Two views of food and farming. The origin of climate science denial. The high cost of living well. And a socialist who mostly disagrees with ecosocialism
New books for reds and greens
Archive | Capitalism
Book review
Biofuels: A pseudo-green scam that only enriches agribusiness
Ethanol and biodiesel boost corporate profits while doing nothing to solve the world’s growing social and environmental crises
Perspectives
If capitalism must end, what should replace it?
By keeping these simple ideas in mind in all our struggles, we can begin to create a world worthy of our best instincts and desires
Inequality rising
An open letter to Steven Pinker (and Bill Gates, for that matter) about global poverty
Defenders of capitalism claim global poverty is declining. Their arguments are intellectually dishonest and unsupported by facts.
Book review
‘Dust Bowls of Empire’ exposes capital’s global assault on the land
The 1930s Dust Bowl presaged today’s global ecological crises. Hannah Holleman’s brilliant new book shows how and why capital destroys the soil that all life depends on.
Book Review
Can the working class change the world?
A superb popular account of what’s wrong with capitalism and what working people must do to get rid of it. Highly recommended!
Fouling the Earth
It’s time to break up capitalism’s love affair with plastic
A valuable invention is massively misused in the service of profit, producing unprecedented waste and pollution. How can we stop the plastic plague?
Capitalism today
Modern slave ships overfish the oceans
‘Seafood caught illegally or under conditions of modern slavery is laundered by mixing it with legally caught fish before it enters the supply chain.’
Biodiversity
Capitalism is killing the world’s wildlife, not ‘humanity’
By failing to name the system responsible, the new Living Planet report undermines its own call for a collective response to the biodiversity crisis.
Corruption and Militarization
The Tragedy of American Science
Corporations and the Pentagon have transformed science from a creative force for human advancement into its destructive and antihuman opposite.
Reading matters
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, October 2018, Part 2
Can the Working Class Change the World? Plagues and the Paradox of Progress. Fishing and Civilization. History of Fossil Fuel. Monopoly Seeds and the Fight to Save Food
Book Review
A Marxist History of Capitalism
An important work of Marxist history and theory restores class struggle to central place in explaining how capitalism arose and grew, and can eventually be overcome
Reading matters
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, October 2018
New books: Essays for Richard Levins … The Earth is not for Sale … Defending Howard Zinn … The Rise of Capitalism … Degrowth … Climate Justice … Below Freezing
Book Review
Will big business destroy our planet?
Corporate giants are driving the world towards environmental disaster. Will self-preservation force them to pull back and end the destruction?
Book Review
The Omega Principle: A vicious circle of fish, cattle and capitalism
How a giant industry that plunders the seas for tiny fish is reinforcing unsustainable industrial agriculture
John Bellamy Foster:
‘There is still time for an ecological revolution to prevent Hothouse Earth’
We need hundreds of millions of people to mobilize in an independent, revolutionary campaign to reconstitute global production and consumption.
Reading matters
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, August 2018
Six new books for reds & greens. Marxist History of Capitalism. Superbugs. Rising Oceans. Capitalism in Critical Theory. Food Bank Nations. American Oligarchy
Guardian Gets It Wrong
An ecosocialist reply to a defender of ‘green capitalism’
People running big corporations—indeed, those running businesses of all sizes—seek to maximize profits not because they are misguided, but because that’s their job in a capitalist economy.
Movement building
The fires this time: Implications for ecosocialist strategy
A call for public discussion of the role of deindustrialization in building an alternative to the catastrophic course of 21st century capitalism.
No way out
Eternity, nature, society and the absurd fantasies of the rich
The wealthier they are, the more they fear that others will try to take their wealth. No wonder the super-rich are building bunkers to escape the apocalypse.