Posted on January 13th, 2011 in AK Authors!, Reviews of AK Books, Uncategorized
Thanks to Paul Craig Roberts and our friends over at Counterpunch for this great review of Fear of the Animal Planet. Check out the original review here.
A Brief for Animals
By Paul Craig Roberts
Jason Hribal in a book just off the CounterPunch/AK press, Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance, regales the reader with tales of animal rebellion and escape from captivity. In Hribal’s account, when big cats, elephants, and orcas injure or kill their trainers and keepers they are inflicting retribution for the abuse and exploitation that they suffer.
One of Hribal’s most convincing examples is Tatiana, a Siberian tiger in the San Francisco zoo. On December 25, 2007, Tatiana cleared the 12 foot high wall of her enclosure to decimate the teenagers who enjoyed themselves tormenting her. Tatiana ripped one of her tormenters to pieces, and, during her 20 minutes of freedom, she searched the zoo grounds for the other two, ignoring zoo visitors, park employees, and emergency responders. As Hribal puts it, “Tatiana was singular in her purpose.” She could have killed any number of people, but ignored them in pursuit of her tormentors.
Obviously, Tatiana could have escaped from her enclosure whenever she had wished, but had accepted her situation until torment ended her acceptance.
Most people, were they to read Hribal’s book, would have a hard time with the intent that he ascribes to animals. Like the executives of circuses, zoos, and Sea World, most humans ascribe captive animal attacks to unpredictable wild instinct, to accident, or to the animal being spooked by noise or the behavior of some third party. Hribal confronts this view head on. Orcas purposely drown their trainers, and elephants purposely kill their keepers. Captive animals seek escape.
Hribal presents captive animals as exploited and abused slaves serving the profits of their owners. Just as human slaves ran away, captive animals run away. Hribal tells the stories of many animal escapes.
He also tells the story of animal executions. Animals that do not accept their slave status, rebel and cease to perform have been executed in the most barbaric and cruel ways. One can hardly be surprised in these days of “the war on terror” at human cruelty to animals when humans are equally cruel to humans. The video–allegedly leaked by Bradley Manning who is confined by the US military in conditions worse than captive animals–of American soldiers intentionally murdering news reporters and civilians for the fun of it, demonstrates the evil and wickedness that finds its home only in humans.
In contrast, animals do not commit wicked and evil acts. Satan’s sphere belongs to humans. Predator animals kill to eat, but, unlike human hunters, they do not kill for fun.
Lions bring down a wildebeest or an antelope; they do not decimate the entire herd.
In contrast, I have heard hunters describe shooting 1,000 doves in one morning and 500 prairie dogs in one afternoon. It was all done for the fun of killing. Humans get pleasure from killing, but there is no evidence than animals do.
So, we are faced with a paradox: a wicked life form holds a non-wicked life form in captivity. Why did God give the wicked dominion over the non-wicked?
A number of Hribal’s examples of animal abuse date back far in time. Today some of the human species who interact with animals follow a more respectful approach. If animals, as Hribal says, respond to their abuse with intelligence, would they not also respond to affection and respect with intelligence?
The answer seems to be that animals do. We have the case of Christian the lion, the cub rescued from Harrod’s department store in London by two Englishmen who raised an African male lion in their London apartment and exercised him on the Church green.
When Christian became too large to continue living in the London flat, the Englishmen consulted an expert, transported Christian to Africa and released him. A year or so later, the room mates who had raised Christian missed him and returned to Africa to find him.
They were warned by conventional wisdom that Christian was now wild and would be a danger to them if they encountered him.
As the videos available on youtube show, when the men found Christian the lion was overcome with joy and lavished affection on his friends. Christian was forming a pride, and the wild lionesses were content with the human company and to be petted by men. The video shows them all–Christian, lionesses, cubs, and men curled up together taking a nap.
There are a number of videos available online of people who have raised cougars (mountain lions) and bob cats and live with them in their homes. Perhaps the most extraordinary story is that of Casey Anderson, a wildlife naturalist who found two
newborn grizzly cubs next to a dead mother bear and took them home to save.
One didn’t make it, but the other did. The photos on youtube document the interaction between humans and grizzly, considered by many the most dangerous and unpredictable of all wild animals, at least in North America. The 800-pound grizzly enjoys the family swimming pool, Thanksgiving dinner with the extended human family, serves as “best man” in the wedding of his human friend, and demonstrates genuine affection for the man who raised him. It is unclear whether the bear thinks he is human or that the humans are bears, but he, and they, are perfectly at ease with one another.
As this will strike many as unbelievable, see http://www.slideshare.net/Slyoldawg/family-raised-grizzly-bear-3399716
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/expedition-grizzly-3909
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1174259/Meet-Brutus-800lb-grizzly-bear-likes-eat-meals-dinner-table.html
Hribal’s book would have benefitted, in my opinion, from examining what appear to be successful human interactions with animals. Animals’ personalities differ, as do people’s personalities. Just as wives murder husbands, husbands murder wives, mothers murder children, and children murder mothers, animals can turn on their human companions. However, animals seldom turn on humans who treat them with respect and affection.
There are examples of humans interacting successfully with the great predator animals.
The story of Christian the lion is one, but there are others. The “lion man,” Kevin Richardson, did not raise many of the lions with whom he interacts, along with leopards and hyenas, all of whom accept him as one of them. Google Kevin Richardson and watch the extraordinary videos of Kevin’s acceptance by lions as a member of the pride.
Clearly, humans have very little understanding of other life forms and little respect for them. So that we can enjoy transportation in oversize vehicles that get 12 miles to the gallon, we destroy the Gulf of Mexico. What happens to the bird life and aquatic life is of no concern.
Some thoughtful people wonder if humans belong on planet earth. Humans are great destroyers of animal and plant life, water resources, and the soil itself. Some people think of humans as alien invaders of planet earth. If one looks at it in this way, it seems clear that humans have contributed nothing to the health of the planet or to its life forms.
The notion that the life of a human, regardless of the person’s intellect, accomplishment, and moral fiber, is superior to that of an elephant, tiger, lion, leopard, grizzly, orca, eagle, seal, or fox, is a form of hubris that keeps the human race confined in its ignorance.
Humans who fire-bomb civilian cities, drop nuclear bombs on civilian populations, act out ideological hatreds taught to them by sociopaths posing as pundits and journalists, and decimate their own kind out of total ignorance could be regarded as a life form that is inferior to wild animals.
Perhaps the human claim to moral superiority needs questioning. Without the presence of mankind, there would be no evil on the planet.
Many humans have difficulty with the idea that animals have rights. However, in the introduction to Hribal’s book, Jeffrey St. Clair reports that in Europe of the 13th-17th centuries animals had rights and were represented in court by attorneys. This suggests that those who are trying to stop the slaughter of wolves and to protect animal habitat are not modern-day crazies but are empathetic people operating from an old tradition.
Those trying to curtail the abuse of animals face a difficult task. As long as humanity has insufficient empathy for its own kind to stop the slaughter of Afghans, Iraqis, Pakistanis, and Palestinians, protection for animals is unlikely to move to the forefront.
Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
Posted on January 12th, 2011 in AK Distribution, AK News
Okay, so we realize that most people put together their “best-of-the-year” features before said year actually draws to its close. Hope you’ll forgive us the extra couple of weeks. Now that we’ve officially closed out 2010, we’re taking some time to look back at what we managed to accomplish this year (which, by the way, was our 20th anniversary year…look out world, we’re 21 now!).
So, here’s the first of TWO Top 10 lists—the bestselling new AK Press books of 2010. Stay tuned, because coming later this week, we’ll follow it up with a list of the year’s hottest new distribution items!
Top 10 New AK Press Titles of 2010:
1. We Are an Image From the Future: The Greek Revolt of December 2008 [ed. AG Schwarz, Tasos Sagris, & Void Network]
“The Greek book” made a big splash this year—thanks in part to the inspiring US book tour, and also thanks in part to a very strange mention on Glenn Beck’s TV show. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand what happened in Greece, and what’s still going on in Europe today.
2. How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds [Paul Craig Roberts]
We assume this CounterPunch book did particularly well because it’s short, it’s understandable, and it just so happens to answer the question on everyone’s mind. Amid continuing economic crisis, this is the explanation you’ve been waiting for.
3. Common Ground in a Liquid City: Essays in Defense of an Urban Future [Matt Hern]
This book was released to coincide with the 2010 Olympics (and anti-Olympic struggles) in the author’s home city of Vancouver, which he uses as a case study. It’s been well received this year by everyone from reviewers to radical urbanites to college professors. See what all the fuss is about!
4. Black Bloc, White Riot: Anti-Globalization and the Genealogy of Dissent [AK Thompson]
This long-awaited release from Upping the Anti‘s AK Thompson sheds light on the omnipresent issue of political violence, looking particularly at the black bloc, the political trajectory of the white middle class, and the anti-globalization movement. Check out this recent review—or just pick up the book.
5. Uses of a Whirlwind: Movement, Movements, and Contemporary Radical Currents in the United States [ed. Team Colors Collective]
Thanks to an exciting release at the US Social Forum, followed by an extensive national book tour, this collection—a wide-ranging look at social movements in the US today—made a big splash. Read the one essay on our blog, and you’ll be hooked! Also check out the companion volume, Wind(s) from Below: Radical Community Organizing to Make a Revolution Possible.
6. Mountain Justice: Homegrown Resistance to Mountaintop Removal, For the Future of Us All [Tricia Shapiro]
Tricia Shapiro launched her new book at this year’s Baltimore Book Festival, and then took it out on tour. An essential book on the fight against mountaintop removal in Appalachia—check out a couple of Tricia’s reports on MTR resistance for our blog, here and here, to get a feel for her book.
7. Anarchism and its Aspirations [Cindy Milstein]
We knew that this basic introduction to anarchism would be a hit at our tables. It debuted at the Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair, and Cindy has since made appearances at bookfairs in New York, Montreal, Minneapolis, and more! Check out this excerpt from her book, or better yet, read the book and then pass it off to all your anarcho-curious friends.
8. Flash: A Novel [Jim Miller]
AK’s first fiction book! And, thanks to a great launch at the San Diego City College Book Festival, and a touring author (you can catch him in the Bay Area this week—tomorrow evening at Modern Times, Friday at the AK Press warehouse!), it’s been a great success. And, it’s good!
9. Dancing with Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin America [Benjamin Dangl]
This new book, from the author of The Price of Fire, has had a great year! It’s an excellent book if we do say so ourselves, but an extensive author tour and some nice reviews haven’t hurt either. Read all about it (and listen to one of Ben’s talks) here on our blog.
10. Sparking a Worldwide Energy Revolution: Social Struggles in the Transition to a Post-Petrol World [Kolya Abramsky]
This past year has brought its share of environment and energy crises, and it’s time to think about our options for energy production and consumptions outside of capitalism. Kolya Abramsky’s ambitious intervention is a good start. Check out an excerpt from the book, listen to one of his talks, and watch for him on a more extensive tour in 2011!
Honorable mention:
Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures, 1960s to Now [ed. Dara Greenwald & Josh MacPhee]
Just released in November, but a holiday bestseller, this book has already almost made it into the year’s Top 10—so it’s definitely worth a mention here. It’s a huge achievement, a catalog of social movement artwork from all over the world—and it’s getting noticed. For starters, it was reviewed by Peter Linebaugh in Counterpunch—and even Publishers Weekly did an article on the book and our fundraiser for Dara Greenwald’s recovery fund!
And of course, we would be remiss if we didn’t mention the Friends of AK Press program here. In 2010, generous support from the Friends of AK Press helped us to publish all 11 titles mentioned here—plus Carlo Tresca, Academic Repression, A Poetics of Resistance, Dispersing Power, Anarchism and the City, Wasting Libby, Come Hell or High Water, In the Crossfire, Paradoxes of Utopia, and the Work: 2011 Calendar. And in return, Friends of AK each received all of these books in the mail, as they came out! Yowza! Sign up now to help us usher in our 21st year, and ensure a 2011 full of worthy reading material. And a round of applause for all you Friends of AK who helped this great year of publishing happen!
Posted on January 12th, 2011 in Events
THINK YOU KNOW VANCOUVER? THINK AGAIN. As part of Vancouver’s 125th Anniversary year celebrations SFU’s department of History and department of Urban Studies are proud to present the first in a year-long series of lectures based on Vancouver’s history.
Vancouver: The Greatest Place on Earth?
TV and Radio personality Charles Demers and SFU Urban Studies professor Matt Hern talk about Vancouver without the rose-coloured glasses in an honest and witty discussion. Both are authors of recent books exploring various aspects of Vancouver’s history.
This is a free public lecture, but RSVPs are appreciated: http://cgi.sfu.ca/~hccweb/cgi-bin/OnlineRegistration/site/event/detail.php?id=205.
For more info: http://www.sfu.ca/history/van125.htm
Posted on January 8th, 2011 in Reviews of AK Books
Nice, in-depth review of Sparking a Worldwide Energy Revolution: Social Struggles in the Transition to a Post-Petrol World. It comes from the Parasol Climate Collective, and appeared on the Institute for Anarchist Studies website.
———-
All Power to the People: Energy Production and the Climate Crisis
by Lara Messersmith-Glavin, for Parasol Climate Collective
A review of Sparking a Worldwide Energy Revolution: Social Struggles in the Transition to a Post-Petrol World, edited by Kolya Abramsky. (Oakland: AK Press, 2010).
One of the most intimidating aspects of climate change is its scale. When we imagine it as a thing in itself, it becomes monstrous, far out of proportion to our ability to stop or even slow it in its path of influence. We cannot petition or strike against it. We cannot use rocks or molotovs or even guns to slow it down. It is already happening: the earth is warming, little by little, and with that shift we witness a seemingly endless chain of results, from catastrophic storms and droughts to changes in human and animal migration patterns, disappearance of species, and altered ocean chemistry. In the face of these effects, it is easy to feel overwhelmed, and to turn one’s attention to those problems which seem more solvable, and less apocalyptic. Yet it is important to remember that the engine behind this global dilemma is human activity, and is therefore human in scale. The better we are able to break the issue down to its parts, the closer we will be to understanding how we can fix it, and thereby confront the enormity of the issue in a manageable, intentional way. In the process of examining the sources of climate change, we find the sources of many other human issues as well. Not only does this effort trace a map of the way out of ecological disaster, but it may also lead to a more just and equitable world order.
A great deal of literature exists on many of the pieces of this giant puzzle: the physical mechanism behind a warming planet, the present and future effects of climate change, renewable energy technologies, and the politics of fossil fuel economies; yet little has been done to explore the concept of energy from a radical perspective. A new collection from AK Press, Sparking a Worldwide Energy Revolution: Social Struggles in the Transition to a Post-Petrol World, edited by Kolya Abramsky, seeks to fill this gap by bringing together analyses of energy production and consumption from a broad spectrum of views around the world, from the progressive to the anti-capitalist Left.
As Abramsky says in his introduction, “This is not a book about climate change. It is a book about energy.”(1) The central thesis of the collection is that energy is the lynchpin of a potential transition to a new and better world; recapturing the commons and disassociating local and global economies from hydrocarbon energy resources are vital challenges for a successful revolutionary project. The book delves into the problems confronting the transformation of global and local energy systems, and unearths the tensions between alternative visions for the distribution of both energy and power. In light of declining natural reserves of both coal and oil, renewable energy production may form a new field of contest for control of resources. While many see the transition to these renewables as an opportunity to adopt a decentralized model of social organization, capital recognizes the need for industrial scale generation to maintain its hegemony over the energy sector.
Abramsky says that the intention of the book is to “trace some of the material processes and human relations on which the energy system is based. Importantly, it seeks to show that a transition to a new energy system requires a material process of building new social relations and not just a shift of ethical and cultural values.”(2) The investigation of the material processes at work is the greatest strength of this collection. One chapter that stands out is Tom Keefer’s essay, “Machinery and Motive Power: Energy as a Substitute for and Enhancer of Human Labor.” Keefer reinvigorates some basic Marxist principles in clear terms without oversimplifying them, and describes industrial energy consumption through a history of automation and efficiency models.
“What is manifestly absent from most ecological economist thought is a critique of capitalism as a historically-specific economic system that is not only based on ever-increasing expansion, but is also compelled to substitute machinery (and the energy these machines require) for human labor in its quest to achieve higher margins of profit and to undercut tendencies towards working-class self-organization and resistance.”(3)
Keefer reminds us that capitalism is not just a simple product of technological innovation so much as the result of a constellation of social relations that require increasing levels of exploitation to remain in motion. The introduction of machinery and new energy sources replaces certain job tasks and devalues human labor, thereby weakening the position of workers in production. Then, the competitive market continues to favor those systems that increase energy efficiency and are able to exploit labor at higher rates. “Every capitalist is in competition with many other capitalists, and seeks ever higher profits to reinvest in production…the key to continued accumulation lies in increasing the productivity of labor power purchased from the worker.”(4) This, in turn, translates to ever greater levels of exploitation, and as capital imposes its organizational forms and duplicates its social relations on a global scale, a world system of imperialism is the result.
This world system requires increasing amounts of cheap energy to maintain its hegemony. A key question at this moment in time is: Does capitalism have the capacity to achieve another round of “revolutionizing” the means of production as it has in the past? That is to say, can it shift to a different source of energy without disrupting its power? Or can a new order acquire control of what remains of the fossil fuel reserves in time to use that energy for a transition both to renewable resources and a new and more equitable means of distribution?
“A point of crisis will be reached with capital will no longer be able to externalize its contradictions. This will provide a whole new set of opportunities for revolutionary forces seeking to transcend the capitalist economic system…With the depletion of easy to access fossil fuel reserves and the impacts of global climate change, humanity will be required to build an alternative to capitalism under conditions of declining labor productivity and under solar energy constraints momentarily transcended by twentieth century industrial capitalism. Consequently, the implications for our theory and practice are significant, and deserve to be put at the center of any anti-capitalist revolutionary project.”(5)
At the same time as the global economic system has been suffering internal shocks due to credit crises and other destabilizing elements, climate change and peak oil may constitute new threats to capitalism’s supply of cheap energy. Of course, while peak oil and global climate change are new developments, history is not without precedents, even for this. In “Everything Must Change So That Everything Can Remain the Same,” George Caffentzis reminds us that “this is not the first time that capitalist crisis coincides with energy transition, as a glance at the previous transitions [from coal to oil and natural gas, and, unsuccessfully, from oil to solar] in the 1930s and 1970s indicate.”(6) Caffentzis suggests that capital and the state recognize this moment of weakness for what it is, and resist efforts on the part of revolutionary movements to utilize this period of transition as an opening for a restructuring of social relations: “The ultimate purpose of the Obama administration is…to preserve the capitalist system in very perilous times.”(7)
Caffentzis goes on to outline the stages of a transition to renewable energy resources and the considerations that should be made. “The first element in the transition is to recognize that there will be inter-class resistance to the transition from those who stand to lose.”(8) The second element, he says, is to recall that non-hydrocarbon energy sources, i.e. renewables like wind and solar, are not necessarily in opposition to a capitalist structure. Indeed, capitalism and colonial expansion led to “the genocide of the indigenous Americans, the African slave trade, and the enclosures of the European peasantry [all of which] occurred with the use of alternative renewable energy!”(9) Thirdly, while oil and coal are extremely efficient resources for generating surplus value, renewables will not immediately be in a position to replicate the same level of production, which indicates that a transition is likely to lead to a great upheaval in terms of the process of production of energy, in particular for worker transitions and retooling. Lastly, he notes that, in light of the frequency with which capital has been able to recover from prior crises, the question remains: “Will this transition be organized on a capitalist basis or will the double crisis, opened up on the levels of energy production and general social reproduction, mark the beginning of another mode of production?”(10)
Are climate change and the threat of peak oil posing a genuine crisis for capitalism? On the one hand, the trend toward “green capitalism” seems to suggest not. As Tadzio Mueller and Alexis Passadakis remind us in “Another Capitalism is Possible?,” “crises are not necessarily bad things from the perspective of capital….While serious crises always entail the massive destruction of capital, as well as transformation in the matrix of social power, this destruction of capital is precisely what is necessary for capital(ism) to maintain its innovative, revolutionary power.”(11) However, for this power to maintain its primacy, it must use its own position of control to begin a more concerted shift to renewables now, in order to maintain its stranglehold on the means of production throughout the process of transition. Nonetheless, in light of actions such as the expansion of drilling in the Gulf post-Deepwater Horizon, and the pursuit of extraction in Alberta’s tar sands, “it is increasingly clear that rather than the market rising up to develop solutions for climate change…we are witnessing what can only be described as the irrational, frantic push of market-forces in their most naked form, precisely at a time where reductions and radical transformation is required.”(12)
Since capitalism is not likely to meet this challenge, it is an ideal opportunity for radical social transformation. “The historical record shows very clearly that deep, enduring changes in energy industries require the mobilization of mass social movements. We cannot simply wait for visionary politicians to forge the way.”(13) While the book does not give any precise recommendations for how these social movements are to come about, it does relate a number of efforts at transition and resistance to capital’s appropriation of energy resources and the commons around the world.
In these pieces we find the tangible evidence of a movement – here is the inspiration, and the beginning experiments and models, both positive and negative, for how the future may look. Particularly inspiring are the accounts of resistance in South Africa, the efforts of the FARMA collective to build self-manageable energy systems with Zapatista communities, and the details of individually and communally owned wind generators in Denmark. The book is at its best in this regard when it lets people speak for themselves and their own experiences, as in Patrick Bond and Trevor Ngwane’s piece, “Community Resistance to Energy Privatization in South Africa,” which includes an interview with a 58 year old woman who describes her decision to have her electricity illegally reconnected by a neighborhood team of “bootleg technicians” after she was laid off and then unable to keep up with mounting energy bill hikes. Here the human interest shines through, while simultaneously providing a clear and relatable example of active resistance within a familiar political and economic setting, with practices and tactics that can be applied in a number of contexts.
Also of interest are the global surveys of struggle: Chapter 42, “Some Brief News Reports from Direct Action-Based Resistance Around the World,” and Chapter 46, “Two Mini Case-Studies: 1) The End of One Windmill Cooperative 2) Chinese Peasants Killed in Land Conflict Over Windmills.” These additions to the collection serve to underscore the tension between decentralization and community control of resources. In this situation–as evidenced by struggles in Mexico, Canada, Nigeria, and elsewhere–the general outlines of capitalist social relations are easily recognizable: tearing people from the land and the basis of their material reproduction through the enclosure of collective resources; the conversion of the survivors of this process to a disenfranchised proletariat; the physical destruction of the natural environment; and the use of violence to maintain the new arrangements. The more qualitative pieces are valuable for their direct-account format and the detail they offer about communities and their struggles. There are some good, rich stories here, but they are often merely anecdotal and lack analysis and context. Chapter 40, for example, “Dynamics of a Songful Resistance,” loses the impact of its message of forced displacement of communities along the coast of Columbia in the sentimentality of its internal metaphor: “Together, we built a fraternal fire and shared a small artisanal boat in which we ate together as equals and gently sung ourselves into dissonance.”(14)
One thing that is missing from this book is the voices of workers. This collection includes a number of position papers written by unions–for example Chapter 10, “For Democratic, National Development of North America’s Energy Resources,” which lists as its author “Various Energy Sector Trade Unions and Other Organizations”; or Chapter 41, “Call for an Immediate Moratorium on EU Incentives for Agrofuels, EU Imports of Agrofuels and EU Agroenergy Monocultures,” by “Diverse Organizations.” US labor has no representation in the collection at all, beyond the endorsement by the United Steel Workers of the statement issued in Chapter 10.(15) The majority of these pieces are formalized statements issued by union leadership, and so may or may not reflect the interests or concerns of the workers themselves. In these pieces we see statements of reform and the defense of jobs; we don’t see examples of a real threat to capitalism, or a dedicated concern for environmental justice within organized labor.
Another criticism is that while Abramsky clearly lays out a revolutionary intent in his introduction, the book draws much of its material from groups who are more closely aligned with the tasks of energy transition than with radical politics. Unions, liberal academics and members of parliament figure prominently among the contributing authors.
Beyond simple questions of content, we identified several areas in which the book fails to completely meet our basic standards of clarity, readability, logical presentation, fairness, and usefulness. First are the book’s organizational structure and length. Abramsky states in his introduction, “the book has been carefully structured to be read as a whole, from beginning to end.”(16) However, despite short introductions to each section, the thematic components that arise are overshadowed by the experience of reading the text itself. Sparking a World Energy Revolution is more than 650 pages long, and though the individual chapters are nearly all very short, as a whole they do not produce the linear and progressive narrative that Abramsky intends. The thesis of the book is lost in a jumble of details with works that are simultaneously too specific and yet not specific enough; or rather, their relation to the whole is lost in the minutiae of their individual purpose(s). While Abramsky clearly has a radical motive in mind, this commitment emerges greatly diluted from the overall span of the perspectives included.
In addition, the collection is lopsided in favor of a few prolific contributors. As the book’s editor, Abramsky may be excused for contributing a long introduction and conclusion. But some other writers contributed surprisingly large numbers of articles as well–there are three by George Caffentzis, four by Sergio Oceransky, and six by Preben Maegaard (arguably the most problematic contributor in the book, politically and stylistically). If a diverse spectrum of opinions and viewpoints was the goal, perhaps it could have best been presented by an actually diverse representation of interests, rather than simply an array of topics covered by a small collection of men.
Another criticism is that many of the authors frequently rely upon highly specialized jargon without offering explanations or glosses. It is unfair to expect that every reader will know what the Gini coefficient(17) indicates, for example, or what it means to measure an oil “reserves-to-production ratio” in “years.”(18) In the interest of making the material and concepts more available to a larger audience, the inclusion of either a glossary or expanded footnotes would greatly improve the usefulness of this edition. Because Sparking a New Energy Movement fails as a linear, progressive narrative, and because the quality and tone of the chapters are so varied, the book is best used as a reference text; the addition of an index would therefore be valuable for enhancing the accessibility of a future edition. As Bruce Pobodnik says in Chapter 3, “Building the Clean Energy Movement,” “this inclusivity is important, because individuals understand and respond to different kinds of messages about energy-related dangers. If the clean energy movement can build a diverse coalition of leaders, each of whom can speak effectively to constituencies from all across the political and ideological spectrum, it will more likely spread deep roots into societies throughout the world.”(19)
Ultimately, the book’s strengths and utility as an educational overview of issues in the energy sector far outweigh its shortcomings of focus and readability. Much of its value lies in what it does not include; what is missing from this text indicates areas we need to investigate as a movement. For this reason, Sparking a Worldwide Energy Revolution serves a dual purpose. On the one hand, it assembles–possibly for the first time–the most comprehensive and wide-reaching array of thought and action taking place on the Left regarding energy and energy production. For this reason alone, the book is an essential addition to any serious reading list aimed at forming a more complete picture of the world today and the project before us. On the other hand, its deficiencies delineate the questions we have yet to ask and answer as a movement. Exactly how can an anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist social organization make the energy transitions necessary without creating devastating gaps in food production? What role will nation-states (or centralized authority structures) play, if any, in those transitions? On what economic models can we reliably build a free society? How do we make it happen?
Lara Messersmith-Glavin is an educator and writer based in Portland, Oregon. She is a member of Parasol Climate Collective and is on the board of the Institute for Anarchist Studies and the editorial collective of Perspectives on Anarchist Theory. She also publishes the nonfiction journal Alltopia Antholozine.
Parasol Climate Collective is a study and outreach group based in Portland, Oregon. They have developed a 5-part curriculum composed of approximately 500 pages of text and 35 minutes of video that explores anthropogenic climate change from a radical perspective. The materials they have collected and outlined, through learning objectives and suggested discussion questions, encourage study participants to consider the origins of the ecological crisis as it is rooted in the capitalist system, and the ways in which it is linked to other social and economic struggles around the world. The materials are intended to direct participants to envision workable, equitable alternatives to the current social structures and build a movement capable of putting those structures in place. Parasol also performs community outreach and education by meeting with other groups engaged in a wide spectrum of social justice work and by facilitating discussions on the ways in which a warmer world may affect their issue(s) of focus. As their own goals are educational, they have read this book as a group and evaluated its successes and weaknesses through the lens of the text as a learning tool.
Parasol Climate Collective is Paul Messersmith-Glavin, Lara Messersmith-Glavin, Ian McBee, and Emily-Jane Dawson. To obtain a free copy of the curriculum, or to schedule a workshop, please contact: parasol.pdx@gmail.com, or visit parasolpdx.wordpress.com.
Notes
1. Abramsky, Kolya, (Ed.) “Racing to ‘Save’ the Economy and the Planet: Capitalist or Post-capitalist Transition to a Post-petrol World?” p. 29.
2. Ibid.
3. Keefer, Tom. “Machinery and Motive Power: Energy as a Substitute for and Enhancer of Human Labor.” p. 82.
4. Ibid., p. 85.
5. Ibid., p. 89.
6. Caffentzis, George. “Everything Must Change So That Everything Can Remain the Same: Reflections on Obama’s Energy Plan.” p. 566.
7. Ibid., p. 567.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid., p. 568.
11. Mueller, Tadzio and Passadakis, Alexis. “Another Capitalism is Possible? From World Economic Crisis to Green Capitalism.” p. 557.
12. Walsh, Shannon, and Stainsby, Macdonald. “The Smell of Money: Alberta’s Tar Sands.” p. 333.
13. Pobodnik, Bruce. “Building the Clean Energy Movement: Future Possibilities in Historical Perspective.” p. 76-77.
14. Avendaño, Tatiana Roa, and Toloza, Jessica. “Dynamics of a Songful Resistance.” p. 465.
p. 155.
15. Abramsky, Kolya. “Racing to ‘Save’ the Economy and the Planet: Capitalist or Post-capitalist Transition to a Post-petrol World?” p. 24.
17. Oceransky, Sergio. “European Energy Policy on the Brink of Disaster.” p. 173. Note: The Gini coefficient is used to measure the concentration of a variable – that is, economic inequality. A Gini coefficient rating of 0 indicates perfect equality within in a society. A rating of 1 indicates perfect inequality.
18. Jasiewicz, Ewa. “Iraqi Oil Workers’ Movements.” p. 219.
19. Pobodnik, Bruce. “Building the Clean Energy Movement: Future Possibilities in Historical Perspective.” p. 77.
Posted on January 5th, 2011 in Events
Apologies folks: Due to a family emergency, Jim Miller has had to cancel his Bay Area events. We’ll try to reschedule for later in the Spring!
A second Bay-Area event for labor-activist and author Jim Miller, who penned AK’s brand-new fiction title, FLASH: A Novel. Flash follows the story of a So-Cal city journalist by the name of Jack Wilson, tagging along as Jack investigates the life of notorious IWW outlaw Bobby Flash. As Jack tracks Flash through the wilds of California’s history, a picture emerges of labor, solidarity, love, and organizing in early 20th century America … and Jack learns something about his own present. It’s a great novel, don’t miss this very special reading at the AK Press warehouse!
Posted on January 3rd, 2011 in About AK, AK Distribution, AK News, Recommended Reading, Uncategorized
Well, after a couple of months unintentional neglect (my computer broke and I can’t use a certain important program on my new one yet!!), we’re back to a rotating, randomly chosen selection of AK titles on sale for 50%. What says Happy New Year like that?! Returning readers may note that I have become a stickler for a to-the-penny discount, where before I’d say $8, now I’m all about the $7.97! I am weird, I cannot help it.
For the month of January, feast your eyes on these deals:
Radical Priorities
By Noam Chomsky
In Radical Priorities, editor C.P. Otero sets out to “provide relatively easy access to Chomsky’s libertarian philosophy and political analysis.” Taken from a wide variety of sources, many never widely published—some never in a book at all—and spanning four decades, the reader is furnished with a truly comprehensive window into Chomsky’s anarchist convictions. Convictions which, while ever-present in his analysis are left largely misunderstood or worseãignored. In seeking to combat the great challenges facing humanity, Chomsky’s analysis, and the traditions that bore it, must not be left in obscurity. Now $9.48!!
Jumping the Line
By William Herrick
Jumping the Line offers a vivid first-hand account of Left culture in America’s heady days of the 1920s through the 40s. William Herrick grew up in New York City with pictures of Lenin above his crib. He provides colorful reminiscences of riding the rails with other hobos during the Depression, of organizing Black sharecroppers in the South, of his time on the anarchist collective Sunrise Farm, where his political ideals of communal living and self-sufficiency were tested by the very real demands of agricultural work on a city boy, up through his tumultuous relationship with his employer, Orson Wells. The bulk of the book, however, focuses on Herrick’s involvement during the Spanish Civil War. Now $7.48!!
Wasting Libby: The True Story of How the WR Grace Corporation Left a Montana Town to Die
By Andrea Peacock
Wasting Libby chronicles the heart-wrenching story of a small Montana town where the W.R. Grace & Company (of A Civil Action) ran a vermiculite mine that supplied the world with insulation, fireproofing,
and gardening materials for nearly 30 years. But Grace’s vermiculite was laced with a virulent form of asbestos, and in its quest for profits the company betrayed this rural community, spreading a legacy of death and disease from northwestern Montana to the World Trade Center, through more than 35 million buildings in the United States estimated to have been insulated with Grace’s lethal ore. Libby’s story, which culminates in the 2009 criminal trial of the corporation’s executives, is ultimately the tale of the families who fought Grace for justice, who refused to sacrifice their dignity even as they lost their lives. Now $7.97!!
Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigation, Collective Theorization
Edited by Stevphen Shukaitis and David Graeber
What is the relationship of radical theory to movements for social change? In a world where more and more global struggles are refusing vanguard parties and authoritarian practices, does the idea of the detached intellectual, observing events from on high, make sense anymore? In this powerful and unabashedly militant collection, over two dozen academic authors and engaged intellectuals—including Antonio Negri and Colectivo Situaciones—provide some challenging answers. In the process, they redefine the nature of intellectual practice itself. Now $10.98!!
Real Utopia: Participatory Society for the 21st Century
Edited by Chris Spannos
What if we had direct control over our daily lives? What if society’s defining institutions—those encompassing economics, politics, kinship, culture, community, and ecologyãwere based not on competition, individual ownership, and coercion, but on self-management, equity, solidarity, and diversity? Real Utopia identifies and obliterates the barriers to an egalitarian, bottom-up society, while convincingly outlining how to build it. Instead of simply declaring “another world is possible,” the writers in this collection engage with what that world would look like, how it would function, and how our commitments to just outcomes is related to the sort of institutions we maintain. Now $10.98!!
Dispersing Power: Social Movements as Anti-State Forces
By Raúl Zibechi
Raúl Zibechi is one of Latin America’s leading political theorists and we are proud to have published his first book translated into English. Dispersing Power is a historical analysis of social struggles in Bolivia and the forms of community power instituted by that country’s indigenous Aymara. This book, like the movements it describes, explores new ways of doing politics beyond the state, gracefully mapping the “how” of revolution, offering valuable lessons to activists and new theoretical frameworks for understanding how social movements can and do operate independently of state-centered models for social change. Now $7.97!!
Posted on December 31st, 2010 in Events
Apologies folks: Due to a family emergency, Jim Miller has had to cancel his Bay Area events. We’ll try to reschedule for later in the Spring!
San Diego native Jim Miller heads up the coast to give a reading from his new novel, Flash, at Modern Times in SF! Check the book out — Mike Davis called it a “remarkable novel … nothing less than a secret history of southern California—a radical past that might yet redeem our future.” How can you resist that?
Posted on December 29th, 2010 in AK Authors!, Reviews of AK Books, Uncategorized
Here’s a great review from our friends at Elevate Difference. Read the original here.
Black Bloc, White Riot: Anti-Globalization and the Genealogy of Dissent
By AK Thompson
AK Press
My fascination with the anti-globalization movement, like my own baby steps into activism, is a late bloomer. I came of age when my peers were shutting down Seattle. I was reading Marx for the first time in college when IMF protestors took to the streets in DC. Yet throughout my extended adolescence, radical politics was background noise. I never paused to find out why globalization made people so angry. Like a lot of people growing up white and middle class, militancy was excessive and embarrassing. Admirable in heroes of the past, the world is civil now (I felt), with no need for insurrections or rage against the machine.
Yet most of the activists in the streets of Seattle also came from nice, white, middle-class homes in suburbia. In fact, this was a common critique of the anti-globalization movement in North America. Instead of multiracial inclusion, the movement seems to reproduce the same racial and class privilege so abhorrent in global capitalism.
This is precisely the criticism AK Thompson tackles in Black Bloc, White Riot. His response is not a how-to for recruiting people of color and/or those lower on the socioeconomic scale. Instead, his aim is to analyze the anti-globalization movement in its white, middle-class character. I.e., rather than complain that the movement is too white so let’s find some black and brown people, he wants to account for why young white people came to the movement at all. After locating it in the particular experience of whiteness, he can proceed to the limitations of the movement’s politics (as well as its strengths).
Referencing radical favorites like Paulo Freire, Audre Lorde, and Fight Club, and full of phrases like “the white experience of constitutive lack,” the book reads like many a lefty intellectual’s work. Whether you find this annoying or exhilarating, the arguments boil down to a few simple ideas. A key theme is turning toward a politics of production rather than representation, by which Thompson means focusing on how to get things done, not the symbolic significance of objects and images. For instance, don’t worry that gas masks look monstrous in the eyes of the media; focus on the fact that wearing them allows protesters to face tear-gas-hurling police. It’s about what one does, not how one appears.
Thompson also emphasizes the importance of violence. Violence, he argues, is a productive force like labor, which puts one in direct material contact with the world and explodes the representational politics that are deadly to the soul (when nothing substantial is accomplished) and deadly to the body (when unjust social structures persist in creating poverty, illness, and climate change). As force is monopolized by governments, historically it is only when groups proved capable of violence that they received political recognition and agency: colonized peoples, immigrants, and women.
In Chapter Four: “You Can’t Do Gender in a Riot,” Thompson anticipates criticism that advocating violence amounts to accepting a sexist, patriarchal model. He argues the material fact that women can and have engaged in violent political struggle. Furthermore, participation in violence is one arena that allows activists to transcend gender. He quotes a female Black Bloc member, who explains how the baggy clothes and black hooded sweatshirt allows her gendered identity to disappear—a perfect example of the politics of production.
I wouldn’t recommend this book as a first introduction to the movement. But if you are familiar with the stakes and the story of anti-globalization, it’s an analysis worth considering, regardless of race and class background.
Written by: Charlotte Malerich, December 24th 2010
Posted on December 21st, 2010 in AK Allies, Current Events, Uncategorized
This post sent to us by our good friend and co-conspirator Devin Hoff ….
Jack Heyman is a modern day working class hero.
As a long time worker/member of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union—which represents maritime, dock, port and other workers along the West Coast, as well as in Hawaii and Alaska—he has consistently helped steer the industrial strength of his union towards righteous action time and again. In 1984 he helped organize the first conscious refusals to load South African cargo ships, in order to help break the grip of Apartheid. According to Nelson Mandela and others, this is one of the key events that eventually led to the fall of the white supremacist regime in that country. Jack was also instrumental in organizing in a successful 1999 coast-wide work stoppage on behalf of Mumia Abu Jamal and authored union Convention resolutions defending other Black political prisoners and Leonard Peltier in U.S. prisons. He helped organize successful solidarity boycotts by San Francisco Bay Area dockworkers of the Neptune Jade, a ship loaded by scabs in England during a union busting campaign in Liverpool. In 2008, he initiated the call for and organized a first-ever one-day shutdown of all ports on the West Coast to protest and demand an end to the U.S. imperialist occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan on May 1st, International Workers Day. Most recently he helped organize a work-stoppage, shutting down all Bay Area ports to demand justice for murdered Black youth Oscar Grant, ahead of the sentencing of his murderer, killer cop Johannes Mehserle.
I have been honored to count Jack, as a friend and comrade for several years. At times we have helped with events the other organized and supported each other when we could. One of the first of these events was in 2001, when Jack gave a talk at a Mayday celebration a few of us organized at the AK Press Warehouse. He spoke not only of the need for workers to defend their rights, but also of the responsibility of workers to use their industrial power to effect radical change and help others. This is not just an idea, it is a principle that Jack and many of his fellow dockworkers consistently practice.
Of course, principle often has its consequences. When police attacked a picket of anti-war activists at the Port of Oakland attempting to block loading of war materiel bound for Iraq in 2004, Jack was beaten by Oakland cops and arrested for the “crime” of trying to do his duty and warn dockworkers that police were opening fire. The authorities threw the book at Jack, suspiciously over-reacting in a way that strongly suggested radical baiting. They of course over-stepped and missed, thankfully, not counting on quite how deeply the well-respected and loved militant union member rolls.
Jack will be retiring from the ILWU at the end of this year. The San Francisco Labor Council has adopted a resolution honoring his efforts and achievements on behalf of working class people and against white supremacy, and other organizations and individuals around the world have and will continue to do so as well (http://www.labournet.net/world/1011/heyman1.html). But I’d like to add my hope that it isn’t just words we thank and honor Jack with, but action following his principled and courageous example. For as much as Jack speaks against capitalist exploitation, racist oppression, imperialist intervention or advocates for international working class solidarity, it has been his actions as a worker and an organizer that have reverberated the loudest.
Happy retirement Jack! Enjoy! And thank you.
La Lucha Continua.
-Devin Hoff
Posted on December 20th, 2010 in Happenings
Dreading the holidays? Wondering what could possibly be awesome enough this week to be worth venturing out into the cold? Well, we’ve got just the thing for you. Come celebrate another year of anarchist-inspired infrastructure in Baltimore, with three of B’more’s most ass-kicking collective projects!
On Wednesday, December 22, come on over to the new AK Press Baltimore warehouse in Woodberry, for a blow-out book sale: 25% off everything in the warehouse, plus a whole table of deeply-discounted book published by the likes of AK Press, PM Press, South End, Autonomedia, and all your favorites!
Enjoy live performances from 7-9PM while you browse the books, plus light (and vegan-friendly!) refreshments prepared especially for you by Red Emma’s & AK Press collective members. Then, at 9PM, the real party starts with music selected for the evening by one of our favorite local DJs.
Hang out, have a drink, and celebrate the close of another successful year with Red Emma’s, AK Press, and the Baltimore Indypendent Reader! Free to attend, book & drink sales benefit all three projects! LOCATION: 3500 Parkdale Avenue, Building One, Suite 3 (3rd Floor). Two blocks from the Woodberry Light Rail stop.
For those of you who are so inclined, we’ve also created a Facebook event for the party—please help us spread the word, and we’ll see you on Wednesday!
