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Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming
A sweeping study of how capitalism first promoted fossil fuels with the rise of steam power—and contributed to the worsening climate crisis The more we know about the catastrophic implications of climate change, the more fossil fuels we burn. How did we end up in this mess? In this masterful new history, Andreas Malm claims it all began in Britain with the rise of steam power. But why did manufacturers turn from traditional sources of power, notably water mills, to an engine fired by coal? Contrary to established views, steam offered neither cheaper nor more abundant energy—but rather superior control of subordinate labor. Animated by fossil fuels, capital could concentrate production at the most profitable sites and during the most convenient hours, as it continues to do today. Sweeping from nineteenth-century Manchester to the emissions explosion in China, from the original triumph of coal to the stalled shift to renewables, this study hones in on the burning heart of capital and demonstrates, in unprecedented depth, that turning down the heat will mean a radical overthrow of the current economic order.“The definitive deep history on how our economic system created the climate crisis. Superb, essential reading from one of the most original thinkers on the subject.”—Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything and The Shock Doctrine
496 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 20, 2015
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6276 people want to read
About the author
Andreas Malm
30 books478 followersAndreas Malm teaches Human Ecology at Lund University, Sweden. He is the author, with Shora Esmailian, of Iran on the Brink: Rising Workers and Threats of War and of Fossil Capital, which won the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize.
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November 24, 2017
I am entirely satisfied with having spent my birthday book token on ‘Fossil Capital’. It’ll most likely be one of the top five books I read in 2016. I have taken my time over it, both because I found it so thought-provoking and also because, in a spirit of laziness, I knew it would require a long and thorough review.
Malm’s main thesis is that to understand climate change we must go back to its roots. Specifically, the adoption of steam power during the British industrial revolution. Having not read a great deal about the period, I’d previously only come across crude economic explanations of this technological shift. Broadly, these state that steam was cheaper and more powerful than the alternative, water wheels, and therefore superceded them. Malm argues that this is a fundamental misunderstanding. Water power was plentiful, cheaper than coal-powered steam engines, and less liable to break down or blow up. Yet it was quickly abandoned from the 1830s in favour of steam as the main source of factory power. The reasons for this, Malm explains, are to be found in power relations. Using water power subordinated the factory-owner to nature, both in space (factories had to be located beside rivers) and time (water flow varied seasonally). This in turn reduced the factory owner’s control of his employees. If factories were not located centrally amid a large pool of labour, employees had to be paid and treated well in order to retain them (or alternatively indentured through apprenticeships). And if the factory sometimes could not operate due to lack of power, employees could not be trained into the habit of regular long working days. From the perspective of factory owners, using coal rather than water allowed factories to be located amid pools of low-cost urban labour and to operate the same hours all year round, benefits greater than the additional cost.
I was equally fascinated to learn that the causation of urban transformation during the industrial revolution was much more complex than I’d realised. English cities, especially London, had been using coal for heating and cooking since Elizabethan times, which enabled them to grow in size and density beyond what wood fuel could support. Thus these cities already had a pool of underemployed labour and a supply chain for coal prior to the invention of the steam engine, characteristics which subsequently attracted factories to locate in urban centres. Malm goes into considerable detail regarding this process, which was in some ways triggered by Henry VIII’s break from Rome. This reduced the church’s control of the land, enabling the enclosure and exploitation of coal seams that the church had previously greatly restricted access to. The result was a surge in coal availability; what an extraordinary unintended consequence of Henry's divorce! Legal structures, as well as the capitalist imperative to compete, likewise deterred the use of water power, which required factory owners to co-operate in order to share rivers. Steam engines and coal, however, could be located anywhere, used any time, and required no such co-operation.
It took me a somewhat embarrassingly long time to realise that Malm was employing a largely Marxist analysis. To be fair, the name of Marx is mentioned nowhere on the cover or blurb, nor does it come up until perhaps two hundred pages in. Nonetheless, Malm draws heavily (although far from exclusively) on Marx, including a section on steam fetishism amongst the bourgeoisie and popular resistance amongst the workers. This part led me onto a tangent, contemplating the steampunk sub-genre which I have often found disappointing. (Examples that spring to mind include Boneshaker, which I never finished, and Aurorarama, which had such unrealised potential.) Very few ostensibly steampunk novels seem to consider the social and political implications of their variation on steam technology in any kind of systematic way, let alone deal with the environmental degradation and colonialism also implicit in such settings. I would absolutely love to read an alternate history in which there was a genuine English revolution in the 1840s, much like the Plug Riots of 1842 on a larger scale, in which steam power was a key point of contention. A novel extrapolating from that could truly call itself steampunk. Actually, I once attempted to write something of the kind myself, but unfortunately I can’t write fiction for shit as I always get distracted very quickly by reading.
Returning to the world of non-fiction, Malm moves from historical analysis to a general Marxist theory of fossil capitalism. Inevitably, as the most theoretical part of the book it was also the densest. Nonetheless, Malm writes lucidly and very intelligently throughout, applying theory and dismantling neoliberal narratives. The final chapters are the most immediate and therefore the most powerful, as they deal with the chronic failure to address climate change in the present day. Although I’ve seen elements of Malm’s analysis in my previous reading on why humanity cannot seem to respond to this civilisation-ending threat, both the presentation and content here are original, powerful, and damning. Notably, Malm refutes the environmental Kuznets curve, which I remember being taught as an undergrad and finding rather over-convenient. Briefly, this theory suggests that wealth begets environmental protection, as beyond a certain level of economic development the population demands better environmental standards. This is of course fits very neatly with the neoliberal commandment that economic growth is the solution to all ills, including those caused by economic growth. Malm points out that the Kuznets curve presupposes some less developed country will take on the burden of environmental damage and then export its products back to richer states. Indeed, he notes that multinational corporations usually end up locating production in countries at the top of Kuznets curve, where the carbon intensity of production is highest, as such places have low labour costs as well as sufficient infrastructure for export. China is of course the classic example and thus the case study used: a huge population of urban labour kept biddable by political repression (an aspect that Malm hardly mentions, interestingly), as well as roads, ports, and a reliable electrical grid, mostly running on cheap coal.
The most depressing argument Malm makes concerns the simplistic and hopeful view that the world will shift from fossil fuels to renewables when the latter become cheaper. There are many flaws in this markets-will-save-us approach. The costs of solar and wind power have been falling steadily and are approaching parity with fossil fuels in some circumstances, yet energy multinationals have divested themselves of renewables investments and insist that they can’t make money from them. Firstly, Malm points out that there are parallels with the choice between water and steam power in the 19th century. In the 21st, fossil fuel multinationals are configured to exploit resources that are centralised and movable in space and time, whereas solar and wind are decentralised, require immovable installations, and provide variable amounts of power depending on conditions. Moreover, the falling cost of renewables is actually bad for such vast companies - it incentivises delaying investment - and large scale renewable projects have repeatedly failed due to difficulty in co-operation and uncertainty of profit. In short, structural factors inherent in fossil fuels create patterns of power relations that preclude an easy, market-based transition to renewables. Whilst I’d of course read plenty about path dependency due to the scale and longevity of infrastructure investments, Malm advances the point several steps further and, in doing so, asks very important questions about who in fact is causing climate change. Ascribing it to individual consumers is meaningless, given that we are all embedded in a global economy of fossil capital. Where, then, is the power held? As Malm puts it:
I struggle to choose small sections ‘Fossil Capital’ to quote, both because it all fits together in such an effective whole and because every part of it was interesting and quote-worthy to me. Nonetheless, this part forms a neat synthesis:
‘Fossil Capital’ is a very important book on what I think is the most important current topic: what are the current barriers to addressing climate change and how can we get through them? For decades there has been more than enough scientific research to create an urgent imperative and more than enough policy research to provide solutions to try. Yet carbon emissions have continued to rise precipitously. Climate change mitigation is not being prevented by information deficit or inadequate technology, but by more subtle and fundamental factors, which were apparently inherent within industrial capitalism from the start. Malm explains this better and more exhaustively than any other commentator I’ve read. I am frankly envious of his scholarship, especially as this book is an expansion of his PhD thesis. I urge everyone to read it and look anew at how the world in which we live works, and why this manner of working is destroying the very means of our survival. It is hard to feel in any way optimistic upon finishing it, although I am no fan of fatalism. Still, if humanity cannot change capitalism before it dooms us all, surely we are a failed experiment in evolution and can only hope that giant cockroaches, or whatever else might create the next civilisation, make better choices than we did.
Malm’s main thesis is that to understand climate change we must go back to its roots. Specifically, the adoption of steam power during the British industrial revolution. Having not read a great deal about the period, I’d previously only come across crude economic explanations of this technological shift. Broadly, these state that steam was cheaper and more powerful than the alternative, water wheels, and therefore superceded them. Malm argues that this is a fundamental misunderstanding. Water power was plentiful, cheaper than coal-powered steam engines, and less liable to break down or blow up. Yet it was quickly abandoned from the 1830s in favour of steam as the main source of factory power. The reasons for this, Malm explains, are to be found in power relations. Using water power subordinated the factory-owner to nature, both in space (factories had to be located beside rivers) and time (water flow varied seasonally). This in turn reduced the factory owner’s control of his employees. If factories were not located centrally amid a large pool of labour, employees had to be paid and treated well in order to retain them (or alternatively indentured through apprenticeships). And if the factory sometimes could not operate due to lack of power, employees could not be trained into the habit of regular long working days. From the perspective of factory owners, using coal rather than water allowed factories to be located amid pools of low-cost urban labour and to operate the same hours all year round, benefits greater than the additional cost.
I was equally fascinated to learn that the causation of urban transformation during the industrial revolution was much more complex than I’d realised. English cities, especially London, had been using coal for heating and cooking since Elizabethan times, which enabled them to grow in size and density beyond what wood fuel could support. Thus these cities already had a pool of underemployed labour and a supply chain for coal prior to the invention of the steam engine, characteristics which subsequently attracted factories to locate in urban centres. Malm goes into considerable detail regarding this process, which was in some ways triggered by Henry VIII’s break from Rome. This reduced the church’s control of the land, enabling the enclosure and exploitation of coal seams that the church had previously greatly restricted access to. The result was a surge in coal availability; what an extraordinary unintended consequence of Henry's divorce! Legal structures, as well as the capitalist imperative to compete, likewise deterred the use of water power, which required factory owners to co-operate in order to share rivers. Steam engines and coal, however, could be located anywhere, used any time, and required no such co-operation.
It took me a somewhat embarrassingly long time to realise that Malm was employing a largely Marxist analysis. To be fair, the name of Marx is mentioned nowhere on the cover or blurb, nor does it come up until perhaps two hundred pages in. Nonetheless, Malm draws heavily (although far from exclusively) on Marx, including a section on steam fetishism amongst the bourgeoisie and popular resistance amongst the workers. This part led me onto a tangent, contemplating the steampunk sub-genre which I have often found disappointing. (Examples that spring to mind include Boneshaker, which I never finished, and Aurorarama, which had such unrealised potential.) Very few ostensibly steampunk novels seem to consider the social and political implications of their variation on steam technology in any kind of systematic way, let alone deal with the environmental degradation and colonialism also implicit in such settings. I would absolutely love to read an alternate history in which there was a genuine English revolution in the 1840s, much like the Plug Riots of 1842 on a larger scale, in which steam power was a key point of contention. A novel extrapolating from that could truly call itself steampunk. Actually, I once attempted to write something of the kind myself, but unfortunately I can’t write fiction for shit as I always get distracted very quickly by reading.
Returning to the world of non-fiction, Malm moves from historical analysis to a general Marxist theory of fossil capitalism. Inevitably, as the most theoretical part of the book it was also the densest. Nonetheless, Malm writes lucidly and very intelligently throughout, applying theory and dismantling neoliberal narratives. The final chapters are the most immediate and therefore the most powerful, as they deal with the chronic failure to address climate change in the present day. Although I’ve seen elements of Malm’s analysis in my previous reading on why humanity cannot seem to respond to this civilisation-ending threat, both the presentation and content here are original, powerful, and damning. Notably, Malm refutes the environmental Kuznets curve, which I remember being taught as an undergrad and finding rather over-convenient. Briefly, this theory suggests that wealth begets environmental protection, as beyond a certain level of economic development the population demands better environmental standards. This is of course fits very neatly with the neoliberal commandment that economic growth is the solution to all ills, including those caused by economic growth. Malm points out that the Kuznets curve presupposes some less developed country will take on the burden of environmental damage and then export its products back to richer states. Indeed, he notes that multinational corporations usually end up locating production in countries at the top of Kuznets curve, where the carbon intensity of production is highest, as such places have low labour costs as well as sufficient infrastructure for export. China is of course the classic example and thus the case study used: a huge population of urban labour kept biddable by political repression (an aspect that Malm hardly mentions, interestingly), as well as roads, ports, and a reliable electrical grid, mostly running on cheap coal.
The most depressing argument Malm makes concerns the simplistic and hopeful view that the world will shift from fossil fuels to renewables when the latter become cheaper. There are many flaws in this markets-will-save-us approach. The costs of solar and wind power have been falling steadily and are approaching parity with fossil fuels in some circumstances, yet energy multinationals have divested themselves of renewables investments and insist that they can’t make money from them. Firstly, Malm points out that there are parallels with the choice between water and steam power in the 19th century. In the 21st, fossil fuel multinationals are configured to exploit resources that are centralised and movable in space and time, whereas solar and wind are decentralised, require immovable installations, and provide variable amounts of power depending on conditions. Moreover, the falling cost of renewables is actually bad for such vast companies - it incentivises delaying investment - and large scale renewable projects have repeatedly failed due to difficulty in co-operation and uncertainty of profit. In short, structural factors inherent in fossil fuels create patterns of power relations that preclude an easy, market-based transition to renewables. Whilst I’d of course read plenty about path dependency due to the scale and longevity of infrastructure investments, Malm advances the point several steps further and, in doing so, asks very important questions about who in fact is causing climate change. Ascribing it to individual consumers is meaningless, given that we are all embedded in a global economy of fossil capital. Where, then, is the power held? As Malm puts it:
Capital is not a being endowed with a will and mind, a cabal, an almighty conspiracy or a central directory preparing its decisions and foreseeing their consequences: anything but. It is a blind process of self-expansion, but one personified in capitalists, whose actions and reactions are - and have to be - animated by the compulsion to valorise value. More often than not, the products are unintended.
I struggle to choose small sections ‘Fossil Capital’ to quote, both because it all fits together in such an effective whole and because every part of it was interesting and quote-worthy to me. Nonetheless, this part forms a neat synthesis:
Capitalist growth, then, did not become welded to fossil fuels because it is a linear, neutral, incremental addition of wealth, output or productive forces: it is no such thing, and no such thing exists. That growth is a set of relations just as much as process, whose limitless expansion advances by ordering humans and the rest of nature in abstract space and time because that is where most surplus-value can be produced.
‘Fossil Capital’ is a very important book on what I think is the most important current topic: what are the current barriers to addressing climate change and how can we get through them? For decades there has been more than enough scientific research to create an urgent imperative and more than enough policy research to provide solutions to try. Yet carbon emissions have continued to rise precipitously. Climate change mitigation is not being prevented by information deficit or inadequate technology, but by more subtle and fundamental factors, which were apparently inherent within industrial capitalism from the start. Malm explains this better and more exhaustively than any other commentator I’ve read. I am frankly envious of his scholarship, especially as this book is an expansion of his PhD thesis. I urge everyone to read it and look anew at how the world in which we live works, and why this manner of working is destroying the very means of our survival. It is hard to feel in any way optimistic upon finishing it, although I am no fan of fatalism. Still, if humanity cannot change capitalism before it dooms us all, surely we are a failed experiment in evolution and can only hope that giant cockroaches, or whatever else might create the next civilisation, make better choices than we did.
February 5, 2021
In a narrow sense a history of coal, but in a broader sense, a history of capitalism. Malm shows that the major reason for the shift within the British cotton manufacturing industry in the early 19th century, from water power to steam power (and which then laid the base for the fossil economy) was not greater efficiency/a drive to technological development, but because it was far easier to control restive labour in the context of an urban-centered steam-run factory rather than cotton mills.
The broader point that flows from Malm's detailed historical/anthropological study is that contrary to capitalism's progress-centred narrative - where technological innovation is determined by a quest for greater efficiency - the historical record actually shows that class relations are the major triggers for technological development/change.
Apart from the rigour and depth of the argument, the book is beautifully and elegantly written, and does a wonderful job of exposition, especially when it comes to complicated concepts.
The broader point that flows from Malm's detailed historical/anthropological study is that contrary to capitalism's progress-centred narrative - where technological innovation is determined by a quest for greater efficiency - the historical record actually shows that class relations are the major triggers for technological development/change.
Apart from the rigour and depth of the argument, the book is beautifully and elegantly written, and does a wonderful job of exposition, especially when it comes to complicated concepts.
March 13, 2016
Caution: fossil history trap
[Through my ratings, reviews and edits I'm providing intellectual property and labor to Amazon.com Inc., listed on Nasdaq, which fully owns Goodreads.com and in 2014 posted revenues for $90 billion and a $271 million loss. Intellectual property and labor require compensation. Amazon.com Inc. is also requested to provide assurance that its employees and contractors' work conditions meet the highest health and safety standards at all the company's sites].
The best parts of this book are two interventions in (for now) niche controversies. The first one is an attack on E.A. Wrigley's theory about the role of energy in the Industrial Revolution (Energy and the English Industrial Revolution). It's not true - triumphantly demostrates Malm - that the adoption of coal as the main source of energy freed humankind from the constraints represented by limited forests. Because coal was not a substitute for wood and charcoal, as Wrigley and his followers have it (see for example Power to the People: Energy in Europe Over the Last Five Centuries: Energy in Europe Over the Last Five Centuries), but it replaced wind and water instead. No land was "saved" thanks to coal. To boot, Malm attacks historical 'technology determinists' - see Landes's The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present - showing how it was not price that drove the conversion to coal, as water was much cheaper than coal, but class conflict.
Malm investigates the transition from water to coal diving with relish into Lancashire's history, and he is exceptionally good at bringing to life the dilemmas facing all the actors involved (water capitalists, coal capitalists, inventors, putters-out, contemporary historians, factory workers, men, women and children). In sum, "the original purpose of coal – heat for the populace – opened a hallway to population concentrations, which subsequently lured manufacturers away from water as a source of mechanical energy in a historical cunning of sorts. Coal in stoves contributed to the pattern of centralised settlements; water mills came into contradiction with this pattern; the conversion to steam resolved it by bringing capital and labour together." (p. 161). And "a shock was required for the masters to move. More or less overnight, the Ten Hours Act of 1847 provoked a conversion: in ten and a half hours, the demand for high-velocity power surged – and now the mill-owners were willing to risk their property and operatives’ lives. Again, social necessity was the mother of adoption." (pp. 190-191).
But the book's strength - its original and important contribution to the explanation of the rise of 'fossil capitalism' - turns into its greatest weakness when it comes to analysing the present. Malm's declared 'political materialism' - positing that property relations (or their project) come first, and then a technology is chosen to keep the preferred status or make it happen, and not the other way round - seems unable to read contemporary property relations and their technological tricks without the help of Marx's insight.
What would Marx do? He would probably forget about Lancashire, and go to Sweden, where Malm comes from, and see what happens in countries that have been 'de-carbonising' their economies, and look at the property relations there, and look for links between those property relations and the low-carbon technologies, and think, and think, and think..
But Malm is fascinated by coal and fossil fuels in general, and keeps looking for Lancashires and chimneys of the world, and so turns to China, blind to the ongoing appropriation of the flow (renewables) by developed countries, or at least the project thereof. In fact, it's not 1847 any more.
[Through my ratings, reviews and edits I'm providing intellectual property and labor to Amazon.com Inc., listed on Nasdaq, which fully owns Goodreads.com and in 2014 posted revenues for $90 billion and a $271 million loss. Intellectual property and labor require compensation. Amazon.com Inc. is also requested to provide assurance that its employees and contractors' work conditions meet the highest health and safety standards at all the company's sites].
The best parts of this book are two interventions in (for now) niche controversies. The first one is an attack on E.A. Wrigley's theory about the role of energy in the Industrial Revolution (Energy and the English Industrial Revolution). It's not true - triumphantly demostrates Malm - that the adoption of coal as the main source of energy freed humankind from the constraints represented by limited forests. Because coal was not a substitute for wood and charcoal, as Wrigley and his followers have it (see for example Power to the People: Energy in Europe Over the Last Five Centuries: Energy in Europe Over the Last Five Centuries), but it replaced wind and water instead. No land was "saved" thanks to coal. To boot, Malm attacks historical 'technology determinists' - see Landes's The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present - showing how it was not price that drove the conversion to coal, as water was much cheaper than coal, but class conflict.
Malm investigates the transition from water to coal diving with relish into Lancashire's history, and he is exceptionally good at bringing to life the dilemmas facing all the actors involved (water capitalists, coal capitalists, inventors, putters-out, contemporary historians, factory workers, men, women and children). In sum, "the original purpose of coal – heat for the populace – opened a hallway to population concentrations, which subsequently lured manufacturers away from water as a source of mechanical energy in a historical cunning of sorts. Coal in stoves contributed to the pattern of centralised settlements; water mills came into contradiction with this pattern; the conversion to steam resolved it by bringing capital and labour together." (p. 161). And "a shock was required for the masters to move. More or less overnight, the Ten Hours Act of 1847 provoked a conversion: in ten and a half hours, the demand for high-velocity power surged – and now the mill-owners were willing to risk their property and operatives’ lives. Again, social necessity was the mother of adoption." (pp. 190-191).
But the book's strength - its original and important contribution to the explanation of the rise of 'fossil capitalism' - turns into its greatest weakness when it comes to analysing the present. Malm's declared 'political materialism' - positing that property relations (or their project) come first, and then a technology is chosen to keep the preferred status or make it happen, and not the other way round - seems unable to read contemporary property relations and their technological tricks without the help of Marx's insight.
What would Marx do? He would probably forget about Lancashire, and go to Sweden, where Malm comes from, and see what happens in countries that have been 'de-carbonising' their economies, and look at the property relations there, and look for links between those property relations and the low-carbon technologies, and think, and think, and think..
But Malm is fascinated by coal and fossil fuels in general, and keeps looking for Lancashires and chimneys of the world, and so turns to China, blind to the ongoing appropriation of the flow (renewables) by developed countries, or at least the project thereof. In fact, it's not 1847 any more.
September 21, 2021
In Fossil Capital, Malm provides an impressively executed historical inquiry into the antagonisms that gave rise to our current fossil economy characterised by self-sustaining growth. The book is a deep dive into the history of the origins of the industrial revolution in England, but once surveyed, this history provides a solid base with which serves Malm well as he engages with the contemporary.
The main question explored through this book is why coal, and not waterpower or wind, was chosen as the ‘prime mover’? The reasons are a multitude of antagonisms, sometimes opposing ones, such as the control it offered capitalist (not being reliant on weather conditions and place) and the establishment of the set 8-hour workday, further boosting the need for control.
Coal is also more aligned with capitalist property relations. Wind and water are part of the commons and cannot be commodified in the same way as coal. Using the latter resources thus required capitalists to cooperate and coordinate, which, as Marx will tell us, is not really the nature of the Darwinian game of markets.
Contrary to what Malm terms the Ricardo-Malthusian paradigm, which assumes technology as a response to scarcity, technology is in this book codified as a tool of disciplining. The creation of the proletariat was a project spanning generations and seemingly a constant headache for capitalists; whereas once you had self-sufficient farmers whose work followed the seasons, you must now seek to shape to routinised factory workers spending all waking hours producing commodities. To me, the labour conditions during the Industrial Revolution represent a historical trauma we have yet to recover from. Seen through the light of the conditions back then, small changes can today appear as large victories while keeping the underlying structure of appropriated labour value intact.
Steam via coal, as mentioned, not being dependent on place, eventually urbanised and dragged with it the workforce, which made workers even less independent. Without access to land to grow on nor any relationship with the mills’ management, the proletariat’s bargaining power further fell (a first wave of flexibilisation, one could say). As steam made its way into common culture, the battle between ‘steam demonology’ and ‘steam fetishism’ ensued; both ascribing a type of autonomous agency to an inanimate object.
Towards the end, the book presents a powerful critique of the Anthropocene narrative which assumes equal and sovereign responsibility to all individuals stuck in the webs of capitalist productive relations. To force the transitions, what we should challenge instead, Malm argues, are the power structures preventing its shift due to private interests whose investments are sunk in fossil capital.
The main question explored through this book is why coal, and not waterpower or wind, was chosen as the ‘prime mover’? The reasons are a multitude of antagonisms, sometimes opposing ones, such as the control it offered capitalist (not being reliant on weather conditions and place) and the establishment of the set 8-hour workday, further boosting the need for control.
Coal is also more aligned with capitalist property relations. Wind and water are part of the commons and cannot be commodified in the same way as coal. Using the latter resources thus required capitalists to cooperate and coordinate, which, as Marx will tell us, is not really the nature of the Darwinian game of markets.
Contrary to what Malm terms the Ricardo-Malthusian paradigm, which assumes technology as a response to scarcity, technology is in this book codified as a tool of disciplining. The creation of the proletariat was a project spanning generations and seemingly a constant headache for capitalists; whereas once you had self-sufficient farmers whose work followed the seasons, you must now seek to shape to routinised factory workers spending all waking hours producing commodities. To me, the labour conditions during the Industrial Revolution represent a historical trauma we have yet to recover from. Seen through the light of the conditions back then, small changes can today appear as large victories while keeping the underlying structure of appropriated labour value intact.
Steam via coal, as mentioned, not being dependent on place, eventually urbanised and dragged with it the workforce, which made workers even less independent. Without access to land to grow on nor any relationship with the mills’ management, the proletariat’s bargaining power further fell (a first wave of flexibilisation, one could say). As steam made its way into common culture, the battle between ‘steam demonology’ and ‘steam fetishism’ ensued; both ascribing a type of autonomous agency to an inanimate object.
Towards the end, the book presents a powerful critique of the Anthropocene narrative which assumes equal and sovereign responsibility to all individuals stuck in the webs of capitalist productive relations. To force the transitions, what we should challenge instead, Malm argues, are the power structures preventing its shift due to private interests whose investments are sunk in fossil capital.
January 8, 2026
*4.5 - amazingly astute, creative, and genuinely useful ways of theorising global warming and what it means to use fossil fuels. Incredible. Will be awaiting the sequel with similar anticipation to gta 6 fr
September 5, 2020
There’s a lot here, and I’m not savvy enough to all of the analytical frameworks in play to say I absorbed all of it, but I found the class relations analysis of why steam power won over water power to be quite interesting. Granted, it is a long detailed slog through that story and perhaps reads as more specialized than it is intended. It is somewhere between a popular book and an academic one. The game theory of how decisions are made within certain property regimes is also very interesting, and while there are cartoon versions of dialectical materialism that are deterministic in a hand-wavy way, this book is a good illustration of how Marxian political economy applies its analysis to climate change and fossil fuels. That isn’t to say there aren’t plenty of points to challenge some of these assumptions either.
August 24, 2024
As I read this book my jaw gradually dropped further and further and I wanted to start fist pumping the air. It's so, so good. A masterpiece of history, and a startlingly original work that has huge implications. It absolutely devastates bourgeois theories of economic and technological development, and absolutely vindicates Marxist theories of class struggle being the driving force of history, with massive amounts of incontestable data. And to top it off he is a really excellent writer! This is a lively book written in excellent prose, and not a turgid, arduous read as serious works of history and theory can sometimes be. His English vocabulary is better than mine and it's his second language. I would say that if you are interested in Marxism, the history of Capitalism, technology or the environment this is a must read. I'm reading this in advance of hosting a book launch with him for Overshoot in November. I will try to read White Skin, Black Fuel too.
August 2, 2019
Stellar if overly long, but the redundant characters are made up for by Malm's talent for enchanting the reader. The fact that I can't recall whether or not I already knew the book's main theoretical points speaks to its fundamental soundness. Full review pending.
March 15, 2022
Very interesting. Malm examines the transition to fossil capitalism via coal-powered steam engines in Britain's cotton manufacturing districts from about 1824 to 1850. This transition from water (the flow) to coal (the stock) power, he argues, was ushered in by capitalists to maximize profit. In other words, it was not necessary to circumvent technological limitations or because growth had hit a wall. To Malm, understanding this is transition is essential to ending the fossil capitalist economy. I found this a fascinating discussion and appreciated his numerous historiographical comments as he engages philosophers, historians, and economists. But the last third or so bogged down for me in a lot of Marxist theory and formulae.
October 8, 2019
I put off writing my review for too long, because this book was too good and I wanted to say too much. The chapter 'Fossil Capital' is the most gloriously ingenious thing I've read in years, utterly convincing, and horrifying. The climate crisis is undeniably caused by the economic system in which those writing and reading this review have thrived. There is no way for that economic system to solve the crisis without transforming itself at the same time.
June 8, 2019
U prvom dijelu ovo djelo se bavi nastankom ekonomije bazirane na parnom stroju (prelazak s energije vode na energiju ugljena, iskorištavanje fosilnih izvora enerije) u Velikoj Britaniji, odnosom tvorničara, radnika i usporedbom toka vode i ugljena kao izvora energije kroz prizmu prve industrijalizirane zemlje Engleske i industrije prerade pamuka, tadašnje najjače industrije. Autor predstavlja tezu kako se na ugljen nije prelazilo radi znanosti ili "jedinog mogućeg sljedećeg načina" nego radi klasnih odnosa, radi kontrole nad izvorom energije, jer se masovnom proizvodnjom stvarao sukob između zahtjeva radničke klase i kapitala. Kapital mora kontrolirati sve , od prvog ulaza sirovine, do krajnjeg proizvoda, kao i pravila igre kako bi bio "siguran". Iskorištavanje energije vode (prije prelaska na parni pogon energija voda se nije iskorištavala niti 10% od moguće na rijekama Engleske) kao izvora energije zahtijevalo bi više suradnje između kapitalista, više uključivanja ljudskih zajednica u rad tvornica te manje zagađivanja okoliša. Zanimljivost koju autor iznosi je kako riječ "power" u engleskom jeziku kao u niti jednom drugom jeziku na svijetu označava istodobno snagu stroja, kod parnog stroja, kao i moć unutar društva. U vrijeme 19.stoljeća tko je imao "power" u vidu parnih strojeva taj je imao "power" i u društvenim odnosima. U ovom djelu autor se dosta referira na klasne odnose i Marxova djela i izjave. Sviđa mi se što u djelu nije predstavljena fatalističko-kataklizmička vizija budućnosti, da ćemo izgoriti ako ne nađemo rješenja skoro. Ima još mjesta i nade za promjene. U djelu ima znatan broj i brojeva i grafova ali ne na način da se čitatelj pogubi, nego su skladno ti podatci "utopljeni" u kontekst. U drugom dijelu knjige, autor piše o novom "dimnjaku svijeta" Kini ( u 19.stoljeću to je bila Engleska sa ugljenom) ,ekspoloataciji nafte, navodi današnje primjere rada tvornica i odnosa prema radnicama i lokalnim zajednicama. Ključna stvar je mobilnost kapitala, kako uvijek traži najjeftinije izvore energije, radnika, sirovina, pa tako su svi uvjeti se podudarili u Kini, a strani kapital najviše ulaže baš tamo. Kroz primjere raznih "poduzetnika" čije izjave autor citira, može se vidjeti glavna bit poduzetništva na ovaj način - profit bez obzira na sve drugo. Ostalo će se izgleda naplatiti kasnije. U zadnjem dijelu autor predstavlja i iskoristivost Sunčeve i vodene energije danas, mogućnosti razvoja takvih tehnologija i njihove primjene. Bitka za stvari bitne i univerzalne kao što je briga za prirodu, rijeke, šume, ljude i zdravlje bi trebala biti vođena na razini čovječanstva, kao jedne nacije, jer smo svi pogođeni istim problemima.
November 26, 2020
andreas malm's writing is unbearably pretentious and long-winded. i want to learn but this shit is unreadable
August 20, 2025
this book is absolutely brilliant and wouldve honestly been 5 stars if it werent for the last thirty or so pages! its so funny to see malm sidestep marxism as if that isnt been the clear advocacy of the whole book railing against capitalism and accumulation. despite how strangely out of-place this is, the information in this book is truly invaluable; to understanding how steam power and capitalism have reinforced one another so strongly and how these processes of normalization work in every fold of our lives capitalism has pervasively seeped its way into. well *well* worth the read. i found some humor in malm's strange finishing evasion of what is clearly our only way to liberation.
"Capital can come across a waterfall in the country like a spider's web, but not spin it. The subsumption of this force of nature is bound to be ever formal.
In one respect, the flow of energy is like labour power: a commodity only in the weak sense of being hired for use, not in the full sense of being produced for the market. That is why water had no exchange-value, why it was so much cheaper than steam and why it had to be discarded. The stock, on the other hand, is but a dormant potential, awakened as a force of nature only through the touch from the resources of capital, its acquired means and labour. That is why coal had exchange-value, why steam was more expensive and why it had to be chosen. (It is likewise the reason for the existence of primitive accumulation of fossil capital and the absence of any equivalent on the side of the flow.) We see here another series of paradoxical reversals: the renewable, common, already activated source of energy appears to capital irreproducible, exclusive, disabling. Only the stock can be conjured up as a power in motion internal to capital itself, setting it free from flowing nature and, indeed, from everyone else, in a sort of thermodynamic autoeroticism."
"Capital can come across a waterfall in the country like a spider's web, but not spin it. The subsumption of this force of nature is bound to be ever formal.
In one respect, the flow of energy is like labour power: a commodity only in the weak sense of being hired for use, not in the full sense of being produced for the market. That is why water had no exchange-value, why it was so much cheaper than steam and why it had to be discarded. The stock, on the other hand, is but a dormant potential, awakened as a force of nature only through the touch from the resources of capital, its acquired means and labour. That is why coal had exchange-value, why steam was more expensive and why it had to be chosen. (It is likewise the reason for the existence of primitive accumulation of fossil capital and the absence of any equivalent on the side of the flow.) We see here another series of paradoxical reversals: the renewable, common, already activated source of energy appears to capital irreproducible, exclusive, disabling. Only the stock can be conjured up as a power in motion internal to capital itself, setting it free from flowing nature and, indeed, from everyone else, in a sort of thermodynamic autoeroticism."
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February 1, 2025Organised pessimism and revolutionary melancholia.
January 8, 2020
Jedna od najboljih knjiga koje sam procitao
February 22, 2022
Malm is a talented author and weaves together some brilliant parts here and there when he is not compiling history. The book is very focused on the battle between water & steam power in the industrial revolution. The powerful analogy was that water was more affordable but required communitarian effort that was incompatible with capitalism so the more expensive route with steam was chosen because it was complimentary with capitalist power relations.
It is indeed much longer than it needs to be, but the book was Malm’s thesis. I’m still giving it 4 stars, though I feel it should be a bit lower, because of the tremendous amount of work and research he put into it; consolidating and disproving very established academic research, citing historic news articles, and reconciling it all with Marx’s Capital and the fossil economy.
All that being said I am more excited to read some of Malm’s other books and academic research because his work on this dense, but gem carrying book, proves his academic rigor.
It is indeed much longer than it needs to be, but the book was Malm’s thesis. I’m still giving it 4 stars, though I feel it should be a bit lower, because of the tremendous amount of work and research he put into it; consolidating and disproving very established academic research, citing historic news articles, and reconciling it all with Marx’s Capital and the fossil economy.
All that being said I am more excited to read some of Malm’s other books and academic research because his work on this dense, but gem carrying book, proves his academic rigor.
January 5, 2022
An important read for climate strategy. This book was published in 2016 and is the foundation of Malm's prolific and provocative work since then. How to Blow Up a Pipeline is the one everybody has heard of, but that book rests on the analysis of fossil capital outlined here.
Three quarters of the book is spent in Britain in the years 1780-1850, the period when coal-fired steam power overtook waterwheels to become the leading power source for the textile industry, and then all of British industry. Malm argues that this is where the perpetual growth machine of modern capitalism was born. By laying out the circumstances of this transition from water to coal, he sheds light on the dynamics of today's capitalist economic system.
Coal triumphed over waterpower not because the technology was more efficient or cost-effective. In fact, it was quite the opposite - waterpower remained cheaper than steam engines well after steam had become the preferred power source. Steam triumphed because it was more useful for disciplining labor. Because a steam engine could be placed anywhere, while water was limited to where the rivers ran, a steam-powered capitalist could situate his business in a town with a reserve army of unemployed workers, rather than needing to attract scarce laborers to a rural mill location. And because steam engines could turn off and on as needed, while water was at the mercy of natural cycles, steam was better able to adapt to labor protections like the 10 hour workday that were adapted in the 1830s and 40s. In short, coal-powered steam was more flexible in space and time, and that made it a better tool to be wielded for the exploitation of workers and extraction of profit.
The final quarter of the book traces fossil capital forward in time, showing that worker exploitation and ever-increasing fossil fuel consumption are the twin foundations of capitalism to this day. Malm leaves us with but with a plea to look squarely at the true dynamics of fossil capital and build a strategy to take it on directly. Having read this book, it's much easier to see both How to Blow Up a Pipeline and Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century as partial attempts by Malm to follow the implications of his own, quite sobering, analysis of fossil capital.
Three quarters of the book is spent in Britain in the years 1780-1850, the period when coal-fired steam power overtook waterwheels to become the leading power source for the textile industry, and then all of British industry. Malm argues that this is where the perpetual growth machine of modern capitalism was born. By laying out the circumstances of this transition from water to coal, he sheds light on the dynamics of today's capitalist economic system.
Coal triumphed over waterpower not because the technology was more efficient or cost-effective. In fact, it was quite the opposite - waterpower remained cheaper than steam engines well after steam had become the preferred power source. Steam triumphed because it was more useful for disciplining labor. Because a steam engine could be placed anywhere, while water was limited to where the rivers ran, a steam-powered capitalist could situate his business in a town with a reserve army of unemployed workers, rather than needing to attract scarce laborers to a rural mill location. And because steam engines could turn off and on as needed, while water was at the mercy of natural cycles, steam was better able to adapt to labor protections like the 10 hour workday that were adapted in the 1830s and 40s. In short, coal-powered steam was more flexible in space and time, and that made it a better tool to be wielded for the exploitation of workers and extraction of profit.
The final quarter of the book traces fossil capital forward in time, showing that worker exploitation and ever-increasing fossil fuel consumption are the twin foundations of capitalism to this day. Malm leaves us with but with a plea to look squarely at the true dynamics of fossil capital and build a strategy to take it on directly. Having read this book, it's much easier to see both How to Blow Up a Pipeline and Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century as partial attempts by Malm to follow the implications of his own, quite sobering, analysis of fossil capital.
September 18, 2020
Provides absolutely vital elements of a marxist analysis of fossil fuel economy and global warming, including excellent close historical analysis of the initial shift from water to coal in England, a sound beating on population-growthism and “all humans are culpable” thinking, and quite critically an investigation of the conflict between de-carbonization and capitalist abstract time - though I’m quite skeptical that Malm understands this problem correctly. His marxist fundamentals are strongly argued, and quite convincing to me. In that respect, this book is vital reading for partisans of a communist future. He goes so far as to work out expansions of Marx’s formulae of capital accumulation that take fossil capital into account.
Downsides are:
a) In the fight between marxists who understand that “Nature” is a real abstraction which emerges behind our backs in the course of capitalist production & circulation and those like John Bellamy Foster who insist that “Nature” is a concretely real thing, Malm takes Foster’s side. This limits his analysis in crucial ways.
b) Malm dismisses the ultimate solution to global warming - communism - out of hand as an impractical pipe dream for the present. He says that it cannot be achieved in the 30 years before we hit the point of warming that causes ecological feedback loops resulting in a runaway train of warming. This may or may not be true; it’s hard to tell these things beforehand. What it means is that Malm advocates massive statification, with state “central planning,” as the only viable immediate solution to global warming. He gives deadly punctures to the feasibility and desirability of geoengineering, forthrightly decentralized market initiatives for non-carbon energy, and so on, but fails to even mention how his statist solution would get off the ground, or discuss what a nightmare this ecological “war communism” would be to live under. Surely he’s aware that he advocates this in the context of a global rise of the far right, yet he never mentions this. If a sudden reversal of the fortunes of the global proletariat is unlikely any time soon, what makes his state response any more likely? - what social force would drive it? I’m open to being convinced that there is one, but he doesn’t bother to try. And 20th Century states in a capitalist world showed that they’re capable only of a very dysfunctional pseudo-coordination, yet Malm doesn’t mention this either, or take on these problems in any way.
I give this 4 stars instead of 3 because I don’t believe that the above problems damage the analytical core of the book, and that analytical core is invaluable.
Downsides are:
a) In the fight between marxists who understand that “Nature” is a real abstraction which emerges behind our backs in the course of capitalist production & circulation and those like John Bellamy Foster who insist that “Nature” is a concretely real thing, Malm takes Foster’s side. This limits his analysis in crucial ways.
b) Malm dismisses the ultimate solution to global warming - communism - out of hand as an impractical pipe dream for the present. He says that it cannot be achieved in the 30 years before we hit the point of warming that causes ecological feedback loops resulting in a runaway train of warming. This may or may not be true; it’s hard to tell these things beforehand. What it means is that Malm advocates massive statification, with state “central planning,” as the only viable immediate solution to global warming. He gives deadly punctures to the feasibility and desirability of geoengineering, forthrightly decentralized market initiatives for non-carbon energy, and so on, but fails to even mention how his statist solution would get off the ground, or discuss what a nightmare this ecological “war communism” would be to live under. Surely he’s aware that he advocates this in the context of a global rise of the far right, yet he never mentions this. If a sudden reversal of the fortunes of the global proletariat is unlikely any time soon, what makes his state response any more likely? - what social force would drive it? I’m open to being convinced that there is one, but he doesn’t bother to try. And 20th Century states in a capitalist world showed that they’re capable only of a very dysfunctional pseudo-coordination, yet Malm doesn’t mention this either, or take on these problems in any way.
I give this 4 stars instead of 3 because I don’t believe that the above problems damage the analytical core of the book, and that analytical core is invaluable.
January 31, 2018
The core of this book is a detailed focus on the economics of the shift from water to steam, which is surprisingly interesting. There is some decent analysis of a few modern situations. Most of the rest was aggressively ideological in a way that struck me as so divorced from reality that I'm not quite sure how to react.
November 4, 2021
I would give this book 10 stars if I could.
September 2, 2022
Such an amazing, informative book (that really could have used an editor, its like he was late and they just sent it to the printer). Sad that reading it in 2022 makes no difference to reading it in 2016, still timely and important perspective.
Ultimately he attempts to connect the climate crises with capitalism and gives the history of both from coal in 1600's Britain to now.
Chapters 2-12 could have been condensed as there is a lot of repeating. Narrowing down to the main points and historical items would have been more effective. Chap 13 seems written while high.
He is obviously knowledgeable and well read, but seems too much name dropping.
He pushes against a Ricardian-Mathusian hyposthesis, but what gave rise to the excess labor in the cities other than a population explosion in the country, that set off the whole capitalist explosion, thanks to also coal, but without the people, as he stated many times, they would have used hydro power.
Capitalists seem to work together all the time, it just seems that when it comes to the environment, it always gets mucked up. His analysis using Althusser, who I was not aware of, was particularly illuminating in describing our predicament and how we might be able to work our way out of it.
Ultimately he attempts to connect the climate crises with capitalism and gives the history of both from coal in 1600's Britain to now.
Chapters 2-12 could have been condensed as there is a lot of repeating. Narrowing down to the main points and historical items would have been more effective. Chap 13 seems written while high.
He is obviously knowledgeable and well read, but seems too much name dropping.
He pushes against a Ricardian-Mathusian hyposthesis, but what gave rise to the excess labor in the cities other than a population explosion in the country, that set off the whole capitalist explosion, thanks to also coal, but without the people, as he stated many times, they would have used hydro power.
Capitalists seem to work together all the time, it just seems that when it comes to the environment, it always gets mucked up. His analysis using Althusser, who I was not aware of, was particularly illuminating in describing our predicament and how we might be able to work our way out of it.
February 23, 2023
This is like a more historically rigorous companion to Naomi Klein’s “This Changes Everything”: a high compliment. Malm revisits and revises the history of “the transition” to a system of fossil fuel use wedded with economic growth, aka “fossil capital”. The explosive economic growth of the industrial revolution was built on fossil fuels, to the point that today we find it easier to imagine planned interventions to our climate than planned interventions in our economic system. Malm shows that coal was chosen as the prime energy source of industrial England not because it was the cheapest or most abundant source, but because it granted just the right amount of control over labor. Today we find ourselves in the same conundrum: cheap solar and wind can’t turn profits for BP and Shell, as we plunge head first into the worst case climate scenarios. Ever pragmatic, Malm knows our only hope is an intensive, globally planned exit from fossil capital.
August 25, 2019
This is a quite extensive, specific treatise, mostly on history regarding the transition from water to steam, and in parts how this can apply to the renewable energy conversation.
It describes matters such as: The relationship of labor to law; The constraints of locality on non steam power; The value of an industrious and disposable worker; Certain idiosyncrasies such as that of a drought.
I'm rating the first half of this book, which is excellent; around the middle, it transitions from a specific, insightful, well-researched history. It becomes something of a politically incoherent, pseudo-mathematical analysis. The statistics it provides before then are excellent, and based in knowledge drawn from a wide variety of sources. Thereafter, I didn't get much out of the book, save perhaps the final (8-page) chapter. You should go somewhere else for your theory.
It describes matters such as: The relationship of labor to law; The constraints of locality on non steam power; The value of an industrious and disposable worker; Certain idiosyncrasies such as that of a drought.
I'm rating the first half of this book, which is excellent; around the middle, it transitions from a specific, insightful, well-researched history. It becomes something of a politically incoherent, pseudo-mathematical analysis. The statistics it provides before then are excellent, and based in knowledge drawn from a wide variety of sources. Thereafter, I didn't get much out of the book, save perhaps the final (8-page) chapter. You should go somewhere else for your theory.
July 10, 2020
I had to read a large portion of this book for a college writing class that focused on Climate Change as its main concentration and not gonna lie, this book was both fantastic and confusing. It's definitely one of the denser and more technical books I have read in this course, but well worth the struggle. Malm provides substantial analysis on climate change and how humans aren't really the source of it, but the capitalistic society (and fossil fuel economy) that our global economy appears to depend on in the status quo.
Probably closer to 4.5 stars, but I personally found one of Malm's shorter essays (not sure if he has a book published on it) called China, Chimney of the World
Probably closer to 4.5 stars, but I personally found one of Malm's shorter essays (not sure if he has a book published on it) called China, Chimney of the World
July 19, 2020
Really stellar analysis. I think the structure is initially off-putting because Malm goes so hard on the history of the adoption of steam (compared to alternatives) in the first half of the book, but it lays the groundwork for his analysis of contemporary problems with capital and climate change. I particularly like how he challenges assumptions on the types of emissions American industry is responsible for (forcing other countries to produce goods and emissions for our consumption) and how a vast centralization of the economy by state is the only thing that can actually address climate change.
March 16, 2023
malm will always be my first love in ecology, the person who got me into environmental studies and environmental humanities in the first place. i was planning to read this cover to cover, but I accepted that wasn't going to happen so I'm just going to shelve this.
October 6, 2025
Listen. I have nothing but love for the aim of this book: understand the complexity of the transition TO fossil fuels (so that we can transition FROM fossil fuels to green energy).
This was a SUPER zoomed-in historical analysis of the transition from watermills to coal-powdered steam mills at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in England.
The two stars comes purely from the fact that this book was BORING lol
▪️ in a me-problem way: this book was 775 pages… and I only care about watermills maybe a 250 page amount? 😅
▪️ in a writing-problem way: even the stuff I really cared about was explained SO BORINGLY
But, if the Industrial Revolution is your Roman Empire, then this book is for you.
This was a SUPER zoomed-in historical analysis of the transition from watermills to coal-powdered steam mills at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in England.
The two stars comes purely from the fact that this book was BORING lol
▪️ in a me-problem way: this book was 775 pages… and I only care about watermills maybe a 250 page amount? 😅
▪️ in a writing-problem way: even the stuff I really cared about was explained SO BORINGLY
But, if the Industrial Revolution is your Roman Empire, then this book is for you.
April 18, 2021
Fascinating if you wanna nerd out on the economics of steam vs. water-power—what actually went down wasn't at all how it's assumed (coal & steam were not cheaper nor more efficient). BUT this book could have been a lot shorter and the narrative a lot more linear. DNF after I felt like it kept repeating the same story over again from a slightly different angle.
September 26, 2025
please read this book!
July 5, 2020
It is difficult to appreciate the workings of something while you are a small cog in the works, especially if you are not allowed to stop and reflect as by doing so you threaten to cause the machine, of which you are a part (even if unconsciously) to fail and grind to a halt. In his book Andreas Malm lifts the reader out of the box placing them outside it from where they can see the whole as he deconstructs it before their eyes and explains how and why the machine works as it does. Fossil Capital is a monumental work and one that takes capitalism seriously, presents a clear argument for how it got us into our current mess and why it will, by its nature, drag us ever deeper into the mire even if it means our civilisational, and probably planetary doom.
The book is a mixture of social and economic history, a narrative of technological change, power relations (in all senses) and a study of on going state of class struggle (conscious or not). The first part of the book looks at the transition from an artisan based production for use, to mass commodity production for profi,t or "exchange-value". Malm presents a thoroughly researched and carefully presented overview of the development of the factory and the emergence of the "working class", an entity dependent on the sale of its labour to survive. We see the effect of push and pull forces, with the new factories needing employees, while on the other hand people are driven from the land, or find their skills replaced by mechanisation forcing artisans into the labour market.
A central interest for the book is why fossil fuels - that cost to extract and turn into usable power - won over the freely available "flow" energy (wind, water, sun) which just required a means to capture energy that flowed freely. Malm shows that despite being more expensive, and initially offering no major efficiency over water, fossil fueled power (in the form of the coal fed steam engine) did give the individual capitalist a "freedom" which ranked higher than any other consideration. Coal and the steam engine gave the mill owner, the factory owner, the freedom to locate almost anywhere and the ability to produce the power they needed, when they wanted it. This trumped reliance on an uncertain flow of a free force offered by water power (fine in the days of products made for their use-value, not so good in the cut-throat profit driven world of commodities produced for their exchange-value). The automation which came with the steam engine, the move from skilled technical workers to overseers of labour replacing machines also made fossil fuel a key weapon in the struggle between workers and employers. While each innovation created new levels of conflict and opportunities for industrial action the end of reliance on a mass skilled workforce in need of housing, education and care by the employer was made possible largely thanks to the adoption of coal fired steam power. Malm goes into a lot of detail about the struggle between water power and steam power and shows conclusively that i) there was no shortage of water to drive industry and ii) the technical skills existed to expand and improve water power significantly. What the industrialists objected to was the communal nature of water power and the lack of flexibility a widely spread network of mills represented over those clustered in a town or city hub where trading facilities were on hand and a large reserve army of labour could be built up keeping labour costs and conflict down.
Labour conflict is examined in some detail. In doing so the book shows how the early capitalists were able to use their built environment and choices about power and machinery sources as a weapon in industrial conflict. While the emerging working class had been stripped of what they owned in their making they quickly realised that the one thing they had, their labour power, made them essential to the mill owners profits. Only through the employment of workers in their factories could the products be produced from which profit could be extracted. No workers, no production, no profit. The level of class conflict in the early nineteenth century was very impressive, from the early rebellions against power looms through to the height of revolutionary activity (in England at least) with the Chartist movement where labour brought about a general strike, took over workplaces, sabotaged machinery and demanded a bigger slice of the cake. (The downfall of the Chartist Movement was a failure to be revolutionary enough and seizing full control of the means of production and disposing of the employers, needless to say this was the finest and last chance the working class had in England, the state responded with force to rescue the owners of private property and became adept in the art of divide and rule and co-opting workers just enough to keep them under the thumb, anyway, I digress).
In summary early on "... capital prevailed over labour in the key industry of the British economy - smashed the unions, reestablished proper hierarchy, extracted more output of fewer workers at lower cost - by means of power, in the dual sense of the word. Automation drew its force from an extraneous source. Only the mobilisation of that source made it possible for the cotton capitalists to begin the process of salvaging profits at the expense of labour". And so the spiral of growth in production of commodities grew and with it the constant battle to extract more profit from the work done fed by an ever increasing demand for fossil based power releasing its planetary poison in the process (the level to which the harmful by-products of capitalist production were understood at the time is quite eye opening). That the global contagion has a source is clear. "If global warming has a historical homeland, there can indeed be no doubt about its identity" says Malm it was "the unique creation of Britain" something that as we grow closer to our doom the "more sharply will the British exception stand out and its history attract interest - not to honour the name of the kingdom, but rather smear it in the soot it has bequeathed to humanity". And so to the late 20th Century and the first decades of the 21st.
The opening up of China to foreign investment, which following WTO membership in 2001, skyrocketed and saw an opportunity for capital unequalled since the early days of Capitalism. China offered a vast, skilled, cheap, compliant and policed workforce, coupled with a state committed to infrastructure development and plentiful supplies of domestic and imported fossil fuel, he country became an overnight relocation no brainer, facilitated as it was by the neoliberal assault on world trade and nationally based production. This is where Malm highlights the problem with "consumption based accounting" the "...view of the Western consumer as an absolute sovereign who sends CO2 packing to other parts of the world" through their buying decisions, namely for cheap imports over domestic products. For Malm, this thinking, which results in calls for consumers/workers to "assume responsibility" for the climate crisis, misses the elephant in the room, the "owners of the means of production" who become a passive and out of sight none actor. However, as he points out "American and other Western workers never made the decision to outsource manufacturing. In fact, if there is anyone who has ever resisted such a move, it is they".He goes on to look at how and why people become integrated so entirely in a system which works against their interests. Returning to the "box" I opened with he introduces "Ideological State Apparatuses" where ideology has become "... a set of doctrines as a state of existence, in which the subject comes to be enmeshed in the relations, something not thought and said, but done and felt" (a bit like being a body in The Matrix). It therefore stands to reason that those with the most to lose in a fossil economy are those in societies most "thoroughly constituted by fossil use-value" the wealthiest consumers whose lives are built on the conveniences offered by such an economy and therefore least likely to recognise the beast or oppose it meaningfully (unlike those on the periphery still not integrated into it enough to make resistance unpalatable or give it the appearance of utter futility). Production here is the problem, consumption follows from production. "The historical tendancy of fossil capital is spew out more products (with a fossil fuel component) in them for more people '' and once captured by and integrated into consumer life it is hard to recognise it for what it is or imagine life without it.
Fossil Capital is primarily concerned with correctly identifying the problem and the historical processes that have got us to where we are today. It is rightly critical of the misdiagnosis, and thus cures prescribed, of much of the environmental and Anthropocene aristocracy. A key concern is that the speed at which things are getting worse is matched by the continued growth of fossil based economic growth and the investment in fossil based consumption. Malm argues that renewables, as the "flow" is now popularly known, are unpopular with the largest corporations for much the same reasons as in the early 19th Century, many fossil fuel giants who have dabbled in renewables had, at the time of writing his book, either withdrawn from, or scaled back, their interest in renewables while concentrating on their core fossil activities with no sign of a slowdown in demand - traditional markets turning to renewable sources more than being compensated for by emerging markets and sector growth. In such a situation piecemeal consumer led "choices" or technical fixes (endorsed by industry that sees a profitable future in them) offer little hope of any meaningful change. At the end of the day the message seems to be forget revolutions, or waiting for the workers to become class conscious and to seize the means of production, only a globally coordinated state led wartime style command economy has any hope of tackling the barest minimum of the problem we face. Even then, getting corporate cooperation would be difficult (especially with their being more powerful than most states). In conclusion Malm notes that the impact, avoidability and survivability of climate triggered disaster is a class issue "... as long as there are class societies on earth - there will be lifeboats for the rich and privileged, and there will not be any shared sense of catastrophe. More than ever class divisions will become matters of life and death: who gets to drive out of the city when the hurricane approaches; who can pay for seawalls or homes solid enough to stand the coming flood. The capitalist class is evidently not very worried. Quite a few fractions of it are rather gearing up for some sweet profits...".
This is a book you'd like to think today's descendants of the iron masters, who will keep drilling until the last breath of the last worker, might read. But they won't, it would be like staring in the mirror and seeing the four horsemen reflected back in one face. Most of those who read this book will do so because they are concerned or care about the future of humanity. In doing so they may be surprised and hopefully engaged by what they read. This book is most important in clearly showing where the problem began, how it has stayed with the same small beneficiary class who control a global machine which can only grow (or die) and how the "Anthropocene" is perhaps misnamed and should really be the Capitalocene.
To try to summarise this epic work in a few lines is unfair to it. It needs to be read and its lessons acted upon across all areas of life if there is to be any hope of mitigating, even for a while, the coming apocalypse. While I think that Andreas Malm is a little over optimistic and endorsing of an idea of a basic good ion humanity, a concept I struggle with, this a book to stand alongside other time tested historical and theoretical epic works.
The book is a mixture of social and economic history, a narrative of technological change, power relations (in all senses) and a study of on going state of class struggle (conscious or not). The first part of the book looks at the transition from an artisan based production for use, to mass commodity production for profi,t or "exchange-value". Malm presents a thoroughly researched and carefully presented overview of the development of the factory and the emergence of the "working class", an entity dependent on the sale of its labour to survive. We see the effect of push and pull forces, with the new factories needing employees, while on the other hand people are driven from the land, or find their skills replaced by mechanisation forcing artisans into the labour market.
A central interest for the book is why fossil fuels - that cost to extract and turn into usable power - won over the freely available "flow" energy (wind, water, sun) which just required a means to capture energy that flowed freely. Malm shows that despite being more expensive, and initially offering no major efficiency over water, fossil fueled power (in the form of the coal fed steam engine) did give the individual capitalist a "freedom" which ranked higher than any other consideration. Coal and the steam engine gave the mill owner, the factory owner, the freedom to locate almost anywhere and the ability to produce the power they needed, when they wanted it. This trumped reliance on an uncertain flow of a free force offered by water power (fine in the days of products made for their use-value, not so good in the cut-throat profit driven world of commodities produced for their exchange-value). The automation which came with the steam engine, the move from skilled technical workers to overseers of labour replacing machines also made fossil fuel a key weapon in the struggle between workers and employers. While each innovation created new levels of conflict and opportunities for industrial action the end of reliance on a mass skilled workforce in need of housing, education and care by the employer was made possible largely thanks to the adoption of coal fired steam power. Malm goes into a lot of detail about the struggle between water power and steam power and shows conclusively that i) there was no shortage of water to drive industry and ii) the technical skills existed to expand and improve water power significantly. What the industrialists objected to was the communal nature of water power and the lack of flexibility a widely spread network of mills represented over those clustered in a town or city hub where trading facilities were on hand and a large reserve army of labour could be built up keeping labour costs and conflict down.
Labour conflict is examined in some detail. In doing so the book shows how the early capitalists were able to use their built environment and choices about power and machinery sources as a weapon in industrial conflict. While the emerging working class had been stripped of what they owned in their making they quickly realised that the one thing they had, their labour power, made them essential to the mill owners profits. Only through the employment of workers in their factories could the products be produced from which profit could be extracted. No workers, no production, no profit. The level of class conflict in the early nineteenth century was very impressive, from the early rebellions against power looms through to the height of revolutionary activity (in England at least) with the Chartist movement where labour brought about a general strike, took over workplaces, sabotaged machinery and demanded a bigger slice of the cake. (The downfall of the Chartist Movement was a failure to be revolutionary enough and seizing full control of the means of production and disposing of the employers, needless to say this was the finest and last chance the working class had in England, the state responded with force to rescue the owners of private property and became adept in the art of divide and rule and co-opting workers just enough to keep them under the thumb, anyway, I digress).
In summary early on "... capital prevailed over labour in the key industry of the British economy - smashed the unions, reestablished proper hierarchy, extracted more output of fewer workers at lower cost - by means of power, in the dual sense of the word. Automation drew its force from an extraneous source. Only the mobilisation of that source made it possible for the cotton capitalists to begin the process of salvaging profits at the expense of labour". And so the spiral of growth in production of commodities grew and with it the constant battle to extract more profit from the work done fed by an ever increasing demand for fossil based power releasing its planetary poison in the process (the level to which the harmful by-products of capitalist production were understood at the time is quite eye opening). That the global contagion has a source is clear. "If global warming has a historical homeland, there can indeed be no doubt about its identity" says Malm it was "the unique creation of Britain" something that as we grow closer to our doom the "more sharply will the British exception stand out and its history attract interest - not to honour the name of the kingdom, but rather smear it in the soot it has bequeathed to humanity". And so to the late 20th Century and the first decades of the 21st.
The opening up of China to foreign investment, which following WTO membership in 2001, skyrocketed and saw an opportunity for capital unequalled since the early days of Capitalism. China offered a vast, skilled, cheap, compliant and policed workforce, coupled with a state committed to infrastructure development and plentiful supplies of domestic and imported fossil fuel, he country became an overnight relocation no brainer, facilitated as it was by the neoliberal assault on world trade and nationally based production. This is where Malm highlights the problem with "consumption based accounting" the "...view of the Western consumer as an absolute sovereign who sends CO2 packing to other parts of the world" through their buying decisions, namely for cheap imports over domestic products. For Malm, this thinking, which results in calls for consumers/workers to "assume responsibility" for the climate crisis, misses the elephant in the room, the "owners of the means of production" who become a passive and out of sight none actor. However, as he points out "American and other Western workers never made the decision to outsource manufacturing. In fact, if there is anyone who has ever resisted such a move, it is they".He goes on to look at how and why people become integrated so entirely in a system which works against their interests. Returning to the "box" I opened with he introduces "Ideological State Apparatuses" where ideology has become "... a set of doctrines as a state of existence, in which the subject comes to be enmeshed in the relations, something not thought and said, but done and felt" (a bit like being a body in The Matrix). It therefore stands to reason that those with the most to lose in a fossil economy are those in societies most "thoroughly constituted by fossil use-value" the wealthiest consumers whose lives are built on the conveniences offered by such an economy and therefore least likely to recognise the beast or oppose it meaningfully (unlike those on the periphery still not integrated into it enough to make resistance unpalatable or give it the appearance of utter futility). Production here is the problem, consumption follows from production. "The historical tendancy of fossil capital is spew out more products (with a fossil fuel component) in them for more people '' and once captured by and integrated into consumer life it is hard to recognise it for what it is or imagine life without it.
Fossil Capital is primarily concerned with correctly identifying the problem and the historical processes that have got us to where we are today. It is rightly critical of the misdiagnosis, and thus cures prescribed, of much of the environmental and Anthropocene aristocracy. A key concern is that the speed at which things are getting worse is matched by the continued growth of fossil based economic growth and the investment in fossil based consumption. Malm argues that renewables, as the "flow" is now popularly known, are unpopular with the largest corporations for much the same reasons as in the early 19th Century, many fossil fuel giants who have dabbled in renewables had, at the time of writing his book, either withdrawn from, or scaled back, their interest in renewables while concentrating on their core fossil activities with no sign of a slowdown in demand - traditional markets turning to renewable sources more than being compensated for by emerging markets and sector growth. In such a situation piecemeal consumer led "choices" or technical fixes (endorsed by industry that sees a profitable future in them) offer little hope of any meaningful change. At the end of the day the message seems to be forget revolutions, or waiting for the workers to become class conscious and to seize the means of production, only a globally coordinated state led wartime style command economy has any hope of tackling the barest minimum of the problem we face. Even then, getting corporate cooperation would be difficult (especially with their being more powerful than most states). In conclusion Malm notes that the impact, avoidability and survivability of climate triggered disaster is a class issue "... as long as there are class societies on earth - there will be lifeboats for the rich and privileged, and there will not be any shared sense of catastrophe. More than ever class divisions will become matters of life and death: who gets to drive out of the city when the hurricane approaches; who can pay for seawalls or homes solid enough to stand the coming flood. The capitalist class is evidently not very worried. Quite a few fractions of it are rather gearing up for some sweet profits...".
This is a book you'd like to think today's descendants of the iron masters, who will keep drilling until the last breath of the last worker, might read. But they won't, it would be like staring in the mirror and seeing the four horsemen reflected back in one face. Most of those who read this book will do so because they are concerned or care about the future of humanity. In doing so they may be surprised and hopefully engaged by what they read. This book is most important in clearly showing where the problem began, how it has stayed with the same small beneficiary class who control a global machine which can only grow (or die) and how the "Anthropocene" is perhaps misnamed and should really be the Capitalocene.
To try to summarise this epic work in a few lines is unfair to it. It needs to be read and its lessons acted upon across all areas of life if there is to be any hope of mitigating, even for a while, the coming apocalypse. While I think that Andreas Malm is a little over optimistic and endorsing of an idea of a basic good ion humanity, a concept I struggle with, this a book to stand alongside other time tested historical and theoretical epic works.
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