Naomi Klein: This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate (2014)

In This Changes Everything Naomi Klein argues that climate change isn’t just another issue to be neatly filed between taxes and health care. It’s an alarm that calls us to fix an economic system that is already failing us in many ways. Klein meticulously builds the case for how massively reducing our greenhouse emissions is our best chance to simultaneously reduce gaping inequalities, re-imagine our broken democracies, and rebuild our gutted local economies. She exposes the ideological desperation of the climate-change deniers, the messianic delusions of the would-be geoengineers, and the tragic defeatism of too many mainstream green initiatives. And she demonstrates precisely why the market has not—and cannot—fix the climate crisis but will instead make things worse, with ever more extreme and ecologically damaging extraction methods, accompanied by rampant disaster capitalism.

Klein argues that the changes to our relationship with nature and one another that are required to respond to the climate crisis humanely should not be viewed as grim penance, but rather as a kind of gift—a catalyst to transform broken economic and cultural priorities and to heal long-festering historical wounds. And she documents the inspiring movements that have already begun this process: communities that are not just refusing to be sites of further fossil fuel extraction but are building the next, regeneration-based economies right now.

Publisher Simon & Schuster, 2014
ISBN 1451697384, 9781451697384
576 pages

Reviews: David L. Ulin (Los Angeles Times, 2014), Sandra Steingraber (EcoWatch, 2014).

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Publisher

EPUB (updated on 2021-8-13)
PDF (updated on 2021-8-13)

Sam Mbah, I.E. Igariwey: African Anarchism: The History of A Movement (1997)

The first book ever written on this subject, African Anarchism was co-written by Sam Mbah and fellow Nigerian, I.E. Igariway. After dealing with questions such as what anarchism is and isn’t, this groundbreaking book introduces the reader to anarchistic elements in traditional African societies, with a focus on Nigeria. It also examines the influence of anarchism on African national liberation struggles, and the failure of State Socialist governments in Africa. The book addresses the ongoing social, economic and political crises caused by colonialism in Africa. The authors end by considering the future prospects and challenges for anarchism in Africa.

Publisher See Sharp Press, Tucson, Arizona, 1997
ISBN 1884365051, 9781884365058
119 pages
via libcom.org

interview with Sam Mbah (March 2012)
Sam Mbah’s blog

PDF
PDF (2001 Edition from The Anarchist Library, multiple formats)

Philippe Pignarre, Isabelle Stengers: Capitalist Sorcery: Breaking the Spell (2005–) [FR, EN]

“If denunciation were effective, capitalism would have disappeared a long time ago. But denunciation is never enough. Capitalism is a system that reinvents itself permanently, through the creation of infernal alternatives, alternatives which take us all hostage: ‘if we don’t cut the deficit, we’ll never regain our competitiveness’.

In other traditions than that of the moderns, this sort of paralysis would be described as sorcery. Capitalist Sorcery takes this idea seriously – literally – and explores the consequences of our vulnerability to a system which daily recruits the minions that it needs to cast its spells.

Proposing a pragmatic reading of Marx, a reading which seeks to ward off the thoughtlessness encouraged by the theme of progress and the resignation that arises from accepting that capitalism is the ‘only game in town’, the authors look at how we can protect ourselves from the logic which – from financial collapse through GM foods to oil spills and climate catastrophe – runs scared of the cry ‘another world is possible’.”

La sorcellerie capitaliste: Pratiques de désenvoûtement
Afterword by Anne Vièle
Publisher La Découverte, Paris, 2005
ISBN 2707143979
228 pages

English edition
Translated and edited by Andrew Goffey
Publisher Palgrave Macmillan, 2011
ISBN 0230237622, 9780230237629
224 pages

Publisher (FR)
Publisher (EN)

La sorcellerie capitaliste (French, 2005)
Capitalist Sorcery (English, 2011)