John Vaillant - Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World

I write this review in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Milton's devastation of parts of Florida. Milton followed Helene, just a week or so earlier. Both hurricanes cut a swathe through parts of North America, leaving death and destruction in their paths. John Vaillant's recent book Fire Weather is subtitled a "true story from a hotter world" and the story of hurricanes Milton and Helene could have shared that subtitle. They were both made worse by the hotter world we now live on. Scientists and environmentalists have longed warned about the feedback mechanisms of a warmer planet. As the world gets warmer, climate change further encourages the warming of the world. This cycle accelerates the speed of warming. The catastrophes that accompany a hotter planet come thicker and faster.

Fire Weather deals with just one such catastrophe, but it is an emblematic and enlightening one, the destruction of Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada in 2016. There's a grim feedback mechanism in play here, for McMurray is at the heart of fossil fuel capitalism. It was for many years a boomtown driven by the wealth of the region's tar sands. The bitumen deposits here are difficult to turn into profitable commodities. But when the price of oil is high enough there are bonanzas to be made. McMurray was a town built on bonanza. 

Vaillant traces the history of McMurray, and indeed, the history of industrial capitalism's obsession with oil. Its a fascinating story that shows the way that capitalism embedded nature, and its resources, into a global commodity system. McMurray started off as an isolated place where animal skins and fur were trapped and sold, before morphing into an (isolated) 21st century oil city. Weaved in with this history is a longer story of humanity's relationship with fire. Combustion, burning, fire are essential for humans. We need fire for travel, heating and food. But fire is also intrinsic to nature. The boreal forests that surround McMurray for tens of thousands of square miles need fire to renew and propagate. Humans think of such fires as a threat that needs to be fought - an invading army that has to be countered with traps, weapons and occasional retreat (the retreats are more common now). But the fires that engulf Alberta are part of that ecological system, its just that (unfortunately for humanity) they are more frequent, more intense and more common in a warming world.

Vaillant explains fire to us. But his use of metaphor is interesting. Describing how wildfires crossover ("when the ambient temperature in degrees Celsisus exceeds the relative humidity as a percentage") and become an exponentially faster, more agile, more dangerous fire, Vaillant says that "if unregulated free market cpaitalism were a chemical reaction, it would be a wildfire in crossover conditions". He continues "Alberta's bitumen industry follows a similar growth pattern, with market forces standing in for weather."

Capitalism is the problem here. It drives an endless accumulation of wealth for the sake of accumulation, based on an insastiable burning of natural resources. It is a wildfire of production, and as it grows it sucks in more nature, more humanity and expels material that pollutes and destroys. The irony of McMurray is that it was destroyed by its own forces of production, or rather the consequences of the usage of the use-values it produced. In fact Vaillant's book is really about the intersection of urban fossil fuel capitalism and wildfire. As he writes:

Combustive energy had drawn people to For McMurray in steadily increasing numbers over the course of a century, and combustive energy was driving them out again, en masse, in a single afternoon... the exodus of May 3 [2016] was the largest, most rapid displacement of people due to fire in North American history. It took the form of an unbroken ribbon of vehicles crawling in ranks, like army ants, northward and southward out of the city while fire raged along the highway, in some cases right up to the breakdown lanes.

With Hurricane Milton in mind, as well as Vaillants accounts of the escape from McMurray, it might be that the defining images of 21st century global warming in the Global North will be endless streams of SUVs and trucks driving away from environmental disasters. Climate refugees from the Global South are met with barbed wires and closed borders. In the Global North the Ford F-150s were given a much friendlier welcome. In one way the Fort McMurray fire was a very unusual climate disaster. Unusual circumstances combined with a rare urban environment: 

Hundredth-percentile fire weather conditions during the hottest, driest May in recorded history, following a two-year drought in a sudden city filled with twenty-five thousands petroleum-infused boxes and surrounded by millions of dessicated trees.

But as Vaillant points out, "this is the nature of twenty-first-century WUI [Wildland Urban Interface] fire." Once in a lifetime events are becoming once in a decade events. Soon they'll be more common. 

If Vaillant had only written the story of McMurray and the urban-wildfire environment it would have been a fine book. But at the heart of the story is that of McMurray's population. His account of the desperate evacuation, the struggle of the authorities to adjust to rapidly changing and unprecedented fire condition and the battle of the firefighters itself is a remarkable account of the reality of disaster in modern neoliberal society.

It is the story of a city that is really unable to deal with the disaster, not because of incompetence, or lack of training, or even lack of resources (something that most people in the world facing disaster will not have), but because there was no real understanding that a disaster on this scale could even happen. In many ways McMurray was better prepared than most cities for fire, because it could draw on the resources and fire-fighting experience provided by the oil industry itself. But the failure to control the fire happened because it was on a scale far beyond imagination. In fact clear is that traditional fire fighting doesn't work in the in the 21st century WUI, and new methods of fire control need to be learnt. Interestingly it seems that allowing firefighters and workers to make decisions based on events and knowledge, rather than centralied leadership, is one lesson to be learnt from these massive fires.

Reading Vaillant's account of the breakdown of control I was reminded of those highly popular 1970s brick sized novels epitomised by Arthur Hailey. In those wonderful disaster stories, tiny mistakes and failures would accumulate into a giant failure. In McMurray there were plenty of such failures that combined to help the fire reach epidemic proprtions, but there was no lack of bravery. In fact the stories of the firefighters and indeed ordinary workers who fought day after day to save their city are inspiring. One wonders what is left for them. Vaillant quotes one Radio director who said afterward, "imagine a city - thousands of people - all living in everyday harmony, each and every one with some aspect of PTSD."

There's going to be more. Vaillant writes that "hotter and drier now, the atmosphere has been tilted in fire's favour". As the hammer of global warming drives more and more hurricanes, wildfires, heat waves and floods against the anvil of capitalism's fractured and divided society, there will be endless death and destruction. There will also be plenty of PTSD for the survivors. But the bravery, industry and inventiveness of the workers who fought the fire in McMurray, and who rebuilt the town, are the potential force for change. John Vaillant concludes his superb book, by arguing for a different vision to that offered by fossil fuel capitalism - "devoting our energy and creativity to regeneration and renewal, rather than combustion and consumption". Let's hope that these are the lessons of Fort McMurray, and hurricanes Helene and Milton.

Related Reviews

Nikiforuk - Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent
Dawson - Extreme Cities

Sparrow - Crimes Against Nature: Capitalism and Global Heating
Angus - Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the crisis of the Earth System
Malm - Fossil Capital

John Grisham - The Runaway Jury

It has been many years since I read a John Grisham novel. But back in the late 1990s and early 2000s I had several favourites. I was a particular fan of The Runaway Jury which I read several times. It is the story of a jury in a case where the widow of a smoker who died from cancer is suing a large tobacco corporation. It is a high stakes trial. If the plaintiff wins, there'll be immediate damages of millions of dollars. The risks for the multinationals though are much bigger - the potential for tens of thousands of further lawsuits.

In order to try and best skew the jury towards a favourable verdict, both sides of lawyers have teams trying to understand who the jurors are. The most unfavourable came be removed at jury selection - the most likely to give big monetary damages for instance. The others might be swayed by more nefarious and illegal means. Bribes, pressure on family members, or other acts. Its highly illegal, though possibly quite realistic, and Grisham has a brilliant cast of utterly amoral and immoral characters trying to win the case for big tobacco, and having access to huge slush funds to make it happen. 

But then there's Nick and Marlee. Nick is on the jury, and no one seems to know anything about him. But he seems to be able to steer the jury. Influencing them to get proper food and cutlry. To get day trips to break the monotony of sequestration and to even act collectively seemingly at random. How is he doing this? Marlee approaches Fitch, an unpleasant fixer for the tobacco companies, with a generous offer. For plenty of renumeration she'll ensure Nick delivers the verdict.

It is a fantastic, if unbelievable, setup. Grisham tells it well though, and creates a real tension by the end. The reader must know which way the results going to go, but how will Nick and Marlee get away with it. There's a fantastic tension between Fitch and Marlee that Grisham nicely develops. It borders on lust on Fitch's part. Not in a sexual way, but because Marlee offers something that he, a veteran of dozens of such trials, can only dream of - the ability to dictate the outcome of a jury's decision.

The Runaway Jury has everything. A humiliated multinational. A cast of unpleasant characters who usually get their comupance, and a nice win for the underdogs. Despite it feeling dated in places - not least because the technological references are now very dated - this is a fun, satisfying read. Particularly for those of us whose lives have been blighted in one way or the other by the tobacco companies.

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Len Deighton - The Ipcress File

Len Deighton's The Ipcress File came out in 1962, the first in a series about an anonymous spy who was to be christened Harry Palmer in the films made of the books. Palmer is an interesting character, a direct reposte to James Bond. Spycraft in these novels is not glamorous or sexy, its dirty, dull and bureaucratic. Deighton's version of the British spy system is stuffed full of upper-class ex-servicemen who are well out of their depth, fighting paperwork battles for funding and obsessing over expenditure. His anonymous hero is a working class former soldier who invades their world, delights in insubordination, and has a "to hell with it" attitude to spying and paperwork. It makes for a fun mix.

Expectations of Deighton's book might depend on whether or not you have seen the film. If you have, then it is difficult to shake off Michael Caine's role. If you haven't then you are treated to a first person view of a Cold War London that is emerging from its era of rationing and austerity. The Dockers are always on strike. The coffee is always cold and inadequate and everything is glum and a bit seedy. It is the depiction of this that makes the film of Ipcress File so entertaining. But the book lays it on much harder.

If I have one criticism it is that the first person structure of the novel makes it quite hard to follow an intricate plot. Despite it's relatively short length, this is not a novel to rush through. The sparcity of prose means that missing a line means plot points can be lost quite quickly. Rather like some of Raymond Chandler's work, I am still a little unsure of the fate of one of the characters!

The Ipcress File is a fantastic 1960s story full of double-crosses, betrayal and international machinations. Combined with frustrations about spies who haven't filled in their expense forms. Highly enjoyable!

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Verlaine Stoner McDonald - The Red Corner: The Rise & Fall of Communism in Northeastern Montana

If you think of the politics of rural America, you probably think of it in terms of conservativism. A mixture of rugged individualistic politics, cynicism about government and conservative political leanings. There's a lot of truth to this. In 2016, 62 percent of the US rural electorate voted for Trump. This reflected the way that Trump's political movement had become the outlet for general discontent at the way small town America had been systematically undermined by successive governments, both Democrat and Republican, and forgotten by an economic system that fails ordinary people in the interest of profits for the rich. In my review of Robert Wuthnow's book The Left Behind, I noted that addressing the concerns of rural working Americans meant developing social movements "whose starting point is that working people, in rural areas and cities, have more in common than their differences."

So on a recent trip to Montana in the US, I was enormously interested to discover, that there is very much a radical tradition in rural America. The radicalism of Montana's urban areas is well known. The insurgent trade union movement of Butte remains a source of pride for working people in that town, and is well documented. But I was particularly excited to learn of Montana's "Red Corner", Sheridan County, which in the early decades of the 20th century, had an extensive radical movement which in the later part of the era, saw Communist candidates being elected to important positions in the County and significant support for left, and communist, politics.

This is a surprising revelation and Verlaine Stoner McDonald's book on the subject The Red Corner, is worth digging out for those who want to know more. McDonald begins with the context. Sheridan County, a remote part of the world even by Montana's standards is buttressed on one edge by Canada and on another by North Dakota. In the late 1800s it was settled by European farmers, many of whom came from Scandinavia, and brought with them left ideas and traditions. McDonald describes the "unforgiving climate", the lawlessness and the difficulties in living on the plains, and argues that this made the population "especially receptive" to the growing "farmers' movement of the 1910s and 1920s":

The movements' message, grounded in the persuasive strategies of other farming and mining organisations in America, would be skilfully manipulated by local political leaders, setting the stage for the astonishing rise of Communism in Sheridan County.

I will return to this comment later. But it is worth dwelling for a moment on the ideas that underpinned the support for such a movement. McDonald explains the,

northeastern Montana farmers' movement, the culture in which it arose, and the types of rhetorical appeals it would use were well grounded in traditional and very widely helf beliefs about the role of farmers in American life. Additionally, the Sheridan County Communists had the advantage of building on a foundation of home-grown populism and labour activism that had been established elsewhere on the Great Plains in the nineteenth century... In the early days of the Republic, American culture was rife with notions about what it meant to farm and to be a farmer, expressed in images that would undergird and enliven the message of the Communist Party in Montana a century and a half later.

These "Agrarian Myth" behind these politics, which celebrated the central role of the farmer to humanity, and specifically the United States, was taken up by a series of farmers' organisations in Montana, and the Plains, "devoted to education, reform, and protest in the rural Midwest and West". There was plenty to protest about and organise around; the cost of living, the price of crops and the realities of farming life on the prairie. The National Grange, one of a number of such organisations, founded in 1867, promoted 

an image of farmers as important and knowledgeable (or at least educable) members of the economic system who were standing up to assert their rights. Grangers also would not hesitate to identify those who would deprive farmers of their rights. In this effort the Grange made occasional use of appeals that would become commonplace in farmer activism, that is, pitting the producers against nonproducers. As banners in an 1873 Grange Independence Day parade asserted: "This organisation is opposed to railroad steals, salary steals, bank steals, and every other form of thieving by which the farmers and laboring classes are robbed of the legitimate fruits of their labour."

It is easy to see how politics like these could evolve into the socialist politics of the 20th century. McDonald notes how the growth of global radical politics in the early years of the new century was mirrored in the United States and Montana. Anti-war, left and socialist politics grew massively in the years before World War One, and mushroomed following the Russian Revolution in 1917. These had their echo in rural Montana where it became focused around the radical farmers' newspaper The Producers News, edited by Charles E. Taylor.

Taylor is a central figure in McDonald's book and this is not the place to retell the whole story. His newspaper became enormously influential, connected as it was to the farmers' movement the Nonpartisan League. The League was accomplished at linking political concerns to mass agitation. Organising meetings, parades and even picnics. It drew in large numbers to its events, and some of its speakers became incredibly well known. Taylor however, developed The Producers News into something more than the mouthpiece of the movement. He filled it with popular columns and editorials, injected plenty of gossip and satire, and was not afraid of mocking and insulting almost everyone else. It was a potent mix and as Taylor's own politics developed, the newspaper carried him with it. As the League morphed into the Farmer-Labour Party, Taylor was twice elected to the Montana senate.

The influence of the left, and the Communists, in Sheridan was extraordinary. As McDonald summarises, at one point 

"Reds" occupied every elected office in the county and had sent a covert Communist to Helena as their state senator for two terms. Local youths could attend camps where they were actively indoctrinated with Communist ideals, and the radicals' newspaper flourished... In [1932], former sheriff Rodney Salisbury was on the ballot in an attempt to become the nation's first Communist governor.

Taylor seems like a fascinating figure, hardworking and exuberant, with a talent for seizing the moment. He was also a socialist, and eventual member of the Communist Party. The US Communist Party had grown, in difficult conditions, out of a complicated merger from a number of different socialist organisations. It was very much a Party that was reliant on its links to the Soviet Union, and while its activists where principled and talented, its limited cadre and the hostile conditions of US politics doomed it. The CPUSA was crude and lacked nuance - it's vision of socialism was far from the emancipatory project that celebrated activism and rebellion from below. This is particularly obvious in its treatment of The Producers News. As the Russian Revolution receded into memory and revolution failed to break through in Western Europe, the leaders of the Soviet Union switched to an isolationist, State Capitalist approach to politics. This was far from the mass radical involvement that characterised Russian socialism in the era of Lenin, and it had its impact in the USA. The Producers News became increasingly a tool to celebrate the Soviet Union and its alleged achievements. Rightwing critics of the News in its rival the Plentywood Herald "acknowledging that farmers in northeastern Montana were enduring difficult times, noted that their suffering was small in comparison with that of Russian workers." 

Increasingly it seems the News was not articulating the anger of its readers, and especially while being edited by official CPUSA members while Taylor was engaged in other projects, becoming a mouthpiece of crude Soviet dogma. It was not a winning combination. The near libelous satire of Taylors' newspaper worked because it could combine local news and gossip, with frustration and anger from below. It connected to the masses, even in the absence of mass movements. The CPs model could not achieve this, and the newspaper went into decline - even when it was converted into the CPs national farmers' newspaper. Along with the decline of the Producers News went the decline of Communist influence in Sheridan County.

This is the extraordinary story that McDonald tells of the rise and fall of Sheridan's Communists. In it, she very much argues that it was the result of a some very specific circumstances. In particular she argues that without leaders like Charles Taylor and the skilled manipulation by left leaders, the movement would never have taken off. I found myself a little unconvinced by these arguments. 

It seemed to me that there was (and is) plenty for farmers in Montana to be angry about, and the left was able to articulate this in a way that was relatively unprecedented in Sheridan County. This shouldn't surprise, after all the question of crop prices, rent, taxes and evictions were screwing many workers and farmers into the ground. Unfortunately what The Red Corner doesn't really give the reader a sense of is the social movements around these issues. McDonald tends to focus on the internecine conflicts between Charles Taylor and his rivals, the arguments between the newspapers that so gripped many Montana readers or the debates within the Communist Party leadership. But there are only hints about the movements against evictions, protests and strikes. It seems to me that there is much more to this story. Radical politics can only take a hold if there is a basis for it, and I was disappointed that there wasn't more given over to the experience of farmers and workers in Sheridan County in the period. 

To give two examples. In 1918, six thousand farmers and their families came to a rally, picnic and festival, in part to hear Jeannette Rankin speak, the first woman to serve in Congress. In 1921 socialist and anti-war activist Kate Richard O'Hare, spoke to "thousands... in a cow pasture under the 'burning hot sun for two hours and ten minutes'." The venue forced on the audience because the assembly all was cancelled. If thousands of people were coming to hear radical parliamentarians and anti-war activists speak, there must have been more of a groundswell radical movement. But we read little of it here.

Verlaine Stoner McDonald's research focuses on "communication" and how activists used communication to connect with voters and the masses. There is no doubt that the role of The Producers News was significant, perhaps exemplary, in this regard. But there is a danger in framing the growth of Communism in Sheridan County, Montana solely through the lens of communication. It means that we focus on the activities of a few individuals, and ignore or downplay the activities of the people at the bottom. It would have been fascinating to learn more about what the angry Sheridan farmers and workers' were actually doing. Nonetheless this is a worthwhile read that gives a real sense of how working people everywhere can become engaged with radical ideas. Trump need not be triumphant again in rural America!

One final point that might only be of interest to fellow Trotskyist readers of this blog. Many of Sheridan's activists did carry on the struggle. A few of them ended up breaking with the Communist Party, and becoming activists in the American Socialist Workers' Party. It seems that the experience of the CPUSA, even in rural Montana, meant that some activists were prepared to carry on the struggle for a genuine socialist politics.

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NoViolet Bulawayo - Glory

What a remarkable work Glory is. A brilliant satrical novel about post-colonial struggles, the way that the hopes and dreams of liberation struggles can be diverted and destroyed, and how that despair can turn into revolution. But perhaps most remarkable is how NoViolet Bulawayo tells the story.

George Orwell's famous political satire on the Russian Revolution, Animal Farm, tells the story using animals in a human world. Bulawayo tells her account of post-colonial Jidada with a cast of animals. Jidada is a fictional country, but the story is based on the struggles in Zimbabwe, where a movement to overthrow British rule was turned into the dictatorship of Mugabe. Glory focuses on a coup that overthrows the aged Old Horse ruler which, instead of bringing the freedom and hope the animals long for, delivers another brutal dictatorship. It is a parable of the 2017 Zimbabwe coup which saw the Old Horse Mugabe overthrown and Emmerson Mnangagwa installed as the new President.

Bulawayo tells the story through her animals. Their personalities in part dictated by the animals they are. The brave exile Destiny returning to Jidada is a goat, the vicious paramilitary regime enforcers are all nasty dogs. The masses range from chickens and kittens to pigs and sheep. It is two donkeys who raise a banner "Sisters of the Disappeared" at a government rally before the regime disappears them. 

But the novel is much more than the adult fairy tale that this setup suggests. Bulawayo experiments with different methods of telling the story. There are twitter threads, songs and chants. It is a briliant way to capture the atmosphere of both Zimbabwe and the mood on the streets. I was particularly struck by the snippets of conversation from the food queues. They range from sullen acceptance of the situation, to naive hope in the regime to growing radicalism. Like any developing revolution there's a mix of contradicatory moods and ideas. Bulawayo captures this better than any contemporary novel I've read.

It is no surprise that Bulawayo acknowledges all the "Jidadas of the world, clamouring for freedom" and says "A luta continua". While the novel finishes on the glory of the successful revolution, its climax is the revolution itself, as the dogs tear off their uniforms, throw down their weapons and break from the regime. The voices from the police, as they realise they are outnumbered by a combatative and confident mass movement, is perhaps the best depiction of the state's armed bodies of men being broken in the midst of revolution I have ever read. The fact that NoViolet Bulawayo makes this book simultaneously achingly beautiful and painfully sad is a tribute to a fantastic novelist. It is a revolutionary classic.

John Bellamy Foster - The Dialectics of Ecology

What can philosophical preoccupations such as dialectics offer a world in the grip of a existential environmental crisis? For most commentators, indeed for most people concerned about the environment, the crisis is a technological one. Humans, the argument goes, use the wrong technologies, the wrong energy sources or use too much natural resources leading to depletion, exhaustion and pollution. The solution then is to change energy source, or use less. In this view, philosophical approaches have nothing to offer. 

John Bellamy Foster has been a leading figure in ecological Marxism for a quarter of a century. In those years he has helped reevaluate Marx's approach to nature - fostering the idea of enviornmental crisis being the inevitable consequence of a capitalist system based on capital accumulation. In his latest book Foster makes the case that dialectical thinking is a crucial insight that we inheret from thinkers like Marx and Engels, precisely because it explains why a technocratic approach is incorrect. Indeed, why such simple answers have failed to even slow the rate of environmental degradation. As he writes in the preface to this new work:

It is the method of materialist dialectics that is Marx and Engels's chief legacy to us today as we confront the twenty-first-century planetary emergency... the theoretical critique of our alienated world takes on practical significance as transformative praxis only by means of the concrete struggles carried out in relation to ever-changing historical conditions.

Foster explains that this is the point of The Dialectics of Ecology, "aimed at the integration of the ecological and political-economic critiques of capitalism with the conditions of the global struggle conceived in the broadest terms."

This reassertion of the importance of dialectics is crucial for Marxists and non-Marxists. As Foster explains Western Marxism greatest failure was to break from an understanding that placed nature's dialectics as a core part of its thinking. As he says, "Historical materialism was then robbed of any connection to nature as a force in itself, reducing the notion of materialism within Western Marxism simply to denaturalised political-economic relations". It is a poison that continues to plague some thinkers. One of the best things about this book, which develops further the theses that Foster wrote about in his Deutscher Prize winning book The Return of Nature, is the notion that Marxism after Marx and Engels was developed and explored by later thinkers. The chapter here on Engels and the Second Foundation of Marxism is an important restatement of this - exploring as it does how various thinkers fought to establish a genuine Marxism far from the promethean Stalinised version we are used to. But, as Foster points out, this is also important because it highlights how Marx and Engels' work was a collaborative and developing set of ideas - countering those, such as Kohei Saito, who argue for a fundamental break between the two thinkers. A genuine dialectics of ecology must recognise this rather than repeat the mistakes of the past.

Restating Marx's contribution to ecological thinking is worthwhile. To summarise Foster. Marx's materialist view of nature was in three parts, the universal metabolism of nature, the social metabolism of nature though human labour and the metabolic rigt that takes place when the social metabolism of nature is shattered by the dominant means of production. It is these insights, combined with Marx's understanding of the dynamic of the capitalist economy that makes his thoughts so important. 

It is a far clearer, and more useful dynamic, than that inhabited by too many "post Marxist" and "post Humanist" thinkers, who decouple economics from nature, from humanity and much more, "anything by a conception of material-senuous human beings, production, and practice".

Foster's clarity on these theoretical concepts is refreshing. Much of the book is an exploration of the importance of these core ideas to both a theoretical understanding of the society-nature relationship and to practical questions within ecological thinking. One of these, the capitalisation of nature, so called "Natural Capital" is exposed as the trick it is, further subordinating the natural world to the accumulation of wealth. 

Key chapters in the book look at China and its historical development. Foster argues that in China today, "ecological Marxism has contributed to the development not only of a powerful critique of contemporary environmental devastation but also to the promotion of ecological civilisation as an answer". Foster continues, "[t]he concept of ecological civilisation being implemented in China today is seen as representting a new, revolutionary, and transformative model of civilisation". 

The development of such a critique of capitalism and such a vision, should of course be welcomed. But the Chinese state will not be the force that can push through and implement the required change. I think Marxists should see China as being a form of capitalist economic organisation whose accumulation of wealth is driven primarily by the needs of its ruling class to grow, in the context of wider, global, imperialist relations. It is only this that can explain China's repression of internal dissent (including environmental protest) and the state's close work with multinational corporations to faciliate the exploitation of Chinese workers. 

This is not to disagree with Foster's point that Chinese philosophy and history have contributed to a greater awareness of ecological ideas in the context of materialist thinking.

As Foster has repeatedly made clear, the creation of a revolutionary socialist sustainable future will require a break with past social and economic organisation. A society based on the collective interests and activity of the "associated producers" can only be that if it is based on the maximum amount of democracy and workers' control of production from the bottom of society. Creating such as society remains the key task of Marxists today and requires the building, or rebuilding of revolutionary socialist organisation.

Key to developing an adequate transformative thinking for such organisations will be clarity of Marxist ideas. Once again John Bellamy Foster's book is an important contribution to such a task.

Related Reviews

Foster - Marx's Ecology: Materialism and Nature
Foster & Clark - The Robbery of Nature
Foster & Burkett - Marx and the Earth: An Anti-Critique
Foster, Clark & York - Critique of Intelligent Design
Foster - The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet
Foster - The Vulnerable Planet
Foster - Ecology Against Capitalism
Foster - The Return of Nature

Sophie Yeo - Nature's Ghosts: The world we lost and how to bring it back

Nature's Ghosts is an excellent study of the way that ecological systems are inseparable from human influence, which means that re-wilding cannot be a return to some imaginary, historic pristine nature. It's a great study and a recommended read. I am reviewing Sophie Yeo's book for another publication and I'll publish the link here when it's complete. In the meantime check out some of my related reviews below.

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Pearce - The New Wild: Why Invasive Species will be Nature's Salvation
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Frank Herbert - Dune

Denis Villeneuve's recent two part film of Frank Herbert's Dune novel have reawakened interest in the author's multi-volume work. Dune was a significant milestone in science fiction, a novel that linked aspects of the 1960s counter-culture, with emerging ideas around religion, ecology and resistance. When I first read the novel after seeing David Lynch's less successful film in 1984 it immediately became a favourite, though the sequels never grabbed me and I gave up half way through the third book. I did return to the original Dune, but hadn't read it for two decades when the new films were released. Time for a re-read I thought.

How does it hold up? In short I was impressed. The novel works on a number of levels, but hasn't dated to the extent that some science-fiction of the era has. One reason for this is that the novel is low in technological detail. Unlike the various film dramatization we don't see any space flight. The "ornithopters" are simply fast moving flying machines. Herbert's great technical detail is to make the Spice that is mined on Arrakis a drug essential to plotting space travel. But the lack of details means that the reader (and film maker) can fill in what they need.

But reading the book today it is notable how much it works as a story of religious inspired anti-imperialist resistance. There are two aspects to this. Firstly the influence of Middle Eastern ideas in general and Islam in particular to the religious of the Fremen. These indigenous inhabitants of Arakis, a sand world protecting the Spice, become in the contemporary mind, the Arab masses and oil. Watching the first of Villeneuve's films it was hard not to see this particularly in the treatment of the Fremen by the Harkonnes. The more morally just rule by the Duke Atreides, which still insists on the extraction of Spice simply becomes a liberal dose of imperialism, reflecting a world, or galaxy, that runs on oil/Spice.

Reading the book in the 1980s I probably missed the religious influences and references. I did not, of course, forget the sandworms. But re-reading Dune today what I noticed was the way the sandworms are only the tip of a complex ecological system. In fact the ecological orientation of the novels is one of its best aspects - contributing both to the world-building and the plot itself, particularly the position of Liet Kynes the imperial planetologist, whose role is sadly minimised in the films. Kynes' death is one of the great moments in the novel, reflecting as he does, on the world beneath.

Dune today stands in the shadow of the two most recent films. But it deserves to be read as a brilliant work of highly original science-fiction. It works best, I suspect, if read before heading to the cinema. But because it fleshes out a strange, but simultaneously highly recognizable galaxy, it is worth reading even if you've seen the movies.

Frank Herbert's brilliance in Dune was the create a world that seems endlessly familiar. But that's because it is ultimately a film about how imperialism relates to rare and essential resources. As such its a story for all our times.

Margaret Renn - Paul Foot: A Life in Politics

I came to radical politics too late to see Paul Foot's contribution to the fight for socialism and against injustice in person. By the time I joined the SWP in the early 1990s, Paul Foot was an occasional, but immensely anticipated speaker in Birmingham and Manchester where I was active. Having read Margaret Renn's immensely enjoyable biography I realise that I had not appreciated his importance to the SWP, the organisation which he devoted his life, and the wider left movements. 

Paul Foot became one the most best known champions of the underdog. From victims of injustice who were falsely imprisoned accused of crimes they did not do, to those who exposed government crimes and lies, to striking workers. He was also a brilliantly eloquent advocate for socialism, something he did for decade after decade, in newspapers, magazines, pamphlets and, most brilliantly, in meetings. Many comrades, in and out of the SWP, have their favourite Paul Foot talk - from the Peasants' Revolt, to Toussaint L'ouverture. His columns in national newspapers, particularly the Daily Mirror, were avidly read and enjoyed by tens of thousands and, no doubt, helped keep the flame of resistance flying during the dark days of the 1980s.

Foot's life might have been radically different. He came from a wealthy, establishment background. His father, Sir Hugh Foot, was a senior diplomat, including playing a central role in the Britain's governship of Palestine. Foot's family included Michael Foot, and Paul could likely have had a long and important career in Parliament had he been prepared to take that step.

But Foot did not take that path. Renn explores that early, formative period, at university. It is very clear that despite the conservative nature of those around him, Foot was able to find a layer of people whose liberal politics and desire to poke fun at the Establishment began to take him down a path toward radical ideas and politics. It is common, when discussing Foot's politics, to show the importance of these relationships to his development. Several of the people Foot met at Oxford became crucial to his life - including key figures at Private Eye. Encountering socialists and revolutionaries outside of this milleau also began to change his ideas - two of these, Harry McShane and Tony Cliff, were crucial in developing Foot's own Marxism.

But it is also clear that there is another factor. After leaving Oxford University, his early work as a journalist put him in touch with working people, and engagement that would shape his life. Foot began his journalism, and his engagement with revolutionary politics in the early 1960s. It was, however, the struggles of working people that capatured Foot's imagination. Foot, Renn tells, once told an audience about how reading Karl Marx's Civil War in France, "smashed all my exciting parliamentary ambitions". But these ideas only made sense when they came into contact with the struggles of workers, and through his involvement in the International Socialists, Foot saw those ideas become concrete. By the 1970s Foot had been involved in mass struggles - strikes by workers, anti-war protests, anti-nuclear movements and so on. Throughout his life he never forgot the lessons he learnt in this period. In particular, he celebrated the self-organisation and collective power through his work.

Had Foot only been an armchair socialist, reading and writing, he would likely have produced a number of important and interesting works. But it was the way he placed himself at the heart of struggles - both collective and individual, that drove his political life. Indeed, as Renn points out, it was these experiences that made his work so powerful. When writing about racism, Foot was able to,

draw on his experience of a strike at Courtauld's Red Scar plant in Preston, in the mid 1960s. The plant employed thousands of workers, including hundreds of Asian and Caribbean workers... The local union branch of the TGWU negotiated a 50 per cent increase in workload for a meagre 3 per cent increase in wages. All the workers rejected the deal. But on 24 May 1865, amangement of the section where the Asian and Caribbean workers were concenrtared announced the introduction of the speed-up. In response, the workers downed tools. 

But the union leaders in the "white" sections of the factory refused to call out their members in solidarity. One union official described the strike as "racial". When the black workers were defeated, management introduced the speed up to all workers. Racism had divided the workers, and the failure of the white workers to unite, had led to their collective defeat.

Such lessons, and much more successful strikes, inspired Foot throughout his life. Renn shows how he was never happier than when engaged with such action. As a result, workers loved him, were inspired by him, and became activists and socialists themselves. There's no doubt that Foot was central to the growth of the SWP and its development as an organisation that could punch far above the weight implied by its few thousand members.

That said I was surprised that Tony Cliff's life and role wasn't give a larger importance by Renn. Foot finished his introduction to Cliff's autobiography by noting "there are quite a few of us socialists in Britain over the past 40 years or so who thank our lucky stars that we had the chance to stand on his shoulders." While Renn tells us of some of the disagreements between the two, I would have liked more on how they developed political ideas together, how they organised and how they discussed. Likewise, other key socialists in the SWP have only passing mentions - Chris Harman and Duncan Hallas, for instance.

These individuals were important to Foot. But it is clear that Foot's politics arose in a dialectical engagement with working class action. The struggles of the 1960s, 70s and 80s, shaped Foot. Without them he would have been a very different person. But he was not just a passive recipient celebrating workers in some abstract way. He did everything he could to develop the confidence and combativity of the working class movement. Leftists often celebrate Foot's ability to popularise and recover forgotten radical figures such as the revolutoinary poet Shelley. But it is also true that he was central to making sure that anti-racist and pro-immigrant politics were part of the left's furniture - not something that was at all automatic. His fights against injustice, the Carl Bridgewater case, the injustice suffered by Colin Wallace, the case of James Hanratty, the Guildford 4 and Birmingham Six, are well known. They were part of his struggle for a better world. 

Of course Foot was more than a socialist and journalist. Margaret Renn also tells the story of his personal and family life. Some readers will find this aspect to the biography more interesting than others. But what comes across is a the story of a man who enjoyed life, and dedicated himself to trying to make sure that ordinary people got the best of the world. Today, the world cries out for justice and an end to capitalism. The arguments made by Paul Foot, with eloquence and passion in books like Why you Should be a Socialist still resonate and hold true today. So Margaret Renn's book celebrates his amazing life, and deserves to be read by a new generation of activists. Partly this is in the hope that a new generation of investigative journalists, bloggers and podcasters will learn from Foot the sort of persistence and politics that is needed to win. But the main reason is the hope that new generations engage with the type of socialism that Paul Foot spent his life struggling for: ideas that sees the working class as the revolutionary power that can emancipate humanity.

Related Reviews

Foot - The Vote
Foot - Red Shelley
Birchall - Tony Cliff: A Marxist for His Time