Climate and Capitalism editor Ian Angus presents six new books for ecosocialists, including a new translation of Marx’s Capital, the role of animal poo in Earth’s life support systems and more.
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Capital, Volume 1
By Karl Marx
Princeton University Press
An ambitious new English translation of Marx’s masterwork, based on the second German edition, which Marx personally edited. Only time and careful study will decide whether it successfully replaces Ben Fowkes’s widely admired translation, published by Penguin Books nearly half a century ago.
Eat, Poop, Die: How Animals Make Our World
By Joe Roman
Hachette Book Group
If forests are the lungs of the planet, then migrating animals are its heart and arteries, a global conveyor belt of crucial, life-sustaining nutrients. Roman shows how animals’ basic biological activities — endless cycles of eating, pooping and dying — make and remake the world. Understanding these processes is a vital part of all serious efforts to repair our damaged planet.
The Automatic Fetish: The Law of Value in Marx’s Capital
By Beverley Best
Verso
Volume 3 of Capital was assembled and edited by Engels, after Marx’s death. Some academics claim that the result seriously misrepresents Marx’s views — but Beverley Best disagrees. Going step by step through the book, she shows conclusively that it brilliantly completes the analysis Marx began in Volume 1. Its “consistency, clarity, and logical flow” provide a powerful presentation of Marx’s most important ideas that rewards careful study.
Lifehouse: Taking Care of Ourselves in a World on Fire
By Andrew Greenfield
Verso
Drawing lessons from Black Panther survival programs, the Occupy Sandy disaster-relief effort and solidarity networks of crisis-era Greece, as well as autonomous Rojava, Greenfield argues that mutual care and local power can help shelter us in a time of global catastrophes.
Heat, A History: Lessons from the Middle East for a Warming Planet
By On Barak
University of California Press
Despite record-breaking temperatures, most people fail to fully grasp the gravity of global heating. Using examples from the hottest places on Earth, Barak shows how we have become desensitised, and charts a way out of short-term thinking, towards meaningful action.
Building the Critical Anthropology of Climate Change: Towards a Socio-Ecological Revolution
By Hans A Baer and Merrill Singer
Routledge
Baer and Singer open a dialog with contending perspectives in the anthropology of climate change, including the perspectives of elite polluters and the all-too-often regrettable contributions of anthropologists and other scholars. They aim to lay the foundation for a brave new sustainable world that is socially just, highly democratic and climatically safe for humans and other species.
[Reprinted from Climate and Capitalism. Inclusion of a book does not imply endorsement.]