Ken Follett - The Pillars of the Earth

Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth is, to the surprise of the experts, one of the most popular novels in the UK. Its sweeping story has been made into a TV series, and even board and computer games and spawned two sequels. The plot covers a largely unknown period of English history, the turbulent 12th century when England was engulfed in Civil War following the death of Henry I's only male heir.

Follett's book is primarily centred on the monastery and settlement at the fictional location of Kingsbridge. There's a  complex web of characters most of whom are hard not to emphasis with, and principally the story looks at those involved in building a cathedral at Kingsbridge and those trying to stop them. What makes the novel work is that the personal antagonisms of various characters, including the vile Earl William and the pious Prior Phillip is in the context of feudal relations and Civil War. William's violence and raids on settlements around his castle are a natural part of feudal society, as are the inter-generational feuds. If the novel overly relies on the ideas of good lords and bad lords, it doesn't neglect that all lords relied utterly on the peasantry to survive.

In fact I suspect that this is one of the reasons for the success of the books. Unusually Pillars of the Earth focuses on the lives and struggles of ordinary people - mostly labourers on the cathedrals, but also their partners and families. While the elite have their role in the book it's often peripheral to the main action, and there are far more detailed descriptions of the lives, labour and food of ordinary people. This is actually quite unusual in novels and works well here, particularly a book that has the hard work of the building of a cathedral at the centre of its epic tale.

There are problems of course. To me the book felt like a soap opera in places - each chapter seeming to end on a cliff hanger that was rapidly resolved by the cleverness of one or other of the "good" characters. There are also a few unlikely coincidences and plot points that don't really make sense (would a grieving husband, having just buried his wife, really jump into bed with a complete stranger a couple of hours later, especially given they were both starving in the midst of winter?) I also found the rape scenes unnecessarily detailed - I get that the author is trying to describe the brutality of a particular character, but it was simply too much. I also skipped a three page sex scene, not out of prudity, but mostly because it was utterly peripheral to the plot.

Nevertheless Follett's book is entertaining. He gives an interesting take on key events in the period and the structure of the book keeps the reader engaged. It's also rare that a novel manages to make the transition from Romanesque to Gothic religious architecture an interesting and integral part of its plot, and it shows well how ordinary people were a central part of that movement.

Mark Lause - The Great Cowboy Strike: Bullets, Ballots & Class Conflicts in the American West

Countless western films, novels and artworks have portrayed the "cowboy" as a lonesome figure, surviving through his wits and ability to quick draw a six shooter. The reality, as this unique book shows, is that the cowboy was a worker. Badly paid, living a life of intense physical hardship, with seasonal and often highly skilled work. They were never loners. Looking after a herd of hundreds of cows was a collective effort and cattle drives required the support of lots of men.

These conditions led to a series of strikes. Cowboys didn't wait to form unions, if they acted at the right time of the season they had enormous power to force the large cattle companies to give them massive pay rises. These strikes were strong, numerous and spread as the cowboys moved along the trail. But they had an inherent weakness - being seasonal work the workers found themselves at the mercy of the employer the next year, and many blacklisted strikers found it near impossible to work again.

This is of course a story that is never told. In an of itself it would be interesting just as the story of an unusual and forgotten episode of working class history. But Mark Lause puts the strikes in the context of the transformation of the American West and, crucially, the development of US captialism and I would argue, the modern US state. One thing that is very apparent about these strikes is how violent they were. Gunfights were common, the assasination of strikers and their leaders was frequent, and many of the classic episodes of gunfights that occur in films are often repeated here in the context of strikers, or former strikers, being hunted down by posse's that were little more than lynch mobs.

Take this example of a "militia" setup by cattle owners in Montana, after a series of strikes. The vigilantes, called "Stuart's Stranglers" after their leader hunted down former strikers who they described as "like many a rebel and anarchist westerner" and perhaps killed up to 75.

The conduct of the Stranglers proved to be notoriously brutal. At one point, they captured a mixed race boy who could fiddle and forced him to entertain them for the evening. The next day they killed him. 'His being a fiddler hadn't nothing to do with his being a horse thief," one said. [Former strikers were often labelled rustlers so they could be executed without trial].... The perpetrators included the founders of the state of Montana. Their '3-7-77' warning - said to notify targets to buy the $3 ticket to the 7am stage to take the 77-mile trip from the area-remains part of the insignia of the state's highway patrol.

Picture via Wikipedia article for 3-7-77

There is a thus a direct link between the anti-working class, racist violence unleashed on the cowboy strikes and the modern police system.

Lause however highlights another aspect to this, which is that this takes place in the context of the larger cattle firms, and their associated industries like the railroads, carving up the American West into huge, enclosed, fenced off lands. The battle between the open-range and the fence builders is the background to many a western. But as Lause points out, in those stories, the small-holders often win. In reality, big capital carved up the west and those who resisted were turfed out, or killed.

There is much more to Lause's book. But I actually found it remarkably difficult to follow in places. In part this is because much of the book dwells on aspects of US history and particularly Labour history which is completely unknown to me. His descriptions of the way that various left organisations tried to develop working class parties was at times difficult to follow. While Lause carefully deconstructs the classic image of the US west, I found the alternative a little difficult to work out, at times Lause seems to focus on events which are difficult to place in the wider narrative.

That said there is a lot in this book for people trying to understand the development of US capitalism, and those who fought against it. I loved this account about Eleanor Marx Aveling's visit to Cincinnati in 1886, "as cowboy strieks swept the West":

The local socialists took her, her husband and another European visitor to see a ground of cowboys on tour there. The comrades lingered behind after the costumed performance and introduced themselves to one of the performers. "To our great astonishment," she recalled, the cowboy "plunged at once into a denunciation of capitalists in general and of the ranch-owners in particular." "Broncho John" Sullivan assured them that many of the cowboys had "awakened to the necessity of having a league of their own" - and that a Cowboy Union or affiliates of the Knights of Labor seemed likely.

Resistance to capitalist domination is a forgotten part of the American west, and many of the famous and infamous figures beloved of books and films played a part in that story. When trying to understand 21st century America, we cannot forget the racist violence that helped entrench the state in the first place - violence against the indigenous peoples, the slaves and the working class. Lause's book is an interesting, if challenging introduction to that.

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Louise Raw - Striking a Light: The Bryant & May Matchwomen and their place in History

Louise Raw's book on the famous matchwomen's strike at Bryant and May is a brilliant work of working class history. But it is much more than an account of the dispute. Raw's argument is that up until now the strike itself has been completely misunderstood. Traditionally it has been seen as a strike led by a few outside socialist agitators, principally the Fabian socialist Annie Besant. In addition, the impact of the strike was negligible when compared to the much more important dock strikes that erupted in East London a year or so later. After finishing the book, to test Raw's hypothesis, I picked up a copy of Allen Hutt's "short" history British Trade Unionism, a 1941 book that is effectively an official Communist Party history. He has this to say about the strike:

In July, 1888, a Socialist-led strike of the girls at Bryant and May's match factory in the East End secured wide publicity, alike for the shocking conditions that it exposed and for the revelation of the number of Liberal politicians who were concerned as shareholders. The strike was successful.

To be fair to Hutt he does continue to say that the strike was the "light jostle needed" (quoting Engels) to kick start wider strikes. But his all to brief account makes a number of the mistakes that Raw's book demolishes. Firstly the strike was not led by Annie Besant. While it is true that Besant had published an important expose of conditions in the factory a few days before the strike began, she neither knew of its beginning nor welcomed the event. In fact, Raw's account makes it clear that Besant's middle-class politics preferred the idea of a well publicised boycott of Bryant and May, and perhaps legal action to expose the employers. She did not welcome the self-activity that the Matchwomen displayed, despite the women having some hopes in her.

Hutt himself seems to subordinate the strike to the publicity it generated to embarrass some liberal politicians. This is to downplay the role of almost 1,400 women in bringing out an entire factory and creating a huge political problem for the employers and politicians. The women, despite the vast majority of them being very young, were confident, politically astute and able to articulate their demands. Rather than being the tools of outside agitators as Bryant and May liked to believe these were women who had a history of struggle, organisation and engagement with radical political ideas.

Careful research by Raw shows how deep these traditions went. In 1871 Raw describes how the government (under Gladstone) wanted to introduce a tax on matches. This would have had a significant impact upon the already impoverished workers at Bryant and May. The workers "convened a mass meeting at the Victoria factory, passing a resolution 'unanimously amid great cheering' stating that 'we the matchbox makers and employees of ... match factories, resist to the utmost of our power by all legal means the imposition of this cruel tax upon our labour'." They then marched to Parliament to hand over a petition, and despite their peaceful intentions encountered the full brute force of the police trying to stop them. It is notable that Bryant and May's management simply intended to pass the tax onto their workers rather than challenge the government. 17 years later the workers would again march to Parliament, following the same route as in 1871*.

Popular legend would have the "match-girl" as a tiny, innocent, poor little girl freezing to death on the streets. The reality, as Raw demonstrates over and over, is that she was often a highly political figure willing to organise her comrades, fight the police and protest to try and improve conditions. This wasn't just true of the strike. Raw's research uncovers the latter-day history of some of the strike leaders who became key community figures prepared to fight for their neighbours and friends, as well as being trade unionists.

But conditions definitely needed improving. Despite the enormous profits made by Bryant and May, life in the factories was notoriously hard, and low paid. The work itself inflict tremendous suffering on the workers, with the phosphorous causing a painful bone disease known as Phossy Jaw. Despite the link between phosphorous and the disease the company sacked people who showed symptoms and downplayed the threat. The suffering must have been horrific. Raw quotes one contemporary account of a former Matchwoman who had completely lost her lower jaw.

Gender

The second strand to Raw's book is the question of gender and its role within the strike. Raw argues that you cannot understand the matchwomen's strike without understanding the wider position of women in contemporary society and in the trade union movement of the late 19th century. Despite a few exceptions women workers were not seen as part of the workers movement, in fact, the official trade union movement tended to see women workers as a threat that would reduce male wages or employment. This was closely linked with fixed ideas of gender roles within the family. As Raw writes:

The ideological victory of the concept of 'separate spheres', and all that went with it, had resulted from a long and sometimes hard-fought battle over ideas of sexual morality, the sexual division of labour, and gender itself: what it meant, or should mean, to be a man or a woman in the nineteenth century.

This meant too things. It meant that women who did work, like the matchwomen, were portrayed as immoral, violent and lacking in womanly qualities. But it also impacted on the labour movement and those who wrote its history. The result is, Raw argues, a "history of the figureheads of women's unioniusm rather than of the rank and file, and of these leaders' estimations of the female workforce, often as weak and undisciplined before the imposition of order from outside". Here is the origin of the myth that the strike was "Socialist-led" or organised by Annie Besant.

Raw's book rescues the Matchwomen from a "gender blind" tradition that cannot conceive that ordinary women could self-organise and defeat a powerful and rich employer. But her book is much more than this. While telling the story of the strike Raw also tells us the story of working class life in the East End - the extreme poverty, the appalling conditions at work and home, the arrogance of the middle and ruling classes who only saw violence and promiscuity. Against this Raw shows us a world of solidarity and self-organisation. Of women and men who fought as best they could for their neighbours, workmates, communities and their families.

The finest example of this is Raw's argument that there was no real separate between the action of the Matchwomen and the more famous (and more celebrated) strikes that followed. Against those historians who argue that there was a gap, or no interrelation between the events, Raw painstakingly pieces together the close community and family links between dockers, matchwomen and other workers. More recent historians might have believed that there were no links, but that was not true of trade unionists at the time.

Dockers' leaders Tom Mann and Ben Tillett were both unequivocal, indeed generous to an almost surprising degree, in attributing to the matchwomen's action the very beginnings of New Unionism. Tillett described the matchwomen's victory as quite simply 'the beginning of the social convulsion.

In my own studies of rural class struggle I've often noticed how  ruling class accounts of strikes begin with a belief that there must be some outside agitators starting the commotion. They cannot believe that the peasants and labrouers were able in and of themselves to organise, let alone threaten their wealth and power. This condensation is also true of the matchwomen, though in this case, it has also been copied by some labour historians who should have known better. Louise Raw's book is a brilliant rescue of the role of ordinary working class women in fighting to improve their lives. It is also a masterpiece of historical study - a model for those of us trying to understand and write about the struggles of the past. I urge you to read it.

* I would like to add a personal note to this. Louise Raw points out that the Matchwomen marched in 1871 and in 1888 to Parliament via Bow and Mile End. In 2003, when war in Iraq broke out, a march by thousands of school and college students followed the exact same route to Parliament to protest at Tony Blair's war. It was fairly spontaneous, and it is nice to know of the unconscious celebration of East London history.

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Cormac McCarthy - Blood Meridian

The history of the American West is one that is all to often cleansed of its violence. Even modern "Westerns" frequently sanitise the killing through ritual gunfights - highly choreographed shootings. The reality is, as one recent history book has shown, that the modern US is built on systematic violence, oppression and exploitation. So I was attracted to Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian precisely because it was supposed to subvert the western genre completely.

It is certainly different. The novel follows the life of "the Kid" a young man from Tennessee who flees his home and joins up with a violent group of Indian hunters on the Texas-Mexican border. For weeks he, and his companions, travel through the deserts hunting down groups of Native Americans and brutally murdering them. These scalp hunters are portrayed as bloodthirsty, alienated, racist killers. Their motivation is initially financial though it becomes genocidal, and after the repeated bloodbaths they drown their sorrows in appalling orgies of drink and rape.

A quick google will show that some one has gone to the trouble of plotting this murderous route onto a map of the US. I'm not sure that the author intended the book to be read as such a literal journey (much like the route taken in McCarthy's other famous work The Road doesn't matter to the plot). McCarthy introduces a collection of vile and surreal characters into the story, and there is a desert showdown of sorts between the Kid and his nemesis, the Judge. But I found the novel's plot barely existed in reality - the tale existed to give the violence a backdrop, rather than the other way around.

Blood Meridian is widely considered one of the greatest novels of North American fiction so I approached reading it with some excitement. My initial enthusiasm was quickly tempered as I found the intensity of the first few chapters giving way to boredom - rather to quickly I found myself immune to the murder; simply taking it as another stage of the Kid's travels. It was only when I realised that this was surely the point, that I re-engaged with the book. Though the Kid and his band are desensitised to the violence, not simply because it is nearly continuous, but also because they have "othered" those they hunt. These are no longer Native Americans, they are animals to be killed for sport and profit.

Other reviewers have noted some deeper themes. The character of the Judge, his relationship to the others in the band, and in particular his violent attraction to young men, and his philosophical discussions are fascinating in themselves, though I liked more how McCarthy depicted the murderous band as being fascinated with the Judge's discussions of history, philosophy and science.

It's "based on true events" but its only real historical accuracy is to say that the West was won through brutal, systematic and racialised violence. Is it a good book? I am not sure. I was shocked, bored, and appalled by turns, and finally disappointed by the ending (though it benefits from a re-reading). I can't even say whether I'd recommend it, though McCarthy is certainly talented, but it is certainly an antidote to the anodyne nature of much of what passes for Westerns.

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Andreas Malm - The Progress of This Storm: Nature & Society in a Warming World

Over the last couple of years there have been intense debates within left ecology about how best to understand the interrelation between society and nature, or even whether there is such a duality as "nature" and "society". Andreas Malm is author of one of the finest studies of the origins of fossil fuel capitalism and his new book is part philosophical study, part polemic and finally a trenchant defence of historical materialism and Marxism as the best tool to understand ecology and the origins of the current environmental crises.

Through the book Malm takes on a whole series of modern philosophical fads, demolishing them with wit and knowledge. In doing so he demonstrates (at least to this reader) that much of philosophy is a set of ideas that bear little relation to reality and offer nothing to those trying to get their heads around the creation of a sustainable future. Malm is an extremely erudite observer shouting "the Emperor has no clothes" at his theoretical targets. Though it must be said that some of these thinkers require little exposing. Take the ideas of Bruno Latour who writes bafflingly "objects have as much agency as persons - for do not hammers hit nails? Do not kettles boil water, knives cut meat" etc. Latour is a highly respected philosopher, but his ideas, when applied to climate crisis aren't simply comical, they become downright dangerous. Latour uses an example of two rivers, one above the other, prevented from intermingling by a human built dam. Malm explains "according to Latour, [this] shows the rivers have goals: the Atchafalaya to swallow the Mississippi, the latter to enter the former." Latour explains, the "connection between a smaller but deeper river and a much wider but higher one is what provides the goals of the two protagonists, what gives them a vector".

Once you are in the realms of seeing "nature" (or components of nature like rivers) as having agency, goals and "vectors" you are edging out society's role within environmental change. Malm's challenge to these ideas is both systematic and entertaining. But more importantly his alternative proves the clarity of the Marxist approach. He begins by trying to understand how it comes to be that one group of people from one country can extract coal from another, and use it to fuel their country's imperial ambitions. This is not because the coal has agency as some might argue, but because they are from a society that requires fossil fuels to further its interests. As Malm writes when discussing Ashley Dawson's Marxist study of extinction,

One emergent property comes into conflict with a whole planet of other emergent properties. This is the necessary and fundamental form of a Marxist account of ecological crisis, which does not exclude other drivers but centres on a feature unique for capitalist relations: the compulsion for perpetually expanding absorption of biophysical resources. Such a property cannot be found in nature. Any creature that had it would be fantastically maladaptive and quickly go extinct; capital has been able to maintain it into the twenty-first century only by establishing complete dominion over tellurian nature. But it cannot go on forever.

It is thus foolhardy as some academics have done to argue that nature no longer exists, but that society and nature have merged to form one. There is of course value to understanding that humans have always interacted with nature and changed it, Marx made the point that there is no "original" nature left anywhere, with the exception of some newly formed coral islands. But this is not to suggest that nature doesn't exist as separate to the human world. Malm quotes John Bellamy Foster approvingly on this subject, "there is no contradiction in seeing society as both separate form and irreducible to the Earth system as a whole, and simultaneously as a fundamental part of it. To call that approach 'dualist' - in the Cartesian sense - is comparable to denying that your heart is both an integral part of the your body and a distinct organ with unique features and functions."

The danger with an approach that sees nature-society as a seamless whole is that it doesn't allow for nature's autonomous behaviour. Again, as Malm writes "Since capital is a human creation, it follows that nature is intrinsically independent of capital, its production and management and domination - which can, from a capitalist standpoint, be highly unnerving".

As we watch the growing environmental crises, the view certainly is unnerving. As capital is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few rich individuals, while the majority suffer the ignominy of poverty, and wealth accumulates at the expense of the world's resources and its ecology, radicals need a theoretical framework that blows away the obscuring smoke and empowers the masses of the world the change it. Andreas Malm's book is a fantastic defence of Marxism as that theory and radicals everywhere should read, think through and argue about.

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Dave Goulson - A Sting in the Tale

This is a charming and entertaining book that at its heart has an important ecological message of interest to anyone concerned about a sustainable future, particularly, an environmentally friendly agriculture. Dave Goulson is a world expert on bumblebees, but he is also an enthusiast for the tiny creatures. He has the rare ability that experts often lack, of making his specialist subject both interesting and accessible. A Sting in the Tale begins with Goulson's childhood fascination with animals, plants and insects, his experiments with taxidermy and butterfly collecting, and his growing awareness of the natural world. It is a story that Goulson tells with wit, and a fair amount of self-deprecating humour, and intertwines it with the history of the study of the bumblebee.

There is an oft repeated quote about bees, attributed to Albert Einstein, (though Goulson argues Einstein was unlikely to have said it) which suggests that if bees die out, human society will rapidly follow. Goulson argues that this isn't realistic, but does explain how central bumblebees are to the pollination of key plants - including fruits, nuts and many other crops that we rely on. He explains in detail the evolution of bumblebees, their central position in plant ecology, and how they have been moved around the world to better serve the interests of agriculture.

I don't have space here to summarise everything about bumblebees that he writes about. The "cuckoo" bees that steal other bee nests, the way that bees use chemicals to detect whether a flower has recently been visited by another bee, how they use colour to avoid predators and so on. Though I feel I should mention that I was fascinated by Goulson's detailed explanation of bee reproduction and how this has, in evolutionary terms,  led to their collective behaviour. In short this is because female bees have more DNA in common with their sisters than their children, which helps create a collective interest.

But for me the key part of the book was the question of bees and agriculture. When writing my own recent article on capitalism and agriculture, I noted the way that a bee industry has developed around the almond industry in California. There, monoculture fields, high usage of pesticides and destruction of the sites (like hedgerows) that bees nest in has created fields devoid of insect life, and bees are brought in their millions across the USA to pollinate crops. Goulson shows how this industry has become global, with factories producing packaged nests for farmers to pollinate crops. Interestingly this is not particularly new, though it is on  massively expanded scale. When European farming moved to New Zealand in the 18th century, bees had to be sent over to pollinate the crops. In turn this had an impact on local ecology (though it created a reservoir of bees to potentially replace extinct species in the UK).

But this isn't simply historical - the introduction of bees for the tomato industry has meant farmers can increase profits massively and cut labour, but it can have a tragic impact on local ecology as bees displace "native" species. The problem isn't simply about the disruption of ecologies. But also that factory farming of bees can produce the perfect environment for the spread of disease. So industrial farming has both damaged the natural communities of bees and produced an industry that also threatens bees! As Goulson writes:

Whether or not a European disease is the cause of these terrible declines, the principle remains. Shipping bees around is inherently risky unless they can be guaranteed to be free of disease. Oddly, despite the commercial trade in bumblebees now being well over twenty years old, there is very little regulations. Honey bees cannot be transported between most countries unless they have been certified free of their major diseases, but no such regulations have been applied to bumblebees.

The book concludes with Goulson's role in trying to preserve and save bumblebees by expanding their natural habitats and educating people about the threats to them. One heartening fact is that farmers seem very keen on being part of the solution, demonstrating once again that rural communities aren't somehow anti-environment and only concerned with profit.

I have no difficultly in recommending Dave Goulson's book. It's an easy read, but full of fascinating information and real insights into ecology. I was annoyed at his tendency for unflattering and jokey descriptions of his students - "she had a very loud voice and an astonishing capacity for food" went one, and "a pretty and terribly well-spoken girl" for another. It felt patronising and unnecessary and detracted from the excellent writing. That aside A Sting in the Tale is a recommended read, and I look forward to reading Goulson's other writings.

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Cixin Liu - The Wandering Earth

Cixin Liu has produced some of the most innovative and entertaining, as well as thought provoking science fiction that I've read in the last couple of years. So I was excited to pick up this volume of his short stories. Like his longer novels these are stimulating and in places unusual, as they subvert many of the established science fiction norms. The majority play around with various threats to Earth and humanity - some of these are natural and others are alien. The titular story considers how humanity might react to an sun that is about to destroy itself and its solar system. The solution, the moving of the Earth, is one that provokes intense debate and discussion. It might be read as a metaphor for the threat from climate change, as many people are swayed by denialism.

I was most struck by the rather poignant story Sun of China which follows Shui Wah on his journey from a tiny unremarkable, and extremely poor village into space. It is very much a story of modern China as Wah travels away from home trying to find work and make his fortune. His eventual employment as a window cleaner on one of Shanghai's numerous steel and glass tower blocks leads him into space. While the story is one purely of Wah's success and personal achievement its wider context is the conquering of space for ordinary working class people - the people who end up doing the maintenance and support for China's space enterprises. Cixin Liu cleverly links the ambitions and successes of Wah, together with the needs of space based economy. How do the capitalists make space travel cheap enough that they can get their labour into orbit?

Taking Care of God explores the return of the "Gods" from space. Gods in this context though are super-beings who firstly seeded Earth and now return seemingly to retire. As with all of Cixin Liu's stories it is multilayered, but raises real questions about how ageing societies, even ones that have conquered interstellar travel, can continue in the face of limited resources.

Several of the stories explore themes that will be known to readers of Cixin Liu's novels, particularly the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy. The idea of "bubble universes" and time travel through hibernation are explored in different ways to the trilogy, but make for entertaining plot premises in themselves. The last two stories in the book are slightly linked, but very different tales. The penultimate one is unashamedly sentimental, and discusses the age old theme of an explorer isolated as an individual but still in contact with the rest of humanity.

The only story I didn't particularly like was Devourer which deals with a external threat to Earth as an alien spacecraft approaches intent on destroying Earth for its resources. There are very strong similarities to Cixin Liu's classic Three Body Problem especially in the high level human discussions about how to fight the aliens. If Three Body Problem followed Devourer, then I'm glad that the author used the short story to work through his ideas, as it doesn't quite come together here. Its treatment in that excellent novel is far superior.

All in all this is a strong collection that fans of Cixin Liu's other work will undoubtedly get a lot out of. I would recommend his novels as a starting point though.

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Rivers Solomon - An Unkindness of Ghosts

***Contains Spoilers***

It is rare to find a genuinely original science fiction novel, but Rivers Solomon's An Unkindness of Ghosts deserves that label. It is set on a generation starship, the Matilda, though the reader is never clear entirely why the ship left its home planet and where it is going. It is entirely possible that none of those on-board know either. The ship's destination is a "promised land" and this is the first clue to the nature of the society on the Matilda.

Whether it began like this or it somehow evolved/degenerated, the people on Matilda live in a society rigidly split by race and class. Those on the lower decks, like the central character in the book Aster, do the majority of the work and are all dark-skinned. The majority of those at the top of the ship's pecking order are white and live lives of extreme luxury. Aster has medical skills and she uses these to help those one her deck and on others. This doesn't mean that she can escape the mind-numbing work producing food for the thousands of people on-board Matilda though, and it is through Aster's eyes that we see how society maintains itself.

Despite the enclosed spaceship, this is not a vessel of shortages. The ruling elite live lives of luxury, with plenty of food, drink and, notably, space. The slaves at the bottom are crowded into communal living, working hard in fields and short of medicines, food and comforts. Despite the overwhelming numbers of slave workers the system is maintained through brutal violence and terror. Physical beatings are common, for the smallest of transgressions, rape and other abuse is common and, because this is a space ship, those at the top of the order even reduce the temperature of the lower decks to ensure cooperation. This results in tragedy. One of the poignant early scenes is when Aster has to remove a young person's foot as a result of frostbite.

Solomon uses the spaceship scenario brilliantly to make sure this isn't simply the antebellum South transposed into space. As Aster moves around the ship we find out that different levels have different languages, histories and beliefs. The author plays around with the use of gendered language and we see how the oppressed develop ways of communicating to get around their "masters".

Gradually Aster learns that her mother left her a secret before her death, one that might open up Matilda's mysteries, but one that puts Aster's in immense danger. That story is well told, but I'll admit that what I mostly enjoyed was the world that the author builds up. Slaves working in a generation spaceship growing food for their masters shouldn't work, but Solomon makes it real.

Like slavery the novel isn't pleasant. Solomon rightly doesn't duck the reality of violence - Aster makes her own medical paste to put on herself to numb the pain of being raped. An event that is common enough that they need to prepare for it. Some of the scenes of violence are painful, but they also serve to contextualise the latter rebellion against the system - one of the more satisfying scenes that I've read in science fiction for a long time.

Reading An Unkindness of Ghosts I was reminded of the story of the Haitian Revolution that was brilliantly retold in a book I reviewed recently. That's not to say that Rivers Solomon has written a work of history (though their own history weighs heavily on the characters in the novel). If anything this is a book about Earth today - with #BlackLivesMatter movements and other anti-racist campaigns fighting bigotry and racism today. With its discussions of class, race and gender it is a book that uses real history and a fictional future to illuminate the world today. I highly recommend it.

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Mandel - Station 11

Julius Caesar - The Conquest of Gaul

Julius Caesar's personal account of his time as military commander (58-50 BCE) in central and north-west Europe is a fascinating read. Caesar has responsibility for an area that mostly covers modern France, Switzerland and parts of Germany and the low countries. Today, his account is often remembered as it contains the first written accounts of Britain and the Britons. But it should also be read for its insights into the reality of the Roman Army.

Rome's imperialism allowed it to gather booty and slaves, essential for the functioning of its economy. But the subduing of huge areas of the continent also allowed it to create areas with which trade was possible. Caesar was mostly concerned with making sure that the local tribes could not damage Rome's economic interests. So some of the book is accounts of Caesar's attempts to create alliances between Rome and various French and Germany tribes. It's fascinating to see how divide and rule is used to undermine the power of the united tribes.

But most of the book is a military account. In places it's breathless as thousands of Roman soldiers and their mercenary allies (often German cavalry) smashes the numerically superior tribes. Sections of the book contain detailed accounts of contemporary warfare. The description of the Siege of Alesia, where the Roman area besieged a town held by the Arveni tribe under the leadership of Vercingetorix. The Roman's completely surrounded the town and held off a huge relief force before winning a military victory that is probably still looked at in academies today.

But what really struck me about reading this book is how it exposes Roman occupation and military action as essentially terror. Hostages are demanded, villages and towns are razed. People are killed in huge numbers when they aren't captured into slavery. Crops are despoiled or stolen to keep the legions marching and the enemies aren't simply defeated, they are smashed.

Setting out once more to harass the Eburones, Caesar sent out in all directions a large force of cavalry that he had collected from the neighbouring tribes. Every village and every building they saw was set on fire; all over the country the cattle were either slaughtered or driven off as booty; and the crops, a part of which had already been laid flat by the autumnal rains, were consumed by the great numbers of horses and men. It seemed certain, therefore, that even if some of the inhabitants had escaped for the moment by hiding, they must die of starvation after the retirement of the troops.

Caesar here is writing about himself in the third person, so this is his own account of events. This sort of mass terror is repeated time and again by the Romans and their allies. What is also remarkable about these descriptions is that they were intended to be read as a celebration and justification of Caesar's actions. In other words, they were read and accepted by the Roman population, who presumably didn't object - or if they did we have no record of it. Certainly Caesar saw no problem in putting his mass oppression in print.

For those interested in military history this is a great read. For those who want to understand the reality of Imperial rule there's also much in it. Sadly the parallel with more recent imperial behaviour is all too clear.

Related Reviews

Harper - The Fate of Rome
Beard - SPQR
Suetonius - The Twelve Caesars
Tacitus - The Annals of Imperial Rome
Plutarch - The Fall of the Roman Republic
Parenti - The Assassination of Julius Caesar

Kyle Harper - The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease & the End of an Empire

I have to admit that I began by disliking Kyle Harper's Fate of Rome. The initial prejudice was because of Harper's use of Malthusian ideas as the intellectual framework for his discussion of Ancient Rome. Reading a book published in 2017 I was surprised to find big chunky quotes from "Parson Malthus" not least because his ideas have repeatedly been challenged and shown wanting.

Persevering with the book however I began to find much of interest. Harper does not abandon his Malthusian positions, but his study of the impact of environmental change and disease on the Roman Empire has much of interest. Harper argues that the fall of the Roman Empire was the "single greatest regression, in all of human history". This was, he says, the result of the contradictions of the Empire coming together with a period of climate change and disease which repeatedly undermined the Empire's rulers' ability to maintain the system.

There are several interlinked contributing factors. The first of these is the environmental context. Harper argues that the Roman Empire arose in a particularly benevolent environmental era - the Roman Climate Optimum (RCO). The RCO is:

poorly defined in time and nature. The chronological boundaries proposed here, ca. 200 BC - AD 150, are a coarse abstraction imposed on a range of evidence, but not arbitrarily. They allow us to describe a phase of late Holocene climate defined by global forcing patterns and a range of proxies displaying some coherence. Buoyed by high levels of insolation and weak volcanic activity, the RCO was a period of warm, wet and stable climate across much of the vast Roman Empire. 

In other words, the RCO allowed big surpluses of food to be grown, agriculture to expand and there were reduced natural disasters to threaten the early Empire.

However the urban nature of the Roman Empire created disease ecologies. The concentration of large numbers of people, in towns and cities that often overwhelmed the sewage systems provided opportunities for disease to flourish. Without any understanding of how disease spread or germ theory, there was little the Romans could do once disease took hold. The results could be devastating. During the Antonine Plague, a disease that was probably small pox, around seven million people died.

The relationship between climate and disease "is not neat and linear". Harper gives us a few examples of how climate change fed the growth and virulence of disease. But his main thesis is that the Roman Empire had little or no protection against disease when it came, and because it was constantly pushing against a Malthusian limit, the results were always catastrophic. While the Empire saw a series of deadly plagues and outbreaks of disease, it seems that the final nail in the coffin was a series of outbreaks in the 500s. In 544 the plague lead to an "unprecedented fiscal-military crisis". The Roman Empire, hitherto reliant on its massive army was unable to mobilise the troops it needed. The repeated outbreaks of plague undermined the viability of the state itself:

The violence of the initial wave reversed two centuries of demographic expansion int he blink of an eye. Then the persistence of plague for two centuries strangled hopes of recovery. If we imagine... a normal growth rate of 0.1 percent per annum leading into the first wave, 50 percent total mortality in an eastern Roman population of 30,000,000, and thereafter a combination of quick recover rates (0.2 percent per annum) and smaller mortality events (10 percent mortality events every 15 years...), the power of the subsequent amplifications to maintain the population at low levels is apparent.

It is difficult to argue against this scenario. But I want to suggest that things were a little more complicated. One thing that is missing from Harper's book is any real discussion about the limitations of Roman society itself. This was a slave economy - the wealth of the Empire was built, in large part, from the labour of slaves. This was a very real limitation on the ability of the Empire to keep expanding, and caused major internal contradictions. The particular nature of Roman society - its highly urban character - arose from the nature of its productive base. The huge populations mentioned are there because there are lots of slaves in the economy. There is nothing here about the interaction between the different classes - the tensions in the cities that meant Emperors had to constantly think about appeasing the mob, the slave revolts, or the condition of the peasantry. One of the strengths of Mary Beard's recent history of Rome is that she points out that the vast majority of the Roman population worked all their lives until they died. Tensions between those at the bottom of society and the one percent were a constant concern for the ruling classes - yet the nature of Roman society is minimised in the face of the external threat from climate and disease. While it would be wrong to ignore these factors, to reduce the rise and fall of a civilisation simply to them is inadequate. Writing about the barbarian attacks on Rome Harper writes:

We need not go in for monocausal explanations. The coming of the Huns did not, by itself, spell the doom of the western empire. In the end the Huns conquered very little, and the effect of their entrance onto the scene must be measured within the particular circumstance that they encountered.

What is true of the Huns is also true of climate and disease. Their impact must be measured against the nature of Roman society that made it vulnerable. In this Harper's book proves inadequate. The reason for this inadequacy is that Harper's starting point is Malthusian - that every human society faces a brick wall against which it constantly presses, and mass hunger (or ecological crisis) is just around the corner. Karl Marx pointed out that the problem with Malthus was that he ignored the economic and social context. As Marx wrote:

overpopulation is... a historically determined relation, in no way determined by abstract numbers or by the absolute limit of the productivity of the necessaries of life, but by limits posited rather by specific conditions of production. As well as restricted numerically. How small do the numbers which meant overpopulation for the Athenians appear to us!

Despite my disagreement with his thesis, I found much of interest in Harper's book. After finishing it, I read Caesars account of the Conquest of Gaul and I was pleased to note a bit when Caesar complains that the barbarians constantly mock the Romans for their short stature. Harper explains that Roman society was inherently unhealthy. Statistical studies of bones show that the coming of the Empire led to smaller stature. People were taller before and after the Empire, but while it ruled their region they were less healthy and were thus shorter. Such details and Harper's detailed studies of the impact of disease on the Roman Empire are fascinating. But the book is undermined by a weak theoretical framework.

Related Reviews

Beard - SPQR
Beard - The Roman Triumph
Everitt - The First Emperor
Syme - The Roman Revolution
McAnany & Yoffee - Questioning Collapse

Jeannette Ng - Under the Pendulum Sun

What would happen if Victorian England, in all its colonial glory, discovered fairy land? This is the intriguing basis for Jeannette Ng's new novel Under the Pendulum Sun. Catherine Helston is a classic example of her class. A young woman born into a middle class family, the daughter of a minister. Her beloved elder brother, Laon, follows their father into the church and becomes a missionary in the country of Arcadia - the land of the Fae.

Left behind in England, Catherine has little to do. Her upbringing has prepared her for a life of sewing, embroidery and tea parties. However when Laon's letters end she begins to fear for him, and eventually receives a letter from the missionary organisation asking her to try and find him. Once in Arcadia Catherine finds herself in a world that is both mysterious and constantly changing. Arcadia isn't simply another part of Earth, it's a place that can only be visited by getting lost (which is why Captain Cook found his way there on one of his voyages). It's a world that is utterly alien - the novel's title refers to the Pendulum Sun of Arcadia, that swings back and forth across the land.

Ng describes the world well. Inhabited by very strange characters and creatures, Catherine has to battle to escape being trapped in a pastiche of her life in England - stuck in a bizarre castle with a few strange characters, one of whom wants to discuss the finer points of Christian doctrine and the other who would mostly not tell Catherine any details of life, but instead take tea and sew.

Eventually Laon does return and Catherine and him find themselves in the midst of rather a complicated situation whereby the Queen of the Fae appears to be setting either a test, or a trap. There's a couple of twists to keep the reader hooked, though I thought the main plot turn was fairly expected. Ng portrays well the stifling nature of Victorian society for the female sex, and the simmering repressed sexuality for the middle classes.

More interestingly I was struck by a number of themes here. One of which is the neat way that Ng upends the dominant colonial mindset of Victorian England. During that period, the sun never set on the British Empire, and the British establishment want to extend that rule to Arcadia. Others are also interested - I loved the idea that Germany was building a railway to Arcadia consisting of a clockwork system to randomly move trains along points so they became lost.

The central ideology of the British Empire was that the English were the most superior race and everyone else was subsurvient. Yet in Arcadia their rules and methods don't work. Here Christianity makes no sense (despite the desperate attempts by Catherine and Laon to find the Fae in the Bible). Here military might is foiled by magic, and while there is much material to trade, it seems that Arcadia gets as much out of the exchange as the human world.

In the end Catherine and Laon find that they have no power in Arcadia. They have become living proof that British rule cannot extend into the lands of magic. But the nature of their Fall also means that they cannot ever return to their old lives. Under the Pendulum Sun is thus more than a simple novel of the Fae (to quote it's subtitle) but instead is quite a rather clever morality tale that shows what can happen to those who believe their culture is far superior to everyone else's. It's a great novel and despite a few errors that should have been caught in editing I enjoyed it alot.

Stephen Mosley - The Chimney of the World: A History of Smoke Pollution in Victorian & Edwardian Manchester

Stephen Mosley's The Chimney of the World is a fascinating book about one of the earliest environmental problems for a major industrial city, but for today's activists concerned about climate change and air pollution in the 21st century it will stimulate many thoughts about how we meet the environmental challenges we face. I read this book for two reasons. Firstly I live in Manchester today and before that lived in Salford for many years. Secondly I am an environmental and socialist activist and one of the key campaigns I'm involved in is against the extension of fossil fuel use through fracking. Thus Mosley's book resonates on several levels for me.

In 1898 there were 1,200 factory chimneys in Manchester and about 760 in next door Salford. To people living here today the figures sound incredible. In addition to these, every home had at least one chimney which was also producing smoke, and there were hundreds more in the towns that today make up Greater Manchester, many of these like Oldham, Rochdale and Stockport, themselves centres of industry. All these factories were belching smoke because they burnt coal to provide energy, and the homes used it for heating and cooking. The pollution was staggering.

In 1888 someone living in Ancoats, Manchester's main industrial area wrote:

The atmosphere in this neighbourhood is so dense with smoke that it is impossible to see any object at a distance of a few hundred years; and, as for sunshine, I have lived here ten years and never seen what could be called 'brilliant sunshine'.

In 1901 another observer wrote:

Deadly suburban fields form the most extensive element of the background; but what rivet the eye are the scores, and scores again, of mill chimneys, tall, straight, and lank, belching forth volumes of black, dense smoke straight at the rocks on which we stand! [Blackstone Edge] Rochdale, Littleborough, Bacup, Burnley, Nelson, Colne - each contributes its quota... and the great smoke drift from South an East Lancashire [can] be seen crossing over the Pennine Range of moorlands and then mingling with the West Riding smoke.

Smoke and fogs on this scale had an enormous impact on the health of the people living in Greater Manchester and beyond. The economic impacts were also huge. What we now call acid rain destroyed buildings in the area and much further afield - in fact the pH of acid was much lower than that experienced in Europe in more modern times. Nothing was clean for more than a few hours, and Mosley documents a couple of cases of women driven mentally ill by constant cleaning - a never ending battle. The Victorians put great emphasis on the need for nature and clean air to prevent ill health, but the parks that they built in Manchester were constantly destroyed by the acid rain, the lack of sunlight and the chemical pollution. Even the council's attempts to put planted trees around municipal buildings relied on the constant ability to cycle the plants into the countryside were they could recover after a few months.

But it was the human impact that is most shocking. By the 1870s Mosley reports, bronchitis had become the most common form of death in "England's factory towns, consistently killing between 50,000 and 70,000 people per annum". In Salford an 1881 report said that 598 out of 100,000 people die annually from lung complaints, compared to 334 in Mid-Cheshire only a few miles away. The contrast between health in industrial towns and rural areas was well know. In addition, sunlight killed TB and "rickets... [was] brought about by the combination of a dietary deficiency of vitamin D and sunlight deprivation".

But despite this, Mosley explains, there was no popular mass movement against smoke and pollution. The reasons, he argues, having nothing to do with lack of awareness of smoke or anger against it. People, including working people, clearly disliked the pollution. The reasons that anti-smoke and clean air campaigns never attracted mass support were mostly linked to economic reasons.

Firstly, Mosley provides ample evidence, that working people in particular associated smoke with prosperity. Chimney's without smoke meant economic down time, unemployment and poverty. As one visitor to Lancashire wrote in 1842:

Thank God, smoke is rising from the lofty chimneys of most of the! for I have not travelled thus far without learning, by many a painful illustration, that the absence of smoke from the factory-chimney indicates the quenching of the fire on many a domestic hearth, want of employment to many a willing labourer, and want of bread to many an honest family.

Smoke meant industry and well-being. This was something played upon by the manufacturers who tried to block attempts to encourage them to use smoke reducing technology by emphasising the economic impact. Indeed the manufacturers did manage to get their workers to protest and picket anti-smoke meetings and activists were attacked on occasion.

In terms of domestic pollution from home fires, another factor played a role. This was the close association in the Victorian mind of the benefits of a warm, open fire in the house as a centre for family life, and as a way of drawing clean air into the house. Tackling the home fires would mean a drastic alteration to behaviour.

To get around these issues, the anti-smoke campaigns tried to play the factory owners on their own territory. One of their main arguments was that smoke represented waste energy - inefficiently burnt coal - and that reducing smoke could save costs. But they found it extremely difficult to prove that the savings were worth the cost of installing specialist equipment and, they had to challenge the industrialists wealth and political power. Without a mass campaign the campaigners lacked political and social weight, and if anything the workers were on the side of the bosses. Despite firm evidence of the toll of the pollution on lives, as late as 1897 some doctors could confidently say that the smoke was not unhealthy.

But there was growing pressure on politicians for action. The Boer War found the working class so unhealthy that it was difficult to find able-bodied men to fight. Of eleven thousand Mancunions who volunteered to fight, 8,000 were rejected because of ill health and of the 3,000 who did join up, only 1,200 were found "moderately fit". But the anti-pollution measures that were introduced were ineffective and the fines so small, and the crimes so difficult to prove, that manufacturers didn't change their behaviour. In fact it wasn't until the 20th century that governments finally acted seriously to stop smoke, in particular as a result of the "Great Smog" of December 1952 that killed 3,000 people in London.

What can we learn for today? Firstly note some parallels. The Victorians had an optimistic belief in technological development to solve their pollution problems and while there were inventions that would reduce smoke considerably, as well as changes to working practises, the manufacturers resisted their introduction in order to maximise their profits. There are many similarities with modern pollution and companies refusing to innovate or introduce technologies because of costs.

Secondly, environmental activists often come up against the question of the economy. President Trump, for instance, frequently plays up the cost to the US economy of action on global warming when compared against China. He plays the jobs versus the environment card. In Victorian and Edwardian Manchester big-business was able to bring workers onto their side, because there wasn't an alternative narrative that attracted workers. Today when we argue against fossil fuels we have to provide an alternative that doesn't alienate workers but makes them feel they have an interest in opposition to the industries that might be providing work. In the UK, one example of this is the Million Climate Jobs Campaign. Finally, there are parallels with the cultural practises of in the 19th century around home fires and today's use of cars. Stephen Mosley makes this point when he argues that car-owners don't want to give up their vehicles in the same way as their predecessors clung on to coal fires  - "the extraordinary affection that the nation once held for the smoky domestic hearth... is rivalled by the contemporary attachment to the... automobile".

Stephen Mosley poses all these questions for us through the prism of historical campaigns to end pollution. If it only did this it would still be a valuable book, but his work is also fascinating, readable and entertaining. It ought to be read by a new generation of political activists and social historians.

Related Reviews

Malm - Fossil Capital
Nikiforuk - Tar Sands
Heinberg - Snake Oil
Engels - The Condition of the Working Class in England
Roberts - The Classic Slum
Roberts - A Ragged Schooling

Adrian Tchaikovsky - Children of Time

This is an unusual and sometimes strange novel. It follows two attempts by humanity to colonise and terraform far distant worlds. The first of this is abruptly terminated when human civilisation collapses, but not before colonists have seeded a planet with earth creatures and a virus intended to allow the apes they've left to evolve rapidly into humans.

The second expedition follows the second colonisation attempt by a new human civilisation that has grown up on the ruins of the old. These are fleeing an Earth that can no longer support human society and have the old world's star charts to follow. When they arrive at the seeded planet they find things have not gone as the original mission intended.

The novel's chapters alternate between what takes place in space, mostly on humanities ship, and what's taking place on the planetary surface. I won't describe the latter as its too much of a spoiler, and frankly, part of the fun is in watching this develop through the book. But I should say there are some interesting discussions about gender and society as a result of Adrian Tchaikovsky's very alien civilisation.

On board the ship we follow the lives of a number of "key crew" who, because they are in suspended animation through the centuries long journey, get to experience all the major events in the story. It's a useful plot device and the main character, who is a academic expert on the old human civilisation, gives a nicely cynical view of events.

This is the first Adrian Tchaikovsky novel I've read and it is certainly different. It's not particularly subtle, but it has a genuinely original set of ideas at its heart and fans of science fiction should enjoy it.

Eric Holt-Giménez - A Foodie's Guide to Capitalism

There is a growing movement of people thinking about how their food is grown, what it contains and its impact on their health and the environment. Often this is tied up with an individualistic view of improving the world - the idea that you can save the world by simply choosing the best food with the least impact on the planet. Eric Holt-Giménez explains he wrote A Foodie's Guide to Capitalism precisely to argue that this approach is inadequate:

This book is intended as a political-economic tool kit for the food movement - from foodies, farmers, farm justice activists, and concerned consumers to climate justice and environmental activists. It is a basic introduction to the economic system of capitalism as seen through the lens of the food system.

In this, Holt-Giménez succeeds admirably. His book is an accessible account of how capitalism works from a Marxist perspective that is focused on the food system, from those who work in the industry, to those who grow the food and how multinational corporations and the profit motive shape the type of food that is produced and how it is grown.

One explain the author gives is the story of the fashionable superfood quinoa. This is an ancient South America staple "poor people's food" which was discovered by wealthy foodies and rapidly became transformed into an expensive export. The locals who had relied on this food for years suddenly couldn't afford it having to switch to "cheap imported bread and pastas for nourishment" and the crop's agriculture was transformed. No longer part of a "complex cropping and animal husbandry rotation system" quinoa instead was grown in huge mono-cultural fields. In turn this displaced the llamas from the grazing areas they've lived on for millennia. Thus the "quinoa boom" gives wealthy western consumers access to a healthy food stuff, but only by breaking up traditional and sustainable food systems in South America - and forcing those peasants to eat less healthily.

The central story here could be applied to thousands of examples from around the globe. In its drive to maximise profits the food corporations transform agriculture into an unsustainable, unhealthy system at the expense of those who produce the food and the planets eco-systems. Much of Holt-Giménez's book explains how this happens and why this is, and one of its strengths is that he never forgets that food is produced by human beings labouring, usually in extremely low paid, exploitative roles. I was struck that the author focused on the peasantry not just as victims of the capitalist food system - people who are impoverished, driven off their land, living in poverty or, forced to migrate in their millions in the hope of better lives - but also as the people who can remake the food system along equitable and sustainable lines.

This focus on the workers and peasants of the system means Holt-Giménez can discuss aspects of food that are seldom acknowledged by liberal foodies - including the racism and sexism at the heart of the exploitative relations between "big food" and "big agriculture" and those who work in them. There is also some useful material here on the importance of immigrant labour to the production of food and while the examples are predominately from North America the same could be said of the UK and Europe (and no doubt many other parts of the world).

Because Holt-Giménez uses a Marxist framework to explain the capitalist food system he has some real insights that might be missed by non-socialist authors. One of these is the centrality of the question of what Marxists call "socially necessary labour time". This, in short, explains how the price of manufactured commodities under capitalism is shaped by a rough average of the amount of human labour that goes into producing something. Looking at the example of organic food, Holt-Giménez points out that it should be much more expensive as it involves more human labour - despite the farmer using less expensive "external inputs" like chemical fertliser. So organic food is more expensive, not lots more expensive, because the price is determined "by the socially necessary labour time to produce a similar conventional product". Capitalist agriculture wants to drive this down, to maximise profits, but only at the expense of those working in the system.

Ever since peasants were pushed off the land and made dependent on wages, agricultural labour has been paid far less than its social value (what it costs to reproduce a farmworker's capacity to work), much less what it adds to the price... of food products.... The low cost of immigrant labour works like a tremendous subsidy, imparting value to crops and agricultural land... The effect of criminalizing immigrant labour is to drive down its cost while passing the vale of immigrant labour power up the food chain.

Calls to "fix a broken food system" are misplaced says  Holt-Giménez. What is needed is a radical reconstruction of the food system in terms for farmers, consumers and the planet. He concludes:

Capitalism is the silent ingredient in our food. It means that the 50 million people living in poverty in the richest country on earth - many of whom grow, harvest, process and serve our food - can't afford to be foodies because they're too busy worrying where their next meal is coming from... It is also the food manufacturers' quest for profits that pushes people to consume unhealthy junk foods high in sugar, salt, fat, artificial flavours, and other additives. If we care about people as much as we do about food, and if we really want to change the food system, we'd better become fluent in capitalism.

Holt-Giménez's book explains this system very well - from land-grabs to the centrality of fossil fuel and the persistence of the peasantry. If I have one criticism it is that I felt Holt-Giménez did not go far enough in explaining how a socialist food system, one that arose from a revolutionary movement might work. I wonder if this is because of the failures of the forced collectivisation that took place under the Soviet Union. However a truly collective, democratically organised food industry would work very differently to the Soviet disaster, and would certainly offer the change of a sustainable, equitable and healthy food system. Our vision, as Holt-Giménez points out, must be far more than a fixing of the broken system. But then I think we should try and spell it out more. I have tried in some of my own writings to explore this, and perhaps in the future we'll need a "Foodie's Guide to Socialism". That criticism aside, Eric Holt-Giménez's book is a very important guide to capitalism for those who want to eat healthier, better, more sustainable and with more regard for those who work at every level in capitalism's broken food and agricultural system.

Related Reviews

Sutton - Food Worth Fighting For
Magdoff & Tokar - Agriculture and Food in Crisis
McMahon - Feeding Frenzy
Lymbery - Farmageddon
GRAIN - The Great Climate Robbery
Graham-Leigh - A Diet of Austerity

Peter Watts - Echopraxia

Despite enjoying the first volume of this short series by Peter Watts, I found Echopraxia to be utterly incomprehensible. The story follows the adventures of a biologist Daniel Bruks who is caught up in a space mission to investigate events described in the first book, Blindsight. That novel was marked by some interesting discussions on the nature of consciousness and humanity, as well as a relatively clever first contact plot.

Echopraxia on the other hand is a constant stream of events that are impossible to understand as a story line. Things happen to characters for no apparent reason and are never explained. Characters are two dimensional cut outs that don't engage the readers sympathies. The reason for the space mission is unclear and what the characters are actually doing in space is never explained satisfactorily and in places the author inserts random bits of techno-babble seemingly to keep the reader convinced that this is actually a very clever piece of hard science fiction

The first volume is a decent piece of writing. The second is over-complicated, confusing and in places unreadable. Read the first if you like very hard science fiction and skip the second.

Related Reviews

Watts - Blindsight

Kohei Saito - Karl Marx's Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature & the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy

Kohei Saito's book Karl Marx's Ecosocialism is a detailed examination of the way that Marx's ideas of what we would today call ecology developed and evolved. Kohei Saito engages closely with all of Marx's work - from his published writings, his unpublished (until recently) notebooks, as well as the margin notes and comments that were made in other peoples' writings. Importantly, Kohei Saito also examines the works that Marx himself read to show how Marx was aware of, and increasingly put the question of the "metabolic interaction" between human society and nature into his critique of political economy.

Key to this is Marx's own understanding of the law of value and his theory of alienation, developed earlier in his life. In places this can be a challenging read, but it is important and very rewarding. I recently selected it as one of my reads of 2017 and hope others will engage with Kohei Saito's work.

My longer review of this important book was published in Monthly Review April 2018. You can read it here.

Joanne Paul - Thomas More

Thomas More was one of England's most important philosophers. A prolific writer and thinker, his writings and ideas are often neglected today with most people knowing him for his role in Henry VIII's court and his most famous work Utopia. So Joanne Paul's new book that explores and rescues More's work is to be very much welcomed.

More's ideas were very much rooted in established ideas, as Paul explains:

More was heavily influenced by the memento mori medieval tradition, which sought to remind people of their death as a way of dissuading them from sinful living. Fore More, the fleeting nature of this life and of what it contains puts one in mind of what is eternal: notably, our equality and commonality. As we are all essentially the same before birth and after death, we should remember these lessons in our daily lives, avoiding the temptation to feel pride in worldly things; after all, our ownership of them doesn't last very long.

But More was also shaped by the changing world that he was living in. Paul points out that the "unsettled world" of the War of the Roses, the "rebellions of the 1490s" would have played their role in shaping his ideas about society. But More was also challenged in his world view by the reformation, and Paul's book makes it clear that More's response to that showed just how well-rounded and thought through More's ideas were.

Central to this was the sense of the "commonality" the collective society to which everyone belonged. More built upon other ancient thinkers to argue that the collective interest was challenged, or undermined, when individuals started to put their own interests first (pride). This meant that an individuals obsession with earthly riches, or private property, was a problem for the whole of the community as it undermined its unity.

As Paul explains, More was in favour of equality, but did not necessarily think that people were equal.

Part of his [More's] critique of the absurdity of social hierarchy was that it was based on the wrong qualities: birthright rather than merit. For More and his fellow humanists, virtue was what should distinguish people in the commonwealth. This was vera nobilitas - 'true nobility'. Inequality of social position, especially in political rule, could be justified, bit not on the grounds of any material difference between people, such as the random circumstances of birth or the artificial value placed on gold.

For such as short book, Paul does an excellent job in locating More's developing thought in the context of those thinkers around him, and those available to him - particularly the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers. I would have liked to have some discussion about More's class position - it is fascinating, for instance, to note that his ideas and debates about private property come in the context of the beginnings of a new rising class of landowner - the beginnings of the bourgeoisie.

The start of a new order (already making itself felt through enclosure in agricultural areas) that put private gain before collective interest was surely a key factor shaping More's ideas. Famously More commented that "sheep... devour men". But More was explicitly not a revolutionary - in fact he despises anything that upsets the smooth workings of the system. As Paul points out, in Utopia More has one of his characters say "the active citizen ought to play his part in the stage play of politics without upsetting the performance, even though he might see through it."

It's this obsession with unity that undoes More when he comes to the Reformation. Unable to side with Henry VIII's changes precisely because he doesn't want to shatter the unity of the church, he ends up becoming an obstacle  that has to be removed. Paul summarises More's thinking:

A citizen 'cannot give his consent' to Henry's supremacy... because 'many foreign places do not affirm;' this supremacy. In other words, as he had indicated to [Thomas] Cromwell, the problem was that England was only a small part of Christendom: the power of deciding over the headship of the church lay with the general council as a representative of the whole body of Christendom.

I was left with the feeling that More was actually a man whose ideas were in advance of the political and economic development of the society he was part of.  More couldn't yet break with a feudal approach to the king and church, one that allowed the mass of the people full participation in society even though he knew it was a worthwhile aspiration.

Developing these ideas would be the task of later thinkers and activists. Having written myself on the Digger Gerrard Winstanley's vision of Utopia, I was struck, as Paul has been, on the similarities of Winstanley and More's ideas of Utopia. But I think Winstanley goes much further than More does - precisely because the society that Winstanley is living in has developed economically much further. Which is why Winstanley places so much emphasis on economic production, unlike More who focuses on ideas.

A small weakness with Paul's book is that she decouples More to a certain extent from the changing economic system he was living in and focuses on his ideas abstracted from society. The Reformation had very real economic roots and neglecting them can lead us to understand the process through individuals and not their interactions with world around them.

The final section of Paul's book looks at the legacy of More's ideas in the Early Modern and modern periods. She notes that More has been adopted by many people, with leading Marxists often claiming his as the first socialist. This I think is unfair, as More wasn't really a communist in the sense that Winstanley was a century later. But More was responding to the changing world around him, and he wanted a better commonwealth for all. So in that sense he remains important to us today. Joanne Paul's excellent and readable introduction will hopefully give a new generation reason to read and debate Thomas More.

Related Reviews

Duffy - Stripping of the Altars
MacCulloch - Reformation
Tawney - Religion and the Rise of Capitalism
Hoyle - The Pilgrimage of Grace
Winstanley - The Law of Freedom