Jairus Banaji - Theory as History: Essays on modes of production & exploitation

Jairus Banaji's Theory as History is a 2010 collection of essays that together are designed to encourage and stimulate a return to serious Marxist approaches to history - both in a theoretical sense and in a the sense of studying specific periods of history. Banaji is an important and long standing scholar whose determination to use Marxism as a historical tool is only matched by his refusal to let dogma go unchallenged. Unafraid of challenging existing Marxists his writing can, at times, be blunt. But nonetheless it is full of insight:

To take modes of production first, these, for Marx, comprised the 'relations of production in their totality' (as he says in Wage Labour and Capital), a nuance completely missd by Marxists who simple reduce them to historically dominant forms of exploitation or forms of labour, for example, positing a slave mode of production wherever slave-labour is used or ruling out cappitalism if 'free' labour is absent. The underlying assumpotion here is that Marx means by relations of production the relations of the immediate process of production, or what, in a perfectly nebulous expression, some Marxists call the 'method of surplus-appropriation'.

Some of the most useful parts of this collection are when Banaji challenges specific academic interpretations of historical eras in order to draw out the real relations of production by deep diving into historical times. This often displays an amazing understanding of source documents - as displayed for instance on the essays about land relations and ownership in colonial India.

While some of the essays display this "deep dive" into particular eras and geographical locations. Others are more theoretical, while being rooted in evidence. One of particular importance and insight is Banaji's writings on the Tributary modes of production, something that many Marxists have grappled with over the years. Take also his conclusins around modern slave society in North America:

The slave-plantations were capitalist enterprises of a patriarchal and feudal character producing absolute surplus-value on the basis of slave-labour and a monopoly in land. This heterogeneous and, as it appears, disarticulated nature of the slave-plantation generated a series of contradictory images when the early Marxist tradition, not equipped with the same abundance of material available today, attempted its first characteristations.

Here Banaji demonstrates two characteristics of his writing - his desire to neither deny that Marx made mistakes or didn't have full insights on occasion, and his commit to updating this. This is particularly noticeable in his writing on wage labour, which is, he says "not a product of capitalism specifically, unless there is a sense in which class itself is peculiar to capitalism, so that workers before capitalism fail to constitute a class in the same sense as workers under capitalism". He then continues:

Wage-labour strikes as a peculiarly modern institution, because the ancient world, indeed all periods of history before capitalism, are seen as intrinsically impervious to any of the institutions that characterise capitalism.

Then:

Labour-power can appear on the market as a commodity, indeed did, even when free labourers are scarce or non-existent. Appian [95-165] CE tells us that a major reason why the rich who had monopolised the public land and carved huge estates out of it preferred the employment of lsaves was that the peasantry was subject to conscription and the supply of labour unstable.

He concludes:

The point of these remarks is not to deny the centrality of 'free labour' to the accumulation of capital in the modern economy... but to undermine the particular way Marx attempts to constue the link between wage-labour and captial. 

Over the half dozen or so pages that cover this argument, Banaji explores multiple theoreticians 'approaches to wage-labour, capital and ancient/modern society, while clearing out a distinctive position of his own. It shows a remarkable command of the material, both sources and contemporary and a deep knowledge of Marx's own work.

However Banaji doesn't simply dismiss others claiming only he has the right line. His discussion of Chris Wickham's work is a case in point. He is both incredibly generous in praise of Wickham's historical writing and, on occasion, quite critical. But it is done with nuance and clarity. There's not a few Marxists who could learn from this.

All in all Theory as History is a remarkable work. But it is hard work. Some chapters were opaque because I had no wider knowledge of the period they covered. Other sections required repeated re-reading. But this is a serious work, that rewarded close reading and I'll undoubtably return.

Related Reviews

Perry - Marxism and History
Carr - What is History?
Callinicos - Making History
Marx & Engels - The German Ideology: A new abridgement by Tom Whyman
Harman - Marxism and History
Heller - The Birth of Capitalism: A Twenty-First-Century Perspective

Vanda Felbab-Brown - The Extinction Market: Wildlife trafficking and how to counter it

In the midst of the environmental led biodiversity crisis, there is another tragedy taking place for global flora and fauna: poaching and wildlife trafficking. While many of us will only be dimly aware of the problem, it takes place on a staggering scale. Vanda Felbab-Brown gives us a sense of the scale in the introduction to this book: 

Between 2010 and 2012, almost 100,000 elephants were killed for their tusks in Africa... African elephants have thus experienced a drastic net population declaine of some 111,000 since 2006, leaving a likely current poplation of 415,000... Between 2009 and 2015, Tanzania lost between 50 and 60 percent of its elephant population... in South Africa alone, 1,215 rhinos were killed for their horns in 2014.

The list goes on and on. A 171 of a global population of under 4,000 tigers were poached in India between 2010 and 2015. More than a million pangolins were poached in the decade prior to the book's publication. Millions of reptiles are poached every year. It is a grim story, and a difficult question to approach. As Felbab-Brown argues the drivers of poaching are complex - and are often rooted in economic instability and poverty. The solutions are not straightforward either, and in this nuanced book Felbab-Brown uses her knowledge of the global drugs trade to discuss various strategies to challenge poaching. 

While the story is grim, the discussion is nuanced. Felbab-Brown points out, for instance, that total bans don't always work, and can often have adverse effects. Indeed, the centrality of hunting to some communities means that bans should be carefully considered. This is not, of course, to follow the lead of the US National Rifle Association who oppose bans on ivory trading in order that their members can go on hunting safaris. But, she points out:

Under some circumstances, legal sales from hunting or farming crucially underpin and enable wildlife conservation in a way that bans, prohibition, and law enforcement will not [be] able to accomplish because they fail to give key actiors and economic stake in conservation. 

Having said this, Felbab-Brown does acknowledge that this is neither easy not automatic. While "the legal trade of farmed crocodilians also resulted in the recocver in the wild of several crocdilian species", there can also be a consequent increase in demand, or allow illegal hunting to insert animals into the legal supply chains. In addition to these nuances, Felbab-Brown is also aware of the way in which questions of poaching and conservation interact with wider political and historical issues. For instance she notes that the setting up of US National Parks such as Yellowstone saw the forced displacement of Native Americans. She also notes that because of how hunting was linked to colonial rule in parts of Africa:

Environmental policies thus came to be strongly associated and directly overlapped with colonial oppression in the minds of many African and Asian population. Not surprisingly they felt morally justified and economically empowered by illeagally hunting and exploiting protected areas. Poaching became not only a means of susbistance but also a form of rebellion against colonial rule.

Indeed the best examples that Felbab-Brown can offer in terms of "parks" and protection of animals from hunters are ones were the local populations are empowered to see the protection of the habitats and the animals as being in their interests. This might mean ensuring that wildlife guards are properly paid to ensure they don't become poachers at night to raise extra cash. But it might also mean ensuring that local communities have land to farm and adequate access to the natural resources they need.

What are the solutions? These must start from a clear understanding of the problem. Felbab-Brown summarises:

Althought global poaching and trafficking have become more organised, many poor individuals and communities willingly participate in them and do not embrace conservation. For them, hunting, sale and consumption of animals and the conversion of natural habitats to agriculture or resource exploitation are means of economic survival and social advancement. Ignoring this uncomfortable truth, as has become a fad in some parts of the consevation communityu, including many environmental NGOs, will produce unsustainable and ineffective policies.

Going further she points out that the "dominant narrative" over emphasises organised crime as a driver of poaching and downplays "corruption of government institutions and the wildlife industry" in affected countries.

The question really becomes one of economic wealth. What are the best ways to ensure that people and communities don't need to hunt animals to extinction? Some of this should be straightforward - making people feel a stake in the protection of plants and animals. Some requires removing demand. This is harder - some markets for animals parts are closely linked to countries' traditional beliefs, foods or practices. Though it is interesting to note that Felbab-Brown points out how much of these are recent inventions, and how "Chinese Traditional Medicine" is constantly reinventing itself as sources change. 

The strength of the book is its nuanced approach. That there is no "one size fits all" for every country, market or animal is a repeated mantra of Felbab-Brown's book. But despite this I was a little unconvinced by the general thrust of the author's argument. Part of the problem is that the generalised approach by capitalism towards nature is the commodification of nature. The "natural capital" approach which seeks to place a value on nature and embedded it in economic flows is one adopted by most governments, lots of NGOs and almost all global agreements on biodiversity. But once you do this you guarantee that there's a profit to be made. This is why Felbab-Brown argues that "Although it is vital to clean up the corruption that has permeated trohpy hunting in much of Africa, to suspend it indefinitely will hurt, not advance conservation". 

This surely is short-sighted - it assumes firstly that people will always want to hunt for trophies and secondly that conservation can only be helped by a uncorrupted hunting industry. I think it's entirely possible to imagine a world where animal hunting for trophies is inconceivable - but that requires a massive challenge to existing ideologies and power structures. A properly funded environmental approach that doesn't rest on "natural capital" would also release the cash needed for the sort of bottom up conservation that Felbab-Brown shows clearly works. But that again requires a challenge to existing global economic priorities.

So while Felbab-Brown has many helpful insights into how not to try and restrict poaching, because her outlook remains essentially bourgeois, I'm not convinced it offers a long term solution. It is why conservation cannot be separated from wider political and economic questions, particularly ones that are about lack of resources and wealth inequality. That's a big criticism, but in making it I want to emphasise that Vanda Felbab-Brown's book has a great deal to stimulate discussion about conservation and the protection of biodiversity loss. It also makes it clear that those who hold the key to protecting biodiversity are often those who are usually dismissed. The book challenges many assumptions and has a multitude of facts and figures that deserve to be widely known. 

Related Reviews

Bourgon - Tree Thieves: Crime & Survival in the Woods
Archer - 'By a Flash and a Scare': Arson, Animal Maiming & Poaching in East Anglia: 1815-1870

Iain M. Banks - Inversions

Inversions is one of Iain M. Banks' novels that I read multiple times after it came out, but haven't read in... well as long as this blog has been going. I found it again recently and re-reading it I was struck by how great a book it is.

The book is set on an unnamed planet, but one where a former powerful Empire has fragmented into rival states following what sounds like a major disaster with multiple asteroid impacts. The remaining rival kingdoms are analogous to Earth's European feudal states - though Banks is very careful not to make them identical. Knights may wear armour and ride to battle - but whether they are on horses is never clear. Banks avoids using words that tie things too closely to Earth.

There are two parallel stroies. Alternate chapters are titled The Doctor and The Bodyguard. Both characters are in kingdoms separated by a great distance. The Doctors' chapters are told by her assistant Oelph, though they are really his lengthy reports to an unnamed Master who is spying on the Doctor. The Doctor has arrived from a third, distant land, and risen quickly to become the personal physician to the King. This causes jealously, suspicion and doubt, particularly when the King begins enacting reforms that benefit the cities and the lower, producing, classes.

The Bodyguard is Oelph's publishing of a separate story that he finds long after the events he is involved in. Consisting of the account of the personal guard to another king, there are natural parallels with The Doctor chapters. But this consists of The Bodyguard's attempts to protect the King and his family while facing down external threats. In doing so he befriends one of the King's harem women and the King's son.

The Bodyguard tells his friends stories, and these can be read, particularly by those who've read other works by Banks, as examples of the way that The Culture view other civilisations that have not yet reached their level of technological and cultural sophistication. A further clue that this is set in the Culture universe and that the Bodyguard and Doctor are possibly not from the planet at all, lies in they way their ideas do not quite fit those of their chosen kingdoms. But are they there as agents of the Culture? Or are they running away from something? Or perhaps each other. 

Ultimately it becomes clear that the Doctor at least is from another place - she has access to knowledge and equipment that are far beyond the planet's technological development. However if the novel is reduced to this guessing game it does it a disservice. The best thing about the novel is the interaction between the characters from different societies. It reminded me of a classic Soviet SF novel Hard to be a God by Arkady & Boris Strugatsky which postulates a future socialist society's agents observing and living within a feudal society trying (or not) to influence its development (while also critiquing the Soviet Union itself). 

The book has little of Banks' trademark hard SF. Its focus is on relationships - and there are several that are beautifully described - in particular that between the Doctor and Oelph and the Bodyguard and Perrund, the King's concubine. But there are others - the Doctor falls for the King and in one moment of exuberance announces her love. It devastates Oelph, but more importantly it shifts the story dramatically as the Doctor realises she cannot be both of the world and from elsewhere. 

Despite barely being The Culture, this is one of the great Culture novels - demonstrating Banks' amazing abilities as a writer, and his ability to hand multiple different ideas and characters. Well worth a read, or re-read.

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Banks - The Hydrogen Sonata
Banks - Surface Detail
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Iain Banks - Canal Dreams

Somewhere in my head I had an idea that Iain Banks' novel Canal Dreams was written for a bet. Someone suggested an utterly implausible plot, and Banks proved he could get it published. For the life of me I cannot find evidence of this on the internet, though I do understand that Banks was never particularly happy with the work.

Perhaps Banks was too much of a perfectionist, because while the plot is implausible, it is certainly an exciting read. It centres on Hisako Onoda, a Japanese virtuoso cellist whose fear of flying means that she embarks on a world tour by boat. Travelling through the Panama Canal as the region slides into war, her and several other cargo boats and their passengers and crew are trapped on the Canal near Panama. As the wait drags on, those trapped entertain themselves with dinner parties, arguments and romantic liasions. Eventually, however, the ships become the target of terrorists who want to use them as a base to attack US interests.

The first part of the book sets up the concept through a series of flashbacks as Hisako remembers her life, and how she came to play the cello. It follows her through music school and a centre point is her first failure to fly. Meant to accompany her orchestra on a plane to tour the US, she's unable to go, and the turning point becomes an emblematic moment for her - both in her transition to adulthood and her image of herself as a loner. 

Trapped on the ship, she falls in love with a flamboant and cocky French officer, who teachers her scuba diving, in exchange for intimate lessons on the cello. In the midst of war and uncertainty this becomes Hisako's first real taste of stablity and love.

But then the terrroists hit, and the book becomes a classic adventure story as Hisako fights for her survival and tries to prevent a wider atrocity. Here I am being vague, because there is a major twist that deserves to be unknown in advance of reading. But it is the destruction of her cello that symbolises most Hisako's transition from to vengeful violence.

The last part of the book is essentially an action film on paper. It is an entertaining read, but perhaps is too much of a stylistic break from the first half to make for that satisfactory a novel. But whether written as a bet, or not, there's an entertaining and clever adventure here that will while away a couple of hours. 

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Banks - Raw Spirit
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Susan Crawford - Charleston: Race, water & the coming storm

One of the immediate, and most expected, impacts of climate change is a rising sea level. Nasa says that "since the satellite record of ocean height began in 1993, the rate of annual sea level rise has more than doubled. In total, global sea level has gone up by 4 inches (10 centimeters) since 1993." But this is nothing to what is coming unless there is a rapid, and drastic, cut in carbon emissions. According to Susan Crawford, "some scientists say we should be planning on three feet of rise by 2050, six feet by 2070 and ten feet by 2100". For the majority of the world that uses metric units this is 0.91m, 1.82m and 3.05m. Billions of people who live in low lying and coastal areas will find themselves, their communities and their economies under threat from this future.

How will this threat impact? Susan Crawford's book is a study of one example - the lowlying, heavily populated southern US city of Charleston in South Carolina. Charleston is a fascinating place. It's a city that has been at the epicentre of US history, mostly because its geographical position meant the slave trade was centred there: about 40 percent of enslaved humans brought to the US from Africa came through Charleston's port. After the international trade in slavery was abolished, it became the centre of interal trade in enslaved people. The legacy of slavery, the centrality of the city to the Confederacy during the Civil War, and the legacy of racism and colonialism have meant that Charleston is a stunningly unequal city. 

Climate change, and particularly flooding, will explode through and along the lines created by capitalism in this city - ones of race and class. As Crawford explains, Charleston's strategy for dealing with flooding exposes this directly:

The reason some breachfront homeowners, but not all, get that sand dumped on their beaches, and the reason that some portions of cities, but not all, get federal funds for building walls, is that the one rule of thumb for all these expenditurers is that they be made subject to a cost-benefit analysis. But that means the only thing that is valued is the price of the property being protected. Lower-income people, or renters, do not get protected or rescued. 

"Surely," asks Crawford rhetorically, " we are interested in everyone thriving, not just those who have the highest land values." The answer is of course that no, US society does not care for all equally, nor does it have a plan for the majority of people who do not have valuable enough assets to warrant projection. In the case of Charleston almost all (but not everyone) of these people are black.

One way that we know the future will be like this is because the past and the present are already like this. The accident of history that placed the initially European settlers at this location, has also meant that the city that developed and grew up, was built on marshy, lowlying, wetlands. As the city expanded much of this was done on the waste and rubbish of the existing town. The poorest areas, again with almost an entirely black population, are built on the worst and most dangerous terrain. Unbelievably this means that some of the material supporting the roads, housing, hosptials and infrastructure is human waste, offal and rubbish. When the tides and storms come, the inevitable floods bring cholera and e-coli into the streets. Crawford uses Noaa data to explain how bad it will get:

Current (2020) numbers of flood days will double or triple by 2030 - double the eight-nine floods in 2019, the sixty-eight floods in 2020, the forty-six floods in 2021, each one of which made some roads in Charleston impassable and undermined strtures. By 2050 [Noaa] says, the number of days of more serious flooding could be five to fifteen times as great as it was in 2020.

Through a combination of reportage, statistics and interviews with citizens, Crawford shows how the black community is hit worst and first by these regular floods. The second thing she demonstrates is that the authorities have done nothing to aid the people at risk, instead channelling funds and investment into reinventing Charleston as a tourist hotspot for wealthy (white) tourists who come to experience Southern "charm". This mostly seems to involve a disney style experience of seeing homes built on the profits of slavery and eating expensive seafood on areas completely isolated from the real Charleston. Black, and poor, Charlestonians are excluded from the rich areas, as racism and poverty keeps them out of the bars, clubs, restaurants and other destinations. Over the years more and more areas have been converted by buying up land from black people (or forciably relocating them) in order to further expand this tourist paradise. Little of the new builds are flood proof, protected or insurable long term. "More than 100,000 structures in Charleston are sited in FEMA's notoriously inaccurate floodplains" says Crawford. FEMA is the Federal Emergency Management Agency whose funding and activities are already seriously under attack from Trump.

This is, of course, the great tragedy. Charleston is doomed. The first people to go will be those forced out of the unprotected areas. But unless there is radical action, great parts of Charleston will simply become unsalvabable. That's why Crawford discusses the reality of "retreat" in the face of sea level rise - something that's already being discussed in low lying areas like the Netherlands, but rarely is talked about in the US.

One of the things that I really enjoyed about Crawford's book is her focus on individuals from the affected communities - people who have lived, worked and frequently campaigned for change in Charleston's black areas. They are people whose families and communities are most at risk, and ultimately they are the people who are the only force that will bring change - both in terms of a socially just solution for everyone in the city and in terms of winning a wider, more equal United States. Stacked against them however are some greedy, corrupt and powerful forces. Time and again Crawford shows how politicians and business leaders, their eyes firmly focused on wealth and tax income, take decisions that mean ignoring the threat from sea-level rise. Its hard to even speak about climate change in the US political arena today. In Charleston's its near impossible to discuss the links between race, poverty and flooding. Local politicians seem to think that a magical solution is there in the future. Actually they really think that what will happen is a major disaster that will lead to significant funding from the Federal government.

The problem is that this seems less and less likely, and Charleston has its specifics, but it is not unique. Millions of Americans live in areas threatened by floods, and in this unequal, racist and violent society many of them (most?) will be left to fund for themselves. This is why I think Crawford's book would have benefited from a closer study of other countries impacted by floods - who returned home? Who got compensation? What sort of activism was needed to win compensation? In addition I think the book could have done with a long look at the aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans. There are plenty of lessons to be learnt for Charleston's future there in terms of race and class.

I explicitly mention class in ths context because the fractures in Charleston's society don't just run through racial lines, but also class lines. It is the poorest who will be affected first by climate change - wherever they are. These same inequalities also exist through the US, even if there are differing ethnic makeups. But class also helps us understand why there's no money for certain communities. Its not just racism (though that's very important) but also a disdain for those at the bottom - the very people who have a vested interest in building a different sort of America, and have the power to change it. And, let's be honest, no one else is coming to save them. Crawford writes:

Few are talking about how America is going to get through the rapid rise in sea level that is coming. Like most other countries, we have no national plan.

Susan Crawford's detailed study of the specifics of Charleston are important for understanding what will happen to the majority of citizens in that city, and other areas globally. For many readers, particularly those outside the US, the reality of racism in the southern states even today will be extremely shocking. At certain points I was dumbfounded by the realities of what the author described. I was also inspired that despite the difficulties and the violence of the police, people protested, campaigned, formed organisations, marched and stood up. That must be the hope for the future. Otherwise, as Susan Crawford says, things are bleak:

Charleston's story reveals a general blind spot that will become more visible as at least thirteen million people are expected to have to retreat from swamped [North] American coastlines. Americans will learn, if they did not know already, that some lives count and some do not.

It's a book for everyone thinking about the climate future in an unequal and unjust society that puts profits before people.

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Smith - The Good Hand: A Memoir of Work, Brotherhood and Transformation in an American Boomtown
Nikiforuk - Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent
Sparrow - Crimes Against Nature: Capitalism and Global Heating

James Ellroy - Perfida

James Ellroy is perhaps best known for his two works Black Dahlia and LA Confidential. I recently read, and enjoyed, his American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand, set among conspirators, CIA agents, murders and racists around the time of the Kennedy assassination. When I reviewed American Tabloid I described it as being set in "the dark underbelly of the American dream".

Perfida is a very different book to the sprawling conspiracies of American Tabloid and its sequels. However it is also a very dark encounter with US history. Set in the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbour, the book looks at a horrible episode in US history - the internment of thousands of Japanese Americans for alleged threats to national security. This infamous event was the culmination of racism, imperialism and an opportunity for people to steal the assets and land off those arrested and interned. 

Ellroy explores this episode through the investigation by Los Angeles Police of the murder of a Japanese family. Two rival detectives, both of whom feature in other Ellroy novels set later, are here as is Hideo Ashida, an intriguing character - a Japanese forensic specialist cop. As they police investigate they unravel a conspiracy that brings together Fifth Columnists, asset strippers and many other lowly types, that threatens to spill over the bring down corrupt politicians, policeman and other nasty types.

Its a fat book. Ellroy's clipped style is taken to many an extreme here. "He snagged his car and laid tracks. He took the 1st Street bridge to Broadway. He took Broadway to the parkway. He popped two bennies and hit Avenue 45". It is not hard to believe that 790 pages could have been 350. Sadly Ellroy's probably too big an author to have that level of editing these days. 

But lack of brevity is not the problem. Nor, indeed, is the violence. For me the convoluted plot took too long to bring to a conclusion and I had mostly lost interest by the time it was wrapped up. But if that was one issue the other was the characters who are too one-dimensional. There's  Kay Lake a young woman with radical ideas desperate for adventure whose endless stream of lovers just happens to include almost every other major character. Her radicalism is quickly brought off by a policeman lover who happens to want her to destroy a group of leftists. The leftists in this book, including the awfully cliched radical filmmaker Claire De Haven (who has apparently read Marx and various religious tracts and concluded Marx got it wrong on religion and there is a god) are bad parodies but, I suspect, they reflect what Ellroy thinks about leftists of all stripes.

If the left in Perfida are corrupt, the right are appalling. But it is the right, the fascists and the racists, who get all the airtime to spot off their views and engage in their nefarious plots. There's plenty of random deaths, beatings and racist attacks here. But no one (even the leftists) seems to care. As I thought when I read LA Confidential, one of the problems is that there are no good, or kind, or even normal people in Ellroy's world. This is the underbelly of the US, but there's no nice side. No solidarity, friendship or kindness. 

After finishing Perfida I realised that I had the option to read the rest of the trilogy. But I also realised I didn't care enough - about the characters, about what James Ellroy was trying to say, or about his distorted view of the world.

Related Reviews

Ellroy - L.A.Confidential
Ellroy - American Tabloid
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David Grann - The Wager: A tale of shipwreck, mutiny and murder

In May 1741 The Wager, a 28 gun Royal Navy ship on a voyage to harass Spanish treasure ships off the western coast of South America, ran aground on a then, nearly unknown, island. This barren mountainous place was home to some 150 castaways for months. David Grann's account of the voyage, the deprivations of the crew, the bullying of their officers and the appalling conditions on the island is based on a closed reading of all the contemporary accounts. On the island, the survivors gradually split into two groups - one, around Captain Cheap and the other the mutinous majority crew. 

Despite the shipwreck, sickness, intense hunger and a severe shortage of any supplies Cheap harboured fantastical dreams of continuing the mission and bringing home glory to "King and country". The rest of the crew recognised that this was not just a fantasy, it would get them all killed, and so they wanted to go home. They did so by seizing control of a boat, supplies and heading back into the Straits of Magellan and home via Spanish controlled ports on the east coast. Some of them took longer. Many died. It was a brave and remarkable journey.

Cheap too eventually made it back, though with far fewer survivors, including the grandfather of the poet Lord Byron. For both groups of sailors the voyages to escape their shipwreck were as bad, if not worse, as the initial voyage itself.

Grann's account underlines the horror of life at sea in the 18th century. This was a violent "wooden world", one where officers had power over life and death, and where hunger, sickness and the horrors of life in a tiny wooden ship in high seas were ever present. In places the Grann's descriptions are almost unbelievable - how anyone could imagine a trip around Cape Horn could leave a small flotilla in a condition to wage war is mind boggling. Nonetheless the Admiralty seemed to think it was possible. But if your crew is sick of typhus, underpaid and terrified then you gets what you pay for (the cook was in their 80s!)

But what really makes Grann's book is his insights into the wider seafaring world. The horror of the castaway life on what became known as Wager Island, is linked to the wider horror of the transatlantic slave trade, colonisation and imperialist ambition. This raid took place during the jingoistic "War of Jenkin's ear". A conflict that should never have happened. It was a war all about British sea power, and those who died on, and off, the Wager were sacrificed to this ambition. Grann notes wider implications - the racist attitudes to indigenous people that drove their saviours away, and the horror that a black British seaman was kidnapped into slavery while on his way home. He even finishes with a second mutiny of enslaved people who were on the ship to Europe carrying some of Wager's survivors.

All in all this is a great read which has surprising depths and is strikingly anti-imperialist. I thought David Grann's earlier book Killers of the Flower Moon about the treatment of Native Americans was fantastic. This is not quite on the same par as that, but is a very good read.

Related Reviews

Grann - Killers of the Flower Moon
Rodger - The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1642 - 1815
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Kai Bird & Martin J Sherwin - American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

Like many others I bought American Prometheus after watching the 2023 film Oppenheimer. By any judgement, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the subject of the biography and film was a remarkable figure. A brilliant scientist who in his early career made a series of important breakthroughs in the febrile atmosphere of early 20th century physics, he was a public intellectual with connections and sympathies with many radical movements of pre-war United States. A multifaceted figure who found himself a central figure in one of the most controversial projects of World War Two - the development of the atom bomb. 

Few of Oppenheimer's enemies would have disagreed with many of these judgements. They acknowledged his genius, his political connections and his central role in the creation of viable weapons of mass destruction. But for these enemies Oppenheimer was a threat to the security of the United States because he was prepared to openly discuss the moral consequences of the atom bomb's invention and its possible future. Fearing that he would use his position to undermine the US's post-war lead in nuclear technology, challenge its military doctrines, and possibly even strengthen its enemies, they decried him as a Communist - spread lies, undermined (and possibly killed) his friends, and dredged up past mistakes to blacken his name. In the growing anti-Communist witch-hunting atmosphere of the late 1940s and 1950s, Oppenheimer was one of thousands whose lives were destroyed. The difference was that Oppenheimer was famous and wealthy. Many others, from trade unionists and civil rights activists to leftists and even a handful of actual communists had their lives ruined.

American Prometheus is the story of how Oppenheimer found himself trapped in the logic of this witch-hunt. It begins with his childhood in a nurturing, wealthy, family who offered him opportunities to develop his knowledge and genius. He was also introduced to the finer things in a wealthy family's life - travel, cars, books and fine foods. Family Oppenheimer was the perfect space for Robert to develop - even if his own personal development was stunted at times. Travelling to Europe in the 1920s, Oppenheimer finished his Phd at an incredible scientific moment, studying and contributing to the insights of the emerging fields of Quantum Mechanics and nuclear sciences.

Back in the United States he found himself at an intoxicating moment. As a scientist, physics was expanding and breaking barriers on multiple fronts. There were countless opportunities for a physicist of Oppenheimer's brilliance to make a name for themselves. But for a liberal thinker, who was well read and engaging with wider political debates, there were many other opportunities. Oppenheimer found himself in the midst of growing political radicalism, the struggle for Civil Rights, and most particularly, the early 1930s, a wave of strikes in San Francisco.

It is here that the authors of American Prometheus really get to grips with Oppenheimer as an individual. Biographers (and indeed his enemies) have of course noted his left ideas, after all Oppenheimer himself did not exactly hide these. But he was teaching at Berkeley at a singular moment - a wave of strikes hit the port of San Francisco. Oppenheimer, some of his friends, and several of his students were supportive and engaged with the struggles:

Berkeley itself was split between critics and supporters of the strike. When the longshoremen initially walked out on May 9, 1934, a conservative member of the physics faculty, Leonard Loeb, recruited "Cal" football players to act as strikebreakers. Significantly, Oppenheimer later invited some of his students... to come along with him to a longshoremen's rally in a large San Francisco auditorium. " We were sitting up high in a balcony," recalled [Bob] Serber, "and by the end we were caught up in the enthusiasm of the strikers, shouting with them, 'Strike! Strike! Strike!' " Afterwards, Oppie went to the apartment of a friend, Estelle Caen, where he was introduced to Harry Bridges, the charismatic longshoreman union leader.

What is interesting here is that Oppenheimer wasn't just a casual onlooker, though he was not a political activist. He was engaged with struggles, and supportive of them. And indeed, in the case of unionisation, he encouraged it on several occasions through his working life. The point is that Oppenheimer had been immersed in radical politics that went beyond mere abstract ideas - though he certainly also engaged in those. He took these seriously, even if he did not always agree. One acquaintance thought he had read more Marx and Lenin than mnay active Communist Party members. While he certainly was radical, and was very close to some Communist Party activists - both his lover Jean Tatlock and his wife Katherine "Kitty" Puening, were CP members and activists - he was not a member (though even CP members often thought he was). The point of this is not that Oppenheimer was close to the CP. Its more that he had a set of ideas - political and scientific - shaped by a period of struggle in US history which influenced his thinking, while not being powerful enough to enable him to understand the threat to him posed by those who hated any ideas to the left of Harry Truman.

When World War Two came, the US scrambled to reassert itself. Money was poured into projects that could strengthen its military position. One of these was the Manhattan Project - the development of the atomic bomb. Oppenheimer was an obvious choice, though his politics made him already suspect. But crucially two factors, often ignored by his detractors decades later, were central. First was that the great threat from Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan meant that people were included into military arenas that they would not normally have been allowed into. People with suspect ideas, were not considered as much of a threat as they would under McCarthyism because the danger was very real. Even liberals like Oppenheimer, who hated the idea of unrestricted military murder, felt that the atom bomb was needed because Nazi Germany would otherwise get it. Note that at this point Nazi Germany was considered the real danger by the likes of Oppenheimer. The second issue was that the Soviet Union was a friend and ally.

Oppenheimer played a central role in making the bomb real - the book details his work, his influence and his importance and we need not be distracted by that here. But Oppenheimer also played an important role in making the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima happen. He drew up the instructions for the proper and best use of the first weapon. He did, as he later agonised, have "blood on his hands". Nonetheless the reality of the atrocities against Japan slowly changed his mind:

Once again [Oppenheimer] had failed to persuade the president and members of his Administration to turn their back on... "the whole rotten business." The Administration now supported a program to build a bomb 1,000 times as lethal as the Hiroshima weapon. Still, Oppenheimer would not "upset the applecart." He would remain an insider - albeit one who was increasingly outspoken and increasingly suspect.

Bird and Sherwin map the trajectory of Oppenheimer's transition from concerned scientist to outspoken critique of the nuclear strategy of the US and its allies. Though I should add here that I think they neglect the work of other scientists who tried hard to build a peace and anti-nuclear movement. This is well documented in Robert Jungk's excellent book Brighter Than One Thousand Suns. Jungk also highlights the significant role of other scientists in the development of nuclear physics, and more detail on events at Los Alamos. Bird and Sherwin's hyper-focus on Oppenheimer means that this material is often neglected undermining the larger story.

However what matters is not Oppenheimer's trajectory but the limitations of his politics. By the 1950s and 1960s, Oppenheimer retained his liberal criticisms of society. But he was very much a US patriot. The crude equation of Soviet Russia with existing Communism meant that Oppenheimer and many others, simply dismissed socialism completely and saw the US as the only option - albeit an option that had to be reformed. 

Intriguingly it is no less a figure than Albert Einstein who understood Oppenheimer's greatest weakness. As the witch-hunting grew louder and those who wanted to dethrone Oppenheimer as a Communist who was at the heart of the US nuclear machine and consequently needed to be destroyed, circled, Einstein commented "the trouble with Oppenheimer is that he loves a woman who doesn't love him - the United States government." Despite the brilliance of his mind, Oppenheimer could comprehend that the US was not a democratic system based on rational debate. It was a imperialist power prepared to murder its enemies, destroy civilians and smash opposition that threatened it - however mild it might be.

Even after he was defeated and lost his security clearance, Oppenheimer remained, according to the science sociologist Charles Thorpe. "in spirit a supporter of the fundamental direction of its [the US's] politics". Bird and Sherwin point out that despite what the US state had done to him, "Robert was determined to prove that he was a reliable patriot". Indeed, his failure to challenge the dominant politics directly led to his downfall. As one person commented, "The trouble was [Oppenheimer] accepted his accusers' terms from the beginning... He should have told them at the outset that he was the builder of the atom bomb - that he was a scientist, not an informer".

Whether that would have been enough to save Oppenheimer from his enemies is a moot point. Socialists ought to, in my opinion, acknowledge the horrors unleashed by the US's nuclear strategy, and the problems inherent in the nuclear bomb. This is not to downplay or ignore the grave injustice of the witch-hunt against Oppenheimer and the others caught up in the US's anti-communist attacks. That said, Oppenheimer did at least get some vindication - subsequent US Presidents recognised the errors and injustices, as did many thousands of scientists and others. 

The same was not true for countless radicals, trade unionists, and socialists who lost their livelihoods and sometimes their lives, as a result. Nonetheless the attacks on Oppenheimer, despite the lack of any real basis, the failure of any sense of natural justice, the collusion, smears and lies that brought him down had lasting impacts. Oppenheimer's brother Frank lost his job in his beloved physics environment. Toni, the gifted linguist daughter of Robert and Kitty, failed to get a job as a UN translator due to the FBI's grudge against the family. The rejection surely contributed to her mental health issues and eventual suicide. I think that accusations that the US government killed Jean Tatlock because of her politics and closeness to Oppenheimer have some merit.

Oppenheimer was not a Communist spy at the heart of the US nuclear programme. He was a gifted scientist and thinker who was brave enough to speak out. He was not a political activist, and once he had lost his position, he retreated from explicit criticisms of the threat of nuclear war. He seems to have made little, or no, comment on US politics - either imperialist or civil rights - in the later years of his life. As a public intellectual he had significant limits. 

American Prometheus is certainly the best biography of this complicated man. The authors have done an admirable job in drawing out the factors that shaped Oppenheimer. They are less clear on those factors that shaped the politics of the system that would destroy him, and continues to deploy nuclear weapons today. Nonetheless through this brilliant account we learn a great deal about the politics that have shaped the world that we live in today, and the individuals who built it - as well as created forces that could destroy it all. A great biography should always leave the reader feeling like they've lived the triumph and/or tragedy of its subject. American Prometheus certainly does that.

Related Reviews

Robert Jungk - Brighter Than 1000 Suns
Miller - Empire of the Stars
Cathcart – The Fly in the Cathedral
Moore - What Stars Are Made Of: The Life of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

Karin Wieland - Dietrich & Riefenstahl: Hollywood, Berlin & a century in two lives

Marlene Dietrich was one of the great artists, actors and performers of the early twentieth century. Her life was shaped by the twists and turns of the German Weimar period, when poverty, capitalist crisis and radical politics shaped a generation. Whatever the particular nature of her beliefs, Dietrich was one who was unafraid to call out things she disagreed with. While she could be a problem to work with, and her casual dismissal of lovers and relationships left many shocked and confused, she was, no doubt on the right side of history.

Leni Riefensthal an admirer of Hitler, a calculating careerist who saw in the Nazi regime a chance to become close to power, to advance herself and to share in the wealth and adoration that went with it. At times this meant she literally used Gypsy prisoners from concentration camps as film extras, before returning them to their inevitable deaths. That she herself was playing a romanticised gypsy in the film being made only heightens the horror. 

Karin Wieland's double biography tries to tie these two individuals together. It is a difficult task. There is little or no physical overlap between the two, though a photo of them together is included. Instead what Wieland is trying to do is to tell the story of the 20th century through the lives of her two subjects. As such the book ends up falling between biography and history and getting neither particularly well. 

What the reader gets from this book will depend on their particular interests. I approached it hoping to learn more about Dietrich, who for me is the enigmatic singer and actor, who threw her lot in with Hollywood and left German as the Nazis rose. Her principled refusal to return to Germany and act in Nazi films, despite her perennial lack of money, was a genuine blow to the propaganda efforts of Hitler's regime. As a result of this, and her choice to become the entertainer of choice for the US military, sparing no effort or personal discomfort to sing, perform and cheer up the troops on the front lines, felt more like a powerful effort at anti-fascism. But Wieland also makes it clear that Dietrich also found a renewed love of applause and adoration. Here she was at her best - not the leading lady from Hollywood, but the Weimar era cabaret superstar who had a instinctive ability to speak to the crowds. 

On the other hand I had little interest in Riefenshtahl who, in my opinion had little talent, and whose close links to Nazism and Nazi leaders was carefully hidden through post-war manipulation. While she clearly had some talents as a director, it is also abundantly clear that these talents came through because of a close identification with the Nazi aesthetic cultivated by Hitler and Goebbels. 

I was, however, intrigued to see that Wieland pulls no punches in retelling Riefenshtahl's career. While there's less material that for Dietrich, she draws out the essential emptiness of Riefenshtahl's life. At the same time Wieland makes it very clear just how close to fascism and the Nazis the filmmaker was. Her post-war career is shaped by the same controlling, manipulative behaviour and a singular failure to atone for her sins. 

Unfortunately there is not enough of a parallel between the two figures to tell the story of the century. Indeed Dietrich isn't enough of a principled political thinker and Riefenshtahl's too limited an actor and performer to make the lives parallel. They just happened to live the same lives - with little or no overlap. At the end of her life Dietrich comes across as a sad, lonely and impoverished former great - someone who made some amazing films, with personal determination and principle. But she was at least a great performer and actor in her time. And after the war Dietrich was at least obsessed with trying to understand and atone for her native country's sins. Riefenshtahl comes across as a pig who got away with a host of crimes, and was accepted back by the establishment as soon as it could.

Readers wanting to learn more about either figure will find lots of material in this book of interest. But it failed too offer any insights into the period, or real connection between the two.

Related Reviews

Evans - Hitler's People: The faces of the Third Reich
Boyd - Travellers in the Third Reich

Alfred Bester - The Demolished Man

Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man is considered one of the great works of post-war Science Fiction. First published in 1953 it is easy to see why it was considered a great work. But reading it today the book seems out of date and not as sharp as it must have read in the 1950s.

While very much sitting in the futuristic science fiction genre, surprisingly the book is actually a police procedural detective novel. There are two twists to this. The first is minor, the book is what Wikipedia charmingly describes as an "inverted detective story". We know, from the opening chapters who the killer is, and how they did the crime. Though it is not clear why. The more dramatic twist is that the crime takes place in a future where some people are "peepers", mind-readers who have varying abilities to read thoughts. This means that the most acomplished peepers can tell what someone is thinking, why they are thinking it, and everything else in their subconcious. It means that there hasn't been a pre-meditated murder in many years - though crime is very much still real.

The main character, and it is not a spoiler to say this, the killer is Ben Reich. Extremely rich, powerful and unpleasant, Reich is challenged by an equally massive company run by Craye D'Courtney. Reich is troubled by dreams of "the man with no face" and is increasingly paranoid. He resolves to murder D'Courtney and comes up with a series of clever plans to evade the peepers and hide his crime.

While much of the novel follows the telepathic police office Lincoln Powell's attempts to prove Reich's guilt and motive, the story's twist is that in the eyes of the law Reich has no motive. Quite the opposite. In fact Reich had everything to gain from keeping D'Courtney alive because a proposed merger of their companies which would have solved Reich's finanical troubles, was on the cards. The murder meant Reich's bankruptchy.

The problem is that telepathicly obtained evidence is not admissible in court, so Powell cannot simply bring in Reich for questioning, but has to find a way to prove what is going on in the killer's mind. 

All this set up makes for an intriguing premise. There's a lot of interesting stuff about the pros and cons of a society where some people can read minds, but where those peepers are not all as able as each other. Bester sets up some other intriguing ideas - the "cartel" of telepaths who monopolise and try to control individuals with those powers, leaving some peepers operating underground or without training and constraints. There are also some surprising class politics - the idle rich whose orgies are carefully hidden away and provide a perfect space for Reich's crimes.

But there are problems. Not least in the uneasy relationship that is depicted between Powell and D'Courtney's daughter. The murder of her father means his daughter regresses to childhood and Powell cares for her as she recovers through an accelerated childhood. From being a father figure, Powell becomes her lover. It feels really inappropriate - quite literal grooming - with the added problem of telepathic intervention.

This actually points to the real problem - the ending. Here Bester resorts to what feels now like a dated and cliched freudian explanation of why Reich commited the murder. It fits, of course, with the general narrative of thought and subconciousness. But it makes for an unbelievable and unsatisfying ending that feels very old fashioned. Bester's book is best read for its world building. But it just doesn't work for me.

Related Reviews

Bester - The Stars My Destination

Eamon Duffy - A People's Tragedy: Studies in Reformation

As one of the preeminent scholars of the English Reformation I have always found Eamon Duffy's work to be insightful and interesting. Despite his framework differing entirely from Marxism, his frequent focus on the lives of ordinary people, the impact of religious changes and the role of religion in day-to-day life, means that there is much to be gained from a study of his work. Two of his books remain unparalleled. The Stripping of the Altars is a fantastic account of the impact of the Reformation with a nationwide view, and The Voices of Morebath is a deeply touching close study of one community's encounter with the sweeping changes of the Reformation through a half century recorded by its vicar, Christopher Trychay.

What to make of A People's Tragedy, collection of Reformation themed essays by Duffy, which mostly explores how the Reformation has been understood by people in the centuries since? While several of the essays are interesting, they are most likely to be fully enjoyed by various experts. However there are some stand out chapters. Two of these demonstrate Duffy's excellence at exploring the ordinary experience of religion. The first, on the nature and experience, of pilgrimage before the Reformation gives, like Voices of Morebath, a real flavour of ordinary lives. Here are the ordinary pilgrims, "goggling" at the splendour around them, distracting them from the shrine. The second, which looks at the doomed, pro-Catholic, rebellion of 1569, again demonstrates what I argue is the essence of the Reformation for "history from below". In England it was experienced by most people as an assault on their culture and community, from above - and thus rebellions against it must be seen as resistance to attacks on ordinary people - rather than just a defence of Catholic practice.

Other essays look in detail at how different historians, religious figures and so on have discussed and understood the Reformation. Some of these are obscure to non-specialists. Others less so. There is a fascinating chapter that dissects Hilary Mantel's trilogy on Thomas Cromwell. Exploring how the author reverses the character and behaviours of two key figures - Cromwell and Thomas More, to the detriment, Duffy argues of popular understanding of the English Reformation. While the main thrust of the argument is understandable, Duffy's desire to protect the legacy of Thomas More seems more sectarian than historical. Another fascinating chapter looks at the development of the English Bible, and its impact today.

To be fair to Duffy, he is concerned not just with pushing a more pro-Catholic viewpoint on the Reformation than most readers will be used to, but in actually exploring the legacy of the schism itself. This, he argues, was quite negative. Regarding the end of the tradition of pilgrimage, Duffy concludes that with its end, "English imagination was the poorer for it". While it is certainly true that the infrastructure and fabric of churches suffered from the consequences, was collective "imagination" really that damaged? Me thinks the writer protests too much.

Part of the problem is that Duffy is concerned about religion per se. This is particularly notable in his chapter on the rise, fall and rise again of pilgrimage to the shrine of the Virgin Mary at Walsingham. Here, in his account of contemporary politics of the event, he is keen to stress the unity of the wings of the Church, over and above the nature of the pilgrimage itself. What does pilgrimage mean in the 21st century is not really a question that Duffy tries to answer. This, I think is important, because Duffy has disconnected his religion(s) from wider economic, political and dare I say it, historical processes. Sometimes this is obvious on a specific level - for instance in the account of 1569 (a revolt entirely neglected by contemporary left historians) Duffy writes:

Till relatively recently, historians have been inclined to explain the rebellion in essentially secular terms, as the last gasp of northern feudalism, an attempt by northern grandees, resentful of their own exclusion from the corridors of power and the domination of the Elizabethan court.

Duffy, instead, reminds us that people did (at all sorts of levels in society) enthusiastically embrace the opportunity to reassert their own religion and practice in the old way: Digging up altar stones, teaching choirboys to sing the old songs and so on. But what Duffy misses is that the revolt can be understood as both aspects. Indeed it is both the desire for northern power and the desire to worship in the old ways that provided the impetuous for revolt by elite rebels and the space for some of the masses to support them.

It is Duffy's ability to disconnect religion from context (while recognising its centrality to the lives of ordinary people) that makes the book a frustrating read. Duffy might be keen to build bridges between the different Christian Churches and to argue against viewpoints that sometimes place Protestantism and being automatically more progressive than Catholicism. But this is abstract religion - there's nothing really here about the role of religion in the modern world, or indeed how a unity of purpose for different Christians might impact on wider politics. Given the uses and abuses to which religion is being purposed in the modern world, particularly by the right and far-right, its a shame that Duffy's excellent historical analysis of the Reformation as a religious process cannot be deployed in ways that might illuminate contemporary politics.

Related Reviews

Duffy - The Voices of Morebath: Reformation & Rebellion in an English Village
Duffy - The Stripping of the Altars

Newsinger - Chosen by God: Donald Trump, the Christian Right & American Capitalism

John Rose - Revolutions Thwarted: Poland, South Africa, Iran, Brazil and the legacies of Communism

John Rose, who died recently, was a veteran socialist of the 1968 generation. I reviewed his excellent book The Myths of Zionism many years ago on this 'blog and like many socialists I learnt much from his pamphlet Israel: The Hijack State. In the 2010s Rose began working on a project to critically examine the revolutionary socialist ideas that had been so central to his activist life. In the introduction to this book he writes that he was motivated to examine a fundamental question, "why was the Marxist left in such a precarious state, especially when the proverbial crisis of capitalism... was so serious?" He decided to put his "1968 assumptions" to an "independent test" by studying three failed revolutionary upheavals (a fourth was later added). 

These studies, on Poland in the early 1980s, Iran in 1979, Brazil in the 1980s and 1990s and South Africa at the end of Apartheid, were all examples of mass workers action that had the potential to spill over into working class revolution. With the possible exception of Iran, which saw workers' councils in a small number of highly organised areas of workers' strength, none of them did. Comparing these events, with the high points of revolutionary activity in the early 20th century, form the main purpose of the book. Despite the book originating in a Phd study Rose writes not out of pure academic interest, but with the ambition of revolutionary emancipation. It is a remarkable work.

The book opens, however, not with 20th century revolution, but with 1848 and The Communist Manifesto, "one of modernity's greatest historical documents". The Manifesto, writes Rose, "provides strategic and tactical guidelines for accomplishing the ultimate goal of a classless society". Rose traces the development after 1848, not just of revolutionary ideas, but also of organisation. Crucially, he notes that while Marx and Engels did not fully develop their thoughts on revolutionary organisation, others did. Gramsci, for instance, noted how his revolutionary newspaper in 1918-1920 "worked to develop certain forms of new intellectualism"... individuals whose strength was not simply "eloquence" but "in active participation in practical life, as constructor, organiser". Such individuals were, Gramsci writes, "elites of intellectuals of a new type who arise directly from the masses through remaining in contact with them".

While Rose fully explores other aspects of revolutionary thought, particularly Marx and Engels' key concept that the emancipation of the working class will "be the act of the working class" themselves. The importance of revolutionary worker "intellectuals" remains central to his argument. It was individuals like these, Rose concludes, who made the Russian Revolution: "Lenin's purposive workers: worker leaders, 'genuine heroes... with a passionate drive toward knowledge and toward socialism' [Lars Lih]" Why is this important? That, in essence, is the argument of the second part of the book.

In examining the four "thwarted" revolutions of Iran, Poland, South Africa and Brazil, Rose explores two things. Firstly the ongoing relevance of the Marxist approach to social change. The moments when mass action by workers begins to spill over into the demand for "self management" a slogan that Rose describes as one of 1968's greatest slogans. This self-management is evident in a number of examples. Rose quotes from his interview with one of the Solidarity activists from Poland who describes a key moment in the strike wave:

There was a nuclear bomb shelter in the basement. I used this shelter because I was formally leader of a trade union... I organised a strike committee for this March mobilisation for all offices, all workshops around the old market. I even prepared food for three months. So I had everything prepared for these strikes... It was a classical dual power situation. There was still a state with military apparatus and police... But the real power, day by day, went to workers' factory councils.... we organised a plebiscite in the biggest factories in Wroclaw about who has the power to choose the director, manger, the Party or workers' councils? And in every factory we won this plebiscite.

If that was the situation in Poland, in some parts of the Iranian Revolution power went even further. One account, quoted by Rose says:

The oil industry is virtually controlled by dozens of independent workers' komitehs, committees, which, though loyal to the central government, are nevertheless participating in all the decisions related to production and marketing... the komitehs have unquestionably demonstrated that they can run the oilfields and the refineries without the top rank Iranian managers and without the expertise of some 800 foreign technicians.

But as Rose shows at crucial points in all four of these risings the left failed the test. This was, it must be stressed, not just about whether or not the left supported workers' action or retreated at the wrong point (a particular issue in Poland), but also whether or not key questions such as oppression were taken seriously. In Iran, for instance, the left failed to support women's fight for their rights, seeing it as a distraction. Comparing the German Revolution of 1919 with Iran in 1979 Rose writes:

The German communists in 1919 had one tremendous advantage over their Iranian counterparts... Both shared the experience of taking part in revolutionary upheavals, toppling tyrannies, as a result of decisive collective workers' action. Both shared the experience of witnessing and participating in very advanced experimental forms, though at different stages of development, of organised workers attempting to establish democratic forms of workers' control of production... But the German left had at least secured elementary democratic and constitutional rights, which allowed the German Communist and the independent workers' movement time to recover from the defeat.

He continues, that the 

tragedy of the Iranian left is that not only was this decisive advantage denied to them; the Iranian left itself has to share some of the responsibility for this failure. The struggle for popular democracy, including the defence of women's rights and the independent press in 1979 was just as important as defending the workers' shoras and the new regime's anti-imperialist stance. 

But the left was unable to engage in the sort of tactical twists and turns that Lenin's Bolsheviks used throughout 1917 to consolidate their position in the minds of the masses. The problem was politics, or the lack of political clarity. In Iran, Rose argues that "the Stalinist mind-set not only ruled out such essential tactical and strategic flexibility, it altogether downplayed the importance of the struggle for popular democracy". Those leading the movements, in all four case studies, too often shared a political allegiance or set of ideas that saw mass struggle as secondary. It was always their downfall.

But it wasn't simply the lack of a clear political line, or a distortion of strategy. It was also the failure of the sort of revolutionary organisation with large numbers of Gramsci's intellectual activists within the working class. Activists who could think about strategy and fight for mass action, at the same time as building an independent movement. That's not to say that individuals like this did not exist. Rose interviews several of them, and he notes that the best of these "the regimes most feared because of their widespread influence" and they tried to silence them. But he concludes, for Iran:

The problem of how to revitalise that vision [of socialism] in the shadow of Soviet Communism and its Iranian apologists was never resolved. The same applied in Poland, South Africa and Brazil. It also meant that the nascent worker intellectuals were unable fully to develop their political abilities.

It is a problem that contemporary socialist organisation must grapple with. Indeed Joseph Choonara has recently written a piece on how revolutionary parties can develop cadre. While the International Socialist Tradition, of whom John Rose was part, have rightly always understood the problem of the Stalinist politics of the State Capitalist regimes and the Communist Parties who acted in their name, Revolutions Thwarted demonstrates how lasting and extensive that influence was. Rose concludes:

This... underestimates the impact of the collapse of Soviet Communism and the growing doubts about its viability that preceded it. Criticisms of the Soviet Union... easily flowed over into a demoralising sense that the original socialist revolution in Russia 1917 was itself flawed... the independent workers' movements in the four countries... were... dogged by the experience of Soviet Communism and lacked confidence to develop sustainable ideological responses which would revitalise a communist project centred on their own self-activity.

The conclusion can only be to build the sort of intellectually dynamics, revolutionary socialist organisation that was lacking in these movements in Polish, Brazilian, Iranian and South African history. The sort of organisation that John Rose dedicated his life to building. Revolutions Thwarted is, in many ways, one of the most important books to come out of the International Socialist tradition in the last ten years. Its a book that reasserts the core politics of classical Marxism, puts workers' self emancipation at its heart, and is not afraid to be self-critical and honest. Its one that a generation of socialists ought to read to arm us for the struggles to come.

Related Reviews

Rose - The Myths of Zionism
Molyneux - Marxism and the Party
Cliff - State Capitalism in Russia

Mary Beard - Emperor of Rome

Emperor of Rome is Mary Beard's latest book aimed at a popular audience about Ancient Rome. As with her others this is accessible, entertaining and readable. This book looks at the Emperors, though as she makes clear this is no easy task. The Imperial period covered a long period of time, and there were numerous Emperors, some of whom lasted a very brief time and several of whom we know little or nothing about. Beard avoids a chronological approach, which is good because it means she avoids having to tell the same story over and again. Instead what she tries to do is to give the reader a general impression of the role, perception and activities of the man who was the pinnacial of the highly rigid, violent society that was Rome.

One of the advantages of this approach is that the Emperor is understood in context. We avoid the "1066 and all that narrative" of good and bad men, and begin to see the men as mor than "benevolent elder statesmen or juvenile tyrants". These are there, and Beard cannot but avoid give us some of the salacious gossip and slander. But she also can conclude that these stories are ones that arise in context - as attempts to discredit, or boost, an Emperor during or after their lifetimes. The Emperors were the top of the ruling class, but they were also important figures in terms of continuinty. As Beard points out, "the magnifying lens of these stories helps us to see clearly the anxieties that surrounded imperial rule at Rome".

It also means that Beard doesn't try to separate the Emperors from those below them. The Emperor cannot exist without military guards and networks of patronage. But he also, being at the top of a slave society, cannot exist without the labour of thousands of slaves. It is the casual commodification of the slaves that highlight the first example of this interaction, as Beard recounts how the Emperor Domitian once held a dinner were everything, including the food dishes, was coloured black. The slaves were painted back, and guest's dinner places were marked with pretend tombstones. The sombre atmoshpere would have terrified the diners: were they about to be executed? At the end, upon returning home, the guests were met by tone of the slaves, carrying a fake tombstone and the washed slave dressed up as a gift. 

There's much in this example - the Emperor's casual references to death as a symbol of power. The even more casual giving of the slave as a gift which, Beard points out, is what will stand out to modern readers. And the use of dinners as places where the Emperor would network and distribute gifts. But we also have to ask "Did it happen"? Was the story, recounted centruies later by the Roman writer Dio, even true. Its a good example of how what we think about Emperors as individuals as well as the role, might be distorted - even if the story reveals much about wealth, power and the nature of Roman slave society.

There's a lot here, and I enjoyed the book as an exploration of the nature of class rule in Rome. Surprisingly for a book focused on individuals it also shed a lot of light on some of the ruins in Italy, particular those in Rome and made me eager to visit again. For other visitors this would be a good book to pack in your holiday suitcase.

Related Reviews

Beard - SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
Beard - The Roman Triumph
Beard - Pompeii: The Life of A Roman Town
Beard & Crawford - Rome in the Late Republic
Hopkins & Beard - The Colosseum

Mike Davis - Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the imagination of disaster

I started to read Ecology of Fear in the aftermath of the recent LA uprising. In part that was because one of the first great such urban risings I remember was when, around the time I became an active socialist, LA rose up in 1992. What is it about the city that makes it such a place of resistance, and a place hated by the US right? Mike Davis' classic book has the answers. 

For Davis, Los Angeles is a city whose location in time and space places it at the epicentre of disaster, and that disaster is made worse by the history of the city, and the history of America. It is a city of gross inequality, racism and cheap labour, and a city smack squarely at the epicentre of disaster. This is why it is, as he systematically documents, a city that has been destroyed in film, literature and comic book hundreds of times, and why that destruction is often covered with a veneer of white supremacy and genocide. It it is so called "natural" disaster that takes up the first chapters, the threat from earthquake, tornado and firestorm, then Davis systematically shows how those disasters are amplified by the reality of capitalist LA:

Megacities like Los Angeles will never simply collapse and disappear. Rather they will stagger on, with higher body counts and gretaer distress, through a chain of more frequent and destructive encounters with disasters of all sorts; while vital parts of the region's high-tech and tourist economies eventually emigrate to safer ground, together with hundreds of thousands of its more affluent residents. Aficionados of complexity theory will marvel at the "nonlinear resonances" of unnatural disaster and social breakdown as Southern California's golden age is superseded forever by a chaotic new world of strange attractors.

While we have long known that "natural" disasters hit poor and marginalised communities first and hardest, Davis' eloquent writing reminds us of how it is the fissures and fractures in capitalist society that creates this reality. 

In the provocatively titled chapter, The Case for Letting Malibu Burn, Davis discusses the war that wildfires and their particular threat to the City, arise from a juxtaposition of location and capitalist planning. Putting profits before people meant making decisions that simultaneously worsened the risk of disaster, and turned the city into an unhealthy and concentrated urban area:

The 1930 fire should have provoked a historic debate on the wisdom of opening Malibu to further development. Only a few months before... Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr - the nation's foremost landscape architect and designer of the California state park system - had come out in favour of public ownership of at least 10,000 acres of the most scenic beach and mountain areas... Despite a further series of fires in 1935, 1936 and 1938 which destroyed almost four hundred homes... public officials stubbornly disregarded the wisdom of Olmsted's proposal.

Almost a century later the homes of this land, now the preserve of the rich and famous, burn over and over again.

The interaction between nature, society and capitalist interests is the great theme of this book, and it's Davis' genius that ensures that the reader never forgets the human cost. But also places the very real story of exploitation and oppression within that wider narrative. Here are the stories of immigrant workers, paid starvation wages, victims of the poorest housing in the most dangerous areas, fighting and organising to improve things, and the callous politicians, city officals and greedy landlords opposing them. But it is also a city bedeviled by official racism and a far-right confident to organise within the space:

According to the Los Angeles Count Commission on Human Relations, attacks on blacks increased 50 percent from 1995 to 1966. Los Angeles became the nation's capital of racisl (539 crimes) and sexual orienation (338 crimes) violence... The commission's annual report also noted that racially motivated crimes had been clearly clustered in older suburban areas... as well as in the economically troubled Antelope Valley. Although the human relations commissioners cautioned that the report "does not say it has become open season on African Americans," the dramatic surge in attacks on blacks suggested otherwise.

While LA has a special place in Mike Davis' heart, the interaction of racism, class, nature and capitalism described in Ecology of Fear could stand in for any number of urban US environments. The history helps us understand the roots of the LA rebellions of 1992 and 2025, and the further resistance. As well as the hatred that the US elite have for the city and its population. It is the book that explains the real background to today's ICE raids and racism, and Trump's military occupation of the city.

Long before many others had even stopped to think about the interaction of these forces in the urban environment, Mike Davis was writing about how global warming would exacerbate the tensions of capitalism. But it is his love of the city, its people and his superb dialectical politics that make this book one to come back to time and again. Its renewed my desire to read his other works on California and US radical history - that's probably the best endorsement the book could have.

Related Reviews

Davis - The Monster Enters
Davis - Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World
Davis - Planet of Slums
Davis - The Monster at Our Door