A review of Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism, Kohei Saito (Cambridge University Press, 2022) £29.99 Kohei Saito’s work on Marxism, socialism and ecology has become increasingly influential since his first book, Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capital,… Continue Reading
A review of Socialism or Extinction. The Meaning of Revolution in a Time of Ecological Crisis, Martin Empson (Bookmarks, 2022), £10 In 1915, during the First World War, Polish revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg saw two possible futures: socialism or barbarism. In… Continue Reading
The death of Mike Davis on 25 October 2022 at the age of 76 has deprived us of perhaps the outstanding Marxist writer of my generation. He delved deep into the contemporary history of the United States, especially in Southern… Continue Reading
What are the prospects for left politics as 2023 begins?1 To say that the coming year will be one of crisis is simply to state the obvious, a point now accepted across the political spectrum and echoing through end of… Continue Reading
A review of China’s Engine of Environmental Collapse, Richard Smith (Pluto, 2020), £18.99 In 2017, Xi Jinping, China’s president, spoke of developing the country into an “ecological civilisation”. China has signed all the usual international environment and climate agreements and… Continue Reading
Vegetation fires are astonishing in their severity.1 Temperatures are painfully intense along the fire’s ember-strewn edges even before the white-heat heart of the blaze arrives. Their smoke is dense, choking, acrid and debilitating. Their 5 kilometres per hour speed of… Continue Reading
A review of The Imperial Mode of Living: Everyday Life and the Ecological Crisis of Capitalism, Ulrich Brand and Marcus Wissen (Verso, 2021), £16.99 Over the past decade, Marxists have published many valuable works on capitalism and ecology.1 Yet, there… Continue Reading
The need to “seize back control of fishing rights in British waters” was pitched as a symbol of all that was wrong with the European Union by the Leave campaign in the 2016 referendum.1 The right-wing Brexit campaign, including Nigel… Continue Reading
In the 1840s, in the manuscripts later published as The German Ideology, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels set out the first comprehensive statement of the approach to understanding history and society that underlay their writing and political activity for the… Continue Reading
The role of trade unions and organised labour in preventing catastrophic climate change is a burgeoning field of research.1 Many academic contributions investigate climate policy issues but leave aside discussion of workers’ action.2 In contrast, this article focuses on past… Continue Reading