samdalefox's reviews
192 reviews

The Destruction of Palestine Is the Destruction of the Earth by Andreas Malm

challenging informative reflective slow-paced

2.75

This is a short essay-form rehash of Malm's PhD thesis which was republished in 'Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming'. It is relevant, it is a useful perspective to take that desrves further enquiry, but my god I found it hard to read; I genuinely dislike the way Malm writes.

So much of this short book was author-centered. Lot's of 'I' sentences, personal history ancedotes etc. Frankly, I don't want to hear a string of these, I want to hear about the subject matter the book promises - the relation between the destruction of Palestine and the destruction of the climate.

Malm does actually touch upon that, but only in sporadic intervals inbetween lengthy sections of history and personal dialogue that both could be condensed, along with other bits of analysis like the morality of armed conflict and the use of technology in resistance, plus rebuttals to criticisms of his work which were so poorly written he shouldn't have bothered. Malm consistently self admittedly states that his essay barely scratches the surface and is a light commentary analysis using limited English sources since he does not speak Arabic. In which case, he should treat it as such, and point to more robust analyses by other academics or sit down and spend some more time of it himself.

"How do we think through the relationship between these two processes? It is with this question the following pages are largely concerned, but they merely scratch the surface. There is nothing here in the way of exhaustive inquiry. The text seeks to approach Palestine as a microcosm of larger processes, focusing on a historical moment in 1840 that I believe has particular importance. Still, the story of what happened then is only told with brevity. There are troves of primary and secondary sources – not least in Arabic – that would have to be plumbed for the whole picture to emerge. Work on other projects has prevented me from giving more than a rough (and lightly referenced) account."

On to the good bits! Malm convincingly traces the parallels and dependencies between petro-states and Israel in maintaining soft power and hard economic power through fossil capital in the middle east through the destruction of Palestine and Palestinians. He presents a solid timeline and good quality sources evidencing the UK's (then later the USA's) plan to use Israel as a colony to maintain its power. This history is given from the pivotal battle of Akka in 1840 with the use of steam boats to the present day. Malm charts the letters between key political figures Palmerston, Shaftesbury, and the other Churchill that explicitly states their intentions to move Jews to the 'empty' land to further the empire's interests. "This, then, was the moment of conception for two interrelated principles: one, no people exists in Palestine; two, the land must be taken with the force of technology running on fossil fuels. As for the former, contemporary Zionists debate who first came up with the slogan ‘a land without a people for a people without a land’, but there is a consensus that it happened around the year 1840." This source in particular was eye-opening to discover:

"Fifty-seven years before the first Zionist congress, seventy-seven years before the Balfour declaration, 107 years before the partition plan, the chief architect of the British Empire near the summit of its power here laid down the formula for the colonisation of Palestine. For some reason, this particular document appears to have never been cited in the entire historiography.

53. Broadlands Archive: Lord Palmerston to Lord Ponsonby, 25 November 1840, GC/PO/755-769."

Malm also touches upon his newly coined term ‘paupericide’ which I think sums up the connection neatly:

"...the relentless expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure beyond all boundaries for a liveable planet. The initial purpose of the act is not to kill anyone per se. The goal of extracting coal or oil or gas is to make money. Once it becomes fully established that this form of money-making actually kills multitudes, however, the absence of intention begins to fill up. As a corollary of the basic insights of climate science, the knowledge is now more or less universally spread: fossil fuels kill people, randomly, blindly, indiscriminately, with a heavy concentration on poor people in the Global South; and they kill in greater numbers the longer business as usual continues... Mass casualties are then an ideologically and mentally processed, de facto accepted result of capital accumulation."

In the last quarter of the main essay Malm finally writes about the touchpoints between the genocide and climate crisis beyond the historical political modes of destruction, such as parallels between victims, e.g., both Palestinian lives affected by imperial genocide and global south lives affected by climate change have no perceived value globally. Though I still found this writing lacking depth. I've included pertinent quotes below.

"More than 5 per cent of annual CO2 emissions stem from the militaries around the world. We often talk about flying and how bad it is for the climate, and it is bad, but civil aviation accounts for about 3 per cent of the total. And the 5 per cent that comes from militaries precede actual war: these are peacetime emissions, made in the process of maintaining the logistical apparatuses and fighting capacities of armies before they go to war."

"Ecocide here fuses with genocide in a manner never seen before. Bosnia was not a less habitable land after 1995 than before 1992. Rwandan soil and water and air went relatively unscathed through the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis. But will people ever be able to live again in Gaza?"

"Destruction and construction are interpenetrating opposites that presuppose one another: the destruction of the planet is the construction of fossil fuel infrastructure; the destruction of Palestine is the construction of racial colonies – or as Theodor Herzl put it in 1896: ‘If I wish to substitute a new building for an old one, I must demolish before I construct.’ Limiting, stopping, reversing the destruction of Palestine and the planet therefore require, as a logically unassailable condition, the destruction of fossil fuel infrastructure and racial colonies – not necessarily their physical destruction; but necessarily their decommissioning and repurposing, in the cases where that is possible, and where not, on the path to their abolition, yes, their physical destruction."

"Perhaps we can then specify this as the first technogenocide. A technogenocide would be defined as a genocide that is 1) executed by means of the most advanced military technology, and 2) at least party animated by the drive to restore it's supremacy after a humiliatingly successful challenge."

"We are grappling with a structural deficit of climate subjectivity and a structural surplus of objective forces of destruction; and perhaps the imbalance is nowhere as extreme as in the Middle East. (Latin America is far richer on the subjective side.)"

"Nelson Mandela - Choose peace, rather than confrontation – except in cases where we cannot proceed, where we cannot move forward. Then, if the only alternative is violence, we will use violence."

Moral Abdication: How the World Failed to Stop the Destruction of Gaza by Didier Fassin

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challenging informative medium-paced

4.0

This is a short, succint, book split into manageable chapters. It does what the title says. 'The present essay is an attempt to analyse what made it impossible for a majority of the leaders, and many among the elites, in Western countries, to grasp the meaning of these two series of events [Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and Israel's response] and recognize the ethical responsibility they entailed.'

I think the book is written clearly enough that most people will be able to engage with it without having to have any formal study of moral philosophy or a thorough understanding of Israel-Palestine history. Having said that, I did have to look up a few words and political events. So maybe this is best suited to lay-people with an active interest.

The essay covers the relevant arguments with effective anylsis and appears reasonably balanced and well referenced. There were a couple of points of view I hadn't heard before which was nice surprise. The reason this is 4 stars, not 5 is because I think there were three pretty big topics not touched upon sufficiently: 1) the morality of guilt, 2) missing analysis about the specific confinement of armed resistance, and 3) economic arguments linked to capitalism/empire. The other verso publication "The Destruction of Palestine Is the Destruction of the Earth" does explore the economic/empire topic in more depth so is good supplementary reading, but is more poorly written in my opinion.

Some of the topics covered in the book: the language used to describe events, inequity between Israelis and Palestinians, revisionism, the interpretation of terrorism, the legal definition of genocide, the changed official and unofficial definitions of Antisemitism, strategic philosemitism, the arms industry and war economy, Islamophobia , the changed position of PLO, freedom of speech, censorship and self censorship, critical expression, necessary conditions for reconcilliation.

Further resources:

1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
Reports from The UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Occupied Territories, Francesca Albanese
Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition, of antisemitism: ‘antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews’, ... ‘criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic’.
The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, 2020

Quotes

"The notion of consent probably requires some clarification. There are two distinct dimensions to it. The first is passive: not opposing a project, whose realization is thereby facilitated. The second is active: approving that project, whose realization is thus supported."

"Faced with this refusal of history, it must be recalled that to understand is not necessarily to condone, and that one can attempt to analyse an act even though one condemns it."

"Palestinian resistance is in a catch: when it uses violence it is oppressed, and when it uses diplomatic negotiations it is ignored."

"The point is not to use history to relativize the violence of political organizations classified as terrorist by Western nations, yesterday or today. It is, rather, to conceive that they might be seen differently elsewhere in the world, and that their very status can change over time depending on the balance of forces they have succeeded in establishing in international relations."

"Words matter, especially when they have historical resonance, political meaning and legal implications"

"This querying of the number of dead is a double punishment for the victims of war. Their life has been taken; their death is denied."

"Barbara Cassin has identified the three conditions of success that had to come together to make the transition from war to reconciliation, and thereby deal with hatred: ‘a policy of remembrance, a policy of justice, and a policy of speech’."

Everything to Play For: An Insider's Guide to How Video Games are Changing Our World by Marijam Did

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informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

I suspect that for gamers this book will be uninformative and perhaps even boring. For non-gamers or very casual gamers (like myself) I think this book is excellent and a terrific entry-level introduction into the world.

The book is organised into logically progressing sections which I've given a brief overview of the topics covered below; no spoilers.

Introduction
Tutorial - What videogames are, their importance, and how they fit into our culture
Level I - History of development, narratology, ludology, political & civic impact, persuasive games
Level II - Immeterial labour, free speech, the importance of mods, social capital, recuperation, software modes of production, relational aesthetics, comparison with fine art industry examples
Level III - Further examples of art and politics being used for material political goals, self criticism/evaluation in the gaming industry, social theory, intellectual property
Level IV - unions, hardware modes of production, game development, publication, finance and income models, global south workers' labour conditions, climate change & e-waste pollution, instability of the world wide web, and AI (briefly)
Conclusion

Pros - Did successfully makes the case for the cultural and political importance of videogames as a means of information dissemination/sharing, persuasion/propaganda platform, skill forming, escapism, and community building. She also successfully highlgihts the uniqueness of videogames compared to other art forms and evaluates them critically e.g., "Videogames occupy an odd space; they are the most influential and profitable entertainment strand there is, but at the same time they are exempt from any serious cultural criticism". The biggest strength of the book in my opinion is the breadth, Did covers a lot of ground concisely.

Cons - The double edged sword of covering a lot of ground is that the book lacked deep dives into particular case studies.There were also times where the author contradicted herself, particularly in reference the potential of games to serve as a space for organising. Did argues that games are an underutilsied space for fostering solidarty and left wing movements, as already being done successfully by the right wing, but then says things like 'games are mirrors' and it's hard to convert people through the game itself since "The (cultural) interests advanced are usually ones reflecting what already exists; real political victories are harder to achieve and involve real risk" unless she argues, the games are surprisingly placed or advanced through the gaming commnuities.

The biggest weakness of the book is the lack of focus and deep exploration of the hardware means of production, and alternative systems to replace the current exploitative one. Did literally asks the right questions, then fails to provide any semblence of answers:

"What would a mass version of such manufacturing ethics look like? How could we have computer operating systems and other software that would somehow not perpetuate capitalist practices? These are momentous questions without easy answers; the aim must be to shift gaming and many other digital practices away from their participation in the whirlpool of harm."

..."The scale of the problem only creates a wealth of openings for involvement. If, in the making of a pencil, there exist numerous parts of production and hence numerous points for sabotage, in games and their cursed hardware, there are that many more! The avenues for impact, revision and subversion are ample, and many are revelling in them."

At the start of the book Did says "I long for a day when political games don’t stop at merely critiquing the status quo but provide tools for destabilising it." In this goal Did failed. Her book (a tool itself) did not provide deep enough anlaysis or alternative suggestions to begin destabilising the status quo. And yes books can do this, Walter Rodney's How 'Europe Underdeveloped Africa' is a good example. Did CONSTANTLY refers to the importance of focussing on the hardware mode of production: "The crucial difference must be at the level of the mode of production, as always." and then gave us half a chapter of nothing.

Overall

If you're new to the gaming industry this is an excellent book to read as it covers a lot of ground. In the introduction Did states that "...this book will crystallise a list of aspects to pay attention to when evaluating and scrutinising a videogame for its social efficacy", to that end I think she succeeded. There are also plenty of examples given and good quality references to substantiate her claims. I knocked this down to 4/5 stars for two reasons. First, the depth of writing was often lacking. It would have been nice to see a couple of case studies where Did more deeply explored one area. Second, the final chapter was disappointing. This is my most common critique of left-wing literature. We so often make grand statements about how the world NEEDS to change but then say shyly but we don't really know how to do it or what it will look like. Did brought up a few very solid examples of work ongoing right now (global unionisation, Namibia banning exports of raw materials, the USA introducing legislation regarding hardware manufacture that will introduce competition to the global south...) yet these were not explored and Did provided no unique ideas of her own. Did clearly has a lot of passion and expertise in the gaming field, what we desperately need is leadership in imagination. Please try to imagine alternatives and sketch them out for us. After being told for so long that 'There Is No Alternative', it would be powerful for readers to actually picture an imagined, thought out alternative as a credible alternative. This is a distinctly new phenomonon, left-wing writers from last century frequently tried to describe utopias. Let's bring that back!

Quotes

"In order to imagine a new kind of politics in videogames and in the way they are marketed, perceived and critiqued, we must first reflect on the modes of production of gaming. Videogames are the future of art, entertainment, sports, and community organising, no matter how reluctant some people are to accept it. They are shaping the world around us culturally, economically, linguistically, aesthetically and politically. Our mission, then, is not to opt out, ignoring this gargantuan industry and its effects on the people we love and the people we fear, but to start taking the industry very seriously. Only by injecting fresh, progressive energy into the gaming world can we truly enjoy this invigorating, sensually unmatched medium and its liberatory attributes."

"For anyone who wishes to be called progressive, politics must maintain an open-ended and experimental edge, where attempts are made at reimagining the world beyond the current circumstance. Games are uniquely placed to offer this, by requiring interaction and participation and being themselves ‘places’ where new rules can play out"

"Theodor Adorno would remind us here that much of entertainment is a ritual in which the subjugated celebrate their subjection."

"Workers with discretionary leisure income pay to be entertained, to be compensated for the boredom of their working lives. Collectively hallucinating and preoccupied with survival instead of overthrowing the structures that engender our suffering, we are stuck in pockets of culture as the only space we have any chance of controlling."

"Cultural theorist Walter Benjamin warned that it is not enough to pass something off as having ‘revolutionary content’ while still utilising contemporary relations to production."

"The late academic Mark Fisher wrote extensively about the narrowing of culture and, by extension, pop culture, and his findings can most certainly be applied to videogames. Under a consolidation of political systems (i.e., semi-democratic state market economies), the boundaries for citizen expression are predefined, reducing the plurality of cultural expression as well."

"Crudely speaking, this is art for the sake of its own spectacle and the artist’s material gain, rather than for a change of heart."

[In reference to unions]... "They are often seen by game workers as a service rather than a space for solidarity or for building a movement."

"And while people from ever more diverse demographics are developing more varied games, this centralisation is still likely to shrink the choice of games overall. Bigger and bigger companies are busy working on a smaller catalogue of old intellectual property assets, or even on a single, financially evergreen game. At the same time, most app stores are steadily removing old games from their digital shelves. Other IP never sees the light of day – projects are discontinued mid-production, and the IP is bought so that another company cannot profit from it. This echoes the wastefulness currently rampant in the film industry, where big-budget projects are scrapped before release."

"Industry insiders must agitate for change, but that we also need more direct action, protests and substantial grassroots pressure to turn things around."

"Culture now abandons aspirations to innovation and puts itself in the corner of conformism and profitability."

"This arena is bursting with politics – from the code written, to the theme portrayed, to the human cost of the objects on which games are played. Nothing short of an international worker-led takeover of this industry will suffice to save it, and the planet, from its own greedy, destructive tendencies. Resistance will be fierce – from a brutal last squeeze of the existing extractive practices, to a debasement of the workforce, to attempts to whitewash status-quo gaming and depoliticise union-busting. For the people embedded in the industry, this change must take place to salvage what is to be enjoyed here, not to take it away.

And what can players do to help the people in the industry win the battle for the soul of gaming? Some solutions for more ethical consumption, of course, come to mind – check the source of a game’s materials, the conditions in its factories and the sustainability of its components. Upon purchasing a videogame, consider seeking out information about its makers and their record of treatment of the game’s devs"

"Raymond Williams, ‘to be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing'."

"The ethical scale will not tilt towards equity if we do not employ force."

Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung

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mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.75

I hand on heart honest to God do not understand why people think Bora Chung's work is good. It's just not. There are plenty of much better written feminist speculative body horror short story authors, such as Catherynne M. Valente (Japanese), Yoko Ogawa (Japanese), Izumi Suzuki (Japanese), Carmen Maria Machado (American), Kathryn Scanlan (American), Laura van den Berg (American), Angela Carter (British), James Tiptree Jr (American), Cassandra Khaw (Malaysian). I beg people to read these authors and compare. If people are refering to the visceral grotesqueness of Chung's writing, I specifically direct you to Scanlan's 'Dominant Animals'.

I am clearly in the minorty here but I feel Chung's work is entirely half-baked; many promising ideas are simply not developed at all. Having read both the 'Cursed Bunny' and 'Your Utopia' collections now I also see that her themes are repetitive and predictable, there were no 'twists' or 'shocks' or 'mic drops' at all. I find them utterly boring and un-interrogative. Her works add nothing new to genre. The specific analysis of Korean culture is also lacking. At first I thought perhaps it was the translation of her writing style, but having compared to translated authors Han Kang and Kim Sagwa I'm convinced the deficit comes from Chung's own limitations as an author, not the translator.

The collection averaged at 1.75 stars. The marginally better stories for me were 'Snare' and 'Reunion'. In all instances I am not sure what I was meant to have taken away from the story. I wasn't entertained and any moral or reference to folk law or contemporary issue was vague in its commentary. I am not convinced of Chung's work and shall not be reading anything further from her.

The Head - 1.5⭐ Utterly predictable, what's the moral of the story, is there one?
The Embodiment - 2.5⭐ Visceral, disturbing, potentially a commentary on the difficulties of being a single mother?
Cursed Bunny - 1.5⭐ Predictable, not scary. Not intriguing, why not say more about the practice of cursed fetishes?
The Frozen Finger - 1⭐ Nonsensical.
Snare - 3⭐ Slightly better. Read like a fable or folk tale. The focus was clearly on men's entitlement to and exploitation of others, in particular women. Lost it in the second half, had potential to be better.
Goodbye, My Love - 2⭐ Fine. Potentially interesting but yet again, not explored enough. A sketch of a half formed idea.
Scars - 1⭐ Terrible. A worse version of 'The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas' by Ursula K le Guin.
Home Sweet Home - 1⭐ why, what was the point, barely a twist. Didn't care. Was the child killing people? Sense of comfort?
Ruler of the Winds and Sands - 1⭐ Boring, barely existing point. Told not shown throughout; such lazy writing.
Reunion - 3⭐ Ok. Still unsurprising twist, Chung does ghosts A LOT, but I liked this reflection: "Once you experience a terrible trauma and understand the world from an extreme perspective, it is difficult to overcome this perspective"

Content Warnings

Pharmanomics: How Big Pharma Destroys Global Health by NIck Dearden

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challenging hopeful informative slow-paced

4.5

I have worked in the pharmaceutical industry for 10 years. There was a lot in this book I did know and an awful lot I didn't. Overall, I think the book is well researched, comprehensive, and ambitious in trying to make the information accessible to people who know nothing about the industry. The TLDR message of the book is: The pharmaceutical industry operates in such a way that it does not produce medical products (drugs, devices, vaccines etc.) to adequately address global health needs, and in many cases operates in a way that worsens global health outcomes.

Important note: I read this as an audiobook and hated the format. I didn't enjoy the narrator's voice and I couldn't look up references as I went as I typically would (there were a couple of points I thought were mistakes and would like to have checked). The subject matter is dense and I personally think it's much better suited to physical print so the reader can take the information at their own pace and flip back and forth between pages to remind themselves of salient points. As such, I'm going to read the book again via a physical copy and see if that changes my rating. It will certainly improve my retainment of knowledge from the book. I do not recommend reading this as an audiobook.

In brief the book covers:

A history of scandals (this is limited to those related to profit, there are many more scandals exlusive to ethics and not profit motivated that are not mentioned here if you are interested e.g., the Tuskegee Trials etc.)
A very good explanation of how the industry has become finalicialised since the 1980s onwards. I have personally seen this in operation from 2015 onwards in my personal career. It's spot on, this is exactly how the industry operates.
Uses the COVID-19 pandemic as a case study to explore how the pharmaceutical industry acts globally in relation to academic research, the state, multilateral agreements and legislation, organisations like WHO and the WTO, different healthcare systems in various countries, and ultimately patient accessibility to vaccines.
A critical examination of patent law development e.g, TRIPS
An analysis of how financialisation, patent laws, and other health economic aspects links to historical and contemporary-colonisation of the global south
In the final chapter there are examples given from various countries of proposals of how to reform the system with the aim of improving public health.

As with all books of this ilk, I would like a greater proportion focussing on the solutions. I'd especially like to see some fully fleshed out thoughts around revolutionary solutions, not reformist solutions. However, the solutions cited here came from a good range of global sources so I'm happier than usual. :)

Overall: a necessary book that is ambitious is scope, but diligently introduces readers to the important aspects of the pharmaceutical industry. I beleive the book substantiates its claims with copius credible examples and is reasonable in its criticism.

How to study the violin by J. T. Carrodus

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informative fast-paced

3.25

I've been playing the viola for most of my life, I picked up this book out of interest in my local antique bookshop. I enjoyed the writing style, the language is a little dated but still very easy to read and enjoyable. I liked the way the book was structured with short chapters and arranged progressively. The first half of the book focussed on the title 'how to play the violin', such as how to hold the instrument and bow, and how to approach studying/practicing music. The second half meandered into personal reflections of the author (a celebrated English violinist), which personally I found less interesting as it tended to list dates and names of tutors, orchestras, and festivals.

Overall it's a lovely little book, the technical advice written is still perfectly relevant to the practicing of the violin today and you also get an insight into the life and personality of J.T. Carrodus. An easy read to complete in a couple of sittings for people interested in the violin. I will be hunting for a few more from The Strad series to read.

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

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adventurous funny lighthearted mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

I see the appeal of this - fast paced, action packed sci-fi novella with a funny and sarcastic protagonist. I certainly enjoyed it; I finished it in two sittings and it helped me get out of my reading slump. However, I don't think there was anything particularly amazing about it. Don't go in expecting a deep dive on the ethics and philosophy of robotic autonomy and free will etc., just appreciate it for what it is; a pulpy fun adventurous sci-fi murderbot romp.

Content Warnings

Your Utopia: Stories by Bora Chung

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mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

Overall, this collection of short stories averaged out to 2/5 stars. There were two stories that I think were significantly better than the others (The end of a voyage, and Seed), however overall I didn't enjoy the collection. I don't think Chung's writing style is particuarly interesting or novel, and I found her subject matter frustrating - her ideas seemed interesting but half baked, which made for underdeveloped plots. I honestly don't understand why she recevies so much praise, her 'twist' endings are underwhelming at best. I wouldn't re-read any of these stories again, though I will try her Cursed Bunny collection. I don't think my disappointment is due to a translation barrier since I've read plenty of other translated Korean, Chinese, and Japanese sci-fi and speculative fiction which I have been blown away by.

The center for immortality research - 1⭐
The end of the voyage - 4 ⭐
A very ordinary marriage - 2⭐
Maria, Gratia plena - 1.5⭐
If you're writing a story about an abuse survivor the focus really should be more/entirely on them. I found this split minimising of her suffering.
Your utopia - 1.5⭐
A song for sleep - 1.5 ⭐This one had potential, I do like the idea of the internet of Things Nest take but the ethically grey areas were not explored enough
Seed - 3⭐Good concept, but required much more development
To meet her - 2⭐

Anarchism: The Feminist Connection by Peggy Kornegger

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informative inspiring medium-paced

3.5

I bought this from the Pink Peacock (a queer, yiddish, anti-Zionist, anarchist, vegan pay-what-you-can cafe and info-shop in Glasglow which has now sadly closed) so I was hoping for a little more from this book. First published in 1975, I was expecting some parts to be dated, but I was disappointed at just how lacking in intersectionality it was. Kornegger is American - did she deliberately ignore the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army and their vocal anarchists at the time, such as Assata Shakur and Kuwasi Balagoon? Kornegger definitely sticks firmly to second wave white binary feminism in her essays.

That being said, I liked the conciseness of writing and enjoyed reading about the Spanish Revolution and Paris Commune. I found this much easier to understand than the same history examined by other anarchists, for example Chomsky or Kropotkin respectively. I would have liked her to expand upong the pacifism/armed resitance discourse from a feminist perspective. I also greatly appreciate the referencing throughout and definitions section, this makes the text more accessible to people not familiar with anarchist theory. Kornegger defines anarchism by three major principles:

Belief in the abolition of authority, hierachy, government
Belief in both individuality and collectivity
Belief in both spontaneity and organisation

And buckets the tactics for preparation into:

Educational - how we share our stories with one another
Economic/Political - direct action through sabotage, strike, and boycott
Personal/Political - anarchist affinity groups

Quotes:

[Referring to the French student protestets and wide civil unrest in 1968]

"What is crucial here is the fact that it happened at all. May-June 1968, disproves the common belief that revolution is impossible in an advanced capitalist country. The children of the French middle and working classes, bred to passivity, mindless consumerism, and/or alienated labour, were rejecting much more than capitalism. They were questioning authority itself, demanding the right to a free and meaningful existence. The reasons for revolution in modern industrial society are tus no longer limited to hunger and material scarcityl they include the desire for human liberation from all forms of domination."

"Feminist are dealing with the male domineering attitude toward the external world, allowing only subject/object relationships. Traditional male politics reduces humans to object status and then dominates and manipulates them for abstract 'goals'. Women on the other hand, are trying to develop a conciousness of 'Other' in all areas. We see subject-to-subject relationships as not only desirable but necessary... Together we are working to expand our empathy and understanding of other loving things and identify with those entities outside of ourselves, rather than objectifying them and manipulating them. At this point , a respect for all life is a prerequisite for our very survival."

"Radical feminist theory also criticises male hierachial thought patterns...which alienate us from the continum of human experience. Women are attempting to get rid of these splits, to live in harmoney with the universe as a whole, integrated humans dedicated to the collective of our individual wounds and schisms."

"If we want to 'bring down the patriachy', we need to talk about anarchism, to know exactly what it means and to use that framework to transform ourselves and the structure of our daily lives. Feminism doesn't mean female corporate power or a woman President; it means no corporate power and no Presidents...When we say we are fighting the patriachy, it isn't always clear to all of us that means fighting all hierachy, all leadership, all government, and the very idea of authority itself."

[On prefiguration]

"So what I'm talking about is a long-term process, a series of actions in which we unlearn passivity and learn to take control over our own lives. I am talking about a hollowing out of the present system through the formation of mental and physical (concrete) alternatives for the way things are.

"What we want is not the overthrow of the government, but a situation in which it gets lost in the shuffle."

"Hope is a woman's most powerful revolutionary tool; it is what we give each other every time we share our lives, our work, and our love. It pulls us forward out of self hatred, self-blame, and te fatalism which keeps us prisoners in separate cells. If we surrender to depression and despair now, we are accepting the inevitability of authoritarian politics and patriachal domination. We must not let our pain and anger fade into hopelessness or short-sighted semi-"solutions". Nothing we can do is enough, but on the other hand, those 'small changes'e make in our minds, in our lives, in one another's lives, are not totally futile and ineffectual. It takes a long time to make a revolution: it is something that one both prepares for and lives now. The transformation of the future will not be instantaneous, but it can be total."

Anarchist Communism by Peter Kropotkin

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informative inspiring medium-paced

5.0

As with all older leftist texts, 'Anarchist Communism', or 'The Conquest of Bread', contains certain priciples and ideas that remain fundamental to political and economic thought, and some that are outdated as we now live under corporate capiltalism and in the age of the billionaire. Overall I actually found this quite a diffcult text to read; Kropotkin had a habit of posing an excellent question then spend three pages of waffle before eventually answering it. That being said I'm still going to give it 5 stars as it's The Communist Manifesto's anarchist counter part, it's right that these seminal texts are recognised for the impact they have had.

This text focuses on an important part of revolutions that is critical but overlooked - the 'practical work' i.e., how to literally feed the people during a revolution to avoid them being subdued again, bought by the promise of bread and end to their current suffering. Although the principles are still applicable to this day, I do think we need to rethink the methodology suggested to acheive it. Many of Kropotkin's suggestions rely on an organisation of community (both rural and urban) and a world pre-globalisation that no longer exists. However on the other hand, the example of water supply being a case study of how humans naturally interact with a communialised resourced and relative abundance/scarcity transcends time.

I read the revised editoion, published in 1913 before the Russian revolution, which is worth noting because Kropotkin astutely criticises not only capitalism and democratic socialism (sociaism through reform, not revolution) but also state capitalism which is what we eventually saw the USSR become developing from Marxist-Leninism.

allison_reynolds's review - "His claims in the text are bold, but I think are often perceived as naïve as their boldness stems from extreme compassion and not extreme violence. The first introduction to Kropotkin is usually his idea of mutual aid - that species naturally work to better each other. This text outlines the revolution as a time of community as opposed to the usual idea of revolution being bloodshed. Social upheaval and the way it is thought about all too often falls into the same pattern. Kropotkin here lays the introduction for breaking that pattern."

Quotes:

"Truly we are rich - far richer than we think; rich in what we already possess, richer still in the possibilities of production of our actual mechanical outfit; richest of all in what we might win from our soil, from our manufactures, from our science, from our technical knowledge, were they applied to bringing about the well-being of all."

"In our civilised societies we are rich. Why then are many poor? Why this painful drudgery for the masses?...The socialists have said it and the repeat it unwearingly...It is because all that is necessary for production...all have been seized by the few in a long course of robbery, enforced migration and wars, of ignorance and oppression... - Taking advantage of alleged rights aquired in the past, these few appropraite today two-thirds of the products of human labour, then squander them in the most stupid and shameful way....It is because these few prevent the remainder of men from producing the things they need, and force them to produce, not the necessities of life for all, but whatever offers the greatest profits to the monopolists. In this is the substance of all socialism."

[With respect to the idea of retaining a money economy and sharing the reclaimed profits of labour equitabily amongst workers].

"Science and industry, knowledge and application, discovery and practical realisation leading to new discoveries, cunning of brain and hand, toil of mind and muscle - all work together. Each discovery, each advance, each increase in the sum of human riches, owes its being to the physical and mental travail of the past and the present. By what right can anyone whatever appropriate the least morsel of this immense whole and say - This is mine, not yours?"

"The means of production being the collective work of humanity, the product should be te collective property of the race. Individual appropriation is neither just nor serviceable. All belongs to All. All things are for all men, since all men have need of them, since all men have worked the measure of their strength to produce them, and since it is not possible to evaluate everyone's part in the production of the world's wealth. "

"Nowadays, in te present state of industry whern everything is interdependent, when each branch of production is knit up with all the rest, the attempt to claim an individualist origin for the products of industry is absolutely untenable."

[Criticising wage labour]

"The wage system arises out of the individual ownership of the land and the instruments of labour. It was the necessary condition from the development of capitalist production and will perish with it as 'profit-sharing'/ The common possession of the instruments fo labout must necessarily bring with it the enjoyment in common of the fruits of labour."

"The forms have changed, but the relations have remained the same, and the worker is forced, under the name of free contract, to accept feudal obligations. For, turn where he will, he can find no better conditions. Everything has become provate property, and he must accept, or die of hunger."

"The result of this state of things is that all our production tends in a wrong direction. Enterprise takes no thought for the needs of the community. Its only aim is to increase the gains of the speculator. Hence the constant fluctuations of trade, the periodical industrial crises, each of which throws scores of thousands of workers on the streets."

"The working people cannot purchase with their wages the wealth with which they have produced, and industry seeks foreign markets among the monied classes of other nations...All nations evolve on the same lines, and wars, perpetual wars, breakout for precendence in the market. Wars for the possession of the East, wars for the empire of the sea, wars to impose duties on imports and to dictate conditions to neighbouring states; wars againist those 'blacks' that revolt! The roar of the canon never ceases in the world, whole races are massacred, the states of Europe spend a third of their budgets in armaments; and we know how heavily these taxes fall on the workers."

[On the proliferation of the bourgeoisie middle class]

"Alongside the rapid development of our wealth-producing powers we have an overwhelming increase of middlemen. Instead of capital gradually concentrating itself in a few hands, so that it would only be necessary for the community to dispossess of a few millionaires and enter upon its lawful heritage...the exact reverse is coming to pass: the swarm of parasites is ever increasing."

[On direct and indirect limitations of production]

"it is impossible to reckon in figures the extent to which wealth is restricted indirectly, the extent to which energy is squandered, while it might have been served to produce, and above all prepare the machinery necessary to production. It is enough to cite the immense sums spent by Europe in armaments, for the sole purpose of aquiring control of the markets, and so forcing her own goods on neighbouring territories, and making exploitation easier at home; the millions apid every year to officials of all sorts, whose function it is to maintain the 'rights' of minorities - the right, that is, of a few rich men - to manipulate the economic activities of the nation; the millions spent on judges, prisons, policemen, and all the paraphernalia of so-called justice - spent to no purpose, because we know that every alleviation, however slight, of the wretchedness of our great cities is always followed by a considerable diminuation of crime; lastly, the millions made by propagating pernicious doctrines by means of the press, and news 'cooked' in the interest of this or that party, of the politician or of that group of speculators."

[On the topic of abundance and waste and leisure]

"If we consider on the one hand the rapidity with which civilised nations augment their powers of production, and on the other hand the limits to that production, be it directly or indirectly, by existing conditions, we cannot but conclude that an economic system and trifle more reasonable would permit them to heap up in a few years so many useful products that they would be constrained to say - Enough! We have enough coal and bread and raiment! Let us rest and consider how best to use our powers, how best to employ our leisure."

"If plenty for all is to become a reality, this immense capital - cities, houses, pastures, arable lands, factories, highways, education - must cease to be regarded as private property, for the monopolist to dispose of at his pleasure. This rich endowment, painfully won, builded, fashioned, or invested by our ancestors, must become common property, so that the collective interests of men may gain from it the greatest good of all. There must be expropriation. The well-being of all - the end; expropriation - the means."

"In claiming the right to well-being, they claim the right to take possession of the wealth of the community - to take houses to dwell in according to the needs of each family; to socialise the stores of food and learn the meaning of plenty, after having known famine so well. They provide their right to all social wealth - fruit of the labour of past and present generations - and learn by its means to enjoy those high pleasures of art and science which have too long been monopolised by the rich. And while asserting their right to live in comfort, they assert, what is still more important, their right to decide for themselves what this comfort shall be, what must be produced to ensure it, and what discarded as no longer of value. The right to 'well-being' means the possibility of living like human beings, and bringing up children to be members of a society better than ours, whilst the 'right to work' only means the right to always be a wage-slave, a drudge, ruled over and exploited by the middle class of the future."

[On how to prevent a new rich person from elsewhere from exploiting people within anarchist communism]

"At the root of this argument these is a great error. Those who propound it have never paused to enquire whence comes the fortunes of the rich. A little though weould, however, suffice to show that these fortunes have their beginnings in the poverty of the poor. When there are no longer any destitute, there will not longer be any rich to exploit them."

"Everywhere you will find that the wealth of the wealthy springs from the poverty of the poor."

"Our friends often warn us, 'take care you do not go too far! Humanity cannot be changed in a day, so do not be in too great a hurry with your schemes of expropriation and anarchy, or you will be in danger of achieving no permanent result.' Now, what we fear with regard to expropriation is exactly the contrary. We are afraid of not going far enough, or carrying our expropriation on too small a scale to be lasting. We would not have the revolutionary impulse arrested in mid-career, to exhaust itself in half measures, which would content no-one, and while producing a tremendous confusion in society, and stopping its customary activities, would have no vital power - would merely spread general discontent and inevitably prepare the way for the triumph of reaction."

"All is interdependent in a civilised society; it is impossible to reform any one thing without altering the whole. Therefore, on the day a nation will strike at private property, under any one of its forms, territorial or industrial, it will be obliged to attack them all. The very success of the revolution will impose it."

"If the coming revolution is to be social revolution, it will be distinguished from all former uprisings not only be its aim, but also by its methods. To attain a new end, new means are required."

[On the relationship between the global north exploiting the global south]

"Since all our middle-class civilisation is based upong the exploitation of inferior races and countries with less advanced industrial systems, the revolution will confer a boon at the very outset, by menacing that 'civilsation', and allowing the so-called inferor races to free themselves."

"Let the revolution only get so far, and famine is not the enemy it will have to fear. No, the danger which will menance it lies in timidity, prejudice and half measures."

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