ResoluteReader

Thursday, July 17, 2025

John Rose - Revolutions Thwarted: Poland, South Africa, Iran, Brazil and the legacies of Communism

John Rose, who died recently, was a veteran socialist of the 1968 generation. I reviewed his excellent book The Myths of Zionism many years ago on this 'blog and like many socialists I learnt much from his pamphlet Israel: The Hijack State. In the 2010s Rose began working on a project to critically examine the revolutionary socialist ideas that had been so central to his activist life. In the introduction to this book he writes that he was motivated to examine a fundamental question, "why was the Marxist left in such a precarious state, especially when the proverbial crisis of capitalism... was so serious?" He decided to put his "1968 assumptions" to an "independent test" by studying three failed revolutionary upheavals (a fourth was later added).

These studies, on Poland in the early 1980s, Iran in 1979, Brazil in the 1980s and 1990s and South Africa at the end of Apartheid, were all examples of mass workers action that had the potential to spill over into working class revolution. With the possible exception of Iran, which saw workers' councils in a small number of highly organised areas of workers' strength, none of them did. Comparing these events, with the high points of revolutionary activity in the early 20th century, form the main purpose of the book. Despite the book originating in a Phd study Rose writes not out of pure academic interest, but with the ambition of revolutionary emancipation. It is a remarkable work.

The book opens, however, not with 20th century revolution, but with 1848 and The Communist Manifesto, "one of modernity's greatest historical documents". The Manifesto, writes Rose, "provides strategic and tactical guidelines for accomplishing the ultimate goal of a classless society". Rose traces the development after 1848, not just of revolutionary ideas, but also of organisation. Crucially, he notes that while Marx and Engels did not fully develop their thoughts on revolutionary organisation, others did. Gramsci, for instance, noted how his revolutionary newspaper in 1918-1920 "worked to develop certain forms of new intellectualism"... individuals whose strength was not simply "eloquence" but "in active participation in practical life, as constructor, organiser". Such individuals were, Gramsci writes, "elites of intellectuals of a new type who arise directly from the masses through remaining in contact with them".

While Rose fully explores other aspects of revolutionary thought, particularly Marx and Engels' key concept that the emancipation of the working class will "be the act of the working class" themselves. The importance of revolutionary worker "intellectuals" remains central to his argument. It was individuals like these, Rose concludes, who made the Russian Revolution: "Lenin's purposive workers: worker leaders, 'genuine heroes... with a passionate drive toward knowledge and toward socialism' [Lars Lih]" Why is this important? That, in essence, is the argument of the second part of the book.

In examining the four "thwarted" revolutions of Iran, Poland, South Africa and Brazil, Rose explores two things. Firstly the ongoing relevance of the Marxist approach to social change. The moments when mass action by workers begins to spill over into the demand for "self management" a slogan that Rose describes as one of 1968's greatest slogans. This self-management is evident in a number of examples. Rose quotes from his interview with one of the Solidarity activists from Poland who describes a key moment in the strike wave:

There was a nuclear bomb shelter in the basement. I used this shelter because I was formally leader of a trade union... I organised a strike committee for this March mobilisation for all offices, all workshops around the old market. I even prepared food for three months. So I had everything prepared for these strikes... It was a classical dual power situation. There was still a state with military apparatus and police... But the real power, day by day, went to workers' factory councils.... we organised a plebiscite in the biggest factories in Wroclaw about who has the power to choose the director, manger, the Party or workers' councils? And in every factory we won this plebiscite.

If that was the situation in Poland, in some parts of the Iranian Revolution power went even further. One account, quoted by Rose says:

The oil industry is virtually controlled by dozens of independent workers' komitehs, committees, which, though loyal to the central government, are nevertheless participating in all the decisions related to production and marketing... the komitehs have unquestionably demonstrated that they can run the oilfields and the refineries without the top rank Iranian managers and without the expertise of some 800 foreign technicians.

But as Rose shows at crucial points in all four of these risings the left failed the test. This was, it must be stressed, not just about whether or not the left supported workers' action or retreated at the wrong point (a particular issue in Poland), but also whether or not key questions such as oppression were taken seriously. In Iran, for instance, the left failed to support women's fight for their rights, seeing it as a distraction. Comparing the German Revolution of 1919 with Iran in 1979 Rose writes:

The German communists in 1919 had one tremendous advantage over their Iranian counterparts... Both shared the experience of taking part in revolutionary upheavals, toppling tyrannies, as a result of decisive collective workers' action. Both shared the experience of witnessing and participating in very advanced experimental forms, though at different stages of development, of organised workers attempting to establish democratic forms of workers' control of production... But the German left had at least secured elementary democratic and constitutional rights, which allowed the German Communist and the independent workers' movement time to recover from the defeat.

He continues, that the

tragedy of the Iranian left is that not only was this decisive advantage denied to them; the Iranian left itself has to share some of the responsibility for this failure. The struggle for popular democracy, including the defence of women's rights and the independent press in 1979 was just as important as defending the workers' shoras and the new regime's anti-imperialist stance.

But the left was unable to engage in the sort of tactical twists and turns that Lenin's Bolsheviks used throughout 1917 to consolidate their position in the minds of the masses. The problem was politics, or the lack of political clarity. In Iran, Rose argues that "the Stalinist mind-set not only ruled out such essential tactical and strategic flexibility, it altogether downplayed the importance of the struggle for popular democracy". Those leading the movements, in all four case studies, too often shared a political allegiance or set of ideas that saw mass struggle as secondary. It was always their downfall.

But it wasn't simply the lack of a clear political line, or a distortion of strategy. It was also the failure of the sort of revolutionary organisation with large numbers of Gramsci's intellectual activists within the working class. Activists who could think about strategy and fight for mass action, at the same time as building an independent movement. That's not to say that individuals like this did not exist. Rose interviews several of them, and he notes that the best of these "the regimes most feared because of their widespread influence" and they tried to silence them. But he concludes, for Iran:

The problem of how to revitalise that vision [of socialism] in the shadow of Soviet Communism and its Iranian apologists was never resolved. The same applied in Poland, South Africa and Brazil. It also meant that the nascent worker intellectuals were unable fully to develop their political abilities.

It is a problem that contemporary socialist organisation must grapple with. Indeed Joseph Choonara has recently written a piece on how revolutionary parties can develop cadre. While the International Socialist Tradition, of whom John Rose was part, have rightly always understood the problem of the Stalinist politics of the State Capitalist regimes and the Communist Parties who acted in their name, Revolutions Thwarted demonstrates how lasting and extensive that influence was. Rose concludes:

This... underestimates the impact of the collapse of Soviet Communism and the growing doubts about its viability that preceded it. Criticisms of the Soviet Union... easily flowed over into a demoralising sense that the original socialist revolution in Russia 1917 was itself flawed... the independent workers' movements in the four countries... were... dogged by the experience of Soviet Communism and lacked confidence to develop sustainable ideological responses which would revitalise a communist project centred on their own self-activity.

The conclusion can only be to build the sort of intellectually dynamics, revolutionary socialist organisation that was lacking in these movements in Polish, Brazilian, Iranian and South African history. The sort of organisation that John Rose dedicated his life to building. Revolutions Thwarted is, in many ways, one of the most important books to come out of the International Socialist tradition in the last ten years. Its a book that reasserts the core politics of classical Marxism, puts workers' self emancipation at its heart, and is not afraid to be self-critical and honest. Its one that a generation of socialists ought to read to arm us for the struggles to come.

Related Reviews

Rose - The Myths of Zionism
Molyneux - Marxism and the Party
Cliff - State Capitalism in Russia

Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Mary Beard - Emperor of Rome

Emperor of Rome is Mary Beard's latest book aimed at a popular audience about Ancient Rome. As with her others this is accessible, entertaining and readable. This book looks at the Emperors, though as she makes clear this is no easy task. The Imperial period covered a long period of time, and there were numerous Emperors, some of whom lasted a very brief time and several of whom we know little or nothing about. Beard avoids a chronological approach, which is good because it means she avoids having to tell the same story over and again. Instead what she tries to do is to give the reader a general impression of the role, perception and activities of the man who was the pinnacial of the highly rigid, violent society that was Rome.

One of the advantages of this approach is that the Emperor is understood in context. We avoid the "1066 and all that narrative" of good and bad men, and begin to see the men as mor than "benevolent elder statesmen or juvenile tyrants". These are there, and Beard cannot but avoid give us some of the salacious gossip and slander. But she also can conclude that these stories are ones that arise in context - as attempts to discredit, or boost, an Emperor during or after their lifetimes. The Emperors were the top of the ruling class, but they were also important figures in terms of continuinty. As Beard points out, "the magnifying lens of these stories helps us to see clearly the anxieties that surrounded imperial rule at Rome".

It also means that Beard doesn't try to separate the Emperors from those below them. The Emperor cannot exist without military guards and networks of patronage. But he also, being at the top of a slave society, cannot exist without the labour of thousands of slaves. It is the casual commodification of the slaves that highlight the first example of this interaction, as Beard recounts how the Emperor Domitian once held a dinner were everything, including the food dishes, was coloured black. The slaves were painted back, and guest's dinner places were marked with pretend tombstones. The sombre atmoshpere would have terrified the diners: were they about to be executed? At the end, upon returning home, the guests were met by tone of the slaves, carrying a fake tombstone and the washed slave dressed up as a gift.

There's much in this example - the Emperor's casual references to death as a symbol of power. The even more casual giving of the slave as a gift which, Beard points out, is what will stand out to modern readers. And the use of dinners as places where the Emperor would network and distribute gifts. But we also have to ask "Did it happen"? Was the story, recounted centruies later by the Roman writer Dio, even true. Its a good example of how what we think about Emperors as individuals as well as the role, might be distorted - even if the story reveals much about wealth, power and the nature of Roman slave society.

There's a lot here, and I enjoyed the book as an exploration of the nature of class rule in Rome. Surprisingly for a book focused on individuals it also shed a lot of light on some of the ruins in Italy, particular those in Rome and made me eager to visit again. For other visitors this would be a good book to pack in your holiday suitcase.

Sunday, July 13, 2025

Mike Davis - Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the imagination of disaster

I started to read Ecology of Fear in the aftermath of the recent LA uprising. In part that was because one of the first great such urban risings I remember was when, around the time I became an active socialist, LA rose up in 1992. What is it about the city that makes it such a place of resistance, and a place hated by the US right? Mike Davis' classic book has the answers.

For Davis, Los Angeles is a city whose location in time and space places it at the epicentre of disaster, and that disaster is made worse by the history of the city, and the history of America. It is a city of gross inequality, racism and cheap labour, and a city smack squarely at the epicentre of disaster. This is why it is, as he systematically documents, a city that has been destroyed in film, literature and comic book hundreds of times, and why that destruction is often covered with a veneer of white supremacy and genocide. It it is so called "natural" disaster that takes up the first chapters, the threat from earthquake, tornado and firestorm, then Davis systematically shows how those disasters are amplified by the reality of capitalist LA:

Megacities like Los Angeles will never simply collapse and disappear. Rather they will stagger on, with higher body counts and gretaer distress, through a chain of more frequent and destructive encounters with disasters of all sorts; while vital parts of the region's high-tech and tourist economies eventually emigrate to safer ground, together with hundreds of thousands of its more affluent residents. Aficionados of complexity theory will marvel at the "nonlinear resonances" of unnatural disaster and social breakdown as Southern California's golden age is superseded forever by a chaotic new world of strange attractors.

While we have long known that "natural" disasters hit poor and marginalised communities first and hardest, Davis' eloquent writing reminds us of how it is the fissures and fractures in capitalist society that creates this reality.

In the provocatively titled chapter, The Case for Letting Malibu Burn, Davis discusses the war that wildfires and their particular threat to the City, arise from a juxtaposition of location and capitalist planning. Putting profits before people meant making decisions that simultaneously worsened the risk of disaster, and turned the city into an unhealthy and concentrated urban area:

The 1930 fire should have provoked a historic debate on the wisdom of opening Malibu to further development. Only a few months before... Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr - the nation's foremost landscape architect and designer of the California state park system - had come out in favour of public ownership of at least 10,000 acres of the most scenic beach and mountain areas... Despite a further series of fires in 1935, 1936 and 1938 which destroyed almost four hundred homes... public officials stubbornly disregarded the wisdom of Olmsted's proposal.

Almost a century later the homes of this land, now the preserve of the rich and famous, burn over and over again.

The interaction between nature, society and capitalist interests is the great theme of this book, and it's Davis' genius that ensures that the reader never forgets the human cost. But also places the very real story of exploitation and oppression within that wider narrative. Here are the stories of immigrant workers, paid starvation wages, victims of the poorest housing in the most dangerous areas, fighting and organising to improve things, and the callous politicians, city officals and greedy landlords opposing them. But it is also a city bedeviled by official racism and a far-right confident to organise within the space:

According to the Los Angeles Count Commission on Human Relations, attacks on blacks increased 50 percent from 1995 to 1966. Los Angeles became the nation's capital of racisl (539 crimes) and sexual orienation (338 crimes) violence... The commission's annual report also noted that racially motivated crimes had been clearly clustered in older suburban areas... as well as in the economically troubled Antelope Valley. Although the human relations commissioners cautioned that the report "does not say it has become open season on African Americans," the dramatic surge in attacks on blacks suggested otherwise.

While LA has a special place in Mike Davis' heart, the interaction of racism, class, nature and capitalism described in Ecology of Fear could stand in for any number of urban US environments. The history helps us understand the roots of the LA rebellions of 1992 and 2025, and the further resistance. As well as the hatred that the US elite have for the city and its population. It is the book that explains the real background to today's ICE raids and racism, and Trump's military occupation of the city.

Long before many others had even stopped to think about the interaction of these forces in the urban environment, Mike Davis was writing about how global warming would exacerbate the tensions of capitalism. But it is his love of the city, its people and his superb dialectical politics that make this book one to come back to time and again. Its renewed my desire to read his other works on California and US radical history - that's probably the best endorsement the book could have.

Friday, July 11, 2025

John Molyneux - What is the real Marxist Tradition?

What is the real Marxist Tradition? is a remarkable short work that was written to fight for a clear understanding of Marxism in one of the hardest, recent, periods for Marxists. First published as an article in 1983 and then republished by the SWP in 1985 as a book, it sought to rescue Marxism as a theory of international proletarian revolution, at a time when Marxism was categorically identified with the State Capitalist regimes of Eastern Europe, and the working class was in retreat.

Reading it, particularly the 1985 edition which has a cover depicting Lenin, Trotsky, Luxembourg, Marx and others from the classical Marxist tradition as well as Castro, Kautsky, Stalin and Mao, I expected it initially to be a critique of each of these individual's politics. Instead this is a much more nuanced study of Marxism, which begins with Marxism as a totality of ideas, that arise out of the working class, which in turn allows Molyneux to discuss the limits of Stalinism, Maoism etc through a discussion of the class basis of their own ideologies.

As I have been asked to write more on this elsewhere, I'll finish this review here and encourage activists to read Molyneux's work online. Watch this space for more.

Laura Elliott - Awakened

Highly recommended by reviewers, I was attracted to Awakened despite my usual rejection of the horror genre. It's pretext sounded intriguing. In a future Britain, a small group of scientists hide out in the Tower of London, protecting themselves from what is essentially a zombie horde outside. The difference here is that the zombies are the result of experiments by the scientists themselves to make people more efficient and profitable by eliminating the need for sleep.

As I said, it's intriguing. The story focuses on the arrival of a stranger, one of the sleepless, who seems to not be quite the same as the others. With him arrives a pregnant woman, proving perhaps that things outside of the Tower are very different. The impact of this arrival on the community, and in particular the narrator, Thea Chares is the subject of the rest of the novel. Thea has her own secrets and reason for her presence in the Tower. She's a scientist, one of those brought in by the eccentric billionaire who developed the chip that ended sleep. Thea's transformation through her developing relationship with Vladimir, the name adopted by the monster from outside, is the core of the story. Unfortunately I found it difficult to follow, events being confusingly described at times, and perhaps deliberately, Laura Elliott ends of drowning out the individual storylines with brooding menance. I had to read the ending several times to really work out what was being said, and found myself not that impressed. Ironically I didn't think the book was that much of a work of horror. It is, perhaps, more of book of implied violence. But I did also think that Laura Elliott had hit upon a good point to start from - if the billionaires could find a way of making us work through our sleeping hours they would. And they'd market it as a good thing for us, while they raked in the coins. This, perhaps, is the actual horror.

Monday, July 07, 2025

Herman Lehmann - Nine Years Among the Indians 1870-1879

In May 1870, Herman Lehmann and his brother Willie, aged 11 and 8 respectively, were kidnapped by Apache Indians and taken from their family farm in Texas. A few days later, in a brief battle with troops, Willie escaped and remarkably got home. Herman was to spend the next nine years away from his family living with the Apache and eventually the Comanche.

Nine Years Among the Indians is Lehmann's famous memoir of his captivity and then life among the two tribes. Initially the Indians feared he would escape, and he was brutally assaulted and imprisoned. Soon however he became ingratiated into the tribe and began to learn how to live, hunt and fight among the Apache. His captors told Lehmann that his family had been killed, and this probably led Lehmann entering the tribe more easily. He seems to have become an accomplished fighter and horserider, and eventually as much a part of the tribe as anyone else - leading raids and fighting against the "whites".

Lehmann's account demonstrates a remarkable memory, given it was written towards the end of his life. While most people today will probably read it for its eyewitness account of traditional camp life, the reader must also be wary. Writing for a "white" audience Lehmann seems to dwell on the brutality and violence of the Apache and the Commanche, and while expressing sympathy for the Indians he tends to celebrate the "civilising" affect of colonial society. This is, it should be said, particuarly noticeable in the introduction by one J. Marvin Hunter, whom produced the book from Lehmann's dictation. Hunter's introduction is full of racism and makes for uncomfortable reading.

Nonetheless there's a lot of interesting material, especially about life among the tribes, and the type of relationships between the Indians inside the tribe and with others. The internal disputes which led to Lehmann leaving the Apache and after many months alone, joining the Commanche are worth reading. But so are the account of the battle with the Texas Rangers (and the account of the same encounter from the other side). This, no doubt, inspired many a tale including similar events in Larry McMurtry's Comanche Moon.

Despite its short length, there is plenty to engage in here, and the difficulties that Lehmann found when he did eventually return to his family are touching. There's an amusing account of how he disrupted a Methodist revival with his Indian dancing, leading to him being banned from religious services until he was brought back to "civilised" behaviour. Lehmann's conclusion no doubt plays to his audience, but at least retains an understanding of who he was, and the life he was never quite able to leave behind. He dedicates the work to his mother, "and to those noble brothers and sisters I owe all for my restoration, for if it had not been for them I would today be an Indian still." If you can get past the appallingly dated language there's a lot here.

Sunday, June 29, 2025

Douglas Newton - The Darkest Days: The truth behind Britain's rush to war, 1914

Why did Britain go to war in 1914? There are some old lies that explain this: "poor little Belgium", German troops "murdering babies" and that old canard, "for the defence of democracy". There are some more complex lies - that Britain was pulled into the war because of treaties and obligations to France and Russia, which place the war as an outgrowth of the complex game of thrones that Europe was in the early 20th century. However, Douglas Newton's brilliant book argues something very different. Britain went to war in 1914 because a small group of right-wing politicians, egged on and encouraged by a fanatically anti-German right-wing media pushed the boundaries at every stage making war more and more likely with every hour that passed.

Newton's book argues that Britain's involvement in the war was not inevitable. Indeed Europe wide, and eventual global war, was not inevitable either. But once Britain entered the conflict World War became a reality. Not least because the very first thing the British military did was to move to seize German colonial assets.

The book covers a relatively short space of time. Remembering that old quip by Lenin, that there are "weeks when decades happen", the few days before in early August 1914 saw a mass of meetings, telegrams, arguments and diplomacy. It also saw a lot of anti-war organising, protest, resignations from the cabinet and a British government on the brink of collapse. The latter is usually neglected by historians.

War, according to Newton, was not inevitable primarily because there were significant sections of the British population - from the working classes to the liberal cabinet - that did not want war. Newton's focus is very much the machinations of the cabinet and leading politicians. In the cabinet, four ministers John Burns, John Morley, John Simon and Lord Beaumont offerd their resignations at varous stages as the crisis progressed. These were principled men, whose opposition to the war was based on politics as well as morals and religion. However they were men who were wedded to the parliamentary system and national interests. Despite their resignations PM Herbert Asquith kept this crucial news from the British people and from parliament. Unwilling to allow a chink to appear in the armour of the British government on the verge of war, the four rebels kept their mouths shut. Asquith worked hard to pressure them to keep quiet, and this allowed the government to portray themselves as united.

The drive to war was however also engineered by those who wanted it. Winston Churchill in particular as First Lord of the Admiralty, played an inglorious (and undemocratic) role, escalated tensions by mobilising and concentrating the British navy, encouraging a feeling of crisis and putting further pressure on the German leadership.

Perhaps the most shocking thing to those who have faith in parliamentary process is that the declaration of war was never put to the test of parliamentary debate. Asquith's cleverness in hiding the fractures in the cabinet meant that when he spoke to Parliament and implied an ultimatum was being presented to Germany,

the Radicals did not challenge Asquith. Why? Perhaps they still believd in the promised major debate before any declaration of war. But most likely, the Radicals chose to tread cuatiously and wait for confirmation of the facts from Belgium. It is possible, too, that the suddend adjournment of the House, under a recent and controversial Speaker's ruling 'that was little understood', caught the Radicals off guard.

The Radicals, says Newton, "simply lost their courage and chose silence on Tuesday 4 August". But it was not even the whole cabinet that made the decision for war. Newton points out that decision was made by "a small clique bunkered down in the Cabinet room. A mere coffee table's worth of the Cabinet". Later Newton adds, the King and three members of the Pricy Council declared war: "Faithfully reflecting the pre-democratic order, four men had launched Britain's war. There was not one elected man among them."

It was a sordid process of duplicity and cowardice. But it was not inevitable. Not least because as the crisis rapidly spiriled all sorts of activists, including trade unions, mobilised to try and stop the war. If I was worried that Newton's book would solely focus on the machinations of the political class, I was disabused of this fear by the chapters looking at the protest meetings, anti-war rallies and the newspapers of those who opposed the war. Despite the shortness of time, impressive numbers mobilised, and had those in the cabinet made their resignations public, its possible that this movement would have grown phenomenally and Britain would have been unable to join the conflict. Millions of lives might have been saved. It is in this spirit that Douglas Newton concludes his wonderful book:

How should Britain's Great War be remembered after a century? In a 'national spirit'? Perhaps the idea that for Britain there was no alternative to war, no error in her handling of the crisis, and no deed left undone in pursuit of peace is an essential consolation. But it is fairy dust. There is really only one story worth telling about the Great War: it was a common European tragedy - a filthy, disgusting and hideous episode of industrialised killing. Not the first, and not the last. It was unredeemed by victory. The uplifting element of the story lies in the struggle to avert it.

This is a remarkable book that will be denounced for its revisionism. But as we live in a world where nations commit genocide and go unpunished; Presidents bomb enemies without debate among their elected representatives and arms spending spirals upwards, its a story worth learning.

Sunday, June 22, 2025

Olivier de Schutter - The Poverty of Growth

There are a now a plethora of books and articles about degrowth from a left and liberal point of view that show how capitalism's insatiable drive for growth delivers inequality, poverty and environmental injustice. Some of these books are very good, extending the critique of growth into a critique of capitalism itself and arguing for an alternative society. Others pretend that capitalism can exist without growth, or somehow imagine a gradual shift to a non-growth society without any clear vision of how this could happen.

Surprisingly this short book had its origins in a meeting between the author and Pope Francis in 2022 where Olivier De Schutter was challenged to "identify certain levels that could be used to eradicate" global poverty. His solutions, that make up this book, place the book firmly in the second type of book about growth - its an attempt to square the circle.

This becomes clear from the preface. de Schutter writes:

Poverty and inequalities should not be seen as an inevitable consequence of the progress of capitalism that we should tolerate before trying to remedy their impacts: they should be seen, instead, as a symptom of an economy that has become ill-suited to the aim of a shared and sustainable prosperity. We must now move from an extractive and predatory economy to a non-violent economy, from an economy that responds to the demand expressed by the superior purchasting power of the rich to one that caters to the basic needds of the poor... etc

The idea that there was a period when capitalism was not ill-suited to providing a shared and sustainable society is laughable. Exploitation and oppression are inbuilt into a system where growth, based on the accumulation of capital, is not an adjunct to modern neoliberal economics, but a central part of how the system functions.

Central to de Schutter's analysis and critique here is not a systematic exploration of the capitalism's exploitation, nor the centrality of accumulation, rather its a vision of capitalism as a system of supply and demand. It makes for a weak analysis both of systemic problems and solutions. Take this annoying sentence: "We all know of people around us who travel by air to exotic holiday destrinations because they drive a hybrid car during the year."

We no, we don't ALL know such people, and even if we did, this tells us nothing about how the system functions. Its a surface level reflection of the way production is geared under capitalism.

The best parts of this book are those that expose the inequality and exploitation, and sheer destructiveness of the modern economy. It is also interesting that de Schutter begins by saying that it is the "world of work" where we need to start shifting this. He paints a charming liberal picture of a world with less work, equal pay, more rest time and workplace democracy. But there's no real attempt to discuss how we, as workers, could win that world. How do we challenge the right and the far-right? How do we take on the capitalist state which exists to perpetuate the status quo and the interests of the system? Is it enough to vote for more progressive parties? And what do you do when those parties go back on their plans and expand the fossil fuel economy in the interest of capitalism. De Schutter has not strategy and no agency of change. Which is why it is so sad that writers like him ignore the work of Karl Marx - not for pedantic ideological reasons, but because Marx's analysis of accumulation led him to identify the working class as the gravediggers of the system.

Tragically this makes this particular work of growth and poverty indisinguishable from a dozen other similar books, and fails to build on the more radical work of the best degrowthers such as Jason Hickel. I'd look elsewhere. My own article here offers some thoughts.