Kohei Saito, the communist philosopher of degrowth – Libération

A follower of Karl Marx, his modern rereading of “Capital” exploded sales in the Japanese archipelago. A success acclaimed by the young generation which puts supporters of degrowth and eco-modernists side by side. It has just been translated into French.

It begins with a pair of wide-eyed eyes in a fancy restaurant tucked under a bridge in Tokyo: “How ? Have you met Kohei Saito?” The scene is set: in the Japanese archipelago, the young Marxist philosopher has the aura of a rock star. He himself is amused by this sudden popularity, which he describes as a «non-sens». (“capital in the Anthropocene”), the French version of which has just been published by Editions du Seuil under the title Less ! Degrowth is a philosophybecame a small mass phenomenon in Japan when it was released in 2020.

In less than a year, the book sold more than 500,000 copies, so much so that the Maruzen bookstore chain in Tokyo’s Marunouchi district opened a section called “Rediscovering Marx.” The book has since been published in twelve countries, and Saito is received as a distinguished guest. In France, it was the Institut La Boétie, the think tank of La France insoumise (LFI), which offered him the microphone during his visit in the fall of 2023, before taking over the Pompidou center on September 20 . The “hype” around Kohei Saito borders on the paradox: his success has become a selling point in itself, beyond the contributions of the book itself.

In Marx’s personal notebooks

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