Alex Callinicos & Mike Simons - The Great Strike: The Miners' Strike of 1984-5 and its Lessons

2014 marks the 30th anniversary of one of the defining British struggles of the 20th century. The Miner's Strike was to determine the course of the Thatcher government. The defeat of the miner's, one of the most powerful workers movements in the country, meant the defeat of other workers. The trade union movement, the biggest barrier to the unbridled introduction of neo-liberal policies was badly wounded. Yet, as Alex Callinicos and Mike Simons argue, this was not an automatic outcome. Despite what the media said at the time, on occasion, the National Union of Mineworkers was close to victory. Thatcher's Tories were not all powerful. The lessons of the defeat remain essential ones for trade unions and socialists today.

On the surface, the strike stemmed from the decision of the Coal Board to close "uneconomical" pits. But a larger reason was the determination of the Tories to defeat a trade union that had sunk their previous administration with strike action. The question of uneconomical mines was a key political one. In reality it didn't mean that those mines no longer had coal, but that they, in a future privatised existence, would not be able to make sufficient profits.

The strike began in a confused fashion, with individual pits coming out in relation to closure threats. Flying pickets brought out further coal mines, and with the exception of a few areas, the strike was solid. Over the course of a year, initial differences, particularly the decision by sections of mine workers in Nottinghamshire not to join the action, would help determine the final outcome.

The strike received enormous support and sympathy. Over the course of the strike, money, food and solidarity poured into the miner's communities. Soup kitchens and food parcels helped keep the strikers going, and the authors celebrate the role of the miner's wives in being at the fore-front of organising this solidarity. They didn't just sort out the soup kitchens, but they toured the country, raising money, speaking at rallies and joining the pickets. Despite commitments to action from other unions and the TUC, solidarity action however was limited. Few workers took solidarity strikes, despite being tremendously successful when they did. Some of the solidarity however, is astounding.

"Pride of place must go to the railway workers of Coalville in Leicestershire. From 3 April 1984 until the end of the strike, they sealed off the working Leicestershire coalfield. The only time the British Rail management got trains out of the Leicestershire pits was when they imported scabs from out of the area to drive the trains and operate signal boxes. Throughout the strike, there were more railway workers backing the NUM in the Leicestershire coalfield than there were miners. They suffered enormous harassment for sticking to trade union principles."

Yet despite vocal support from the TUC and other unions, they were wary of challenging anti-union laws by committing themselves to strike action. The Tories understood the threat of other simultaneous strikes, and bought off the unions who might join the miners. In May it looked like the rail workers might take national action.

"Suddenly the scene changed. A week before the scheduled industrial disruption, the rail union leaders were called in and offered an improved pay deal - 5.2 per cent on basic rates... worth about 7 per cent."

Union leaders were amazed, but Tory Party chairman John Gummer wrote "It seems to me to be critical at this juncture to avoid the risk of militants being strengthened in their attempts to block the movement of coal by rail, and to make wider common cause with the miners."

The Tories were fighting an open class war, as extensive quotes by the authors from The Financial Times, The Economist and internal government papers make clear. Sadly the union leaders weren't doing the same. The authors conclude:

"Leaders such as Len Murray, David Basnett and Moss Evans did not want confrontation with the government. Their role was essentially that of negotiators, seekers of compromise. They looked back wistfully to the TU bureucracy's heyday in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, when they had enjoyed ready access to 10 Downing Street. But the willingness of ruling class  to admit the TUC to corridors of power then was a reflection of the strength of organised labour... Thatcher felt she no longer needed the TUC's active co-operation."

The position of the union leaders as arbitrators between capital and the workers meant they were both unwilling to challenge the power of the Tories and risk losing control of strike action, and wary of encouraging further rank and file action. They wanted a mediated solution that ensured their position, rather than a militant victory that might transform the balance of class forces. This cowardice contrasts with the bravery of the miners' and their communities who withstood police brutality, demonisation in the media, hunger and poverty for a year, sustained only by solidarity from other workers and their own reserves of strength.

Despite the left leadership of the union and Arthur Scargill in particular, the NUM was not without fault. The authors, who both covered the strike for Socialist Worker, lament the way that rank and file action was often not encouraged. All to often they point out, strikers were encouraged to stay at home, rather than joining mass pickets. At crucial junctures this meant that the mass of miners were out of touch with the ins and outs of the dispute, as well as preventing the sort of mass action that might have closed down pits, power stations and coking plants. The authors see the battle of Orgreave, one such confrontation, as a turning point for the strike, lost because there simply wasn't a sustained attempt to deliver mass action.

Writing in the immediate aftermath of the return to work by the defeated miners, the authors have an optimistic outlook on the future. They argue that similar historical defeats had not seen the end of the miner's union, but after the rebuilding of rank and file organisation, the union had returned to its former strength. Sadly this optimism was misplaced. Thatcher continued to ride roughshod over workers and even today the legacy of the defeat means that trade unions have not yet recovered their confidence to fight the Tories.

Neil Kinnock's failure to support the miners and his sitting on the fence throughout the dispute meant Labour failed to give any leadership to the struggle. His failure to beat the hated Tories in the 1992 General Election led, in turn, to John Smith and then Tony Blair. Kinnock's betrayal of the miner's was a disgrace and history should never let him off the hook.

I picked this book up because the 30th anniversary of the strike will be the cause for looking back on behalf of the union movement. Too many will wring their hands and bemoan the defeat of the miners. Few of us will see the opportunity to discuss the sort of union movement that we need today. This book is an excellent introduction to the debates, and activists today who are committed to building up the union movement and defeating the Tories will gain much from reading it.

This book is sadly out of print. But it is available online here.

Related Reviews

Darlington & Lyddon - Glorious Summer: Class Struggle in Britain 1972
Darlington - Radical Unionism
Cliff & Gluckstein - Marxism and Trade Union Struggle

Robert Harris - Lustrum

*** Spoiler Warning ***

Volume two of Robert Harris' trilogy about ancient Rome's most famous senator, lawyer and orator is a different beast to the first novel. I remember enjoying the first because it evoked a real sense of Rome - the sights, smells, over-crowding and general atmosphere of an ancient city. Instead, volume two, concentrates on the relationships in the senate and between the most important figures


Cicero has grown self-confident and wealthy. The story begins with him helping to finish off the conspiracy of Cataline. His rhetorical skills, and cunning ability to play individuals off against each other, as well as an avowed commitment to the Republic allow Cicero to come out on top. But in doing so, he lays the seeds for his future demise.

As in the first volume the mass of the population rarely make an appearance. Usually they are there to cheer one or other of the main characters. But I did like the way that Harris uses Cicero's greed to demonstrate how ordinary Roman's could still dominate thier rulers. As Cicero glories in his victory, he over-reaches himself, purchasing an elaborate mansion on a hill overlooking the forum. Cicero is glad to be higher up and in a better place than his arch rival, Caesar. But his enemies can use the easily visible mansion as a rhetorical point. Now Cicero is classed as the wannabe dictator, gazing down on the city from on high. The seed is set for future collapse as Cicero's networks unwind.

Sadly volume three is yet to be written in this enjoyable trilogy. The outcome is well known, but Harris has a story-tellers ability to make it all quite new.

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Harris - Imperium
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Graves - Claudius the God

Ralph Darlington - Radical Unionism: The Rise and Fall of Revolutionary Syndicalism

This book deals with the ideas of Revolutionary Syndicalism, ideas that were in part responsible for mass movements involving millions of workers in the first few decades of the twentieth century. This was a period when in many different countries, workers and their organisations, were faced with the challenge of world war, conscription, mass unemployment and repression from their governments and bosses. The struggles that Syndicalists took part in, the battles they won and lost, their ideas, innovation and solidarity form a core of this book.

But Ralph Darlington hasn't just written a history of the Syndicalists. He has tried to explore "the different conceptions of capitalism, revolution and socialism held by the syndicalist and communist traditions, and the way in which an entire theoretical and organisational heritage was remade on the road from syndicalism to communism." Coming from a revolutionary Marxist point of view, Darlington has tried to examine the types of workers movements and organisations that are needed to defeat capitalism, drawing on the lessons of Syndicalism and the debates that they took part in after the success of the Russian Revolution of 1917.

The Syndicalists arose from the deep cynicism with which many radicals in the workers movement saw existing workers organisations. At the dawn of the twentieth century, political parties of the left were dominated by reformist tendencies, preaching the language of socialism but in rarely challenging the system. Trade unions, often mass organisations, too were geared less to fighting for even the short term interests of workers, preferring to organise in support of reformists interests. The existence of a bureaucratic layer of officials in the unions created a conservative layer that held back the movement at crucial times.

Syndicalists, in different countries and in various different ways tried to create workers organisations that could break from the existing practice. Revolutionary to the core, these organisations hoped to create mass unions that could, through a enormous general strike, bring down capitalism and introduce socialism. Frequently Syndicalists were prepared to engage in radical, mass action. Action, that could and did win and which led to the growth of such organisations. Frequently Syndicalist unions drew into action workers who were unorganised, or were considered unorganisable. Agricultural workers, those on short contracts, or immigrant labour. The growth might be explosive:

"In America for brief periods the IWW involved many thousands of workers in their organisation. Nonetheless, one year after its 1905 foundation membership was down from 23,000 to 14,500... It was not until 1909 that the Wobblies began to experience rapid growth arising from their free-speech campaigns and increased strike intervention... During 1916-1917 this leapt to 75,000 and it is estimated that by the end of the summer of 1917, at their height, they had between 125-150,000."

But;

"It seems likely some workers may have readily subscribed to the methods of syndicalism (especially 'direct action') rather than necessarily the revolutionary aims of the movement. The immediate demands of the syndicalists, ostensibly a prelude to a revolutionary reconstruction of society may have seemed to individual militants a more sensible strategy for securing reforms in the meantime than the activities of those in the labour movement dedicated to the mere attainment of such reforms."

A further problem was the tendency to reject politics. This meant that frequently syndicalists concentrated on workplace struggles, or looked towards the future control of production, but ducked wider questions of political struggle. The example of World War One is informative here. Many syndicalists were powerfully anti-war, yet few seemed prepared to risk their organisation. The IWW is a case in point. As the IWW discussed calling a general strike against the entry of the US into the war, and the refusal to support workers going to fight for the capitalists, the editor of the IWW's newspaper responded:

"In case of war we want One Big Union... to come out of the conflict stronger and with more industrial control than previously. Why should we sacrifice working class interests of the sake of a few noisy and impotent parades or anti-war demonstrations. Let us rather get on with the job of organising the working class to take over the industries, war or no war, and stop all future capitalist aggression."

Such words sound very revolutionary, yet in practice they are a recipe for inaction.

Part two of Darlington's book looks at the experience of syndicalism following the Russian Revolution and the attempts by the Bolsheviks to engage the mass workers movements into revolutionary struggles. Darlington doesn't simply reject the syndicalists, like the best of the leading Bolsheviks, he understands that their was immense potential for the two groups learning from each other. Indeed many leading syndicalists like Bill Haywood or Alfred Rosmer joined the new Communist Parties.

Haywood said in April 1921, for instance,

"'I feel as I'd always been there... You remember I used to say that all we needed was 50,000 real IWW's and then about a million members to back them up? Well isn't that a similar idea [to the Bolshevik model]? At least I always realised that the essential thing was to have an organisation of those who know.'"

But Darlington also understands that a revolutionary workers movement cannot simply abstain from big political questions, such as the role of the state or the need for revolutionary organisation. Leon Trotsky, in very fraternal exchanges made this point;

"It is quite self-evident that a continued 'denial' of politics and of the state by French syndicalism would constitute a capitulation to bourgeois parties and to the capitalist state. It is not enough to deny the state-it is necessary to conquer the state in order to surmount it. The struggle for the conquest of the state apparatus is - revolutionary politics. To renounce it is to renounce the fundamental tasks of the revolutionary class."

Darlington too writes in this fraternal way. He starts from the same rejection of reformist methods and organisations that so infuriated the syndicalists. But he also draws on the lessons of the various radical movements in the early twentieth century in an attempt to find a strategy that can win. In doing so he celebrates the struggles of the syndicalists, but finds their strategies wanting. As a result, this book is an excellent discussion of the type of trade union struggle we need, but also the revolutionary parties that must be built.

Related Reviews

Darlington and Lyddon - Glorious Summer: Class Struggle in Britain in 1972
Cliff and Gluckstein - Marxism and Trade Union struggle: The General Strike of 1926

N.A.M. Rodger - The Safeguard of the Sea: A Naval History of Britain, 660-1649

The history of the British Isles has been shaped by its island nature. Yet for much of the period covered in this book, there was no formal navy. Indeed, for a large part of this time frame, Rodger's points out that the various monarchs struggled to find the finance to maintain even a few standing ships that might be used in defensive or offensive roles. Rodger is obliged to list the various ways that in times of need, the British, or English state needed to make shipowners and their crews take on a naval role.

This lack of a permanent navy tended to leave monarchs misunderstanding, or downplaying the role of naval forces in their military endeavours. Time and again Rodger's points out that a monarch missed excellent opportunities for military victory simply because they failed to deploy their ships in more than a supporting role.

We know little of the early navy, though the author does an excellent job in telling us what we do know, and summing up the evidence for what may have happened in the past. Ships tend not to survive well, though we can summarise that for much of the first few centuries covered in the book, English monarchs, traders, raiders and fishermen used a variety of ships similar in design to those of Northern Europe. Ships of "viking" design survived in some parts of the British Isles, surprisingly late,

"longest in the West Highlands and parts of Ireland, where the Lords of the Isles and other chiefs maintained large fleets of them throughout the Middle Ages.... The Highland 'galleys'... carried into the sixteenth and even seventeenth centuries that naval traditions of the Viking world. Though adapted to use the stern rudder, these galleys were in other respects unchanged examples of a building tradition which was by then more than a thousand years old."

Maintaining ships is a costly business. Few monarchs before the late Middle Ages could do more than hold together a token force in permanence. Most of those relied on commandeering ships from others in times of need. The biggest problem, was providing food, water and other supplies for the navy when it was required, and Rodger's spends fascinating chapters detailing how this became a major part of operations. Later, the role of individuals in the 16th and 17th centuries in filling their own pockets as part of the victualling process is examined, this wasn't always seen as the corrupt practise that we would think today. Indeed many of those in leading naval positions in the Elizabethan and Stuart era died having pumped large amounts of their own cash into the King's ships.

Other than the technological and political history, Rodger's looks at the lives of the sailors aboard these ships. Rarely did naval sailors earn the wages or have the quality of life of their comrades on merchant or fishing vessels. Life was hard, and few would volunteer, and Rodger's looks at the historic role of the press-gang in making sure there were enough men to man the ships. There is also, the occasional story of rebellion or mutiny as men refused to continue to work (and fight) for short wages.

It might seem that Britain achieved a navy because successive monarchs and states gradually came to understand the importance of this military power. Oddly this doesn't seem to have been the case. The navy rose and fell, in part based on the whim of the monarch, or his finances. It also depended on the threat form overseas, or whether there was opportunity for plunder from Spanish convoys. Henry VIII is often portrayed as the founder of the modern navy, paid in large part from the one-off monies from the abolition of the monasteries. Yet after Henry's death, the navy receded in importance again, rising to new heights with Elizabeth, then declining in the run up to the Civil War era.

At the heart of the book is the story of the Armada, and Rodger's ends a few cherished myths in this excellent chapter. But the real story is how, by the end of the Feudal era, Britain was in no position to have the navy it needed without fundamental change.

"the early Stuart Navy was not merely a decayed and corrupted version of the Elizabethan Navy, but a force attempting to respond to a new threat. Certainly it was under acute strain from human and administrative failings, but it is not sufficient to explain the Navy's weakness simply in moral terms.... the basic problem would have remained, unless the political system had been able to supply an income sufficient to sustain a modern war. Many of the Navy's difficulties were not unique to it, but were symptoms of strains that were falling on government and society in general... The historian's rhetoric of 'corruption' and 'reform' has obscured many developments which might be equally well thought of as growing pains. The question in 1630 was whether the Navy and the English constitution could grow and change fast enough."

Rodgers sets much of the theme for the second volume of his work here. Increasingly placing the navy as both part of the new social and economic order and one that is helping to shape Britain's place in the world. By understanding the navy as having this role in British history, rather than the central feature that explains British dominance of the globe for the next few centuries, Rodger's creates a much more nuanced version of history. One in which British supremacy was not inevitable, indeed almost never occurred.

There are some minor quibbles. I felt that the international role of Britain's ships was neglected, particularly in terms of the establishment of early colonies, and trade. Despite the length I also thought that more detail in some of the key chapters (such as the Armada might have been worthwhile). That said, this together with volume two, is a fine work and readers will be eagerly awaiting the final part.

Related Reviews

Rodgers - The Command of the Ocean

Mary Beard & Michael Crawford - Rome in the Late Republic

The end of the Roman Republic and the transition to the Imperial era is a fascinating period of cultural and social change, civil war, and political chaos. As the authors point out, in a "swift and striking transformation, a political system founded upon principles fundamentally opposed to monarchy was replaced by a system monarchical in all but name."

Precisely why this change happened is the subject of enormous debate and Mary Beard and Michael Crawford's book is one of the single best short introductions to the material that I have read. First published in 1985 this 2012 edition has a new introduction and supplementary material where the authors in general stand by their original arguments.

Perhaps the most important part of the authors' approach is the sense of the Roman Republic as a society in constant change and development. This is not a static society that suddenly goes into crisis, but a one were all sorts of individuals and social groups are in constant motion. Take the famous "turning point" of the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus in 133 BC. Here a radical proposal to redistribute land to the landless poor was made by Tiberius. Unusually he made it to the popular assembly, instead of the Roman senate. Tiberius' method and his ideas brought murder upon him from other members of the governing elite, because

"By his use of the popular assembly, Tiberius gave that body the status of rival to the senate as a source.. of political authority.... the proposal concerning the Asian revenues [to finance redistribution of land] carried with it the implication that the people had some claim on the management of the fruits of the growing empire."

Elsewhere the authors argue that other factors in Roman society were changing, the "development... of moral and political philosophy in the late Republic, bringing with it new ways for the Roman governing class to understand and justify their own conduct." Rules of how Rome was to be governed, and by whom, became more codified, less reliant on custom, more on law.

Similar there was an explosion of culture (which "did not involve the poor or lower classes), though with the reign of Augustus, the authors suggest that this become less dynamic and tended towards a more uniform nature.

Key sections of the book look at social and cultural structures of Roman society. All of these in flux and changing - whether religious practice, or the closely related political process. All these changes were key to understanding what took place with the fall of the Republic. The authors argue hard that there is no single factor. Instead;

"The changes in late Republican society should not be seen just as the causes of the breakdown of the specifically Republican political system; they were also parts of the development of Roman society, which underwent no clean break between the 'fall' of the Republic and the 'advent' of Empire".

The problematic word "revolution" is always used in this context. The authors perhaps clarify this somewhat by pointing out there were two parts to the revolution. The first is the end of the republic, the second is the way that Augustus made himself the single ruler. That story is not part of this book, though it is illuminated by the material here.

This is an excellent short history, marred only by the unfortunate high price. Heavily footnoted and with an excellent summary of the material, it is a must for all students of the period. It is a history based on an attempt to clarify the different, and often competing parts, of Roman society and to understand how they related to each other. It also sees Rome as a evolving culture, whose development brought further, sometimes unexpected changes, that altered the interests and forces within society. Eventually the many internal contradictions broke through, and a new regime was needed, one that could solidify Roman society in its new form.

Related Reviews

Syme - The Roman Revolution
Holland - Rubicon
Everitt - The First Emperor
Suetonius - The Twelve Caesars
Beard - The Roman Triumph
Beard - Pompeii

Alan D. McMillan & Eldon Yellowhorn - First Peoples in Canada

Perhaps the first thing that strikes readers of this history of the Canadian First Nations peoples, is the sheer variety of ways of life that existed before the arrival of Europeans. From the Arctic peoples who lived in extreme cold, hunted seals, fished and gathered very little food, to those living on the plains, hunting bison or engaging in farming and those living from the vast salmon runs of the West Coast, or hunting and gathering in the extensive forests of the east.

An extremely crude version of Canadian (indeed North American) aboriginal history would simply separate the periods into that pre-European arrival and then post-European time. Some First Nations people have their own version of this, the "Dog Days" versus the "Horse Days", remembering a time when positions were moved with the help of Dogs and then, after European's had introduced horses, a time when travel (as well as hunting) was changed.

But what this book demonstrates is that there is an enormously history of those who arrived in the Americas via the Bering land bridge some 12,000 years ago. They arrived in a "Terra Nullius", a land empty of people, but stocked full of flora and fauna. The authors discuss at length how the first people arrived - contrasting the tradition view of an overland crossing with a suggestion that many people would have travelled along the coast lines. Over the intervening time span, humans spread to every corner of the continent, and adapted to live in a myriad of different ways.

Over time, the aboriginal cultures developed and changed. Some died out, victims of hunger or conflict with other groups. This process accelerated as Europeans arrived, particularly as a result of the diseases that came with them, but also as a result of violence and war. Thus the societies that existing at the point of European contact were not ones that had been fixed for thousands of years. They were the result of the First Nations own history, a history that would have continued on its own path had it not been interrupted by European arrival.

Contact with the global economy transformed aboriginal life. In part the existence of metal tools, guns and horses had an immediate effect on life. But so did the particular nature of the relationship. Many Europeans on the west and east coasts wanted enormous quantities of furs or skins. Purchasing these from the native people, transformed those societies. Now they hunted not for food, or to satisfy needs, but to produce commodities for trade. In one case mentioned in the book, warfare took place that may have annihilated the St. Lawrence Iroquois, as a rival group the Stadaconans tried to monopolise trade with the French.

At the core of this book is a detailed examination of the changing life of different First Nations peoples. This is rooted in archaeology and anthropology, but also the culture and knowledge that we have from encounters with these people since European Contact. Indeed, each section begins with an extensive look at the history of the different groups, then finishes with a history of the time of European contact and finishes by bringing the history up-to-date by discussing the group's experience during the "global era".

I found this later part quite illuminating. The struggles of the First Nations people against the emerging nation state of Canada, were struggles for survival. They were also struggles to protect a heritage. Even in the 20th and 21st centuries, First Nations peoples continue to have to fight for their rights and compensation for how they were treated in the past. Even as late as the 1980s remnants of old Indian Acts several restricted the rights of "Indians" to move, to drink or to work. Much has changed, but much must still change. The First Nations people are not a living museum, they are a people with a rich history which continues to develop. The great strength of this book is to link that history to today, and present a continuity of struggle.

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Neal Stephenson - The System of the World

Finishing Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle feels akin to completing a long voyage. This is not simply because the trilogy weighs in at nearly three thousand pages; it also reflects the enormous scale of the work. Covering some of the most turbulent decades of European history, we see the end of the old feudal order being replaced with a mercantile, capitalist system. The kings and lords are pushed out and replaced, particularly in England, by the coiners, the merchants, the investors and the traders. This is a set of novels about the capitalism becoming entrenched.

Set mostly in England then, System of the World book covers the machinations of those caught up in the whirlpools and eddies of the time. Many of these hang around the court – the post Civil War court – aware of their diminished power, but clinging on to tradition in the hope of wealth, prosperity and promotion.  This final volume brings it all to a head. If the first volume, centred in large part, on the Royal Society dealt with the transformation of culture and science in the new era, volume II examined the impact upon the rest of the world. There we saw South America being stripped bare of precious minerals, slavery and empire.  Our heroes have traveled the globe now and in the final volume they congregate back in England. Some of them attempting, through the introduction of forged coins, to debase England's currency, undermine the economy and open the door to counter-revolutionary foes. Others to stop them, but most of them trying to make a future for themselves by fair means or foul.

The System of the World is the climax to a string of different stories, linked and inseparable, but each with their own characters and subplots. As is the nature of climaxes there is a lot of energy, excitement and drama here. Stephenson ties up lose ends and characters at the same time as taking the story forward. Unusally for the trilogy I found it slightly over long – in the early volumes the philosophical detours that took in science and alchemy, royal intrigues or historical information here seem a distraction. The book could have been a hundred or so pages shorter without losing anything.

Ultimately the book comes down to the fates of the principle characters we met in the early pages of volume one.  Jack Shaftoe, King of the Vagabonds, faces his final and greatest challenge after breaking into the world’s greatest prison. Eliza, the woman he has loved for three decades, is pulling a myriad of strings to ensure her plots and sub-plots work out. Scientists like Newton, Leibniz and the fictional Daniel Waterhouse are on the brink of new discoveries that will open up the universe to human intellect. But their fire and steam machines are also set to open up the world physically to the search for profit. The era of the human slave may be ending in some parts of the world. That of the wage slave and machine is dawning. A new World System as the title, after Newton, indicates.

Stephenson’s trilogy is a masterpiece. Each volume different yet together making an enormously satisfying whole. I marveled at the author's knowledge of the period, his grasp of science and his sense of historical change. Despite the characters frequently being kings, great men, landowners, famous scientists and merchants, the real heroes, drawn in loving detail are the ordinary people of the 17^th and 18^th century. So I recommend these books to all those who like their fantasy sprinkled with historical change, science, improbable adventure and the dirty streets of London.

Related Reviews

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Paul Burkett - Marxism and Ecological Economics: Toward a Red and Green Political Economy

Paul Burkett, along with John Bellamy Foster has been at the forefront of both rescuing the ecological core of Karl Marx's work and developing it further. This 2005 book puts the case that Marxism offers both the best critique of existing ecological economics and the best alternative. Burkett argues that "Marxist class analysis can help answer many of the questions raised by ecological economists, at the same time that the substantive agenda of ecological economics can enrich the materialist dimension of Marxism"

Until recently, Burkett argues, ecosocialist (a term I consider slightly problematic in this context) economists have "crowded out any serious Marxist engagement with ecological economics" because of the domination of the "two contradictions' framework".  Behind this lies a critique of Marxism that it doesn't "adequately account for the natural and social conditions of production". Burkett's book is an attempt to seriously grapple with these and other critiques and prove them wrong.

The first part of the book is an excellent attack on the ideas of contingent valuation (CV). Essentially, this boils down to various attempts to quantify natures' contribution to economics by putting a price on different parts of the environment. In some of the cases examined here, this is partly an attempt by various economic theorists to explore ways that the economy can take better account of the natural world. In others, CV is an attempt to mathematically model the resource inputs and waste outputs of the economic process. Should any reader think this is purely an academic experiment, I direct them to those neo-liberal politicians who, at the 2011 UN Environment Conference in Rio de Janiero, attempted to push an agenda where such price tags became the mainstay of international ecological practice. Something I discussed briefly in this article (PDF).

The great strength of Burkett's book is that the way he uses Marx's ideas. In contrast to the academic jargon of the mainstream economists he is analysing, Marx's alternatives shine through with great clarity. Burkett begins by looking at how Marx's debates with the physiocrats (19th century economists who believed land was the source of all wealth) allowed him to develop on their ideas. Burkett writes that "Physiocracy represents an interesting hybrid of the different views held by present-day ecological economists on nature's value." He continues:

"What distinguishes Marx from both the physiocrats and the contemporary nature valuation debate is his definition of 'value' as capitalism's specific form of economic valuation. For Marx, real wealth or use-value is anything that satisfies human needs, whereas value is the specific social representation of use-value under capitalism... Marx thus insists that value relations, including the various tensions between use-value and exchange-value, be analysed in terms of capitalism's specific relations of production."

Here is the crux of Burkett's argument. However brilliant your economic model is mathematically, it cannot account for the destruction of the environment by capitalism, unless it examines the "relations of production". Because Marx begins with the human-nature interaction at the heart of production, but then analyses all aspects of the social relations that result, his method allows a much more nuanced understanding of the degradation of nature. Affixing prices to nature, or parts of the natural world, cannot solve ecological problems because it leaves untouched the need for capitalism to accumulate for the sake of accumulation, whatever the consequences.

Neo-liberal approaches to the environment that begin by giving nature a price, end up with the "introduction of market mechanisms and norms into new spheres of life that previously have been protected from markets." [John O'Neill 1997, quoted by Burkett] The solution then, for the likes of Sir Nicolas Stern, is the introduction of even more market mechanisms, and the commodification of further aspects of nature. Once again, against this approach, Marx's approach begins from the nature of production, not the existence of markets.

"the conditions required by human production and development are in no way, not even partially, external  to the market-orientated sphere where surplus value is produced and realised. They are part of an overall process in which use-value (human need satisfaction and development through the metabolic interaction of labour and nature) is subsumed under, and becomes a means of, the class-exploitative and competitive process of value accumulation. In Marx's dialectical view, the ecological and other social costs of capital accumulation are internal to the general metabolic process of human-natural reproduction (co-evolution) in its specifically capitalist form."

The problem is not that capitalist markets haven't gone far enough, but the nature of capitalist production itself.

I've concentrated on these early aspects of Burket's book here, because I think they are most pertinent to the debates socialists and environmentalists are having at the moment. Burkett's book deals in depth with a number of other related topics. Some of these are very challenging and I feel that readers who, like myself, lack a background in mainstream economics may struggle with some of the chapters. While I was fascinated by those economists who have tried to use an analysis of entropy in ecological economics, I found that even Burkett's clear explantions were not enough. That said, there is still much for the reader to get from these chapters, if he or she is willing to study them.

Later chapters too, will be more accessible if the reader is conversant with the works of various other economists, and I think that many readers who pick up this book hoping for enlightenment may stop before the end. This would be a shame, because in his final chapters Burkett once again takes up the argument that Marxism can offer both a critique of existing ecological economics and an alternative. Unlike many academic Marxists Burkett doesn't simply suggest that Marxism's strength is just its analysis of capitalism, he also argues that the centrality of class struggle is of primary importance. In particular Burkett looks forward to a revolutionary over-throw of capitalism. His final chapters demonstrate the way that, in Marx's words,

"socialised men, the associated producers, govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way, bringing it under their collective control instead of being dominated by it as a blind power; accomplishing it with the least expenditure of energy and in conditions most worthy and appropriate for their human nature."

Related Reviews

Foster - Marx's Ecology
Foster - The Vulnerable Planet
Smith - Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Production of Space

R L Stevenson - Treasure Island

While reading recently about real life pirates, I decided to read R.L. Stevenson's classic novel Treasure Island. Reading it was a fascinating experience. I'd never read it before, yet the story was as familiar as if I had read it half a dozen times. No doubt this is because it is one of the most dramatised books ever published, being made repeatedly into a film and play.

So there is little point in detailing more in this review. Though it is worth noting that many of the popular conceptions about pirates had their beginnings here. Wooden legs, parrots on shoulders, Yo Ho Hoing, black spots and treasure islands. The popularity of the book must in part lie in its writing - the story is gripping and exciting, yet the characters are also wonderfully constructed. Blind Pew is terrifying as he taps his way around, the moment he grabs Jim Hawkins genuinely scary... Long John Silver is delightfully ambiguous in his morals and Hawkin's climatic battle with Mr. Hands is as exciting as gunfight ever imagined on the silver screen. The only characters that annoyed me, are the uptight and holier-than-thou Squire and Doctor. Stevenson slotting in some minor English gentry to demonstrate how the plebs ought to behave.

So if you're only experience of Treasure Island is the Muppet version, you really should dig out a free online copy of the original and follow Jim Hawkins into the South Seas.

Karl Marx - Value, Price and Profit

Karl Marx's work is often decried as being difficult or inaccessible. While it is true that some of it requires careful reading, the basic concepts are actually fairly straightforward, and indeed, many books have been written to present these ideas in an accessible way. What is less well known, is that Marx's own writing can be extremely readable, and he was a master at clarifying and presenting complex ideas. Value, Price and Profit is a case in point.

First presented as a paper to a meeting of the International Working Men's Association in 1865, its subtitle, "Addressed to Working Men", betraying its intended use - as a tool to educate and arm workers. In it, Karl Marx presents the basic concepts of what is today usually known as the Labour Theory of Value.

Marx begins by debunking a commonly held belief, that rises in wages cause price rises. At the time he was arguing with a fellow traveller of the IWMA. But more recently the argument that workers cannot have price rises because of inflation has been used by various governments. In opposition to the "dogma" that "prices of commodities are determined or regulated by wages", Marx embarks on showing what actually causes prices to rise. In doing so, he takes the reader through the nature of a commodities value and what gives it that value.

What gives a commodity a value, is its "relations to all other commodities" and the thing that all commodities, whether newspapers, gold or wheat have in common is the human labour required to make them. In a wonderfully clear passage, Marx shows how what is important in giving commodities exchangeable values is the social labour that goes into creating them.

"To produce commodity a certain amount of labour must be bestowed upon it, or worked up in it. And I say not only Labour, but Social Labour. A man who produces an article for his immediate use, to consume it himself, creates a product, but not a commodity. As a self-sustaining producer he has nothing to do with society. But to produce a commodity, a man must not only produce an article satisfying some social want, but his labour itself must form part and parcel of the total sum of labour expended by society. It must be subordinate to the Division of Labour within Society. It is nothing without the other divisions of labour, and on its part is required to integrate them. If we consider commodities as values, we consider them exclusively under the single aspect of realised, fixed, or if you like, crystallised social labour."
Marx then goes on to discuss Price a "peculiar form assumed by value".  Marx goes on to show the origins of the capitalist's profit, lie not in the setting of a commodities' price, but in the difference between the value generated by a worker and that paid to the worker. Because a working men sells is his Labouring Power, there exists the potential to alter both the wages and the profits. But because what the capitalist is doing is paying a wage, but gaining far more from the worker than the wage is worth, Marx repeats that "that normal and average profits are made by selling commodities not above, but at their real values." These real values are determined by the "social labour" utilised in manufacturing the commodity by the worker.

Despite the short length of this work, Marx packs a lot in. He has a brief digression on the origins of the wage labour system being in the separation of the worker from his original means of subsistence and the revolutionary change embodied in the transition to capitalism. Marx also discusses briefly how rent, profit and interest are actually different terms for parts of the surplus value extracted from workers.

But Karl Marx was above all a revolutionary, and the conclusion of the book, after drawing out the nature of work under capitalism, is to point out a revolutionary way forward. The struggle between workers and capitalists has an effect. As Marx points out "if wages fall, profits  will rise; and if wages rise, profits will fall". But for the worker this cannot be enough. Capitalism can only seek to maximise its profits by making workers pay, thus in order to secure for workers the best possible situation, the wages system must be ended. Famously Marx concludes that

"Instead of the conservative motto, 'A fair day's wages for a fair day's work!' they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, 'Abolition of the wages system!'

In this context, Trade unions are "centres of general resistance" to capital, but the struggle is hampered by their lack of revolutionary struggle, their "guerilla war against the effects of the existing system". What is needed is a revolutionary movement and this short book by the greatest anti-capitalist of them all, is one of the best weapons to educate and clarify workers in understanding the nature of the beast we must destroy.

Related Reviews

Marx - The Civil War in France
Mehring - Karl Marx: The Story of his Life
Choonara - Unravelling Capitalism: A Guide to Marxist Political Economy
Harman - Zombie Capitalism: Global Crisis & the Relevance of Marx

Ian Knight - Zulu Rising

I suspect that most people's knowledge of the Anglo-Zulu wars consists of watching the film Zulu. In that movie, a heroic band of white-British soldiers hold off the Zulu hordes at Rorke's Drift and prove, through their valiant winning of multiple Victoria Crosses, that they were made of British pluck.

Ian Knight's book fills a enormous gap in the literature of military writings on the Victorian era. Unlike many celebration's of British colonialism, he retells the appalling story of the Anglo-Zulu war through the eyes of both sides in the conflict. There are many military histories of the battles of Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift. Few of them are sympathetic with the Zulus. Fewer still locate the root of the enormous defeat the British had at Isandlwana in the personal ambitions of British colonial leaders, isolated from London, who thought they could win a quick victory over a backward people.

Knight begins with a history of the Zulu people. Their origins lie in the Nguni people of eastern Africa and Knight tells us fascinating details of the development of their culture. In this difficult terrain, the Zulu's developed an economy centred on cattle, with a complex network of different tribes that paid homage to a central king.

By the 18th century, these tribes were beginning to encounter white Europeans, often shipwrecked on the dangerous coasts. As the 18th century became the 19th, European interest in East Africa increased, particularly with the discovery of resources such as diamonds.

The Anglo-Zulu war has its origin in colonial incursions into Zulu land. Knight makes it clear that local authorities, desperate to create the basis for a quick war against the Zulu, convinced those back in London to build up their military forces. But not enough. Acting with little more than their own authority, men like Anthony Durnford and Lord Chelmsford invaded the Zulu nation and incurred the wrath of Cetshwayo the Zulu King.

Knight is no romantic. He is completely aware that in the long run, the Zulus stood little chance against the might of the British industrial economy. But this first military campaign suffered from many colonial prejudices. Not for the first time did British red-coats pay with their lives, because General's assumed that the natives would run away in the face of British guns and bayonets.

The actions of the British commander Lord Chelmsford read like a text-book example of how not to invade hostile territory. He split his forces, and badly under-estimated the scale of his opponent. With columns scattered country-wide, few experienced soldiers, long-supply chains over inhospitable terrain, and racist attitudes to the enemy a military defeat of some sort was inevitable. But the scale of the disaster had more to do with the enormous size of Cethswayo's kingdom and the number of Zulu troops prepared to muster to defend their land and people. So skilled were these troops, and so over-confident the British that the Zulus were able to bring 28,000 troops within 8 kilometres of the poorly defended British camp at Isandlwana.

Knight's book is partly social history, hence his emphasis on the history of the Zulu nation and the background of the British troops and officers. Yet it is also military history. Unusually his detailed explanations of, for instance, how a soldier actually fired a Martini-Henri rifle only serve to detail the true horror of the British defeat. Knowing exactly how hot the gun's barrel got after a few shots, and how this could cause the weapon to jam, means that the reader understands how quickly the British got themselves into trouble in the face of such over-whelming odds. Knight has dug out large numbers of eyewitness accounts, from British and Zulu veterans and the stories of the last moments of the massacre, with red-coats fighting with pocket-knives against heavily armed Zulu warriors, are very hard to read.

But Isandlwana was a unique set of circumstances. The entirely different outcome at Rorke's Drift demonstrated that British tactics, in a heavily defended area, with disciplined troops, could defeat enormous odds. The Zulu people just didn't have the weapons to defeat British guns. That said though one does have to wonder at the intelligence of any commander who took rockets out into the plains of Natal to try and defeat a mobile force.

Knight captures the prejudices and mistakes made by the colonial authorities, lays to rest many of the forgotten aspects of the conflicts (the central role played by native forces in the British armies) and demonstrates how British policies (particularly after the defeat) helped lay the basis for many of the problems that came after. This is no sanitised account of military action, but a bloodily realistic description of the front line of Empire.

Sadly the book is slightly over-written, I felt a decent editor could have cut 50 to 100 of the 700 pages. That sad though, the work is immensely readable and recommended.

Related Reviews

Newsinger - The Blood Never Dried; A People's History of the British Empire
Gott - Britain's Empire: Resistance, Repression and Revolt

A S Jasper - A Hoxton Childhood

A S Jasper's memories of life in Hoxton in East London, in the first two decades of the twentieth century portray a life of poverty and suffering. Jasper's working class family suffered doubly; from the limits of East London's economy and a father who's semi-legal income mostly made its way behind the bars of the myriad of local pubs.

So this is a autobiography of a childhood blighted by poverty, unemployment, alcoholism and violence. The violence of individuals who took out their suffering on those around them, together with the violence of a system that turned people on the street for falling behind on their rent, or because their labour was no longer needed.

Unfortunately while Jasper's tale is illuminating in the reality of life for the majority of those living in East London, unlike other similar accounts, we learn little about social life. There certainly is no sense of the collective acts of resistance that marked out East London life, or the workers' organisations such as their left parties and trade unions. Perhaps this is because Jasper is remembering the earliest years of his life, but East London did have its share of struggles in the years described.

The arrival of World War One brings with it death and destruction. The fear of German Zeppelin raids and friends and family who joined up. Some, like Jasper's brother-in-law couldn't stand the army and got out as soon as they could desert. Others never returned. Leaving young families to fend for themselves.

Those interested in the lives of ordinary people will find this book interesting, but lacking in substance. Certainly nobody could believe that Eastenders between 1900 and 1920 lived a happy, but poor existence. In a postscript written in the 1960s, Jasper hopes that his readers will be thankful that these times of poverty are past. Sadly, as the economic crisis continues, and British governments pursue their austerity programmes, the safety net helping those in poverty, low pay and unemployment is getting thin. We can hope we avoid such times again, but its not automatic. Let's hope for some resistance before following generations have to live like Jasper's friends and family.

Hilary Mantel - Bring up the Bodies

The second volume of Hilary Mantel's novelisation of the life of Thomas Cromwell carries on the dramatic story of the reign of Henry VIII. The first novel describes Cromwell's rise, from humble origins to the heights of power in the English court. Henry VIII is of course known for his wives, and Cromwell's role in securing the marriage of Henry to Anne Boleyn is a masterpiece of intrigue and political manoeuvring. At the heart of this volume is the dramatic change that occurs as Henry loses interest in Anne as a result of her failure to produce a male heir, and his growing interest in her successor, Jane Seymour.

Thomas Cromwell's role, balancing the forces ranged behind each of the women in this epic tale, is in reality the balance of some of the most powerful families in England. One struggling to hold on to power and remaining linked to the King, but terrified of being dragged down by the fallen angel; the others scheming to use the new found interest of the King to increase their power and wealth. As with the first volume, Mantel skilfully demonstrates the way that women in the Tudor aristocracy were merely pawns in a game of power. Few male aristocrats love their wives, preferring to sleep with prostitutes or other men's wives and hoping their own will produce a heir as quickly as possible. Cromwell himself is at the height of his powers, but the cracks are beginning to show.

Mantel's prose is sharp and to the point. Bring up the Bodies is a novel of dialogue and impressions, but ever so often the raw emotion of events breaks through. In her postscript, Mantel points out, that much of the story of Anne Boleyn's trial and her execution remains obscure. The impotence of Henry's victims in the face of the power of his court is tragic, so is their violent end. Mantel is not trying to write history through fiction. She's telling a story that links to the past, powered by real events, but driven by our ability to emphasis with characters from the past. Oddly, given the subject matter, this story of the Tudor Court, grabs the reader and doesn't let go.

Ronald Syme - The Roman Revolution

First published in 1939 this classic study of the end of the Roman Republic and the rise of Imperial Rome still contains a wealth of scholarship for contemporary readers. The central thesis for Syme's is that a political revolution occurred which transformed the Roman city state into a Imperial nation, capable of fully developing its Empire and utilising the resources of the subjugated nations.

Like a more recent biographer of the first emperor, Syme's considers Augustus a revolutionary, helping to drive through the changes needed in Rome's political structures (notably the Senate) to allow the new Rome to prosper. As Syme's explains, the old order was unsuited to running the new Empire;

"The constitution served the purposes of generals or of demagogues well enough. When Pompeius returned from the East, he lacked the desire as well as the pretext to march on Rome; and Caesar did not conquer Gaul in the design of invading Italy with a great army to establish a military autocracy. Their ambitions and their rivalries might have been tolerated in a small city-state or in a Rome that was merely the head of an Italian confederation. In the capital of the world they were anachronistic and ruinous. To the bloodless but violent usurpations of 70 and 59 BC the logical end was armed conflict and despotism. As the soldiers were the proletariat of Italy, the revolution became social as well as political."

Caesar's victory began as "the triumph of a faction in civil war" but he was no social revolutionary. Despite wanting to curb some of the interests of the aristocracy, he was unable or unwilling to drive through the changes that many wanted to see. Augustus then, can in part be seen as a Bonapartist figure who, in the chaos following Caesar's death, was able to defeat all comers and then drive through the political changes needed to cement the regime in place. These changes began with a war on the old aristocracy, a "regular vendetta against the rich, whether dim, inactive senators or pacific knights". Thus the "foundations of the new order were cemented with the blood of citizens and buttressed with a despotism that made men recall the Dictatorship of Caesar as an age of gold." This may have been a revolution, but it was not one that radically transformed the social structure of Rome, nor that emancipated anyone from the lower echelons of Roman society. In fact, Augustus like those who preceded and followed him, claimed to be restoring things to an earlier Utopia. Those who fell at the battle of Philippi; the confrontation that ended the hopes of Caesar's assassins and ensured that Augustus and Antonious would be the sole figures vying for power, was "fought for a principle, a tradition and a class - narrow, imperfect and out-worn, but for all that, the soul and spirit of Rome."

Syme's analysis has much going for it. His book though suffers in part from the sheer scale of his material. With hundreds of references, quotes from original Latin sources, and enormous detail of the interlocking political alliances, this is almost impossible for the lay-person to follow. Syme's is more interested in the 100s of different senators and the long family trees of those in Augustus' circles, than with the lives of the majority of the population. Those more familiar with Roman history of the period might be surprised at how little mention there is of significant events (such as the death of Cleopatra).

Bigger problems are caused by Syme's refusal to translate any Latin quotes, which are sprinkled liberally through the text. One can only hope that modern readers have new editions which editors have not assumed that those interested have had a classical education.

Finally, Syme's is very much of his time. References to "Marches on Rome" and the importance of Rome having a strong leader to restore social stability smack very much of the late 1930s. That said, this doesn't read as an apology for dictatorship or contemporary fascism, but a scholarly attempt to grapple with enormous social change. A clearer understanding of the period can come from reading it, but those interested would be well advised to develop their knowledge of Roman history somewhat before attempting it.

Related Reading

Holland - Rubicon
Everitt - The First Emperor
Suetonius - The Twelve Caesars

Christian Høgsbjerg - Chris Braithwaite: Mariner, Renegade & Castaway

Subtitled Seamen's Organiser, Socialist and Militant Pan-Africanist this short new biography of Chris Braithwaite (known as Chris Jones) rescues a forgotten hero of the working class movement from relative obscurity. It is also a useful introduction to the politics of a period that saw the international Communist movement move from being a tribune of the oppressed peoples of the world, to an apologist for Stalin's Russia.

Braithwaite was born in Barbados. A seaman, he was widely travelled and after a time in New York he ended up, as so many inhabitants of British colonies did, in East London. There he rapidly became involved in the emerging movements that sought to organise seamen and the docks. In particular, Braithwaite tried to organise black seamen, who not only suffered the racism of the employers, but also that of their colleagues and on occasion, the Natonal Union of Seamen. His writings continually try to both organise workers, and build unity. In the appendices to this book, Høgsbjerg has collected a few of Jones' writings aimed at seamen, which give a flavour of this work. Here is Braithwaite/Jones writing in 1938:

"In the last issue of International African Opinion I appealed to ever colonial seaman to get into touch with the International African Service Bureau, which is willing to take up their grievances... I again repeat this appeal, and at the same time urge coloured seamen to take a greater interest in their union activities. For only through their organised might will they be able to mobilise the support of the white workers on their behalf."

Braithwaite, like many other radicals, became attracted to the Communist Party because of its principled anti-imperialism. Once the abandoned that position, Braithwaite, like many others, broke with Communism. But unlike many, Braithwaite didn't lose his radical socialism, speaking on platforms of the ILP and continuing to write for various journals. One memorable part of this book is a description of a meeting hosted to highlight the abuses in French Colonial Africa. This was the period of the "Popular Front" and Communist members at the time were being instructed to stop criticism of a government that their French party supported. As Communists heckled and accused the speaker who represented nationalist movements of Algeria, Tunisia and other French colonies, Braithwaite's powerful voice roared above the noise, "I'm with you, Boy" he encouraged the speaker.

The decline of maritime industry in Britain has no doubt helped lead to activists like Chris Braithwaite being forgotten. Alongside other recent works, such as the republishing of Madge Dresser's book on the Bristol Bus Boycott, Hassan Mahamdallie's pamphlet on Black British Rebels and the excellent, Say it Loud!, this book rescues those black activists who were often at the heart of working class struggles in Britain, fighting racism and winning workers to united action.

Related Reviews

Richardson (ed) - Say it Loud! Marxism and the Fight Against Racism
Fryer - Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain
Dresser - Black and White on the Buses: The 1963 Colour Bar Dispute in Bristol

Marcus Rediker - Villains of all Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age

Two events occurred while reading this book made me ruminate on the endless fascination that we have for pirates. The first was the coincidence of reading  Treasure Island at the same time. A book that perhaps invented many of the cliches, yet is so much part of popular consciousness that I felt I knew it by heart despite never having read it. Secondly was being asked by a fellow train passenger for this book's ISBN because in his words, he loved sea novels and wanted to know the real history.

Oddly the real history is very different to that portrayed by R. L. Stevenson, or countless other pirate films, books and plays. As Rediker himself points out,

"Traditional explanations of why people turned to piracy have emphasized greed, and there is certainly truth to this. Many who worked the pirate ship wanted money, which as dispossessed proletarians they desperately needed to live. But the struggle for money is more complex than simple greed, as pirates themselves made clear. Money meant simply getting a living... It meant subsistence for poor families... It meant escaping the brutalities of life at sea 'as long as they lived'... They were now 'Gentlemen of ffortune'."

Pirate ships were, in the main, organised very differently to naval or merchant vessels. By and large instead of a near dictatorial, violent hierarchy, pirates organised more democratically. They elected their captains and unelected them if they behaved incorrectly (perhaps by displaying cowardice in the face of the enemy). They redistributed wealth, and frequently displayed kindness and honour towards captives. They were brutal in battle, but this is no surprise, they were treated violently by their previous captains and were unlikely to escape death if captured. Indeed the violence on non-pirate ships is a singularly important factor leading many to rebel, or join pirate crews.

The new social order on-board pirate ships that Rediker describes has its roots in necessity. A new crew in open rebellion requires self organisation. But Rediker suggests that the closeness of the radical events of the English Civil War meant that "when sailors encountered the deadly conditions of life at sea in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, they had an alternative social order within living memory."

This acute understanding of the realities of life was never far from the minds of the buccaneers. Pirate captain Charles Bellamy lectured a captured captain thus:

"damn ye, you are a sneaking puppy and so are all those who will submit to be governed by laws which rich men have made for their own security, for the cowardly whelps have not the courage otherwise to defend what they get by their knavery; but damn ye altogether: Damn them for a pack of crafty rascals, and you, who serve them, for a parcel of hen-hearted numskuls. They vilify us, the scoundrels do, when their is only this difference, they rob the poor under the cover of law, forsooth and we plunder the rich under the protection of our own courage."

Pirates organised themselves in egalitarian and democratic ways. They saw themselves as "honest men" trying to win justice for ordinary sailors. But this could not be left to stand. There were significant numbers of pirates and the various nation states organised to stop the destruction of commerce. This "cleansing of the ocean" meant the destruction of the pirates, but their popular acclaim inspired many tales and legends. Some of those have come down to us today, but the truth is far more inspiring and Marcus Rediker's fine history rescues it from Davy Jones' Locker.

Related Reviews

Rediker - The Amistad Rebellion
Rediker - The Slave Ship
Rediker - Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
Rediker & Linebaugh - The Many Headed Hydra

Richard Levins & Richard Lewontin - The Dialectical Biologist

At first glance, some might think this is an extremely odd title for a book. After all, dialectics is essentially a philosophical term and biology is, well, science. But the author's purpose in bringing together these essays is more to argue that a dialectical approach to science, both in terms of scientific research and practice, as well as understanding the position of science in society, benefits immensely from a dialectical method. Indeed, science, they argue, is better when practiced dialectically.

So what does that mean? Firstly the authors begin from a radical position. "We believe that science, in all its sense, is a social process that both causes and is caused by social organisation." This is very different to the majority of other scientists, who often, as the authors argue, separate out specific points of science from wider contexts, social and indeed scientific. Some of the problems with this approach are outlined in this quote from the authors, pointing out the dangers in looking at only on aspect of an organisms biology:

"The mammalian ear is obviously an organ of hearing, but it has other properties as well. For acoustic reasons it is a thin organ with a large surface area, the blood vessels cannot be deep, so heat is very readily lost. In fact, desert mammals often have extraordinarily large ears that serve as organs of temperature regulation. In this case a physical by-product of the evolution of an organ had properties that themselves became the objects of [evolutionary] selection under the special conditions of the desert."

By only looking at one aspect of a scientific question, one can miss wider questions. A similar problem can occur when trying to understand organisms outside of wider environments. While this approach can be useful, isolating particular aspects of behaviour or biology to illuminate others,

"it eventually becomes an obstacle to further understanding; the division of the world into mutually exclusive categories may be logically satisfying, but in scientific activity no nontrivial classifications seem to be really mutually exclusive. Eventually their interpenetration becomes a primary concern of further research."

So, in terms of understanding organisms in the wider world;

"'Environment' cannot be understood merely as surroundings, not matter how dynamically. It is also way of life; the activity of the organism sets the stage for its own evolution."

The benefit of this book is the authors root such statements in clear examples, so,

"To understand the evolution of the sea lion from a primitive carnivore ancestor, we must support that at first the water was only a marginal habitat... A slight evolution of the animal to meet these demands made the aquatic environment a more significant part of the energetic expenditure of the proto-sea lion, so a shift in selective forces operated instantaneously on the shape of its limbs. Each change in the animal made the environment more aquatic, and each induced change in the environment led to further evolution of the animal."

The dialectical interaction between different aspects of the natural world here is merely one aspect of the book. Other sections look at the way that science within capitalist society is shaped by and shapes wider economic questions which in turn shape scientific and research needs. There is a particularly useful chapter here on agriculture.

Though is book is dated in parts, due to the data for some chapters stemming from the 1970s or 80s. The general political arguments hold sway and it should remain required reading for those interested in science and society. Interestingly the authors display an excellent sense of humour and the inclusion of work by Isidore Nabi, a fake scientist created to expose problems of mechanical scientific approaches are a welcome break from the more difficult chapters.

Related Reviews

Molyneux - The Point Is To Change It
Carson - Silent Spring

Jim Crace - Harvest

The enclosures that took place in England were part of a process of the development of productive forces in the countryside. In medieval times, they were often about local lords consolidating wealth. From the English Civil War onward, the destruction of common land and its associated rights, and the enclosure of farmland was explicitly about constructing capitalistic economic relationships in the countryside.

But writing something like the above paragraph hides so much. It ignores the violence used against those who formerly worked the land. It does not include the displacement of families, or the way that former labourers were pushed into new jobs in dirty, dangerous factories. It misses out the pain and anguish of turning land from grain to sheep.

Jim Crace's brilliant novel Harvest does. Telescoping the changes that take place in a small, remote English farm into a short week, Crace captures the transformation that enclosure imposed upon the poorest in England.

One morning, at the end of harvest, the village awakes to fire. The signal fire set by new arrivals in the area, and a fire in the Master's dove cote. The impact of both these events forms a backdrop to the wider changes, initially represented by Mr. Quill who is engaged in drawing maps of the village. The villagers cannot comprehend the way the land is transformed into coloured boxes on a piece of paper.

Few can understand the radical transformation that is about to take place. The kindly local Master wants none of it, but it turns out that he is not the real owner. By dint of the laws of inheritance his brother in law arrives, desperate to transform the village's economic outlook. Some families will be turned into shepherds, but for the others - he'll build a church to preach charity. The outlook of this proto-capitalist is epitomized by his disbelief that the Master won't turn a beloved horse that has died into grease. Any opportunity for profit seems to be his mantra.

Jim Crace's village is timeless. But it is no pre-capitalist Utopia. The villagers struggle hard in the fields, finding relief in alcohol and sex. They dream of stopping work, but love and know their lands better than anyone else. They fear illness and injury and are sharply aware that even a small cut can prevent them contributing to the collective labour. While suffering is well known here, violence isn't, which makes the shock of the new even harder to deal with.

Brilliantly written, in clear, sharp prose, this is a wonderful novel of life in a changing countryside. It feels like a small glimpse into what happened in a thousand different villages, in a hundred different areas of the British Isles. The appalling reality of "primitive accumulation" brought to life.

Anthony Everitt - The First Emperor: Caesar Augustus and the Triumph of Rome

The fall of the Roman Republic and the rise of Imperial Rome remains the central story that underpins all attempts to understand later-day Roman history.

Anthony Everitt's biography has at its heart the individual who personifies the historical transformation. Octavian, the man who became Caesar Augustus, was adopted posthumously by his great uncle, Julius Caesar. His adopted name gave him enormous gravitas in the years immediately following Caesar's murder, as did the enormous wealth that came with it. But Octavian was not an outsider to wealth and privileged. This was no upstart from the fields, or slave made good, Octavian was a Roman, and he fought to ensure the continuation of Rome.

The story of Octavian and his transformation into Augustus brings into play many of the great figures of Roman history. There is of course Julius Caesar, and Augustus' great rival, Mark Anthony. There is also Cleopatra, and to a lesser extent other wives and mistresses. Everitt also introduces many of the poets who were part of Augustus' circle. Though occasionally I felt lack of material meant that Everitt strays a little from his topic, delighting, on occasion, in salubrious detail. (Did we really need that Horace poem on his wet dream)?

That aside this is a useful and readable account of the period. A nice summary of Anthony and Cleopatra; the stories of Augustus' limitations as a military commander and the genius of those (Agrippa in particular) who laid the basis for Rome's Empire.

Whether named Octavian or Augustus, the subject of this biography is far from the fair minded ruler that some later Emperors claimed to wish to emulate. He was ruthless and violent. Whether or not he had Cleopatra murdered as some suggest, he certainly made sure her heirs were killed. Octavian was given "a personality makeover" even while alive. Stories were spread to convince the rest of the world that "the young revolutionary whose career had been founded on illegality and violence a respectable, conservative pedigree."

At the core of this book is this notion of revolution. To what extent did Augustus revolutionise Rome? There is no doubt that both Augustus and the other two members of his Triumvir engaged in a vicious, brutal fight to ensure they gained power. The destruction of much of the old Roman ruling class and the absorption of their wealth and land into the new Roman state seems, on the surface, revolutionary. Yet there seems more continuity in other respects. Roman remained a society based on slavery, and its political institutions, at least at a senate and regional level seemed very similar. And there was little between Augustus and his main rival Anthony, as Everitt comments, the "choice was simply between two kinds of autocracy: tidy and efficient, or laid-back and rowdy."

The Marxist historian of Rome, Neil Faulkner, has a different analysis. Rather than the revolutionary Augustus, he sees a stabilising force:

"Caesar’s brief rule in 45 to 44 BC was also ‘absolutist’-it was, in effect, that of a military dictator governing against the opposition of much of the ruling class but with strong popular backing. Caesarism was a form of what Marxists call ‘Bonapartism’. It arises when a clash of class forces produces chronic instability but no clear outcome-when there is no revolutionary class able to seize power for itself and remodel society in its own image. In such circumstances, revolutionary leadership can be ‘deflected’-it may devolve on ‘strongmen’ who lift themselves above the warring factions, building support by promising popular reform and a restoration of order, and maintaining power by balancing between evenly matched class forces. Caesar, the imperialist warlord and popular reformer, provided ‘deflected’ leadership to the Roman Revolution, and, once in power, ‘Bonapartist’ leadership to the fractured Roman state. His immediate successor, Octavian-Augustus (30 BC to AD 14), who became the first emperor, led a conservative reaction which largely restored the unity of a Roman ruling class that was now purged, enlarged and more open to recruitment from below. It was this that distinguished Caesar from Augustus, not that one was a democrat and the other an absolutist."

The "Roman Revolution" had begun some years earlier and Augustus was, in large part, consolidating earlier change. But it was less a revolution and more, in Faulkner's words, of "a struggle between aristocratic factions over the future of empire". By strengthening the Roman state, expanding and developing it, Augustus was making it into the system that could govern most of the known world. In this context Augustus was less of a revolutionary and more the figure who ensured that change became permanent.

It might be suggested that this is a minor part of Everitt's book. But it does get to the heart of who Augustus was. While much of the biography is readable and fascinating and an excellent introduction to Roman history, I felt the core argument lacked strength and undermined the viability of the whole work. That said, this is a complicated period that has challenged all those who have tried to understand those turbulent Roman years. While I don't agree with all of Everitt's conclusions, his book is an excellent introduction and will give readers a useful over-view of the subject.

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