Confronting Injustice: Social Activism in the Age of Individualism`

by Umair Muhammad

According to recent estimates 400,000 people die every year as a result of human-made global warming. The UN projects that 3 billion additional people may be pushed into extreme poverty by 2050 because of environmental destruction. The scale of the problems we face makes it clear that individualist, lifestyle-centric approaches to activism will not suffice. We need to change the structures of our social system, not our light bulbs. This book seeks to expose the structural roots of the injustices we must confront, and outlines an approach to activism which transcends the hopeless individualism of our time.

Genres: Nonfiction, Environment, Activism

202 pages, Paperback

First published December 12, 2013

Reviews

[Rabib · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fine book for someone seeking an introduction to ecosocialism. I am not too hot on the characterization of capitalist injustice as a moral problem, but this framing may be attractive for some people. Nonetheless, the way Peter Singer is used as a springboard for a critique of NGOs and other charity initiatives is quite fluid and perceptive.

This book is liberally peppered with footnotes, leaving the reader plenty of direction for further reading. I am, for instance, now particularly excited to engage with Polanyi's work. However, I do find that the exposition would benefit from focusing a bit more on the arguments of the quoted authors, as at times I found that justification for certain points felt lacking.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book to read if you're new to activism, or if you've been in activism a while and want to rethink what is and isn't currently working. The author presents some macro solutions to worldwide problems and really digs into how issues like poverty and climate change are intimately connected. Like any solutions to large scale issues, many suggestions seem "pie in the sky" but are worthy of thought. One of the most actionable takeaways I got was to give yourself the time and mental space to think, as opposed to constantly absorbing media, media, media in any quiet moment.

[Ellen Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. This book was easy to read but as in-depth as I wanted it to be.
I devoured it.

[Yngve Skogstad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not quite the book I was expecting, but nonetheless an enlightening read. Umair Muhammad provides an accurate portrayal of the enormity of the challenges we’re facing in terms of environmental destruction and global poverty, as well as linking our failures in dealing with these issues with what he calls “the crisis of activism”, denoting a development where activism has become a question of individual lifestyle choices, all too easily co-opted by capitalism. The charity industry and the NGO-ization of development policy is seen as part of the same turn to individualism.

As opposed to the structurally blind Singer-proposal of “giving what we can”, Muhammad delivers a cohesive structural analysis of how the current social order reproduces itself, and how the great problems of our time are interlinked, making any solution within the existing political economic framework impossible. He certainly covers a lot of ground in relatively few pages, and has a wonderfully sharp, quite polemical writing style. He reminds me a bit of Yanis Varoufakis in his aptitude for one-liners and penchant for mixing solid theoretical and empirical analysis with parables and mythological stories.

As for proposed solutions I found the book not as concrete as I had hoped for. His proposals for “rethinking democracy” seem a little too idealistic and anarchist to me (he eventually walks back on them in the afterword, though). Aside from that, I’m fully on board with proposals like blockages, strikes and creating and empowering local and worker councils, capturing state power as well as the importance of having an organization that can coordinate and disseminate information/tactics between different movements and struggles (though he doesn’t spell out the word, I believe what he’s thinking about here is a PARTY).

“While it is true that some improvements can be made within the bounds of the existing system, ultimately there can be no such thing as a democratic, socially just, and environmentally sustainable capitalism. As we have seen, capitalism unavoidably produces a mass of propaganda that makes meaningful democracy impossible; it unavoidably produces a world full of injustice and inequality in order to secure a global division of labor suitable to profit-making; and it unavoidably produces the kind of ecological destruction that makes its own longevity, and that of human civilization, impossible.”

[Izabela · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many valid points about the inequality and the approaches to take to deal with the inequality and climate change; however it may be too radical and extreme for getting the message across