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2024
Capitalism by its very nature puts us at odds with the environment. Therefore, argues award-winning Japanese philosopher Kohei Saito, the future must belong to a new form of communism, the only fair and humane existence the limits of nature can support. Drawing on a revelatory new reading of Karl Marx’s enigmatic final writings, Saito shows us how nothing but a transformation of our economic life can save us from climate collapse. There is no alternative: the endless acceleration of capital has run out of road. If we can’t slow down, we will crash.
Open to all. First-come, first-seated. No registration required.
Centre for Capitalism Studies is a world-leading centre for critical interdisciplinary research into the past, present, and future of capitalism. It brings together UCL faculty and students studying how markets, finance and economic institutions shape our everyday life, structure societies’ capacity to change, and are contested and remade across time and space.
About the Speakers
Kohei Saito
Associate Professor of Philosophy at University of Tokyo
He works on ecology and political economy from a Marxist perspective. His recent best-selling book, Capital in the Anthropocene, has been credited with sparking a resurgence of interest in Marxist thought throughout Japan. Wanting to continue his research on post-capitalism and the Anthropocene, he felt the need to interact with theories and practices that are rapidly developing in Europe, especially in Germany, in response to the deepening climate and economic crises. Kohei is Chair of the Beyond Capitalism: War Economy and Democratic Planning program at the New Institute, Germany, in the Academic Year 2024/25.
More about Kohei SaitoAris Komporozos-Athanasiou
Director of the UCL Centre for Capitalism Studies
Dr Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou is Associate Professor of Sociology, Director of the UCL Centre for Capitalism Studies and Director of UCL's BSc Sociology programme. Aris’s research combines economic and political sociology with social theory to trace the impact of financial markets on everyday life and the collective movements emerging in response to financialisation. He is the author of Speculative Communities: Living with Uncertainty in a Financialized World (University of Chicago Press, 2022), and Real Fake (forthcoming with MIT Press). His work has been featured in The New Yorker, Bookforum, EL PAIS, and the Locarno Film Festival. In 2024/25 Aris is Research Chair of the programme Futures of Capitalism at The New Institute in Hamburg.
More about Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou