Alexander F. Gazmararian & Helen V. Milner - Climate Fault Lines: The new political economy of a warming world

The annual occasion of the UN climate talks usually provokes a lot of hand wringing from politicians, institutions and the media about the state of the worlds' environment. Platitudes are followed by hollowed promises. Delegates return home from their jaunt usually having been heavily lobbied by fossil fuel representatives and little is actually agreed. As a result the ecological crises intensify, the world sees more floods, droughts, wildfires and these are more powerful. 

It is this latter point that is the most important. The actuality of climate change manifests itself in very real ways, on people, companies and businesses and governments (local and national). The impact itself is uneven. Very roughly, countries in the global south, because of historic and contemporary realities - colonialism, imperialism, capitalism's uneven development are disproportionatly hit. The figures are stark: billions face a dangerous and unpredictable future.

How will these realities affect global politics? This is the complex task that authors Alexander F. Gazmararian and Helen V. Milner set out to examine in their new book Climate Fault Lines. Both are academics working in politics and international affairs, but their book differs from those I would normally read on environment and climate politics. It is a complex and important study of how institutions, politicians and individuals respond to climate change. Its conclusions are stark. It offers no easy solutions. But it deserves to be considered seriously.

Firstly let's have a look at what the authors argue. Despite the common belief that "we are all in it together", the authors highlight the "profoundly unequal toll" from climate change, a "variation in vulnerability" they label "climate change's economic geography". They define a "climate fault line", the 35th parallel, "a fuzzy boundary that marks the broad divide between regions projecto to suffer significant damage from rising temperatures and those likely to face more limited harm and, in some cases, potential net benefits". The line roughly divides the Global South from the Global North, but it bisects some countries - such as the United States and China. 

Because this is a serious work of theory and science, it is worth quoting from the authors' methods and approach:

Our theory seeks to explain how people, businesses and governments respond to climate change. We focus on their beliefs, preferences, and political activities toward global warming. Our inquiry is positive, not normative. We seek to understand how these actors behave, not prescribe how they should act. The goal is to improve out understanding of why global warming is difficult to address...

...We assume that people, businesses and governments are self-interested when deciding how to respond to global warming. They first consider how global warming affects them rather than acting in the world's best interest. Self-interest doesn't always guide short-term behaviour; but, in the longer run, economic incentives influence political actors' strategies.

I should explain that the authors support their conclusions through analysis of surveys, reports and statistical data. I am no data scientist and more qualified readers than me can disect the methodology, but it seems to me to be rigorous. Troublingly what the authors conclude goes against the grain of perceived thought. Take the case of the study of how individual people change their attitude to climate change when they experience a "climate shock" - a disaster, be it flood, drought etc. 

After a climate shock, only people in damage zones become more supportive of mitigation policy [to reduce emissions or otherwise deal with global warming].... There is no effect on climate shocks on policy preferences among people living in less-climate vulnerable areas.

They emphasise, "central to our theory, we find that only people in climate-vulnerable places respond to the shocks". The authors add, a little later, when discussing the impact of climate shocks on "climate skeptics" that:

The finding also suggests that more repeated and stronger exposure to extreme weather and disasters may be necessary to chaneg the minds of people most doubtful about global warming. What's clear, however, is that political attitudes aren't immutable - even among people who initially doubted the existence of global warming.

These conclusions, which demonstrate that those above the fault line do not fundamentally change their attitudes to global warming even after a climate crisis, are matched by similar findings for the other sections of society studied by the authors. For instance

after climate shocks, companies in damage zones spend more on climate lobbying. But for less vulnerable companies, there is no change in lobbying expenditures.... companies below the fault lime appear to learn from climate shocks and then select their political strategies based on how climate change will materially affect them in the future.

Similarly,

only local governments below the fault line respond to extreme heat by disclosing emissions mitigation actions. Importantly, only cities in the most democratic contexts become more likely to disclose mitigation politics after climate shocks. In less democratic contexts, extreme heat makes cities, especially those outside damage zones, less likely to take climate actions. 

The authors are good at showing how different cases affect outcome - democratic accountability for instance, or the tensions that will arise within states (eg the US) where some regions are below and others above the fault line. They conclude, "local leaders who fear accountablity and anticipate future damages because of their geographic vulnerability become more likely to disclose emissions reduction actions." 

There is a similar, and glaring, conclusion for national governments. Those countries that sit above the climate fault line are less likely to introduce policy to mitigate climate change in the aftermath of disaster. This challenges perceived wisdom. The liberal dominated governments of the developed world, particularly those in Europe and Canada, are considered "climate leaders". It is the countries that are most at threat that are most likely to respond to disaster with positive action on climate change: "national governments [that] perceive greater benefits from mitigation because of their vulnerability... pass more mitigation policies". 

Readers who have got this far, or, more likely, finish Gazmararian's and Milner's book are entitled to ask "Why do we get these different responses?" Why in the face of scientific knowledge do governments and individuals, above and below the fault lines, act different? The authors suggest that understanding this requires accounting for "unequal ways that global warming will materially affect places worldwide". They worry that their study's conclusions show that we will "not succeed" in preventing disastorous climate change.

But reducing responses to climate shocks to differing impacts puts the cart before the horse. There are other factors that determine how people, institutions and governments think about climate change. The most important of these is hinted at when the authors acknowledge how more democratic states/governments are more likely to respond positively. This is the question of political campaigning, social movements and protest.

Moving from the theory of Climate Fault Lines to anecdotal evidence will help me illustrate this. Through 2019 there were growing, social movements around climate change. In Britain Extinction Rebellion put tens of thousands of people on the streets, drawing in new layers far beyond existing climate activists. At the same time Greta Thunberg began her school strikes. The response to this was massive, with walkouts in many countries. 

In the UK where I am based, the school strikes began to morph into wider action. In September 2019 the movement saw serious, if small, mobilisations of trade unions and workers into solidarity with the students. In schools, colleges and workplaces, as well as the media, discussion global warming mushroomed. Suddenly every institution, government, and workplace wanted to declare a climate emergency and act. It can be argued that this was small beer. But it did lead to enough changes that the right today is desperate to roll back these successes. However we can conclude that social movements do shift companies and individuals, as well as governments - above and below the fault line.

Secondly, understanding how groups respond, must surely also require the study of the global economy itself. How does the penetration of government by fossil fuel companies hold back mitigation. The authors' case study of Norway notes that drought in there failed to lead to climate mitigation, while similar droughts in countries below the fault line did. Norway is a fossil fuel producer. What role did those companies play in holding back action? The industry certainly reduces the impact of COP conferences each year. Indeed the authors' case study of Nigeria seems to prove this point. Devastating floods in 2022 led to bold promises from the Nigerian government to act, yet "implementation has been slow and disappointing for some analysts". The barrier to this may well be the powerful oil companies in Nigeria, as well as the fact that "150,000 to 200,000 people work in the oil and gas industry and could lose their jobs in the transition". 

While the Nigerian government is right to point out it needs international aid from countries above the fault line, we also have to probe deeper to understand how resistance from fossil fuel corporations and other stakeholders in the fossil fuel economy holds action back. Thus we are faced not just with the question of geography, but a geography that is superimposed on a global system of accumulation. Which, ultimately, is why social movements become central.

Climate Fault Lines is a challenging book because it points out how difficult dealing with climate change is, and will be. It shows us some painful truths. But I worried that the pessimistic conclusions reached by the authors arose not out of the statistical findings, but because those studies have become abstracted from wider contexts, and it is these contexts that will help us shape the political and social strategies we need to challenge fossil fuel capitalism and its inaction.

Related Reviews

Huber - Climate Change as Class War
McGuire - The Fate of the World: A history & future of the climate crisis
Battistoni - Free Gifts: Capitalism and the politics of nature
Crawford - Charleston: Race, water & the coming storm
Vaillant - Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World

Katsi’tsakwas Ellen Gabriel with Sean Carleton - When the Pine Needles Fall: Indigenous Acts of Resistance

In July 1990 the Canadian state laid siege to an Indigenous Mohawk community near the town of Oka in Quebec. The 78 day siege saw violent confrontation, including the use of guns against the First Nations people, and self-defence and armed retaliation from the Indigenous community. Images of masked and armed First Nations people resisting the state made headlines across Canada, but few of the newsreports talked about either the wider issues or the way that the community's resistance was led by unarmed women. One figure who did stand out was  Katsi’tsakwas Ellen Gabriel, the young spokesperson for the First Nations people.

The dispute was over the extension of an existing nine-hole golf course into Indigenous lands - the pinewoods suggested by the title. A further nine-holes were to be built on land that was considered sacred, but was also an ancient burial ground. The appalling dismissal of Indigenous beliefs and interests was shocking, but characterises the dismissal by the Canadian state of First Nation's interests. The resistance was, eventually, successful. The golf course was not extended, but the conflict itself exposes wider questions of Canadian history and colonialism. 

Gabriel's account of the resistance is inspiring, and demonstrates that through collective resistance, injustice and be tackled. But she is keen to make wider points. Firstly she repeatedly emphasises the so-called Oka crisis was not an isolated example of injustice. It was part of an ongoing process of displacement and land-robbery. Indeed she makes the point that dispute the end of the resistance in 1990, the situation continues in different forms.

It's very frustrating that in the years since 1990... we're still dealing with the land issue. The federal government had an opportunity to do something about it in 1990 but did absolutely nothing to change it. Canada continues to commit land fraud. They've sold our land to a developer again, as they did in 1990. They sold contested land to a private individual, so they should be compensating the people (in Oka) that they fradumently sold the land to, but they won't acknowledge or take responsbility for creating this mess.

Of the wider Indigenous demand for #landback, a hashtag that has become a common demand by First Nation's people and their supporters, she points out that the state and its supporters

claim we want the keys to their houses, but that is absurd, really. Canadians need to direct their outrage at the right people: the Sulpicians, the Municipality of Oka, the provincial and federal government, settler-colonialists themselves. They all need to be held accountable for their ongoing complicity in land fraud and land theft at Kanehsata:ke... for the land fraud committed against all Indigenous Peoples in the Americas.

The Sulpicians were a French Catholic order that arrived in French Canada to convert and subvert Indigenous society. Gabriel argues, that "peace and reconciliation" is not about taking land back completely. But it is about recognising genocide and robbery and giving reparations and restitution.

Going further Gabrield explicitly places the blame for Indigenous genocide and repression on an economic system that puts profit before people. She says:

It feels like a war, the rich against the poor. It's a very dysfunctional society in which racism is the accepted norm and whereby systemic racism and environmental destruction are justified for corporate profits. I think that is the key reason why there's so much resistance to change: Land Back will mean less money in settlers' pockets and the coffers of the state... Canada's economic prosperity has always been at the expense of Indigenous Peoples' lands and our human rights.

She continues:

Canadians who are indifferent to our plight and history seem oblivious to the fact that their prosperity is built on the backs of Indigenous people. They're getting rich from developing outlands, which they've stolen, and their developments are protected by colonial laws. So, naturally, they stay quiet and benefit from the racism norms.

Would #landback be at the expense of most ordinary Canadians? I think probably not. In fact most ordinary Canadians probably can be won to such a struggle because they have a shared interest in resisting corporate greed and state racism. 

Peace and reconciliation will not be straightforward. But it can be done in a rational and equitable way. The people who ought to pay are those who have concentrated wealth in their hands through centuries of exploitation - and that's a minority of super rich people and their corporations. This requires winning an argument in Canada that non-Indigenous workers have a shared interest with Indigenous workers. There are multiple hints that this is possible in Gabriel's book. One example, surprisingly, comes from the family of Corporal Marcel Lemay who died during the 1990 crisis. Lemay is likely to have been killed by "friendly fire" from the state/army troopers attacking the First Nations. But what is interesting is that his sister, has dedicated herself to a process of "peace and reconciliation" and has concluded that her brother died unnecessarily.

Gabriel does, however make the point, that while this is tragic, Lemay's death was used to blame and target Kanien'keha:ka people and the police "enacted a kind of revenge in which they did not listen to government and became a law onto themselves". Lemay's sister has "become a strong voice for reconcilation" says Gabriel. But she also wonders if there would have been the same outcry and indignation if it had been a First Nations person who was killed. For Gabriel the fact that Lemay's sister has spoken out demonstrates the potential for things to change among non-Indigenous people, but it also was "history repeating itself".

For me, this discussion of the tragic death of Corporal Lemay, highlights a central important theme of the book. Nothing that happens in Canada can be understood without reference to the colonial history of the state. And until that is acknowledged, there can be no justice. The problem is a systemic one, and it requires systemic change.

Since 1990, Gabriel has become a leading figure in the fight for Indigenous rights on a global stage. Much of this book explores her own thoughts and ideas, which naturally engage with wider issues such as the global environmental crisis. Ultimately Gabriel is clear

History will show that what we're doing is the only choice we have if we're to be true to ourselves and to honour Mother Earth, giving the future generations a fughting chance to survive the cataclysmic environmental changes from the climate crisis.

Socialists, like myself, will have their own ideas about how that struggle will manifest itself. What Gabriel's book makes clear is that that struggle cannot win without a recognition that historic colonialism is part of the basis for todays' capitalist destruction and that the repression and displacement of Indigenous Peoples is an ongoing structural part of contemporary society. Supporting the ongoing contempory struggles of Indigenous Peoples for economic and political justice is not a optional extra for the left, trade union and environmental movements. It is part of how we understand and challenge capitalism.

Related Reviews

Palmer - Capitalism, Colonialism & Crises: The Remaking of Modern Canada 1960-2025
Palmer - Colonialism & Capitalism: Canada's Origins 1500-1890
Palmer - Capitalism & Colonialism: The Making of Modern Canada 1890-1960
Fraser & Komarnisky - Talk Treaty to Me: Understanding the basics of treaties and land in Canada
Krasowski - No Surrender: The land remains Indigenous

Matthew T. Huber - Climate Change as Class War

I write this review the day news reaches us of a horrific tragedy in Nepal. Hundreds if not thousands of people have been killed by a glacier collapse, flood and giant landslide. It seems likely that global warming played a role in these events, though at the moment of writing this is as yet unproven. Yet fossil fuel corporations do nothing to limit their emissions for fear of risking their profit. In his introduction  to Climate Change as Class War Matthew T. Huber makes a pertinent point: "It is a great achievement of neoliberal ideology that policymakers today barely imagine the expropriation of fossil fuel property as a conceivable option despite the increasing severity of the crisis." Indeed politicians of the mainstream are doing much to expan production, condemning millions to death.

For socialists and environmentalists there is an inevitable follow up question. Why have our social movements, including mass and militant protests around environmental issues, failed to shift this situation? For socialists involved in environmental politics there's an additional question. How do we get workers involved? Huber writes:

One of my key arguments in this book is that if we want to build a majoritarian, popular movement around climate change, it must resonate with a broad and diverse working class. More importantly, the working class is alsosubject to lower, stagnating wages and alienating, dangerous work. This poverty and insecurity give the working class a material interest in better their lives through transformative change.

Too often though, Huber argues, socialists, including "eco socialists" have failed to engage with the workers movement, and argued for abstract politics that just attack capitalism and demand a socialist society. Later he adds, in critiquing Jason W. Moore with a critique that could be aimed at others on the left, that because "much of what is important ecologically is 'outside' value and production.... [this] reinforces the idea that class politics is separate from ecological politics - and a focus on production is separate from the external world of ecological 'conditions'."

The socialist tradition I am part of does not, I hope, fall into this trap. But we are very much a minority within the larger environmental movement and the politics that dominates that movement is shaped, Huber argues, by ideas and forces that cannot conceive of a challenge to the capitalist system and is "nowhere near achieving the revolution in the structuring logics of production". One key argument he makes is that this is because the climate movement is dominated by a "minority of the population", the "professional class". These professionals, "reproduce a capitalist ideology of meritocracy that tends to supplement the domination and exploitation of the majority of society (the working class)". Some of the fault, according to Huber, lies with "science communicators" who, he says are often scientists and believe the problem is "a lack of awareness" and who believe that "if the masses truly understood the science, action would follow." Such approaches lead to a technocratic solution to environmental issues and hence an attempt to work within the system.

More problematic, Huber says, is the way that that professional classes are shaped by their collective guilt over their own position in society and their own impact on the world. Let's look at how Huber argues this in regard to "carbon guilt".

At the heart of the flying less campaign is guilt over one's high carbon lifestyle... this guilt emerges from a contradiction at the heart of professional-class formation. One the one hand, the enture class project aims to use credentials to acive the salary and material security of a middle-class lifestyle. On the other hand professional-class lifestyles relate to massive levels of ecological degradation and waste. This realisation creates inward feelings of guilt or complicity... But carbon guilt leads one to think it is actually professional, middle-class consumers themselves who are most priviledged in a climate change world. Carbon guilt confuses material privilege - a level of comfort and security - with the power to control the material organisation of energy production.

Out of this guilt comes, Huber argues a series of strategies that see a minority of the population - in this case the professional class - arguing for a series of demands (eg degrowth) that are about asking the majority of the population (to consume less). Such austerity like policies can neither solve the climate crisis, as they don't challenge the fundamental driver of climate crisis - capitalist production; nor can they appeal to the workers who have already been told they must tighten their belts for decades.

There is much to agree with here. But I felt uneasy with the direct link between what Huber calls the professional class and carbon guilt. On the one hand, he cites two scientists James Hansen and Rachel Carson as sitting in the "lack of awareness camp". There are problems with these scientists approach to the system - Hansen for instance does advocate for the solutions that Huber critiques. But both of them were more radical that he credits. Hansen has taken part in direct action. Carson was a critic of capitalism and had she lived to see these decades would I think have gone much further.

On the other, I am less convinced about his argument around climate policy arising simply out of the class position of the professional class. One reason is practical - the types of workers he describes, scientists, university professors, medical doctors etc - have become increasingly proletarianised in the West. They have made up some of the biggest and more militant pickets in recent strikes in the UK. Another is where these politics come from. I think the bigger problem is the decline of revolutionary socialist politics and the way that Marxism in academia has become increasingly divorced from its revolutionary strategy. Environmental politics has been dominated by individualist approaches because of the influence of the fossil fuel industry (BP's carbon footprint) and NGOs. So while I do agree there's some truth to Huber's approach I found it inadequate.

However Huber adds a second qualification which I think is right. He points out that the working class feels limited in its ability to respond to the environment crisis, because of the nature of that crisis and because of the limitations of workers' power at the current time. Huber writes:

The working class not only lacks control over what it needs as individuals, but also over the larger sociaoecological "metabolism". This lack of control over material production itself is what leads to the specific experience of powerlessness over the ecological crisis today, of watching an unfolding disaster caused by seemingly distant and uncontrollable forces. Whether we see these as abstract "market" forces or the corporate elite, the lack of control over the processes of ecologica ldegradation creates feelings of helplessness in the face of planetary crisis.

This is absolutely right. The problem is not that workers are unaware or unconcerned about ecological questions - quite the contrary, they are often the most enthusastic about environmental issues - but workers feel powerless to change the status quo, or challenge the dominance of fossil fuel corporations. This is often acknowledged - "I'm recycling my paper, but whats the point if water companies just dump shit in the rivers". But the only solutions offered are individual, or corporate. This is also, it should be said, perpetuated by many trade union and labour movement "leaders" who, because of their ties to the system, form a class who have a vested interest in holding back struggle. 

This refreshing and insightful material aside, I was disappointed by Huber's political conclusions. Here he tends to reject the idea of a revolutionary insurrection led by a revolutionary party. In "advanced capitalist societies, the working class faces a far more thoroughly armed state" and this (he quotes Eric Blanc), means "too much armed strength for an insurrectionary approach to be realistic". He instead hopes for a working class alternative, which by "sheer numbers, there is a possibility to stitch together a mass, working-class electoral colaition to win state power trhrough campaisn powered not only by masses of working-class votes but also by small donations that free up candidates from the more typical wealthy donors".

For those of us who recently lived through the Your Party debacle in the UK, I don't hold out much hope for this. Indeed, I'm concerned of the seeming dubordination of working class power through its ability to withdraw labour to electoral processes. This is not to say that workers cannot or should not, try to win elections and use parliament. But Marx did warn us that workers' cannot readily seize the capitalist state machinery and wield it for their interests. It needs to be smashed as its a weapon of the capitalist class itself.

Further Huber argues that we cannot rebuild workers' power quickly enough to give it the strength to challenge fossil fuel capitalism across the board. So he argues for a selective tactic based on workers in the energy industry. Again there is some interesting material here. But I'm more of the belief that its possible to develop workers' combativity much quicker, and that requires fighting for campaigns that link economic and politics issues. Two examples strike me - the Italian strikes over Palestine and the workers in London buses who are striking over AC and heat in their vehicles. Both demonstrate the potential for industrial action that links wider questions of imperialism and climate with economic struggles. Both also have the potential to link into much wider networks of solidarity. 

Huber doesnt agree with the Climate Jobs strategy in the UK (disclosure, I am part of that campaign) because he suggests it (quoting Stegania Barca) sees "workers not as political subjects of an ecological revolution, but as potential victims of climate policies". I would turn this upsidedown and suggest that workers who are, or will be such victims, can be part of an ecological revolution through a process of struggle. In fact, I'd go so far as to suggest that properly articulated, a climate jobs strategy can lead to a wider generalisation of struggle. But that requires grassroots and rank and file radicals pushing for that outcome, rather than a passive top down approach.

Much of this review will seem like a major disagreement with the author. It is, of course, true that I do have disagreements. But they are tactical, rather than strategic. To illustrate this, I'd like to quote from Huber's conclusion:

We do not need better environmental policy ideas to solve climate change; we need a stronger working class. As long as we are losing the larger class struggle, we are also losing the climate struggle.

This is an absolutely correct conclusion. The key issue, as Huber repeatedly argues, is how to shift to a winning struggle. So while I have my own disagreements, I do encourage socialists to engage with Climate Change as Class War. Too few such books discuss workers at all, never mind their active struggles and the need for revolution. Matthew T. Huber's book does and this makes it worth the read.

Related Reviews

McGuire - The Fate of the World: A history & future of the climate crisis
Ramana - Nuclear is Not the Solution: The folly of atomic power in the age of climate change
Glynn & Clarke - Climate Change is a Class Issue
Vaillant - Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World
Battistoni - Free Gifts: Capitalism and the politics of nature
Crawford - Charleston: Race, water & the coming storm

Héctor Puente Sierra - Revolution & Counter Revolution in the Spanish Civil War

In 1936 a revolutionary movement swept the Spanish state. After the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the German Revolution of 1918/1919 it was one of the most important workers' revolutions in history. It saw a powerful working class movement take control of cities, towns and the countryside, running it in the interest of the producers and expelling the capitalist class. George Orwell famously said that his arrival in Barcelona was the first time he had see a city were "workers were in the saddle". But Orwell's experiences must not blind us to the depth of workers' control that was seen in 1936.

Héctor Puente Sierra's new book is published for the ninetieth anniversary of the Spanish Revolution. His book is first, and foremost, a celebration of the potential for organised workers to defeat capitalism and build a society based on mass participatory democracy. Delightfully he quotes a Communist railway worker in Catalonia:

It was incredible, the proof in practice of what one knows in theory... All one's doubts are suddenly stripped away... Suddenly you feel their creative power; you can't imagine how rapidly the masses are capable of organising themselves. The forms they invent go far beyond anything you've dreamt of, read in books.

An anarchist leader wrote:

The Antifascist Militias Committee was recognised as the only effective power in Catalonia... It was everything, supervised everything, the transformation of the peacetime industries into war industries, propaganda, relations with the government in Madrid, help for all the fighting centres, relations with Morocco, the cultivation of available land, health... and a thousand and one problems of every kind... The Antifascist Militias Committee was simultaneously a ministry of war, a ministry of the interior, and a ministry of foreign affairs.

In the countryside poor peasants "sponsored and favoured collectivisation", while richer peasants were "more sceptical". But interestingly "the first harvest under the collectivised system would show a 20 percent increase over the year before". This was not because the system was more efficient, but because it was a agriculture run by, and for, the poor peasantry.

Sierra doesn't limit his account simply to the gains of the Revolution. The Revolution itself was a spontaneous response to the threat from the far-right to the Spanish "Popular Front" government. Understanding how this arose requires an understanding of the growth of the Spanish left, its various forms (communist, anarchist, anarcho-syndicalist and so on) but more importantly the late and uneven development of Spanish capitalism. By the 1930s Spain was experiencing the tensions caused by the contradictions of advance industrial capitalism in some regions, and backward agrarian capitalism elsewhere. The class struggles that arose from this, as well as the need for the capitalist class to throw off any restriction on their ability to accumulate capital, fuelled a contradictory push for development - one that was both attractive to Spain's capitalist interests (and their friends abroad) but also antagonised sections of Spain's rulers. 

Spain's powerful workers movement was part of this. It's general political affiliation was to the Popular Front, but it was also self confident and developed enough to fight for its own interests when needed. When the right rose up in a military coup against the Popular Front government the Spanish working class responded by creating a situation of dual power across much of the country. While this quickly became a war to stop Franco and his military forces it was, at every stage, a political battle.

These tensions are brilliantly explained by Sierra, no more so than in his discussion about the influence of Stalin and Russia, and the debates from other sections on the left about how to win. Sierra argues that the nature of the Soviet Union was now very much a State Capitalist society, and foreign affairs were subordinated - not to the development of revolutionary forces against capital - but to the protection of Soviet national interests. Throughout the latter half of 1936 and into 1937 Russian support for the Republic, militarily and politically, was coloured by this factor. Those who argued otherwise were denounced as opponents of Russia, Trotskyists and fascists - somehow simultaneously people who supported the Republic and revolution and supported Franco.

While Franco's forces used the most appalling violence against the revolution - from massacres to systematic rape and destruction, Sierra also notes the problems caused by Stalinist strategies. In Madrid, over two thousand supporters of the military coup were imprisoned by the Republicans. These were "summarily shot". Sierra writes that

The indiscriminate massacres of prisoners flowed from the Stalinists' efforts to centralise all decisions to do with public orders into their hands. It also signalled the import of the brutal methods associated with the Soviet secret services into republican politics.

This also saw those Marxists forces that did not support the Stalinist strategy, or the Soviet Union, starved of resources, isolated, repressed and murdered. The most important of these organisations, the POUM, is studied in detail by Sierra, not least because its strategy and tactics offer perhaps the most useful way of learning the lessons of 1936 today.

The POUM argued that the way to win the Civil War was to extend the revolution - to give full rein to workers' power across the country and to develop mass participation in the war. This would have seen the encouragement of workers' and peasants' participation in government, locally and nationally and would have also seen revolutionary methods extended to areas that mainstream politicians were terrified of going. This would have meant further challenges to capitalist interests and, perhaps of most importance tactically, support for the independence of Spanish colonies. 

One of Franco's most significant bases was the Army of Africa, principal made up of troops from Morocco. Offering freedom to Morocco would have potentially split that army apart. Yet the bourgeois participants in the Popular Front government and representatives of Stalin's Communist International opposed this. Their attempts to keep on board the soft right and placate the capitalists of Britain, France and America, doomed the Republic and the revolution.

Two final parts of Sierra's analysis must be discussed. The first is his analysis of the POUM. The POUM was a Marxist organisation that had some of its roots in Trotsky's opposition to Stalin. On the eve of the revolution they were a relatively small organisation of a few thousand members. Sierra says they "had shown promising signs in the years leading up to the revolution that they could build the kind of mass revolutionary force... that had been sorely missed in decades of struggle." Sierra's analysis of how the POUM used the united front tactic is particularly relevant today. But the POUM made a series of tactical errors, but as the "revolutionary situation" developed, their mistakes became "magnified and had fateful ramifications". At crucial moments the POUM were unable to capitalise on events, or placed themselves in positions, that made it hard to winning mass numbers to a revolutionary position. This was particularly true of their attempts to engage and win over anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist workers whose leaders had failed to advance the revolution.

While Sierra is critical of the POUM, his anger is aimed at their main opponents on the Republican side. The betrayals of the Communist Party have been mentioned. But those anarchists today who continue to celebrate the Spanish Revolution as a great moment in anarchist history ought to read Sierra. While his criticism of the anarchists who ended up joining governments are well documented on the Trotskyist left, I was more interested in how Sierra draws out the implications of anarchist theory for revolutionary periods. For instance, anarchist belief that money was something that could simply be abolished might seem like a theoretical discussion that could be safely ignored. But, Sierra points out, it meant that anarchist revolutionaries simply ignored banks and then found that they were unable to run the economy in a transitional revolutionary period.

The final point to make concerns Sierra's discussion of fascism in Spain. Sierra concludes, I think rightly, that Franco's regime was not a fascist one. Again this is not an abstract point, but has implications both for how the War was fought, and for what came after. Sierra rightly acknowledges the centrality of mass fascist organisations like the Falange to Franco's victory - and the scale of the crimes they committed. But he argues this was only one part of a coalition, which Franco tamed in order to protect his new regieme. Franco, Sierra says, walked a "tightrope" between the Third Reich and the Western powers. But most of the forces that made up Franco's coalition were opposed to closer ties to the fascist powers, especially as WW2 loomed. After the war, and the military defeat of fascism in Europe, it was the Catholic Church that "would play the greater role in defining the new Francoist state".

Revolution & Counter Revolution in the Spanish Civil War is an impressive book. It takes one of the most complex periods of working class history, places it in its context and develops a series of interacting analyses of the different forces and interests to explain a sometimes complex history. It celebrates the power of the workers, and the gains of the left. But it is always critical of the mistakes and strategic errors made by different forces. 

Another strength of the book is that it never patronises it's audience. Not all readers will be familiar with the arguments and concepts that Sierra uses. So it's good that he backs up some of the more theoretical arguments with reference to other revolutionaries such as Marx, Lenin and Trotsky. In addition, Sierra is approaching these debates from a different direction to others on the left. Orthodox Trotskyists have tended to be critical of the POUM because of some of their tactical disagreements with Leon Trotsky himself. Similarly Sierra is highly critical of the Communist Parties and the Stalinised Communist International of the 1930s for their mistakes then. So it's good that Sierra also roots his arguments in the ideas of those from the revolutionary left who historically have been critical of orthodox Trotskyism and Stalin's Communists.

Today, the Spanish Revolution probably does not get the attention on the British left that it deserves. The mass movement that erupted in 1936 offers us a glimpse of workers' power. But it also offers use much to learn from. Héctor Puente Sierra's book is thus an important contribution to the development of a new revolutionary movement rooted in the belief in workers' self emancipation.

Related Reviews

Gonzalez & Barekat - Arms and the People
Cliff - Trotsky 1927-1940: The Darker the Night the Brighter the Star
Newsinger - A Rebel's Guide to Orwell

Leon Trotsky - Fascism, Stalinism & the United Front

In the early 1930s, as fascism in Germany grew from strength to strength, the great Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky wrote a series of pamphlets and articles to explain the nature of fascism and to argue for a working class strategy that could defeat it. These articles, several of the most important of which are collected here, remain some of the best studies of German fascism and Hitler's rise to power. They remain crucial reads today for those trying to understand contemporary fascism - not because the situation is identical, but because Trotsky's method is to place the far-right into the political and economic context.

That said, the essays collected here, contain a great deal of insight, strategy and tactics, that can help us understand how to defeat the far-right and fascism today. Key to this, as Trotsky understood in the 1930s, was mobilising the largest number of workers in militant and mass opposition to the fascists. This required the use of the United Front tactic, a strategy developed in the revolutionary circumstances of 1917 by the Bolsheviks, and adopted by the early Communist International. It required the revolutionary left to build a strategic alliance with forces and workers' organisations to the right of them in order to shape a mass movement. The potential, as Trotsky repeatedly notes, was there but the principle barrier to such unity was the ultra-left position of the German Communist Party (KPD). The KPD argued, following the lead of the now Stalinised Comintern, that the Social Democrats were no better than the fascists. Indeed, at times they made it clear they thought that the Social Democrats and the millions of German workers' who supported and voted for them were worse than the Nazis.

This positioning was tragic. It cut the revolutionary left off from wider workers' forces. This fundamentally weakened the anti-fascist movement and it also undermined the ability of the KPD to build the revolutionary left. Throughout these essays there is a growing sense of urgency from Trotsky as he desperately argues for a different course. 

In 1930 he writes:

If the Communist Party is the party of revolutionary hope, then fascism, as a mass movement, is the party of counter-revolutionary despair. When revolutionary hope embraces the whole proletarian mass, it inevitably pulls behind it on the road of revolution considerable and growing sections of the petty bourgeoisie. 

But the opposite is also true. Trotsky continues:

The election revealed... counter-revolutionary despair embraced the petty bourgeois mass with such a force that it drew behind it many sections of the proletariat. 

Later he points out that:

those workers who remain with Social Democracy, as well as those who voted this time for the National Socialists, did do not out of simple ignorance, not because they awakened only yesterday, not because they have as yet had no chance to know what the Communist Party is, but because they have no faith, on the basis of their own experience in the recent years.

The mistakes of the KPD in the revolutionary era of the early 1920s were one thing, but a bigger problem was the wrong-headed approach to the Social Democrats. One problem of course, was the failure to build unity also undermined the ability of the KPD to build the sort of struggles that could have undermined some of the political and economic base of the Nazi's support.

The belief that the SPD were as bad as the fascists meant that the KPD wasn't able to launch the sort of industrial strategy that could have raised the confidence of the working class and transformed the situation. In his 1932 article, The Only Road, Trotsky points out that it is precisely the chaos of capitalism itself that is leading the capitalists towards seeing fascism as a solution. That requires a clearer revolutionary strategy from the KPD, one that was sorely lacking:

If the economic evils of our epoch, in the last analysis, result from the fact that the productive forces of humanity are incompatible with private ownership of the means of production as well as with national boundaries, German capitalism is goring through the severest convulsions just because it is the most modern, most advanced, and most dynamic capitalism on the continent of Europe.

He continues a few pages later:

The petty bourgeoisie must acquire faith in the ability of the proletariat to lead society onto a new road. The proletariat can inspire this faith only by its strength, by the firmness of its actions, by a skilful offensive against the enemy, by the success of its revolutionary policy.

The barrier to this was, in the first instance, the fact that the Soviet Union's isolation meant that country was no longer led by revolutionaries, but by a "national-opportunistic bureaucracy, which does not believe in world revolution". This is the "misfortune" for the whole proletariat.

Many of these essays are available elsewhere, and some of them have been collected in different collections. One thing that stands out from this edition from Bookmarks in Britain is a very useful framing essay by Steve Wright, and contextual introductions to each year by Chris Harman. This new edition of Fascism, Stalinism and the United Front also benefits from an excellent essay by British socialist and anti-fascist organiser Samira Ali, who brings Trotsky's analysis of fascism up to date. As she says, these articles "endure because of their theoretical clarity and their strategic questions remain profoundly contemporary". 

In Britain we live in the most dangerous times since Trotsky was writing. If the specifics of fascist organisations today are different, as Samira Ali says, we "return to Trotsky['s writings]... not because they offer a ready-made template for understanding fascism today, but because they provide something more important than historical analogy. They provide a method: analyse fascism concretely, identify the forces that can stop it, and argue for forms of working class unity before the decisive moment has passed."

As such this book is one for our dangerous times.

Related Reviews

Trotsky - The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany
Trotsky - The History of the Russian Revolution
Zetkin - Fighting Fascism: How to struggle and how to win

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related Reviews

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related Reviews

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In particular the authors write that the 1876 Indian Act 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related Reviews

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related Reviews

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

V.I. Lenin - Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism

Lenin's short book on Imperialism is perhaps the best known of his extensive writings. So well known, in fact, that the edition I've just read is number 96 of the Penguin "Great Ideas" series. Make of that what you will. Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism remains a key reference point because of the continuation of imperialism itself. It is a succinct presentation and defence of the Marxist understanding of Imperialism, defended by Lenin principly (and deliberately) through reference to bourgeois commentators and statistical sources and defended by Lenin from critiques on the left, most prominently Karl Kautsky.

The book is itself limited, or rather it is very much of its time. Lenin acknowledged this because he was writing for the censor. Written in 1916 it needed to bypass Tsarist censorship and thus Lenin's conclusions and language are deliberately mitigated. Michael Kidron, his his own discussion of Lenin's work noted more critically that "have all been lost sight of in an uncritical, almost universal, acceptance of its central themes. This is all the more strange since much of what he analysed has clearly either gone or become much less important than in his day."

Kidron goes on to make some sharp criticisms of Lenin's work. Recognising it as a brilliant piece of revolutionary work at the time, but acknowleding that it has its limits and is very much of its time. Lenin himself acknowledges this in one of the prefaces written after the Revolution when he notes that the book was limited by lack of research material while writing in exile. Kidron's criticisms focus on the changing role of banks and finance capital, which was central to Lenin's analysis and he argues, a over generalisation from the German economic situation. The changing importance of capital export from developed economies to the developing world is also something noted by Kidron.

These criticisms remain important and Marxist theorists such as Alex Callinicos have continued to develop the theory of imperialism for a new years, 60 years after Kidron's critique and over a century since Lenin's. Nonetheless Lenin's book remains crucial to understanding modern imperialism because it offers a Marxist account of the interaction between capitalist development and imperialist structure. Lenin argues that his left critics, such as Kautsky continually misunderstand imperialism prescisely because of their neglect for context.

So what does Lenin argue? Imperialism, says Lenin, arises out of a stage in capitalist development when monopoly capitalism (existence of gigantic firms that have swallowed up most, or all, of their competitors) comes to dominant and can obtain massive profits from exporting capital into delveloping countries. This is faciliated, Lenin argues, when banks have reached such proportions that they control finance capital and can deploy it to further their own interests and those of other capitalists. This then goes further, as Lenin writes, "the 'personal union' between the banks and industry is completed by the 'personal union' between both and the state."

This union between capital and the state means that the state itself can and must intervene in the interest of its own national capital in the world. While this can lead to war, Lenin also highlights that imperialism is more than war. It is the intervention of the state in trade, economic relations and colonial development, in the interests of its capital. Two countries, he writes

England and France are the oldest capitalist countries, and... possess the most colonies; the other two, the United States and Germany, are the front rank as regards rapidty of development the degree of extension of capitalist monopolies in industry. Together these four countries own 479,000,000,00 francs... nearly 80 percent of the world's financial capital. Thus... the whole world is more or less the debtor to and tributary of these four international banker countries, the four 'pillars' of world finance capital.

Such a relationship rests on the ability of the state to deploy military power if required, as Thomas Friedman famously said in 1999:

The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.

It is this analysis that makes Lenin's work such a crucial starting point for anyone trying to analyse the modern world. Think of US intervention in the Middle East, or Russia and Ukraine's war. We cannot understand these without understanding the "economic essence of imperialism", to use Lenin's words. Take Ukrain and Russia. Russian aggression began the conflict, but it was Nato and Western interests attempt to hold back Russia's economic interests that identify the conflict as a proxy imperialist one. 

But there are aspects to contemporary imperialism that remain absent from Lenin's book. One of these is the question of "sub imperialism", those nations who have broken from colonial domination and now exert their own economic and political interests, sometimes militarily. Israel in the wider Middle East, or Iran and UAE in Syria and Sudan. Lenin's work is dominated by an attempt to explain World War One and link this understanding to a fight against "opportunists" whose siding with their nation state had so badly damaged the socialist movement. Nonetheless, understanding how the development of capital in post-colonial countries and regions has led to sub-imperialist clashes, hinges on the same recognition as Lenin developed in understanding the rise of the Great Powers in the colonial era. If Lenin's work doesn't anticipate these developments, it does, at every stage recognise that colonialism needed to be resisted by those workers and peasants in colonial states. Had he lived to see this era, he would no doubt have analysed it as succinctly and clearly as he does in this work.

Related Reviews

Lenin - The Development of Capitalism in Russia
Lenin - The Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy in the First Russian Revolution 1905-1907
Lenin - Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky
Lenin - Will the Bolsheviks Maintain Power?
Callinicos - Imperialism and Global Political Economy