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Sunday, February 09, 2025

Brett Christophers - The Price is Wrong: Why capitalism won't save the planet

This deep dive into the problems with and limitations of the capitalist energy system is a powerful argument against the free market's role in making renewable energy and sustainable energy systems a reality. I am writing a review of The Price is Wrong for another online journal and will publish a link here when that's online.

In the meantime here's my 2019 review of Brett Christophers The New Enclosure on the privatisation of land.

Friday, February 07, 2025

Adrian Tchaikovsky - Alien Clay

*** Spoilers ***

Adrian Tchaikovsky is known for his big scale science fiction that often has unusual takes on alien planets and lifeforms - intelligent octopuses and city building spiders are just two. But Alien Clay is a novel about first contact with a very different form of alien ecology, and to further interest this reader, it is centred on a group of revolutionaries and radicals, albeit ones who have been captured and exiled to another planet.

The book opens with the arrival of Professor Arton Daghdev on the planet Kiln. He doesn't arrive as an explorerer of scientist ready to study the planet's unusual life, instead he is there as a political prisoner, exiled by the despotic Mandate to an interplanetary gulag. Forced labour on Kiln is brutal, and the environment unforgiving. But the workers are not digging for raw materials, they are aiding the project of unravelling Kiln's ecological and archaeological mysteries.

For Kiln is the site of ancient alien ruins. Among the chaotic and dangerous flora and fauna there remains no sign of the intelligence that surely must have built and inscribed the ruins with mysterious writing. The labourers, including Daghdev are set to clearing the jungle from the ruins and trying to understand the animal life. It is Daghdev's dream, one he is uniquely trained to do as a exo-biology scientist, but one fraught with danger. Some of this comes from the threat formed by the planet itself, but mostly it comes because he has to tackle a difficult contradiction. Mandate orthodoxy states that humans are the pinnacle of a neat evolutionary process. Alien intelligence that goes against this threatens to not just to turn science upsidedown, but to turn the Mandate's ideology inside out. This is why Daghdev had no idea of Kiln's reality before the arrival on the planet.

On the planet life is cheap. The brutal camp commandant whose need to enforce Mandate orthodoxy is only partly tempered by his desperation to understand Kiln as much as his prisoner scientists. He has plenty of scientists, for in a earlier life Daghdev was one of a growing revolutionary underground, and while Daghdev was one of that movement's leaders, he was also part of the intellectuals whose opposition to the Mandate found tiny ways to challenge the "ruling ideas" of society.

These twin strands of alien exploration and revolutionary action intertwine on Kiln and Tchaikovsky does a brilliant job of using his intellectually unorthodox main character to be the eyes and ears of the reader as we ourselves learn about the reality of Kiln. And what revelations await. Even with the spoiler tags at the start of this review I don't want to give too much away, but Tchaikovsky shows how thinking outside of the box is box helpful for both revolutionary leadership and for scientific enquiry. The dawning awareness of what Kiln really is makes for a great story: who is actually doing the "First Contact" between Kiln and humanity. Tchaikovsky unveils this brilliantly.

Unusually, I read this as an audiobook. Normally I prefer physical books, but Alien Clay worked as audio primarily because it is a first person narrative. In places this it is borderline horror, not just because of the alien life's impact on humans, but also because prison worlds and gulags are horror filled places. The commandant knows all too well that rule comes from the barrel of a gun. In his isolated, and numerically weak position, the Mandate's man on the ground, can only rule - ideologically and physically - by mimicking the rule of the state back home on Earth. As such, the novels ending is perhaps a metaphor for wider revolutionary change.

Alien Clay is one of the most unusual science fiction novels I have read in recent years. It could be written by someone prepared to push the boundaries of the science bit in science-fiction. But Adrian Tchaikovsky's obvious sympathy with radicals and rebels means that the revolutionary bits to the story feel remarkably real. As such, this will appeal to science fiction lovers. But it will also be enjoyed by those sitting on revolutionary committees everywhere who need a bit of a break from the actual struggle.

Jane Harper - Force of Nature

This entertaining, if unsatisfying, detective story is the second of Jane Harper's novels featuring the detective Aaron Falk. Unfortunately I haven't read the first, but this did not seem to effect my reading of the book at all. Force of Nature follows the aftermath of a corporate team building exercise gone wrong. Two groups of men and women are sent into the hills outside of Melbourne and expected to make their way to the end point. Despite it being a well managed event by organised guides, when the group of women finally make their way out, one person is missing and others have mysterious injuries.

The story is efficiently told, with Harper jumping back and forth between the investigation led by Falk and the account of the women's trip. She handles the points of view well, and the story of the disintegration of the lost party as personal rivalries undermine the team. There's a real tension with the missing woman Alice Russell, as its not clear whether she is alive or dead.

Unfortunately I struggled to care for any of the corporate types and their motivations felt unlikely. The detectives felt a little one-dimensional at times, and the back story felt squeezed in. All in all its a quick, tense read that lacked the dynamism and pull of Jane Harper's The Lost Man. A good light read but one I fear I will forget rather quickly.

Sunday, February 02, 2025

Michael Scott - Royal Betrayal: The Great Baccarat Scandal of 1890

The Baccarat Scandal of 1890 might seem like a surprising topic of interest to a Marxist like myself. After all it concerns itself with a complex legal case that followed events at a rather dull sounding weekend party at Tranby Croft house in Yorkshire, when Sir William Gordon-Cumming, a distinguished lieutenant colonel in the Scots Guards was accused of cheating during two games of baccarat, where one of his opponents was the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII.

My interest in these events was first piqued when I read Flashman and the Tiger which places Flashman at the dinner party itself. Returning to the real world, or at least history, the 1890 scandal is of interest for the way it exposed, and continues to expose, Victorian ruling class snobbery. The substance of the scandal is relatively simple. Gordon-Cumming was observed by one member of the party to be adding to his stake while playing baccarat in a way that would increase his winnings. Rather than confront Gordon-Cumming, the witness told other party members who then watched the game and Gordon-Cumming more closely the following night. When they thought they had seen him repeat the cheat, he was confronted by the Prince of Wales, and encouraged to sign a paper that swore he would never play cards again. It was essentially a confession, and when the paper became public, Gordon-Cumming faced ruin.

There are, of course, lots of facts that don't add up. Once it became clear that he was now publically accused of cheating Gordon-Cumming had only one option - a very public court case against his accusers. The problem was that while the facts didn't add up, it was difficult to prove anything and, the establishment moved to protect the heir to the throne. The Prince of Wales was a wasteral. He loved gambling, adultery, and parties. He was a man of limited grasp of politics, lacking interest in rule and frequently skirted scandal. It seems that Gordon-Cumming was made to sign the paper to protect the Prince of Wales by those who realised that another public scandal with the heir to the throne playing a forbidden game (it was banned outside of public homes) could well destroy the monarchy. Indeed, so low was the view of the monarchy among the public that many people thought it would die with the death of Queen Victoria.

Michael Scott's book tells the story of the events leading up to the court case, and the case itself. The ending is not a spoiler. Despite enormous popular support in the world at large Gordon-Cumming was found to have cheated and his reputation was destroyed. He was, luckily for him, able to retire to his wealthy landed estate and live his life out in pseudo-Feudal splendour. So it wasn't all bad.

It is clear from Scott's account (and indeed every other discussion) that Gordon-Cumming got no justice - the judge was biased, the legal process flawed and court-room procedure was laughable. But that shouldn't be a surprise. The establishment moved to protect itself was an external threat. Gordon-Cummings was its victim and was a fool for allowing himself to fall into the trap set for him. He probably believed a little more in British "justice" than he should have. It's hard to care much about anyone involved here - though the Prince of Wales was clearly a pig, and Gordon-Cumming's was likely not guilty. No one seems to have asked why the immensely popular and rich soldier would need to cheat, and its clear he was a pro at the game, playing in a style that was unorthodox, but not illegal. This was a situation entirely caused by the idle rich failing to solve a problem, and enjoying the subsequent gossip and shock while plunging headlong into scandal.

What of Michael Scott's book itself? It has all the information, but attempts to draw out new information and details add little to the story itself. Whether Gordon-Cummings was an agent of British Intelligence seems besides the point, and irrelevant. The back story that Scott provides to all the characters is overwhelming and adds little. It simply serves to show the author has read lots. There's a surprising reliance on US newspaper reports of the trial, rather than British acounts - which seems to place it a little third hand. There is also a typographical problem where the extended quotations are not distinguishable from the main text, leaving the reader a little confused between what are Scott's words and those of his sources. This, I suspect, is a problem with print-on demand books.

Ultimately the real meat of the story ought to be a critique of the establishment and its struggle to protect its own. I agree with Scott's conclusion that Gordon-Cummings was probably innocent, but in many ways that's actually irrelevant. I'd have preferred a deeper discussion of what the trial, and scandal, told us about wider Victorian society. That said, at least one journalist of the time quoted by Scott, understood some of what the trial exposed, though Scott just says this is "predictable" from the press on that side of the Atlantic:

No Magistrate thinkgs of arresting him [Prince of Wales] for doing what an ordinary gambler would be sent to prison for doing. When he enters court to give testimony concerning his law breaking, the entire audience rises to receive him, and he is placed on a bench beside the judge as an honoured guest. And when his gambling losses and his other squanderings bring him into trouble, he asks the bread-earners of Great Britain to pay his debts for him. How long are the 'plain people' of Great Britain going to stand the false system which makes of this gambler, debauchee, and idler, teir destined ruler, and exalts him to the headship of both the Church and the State?

How long indeed.

One footnote of interest to those of us more interested in social history of the period. One of the guests at Tranby House was the socialite Daisy Brook, known as "Babbling Brook" for her love of gossip, and mistress of the Prince of Wales. Brook was known as something of a lefty, and when she became Countess of Warwick, was the person who helped the agricultural trade unionist Joseph Arch to publish his memoirs and wrote an introduction to his autobiography.

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

Elie Wiesel - Night

It feels inadequate, or impossible, to review a book like Night. Reading this short work is an incredibly emotional experience. It is the first hand account of Elie Wiesel's time in Auschwitz and then Buchenwald concentration camps. As such it is intensely brutal. It begins with his life in Romania, before the Nazis arrived, the naive illusion among the Jewish community that the war would be over before anything happened. Then the panic and despair as the community is forced into ghettos and onto trains. There is nothing cheerful here. Wiesel sees his mother and sisters as they disappear in one direction at the gates of Auschwitz, while he and his father, warned by a inmate to lie about their ages to make them eligible, become forced labourers.

This then is an account of brutality, of despair, of hunger and of the loss of faith. It is the story of millions of tragedies told through the eyes of one teenage eyewitness. Wiesel struggles to keep his father alive and is successful, almost too the end, when he dies just before liberation.

As the Jews on Wiesel's train wait outside Auschwitz, some discuss rebellion. Even in their weakened state, some have knives and urged others to attack the guards. "But the older men begged their sons not to be foolish" says Wiesel. As the world sees the growth of the far-right and fascists, from the US to Eastern Europe, the most important lesson for me from Night is to stop the Nazis before the world goes that far again. Millions of people died in that death camp at the hands of the Nazis. Elie Wiesel's Night and indeed the remainder of his life, were dedicated to saying Never Again. That's why it must be read by every generation.

Thursday, January 23, 2025

Alan Wood & Mary Seaton Wood - Islands in Danger

Islands in Danger was first published in 1955 and claims to be the first full treatment of the Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands in World War II. These events have an interest beyond their uniqueness. They give an indication of what might have happened had the British Isles themselves been occupied by Germany. Unfortunately this is not a tale of systematic resistance, but rather one of official connivence, a general "keep on keeping on" attitude and rare (but incredibly brave) resistance by individuals. In addition there was brutal violence by the Nazis against forced labourers, the deportation of Jews and violent retribution against those British subjects who dared to oppose them.

The Channel Islands, Jersey, Guerseny, Sark and Alderney were unusual in their location, a few miles from France, their semi-independent government and the vestiges of feudal relations. But they were, nonetheless, part of Britain. Photographs (not reproduced in this book) of British policeman with their characteristic uniforms, and Nazi soldiers are available. The collaboration between the two one of the great stains on this era of history.

The British authorities on the islands essentially carried on doing what they needed to do. Their cooperation with the Nazis was pretty much complete. The Bailiff of Guernsey, Major Sherwill, made this clear at the start of the occupation when he made a long address, that included the phrase:

May this occupation be a model to the world - on the one hand tolerance on the part of the military authority and courtesy and corectness on the part of the occupying forces, and on the other, dignity and courtesy and exemplary behaviour on the part of the civilian population; conformity - the strictest conformity - with orders and regulations issued by the German Commandant and the civil authorities.

Now Sherwill, it is true, did eventually get imprisoned by the Nazis for his role in protecting British commandos who had landed, but failed to escape. This was, it should be said, brave. But Sherwill and others set a tone for the relations with the Nazis, which saw British policemen enforcing and assisting in a Nazi occupation. For some the consequences were appalling. Was there an alternative? The authors of this volume suggest not. But the problem is not whether Sherwill et al might have led a revolutionary movement against fascism, but the extent to which they greased the wheels for the Nazis. They made it easy.

The problem with this volume is that it fails to properly interrogate this. There is far too much about "Dad's Army" still shenanigans, humourous annecdoates about how the Nazis were made to remove their shoes when entering various peoples homes, and funny stories about hiding wirelesses. There is far too little about what else happened.

Hundreds of forced labourers worked and died on the Channel Islands. Their treatment is discussed at length, and there are some heartbreaking anecdotes of how individual islanders tried to help them. But the question of the Islands' part in the Holocaust is examined less well. We know, for instance, that Alderney had a transit camp for French Jews to be transported to Auschwitz. Three Jewish residents of the Channel Islands died in the Holocaust. Hundreds of other residents were imprisoned and deported. As many as 1,134 people may have died there. What do the authors say about the Jews. Rightly they are critical of the authorities:

Some actions by the authorities were harder to defend. Anti-Semitic edicts, emanating from the German command in France, were registered by the Royal Courts both in Jersey and Guernsey. It was felt that the number ofJews was so small—less than ten in each island—that it was not worth asking for trouble by making an issue of the matter. In Guernsey there was one dissentient vote.

Then they describe some of the Nazi attacks on Jews on the Channel Islands:

Coutanche successfully resisted a proposal for making Jews wear yellow stars on their backs. In the end some Jews were deported to the Continent.*

Here the asterixed footnote reads: "We were surprised to be unable to obtain any reliable information as to their ultimate fate, even from present members of the Jewish communities."

This is an extraordinary inadequate comment. I wonder what the authors imagined happened to the Jews deported to the Continent? Tragically this is the only reference to what took place.

In recent years there have been serious attempts to understand what took place on the Channel Islands, both in terms of the collaboration, the resistance and the role of the Islands in the death of hundreds of people as part of the Nazi Holocaust. Sadly this book, even allowing for limited historical data available at the time, fails to do justice to these questions. Instead the authors opt for a more entertaining tale of plucky Brits trying to outwit the nasty Germans.

In his book Empire of Destruction, the historian Alex J. Kay asks why the experience of the occupation was different in the West of Europe, to that of the East. The answer, is in part, due to the Nazis' project of colonisation, and their belief that the Eastern population were "sub human". The tragedy of this book is that ten years after the Holocaust the authors of this account did not even consider to ask such questions.

Related Reviews

Vinen - The Unfree French: Life under the Occupation
Gildea - Marianne in Chains
Gluckstein - A People's History of the Second World War
Cobb - The Resistance: The French Fight Against the Nazis

Tuesday, January 21, 2025

Larry McMurtry - Dead Man's Walk

Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove is one of the best regarded Western novels of the 20th century. It certainly sustained me on a trip through the American West. The two main characters of that epic story, Woodrow F. Call and Augustus "Gus" McCrae, are two Texas Rangers. Legendary men of the frontier whose job was to enforce frontier justice and stop the Native Americans halting the White settlers. Dead Man's Walk, published a decade later, is the Woodrow and Gus' origin story. The tale of their first travels with the Texas Rangers, and the story of how they develop their friendship and the knowledge that enables them to survive on the frontier.

The book begins with their first expedition in which their party is hunted and nearly destroyed by the Comanche chief Buffalo Hump. Buffalo Hump is a experienced and skillful hunter and killer. He doesn't simply kill off party members one by one, he traps and hunts them like animals. His plan is to terrorise the White people off. It's a frightening experience that scars the two Rangers permanently. But not enough to prevent them joining a gung ho expedition into New Mexico to capture Santa Fe. This expedition is a disaster too, failures of leadership, experience and equipment lead the 200 strong force to be decimated and reduced to a motley crew of forty who are captured and tortured by the Mexican Army. The Dead Man's Walk of the title is the desert journey the remaining Rangers and the Mexican troops are forced to make. One that claims many lives.

Like Lonesome Dove this is a novel that doesn't pause for breath. There are a sequence of events that blend into each other. Most of them violent and characters are often only introduced to be knocked off a few chapters later. At the heart is the growing story of love and respect between Woodrow and Gus, their growth into adulthood and the sharing of experiences that bonds them. The growing love between Gus and Clara, a young woman he meets near the beginning of his adventures and will feature throughout the series, is actually a backdrop between the love of the two men.

It works well as a novel, but I was uncomfortable with the depiction of the Native Americans. They are always violent and bloodthirsty. While they are clearly fighting for the lives and society, they feel two dimensional, depicted as violent killers to give the White characters something to revolve around. I've seen online comment that suggests this is to do with how they are seen by the main characters. But it feels lazy and inadequate. McMurtry could have rounded out Buffalo Hump and his contemporaries, but instead they're too simple - untrustworthy, violent and superstitous. It felt like the worst stereotypes of the previous century and detracted from an otherwise excellent novel.

Related Reviews

McMurtry - Lonesome Dove

Friday, January 17, 2025

Joseph M. Marshall III - The Journey of Crazy Horse: A Lakota History

Crazy Horse is best known, to non-indigenous people, as the military leader whose charge destroyed General Custer's final defence at the Little Big Horn battle. But that's about it. There are no authenticated pictures of Crazy Horse, and much of the rest of his life as a Lakota leader is forgotten. Though his tragic murder is often mentioned in passing, a consequence of the genocidal policies of the US government who could not afford to have such a figure head live.

But there is a lot more history and autobiography about Crazy Horse, though learning it means listening to the people who knew him best - the Lakota themselves. Joseph M. Marshall III, himself a member of the Lakota, has written this epic autobiography basing it on the oral history of the Lakota. It is a remarkable read which interweaves the story of Crazy Horse with the story of the Lakota and the author's own experiences.

In fact, the most interesting parts of the book are not those dealing with the specific battles - though these are fascinating. They are the ones that depict Lakota life and how it was transformed by contact with Europeans. Crazy Horse himself represents this in microcosm. His birth mother died early in his life, and his father took two more wives who became Crazy Horses next mothers. It is an intriguing difference to the "family" that dominates Western culture and is told to us as the norm. Marshall points out that many Lakota, including people today and himself, have multiple parents in this way. Their upbringing not being restricted simply to a mother and father. Crazy Horse was mentored and trained by several different male parental figures, including his father. His father himself was called Crazy Horse, as was his grandfather. The Crazy Horse that is the centre of this book being given the name by his father at an appropriate moment while his father took a new name to replace it.

These aspects of Crazy Horse's early life are intriguing for the insights into different styles of organising life. And it is defending that way of life that Crazy Horse commited himself to. He and his contemporaries watched the settlers arrive and travel across their terrority on the Bozeman Trail, until the Battle of the Hundred-in-the-Hands saw Crazy Horse play a leading role in defeating Captain Fetterman's force and the eventual withdrawal of US forces from the area.

The treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868 was supposed to bring hostilities to an end. But Crazy Horse was skeptical. As Marshall explains:

Sitting Bull knew what would happen, Crazy Horse was certain. The whites would use that treat as a way to control the Lakota. They drew lines on a paper to outline the picture of the land, something not unknown to the Lakota. But the idea that an imaginary line could define where the land begins andends was laughable - as if the line would somehow show up on the land. Even more laughable was the rule that the Lakota had to live in one part of the land and obtain permission from the whites to hunt in the other. Their thinking was laughable, but it was their thinking and they had the power of numbers, many soldiers with many rifles, many wagon guns and plenty of powder. Part of the answer was to fight. There could be no other way... The whites understood force.

Crazy Horse has always been judged by others. In his summary Marshall notes that there are multiple Crazy Horses to the whites. The "noble warrior" doomed to loose, the chief. He points out that Crazy Horse as the "conqueror of Custer" means that "Crazy Horse has no validity without Custer". Always depicted, weapon in hand, Crazy Horse epitomises a certain, racist, view of Native Americans. But, as this book shows, Crazy Horse was a thinker, a leader, and a fighter. He was a human being - with foibles and loves - and part of a community with a rich and powerful tradition. He led the resistance to the destruction of that community, but in remembering him the West does so in a way that seeks to defeat him and his people. Joseph Marshall III's wonderful book does much to tell the true story.