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
A review of John Bellamy Foster, The Return of Nature: Socialism and Ecology, Monthly Review Press (2020), £30. Since John Bellamy Foster published Marx’s Ecology in 2000, the idea that Karl Marx had little to say on environmental issues has… Continue Reading
As I write this, a global revolt is shaking ruling classes from Hong Kong to Colombia, via Chile, Haiti, Catalonia, Egypt, Lebanon and Iraq. Protest movements in the United Kingdom are not on the scale of those in other countries.… Continue Reading
This article was written at the time of the first UK school student climate strikes. In February and March 2019, UK school students, in huge numbers, took their place in a global movement. The strikes were inspired by the actions… Continue Reading
Capitalism has placed humanity on a devastating collision course with living nature.1 In its 40-year neoliberal phase alone it has unleashed a scale of ecological destruction that has few precedents across Earth’s entire geological history—we are teetering on the brink… Continue Reading
A review of Martin Empson, Kill all the Gentlemen: Class Struggle and Change in the English Countryside (Bookmarks, 2018), £14.99 When Karl Marx analysed the birth of capitalism he drew attention to what he called the primitive accumulation of capital.… Continue Reading
A review of Penny McCall Howard, Environment, Labour and Capitalism at Sea: “Working the Ground” in Scotland (Manchester University Press, 2017), £75. In the 21st century, 27 million people around the world catch fish for a living which is worth… Continue Reading
A review of Raj Patel and Jason W Moore, A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet (University of California Press, 2017), £19.95. Every airport bookstore features books… Continue Reading
A review of John Bellamy Foster and Paul Burkett, Marx and the Earth: An Anti-Critique (Brill/Haymarket, 2016), £21.99 Marxist analyses of the natural world have been the focus of intense debate recently, and the publication of any book that further… Continue Reading
A review of Andreas Malm, Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming (Verso, 2016), £20 One of the biggest challenges that humanity faces is how to stop global warming. It is clear that if… Continue Reading