Philip José Farmer - The Fabulous Riverboat

I've previously reviewed the first novel of Philip José Farmer's series set on the fantastic Riverworld, so I won't repeat my descriptions of that amazing planet. Volume two of the series is more action packed and less thoughtful than the first book, but that does not undermine the essential brilliance of the novels. Here we have the most impossible planet, made to feel possible.

This volume only mentions Richard Burton, the hero of the first book in passing. Burton now has reached almost mystical proportions amongst the denziens of Riverworld. A few characters return, Goering, as a rather annoying religious character for instance.

This plot centres on the desires of Mark Twain, or Sam Clemens to use his given name. Sam wants to build the eponymous riverboat, to explore and find the true meaning of Riverworld. To do so, he needs a source of metal and other materials that barely exist on the planet. The intervention of a rogue member of the planet's alien masters allows this material to be found, and the kingdoms that develop around the locations of these new resources creates the potential both for technological advances and conflict. An era of Imperialism has arrived to Riverworld. Interestingly, slavery (in the form of grail slaves) has re-made an appearance. On a planet were no-one has to work, because food is provided through the grails that each person has on reincarnation, getting others to labour or fight for you, can be difficult. Taking their grails away makes slavery possible. It also makes slave revolts a possibility too.

The uneasy alliances between such historically untrustworthy characters as Eric the Bloodaxe and King John are of course bound to be full of tension. To tell more would ruin the story, but Farmer skillfully keeps us believing its all possible and throws in a few sharp commentaries on the way the world runs today.

Related Reviews

Philip José Farmer - To Your Scattered Bodies Go

David Kynaston - Austerity Britain 1945 - 1951

As the Tories and their lickspittle friends the Liberal Democrats try to destroy every last vestige of the welfare state, what better book to read than an account of Britain's greyest hour - the post war years. Austerity Britain is well titled. The sufferings of the war-years, the rationing, the death and destruction rapidly passed into a period of dull greyness. People continued to go hungry, if anything rationing got worse as the food aid that had poured into the country from the United States no longer arrived. The destruction wrought by bombing, added to the over-crowded conditions in many working class areas from before the war, meant that housing was in short supply.

David Kynaston's history of this period is a superb follow up to a book I read and reviewed here recently - Angus Calder's history of World War Two - A People's War. Like Calder, Kynaston uses extensive social records from the time, Mass Observation in particular, but also diaries, reminiscences and interviews. Many of these are from ordinary people, though Kynaston is at pains to try and include all sides of the class divide. This is important - class differences a very stark during these years.

The book starts with the most hopeful period - the introduction of the welfare state and the nationalisation of industry. Around a fifth of the economy was nationalised - including the coal industry, energy, the Bank of England and the railways. Kynaston argues that this nationalisation was at the heart of the post-war Labour government's agenda, and as a consequence was viewed with terror by the establishment and the Tories. As the election results came in, many middle and upper class people thought their time had come. They imagined their wealth being taken from them, losing their money, businesses and homes. In fact this didn't happen. Labour proceeded nervously, seemingly unsure of how to use their popular mandate, terrified of upsetting big business.

As unemployment rose, cynicism seems to abound. Kynaston paints a picture of a population unhappy and grumbling, unhappy with their lot, but unconfident to challenge the system. There must be some truth in this - strike figures don't exactly show a combative working class, but you do see the settings for future conflicts beginning to be laid out.

One review of the book, in Socialist Review, argues that there is not much to this, than a series of anecdotes. There is much truth in this, and I agree with that reviewer that the anecdotes are illuminating. Too often they seem random, but they are given context and the astute reader can develop a better understanding of the time. There are startling omissions - the rest of the world most importantly. The ending of the War, marked the beginning of the end of Britain's Empire, yet some of these great events, which surely must have impacted upon people's consciousness barely get a mention. I do not recall a single mention of Indian Independence in 1947 for instance.

The book is at its best when it gives a flavour of life and the times. The sections on the lives of recent immigrants to the country from the West Indies for instance, are fascinating. The chapters dealing with the reaction of the establishment to the election of Labour are similarly interesting and show how scared their side is of us. Labour comes out of the book, less like the domineering and influential post-war government that we are often told about. The creation of the Welfare State brought was done with frequent pandering to the vested interests for instance. Leading politicians seem to show ignorance, naivety and indecisiveness in the face of economic crisis and social change, but nothing new there.

If you enjoyed A People's War, you'll probably enjoy this, though there is a weaker narrative - the book is more of a sequential history, rather than an attempt to come to many conclusions. That said, for those interested in social history, there is a wealth of material here of interest.

Related Reviews

Angus Clader - A People's War

V.I. Lenin - The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky

Cover of Russian first edition (1918)

The outbreak of World War One was supposed to have been met by mass strikes and protests led by the mass socialist organisations of the Second International. At numerous meetings and conferences, leaders of these organisations had declared the coming war to be an imperialist one. Not in the interest of the proletarians who voted and supported these organisations. With the start of the war, one by one these parties capitulated to their national bourgeois, declaring that the defence of their nation state was the most important priority. This abandonment of revolutionary socialism shocked those socialists who remained loyal to Marx's ideas. In particular Lenin's Bolsheviks remained one of the few organisations to remain opposed to the war and imperialism.

In this short book, Lenin deals directly, in polemic, against Karl Kautsky. Kautsky had been a leading Marxist for several decades, heading up the German SPD and Lenin had looked to him for most of his life as a revolutionary. Kautsky's conversion to supporting the German capitalism was a great shock to Lenin. This polemic though is a response, not to Kautsky's initial betrayals, but to his later attacks and criticisms of the Russian Revolution.

There is too little time for me to rehearse the history of the Russian Revolution here. Suffice to say this book will remain mostly incomprehensible if you haven't read some history of that momentous point in working class history. Amongst the things that Lenin takes Kautsky to task for is the belief from Kautsky that the revolution in Russia was premature. Like many of the pre-war Marxists, Kautsky (and indeed Lenin) had argued that the coming revolution in Russia would be a bourgeois one. One that would create a capitalist state like those in Western Europe. Russia's economy, and in particular its working class were too immature to lead a successful revolution. Kautsky's criticism is based on this mechanical interpretation of events.

Lenin and Trotsky had argued two things. That the revolution against the capitalists and their government in Russia could lead to the workers taking control, so long as the peasantry was on their side. Secondly, they argued that a successful Russian Revolution could only survive if followed by a European wide insurrection. Kautsky criticises this, asking "what if it did not happen?" To this Lenin points out, that the "expectation of a revolutionary situation in Europe was not an infatuation of the Bolsheviks, but the general opinion of all Marxists". To betray the revolutionary opportunity would have been a betrayal of revolutionary principles.

Kautsky supports his argument with what Lenin refers to as many "liberal" arguments. The declaration of the dictatorship of the Proletariat is undemocratic, that with a majority of support and vote of the population there should be no need for the new workers state to protect itself against the capitalists. These were hollow words for Lenin, who was in a country assailed by the forces of the capitalists. Lenin rehearses the basic Marxist arguments of the role of the state - an instrument for the oppression of one class by another. The nascent workers state, Lenin says was as much in need of defending itself against external threats as the capitalists needed to protect their interests from the workers and the mass of the population.

Lenin argues that Kautsky's position on this is the crux of his abandonment of Marxism.

"Infatuated with the 'purity' pf democracy, blind to its bourgeois character, he 'consistently' urges that the majority, since it is the majority, need not 'break down the resistance' of the minority... Kautsky inadvertently commits the same little error that all bourgeois democrats always commit, namely he takes formal equality... for actual equality. Quite a trifle."

As Lenin then points out this trifle is a failure to understand the most basic of Marxist ideas, namely that "the exploiter and the exploited cannot be equal." As a result of this abandonment of his politics, Lenin explains that Kautsky spent the war years, trying to "extinguish the revolutionary spirit, instead of fostering and fanning it."

Kautsky's betrayal of Marxism was an enormous shock to the workers movement. In this book Lenin argues against Kautsky's new positions, and defends the revolution, in particular challenging Kautsky's criticisms of the disolution of the Constituent Assembly and the agrarian policies carried out by the Soviets. His defence of soviet power as a higher form of democracy is based on a re-reading and reassertion of many of Karl Marx's core ideas. In particular Marx and Engels' writings on the Paris Commune, and specifically, Marx's book The Civil War in France. This reassertion of Marx and the defence of the revolution, in the midst of the revolution itself is what makes this book so powerful and interesting.

The only thing that is lacking in the book is an attempt at an explanation of why so many great Marxists and their organisations capitulated to capitalism. In his excellent book The Comintern Duncan Hallas argues that the parties like the SPD in Germany that Kautsky led, had managed to gain a foothold inside the system. Their bureaucracies, their MPs, their organisations gave them a significant inertia and interest in maintaining the status quo. For them to break with Marxism in practice, meant, Hallas says a return to illegal, under-ground work. For many of the leaders, whose Marxism was limited to speeches on May Day, there was much more "to lose than their chains". This stake in the system, combined with a bastardisation of revolutionary politics, began to undermine the desire for genuine revolutionary change. Rosa Luxemburg in particular had before the war broke out, fought a hard fight against such reformism from one of the SPD's leading members.

The book itself has no conclusion. Lenin notes at the end of the last chapter, that his last few lines were written on the same night that news reached Russia of the seizure of power in numerous German towns, including the capital by Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. For Lenin this in itself was the final rebuttal of Kautsky's politics and offered new hope for the Russia Revolution itself. Sadly this was a false dawn, but this neglected book of Lenin's remains a powerful declaration of the hopes of the revolution and a defence of the revolution itself.

Lenin - The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky - full text from the Lenin Public Archive here.

Related Reviews

Kautsky - The Agrarian Question - Volume 1
Cliff - Revolution Besieged
Birchall - A Rebel's Guide to Lenin
Marx - The Civil War in France

John Sheail - Rabbits and their History

The history of rabbits in the UK might seem an unusal topic, but there is a surprisingly fascinating and complex story here. Rabbits first arrived on the British Isles at some point after the Norman Conquest. They began as a luxury food for the rich, but soon escaped the boundaries of their warrens and easily adapted to the British countryside. Over time, rabbits rapidly became an important part of  the rural economy and the natural ecology of the countryside, their meat helping to feed the population and their fur being a prized material for sale.

What John Sheail does well though, is to demonstrate how the history of the rabbit in the UK is one of an interaction between human society and nature. This is not a simple story of rabbits escaping their warrens and becoming accepted as a normal part of nature.

Rabbits could be a prized asset, yet their introduction often helped to destroy crops and woodlands. Their ability to procreate made it difficult, if not impossible to control their numbers. Whole areas of farmland were rendered worthless. A single collection of rabbits, unrestricted by property boundaries could, and frequently did, lay waste to crops. As a result of this, rabbits themselves became a battleground. Landowners might relish rabbits for the hunting parties that paid to shoot them, bagging dozens of animals in a day. The money from this could be much greater than the money obtained for farming the land, but the rabbits would alienated surrounding farmers. So poaching, hunting and trapping became something that also represented the struggle between farmers and landowners.

Dozens of laws aimed at restricting poaching are testiment to the landowners ability to use parliament to fight back, but the spread and growth of rabbits across the isles, meant that by the 20th century they were of epidemic proportions.

Much of Sheail's book deals with the back and forth nature of the battle for the right to hunt and eat rabbits and the defence of crops and land from them. He describes the, sometimes huge, artifical warrens built to house the animals (Henry VIII's estate owned an enormous auger, used to drill rabbit holes). He explains how gin traps worked, and why there was such an outcry at their cruelty and amusingly he discusses ferrets. He reports on the alleged use of crabs and lobsters (with lit candles on their backs) by rabbit trappers who used them to flush the animals out of their tunnels and called them sea-ferrets. He mentions evidence that toads were used in a similar way, but I find this somewhat unlikely.

Most interestingly he demonstrates how the introduction of myxomatosis destroying rabbits in their millions and almost driving them extinct had the consequence of changing, once again the nature of the beast. Rabbits today spend little time below ground, unlikely their more recent ancestors, and similar to the original animal introduced in medieval times. Their numbers are limited by the disease, and crops and agriculture are safer, but the example serves to show how rabbits are really a product of the social space that humans have created for them, rather than a natural evolution. The lack of suitable predators in Australia has shown the consequence of the introduction of the animals into an area offering almost unlimitless growth.

Sheail's book concludes by saying that the story of the rabbit has not ended. After all the interlinked nature of the shared history of humans and rabbit described so well in the preceeding pages will no doubt continue and develop.

Alan Bennett - The Uncommon Reader

I love Alan Bennett's writings. His recent article in the London Review of Books, defending libraries in the face of the cuts is a wonderful piece of polemic, that sums up this great writer.

So I finally got around to reading The Uncommon Reader, I was excited, ready to be carried away with it. Everyone else has read this short novel, so I won't go into detail. The plot is straightforward but slightly surreal - the Queen gets switched on to reading following an accidentally encounter with a mobile library (oddly enough, it gets cut eventually, like the ones in Manchester have). She rapidly gets sucked into the world of literature to the exclusion of much else. Her royal duties suffer, her relationships with staff and family suffer and the nation, it seems, don't like it.

Sadly, it just didn't quite work for me. Maybe I am too much of a revolutionary to think that the Queen is like this. Maybe I just don't do absurd. Maybe I didn't like the choice of books she reads. There's nothing wrong with the book, just not to my taste. And given my love for Alan Bennett's writings, that was a surprise. There certainly are some clever bits - the way the establishment organises to undermine the Queen's new love of writing is well written, but she gets her revenge and.... well I shouldn't give the end away.

John Molyneux - Anarchism: A Marxist Criticism

Whatever else it is remembered for, 2011 will remain the year that ordinary people once again took to the stage of history. The revolutions that shook Tunisia and then, most inspirationally Egypt have inspired millions of people around the globe. The protests, demonstrations and strikes in Europe this year have all had a little spirit of Egypt about them. Not a few times in recent workplace discussions have one or other trade union members said to me, words to the effect of "If they can do it in Egypt, we can do it here."

"It" in this context is stopping the austerity program imposed by governments across the world. The ruling class' response to the economic crisis. Their attempt to make working people pay, rather than the bankers and the wealthy. For revolutionaries, this is a truly exciting period. Millions of people have engaged in revolution. Millions more have been inspired.

But what is our strategy? Revolution is not an easy, nor a uniform process. There are twists and turns, moments when the movement goes forwards, stands still or must retreat. How should those, who are revolutionaries, who recognise the horrors of capitalism and want to build a new world, organise?

Marxism and Anarchism are the two major strands of anti-capitalist thinking. They have had, and continue to have, a stormy relationship. Anarchists, like Marxists hate capitalism - a society dominated by a tiny minority, who make the majority of us work for them, creaming off the wealth for their own use, and leaving us as little as possible. A system of war and racism, a system of alienation and poverty. A system that can only maintain its existence through the existence of the state, armed bodies of men, the judiciary and those others who hold us in our place.

The rejection of this state is natural for revolutionaries, as is the rejection of hierarchy and authority. Workers spend their lives being told that they must do this or that, by their "betters" or by someone with power over them. But this rejection of authority and hierarchy has dangers for those that want to organise against the system. Veteran Marxist John Molyneux here outlines the arguments against revolutionaries whose strategies to change the world are based on Anarchism, or often more recently called Autonomism.

Molyneux gives a potted history of Anarchism which I won't outline, and he gives a decent, if short critique of Anarchism's high points (the Spanish Revolution of 1936, when they joined the Popular Front government) and in the late 1870s. Most Anarchists I would argue, will be aware of the criticisms of these periods by Marxists, so I won't rehearse Molyneux's arguments here.

I want to briefly concentrate on two aspects of his arguments. The first is the role of the state, and implicit in this hierarchy. Firstly Molyneux puts that it is Utopian to believe that you can destroy capitalism and replace it with a stateless system over night. As the Egyptian revolutionaries have learnt since the fall of Mubarak, the system will come back to fight you and try to regain what it has lost. In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, or the success of the Paris Commune in 1871, the old order didn't give up and go home. They organised to destroy the revolutions and the revolutionaries.

So organisation of revolutionaries is important. But so is the workers state in the aftermath of the revolution. The state is a force to maintain class rule. That's as true of the capitalist state as the workers state in the immediate aftermath of the revolution. Now Marxists don't believe that in a communist society, when the revolution has spread and embedded itself, that the state will continue to exist forever. Once the external threats to the revolution have vanished, so does the need for the state. Anarchists, in their hope that we can move from the system we live in now, to one without a state, leave out an intermediary step that is crucial if we are to win.

The rejection of hierarchy is another aspect to this. I've had my own experiences of organisations that are dominated by anarchist politics or strategies, and for all their criticism and suspicion "hierarchical organisations" like the SWP, they are often hierarchical themselves. This isn't in an organisational way, but a practical way. I remember many of the anti-capitalist mobilisations being dominated organisation by the same few individuals. Often ones (particularly in Prague in 2000) who had time and money to be able to drop out of normal society and spend a few months organising a protest. Such hierarchies are even less accountable than the ones that the anarchists claim to hate. They have no way of challenging these individuals, decisions are put off, or changed at future events with no reflection on the past and people come and go without any continuity to the organisational process.

Marxist organisations, as John Molyneux and I would be the first to admit, have their own weaknesses too. But certainly those in the Trotskyist tradition attempt to have accountability and the democratic process at their heart. This is because revolutionary organisation needs leadership, not in the sense of a know-all individual, but in the sense of a collective decision making process that results in agreement and movement together towards a common goal.

Molyneux's book is an excellent read. He doesn't patronise his subject nor the objects of his criticism. His starting point is that both Marxists and Anarchists want to change the world. He celebrates the heroes of Anarchism's past and the actions that they have tried to lead. But because the book is written in the spirit of a desire to "win" it is necessarily challenging towards those who call themselves Anarchists. Brief sections on decision making, differing attitudes to elections and direct action are also included.

One final point. I have no doubt that many people will read this review who class themselves as autonomists and anarchists. I urge them to read Molyneux's short book (it is after all, only £4). I don't do this out of a belief that people change their ideas overnight after reading a short 80 page book, but rather I do it because if you are serious about changing the world, then you need to be sure of your ideas. Our ideas, particularly for revolutionaries, are constantly being challenged. If you think you are an anarchist, then you should open up your ideas to the Marxist critique and see how they stand up. Perhaps you'll put some of your responses in the comments box below. A good polemic never did anyone any harm!

Related Reviews

Molyneux - Will the Revolution be Televised? A Marxist analysis of the Media

Michael Klare - Blood and Oil

Subtitled "How America's Thirst for Petrol is Killing Us", Michael Klare's book is an excellent attempt to understand the history of the relationship between the United States and the sources of oil around the world.

Unfortunately, the book is somewhat dated. The copy I got from my local library is dated 2004 and thus he was writing only in the earliest days of the Afghanistan and Iraq occupation and before the Obama Administration. Nevertheless, I found it very useful, particularly from a historical point of view, as well as understanding the reaction of the United States government to the September 11 attacks.

Until the Second World War, the United States was the world's largest producer of oil. Indeed it was the world's largest exporter of oil too, helping, particularly during the war, to keep the wheels of modern warfare moving.

US oil companies had begun to work to start controlling the largest oil reserves by the 1930s. This meant of course, Saudi Arabia, where the world's largest oil fields remain. The Second World War put a new emphasis on oil, and the US moved quickly to shore up reserves. President Truman meet in private with the Saudi King just after the Yalta conference. Speculation is, that he offered US money and expertise to protect the Kingdom in exchange for priority access to oil. Since then, US foreign policy, military intervention and government priorities have, in large part been about protecting this link.

The later sections of Klare's book look at US policy in more contemporary times. In 2001 the US government issued a report into the future of US energy policy. This was an attempt by the administration to look into the problems of future oil dependency. As oil gets used at an alarming rate, with more and more countries placing more and more demands on the reserves, and regional instability affecting oil regions like the Middle East and South America, President Bush was concerned about whether there would be enough supplies.

Interestingly, though the report paid great lip service to energy efficiency savings, or alternative sources of fuel, in reality it was about increasing US dependency on foreign oil. The authors, headed by the oil man Dick Cheney, used the opportunity of the report to instruct the government to do everything it could to maintain the status quo. More money must be spent control foreign oil, the Alaskan nature reserves must be opened up to the oil companies and so on. Rather than discussing in detail how dependency could be improved by reducing oil use, the report concluded that foreign sources must be increased. More emphasis was placed on oil from Alaska, South America and areas around the Caspian Sea. Klare demonstrates that this is a drop in the oil ocean. These sources are minimal at best and do not offer the long time security that the United States needs. They are also contested sources, growing economies like China have enormous demands for oil, and they too have their eyes on these areas.

The title of the book reflects this concern. Klare shows how, over the years, countless American lives have been lost in the interest of protecting access to this strategic resource. The potential for further clashes and further wars remains there, so long as the dependency on foreign oil continues. Which brings me to the most disappointing aspect of the book. I felt that Klare's alternative vision, though radical missed the mark. He calls for the US to stop arming and supporting regimes like Saudi Arabia, which can only lead to bloodshed. "Severing" the links between the US's energy behaviour and their overseas commitments sounds like a radical statement. But it is impossible given the structure of US capitalism. Oil is a central feature of modern capitalist economies. Breaking from the dependency means challenging the priorities of the whole economic system and the powerful oil multinationals. You cannot separate US military interests and their commerical interests like this.

Klare does discuss alternative fuels and energy sources, though probably not in enough detail to convince most readers that a low oil economy is feasible. To be fair to him though, this is not the purpose of his book, and he certainly does a good job of proving the potential for conflict over oil in the future, in many areas of the globe. One final thought though. Oil will run out. What happens after that will be terrifying. Klare's final call for a rethink over energy is important, if human society is going to avoid collapse and runaway climate change.

Peter J. Reynolds - Ancient Farming

This short book is a useful look into what we know about how people in the neolithic, bronze and iron ages, farmed. Beginning with a section on the evidence that archaeologists use to try and piece together the lives of ancient farmers, the book moves on then to look at the development of agriculture and how farming itself took place.

The sections on the development of the earliest ploughs are some of the most interesting, in part because the work is informed by experimental archaeology and farming that takes place at the Butser Ancient Farm. Here they recreate ancient tools and experiment with how the worked. They also try and apply some of what the know of farming to the past, so for instance, archaeological sites with a post hole, surrounded by a depression in the earth may well be sites of ancient hay stacks. In the more recent past, these tended to be made in a similar way, built around a central pole fixed in the earth. Some of this the author points out, may be conjecture, but other evidence is more convincing. The scratch marks on ancient plough tips matching those made after farming with modern copies proving, with little doubt, that this was the original purpose for these tools.

The final chapter deals with the seasonal life of an ancient farming. Unsurprisingly it is very similar to life for many farmers today, in terms of the times of sowing, harvest and ploughing. The tools are different, the scale is different and today farming is driven as much by the profit motive as by the need to feed people, but there is much that remains the same. A useful introduction to this subject.

Colin Tudge - Good Food for Everyone Forever

Subtitled "A People's Takeover of the World's Food Supply", Colin Tudge's book is really a manifesto for what he calls, "enlightened farming". While the concept seems onerous, the reality, as the author explains, is much more straightforward.

Tudge begins by explaining that the food system we currently have, is dominated by Western corporations driven by their need to make profits, rather than feed people in the best possible way. This produces the contradiction of malnutrition and starvation for millions at the same time as obesity and unhealthy eating for others.

Tudge, argues that this can be different. He points to the need to break from the food system we have, by encouraging better practices, better crops and more farmers. In the industrialised world we should, he argues, we should arrive at a situation were one in ten workers is a farmer of one sort or another. Tudge is at pains to argue, that farming should not be the back-breaking drudgery that is often imagined by city dwellers. It can be enjoyable and stimulating, so long as the farmers have the opportunities to break free of economic constraints imposed by the wider system, particularly government policy dominated by the idea that technological solutions are all that is needed to feed the world.

Some of the most useful parts of the book are the parts were Tudge shows how mixed farming, or poly-culture is more environmentally sound, produces better yields and healthier crops. He shows how our reliance on technology has helped to deplete and damage the basis for farming systems, but he's careful not to throw the technological baby out with the bathwater. Organic farming should, he points out, be the basis for rational agricultural, but farming that specifically excludes technologies and developments such as pesticides or some fertilisers may undermine the abilities to produce the best food in the best yields. Tudge is also keen to challenge those who simplistically argue that vegetarianism would enable us to feed the world, and save the planet. He points out that mixed farming, and corresponding "traditional" diets have served us well for tens of thousands of years and animals on farms offer opportunities to improve other crops as well as produce meat, milk and eggs. No system of agriculture exists, Tudge says, that couldn't be improved without the right number and correct type of agriculture. But this is not a meat-eaters manifesto, this is about producing better food, in a way that is better for the planet and better for farmers

I also found Tudge's style very straightforward and easy to understand. His explanation of why a well managed farm with cows grazing grasses could actually reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide, is a good example of this. It is encouraging that not everyone falls for the environmentalists' status quo.

There are problems though. In part this is with the manifesto style. Much of the first few chapters is taken up with philosophical musings on why people are not inherently evil, and change is possible. There is nothing wrong with this, as I am warrant to do exactly the same fairly frequently. The problem is, that this detracts from the more interesting and potentially more valuable arguments that Tudge is making about how farming might be. The second problem flows from this first. Tudge clearly identifies the main problem is the particularly modern system of capitalism that we see, and how it ruthlessly exploits, overproduces and undermines the best interests of everyone. His solution, he explicitly argues is not for revolution, but a "renaissance".

Tudge believes that early forms, the early United States' small-scale capitalism, is better and we need a return to this. There is of course a kernel of truth, small capitalists are less damaging than modern multinationals, but this is to ignore the continuity between the past and now. Tudge seems to view capitalism simply in terms of exchange of commodities, so he seems elements of capitalism even amongst ancient neolithic peoples exchanging hand-axes. But this is nonsense. Capitalism is a particular mode of production that was the result in the revolutionary transformation of the old feudal order a few hundreds years back. It grew out of that system, but was also the result of a break from it. Modern capitalism has developed from this, through a process of expansion, centralisation and concentration. To believe that we can simply retreat, without challenging the powers at the core of the system is more Utopian than some plans for revolution.

Nonetheless, Tudge offers many insights, and indeed the examples of those farmers trying out in practice, small localised mixed farming are fascinating and we can but wish them success, in the face of the powerful corporations and economic forces that threaten us all. All in all, I would suggest people read this. Too few of us in the industrialised world understand agriculture, still fewer have any understanding of how it could be improved. Tudge offers some interesting ideas, its a shame the book is to preoccupied with the philosophy of change, and not enough on the change we need.

Related Reviews

Tudge - The Secret Life of Birds
Walden Bello - The Food Wars
Magdoff & Tokar - Agriculture and Food in Crisis
Mazoyer & Roudart - A History of World Agriculture

Isaac Asimov - The Robots of Dawn

If I was in the habit of giving my posts titles, I think this one would be called "My Unhappy Return to Isaac Asimov". Sick in bed the other day and needing something light, I decided to re-read some Asimov. When I was 14 or so, Asimov was important to me. I lapped up his short-stories, and delighted in his scientific accuracy. But I never liked the Foundation series, of which this novel is a peripheral part, as I found it clumsy and unbelievable.

I did like the Robots novels and short-stories. Asimov was good at them, mainly I think because his robots need no personality, and Asimov excelled at characters lacking in that - the dispassionate scientist, spaceman or detective.

The Robots of Dawn is a detective novel in space. The lead character, Elijah Baley, is summoned once again, to a Spacer planet. Earth, in this future has been isolated, its overpopulated surface and attitudes of its inhabitants, being deemed unsuitable for expansion further into space. Descendants of those humans who did, live on a variety of (fairly boring) planets, in ways that are designed to make us reflect on our own lives, and what Earth has become. In this particular story, Baley visits the planet Aurora. One that is heavily populated by Spacer standards, but light from Earth's point of view. It is, however, dominated (teeming?) with Robots.

Note the capital R. Aurora sees Robots as equal with humans, even though they aren't really. One of them has had its life ended (Baley debates long and hard, and in exquisite detail, whether it is murder) and Baley is the only person who can work it out, and save the future of each, blah blah blah.

The problem is, that the setup seems manufactured, the ending is laughable, and the characters wooden. Asimov can't really write for toffee. In fact, much of the novel centres on sex. You kind of get the impression that he realised it was the 1980s and his readers probably knew about sex, so he injected it into a thin plot. He even uses the word masturbation. In the context of Robots. Nudge nudge. If you've read this, and the other Baley novels you'll remember there is a whole thing about toilets in them. It is like Asimov was trying to think about how he could capture the differences between human societies on different planets. "I know, I'll do a thing about toilet culture". Geeez.

He also tries hard at the whole descriptive prose thing.

Her gown, so simple as to be nothing more than a closely fitting sheath, was not black (as it would have been on Earth) but of a dull colour that showed no sparkle anywhere in it. Baley, no connoisseur of clothing, realized how well it represented mourning.

"A dull colour, that showed no sparkle" is a wonderful phrase and I may use soon.

The trouble is, that Asimov excelled on the whole scientific, logic conundrum, which is why I think his short stories work so well. Take a longer novel and it gets out of control. Whole conversations are really just dialogues about the three laws of robotics. Fun occasionally, but not over and over. His realisation of the future is, decidedly flat. It reads like the 1950s that Asimov began in, not the mid-1980s. Today we are used to a particular sub-genre of SF going on and on about the detail of the technology, but Asimov did not even imagine personal communication devices. Star Trek had been doing that since the 1960s, but not in Asimov's far distant future. No, there you can ask if you might use your hosts land line.

Anyway, never re-visit your childhood heroes as they may disappoint. If you want to read Isaac Asimov, read his collections of short stories, particularly the three, "Early Asimov" books, which capture the delightful period of the late 1940s, early 50s when SF was about to go blockbuster and Asimov was a young kid with all the ideas.  He even had a bit of humour. And there was certainly no masturbation then.

Eric Richards - The Highland Clearances

The Highland Clearances were one of many blots of the development of the modern world. The story of the way that the Highlander crofters were forced from their land is well know. Over a period of around a century, though clearances did occur earlier, tens of thousands of some of the poorest people in Scotland were made to leave the lands that they, and their families had farmed for generations. Often their homes were destroyed in front of their eyes. In at least one case, the buildings were torched while a family member was still inside.

The people were being cleared to make way for animals, cattle initially, then the extraordinarily profitable sheep and finally, in many cases deer. Scotland itself was transformed by the process, not just through the depopulation, but also her landscape became much more one of open "sheep walks", and less of farmed land. The people had many destinations. Some were shoved aside, onto progressively less and less arable land, till they lived off the worst that their landowner had. Others were driven towards new industries, particularly the kelp and fishing industries. Still more found themselves heading towards the major cities of Scotland, reliant on charity if the economic moment was not right and they weren't needed in the factories. Finally, many thousands ended up making a journey into the unknown, ending up in Britain's colonies, forming a wave of settlers who themselves, in turn, often took part in clearing the foreign landscape anew. Despite what the propaganda said at the time, the journeys to the new world's were seldom pleasant and life was harsh.

Eric Richards' has written a comprehensive account of the clearances. He very much sites them in the changing economic circumstances of the 18th and 19th century. A time when the old landowners were no longer able pay their debts from the rents they could charge their tenants. A time when increasingly cash crops were offering huge profits in the run up to, and during the Napoleonic Wars. Some of these landlords, whose origins lay in the old clan system clearly believed that improvements to their lands were in a collective interest. The introduction of sheep would produce wealth that would benefit all. Those conservative crofters only had to accept in the inevitability of change and take up new opportunities or positions and they too would feel the benefit.

This is an older version of the "trickle down" argument, that everyone would benefit. It was certainly not true in the Highlands, though as with today, "economic improvement" often brings wealth to a tiny minority. Richards makes much of the economic contradictions that plagued the landowners, indeed he spends some time demonstrating that a number of them did much to help the poor on their land. Some landowners invested large amounts in trying to create industrial opportunities for the poor farmers, though how many were to make the transition from subsistence farming to fishing was not something thought through by these wealthy individuals. Presumably work was just work to them. Other landowners offered enormous amounts in payments to encourage emigration. Sometimes these were not honoured and people arrived in Canada lacking clothes and food, never mind hope. The reality is, that such wealth was designed to get rid of the problem, by pushing the poorest away, so the land owners could continue to invest in sheep and earn their profits.

The process was by no means inevitable. Resistance was frequent and fierce, though it barely graces the history books. Mobs would often try and prevent evictions, officers of the law and less legal hard men were fought and stoned. On occasion their papers were burnt and they were themselves evicted naked from the villages. A general uprising in 1792, led to hundreds of crofters gathering up to 10,000 sheep and herding them miles away from their lands. Later on resistance did force the evictions to be cancelled and clearances to stop. The crofters had limited economic power themselves, but increasingly they did have the support of public opinion. The sight of the poor and the old being thrown of their lands did not sit well with the new socially aware Victorian society, and the Highland question eventually led to limited parliamentary reforms to protect some tenancies. Interestingly, out of the struggle against clearances, the first radical MPs were elected to help bring the Crofters Law to pass.

Richards has produced a readable and detailed history of the clearances. But it left me unsatisfied. I felt he concentrated too much on the economic argument. Like many he seems to see the Clearances themselves as a tragic, but inevitable part of the progress to a more modern world. Like the enclosures, or the displacement of those in the way of new canals and railway lines, the suffering was immense, but in the long term almost necessary for the greater economic development. That's not to say Richards has no sympathy with those whose lives were destroyed. He writes with passion and empathy for them, and by rescuing their struggles for justice from forgotten history, he shows he believes in the justice of their cause.

So was their an alternative. In some senses this is idle speculation, after all the crofters were isolated and politically inexperienced. Though had their struggles linked up with the wider, growing movements for justice elsewhere in Britain, they may have stood a chance. Its notable that the later victories of the Crofters linked in with a growing sense of the need to protect people from the excesses of industrial capitalism. Like all too many historians, Richards makes one mistake. He cannot break from the logic of private ownership of the land - if there was an alternative, it was the destruction of the landowning class, or at least their acceptance that the Highland people had the right to do what they saw fit.

Richards' book is however worth reading. The Highland Clearances are but one part of a tragic story of the development of capitalism. Richards points out that at the beginning of this millennium, 14% of Scotland was owned by just 21 nobles. The fact that we haven't yet broken from the logic of small number of people owning vast acres of land is reason enough to remember the crofters and the way at the forces of one of the world's most powerful states were directed against them.

Related Reading

Kerr Cameron - The Ballad and the Plough
Hutchinson - The Soap Man: Lewis, Harris & Lord Leverhulme

James M. McPherson - Battle Cry of Freedom

In the introduction to this volume the series editor feels obliged to justify the length of the work itself. He points out that almost every other treatment of the American Civil War requires multiple volumes. James M. McPherson's book is compressed into a single volume, albeit of almost 900 pages and is lauded on the cover as "the best one-volume treatment of its subject". This obsession with size is a little strange, but nonetheless the work is an astounding piece of history. McPherson has skilfully combined what seems the key features of the events leading up to and during the Civil War and woven them together with a detailed, but clear analysis.

I approached the book as a new-comer to this period of American history. With only a haziest grasp of some of the names and issues - Lincoln, Slavery, Confederacy and places like Gettysburg. I'd certainly recommend the book to someone trying to get to grips with the period. McPherson assumes nothing and if on occasion his treatment lacks enough detail, this is only for reasons of space. His detailed footnotes surely point the scholar to further reading.

McPherson begins with an analysis of the situation on the eve of war. The United States appears very much as a collection of diverse states, to a certain extent in competition with each other and lacking it appears in a sense of collective identity and ideology. At the heart of this was the growing divergence over the question of Slavery. For the Southern States the question was one of survival - without this aspect to their economy, they would fail and to the North, increasingly for large numbers of people Slavery was an abhorrence that should be ended.

McPherson deftly describes, sometimes in painstaking detail the growing confrontation between the two sides, and the great rainbow of opinions between the extremes. From a layman's point of view it becomes clear that a confrontation over the question becomes inevitable at a certain point. For the United States to survive as a whole the question of slavery has to be resolved, there cannot be a compromise. Northern Capitalism is increasingly based on free labour, Slavery anywhere in the US undermines this. In the South, the opposite is true. The capitalists there want to continue in the old ways, and the northern methods of making profits undermine their ability to benefit economically from slavery.

War, once it comes, is appalling brutal. The earliest of battles were fought in the old ways, men charging fixed positions, defended by soldiers with muskets. The heavy, slow ammunition causing horrific wounds. Its in this sort of discussion that McPherson's scholarly work really shines through. Detailed analysis of the war is one thing, but the social consequences, such as the drafting of women on both sides to nurse the wounded is not left out. Just as women entering the workforce in Europe during World War I had important social consequences so did their involvement at this point in US history.

My crude understanding of the war had lead me to believe that the North won on the back of its economic and industrial superiority. I was surprised to find that the North came very close on a number of occasions to losing. In part this was due to military ineptitude (there was plenty of this on both sides, particular from senior commanders). Though another important factor was the inability from both sides, but particularly the north, to press home military advantage. On at least two occasions the north could have finished the main bulk of the south's forces off on the battlefield but held back, letting them fight another time.

One of the strengths of McPherson's analysis is that he understands that everyone involved in the war was going through change throughout the conflict. The war began as a war to maintain or restore the Union. It ended as an all-out war to end slavery. Many of the military leaders in the North were prepared to take the first, but not the second. Their unwillingness to destroy the enemy was based on their unwillingness, in the final analysis, to end slavery. Lincoln himself optimises this change. While slavery is the dominant question in the run up to the war, he himself only belatedly comes to the question of emancipation. Indeed, before making this his public position he goes through a whole host of other positions first - partial emancipation, a black homeland in South America and so on.

As it becomes clear that the war must be fought to a military end it also becomes clear that this means the destruction of the institution of slavery in the south. The war becomes a revolutionary conflict - the North has to destroy the basis for the south's old strength. This is why the question of the involvement of black people in the North's military forces is so important. It is both a recognition of the fact that the North needed to mobilise everyone, and as a symbol of what the war has become.

This review cannot hope to do justice to McPherson's brilliant book. There is so much inside - from the naval war, which saw the use of iron-clads for the first time, to the role of the United Kingdom and Napoleon, as well as the support from the ordinary people of Britain to the anti-slavery fight. The military history is fascinating too. Wars and battles cannot be separated from the social situation in which they are fought, and the descriptions and details of the conflicts are fascinating for the insights into the minds of the commanders and the ordinary troops. It is notable that the war bridged a period of military history; it began in the style of the Napoleonic conflicts and ended with the brutal attrition of trench warfare.

The United States like most nations is contradictory. Its leaders spoke of freedom but its very existence was based on the destruction of the country's aboriginal people. Indeed many of those who fought slavery in the South, in turn took part in the final destructions of the Native American tribes.

The American Civil War was the turning point for US history, the victory of the North was the moment when modern capitalism became free to develop as it needed, no longer restrained by the last vestiges of the old order. The stage was set for the twentieth century. McPherson's book tells this story brilliantly and deserves to be read and re-read.

Karl Marx – The Civil War In France

Marx's Civil War in France is both an impressive history of the Paris Commune – the short lived, but important moment in working class history, when working people rose up and took control of Paris, and a powerful polemic against the barbarity of the capitalist system and those who stand in its name.

There is no doubt, from the various drafts that exist and have been since published that Marx worked hard to produce a sucinct, but detailed historical account of the Parisian events. The Civil War works though, precisely because Marx applies his own approach to history to the events, rather than merely reporting things. The Commune then becomes a living breathing attempt by working people to seize control of their lives, reorganise society on a more democratic and inclusive basis, precisely because it is located in the a viciously corrupt and disorganised old order. Marx's brief account of French history leading up to the Commune paints a picture of a newly emerged capitalist order, intent on enriching a tiny minority, at the expense of both the wider population and France's own position in the world order. “The proletarians of Paris, amidst the failures and treasons of the ruling classes, have understood that the hour has struck for them to save the situation by taking into their own hands the direction of public affairs.”

For most readers though, the parts of the Civil War that are most interesting and inspiring are the brief accounts of the ways that the Communards attempted to reorganise their society. The direct democracy, delegates paid no more than 6000 Francs, or the average working wage, were instantly recalable by the electors. As Marx puts it, “instead of deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people, constituted in Communes, as individual suffrage serves every other employer in the search for the workmen and managers in his business.”

Marx uses the term Universal Suffrage as it would have been understood in his time. This was suffrage for Male adults only. Woman played, as Marx reports, a central role in the Commune and suffered equally the fate of their male Communards, but despite their role, they weren't given full democratic rights. The working class movement had to develop further before these were to be fully understood and accepted, even by its most advanced sections.

The Commune wasn't just about radical democracy. Attempts were made to kick religion out of education and provide free education for all that needed it. The seperation of church from state meant that Priests feel back on the donations of their worshippers, as Marx quips, like the apostles they claimed to follow. Indeed, shot through the Civil War, is Marx's sense of humour and vicious barbs aimed at those who opposed the Commune.

And those that opposed it, destroyed it. Marx's points out that working people cannot simply seize control of the state and wield it in their interests. The state machinary must be destroyed and rebuilt in order to help the newly victorious class stabalises its power and defeat the old order. The most barbaric means were used to destory and isolate the Commune, and many thousands perished in its defense. If the enemies of the Commune highlight atrocities of the Communards, they do so to cover the fact that these were in retailiation for far greater crimes committed against innocent working men, women and children. Marx quotes independent witnesses to highlight these, and points out that the capitalists, despite their talk of freedom and democracy only care for the freedom to profit from other peoples labour. When this order is challenged, as the Paris Commune did, they will react with the utmost brutality to maintain the status quo.

The Civil War is far from the complicated writings that many expect Marx's writings to be. Indeed it is one of the most accessible of his works, though some French history will help readers. My edition has a very useful introduction by Frederick Engels, written on the 20^th anniversary of the Commune, as well as some supporting introductions from Marx to put a wider context. Earlier drafts of the pamphlet are online and will reward those willing to delve deeper into this important revolutionary moment.

Related Reviews

Gluckstein - The Paris Commune; A Revolution in Democracy

Steven Mithen - To the Islands

Before reviewing this book, I want to mention how I came about it. On holiday just south of Oban on the west coast of Scotland, I visited Kilmartin. This small village is the centre of an enormous concentration of neolithic sites, including several impressive cairns, a few stone circles and not a few standing stones and inscribed rocks. Kilmartin has a very impressive museum including an extraordinary bookshop specialising in particular ancient history. I encourage readers who are fascinated by the Mesolithic and neolithic periods of history to visit and support both the museum and its bookshop.

I was lucky to find Steven Mithen's book there, because holidaying on an island very near many of the places mentioned inside, helped me picture and understand his work more. Mithen is the author of After the Ice a book that I consider one of the best introduction to the lives of ancient humans living in the post ice-age world. His latest book, To the Islands is much less an academic work and more of a archaeological autobiography. Mithen describes how his career has been tied to the people of the Mesolithic era since the earliest days of his PhD studies. The Mesolithic people were the hunter-gathers who spread across the world at the end of the last ice-age. They lived, in a myriad of different ways depending on the landscape they inhabited, before with the arrival of agricultural practices, the “neolithic revolution” led to a new mode of production.

Mithen believes that to understand the people of the Mesolithic requires a detailed understanding of their lives in the context of the environment and landscape they inhabit. The fish they could catch, the deer they could hunt, the trees and plants that surrounded them, the way they would have been inspired by the land itself. His early research using computer models to predict how hunter-gatherers might exploit the natural resources, led to repeated visits to the Hebrides to try and understand the lives of these people.

Mithen is enchanted by the Hebrides, their culture, the environment and the modern people, as well as the historical inhabitants. The remoteness of many of the islands, despite the popularity of places like Jura as modern holiday destinations, has helped protect many important prehistoric sites. This remoteness leads to further problems. Mesolithic archaeology cannot rely on hunting for visible remains like stone circles. Rather, the archaeologists must look for more subtle clues. Shell middens – the piles of waste left by prehistoric peoples as they extracted food from limpets and mussels are gradually covered by grass. Rabbits can dig out the prehistoric shells, littering them outside the entrances to their warrens and provide a clue for archaeologists. Other clues can be found in subtle surface bumps, or as Mithen tries to show, simply looking at the landscape and trying to get the mindset of an ancient hunter-gatherer. What would you look for as a hunter-gatherer on a Scottish island? Easy access to fish, woodlands and shelter? Where might you sit?

In the decades of research and excavation that Mithen does, with dozens of students and helpers, he gradually comes to understand more about the prehistoric life. On several occasions, Mithen quotes an earlier archaeologist, Lewis Binford about how archaeologists must “recalibrate their perspective of hunters and gatherers from the five foot excavation unit at a single site to an area of more than 300,000 square kilometres”. 

With this view, Mithen shows how hunter-gatherer life in the Hebrides was spread over island after island. One a source for flint for tools, others a good place to fish or find shellfish, another a ideal hunting ground. Life then wasn't stagnant, nor was it necessarily based in one place, instead it was spread across time and space. The landscape was a living part of human life, not a separate thing.

Mithen's book is wonderful. By choosing the autobiographical format, he has shown how archaeological understanding must develop over time, how intellectual ideas must be challenged and developed regularly to allow for new data and information.

For those amateur archaeologists, two things will be particularly pleasing about Mithen's book and his work. One is the detailed descriptions of the archaeological processes, how and where they sink trenches, why it takes so long and costs so much. The other is the importance he gives to amateurs. Countless times he visits local people and is shown their collections of Mesolithic tools. He frequently relies on local knowledge from farmers and others to find the best sites and is clearly inspired by the way that people are interested in the history of their place, even thousands of years ago.

One thought popped into my head repeatedly while reading this book. The world of academia that Mithen inhabits, a world of grant applications and quests for funding, is one that must be getting tighter and tighter. In fact his search for funding and support for his work makes up an important theme of the book. I don't doubt it is easier to get money to dig up a site of national importance or a famous image. But archaoeological work must rest on all history, even the small charcoal remains and broken tools that dominate the historical record from our hunter-gatherer past.

As funding gets further squeezed by Tory cuts and as education gets still further restricted to those who can afford it, how will academic subjects like archaeology cope? Mithen describes the passion and enthusiasm of his students and helpers. But if there is no cash to fund digs, how will the next generation of archaeologists develop and learn? Mithen is clearly someone prepared to fight for his subject in the wider world. We'll need him and others like him in the struggle to understand our past, but also to ensure that in the future we can continue to learn.

Related Reviews

Mithen - The Singing Neanderthals
Mithen - After the Ice

Henry Pollack - A World Without Ice

If you can ignore the somewhat sycophantic paeans to Al Gore that make up some of this book, and the all too demoralising hopes vested in the election of a Democratic government in the United States, then there is much to get out of this book.

The author is a distinguished scientist who has been part of those investigating climate change and its environmental impacts for many years. His speciality interest is ice, in all its forms. The thousands of glaciers, the millions of cubic metres that form the polar caps and those on Greenland and mountains around the globe.

The first section of this book is a history of the exploration of the poles. Pollack is astute enough to locate the era of polar exploration within the imperial expansion by the major powers. The poles were the last, unexplored and unknown territories and it was not until the 1950s that governments agreed that Antarctica was to be used for science rather than a mineral grab.

Much of the rest of the book is an exploration of the causes and impacts of climate change. As many others have done before Pollack explores the way that from the industrial revolution onwards capitalism has poured countless tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Pollack is a excellent populariser of scientific ideas and his explanation are easy to follow as well as illuminating. He doesn’t duck some of the more complex ideas and takes on the climate sceptics who seem prepared to let us all cook in a warming world, simply to bolster their own distorted social agendas.

Pollack tries to pitch the questions that arise from climate change through the impact on the world’s ice. Ice he argues, is a major ecological resource for billions of people. The agriculture, drinking water and sewage systems of millions of people in cities all around the globe depend on the melt water from mountain snow caps and glaciers. As the world warms, this is increasingly under threat, and the question remains unclear… what will happen to these people.

As the ice melts, millions more face floods and extreme weather. Pollack looks at the 108 million people who live on land less than three feet above sea level and worries about how the world will cope with them fleeing their farmlands.

Using analogies with environmental systems in the past, Pollack shows what might happen if we pass some of the tipping points that mark the transition from one stable situation to another. Again the prognosis is bleak for millions of people. Which brings Pollack to solutions. Sadly, this is the book’s weakest point. Pollack points out, rightly, the technology ease with which these problems could be solved. Governments need to urgently switch to low and zero carbon technologies, invest in public transport and so on. Pollack can only understand their hesitancy to do this due to lack of willing. He doesn’t see any structural problems within the political and economic system we have to this moving forward. Its why his mate Al Gore was unable to deliver real change during his vice-presidency and why emissions rose during the Clinton era. That he has hopes for Obama shows that he doesn’t understand the blame lies within a system geared to profit, rather than human needs.

That said, there is much here of interest. Pollack’s book is yet another stern warning in the face of growing environmental crisis. I disagree with some of his points - I think he puts over emphasis on the problems of population, and downplays the questions of big business. But his honest and straight manner deserves a wide readership, particularly in his home country. Strategies for taking the question forward and winning the change needed will have to be found elsewhere.

Related Reviews


Hooper - The Ferocious Summer; Palmer's penguins and the warming of Antarctica
Pearce - The Last Generation; How Nature Will Take Her Revenge for Climate Change
Bellamy Foster - The Ecological Revolution
Monbiot - Heat; How to Stop the Planet Burning

Brian Fagan - Floods, Famines and Emperors - El Niño and the Fate of Civilizations

Environmental archaeologist and historian Brian Fagan has written a number of excellent books on the historical links between environmental and climatic change and human history. This early book of his, concentrates on the links between a particular aspect of the Earth's environmental systems and their wider influence on the global climate and thence, human civilisation.

El Niño is a semi-regular change in the temperature at the surface of the Pacific Ocean. Every five years or so, these temperature changes in the East of the Pacific cause a corresponding drop in air pressure in the West. This regular oscillation, which likely has no single cause, can have major impacts depending on the severity of the changes and other factors that can exacerbate the fluctuations in the climate / weather.

The sudden shifts in climate can wreak havoc on human society. Fagan wrote this book in the late 1990s when El Niño was already a household word as a result of a number of extreme periods of weather in the 1980s and 1990s. Scientific studies were launched by a number of governments to try and understand the process better, as extreme weather changes caused by El Niño spread famine, floods and drought around the globe. Some of the consequences were appalling. The 1992 drought threatened up to 80 million people in Southern Africa. An early famine in the Sahel in 1972, another El Niño year, killed up to 200,000 and destroyed 1.2 million cattle - the principle source of food and wealth the people there.

Much of the book is concerned with this historical impacts of El Niño, as well as the way that wider climatic shifts have altered civilisation. Fagan is particular keen to link particular periods of climatic changes with similar impacts around the globe. But mostly he is examining the way that different societies can reach the point when changes in the climate can have devastating consequences. Some societies survive or adapt. One of the most fascinating chapters is the Moche people of western Peru who, in around 1000 AD were destroyed as their world warmed and the waters they relied on in their dry homelands vanished. Their leaders became increasing authoritarian to try and survive and moved their whole kingdoms closer to the sources of water in an effort to survive and maintain power. Their much reduced society was a shadow of its more glorious past, their former lands swallowed by sand dunes.

Fagan marks the passing of a number of civilisations. One of the themes he comes to, is that some of these societies had reached or exceeded the carrying capacity of the lands they relied on. He then uses this to argue that we, in the modern world, are in danger off allowing our growing population to threaten our own survival. This is not to paint Fagan as some sort of neo-Malthusian. He is more subtle than that, understanding that other factors have a major impact upon environmental questions and so on. However he stops short I think of a clear understanding of the barriers to modern society dealing with climatic catastrophe. That's not to say he doesn't come close. In discussing the 1992 Famine in Southern Africa, he shows how the IMF imposed structural adjustment schemes had lead to that country selling all its grain reserve to raise cash. Meaning that when El Niño caused droughts, they had to rely on foreign aid.

Its this difference between modern civilisation and the past that needs developing. While there are of course similarities between us today and in the past, our ability to shape the world has grown a hundred fold, but the impact upon the natural world has also grown. The motivating forces of capitalism today are the biggest barrier to us having a rational relationship with nature, as well as dealing with the consequences of environmental crises. We saw that in Africa in 1992, and more recently in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Capitalism continues to cause environmental crisis, and remains a barrier to the struggle to prevent more.

Related Reviews

Fagan - The Long Summer; How Climate Changed Civilisation
Fagan - The First North Americans

Thomas C. Patterson - Karl Marx, Anthropologist

Thomas Patterson sets out to argue that central to Marx's understanding of the world, history and society was what we might now call anthropology. In one sense this should be no surprise - the study of society and how it changes does after all centre upon an understanding on what makes humans tick.

Marx was fascinated by human society in all its forms. Both Engels and he devoured contemporary books and research on archaeology, anthropology and related subjects. Patterson points out, that between 1879 and 1882, Marx filled 450 pages of notes "on topics as diverse as prehistoric Europe, the history of India, Dutch colonialism, family and gender in Roman society and American Indian societies". In part this is no doubt a result of the fascination that Marx had with history and people. But this was also a time when Marx was feverishly working on other topics, and Patterson argues that this reading reflected not just an interest, but as part of an attempt to understand non-capitalist and pre-capitalist societies. This was not a separate interest, but as part of a wider attempt to grapple with human history. In particular, Patterson argues, that Marx was trying to understand the potential for "alternative pathways of development for capitalist societies by the 1870s and for non-industrial and non-Western societies more than a decade earlier".

Marx and Engels also had a great fascination with other important subjects that were shaking up the intellectuals of Victorian England. One of these was evolution, and Marx devoured Darwin. "Absolutely splendid" was how Marx described The Origin of the Species in a letter to Engels, less than a month after its publication. Marx was critical, but he also saw how "Darwin rediscovers, among the beasts and the plants, the society of England with its division of labour, competition, opening up of new markets, "inventions" and Malthusian "struggle for existence."

This was not to argue that the social structures visible around them were mirrored in nature, but rather that Darwin and other scientists tended to reflect social ideas in their work. Their ability to locate the new scientific explanations and ideas in a wider understanding of society meant that Marx and Engels could be incredibly perceptive. Patterson demonstrates this by comparing Engels' little known pamphlet The Part Played By Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man to modern understandings of human evolution and the development of language and so on. Patterson concludes that Engels "got it right!" in his argument that the ability of proto-humans to use their hands as tools, helped to develop and encourage both this and their wider cogitative abilities. Of course, these ideas on the part of Engels were broad brushstrokes, and as with other areas of his scientific writing, Engels was often wrong. But what matters here is the approach to a subject and the attempts to link science with wider social questions.

Patterson's book is fascinating if a little hard going in places. Occasionally it feels to academic and the reader new to Marx's work (or indeed wider philosophical writings) might find some of it quite difficult. I was disappointed with the price-tag. Twenty pounds for a book of only 200 pages is a little steep, but clearly this is aimed at the academic market. This brings a second minor point - Patterson has an extensive and very useful bibliography. The one obvious missing Marxist from this is Chris Harman who had a great fascination with anthropology and wider human history. His writings I think would have fascinated Patterson and backed up some of his wider arguments. I cannot help but feel though that his absence reflects the fact that Harman was never an academic. In this context though, Harman's grounding in revolutionary practice would also have been useful to the author.

Related Links

Chris Harman reviewed an earlier book by Patterson, Marx's Ghost - Conversations with Archaeologists. You can read that here.
This review of Karl Marx, Anthropologist by an actual anthropologist is worth reading.

George MacDonald Fraser - Quartered Safe Out Here

George MacDonald Fraser is most famous for his highly entertaining Flashman novels. At the centre of those stories, which follow the adventures of Flashman through various battles and conflicts of the Victorian era, is a deep sympathy and understanding of the life of a soldier.

Fraser's knowledge of soldiering is based on his own active surface in the forgotten war in Burma during World War II. Here, Fraser as a young man took a minor part in some of the major battles with the Japanese as they retreated from India towards Japan. Most of this book deals with Fraser's time leading a small group of British soldiers from Cumbria. The Cumberland dialect is so unlike modern written English that the author provides a note on translation and a glossary to help the reader.

Much of the book, as with other accounts of war, is of boredom and waiting. Fraser actually takes very little part in some of the most important battles, his small troop being on the periphery. What action he does see, takes place in a seeming flash, such as the time he is nearly killed by a wounded Japanese soldier who almost fails to see in a ruined bunker. There is a brilliantly funny section towards the end of the book, when Fraser, about to leave for officer training school is sent to train a strange and slightly crazed officer to use a particularly unusual anti-tank weapon. The officer wants to use it against the boats that the Japanese are trying to use to escape and Fraser gets involved in a firefight led by the half mad British soldier. There are shades of Apocalypse Now here, but more laughs.

Fraser is very good at putting across the life of the solider. The petty complaints, the worries and the personal feuds. However what annoyed me mostly about the book is that it wasn't really about the war, but about Fraser's reflections on life, soldiering in general and modern society. Fraser perhaps tries a little too much to be like the lofty arrogant character that is at the centre of his best read novels. But writing at the time of the First Gulf War, he has nothing but disdain for modern soldiering methods and equipment. He seems bemused at those who needed Post-Traumatic counselling following the Falklands and Gulf War and certainly seems to see it as part of the namby-pamby state.

Sadly Fraser's political interventions ruin what is an interesting book. His accounts of the discussion on how his troops would vote in the 1945 election is fascinating (most of them for Labour) as is his discussion on the use of nuclear weapons. Despite his view that Japan wasn't on the brink of surrender, and the pleasure he gets from his description of challenging a lecturer in the 1980s who thought it was a mistake to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he points out that most of his comrades would have opposed the use of the weapon had they known what the consequences were.

The war in Burma was one that most people seemed happy to ignore. Long after VE Day, men were dying in jungles and rivers far from home. Fraser's book is a useful introduction to the war, and Burma itself probably deserves being a larger part of British history. But Fraser's heavy handed politics and contemporary polemic, as well as his seeming desire to be come across as a grumpy old colonel ruin what should be a fascinating read.

Related Reviews

Fraser - Flashman on the March
Fraser - Flashman and the Tiger

Kieran Allen - Marx and the Alternative to Capitalism

According to the blurb on the back cover of Kieran Allen's latest book, it "provides a crucial alternative introduction to Marx for undergraduates in sociology and politics". I have no idea what passes for discussion about Marx and Marxism in university departments but I have no doubt that this book will prove useful for anyone trying to get to grips with Marxist ideas for the first time. However to reduce the target audience down to university undergraduates, would in my opinion be a great shame.

Allen's book is a clear and detailed explanation of the ideas of Karl Marx. An early chapter puts Marx into the context of his times, and describes his revolutionary life, but rapidly Allen gets to the meat of the story. Allen demonstrates how Marx explained the driving force of capitalism was the need to accumulate wealth for the sake of accumulation. This wealth comes from the exploitation of workers, and Allen's explanation of the Labour Theory of Value is particularly clear. For those approaching Marx's ideas at first, the LToV can often be a stumbling block. Marx explains that it is from the work of men and women that all wealth originates. In this, he was following Adam Smith and other classical economists. Smith wrote that it is from "labour, that all wealth of the world was originally purchased; and its value to those who possess it, and who want to exchange it for some new production is precisely equal to the quantity of labour it can enable them to purchase or command."

What Allen is particularly good at getting across is an explanation of why it is that say a car is worth a certain number of bicycles. As he puts it the "reason why a suit of clothes now exchanges with a chair in a certain proportion is that both contain a distinct quantity of abstract labour." Abstract labour being a "quantitative measurement of human labour for the purposes of exchange... general, human labour that is not marked by specific feathres and can be reduced to a common denominator so that units of labour can be compared to one another".

In other words, what is important is the way that amounts of human labour average out across industries and economies. This helps explain why for instance, my inabilities at carpentry mean that a chair I manufacture (taking 10 times the length of time as a worker in an Ikea factory) isn't worth ten times more.

Now Allen's explanation of Marxist ideas goes much further than the LToV. Short snappy chapters on Alienation, Class, "How We Are Kept in Line" detail much of Marxist thought. Their length perhaps betrays that this is primarily a university text book, but don't let that put you off. These are useful introductions that will help direct the reader to a more detailed reading of these ideas, particularly if they follow up with the useful section of further reading at the end.

Finally Allen's last two chapters take Marxist thought and look at the future. This is unusual. Most introductions to Marx avoid placing too much emphasis on what a future, socialist society might look like. In the penultimate chapter, Allen looks at "The Economics of Socialism". Here he distances himself from the bureaucratic command economies of the former Eastern Bloc, which labelled itself socialist, and instead looks at how a democratic, planned economy might work, and why we need it. He looks at the potential for worker's self management, drawing on historical examples, such as the Paris Commune, that inspired Marx and Engels. He draws a useful picture of a world were representatives are elected and accountable to the electorate. Were decisions are taking in a collective interest, rather than that of a tiny number at the top of society. Allen also looks at the question of environmental destruction and climate change in the context of a society that is able to solve the question through a rational system of production, rather than simply hoping the market might deliver.

The final chapter, aptly titled "Into The Beyond" then looks at what happens as the old order vanishes, as a new generation grow up without the distortions that capitalism has imposed on us. It is an optimistic chapter and one that will inspire readers.

The criticisms I have are mainly typographical though the price is ridiculous, £16.99 for a 233 page book (including notes & biography) seems to me very steep. There are a number of errors including the miss-spelling of the Marxist John Molyneux's name several times (including in the acknowledgements) and the NASA climate scientist (Hansen not Hanson).
But these are pedantic moans from me and should not impinge on the enjoyment of the vast majority of readers. If you are new to revolutionary ideas and want to explore things further, in particular if you want to explore thoughts on what comes after the revolution, then this is an ideal book for you and I recommend it.

Note that as I post this review, I find a video of Kieran Allen speaking on the current economic situation in Ireland which is worth watching.

Related Reviews

Choonara - Unravelling Cpitalism; A Guide to Marxist Political Economy
Perry - Marxism and History
Choonara & Kimber - Arguments for Revolution