Jean-Patrick Manchette - Three To Kill

This is an unlikely Marxist novel. Now that's not to imply that this is some clunky Stalinist era-story, telling of the great successes of Comrade X as he strives to help the Soviet Nation to acheive greatness. Rather, this is a novel written by someone who has a Marxist understanding of the world, plus, I imagine, some experience of the upheavels that French society went through in the 1960s and 1970s.

This is perhaps best summed up by a section of the opening chapter;

"The reason why Georges is barreling aling the outer ring road, with diminished reflexes, listening to this particular music, must be sought first and foremost in the position occupied by George in the social relations of production. The fact that Georges has killed at least two men in the course of the last year is not germane. What is happening now used to happen from time to time in the past."

The George of the above paragraph is an ordinary travelling salesman, who drinks too much, as a couple of kids and a beautiful wife. In his past, he was a radical militant - from, oblique comments refering to Stalinists - I presume, some sort of Trotskyist organisation. He still retains some of his previous understanding of the world, though it's perhaps now clouded by cynicism.

The author doesn't try and shove marxism down your throat. As my earlier quote points out, the big picture of the novels character is determined by larger social forces. But the detail of the story depends on small individual actions. In George's case, his helping an injured man from a car wreck, sets him up in the sights of soome hired gunmen, who hunt him the length and breadth of France. George goes on the run, hiding out in France's small towns, and eventually escaping his death sentence with a mixture of luck (good and bad) and violence. The ending is neatly done, leaving the story with enough closure to make the reader happy, but it's an uneasy happiness, George is changed by his experiences and not necessarily for the better. What happen's next is in our imagination and who knows were that goes.

Note: I'm indebted to Pechorins Journal for his review of this novel that first brought it to my attention. I'd recommend reading it for a more detailed analysis of the book.

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Noreen Branson - Poplarism 1919 - 1925; George Lansbury and the Councillors' Revolt

Noreen Branson's excellent work looks at one of the great high points of the British Labour Party's history. In the early 1920s, when the Labour party still remained very much on the fringe of mainstream electoral politics, it started to make gains out of the radicalisation that followed the First World War.

Almost immediately debates took place inside the organisation that would continue in one form or another to this day. Basically, to what extent should socialists within the Labour Party accommodate to mainstream politics in order to win elections, or fight for a more radical set of ideas, using electoral politics as a platform for the struggle for socialism.

Nowhere was this clearer than in the East London borough of Poplar (now part of Tower Hamlets). George Lansbury and a number of other Labour candidates took a majority on the local council in November 1919. Lansbury was a well known socialist and pacifist. He and many of the other newly elected councillors had long roots in the socialist and trade union movements locally. On the back of increasing radicalisation, they were elected to improve the lot of a borough, which was then, as it is now, one of the poorest places in England.

Initially the election of Lansbury et al, had little impact. They made some significant changes to local services, building baths, increasing library use and so on. But then, as the economic crisis of the early 1920s started to take hold, they set upon a path that was to bring them into radical confrontation with the government. This hinged on the allocation of rates. The Poplar councillors recognised that the existing system, whereby all the London councils paid into a pot and money was then distributed back out, was discriminatory to the poorest of boroughs which had the most need to help the poor and unemployed. The Poplar councillors refused to pay a section of this money to the government, instead spending it on employing the unemployed and ensuing poor relief at much higher than normal levels.

This illegal action, though clearly morally fantastic brought down the wrath of the courts, and the Poplar councillors served weeks in jail, until they were released by the pressure on the government from outside.

The story is a complex one. The Poplar councillors refused to bow down to the powers that be. Mobilising thousands of local workers in a huge protest movement that started to radicalise the wider London population. But this was not in the interests of the fledgling Labour Party, many of whom wanted to court legitimacy to ensure they were seen as respectable.

Noreen Branson's history is detailed and passionate. Particularly if you've been involved in radical East End politics at any time since the 1920s - she draws out the problems that face those who would struggle for radical change using bourgeois methods.

The councillors were indeed up against a situation which was new at the time, but which has faced many dedicated socialists since. Convinced of the need for fundamental changes in the system, such people have believed that if elected they will be in a position to make a major impact on the lives of those they represent. But once elected, whether in local or national government, they have found their opportunities are smaller than expected. They are hemmed in by the structure of property relations which in turn is reinforced by administrative ties and legal props. They are bound down by the financial fetters imposed from on high. The existing framework is too strong for them.

Many of the victories of Poplar are considered normal today - that working people should receive unemployment benefit when thrown on the scrap heap of the dole. Family Allowances that don't force extra suffering on larger families. No means testing and so on. But the real lessons from Poplar's struggle is that fighting for change means mobilising large numbers of people, and socialist organisation is crucial to do that.

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Dave Sherry - Occupy! A Short History of Worker's Occupations

Anyone involved in climate or environmental politics will have been inspired last summer when the workers at the Vestas Wind Turbine blade plant on the Isle of Wight occupied their factory against its closure. They followed the Visteon workers who occupied their plants in Enfield and Ireland against closures. Sadly the Vestas workers didn't win, but the Visteon workers earnt a fantastic improvement in their redundancy payments.

It might be to early to predict, but activists around both these disputes felt a new atmosphere in the workers movement. For too long dormant, the desire to fight back against cuts and closures broke through. The occupation tactic was a new one to many in the movement. It's been a long time since such actions had been seen in the UK, but Dave Sherry rescues the tradition and helps us learn the lessons with this new book.

Sherry points out that occupations can be better than strikes. They don't leave you standing on a cold picket line for one thing. But more importantly, they prevent the use of scab labour to break a strike, the closure or dismantling of a plant's machinary or the sacking of those refusing to work. More importantly than this, they raise the prospect of workers control of the means of production and by their very nature, they encourage participation - in the strike and in the support of it.

Sherry looks at a few examples. He misses some - there is only limited mention of the actions in South America recently that showed the immense potential for workers to challenge private profit. But the examples Sherry used are inspirational. The mass occupation of the Italian factories in the early twenties brought the country to the brink of revolution. The experience of the US where sit-down strikes created unions in places no one had thought possible. The stories of France in 1936 and again in 1968, which shook a whole nation, and in the case of 1936, won serious gains that we now take for granted - paid holidays for instance.

This book is a polemic. Aimed at arming a working class under increased threat from economic recession, it also clearly argues that rank and file trade unionism is a must for such tactics to win. A few sad examples of bureacratic occupations that didn't inspire or push outwards, which went on to loose illustrate this. Not missing is Britain, which has a truely brilliant history of such struggles, which I was surprised to learn went on (with some success) well into the Thatcher years, a period which we are told was the end of trade unionism in this country.

Finally argues Sherry, we need socialist organisation that can help spread the solidarity and the message that workers can win. It's a lesson more and more workers are going to start to draw when the next government starts its cutbacks.

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Sarah Wise - The Blackest Streets, The Life and Death of a Victorian Slum

The East End of London has had more than its share of historians. This shouldn't surprising as it was the centre of some of the most important industries to the British Empire – in particular its docks. But the rich diversity of the area, the first stop for a succession of different immigrant cultures that continues today, has made the area a magnet for writers.

Sarah Wise concentrates her book on a tiny geographic area. She has chosen the area known as “The Old Nicol”. A long since vanished slum, filled with the most appalling housing and poverty. In the late 1800s the area was already gaining a reputation and was often the destination for visitors who had something to say about the poverty. Everyone from anarchists and socialists to the rich charity donors and the clergy had something to say about the way in which such poverty could exist at the heart of the richest city in the world.

Wise looks at who this slum came about. How it developed out of need, with landlords (themselves often secretive and very wealthy men) could make fortunes offering housing to the poorest people. She shows how early attempts at reform and improvement were often blocked by the rich local politicians – who often had their own fingers in the pie.

We learn of individuals, some courageous with nothing but alturism on their minds. Others with the vested interests of others – in particular the church – came to the area to try and alleviate the suffering. We also learn of the struggles that shaped the region, how the people themselves tried to escape the poverty, by resisting the system itself, or by stealing and living below the law. One of the interesting themes that runs through the book, is that there is a instinctive collectivism by the people who lived there. A mistrust of authority, that means those escaping the police could always besure of an open door or a helping hand.

Finally Wise discusses the destruction of the slum and it's replacement by what is now the Boundary Estate. These new homes were designed as ideal homes for the poor working people of the Nicol. Yet they proved inadequate for the needs of those whose lives didn't fit the Victorian idea of working life. No trace of the Nicol remains. Wise has brought it to life from contemporary accounts, newspapers and census records. A fascinating expose of the foundations that modern London are based on.

Hans Fallada – Alone in Berlin

It's difficult to believe that this 1947 novel about life in Berlin under Nazi rule, only made it into print in English in 2009. As no less an authority than Primo Levi commented, “the greatest book ever written about German resistance to the Nazis”.

Our heroes, Otto and Anna Quangel are quiet, unassuming people. At the start of the book, Anna receives a standard letter informing her that her only son has been killed at the front (we presume in the Battle of France). This inspires both of them to gradually take on a campaign of resistance against the Nazi regime in general, and Hitler in particular.

Resistance means many different things. Under a totalitarian regime, with an unprecedented network of spies and snoops, a complex and extensive security apparatus and a reputation for the utmost brutality, open resistance doesn't last long. Otta and Anna's resistance takes a quiet form, but one that nonetheless angers and terrifies the Nazi power structures. Rather simply, they take write cards with anti-war or anti-Nazi slogans. Despite how the Gestapo imagines them, these aren't the writings of Communists, but the anger fuelled rage of two people whose lives are being destroyed by the Fascist regime.

Simple but for the Thousand Year Reich, no hint of feeling against the regime must be allowed to shine through. So the game of cat and mouse begins. The Quangrels drop a postcard a week at first, gradually gaining confidence. Knowing that the state is trying desperately to identify them.

To tell much more of the plot would ruin one of the world's great novels. But what makes it particularly brilliant are the details of life under the Nazis. The way the system rests on the willingness of some to sell their friends and family. The way in which details of the wider, more horrific horrors are leaking out, gradually. The way that many people don't accept the Fascist government, who are on the Gestapo lists simply because they don't conform, or spoke out once in public.

My own family lived in Berlin at this time. My grandfather, a baker by trade refused to Sieg Heil once after a job interview. Something that almost lost him the job, but could certainly have landed him in far deeper water should someone have complained to the right person. It seems a minor gesture now, meaningless when compared to the atrocities of Treblinka, Dachau or Auschwitz. But the story was told with pride and honour by relatives who knew what it was like to be watched by men who would torture you at a moments notice.

It's this atmosphere that Fallada captures with such brilliance. The end of the novel isn't easy, but in many ways it is full of hope. Even in the darkest of hours, there are those who refuse to bow down.

Tristram Hunt - The Frock-coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels

Fredrick Engels spent much of his life in the shadow of Karl Marx. In itself, this shouldn't be too surprising - Marx's genius eclipsed most of his contemporary thinkers, his prodigious output was enough to drown out other socialists of the time, and his personality was one that made it hard to stand out against him.

In addition, Fredrick Engels, son and heir of one of Germany's growing cotton industrialists was happy to pay second fiddle. He did this to allow Marx the opportunity to develop and write the most important social theories of Marxism, knowing that it was his own labour helping to run the cotton industry that enabled Marx to fund his work.

However Engels was a great thinker, activist and writer as well, and Tristram Hunt's new biography brings out this great life which has been kept too long in the shadows. Hunt starts by examining what would make a young son of the bourgeoisie move to radical politics, placing it very much in the context of a Germany breaking free of the old feudal order and the constraints of church and state, moving towards a new industrial capitalist order. The ideas of Hegel and other radical atheists challenging the old ideas that helped to hold back the development of the new.

From such ideas, it was an easy step, as it was for Marx, to start to challenge the growing belief that emergent capitalism would bring peace and prosperity. Engels was someone who judged ideas on experience and what he saw in the industrial heartlands of Manchester clearly brought him closer to a belief in a socialistic future. His horror at factory conditions was not the false sympathy of the rich charity donor, but a seething anger at a system that wrecked lives in the name of profit.

Hunt follows the growing friendship and collaboration between the two revolutionaries. It wasn't simply money that Engels sent to help Marx. But his proofing skills and his ideas. Engels finished articles and books that Marx had abandoned. Prodded and poked the other into work and became a close family friend.

But what shines through for me is that Engels was a man who loved life. Fine wines and walks in the country, travel and the excitement of revolution. For Engels the world could produce plenty and he clearly believed that the bounty that capitalism had produced should be something to be enjoyed by everyone, not a select few. He wasn't someone to abstain from his own enjoyment. He loved to party. But he also knew that he was in a privileged position, one that could only be extended to others if capitalism was overthrown.

The later chapters of the book deal with Engels' life after the death of Marx. Here Engels comes into his own. Free of the shackles of helping to run the mills, he is able to write and get involved in politics in a way he wasn't able to before. It's now that some of his greatest writings get published - works on sexuality and the family, the origins of humans and his writings on science.

For the developing socialist movement on the continent, Engels was a living link to the past, and to Karl Marx. But if later governments and parties acted in the way that they did because they believed that Engels gave them a blueprint that matched their own beliefs, Hunt shows us just why they were wrong. Until his last days, Engels argued that Marxism was not a dogma, but a guide to action. Engels was always keen to avoid placing himself above Marx, but never shy of his own arguments. The use by Stalin and others to put Engels on a pedestal to justify their actions, deliberately misunderstands that Marxism is a way of looking at the world, not a hard and fast explanation of how society must work.

For any Marxist or revolutionary socialist reading this book, there are inevitably quibbles. I found some of Hunt's descriptions of Marx and Engels actions a little unbelievable. At one point for instance, he implies a cynicism towards the defeat of the Paris Commune, based on the Communards failure to create political organisation along their preferred lines. But such criticisms by the revolutionaries are done in the interests of the movement, and they certainly didn't celebrate the Communes defeat. In fact, as Hunt shows they sheltered and aided those fleeing the counter-revolutionary brutality of the French regime.

This however is perhaps more of a criticism of style or at least a misunderstanding of the importance of the Commune. While Hunt has an excellent understanding of how Marx and Engels' understanding of the problems of capitalism help explain events in the modern era, he isn't writing to arm us for the destruction of capitalism today.

Nevertheless, this is a fantastic introduction to the life of one of the world's greatest revolutionaries, and to the politics upon which the modern socialist movement is based. It should be a springboard to reading further works of both Engels and Marx, but will help many put their ideas into the context of the times.

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Eric Ambler - The Mask of Dimitrios

This is an unusual crime thriller. It follows an unlikely hero, Charles Latimer, as he crosses Europe trying to get discover the full story of the mysterious Dimitrios. Latimer is a crime novelist, and on a trip to Istanbul he is taken by a fan, a senior policeman, to see the results of a real crime. This is the body of Dimitrios, now at the end of a long life of crime, doublecrossing and violence.

As he listens to Dimitrious' somewhat patchy life history a fire is lit in Latimer, who decides he will attempt to find out who this man really was. So starts a trip of discovery that brings Latimer into the dirty underbelly of interwar Europe.

It's a fine novel, not particularly challenging and there are some fairly obvious twists that pop up from time to time. But the descriptions of the cafes, bars and brothels are what makes the novel. Amber has a nice writing style that means he recounts every part of Dimitrios' life differently. Once it is in the form of a letter that Latimer sends containing details of his meeting with someone who knew the man. Another time it's a conversation recounted or a flashback from an old lover.

Clearly this is the forerunner of the more modern "thriller". But it is worth reading not because of this historical interest, but because of the beautifully portrayed, dark and dangerous criminal underworld that we can imagine surrounds our more mundane society.

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Steffen Böhm and Siddhartha Dabhi (eds) - Upsetting the Offset, The Political Economy of Carbon Markets

The idea that market mechanisms are the solution to our climate crisis might be considered dangerous in the light of recent economic events. Yet Carbon Trading and other related projects are at the heart of international strategies to deal with the environmental situation we are in. Thus this accessible and detailed examination of the economics behind such schemes and their impact on the world is both timely and important.

Carbon Trading schemes arose out of the Kyoto agreement in the early 1990s. They're based on the idea that you can offset or mitigate emissions of pollutants in one part of the world by balancing them out with projects that reduce or prevent emissions elsewhere. In an excellent essay, Larry Lohman of the Corner House institute points out that such creative accounting has been responsible for everything from coal mines to gas powered power stations being built.

The problem is, that "climate change isn't simply a numbers game". No matter how careful the accounting, offsetting schemes don't allow for other impacts - the eviction of families from land that is intended for tree planting. The problems of time - your offset scheme might allow you to carry on generating electricity by burning coal, but it may take 100s of years for the low energy light bulbs you've paid for to negate the emissions. The schemes are of course open to corruption - with numerous individuals running companies based on them, previously having been involved in pushing the legislation through. The longer term problem though, is that such schemes don't reduce emissions and they end up justifying the status quo.

Where is the incentive to invest in renewable energy if you can simply cancel out the pollution from your coal plant? Why move to more sustainable housing or transportation if you can mitigate the effects of existing practices by spending money elsewhere. Such creative accounting hasn't reduced emissions, but it has led to some very shady companies making large amounts of cash.

If I have one criticism of the book, it's that the alternatives don't match the scale of the problem that is outlined so well. 90% of the book is a critique of market mechanisms, and by extension, the capitalist system that produces them. With this in mind, simply offering small enclaves of sustainable housing or better biking practices isn't enough. As some of the essays point out, we need investment in zero carbon energy and non-fossil fuel based technologies as well as powerful social movements to force governments into action.

But this is a minor criticism. The vast bulk of the essays collected here will be extremely useful to those who want to argue that we have to change the world to save it.

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Alastair Reynolds - House of Suns

Alastair Reynolds continues to go from strength to strength, though quite how he churns out such large volumes, quite so regularly is a mystery to me. This latest novel, is as galactic spanning as his others, though this one feels tighter and more compact than some.

In this story, Reynolds grapples with two aspects of his vision of the future universe. The first is the immense time required by civilisations that would seek to create interplanetary societies. Probably because of his scientific background, Reynolds tends to avoid things like faster than light travel. In this case, light speed is a limiting factor, but Reynolds has introduced the ability to slow down - characters can reduce their personal perception of time to travel great distances. This coupled with an ability to live longer gives us humans who can live for immense periods of time.

The second aspect to this book, is the idea that human civilisations, however successful, eventually fail - through internal conflict or external threat. The only exceptions to this are the "Lines". Groups of humans who gather for self serving interests and attempt to remain above such restricting things like civilisations. The "Lines" find that the most precious commodity they can have is information - one the galaxy, on its inhabitants and its history.

We meet the Gentian Line's two most cavalier and bohemian characters. Despite having existed for almost Six million years, the Gentian Line's members have managed to avoid falling in love with each other. Campion and Purslane haven't and this makes them late for the irregular Line meet-up. Arrival and the rendezvous finds most of the comrades dead and a struggle to find out what has happened marks the rest of the book. Needless to say Reynolds can't break from his galaxy spanning background and we are taking on the longest (in terms of time and space) car chase across the universe you can imagine.

If this all sounds a bit bonkers to you, then don't worry. Science Fiction usually does contain insanity, but House of Suns and Alastair Reynolds do bonkers particularly well and this reader was kept guessing right till the end. Well worth the very late night it took to finish!

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Vasily Grossman - A Writer At War, with the Red Army 1941 - 1945

(Edited and Translated by Antony Beevor and Luba Vinogradova).

Since reading Life and Fate, I've been waxing lyrical about it to anyone who will listen. So it was a great pleasure to be given this book which gives a much deeper back ground and understanding to the experiences that led Grossman to write Life and Fate.

The invasion of the Soviet Union by the Germans in 1941 was a great shock to many. Vasily Grossman immediately tried to join the Red Army, but was deemed unfit for service. Given the life expectancy on the Eastern Front, this was lucky for us, as Grossman instead became a special correspondent for one of the leading Soviet newspapers. His experiences with the Red Army were documented in short notes, and these extensive notes form the basis for this book. Time and again I read little notes that reminded me of bits in Life and Fate (and, the editors tell us, often make it into other Grossman novels).

Grossman found himself at some of the crucial moments of military history. He retreated in the face of the seemingly unstoppable German armies as they threatened Moscow. He was in Stalingrad even before many realised how significant the battle was likely to be, and he followed the Russian armies towards Berlin, via the appalling horrors of Treblinka. At the end of the war, after documenting atrocities against the Jews, he found himself in Hitler's bunker, and helped himself to a few pieces of paper from the dictator's desk.

Having read Life and Fate first you see just how much of Grossman's experiences and interviews make it's way into the novel. In fact, for me, it underlined just what an important book the novel actually is. It's more than simply a work of fiction, it is a historical document in it's own right.

Some of what Grossman noted didn't make it into print. In fact lots of it wasn't intended to be in print. Grossman's desire to record accurately what went on, wouldn't have fitted with Soviet propaganda all the time. Records of desertions, collaborations or retreat didn't sit well with the official portrayal of the Red Army. But even these short quotes show why he became loved by many ordinary soldiers - he could describe the realities of war far better than any one else. His notes are full of soldiers honesty and humour.

"A soldier who had been a prisoner of war during the last war looks at a diving plane: 'Must be my lad bombing,' he says.

But the grim reality of war shines through.

"Pilots say: 'Our life is like a child's shirt - it's short and covered with shit all over.'"

For Grossman, the war meant personal tragedy. His mother never escaped from the German's and as a Jew, was massacred. This means that his documentation of Treblinka must have been even more heart rending for him. Though is account of that concentration camp is accurate and detailed enough to have made it important evidence at trials after the war's end.

Grossman comes across as a brilliant writer, but he was naive till the end. Despite his popularity, his writing couldn't become public. His honesty about ordinary people was too dangerous for the soviet machine. He died, never knowing that his greatest work would ever become public. That is a tragedy, but Antony Beevor and Luba Vinogradova have done his memory a great service by bringing Vasily Grossman's notes to light.

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Charles Stross - Saturn's Children

Sometimes I need to listen to people around me before reading books. I've liked much of Charles Stross' earlier work, as it pushes new boundaries in Science Fiction, deals with different concepts and updates some of the science behind the fiction. It is also often funny and entertaining, even if it doesn't have the most in depth characters and plots.

Saturn's Children is a break from this. It would be wrong to describe this as awful. It's far far worse than that. Take a look at the cover description;

"Freya Nakamachi-47 has some major existential issues. She's the perfect concubine, designed to please her human masters - hardwired to become aroused at the mere sight of a human male".

A friend pointed out to me that this was merely some sort of adolescent masturbation fantasy. "Oh no", I said, "Stross is far better than that. He likes to set up plot lines like this and play with the ideas and stereotypes".

The one original idea at the heart of this novel - that our "perfect concubine" is living in a universe were every human being has died out - is a good one. How would an automated society function with out humans in it? Sadly however it isn't an exciting enough idea to support the deep and meaningful questions that Stross would like. "What does it mean to be free?" is a meaningless question when the reader just doesn't care for the characters and is drowned in a seemingly endless series of inter-planetary trips that seem to simply to show that Stross understands the distances between planets.

Here in lies the real problem. The best ideas in the world are meaningless if the reader struggles to remember who is who amongst all the characters. The fact that they are all robots and most of them are identical models of other robots makes it even harder to follow.

The sad thing to note is, that Robert Heinlein did it all before. Apparently this novel is a "homage" to Heinlein, but where does homage end and pale imitation begin? Heinlein's novel Friday is about a robot super courier who can carry important items in a cavity within her abdomen. Unusually for Heinlein he didn't try and turn that novel into an adolescent masturbation fantasy. Sadly for Stross that's about all Saturn's Children has going for it.

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Deborah Cadbury - The Dinosaur Hunters

At the start of the 19th century, the world was a very young place. God had created the planet a few thousand years previously and placed, according to the book of Genesis, everything on it in a few days. Less than a hundred years later, the natural world and its history had been expanded to include tens of thousands of creatures not mentioned in the Bible, a history spanning at hundreds of thousands of years and the very basis of much that was held as true had been turned upsidedown. It was, in every sense a ideological revolution.

Deborah Cadbury takes us through the amazing individuals that broke down the barriers of a rigid religious based society and strove for a new way of looking at the world. It shouldn't be underestimated what a suffocating atmosphere Victorian atmosphere must have had on this process. At one point in her tale, Cadbury describes a chance meeting between William Buckland, one of the countries greatest scientists with a women in a carriage. Both of them happen to be reading a new book by the French scientist Georges Cuvier, one of the world's most eminent scholars of fossils and geology. There is no one to introduce the two and Buckland has to overcome the social stigma of talking to a female stranger, despite their obvious mutual interests.

The characters at the centre of this fascinating tale of how the past gradually became unravelled make for great reading. But what is really interesting is the way many of them break with their past. Gideon Mantell for instance, the son of a lowly shoemaker, who never went to university, fights to break free of his social position to establish himself as one of the greatest scientists of his time. Despite opposition from his "betters" he is eventually recognised, though much of his hopes are dashed along the way.

We also read of the way that stereotypes are being broken. The stuffy, aristocratic atmosphere of the Royal Society being challenged merely by the existence of women like Mary Anning, fossil collector extraoridinare who despite not coming from the "easier classes", "contributed by her talents and her untiring researches... to our knowledge of the great Enalio-Saurians and other forms of gigantic life."

Scientific was no longer the realm of the rich man who could pursue his researches as part of his life of leisure. It was time for the professional, dedicated scientist who could devote his or her life to the study of the world around them.

The discovery of the great fossils, their identification as extinct animals and the growing understanding of the scale and age of their remains is a story too long for this review. But it is one worth studying as it illuminates just how with the expansion of commerce and industry at the beginning of the 19th century, a new way of viewing the world was needed.

The individuals who fought and argued just how this vision was laid out were not necessarily motivated by trying to expand that viewpoint. Often they were trying to defend the old order. But ultimately they all contributed in part to breaking down the barriers. The rest, as they say is history.

Tony Cliff - Revolution Besieged

Recent reading has made me think about how it was that the hopes of the Russian Revolution of October 1917 became the distorted caricature of socialism that was Stalinist Russia. Revolution Besieged is actually the third and fourth volumes of Tony Cliff's political biography of Lenin, the leader of the Bolsheviks and hence the effective leader of the Russian Revolution.

This part of the biography is perhaps the most important. Many activists in the International Socialist Tradition will have read part one of the trilogy, Building the Party. That book deals with the importance and necessity of building a revolutionary socialist organisation, viewed through the lens of Lenin's early life and his single-mindedness about turning the Bolshevik party into a mass organisation of the working class.

But this volume is perhaps neglected slightly. It's importance is two-fold. Firstly it examines in great detail the problems inherited by Lenin and the Bolsheviks once they had taken power. Russia with its backward economy and its domination by the peasantry was hardly the ideal place to build socialism in the midst of its powerful capitalist competitors. Cliff then examines what the revolutionaries attempted to do to strengthen their economy and entrench working class power. But it also shows how they tried to spread revolution, supporting revolutionaries elsewhere and trying to help others learn the lessons of the Russian experience. This is the second important strand of the book, because Cliff doesn't avoid criticism of the mistakes made in this period.

In particular, he tries to demonstrate that because the Russian revolutionaries had such a huge amount of respect for having taken power, often their advice was accepted without criticism by local socialist organisations. This led to a number of mistakes, most importantly perhaps, the German Revolution of 1923 was undermined by an over-reliance of the German Communist Party on the advice of the Russians.

Cliff though understands that this isn't necessarily the fault of the Bolsheviks. Lenin had created a revolutionary organisation that had, over a period of decades put itself at the heart of working class struggles. It had made mistakes, but had learnt from them. Bolshevik activists were respected by other workers. Revolutionaries across Europe couldn't simply create such experience out of thin air.

While this isn't a difficult work to follow, it is dense. There is a huge amount of history and politics to cover here. Some important aspects of post-revolutionary Russia are dealt with in short chapters that urge further reading. The debate over the New Economic Policy, the temporary re-introduction of capitalist processes to try and stimulate the economy following the increased isolation of the revolution is clear, but I was left feeling I needed to know more. Cliff isn't hiding anything here, but using a broad brush to paint a picture.



At one point the author asks rhetorically (about a particular point of the German Revolution) what place it has in a biography of Lenin, given that Lenin had no input on the debates. The answer he himself gives is that the "catastrophe in Germany in 1923 was the most important item on the balance sheet of Lenin's Comintern". The Comintern was the international body created following the Russian revolution to spread revolution internationally and cannot be separated from Lenin's life work - the commitment to international socialism.

There are many tragedies in this biography. The greatest are outlined in the final chapters as Lenin lies dying and Stalin manoeuvres to take personal power. One interesting aspect that Cliff highlights is the growing awareness of Lenin of this process, though it must be emphasised that Lenin is by this stage increasingly unable to intervene. However Cliff also highlights the seeds of some of the worst aspects of Stalin's distortion of socialism. We see the leaders of the Comintern labelling the Social Democrats in Germany as fascists and an increasing desire to downplay international revolutionary activity in place of the interests of Russia. Again, this shouldn't be over-emphasised, but Cliff clearly shows that by the time of Lenin's death the stage was set for a greater tragedy.

But Cliff also shows that there were many other seeds in the Russian Revolution. Lenin and the Bolsheviks fought with everything they had to create international socialism. The mistakes they made, as well as their successes provide many lessons for revolutionaries today. Tony Cliff's masterful writing has made these accessible to socialists today, and for that reason alone, though there are many more, this book is worth reading.

David Watkin - The Roman Forum

I started this volume of the excellent Wonders of the World series prepared to dislike it. Perhaps I shouldn't read press releases, but when I read that David Watkin's book "celebrates the Forum as it should be seen - etched in the haunting engravings of Piranesi", my heart sank.

The Roman Forum is, for most people, the heart of Rome. It is the place you can go and feel like you're wandering down the Roman streets like the ancients did. This isn't new of course, Watkins shows us how countless tourists have done just that for centuries.

So I was skeptical about a book that seems to imply that the Forum as it is today was somehow wrong and should be appreciated through a return to romantic etchings from centuries ago. Indeed I thought, how can you discuss objectively such a historical setting, if your starting point is that only a particular artist can portray it correctly.

I have to admit that I was wrong. At least partly. What Watkin has done is very clever. He's exposed the myth that is the Forum and laid the basis for a different way of looking at the remains. Firstly he makes the point that little of what we see is real. Much of the most famous monuments, such as the famous Temple of the Vestal Virgins (pictured) are modern reconstructions, using only small amounts of the original materials. In the case of the Arch of Titus, little remains of the original (with the exception of the famous panels) and it is, according to Watkins "largely a nineteenth-century monument". Piranesi's etchings are important, because they are one of the best visualations of what these ruins looked like before various figures through history destroyed, damaged and rebuilt the area in an attempt to recreate it.


Secondly he shows how even quite recent archaeological practice has destroyed many buildings and remains of great importance in the rush to show the real Forum. This is an interesting and important debate. When you take a historical area like the Roman Forum, at what point should it be preserved? Do we want to see the Roman Forum of 2000 years ago? Or the Forum 500 years ago? The Forum has been lived in for thousands of years. The more modern buildings built in the 13th or 14th Centuries are as much a part of its history as those of Julius Caesar.

This is what the visitor won't see. I think the point that Watkin is making is that visitors are sold an illusion. The idea that the Forum has been frozen in time and they can see it as it was at the height of the Roman Empire. Of course, the Forum changed constantly, particularly in Roman times. Buildings were added, extended and destroyed and Watkin takes us through this history to try and illuminate what we see when we stand there.

So I admit that my first impressions of this book were incorrect. But there are problems with it. Firstly, this is not a history book. It is a book of architectural history that leaves the social and human history of the place out. This is a shame, because the Forum is, above all, a social place. But it can be frustrating for the lay reader. If you don't have a background in architecture and just want to understand more of what you are seeing, what is the non-specialist to make of sentences like this one, describing the Basilica of Maxentius;

"the whole of the north aisle with its central apse and its three arched exedrae with giant coffered barrel vaults which served to buttress the central groin-vaulted nave".

Rare is it that I have to resort quite so often to the dictionary to make it through whole paragraphs. This is a shame, because the rest of the Wonders of the World series that I've read have been tremendously accessible and open to the ordinary reader and this one feels just a little too pompous in places.

What this book does well is make the reader think about the history of places like the Forum differently. How we excavate and display history is important. How we preserve it and interpret it is subject to ongoing debate. So it's an interesting book to take with you to Rome, if only to feel sad has been lost.

Oh, and if you really want to walk down Roman streets visit Ostia Antica. It's a short train journey from Rome. Absolutely deserted and has a fantastic little restaurant in the middle.

Related Reviews in the Wonders of the World series

Fenlon - Piazza San Marco
Tillotson – Taj Mahal
Goldhill - The Temple of Jerusalem
Gere - The Tomb of Agamemnon
Ray - The Rosetta Stone
Hopkins & Beard - The Colosseum

Raj Patel - Stuffed and Starved

This is a superb book. Rarely do I come away from reading a non-fiction book feeling as satisfied as I did when I closed Stuffed and Starved.

Raj Patel has produced an amazing investigation of the problems with the world's food system. Starting from the very bottom - the men and women who produce the world's food, he shows us a system that has become dominated by multinational interests, profiteering and ruthless capitalist actions. The consequences are impoverisment, soaring suicide rates amongst farmers, unemployment and food that is geared to maximising profit, rather than improving diets.

We see the ruthlessness of the seed companies, forcing and tricking farmers into using GM seeds. We see the power of the supermarkets determining what must be grown, despite what is best for the farmer. And finally we see how this comes together in a world food system that creates hunger in the midst of plenty, and simultaneously obesity on a mass scale.

Patel is rightly cynical about the multinationals being able to solve these contradictions. He points out how supermarkets for instance rebrand themselves to appeal to an era when more and more people are worried about what's "behind the label". Yet in a system where the problem is agribuisness as a whole Patel doesn't believe that this sort of reorientation of the food giants helps.

"To turn agribusinesses loose on organic food is to legitimate their rule, to concede that no kind of food system is possible without their participation, just as to choose between high-pericide farmaing or GM farming is to admit that, either way, the pesticide companies are a part of our food system. But there have always been alternatives."

It's when Patel is looking at the alternatives that things become really interesting. He discusses various food co-operatives, or shops aimed at bringing local, cheap, healthy food to communities. Pointing out that when people to have access to decent food it is very popular. (He also makes the point, having discussed how supermarkets destroy such local shops, that were supermarkets don't exist at all, were there is no easy access to food, obesity shoots through the roof as people survive on a fast food, high fat, high sugar diet).

But at the heart of Patel's argument is that its a lack of control over the food production process that is the fundamental problem. He shows how things improve once people start to take control of their lives - the MST in South America, creating collective farms based on solidarity for instance - but what is true in rural societies is also true of those of us living in towns.

"If the quality of food we eat is shaped by work and play, by the neighbourhoods we live in, the jobs we can get and the time we spend travelling between them, then we might want to consider poor diets as a symptom of a systemic lack of control over our spaces and lives."

Such a conclusion can only serve to underline the argument that if we are truely to improve our lives, then fundamental social change must be part of the solution.

Vasily Grossman - Life and Fate

Few countries have a history that really allows for novels on an epic scale. France is of course one, with its revolutions and Commune, dictators and dynasties. Russia is another. Partly for similar reasons, but more importantly I would argue, because it is in Russia, more than any other that the fate of entire nations was bound up in the actions of ordinary people.

Life and Fate is an truly epic novel - my edition is just over 870 pages long. I'd go so far as to say it's one of the greatest ever written. In some ways it is a simple story, dealing with the changing fortunes of war. But the battle at the heart of this story - the Siege of Stalingrad - is the most epic of engagements and history depended on its outcome.

Life and Fate has a cast of hundreds. Some come and disappear rapidly, as is the nature of war. Some mark time, and their tale illuminates some great aspect of Russian history. Viktor Pavlovich Shtrum is one. A physicist of enormous talent, his Jewish background and his enthusiasm for Einstein's science no longer plays well in the growing anti-semitism that Grossman has characterising the later years of the Second World War in Russia. Shtrum faces professional and personal destruction as he refuses to give in to his tormentors. He is saved by the intervention of Stalin. Not from any magnanimity, but from the state's growing realisation that nuclear power will determine the next stage of the world's history.

But Shtrum's part in this novel isn't simply there to show how the changing world impacts individuals. His love for a colleagues wife, despite his own wife's support and love demonstrates that in the midst of the darkest hours, what we are as individuals never disappears. At a time when millions of men and women are dying nameless deaths, Grossman creates a cast of ordinary men and women fearful for their lives, their loved ones and their future.

The darkest moments in the novel deal with the Holocaust. We are taken along on a forced march, as Jews from a Ghetto are taken to Auschwitz. Separate from the main characters paths, but inseparable, the deaths are heart rending, forming the backdrop to the war in the East. Underscoring the peculiarly viscous conflict in Russia, the chapters that deal with the Holocaust serve also to show how Fascism didn't arrive simply with the idea to gas six million Jews. But how this was the inevitable outcome of the bureaucratic state based as it was, on vicious anti-Semitism.

There's much more to the novel. The stories of the men and women trapped under siege in Stalingrad are fascinating. Here in the intense, dirty conflict, barriers break down. Ranks become less important than fighting as a cohesive unit. Old Bolsheviks clash with superiors who hate the idea of a non-hierarchical army. Tensions and rivalries led to denunciations and accusations. Perhaps this isn't surprising but the way that Soviet society is opened up and exposed is incredible.

Of course, as in any war, the suffering and pain is horrific despite the ideals that people fight for. Here the novel really comes into its own. This little brief description of the situation of some of the German troops as they starve following their encirclement by the Russians.

The talk turned to food and everyone grew more animated. First they discussed the best way of getting rid of the smell of sweat in boiled horsemeat. Some said you just needed to scoop the black scum off the top of the boiling water. Others said it was important to simmer the broth very gently; still others said you should only use the meat from the hind-quarters and put it straight into the boiling water while it was still frozen.

Here we have the extraordinary made ordinary. Soldiers who had several months previously been at the forefront of a seemingly unstoppable forward march, reduced to scrabbling around for food.

Some reviews I've read - including the awful analysis of the novel that passes for its Wikipedia page - have this as an anti-communist novel. I think it's the opposite. Certainly it does nothing to defend Stalin or the state he created. But it is a celebration of ordinary people. A celebration of people's ability to survive the worst that they can imagine and come out fighting. It is a celebration of solidarity and survival and in its description of the ideals of the Old Bolsheviks, as well as the defeat of Hitler by millions of ordinary Russians, its a reaffirmation of the ability of the nameless masses to change the world.

Clive Finlayson - The Humans Who Went Extinct, Why Neanderthals died out and we survived

Why the world is dominated by us and not Neanderthals, is a surprisingly complex question. Traditionally, we've been given an image of Neanderthals as lumbering idiots, not capable of withstanding the superior brain power and agility of our own ancestors. The reality is of course, far more complex.

The fossil records doesn't show any evidence that Neanderthals were ruthlessly displaced by our ancestors. What it does show, is that Neanderthal society was surprisingly complex, lasted (in the case of a small group in Gibraltar) as recently as 28,000 years ago. These were tool makers and hunters, not the stupid brutes portrayed in countless cartoons.

This is a fascinating look at our own peculiar history - how we developed, how tools transformed our ability to survive, but also occasionally limited our ability to adapt. The surprising role of climate change in getting us to were we are now is clearly explained.

Finlayson looks at why the Neanderthals went extinct and we didn't. There is every evidence that our ancestors and Neanderthals lived close together at the same time, though no evidence that they interbreed. Certainly they would have encountered each other while hunting or moving to different scavenging grounds.

So what happened to the Neanderthals? At a time of extremely primitive technology, environmental changes would have forced great changes upon human societies. In particular, the favoured hunting grounds of the Neanderthals, where areas where small tree coverage allowed for "ambush hunting". A colder climate forced the trees back, reducing areas available for hunting.

Alternate periods of warming and cooling would repeatedly isolate and then reunite populations. Obviously, some populations might not survive the changes, and the process would gradually reduce the overall population.

Luck has played a great hand in our own evolution. While some populations of our ancestors would have died out, a combination of luck, further developed bodies and the development of better technologies, as well as a wider global spread helped us survive.

Ruminating further on what survival means, Finlayson sees worrying parallels with today's changing planet. However he also points out, that it is all too easy to think that we are were we are today, because we are the product of "successful genes". Our genes are successful, only in the sense that we have made it to this point. "There were many highly successful lineages that went extinct because their luck ran out - the Neanderthals and other populations of proto-Ancestors among them".

More of the branches of our ancestral tree vanished than survived. It is only a small fraction of human existence on the planet since the development of agriculture, the point that fundamentally changed us. In that time, Finlayson argues we've lost contact with our biological heritage. There is a mismatch he argues, between our current methods of organising our lives, and the biology that evolved over millions of years.

In a sense I agree. This is close to the argument that Marxists put about a "metabolic rift" - that we have become alienated from the natural world that we are utterly dependent on. But there is a danger with Finlayson's argument - that we are simply the products of our biology. We have a unique ability to transform the world around us. At the moment, the present society we have created threatens to undermine the very ecology that is the basis for life on this planet. But we do also have in our power to transform our way of organising society and avoiding the fate of the Neanderthals.

Related Reviews

Mithen - After the Ice, A Global Human History

Buy it here.

Francis Pryor - Britain AD: A Quest for Arthur, England and the Anglo-Saxons

In the simplistic view of British History, there was a brief period around 2000 years ago of stability, civilisation and prosperity with the arrival of the Romans. Either side of these few centuries was chaos, poverty and war.

In particular, the departure of the Roman's we are led to believe led to the collapse of civilisation followed by the brutal arrival of the Anglo Saxons. These Saxon's pushed aside the natives and established themselves as the new British. From such noble stock are the current denizens of this island descended.

Francis Pryor's book, which might loosely form the middle part of a trilogy, sets out to argue that this view of history is nonsense. Partly his argument is common sense. Why, with the departure of the Roman's would people simply abandon the towns and cities they had lived in, and disappear back into an earlier mode of existence?

Instead, Pryor argues persuasively that reality was very different. Firstly he explains that the Roman invasion actually impacted very little on the vast bulk of the population. Most people continued to farm as they had done, with perhaps better goods or more variety of items being available in the local market. This is explained in terms of the archaeological record by the continuity that the remains show. There aren't a series of breaks as the Roman's arrive and then leave in most places. Even in the new towns, there is often continuity between pre-Roman and Roman buildings.

A similar process takes place as the Roman's leave. Most places are left relatively undisturbed with minor changes - in particular coins vanish as the Roman market disappears. Bartering would have returned. The most common archaeological remains - pots - revert to simpler and local designs.

It should be pointed out that these aren't just Francis Pryor's ideas. He quotes numerous other archaeologists to back up his case and builds an extensive case. Here he summarises a fellow archaeologist, Dr. Richard Reece;

"He [Reece] sees no evidence for chaos or social collapse, because communities were resuming a pattern of life that had not died out and that was already well-established prior to the Roman interlude."

Following the Roman departure, there simply wasn't an Anglo-Saxon invasion. Certainly there was an Anglo-Saxon influence. But this wasn't out of the ordinary. There must have been trading networks, as well as other contacts between people living on the British Islands and the Continent for thousands of years. Pryor shows that the evidence for an Anglo-Saxon invasion is more in the minds of chroniclers and their more modern followers, than in the archaeological record.

There are numerous examples. Perhaps the most interesting is that from a farming point of view there is a great continuation of farming methods from before Roman times to more recent eras. A series of invasions by a new people, that displaced the earlier inhabitants, would have led to a change in the pollen records. Instead, either any invaders immediately learnt traditional methods of crop growing, or they didn't exist.

Pryor's is a easy to follow account. Despite the book's subtitle, there is little in here about King Arthur. The evidence for this individual is very limited. More likely King Arthur was a propaganda figure, invented for the interests of a particular elite - elements of his story tie in with much longer established myths and traditions and it's not uncommon for those trying to establish legitimacy to add existing legends to their own newer tales.

Francis Pryor's version of British history is less exciting that the one that we are used too. There are less invasions and populations often stay in one place, quietly farming for dozens of generations. Yet it is clearly a more believable history - one which puts ordinary people at the heart of things for the last two thousand years.

Related Reviews

Pryor - Britain BC
Pryor - Britain in the Middle Ages

John Bellamy Foster - The Ecological Revolution, Making Peace with the Planet

No one has done more than John Bellamy Foster over recent years to reassert an ecological aspect to Karl Marx's thought. In a series of books, Foster has explored the ecological core of Marx's thought and used this to develop a devastating critique of capitalism and its relationship to the natural world.

In an earlier work Marx's Ecology, Foster explored the origins of Marx's materialism to argue that Marxism had far more to offer the ecological movement than many would give credit for. Further books, The Vulnerable Planet and Ecology Against Capitalism have developed these arguments further.

This latest book, is perhaps best seen as the coming together of much of Foster's previous work. It summarises much of his earlier work and adds some new material. Foster shows how both Marx and Engels were enthused by leading scientists of the day, in particular, the German soil chemist, Justus von Liebig, who were developing a critique of industrial agriculture.

At the time there was a growing crisis in agriculture, due to the removal of essential nutrients as food was taken to the towns and cities. Marx took this starting point and using the concept of species metabolism, came up the theory of "metabolic rift". For Marx, human metabolism was human Labour. Hence Capitalism, by increasingly separats human society from nature, through a process of production that alienates and isolates the worker. This creates a "rift" between society and what helps make us human - our ability to shape the natural world. This rift, could only be healed by creating a new world based on a sustainable relationship with the environment.

This idea that capitalism, through it's methods of organising production, it's short term, irrational, un-planned nature, is what is destroying the planet is a thread that runs through the book. For Foster, what is important is that this understanding can help shape the types of movement that can create and alternative to capitalism.

There are some problems. The book's origin in other works means that it needed better editing. Several quotations are repeated verbatim, as are several key ideas (notably the explanation of Liebig's importance to Marx, which we read about at least five times).

This is minor though, a more important criticism, is that Foster ignores the opportunity to present a more rounded argument about what a democratically planned economy might look like. In the face of those who argue planning isn't possible, or can only end up like the bureaucratic East European states, it is a major opposition.

Foster instead offers us some isolated "islands of hope" - localised practices in Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia which he suggests show the potential for sustainable society. He himself recognises that these islands exist in a hostile sea - a capitalist world that only organises production for profit. So in a way this argument is undermined by the rest of the book.

These criticisms aside, Foster's reassertion of the centrality of revolutionary change in order to save the planet is one that must not be lost on a new generation of socialist activists, engaging and building an environmental movement for the 21st Century.

Related Reviews

Foster - Ecology Against Capitalism
Foster - The Vulnerable Planet
Monthly Review - Ecology, Moment of Truth

Further resources

There is an audio file of John Bellamy Foster discussing the 21st Century Environmental Revolution at Marxism 2008 available here.

Antoine de Saint Exupéry - Wind, Sand and Stars

This memoir by one of France's most important writers recounts a series of disjointed episodes from his life as an aviator. Flying mail across the Andes and the Sahara, he discusses comradeship, fear and excitement and ruminates on what makes us human.

It's a beautiful poetic work. Pick it up at random and there will be the most elegant description or piece of philosophical prose. Here's a paragraph that jumped out at me for instance

"To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible. It is to know shame at the sight of poverty which is not of our making. It is to be proud of a victory won by our comrades. It is to feel, as we place our stone, that we are contributing to the building of the world."

The climax of the book, is the story of a plane crash that he and his co-pilot survive in the Sahara and their miraculous escape. It's mirrored by an earlier story of the crash in the Andes of one of his closest friends. In both stories, indeed, running through the whole work is the concept of comradeship. Clearly for this writer, as demonstrated in the quote above, what makes us human is our bonds with others.

Antoine de Saint Exupéry was writing at a time when to be a pilot was to be an adventurer. When aeroplanes still made people stand and stare. When the opening up of mail routes transformed continents.

To fly then was to rely utterly on a few close comrades and your own internal strength. This experience wasn't just an adventure for the author, it was a life-affirming action, something that shaped his life. The book reflects this passion, making it a powerful and emotional read.