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Alyssa BattistoniFree Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature
Monday, May 4, 2026, 5:00–6:30pm
Capitalism is typically treated as a force for relentless commodification. Yet it consistently fails to place value on vital aspects of the nonhuman world, whether carbon emissions or entire ecosystems. Free Gifts explores capitalism’s persistent failure to value nature, arguing that to understand contemporary ecological problems from biodiversity collapse to climate change, we have to understand how some things come to have value under capitalism—and how others do not. The book recovers and reinterprets the idea of the free gift of nature used by classical economic thinkers to describe what we gratuitously obtain from the natural world, and builds on Karl Marx’s critique of political economy to show how capitalism fundamentally treats nature as free for the taking. This novel theory of capitalism’s relationship to nature not only helps us understand contemporary ecological breakdown, but also casts capitalism’s own core dynamics in a new light.
This lecture is presented in conjunction with 3CT’s Marx + Theory reading group, led by Neil Brenner, Anton Ford, and Gabriel Winant.
This event is free and open to the public, and registration is recommended. Please email us at ccct@uchicago.edu if you require any accommodations to enable your full participation.
Alyssa Battistoni is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Barnard College. Battistoni is a political theorist with research interests in environmental and climate politics, feminism, Marxist thought, political economy, and the history of political thought. Battistoni is the author of Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature (Princeton University Press, 2025) and the co-author, with Kate Aronoff, Daniel Aldana Cohen, and Thea Riofrancos, of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal (Verso 2019). Her work has appeared in Political Theory, Perspectives on Politics, Contemporary Political Theory, and Nature Sustainability. Battistoni also writes frequently for publications including the Nation, Dissent, Jacobin, n+1, and Boston Review, and is on the editorial boards of Jacobin and Dissent.
