M. John Harrison - The End of Everything

Well they always say you shouldn't be afraid to try new things. I was unsure I would like M. John Harrison's latest book The End of Everything after I read the Guardian review here. As quite a literal reader I am uncomfortable with stories that aren't particularly clear on what's happening, or layer meaning upon meaning. Nonetheless I decided to give it ago, not least because I very much like end of the world novels, and we are facing catastrophic change.

The End of Everything is mostly set in the very English seaside world of the Kent coast. A place of small farms, former fishing villages and second homes. The world has undergone some form of catastrophe. Aliens called the iGhetti have appeared connected in some way to financial centres and banking - the City of London being a common location. The military have bombed and shelled their somewhat ghostly forms, but nothing seems to have halted their advance.

Civilisation seems to have collapsed. One character who claims that he has repeatedly visited London to study the iGhetti is met with disbelief. The state doesn't seem to function - there are no police when one of the characters commits murder early in the book - and instead a form of listless mob justice seems to rule. But on the other hand some cafes and inns seem to function in a way that bears no real relationship to an actual economy. Perhaps this is meant to be a comment on our own economy, which seems to bear little relationship to the needs of the people who make up society.

Much of the book centres on people who make their living by collecting artefacts from the sea. Unnamed things wash up on the beach and some are sold or kept. Special artefacts can be transformative for the finder, who consequently leave the coast. Phillip has found one of these artefacts. It seems to be alive - indeed at various points people eat bits of it - and over time it grows and develops. When Phillip dies it takes on his personality or part of it. Marnie, Phillip's elderly relative, goes on a road trip with the artefact and Phillip's ashes. Marnie appears to be on a quest to try and find out what happened. But she doesn't seem to really mind - instead she's drawn to the source of the problem at the City of London. Perhaps its the source of all our problems.

Online commentary suggests that the novel is meant as a comment on Brexit, or capitalism. I thought it had something to say about commodity fetishism - but perhaps thats the Marxist in me reading too much. But there's a real fog about this book. Its not clear what is happening - is anything real. Is anyone even human? Does anyone have a purpose? Are the customers in the cafe ghosts? Or are they real people lost in a landscape that has lost all meaning.

My Guardian reader worried that readers who dislike SF might be put off by this book. I am not sure. Those who are put off are probably those like me who need more certainty in their novels. Those who like ambuguity, metaphor and fog will love it. I could see the brilliant writing. But I couldn't see into the story.

Tomáš Tengely-Evans - Death Rides Out: Imperialism in the 21st Century

As Socialist Worker editor Tomáš Tengely-Evans has had to cover more than their share of imperialist conflict and the threat of such conflict. In the last few years we've seen war in the Middle East, genocide in Palestine, a bloody proxy-war between Nato and Russia over Ukraine and Trump's aggression against countries as varied as Greenland, Canada and Venezula. 

Understanding the tendency for nations to go to war under capitalism, and the particular forms these wars take, has been one of the great tasks of Marxism. Tengely-Evans' new book is a brilliant synthesis of this historical work with insightful studies of current conflicts and their source. The book begins with Tengely-Evans's comment that he wrote the first draft of the book in Sarajevo, close to were Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated - one of the events in the run up to World War One. It's a fitting beginning, because he begins with how Marxists like Lenin, Luxembourg and Bukharin developed and updated Marx and Engels' war to explain the origins of the slaughter. The war did not arise out of the killing of Ferdinand, but what was it about society at the time that meant that within a few weeks of the assassination millions of men were being murdered? 

For Marxists it is the economic division of the globe that leads to conflict. More precisely it is the uneven division of the globe between capitalist interests. As Tengely-Evans writes:

Because capitalism does not develop equally acorss the world, there is a constant fluctuation of the relative power of the different nation-states within the global imperialist system, and this drives a logic of imperialist competition that tends to build towards war.

In hindsight these insights don't feel particularly novel. But Tengely-Evans makes the point that some Marxists thought in the run up to World War One that global capitalism made war impossible. Tragically they were proved wrong, and it was left to a few individuals like Lenin to critique this. One brilliant aspect of this new book though is that it neatly summarises how Lenin, Bukharin and Luxembourg developed a new understanding of the particular capitalist moment. In particular the question of "finance capital" playing a role in pushing and organising production. But Tengely-Evans does point out the limits of this approach, which saw both Lenin and Bukharin generalising too much from the nature of German capitalism - leading Tengely-Evans to point out that "the core of Lenin's theory stands the test of time if creatively applied".

The "core" refers to the way, in Bukharin's words, "the struggle between state capitalist trusts is decided in the first place by the relation between their military forces, for the miliatry power of the country is the last resort of the struggling 'national groups' of capitalists." Tengely-Evans uses this approach in his very stimulating analysis of current conflicts. For instance, writing about East Asia, he says:

East Asia is now the most dnamic region of global capitalism - and consequently, a key battleground of imperialist comptetition ebtween the US, China and regional powers. It makes up around 40 percent of global domestic product and over 50 percent of global economic growth. China, Japan and India are the leading economies in the region making up 65 percent of the continent's GDP.

It is this startling growth that terrifies Washington. Tengely-Evans goes on to show how the US state has been preoccupied particularly by China, but more importantly for understanding the world today, he shows how conflicts in Venezula and the Middle East, are often shaped by the US government acting in response to the threat from China. As he says:

The US may want to focus on the Western Hemisphere. But it does so within a global system of increasing competition and while trying to contain China across muiltiple parts of the world. War with Iran hasn't turned out the way the US planned. But it's a product of that increasing competition, unleashed on the world in large part by China's rise, and that logic of competition drives war between the competing parts of the system.

Does the left really need another book in Imperialism? Especially when those of authors' like Lenin have proved so useful. I would argue that one great strength of Tengely-Evans' book is that it offers an understanding of imperial through a Marxist lens, while demonstrating how Marxism is a tool to understand the world. This constantly needs to be refreshed and new generations of activists taught how the system works, not least because there will be more and more war. Indeed Tengely-Evans quotes Marx: "The working classes have the duty to master themselves the mysteries of international politics". Unpicking why Russia is in Ukraine, or how Israel makes it hard for Trump to stop war on Iran needs an wider understanding of the system itself.

In addition Tengely-Evans shows how an Marxist understanding of war and imperialism leads to a revolutionary approach to stopping war. The final section, on how revolutionaries have tried to turn war into revolution is a lesson for everyone today - if we are to avoid imperialist escalation leading us all to our doom.

Related Reviews

Bukharin - Imperialism and World Economy
Lenin - Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism
Callinicos - Imperialism and Global Political Economy

Jakub S. Beneš - The Last Peasant War: Violence and Revolution in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe

From the end of World War One through to the 1950s Eastern Europe's peasant societies were engaged in a new continuous "Peasant War". It is a struggle that is rarely acknowledged, except perhaps by those looking to understand the dynamics between workers and peasants during the Russian Revolution. Those who do study these events tend to seem the separately, as struggles around particular events, rather than as part of a longer continuity. The peasant struggles that began as mutinies and rebellions against the War, then morphed into radical nationalist struggles as European nations and empires crumbled at the end of the War, became battles over land and power in the inter-war years.

Jakub S. Beneš' The Last Peasant War is an excellent read that emphasises the continuity and change of these movements, while sympathetically treating the peasant as an object of history. I have been asked to write a fuller review of this book for another publication, and I will link that here when it becomes available.

Iain M. Banks - Feersum Endjinn

Despite my love of Iain M. Banks' science fiction novels I have never read Feersum Endjinn. When I first attempted it soon after it's first publication in the mid 1990s, I was put of by the "difficult" chapters. These are written phonetically, and I found them impenetrable. Today, after nearly three decades of text speak, I was less challenged by them. Perhaps younger audiences will find them normal.

Feersum Endjinn is set on a future Earth facing a gigantic astronomical calamity. Precisely what this is, and what the solution is, is unclear until nearly the end of the book and I won't ruin that here. But living on the Earth, long after huge populations have deserted the planet, are a number of waring factions that inhabit different levels of a colossal structure known as the Fastness. This is the remnant of Earth's spacefaring past, the anchors for its space elevators, and a monument to civilisational collapse. The factions that inhabit the ruins do so in a feudal structure - something that Banks often uses to represent retrograde or backward human societies that have falled from their technology appogee. The war between these factions takes place on a number of vertical levels. It also takes place on a number of cyber levels too. Humans in this future have the ability to enter different dimensions, places were time moves differently, and engage with others physically and mentally.

Banks explores this conflict from multiple points of view. One of them is a senior aristocratic Count, who has been assassinated multiple times, before escaping to a new "level" to solve the riddle of his murder at a different time scale. The other is a scientist who has receved a cryptic message from a seemingly alien presence that alerts her to a potential solution to Earth's dilemma. Finally we have an initially aimless being who appears suddenly at the estate of a minor noble, but whose innocence betrays the fact that she has deeper knowledge of what is happening. Finally there is a oddly minor figure, whose account is told phonetically, whose innocent quest to find his talking pet ant takes him on a strange quest, full of all sorts of beings, that gradually point toward the resolution.

The backdrop to the story is the various factions who are trying to cover up the danger to Earth, and also to protect themselves. the resolution sees the coming together of representatives of the various factions, manipulated by unseen forces and made to overcome their differences.

Writing in 1994 it is possible to see Feersum Endjinn as a metaphor for social intrasigence in the face of oncoming environmental disaster. At the time it was also possible to believe that techology alone would be enough to "save Earth". Today that is unlikely, and perhaps this literal ex machina escape rings less true that it did when the book was first written. Nonetheless for Iain M Banks' fans this is an excellent read, though its structure and language makes the book a difficult one.

Bryan D. Palmer - Capitalism, Colonialism & Crises: The Remaking of Modern Canada 1960-2025

The third volume of Bryan D. Palmer's trilogy on the history of Canada brings the account right up to the present date. Indeed, so recent is some of the material that it covers 2025. It means that there's the slightly uncanny experience, for this reader at least, of reading a history book cover events that are part of your own experience.

Palmer opens his book by making a general point about the period covered. Before the 1960s he says, there was  "scan indication" that oppositional movements could unite together. As both the previous volumes have shown, there is a long and rich tradition of resistance and organisation from below in Canada. This includes movements such as Indigenous struggles, working class movements, including radical socialist and anarchist ideas, movements against war and movements for liberation. At times, particularly in the period covered in the first book, when those movements failed to unite. Had they done so, they was a potential for systemic and radical change. But Palmer says about the first decades covered in this volume:

In the 1960s, voices of anti-capitalism and anti-colonialism gew louder, amplified in many ways. There were also hints that the long-standing divide keeping those challenging the profit system and those opposing colonial thought and practice separate and consequently weakened was breaking down. This 1960s development was paralleled by a strengthening and increasing penchant for militancy among mainstream working-class trade unions and Indigenous organisations, groups and associations.

What these movements saw was a proliferation of radical groups, parties and organisations - a process that mirrored what was happening elsewhere in the world as the post-war boom turned to economic and political crisis, and the movement against US imperialism was fuelled by resistance on the ground. Revolutionary ideas inspired these movements. In Canada, "anti-capitalist and anti-colonial thought... captivated those drawn to the New Left" and "causes traversed one another". Palmer tells the story of an Abortion Caravan that left Vancouver in April 1970, but by the time it reached the capital, some of its participants were also raising demands as "Victory to the NLF" and "Smash Capitalism" was written on the outside.

The peculiarities of Canadian history however added new factors to the radicalism of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In Quebec, there was an "upsurge of radical nationalism, supported by many Québécios workers" which built upon a movement for independence that had grown up in the 1950s and 1960s. The movement included many who saw colonialism and capitalism as the "enemy". Canada's 1968 moment, in the summer of that remarkable year, saw a massive protest at Dorval Airport near Montreal. Traffic was stopped, buses set afire and molotov cocktails thrown. Gunshots were heard. Palmer says:

New Left aspirations, anti-colonialist indépendantiste demands, and a militant class struggle and anti-capitalist politics thretaened to come together. This was a rare development in Canada... The often young and unusually militant Quebec sovereigntists situatied their struggle within the global anti-colonail mobillisations of the 1960s. They railed against the mainstream politicians and capitalist interests, both French and English-speaking. They held this rich elite responsible for deepening the subordination of oppressed and working-class Québécios.

These revolutionary and radical ideas "appeared to resonate with wider sectors of society" terrifying the ruling class. Here, as in the previous volumes, Palmer places the history of Indigenous people, and their resistance, central to his account. He shows how revolutionary ideas influenced "Red Power" movements, and these in turn, fed back into wider radicalisation. In 1969, the Government struck back, it appeared to offer concessions, but did so by arguing that the Indigneous peoples of Canada, where "burdened... with a historically constued paternalism" this required dismantling and an end to the allocation of "First Nations a plus status as an addition t their citizenship".  While superficially appearing radical, in reality this "would inevitably leave First Nations peoples without any possibility of successfully pursuing land claims or holding on to entitlements that shored up their traditional ways of life". The backlash, including the publication of the tremendously successful book The Unjust Society by Harold Cardinal, saw a retreat by the Canadian government, but it did see the "drift of Indigenous leadership into collaboration with the colonial state" and the decline of the revolutionary Red Power movement.

The radicalism of these movements was the context for a wider awaking of knowledge of Canada's colonial past. In the years after the 1960s Canada saw renewed attempts at control of radical movements and First Nations peoples, what Palmer calls "coercive continuities". If the 1960s had seen Red Power, revolutionary radicalism and "class war from below", including some spectacularly powerful trade union movements, 1975 onward saw "class struggle from above". The political and economic gains of the 1960s  that had been won by working class and First Nations struggles, were eroded as Canada turned toward neoliberalism and austerity to try and resolve the contradictions of its economic crisis. This period saw systematic and brutal deindustrialisation as thousands of workers lost their jobs. In Montreal, for instance, between 1976 and 1996, 27,000 jobs in the garment industry were lost. What strikes there were, were unable to significantly turn this tide. In the case of Montreal, a strike against job losses was sold out, a "scathing indictment of the cozy relationship between the union leadership and garment industry bosses".

The final chapters of this book are perhaps the most depressing. They paint a picture of Canada dominated by economic precarity, low levels of struggle and rampant capitalism - massive levels of homelessness, low wages and economic insecurity are one picture of the period. But Palmer is careful to note that there is resistance, including another rise in the level of organisation by First Nations peoples, often building links with the wider working class movements. This includes the struggles against oil infrastructure and the expose of the horrors of the Residential School system. A horrific chapter on the "murdered and missing Indigenous Women", the thousands of women who have lost their lives and disappeared, makes it clear that much more needs to be done. Indeed the racism at the heart of the Canadian state continues to be exposed by the lack of action on this.

The weakness of the trade union movement, Palmer argues, means that there is a tendency for the trade unions to respond to the current economic situation, including the pressures from the Trump administration, with nationalist answers rather than class struggle. As the labour movement lines up behind national demands, "working people and their interests were hitched to the cart of Canadian capital and the state". 

Palmer's book is, however, written in the spirit of the need to rebuild a new and radical left, that can shift the narrative. If the urgent need is there, so the crisis creates the potential. As Palmer says Canadian capitalism, like that around the world, is "increasingly riddled with contradictions and challenges". Understanding the history of Canada, and the interplay between class struggle, anti-colonial and Indigenous resistance, and updating that for the 21st century is an urgent need.

The final volume of such a series will be distorted by the narrowing of the writer's lens. If the first two books covered sweeping periods of history, this later book covers shorter periods in more detail. This reflects both the author's and the readers' experiences. Inevitably it means that things are missed. For instance I thought it would have been helpful to have more detail on the growth of Canadian fossil capitalism and the politics and economics of (say) the Tar Sands. But this is a minor complaint against a powerful book and a wonderful series. Everyone who is interested in the fight for liberation and the struggle against capitalism today ought to read these three books.

If Bryan D. Palmer's book teaches us anything it is that the history of Canada shows that ordinary people have frequently resisted oppression and exploitation, and they have often done so in the most militant and inspiring ways. The knowledge of that history will be immeasurably helpful in rebuilding the sort of radical left we need to face the challenges of 21st century capitalism. Palmer is owed a huge vote of thanks.

Related Reviews

Palmer - Colonialism & Capitalism: Canada's Origins 1500-1890
Palmer - Capitalism & Colonialism: The Making of Modern Canada 1890-1960

Sinclair Lewis - Elmer Gantry

Sinclair Lewis' Elmer Gantry is a delightfully cynical black comedy. It is also a book very much for our times. The eponymous Elmer Gantry is a happy go lucky young man, brought up in a stifling religious home, but now at college he's a partying, womanising and drinking law student. Realising that becoming a lawyer is hard work, and will likely keep him poor, he decides on a different course of action. Confounding his critics - the hardworking and deeply religious students around him - he heads to a Baptist College where he begins his planned ascent through religious bureacracy to make his fortune, strip the gullible masses from their wealth and sleep with as many attractive parishioners as possible.

When it was first published Elmer Gantry scandalised the good Christian folk of the United States. Small wonder really. Gantry is a lying, swindling, blackard. He is not afraid to dump his friends, betray his flock, and commit adultery. Indeed he happily changes churches, not out of actually religious fervour, but because he sees better chances of enriching himself. Gantry isn't lazy. He's perfectly happy to seep himself in religious works to better understand his place. He just doesn't believe any of it.

Perhaps his worst habit is the way his infatuation with young women leads eventually to boredeom and betrayal - and then abandonment. The only case where this bucks the trend is his encounter with the evangelist Sharon Falconer, to whom he seems genuinely committed - at least to the extent of only creaming off some of the cash, and only having one brief affair. 

Gantry's rise and fall, then rise and further rise, is the story of an obsessive and clever swindler. But it is also the story of hypocritical 1920s America when the church was happy to sell love, truth and future happiness for a decent enough donation in the collecting tray. The only difference Lewis says, is that Gantry is the most extroverted at it. He's also very good, and ambitious. The rest of the Church hate him but his gilded tongue, superb sermonising and his ability to cover his tracks usually gets him through.

HG Wells apparently wrote an article on America based in part on Lewis' descriptions in this book. While Wells probably ought to have done more first hand research, Elmer Gantry feels very much like its based on real people. Indeed Lewis lived with various preachers, went to multiple religious services on a daily basis for months, to research the background to the book. One of those whom he lived with was a preacher determined to show Lewis that his portrayal of priests and preachers in early books was deeply inaccurate. One can only imagine how he felt (and sermonised) about what Lewis did with his hospitality.

It is alleged that Lewis wrote much of the last chapters of the book in a deep alcoholic hole. If that's true than I didn't really find the book any worse for it. Indeed, the ending spoke very much to 21st century America. Lewis is a fine observer of the dirt beneath America's surface.

Bryan D. Palmer - Capitalism & Colonialism: The Making of Modern Canada 1890-1960

Volume two of Bryan D. Palmer's trilogy on the history of Canada begins where the previous book left off. But, as Palmer immediately notes, Canada on the cusp of the twentieth century "was remarkably different than the disparate collection of British North American colonies" that had come out of the 17th century. Canada was now a fully fledged capitalist nation, with economic crises to prove it, and part of a global capitalist economy. Capitalism was "most assiduously cultivated in the open yeaes of the twentieth century" writes Palmer. The country "took off" economically in the period before 1914 and by every aspect of measurement the economy was growing. New technologies were introduced, whole new industries appeared, and class relations were "reconfigured".

The opening chapters explore this growth in different sectors. This was a period of class struggle from below and above, and one of consolidation of the economy. Palmer writes:

The layers of colonialism in which Canada was richly enveloped grew increasingly complicated, with capital imports rising to £100 million annually in 1911-1913. British capital supplied three-quarters of this influx... securing the loyalty of the Canadian chartered banks"... On the eve of the First World War, 60 per cent of Canada's government debt was held abroad, and servicing this borrowing consumed one-quarter of the country's export earnings.

At the same time the Canadian government was continuing and expanding its colonial control at home. New laws oppressed Indigenous people still further, and "Ottawa also worked diligently to extend the domination of the Dominion into the last frontier of capitalist exansion, an enclve of the preservation of Indigenous ways of life: the resource-rch North." Finally, "francophone Quebec" was further subordinated within the Confederation. There were also significant examples of workers' resistance and organisation in this period. But the key line of development was the increased centralisation and consolidation of capital.

While there were significant economic differences through the Canadian regions, there was a general growth in large corporations such as steel manufacturing, coal and industrial farming. But the wealth from these accrued to a small minority of the population. Hard work by miners, industrial workers and farmers drove capital accumulation, but they were not its main beneficiaries. Take farming. Palmer explains that on the prairies:

It was wheat... that proved the major engine of capital accumulation... the single most important crop enticing homesteaders. They settled on some ninety-nine million acres of land between 1870 and 1927, successfully patenting 58.2 million acres by 1930. Settlers bought more land than they acquired for free through federally overseen pre-emptions, with fifty million acres purchased from the railways, Hudson's Bayt Company and other agents... These lands, traditionally the territory of various First Nations, sustained the wheat economy of the Canadian west. Harvests of the prairies proved a juggernaut of capital formation for the railways and their beneficiaries, the monopolistic grain elevator owners who controlled the sales and distribution of what. Powerful interests like these bled farmers dry.

Such growth required massive numbers of workers. Between 1901 and 1931 Canada's population nearly doubled. Urban centres like Toronto and Vancouver grew at astonishing rates. The immigrants who came arrived from enormously different areas, and experienced appalling racism.

The prejudice and poverty faced by these recent arrivals disfigured Canada, the intolerance they confronted paralleling the marginalisation and discriminatory treatment accorded the country's original colonised peoples. Confederation's economic margins now included First Nations, Métis, Inuit, Québécois, the labouring poor, the immigrant masses, most Maritimers and wage-earning women, whose pay in the 1920s averaged 54-60 per cent that of males.

These immigrants had arrived hopeful of owning and farming land. The Canadian government "extolled the virues of European peasants as the kind of human material best suited to the settlement of the West" but most lacked the experience and resources and instead usually "ended up as itinerant harvesers... peripatetic railroad navvies...miners; or the lowest-paid labourers in industrial factories." 

There was, inevitably, a racist dimension too. These immigrants "became the racialised 'other', scapegoated in the social construction of a Canada htat had to be constantly remade in the image of a British Dominion championed as 'White, forever'."

One of the great strengths of Palmer's histories of Canada is his subtle exploration of the relationship between capital and colonisation. Thus he traces the impacts of capitalism's expansion on the First Nations, Métis and Innuit peoples and its impact on the workers. The growth of new industry, followed by the industrial decline and depopulation of the Maritimes or the expansion of capital and resource extraction into the North and the displacement and genocidal policies against the Innuit. These are handled with care and thought, and never once does Palmer dimminish the horror of what happened to First Nations, the oppressed and exploited. Canada's colonism wasn't just internally. It was central to expansion of the British Empire into the global south: "Sugar refineries in Canada, for instance, were at the centre of capital's expansion in the 1890-1914 years". Imports of sugar from Asia transformed the people and economies of places like Fiji. These were now part of the "sphere of influence" that Canadian capital cultivated. Canadian banks were at the forefront of expansion into South America and the Carribean. 

The middle part of the book covers the Great Depression and the horror experienced by working people in the 1930s, it also covers a great period of resistance. Massive strikes, in particular in the "year of rebellion" 1937, saw millions of workers fighting back over pay and conditions. This also saw an expression electorally with the growth of the Communist Party and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. Palmer traces the evolution of these groups, and their intersection, well. For those on the Canadian left this is probably a well trod path. For most of us outside of Canada it will be very new material. 

Canadian capitalism did not recover until World War Two. Palmer accurately describes this as "capital's saviour". But production of food, weapons and ammunition drove the Canadian economy to new heights, bringing new opportunities for women workers'. Economically it was also transformative. US capitalism spent "nearly $12 billion" in Canada during the war, which "helped keep the wartime domestic economy huming and further solidified the Dominion's integratin into a new continentalism, driven by rising American demand". Uranium mining in Canada also meant the country, and its government, became closely linked to the US atomic bomb programme. Coming out of the War the Canadian government needed to implement a Welfare State - much like in Britain, fear of further workers' rebellion fuelled the belief in reforms to buy off the potential threat. But it is striking to learn that so racist was the Canadian state that the original plans for Welfare did not even feature the poorest Canadian people - the First Nations.

By the end of the period, "obvious voices of anti-capitalism" and anti-colonialism were "quieted" and "in retreat". the left was weaker and the post-war consensous seemed to have gained for the trade union movement "much of what it had long sought to attain". But the 1960s were to be a "decade of tumultuous change and oppositional turmoil" and would see Indigenous movements, those of the oppressed and organised workers, and the left, grow and pose radical challenges. But, argues Palmer, these changes were all rooted in a the longer trajectory of colonialism and capitalism boom and slump across Canada.

This book tells a wonderful, if frustrating, story. In the face of a vicious, settler, state power, working and Indigenous people were sacrified to the interests of capital. Resistance was almost continuous. But with the exception of the period after World War One and the later 1930s, rebellion did not fundamentally challenge capital. Palmer tells the story of the few brave radicals who led that fight, and more emerges in the final period in the third volume. But this reader felt that there were too many missed opportunities for radical resistance.

I enjoyed volume two almost as much as Palmer's first volume. I was surprised at the ommission of two things. One was any mention of the experience of Canadian troops during World War One. I had expected that the slaughter in the trenches would have had a political impact back home, but this was not discussed. Secondly I was surprised that there was little discussion of far-right and Nazi politics in Canada in the 1930s. Was there such a movement like much of the rest of the world? Was there anti-fascist resistance? These omissions aside, Palmer's sweeping history is excellent.

Related Reviews

Palmer - Colonialism & Capitalism: Canada's Origins 1500-1890
Palmer - Capitalism, Colonialism & Crises: The Remaking of Modern Canada 1960-2025

Nikolai Bukharin - Imperialism and World Economy

Three great works of Marxism mark the transition from Marx and Engels' work on economics into the modern era. They are Lenin's Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Nikolai Bukharin's Imperialism and World Economy and Rosa Luxemburg's Accumulation of Capital. Each of them was written to attempt to engage with a changing world - one where Great Powers had divided up the world and were clashing with each other for redivision of the spoils.

Most revolutionary socialists have read Lenin's contribution to this. Fewer have read Bukharin's and Luxemburg's. Bukharin's work is a more detailed work that has many overlaps with Lenin's book but develops the points further. It also has an interesting history. Because it was lost to the censor and only recovered after the revolution it is published with an additional chapter that reflects the post-revolutionary hope of the era. Bukharin, as with Lenin, elegantly paints a picture of a transformed world where everything is in flux:

In various ways there thus takes place the trasnfusion of capital from one "national" sphere into the other; there grows the intertwining of "national capitals"; there proceeds the "internationalisation" of capitalism. Capital flows into foreign factories and mines, plantations and railroads, steamship lines and banks; it grows in volume; it sends part of the surplus value "home" where it may begin an independent movement; it accumulates the other part; it wides over and over again the spehere of its application; it creates an ever thickening network of international interdependence.

He continues:

We thus see that the growth of the world economic process having as its basis the growth of productive forces, not only calls forth an intensification of production relations among various countries, not only widens and deepens general capitalist interrelations, but also calls to life new economic formations ,new economiv forms unknown to the past epochs in the history of capitalist development.

These new formations, syndicates and cartels and other such capitalist constructs, signal the emergence of a new order. Bukharin argues that the old world economy could be compared to the structure of a national economy until the late 19th century, but the new economy is marked by the "considerable narrowing [of] the hitherto unhampered 'free play of economic forces'." National economies are now geared towards the international economy, but the global economy is much more than a sum of national economies it is a everchanging, interacting and evolving system. Even if competition was abolished, he argues, in a national economy, there would still be crises because of the international economy.

This, Bukharin argues, is also true of war. War "in capitalist society" is an example of competition, extended to the world economy. "War is an immanent law of a society producing goods under the pressure of the blind laws of a spontaneously developing world market". But, he argues, not one of a sociaet that consciously regulates the process of production and distribution - i.e. socialism.

For Bukharin it is the newness of 20th century capitalism that is remarkable. He describes the changes as "radical" and it is driven by finance capital which has reached "colossal proportions". Banking capital "appears in the role of an organiser of industry". But it is unplanned and disorganised. The growth of the productive forces "clashes with the antagonistic form of distribution and with the disproportion between various parts of capitalist production". It is a profoundly unstable world, without planning or equilibnrium, "hence terrific crises and precipitous changes".

For those reading Imperialism and World Economy in the era of Trump it is worth noting Bukharin's comments on tariffs. These are "partial sorties". In the long run he says, "conflict is solved by the interrelation of... force of arms".

Some of the book takes up political questions. Bukharin points out that pacifists cannot solve war - because of its centrality to the logic of capital. Less convincing his Bukharin's insistance, along with Lenin, that there is an aristocracy of labour in the rich countries that is bought off by the surplus from imperialism. Not least because there is no satisfactory explanation of how this process happens, and the capitalists have never knowingly handed over cash to their workers - however important they are - without serious class struggle.

Also Bukharin fails to foresee what might happen when capitalism has further developed in colonial countries. How could new imperialisms, or sub imperialisms, evolve and challenge the powerful nations. This is a process I would argue that plays a central role in modern political economy. The emergence of China as a new imperialist power is one example. But so are the regional imperialist interests of countries like Israel and Iran. Their interplay with global politics is shaping the modern world.

Overall though, this is a must read for a deeper grasp of the history and development of world capitalism and of Marxist thought on imperialism. Tragically a book written for the early 20th century that is still massively relevant to today.

Related Reviews

Lenin - Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism
Callinicos - Imperialism and Global Political Economy

Christopher Clark - Revolutionary Spring: Fighting for a New World 1848-1849

In January 1848, Francesco Bagnasco, a radical Scilian who believed in the "universal regeneration" of society in the face of inequality, unemployment and hunger, spoke:

The time of useless prayers has passed. The protests, the pleas, the peaceful demonstrations were useless. Fedinand II viewed it all with contempt; and as for us, a free people reduced to chains and misery, will it take us yet longer to regain our legitimate rights? To arms, children of Sicily, to arms! The strength of all is omnipotent: the union of peoples is the downfall of kings. On 12 January, at dawn, the glorious epoch of universal regeneration will begin.

Such sentiments arose in almost every part of Europe in the years 1848-1849. They represented a huge desire for fundamental change. On the one hand their were the poverty stricken masses in town and country, for whom life was unbearable. On the other, there were a newly emergent class of wealthly, liberal bourgeois people for whom the existing order was preventing them engaging in, and expressing, their real desires - the pursuit of wealth. Bagnasco, represented the latter, a class for whom the world was changing, but not fast enough. Liberals imagined a different way of organising society. As Christopher Clark says:

Liberals liked markets. In an era when markets are dominated by mighty global entities like Google and Amazon, it is hard to recapture the subversive magic that still attached to the idea of the market in this era. Markets were not manorial or feudal, they did not represent royal power, they were not ecclesiastical. They were a space of exchange in which individuals could operate - in theory at least - on a more or less level playing field, outside the prescriptions of an arbitary authority.

The quest for a bourgeois capitalist order, was also one that threatened to shatter apart the older order, on every level in which it existed. While the ideas of the bourgeois class were radical, so were those of the lower orders and these ideas radicalised as the masses began to move into action against their rulers. One of the patterns that Christopher Clark describes, which was almost universal to the European revolutions of 1848, was the way in which the initial euphoria of revolution, the unity of classes against common enemies, deteriorated as their contradictory interests emerged from the struggle. One example comes from Paris. There the initial revolution had instituted a Provisional Government for France. The make up of the new assembly was a "bitter disappointment" to the left, and it set about writing a new constitution:

Odilon Barrot, who was a member of the Constitutional Committee, later recalled how the 'fear of social war' left its mark on the drafting of the constitution: ' the agitation that had suffused this society, the exasperation of some, the anxiety of others, did not permit the calm, the coolness of mind required for such a task;. He could not forget, he wrote, how in a the room where the commission was deliberating, the sounds of civil strife could be heard through the windows.

Clarke notes that in this constitution the writers' objective was "not to project the revolution forward into the future, but t capiture it in something cool and inert, conserve a liberal understanding of what had been achieved and thereby prevent further radicalisation."

Clarke's analysis here is not new. The gap between the liberal bourgeoisie's interests and those of the masses was plain at the time, and has much been commentated on. Marx and Engels noted this often in their writing, and indeed - to relate this work to my own recent interests, the whole purpose of Engels' work on the German Peasants' War was to explore why the bourgeosie in Germany in 1848 was so cowardly through contrast with 1525.

There were other factors too. The lack of radical leadership from below often undermined the revolutionary movements. Clark notes how mass demonstrations in Berlin were curtailed by the use of the popular radical orator Friedrich Wilhelm Held, who was chosen at a crucial moment to speak to a revolutionary protest:

Held announced that the demonstration would retrace its steps... The tension in the crowd dissipated. To countermand Held's announcement was impossible - his grip on the crowd too strong. The demonstration was over; people began to drift away. Looking back, Paul Boerner felt that this was the moment when the radical movement in Berlain missed its appointment with history.

Crucailly Clark argues, Held's own motivations matter little: "Whether Held was an agent of some kind or simply changed his mind at the last moment is not important. He was a crucial link in the sequence of that day's events, a link made of capricious and changeable stuff. That a man like him should have found himself in such a position on 14 May 1848 tells us something about the absence of a cohesive radical leadership cadre".

Despite the failure of more strident and throughgoing revolutionary change, 1848 did make massive changes. A space was opened up for capitalist development that pushed aside the older order. Clarke notes that these changes "were a direct consequence of the revolutions. They were only possible because conservative political groups that had previously opposed or resisted them had been pushed away from the centre of power." 

Marxists often point to the way that the capitalist class pretend that revolution played no part in their conquest of power. Clark's book demonstrates the opposite. The centrality of mass revolution to their victory. He also celebrates the role of the masses - without whom the bourgeoise could not make a revolution, but who were universally feared and reviled by the same class. In his own discussion of revolution and counter-revolution in France in 1848, Karl Marx concluded: 

Thus the solution is postponed; the status quo continued; one faction of the party of Order compromised, weakened, made unworkable by the other; the repression of the common enemy, the mass of the nation, extended and exhausted — until the economic relations themselves have again reached the point of development where a new explosion blows into the air all these squabbling parties with their constitutional republic.

These revolutions then, in many senses, remain unfinished, at least for the "mass of the nation". Clarke is right to conclude his book by drawing parallels with more recent, contemporary struggles, and revolutions. In reading of 1848, for instance, it is impossible not to visualise the very similar looking scenes that saw the masses take over squares in cities throughout the Middle East in 2011 - not least Cairo's Tahrir Square or Sudan in 2019.

But, as Charlie Kimber notes in his own review of this superb book, "one key difference from 1848 is that our rulers no longer face a working class that is being born. Instead, they face a global one whose members and dependants make up the majority of society."

The 1848 revolutions remade the world for capitalism. But they also began the process by which the working class became a class for itself.

Clarke's book is extraordinary. Its breadth and attention to detail are phenomenal. More importantly it is extremely readable, and avoids trying to tell the story nation by nation. Instead Clark constructs the story by reference to multiple places, drawing out similarities and differences. He thus avoids repetition and boring the reader. There are plenty of exciting, inspiring moments and Clark has an eye for the unusual and the comic. It is a sweeping history. Clark avoids just focusing on the familiar and talks about the whole geographical breadth of the continent, in all the varied forms revolution manifested. He never fails to neglect wider implications of the struggle - the question of women and gender roles, the emancipationary conclusions that the revolutions had for enslaved people and the differences between town and country. All these aspects deserve a review of their own. Above all Revolutionary Spring is a reminder of what we can achieve when millions of us join together.

Related Reviews

Saville - The Consolidation of the Capitalist State
Mehring - Absolutism & Revolution in Germany 1525-1848
Marx - The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Davidson - How Revolutionary were the Bourgeois Revolutions
Leipold - Citizen Marx: Republicanism & the formation of Karl Marx's social and political thought
Greene - Communist Insurgent: Blanqui's Politics of Revolution

R.F. Kuang - Katabasis

*** Spoilers ***

Apparently R.F. Kuang explained the origins of her latest novel Katabasis on noting that "academia is hell" and extending this to what if academia was hell. In this sense it is a development of what has come to be known as "Dark Academia", a subset of fantasy novels that deal in horrors, violence and threat in universities. The dark side of academia.

Katabasis begins like many a fantasy novel. The hero, Alice Law, is studying magic under Doctor Jacob Grimes. Grimes is a magical genius. But also a control freak, self obsessed, egotistical monster and a bully. He steals ideas, makes promises that never come to fruition and has a reputation as a someone who is impossible to work for. He is also a serial sexual assaulter, and a key plot point is that Alice has been his victim.

Grimes' two star students, Alice and Peter Murdoch have a difficult relationship with their tutor. Alice is desperate for acknowledgement and praise, Peter is wounded by how he has been betrayed by Grimes. Their own friendship has fallen about as a result of misunderstandings, and lack of communication. Both of them seek revenge and in doing so Grimes is killed in a magical accident while trying to test an idea he has stolen from Peter.

Feeling guilty, but not trusting each other, Alice and Peter head to Hell, to the realm of the dead, to try and rescue Grimes. If nothing else they both need to graduate.

The bulk of the book is set in Hell, with Alice and Peter trying to track down Grimes' shade and return him. They proceed through the various levels that have previously been documented by earlier visitors like Dante, debating philosophical questions as they proceed. Hell is academia. It's outer layers are mirrors of undergraduate life and its inner realms are reflections of the hell of trying to publish, gain recognition and stay ahead.

Katabasis is a strange fantasy. It has been described as a love story. But in many ways it is more a story of revenge. It is also a critical, if somewhat oblique, comment on academia in general, and Oxbridge in particular. Grimes' is the worst you can imagine in an academic, and Alice's tragic experiences with him, and the failures of those around him, are portrayed well. As is the final reckoning.

Conor Kerr - Prairie Edge

Grey Ginther and Ezzy Desjarlais are two Métis cousins living in an old trailer near Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Their days are a mix of drinking and endless card games; listless and dull. Grey is a disillusioned environmental and indigenous rights activist, fed up of the corporate NGO lobbyists, and the endless treadmill of well meaning white activists whose trajectory from college to NGO jobs or academia means they never actually engage in meaningful and lasting action. Ezzy is her friend, who survived a succession of foster homes, poverty and state failure - desperately looking for love and hope, yet failing at ever stage.

Grey comes up with a cunning plan. To ramp up activism needs something profoundly different. Rather than protest, they need direct action, and remembering how the bison were taken from indigenous and Métis people she vows to return them to their rightful home - the plains. Even if there are towns and cities in their way. Grey and Ezzy borrow a truck, steal a car and suddenly the news is full of video of bison roaming where they should not. "Let them stay" and "land back" become the chants and demands of citizens.

The bison plan is the back drop to this tale, but the story is really about how the crushing reality of the Canadian state oppresses and exploits people like Ezzy and Grey at every turn. There's little way out, and sooner or later something will (and does) go terribly wrong with the plan. 

The police turn up - all fat and aggressive. To them Métis and indigenous peoples are simply guilty. 

This is a deeply painful novel. It is not without hope - but that lies in the way that ordinary people stand up for each other and resist oppression. Community and family are the only defence again a brutal state, drugs and alcohol, poverty and addiction. But the novel really asks - is this enough? Or can we rewild Canada and other capitalist states to build something different.

Crystal Gail Fraser & Sara Komarnisky - Talk Treaty to Me: Understanding the basics of treaties and land in Canada

I picked up Talk Treaty to Me at a left-wing bookshop in Halifax, Nova Scotia, as part of my reading during a trip to Canada this month. Indigenous struggles over land, social and ecological issues have come to the forefront frequently in the last few decades as social movements by Indigenous people have fought to defend and extend their rights, and these have meshed with wider environmental and social struggles. The First Nations people of what is now called Canada have made a global impact with some of their struggles, but there have also been bitter right-wing back lashes against them - including the racist attacks on Mik'maq fishers in Nova Scotia - documented in a book I reviewed recently Contested Waters.

Talk Treaty to Me is not a pure history of the First Nations. Rather, as the title suggests, this is a book that is designed to educate Canadians about the history of the treaties that shape contemporary debates about First Nations' social and political issues. But history cannot be ignored. The history of treaties in Canada includes the history of treaties made between Indigenous people before European settlers arrived. This is important because sometimes there's a crude suggestion that First Nations people could not understand treaties because they had no concept of them. It is true that Europeans arrived with completely different understandings of land ownership and use, commodity exchange and culture. But First Nations people always made treatments. The authors quote Elder Danny Musquq, of the Keeseekoose First Nation:

All of the agreements they [First Nations] have had between one another as peoples and as nations were always based on [land] use - on how they were going to use that land. And.. when... I say... the use of that land, we had agreements between one another, hunting territories that we shared, trapping lands that we shared, gathering lands that we shared, medicinal lands that we shared [sacred lands,... lands that were designated for the shelter and safety of all people.

Crucially these treaties were different to those made with Settlers. One historian Leanne Beasamosake Simpson has described a treaty between two First Nations, which "did not involve interfering with one anothers' sovereignty as nations. It represented harmony and interconnection, as bot parties were to be responsible for taking care of the dish.

The "dish" referenced here, refers to the "Dish with One Spoon" concept, an understanding about how to share land and resources, equitably and sustainable. The authors of this book comment that this agreement is "vastly different from how Canada acts as a treaty partner today".

In my review of Sheldon Krasowski's book No Surrender: The land remains Indigenous I described some of the ways that treaties made by European settlers and the British government were constructed on falsehoods and deliberate subterfuge. Krasowski's book is referred to by Fraser and Komarnisky several times, and they also cover similar ground. These are stories of racism, lies, and deliberate attempts to sideline and undermined Indigenous communities and Nations and take away their land and resources. 

In particular the authors write that the 1876 Indian Act 

Was created to control and oppress Indigenous Peoples. As a mechanism of assimilation and genocide, it controlled movements on and off reserve via a pass systeml it criminalised cultural ceremonies and celebrations; it enfranchised First Nations persons who earned a postsecondary education or joined the miltary; it altered the identities of First Nations women and their children; and it imposed a system of governance for Indigenous Nations radically difrerent from their own systems. The Indian Act, by every means, was designed to obliterate Indigenous cultures, traditions, languages and governance.

This process continued into the 20th century, the authors write about how "Indigenous northerners were not consulted even though their Lands were being used, sold, and exploited by both the federal and territorial governments." A foundational moment for contemporary relations between Settlers and First Nations came in the 1970s when the first modern treaties were signed. This was a period when Indigenous movements were reasserting themselves and fighting to extend their rights at the same time as pushing the boundaries of existing treaties. "At their best", the authors say, more recent treaties, "provide frameworks for the management of Lands, wildlife, resources, and programs and services and ultimately a plan for how Indigenous Peoples and non-Indigenous peoples and our governments will relate to each other." The authors encourage readers living in Canada to find out what treaties cover the areas they live in to understand how their own role in taking these forward.

The problem is that Treaties don't always match up with the interest of government and big business. For instance, the British Crown and then the Canadian state signed treaties that said one thing, but allowed them to institute highly repressive and genocidal policies. This is because First Nations peoples might be talking about "treaty rights" at the same time that the government is thinking about "rule of law". The Indian Act, in many places, "violated the spirit and intent of treaties" causing appalling damage and harm to individuals and communties. Explains that the authors explore include the "Indian Residential Schools" which devastated the lives of young people in an attempt to systematically destroy Indigenous cultures and assimilate people into Settler society. Thousands of lives were lost and there are ongoing generational traumas for many people today. 

These issues matter however not just because individuals and communities need restitution, support and reconcilation. But because solving the legacy of Treaties and the Indian Act and what has happened to First Nations peoples is not just about creating new treaties. What is needed are completely new relations to develop that are based on breaking existing social, political and economic relations. One key example of this is the "Land Back" movement. This means, the authors say, starting a "process of regaining Indigenous sovereignty and political authority over Indigenous lands". Ultimately it means "getting Lands back under the jurisdication of Indigenous people".

Such questions are crucial - but they are a challenge. Increasingly activists and socialists from Settler backgrounds are recognising the need for "Land Back" demands and similar changes. One of the fascinating things about reading Talk Treaty to Me as someone who comes from a former colonial power, but doesn't live in Canada, is how the authors take time to recognise that non-Indigenous readers might find the ideas and language challenging. But this is not just about language. It is also about recognising that settler colonial powers like Canada cannot give "Land Back" without undermining their own right to exist. This is why, as the authors point out, "Canada is more concerned about protecting its statehood, soverignty, and economy than about implementing human rights". Giving "Land Back" or offering proper restitution for past and present genocidal policies would be a challenge to corporations that want to extract resources and wealth from land and people, and undermine Canada's very existance. As the Mohammed Mamdani has written of the US in the context of a discussion on Settler Colonialism:

Engaging with the native question would require questioning the ethics and the politics of the very constitution of the United States of America. It would require rethinking and reconsidering the very political project called the USA. Indeed, it  would call into question the self proclaimed anticolonial identity of the US.

Similar the existence of the Canadian state itself is incompatible with offering genuine restitution to First Nations peoples. Thus the project becomes a revolutionary one - and one that out of necessity needs the unity of Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in the struggle against Canada and capitalism. In this process new Treaties will be written, but they will be done in very different contexts, which see all the signaturies fully empowered.

Crystal Gail Fraser's and Sara Komarnisky's book is aimed at a Canadian audience, but it covers material that is relevant to everyone who is fighting for social and environmental justice. It is deliberately challenging to its readers and takes on difficult questions. But it is an engaging and important read. I'm glad I was able to read it during my time visiting Canada and engaging with activists here.

Related Reviews

Krasowski - No Surrender: The land remains Indigenous
Englert - Settler Colonialism: An Introduction
Dunbar-Ortiz - Not A Nation of Immigrants
Mamdani - Neither Settler Nor Native: The making and unmaking of permanent minorities

Ken Follett - A Column of Fire

A Column of Fire is the third book in the Kingsbridge series - Ken Follett's incredible popular novels set around the mythical Cathedral town of Kingsbridge. One of the reasons for their popularity in my opinion is that they focus on the ordinary people of the town, artisans, traders, workers and servants, and their relationships and working life. The first novel, which centred on the building of the cathedral, is particular good in its portrayal of the people who created the building and those who supported them.

A Column of Fire still has Kingsbridge at its heart, and the cathedral is the centrepiece of one or two key events, but this time the book is very different. If the first two novels placed Kingsbridge's inhabitants at the centre of the story around which historical events took place, this one places one or two inhabitants of Kingsbridge, and their families, at the heart of historical events.

This means that the novels scope is much larger, to the detriment of the characters. The novel's principle focus is the life of Ned Willard, whose family are prosperous merchants. At the start of the novel he is returning to Kingsbridge from learning the family business in Antwerp, and is desperately in love with Margery, the daughter of the local Earl. Their romance is stopped by the dynasty building ambitions of her father, and Ned has to leave Kingsbridge to become a courtier working in the service of the new Queen, Elizabeth.

Further tensions arise as Margery is a devout Catholic and Ned is Protestant. Ken Follett here is able to construct the complicated religious conflicts of the era around the tensions between the two. Ned is present at many of the key events of this era, including the Saint Bartholemew massacre, the Armada and so on. While the reason for this is of course his service as a spy for Elizabeth, it's on occasion a little implausible.

The networks of Catholics trying to overthrow Elizabeth are only part of the story. Follett has included other aspects of the period - including the slave trade and international commerce with Spain and the New World. Some of Ned's family become incredibly wealthy, and peripheral characters, such as former slaves are shown to also become rich - after they are liberated. While Follett doesn't downplay the violence of slavery, its a little too much in the background. 

Ned's central role in key historical events allows him to become the modern reader's viewpoint. He's liberal and kind, bemoaning the violence of both sides, while desperately trying to avoid England collapsing into Civil War.

A Column of Fire is an enjoyable read - like the other books its packed with cliff-hangers, sex and violence. It's a decent holiday read and should be enjoyed on that basis.

Related Reviews

Follett - World Without End
Follett - The Pillars of the Earth

Donald A. Bowman - My Battle of the Atlantic

The corvette convoy escort ships from World War II have gained a remarkable amount of fame for a small ship that was designed to fill a military gap. As the submarine war against Allied shipping escalated in the first years of the war, convoy protection became an urgent requirement. Yet no ships existed to fill this role, and navies had little experience, despite similar events in the First War. The corvette was created to fill the gap, and almost 300 were built through the war on both sides of the Atlantic. 

The corvette is famous because it is the centerpiece of Nicholas Monsarsat's novel The Cruel Sea, and the subsequent film. Monsarrat also wrote a biographical work on his experience on the little ships. Monsarrat served in the Royal Navy, but corvettes were also used by the Canadian Navy as a key part of their commitment to the Allied war effort. Donald A. Bowman served on HMCS Edmunston escorting convoys to and fro across the dangerous Atlantic. This short biographical account of his experiences begins with his early training, and follows him through the war until HMCS Edmunston is decommissioned. Bowman was on the ship for almost its entire service life. The ship thus takes on a personality of its own.

Bowman's experiences are typical of many servicement. Hours of cold, discomfort and boredom, interpersed with moments of terror. But like any other disperate group of people forced together to work as a team, he also recounts the occasional fun and laughter. Interestingly though, he makes the point, that he never saw an enemy - alive or dead - through the war. Notably though he points out that this is the reason he volunteered. By doing so he could chose the service to be in, and this meant he could avoid the army and having to bayonet people or live in trenches. The shadow of World War One hung over his generation.

Bowman's book is very candid. He describes his sweet and lengthy marriage, and his honeymoon,cut short by the demands of the Navy, after just a couple of days. But readers will really want to know about the time on the ship. This is usually discomfort. The ships had "an open bridge... watchkeepers exposed to the weather" food was terrible:

By the fifth day at sea, bread was mouldy. The galley could not cope with baking bread for ninety-six crew. Hardtack biscuits were availale, but found few takers. A menu staple was "British Bangers" otherwise known as sausages.

The ship was crowded. Ninety-six crew in a space intended for sixty-five. And it was shared by lots of rats and cockroaches.

The corvette HMCS Sackville in Halifax, Nova Scotia

There's plenty here about life at sea. Refuelling, anti-submarine tactics and the stress of convoys at night. If that was it there would still be much to reward those interested in Naval warfare. But Bowman is equally candid about the stress and stress of life on the ship. His final chapters detail the suffering he experienced from what is now called PTSD. Googling Bowman's life beyond the book you can see the stories he tells here and how they continue to affect him. This is especially true of Charlie, a fellow trainee, he met after the war whose life was destroyed by his experiences in the war. Bowman's trauma comes in part from the loss of confidence he says he experienced as a result of taking off the uniform, which removed his sense of place in society. He also suffered terribly from the after affects of brain and hearing caused by the explosions from the "hedgehog" anti-submarine weapon. But it is actually the horror of what Charlie experienced that remains with Bowman, and every Remembrance Day "the futility of war visit my mind all day and late into the night, as I remember Charlie". Those looking for a sanitised miltiary adventure will not find it here, and nor should they.

This short book is thus much more than a memoir. It's an attempt to understand the war from the perspective of someone who was only a small cog. It's fascinating and when I visit the last corvette, HMCS Sackville in a few days time, I hope to see HMCS Edmunston's flag that Donald A. Bowman donated in memory of his friends and comrades.

Related Reviews

Rayner - Escort
Monsarrat - Three Corvettes
Monsarrat - The Cruel Sea
Woodman - The Real Cruel Sea: The Merchant Navy in the Battle of the Atlantic 1939-1943
Lund & Ludlam - PQ17: Convoy to Hell

Hossam El-Hamalawy - Counter-Revolution in Egypt: Sisi's new republic

The Egyptian Revolution of 2011, was perhaps the important event of the 'Arab Spring'. It was a seminal moment for me, and a generation of activists who saw Revolution on the TV and social media on a nightly basis. I, like many other activists, followed events closely. The fall of the dictator Hosni Mubarak was a joyous day.

Hossam El-Hamalawy was an activist, socialist and journalist during those days. This, his analysis of the Egyptian state's evolution and the change and continuity it experienced during and after the Revolution is based on close study of events and documents, including leaked papers, and interviews. Some of it, including references to the imprisonment of activists and events during the Revolution is based on his own experiences.

Friedrich Engels' described the state as a collection of "special bodies of armed men" whose position seeks to defend the status quo, and expand capital's interests. This is nowhere more clear than in Egypt. In the decades before the Revolution the Egypt state had a huge, and overlapping, network of organisations, police, army, informers, spies and agents who watched, punished and restricted anyone expressing dissent. This included trade unionists, socialists, human rights campaigners and Muslim activists who questioned or challenged the existing setup. At the same time, Mubarak was a master at using the state against itself to prevent any threat to his position- giving its leading figures overlapping mandates, turning favourites against each other, bolstering one organisation against another, carefully manipulating the system to protect his position.

In February 2011 the Egyptian military deposed Mubarak. They did this under pressure from below and to try and limit the revolution. El-Hamalawy argues that we cannot see this event as part of a disguised plot by the generals to give themselves power through a coup even thoug this is what happened in July 2013 when Sisi took power from th elected President Morsi. El-Hamalawy argues:

While it is impossible to know every general's thinking, informed accounts suggest the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces aimed for a quick end to the uprising, a return to normality and troop withdrawl. One general explained the priority was to 'restrain the unrelenting revolutionary impulse, so that it does not smite the state's military, security, and economic apparatuses.

Crucially, says El-Hamalawy, "the generals were eager to transfer power to an elected [civilian] government as long as their interests were protected." This is further confirmed by a US State Department report that said the Army preferred "after the Mubarak experience" a situation like in Turkey, were "the army mainstains its status... but stays in its barracks under a democratic order"and is the "guarantor of democracy".

No doubt the military wanted a say in events. But they were not, at that stage, trying to dominate. What changed? Here the importance is the old saying that "Revolution is not an event, but a process". Morsi, who replaced Mubarak, was unable to hold back or end the Revolution. In fact, as El-Hamalawy says, his election became a focus for further radical demands. 

The coup that Sisi led in 2013 was a response to the ongoing revolution, not the revolution per se. But it was, from the generals point of view, a necessary one. El-Hamalawy writes that "by the Spring of 2013, the country had become ungovernable". Industrial disputes were escalating and the capitalist class were "abandoning" Morsi after ongoing "mass protests". It was, a classic moment when the working classes were no longer willing to be governed in the older way, and the ruling classes were unable to govern in the old way.

Post coup Egypt demonstrates a strengthening of the state in both its size and its scope. The military is more powerful, and has managed to displace other forces such as the police as the chief instrument of control. The military have also extended their roots further into Egyptian society. Military capitalism, writes El-Hamalawy, "expanded massively in scale and scope after the coup":

From about $300 million in the early 1980s, the post-coup military's civilian involvement - via debt-financed projects run directly by the army or in partnership with local and international capial - rose to $200 billion over five years... this equalled two-thirds of GDP. Civilian employment in such ventures also grew from about two million in December 2016 to five million by September 2019.

He continues:

The repressive apparatus generals, with the military at the centre, have become predatory elites who sometimes cooperate with the civilian bourgeoisie but also seize their capital by force. 

Repression, punishment and violence against dissenters has reached new levels. The Egyptian state is building some of the largest prisons on the planet, and modelling them on US prisons. Sisi's government has placed itself at the heart of every Egyptian cultural and political institution - from soap operas to mosque sermons. It is difficult to be optimistic about the situation in Egypt in the short term, though El-Hamalawy finds evidence for the "slow revival of dissent" and occasional strikes and protests. More importantly he notes that Eygptian society is also under enormous strain - not least from the global context of Trump and Israel's War on Iran and genocide against the politicians. These tensions are reflected within the state itself and El-Hamalawy notes that "cracks in authoritarian security coalitions rarely stay small".

Any hope we have for a renewed mass struggle will lie in the growth of confidence from below and the breaking open of disagreement within the state. For those studying Egypt Hossam El-Hamalawy's book is a must read. Despite at times the detail being a little overwhelming the book gives a clear picture of the way that Sisi's current government rests on a seemingly powerful, but inherently unstable, state-machine. There's much here on the specifics of Egypt. But the analysis will be useful for everyone trying to understand tensions in other states globally.

Related Reviews

Shenker - The Egyptians: A Radical Story
Alexander & Bassiouny - Bread, Freedom, Social Justice: Workers & the Egyptian Revolution
Alexander - 'Revolution is the Choice of the People': Crisis & Revolt in the Middle East & North Africa
El-Mahdi & Marfleet - Egypt: The Moment of Change
Ayeb & Bush - Food Insecurity & Revolution in the Middle East & North Africa

John Foot - Blood and Power: The rise and fall of Italian fascism

The rise of global far-right and fascist parties and movements is something of great concern to working people. It is, perhaps, the most dangerous time that the left has faced since the 1930s. While fascists and right-wingers have evolved and changed, as this penetrating article by Richard Donnelly shows, their core purpose remains intact. They aim for the complete destruction of democratic structures and the left, while using radical, right-wing, rhetoric to gain support through a critique of the system.

In organising to stop the right activists should learn from the past. Two strands of fascism dominated European politics. One of these was Hitler's Nazis in Germany. The other was Mussolini's fascists in Italy. The latter is not discussed as often as the former, so John Foot's Blood and Power is an important read.  Foot begins:

Italy invented fascism. Out of the chaos of the First World War, in which nearly 600,00 Italian soldiers lost their lives, a new movement emerged which preached hatred for politicians and love for the fatherland. Fascists embraced violence, both in their language and on their streets.

The violence was needed. In the early 1920s the myriad of local fascist leaders out of whome Mussolini was to emerge was the sole leader faced a powerful foe - the working class movement and mass socialist organisations. As Foot says, the fascists were "overshadowed" by a "socialism uprising" at the end of World War One. One cannot downplay the scale or significance of the Italian workers' movement in this phase. The opening chapters of Foot's book are a sweeping, but powerful and inspiring account of a working class in open and confident confrontation with the state.

While Italian fascism was nationalist and racist, and later embraced antisemitism, it's core ideology was one of counter-revolution and patriotism. It was the perceived threat (even after the struggle had receded) from the workers' movement that gave Mussolini's fascists a chance to organise and a ideology to coalesce around. Italian fascism cannot be understood without seeing the centrality of counter-revolutionary politics. In 1914, for instance, the northern Italian city of Ravenna had been the centre of a major workers' revolt against World War One. The story itself is inspiring. But in July 1922 it was the scene of a brutal counter-revolutionary strike by the fascists:

Thousands of armed blackshirts descended on the city... The 'march on Ravenna' was carried out like a military invasion. It took place out in the open, during the day, and was accompanised by a selective purge - the victims being socialists, republicans and trade unionists... At least nine people were killed in Ravenna alone... but the attacks ranged across a vast area.

By the summer in Ravenna and Cremona, Ferrara, Bologna and countless other places, the fascists squads were in control, and "the state, police prefects, army and carrabinieri were all reduced to the role of onlookers, and often took sides, providing logistical assistance to the violent gangs".

The speed at which fascist gangs did defeat democracy and the left is breathtaking. In city after city, town after town, village after village fascist gangs smashed, murdered and broke local and regional organisations of trade unions and socialists, democratic organisations and elected bodies. It was systematic. One thing that should be recognised by all activists today, is that democratic organisation in any form - whether it was local councils or national government, was in no way a barrier to the fascists. Their deployment of extreme violence at the slightest provocation (and usually with no provocation at all) saw democratic institutions fall almost instantly. It seems incredible, but democracy as a set of ideas and institutions could not (and often did not try) to stop fascism. Foot writes:

Local democratic institutions fell, one by one, to fascist pressure. Forty [fascist] councillors had been elected to the provincial administration of Cremona... in May 1922. But this formal, democratic procedure was completely ignored by the local fascists. They did not recognise elections. In that same month, local fascist leader... Roberto Farinacci, insisted that he be allowed to speak as the 'forty-first councillor'. Farinacci had not even been a candidate in the elections... When asked who had elected him, he replied, 'I elected mysefl'. It was the last meeting of that provincial council.

He concludes "Election results and democracy had come up against fascist violence and the latter had won".

This begs the question, could the fascists have been stopped. There's no doubt that the left could and done so. Tom Behan's remarkable book The Resistable Rise of Mussolini shows how this happed in one location. The key was left unity and militant mass mobilisation. Certainly there was resistance and the fascists were held back temporarily in places. But there was not enough. One problem was clearly that the left (in a broad sense) did not understand that everyone was threatened. Too many liberals and moderates thought the fascists were only targetting the revolutionary left, but "moderates were often targeted in the same way, and with even more violence, than those on the far left". Tragically, in a number of key cases, such as when the fascists took out the left stronghold Bologna in November 1920, the leader of the radical left, the Mayor Ercole Bucco, backed down from armed defence, despite having a massive majority in the city. Foot concludes:

Bucco's actions that night also seemed to confirm the overall historical judgement on maximalism. They talked the talk, but were incapable of organising a real revolution. Local fascists on the other hand, were emboldened. 

Time and again the left was to fail. In January 1921 the Socialist Party left split, and the Italian Communist Party walked out. Foot regards this as a mistake. He says that "at a time of mass fascist violence directed against socialists, the main political organisations... divided into two, weakened any sense of opposition or even defence". This was, of course, a dangerous time. The trick would have been if the Communist Party had been able to respond in a way that would have built left unity in an anti-fascist alliance while maintaining independence. This failed to happen, and probably it was too late after January 1921. Had the CP prepared the ground by organising like this, the split could have been much more productive in terms of anti-fascist mobilisations. I was reminded of Clara Zetkin's analysis of fascism in Italy:

Fascism... is not at all the revenge of the bourgeoisie against the militant uprising of the proletariat. In historical terms, viewed objectively, fascism arrives much more as punishment because the proletariat has not carried and driven forward the revolution that began in Russia.  

At the start of this review I mentioned the ideology of Italian fascism. It is notable that while the fascists were appalling racists, many Jewish people were members. Mussolini's alliance with Hitler and his adoption of a vicious antisemitism shocked them. Italian fascism was not more benign than in Germany. Jewish people were hounded, murdered, arrested and lost everything. Many were sent to Concentration Camps, particularly later in the war. Foot's analysis of fascism in power is an important counter to those today who argue that Mussolini was not as vicious. The Italian fascist state was a violent, repressive and murderous entity - and its violence extended into Africa with the occupation of Ethiopia.

Nonetheless fascism in Italy was weak. It seemed extremely powerful, but the contradictions of economic and imperilaist policies undermined its position. By the time it had entered the war, the longer anti-fascist and anti-war traditions of the working class were beginning to make themselves felt. When Mussolini's regime eventually fell, it was a surprisingly quick series of events. This period, and the subsequent German take over of Italy, is well told by Foot.

Foot's book concludes with an analysis of Italian fascism in the context of contemporary Italian politics. It is clear that the failure of the Italian state to properly come to terms with, or confront, the legacy of Italian fascism - including its failure to prosecute or challenge many of its key figures - has left a belief that Mussolini's time was "wonderful". Foot's expose reminds us that it was for a few people - those who were frightened by the rise of a powerful workers' movement. But the reality for millions was the opposite. 

It is an excellent (and extremely readable) account of a period of history we ought to study more. I would have liked more accounts of anti-fascist resistance and further analysis of how the left could have stopped fascism. Nonetheless this is a very useful read.

Related Reviews

Zetkin - Fighting Fascism: How to struggle and how to win
Paxton - The Anatomy of Fascism
Trotsky - The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany
Sparrow - Fascists Among Us: Online hate and the Christchurch Massacre