The Tragedy of the Worker: Towards the Proletarocene

Description

The climate crisis is so comprehensive in its reach, so thorough in its unsettling effects, that it has called into question not only the foundations of a certain kind of socialism, but also the Enlightened verities upon which both capitalism and its opposition have sought their foundation.' The current state of the planet, the capitolocene, is a direct result of extractive appetites of capitalism. The threats of climate change are already here and, if we continue along the same path, ensures an apocalyse. The tragedy of the worker is, therefore, twofold: forced to work in such conditions the present is unsupportable. However, within these conditions are exposed the contradictions that might deliver liberation. Nevertheless, this liberation is likely to be into a world that is beyond salvage. What is to be done to create a planet where the prospects of a communist horizon are a new dawn rather than a planetary twilight? In this brilliant, stringently argued pamphlet the authors set out a new way to think about the Anthropocene and demands an alternative future that seeks to repair and restore our world, and ourselves.

the authors are collectively the editors of Salvage Magazine [https://salvage.zone/] Jamie Allinson is a senior lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Edinburgh University; China Mieville is the author of a number of highly acclaimed and prize-winning novels including, most recently, The Last Days of New Paris; his non fiction includes October: The Story of the Russian Revolution. Richard Seymour is a journalist who writes regularly for the Guardian, the London Review of Books, and Jacobin. His most recent books include The Twittering Machine and Corbyn. Rosie Warren is chief editor of Salvage magazine and an editor at Verso.

Salvage is the most exciting journal to appear on the anglophone left over the past decade: avant-garde Marxism with no illusions, perfectly pitched to our dismal times. Here the formidable Salvage Collective tackles the defining question of those times: the ecological crisis. The result is the most beautiful and urgent essay yet written on what climate catastrophe means for the struggle for communism, in the past, present and future. This is one for the ages. -- Andreas Malm, author of How to Blow Up a Pipeline The kind of realism we need to meet this moment: eyes wide open. Strangely poetic, as befitting a tragedy. I never want to read books about the ecological crisis twice, but this one I will return to many times, because it's layered. Layered but legible; bold and without pretention - this is a book you can't wait to pass along to a friend, because despite its grimness, it evokes that feeling of common cause. -- Holly Jean Buck, author of After Geoengineering A book that ought to be essential reading for all ... detailed, convincing and critically important. -- Andy Hedgecock * Morning Star *