When the ravages of Alzheimer’s leave an elderly woman marooned in painful memories of October 1950, her grandchild comes up with a creative strategy.
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‘Stabilising the human relation to the earth’
RICHARD CLARKE recommends a book that shows how pervasive the ideas of Marx and Engels have been in the parallel development of ecological science and of socialist theory and practice
DEATH WISH: A 2008 view of the fly ash spill from the TVA Kingston Fossil Plant outside Kingston, Tennessee - testing showed significantly elevated levels of arsenic, copper, barium, cadmium. The pile of ash is 20-25 feet high, and stretches for two miles and empties into the Emory River
[Brian Stansberry/CC]
New releases from Simone White, Brass Funkeys, and Souad Massi
SUE TURNER is compelled by a history that shows how far a country can turn in on itself to collude with abuses of power
RON JACOBS is persuaded by the parallel drawn between Charles Manson and Donald Trump
In this comparison of Britain pre- and post Thatcher, WILL POMORE applauds the analysis, but distrusts the solutions offered
MARIA DUARTE defends a solid, late-career Spielberg conspiracy flick that calls for empathy in a hostile world
Capitalism in the Anthropocene; Ecological Ruin or Ecological Revolution
by J B Foster
Monthly Review Press £25
“ANTHROPOCENE” is a scientific term (awaiting ratification by the International Commission on Stratigraphy) increasingly used to designate the last 75 years or so as a geological epoch in which biological, chemical and geological processes on the Earth’s surface have been dominated by the consequences of human activity.
It has its own stratigraphic markers including radionuclides from hundreds of nuclear tests (and two bombings), plastics and petrochemicals, food-chain accumulants and, increasingly, the deposits from floods, droughts and fires consequent on climate change.
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MARTIN GRAHAM welcomes, with reservations, a scholarly addition to the unfinished business of understanding how capital works on a world scale
The selection, analysis and interpretation of historical ‘facts’ always takes place within a paradigm, a model of how the world works. That’s why history is always a battleground, declares the Marx Memorial Library
From hunting rare pamphlets at book sales to online panels and courses on trade unionism and class politics, the MML continues connecting archive treasures with the movements fighting for a better world, writes director MEIRIAN JUMP
The creative imagination is a weapon against barbarism, writes KENNY COYLE, who is a keynote speaker at the Manifesto Press conference, Art in the Age of Degenerative Capitalism, tomorrow at the Marx Memorial Library & Workers School in London