Judith Orr - Sexism and the System, A Rebel's Guide to Women's Liberation

This, the most recent addition to Bookmarks' "Rebel's Guide" series, is slightly different than the earlier books. Rather than dealing with a revolutionary individual, it deals with an issue - the on-going struggle for women's liberation.

The author, Judith Orr is the editor the monthly magazine Socialist Review. She isn't a feminist in the strict definition of the word. The sexism of society, the oppression of women, isn't for Orr because "All Men are Bastards", rather it is because capitalism requires women's oppression.

In this context the systematic way that women are treated as second class citizens is actually beneficial to capitalism. For instance, by relying primarily on women to bring up children, to feed, clothe and look after the next generation, capitalism is avoiding the immense cost of socially provided child care. But it's not just financial - the family creates the ideological backdrop to capitalism - with women at home and men at work, and all the problems of the world being down to us as individuals.

The early chapters of this short book, re-assert the Marxist position on Women's oppression. Despite us being told that Marxism is purely about economic issues, Orr shows how both Marx and Engels understood that there was "nothing 'natural' ... about the way we live today". Indeed, for tens of thousands of years there were no class divisions, and women's oppression simply did not exist.

Orr looks at the way that the rise of class society led to the oppression of women, with the rise of more labour intensive forms of farming.

However, for me the strongest and most interesting chapters in the book are those that look at contemporary society. Orr rattles off some depressing statistics for a world where women are supposed to be equal. On average women earn "18% less than men". The UK's childcare situation is the "worst in Europe" and it's high price means that lowest income families are unable to afford it - "low paid women simply can't afford to work".

Simultaneously we have, as Orr shows, the rise of "Raunch" culture. The attempt to make porn mainstream, the rise of lap-dancing and children's clothing with the Playboy logo. She points out that this isn't new. Women's bodies have been used to sell all sorts of things for many, many years. The difference is that it is now "being sold to women as empowering".

All this means that real liberation for women won't come about under capitalism. The system that oppresses women doesn't benefit the majority of men, whose own lives are blighted by the distortions caused by capitalism telling us that the family is the only way that we can bring up our kids.

Judith Orr shows how in all struggles the ruling, sexist ideas in society, are challenged. She finishes her book by showing how the Russian Revolution introduced massive changes in the lives of women and men. Abortion and divorce on demand, socialised childcare and launderettes, equal employment rights between the sexes and paid maternity leave. That backward country, in the midst of revolution, civil war and famine made it a priority to tackle women's oppression.

So important was this that Orr points out that Leon Trotsky measured the success of Stalin's counter revolution by his undermining of these measures.

Ending the book with a quote from Engel's about how a socialist society would transform our sexual lives, Orr shows a vision for us all a truly equal society, were no one is excluded from enjoying life to the full simply because of they are the wrong sex.

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Victor Serge - Conquered City

The title Conquered City is a multi-layered one. It refers, in the most, to the great city of St. Petersberg, conquered in the first successful working class revolution, and renamed Petrograd. However it must also refer to the near defeat of those workers in the civil war that followed the revolution. The attempt to isolate and strangle the fledgling workers democracy by the invading armies of the capitalist power.

Serge's novel deals with the lives of the workers of Petrograd. Both conquerors and conquered. Many of the best had died, or were dying in defense of the revolution. Those who remain in the city starve, working in factories almost devoid of materials or resources, or queue for hours at shops rapidly running out of the necessities of life.

Those who hate the revolution deal with their hunger by dreaming of the restoration of the old way of life. Impossible though this is, as there can be no return to the city of the Tsars. Revolutionaries and workers repeat the slogans of the revolution, but as the city's life is squeezed from it, as time and again supply trains fail to arrive, for many the slogans are now hollow, for many others they offer an inspirational hope in the midst of hunger and fear.

For me, the plot of the novel matters little. What's important is the description of the people and the city. This is what the civil war was like - this is what the capitalists were prepared to do to those that challenged their way of living. Victor Serge arrived in Petrograd to this reality. The descriptions have a ring of truth about them, because they must be his experiences. Indeed in one section, the author himself enters the novel, describing his own experiences amongst those of the characters.

At the end, the city and it's people are triumphant. The invaders are defeated, their terror having been beaten by both the enthusiasm for the revolution in the Red Army and the terror of the "reds" prepared to use revolutionary justice to force through victory. This is of course only one of the compromises that the revolution had to make to survive. But as the characters in the book learn of the defeat of the European revolutions, the isolation of Russia becomes cemented and the path to bureaucratic state capitalism opens up.

Coming from the libertarian background that he had, this novel is Serge wrestling with the realities of revolutionary struggle. But he also wrote it as a dedication to those who continue to fight for justice. Indeed he wrote it while in prison under the watchful eye of Stalin's jailers. He could barely use the name Trotsky, and the small parts of the book that refer to Trotsky's heroic leadership, do so obliquely, without naming him.

Serge was never broken by the counter-revolution of Stalin, but he was lucky. In the afterword, the translator, Richard Greeman, quotes from Serge's diary, on the occasion of meeting Trotsky's widow many years later.

"There is nobody left who knows what the Russian Revolution was really like, what the Bolsheviks were really like"

But Serge wasn't alone, though there were few like him. His novels, books and writings helped keep alive the real tradition of the revolution, warts and all, and for that reason he deserves a much wider readership.

Mike Gonzalez - Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution

Cuba is an enigma for many people. For some, it is a socialist country, dedicated to the world revolution. For others it is simply a beautiful, but poor, holiday destination.

Che Guevara, the face on a million t-shirts, is of course the revolutionary most associated with this island. His life has been the subject of many biographies and much comment. He is an icon for millions of people who want a world free of poverty and oppression. Mike Gonzalez's book is an important work - not simply because it is about finding out who the "real" Che is. But more because it is about asking difficult questions that will help inform today's struggles to change the world.

Despite his association with armed Guerilla uprisings and revolution, for most of his short life (he died just short of his 40th birthday) he wasn't political in any meaningful way. Growing up in Argentina in the period that he did - he was surrounded by political events and it seems his parents had communist party sympathies. But it was only later on, around the time he finishes his university medical studies that he shows a definite turn towards radical ideas.

Falling in with a group of radicals around Fidel Castro, and seeing the suppression by US imperialism of various attempts to challenge it's power (particularly in Guatemala), Che becomes convinced of the ability of a small band of dedicated Guerilla fighters to topple oppressive regimes and bring about radical change. As he develops his ideas, he comes to see himself as a communist - reading the works of Karl Marx and increasingly identifying with the Soviet Union. Fidel Castro, on the other hand, the man who comes to symbolise Cuba for the rest of the century though, is clearly far from an explicit identification with Communism, only later developing these ideas himself to improve economic links with the USSR.

As many readers will know, Che's Guerilla army land in Cuba and eventually topple the corrupt and brutal Washington orientated regime. But the story of this revolution is less important than the story of Che for this review. Mike Gonzalez time and again shows how the revolution in Cuba wasn't a workers and peasants uprising. In fact the Guerillas show disdain for the movements in the cities, and the peasants are a backdrop to help the fighters, but not to be part of the battles.

As the new Cuba is isolated on the world stage, and increasingly comes to rely on Soviet aid, Che looks to spread the Latin American revolution. Sadly, his strategy that was so fortunate in Cuba, fails in both Congo and Bolivia. Che is murdered by state forces as US representatives look on.

Che is a fascinating figure. What I like about this book is how Gonzalez rescues the real Che - the brave, heroic figure, prepared to sacrifice everything to the struggle. But that heroic image has it's warts. Much of these are political - Che believed that simple will power on the part of revolutionaries would be enough - he doesn't seem to have understood the world situation and how it can impact on the lives of ordinary people. To put it bluntly, Cuba was ripe for revolution, Bolivia wasn't. And even were there were people challenging the existing state, such as Bolivia's Copper miners, Che ignores their power in favour of his small military force.

Often the Che that comes through is naive - he seems to have taken Soviet propaganda at face value, neglecting the very real problems of the mass of people under the "Communist" regimes. He seems to have idolized Castro, at the same time as Castro clearly uses Che's image and popularity for his own ends.

This short book is a fabulous read. It is an insightful look at one of the world's most famous revolutionaries, and by refusing to simply re-create the heroic Che, it enables us to learn the lessons of the past, to better change the future. What better memorial could a revolutionary want?

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Alan Weisman - The World Without Us

One of my favourite science fiction novels, is Earth Abides by George R. Stewart. His book imagines the way the world develops as the an unknown disease decimates the population of the planet, leaving a few survivors. In imaginative chapters he describes how cities fall apart, car tyres rot, cattle in fields die off, unable to survive without their farmers and roads are torn apart by weeds.

Alan Weisman's book is a non-fictional version of this "Deep Green" fantasy. Anyone who has ever watched how mould can break through the smoothest of bathroom tiles, or watch weeds spring up through the smallest of cracks in concrete, has a glimpse of just how frail out technological civilisation is. The opening chapters imagine how quickly our cities would vanish. Weisman visits parts of the world where humans have disappeared - the contested zones between North and South Korea, or the abandoned cities in the divided Cyprus He illustrates how quickly nature returns, and breaks down seemingly eternal buildings.

Occasionaly giving you the impression that he is somewhat excited by the prospect of the extinction of the human race, we learn much about our societies relationship with the planet. Because, while our cities will crumble, and in a few hundreds of thousands of years only trained alien archaeologists might find anything of us, we will leave a lasting legacy. The radioactive waste lying about our planet - the depleted uranium debris that litters Iraq (and will remain posionous long after the expanding sun has boiled our planet away). The millions of tonnes of plastic in the oceans that won't decompose. The giant rifts in the planets crust where we've mined the minerals underground.

Interestingly though, some of the largest changes we have made will vanish the quickest. The Panama Canal would rapidly be overcome by flooding and landslides as the pumps and channels that keep it open, block and overfill for instance.

Weisman also clears up one of those silly arguments that the pro-nuclear lobby throw at envrionmentalists occasionally too. The abandoned areas of Chernobyl may have recovered a rich and varied collection of flora and fauna, but the radiation continues to produce mutations and genetic changes that often make those animals and plants unviable. An interesting discussion about the consequences for the planet if we vanished and couldn't shut down our nuclear power plants follows these observations.

While the book has much of interest, it suffers a little from trying to be too readable. We don't need to know the hair length, body shape, posture or mannerisms of every scientist the author interviews. Nevertheless, it's a readable, and humourous (if terrifying) introduction to some of the big questions facing humanity.

Unfortunately I thought the assertion that our brain emanations, "like radio waves" might well travel through space and curve back on the planet, and at some distant time, ("long after we're gone"), "our memories might surf home abroad a cosmic electromagnetic wave to haunt our beloved Earth" was a load of mystical, unscientific nonsense. A horrible way to finish the last chapter that jarred with the clearly explained scientific notions elsewhere in the book.

Michael Albert - Parecon, Life After Capitalism

For all revolutionaries, being able to imagine a future society is very important. This isn't simply because we need to have something to struggle for, but because we have to be able to show that an alternative is possible. If a new form of society does not work on an intellectual level, who will be prepared to join the battle to create it?

In this regard, Michael Albert's book is tremendously important. It is, in effect, a blueprint for how a non-capitalist society might work. Albert doesn't of course believe that every aspect of his imagined world will be created in the way it is described here, but he has constructed it to prove that it isn't impossible to organise society differently.

Albert starts by showing how life under capitalism is one that is distorted by the nature of society. The blind competition between capitalists in the search for profit is what drives production. Hence production isn't for the rational needs of society, rather it is for the needs of the capitalists - profits in short. This means that the lives of the people who do the work are limited. Limited to the type of jobs the capitalists need, limited to the type of work that is needed - often boring, rote work with little reward or social recognition.

Albert's Parecon (Participatory Economics) then is a world where production is for need - where locally, regionally, nationally and internationally, those who create the wealth in society get together to discuss, debate and decide what is made, why and how. In Parecon, everyone has the widest possible access to the information about what is made and what goes into it. We can imagine a huge networked database showing every product, with information about it's manufacture - how long it takes, what raw materials are needed and who makes it.

From this information, participants in this new society are able to make genuine informed choices about what they consume, and what their workplace would be like.

Albert also discusses how the false divisions of work under capitalism should break down. Why should a brain surgeon be rewarded more than a road sweeper? Why should someone who helps keep the city clean and running, not have access to the choices and things that a medical worker has? In Albert's imagined world such distinctions would break down. Men and women would have more opportunities, and those who do more rote work might even have greater rewards in terms of access to goods.

Not all of Albert's world is one I necessarily agree with. What is most important is the way he describes how such a world could function. How a planned economy could work, how such a society would be sustainable in a way that capitalism never can be.

I feel there is a huge missing chunk though. Nowhere does Albert grapple with the thorny question of "how do we get there?". It's fine to imagine the future. But such fantasies should at least feel real, because we can imagine how they are brought into life.

For Marxists, the revolutionary transformation of society is not simply about destroying capitalism. It is important because only through such a transformation do men and women throw off the "much of ages". Through the collective struggle, individualism breaks down and collective action becomes the norm. Racist and sexist attitudes are challenged. Workers create the organs that become the basis for a functioning Parecon.

I suspect that many who read Parecon will think it new and innovative. In some ways it is, but many of these ideas have been tried before. In fact every time workers enter into struggle, the basis of some of Albert's theories can be glimpsed. In every strike committee, picket line and workers council, the basis for a new way of organising, planning and distribution raises its head. In this context Albert's ideas are important, but the struggle to create that world cannot be ignored.

Related articles:

James Meadway provides a more in-depth review of Parecon and several other "anti-capitalist" books of a similar ilk, in this extensive review here.

There is an excellent debate between Michael Albert and British Marxist Alex Callinicos on the ZNet website, covering much of the ground of Parecon. It is online here.

Century Rain - Alastair Reynolds

There is a narrow sub-genre of Science Fiction that I love - archaeologists in space I like to know it as - this is the type of Science Fiction novel that has historians looking at the remains of long vanished alien civilisations. Usually before they disturb some artifact and find themselves plunged into a wormhole etc etc etc.

Alastair Reynolds' Century Rain has a interesting variant on this theme. A few hundreds of years into the future mankind is divided between those who blame technology for the war that made Earth uninhabitable, and those that believe technology is a useful tool.

Earth is uninhabitable, but parts of it remain, and archaeologists like the protagonist Verity Auger, are experts at piecing together the last fragmentary remains of the doomed society. They hope to find more out about the last moments of Earth, in order to prevent a similar catastrophe in the future.

Now, elsewhere in the universe there exists an old, abandoned alien transport system. One of the portals to this contains, rather astonishingly an exact copy of the Earth in the mid-1950s. Even more astonishingly, the portal leads directly into Paris - the very city that our heroine Verity is an expert on! Of such coincidences the greatest Science Fiction is made, and Verity sets off to explore this copy of Earth (which turns out to have not experienced the Second World War, and the fascists are on the rise again!). Of course, it's not so simple. There is a murder and a classic, film noir detective to make the plot more and more convoluted.

Of course Ms. Auger rapidly finds herself in the midst of a plot to destroy the Earth (Mark 2) and all manner of people try and stop her. Including some truly nasty children.

Century Rain is not part of Reynold's normal SF universe. It is however a fun and interesting standalone novel. Well recommended if you like detectives, space and archaeology.

Eric Newby - Love and War in the Apennines

The aftermath of the Second World War brought a plethora of memoirs of wartime experiences. Popular amongst these where books about the experiences of Prisoner's of War, in particular those of escapees.

Eric Newby's memoir of his wartime experiences as a POW in Italy, and then as an escapee on the run waited almost three decades before making it into print. In the introduction he says that he did this, because he didn't think that his experiences were as exiciting or interesting as those of many others. He didn't for instance, even "getting through the enemy line as so many people did", nor did he join the Partisans.

Instead, Newby's story is one that shows the heroic, and forgotten resistance of ordinary people who simply refused to allow a stranger in their midst to be captured by the powers that be - whether they were Italian fascists, or German soldiers. While it is true that Newby was betrayed (twice in fact) by people in the communities that sheltered him, it is also true that those people were not representative of the Italian peasants who hid him for months and years. It is also true that one of those betrayers was never allowed to forget what she did... "lucky not to be shot by the partisans".

When Mussolini's government fell, Newby escaped his prison with hundreds of other British POWs. Before the German's took control again he had made it into an area of tiny villagers in the Apennine mountains in Northern Italy. Moving from village to village, tiny shelter to remote cottage he was looked after, fed and protected by dozens of nameless souls, who faced death if the authorities found out what they had done.

Poverty is rife in rural Italy then and now. Wartime brought many further hardships and Newby had to work hard to repay the support he was given. He spent many months removing stones from one farmers poor fields, or doing other odd jobs in the towns.

In one of the most memorable chapters, Newby is found by a German officer, butterfly hunting. This soldier doesn't try and capture Newby. Recognising him as British by his very demeanour, the German discusses the end of the war and the inevitable defeat of Germany. At the end of the encounter, the German returns to his search for butterflies, and the surrounding villagers dismiss him as a lunatic.

Newby returns to the area after the war. He fell in love with the daughter of the first people who helped him, and had kept sporadic contact with her. His return to the village that sheltered him many years later is the subject of the final chapter, and is a deeply moving account of how he brought thanks for his life - something that the villagers had done simply out of honest solidarity, with no hope, nor thought for reward.

Phil Piratin - Our Flag Stays Red

Unusually for an MP, or indeed a local government councillor, Phil Piratin didn’t believe that political change came from Town Halls or even parliament. He firmly believed that change came because ordinary people fought for it. The role of Councillors and MPs representing working class people was to help facilitate those struggles.

In this capacity Piratin was elected a Communist Party councillor in Poplar and then MP for Mile End in the 1945 General Election. His campaigns centred very much on the struggle to improve the lot of ordinary working class people – working men and women who then, as now, live in overcrowded, poverty stricken conditions. Today of course Poplar council is part of the larger borough of Tower Hamlets, but 60 years ago the gulf between rich and poor was remarkably similar for the people of the East End.

This short book tells the early life story of Phil Piratin, how he became involved in the fight against Mosley’s blackshirt fascists in the 30s, and how he became a member of the Communist Party. It has much to offer the casual reader – particularly one who lives in the East End. Many of the places mentioned still stand and it’s amusing to read of the street fighting, street meetings and demonstrations that happened on this or that road.

Those who would really benefit from reading it are those socialists and radicals up and down the country campaigning against injustice and poverty today. This isn’t simply because of Piratin’s inspiring story. Nor is it to get a sense of what can be achieved, though both of these are important. While the reader may cheer to read the accounts of the Cable Street battles that stopped the British Union of Fascists marching through the Jewish East End in 1936, what is truly important I think for readers today is the way that socialists then are faced with the same challenges that we face today.

The late 1930s was a period of history when war loomed on the horizon. Millions of people were fed up of poverty and felt disillusioned with their normal leaders in the Labour and Trade Union movements. Radicals in the Communist Party could get large audiences for their anti-capitalist, pro-peace message. Translating this into deeper support and getting deeper networks in working class communities was the challenge.

As I write this in 2008, the picture is similar. There is anger at the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Millions face economic uncertainty and there is deep cynicism at the established “workers” parties.

At the same time, organisations of the far right, openly fascist in the 1930s but more “suited and booted” today (though still wearing their Nazi credentials close to their heart), thrive in conditions of poverty, alienation and government racism.

How socialists and radicials turn this anger into co-ordinated political activity is the question of the day, and it was also the challenge for Piratin and the Communist Party then. This is/was even more important as fascist movements need to be stopped before they can grow any further.

Piratin lead a hard battle within the Communist Party. He argued that at the same time as being involved in national campaigns like the anti-war movement, you also had to fight over bread and butter issues. In his time this was the issue of rents and housing conditions and the Stepney Communist Party threw itself into building rent-strikes and housing occupations to campaign for better living conditions. The CP didn’t ignore those supporters of fascism facing eviction. Indeed by fighting to defend their homes too, they won BUF families away from fascism, by demonstrating practically the value of working class solidarity.

As the war approached, the pressures on the CP given their uncritical stance towards Soviet Russia clearly have some effect, though the basic nature of their work on estates and in communities continued to have a hearing. Every time you see a photo of people hiding from the Blitz on the underground platforms, remember that the government refused to let the tube network be used like this, until CP members had forced open the gates to save people’s lives. Only then did Churchill’s government cave in and promote the underground as deep bomb shelters.

Piratin’s victory in 1945 came on the back of a huge desire for change that swept out the Conservatives and brought in a Red Flag singing Labour government. This book doesn’t cover Piratin’s experiences in Parliament, if his time there was spent as it was in the Poplar council chamber providing a voice for the voiceless, it must have been very inspiring indeed.

While many socialists today have numerous criticisms and differences with the ideas of the Communist Party of the 1930s, we all have much to learn from a group of men and women who believed that it wasn’t enough for the left to provide propaganda from the side-lines. The only way that socialist politics could be won to a wider audience was through the comrades rolling up their sleeves and getting stuck in. For that reason, if no other, “Our Flag Stays Red” should be read, and re-read by all those who want a better world today.

Simon Goldhill - The Temple of Jerusalem

As with the other books in the "Wonders of the World" series, Simon Goldhill concentrates on a single building from history, and examines it's architectural, historical, social and cultural impact. Unlike most of the others, his task is made much harder by the simple fact that the Temple of Jerusalem was pretty much flattened on 28th August 70AD (in the morning we're told).

The Temple of Jerusalem was the most important place for the whole of the Jewish religion. Preceding it, had been at least two other Temples, but this final one, built by King Herod, diminished all others in size and scale. 144,000 square metres in area, and 32 metres in height, the only part that survives now is one of the massive walls that held it in place. The Western Wall, that is now known as the "wailing wall". The Temple only stood for 90 years. For almost 2000 years Jews from around the world have travelled to the wall to pray, and mourn the loss of the Temple.

For the Jews the Temple holds a special significance. But the area at the heart of Jerusalem, holds significance for the other two, key religions from the area - Christianity and Islam. For this reason, the Temple as a building (and the Temple as an Idea) hold special importance for millions around the globe. And now, as then, this significance creates ideological, as well as religious importance.

Goldhill describes then the limited knowledge we have of the building. What archaeologists have discovered and what the few historical writings that describe the building tell us. We know a surprising amount about the Temple rituals - depicted with great accuracy in Jewish holy books. But the meat of his book, is to examine how the building has been fought over (by Christian, Jewish and Islamic troops) and how the Idea of the Temple has developed through the years. He argues that for Christians, the promise of rebuilding the Temple in the future, becomes linked with the idea of Jesus as personification of the Temple. It's image becomes part and parcel of actual buildings now - witness the "Temple Church" in London.

In one example Jewish revolutionaries against the Roman occupation placed an image of the Temple on the coins they minted - a sign of the ideological importance of the building. Everyone from the Crusaders and the Freemasons (though their contribution is decidedly a-historical) have grasped at the concept of the Temple in one form or another.

Finally, Goldhill finishes with the 1967 Israeli war to capture Jerusalem from the Arabs. He makes the point that how you view the story, will be coloured by the readers politics (and events since then).

For a building that hardly existed on a historical timescale, the Temple has perhaps more than any other ancient building shaped our current times. I'd recommend this book if only because it gives a better understanding of some of the great political, social and religious movements in our own times.

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Stephen King - The Drawing of the Three - The Dark Tower book two

Volume two of Stephen King's seven part "Dark Tower" series is a very different beast to volume one. This is a good thing, as I found that the first book tried to hard to be an epic. You can read my review of that here.

In volume two, Roland, the Last Gunslinger finds three doors into other places and people. The book is entirely set on a seemingly endless beach. The beach that the Gunslinger arrived at towards the end of the first novel. As he opens each door, he finds himself in the head of one of three fascinating people. The first is a drug smuggler, the second a angry, brave and rich woman, clearly suffering from some sort of dual personality problem. The last is a serial killer, whose life has already crossed the Gunslingers and is responsible for the woman loosing her legs.

Interestingly, this volume continues the theme of the epic journey, though this time it is the slow trip along the beach. It's slow because the companions are hampered by illness and injury and a wheelchair. But King's writing is good enough for us to feel every turgid step.

The reader also can find amusement in his own knowledge. Each time Roland enters 'our' world (1980s New York) he is confused and bedazzled by everything around him. His attempts to understand, by fixing the knowledge, laws and understanding of his own times onto the things around him, create lots of little in-jokes for the modern reader.

This is an enjoyable read, certainly it's very different to the first in the series and bodes well for the rest of the series.

David Beerling - The Emerald Planet; How Plants Changed Earth's History

The idea that the humble planet could change the course of Earth's geological history is difficult to imagine. That plants have changed human history is of course easy to believe - imagine how the European world would be without tobacco or potatoes for instance.

But plants have had a much bigger impact - the ability for vast forests for instance to alter the fundamental make-up of the atmosphere may, as David Beerling shows, have been the crucial factor in turning the Arctic of 50 million years ago, from a coolish region, to a tropical one where the precursors of today's alligators slumbered in the heat on river banks.

The role of ancient swamps and forests in giving out huge amounts of greenhouses gases like methane has oft been neglected. Climate models that ignore these factors often can't explain historical temperatures.

Beerling takes us through a fascinating history of the earth, as well as the story of scientific discovery. We read about Scott's polar exhibition that discovered fossils of ancient forests - and the long subsequent debate about why those forests were deciduous. Not having a background in the biological sciences some of the book was harder to follow then elsewhere - but nevertheless the application of the historic studies to current climate science, particularly in the light of rainforest destruction and a warming earth, is something that everyone would be able to comprehend.

Alfred Bester - The Stars My Destination

There are few classic works of science fiction written in the 1960s that survive so well into modern times as “The Stars My Destination”. That, in part, must be because at it’s heart it’s not really a science fiction story. It’s a classic tale of betrayal and revenge set in the context of a widely colonised solar system, whose planets are at war with each other.

At the start of the novel, it’s protagonist Gully Foyle is the only survivor of an attack on his space ship that has left him helpless inside a tiny “coffin”, the only area airtight enough to keep him alive. His daily struggle to survive, is interrupted by the arrival of another spaceship, which while it sees his distress flares, pointedly moves on.

This betrayal energises Gully, who with renewed vigour, re-examines his predicament and maguyver like, improvises repairs and lights the engines of his spaceship. Gully’s return to earth, is briefly interrupted by a chance arrival at a spacestation – it’s inhabitants, scavengers of the spaceways, hideously tattoo Gully. For the rest of his life, Gully is scared by the livid stripes of a facial tiger. After surgery, the tattoo disappears, except at times of extreme emotion, making it impossible for Gully to live amongst humans without his identity being discovered.

The rest of the novel is a story of Gully’s descent into madness and his desperate quest for revenge on those who left him to die alone in space. Gully’s rage dominates his character, driving him onward. His anger leads him to treat all who come in his way with derision – rape, violence and murder follow in his path. Even while imprisioned, when he finds true love, his facial scars frighten and betray a brief mental normality.

Much of Gully’s future world is one we woud recognise. Millions live in poverty, while a tiny number of rich individuals lord it over the rest of the population. The central difference with our own time, is the idea of jaunting. Jaunting is the ability to travel around great distances by the power of thought. It has, understandably, fundamentally changed much of human society, while leaving some of societies greatest differences in place.

Jaunting is a fantastic science fiction innovation. This isn’t because it’s a brilliant idea. Many writers have imagined the ability to think yourself somewhere else. In Bester's hands jaunting becomes a fantastic ability that accentuates social differences. Because you have to have been somewhere to jaunt to it, long distance travel remains the presever of the rich. Not everyone who can jaunt, can do so equally, and some poor unfortunates are unable to do so at all. I was particularly impressed by the fact that when instantaneous travel is widely available to all, the rich, to prove their wealth, travel in old fashioned ways. Arriving at celebrity parties by limo, car or carriage is a demonstration of how much money you have, and how much free time you can waste. Sending a letter around the world, when a hired agent could take it there nearly instantansouly, is both insane and a true demonstration of your contempt for the masses.

The tale of Gully’s revenge, and his retribution is a complex and convoluted one. His flawed character is of the great anti-heroes of fiction, and deserves to be read, discussed and enjoyed by many more readers.

Jonathan Swift - Gulliver's Travels

Few readers can have failed to have heard the basic tenets of Gulliver's Travels. Written in the 1700s, it follows the voyages of Lemuel Gulliver as he, through a series of misfortunes, finds himself at a variety of stragen lands, populated by even stranger creature.

Most people will have heard of Lilliput - the first land that Gulliver arrives at, where the inhabitants are tiny - six inches or so - but have built a complex civilisation. Gulliver befriends Lilliput's King and in a series of conversations illuminates both his one country's society and the newley discovered one.

The author of course, uses the differing scale between Gulliver and the inhabitants of Lilliput to great comic effect. Some of this is moral questioning, some of it is humourous. Some of it is simple bawdy slapstick - as in the musings that Gulliver gives to the problem of his excretment for a civilisation of such small people.

Eventually, Gulliver upsets the status quo - society can deal with a giant, but not one who breaks social taboos (even accidently). He is forced to flee Lilliput.

The next destination for Gulliver is much less well-known. His voyage to Brobdingnag - a land of giants, as large to Gulliver as he was to the people of Lilliput, allows for further humour, social discourse and comments on the nature of Gulliver's own society. If the children's version of Gulliver's Travels omit the problems of Gulliver's waste in Lilliput, they surely omit the description of the maids in the royal court of Brobdingnag, who appear to use the naked Gulliver as a type of sex toy.

As Gulliver makes further voyages his becomes less of a proponent of the superior nature of English society with it's class system, laws and religious codes, and becomes more and more cynical about human nature. I won't give away the ending, but by the time that we (and Gulliver) reach the end of his voyages, our traveller has effectively given up all hope for man-kind, as well as any desire to spend time with them.

Jonathan Swift's book has, I suspect, spent too much time being read as a humourous account of fantastic voyages. It is really a powerful social critique of human society. From our petty religious squabbles (mirrored by the Lilliputten wars over which end of an boiled egg to start at) to the incomprehensibility of lawyers and our legal system to a society where lying is unknown, this pokes fun at every aspect of our lives. It entertained hundreds of thousands when it was first published and even now has the power to bring a wry smile to anyone out there who reads it today, in our more enlightened times.

Lester R. Brown - Plan B 3.0, Mobilising to Save Civilisation

Lester Brown's book on climate change is unlike many of the myriad of books that have been produced about the subject. His book is geared towards the international strategies that are needed to tackle the problem - or at least limiting emissions so that global temperatures do not rise about the 2 degree mark, and runaway climate change becomes inevitable.

Of course to do this, Brown has to set out the scale of the problem, and even those who have read widely on the subject will once again find themselves scared and nervous. When you read about the 400 million people in India and Bangladesh who are reliant on the waters of the Gangees River, you can only imagine what will happen if that river becomes seasonal. Brown paints a picture of a world where untold millions will suffer drought, famine, disease and war as climate change accelerates.

If Plan A is "business as usual", Brown's Plan B is nothing less than the restructuring and recreation of almost every aspect of society. From how we generate and use energy, to how we grow our crops, to how we travel in our cities. In every case where Brown shows us how our existing setup is leading us straight into catastrophe, he gives counter, real-world examples showing how it's possible to change things to be better and more climate friendly.

Brown points out that the solutions he offers will also benefit mankind. A low carbon world is one that needs high levels of employment. Solving the climate threat should bring wealth and improved conditions to millions of people around the globe.

There are a couple of problems with his strategy. The book finishes with a call for political action, but this is limited to lobbying politicians for environmental taxes. In reality, the changes that he proposes - reducing car use, phasing out oil and coal power stations and so on, will bring down the wrath of the most powerful corporations upon us - and their allies in government. Look at how the car and oil companies have blocked legislation aimed to make cars legally more petrol efficient.

This book has many great ideas, it falls short because it underestimates the entrenched interests of capitalism to resist change - and thus underestimates the power of the movement we need to build to save the planet.

Plan B 3.0 can be purchased through the normal channels. I got mine through Bookmarks, but you can download it for free from the website of the Earth Policy Institute.

Related Reviews

Monbiot - Heat, How to stop the planet burning
Pearce - The Last Generation

Mary Beard - The Roman Triumph

Unusually for a classical historian, Mary Beard seems to be adept at bringing to life complex periods of history. Her humourous and immensely entertaining blog, uses the past to shed light on the present and often explains the past through the lens of current events.

Her latest book, The Roman Triumph, examines what is actually quite a niche in Roman History. The Triumph, was the much emmulated procession through the heart of Rome to celebrate a general's military victories. While this might seem an unusual subject to make the subject of a complete book, Mary Beard argues that the Triumph "had an impact far beyond the commemoration of victory, and on aspects of Roman life as diverse as the apotheosis of emperors and the passion of erotic pursuit".

The author documents extensively how the Triumph became the subject of ancient historical study and poetry. Images of Triumphs were carved into sculpture and reliefs and lists of those victories Generals who celebrated the Triumph were carved into tablets and displayed at the centre of the Roman capital.

However the study of the Triumph is not simply a study of what happened, who celebrated them and the event's history. It is also a study of how we examine history, and actually what history is. In this regard, Mary Beard is remarkably critical of some modern historians who, it seems, often repeat unsubstantiated information about the Triumph as if it was historical fact. She describes a "process of conjecture, wild extrapolation, and over-confidence" being "how many of the "fact's" of the triumph are made."

There are many other fascinating aspects to this book. I found it interesting how the notion of "Invented Tradition" plays it's role in both the historical development of the Triumph itself and it's study through the ages. The role of the Triumph in creating an image of Roman, for the Roman people itself is also somethign that comes through the work. The Triumph wasn't "intended to reward private brigandage", only those victories that fitted the Roman ideal would be marked in public in this way - military victories in Roman civil wars rarely were celebrated by Triumph. "Romans only belonged on the winning side" of the ceremony is how Beard puts it.

For the Roman people, the Triumph wasn't always simply about celebration. It could be an occasion for sympathy towards prisoners or amusement at the lack of captured trophies.

While military leaders from Napoleon to Hitler have used parades to celebrate conquests, today military victory isn't marked in quite the same way, (though it's tempting to think of George Bush's "Mission Accomplished" display on the aircraft carrier in the Gulf as a mistaken Triumphal display).

What Mary Beard's book does though is remind us that we are part of a long history. A history that is often coloured by the times we live in, but a history that has shaped the our perception of ourselves. Through is insightful and entertaining book, she thus reasserts the importance of studying the past, if only to illuminate our own present.

Larissa Reissner – Hamburg at the Barricades

To live through a revolution is the dream of every revolutionary. To experience the overthrow of capitalism and the first steps down the road towards a new society is something that few have experienced in history. One of those who did is a little known activist and writer called Larissa Reissner.

Reissner took part in the Russian Revolution in 1917 and fought gallantly in the civil war that followed as the imperialist powers tried to crush the new born soviet powers. Exceptionally talented Reissner took part in a number of crucial battles. She travelled to Afghanistan, Germany and all over Russian writing, reporting and working for the Bolsheviks.

The importance of her work is described by the German revolutionary Karl Radek, who writes after her death “They [her articles] shall proclaim what the revolution meant for all peoples, for the West and the East, for Hamburg and Afghanistan, for Leningrad and the Urals”.

After Afghanistan, she went to Germany in 1923, there to witness the aftermath of almost 5 years of revolutionary upheaval. The left in Germany was immensely strong. The reformist Socialist Democratic Party had the allegiance on many workers, though it had assisted in the defeat of the Germany Revolution that overthrew the Kaiser and ended World War One The Communist Party was growing, but was tactically inexperienced and had made a number of mistakes during the revolutionary years.

Reissner documents the suffering of ordinary workers in Germany in the early 1920s - a time of mass unemployment and high inflation. This is the background to the central part of this collection of her writings – the abortive Hamburg insurrection of 1924. Hamburg had a powerful working class, a well organised Communist Party and many armed workers dedicated to overthrowing the existing state. It also had hundreds of thousands sick of poverty, starvation and unemployment.

Reissner explains how a belief that the revolution had broken out across Germany led to a mass uprising and street fighting in Hamburg. She describes the snipers, the arresting of the police and the storming of government buildings. She also describes the orderly retreat and the backlash against those who took part.

The articles are brilliantly written. Reissner is clearly a brave and experienced journalist. Her articles spoke not just to the workers reading them in newspapers back in Russia, but the men and women she described. There is a beautiful article that describes how rising price levels affect different stratas in society – clearly written because she spent a day with the milkman, visiting those who could afford no milk, and those who could afford only the cheapest, through to those who had money for the best quality.

While it is bound to be mostly remembered for the accounts of the street fighting in Hamburg, Hamburg at the Barricades is much more than that. Covering all aspects of German life at the time; from the boardrooms of the giant Krupps factories, to life at the coalface, where Reissner went to meet workers and discuss life in Russia with them, the book is a stimulating read and a fascinating insight into the process of revolution.

Hamburg at the Barricades can be read online here, as it's sadly out of print.

Fitzroy Maclean – Eastern Approaches

I suspect that few boys have read the novels of Rider Haggard through the years and not dreamed that they would one day cross deserts, fight in battles and explore strange countries. The reality of escapist adventure though, is that it is the stuff of dreams, not normal life and the closest most people get to adventure is running for the bus in the morning.

Fitzroy Maclean however was a real life adventurer. His career reads like the mad out-pourings of a Victorian thriller writer, but in the early 1930s he had travels and adventures that seem almost impossible.

Clearly born to the better end of society, Maclean joined the Diplomatic Service with a view to serving the British Empire. In his early twenties, he yearned to visit the Soviet Union, and surprised many by volunteering to work at the embassy in Moscow. It wasn’t a popular destination and he was able to get posted there.

The first pages of the book are his fascinating account of his train journey from Paris to Moscow. Once there, he interspersed his diplomatic work with barely legal trips into the Russian east. He visits Kazakstan, Samarkand, Baku and many other famous (but by then almost impossible destinations). Along the way he dodges the Soviet agents sent to track him down, meets all manner of locals and uses every dodge he can come up with the see parts of the world few westerners could visit.

While in Moscow, during a break from his adventurers, he witnesses the final show trial, at which Stalin consolidated his power. The chapter describing the “Trial of the Twenty-One” is a must for anyone interested in socialist history, describing as it does the great lengths that Stalin was prepared to go to, in order to destroy his opponents, and the manner in which friend became victim. Of the twenty one on trial, Maclean devotes some time to Nikolai Bukharin, once a leading Bolshevik intellectual who capitulated to Stalinism. Maclean describes how Bukharin repeatedly runs rings around the prosecutor's invented stories, but is unable to break out, fearing, Maclean feels, to criticise the Soviet Union even though it had by then strayed far from the orginial socialist vision.

Few were brave enough to believe that Stalin had destroyed genuine socialism, like Trotsky argued. But Maclean shows that even when they had been completely crushed, the old revolutionary spirit could still show itself.

At the outbreak of World War Two Maclean is back in London and discovers he is unable to join the military due to his important foreign office role. Discovering a loop-hole that means he cannot remain in his post if he stands for electoral office, he resigns to fight a seat for the Tories and wins. Soon after becoming an MP he is called up for service and ends up in the Western Deserts of Libya with the SAS and the Long Range Desert Group.

Further “boys own” adventures occur, until he is plucked out of this hell hole and parachuted into Yugoslavia on the personal orders of Winston Churchill to aid and abet the guerilla forces sabotaging the German war effort there.

Maclean quickly becomes indespensible to Tito the Guerilla leader as a conduit for weapons and resources and spends the rest of the war fighting with the partisans against the Germans. He is even present with a British Jeep at the Russian liberation of Belgrade.

Fitzroy Maclean, SAS soldier, Tory MP, friend of Churchill and Tito lead a life full of excitement and adventurer. His book is a fascinating insight into the nuances of an amazing period of history, even if his ideas and politics aren’t something that I can share. I recommend it as a piece of history as well as adventure.

Fredrick Engels - The Condition of the Working Class in England

Before he became Karl Marx's friend and closest collaborator, Frederick Engels had already achieved more in his life than most philosophers do in decades of thinking. This book, his first major work, is nothing less than a classic work of social investigation. It wasn't the first book to document the poverty and alienation of the emerging working classes, but it was the first to do so with an explicit attempt to understand the role of workers under the newley emerging capitalist system. In part, this was to explain and document this new social situation for those outside England where industrial capitalism had yet to take hold, but in part it is clearly a stage of Engels' thinking as he grasps towards the theory that would ultimately become Marxism.

The major parts of the book that deal with the conditions of people's lives in the mid-1800s are horrific. Walking the streets of Manchester today, it's impossible to comprehend the lives of those who lived in the slums that made up so much of the town. Engels mainly looks at Manchester as it was both the city where he worked (in his father's business) and the foremost industrial city of the world.

One brief passage would serve to get a taste of Engels' descriptive powers:

"In one of these courts there stands directly at the entrance, at the end of the covered passage, a privy without a dorr, so dirty that the inhabitants can pass into and out of the court only by passing through foul pools of stagnant urine and excrement...... below it on the river there are several tanneries which fill the whole neighbourhood with the stnech of animal putrefaction."

This description of the area around Ducie Bridge in central Manchester continues in this vein for many paragraphs because this was typical of working class areas of the time - left, effectively to rot.

Themes that are to become central to the Marxist thought that Marx and Engels develop later are touched on here. The atomisation of the worker that leads him or her to compete with others, turning them against those who should really be allies.

Talking of London he writes "The dissolution of mankind into monads of which each one has a separate principle and a separate purpose, the world of atoms, is here carried out to its utmost extreme"

The role of the family as both a haven from the horrors of working life and a source of pain, stress and suffering. The way that physical work distorts both physically and mentally, and the way that the factory owner makes profits from the exploitation of the thing that makes the worker human.

In the 1840s, Manchester was a source of immense profit for a few capitalists. Yet none of this significantly improved the lives of those who created this wealth. Engels' documents the medical and scientific reports that show how human life was stunted and deformed by the repetative, back breaking jobs. Constantly in this work, we find Engels raging at those responsible for the wretched lives of the workers.

"During my residence in England, at least twenty or thirty persons have died of simple starvation under the most revolting circumstances, and a jury has rarely been found posessed of the courage to speak the plain truth in the matter. Let testimony of the witnesses be never so clear and unequivocal, the bourgeoisie, from which the jury is selected, always finds some backdoor through which to escape the frightful verdict, death from starvation".

Engels' hatred of the consequences of capitalism and the rise of these giant industrial cities lies alongside his understanding that for a socialist society to emerge the force to create it must be created. He understands that only in these industrial towns does the concentration of economic power in the hands of thousands of men and women give the proletarian movement the hope of success. To this extent the book is also a celebration of working class revolt. However it's in this context I mention one thing that slightly surprised me - this is Engels' description of the Irish in the book.

Marx and Engels, writing years after the completion of this work, understood that the racism directed towards the Irish was a huge weakening factor in the unity of workers. It damaged their movement, distracted from the real enemies and was artificially stoked by the media and the ruling class of the times, for precisely those reasons.

However in passages in this book, the young Engels certainly echoes some of those prejudices.

"These Irishmen who migrate for fourpence to England, on the deck of a steamship on which they are often packed like cattle, insinuate themselves everywhere. The worst dwellings are good enough for them; their clothing causes them little trouble, so long as it holds together by a single thread; shoes they know not; their food consists of potatoes and potatoes only; whatever they earn beyond these needs they spend on drink. What does such a race want with high wages?"

Given that this is could be the worst racism directed at more recent immigrants to these shores, it's important to venture the opinion that this was very much Engels at a young age. His ideas were not fully rounded and perhaps he reflected the awful prejudices of the time, and his class (he was after all from the factory owners, not the factory hands). Later in his life, he explicitly rejected such ideas and indeed had a lifelong relationship with an Irish woman, Mary Burns.

The work is clearly an important one, not simply for the documentation of the life of the workers of early capitalism, but for an understanding of the development of Marxism and also to show that Frederick Engels, a man who all to often stands in the shadow of his friend and collaborator, was also a man of formidable skills.

For those who would like to know more about the life of Frederick Engels I would recommend this article by Lindsey German.

Related Reviews

Engels - The Condition of the Working Class in England
Hunt - TheFrock-coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels

Alastair Reynolds - Pushing Ice

This is the first Alastair Reynolds work that I have read that isn't set in his future history set in the so called "Redemption Ark" universe.

It's really a three part novel that starts moving very slowly and gathers pace, until the end, which is extremely fast moving. This is only in part due to the immense acceleration in space/time that the principle characters experience.

The title refers to the particular employment of the "Rockhopper" and her crew. Rockhopper is a fairly beaten up space-craft that really could do with a re-fit (think the space-craft in Alien for instance). It's crewed by a dedicated band of miners whose job is to manouvere comets into earth orbit.

The opening chapters describe the fairly mundane work that goes on, until Janus, an unusual moon of Saturn, starts to leave the solar system. Clearly under some form of alien propulsion, Rockhopper and her crew give chase. They're the only humans near enough to possibly get close to the rapidly disappearing Janus.

What's interesting, is that while this is a fairly normal plot device for SF (remember Rendevouz with Rama and its sequels anyone?) Reynold's adds some interesting twists. Firstly, unlike Arthur C Clarkes famous book, the people who explore Rama, sorry Janus, are very much fleshed out characters. The main storyline, other than humans travelling across the universe trying to investigate strange alien space craft, is that of the conflict between two women for control of the space craft. There aren't really any good or bad people in this - just those who have difference ideas of how best to save their own lives, but this makes for a much more human SF than normal.

There is, disappointingly little information on what the Janus spacecraft is eventually. I kept hoping for some big explanation about what was going on. When it finally comes, the story has, to be honest moved on to a different arc, and dramatically changed it's course. So I felt it was a little lacking in clear explanations to why a moon of Saturn suddenly left the solar system at great speed.

This is a good bit of writing, from a SF author who is clearly writing at his best. I look forward to more of these standalone novels, just as much as I look forward to the next Redemption Ark book.

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Reynolds - Redemption Ark

Larry Niven - Crashlander

Crashlander brings together all the short stories that make up one of the more famous "arcs" in Science Fiction - the stories dealing with Beowulf Shaeffer. Or so it says on the back, however since reading this, I've discovered that there is a further Shaeffer story, which I'm glad about, because the last one in this volume is strangely unfulfilling. In the "future history" that is Larry Niven's "Known Space", Shaeffer fills an important role.

It's him who discovers that the core of our galaxy is exploding and sets the scene for the Puppeteer exodus... leading to the Ringworld Series. He also has a number of adventures that serve to set the scene for key plot elements of Niven's universe - the near indestructibility of the General Products spaceship hull for instance. He also is the father of Louis Wu - the hero of the Ringworld books.

This story collection contains one new story, and a bridging story - giving context to the last tale and taking the form of a conversation where all Shaeffer's tales are recounted - giving the excuse to reprint them. The latest story is interesting - the nuances of the writing give the game away that it's written many years after the earlier stories (people have handheld communications devices and use them frequently, unlike in the earlier works for instance).

For Niven (and Known Space) fans this will be a must have. For those interested in the development of one of the classics of Science Fiction it will be interesting. For many others, the stories might seem a bit dated.

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