Joshua Slocum - Sailing Alone Around the World

In his introduction to this famous traveller's tale, Arthur Ransome says that "A school library without this book is incomplete. It should be part of the education of every English or American boy". Times, of course, change, and Joshua Slocum's feat is almost forgotten.

There is no doubt though, that he inspired and excited the world when he became the first to sail single handed around the world. The story itself is a somewhat stilted yarn - it's full of descriptions of ropes, sails and wind directions. No doubt, the school boys that Ransome refers to, might have understood it all, but it can be a bit confusing for the land based reader today.

The voyage itself is not only an incredible feat - it also marks the passing of a world that no longer exists. It is a time when sail is being eclipsed by steam, and when foreign ports were as unique as alien planets. Slocum visits some amazing places - the place where Alexander Selkirk (inspiration for Robinson Crusoe) was marooned being one. Slocum claims that Selkirk lived in a particular cave, though recent research doesn't back that up. He also meets the widow of Robert Louis Stevenson who appears to live on an island in the middle of nowhere, and takes her on a sailing trip.

By its very nature, Slocum's story is a long trip, punctuated by brief visits to ports and islands. At many of the places, he is feted by the local establishment, who arrange speaking events and take him on tours. Through this, he funds the further voyage. There are no big name sponsors here. No newspapers or advertising to keep his trip going. Slocum survives from resourcefulness and the kindness of strangers.

There are some odd moments - pirates and robbers occasionally, beaten off by a couple of quick shots, or some tacks scattered on the ship's deck at night. Armchair sailors the world over will enjoy this tale, perhaps mostly from historical interest. Though it may well inspire, it's doubtful that it should be put at the heart of youngster's education today.

Tony Cliff - All Power to the Soviets, Lenin 1914 - 1917

The second volume of Tony Cliff's biography of Lenin contains perhaps the most important political and historical period for socialist activists. The first volume of the three part series dealt with the early years of the Bolshevik party and Lenin's role in building it up to the point when the First World War broke out. This part has, in my experience been widely read, discussed and debated through by the revolutionaries who stand in the tradition that Tony Cliff founded.

But both the remaining volumes also have much to offer activists and students of the Russian Revolution. The period under question begins with the activity of the Bolsheviks with the outbreak of the First World War. It ends with, as Cliff points out, Lenin speaking to the Congress of Soviets the day after the uprising had taken power and declaring "We shall now proceed to construct the socialist order."

The period is interesting, not least for the amazing events that took place. By the time 1917 had arrived, Russian military hopes were being dashed by a combination of military ineptitude, rebellion and mutiny. Conditions at the front were appalling, hunger, lack of equipment and a brutal military regime combined to make a situation ripe for rebellion. Conditions in the cities, villages and towns were hardly better. Something that revolutionaries were quick to build upon.

The twists and turns of the final year before the uprising takes up most of the detail of this volume. Contrary to the perceived idea of a simple Bolshevik coup, Cliff paints a picture of a working class and peasantry increasingly moving of it's own interest towards revolution. The Bolsheviks fight to put themselves at the heart of the movement, though in the initial stages, when the February revolution overthrew the Tsar, the Bolsheviks were taken by surprise.

Through patient argument, principled slogans and activity and often sheer bravery, the Bolsheviks gradually become the acknowledged leaders of the revolutionary movement. At various points during 1917, the Bolsheviks go on the defensive. During the "July Days", the working class of Petrograd, the largest and most important industrial city, move instinctively towards revolution. Lenin argues hard, against most of his party and its leadership that the time is not right. The Bolsheviks see a collapse in support and are repressed even further, though their subsequent practice in the face of a far-right attempted coup, makes their principles clear to the great mass of the workers.

On this and in other moments, Cliff makes an important point. Far from being the monolithic organisation that the Bolsheviks are often described as, there was much internal disagreement and debate. Lenin was often in a minority and took time to win his comrades around. At other points, Lenin was wrong, despite the Stalinist myth of his infallibility. Even more importantly, Lenin never simply used his own standing within the organisation to win a political position. He frequently refers back to the rank and file, or the experiences of other workers to deal with a changing situation and win the leadership of the organisation to a new direction or new slogans.

I was also interested, as I suspect many revolutionary socialists will be, at how the internal organisation of the Bolsheviks worked. Being an underground, illegal group for most of their existence, there are some differences for those organising in the UK today, for instance. But there are similarities. Not least the way that revolutionaries must constantly change tack to relate to changing political circumstances.

But also of interest is the lack of organisation. Groups of Bolsheviks outside the main cities, frequently complain of lack of material and direction from the centre. The Central Committee seems at times to be at odds with each other, certainly, Cliff points out, that they occasionally took decisions that they seemed to forget. Perhaps as a result of the illegality, the CC often didn't have full meetings - the meeting that decided to go for the insurrection had only slightly over half of its members present.

This is a fascinating work for students of revolutionary history. At times, it lauds it's central character a little too much. But this is because its real subject is the creation of a revolutionary organisation capable of leading the working class to power. There is little her about Lenin himself - what he liked to eat or what music he preferred. If you want that information, I'd recommend Krupskaya's book. For Cliff, Lenin is utterly inseparable from the revolutionary struggle. His experiences are the experiences of the movement, and there is much here to learn from.

Related Reading

Krupskaya - Memories of Lenin
Cliff - Revolution Besieged, Lenin 1917 - 1923
Birchall - A Rebel's Guide to Lenin

Peter Fryer - Hungarian Tragedy

It's a statement of the obvious, but revolutions change things. Most obviously a successful revolution changes the political and economic setup. But even unsuccessful revolutions throw life into turmoil. All that seems certain becomes uncertain; "All that is solid, melts into air" as Marx put it.

But revolutions also change people. They change the people who take part, turning them into leaders, writers and agitators - giving them the confidence to take up arms, or break open a police station. And finally they change the onlookers.

At the time of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, Peter Fryer was an onlooker. He had, for some 14 years been a member of the British Communist Party. For years he'd been a proud journalist working "at less than a labourer's wage" on the CPGB's newspaper, The Daily Worker. Sent to Hungary to report on the events of the revolution, what he saw turned his world upside down.

Fryer almost certainly didn't have a rose tinted view of East European socialism. But he in no way expected the response that the Soviet regime inflicted upon the Hungarian people. More importantly, Fryer was inspired by the experience of a people in the midst of revolution. As he put it, "Here was a revolution, to be studied not in the pages of Marx, Engels and Lenin, valuable though these pages may be, but happening here in real life before the eyes of the world. A flesh and blood revolution with all its shortcoming and contradictions and problems - the problems of life itself."

In his travels, Fryer documents the revolutionary processes that mark working class uprisings time and again. The election of organising groups to run workplaces, cities and farms. The collective discussions and debates that take time, but are the true trappings of real democracy. The suppression of the enemies of people - sometimes, in the case of Hungary, the hanging of the secret police. We hear of the release of the thousands of people imprisoned by the former regime and the freeing up of ordinary men and women, held dormant for years. There is a lovely section where Fryer describes the explosion of independent newspapers - with one editor playing host to queues of young people coming in with their stories, poems, articles and writings.

Of course this was short lived. The Soviet invasion was a brutal suppression of these hopes. But the workers councils and committees didn't vanish. The people fought on, despite the overwhelming odds. Having tasted freedom, it takes much to give it up.

Fryer's dispatches were censored and then ignored by the Daily Worker. Such vivid descriptions of workers and peasants rising up and taking control, was far too much for an organisation and newspaper dedicated to believe that Russia and its client states ruled already in the name of the workers. His estrangement from the CPGB didn't mean he abandoned revolutionary socialism. His own experience in Hungary could only bring a greater desire to see a revolutionary transformation of society, but he learnt that that needed to take place in the East, as much as the West.

Further Reading

Chris Harman's "Class Struggles in Eastern Europe" goes much deeper into the background to the various risings against Soviet rule.

Mike Haynes' ISJ article "Hungary; workers' councils against Russian tanks" marked the 50th anniversary of the revolution. It's worth reading here.

Related Reviews

Dewer - Communist Politics in Britain

Hugo Dewar - Communist Politics in Britain: The CPGB from its origins to the Second World War

Harry Pollitt, General Secretary of the CPGB

The history of radical parties is always of interest to those trying to build radical organisation in their own times. One of the reasons for this, is that you can learn from their successes and their all to often mistakes. The other is that history has an unerring way of repeating itself.

At the core of Hugo Dewar's book is an attempt to understand why it was, that in a period that should have been ideal for its growth, the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) failed to grow significantly. In doing so, he helps us to understand some of our own problems in the current period.

The October 1917 revolution in Russia lit a beacon of hope for millions of people around the world. Here was proof that workers could stand up and overthrow the old order which had bought war, misery and poverty. The leaders of that revolution became icons for the people everywhere.

Success brought its own problems. In their desperation to emulate the success of the Russian revolutionaries, it was all to easy to simply attempt to borrow, root and branch the strategies of the Russians. Following one resolution to the Communist International, Lenin commented that the motion had been "Too Russian", based too much on their experiences. A backward economy like Russia meant that the revolution didn't have to tackle the problems of the Reformist parties that revolutionaries in Britain and Germany had to try and deal with. The misunderstanding that the Russian revolutionaries had of organisations like the British Labour party meant that all to often socialists abroad underestimated their appeal to working people. (This is something that is further explored in Cliff and Gluckstein's book on the British General Strike.)

This explains why, the CPGB constantly tried to enter the Labour Party, even when workers were turning their backs on it, or even when the CPGB was claiming Labourites as being Social Fascists.

However the biggest problem for the CPGB is that they never developed their own ability to think through the period they were in. On every major question, they followed the lead of the Russian dominated Communist International. This wasn't initially a problem, but when the CI had become less of a tool for world revolution and more of a weapon for Stalin to help strengthen Soviet foreign policy, the CPGB ended up subordinating it's activity to the interests of another state.

So the late 1930s were dominated by vacilation on the question of war and colonialism, as Stalin first challenged Hitler, then accommodated to him and then went to war with him. For many earnest Communists, the rapid changes in line were confusing and demoralising. On the brief occasion when the leader of the British CP Harry Pollitt thought independently of Moscow and produced an anti-war tract, it had to be pulped within a few weeks as the line from the Russian capital changed once again.

All in all, there is much in this short book to learn from - though mostly it's of a negative character. The CPGB did have some successes in organising workers, and this doesn't really feature in what is a polemic against their history. Their significant growth seems to mostly flow from activities that stemmed from mistake strategies. One of these, the Popular Front saw the CPGB attempting to unite with any anti-fascists there were. At one point supporting a Tory candidate against a socialist.

The 1930s were a period dominated by economic crisis, war and the rise of fascism. Things aren't yet so bad in 2010. But they could be.Whether workers weather the storm and even build movements out of it that can challenge the madness of the system, will depend in part on clear socialist leadership. One of the lessons of the pre-war CPGB are that a small organisation can make a difference. The tragedy is that they got is so wrong. Let's try and learn those lessons to avoid such damaging errors in the future.

Theodor Plievier - Berlin

Despite the impression given by countless Saturday afternoon war films, the Second World War and Hitler's dictatorship was ended by the Russian army. The Soviet Union lost around 24 million people in the war - military and civilian. The war was brutal and the revenge upon the lands captured by the Soviet army was violent.

Theodor Plievier's book deserves a much wider reading. He himself was an interesting man - he was a leading figure in the uprising by German sailors in Kiel that sparked the German Revolution of 1918/9. This revolution toppled the Kaiser and brought World War I to an end. His politics seem to have been very left wing, and the rise of Hitler led him to flee to Russia, which he eventually became disillusioned with. He fled again to the West and lived out his days in Switzerland.

His book on Berlin captures the violence that was the end of the Third Reich. It is almost impossible to imagine the brutality that was imposed on the people of Germany. In the novel, many of them seem unable to comprehend what was happening, but most hadn't seen the slaughter at Stalingrad, the siege of Leningrad or the concentration camps. Plievier's book is clearly based on many true stories - many of the figures are historical. So the descriptions of those raped and murdered while holding out flowers for the Russian invaders read eerily true. The story certainly fits with the descriptions of other non-fiction books such as Antony Beevor's Berlin.

For many, the most fascinating parts of the book are those that deal with Hitler and the people around him. As the Germany army retreats and collapses, the debates and arguments that take place in the bunker are fascinating. The belief even as Soviet troops entered the building that there was a relief army out there, preparing to stop the Russians was a fantasy that Hitler seemed to inspire in others.

Many other figures appear - Albert Speer's character is accurately portrayed, though Plievier has an interesting style of rarely mentioning historical people by name. There are minor errors (Speer's pilot back into Berlin as he sought absolution from Hitler was a woman, not a man as Plievier tells us).

There isn't really a central character to this novel. There are men and a few women who come and go. Their rise and fall fits with the rise and fall of the city, but some linger and as we follow various characters through the last days of the war, the post war order begins to fall into place. Germany is to be picked clean, it's industry and often its man power removed back to Russia to help rebuild the economy. The new government is put in place, men are selected and though they hold dreams of rebuilding a democracy out of the ashes of the war, they rapidly find that they are pawns in a larger game. The division of Germany in the interest of the other powers has begun.

Rather startlingly, the book ends with a historic event that few may know of. The East German workers uprising in 1953 was the first time that large numbers of working people in that outpost of Russian State Capitalism rose up against a state that claimed to rule in their name. The brutal suppression is well described. Modern Berlin's long story, that begins with the events that Plievier himself took part in in 1919 still had a long way to go - and Plievier captures the tragedy at its heart.

Related Reviews

Plievier - Stalingrad

Patrick Macrory - Signal Catastrophe: The Story of the Disastrous Retreat from Kabul 1842

The defeat of the British in Afghanistan in 1842 had far reaching implications. It caused shock at home - the political classes and the British population was used to seeing themselves as an invincible civilising force. The news of the disaster took several months to reach home, when it did, the information that around 17,000 soldiers and camp followers died, many in the most miserable of conditions was almost unbelievable. The defeat was a huge shock to those back home, yet it also had a effect of the millions of people living under British Rule - for once the British had been defeated and as Patrick Macrory says in his prologue, "the realisation that the British could...be beaten was to smoulder in secret in many an Indian breast for another fifteen years until, with the Great Bengal Mutiny, it burst into angry flames".

Patrick Macrory's book isn't a history from below. Nor is it a particularly critical account of British Imperialism and the experience of colonialism. Macrory was very much an establishment historian, yet his work is an honest account of the reasons for the failure of the First Afghan War. The army that entered Kabul to prop up a British selected ruler was doing what the British had done many times before in India - the build up and support one side in an internal conflict, in order to rule by proxy.

Yet the truth was that Kabul wasn't in India. It's great distance from the larger British garrisons, the inhospitable terrain and the unpredictable weather were always going to make a military occupation difficult. The Afghan tribes were not the uncivilised people that the British imagined they were. Indeed, they had, through a series of wars with their neighbours build up a very well trained army. The British were also to learn the hard way, that European strategies and tactics didn't always fit.

The Afghan jezail, with its long rifled barrel, far out-ranged the British musket and was much more accurate.... More-over, the Afghans fought intelligently. Not for them the thing red line or the British square, standing in full view of the enemy weapons and firing from the upright position. They took advantage of natural cover and 'until they commenced firing not a man was known to be there.'.... They were 'marksmen who seldom missed their aim' and, what was more, 'they appeared to pick off the officers in particular'.

One soldier commented that "our infantry soldiers... might have taken a salutary lesson from the Afghans... our men seemed to fire entirely at random, without any aim at all".

Racist assumptions of European supremacy were not for the first time going to catch British military leaders out. But the drive into Afghanistan was one that was in many senses doomed to failure anyway. The particular tragedy of 1842, was that bureaucratic failings, stupid leadership (and I use the word deliberately) as well as tactical ineptitude accelerated the process so that at every stage the British made the worst possible choices. The victims weren't simply the soldiers. Alongside the regular troops were many Indian men whose "native" regiments were seen as secondary to the European troops. When the retreat came, these men, despite years of loyalty were literary left by the roadside, forgotten and ignored.

To encourage the idea that the British occupation would last for years, these men were encouraged to bring their families. Accounts of the retreat from Kabul, include several of European officers having slight twinges of regret at the sight of young Indian children freezing to death.

Interestingly, Macrory brings out another problem with British rule - aside from the colonial arrogance that they governed with, they seemed unable or unwilling to understand the needs of a garrison in Afghanistan. Not only did they take their fox hounds, but they carried little enough food. Barely surviving the march into Kabul, the garrison quickly made sure the officers had enough entertainment and good food brought in from India. Dining on fine wines and delicacies shipped from the British Isles, playing cricket and organising horse racing, Imperial arrogance must have rubbed Afghan people rapidly up the wrong way.

But the tactical stupidity is what really stands out. Readers who know little enough about siege warfare, will realise that storing all your food outside of the well defended garrison will mean problems in the event of any uprising. When the uprising starts, telling your troops to conserve ammunition despite having 12 months supply doesn't led to a demoralised enemy. Refusing to attempt to storm the well-stocked, easily defendable city a few miles away, and instead trying to march 20,000 through heavy snow over some of the most dangerous mountain routes in the world is insanity.

William Elphinestone, who commanded the Kabul garrison was on paper an ideal leader. He'd fought honourably at Waterloo yet was now a very ill, old man incapable of decisions. Much of the individual blame lies at his door, yet the appalling bureaucratic nature of the British Army meant that initiative from below was stifled.

Part of this was due to the class nature of the army. Its leaders acted as a minor aristocracy. Several of the wives of the British officers and their families were captured. Macrory describes the snobbery thus:

Eyre's wife, who had only one gown tried to borrow another from a lady who had trunks full, only to be rebuffed by the answer that she could not spare any. Mrs Eyre was also short of needles and persuaded Mackenzie to try to wheedle one or two out of Lady Sale... He never exercised greater diplomacy in his life, he said later, but he failed.

Such are the bonds of class that must rule even in the deepest dungeon. Interestingly, Mackenzie was so traumatised by this that for the rest of his life, he "could not resist picking up every needle or pin that he saw".

When news of the disaster reached India, and thence Britain, retribution was furious and swift. Kabul was recaptured from the rebels, and much of it was razed to the ground. The British didn't stay though, the Afghan people had stopped the permanent occupation.

It is of course impossible to read this book without noting the similarities with more recent events in Afghanistan. Then, as now, the occupying forces are unwanted by the majority of the Afghan people and they are finding that modern methods of fighting don't necessarily translate to the terrain that is being fought over. Problems of supply and unsuitable equipment once again raise their heads. Though I doubt that the current British garrison's have tried to bring a pack of fox hounds with them.

But at root there is the same problem today as there was in the 1840s. Then, Britain occupied out of fear of a Russian threat to India. They saw the rest of the world as a place to be used in the interests of British imperialism. After the war a more level headed member of the British establishment said that he had no "intention of making war for the sake of promoting the study of Adam Smith among the Afghans". Today, the occupation of Afghanistan too has little point other than the furthering the interests of a section of the US and British ruling classes.

The thousands of men and women who perished in the Afghan snows almost 170 years ago, would have recognised the stupidity of what is being done there today. Perhaps they would also be surprised that few, if any lessons seem to have been learnt.

Notes

For those interested in the Flashman novels, this work forms the basis for much of the story in the first in that series.

The book's more recent title is "Retreat from Kabul: The Catastrophic British Defeat in Afghanistan, 1842"

Related Review

Dalrymple - Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan

Frederick Engels - Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

This little book by Engels packs a hard punch. It is, in a few short pages, both a summary and a detailed explanation of the basics of Marxist ideas. It starts with the development of capitalism - the way that capitalism develops out of the old feudal order, bringing with it both a new way of organising production, but also it's own gravedigger. Alongside this Engels examines the way that ideas change - rooted as they are in the material circumstances that people live in, the development of capitalism means that the old ways of looking at the universe no longer fit.

In particular, Engels looks at the Utopian socialists, thinkers who believed that rational thought and organisation would be enough to solve the twin problems of capitalism - "the class antagonisms prevailing in modern society between proprietors and non-proprietors, between capitalists and wage workers, and on the other, of the anarchy ruling in production". But Engels shows how these problems aren't simply about the organisation of capitalism, they are endemic. And despite the well-meaning and idealistic visions of many early socialist thinkers, "modern socialism" is about the struggle for a new way of organising society - a higher order.

At the time of publication, Engels' short book was more popular than the Communist Manifesto. It's an accessible work, designed and aimed at working men and women. Explaining everything from the origin of capitalist crisis to the role of the state as an instrument of oppression of one state by another it still has much to offer.

One interesting part is the way that he looks at nationalisation as being a key aspect of later day capitalism - he uses this to challenge those who think that it is enough to nationalise industries to create a socialist society. In one footnote, he jokes that were this true, Fredrick William III would have been a socialist for his nationalisation of the brothels. And this is another aspect to this book - Engels' writing is full of humour and barbed jokes.

Another important point is Engels' examination of the role of the state. In particular he shows how the state cannot simply be abolished, but must wither gradually away after the workers have defeated capitalism.

For those who want an excellent introduction to the basic ideas of Marxism, this little book cannot be recommended enough, together with the Communist Manifesto, it is a good starting point. It is worth digging out a version that has the 1880 forward by Karl Marx (to the French Edition) and Engels' own introduction to the first English Edition of 1892 which puts the discussion into the context of the UK's own historical development, in particular with regard to the particular role that religion played on these isles.

Related Reviews

Engels - The Condition of the Working Class in England
Hunt - The Frock-coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels

Nadezhda Krupskaya - Memories of Lenin

Ever since the Russian Revolution there have been attempts to discredit those who led the revolutionary movement as being monsters, only interested in power. These memories go some way to showing that the most important revolutionary socialist of the time, Lenin wasn't the power hungry, vicious revolutionary that some who would discredit the socialist movement would have us believe.

Krupskaya was Lenin's wife for almost two decades. More importantly, she was a leading Bolshevik organiser, including being secretary to the Central Committee at some of the most important points in that revolutionary organisation's history. Following the revolutionary, she played a key role in expanding and developing the educational organisation of the new, socialist society - something that had long held an interest for her.

Those who would show the "human face" of Lenin, will find here much to help their project. One biography of the revolutionary leader was called "The Man Behind the Mask", with the idea that somehow he had a different public face to his real, monstrous interior. For someone who hated the way that Tsarism and capitalism restrained and limited human behaviour, it should come as no surprise that Lenin liked walks in the country, paintings and art of all types. He liked to hunt and explore.

But it is not enough to show Lenin as an ordinary person in extraordinary times. What Krupskaya's memories show is a man absolutely dedicated to the revolutionary cause. Through years upon years of exile, the occasional imprisonment and countless difficult meetings, conferences and arguments, Lenin lost friends and made enemies. He rarely was able to see his closest families, but he was prepared to do this, because he understood that he had something to offer the revolutionary movement.

There are omissions and problems with this book - as every memoir must have. It is a product not just of the times it describes, but also of the moment when it was written. By 1930, when Krupskaya wrote this book, Lenin had been dead some 6 years. Stalin had consolidated his power over Russia and had moved far from Lenin's strident internationalism, to his doctrine of socialism in one country. The liquidation of those who had lead the revolution by Stalin was proceeding apace, the most able leaders like Trotsky had fled the country or been murdered.

This is reflected in Krupskaya's book. She cannot ignore reality completely - so Trotsky get's passing mention in the book, mostly to describe the moments when he is wrong. The book finishes however with the October revolution. Though there is no mention of the close collaboration between Lenin and Trotsky. Nor is there mention of Trotsky's central role in the civil war, even though passing reference is made to the events. It's possible that Krupskaya was fearful of confronting Stalin direct by this point. It's also possible she was writing for Stalin. There is nothing in here that can explain it either way. Those were difficult times for genuine socialists and Krupskaya may well have been hedging her bets - though she comes close to justifying Stalin's events when she singles out some quotes of Lenin's seemingly to support the idea of "Socialism in One Country".

It is of interest though, that those who would portray Stalin as a great revolutionary leader will find little mention of his role in the early Bolshevik party here either. For those who have some knowledge of Russian Revolutionary history there is a lot in here that will be of interest. Particularly for those active on the revolutionary left now, the stories of life in an underground organisation, facing constant harassment and imprisonment are fascinating. Time and again, the author describes socialists who meet some bitter end, in exile, the gallows or prison. But if there is one thing that we learn, it is that a revolutionary group, with consistent ideas and activity, can influence and make a difference when the mass of workers move into action against a system that exploits and ruins them.

Related Reviews

Birchall - A Rebel's Guide to Lenin
Cliff - Revolution Besieged
Cliff - Trotsky; Towards October: 1879 - 1917
Smith - Red Petrograd; Revolution in the Factories: 1917 - 1918

Peter Ackroyd - Thames, Sacred River

The number of books available on the Thames is immense - the bibliography of Peter Ackroyd's book contains at least 300. But it's worth digging out this one, because it's very different from most other books on the river. It's more than simply history, though there is a great deal of history within, it's more than a travel guide, though their is an entertaining final section which takes you from source to sea, explaining the names of places on the shores and many anecdotes;

"Buscot... is famous principally for having a church with no aisle.... The area was once well known for its brandy distilled from beetroot. The beverage was not popular."

But what is really different about Ackroyd's book is his style. In the chapter on "words of the river" he comments that "There seems to be a tendency, in the writers of prose, to break into verse in the course of the narratives - as if the river itself elicited a less than prosaic response". This is just as true of Ackroyd himself; some of his chapters having elements that are poetic in their style. The chapter on the vessels that have existed on the Thames, opens by listing some 30 or so types of boat, but its not a simple list, there is poetry in this pedant's paragraph;

"There have been wherries and clinkers, hoys and onkers, houseboats and skiffs, yachts and motor-boats, tilt-boats and shallops..."

The history of the Thames is no less poetic. From the votive offerings thrown into the water near to crossing points and bridges. To the historic burial mounds and earthworks that line the shores. People have relied on the Thames for water, for transport and trade for hundreds of centuries. Many have left their mark, and the Thames has made it's mark on them.

There are darker moments - the suicides and accidents, the poverty that marked the London shorelines for instance. And Ackroyd is selective in his history - despite the importance of the docks in shaping London and the Thames, there is nothing here of the great class battles that took place around them - the Dock Strikes of the 1880s that helped to shape a new Trade Unionism for the 20th Century.

Nonetheless, there is much to enjoy here in this casual history. Occasionally Ackroyd's style gets in the way of substance and his desire to find evidence of some inherent fascination with the Thames water stretches things too much, this little paragraph for instance;

"In 1756 Stephen Duck, a country poet who became a target of ridicule, flung himself into the Thames behind the Black Inn at Reading; perhaps his surname had drawn him towards the river."

But this aside, Ackroyd has written a lovely book that deserves to be read for its entertaining look at one of the most important rivers in the world.

Tony Barnsley - Breaking Their Chains, Mary Macarthur and the Chainmakers' Strike of 1910

Winston Churchill famously said that "History is written by the victors", but the story of the Chainmakers' strike shows that this isn't true. The hundreds of women chainmakers who went on strike in 1910 for two months have been forgotten to history. Their inspiring victory was unlikely to be celebrated by those who write what passes for official history, because it was the story of how the most downtrodden, isolated and poverty stricken workers took on their bosses and won a stunning victory.

The story has recently come to light, according Tony Barnsley's preface, with the demolition of the Workers Institute in Cradley Heath. This institute was built with the cash left over from the workers' strike fund, so great was their support. The demolition of the Institute and it's rebuilding as part of the Black Country Museum and the rediscover of the story of the women's strike has led to an annual celebration of their victory. Something that would no doubt bring a smile to those who took part.

In this short book, Tony Barnsley covers an immense amount of ground. He starts with the appalling conditions that were the norm for workers in the Black Country. Low pay, appalling housing and a short life-expectancy. Despite being known as the "work shop of the world" the majority of those who lived in the growing industrial areas around Birmingham benefited little from the huge profits to be made from the coal and manufacturing industries.

But their had been some gains - trade union organisation and strikes had benefited some. But the women who made the chains that were exported around the world hadn't been part of this. Theirs wasn't a peripheral industry, they made the iron chains that helped to moor merchant ships in docks around the British Empire. They made the chains that bound many slaves in the plantations. But mostly these links were forged in the individual homes of the women and their families. This system of sweating out, meant that negotiations were individual - between a single woman and the middle men, who made their own profits from the deal.

Into this battle steps the real hero of this tale - Mary Macarthur, a union organiser who mobilises and inspires the women and their families, and puts them at the heart of a campaign that publicises their plight. As Barnsley says, she clearly had an "eye for getting the message across the press", the primitive newsreels showed film of the appalling conditions of work to tens of thousands of people around the country. Reproduced in the book is a wonderful photograph of some of the oldest chainmakers - in their 60s or 70s, they sit, proud in their best clothes. "England's Disgrace" read their signs.

The solidarity money poured in. The strikers were able to survive with decent strike pay, and the bosses quickly found the money to double the women's wages.

The story of the strike cannot be separated from the inspiration story of Mary Macarthur herself. A pacifist and socialist, she was an inspiration speaker and organiser. She launched the first women workers union, but argued that women should organise together with men, so collectively they were stronger. Her women's union quickly joined the wider TUC. She stood, but lost, for parliament and would no doubt have been an inspiring official politician.

But the story also can't be separated from the wider story of the British trade union movement, and one of the excellent things about the pamphlet is the way that the author puts the strike into the context of the growing industrial might of British workers. From the "New Unionism" to the "Great Unrest", the chainmakers struggle was an important battle in a much wider war.

In conclusion Barnsley points out that the Chainmakers' strike shows that there really are no "unorganisable" workers. Today there are still sweatshops across the globe, not a few of these in the UK. The battle for social justice continues and there are lessons from a century ago for us today.

The Chainmakers Festival takes place in September and is rapidly becoming an important date in the Trade Union calender. There is more information on the 2010 event here.

Tony Barnsley's new book is published by Bookmarks the offical bookshop of the TUC. It's sponsored in part by branches of the NUT and NASUWT in Dudley.

Kim Stanley Robinson - Icehenge

This 1984 novel by one of Science Fictions masters is a strange amalgam. It begins in 2248AD, with a revolution on Mars against the "Committee". This revolution is seen only at a distance, at least until its last moments. One of the co-incidental actions is that a group of space miners in the outer solar system, looking at existing society in despair, decide to build a star ship and found a new society in a different solar system.

The novel then goes through two further sections, by 2547AD the revolution is long defeated and forgotten. The ever powerful Committee funds archaeological expeditions, one of which uncovers power evidence that the revolution did occur and was more than simply an episode of rioting. This creates huge social turmoil as contemporary views of society are suddenly changed. Simultaneously a monument is found on Pluto's north pole. This "Icehenge" is accurately made and scrawled with the figures 2248, linking it to the first star ship to leave the solar system.

There follows a battle to explain and understand what has happened. Rather cleverly Robinson uses this to show how different strands of thought in archaeology often take on major contemporary importance, or reflect modern debates and prejudices. Most of part two is an attempt by a minority of experts to argue that there was a revolution, that the committee has blood on its hand for the suppression of the revolution and that the world is a different place.

Part three turns this back on its head again. To say more would undermine the plot for future readers, though again, the author is showing how we shouldn't take anything for granted.

Sadly this is possible the story's weak point. I didn't feel that the conclusion was satisfactory, even on the novel's own terms. In fact the author seems to make a virtue of not tying up the loose plot threads and certainly left this reader hanging. But as one of the few examples of the genre that I call Archaeology in Space it's certainly worth a read, if only for the reflection it allows on what history is, and who writes it.

Related Reviews

Robinson - The Years of Rice and Salt

Castle Freeman - All That I Have

Castle Freeman's "All That I Have" is on the surface quite a simple story about a county sheriff and the places he looks after. The towns have the expected collection of oddballs and eccentrics, who one assumes get like that because of the isolation from civilisation.

But as the story progresses what we find is something much darker. The outside world is causing change, and its not welcome. Some unknown, but very rich foreigners have arrived and in building an expensive, gated mansion, they drawn the attention of what passes for the local criminal community. Sheriff Lucian Wise however isn't prepared to go for the simple answer and pick up the obvious criminals. He's more interested in the darker forces at play. This refusal to bow down to accepted practice incurs the wrath of his colleagues and things start to get out of hand.

Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, everything that the Sheriff holds true is under threat. His relationship seems threatened, and the very thing that makes him who he is - his job - is under threat from an ambitious, if mechanically minded deputy. Sheriff Wise has to not only solve a crime, he has to protect a carefully nurtured method of doing things, one that has served him well, but is rooted in an older, simpler time.

The sense of a town simmering away, with its internal tensions held in check by the most minor of bounds, is not new to novels; this feels very much like some of Cormac McCarthy's work for instance. But Freeman does it well. The ending isn't particularly explosive, on the surface all the loose ends are tied up. But something doesn't quite feel right. Everything stays the same, but everything has also changed.

Castle Freeman has packed a great deal into this short book. It is a story that will linger and stimulate the mind long after many longer books have been forgotten.

Hannah Dee - The Red in the Rainbow: Sexuality, Socialism & LGBT Liberation

This short, but impressive book is an excellent introduction to a subject that I think has been neglected somewhat by the revolutionary left. The history of human sexuality is a complex one, tied up with the various forms of society that we have lived in and constantly changing.

Hannah Dee starts however, by looking at the modern gay liberation movement born as a result of police raids on a New York gay bar, leading to three days of rioting. The year is significant - 1969 followed the near revolutionary movements that united students and workers around the globe. The Gay Liberation Front that was launched from Stonewall, consciously echoed in its name of the organisation that was starting to grind US troops down in Vietnam, and it was inspired by (and drew support from) the Black Panthers. Dee shows how, for years, Gays and Lesbians had been brutalised, ignored and ostracised. The Stonewall riots marked the beginning of their attempts to organise and fight back, winning much of the rights that we have today. But crucially, as she points out, we still have far to go.

Human sexuality is ever changing. Early colonial visitors to the New World were often dismayed by the lack of moral codes defining sexuality or gender amongst tribes that we would now characterise as "hunter gatherers". But even more recent class societies have had differing attitudes to homosexual love and sex - witness the "highly visible" relationships between men in ancient Greek Society for instance.

Hannah shows how the development of class society changes all this. With the need to protect a "surplus" of food, came social divisions into classes. The exploiters and the exploited. Along side this develops a sub-division were the different genders in society take on different roles in the productive process. In particular, women become seen as those who primarily raise children and men those who do the work. This process takes thousands of years and for the vast majority of human history has not existed. The rise of class society creates and eventually cements this in place. Drawing on the work of Fredrick Engels, Dee shows how this "world historic defeat of the female sex" becomes central to the latest stage of class society - Capitalism.

Under capitalism however, the family becomes increasingly central, and for the rulers it becomes increasingly important to instill a particular vision of what society should be like. It is in this context that sexuality becomes legal and socially restricted in the way we have known it more recently. That's not to say that there was no oppression or restrictions on homosexuality before capitalism, but it reaches its pinnacle with modern capitalism. Henry VIII introduced laws to make sodomy illegal and punishable by death. But the death penality was rarely carried out until the late 18th century.

What is fantastic though, is that at all stages in history, men and women have ignored the law and rebelled against it. Dee shows how various radicals fought and argued for the freedom to love who you wanted. At points of high conflict, when everything is up for grabs, the way relationships are seen is also challenged. So for instance, Dee points out that the "American Revolution of 1766 against British Colonial Rule also decriminalised sodomy".

A central theme of this book, is that the struggle for sexual liberation is inseperable from the struggle for social liberation. In fact, it has often been the working class and socialist movement that struggled hardest for these rights (the "Red in the Rainbow"). Edward Carpenter is one such fascinating figure in this battle and a recent biography by Sheila Rowbotham has done much to rescue him from obscurity. The highest point though of this struggle for liberation was the Russian Revolution. Dee draws out the way in which the first working class revolution, frees human sexuality in ways unimagined in other countries - not just the decriminalisation of homosexuality, but abortion and divorce on demand.

The final part of the book looks at the ways in which the struggle for liberation has ebbed and flowed with the strength of the working class movement. The defeat of the German and Russian revolutions led to vicious attacks on Gays and Lesbians under Hitler and Stalin. But other struggles revived the movement - the chapter on the 1984 British miners strike is inspired. Reagen and Thatcherism's reassertion of capitalism's ideal of the family also hampered the LGBT struggle, and created the terrain upon which the AIDS epidemic could be painted as a "Gay Disease".

The book finishes optimistically, but with determination. LGBT people have not won freedom, but have many freedoms. These will come under attack and the struggle to defend the gains of the last few years will have to be coupled with campaigns to protect much else that is under threat in this period of austerity. But true liberation means breaking free of the class society that imposes such restrictions on our lives, including our sexual lives.

Dee quotes Engels' wonderful paragraph imagining a future society were men and women "make their own practice and their corresponding public opinion about the practice of each individual" without the restrictions of money, power and class tat capitalism imposes upon us. Such revolutionary dreams might seem unimageinable today, but as Oscar Wilde is quoted as saying on the final page "A map of the world that does not include utopia is not worth even glancing at".

Arthur C. Clarke & Frederik Pohl - The Last Theorem

This is a strange novel indeed. There is much of interest within it - it's certainly the only novel I can think of that starts with a Sri Lankan mathematician who has a homosexual relationship with his best friend. The story is set at an indeterminate, but short time in the future and is heavily influenced by current political and social issues - extraordinary rendition is an important theme.

But there are problems. Not least the plot, which jumps of idea to idea. The central character, Ranjit Subramanian is socially naive young man who sets himself the challenge of solving Fermat's Last Theorem. In doing so, he puts himself at the heart of a network of people of great importance to the future of planet Earth.

Simultaneously, a secondary plot line deals with several interstellar alien species. One of which has evolved to a new level of consciousness that is independent of matter. These beings see the evolution of human kind and their technological driven expansion as a threat and a couple of other species are dispatched to end human life.

Apart from the various fantastical notions in the book (Ranjit solves the Last Theorem in under five pages for instance) the authors throw half formed and irrelevant ideas into the plot seemingly at random. We're treated to the first "Lunar Olympics" and a new super-weapon which can destroy all the technological in a given national boundary.

The problem is, that neither author seems to have the skill to hang all this together in anything approaching a plausible way. Science Fiction often deals with fantastical ideas, but some of this was so implausible that it made me laugh out loud. The idea for instance that China, Russia and the USA would sit down with a new super-weapon on the table, and discuss how they could use it for the world's good was amusing enough.

But what annoyed me was the way that the more unusual elements to the story vanish and are replaced by more standard fair. Ranjit's homosexuality is simply a phase he goes through, eventually he marries a gorgeous, scientist who happens to be one of the world leaders in AI. The second target of the world's new super-weapon (after North Korea) includes Venezuela, which appears to be showing sub-imperialist interests in the region. Whether the crude descriptions of the leaderships of these two countries are lazy writing or they are common caricatures, it smacks of the worst of Cold-War science-fiction, which linked Russia and the "alien threat".

Oddly the book is compulsive, mainly I think because it's so unbelievable that the reader wants to see what depths are going to be plumbed next. The ending is a sort of "and they all lived happily ever after", but the novel is really nothing less than a collection of half-baked fantastical ideas linked by the most tenuous of plot lines.

Simon Behrman - Shostakovich: Socialism, Stalin & Symphonies

Perhaps more than any other composer Dmitri Shostakovich demonstrates how difficult it is to seperate music from its historical period. Shostakovich's life was marked by the rise and fall of the Russian Revolution and the great events that shook Russia. But Simon Behrman argues that, this is not simply reflected in Shostakovich's music, it shaped the very nature of his compositions.

In part this is negative. Towards the end of his life, Shostakovich went for several years without composing anything of note - a few film scores and so on - but this wasn't simply writer's block, it was a reaction to the huge pressure imposed upon him by the Soviet regieme which waxed and waned in its attitude to the composer.

But more importantly; and brilliantly illustrated by Behrman, Shostakovich's musical style was developed and shaped by the Russian Revolution and the tragedy of its isolation and defeat.

Revolutionary moments in history are always reflected in culture. Partly because of their inspiration - take William Wordsworth's famous declaration in reaction to the French Revolution for instance:

"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!"

So in part Shostakovich's music reflects the excitement and potential of the liberation represented by the Russian Revolution, as the shackles of Tsarism were overthrown and society was controlled, albeit briefly, by ordinary men and women. Behrman shows how the rarely performed Second Symphony captures the essence of the revolution, almost as a story in musical form.

But more importantly perhaps, the revolution unleashed it's own cultural revolution. Shostakovich experiments with new musical forms and even new electronic instruments. The music post revolution must, almost by definition be different to that which has gone before.

But such a celebration of the "genuine" revolutionary tradition could not surive the isolation of the revolution and Stalin's counter-revolution. Thus Shostakovich became a difficult figure for the Soviet government. Loved and venerated around the world for his musical genius, the inherent criticism of the new regieme in his music couldn't survive.

Behrman shows how Shostakovich now moves in and out of popularity with Stalin's government. Lauded then banned, until once again he is popular as his powerful celebration of the resistance of Leningrad to the Nazi invasion in the Seventh Symphony fits with the ideological needs of the time. Some of his greatest pieces of music, however are too controversial and remain unperformed until the very end of the regieme in the 1980s.

Shostakovich never quite looses the passion that the revolution introduced to his, and millions of other people's lives. He remains a complicated figure for many who perhaps cannot quite get to grips with the politics of the period - in part this is why some assume that his criticism of Stalin maust make him an "anti-communist". But this is to misunderstand the complex interaction between the inspiration of the revolution and the despair of its fate.

Behrman illustrates this brilliantly through the life of one of the 20th centuries greatest composers in an accessible book that I hope will inspire readers to explore a set of musical compositions that might not normal be considered radical.

Related Reading

Simon Behrman's 2009 piece "From revolution to irrelevance: how classical music lost its audience" is well worth a read here.

Mahamdallie - Crossing the 'river of fire': the socialism of William Morris

Peter D. Ward - The Call of Distant Mammoths: Why the Ice Age Mammals Disappeared

The massive extinction of the large mega-fauna towards the end of the last ice-age provides for a complex and surprisingly passionate debate. This shouldn't be a surprise - if the Mammoths and Mastodons of North America vanished because of climate change, or because of our ancestors hunted them to extinction, there are salutary lessons for us today.

Peter Ward tries to get to grips with what happened and why. To do this, he starts by looking at previous mass extinctions - there have been fifteen of these in the last half-billion years. Of these, Ward explains that five were "major", destroying over half the planet's species. Shocking though these statistics might be, Ward makes the point that we owe the existence of our own species to one of the most famous extinctions.

The disappearance of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago created the ecological space meaning that our own mammal ancestors had the space to grow, develop and evolve.

Ward looks at the various extinctions in turn - both to enable us to understand the megafauna extinction better, but also to help explain some of the central arguments around what you might dub, extinction theory. How we measure when a species dies out is complex - there isn't simply a visible line in the Earth's strata. Creatures that vanish often look like they are gradually dying out in the fossil record, leaving it hard to pinpoint what exactly happens.

The author does put both sides of the argument - for extinction of mammoths by human action and through climate change. He favours the first, so develops the theory of this more - looking at various arguments and ideas about how this has happened. The Clovis people who entered the North American continent at the end of the last ice-age clearly hunted the animals they encountered. These, as Jared Diamond argues well in Guns, Germs and Steel, had no experience of humans and had no instinctive fear of the hunter.

But Ward argues that the idea that mammoths were simply wiped out by the hunger of human mouths (as argued by Tim Flannery for instance) isn't correct. Describing the mathematical modelling of animal populations, he points out that recent research shows that a small, but systematic reduction of numbers for a population can systematically undermine the viability of a animal population. Putting an explicit figure on this, he argues that humans only had to kill 2% of the Mammoth population to help cross a "critical threshold" which meant that the whole population could crash in less than a century.

Citing evidence that mammoths that had been found were well fed and giving birth regularly, he argues that it is unlikely that we are discussing a weakened population of animals. Mammoths did not die out from starvation.

It should be pointed out that this is an explicit argument for the North American continent. In Siberia, for instance, the Mammoths were unable to survive the Ice-Age - a very different situation.

Ward argues his point well. I am sure there are arguments against his but there is much to be gained from this book even if his central tenets aren't correct. His discussion on the problems with conservation of modern day elephants, based on the computer models of isolated populations, argues well against some conservation practices used in Africa today. His explanations of why extinctions occur are useful to anyone concerned about the planet's eco-system today, though his pessimistic conclusion will not be to everyone's taste.

Jonathan Hughes - Ecology and Historical Materialism

Published in 2000, Jonathan Hughes' book is an excellent and important defence of Marxism in the face of its Green critics. Coming out almost simultaneously with John Bellamy Foster's book "Marx's Ecology", both books should be seen as a contribution to the debates on how to understand ecological crisis in the context of human society and capitalism.

Hughes' book suffers from a somewhat abstract academic style - perhaps not surprising given its origins as a doctoral thesis. Certainly the rigorous logical examination of different critics of Marxism and the author's trenchant defence of Marx sometimes seems to obscure the points being made. Nonetheless this vigour is important as all-to often Marx's Green critics have been able to set the tone in a debate that is crucial to the future of human society.

Much of those criticisms have centred on a perception of Marxism being dominated by the idea of growth at all costs. Hughes argues that "central to the development of environmental thought" has been the "claim that there are definite limits to growth to which society must adapt". In response to this, Hughes points out that growth can have detrimental effects and that Marx and Engels were aware of this. He goes on to point out however, that:

"the limits in question are not a function of nature alone but of the way in which humans interact with nature and hence are absolute only in the abstract and in practice are relative to human knowledge and social organisation".

In other words, the problem of growth is one rooted in the nature of human society. A different method of organisation society could lead to a different type of growth, which may not be inherently anti-ecological.

Hughes follows this with an explanation of how Marx and Engels understood that human society was both dependent on and impacted back upon the natural world. Humans are also part of nature, and thus the process of changing the natural world also changes people themselves. For Hughes, this transformation of nature is one of the key distinguishing features of Marx and Engels' materialism. An importance was also shared by Marx and Engels themselves, who writing in the German Ideology say;

"the sensuous world around...is, not a thing given direct from all eternity, remaining ever the same, but the product of industry and the state of society..."

This constant transformation of the natural world is based on the continued development of the production process. Of course, since, as Hughes points out "ecological problems are problems arising out of humans' dealings with nature", for many, it is Marx and Engels insistence on the continued development of the forces of production - that is the problem. But Hughes points out that developing productive forces doesn't simply mean the development of newer forms of technology, and there are not reasons why this development couldn't happen in a way that is more ecological.

This review cannot hope to cover all the detail of Hughes' arguments. Indeed, I've over-simplified some of the criticisms of Marx that he is responding to. His defence of Marx's approach and his arguments place Hughes firmly in the camp of those who believe that Marx has much to offer those who want to create a more sustainable world. But I think there are a few problems with his book.

Firstly Marx and Engels spent their lives dedicated to the overthrow of capitalism and the ideological arming of a movement that could do that. Rarely in Hughes' work do you get a sense of that important transformation of society. While it is true that he examines the question of the transformation from Feudal societies to Capitalist ones as part of his attempts to explain historical change, I think his argument comes close to implying that there was a certain inevitability about this. He describes this change as:

"a transition which has been characterised in terms of a choice of non-fettering relations of production over fettering ones".

In reality of course, the transition from a society dominated by Lords to one dominated by capitalists wasn't a choice. Often it was marked by bloody and violent confrontation between social forces representing the different "relations of production". And it wasn't always successful. There were feudal societies that stagnated or went backwards because they couldn't develop.

Hughes does briefly acknowledge the importance that Marx attached to self-emancipation - because "it is through collective activity aimed at overthrowing contemporary society that people can acquire the qualities necessary for the future society and form a collective vision of how they want that society to be". But the necessity of revolution is that it also creates the political and social structures that are the basis for a new form of society. A truly sustainable society will be one that is based on a different way of organising our lives.

In addition, there is only a limited explanation of why capitalism is so destructive to the natural world. Granted, that this is perhaps slightly out of the remit of the book, but by skipping this aspect of Marx's thought Hughes has left the reader only partially armed for the debate about how we stop ecological catastrophe.

Marxism if it is anything is a guide to action, not simply an exercise in academic discourse. If we are to really develop Marxism into the ecological sphere we have to explore much further its ability to help us imagine an alternate future.

Wolfgang Behringer - A Cultural History of Climate

The interaction between society and the natural world should be a major preoccupation for everyone these days. The way in which humans interact with the world around us, and the way in which we are in turn effected by the changing world has particular significance in an era of global warming.

However this isn't simply true of our modern, industrialised world. Towards the end of this book, the author shows how recently scientists have debated whether or not increased methane emissions as a result of the agricultural revolution, may have "already prevented a new ice age in the more distant past". Whatever the truth in this, and the author characteristically remains neutral about his own conclusions, all the evidence cited shows that it is the result of the during latest stage of human society that emissions have reached the extent that dramatic warming may occur.

At it's best, this book is a wonderful exploration of how human society has been impacted in the past by climatic changes. Take the collapse of the Mayan society as a result of the fairly rapid changing of their climate and the onset of extreme droughts - "The Maya did not die out as an ethnicity, but the nobility and priesthood disappeared from the scene". Behringer brings a wealth of evidence and anecdote to the discussion.

Unfortunately, despite the scope of the book, some of the sections are very short (the important discussion about the Mayan civilisation receives just over one page). In his discussions on the importance of weather and climate to human history, Behringer comes close in places to seeing climate, if not as the only factor leading to social change, then as the one that lies close to the root causes. For instance while he concedes that the years of repeated bad weather preceding the French Revolution wasn't the only factor that caused that radical transformation, but all the other factors - the "explosive cocktail" - were "compounded by a cluster of phenomena characteristic of the Little Ice Age".

The climate aspect though does provide some interesting insights. While discussing the Enlightenment, Behringer argues that during those years, "every harvest failure due to bad weather became a test for the Enlightenment". Not simply because the new sciences must explain the world, but because those representatives of the old order were quick to try and rouse the population against the new establishment.

Behringer is at his best when examining aspects of social history and the links with climate. From Witch hunting to the painting of landscapes there is much here to intrigue and cause debate. In particular there are some useful pen portraits that discuss why particular civilisations rose and why they may have fallen. At a time when we've just experienced the impact of a fairly minor volcanic eruption, Behringer shows how huge amounts of volcanic material entering the atmosphere have caused major social problems for many of our ancestors.

But his argument becomes increasingly weak the more he writes about modern climate science and society. Partly there is little new here, but Behringer clearly believes that little can be done to reduce emissions and transform industry. In part this is because he views the discussion through the prism of the failure of Kyoto. But it is also because he clearly has no sense of the potential for social transformation arising from new mass movements inspired in part, by the failure of the politicians to deal with climate change.

Strangely though, for a book written in 2006, there is one glaring scientific and social problem. Increasingly in the last five or so years, scientists have been warning about runaway climate change, tipping points and feedback mechanisms. These occur when the processes unleashed by global warming - the melting of ice caps - feed back on themselves and cause more warming. Surprisingly, given that this is a discussion on historic climate change, Behringer gives no time to examples of ancient "abrupt" climate change. None of this is discussed, and it allows the author to erroneously and dangerously claim that "The world will not come to and end. If it becomes warmer, we will get used to it".

This statement is simply not true. Many scientists and environmentalists are concerned that runaway climate change could result in a planet that is too hot to sustain human society. Sadly in the last quarter of his book, Behringer ends up arming those who argue that we don't need to do anything and can simply carry on as we have been doing.

Alastair Reynolds - The Prefect

The Prefect is another of the "Revelation Space" novels of Alastair Reynolds. Reynolds enormous output is fairly stunning - but the interconnectedness of his works is also impressive. This novel fills in some of the background to his earlier works. Set in the 25th century humans have progressed out into the wider galaxy. The Glitter Band is a area of thousands of habitats that orbit planet Yellowstone.

The band is overseen by Panolpy, whose Prefects are responsible for protecting and co-ordinating the lives of the millions of human inhabitants. Readers who have read earlier novels will be aware that a disaster hits the Glitter Band in its later history but of course those characters in this particular time frame aren't aware of this.

Democracy is central to the story. Panolpy governs but is restricted by the democratic control of the Glitter Band's inhabitants. The Prefects cannot arms themselves unless they win a vote. The inability of Panolpy to respond to an initial military crisis, because they lose the vote to get arms is one of the more interesting points of the novel. The fact the government ignores the democratic decision might raise a wry smile from voters back on today's Earth.

Democracy looms elsewhere in the story. We are taken on a brief tour of some of the human habitats. In one of these, inhabitants are considered to be better at making decisions that others. Because they can better juggle different factors, they are considered more worthy of consultation. A non-hierarchical democratic utopia exists as the inhabitants sell their greater judgemental abilities those in the outside world who want to make decisions. This market in improved democracy hardly seems impossible when considering some of the things that currently traded on the free-market.

The story revolves around the struggle to protect the status-quo from an external force. Aurora is an unknown individual who claims to be aware of the future disaster. She plans a violent takeover of the whole band, to put in place a regime capable of preventing the Band's destruction. The battle to stop this happening is the central theme of the book. Of course knowing that the Band is eventually destroyed and millions of people killed leaves open the question about who is right. But convention must remain, even in future history, and good eventually triumphs over evil.

Sadly though the very setup of the story despite all its democratic overtones is really an argument that an enlightened few can govern, or rule in the best interests of the many.

Reading as a more fluid novel that some of Reynolds' other works in this series, The Prefect fills many gaps. The other works can often feel too large in scope, and The Prefect pitches itself well, remaining self contained, but giving a good glimpse into the wider universe that Reynolds has created.

Related Reviews

Reynolds - Blue Remembered Earth
Reynolds - Zima Blue
Reynolds - Terminal World
Reynolds - Galactic North
Reynolds - Redemption Ark

John Steinbeck - Travels With Charley

John Steinbeck's trip around the United States in the early 1960s captures beautifully a country in transition. Coming out of the Second World War, America was riding the rising tide of a seeming economic miracle. Gone were the dark days of war, memories of the depression were vanishing into the mists of time, and consumer spending was rising up and up.

Steinbeck's journey captures in a series of flashbacks and musings, the changing America. He doesn't lay it on thick, but you get the impression of a man watching with cynical eyes. From the boom in "mobile homes" were the inhabitants can chase economic prosperity forever, and carry with them the mod-cons of urban life, to the bland and boring road side food that he finds from the east to the west. Here Steinbeck sums up the way that America was becoming more generic as he ruminates on roadside rest stations.

Civilisation had made great strides in my absence. I remember when a coin in a slot would get you a stick of gum or a candy bar, but in these dining palaces were vending machines where various coins could deliver handkerchiefs, comb-and-nail-file sets, hair conditioners and cosmetics, first aid kits, minor drugs such as aspirin, mild physics, pills to keep you awake.

He continues, touching on the restaurants:

The food is oven fresh, spotless and tasteless; untouched by human hands. I remembered with an ache certain dishes in France and Italy, touched by innumerable human hands.

Steinbeck's writing is beautiful, but never too florid. The brief pencil portraits of the people he meets along the way left me wanting more. The conversations are pared down to basics, and we wonder what has been left out. But enough is there to allow us to understand what that person is. Their hopes, dreams and ideals.

Some of the writing is lovely and I wondered why this book wasn't better known. Though perhaps it is in America, the place it is dissecting.

Of particular note to those interested in social history must be Steinbeck's visit to watch the National Guard escorting young black children into a mixed New Orleans school. The vicious, racist protests are difficult to imagine. Steinbeck's portrayal of the anger and violence brings these early steps in the struggle for civil liberties alive in a way that the old news footage has never done. His discussions about the way forward with fellow travellers show an impatience with non-violent direct action by some, perhaps another reflection of the frustration and anger that many must have felt towards the priorities of the America of the early 1960s.

A Y Badayev - Bolsheviks In the Tsarist Duma

For revolutionaries who believe that there is a higher form of democracy than that of Bourgeois Parliamentarianism, what to do during elections is the sort of discussion that sparks intense debate. For the Bolsheviks in the years of Tsarist rule it was even more complex because the Russian Parliament, the Duma, existed only as a gesture towards democracy from the Tsar.

In this context the Duma was of limited power - but more importantly, it was seen by some on the left as the first stage in the struggle for the capitalist order, rather than the feudalistic Tsarism that prevailed.

Lenin's Bolsheviks took a principled position. They tried to win seats in the Duma, in the face of extreme hostility from the ruling class, but not for the reasons most other parties tried to do so. The Bolshevik candidates saw the Duma as an arena were they could in a period when their organisation was illegal, spread propaganda and socialist ideas with a level of immunity. Revolutionary socialist ideas were popular - tens of thousands of workers voted for the Bolshevik candidates, thousands of workplace groups sent messages of support - but it was hard to organise. The Tsar's police force ran an efficient network of spies, newspapers and publications were regularly seized. Socialists, Trade Unionists and activists were regular imprisoned and exiled.

But in an era when some were proclaiming that socialism was a future ideal, and the important political task was to win a Bourgeois Parliament like that of the West, the Bolsheviks recognised that they couldn't run the risk of sowing illusions in parliament. The key thing was to use their position to educate, inspire and organise the workers movement. This was made easier by the way that the Duma was stacked against the representatives of the workers movement.

Badayev was one of the Bolshevik deputies. His was a background in engineering and he was a longstanding Bolshevik activist. His account is fascinating for many reasons - in part because of his stories about how they evaded the police and how revolutionaries had to organise in an era when simply being discovered with a socialist newspaper could mean years of exile. But the most important parts of the book are those in which he describes how socialists can use parliament, or other elected bodies to raise the workers movement to new heights. Because it was legal to print speeches of the deputies, it meant that organisatins could distribute speeches by socialists. The deputies could become the focus of networks of workers - collecting money for strikes for instance.

Take the struggle for the 8 hour working day - a key demand of the workers movement in Russia in the early 1900s. The Duma and the Tsar was never going to grant this - it would have to be won by mass struggles and protests. But the Duma became a part of the battleground. The Bolshevik newspaper Pravda explained:

"Of course we do not for a moment expect that the Fourth Duma will pass this bill. The eight-hour days is one of the fundamental demands of the workers in the present period. When this question is raised in the Duma the other parties will be forced to declre their attitude towards it and this will assist in our struggle for the eight-hour day outside the Duma. We appeal to all workers to endorse the bill. Let it be introduced not only in the name of a group of deputies, but in the name of tens of thousands of workers."

As Badayev says, "the very failure of the bill could be made the occasion of further revolutionary agitation".

The deputies, despite their small numbers were very successful. They were able to strengthen and inspire millions of people across Russia, particularly with the work they did to highlight examples of workplace abuse or inter-workplace solidarity. Raising tens of thousands of rubles for strikes in far off Baku, shows just how much their were successful.

The rising revolutionary mood against the Tsar and against capitalism that took place in the pre-war period was curtailed by the outbreak of the patriotism that marked the start of World War One. The Tsar took the opportunity to clamp down on workers organisations, and the Bolshevik deputies were arrested. Even in those difficult times, thousands of workers took action in support of their deputies - a far greater mark of respect than many so called "workers representatives" would get today.

For socialists today, there is much to learn from Badayev's book. It isn't intended as a blueprint for organisation today. Nor is it really a guide for elected representatives. But it does show how socialists who do get elected can use their positions to strengthen the movement. It also shows the need for flexibility and organisation fluidity to adapt to changing circumstances. Over a hundred years later, we've much to learn from Badayev and his comrades.