Seven recent books on movement building, modern capitalism, evolution, ecology and colonialism
Ecosocialist Bookshelf is a monthly column, hosted by Ian Angus. Books described here may be reviewed at length in future. Inclusion of a book does not imply endorsement, or that C&C agrees with everything (or even anything!) it says. Climate & Capitalism has received review copies of some of these books, but we do not receive any payment for reviews or for reader purchases.
Kevin A. Young
ABOLISHING FOSSIL FUELS
Lessons from Movements that Won
PM Press
To win the fight against fossil fuels, the climate movement must learn from past victories. Kevin Young shows that electing and pressuring politicians has rarely been successful — that real gains have almost always been the product of upsurges in the fields, factories and streets. He offers lessons for building a multiracial working-class climate movement that can win a global green transition that’s both equitable and fast.
Gene Ray
AFTER THE HOLOCENE
Planetary Politics for Commoners
Autonomedia
Business-as-usual is leading to hothouse earth and mass extinction, but how can we pull the emergency brake? Ray proposes communing as a pathway to metabolic sanity and collective self-rescue. Because a mass anti-capitalist movement does not yet exist, he writes, “the building of a world of worlds against capitalism will have to begin within it.”
Kevin N. Lala, Tobias Uller, Nathalie Feiner, Marcus Feldman, and Scott F. Gilbert
EVOLUTION EVOLVING
The Developmental Origins of Adaptation and Biodiversity
Princeton University Press
Scientific understanding of evolution is itself evolving. Without undermining the central importance of natural selection and other Darwinian foundations, new developmental insights indicate that all organisms possess their own characteristic sets of evolutionary mechanisms. Five leading biologists draw on the latest findings to examine the central role that developmental processes play in evolution.
Neil Davidson
WHAT WAS NEOLIBERALISM?
Studies in the Most Recent Phase of Capitalism 1973-2008
Haymarket Books
It is widely agreed that neoliberalism arose in the wake of the global economic crisis of the 1970s, but there is much debate about how to understand its significance and even how to define it. Neil Davidson, whose death robbed us of an important Marxist thinker, left us this insightful account of what is unique in neoliberalism, and what marks it out as a continuation of capitalism more generally.
David Matthews
THE CLASS STRUGGLE AND WELFARE
Social Policy Under Capitalism
Monthly Review Press
Confronting the hypocritical rhetoric of politicians who castigate welfare beneficiaries as lazy, Matthews shows that the welfare state is essential to the prosperity and health of capitalist economies. The working class must build an alternative type of welfare system — one which looks beyond the state and truly reflects the values of equality, solidarity, and community.
Karen G. Lloyd
INTRATERRESTRIALS
Discovering the Strangest Life on Earth
Princeton University Press
In recent years, biologists have discovered unexpected life – trillions of microbes that live without light or oxygen, deep belief the Earth surface. Lloyd provides a fascinating firsthand account of the search for underground life and discusses These discoveries are challenging science’s most basic assumptions about the nature of life and its possible existence on other planets.
Martin Crook
CAPITALISM, COLONISATION AND THE ECOCIDE-GENOCIDE NEXUS
University of Chicago Press
Focusing on the former British colonies of Kenya and Australia, Crook draws attention to the critical role that ecological destruction has in the genocide of Indigenous and place-based peoples. He synthesizes radical political ecology with a political-economic approach, illuminating the inherent genocidal and ecocidal properties of global capitalism.