Facing Catastrophe: Food, Politics, and the Ecological Crisis

by Carl Boggs

With the world facing an unparalleled global ecological crisis, Facing Catastrophe shines a searchlight on a crucial, but often ignored, part of the oncoming disaster – the vast food sector, dominated by agribusiness, meat and dairy producers, and a McDonaldized fast-food complex. Capitalism – with its growth-driven, profit-oriented, nature-destroying logic – is incompatible with an ecologically sustainable society. This is particularly evident in the food sector, where, as societies become more economically developed, they make large-scale shifts toward meat and dairy consumption, dramatically increasing their carbon footprint. Facing Catastrophe offers a powerful analysis of the problem of capitalist agriculture and the power structures that sustain it, revealing, on the one hand, a crisis more severe than even most environmentalists seem prepared to recognize, and on the other, a path forward to an ecological radicalism bold enough to move the planet off the path toward catastrophe.

379 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 14, 2020

About the author

Carl Boggs is Professor of Social Sciences at National University in Los Angeles. He is the author of Gramsci's Marxism; The Politics of Eurocommunism (with David Plotke); The Impasse of European Communism; The Two Revolutions: Gramsci and the Crisis of Western Marxism; and Social Movements and Political Power.