Andy Wood - The 1549 Rebellions and the making of Early Modern England

Despite the somewhat academic title, this is an exceptional study of the 1549 rebellions, their causes and consequences. Andy Wood's account puts class at the heart of the discussion of the rebellions, something that is often missing from more popular accounts. This allows him to give a real sense of a period of history going through enormous changes, while different groups in society struggle for their own interests and identity.

Firstly Wood argues that this is a time of growing class confrontation, as economic, political and social changes come together. He points out that traditionally popular rebellions like that of 1549 have been seen as about restoring or protecting the existing social order. It is clear that there is some element too this - the Western Rebellion was explicitly centred on opposition to changes in the established church, while the rebels in Norfolk and elsewhere frequently began by over-turning enclosures of common land. But Wood also argues that the 1549 rebels often demanded a new order in society

The Norfolk rebels of 1549 demanded a polity based upon a combination of monarchic lordship and popular sovereignty in which small communities formed autonomous entities, linked to the sate in a dispersed network... Moreover, the 1549 rebels sought to exclude the clergy from the economic life of the village. [3]

So simultaneously the rebels were looking backward to a more ordered society and fighting for a new society based on a more just setup. This is not surprising, there was growing injustice, as the changing world was demanding more from the commons. Wood points out that the religious changes, the Reformation was interpreted "in terms of the greedy, avaricious and corrupt gentry, back by the Crown." This was a time, Wood argues, when labouring people "frequented articulated" anxieties relating to their futures, or their families future and saw the Reformation in "material terms".

A central part of Wood's book is the role of memory, and in particular the memory of past rebellion. Rebellion was celebrated and the stories passed down, but they also gave a reference point to other rebellions. We are reminded of the parallels of some 15th century rebellions which deliberately chose the same sites to assemble as those of the 1381 uprising.

But as Wood points out, 1549 takes place at a slightly different juncture, the intersection between the older medieval world and the early modern period when capitalist relations was just beginning to change the nature of parts of the English countryside. Central to this was Norfolk, and the town of Norwich which played a central part in Kett's rebellion was key to this. Wood uses Marx's insights into historical change to argue that 1549 was "as dispute between lord and tenant over relations of production and modes of exploitation".

Sections of the ruling class in the mid 16th century certainly understood what was at stake, Sir William Paget's famous letter to the Duke of Somerset, makes this clear

How say for the law where is it used in England at liberty? Almost nowhere. The foot taketh upon him the part of the head, and commyns is become a king; a king appointing conditions and laws to the governors, saying, Grant this and that and we wil go home.

Wood makes it clear that the scale of this rebellion was much larger than traditional accounts have it. The two epicentres of revolt in Norfolk and the South-West are simply the best known of the rebellions of the time. Events in Norfolk in particular, according to Wood, are known to us because the ruling class there specifically recorded and marked them in contemporary accounts. Alexander Neville's account of the rising, upon which all histories of 1549 in Norfolk base themselves, was widely used to offer an alternative narrative to what took place. Bishops read it allowed to congregations, hoping that this would supersede popular memories of events. The popularity of Neville's account obscured events elsewhere and simplified the story. Instead of a countrywide rebellion reflecting mass discontent, the rebellion could be dismissed as a few localised events inspired by individual hot-heads and criminals.

But 1549 was the last of the great rebellions. Wood argues persuasively, that the economic changes taking place, which had in part inspired the rebellion, were undermining the relations in rural communities that gave the uprisings their character.

As the sixteenth century drew to its close, social changes in agrarian regions increasingly divided rich from poor. The consequence of this was to fracture the social alliance upon which the tradition of late medieval popular rebellion had rested. Wealthier villagers had increasingly little in common with the social complaints of their poorer neighbours; indeed, in some communities, they became the target of popular opprobrium. [203]

By the 1580s and the 1590s, Wood argues, it was rich men and farmers who had become the enemies of the poor. I'm less convinced of this particular analysis, which to me seems to suggest that before 1549 there hadn't been any antagonism to the wealthier people in the towns. What is taking place is a transformation of the nature of wealth and power in villages. These were no longer simply wealthier peasants, but a completely different class of people. Wood understands this too:

Driven by a combination of social anxiety and economic opportunity, the 'better sort of people' now stood for a very different est of principles from the 'honest men' who, between 1381 and 1549, had formed the public leadership of popular insurrection. [207]

100 years later this new class would itself dynamite a national rebellion and as such 1549 was the end of a particular era of rebellion, but it wasn't the end of revolt. In some senses, it was just the beginning.

Related Reviews

Fletcher and MacCulloch - Tudor Rebellions
Caraman - The Western Rising of 1549
Land - Kett's Rebellion
Cornwall - Revolt of the Peasantry
Wood - Riot, Rebellion and Popular Politics in Early Modern England

Elaine Graham-Leigh - A Diet of Austerity: Class, Food and Climate Change

Like the author of this interesting book on food and climate change I have been struck by the way that the question of diet, and in particular meat eating, has become central to debates on tackling climate change. In her introduction Elaine Graham-Leigh notes the many ways that advocates for non-meat diets are inserting this message into the climate movement. Slogans that argue that only vegetarian diets can save the planet, or that genuine environmentalists are vegan are common place. But the argument has also reached higher levels, with NGOs, governments and politicians frequently advocating this approach.

Graham-Leigh's book is a challenge to this approach. She rightly argues that the danger is that it fails to address the real causes of climate change, will not actually have the desired effects and most importantly, it shifts the focus of blame for climate change onto predominately working class people.

Unusually for a book on the environment, class is a central part of Graham-Leigh's book. She notes that "as with discussions of austerity, it seems that those who have the least are the ones who have the greatest responsibility to be restrained in consuming it". Graham-Leigh illustrates this by quoting Jonathan Porritt in 2004, who argued that meat-eating was a "moral outrage and a threat to ourselves... and future generations" but that his real problem was with "cheap meat". She argues that "the concentration here on price suggests that what is problematic here is not bourgeois meat consumption, but consumption by the poor, who would not be able to afford to do it if it were priced 'properly'."

This leads to an important insight by Graham-Leigh:

What we are seeing here is the general panic about obesity becoming a vehicle for expressing ruling-class fears about the demands and appetites of the poor, fears which are particularly pointed at a time when working-class living standards are under attack.

Much of the environmental movement sees consumption (of commodities, not just food) as the driving force of environmental destruction. Because of this focus, tackling climate change becomes a question of demanding that people purchase less, eat less, waste less. While there can seem to some logic to this, it misunderstands the nature of capitalism and how the system causes environmental damage.

At the heart of this book is an explanation of how capitalism's need to accumulate for the sake of accumulation drives environmental destruction. Contrary to popular belief, and the hopes of those who advocate consumerism as a solution to environmental problems, production under this system is not driven by consumer demand, but by the desire to maximise profits. The book has some fine examples of how corporations have manufactured needs in order to sell new commodities. Notable among this is the example of the way that processed foods, frequently highlighted as particularly damaging to the environment and health, are preferred by capitalists because the processing itself adds layers of profits.

Thus Graham-Leigh shows how the "choices" people make about what food to buy and eat are not made in a vacuum, but are the result of the nature of the system and government policy. It is also the result of the food system itself, dominated by the interests of supermarkets, which causes enormous amounts of waste at all stages of the food system. Once again, rather than the problem being workers buying too much food and then throwing it away, it is a food system whose major components have a "business model [which] is based on procedures which entail wastage".

The book is an important Marxist contribution to contemporary debates about food and climate change. If I have one criticism it is that Graham-Leigh deliberate ducks the question of the "future socialist society" in her final chapter. She argues that it is "counterproductive... to prescribe what a different society after capitalism might look like". While we cannot "prescribe" it, we can at least argue on the basis of historical experience what some elements of that society might be, and how they can be part of an alternative to capitalism. Of particular importance in this regard is the idea of democratic planning, which I think holds the key to how future societies could deal with the question of feeding the world in a sustainable way. I think it's a shame that Elaine Graham-Leigh didn't explore this a little bit more, as it weakens what is an otherwise important book.

Purchase this book from Bookmarks, the Socialist Bookshop

Related Reviews

Paarlberg - Food Politics
McMahon - Feeding Frenzy
Lymbery - Farmageddon

Ashley Dawson - Extinction: A Radical History

This short book is a brilliant and powerful argument which locates the "Sixth Extinction" in capitalism, and its solution in anti-capitalism. This is an important argument, and one noticeably lacking in most commentaries on the bio-diversity crisis. Elizabeth Kolbert's otherwise excellent and popular book documents the scale of the crisis, but fails to argue that the problem is the system we live under. Ashley Dawson, on the other hand, documents the role that humans have played historically in causing extinction, but argues that the emergence of capitalism has made this far, far worse.

As Europeans subjugated and colonized 'virgin' lands, they dramatically augmented processes of environmental degradation and extinction. The expansion of capitalist social relations through European colonialism and imperialism pushed what had previously been regional environmental catastrophes to a planetary scale. In addition, by transforming nature into a commodity that could be brought and sold, capitalist society shifted humanity's relations with nature into a mode of intense ecological exploitation unimaginable in previous epochs.

The second part of this quote is important, because Dawson argues that it is the commodification of nature under capitalism which, in part,  renders many solutions to the biodiversity crisis as limited, or short term. In an excellent discussion of "rewilding" Dawson notes that the problem with this is that because capitalism is driving a global ecological crisis, rewilding parts of the world can only lead to shrinking islands of nature. But in addition, Dawson also argues that this sort of strategy is also shaped by the needs and perceptions of the developed world. The danger is, that we recreate "European savannas" featuring endangered "charismatic megafauna" and the rest of the world is left to ruin.

The final part of Dawson's book is a discussion about what a radical conservation movement would look like:

An anti-capitalist movement against extinction must also address the fundamental economic and political inequalities that drive the slaughter of megafauna. The extinction crisis should be framed in the context of a new wave of extractivism that is denuding many poor nations, shunting their minerals, flora and fauna to consumer markets in industrialised nations.

In other words, environmental questions cannot be separated from ones of social and economic justice. This means radical demands to dismantle fossil fuel corporations, force the developed world to pay for its pollution and oppose the commodification of nature. But ultimately it means a challenge to capitalism itself. With every day bringing more and more evidence that the planet is on a path towards global ecological catastrophe, and less and less evidence that anything is being done about it, it's hard to fault this revolutionary conclusion.

While Dawson doesn't outline how this revolution will take place - I would argue that only the global working class has the power to challenge the nation states and the multinational corporations - his book is a very important tool in winning people to anti-capitalist environmentalism. As he points out, "the only true conservation is a radical conservation".

Related Reviews

Dawson - People's Power: Reclaiming the Energy Commons
Dawson - Extreme Cities
Kolbert - The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
Burkett - Marxism and Ecological Economics
Smith - Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Production of Space

Colin Forbes - Tramp in Armour

Colin Forbes was the pseudonym of Raymond Sawkins, a prolific writer of thrillers and war novels Tramp in Armour was one of his first, and in its time was an extremely popular novel. Like many war novels of the 1970s it is an improbable tale of daring British soldiers pitted against a ruthless enemy. Forbes spares no blushes in telling his tale, characters are introduced and killed off in a relentless series of set-pieces.

Sargent Barnes, the commander of one of the British Expeditionary Forces few Matilda tanks is trapped behind enemy lines as German panzers' sweep across Belgium and France. Desperately trying to regain contact with the British, Barnes and his crew must make their way to Dunkirk. So far, so good, but Forbes keeps the story running by giving the reader a series of near unbelievable adventures. Barnes' tank must hide under a bridge as a German convoy drives overhead; Barnes has to hide a tank in a haystack as a German convoy drives past; Barnes has to avoid detection by over-flying German planes.

All of this might seem quite silly. Yet Forbes' story telling is surprisingly compelling, even if at times somewhat laughable (at one point Barnes swims in ice-cold water with "clenched teeth" as a result of his wounds). I was surprised to remember much of the plot from reading this as a boy, testament to Forbes' storytelling - or maybe the mindbogglingly unlikely events.

Oddly the book reminded me most of a computer game. In fact the climax is rather like the final boss in some first-person shooter, where the player has mown down hordes of identikit troops and suffered unbelievable injuries, but still continues. I'm surprised it was never made into a film in that era when war-films were simply "goodies" versus "badies". It's no work of art, but it has a certain something... you'll probably find it on the shelf of a tired hotel somewhere in Yorkshire... you could do worse than read it on a rainy Sunday.

Vandana Shiva - Soil Not Oil: Climate Change, Peak Oil and Food Insecurity

I found Vandana Shiva's Soil Not Oil a frustrating read. On the one hand it has some extremely clear, and eloquent explanations of what climate change means to the people of the world, and how the domination of big-business is destroying peoples' lives together with the planet. It also is a important contribution to the debate about climate change because it is written by a leading activist from India, and all too often people from the Global South are seen as being passive victims of environmental disasters, rather than agents for solving the problem.

But on the other hand I found Shiva's explanations weak and unconvincing. On occasion the book descends into unnecessary mysticism, but more frustratingly, Shiva is unable to offer any sort of road-map for getting where we need to be. For instance the author as absolutely right to argue that

the transition from oil to soil is a political transition. It is a transition from undemocratic political structures - which impose globalization and a fossil fuel infrastructure on society and force the large-scale uprooting of peasants and indigenous peoples - to a decentralized democracy in which local communities have a say in what happens to their land and their lives.

But Shiva fails to offer any argument for how this transition might come about.

She quotes the a chief minister of West Bengal, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, saying "That 63 percent of the population continues to depend on agriculture for its livelihood is a sign of backwardness... From agriculture to industry, from villages to cities - this is what civilization is."

As Shiva points out, there is nothing inevitable, natural or evolutionary about people moving from rural areas to cities, it is a product of economic and political, as well as historical processes. Nor is it, as the chief minister suggests, necessarily progressive. But there is a danger of fetishising the peasant lifestyle, or even, in the case of her discussion about urban areas, low technological solutions. As she concludes:

India can lead the world to a post-oil future of low carbon dioxide emissions because it is still primarily an agrarian economy based on peasants and small farmers.

This is a dangerous proposition, because it suggests the only alternatives are the highly unsustainable economies of the developed world, or the rapidly disappearing localised, small scale agrarian economy.

Peasant lifestyles are dominated by human and animal labour, long, backbreaking work that often offers little reward, particularly because it cannot be separated from the wider economy. A genuinely sustainable and socially just society has to offer more than simply what exists today. So while Shiva's examples about sustainable agriculture, particularly her Navdanya network, demonstrate the real benefits and potential of multi-cropped, organic, low carbon agriculture, they are limited because she fails to address the question of how we get that in a way that offers more than what exists at the moment.

Shiva is right to argue that adopting "an obsolete, outmoded, unsustainable model of development imported from the West" would be a disaster, but the alternative is extremely nebulous. At one point she suggests that what is needed is to "rewrite the rules of trade to favor the local". While this would indeed be a good idea when contrasted to what the IMF and WTO do to economies in the Global South, it is a limited answer when we consider the power of the multinationals and their governments and what they will do to protect the status-quo. In addition, I remain skeptical that a purely local economy is the way forward? Why can't we have a globally integrated economy, but built in the interests of people and planet, not profits.

Part of the problem, I felt, was that Shiva argues that what is taking place in India is the destruction of an already existing sustainable agrarian economy. Rightly, she wants to protect that from the ravages of the IMF and neo-liberalism, but she then falls into the trap of seeing this in idealistic terms. We have to have something more than this.

Ultimately I think the weakness of the book lies in the failure to identify capitalism as the problem. Shiva discusses globalisation, but not capitalism. It is the nature of the capitalist system itself that has left the Global South in poverty at the expense of the profits of the multinationals. Thus it is wrong to argue that what humanity needs to do is "make a choice". What we need to do is end capitalism and replace it with a socially just, democratic, sustainable world.

This review has focused on the disagreements I have with Shiva's book, partly because of other work that I have been engaged in. But this is not to dismiss the work entirely. There is much here of interest to those discussing agriculture and sustainability, as well as questions of economic development. Vandana Shiva is an eloquent and passionate campaigner for a better world and readers will find here much of interest, but it needs to be seen as part of a much wider debate.

Related Reviews

Patnaik and Moyo - The Agrarian Question in the Neo-Liberal Era
Bernstein - Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change
McMahon - Feeding Frenzy
Bello - The Food Wars

Nick McDonell - The Civilization of Perpetual Movement: Nomads in the Modern World

Any interesting, if occasionally dry and over-academic discussion of the role of nomadic people in the modern world. An emphasis on them as political actors, rather than a simple economic category.

I've been asked to review this for another publication so I'll post a link to that review here when it's published.

Peter Linebaugh - The Incomplete, True, Authentic and Wonderful History of May Day

Peter Linebaugh's writing is always wonderful. His easy, lyrical style that seemingly plucks randomly from the history of humanity's struggle against oppression and exploitation, always builds up to a powerful statement of the need for radical change. This short collection of his essays around the theme of May Day is a great read that celebrates our historic struggles, but also Linebaugh's own involvement in the building, and rebuilding, of the left.

In here is the story of the Haymarket martyrs, who were framed for a bomb thrown in Chicago during militant protests that terrified the local ruling class. "Make the raids first and look up the law afterwards" said the Sheriff, and on "Black Friday" November 11, 1887, four innocent men were hung.

Here are also the stories of the immigrants who fought, protested and struck for the right to be properly paid for their labour and the right to dignity at work. The struggles of indigenous peoples, from the Native Americans to the Zapatistas. Here are also Frederick Engels, Karl Marx, Lenin, and Rosa Luxemburg, who Linebaugh quotes on May Day thus:

The brilliant basic idea of May Day is the autonomous, immediate stepping forward of the proletarian masses, the political mass action of the millions of workers.

 Linebaugh criticises Engels for neglecting, in his great work, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific the struggles and existence of the indigenous peoples, but goes on to celebrate Engels for recognising that "the preservation of the commons depends on an international struggle". Such gentle and powerful criticism is a hall-mark of Linebaugh's writing. The final essay collected here is Linebaugh's retirement speech from his university. A powerful denunciation of neo-liberal destruction of education, libraries and books. A celebration of workers who built the university, their struggles and an explicit call for revolution. How the Dons must have squirmed in their seats, and how understated is Linebaugh's comments on his own contribution to the struggle, to scholarship and to education.

One of those who died for the Haymarket events, August Spies, said "There will come a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today". We still wait, and struggle, for that time, but we don't forget those who went before. As Linebaugh finishes, "let the sober vow be recognized again, to unite with the workers of the world. We have the World to gain, the Earth to recuperate".

Buy this book - from your local radical bookshop, not from a multinational - and enjoy Linebaugh's trip through the history of May Day and then rise, refreshed, to fight again.

Happy May Day everyone. Solidarity.

Related Reviews

Linebaugh - Stop Thief! The Commons, Enclosures and Resistance
Linebaugh - The Magna Carta Manifesto
Linebaugh - The London Hanged
Hay, Linebaugh, Rule, Thompson and Winslow - Albion's Fatal Tree
Linebaugh and Rediker - The Many Headed Hydra

Mary Beard - SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome

Mary Beard's latest book is a excellent study of the Ancient Roman world. It is one that has much to offer everyone who reads it, from those who simply like history to those with an extensive knowledge of the texts that Beard discusses and the period covered. From discussing Roman sexuality to poetry; from political processes in the Roman world, to the rise of the emperors, Beard's book is informative, accessible and laced with the author's characteristic humour. Those on the left of the political spectrum will appreciate Beard's approach that argues that

for the most part the great divide in the Roman world was between the haves and the have-notes; between the tiny minority of people with substantial surplus wealth and a lifestyle somewhere on the scale between the very comfortable and extravagantly luxurious, and the vast majority of even the non-slave population, who at best had a modest amount of spare cash (for more food, for an extra room, for cheap jewellery, for simple tombstones), and at worst were destitute, jobless and homeless.

Referring to recent political movements Beard draws analogies with contemporary politics, writing that she will focus on the lives of the "99%" in particular chapters. This is a refreshing approach. All to often you can read history about Rome and conclude that this was a period when everyone but the slaves was wealthy and living a life of leisure. In actual fact, as Beard argues, the vast majority of the Roman population had to sell their labour power to survive, and they did so until they died, or became unable to work. Despite the free grain handed out for Roman citizens, there was no welfare state or pensions system. The majority worked until the end.

Children frequently failed to make it even to the age of ten, with over half dying before that birthday, though once birth and childhood had been successfully navigated, a Roman might have an age-span comparable to our's today. Beard is excellent in drawing out what this meant, for Rome, and for the women of Rome:

Simply to maintain the existing population, each woman on average would have needed to bear five or six children. In practice, that rises to something closer to nine when other factors, such as sterility and widowhood, are taken into account. It was hardly a recipe for widespread women's liberation.

The Rome in these pages is not the shiny marbled opulent capital of a relatively benign imperial power that we often get from Hollywood or novels from the period. It's a dirty, smelly, world, dominated by state violence and political confrontation. A world of hunger and poverty for many, class struggle and political tension. The Roman leadership understood this well, as illustrated by one example. During the reign of the Emperor Nero, a suggestion that all slaves should wear a uniform was rejected on the basis it would make clear precisely how many slaves there were. A piece of information that would have given everyone pause for thought.

Beard argues that there is an inherent difficulty with writing Roman history:

there is no single narrative that links, in any useful or revealing way, the story of Roman Britain with the story of Roman Africa. There are numerous microstories and different histories of different regions...But it is also because, after the establishment of one-man rule at the end of the first century BCE, for more than two hundred years there is no significant history of change at Rome.

Later she describes the Imperial period as one of a "remarkable stable structure of rule and... a remarkable stable set of problems and tensions across the whole period."

But if I had one issue that I found problematic with Mary Beard's book, it was her explanation of what the Roman Empire actually was. Undoubtedly there was stability in the Imperial period, but there must have been growing structural problems which meant that the Empire would eventually break down, or was ripe for collapse when a strong enough external force or forces arrived on the scene.

While Beard discuses in great detail what it meant to be Roman, for those who were in the Roman sphere of influence, what is lacking is clear explanation of the dynamics of Roman society. In fact, what was Roman society? What drove it forward? Was it the booty accrued from warfare? I find this an inadequate explanation. Was it the role of slavery? If so, then Beard's book doesn't really get to grips with this at all. Despite the excellent treatment of early Rome, there's nothing here that really clarifies the role of the slaves, or when Rome became a slave society. Was this a society that depended on the labour of the 99 percent? Or was it one that needed the slaves on the plantations and their mines? Was it both?

So while I enjoyed SPQR immensely and have absolutely no hesitation in recommending it to readers, there were important questions for me that weren't adequately answered.

Related Reviews

Beard - The Roman Triumph
Beard - Pompeii
Beard & Crawford - Rome in the Late Republic
Hopkins & Beard - The Colosseum

K.M. McKinley - The Iron Ship

I almost didn't get past the first couple of paragraphs of this book after the use of the word "senescent" in the first line. Close to dismissing it as another over-written book of fantasy that needed a better editor, I decided to try a little more and ended up being sucked into what is actually a well thought our piece of fantasy, despite the occasionally over-descriptive prose.

This is a world of magic in the process of transformation. A new world of science, technology and capitalism is encroaching on the old ways. Money is driving forward new ideas that challenge the established order. Centred on a group of brothers and sisters, the novel is set in a world were historic highly-technological civilizations have vanished. Their ruins promising wealth and power to those who can understand the surviving artifacts. But it is also a world where dangerous magic lies just out of the barely controlled borders.

I was most struck by the sense of change taking place in the book. Here's a sample that captures the mood, that could have been written about characters in the French Revolution,

Guis's family was the newer sort of aristocracy, Gelbion Kressind buying the manse from a bankrupt baronet some thirty years back.... His argument, often and vehemently aired, was that there was nothing special about the old money families. They had come from nothing, so why should they sneer at those newer to high rank who had come from nothing in their turn?

In reality these new aristocrats were coming from industry and capitalism. The titular vessel is a project driven by one of the world's wealthiest individuals, but its a ship whose voyages will still take place within the magical realm dominated by the old order.

I was disappointed that the iron ship made little enough appearance in the novel, only being launched near the end. So I will have to wait for the follow up books, though hopefully they'll be edited with a touch more severity. But McKinley has created an interesting world, with well rounded characters (with some strong female roles as well as the obligatory male wizards and soldiers).

Robert Paarlberg - Food Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know

This is not an anti-capitalist critique of the world's food system. In fact, in places it celebrates the successes of the system, and argues that solutions lie very much in reforming and improving existing practices. Nonetheless, for those trying to understand the problems of world agriculture, and its failings, it offers much useful information and data.

Much of Paarlberg's criticisms of the food system have been written about elsewhere. He points out the problems inherent with using too much fertilisers, too much pesticides, too many anti-biotics, as well as the limitations of a critique of capitalist agriculture that simply argues for a return to small scale farming. He notes as well the domination in certain aspects of world agriculture of a few massive corporations (four companies control 80 percent of US beef, for instance. Though he argues this does not have the impact that some suggest, for instance, quoting a US Department of Agriculture 1989 survey that there was "no significant effect on supermarket prices from increasing industry concentrations". Continuing that "Instead of controlling consumers, modern supermarkets compete with each other to attract customers by offering an ever growing array of affordable food purchase options". At best I suggest this is a naive vision of the role of supermarkets, which in the interests of maximising profit have helped distort food production and distribution, as well as consumer choice because of their large capital that can force farmers to comply.

Paarlbery believes that there must be a role for science and technology in feeding the world. He doesn't believe the problem lies with population. This means he rejects what he sees as simple solutions (such as organic only farming) pointing out that this can mean higher emissions of greenhouse gases and larger land use. But to be fair, he also understands the benefits of organic agriculture.

The problem I think is that Paarlberg's analysis doesn't begin from questioning the role of power in society and international relations. For instance, he notes that there are "food circumstances" between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, two countries occuopying the same island. The problem he suggests is governance. In "poorly goverened Haiti 45 percent of all citizens are undernourished, versus just 15 percent in the better-governed Dominican Republic". No one would suggest that governments do not matter, but to ignore the way taht Haiti has been a victim of colonialism and imperialism for the last 150 years, is to misunderstand the way that capitalism ultimately shapes the food choices that people (and governments have).

Paarlberg suggests that "eating habits worldwide will continue to converge towards common sets of practises, including an increased reliance on foods purchased at supermarkets; increased consumption of packaged and process foods...a wider range of affordable eating choices, both healthy and unhealthy... but choices available will continue to expand for nearly all. Individual diets will continue to move away from, being ones geographic or economic destiny, toward being instead a result of conscious choice."

I'd suggest that this is not a positive vision. As even Paarlberg notes this "will destroy the natural environment". But it also will not challenge the very real problems with the food system, diet and health. Because the author doesn't attempt to challenge the way that agriculture reflects the priorities of the economic system and the most powerful economies within that, he fails to grasp the limitations of a system that creates hunger and obesity in vast amounts.

Strangely much of the information in the book does imply a critique of the current system. Paarlberg is not a vicious right-winger only interested in the profits of agri-business. His book is very much an attempt to understand what is happening in the world food system and to improve things. He sees both the threat from mass hunger and mass-malnutrition as being two parts of the same coin, but in my opinion he fails to explain what is the root problem. For readers trying to understand the system this then is a book which has much information to help form your own opinion, but for ultimately it is an apology for the status quo and its conclusions are thus limited.

Related Reviews

McMahon - Feeding Frenzy
Patel - Stuffed and Starved
Bello - Food Wars
Lymbery - Farmageddon

Paul McMahon - Feeding Frenzy: The New Politics of Food

In the aftermath of the global food price crisis in the late 2000s a plethora of books were published trying to make sense of what had taken place. Food commodities were supposed to be the most stable, and with various trade protections, there should not have been massive price rises. Paul McMahon's Feeding Frenzy is one of the better books published in recent years on food politics, not least because he resolutely refuses to blame individuals as the problem. He also puts the politics of food in the context of climate change and international trade and argues that the current food system is failing hundreds of millions of people.

A key argument in this book is that population levels are not the problem when it comes to hunger. As is common in books of this ilk, McMahon gives us a whistle-stop tour of the ideas of Robert Malthus and his supporters today, who argue that "too many people" means too many mouths to feed. But even excluding land that is currently forested, or protected by national parks, McMahon tells us there are "1.3 billion hectares of grassland and open woodland suitable for agricultural expansion, a large area equivalent to 80 per cent of all crop fields today". Further, it would be entirely possible to produce even more food, if current agricultural land was used more efficiently. As McMahon points out about Africa this is isn't done because:

The unproductive state of agriculture in Africa and other poor regions is a product not of geography but of political, social and economic failures. The real reasons include poor infrastructure, dysfunctional markets, lack of knowledge and skills, limited access to finance and technology, unclear land rights, harmful regulations and tax regimes, unbalanced trade arranges, and governmental systems that do not serve the interests of the rural poor.

However McMahon understands that there is a problem here. There exists the potential to feed many more people than we currently do, and to feed everyone well who today, but that barriers are political and economic. People starve not because there isn't enough food, but because they are poor. And while we may have the potential to feed billions more, doing it in a sustainable manner is more problematic. Much of this book then is an examination of the nature of modern agriculture and his conclusions are bleak:

the modern agricultural revolution has come at a price. It has been built on cheap and abundant energy, mostly in the form of fossil fuel. Hydrocarbons mot only power the tractors on the farm, and the ships and trucks that carry food around the world, but they are a major input for the production of fertilisers and agro-chemicals.... modern farming can destroy the natural resources on which it depends. Aquifiers are pumped dry; land is poisoned by chemicals; over-ploughed soil washes away; the inappropriate use of pesticides and antibiotics breeds resistance pests and diseases. Farming.... is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions...

So what is McMahon's solution? At one point in the book I almost cheered when he wrote that he was going to defy convention and not tell the reader what their diet should be. Instead, McMahon is highly critical of the economic system that shapes modern agriculture. He argues that "free trade" is not the answer, and even quotes former US President Clinton bizarrely arguing that "food is not a commodity like others". Whether or Clinton has suddenly become a major critique of capitalist food system, I doubt, but McMahon's point remains solid. It is neo-liberal policies in agriculture, dominated by the most powerful nations and enormous corporations that are distorting the world's food system, and turning it into a highly inefficient way of feeding people. Industrial farming is not designed to feed people, but to maximise profits:

Profitability in farming is driven not by high yields but by good margins - the difference between the price a farmer gets and the costs of production. High-input, mechanised farming systems emerged during a time of cheap energy, which kept costs down.

McMahon argues that there are signs that investors are moving towards better economic systems, but frankly I think this is pie in the sky. What investors want is a return, and while it might be profitable to change things while oil prices are high, that may not be a long term strategy for them. I do agree with him when he says that "if we are going to make the transition to a sustainable and just food system this means altering the political and economic framework in which we all operate". And I certainly do agree that the start is to insist, as he does through the book, that governments must take a leading role.

But we have to go one step further. Unless we challenge the powers of the massive agricultural corporations, and unless we stop neo-liberal capital itself, we will see the profit motive destroying land and food. Reforms can limit this, but we have to put the food system and farming back into the hands of those who work the land, produce the food and distribute it. That requires a revolutionary change and while Paul McMahon's book provides much powerful fuel for this argument he pulls up short of a more radical conclusion.

Nevertheless, this is a powerful and useful book for activists and people concerned about climate change and the food they eat. It deserves a read.

Related Reads

Meek - Marx and Engels on the Population Bomb
Mazoyer & Roudart - A History of World Agriculture
Lymbery - Farmageddon
Bello - The Food Wars
Patel - Stuffed and Starved

Seán Mitchell - A Rebel's Guide to James Connolly

The excellent Rebel's Guide series from Bookmarks Publications continues with a timely publication of Seán Mitchell's A Rebel's Guide to James Connolly. This examines Connolly's life, his revolutionary activity and his politics.

Connolly was born in Scotland to an Irish immigrant family where, Mitchell points out, his early life in one of the poorest parts of Britain, his long monotonous, low paid work as a child and his seven years service in the British Army must have shaped Connolly's revolutionary politics. Mitchell shows that Connolly:

beyond his leading role as a labour agitator Connolly was also a self-educated revolutionary who understood the importance of ideas and theory. He was an avid reader and a prolific writer, publishing not only pamphlets and articles but also plays, poems and songs. He was one of the great popularisers of socialist ideas in the English language, but to communicate with immigrant workers in the US he taught himself rudimentary Italian, and was an avid student of Esperanto - the 'universal' language that many radicals of this time believed would one day unite workers around the globe.

Connolly spent time in the US, as an organiser for the IWW union and revolutionary activist, clashing with American socialist Daniel De Leon over how trade unionists should organise and fight.

But Connolly is most famous for his central role in the struggle to build socialist organisation in Ireland, and the struggle against British Imperialism. Here Mitchell's book is particularly good at making clear that Connolly never separated the two questions. Mitchell writes:

Connolly's Marxism led him to the understanding that the Irish National Question was a social question: 'The whole age-long fight of the Irish people against their oppressors resolves itself in the last analysis into a fight for the mastery of the means of life, the sources of production, in Ireland' (Connolly, Labour in Irish History).

Unlike some in the Republican movement then, Connolly never saw the Irish bourgeoisie or landowners as allies in the fight for liberation. Mitchell explains:

The Irish bourgeoisie, according to Connolly, were not to be trusted. Even if rhetorically they supported independence, in the end they had 'a thousand economic strings in the shape of investments binding them to English capitalism as against every historical attachment drawing them towards Irish patriotism' (Connolly, Labour in Irish History).... As he wrote elsewhere, 'No amount of protestations could convince intelligent workers that the class which grinds them down to industrial slavery can, at the same time, be leading them forward to national liberty' (Shan Van Vocht, August 1897).

As the centenary of the Easter Rising is marked this Easter weekend, all sorts of people that Connolly would probably have damned had he been alive today, are trying to link themselves to that historic struggle. Connolly was executed in the aftermath of the Rising, and Mitchell's book ends with a short account of the uprising, its mistakes, and Connolly's role at the centre of the fighting. Mitchell argues that the Rising had a "reasonable chance of success", and quotes Connolly to show that this was not simply a nationalist rising, but one for the Irish working class, "not the sweating, profit-grinding capitalist".

The murder of Connolly by the British State will remain a testament to the brutality of the capitalists when trying to protect their wealth and system. Mitchell's book is a wonderfully concise introduction to the life and struggles of a man who was prepared to suffer poverty, personal tragedy and eventually death in the fight for a better world. This Rebel's Guide will both inspire and encourage readers to delve deeper into Connolly's writings.

Order A Rebel's Guide to James Connolly direct from the publishers here.

Related Reviews of other Rebel's Guides

Brown - Eleanor Marx
Campbell - Rosa Luxemburg
Orr - Sexism and the System - A Rebel's Guide to Women's Liberation
Birchall - Lenin
Gonzalez - Marx
Bambery - Gramsci
Choonara - Trotsky

Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter - The Long Earth

While this novel is based on an intriguing concept, millions of parallel Earth's that are subtly different (though Homo Sapiens has not evolved on any of them), it never quite came together for me. The best parts were those that dealt with the degeneration of civilisation as millions of people discovered that with the aid of a simple piece of engineering, they can move (step) to another Earth. The spirit of adventure, exploration and the desire for a better life undermine the viability of many countries. In turn the minority that cannot step let their anger and jealousy flourish.

But the rest of the story, based around a deep exploration trip into far-flung parallel Earths never grabbed me. The central story of why some of the non-Homo Sapien species were fleeing away from a particular parallel-Earth seemed flimsy, and our story's heroes spent so little time on some of the more intriguing other-worlds that I was constantly disappointed. All in all it was quite disappointing.

Ralf Hoffrogge - Working-Class Politics in the German Revolution: Richard Müller, the Revolutionary Shop Stewards and the Origins of the Council Movement

Ralf Hoffrogge's newly translated study of Richard Müller and his role in the development of the German revolutionary movement during and after the First World War is extremely important for students of this period. Hoffrogge argues that historical studies of the period have been dominated by the role of the precursors of the German Communist Party (KPD), the Spartakist League, which was led until 1919 by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. The domination of the KPD on the left from the 1920s onward and then the centrality of it to the story of East Germany meant that historians had every reason to emphasis its role.

Another aspect of this, was that those revolutionaries who did not fit into the narrative, or were critical of the KPD were written out of history. Richard Müller was one of these. Müller was an able and articulate trade union militant organising within the Berlin metal workers. A lathe operator within a crucial war industry he was able, together with his comrades, to build a powerful syndicalist movement. Initially not taking a position on the war, the Revolutionary Shop Stewards rapidly became the heart of growing discontent with the progress of the First World War, leading a number of strikes and protests.

By the end of the war, with the outbreak of the Revolution in Germany, Müller was a central figure in the revolutionary movement in Berlin. So much so, that with the creation of a network of workers and soldiers councils, Müller effectively became (briefly) head of the revolutionary state. Müller was a talented individual, and Hoffrogge ably documents his central role in the heady days of revolution and the months that followed. Müller fought to strengthen the role of the workers councils in the face of domination and betrayal by the "reformist" Social Democrats.

What becomes clear while reading this excellent book, is how unprepared revolutionaries were for events. While acknowledging the very real difficulties, one of the great criticisms of Luxemburg and Liebknecht was their failure to build an independent revolutionary party in the years before the German Revolution. Hoffrogge's book makes it clear how the lack of a clear-sighted party, rooted in revolutionary politics, was lacking. The author quotes a revealing account of the Revolutionary days, when revolutionary soldiers seized a large quantity of cash:

I found Comrade Vogtherr, the secretary of our caucus in the USPD, in distress. A group of soldiers had commandeered a whole truckload of banknotes and dumped the money in the USPD caucus room. Comrade Vogtherr asked me, "What should we do with it?" We didn't know either and finally we decided to put all of the money in a safe in the central bank. My job was then to ensure that the money was transported safely. So we brought the money to the Reichsbank and I would like to say now that we were absolute idiots for giving all of that wonderful money back to the capitalists. At the time we thought that we had the power and the bank belonged to us. That was a colossal mistake. Nothing belonged to us and - as before, the capitalists had the power.

This failure of revolutionary politics was a real limit for the movement, but it was also a failing for Richard Müller. For instance, he for "fear of economic collapse, energetically opposed so-called 'wild socialisation', and not only limited the powers of workers' councils to 'audit' their employers but also failed to give them a means to actually implement even that limited power against the inevitable resistance."

In the months following the failure of the January 1919 uprising, Richard Müller spent much time detailing out how a system of workers' councils might operate. While he emphasised the role of workers, from the bottom up, he was also guilty, as the above examples show, of not really understanding the role of the capitalist state, though Muller's politics were took much from Marx and others, including Lenin.

Muller's close links to the organised working class made it hard for the Communist Party to challenge him when he was critical. Muller even went to a meeting of the Communist International were Lenin helped broker a deal to heal the growing rift between Muller and others in the leadership. Sadly the distortions on the international Communist movement caused by the victory of Stalin sealed the fate for many of the best revolutionaries of Muller's era.

In his later life, Muller drifted eventually becoming a major Berlin landlord and living until 1943. Hoffrogge shows that Muller's actions as a landlord were hardly progressive and the KPD, rather gleefully, attacked him for his behaviour. In his later life Muller appears to have abandoned his revolutionary politics, perhaps though, this reflected the defeats he had suffered as well as his occasionally limited politics.

Hoffrogge's book is a detailed examination of how individuals make a real difference. He has rescued an individual who up until now was barely a foot-note in some of the best histories of the German Revolution, and that is reason enough to read, and learn from this book.

Related Reviews

Broue - The German Revolution 1919-1923
Fernbach - Selected Writings of Paul Levi
Reissner - Hamburg at the Barricades
Trotksy - Lessons of October
Hippe - And Red is the Colour of Our Flag

Roddy Slorach - A Very Capitalist Condition: A History and Politics of Disability

As I write this review the British Tory government has announced huge further attacks on welfare provision for disabled people. George Osborne's March 2016 budget will take a further £1.5 billion from Personal Independence Payments, on top of the swingeing cuts already made.

Roddy Slorach's new book, A Very Capitalist Condition, is an extremely important contribution to the Marxist analysis of oppression. It takes up many different subjects but it is accessible, aimed at activists as much as those trying to understand how Marxism can both explain the world and offer a strategy to change it. It also helps to explain the ideologies behind the attacks on the welfare of disabled people.

Slorach locates the oppression of the disabled within the wider context of capitalist society. To do this he shows the way that attitudes to those with impairments or disability's have varied under different historical societies. In some of the most fascinating chapters Slorach demonstrates that the very idea of "disability" is actually a relatively recent invention and could not have been understood by people for most of humanities past.

The earliest human societies - which comprise some 90 per cent of our history... were nomadic hunter-gatherers... These communities depended wholly on "nature's bounty"... All group members had a role. Such societies practised egalitarian sharing and participation: their immediate dependency on nature left them no option... people with impairments were not marginalised or excluded.

Things begin to change with the rise of class society, but in the earliest class societies, Slorach argues, there was no systematic exploitation or oppression:

The ambiguity towards impairment identified in early class societies, therefore can be explained by a need to appease the capriciousness of nature due to a far greater degree of dependence on its favours than appears to be the case under capitalism. The lives of people with impairments were determined by the general conditions of exploitation and oppression that obtained in these (often brutal) societies. But there is no evidence of any specific, systematic discrimination levelled at them.

But this fundamentally changes with the rise of capitalism. Beginning in the late feudal period societies begin to see individual's impairments as part of a deviation from the norm. "Madness", Slorach writes, "begins to feature more prominently in culture" and institutions are founded. All this is part of a growing tendency to see people as individuals whose ability to labour is their key function. This is seen most clearly with the rise of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution. In part this is because the nature of labour under capitalism, in particular the birth of huge factories, creates industrial injury on a huge scale. But, as Slorach explains, the key reason is that under capitalism what is important about an individual is their ability to sell their labour power so that the bosses can maximise the surplus value obtained from them.

With capitalism, the extraction of surplus value relies on the commodification of labour power, devaluing the role of impaired people's labour and leading to discrimination against them on the basis of their cost to society.

So for Marxists, societies' attitudes to those with impairments is rooted in the wider nature of production under capitalism. This has many different implications, for instance, at times of "austerity" capitalists can argue that the disabled contribute less, so they deserve less. Ideology of this sort is no doubt behind the British Tories plans to decimate welfare once again.

But its not only at times of cuts and austerity that there is systematic discrimination. Slorach points out that "The unemployment rate of disabled people of working age in the UK has remained at around 50 percent for the last 50 years."

Much of this may not seem new. But Slorach points out that there is another factor which is crucial to this debate, this is the historic struggles of disabled people themselves. These struggles have often been in conjunction with other forces in society, such as the trade union movement, but more often than not they have been struggles that have been led by those with impairments. In one fine chapter, Slorach shows how the fight for rights and work has often come from war veterans. The aftermath of World War One and its "industrialised slaughter" saw millions of men wounded and disabled. Their struggles became part of wider revolutionary movements that challenged the system.

Slorach also examined the way that Vietnam veterans in the US (and also veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan) have made their demands part of wider anti-war movements, but also shaped new generations of activists who have struggled to demand new approaches to disability in society.

Of course the response is not equal. A person whose limb is amputated in the developed world will likely receive far better treatment than someone living in Sierra Leone who has be injured by a land mine. But even those former British soldiers who have received highly technological prosthetic limbs find, as Slorach notes that such equipment may not always be forthcoming, "injured service men could leave Headley Court [military rehabilitation centre] with £50,000 worth of equipment. Difficulties come later when they leave the military and the NHS does not have the budget to replace the equipment."

So the struggles of disabled people cannot be separated from wider struggles in society - the fight for proper healthcare funding, or education for everyone. But disabled people have also had to fight wider battles, and it is here that I found Slorach's book excellent. Slorach examines the fight to have disability seen in the context of wider society. In some cases this has been a battle by disabled people for the right to express themselves as they see fit. For instance, until relatively recently I was surprised to learn that sign-language was considered unacceptable and Deaf people were usually forced to try to learn to speak, often through very brutal methods. Because this method failed, "the only remaining option was to stress the sub-normality of deaf people, now seen as childlike or savage, requiring institutionalisation".

Slorach tells the amazing story of the students of a Gallaudet University in the US, a college for those with hearing impairments, who in 1988 held mass occupations when a non-deaf person was appointed president. These struggles sparked a wave of protest, and support from the trade union, movement, which eventually led to a reversal of the University's position.

Even today though, sign language is taught in many schools, it is often not an "indigenous sign language" but rather one that means "Deaf pupils are forced to learn signs 'not for the actions they want to express, but for phonetic English sounds they cannot hear". Such attitudes no doubt contribute to a education system in England were "only 36.6 percent of Deaf children in England hit national GCSE benchmarks compared to 65.3 percent of their hearing classmates".

Thus the struggle for rights continues. In an era of austerity that fight is even sharper, which is why campaigns such as Disabled People Against the Cuts have put themselves at the heart of the British anti-austerity movement, gaining wide support for their fight. But Slorach finishes by arguing that the problem isn't one of disabled people within wider human society, but how capitalism oppresses disabled people as a result of the way it organises society. The real solution, he argues, is the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, and the forging of a socialist society. As his book shows, disabled people have played central roles in historic revolutionary movements, and for a brief period Russia in the aftermath of 1917 was able to lay out the beginnings of a completely different approach to education which demonstrates how a truly liberated society would transform how individuals were seen. The revolutionary Education Act of 1918 that Roddy Slorach mentions is worth quoting to end this review of an outstanding book:

The personality shall remain as the highest value in the socialist culture. This personality however can develop its inclinations in all possible luxury only in a harmonious society of equals. We (i.e. the government) do not forget the right of an individual to his own peculiar development. It is not necessary for us to cut short a personality, to cheat it, to cast it into iron moulds, because the stability of the socialist community is based not on the uniformity of barracks, not on artificial drill, not on religious and aesthetic deceptions, but on an actual solidarity of interests.

Related Reviews

Richardson (ed) - Say it Loud! Marxism and the Fight Against Racism

Philip Lymbery with Isabel Oakeshott - Farmageddon

It is impossible to read Farmageddon: The True Cost of Cheap Meat without coming to the conclusion that the world's food and agriculture system is screwed. This is a system that produces enormous quantities of food, yet sees up to a third of that wasted. It's a highly technological system requiring enormous quantities of oil, pesticides and chemicals to produce vast quantities of food; yet it's a system that fails to feed the hungry.

Opening the book at random gives the reader plenty of ammunition to argue for a different, more rational, way to produce food. Take fishing for instance. Lymbery points out that a fifth of all fish caught is used as food for other fish in fish-farming. Some of this fish also is used as feed for pigs and other animals. Our food system spends vast quantities of energy and time producing food sources to fuel other food sources.

This is most apparent with beef. Lymbery points out that if "all the cereals alone currently fed to factory-farmed animals offered directly to people instead of being converted into meat, it could feed a mind-boggling number - as many as 3 billion folk." This represents a tremendous waste of resources, but this isn't simply an incredibly inefficient way of producing food. What this food system also produces is environmental disaster, ill-health in humans and frequently stressful and unhealthy animals.

So Lymbery documents the way that mass factory farming of beef, pigs and chickens in particular helps create the conditions for outbreaks of avian or swine-flu. The way over-use of antibiotics is helping to encourage drug resilience in both animals and people. The fossil fuels that drive the tractors, keep the lights on in the massive chicken farms and produce the pesticides contribute enormously towards climate change and vast quantities of manure threaten eco-systems (particularly in seas and oceans) around the globe.

The author emphasises one thing above all else. Factory farming does not feed the world. In fact, because it sucks up other foods sources to feed animals, it actually undermines the ability to do this. In doing so it encourages (or needs) even more ridiculous solutions, such as the transportation of billions of bees vast distances to pollinate crops because the farms which use monocultural farming and high levels of pesticides have decimated local bee populations.

Lymbery is not arguing against meat eating. What he is arguing for, and demonstrates very clearly, is that meat can be produced in a healthier, more sustainable way. This requires animals to be pastured, and not farmed in an industrial way. The knock on effect will be healthier, and better tasting food. Such sustainable farming will also likely lead to people eating less meat, but given the close links between heart-disease or obesity and high dietary levels of meat this is not a bad thing.

But there is an underlying problem with Lymbery's book. He never quite gets to the bottom of why the agricultural system is like it is. He argues, for instance, that government policies have actively created the current system, particularly in the aftermath of the Second World War. The European Common Agricultural Policy was precisely about encouraging factory style farming. But what is missing is an analysis rooted in the profit motive of agriculture and the domination of agribusiness. This, combined with the way that a high meat diet has been sold to consumers as a mark of social status, is at the root of the problem.

For instance, Lymbery notes the shocking statistic, that 80 percent of malnourished children live in countries that produce an agricultural surplus. Why isn't that food used to feed the hungry? Interestingly Frederick Engels made a similar point in 1865. Why wasn't there enough food he asked?

Not because the limits of production—even today and with present day means—are exhausted. No, but because the limits of production are determined not by the number of hungry bellies but by the number of purses able to buy and to pay. Bourgeois society does not and cannot wish to produce any more. The moneyless bellies, the labour which cannot be utilised for profit and therefore cannot buy is left to the death-rate.

Ultimately people go hungry because the agricultural system is driven by profit and there isn't any profit in feeding the poor.

Lymbery does acknowledge that inequality is a significant problem. He quotes one activist, pointing out that "Soya is a business for the few and an epidemic for the masses". But the book fails to see the system as a whole as the problem. This is why I felt that Lymbery's solutions, rooted in consumer power, were inadequate. We can chose to eat better meat, or more sustainable fish, or even, reduce our individual consumption of meat, but this will not fundamentally challenge the agricultural corporations. His belief that governments act to slowly and corporations can change quickly is in part correct. But state action can force corporations to act in a way that consumer power cannot.

Ultimately though what is needed is a root and branch transformation of agriculture, based on a challenge to the system itself. That isn't pie in the sky either - there are a whole number of examples of peasant producers, particularly in South America fighting for a completely different farming. While I have my reservations about seeing this as the only route to a sustainable agriculture, it's certainly part of a solution that will ultimately require the completely transformation of farming.

These are significant criticisms, but they are made while wanting to encourage activists to read Philip Lymbery's book which is accessible, readable and interesting, as well as brilliant at exposing the failings of our food system and what that means.

Related Reviews

Brulin & Klingzell-Brulin - Food for Thought
Bello - The Food Wars
Magdoff & Tokar - Agriculture and Food in Crisis
Patel - Stuffed and Starved

Neil Gaiman - Stardust

A wonderful adult fairy tale that, as is Neil Gaiman's trademark, links the fantastical world of faerie to the "real" human world. Beautifully written, I particularly enjoyed the way Gaiman brought all the interconnected threads together at the end, making almost every detail matter to the eventual wrapping up of the story. A great read to while away a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Related Reviews

Gaiman - Neverwhere
Gaiman - American Gods
Gaiman - Smoke and Mirrors
Gaiman - Ocean at the End of the Lane
Gaiman - Anansi Boys

Oskar Hippe - ...And Red is the Colour of Our Flag

The life of Oskar Hippe is a fascinating one for Marxists and revolutionary socialists today. As a young worker in German during World War One, he became a socialist, becoming involved in anti-war protests as early as 1916. Later he would join the Spartakist League, the organisation setup by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, but not being based in Berlin for much of the period, following his conscription in the latter stages of the war, he missed some of the key debates and battles of the early German Revolution. Nonetheless his eyewitness accounts are unique,

On the eve of 1 May 1916, my brother-in-law told me that we would not got to work the next day, since the workforce would all be joining an anti-war demonstration on the Potsdamer Platz. We went there at the specified time. Ten thousand workers had gathered in the square, and Karl Liebknecht spoke to them from the platform of the Potsdam local station. I do not know how long Liebknecht had been speaking when the police arrived. They could not do anything at first; the crowd prevented them from getting up to the platform. More and more detachments were sent in, including mounted police who rode into the crowd with enormous brutality. For a time, the demonstrators put up resistance, and many policemen were knocked off their horses. 

Along with his unit, Oskar Hippe effectively mutinied and went home were he became centrally involved in the revolutionary movements in his home area of Halle. The book describes the scale of the revolution and the impact of the deaths of Luxemburg and Liebknecht, as well as the rapid emergence of the counter-revolutionary troops of the Freikorps.

As the 1920s developed, Hippe became an important activist in the German Communist Party (KPD). He was often targeted by the right and the authorities. Frequently blacklisted for trade union activity, the period becomes dominated by the struggles within the Russian organisation. Hippe describes the failure of the 1923 movement when revolution was perhaps on the cards, but the inexperienced Communist Party sounded the retreat on orders from Moscow. From then on his narrative becomes increasingly shaped by the battle with the Stalinist wing of the KPD.

The post-revolutionary period is also marked by the growth of the fascist movement. One thing that struck me reading the autobiography was that violence, or the threat of violence, was a daily reality for socialists. The socialists responded by arming themselves and being prepared to fight back, but it is notable that this violence was very much about defending and protecting the organisation, it's activists and allowing their planned activity to continue. This wasn't fighting for the sake of fighting, but in the interests of building socialist organisation. At the end of the 1920s Hippe breaks with the Stalinist KPD, and with many others works to build a new "Trotskyist" party. For some readers this may seem like a part of the book dominated by arguments among the left, but Hippe explains that this was about trying to keep the revolutionary tradition alive in a period where the rise of fascism is a real prospect, but with a huge and powerful German working class still unbroken.

With Hitler's victory, Hippe's group is forced underground and eventually he is imprisoned, serving many years of brutality and violence. Eventually he is let out and works on the northern coast of Germany, trying to make a few contacts with workers and discussing politics with captured prisoners of war. Hippe and his comrades bravery is outstanding in this period of difficult, dangerous underground work. This is no manual for this activity, but you get a sense of the dangers and difficulties, as well as the frustrations. Interestingly Hippe and his comrades believed that Fascism could not be over-thrown by German workers, who were now to weak, but would be over-thrown by defeat in a World War. It was an accurate, if pessimistic outlook.

Hippe then faced renewed persecution under the Stalinists. Initial hopes that a new mass socialist organisation could be built after the end of the war lead to a further period of splits, internal arguments and eventually underground work. Hippe once spent years imprisoned for being a "Trotskyist counter-revolutionary", and had to watch as others, including collaborators with the Nazi regime became senior figures in the East Germany state.

At the end of the book, Hippe's hope for the revolutionary over-throw of capitalism remain undiminished. It ends in 1979, though Hippe lived long enough to see the fall of the Berlin Wall. Hippe was an activist through the 1960s and early 1970s, saw the birth of a new movement and the emergence of a new left. Throughout he remained loyal to the central tenets of Marxism, and the ideas of Lenin and Trotsky, believing that the overthrow of capitalism had to be the act of the entire working class.

For those interested in the history of the left, as well as the German Revolution and the International Communist Movement this is a fascinating book, perhaps marred by what seems like a clunky translation. Hippe's account is perhaps unique and its worth trying to find this book.

Related Reviews

Pierre Broué - The German Revolution 1917-1923
Fernbach - In the Steps of Rosa Luxemburg: Selected Writings of Paul Levi

Diarmaid MacCulloch - Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490-1700

Diarmaid MacCulloch's Reformation is an impressive and monumental achievement. It's massive size reflects the scope of the material covered - over two centuries of detailed history of countries from Ireland in the west, to Poland, Lithuania and Transylvania in the east. As well as Spain, Scandinavia and Italy. The book even touches on the impact of the Reformation for those who lived in the Americas and those who emigrated there (as well as the slaves who were brought there).

For MacCulloch the history of the Reformation is very much one of ideas. It's the changing attitude to the Church and its activities that drives the Reformation, but the Reformation in turn drives all sorts of other social, political and economic processes. He writes:

The old Church was immensely strong, and that strength could only have been overcome by the explosive power of an idea. The idea proved to be a new statement of Augustine's ideas on salvation. That is why there is so much description of apparently abstract thought in my account of the Reformation... Monarchs, priests, nuns, merchants, farmers, labourers were seized by ideas which tore through their experiences and memories and made them behave in new ways... Social or political history cannot do without theology in understanding the sixteenth century.

It is of course true to say that you cannot understand this period of history without understanding the ideological changes, and the ideas themselves. But I fear that MacCulloch reduces history down to "the idea" without really getting to grips with the thorny question of why it was in the 16th century such diverse groups of society would accept them and drive the change onward.

Of course, some of this was about the role of individuals. MacCulloch highlights the contribution of men like Luther:

He spoke at so many different levels: he debated with scholars, shouted from the pulpit, wrote vigorous German and sang his message in German hymns and songs. Perhaps the hymns were the most persuasive to the wavering because they were the least polemical. Luther's impact was naturally greatest on his fellow German speakers, but it was much wider than that in the 1520s. It was not just he impact of print, vital through it was: the Reformation was a matter of the spoken and sung (some might say, the ranted) word, as much as the word on paper.

But here again, MacCulloch fails to explain why these words had such power. I believe this is why a materialist historical analysis is so important, because it can show how the new ideas fitted more closely with a changing economic world - one based increasingly on trade and manufacturing for the accumulation of wealth. The beginning, in other words, of the capitalist era.

This isn't to say that MacCulloch's work is not without value. It is a detailed history and it's 700+ pages are packed full of history that repays study. The idea of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation as Europe spanning movements that transformed the whole world eventually works well in this format. MacCulloch's historical knowledge is as clear when writing about 16th century Poland as events in England, Scotland and Ireland a century before or after. MacCulloch is also an entertaining writer, and his account is full of details of the lives of ordinary people as well as the rulers. Indeed the final chapters are an examination of the way that the Reformation changed people's lives in such important matters as marriage, love and sex.

On occasion MacCulloch's historical method lets him down. It is a simplistic analysis that links the violence of "twentieth-century Belfast, Mostar or... Rwanda" with the St Bartholomew's massacres in Rouen and Antwerp. Reducing these conflicts simply to "hatreds" between different religions is inadequate.

But MacCulloch is right to point to the importance of these changing ideas. As were the ruling classes of the 16th and 17th century. MacCulloch quotes one of Charles I's generals, WIlliam Cavendish, "The Bible in English under every weaver's and chambermaid's arm hath done much harm... for controversy is a civil war with the pen which pulls out the sword soon afterwards."

While there are many criticism's to be made of this work of history, it has much that will repay the reader, particularly those trying to get a sense of the sweeping changes that took place in Europe in this period, ones that had profound impacts on the people of the whole globe.

Related Reviews

Fletcher & MacCulloch - Tudor Rebellions
Wilson - The People and the Book
Tawney - Religion and the Rise of Capitalism

Karl Marx & Frederick Engels - The German Ideology

Reading The German Ideology I am once again reminded about how clear the writing of Marx and Engels can be. That said, it's always useful to have a good guide, and this student edition from Lawrence and Wishart, has an excellent introduction by C.J.Arthur which puts The German Ideology into the context of the developing ideas of Marx and Engels, as well as the debates taking place at the time.

The German Ideology was written as a polemic, and explores Marx and Engels vigorous debates with various other philospohers. This is why the introduction is important, because most of these philosophers have been forgotten to history, except as the recipient of the authors' critique and wit. To cut down the amount of this, C.J.Arthur has edited the work to bring out the key selections from this important work, and these are fantastic to read.

The German Ideology is where Marx and Engels first set down the ideas that will eventually become the body of thought known as Historical Materialism. Arthur describes it as the "first recognizably 'Marxist' work". He quotes Engels saying with hindsight that it "consists of an exposition of the materialist conception of history which proves only how incomplete our knowledge of economic history still was at the time".

The authors begin by challenging the "Young Hegelian" view of the world, an idealistic one where "the relationships of men, all their doings, their chains and their limitations are products of their consciousness". Famously, Marx and Engels challenge this, with their materialism.

Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from aniumals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organisation. By producing their means of subsistence, men are indirectly producing their actual material life.

This core idea runs through the whole work, that humans are shaped by the society that they build. Marx and Engels explore how this develops with a brief, and somewhat simplistic survey of history, inverting the Hegelians,

The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their material behaviour.... Men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc - real, active men, as they are conditions by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its furthest forms.

And to reiterate their criticisms, Marx and Engels continue,

In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to eartth, here we ascend from earth to heaven.

In other words, human ideas evolve out of the real world, they aren't created randomly, or arise out of some general truth. In my own work on ecology and human history, I've often noted how the approaches to nature and the surrounding world are radically different depending on the way in which socieities are organised. Capitalism has a particular relationship to nature, because for capitalist production, nature is seen as a resource; part of the productive process geared towards accumulation. This contrasts with nature as conceived of by hunter-gatherer communities for instance. Nature is also central to the historical materialist account in The German Ideology. Marx and Engels put it at the heart of their analysis of human history, in contrast to the philosophers they critique who see it as eternal, unchanging and passive.

Marx and Engels are full of damnation for the limits of German Philosophy. They write at one point, that "across the Rhine...history has stopped happening".

While the authors would go on to clarify and develop their ideas, the book has some excellent expositions of their ideas. Here for instance, is the culmination of a summary of their understanding of the process of historical change, which might be seen also as the basis for later Marxists' theories of Permanent Revolution.

Thus all collisions in history have their origin, according to our view, in the contradiction between the productive forces and the form of intercourse. Incidentally, to lead to collisions in a country, this contradiction need not necessarily have reached its extreme limit in this particular country. The competition with industrially more advanced countries, brought about by the expansion of international intercourse, is sufficient to produce a similar contradiction in countries with a backward industry (e.g. the latent proletariat in Germany brought into view by view by the competition of English industry). [Form of Intercourse would eventually be clarified to Social Relations] 

For the general reader trying to get a handle on the essential ideas of Marx and Engels this might not be the best starting point. But for the reader with a good grounding in Marx's ideas and a decent edition (this one also has some useful and relevant supplementary material) this is a rewarding work.

Related Reviews

Marx - Value, Price and Profit
Marx - The Civil War in France
Engels - The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
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