‘Facing the Anthropocene’ is now in its second printing, and Paul Burkett’s brilliant new article is is essential reading for everyone who is concerned about changing and saving the world.
I know I shouldn’t brag, but I can’t resist. Less than a year after publication, Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System is now in its second printing.
Now, this needs to be kept in perspective. It hasn’t made the New York Times bestseller list. I’m pretty sure that more Stephen King and Danielle Steele books are sold every day than my book has in nearly a year.
Nevertheless, most radical books go for years without being reprinted. Many never are. That’s especially true today, when a large proportion are purchased as ebooks. So I’m feeling pretty good.
I’m feeling even better because this month Monthly Review has published An Eco-Revolutionary Tipping Point? in which Paul Burkett reviews Facing the Anthropocene, Andreas Malm’s Fossil Capital and Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything, and extends the arguments of all three books brilliantly, in a stirring and convincing call to action. He writes:
“Just a couple decades ago, we were told that neoliberal capitalism marked the “end of history.” Now it appears that the system’s ideologues may have been right, but not in the way they envisioned. The system of fossil-fueled neoliberal capitalism is indeed moving toward an end of history, but only in the sense of the end of any historical advance of humanity as a productive, political, and cultural species due to the increasingly barbaric socio-economic and environmental conditions the system creates. There is now no alternative to the end of history as we know it. The sustainable development of human society co-evolving with nature including other species now depends on a definite historical break with capitalism (wage-labor, market competition, production for profit) as the dominant mode of production.”
Like Paul’s masterful book Marx and Nature: A Red and Green Perspective, this article is essential reading for everyone who is concerned about changing and saving the world. I’m proud that my book contributed to it.
So, if you see me walking around with a big smile, you’ll know why. Ecosocialism isn’t a mass movement yet, but it is on the move.
Thank you for reading,
Ian
Congratulations Ian. Wishing you the best of success.