The Tragedy of the Worker: Towards the Proletarocene

by The Salvage Collective

Facing irreversible climate change, the planet is en route to apocalypse

To understand the scale of what faces us and how it ramifies through every corner of our lives is to marvel at our inaction. Why aren’t we holding emergency meetings in every city, town and village every week?

What is to be done to create a planet where a communist horizon offers a new dawn to replace our planetary twilight? What does it mean to be a communist after we have hit a climate tipping point?

The Tragedy of the Worker is a brilliant, stringently argued pamphlet reflecting on capitalism’s death drive, the left’s complicated entanglements with fossil fuels, and the rising tide of fascism. In response, the authors propose Salvage Communism, a programme of restoration and reparation that must precede any luxury communism. They set out a new way to think about the Anthropocene. The Tragedy of the Worker demands an alternative future—the Proletarocene—one capable of repairing the ravages of capitalism and restoring the world.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Environment, Climate Change, Labor, Economics, Theory

112 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2021

Reviews

[Meg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good ideas expressed in the most inaccessible language imaginable.

[Jonfaith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Salvage-Marxism is a disaster communism conditioned by and pining for a party form that it knows did not deserve to survive, and did not: learning to walk again, pain in that phantom limb.

I had devoted today to walking, a perambulation teeming with ghosts and reflection. I had just left my perch observing where the river had broken its banks and was now noisily flooding everything 30-40 feet above its normal bed. This is the third event this year. It is April.

I happened upon an honor library and found a cache of Verso publications including this. It appeared more than appropriate. Tearing into it I hated the first third, jargon-choked and using glib references to other theory texts as established fact. There was also a quaint nostalgia in that the book was published in 2021 in a post-Trump reality finding its footing.

The text really improved when it became both poetic and humble. The goals argued are nearly ridiculous in the most painful way. I mark the book a minor success in that it forced me to reconsider some things. For that I’m grateful if a touch depressed by the implications.

[Dusty Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an elusive text, definitely inaccessible to most, and betrayingly Euro-centric in its literary nostalgia and multilingual poetics - yet it convincingly argues the necessity of a socialism with roots in a relationship to land informed by Indigenous cosmologies, and rejection of industrial productivism that partly ruined the Bolshevik attempt.

[Owen Hatherley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very much a typical Salvage product - dense and allusive, apocalyptic, psychoanalytic, full of ex-Trotskyist angst, refusing various easily available pieties, and a little too in love with its own cleverness (so many 'cenes', my god) - and if you don't like the sound of that you won't like it. I did.

[Andy · Rating 2 out of 5]

One has to wonder if The Salvage Collective actually takes the climate emergency seriously, given how much time they spent making sure this volume wasn't accessible. At least two of the essays were so bad in this regard that I would actively avoid other works by the author, were I to know who wrote them (for those who have read this book, "Meming Prometheus" is one of the two, I can't recall the other by name). I also thought that Verso had an editor assigned to this project, so I wonder what exactly they did or how they okayed this. Tragically, there are some good ideas and thoughts in this book, but I can't in good faith recommend it to anyone as there plenty of other books by radical authors on this topic that actually put some effort into effectively communicating their ideas to their audience.

[Nathaniel Flakin · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Salvage Collective describes itself perfectly: their brand of communism is based on 1) fancy writing and 2) historical pessimism. I am a huge fan of China Miéville's novels and I enjoy Richard Seymour's commentary — plus, I am extremely pessimistic about the prospects for human civilization. So this would seem like the book for me, but…

The Salvage Collective emerged from the crisis of the Socialist Workers Party in Great Britain ten years ago. Both Seymour and Miéville were involved in the farcically unsuccessful attempt to build a new socialist organization, the ISN, before they launched Salvage as an exclusively literary project. I think a lot of their pessimism comes from that experience. I get it: Socialists from Tony Cliff's tradition tend to project the forced optimism of a cruise ship entertainers ("Aren't we excited to be at this demonstration today?!?"). Salvage, unfortunately, represents the simple negation of this annoying tic.

This very short book is packed full of $10 words. Had it cost me a dollar every time I needed to consult a dictionary, I think I would be out a month's salary. The authors criticize "inadequately fearful ecomodernist extropianism, the Elon Muskrattery of the left." Huh! They say they "embrace the aesthetic in politics", but can something so deliberately exclusive really be beautiful in the socialist sense? WWBW — What Would Brecht Write?

Most of this book is a very convincing essay about why capitalism can never be green — "green capitalism" just represents a different form of bourgeois climate denialism. The growing catastrophe means that the prospects for creating a communist utopia are grim: "Capitalism has, one hundred and fifty years after Marx predicted, finally produced enough diggers to complete the grave, but in doing so it ensured all that was left to inherit was the graveyard." So far, so good — but also a restatement of the obvious with fancy words.

I felt like I was promised a sketch of a strategy to prevent the worst: "salvage communism." Unfortunately, there's nothing here about how the working class can put an end to capitalism ecocide and carry on the flame of human civilization. Really, nothing except for same vague buzzwords about "Red Geoengineering." I was expecting something more radical than Andreas Malm — going beyond letting the air out of SUV tires and thinking about smashing some bourgeois states —, but Salvage's proposals were all just poetically vague.

This reminds me of a Frankfurt School for the age of climate catastrophe: Marxism is reduced to a literary exercise divorced from working-class movements for revolution. Sure, this left-wing pessimism might have a certain appeal while the working class is stuck in passivity. But as soon as things start moving, Marxism-Adornoism reveals itself to be reactionary. Adorno spent years explaining why the working class had lost all revolutionary potential. When 1968 came around, and he was proven wrong, the only thing he could think of was to call the police to kick radical students out of his institute. Let's hope that Miéville, Seymour, and comrades don't end up calling the police on us.

The perspectives for humanity are indeed grim. That's why we need to think hard about how socialist revolution can save as much as possible of our civilization. We need pessimism to understand the depth of the approaching catastrophe — and optimism to fight our way out of it. This book stops halfway.

[Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I imagine the Salvage Collective to be white men between the ages of 16 and 25, all dressed either in khakis or military garb, having read a lot of book but not participated in much actual change. They make a good case that capitalism is killing the world (does anyone still need to be convinced?) for the first 95% of this book. The last couple pages are dedicated to a "solution." The so-called solution is Red Geoengineering. What exactly does this mean? Maybe they'll tell us in book two.

[Jooseppi Räikkönen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Joo o.

Vaikea antaa 2 tähteä kirjalle jonka kanssa on tosi monesta asiasta samaa mieltä. Kirja eroaa sikäli viimeaikaisista ekologiateksteistä että edustaa semmosta italialais-ranskalais-tyylistä kamaa (mieti Comité invisibletä tai operaismo -settejä), joka keskittyy lähinnä raskaanpuoleiseen teoriatykittelyyn täsmällisten toiminta-alustojen tai yksittäisten ongelmien ruotimisen sijaan. Toisaalta aika Versosfäärin perusyksiköissä mennään - pitäähän niitä kirjoja myydä.

Vaikka nivaska on pääosin teoriatykittelyä, perinteisiä ekofaktoja ja tilastojakin löytyy, kuin myös Richard Seymorin kynästä kirvonnenneita listoja eri eläinlajeista oikein runollisesti kuvattuina ja vittu JÄÄMEREEN HUKKUNEINA (AAAAAAAAAAAAA! [Insert Leonardo Dicaprio suomeksi]). Turvallisen (vaarallisen?) tuttua romahdusmässäilyä löytyy semisti, mutta tässä enemmän keskittyen poliittisiin dynamiikoihin joita ne kirvoittavat, mikä on kiva.

Yksi asia saa viisi tähteä ja se on näiden navigointi juuri täsmälleen oikeaan kohtaan sitä ani-surullista vektoriavaruutta joka on ekologioiden poliittinen ideologia.

Salvage:
1) Vaativat prometeanismia (nice!), myös ideologian saralla (mikä onkin ekomodernistien sokea piste: tahattomasti luonnollistavat erään ajattelutavan (mega-nice!))

2) Vastustavat luonnon "uudelleentaianomaistamista" ynnä muita vastaavia muutosstrategioita. (mielestäni tärkein pointti tällä saralla on, että luonnon "uudelleentaianomaistaminen" (joo se on enkuksi "re-enchantment", lass mich in ruhe) toisentaa yhtäältä varhaisen (ja nykyisen) napapiirikolonialismin logiikkaa ja uusi trendisana "tasapaino" voi ihan hyvin korvata "kestävyyden" kapitalistisena reunaehtoneuvottelukäsitteenä.)

ja he 3) käyttävät salvage-sanan logiikkaa tosi nokkelasti. Se on sekä välittömän realistinen strategisessa katsontakannassaan (mitä voidaan vielä "salvagea" (ottaa talteen, vielä pelastaa?) nykyhetkestä?), että kuitenkin ymmärtäväinen ja hieman myötäeläväkin sille aidolle melankolialle jonka ekokriisi luo (tiedätte kyllä).

Miksi kaksi tähteä? Koska tyyli on aika sietämätön, ja pääosin pointit tulivat sivutuotteina, enkä oikeen nää miten tämän etymologiarunkkauksen päälle voisi jotain konkreettista ohjelmaa rakentaa? Kirja on toisaalta aika eksplisiittisesti jonkinlainen "lähtölaukaus" Salvage-projektille, jonka puitteissa oletan tulevan oikeasti todella todella arvokkaita ja potentteja avauksia. En kuitenkaan pysty ravistelemaan tunnetta, ettei vaan se että toistelee "M-C-M'" ja jotain "teologioista" ratkaise ongelmia tai luo niitä ratkaisevaa ajattelua?

Kirja sai myös miettimään tämmösen humanistis-oppineis-akateemisen teoriatykittelyn arvoa ja ymmärtämään yhä entistä enemmän miksi Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future on niin erinomainen huolimatta hätäisestä ja tomuisasta estetiikastaan.

[Simon B · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Capitalism, like certain bacteria, like the death-drive, is immortal. It has its limits and crises but, perversely, seems to thrive on these. Unlike the multi-species life-systems powering it, the only terminal limit to capital's perpetual augmentation is, if driven towards from within, external: either revolution or human extinction; communism, or the common ruin of the contending classes."

A compact and wide-ranging long essay that usefully draws on many contemporary discussions and controversies in ecosocialism. I liked how it boldly confronted the sheer scale and seriousness of the ecological crisis. It's critique of ecomodernist socialist proposals made some good points (though it also included some equivocations). I also liked it's critical assessment of 20th century socialism's tendency towards productivism, influenced by the Stalinised Soviet Union, which conceived of socialism as a new and better form of growth. This is untenable today.

I was not as enamoured by some of this essay's other arguments. I'm fairly antagonistic toward the 'Climate Leviathan' theory, which imposes too rigid a schema on the future. I'm very skeptical that Holly Buck's idea of ecosocialist geoengineering is possible or desirable. And I've long agreed with Ian Angus that the 'anthropocene vs capitalocene' debates are not especially meaningful or worthwhile (See: https://climateandcapitalism.com/2015... )

These are relatively minor criticisms though. Overall I was impressed by this informed and serious contribution.

[Daniel · Rating 1 out of 5]

The kind of book you regret reading. At a time when a radical Marxist strategy on dealing with the climate crisis is desperately needed to be passionately made, this book could have filled what currently seems to be a vacuum. However, the eurocentric basis of many of the points in the book drawback on the effectiveness of any of the solutions it could suggest. Those solutions themselves are often left not fully explored.

The book, at one point, seems to compares some of the flaws the "pink tide" governments across Latin America with Unite the Union's left-leaderships inability to pose a solution to the climate crisis within the UK because of a focus on "jobs". A ludicrous comparison. The book conveniently leaves out the ways in which the west continues to exploit countries across the global south for resource exploitation. Any critique of countries across the global south that partake in resource extraction without mentioning that overwhelming pressure isn't worth the paper it is written on.

My disappointment with this book stems from what it could have been, and the hope it could have projected. The book leaves out crucial arguments like; how resource extraction is imposed on countries, or how anti-imperialist movements have sprung up and their relation to fighting back against both imperialism and protecting people from the climate crisis. Unfortunately, the book doesn't offer up any real solutions or analysis that would let you look past these flaws and I'm not sure the writers would have been able to either.

[Fraser Simons · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of this ventures into ‘no, shit’ territory. While some of it is surprising, such as acknowledging indigenous cultures and cosmologies and somewhat drawing parallels to this so-called Salvage Communism.

Yet, who is this for. Massive amounts of time is naturally dedicated to codifying the numerous tragedies of the worker. So, why ask a rhetorical question, like why is this book not for the average worker. It crosses into the masturbatory quite often with its diction and insipid references and jargon. Add that to another tragedy.

When it comes time to codify their own manifesto, it’s the most nebulous thoughts you could think of after consuming such a document. Basically, they’re waiting for a time when it will be possible to implement their salvage ways.

Read it for thoughts on capitalism, ecological issues related to the west, and a fragmented look at how intersectional the issues are, rather than any clear manifesto or addressing of aforementioned complexities.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some good and interesting ideas, hidden behind prose that often comes off as intentionally elitist and incredibly smarmy. Not that I found this as distracting and offputting as some of the other reviewers did - since again, the ideas are often engaging - but it's obviously going to make this less appealing to readers and harder to recommend. Even the title is a bit annoying in this regard.

Clearly, though, the impending (indeed, already ongoing) climate catastrophe warrants such a look at how to challenge and correct certain ideologically-driven "solutions" that fail to understand even the nature and scale of the problem. Taken alongside the rise of eco-fascist rhetoric and disaster-fascist actions (such as selectively providing relief to only far-right localities), as well as the limpness of UK environmental activism and the failure of many leftist groups to challenge the destruction inherant in growth economies, it is clear that this treatise is timely and important.

[Leif · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mostly forgettable, which is a real shame. The authors are powerful writers on their own right but this collective exercise is closer to noodling than to precision. The opportunity to outline a worker-based, actionable response to climate change is totally missed. Nothing here that hasn't been said before - the variety of ecological writing which is mostly for its authors' benefit than the readers. At least it was brief?

[Steve Lawless · Rating 3 out of 5]

Basically it argues that capitalism is the cause of the climate and extinction crisis and that only the cessation of capitalism will work. However, ironically, the academic language is obscure (he would write obscurantist) peppered with foriegn words and phrases and elitist making it a difficult read. Naomi Klein did a more accessible job.

[Hannah Aziza · Rating 3 out of 5]

The tragedy of the worker is that, as long as she works for capitalism, she must be her own grave-digger.

Good ideas, but absurdly dense and inaccessible language.

[Federico · Rating 5 out of 5]

A marvellous and dense synthesis of the revolution (should) expects us

[Don · Rating 4 out of 5]

Socialists in the mid-19th century assumed they would inherent the world that capitalism built, which with its industry and Parliamentary democracy, would be a healthy place to proceed to accomplish the one task the old masters had not been interested in - namely the emancipation of the working class. The Salvage Collection tell us that the hope for such a easy transition has long passed, and the what will be passed on to those who are hoping for a world of plenty will be a wrecked planet that might have lost its capacity to support a human population at the levels attained during the past few centuries.

The task of communism might therefore be one of salvaging what can be got from the devastation, with the hope of 'Red Plenty' being indefinitely postponed. This, as they say, is the tragedy of the worker. But even getting this far will mean shifting our view of the thing we need to get rid of - namely the capitalist class - and putting in its place an understanding the enemy as the drive towards capital accumulation, which is the real name of the beast. It functions as a logic, or a relentless drive to grow an abstraction - capital - to ever greater heights. Everyone is a victim whenever capital accumulates, and even capitalists can be left nonplussed when they have to accou9nt for fortunes which have expanded exponentially for reasons that no one can clearly explain, or perhaps vanished overnight as the abstraction has upped stakes and the caravan moved on.

The text is thick with references to the thinkers and writers who have produced works that support the collectives gloomy viewpoint. The metabolic rift that severed human beings from the natural world that sustains them is the source of our problems and the crisis of the environment at all its levels has happened because capital accumulation is such an alien entity that has no analogue in a natural world which follows a cyclical logic, requiring things that have been taken to be returned so they can remerge in the new world just beyond the horizon. Capital accumulation recycles nothing. Like the famous vampire squid it transforms everything it feeds on into its own substance and in doing so moves beyond anything that the world can make use of again at other parts of the cycle.

This is brief text that moves at helter skelter speed towards its conclusions. The crisis of the environment has to be revealed to all as a crisis of a society structured by class rather than the undifferentiated humanity which is implied by the term 'anthrocene'. We stand on a precipice because we've been driven their by mindless accumulation which has no end or purpose other than to keep on accumulating. It has at least brought us to the point where the portion of humanity transformed into the commodity which capital needs for its survival - the bearers of labour power - is now finally the majority of the people of the planet. Capitalism's gravediggers maybe , but its tragedy is that it might be doing its work in a world not fit much much else than the internment of corpses.

[Colin Simonds · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely phenomenal piece of ecosocialist writing. Short but definitely worth a read.

[David D. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up ‘Tragedy of the Worker’ based on the blurb. I anticipated a kind of manifesto or program of a novel synthesis that the writers described as ‘Salvage Communism.’ I don’t really disagree with of any the main tenets here. However, the bulk of this short book is spent laying out critiques of capitalism (of both ‘green’ and ‘classic’ varieties), as well as past socialist projects that would already be familiar to most Marxists. At the same time, the unnecessary jargon and highfalutin language make it totally alienating to most people who aren’t already Marxist academics (either by trade or by vice).

There are some interesting passages, but I’m ultimately left wondering: who this was really written for? The book is not really going to be useful at disseminating new ideas to any proletarian readers, and it’s not really introducing anything markedly new to high-level discussions of Marxism. It’s a fine read, but nothing earth-shaking.

[Kristofer Carlson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting take on Climate Change. The major premise is that climate change is the natural outcome of the capitalist system, with its emphasis on limitless growth. At one point the cult of growth could have been arrested without doing great harm to the planet. That time has passed, yet capitalism keeps on using more and more resources and leaving destruction in its wake. Like a cloud of locusts, the capitalists move from one field to the next, always expecting the exploitation of resources will continue unabated. This, despite the finite store of useful forms of energy and the increasingly unstable natural environment. It is clear that a tipping point has been reached, and yet capitalism drives us all ever forward into the breach. There is no way to prevent catastrophe; the only question is how large the catastrophe will be and how long it will last. Were the capitalist system die tomorrow, we would still face its aftereffects far into our future.

[Sahara Khan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book uses very inaccessible language and allusions to ultimately provide pretty obvious conclusions. Also, the authors are probably too in love with their own writing; I caught myself rolling my eyes at all the invented "scenes" and "isms". I was disappointed that it included the intersection of race and indigenous relationships as somewhat of an afterthought, and it's conclusion did little to meaningfully embed the indigenous cosmologies and wisdoms it claimed to support.
As someone invested ecosocialist/ ecoanarchist spaces, I'm genuinely not sure who the proper audience for this book is ... Maybe someone who is intimately familiar with the history of socialist and communist movements, but for some reason has never considered how capitalism shuffles the ecological burden of its project onto the exploited class?🤷🤷
Three stars because at least it was short and the plethora of references served as a springboard for the further reading.

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

If this is the most inaccessible language you can imagine, there's a whole world of theory to be discovered. Pretty good! 3.5 stars.

[Baglan · Rating 3 out of 5]

*China Miéville hits you in the head with a dictionary*

[Daniel Clemence · Rating 2 out of 5]

Marxist pamphlets come in all shapes and sizes. The Tragedy of the Worker is no different. Written by different authors, the book, which turns out to be a glorified essay is about the collapse of the environment and climate change from a Marxist perspective. It attempts to advocate the abolition of capitalism for communism as a means of halting climate change and saving the planet.

The majority of the essay looks at how capitalism is antithetical to saving the planet from climate change. It is fixated on being a fetish for capital to use fossil fuels to produce profits. The essay argues that capitalism is a death-cult that seeks to extract profit, even if it causes mass death. The term “fossil capital” is used multiple times. I guess ammonites had banks and businesses. All jokes aside, the book takes a sober view of the environment and pretty much argues that humanity has set itself up for the apocalypse because of climate change. What is interesting, though, is the recognition that Communism in the Soviet Union was terrible for the environment. This is a welcome development from the hard Left who argue about how climate change is a unique thing created from capitalism, and yet the USSR and other socialist regimes had horrific environmental catastrophes. Still, the book offers a grim future for mankind.

The solution is some kind of “salvage communism” to repair the world from the worst excesses of climate change. This is very vague on details other than mass enforced veganism, which is hoped to stop climate change. There is an argument against mass automated communism that the authors believe is not possible now.

There is a lot that could be said about this book and why I disagree with its views. I think Marxists are right about how capitalism externalises the damage of climate change. However, the assumption that capitalism is a death-cult in my mind undermines this entire essay. Sure, fossil fuel companies have been highly destructive to the environment and are directly responsible for making this world unlivable. But fossil fuels are not the total sum of capitalism. Admittedly, they are strongly correlated to undermining climate reduction and spreading a toxic political right that is climate sceptic. But capitalism involves different sectors that are at odds with one another. Renewable energy producers are at direct odds with the fossil fuel industry. As for Green-Keynesianism that this essay rebukes, there is little evidence that Communists would be able to replace it with 5-year plans for stopping climate change.

As with a common theme, the book has badly cited work. There is a bibliography, but it would be nice if the citation either used a Harvard or Vancouver referencing system, as research was quoted without any citation.

For a book that argues against Capitalism in how it has dealt with climate change, it offers hardly any solutions. The “salvage communism”, which is comparable to War Communism under the Russian Civil War doesn’t offer a bright or likely future of people to aim for. Neither does it do a good job at trying to convince the working classes, who have a mixed track record for environmentalism to support their cause. The essay seems to make out that the working classes were, at many times in American history, protected the environment. I guess their voting records betray them as the working class goes further and further to the political Right. I guess communism and socialism are no longer attractive as Fascism for the working classes.

But as Marxist books go, this book offers few solutions to the climate crisis. But it does give you reasons why you shouldn’t have children. In the words of Dante, “abandon ye hope, all ye who enter”

[Sam G · Rating 1 out of 5]

Other reviewers have made the perfectly valid point that this book revels in dense prose. Anyone at all familiar with the writing of Richard Seymour will hardly be surprised. Young Richard has never looked back since mummy gave him that thesaurus for his tenth birthday. This is a writer, after all, that wants to articulate “an aufhebung of Prometheanism and humility that does not yet have a name”, and words like “ideologeme” are sprinkled around a text that seeks to extend “materialist theology into the realm of geologic ‘Deep Time’, of paleo-ontology, paleo-oceanography, and paleo-climatology.” Any group of people that get together and decide it would be a good idea to end a book with the following – “the only path to an Anthropocene of a liberated and self-transformed Anthropos runs through the destruction of the Capitalocene, the Proletarocene dawn” - probably need, at the very least, a very stern talking to.

There is a deeper point to all this, however. There is a political reason why the very best writers produced by the left – whether that be Trotsky, Orwell, E.P. Thompson, CLR James, David Widgery and so on – wrote with a depth, knowledge and piercing clarity that deliberately shunned the sort of constipated prose so beloved of the Salvage set. Aside from a natural talent as writers that Seymour and co don’t have, they were writing as part of a movement that was both insurgent and hopeful. Even when there was cause for despair, they could regard and reflect that despair from a vantage point of a movement that still believed it could and would transform society for the better. They wanted their writing to inform and inspire the people involved in that movement. This writing is bad, yes, but it is bad because it is so completely divorced from any living connection to any working-class movement.

That is also why, despite its desperate attempts to be profound, it lacks seriousness. If you were serious about the need to address the problems you are writing about, and to mobilize a constituency with some social clout to affect change, you simply wouldn’t write something like the following: “The striving towards a new totality, a new cosmic apperception, is ubiquitous…The crisis is totalising, destabilising the epistemological atomism of capital, provoking a search for holisms, spiritual and theological alternatives to the death cult…the appointed time is running short: a kairotic contraction akin to Walter Benjamin’s ‘messianic time’.”

As has been alluded to elsewhere, this catastrophism, that is so prevalent on the contemporary left, makes it prone not to liberatory politics but to authoritarianism, as was witnessed by the unabated excitement which greeted the state-enforced atomization and surveillance of the Covid-19 ‘lockdown’ era.

In short, if you’re at all interested in changing the world for the better, don’t bother with this book. Look for your cosmic apperceptions elsewhere.

[Holly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Honestly, a waste of my time and an irritating read. All theories about climate change being fueled by capitalism are common sense. Any high schooler with minuscule critical thinking could conclude the same. Putting big words and adding "-ian" at the end of words to create obscure theories does not make them revolutionary. It makes them pretentious. The Salvage does a great job at continuing to make left-wing literature inaccessible. The entire book states facts (while I do not discredit the quantitative facts, no sources were provided) until the last three pages where a "necessary step" is provided. What was this necessary step? No clue. The Salvage simply states what they call for, with absolutely no step to further their calls. In the Tragedy of the Worker essay, they end by stating that the left "must register its own illusions, its own hubris, its own defeats." The Salvage continued to make left-wing/communist-leaning literature inaccessible with their fancy language. One of the reasons dems lost in 2024 is the same reason people find most leftists pretentious - their own excessive hubris. If the Salvage could have created actual solutions, this would be a groundbreaking book. Instead, it is not.


Some quotes I liked or found interesting:

"Nonetheless, the continuing decision for fossil fuels as a solution to the energy demands of capitalist production, for all the growing denial of climate-change denial among the anti-vulgarian ruling class, for all the concerned mouth music, is an exemplary case of the capitalist imperative of competitive accumulation at work."

"Capitalism has, one hundred and fifty years after Marx predicted, finally produced enough diggers to complete the grave, but in doing so it ensured all that was left to inherit was the graveyard."

"Now, climate change can become a weapon of open race war, and of eco-eugenic class war."

"We call for an aleatory materialism, a materialism of the encounter, which recognizes life as a fluke worth preserving, and human existence as a lucky 'spandrel', a contingent byproduct of the cycle of earthly extinction."

[Michele Mosca · Rating 4 out of 5]

A dense and interesting book, guiding the readers into an apocalyptic vision (sure justified) of our age, known as Anthropocene. Not quite easy to read, being pretty much allusive and not flowing in many parts. Still, you can find some good insight, maybe not philosophically well explored, but convincing. I thought It was a more political reading, but in the end there is no a clear explanation of what It Is supposed to be done against the capitalism destroying accumulation syndrome and its cult of death. Not easy at all, for sure, proposing and clarifying a concrete path or strategy for such a planetary issue in few pages, but you won't actually find a single suggestion about It. However, It Is certainly a lucid picture of our present.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Undoubtedly an important read, but the writing style made it difficult for me. The style reminded me of the writing in "Che Guevara and the Latin American Revolution" and similar books from Cuba. There's a particular way of presenting the topic that feels dated or off in some way, invented words pop up in each chapter, and a very "party line, comrade" presentation coupled with many, many references that I'm not familiar with made this a hard read for me despite me being a supporter of the cause.

Being that China Miéville is associated with The Salvage Collective, I was hoping for something that would be somewhat related to his creative writing style, but that was definitely not the case.

[Neal Spadafora · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good primer on what communism looks like in the age of climate catastrophe. While simultaneously critiquing both green capitalism and luxury communism, this collection of essays acts as a courageous defense of salvage communism.

As someone who knows more about political economy than climate science, I found this book to be immensely helpful in its reading of climate change through the lens of class. For those not familiar with the salvage collective or acclimated to their vocabulary, the language may be obtuse and at times inaccessible; however, learning a few new words never hurt anybody.

[Michael Jacob · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing is far too intellectual and academic to really be readable. It requires a comprehensive understanding of communist and socialist theory and historical knowledge or constant googling to understand. The exclusivity therefore of the text is ironic. The over arching thesis that capitalism essentially by nature and market failure creates huge issues for the natural world feels intuitive. However that Communism offers a way forward but the reason we never saw red plenty because the bolshevik purists lost to a Productivism (production based competition) seems partially convenient.

No wonder the radical left struggles, its very poorly communicated.