LAND AND LABOUR

Marxism, Ecology and Human History

Martin Empson

In memory of Richard Empson

1943-2013

LAND AND LABOUR

Marxism, Ecology and Human History

Martin Empson

Land and Labour: Marxism, Ecology and Human History

Martin Empson
Published 2014 by Bookmarks Publications
c/o 1 Bloomsbury Street, London wc1b 3qe
Copyright Bookmarks Publications
Typeset by Bookmarks Publications
Cover design by Tim Sanders
Printed by Halstan Printing Ltd
ISBN print edition: 978 1 909026 52 0
Kindle: 978 1 909026 53 7
ePub: 978 1 909026 54 4
PDF: 978 1 909026 55 1

Contents

Introduction
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14

Humans and nature

Early human history
Hunter-gatherers
Early agriculture, class society and crisis
Maya collapse
The Americas: a fatal impact
The rise of the peasant and the shaping of the modern landscape
Historical change
The development of modern agriculture
Agriculture in the 20th century
Capitalism and nature
Urbanisation
Climate change
The future sustainable society
Bibliography
Notes
Index

Acknowledgements
This book could not have been written without the help of many people. I would like to thank Joseph
Choonara, Andy Cunningham, Mark Krantz, Paul McGarr, Jonathan Neale, John Parrington, Matt
Read and Anna Roik. Their suggestions and help proved invaluable.
Thanks to Mary Phillips, Peter Robinson and Tim Sanders for their work in producing the final
book. I am particularly grateful to Sally Campbell for turning my original manuscript into the finished
product.
Finally I would like to thank Sarah Ensor for her encouragement and support at every stage.

Introduction

The next few decades will determine whether the human species will continue to be able to survive
on planet Earth. The threat from global warming, explained in a thousand scientific papers, hundreds
of books, films and articles, is unquestionable. Without fundamental change the impact that we have
been making on the environment since the dawn of the industrial age will culminate in catastrophic
climate change. No scientist can predict when that might happen. But every year we delay in reducing
greenhouse gas emissions makes environmental disaster more likely.
Scientists have known about global warming for decades. A few politicians have been aware of
the problem for almost as long. Campaigners have been trying to get action for many years. Today
understanding of the threat from climate change is higher than it has ever been. Yet emissions continue
to rise.
Even the United Nations meetings designed to assess progress on climate change have proved
impotent. Economic differences bound up with differing national interests often turn the conferences
into political battlegrounds. At Copenhagen in 2009 US President Barack Obama, together with the
leaders of China, Brazil, India and South Africa, scuppered the negotiating process that would lead to
agreement on emissions reductions.1
During the writing of this book I travelled to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil to take part in protests and
counter-conferences outside the 2012 United Nations Summit on Sustainable Development. The utter
failure by international politicians to agree meaningful action in Rio was a further tragic
demonstration of an all too common theme.2
The problem is not that politicians do not understand climate change, nor is it necessarily that they
do not care. Neither is it a question of technology. As we shall see, the solutions that would
drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions already exist. Rather the problem is rooted in capitalism.
In order to understand why capitalism is so unable to deal with environmental crisis we need to
understand the wider dynamics of the relationship between human society and nature.
Humans have always changed nature. Our earliest ancestors picked fruit and hunted animals, made
tools, cut down trees and planted crops. Whole ecologies were altered as humans learnt to farm. The
spread of agriculture led to enormous amounts of deforestation across the world.
Capitalism, the system that we live in today, is relatively new. In only a few hundred years it has
spread globally, fundamentally reshaping ourselves as well as the planet. But capitalism also
represents an enormous growth in the productive forces and hence our ability to transform nature now
threatens global ecological and environmental systems. Capitalism is a system geared towards the
interests of the few at the top of society, rather than the majority. But this is not what makes it unusual
when compared to how we lived in the past. There have been many different hierarchical societies,
organised in the interest of a tiny elite at the expense of the majority. What makes capitalism unique is
how production is organised. The drive to accumulate wealth for the sake of further accumulation is
at the core of this system. It is this drive which makes capitalism so destructive and so unable to deal
with the threat of environmental disaster.

For most of human history we organised our lives in very different ways. Before human society
was divided into classes, our communities were more egalitarian, more communal and less violent
than today. The relationship between those societies and the natural world surrounding them was very
different too. That changing relationship is the subject of this book.
Dealing with climate change means dealing with the question of capitalism. If we are to solve the
environmental crisis we will have to radically challenge the priorities of the system. The possibility
of change can seem remote. Yet throughout our history we have constantly revolutionised how we
organise ourselves.
History is not a gradual process. Indeed the archaeological record is littered with examples of
societies and civilisations that were unable to develop or adjust to changing circumstances.
Nature itself has a history. Animals and plants have evolved, some have gone extinct and a
relatively small number have been domesticated. The planet has seen repeated ice ages, as well as
warmer periods. It has experienced gradual changes in temperature as well as sudden climate change.
These variations have also played a role in the human story. At crucial moments in our past the
natural world has had devastating effects on societies or has helped to prompt a new stage in our
history.
At every moment in human history our ancestors have simultaneously relied on and altered the
natural world around them. The ways in which they have done this demonstrate our resourcefulness
and intelligence. The ways in which those societies have organised, why some failed and some
developed further, contain lessons for us today as we face our greatest environmental threat.
This book begins by exploring the importance of the relationship between humans and nature. This
relationship is dialectical: the changes we make to nature impact back upon us.
In chapters 2 and 3 I look at the earliest human history, the evolution of our species and how it
spread around the globe and the way that climate change played a role in this. I also examine the
radically different ways that humans organised their societies in the distant past, to demonstrate that
human nature is not fixed, but has changed throughout history.
The production of food has been the fundamental way that we have altered nature. Agriculture is
thus one of the central themes of this book. Farming has changed the natural world in dramatic ways,
but it has also played a central role in shaping our own societiesfor instance, it was only with the
development of agriculture that class society became possible.
In chapter 4 I look at the early history of agriculture and the way that it is closely linked with the
development of class society. The Neolithic agricultural revolution marked the beginning of the end
for the egalitarian societies of early human history. From this point onwards human history was
dominated by class society. In this chapter I explore the early history of Egypt, to show how
agriculture was closely associated with the development of a centralised state. This chapter and the
next also examine the way ancient society related to environmental crisis.
A number of writers, most notably the American academic Jared Diamond, have explored the way
that historical environmental crisis and collapse can be a warning for the world today. In chapter 5 I
explore this further by focusing on the specific experience of the Maya.
I have not attempted to write a complete human history. Instead I have looked at periods that
illuminate the fundamental relationship between us and the natural world and moments of change
between different historical periods. These might be the great historical transformations that took
place when human society moved from one mode of production to another, whether the neolithic

revolution or the transition from feudalism to capitalism. But this also means exploring the changes
that take place when one form of society meets another. In chapter 6 I examine the impact of the
arrival of Europeans in the Americas. This was a period when attitudes towards the natural world
were completely reshaped, and in the process many indigenous societies were brutally forced into a
new way of organising. Chapter 7 explores the development of early agriculture and European feudal
society. This fundamentally reshaped the natural world and laid the basis for the beginnings of
modern capitalism. Here I also explore the new ways of looking at the relationship between the
natural world and humans through some of the radical ideas of the English Revolution.
Karl Marxs theory of history, historical materialism, is rooted in the relationship between humans
and nature. This makes it an ideal way to understand both historical change and its environmental
consequences. In chapter 8 I look at Marxs ideas and what they mean for our ecological history.
In chapters 9 and 10 I examine the development of modern agriculture. This is inseparable from
the rise of capitalism, and in particular I look at how rural society had to be forcibly transformed,
through clearances, enclosures and the use of force against rural populations. I then look at the first
great crises of agriculture under capitalism and the development of the modern industrial agricultural
system that dominates todays world.
Chapter 11 explores the particular relationship between capitalism and nature. This means
understanding capitalism, how it works and what it does to people. It also means understanding the
relationship between the system and the companies that dominate the economy.
The development of towns and cities fundamentally reshaped the ecology of the countryside, and in
chapter 12 I examine the growth of urban areas.
Chapter 13 looks at the science of climate change. This is not complex but is often shrouded in
confusion. I explain what causes climate change and what it means. I also look at potential solutions
and try to explain the question posed at the beginning of this introduction, Why is nothing being
done?
In the final chapter I explore what a sustainable world would look like. I argue that this must come
about through the fundamental transformation of society, the replacement of capitalism with socialism.
A socialist society is one based on a democratic planned economy, and I conclude this book with an
exploration of why such an economy would be sustainable, by looking at some historical examples to
show how it could come about.
This book is written from an explicitly Marxist viewpoint. Marx and Engels did not know about
global warming but throughout their lives they demonstrated a fascination with nature. Both of them
followed with great interest the debates around evolutionary theory. Less than a month after Charles
Darwin published the Origin of Species, Marx described it as absolutely splendid in a letter to
Engels.3 Both were excited by the growing understanding of early human history, in particular the
work of Lewis Morgan whose 1877 book Ancient Society formed the basis for much of their own
further writings. In the late 1870s and early 1880s Marx read widely on diverse subjects such as
prehistoric Europe, the history of India, Dutch colonialism, family and gender in Roman society and
American Indian societies.4 This wide interest reflects Marxs understanding of how human
societies have developed and changed throughout history and how this has influenced the cultural
attitudes that we have had throughout our history.
Today we have much more archaeological and anthropological evidence than was available to
Marx and Engels. Some of their ideas were of their time and are no longer accepted by scientists. But

as a recent book argues, Engels writings on the transition from ape to man, for instance, have
stood the test of time.5 Some of the details of their thoughts on early human history and evolution
may be incorrect, but their approach teaches us many things.
The work of Marx and Engels is most useful in understanding how human society has changed and
how we can change it in future. If we are to survive the current environmental crisis, we need to
create a sustainable world that puts the relationship between people and their planet at the heart of its
priorities; this I argue will require a radical break with our existing society. Such revolutionary
change may seem daunting, but it is necessary for the future of our planet and its people.
A note on dates and terminology
In this book Ive used CE (Common Era) and BCE (before Common Era) for describing dates. While
this mirrors the conventional AD and BC, it acknowledges that the most of the world does not follow a
Christian calendar.
For more ancient dates, BP (before present) is used. This is a standard frequently used in
archaeological and historical writings. Here the present is designated as being the year 1950, a
reference point chosen because the 1950s were the decade in which radiocarbon dating first became
practical and because it predates the regular testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, which
altered the natural ratio of carbon isotopes, a sad example of human ability to change nature.
In discussing agriculture, land areas are very important. The hectare is 10,000 m2 which is
approximately the size of Trafalgar Square in London or one and a third soccer pitches; 100 hectares
is 1 km2. An older measurement of land area, the acre, is just over half the size of a modern soccer
pitch. Hyde Park in London is 350 acres.

Chapter 1

Humans and nature

Like all living things humans depend upon the natural world. At the very least we need water to drink
and food to eat. If we are to survive the worlds varied climates we need shelter and clothing to
protect us.
All human societies are based on a productive process whose end result is the satisfaction of these
basic needs. As Karl Marx put it, the first historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy
these needs, the production of material life itself. And indeed this is an historical act, a fundamental
condition of all history, which today, as thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled
merely in order to sustain human life.6
This is not always obvious. Most inhabitants of the cities of Europe or North America do not
engage in labour to grow their own food. Even those city dwellers who have a small allotment do not
cut themselves off completely from the distant unseen work that goes towards the mass production of
food. For those of us living in the developed world the labour that goes into providing drinking water
rarely crosses our minds. We simply turn on a tap. Later we will see how this separation between
humans and nature under capitalism brings its own problems, but without humans working on nature,
all of us would starve.
Every other aspect of society depends on this relationship. Frederick Engels summed this up when
he said that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue
politics, science, art and religion, etc.7 We change the environment in many different ways, but the
natural world influences us as well. The changes we make to the environment impact back upon us.
Farmers cut down trees to create farmland, but this deforestation can also allow the fertile soil to be
washed away. Engels cautioned:
Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes
its revenge on us we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature
but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact
that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly.8

This ability has allowed us to spread across the whole globe, to live in environments as varied as
the arctic tundra or the rainforests of South America. We have developed tools and technologies to
enable us to do this. It is true that some other animals also use toolsdifferent types of birds use
sticks to get at insects hidden in tree bark, for instance. But there is a fundamental difference with the
way that humans use and conceive of tools. Before the first proto-human could create a stone tool 2.6
million years ago in Africa, he or she would have required hands capable of manipulating stones and
a brain capable of imagining the final product of an operation before it had even been started as
well as the physical strength and dexterity to create the tool.9
As a species we lack speed, strength and sharp teeth or claws with which to protect ourselves.
The development of tools for hunting and defence would have helped. The evolution of our brains
also helped. A more complex brain allowed us to better judge situations, to out-think and outwit the

opposition, to predict its likely behaviour and the behaviour of your fellow hunters. 10 Some
animals also exhibit predictive behaviour when hunting, but this evolved behaviour in humans
allowed far more complex social interactions to develop.
One theory, known as the Social Brain Hypothesis, suggests that our large brains have evolved
not just in response to human needs for things like foraging and hunting skills, tool-making and
invention, but also because of the complex societies in which we live.11 There is evidence that some
animals such as wild chimpanzees exhibit cultures: shared traditions of behaviour in gathering
food, for instance. These are learnt as the chimp grows up. But as anthropologist Chris Stringer points
out, these are a long way from the cultural repertoire of even the earliest humans in Africa two
million years ago.12 Early humans needed tools to get food and protect themselves, but they also
needed social organisation, which in turn needed a more evolved brain. As the Marxist Chris Harman
explains:
Over many millennia those creatures whose genes changed in such a way as to best enable them to learn from, to communicate
with and to care for each other would have an advantage when it came to surviving and reproducing. Natural selection would bring
about the evolutionof ever larger, denser and more complex neural networks, capable of directing and learning from intricate
motor functions of the hand and of using minute changes in gesture or voice to communicate.13

This in turn helped to encourage the further development of the ability to labour, sociability and
communication. So the reason that early humans were able to develop new tools, technologies and
live in varied parts of the world is:
2 million years of cumulative evolution, with labour at each stage encouraging the adept hand, greater sociability and the larger
brain. And, at each stage, the adept hand, greater sociability and the larger brain made possible more advanced forms of labour
Such labour had enormous implications for the brain. Those best at co-operating with others in tool production and use would have
been those whose brains underwent changes in structure and size that made them better at co-ordinating the motor functions
controlling the hands with vision and hearing, while also becoming more responsive to the signals of others of their kind.14

So labour helped to stimulate the development of communication, culture and further tool use.
Hundreds of thousands of years ago early humans were already using tools, not from instinct like
some animals, but because they could comprehend how they could help the user obtain food. As Marx
put it:
A spider conducts operations which resemble those of a weaver, and a bee would put many human architects to shame by the
construction of its honeycomb cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is that the architect builds the
cell in his mind before he constructs it in wax. At the end of every labour process, a result emerges which had already been
conceived by the worker at the beginning, hence already existed ideally.15

Chris Stringer echoes this:

We remain unique in the extent to which we modify the world we live in through the things we create. Beyond that, we also create
imaginary worlds that are entirely virtual, made up of thoughts and ideasworlds that live in our minds, from stories and spiritual
domains through to theories and mathematical concepts.16

Over hundreds of thousands of years our ancestors developed more and more advanced stone
tools. The first tools were little more than stones that had been broken to create a sharp edge.
Excavations at sites such as Boxgrove quarry in England show that half a million years ago early
humans were making complicated flint hand axes and using them to skin and butcher animals. Other
European sites have yielded hunting spears dating to between 300,000 and 400,000 years ago.
Technological developments throughout human history have played an important role in our ability
to change the world. We are familiar with how modern machines can destroy huge swathes of the
world todaythink of the phenomenal rate at which we can clear the rainforests using chainsaws and

bulldozers. But even during the earliest stages in our history our behaviour has changed the natural
world, sometimes permanently.
At Klasies River Mouth, a site in modern South Africa, archaeological evidence from 75,000 to
55,000 years ago shows that early humans were manipulating the landscape to improve their food
sources. The vegetation at Klasies River Mouth is a mixture of plants called fynbos, one of which is a
flower called watsonia, which has an edible bulb. Early humans in the area understood that if they
burned the fynbos off, they could return the following year to find that watsonia had increased in
density by five to ten times. Archaeologists can see the evidence for this in burnt plants in the
historical layer. This means that up to 75,000 years ago humans were exhibiting a delayed-return
strategy, shaping the natural landscape in the interest of their future food supply.17
The analysis of pollen trapped in ancient mud and clay from the bottom of rivers and lakes tells
archaeologists about ancient ecologies. Around 9000 BP a sudden spread of hazelnuts across Europe
can be detected. Since these nuts are too heavy to be transported far by animals, but are extremely
nutritious, the evidence indicates humans may have been spreading the nuts as they travelled. It is
possible that Mesolithic people may have deliberately planted and nurtured hazelnut bushes to
provide future food supplies. Thus early on in human history, our interaction with the natural world
began to shape it in permanent ways. As one author comments, humans consciously intervened in the
growth of vegetation and began the process of transforming nature into a cultural landscape.18
Changes like these can have unexpected consequences which are not always positive for the
people making them. The first people to arrive in North America found enormous numbers of large
animals: mammoths, mastodons, wild horses, giant sloths, camels and lions. Unused to humans, these
proved easy hunting. Over the next 2,000 years as these first Americans spread across the continent
they were able to undermine the viability of the herds and help cause the extinction of the mega fauna.
Thus their own success at hunting meant that they had to find alternate sources of food. Even small
numbers of people with simple tools could fundamentally alter the natural world.19
As our societies have developed, the ability to change the world has also grown. In the past, if our
ancestors over-hunted a herd of animals, it might mean that their tribe would starve. Today the
changes we make are global. Preventing this change being catastrophic will depend on our ability to
both understand our social relationship to nature and create a society that utilises the natural world in
a sustainable way.

Chapter 2

Early human history

Global warming played an important part in the evolution of our earliest ancestors. Mammals have a
long history on planet Earth with the earliest fossil remains dating to 170 to 120 million years ago,
but a key evolutionary moment took place around 55 million years ago when global temperatures rose
significantly. For 100,000 years this warming caused the rapid expansion of forests across the
northern hemisphere. This proved to be ideal for the early tree living primates that then spread across
the land masses from southern Asia to North America and Europe.20
Most of these primates did not survive the period of cooling that followed but the descendants of
the ones that did evolved into the apes that appeared around 23 million years ago.21 These apes were
beginning to look like those we see today. The need to be able to climb trees, swing from branches
and hold food without falling meant they developed very flexible joints. This had important
consequences, as evolutionary ecologist Clive Finlayson explains, because it would give one distant
descendant the ability to manipulate the hand and, among many other things, make tools.22
Over the next six million years apes gradually evolved and spread throughout the world. But the
highest concentration and variety remained in the huge forests that covered Africa. As the world
alternately warmed and cooled, the areas open to apes grew and shrank. Eventually tree cover shrank
to such an extent that that by ten million years ago apes were restricted to two small regions, central
Africa and south-east Asia.23
Between seven and eight million years ago, after millions of years of evolutionary change, the apes
in Africa split into two separate evolutionary branches. One of these gave rise to the modern day
gorilla. The other branch split again two million years later with one branch becoming our first human
ancestors, while the other split again, later becoming the ancestors of chimpanzees and bonobos.24
The warming that led to the spread of forests across much of the world permitted an explosion of
tree-dwelling mammals which gave them and their descendants such a strong evolutionary launch
platform. The rise and fall of sea levels as the world warmed and cooled helped allow early primates
to spread around the world.
The role of climate is not the only factor in the evolution of humans but it is an important one.
Using the analogy of a theatrical play, Finlayson argues that the planetary theatre takes place in
several different acts, initially restricted to parts of Africa and Eurasia but eventually Australia and
then the Americas The scenes and stage sets change with each act and on each stage. The stage
manager is climate, constantly changing and rearranging the scenes.25
Much of what happened for the next few million years of human history is obscure. From seven
million to around five million years ago, we have a handful of fossil remains from African sites. But a
sudden event 5.33 million years BP caused the local climate to alter dramatically, impacting
enormously upon our ancestors. The formation of the modern Mediterranean Sea took place when the
Atlantic Ocean broke through what became the Strait of Gibraltar. The whole climate of North Africa

changed and began to resemble that which we see today. The rainforests that had covered Africa
broke up, forcing the earliest ancestors of humans, or proto-humans, to walk across gaps where
there had once been continuous tree cover.
On the shores of the ancient Lake Chad generations of proto-humans lived and evolved. Today the
lake is about one and a half thousand square kilometres, but then it was enormous, its shores a mosaic
of rich environments which would have gone from desert at one extreme to forest and savannah at the
other.26 This variety helped to encourage our ancestors to adapt to life in different environments.
Over the next three million years these proto-humans would spread across Africa. A skeleton
discovered in Ethiopia in 1973-4 and nicknamed Lucy dates from this period. The archaeologists who
found her bones named her after a Beatles song, though her Amharic name Dinkenesh, meaning You
are amazing, is far more appropriate for early humans who dominated the world for the next few
million years.
Dinkenesh and her relatives were bipedal, but would not have been able to run.27 A great diversity
of small-brained proto-humans like her lived from around five to 1.8 million years BP . As climate
continued to change over this time the African landscape was transformed into much more open areas
as tree cover declined. Only a few types of proto-humans survived: those who were capable of
living in this new hostile world. But this new landscape allowed for new opportunities, chief among
them the first stone implement made around 2.6 million years ago. As Clive Finlayson comments, the
world changed forever.28
The scarcity of fossil remains from this period makes it hard to know exactly what evolutionary
route humans took. We do know that around two million years ago the first human-like species, Homo
ergaster, evolved in Africa. 29 These humans rapidly spread out across Africa and reached south east
Asia 1.8 million years ago.30 Surviving by scavenging, Homo ergaster evolved a body shape that
made walking or running long distances more efficient.
This had enormous evolutionary consequences for humans. In females the birth canal was much
narrower than in their immediate ancestors; this meant human babies were born earlier and their
brains continued to develop outside their mothers wombs, so human children need to be protected
and nurtured long after those of other mammals.
There is debate as to whether Homo ergaster is a separate species from one of the most successful
of early humans, Homo erectus. It is possible that the separate names really only refer to the African
and Asian populations of the same wider group of humans. But the colonisation through Asia by
Homo erectus is an important moment in our history. From then onwards human evolution took on a
new direction. Up until that point our ancestors were ape-like, afterwards they were recognisably
human as paleoanthropologists Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin explain:
Everything after Homo erectus was distinctly humanlike, in behaviour as well as form. The beginnings of a hunting-and-gathering
way of life came with Homo erectus, stone tools for the first time gave the impression of standardisation, the imposition of a mental
template, fire was harnessed for the first timeand surely the rudiments of languageperhaps even consciousnesswere
produced in a dramatically expanding brain.31

It is possible that as long ago as 800,000 years ago Homo erectus used fire in a controlled fashion.
It is generally accepted that evidence of hearths and burnt bones in caves in Zhoukoudian, China show
that Homo erectus used fire up to 500,000 years ago and at a site in Suffolk, England, by 400,000
years ago.32 Homo erectus may not have had the ability to make fire though, relying on lightning
strikes or forest fires and keeping flames burning. But in the last 200,000 years hearths are

increasingly common at ancient human sites.

We cannot tell when the cooking of food became ubiquitous for early humans. Some sites show
evidence that, while fire was being used, meat was not necessarily being cooked. Archaeological
evidence from Gibraltar, for instance, shows that Neanderthals there knew that putting mussels in the
embers of a fire would open them, but that meat was being eaten raw.
The use of fire was probably the first example of our ancestors controlling nature in any
meaningful sense and would have had a profound impact on their lives and social interaction.
Cooking was important for early humans because it meant their diet would have improved. Cooking
kills harmful bacteria and parasites and allows a greater variety of foods to be eaten. But cooking
may well have had much wider implications for human development.33 Chris Stringer explains that:
cooking provided an extra social focus for fire, in that individuals could cook for each other, for partners, kin, friends and honoured
guests. Once cooking became central to human life, it would have influenced our evolution, leading to changes in digestion, gut size
and function, tooth and jaw size, and the muscles for mastication.34

Homo erectus were extremely successful at using tools. The simplest would have been knives
designed for chopping, the blades made by chipping pieces from one side of a piece of stone. After a
million years of use Homo erectus had invented tools cut on two sides. Initially these were crude and
simple, but by 250,000 years ago the edges were more finely cut.
Homo erectus was the most successful of prehistoric humans, lasting for over 1.5 million years
and spreading from Africa through the Middle East, China as far as South East Asia, sites being
known on the Indonesian islands.
Our own human species, Homo sapiens, evolved in Africa around 130,000 years ago, probably
descendants of the Homo erectus who remained in Africa. Eventually we became the only human
species on the planet. But this process took many thousands of years. Early Homo sapiens were highly
skilled. Their larger brains allowed further developments of tools, including chisels, drills, scrapers,
knives, axes and oil lamps.
The different human species did not simply replace each other; there would have been overlap for
long periods. For instance, Homo erectus would have shared territory for up to half a million years
with an earlier species of small brained proto-humans.35 This would imply there was no immediate
domination by one species over the other or perhaps there was no need for the two groups to compete
for similar foods.
Another descendent of Homo erectus was the Neanderthals. The human lineage that was to become
the Neanderthals probably split from our own ancestors around 780,000 years ago.36 The
Neanderthals reached their heyday around 125,000 years ago, dominating Europe, hunting large game
such as mammoths. Homo sapiens and Neanderthal communities coexisted for some thousands of
years. It is difficult to determine how frequent contacts between the two groups were, particularly as
population sizes were low. However, there is some evidence for inter-breeding and possibly the
exchange of ideas such as wearing of shells or animal teeth as jewellery between the two groups.37
The exact reasons why the Neanderthals died out and were replaced by Homo sapiens are not
known. Neanderthals had been tremendously successful, surviving for over 300,000 years, but then
they disappeared completely. Some researchers argue that as the world cooled and their preferred
environments vanished, the Neanderthal population became geographically restricted and declined.
The last population of Neanderthals died out in Gibraltar, the furthest south that they could get, around
30,000 years ago.38

But it is also possible that Neanderthal populations never reached a size that enabled them to
develop further and survive the arrival of other humans.39 The truth is probably somewhere in
between. In some parts of the world Neanderthals would have died out as a result of the changing
environment. In others the changing climate might have led to increased competition for resources
from the more behaviourally developed Homo sapiens. Our own ancestors were better able to exploit
the ecological niches that they shared with the Neanderthals. This is not to say that Homo sapiens
physically destroyed the Neanderthals, though there may well have been conflict. For whichever
reason, the Neanderthals died out and by 30000 BP Homo sapiens were the only humans on the
planet.40
At this time Earth was entering the deepest point of the last ice age. For the next 20,000 years
humans would have to struggle with a climate that was increasingly cold and dry. Glaciers were
expanding outwards from the North Pole while deserts were growing. At this point in our early
history there were possibly only one million humans alive.41

Chapter 3

Hunter-gatherers

For the vast majority of human history humans existed by hunting and gathering. Today some groups of
hunter-gatherers survive, though few of these have remained unaffected by the influence of other
societies. Even the most isolated groups have changed as a result of interactions with scientists,
hunters, miners or forestry workers.
The very earliest humans probably lived by foraging rather than hunting. Their food came from
nuts, fruits and berries as well as the meat they could get from other animals kills or natural deaths.
Stone tools meant that obtaining meat was more a question of luck than hunting ability.
For many hunter-gatherers, hunting is very important in the social life of the community, but rarely
would meat have been the most important source of nutrition. In pure energy terms hunting is not as
efficient a way of obtaining nourishment as the gathering of foods.
Studies in the 1960s of the !Kung people, hunter-gatherers living in Botswana, confirms this.*
Vegetables and fruit formed the bulk of their diet, with meat providing 40 percent of their calories,
unevenly distributed through the year. During the best hunting seasons daily consumption of meat may
be over 2 kg per person, while at other times there was little or no meat.42
Hunter-gatherer communities live a semi-nomadic life, but they do not wander aimlessly. They
move from place to place through a yearly cycle. The places where they stay are chosen because of
their proximity to food sources during different seasons. At one time of year hunter-gatherers may stay
close to rivers where fish are plentiful, later they might follow a herd of animals as they move to new
feeding grounds, and at another time they stop near a source of fruits, nuts and berries. The need to
travel was born from necessity. Hunter-gatherers are limited by the food available locally. Once it
has been eaten, it is necessary to find more. Sometimes hunter-gatherers do have some semipermanent dwellings, allowing the group to return to a place with abundant food at a particular time
of the year.
The food itself, whether hunted or gathered, would be shared among the wider group, rather than
just those who had brought it back. While there may have been divisions among the sexes about who
did what, both men and women were responsible for obtaining food. Other social roles, such as
childcare, were not the preserve of one sex either, with the group collectively taking responsibility.
Anthropologist Eleanor Burke Leacock points out the way that the role of the family among huntergatherers differs dramatically from modern attitudes, writing that in a gathering hunting society the
nuclear family, although seemingly a unit, is functionally merged in the band collective in a manner
without parallel in Western culture.43
Hunter-gatherer groups exhibit a much more collective social approach. Without sharing and
communal support the bands might not survive periods of shortages. Anthropologists have frequently
recorded examples from around the world where hunter-gatherers without food have been helped by
others from their group. One example is from Peter Freuchen, a Danish writer. Following his own

unsuccessful hunt, he recorded the words of a fellow Inuit hunter who came to give him several
hundred pounds of meat. Freuchens profuse thanks were met with indignation:
Up in our country we are human! said the hunter. And since we are human we help each other. We dont like to hear anybody
say thanks for that. What I get today you may get tomorrow. Up here we say that by gifts one makes slaves and by whips one
makes dogs.44

Few hunter-gatherer communities that have survived until today remain unaffected by the modern
world; they are often integrated into trading networks and have manufactured goods such as clothing
and tools. Despite this, they do frequently retain characteristics of their past social organisation.
Their egalitarian life is often difficult for outside observers to comprehend. We will explore this later
when we discuss Eleanor Burke Leacocks studies of the Montagnais people of eastern Canada.
There is a characteristic lack of permanent leaders in hunter-gatherer communities. Instead there is
often a type of collective-democracy in day to day decision making. The role of leaders or chiefs is to
serve the wider community, rather than materially benefit from their position, however temporary.
When asked by an anthropologist if his people had chiefs, one member of the !Kung responded, Of
course we have headmen! In fact, we are all headmen; each one of us is headman over himself.45
Leaders among the !Kung had no real power; they could persuade, but not enforce their opinions.
Local camps might well be named after an individual, for instance Bon!as camp at !Kangwa. But
these individuals were unlikely to be leaders as we imagine them. They were often individuals known
for being the best speakers, arguers, ritual specialists and hunters, or simply those who had lived in
an area for the longest. Even the !Kung word for chief was rarely used about themselves and then
usually in a derisory manner, though it was applied to other tribes headmen and even English
royalty.46
In their important study of the creation of inequality in human societies, the anthropologists Kent
Flannery and Joyce Marcus point out that hunter-gatherer communities work actively to prevent
inequality from emerging. Humour and disapproval would be used to downplay any potential feelings
of superiority. A !Kung hunter asking for help bringing a kill to camp would be told, You think this
skinny bag of bones is worth carrying? The !Kung hunters also exchanged arrows before a hunt.
Their arrows were individually marked, but by mixing them up, each hunter, irrespective of his skill,
would eventually be credited with a successful kill. Flannery and Kent conclude that in all such
societies, inhabitants used social pressure, disapproval and ridicule to prevent anyone developing a
sense of superiority.47
But it is not simply in terms of social organisation that a hunter-gatherers view of the world
differs from ours. Notions of ownership or private property are radically different. Land, hunting
grounds or access to streams are not owned individually, but used collectively. This use was
temporary, based on the need for resources rather than any claim to permanent control.
The environmental historian William Cronon notes that among indigenous peoples in New
England, families enjoyed exclusive use of their planted fields and of the land on which their
wigwams stood, and so might be said to have owned them. But neither of these were permanent
possessions. Wigwams were moved every few months, and planting fields were abandoned after a
number of yearsno effort was made to set permanent boundaries What families possessed in their
fields was the use of them.48
A common misconception about hunter-gatherer societies is that life was short and unpleasant. But
this is also not true. Contemporary studies and archaeological evidence have shown that hunter-

gatherers were often healthy. Their lives were not necessarily short either. The average lifeexpectancy might be only 30 to 40 years, but this is due to very high infant mortality levels. Among
hunter-gatherers who have had little experience of modern medicine, only 57 percent of children
reach the age of 15.49 But those children who survived to their teenage years were likely to have long
lives, long enough to become grandparents. One extensive study of hunter-gatherers concluded that for
those who reached adulthood, the modal age at death (the age when individuals were most likely to
die) was between 68 and 78 years.50 The Hadza people of Tanzania and the !Kung had modal ages at
death for adults of 76 and 74 years respectively.51
The Hadza live in an area around Lake Eyasi. Today they number around 1,000 individuals, their
lifestyle little changed from when they were first recorded in the early 20th century. The lake is
abundant in game and foods such as fruit, nuts and tubers. Despite being surrounded by farmers, the
Hadza have not taken up agriculture, despite pressure from colonial administrations and the
Tanzanian government.
Because of the abundance of food, and their hunter-gatherer lifestyle, the Hadza do not have to
spend much time working. In fact, their lives are characterised by lots of leisure time. For instance,
one study in the 1960s commented that Hadza men seem more concerned with games of chance than
with chances of game. During the long dry season especially, they pass the greater part of days on end
in gambling. Only a minority of the men were active hunters of large animals, and while the women
are more assiduous in collecting foods it is a leisurely pace and without prolonged labour. The
food collected includes the highly nutritious fruit of the mongongo tree, which provides around 40
percent of their daily energy requirements.52
The Hadza spent an average of less than two hours a day getting food, and preferred to reject the
Neolithic [agricultural] revolution in order to keep their leisure.53
This figure does not include time spent preparing food, cooking or other tasks such as looking after
children, but is a remarkably short time. Other studies of hunter-gatherer communities have shown
similar results; on average an adult spends between three and five hours a day producing food.54 Total
working hours are higher. In a study of the !Kung people the total average working week (for both
sexes) was over 42 hours, though the total time obtaining food was less than half of this. It is worth
noting that the men of the !Kung spent more time hunting than the women spent collecting food (21.6
hours against 12.6 hours) yet the contribution to nutrition from the gathered food was much more
important.55
Because the relatively short amount of time spent collecting food for hunter-gatherers compares
very favourably with the time spent farming, not all communities made the transition to agriculture. As
a member of the !Kung said, Why should we plant when there are so many mongongos in the
world?56
Some agriculturalists switch back to hunter-gathering when circumstances change. Neighbours of
both the !Kung and Hadza resort to hunter-gathering if their crops fail.57
The motivation for switching from hunter-gatherer lifestyles to agriculture is complex. Agriculture
brings many benefits, predominantly the potential for greater quantities of food. But it is important that
we do not see the benefits of agriculture as the motivation for the initial move to farming. There were
many reasons not to make the transition and the transition itself would have happened over a lengthy
period of time. Some recent studies have argued that the switch to agriculture came, not because
people could foresee the benefits of agriculture, but because it developed organically out of their own

way of organising society. In particular it helped address the question of predictability of food
supply. We have already seen how very early humans clearly understood that they could help
encourage plants to produce more food. Modern hunter-gatherer communities exhibit detailed
knowledge about the varied plants and animals in their regions.
Anthropologists Fiona Marshall and Elisabeth Hildebrand argue that in some African huntergatherer communities the replanting of natural spontaneous crops to more accessible areas was an
attempt by villagers to overcome potential problems with their normal food supplies. It is not easy to
tell when plants that are some distance away are ready to eat, or to protect them from pests and wild
animals. The Sheko and Dizi farmers of Ethiopia often replant yams closer to their homes, while in
another part of Africa the Okiek people are known to replant basella, a wild climbing plant common
in steep ravines, to the doorways of their homes. In both these cases the replanting has more to do
with ease of access than the amount of food obtained.58
It is not a difficult leap from this basic farming to more complex crop growing. Once agriculture
had begun, its potential rewards would have made the further expansion of farming attractive. Out of
necessity hunter-gather communities are small groupings of individuals. Growing populations could
only survive if they were able to split into smaller groups. If the community was unable or unwilling
to divide, they would have had to find a more productive method of obtaining food. So people who
had started to grow crops, even in the most limited sense, would have been encouraged to extend the
practice.
But even this did not necessarily mean an end to the hunter-gatherer life. For instance, the
cultivation of maize in the Americas did not immediately lead to communities switching to a
permanent agricultural lifestyle. Writing about indigenous American tribes, historian Jake Page
describes the Bat Cave site in central New Mexico, where it appears that people planted this new
cultigen in the spring and then went on to make their seasonal rounds, hunting and gathering, to return
to Bat Cave and harvest whatever maize plants had survived.59
Before agriculture humans lived in societies without class divisions. The development of
agriculture slowly began to change this. But, initially at least, many characteristics of hunter-gatherer
communities carried over into the new agricultural societies. For instance, studies of the Nuer people
in Sudan in the 1930s and 1940s showed a society without leaders governed by a democratic
sentiment, with limited ownership of private property beyond cattle. The Nuer were agricultural
people growing millet and herding cattle, but their social lives were close to the lives of huntergatherer communities.60
Eventually agriculture led to big changes. Most nomadic groups became sedentary and villages
became permanent.
At the end of the last ice age, around 20,000 years ago, humans lived an egalitarian life of hunting
and gathering. Within a few thousand years, a new era of agriculture, class division and inequality
dominated.61 A few hunter-gatherer communities did survive into modern times. But class societies
allowed the accumulation of more wealth and resources and the greater mobilisation of human labour.
In regions where class society arose it won out over older forms of social organisation. In the next
chapter we will look at how class societies arose, why this is associated with the development of
agriculture and what this meant for ancient societies facing environmental crisis.

* The !Kung are one of a number of peoples in Africa who use tongue clicks in their speech. The exclamation mark symbolises one
such sound.

Chapter 4

Early agriculture, class society and crisis

In the developed world today agriculture is highly technological, dependent on heavy machinery,
artificial pesticides and fertilisers. Yet of the 1.3 billion people who work the land worldwide some
400 million do so without these modern innovations.62
Todays mass industrial food production is the outcome, though not the pinnacle, of a long
evolution of agricultural techniques, shaped by wider social changes. This chapter looks at the
earliest types of farming, how class society and the first states arose from them, and how the modern
landscape has been formed by thousands of years of farming.
The earliest forms of farming
Around 12000 BP the Neolithic era was characterised by a new technological developmentground
or polished stone tools. The preparation of stone in this way was hard work, but it produced stronger,
sharper tools than earlier flint ones. Now humans could make axes and adzes, useful for chopping
trees on a larger scale. Vast quantities of these tools were made; there are Neolithic quarries in many
places in the world. Around this time our ancestors started producing early forms of pottery, building
semi-permanent homes and breeding animals. They also began their first experiments in agriculture.
The transformation to farming is known as the Neolithic Revolution. The term was first coined by
the Marxist historian V Gordon Childe who described it as an economic and scientific revolution
that made the participants active partners with nature instead of parasites on nature.63 Childe points
out that the revolution arose out of existing practices, including the collecting of seeds of wild
grasses, ancestors to modern crops like wheat. He writes:
The decisive step was deliberately to sow such seeds on suitable soil and cultivate the sown land by weeding and other measures.
A society that acted thus was henceforth actively producing food, augmenting its own food supply. Potentially it could increase the
supply to support a growing population.64

The use of the term revolution is sometimes criticised as the process was a long, drawn out one
that took millennia. The British archaeologist and historian Francis Pryor argues that the transition to
agriculture looks more dramatic than in fact it was. Its consequences were indeed revolutionary, but
the original processes of change probably werent. In fact, they were remarkably gradual.65 He
continues that the revolution was certainly not comparable with the Industrial or Agricultural
Revolutions of recent times, which happened rapidly and had immediate as well as long-term effects.
It was a process of change, not of revolution.66
But revolutions are not short events that take place in a few days or weeks; they are drawn out
social and economic processes that may take years. The Neolithic Revolution was an evolutionary
process that arose from previous human activities, but ultimately led to a fundamental transformation
in how human society organised itself. In this sense, Gordon Childe was correct. Before the Neolithic

Revolution human society was based on hunting and gathering and afterwards it was based on
agriculture. This radical economic change had fundamental social consequences. People became
more sedentary, living in permanent settlements. It encouraged more innovations such as pottery,
metal working and animal husbandry. As we shall see, agriculture also led to the development of
class societies and other fundamental changes.
Equipment such as sickles and grinding stones, pestles and mortars are essential to turning cereal
plants into edible food. These tools existed long before the Neolithic Revolution, but the new
technological process and the successes of early farming encouraged further developments.
Agriculture began in a few distinct centres of origin around the world. In these places particular
plants had been domesticated and, from there, agricultural practices spread outwards among the
surrounding populations. Today six places are regarded as being centres for the independent
development of agriculture. The Near Eastern Centre, commonly called the Fertile Crescent, is the
best known of these areas. It ran from the far-eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea through
Mesopotamia and down towards the Persian Gulf. Here, between 10,000 and 9,000 years ago, wheat,
barley, peas, lentils, chickpeas and other crops were domesticated. Later on animals such as the cow,
pig and donkey were also domesticated.
The domestication of plants and animals took place at different times elsewhere in the world.
These points of origin included China around 8500 BP ; Central America between 9000 BP and 4000
BP ; South America in 6000 BP and North America in 4000 BP . A further centre of origin is found in
New Guinea possibly dating to around 10000 BP , but certainly from 7000 BP .67
In each of these areas small groups of people came up independently with the basic ideas of
agriculture. These ideas then spread rapidly outwards. Some communities would have adopted
agriculture; some would have remained hunters and gatherers, or combined elements of the two. For
example, some tribes in the Great Plains of North America hunted buffalo and exchanged meat and
hides with those groups that farmed. Some tribes did both, moving around to hunt, but returning to
places to harvest crops. Still other groups took up farming for years, returning to hunting when they
obtained horses.
Around 10,000 years ago people in the mountains of Papua-New Guinea began to cultivate taro, a
root and leaf vegetable, but the most significant domesticated crop was a type of wheat called wild
einkorn first cultivated in the Fertile Crescent in what is now south east Turkey around 9500 BP . In the
wild it would have been easily observed growing, maturing and producing more seeds in a single
season. Wheat thus forms an ideal basis for early agricultural society. Fruit or nut trees provide
plenty of nutrition, but take years to mature and reach the point where their crops are abundant enough
to make their farming worthwhile.
Harvesting selects for the biggest and best seeds from the strongest plants and once some of these
are replanted this creates a stronger, more abundant crop. Gradually early farmers developed or
obtained further types of cereal. Emmer wheat comes from the natural cross between the einkorn plant
and a type of grass, and this in turn led farmers to spelt wheatan important crop until medieval
times. These plants form the basis of all modern wheat.
We can trace the spread of these new plants throughout the world. Emmer wheat was domesticated
in the Fertile Crescent. Two thousand years later we find it in Greece and 1,500 years after that in
Germany.68 The same happened with other domesticated plants. Many of the animals that we now
most commonly associate with farmscattle, goats, pigs and sheepwere domesticated around the

same time as these early crops.

As we have seen, the exact reasons why a particular group of people took up agriculture are not
easy to explain. But even the earliest forms of agriculture allowed people to produce much more food
than via hunting or foraging.
The early farming landscape
Once farming took hold it began to dramatically change the landscape. The most obvious case would
have been deforestation as areas were cleared to plant crops. Domesticated animals such as pigs and
sheep would have also helped clear woodland as they eat the bark from trees and shrubs.
Evidence of the earliest farms can still be seen today. One of the most extensive sites of Bronze
Age farming survives on the open moorland of Dartmoor in Devon, England, dating from between
2000 and 1200 BCE. These Bronze Age fields run across the moor separated by parallel stone banks
upon which hawthorn hedges may have been planted.69 The fields do not follow the natural contours
of the landscape; these Bronze Age people were creating an artificial landscape, deliberately shaping
the world they lived and worked in. We can speculate on what their reasoning wasas well as
preventing livestock roaming, the reaves, as the walls are known, probably marked both physical
boundaries and spaces that may have had religious or historical importance.
The people of the Bronze Age would have looked at their countryside with very different ideas to
ours, and we should be wary of projecting our own experiences of agricultural landscapes onto the
past. We might see an arrangement of walls as a field. For the people of the Bronze Age, the layout of
the farm may represent something much more subtle. For instance, elsewhere in England, in Exmoor,
boundaries of Bronze Age fields are influenced by the presence of barrows and burial chambers on
the horizon, places that would have had significance for the farmers.70
So rather than viewing each part of the Bronze Age landscape separatelyfields in one place,
burial mounds in another and homes elsewhereit is better to see them as being linked together. This
idea of the ritual landscape is important when looking at how people lived in the past. We may
think that only modern humans with our aerial photographs or satellite images can understand our
place within the land. But ancient people often took great care to align their buildings and monuments
over extensive areas. Stand near the Stonehenge monument and gaze outwards towards the dozens of
barrows visible on the horizon and you will instinctively understand this.71 Some of the focal areas
for ancient peoples would have had roots that stretched back into the much more nomadic past.
Stonehenge was an area of ritual importance long before the stones themselves were tilted into place.
There is no doubt that the places chosen by our ancestors for agriculture would have been picked not
just for their good soil and climate, but because of their symbolic importance. Some archaeologists
see Stonehenge as being part of an extremely large landscape, with natural bodies such as rivers
playing an important symbolic role, as well as the artificial monuments, barrows and the long
enigmatic ditches known as cursuses.
Despite the success of agriculture and its consequent spread, it did not provide protection against a
changing world. As the climate got colder and wetter around 1200 BCE, the Dartmoor farms were
abandoned. A thousand years of farming had probably reduced the moors fertility. The first Neolithic
or Bronze Age farmers had to clear the natural tree growth from the moors to create their farmland.
These trees once protected the soil, retaining it with their roots. Once they were gone the fertile top

soil (which comes from decomposing leaves) would have been eroded and would not easily have
been replaced even with manure from livestock. Farmers have always battled to maintain the fertility
of their soil. One ancient method of farming does this so well that it is still practised in some parts of
the world today.
Slash and burn cultivation
Initially the growing of crops would have involved the scattering of seeds in natural clearings, on the
banks of rivers or on flood plans. This natural space was limited though and people would soon have
needed to clear the grasslands, woods and forests around them. The clearance of space to farm
required tools, initially simple stone axes, though once metals had been discovered the process would
have been far easier.
Slash and burn is also known as swidden cultivation. The word originates in an old English word,
swithen, meaning to burn. Farmers chop down trees and then burn the wood, producing large
quantities of nutrient-rich ash. Rainfall causes the ash to soak into the ground, dramatically increasing
the fertility of the soil. Once the roots and tree stumps have been cleared, seeds can be planted. The
first few crops are the most abundant, but the fertility quickly drops. In part this is because the nutrient
rich ash is either used or washed away by later rains, but the hoeing, aeration and general farming of
the soil also degrade it. Eventually the soil is abandoned. Shrubs, bushes and trees slowly reclaim the
ground, and over the years the soil gradually regenerates. At some point in the future this new
woodland can in turn be cleared and burnt and the cycle repeated. Exactly how long this cycle takes
depends on the crops grown, the size of the local population, soil and climate. It also depends on how
long different plants and trees take to reach maturity. Farmers who practise this type of agriculture
become adept at shaping the new forest; they might plant fruit or nut trees once they leave an area, to
provide an extra supply of food for the future. Farmers will also have animals to supplement their
foods, and frequently villages of swidden agriculturists keep some areas near their homes
permanently clear for small garden plots.
This gives a hint of how structured swidden agriculture can be. Communities that practise it today
often have very complex systems that ensure that the forest around villages is used in a particular
order. Some systems leave lands to regenerate for three or four decades, others reuse the same land
within five or six years. Crops change year on year as the soil slowly degenerates. The complexity of
these cycles means that occasionally the interval between one clearance of an area and the next use of
the land is longer than the lifetime of the farmers. Those practising slash and burn cultivation would
have needed some form of social organisation to co-ordinate their farming.
Just how complex slash and burn cultivation can be is shown by the Hanunuo people of the island
of Mindoro in the Philippines who cultivate over 280 different types of crops. Cereals are planted in
the first year, in the next five to ten, root and tree crops such as bananas are grown. Depending on
types of trees, the cycle lasts between ten and 35 years. Each hectare of cultivated land requires
around 3,000 hours of labour per year.72
Slash and burn agriculture spread rapidly outwards from the centres of the Neolithic Revolution. It
allowed the population to increase more rapidly than before as more people could be fed from a
given area around a village. But once villages reached a certain population size, new villages would
have to be founded far enough away from the original communities that farming areas did not overlap.

Between 8000 BCE and 3000 BCE the world population grew from five to 50 million people. Studies
of modern slash and burn communities show that villages tend to be limited to around 1,000 people,
and are separated by distances of perhaps five to six kilometres. This allows access to around 30
square kilometres of forest per village. Modern population growth in these communities is around 3
percent per year, doubling every few decades. 73 It is easy to see how the development of slash and
burn cultivation led to an explosion in the worlds population.
Despite the increasing food supply, swidden farming could not have produced enough to support
many non-agricultural workers. It is likely, for instance, that those who had roles such as tool-making
would also have had to be involved in farming. As we shall see, as agricultural practices develop,
the surplus food produced is eventually enough for a society to support individuals who do not labour
producing foodeither because they have a different job, or because they are tribal or religious
leaders.
Slash and burn agriculturalists carry over some of the other characteristics of hunter-gatherer
communities, in particular a sense of collective work and common use of land. Some parts of the
slash and burn agricultural cycle require high levels of labour, the clearing of areas following the
burning of forests, for instance, and farmers help each other at these times. Communities would often
recognise particular pieces of land as being open to everyone. Even until the early 1800s in Finland
commonly-owned forests were used by landless people for cultivation, logging and livestock.74
Permanent land ownership means little for people living in this way. Owning land where forest is
regrowing would bring no gain to an individual. Villages may well allocate pieces of land to
particular families to cultivate and harvest, though this ownership ends when the land is abandoned
again. Once the forest returns, everyone has the right to collect fruit or firewood from this common
area. This has much in common with the farming practices of some Native Americans, who, as we
will see later, vacated a piece of land after a time, leaving it available for anyone else to use.
Slash and burn cultivation was incompatible with farming methods that were about making money.
Leaving an area of land to gradually regenerate would be considered wasteful by those used to
thinking of land as an investment to be rented out or for growing cash crops. Slash and burn farmers
were labelled lazy or backward, as the experience of the Bemba people of northern Zambia
illustrates. By the late 1800s the Bemba had developed slash and burn agricultural methods (known
locally as citemene) into a highly organised system. Their agriculture took place over a cycle of 20
years or so and was ideally suited to a low population with plenty of woodland. Additionally and of
great importance to the community, permanent gardens near the villages existed where crops such as
cassava and maize were grown. Men were responsible for the clearing of the trees and bushes;
women stacked the wood and were responsible for harvesting later in the year. In the gardens men
dug the initial plots, but womens labour on village gardens was considerable and added greatly to
the overall agricultural labour input.75 This was to the detriment of the women though, who
according to a study in the 1930s, worked an extra two to three hours a day doing housework.
European conquest and colonisation of the area began in the 1880s. The ancient citemene system
was a barrier to the type of agriculture that the new colonial governments needed. Africa was rich in
natural resources and the colonial governments needed a large indigenous workforce to extract them.
Zambias copper mines, for instance, were the largest in the world and enormous numbers of Bemba
men were sucked into working in them. In turn, this led to hunger in the Bemba villages as the number
of people clearing the forests was reduced.

These new workforces had to be fed, but old forms of agriculture could not provide food in large
enough quantities. New farming methods were imposed on Africa. Instead of the citemene system,
oxen would pull ploughs through large fields. In 1905 an official said that among the traditional
practices that must end were the wasteful methods of cultivation in cutting down trees and thus
deforesting the country. The colonial government declared that citemene would end.76 Citemene
practices were even declared evil by the British South Africa Company. The administration hoped
this action would force the Bemba to produce cash crops and raise taxes. It was also a method of
social control. For the Bemba, the consequences were traumatic. An anonymous bureaucrat summed
up the impact of the change in dry, patronising language. The Bemba had, he said, changed
completely from the cheerful attitude they had always borne.77
In the 1960s the government introduced a new development area around Mungwi in an attempt to
further develop agriculture, educate people and improve the local economy. This agricultural
programme included farms of over 20 hectares, with piped irrigation systems and loans for new
farmers. The attempt to introduce permanent agricultural practices had an emphasis on male farmers.
In contrast to the central role of Bemba women in agriculture previously, they were now sidelined.
Instead they were encouraged to cook and sew. In part this was to try to attract men back to
agriculture from the mines, but it mostly reflected colonial attitudes to the division of labour.
The colonial administrators in Africa who wanted to end citemene practices aimed to recreate
European style permanent cultivation in Zambia. They ignored the importance of foodstuffs produced
from permanent village gardens and downplayed the central role of women in the production of food.
By neglecting the role of women, the colonial government was misunderstanding the nature of
production in Zambia. It meant that their solutions to the crisis caused by men leaving to look for
work in the mines were inadequate.
The destruction of the older agriculture undermined community relations and increased poverty
and hunger. A survey of families in 1985 showed a:
noticeable improvement in the nutritional status of children under five [on previous surveys]. However, the children of
subsistence famers showed more significant improvement than did those of commercial farmers, indicating that malnutrition in
the latter category was a less seasonal phenomenon.78

The main reason for this seems to be that in those families engaged with cash-cropping, there are
increased demands upon women to help with this work, reducing the time available for preparing
food for children. This is not to say that similar pressures did not exist earlier. A survey in the 1930s
showed that at times of most intensive agricultural labour meals were often not produced because
women were too busy in the fields to prepare them. But the switch to cash-cropping intensifies this
process, putting a much higher burden of work on women in the family. Colonial administrators did
not understand the importance of citemene agriculture to the wider social and ecological relationships
of the Bemba people. In the rush to make money from mining and cash crops, they failed to understand
the central dynamics of Bemba life. This in turn laid the basis for future hunger.
Deforestation
As we have seen, population growth is limited for slash and burn cultivators unless a section of the
population can relocate to another area. However, if further geographical expansion is impossible
then a growing population will have to try to increase the use of the forested areausually by

decreasing the amount of time that an area remains unused before clearing it again. This in turn
reduces the yield of crops as the amount of nutrients returned to the soil through the clearance of
woods is less. Thus slash and burn agriculture can turn into deforestationthe permanent destruction
of woodlands. It is important to understand that deforestation is not an automatic result of swidden
cultivation; it occurs when there is not enough forest land to make slash and burn sustainable.
Deforestation has major ecological impacts. Once forests are permanently removed, rainwater can
easily wash soil away. Trees form natural barriersthey hold soil in place on the side of hills and
slow down water courses, allowing time for water to be absorbed into the ground. Once the trees
have gone water runs quickly downhill leading to floods; valleys become choked with earth and
debris; rivers transport earth downstream, silting up deltas.
Even in ancient times the deforestation of the Mediterranean areas led to the rapid silting up of
rivers. Ancient Romes port at Ostia is now inland despite being built where the river Tiber entered
the Mediterranean.
Some forms of slash and burn cultivation do not involve a cyclical system and can, on the surface,
appear to be immensely destructive to forest cover. Here the community move on to a new location
when they have exhausted the agricultural potential of a cleared area of forest. This is known as
shifting agriculture and is not the same as the systematic and mechanised clearing of forests that we
see todaythe destruction, for instance, of huge swathes of the Amazon rainforest by a small number
of landowners for cattle pasture.
Photographs of enormous vehicles tearing down the Brazilian rainforests helped to create a new
generation of environmental activists in the 1980s and 1990s. They also helped to create the idea that
forest clearance must always be environmentally degrading or destructive. Slash and burn cultivation
changes the local ecology. But this is very different to the permanent ecological transformation of a
whole area through deforestation. Slash and burn cultivation is premised on the idea that forests will
return. The removal of any significant section of forest will have an impact on biodiversity. It can
take an extremely long time for forests to return to the state they were in before they were first cleared
between 150 and 500 years for some Asian forests and 200 years for some European ones.79
As with the transition from hunter-gatherer communities to ones based on agriculture, the transition
from slash and burn to permanent agriculture is not automatic. One reason for not making the
transition is that swidden agriculture does not require as much work as permanent cultivation. Other
external pressures also play their role. Farmers can be prevented from moving, or face economic
pressures to produce cash crops. Attitudes to ownership of land can change, often because a far
distant government decrees this. Nonetheless, shifting or slash and burn cultivation even in modern
times has been responsible for producing significant amounts of food.
In Finland in 1830 swidden agriculture was common in two thirds of the country, and one third of
bread produced in the east and centre of Finland used grain from slash and burn cultivation.80 This did
not prevent the government enacting laws to end the practice from the middle of the 19th century
onwards as they moved to consolidate landownership in crown hands. Later, from 1859-61, the
Finnish government relaxed restrictions on sawmilling. Timber suddenly became a cash crop.
Landless populations who practised swidden agriculture were a barrier to the expansion of the timber
industry. Enormous estates were purchased to guarantee future access to wood and together with
cheap grain from Russia; centuries of Finnish swidden agriculture were brought to an end in the
1870s.81

Permanent agriculture and the rise of class society

Slash and burn agriculture was humanitys most successful form of agriculture, lasting for many
centuries. It survives in some parts of the world, but it is not by any means the dominant form of
agriculture. Those communities that moved on from slash and burn farming to more permanent
methods of agriculture came up with an incredibly diverse set of practices that fitted the different
climatic and geographical areas they lived in.
This needed new types of tools, new farming methods and new social organisations. In arid
regions the lack of water meant that people had to develop ways of storing water for the dry season or
irrigating farmland from nearby waterways. Some communities put more emphasis on animal
husbandry and developing systems of fallowing.
With agriculture becoming centred on permanent settlements, there was a further fundamental
change: the division of society into distinct classes. The existence of classes within human society has
had profound impacts upon our ecological relationships as well as our responses to changing
environmental circumstances, so I want to briefly look at how class divisions arose and what this
meant for our ancestors.
Before society could become divided into classes, the productive forces had to develop to the
point when a surplus of food could be produced by those farming the landthat is, when farmers
could produce enough food to provide for themselves, their families and others who did not work the
land. Until there is a surplus it is impossible for anyone not engaged in food production to survive for
any length of time. Once a surplus of food was available it changed life immensely. Food could be
stored against future famine, for instance.82 Using the surplus to employ some people doing other
work instead of farming could bring benefit to the whole community. If some villagers dig a new
irrigation channel instead of farming, this will improve everyones crops.
Those groups, individuals or lineages which are most able or successful at gathering a surplus of
food use it, initially, in ways that benefit everyone. This leads to so-called Big Men arising, who
gain prestige from their ability to give gifts, but who have no real authority. In a classic study of
communities in Polynesia and Melanesia in the Pacific Ocean, the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins
explains that:
Big-men do not come to office; they do not succeed to, nor are they installed in, existing positions of leadership over political
groups. The attainment of big-man status is rather the outcome of a series of acts which elevate a person above the common herd
and attract about him a coterie of loyal, lesser men.83

He continues:
Typically decisive is the deployment of ones skills and efforts in a certain direction: towards amassing goods, most often pigs, shell
monies and vegetable foods, and distributing them in ways which build a name for cavalier generosity, if not for compassion.84

Elsewhere, among the Nambikwara of South America:

The chief must not just do well. He must try, and his group will expect him to try, to do better than the others Although the chief
does not seem to be in a privileged position from the material point of view, he must have under his control sufficient surplus
quantities of food, tools, weapons and ornaments When an individual, a family or a band as a whole, wishes or needs something,
it is to the chief that an appeal is made. Generosity is, therefore, the first attribute to be expected of a new chief.85

As the surplus from production continued to grow, these individuals, or their family groups, began
to form a social class which controlled a part of societys wealth. Once they formed a separate class,
they began to have different collective material interests from the mass of the population. This leads
to a self-identification for the controlling group as a separate class from the wider population.

Increasingly the new ruling class will see the interests of the whole of society as being their own.
In order to protect their interests, this new class could use a part of the surplus they controlled to
employ others, soldiers to guard them, bureaucrats to organise society and priests to justify their
position. Alongside these changes develop legal and religious institutions which also serve the
interests of the new ruling class. Consequently, with the rise of class society, there is a corresponding
development of the state. The state is made up of the institutions and organisations that exist to protect
the interests of the ruling class.
Since the ruling class are dependent on the labour of others, they also have an interest in making
them work harder so that they can appropriate more of the product of the labour for themselves. So
the rise of class society brings with it the exploitation of one class by another. Attempts to increase
exploitation lead to conflict. Hence class society cannot be separated from class struggle. There is
always a tension between those who are taking the surplus for their own use, and those who want to
ensure their farms produce enough to feed their family. Thus agriculture itself becomes a contested
area.
Not all societies developed into fully fledged class societies, but those that did were able to
accumulate more wealth and expand more rapidly. In most parts of the world early agricultural
societies continued until they were encountered by more powerful class societies, for instance, as we
will discuss later, European colonists arriving in the Americas. 86 Additionally, the existence of
soldiers makes conflict possible between communities. The existence of a surplus of wealth makes
war a potentially profitable exercise. This is not to say that pre-class societies did not engage in war
or fight for resources. But with the development of classes, violence becomes inherent to society.
Initially the development of class society would have helped improve the collective lot of the
whole population, but as Chris Harman explains:
once such state structures and ideologies were in existence, they would perpetuate the control of the surplus by a certain group
even when it no longer served the purpose of advancing production. A class that emerged as a spur to production would persist
even when it was no longer such a spur.87

Womens oppression
Alongside the division of society into classes and the rise of the state, there was a fundamental
transformation in the role of women. We have seen that hunter-gatherer and early agricultural
communities were based on participation of both sexes in the production of food. Later when we look
in more detail at one such community, the Montagnais in eastern Canada, we will also see how
women had central roles in all aspects of hunter-gatherer communities. But with the arrival of class
society women took on subordinate roles, something described by Frederick Engels as the worldhistoric defeat of the female sex.88
In hunter-gatherer communities men tended to be involved in hunting and women took on the role
of food gathering. This was because women had to breastfeed their children. This is not to say that
they did not hunt and men did not gather food, but there was some social delimitation. Men were also
central to childcare. A study of Semaq Beri hunter-gatherers in Malaysia in 2002 found that while
mothers spent more time with children than their fathers did, there were no differences between
genders when it came to time spent holding and carrying children. Additionally, during occasional
periods of frequent movement, only adult males were assigned holding and carrying [of children]

activities.89
These differences between the roles of men and women sharpened with the arrival of agriculture,
particularly the introduction of the plough. Agriculture ceased to be the work of both sexes and
became dominated by men. There are a number of reasons for this. Because farming with a plough
requires more physical strength, it favours men. But more importantly, ploughing is also difficult and
dangerous to do with children. The use of ploughs reduces the amount of weedinga task that was
often the role of women with small children. The development of agriculture eventually leads to a
situation where men increasingly take on responsibility for production in the fields while women take
on responsibility for the raising of children in the home.
Even today this is noticeable in countries like Burundi where farming is based on the hoe and
women make up 90 percent of the agricultural workforce. By contrast, in Pakistan, where the plough
dominates, only 16 percent of agricultural workers are women.90 The wider social impact of this is
dramatic. An extensive 2011 study concluded that societies which traditionally used the plough have
lower rates of female participation in the workplace, in politicsas well as a greater prevalence of
attitudes favouring gender inequality.91
As men increasingly took on producing food, and women the tasks associated with looking after
children and preparing food, decisions about production were taken by the men, and women were
subordinated, though their role might differ depending on which class they belonged too. Over the
centuries the social differences in the roles of women and men have helped to undermine the
collective solidarity of those at the bottom of society in the face of attempts by the ruling class to
increase their exploitation. The continued oppression of women has its roots in changes that occurred
thousands of years ago with the development of agriculture and the beginnings of class society.
Ending that oppression permanently will also require fundamental social change.
The ancient Egyptian state and environmental crisis
Egypts human history stretches back long before the time of the Pharaohs. 92 When Homo erectus
dispersed into the Middle East from Africa they probably travelled through the lands around the Nile.
A dried up stream, Wadi Kubbaniya, near the modern city of Aswan has archaeological evidence of
prolonged human habitation as early as 17000 BP .
Today North Africa is a hot, dry part of the world, a climate that has endured for around 6,000
years. But before this it was cooler and wetter. For almost 9,000 years people in North Africa had
farmed the land, developing and expanding the agriculture that had spread from the Fertile Crescent.
During the Neolithic period the area supported a few thousand nomadic cattle herders.
The earliest evidence of agriculture in North Africa comes from the shores of the ancient Lake
Faiyum in Egypt. Today this lake covers 200 square kilometres. In 5000 BCE the lake was a hundred
times larger and thousands of people would have grown crops with its water, hunted the animals that
came to drink and caught its fish.
Between 5450 BCE and 4400 BCE, the Faiyumian culture lived on the lake shore. The existence of
grain storage pits are the best evidence for farming here, some up to a metre and a half in width and
almost a metre in depth, to store barley and emmer wheat. Other archaeological evidence points to the
breeding of sheep, goats, pigs and cattle. Agriculture was not the key source of food for the Faiyumian
people but for their descendants and the people of the Nile River it would become increasingly

important.
The early development of agriculture in Africa is unusual because animals were domesticated
before plants. An unpredictable climate meant farming was not reliable as it was elsewhere. Hence
the communities in North Africa often herded cattle, goats and sheep between areas of pasture. As the
current warm period began around 6000 BP , rainfall levels in North Africa dropped, desert spread
and lakes shrank. The population moved gradually towards the Nile, which offered the conditions to
grow crops, its annual floods producing some of the most fertile land of the ancient world.
Along with other major rivers such as the Indus, Euphrates and Tigris, the 7,000 mile long Nile
became the heart of powerful civilisations. The Egyptian civilisation lasted thousands of years and
produced some of the most recognisable of ancient monuments.
Every year, driven by heavy tropical rains far to the south, the Nile rose in flood and the river
valley became an enormous lake. As the floods receded they left thick layers of extremely fertile silt
on the land. Today the enormous Aswan Dam, built between 1960 and 1970, prevents the annual
floods, but thousands of years ago the rising Nile produced a very different environment, a huge
oasiswith plenty of fertile soil, ample pasturage, and many hectares of ponds, swamps, and
marshes where fish teemed and edible foods abounded.93
The importance of the Nile to everyday life is reflected in the way that it became part of the
cultural and spiritual life of the Egyptian people. Numerous songs were dedicated to it, and the river
was deified as the god Hapi who brought the annual flood. One of Hapis titles was Lord of the
River Bringing Vegetation.
The Nile flooded between July and August and then, as the water levels receded, wheat, barley,
millet and flax were planted along the length of the river. The first two of these thrived in this
environment, planted in September and then harvested the following spring before the higher
temperatures and dryer conditions could destroy the crops. Later, peas and lentils were alternated
with these major crops to enrich the soil. From around 4000 BCE progressively more complex
irrigation systems were developed. At first only the areas closest to the river were farmed, but later,
as populations grew, floodwater was trapped in natural depressions with small dikes. This allowed
irrigation of wider areas for longer when the floods had ended. Later still, basins were dug from the
riverbank outwards towards the desert, allowing cultivation to be extended even further.94
These extensive irrigation works allowed the land which was never touched by the Nile floods to
become viable agriculturally. The irrigation also allowed the control of waterfarmers could store
river water to protect themselves from possible lower than average floods in the following years. All
of this greatly increased the number of people that could be supported and the Egyptian population
grew dramatically. One small collection of villages in Naqada in Southern Egypt illustrates this. In
4000 BCE these villages could support 75 to 120 people per square kilometre. Once the cultivatable
land had grown four or eight times the population that could be fed had grown to between 760 and
1,520 people per square kilometre, and by 3600 BCE these villages formed a small town. The surplus
food grown meant the population included many people who were not farmers, but traders or
priests.95
The earliest rulers of the Egyptian civilisations governed a state that was bureaucratic and very
hierarchical. At the very top of society were the royal family. Initially, they had no fixed home,
crisscrossing the country over the course of a year and staying at various palaces. As the state became
more centralised the bureaucracy took on specific administrative taskscontrolling tax and finances

in particular. But there was also a great deal of autonomy in the localities. 96 Even thousands of years
into Pharaonic rule, most rural Egyptian villages were almost self-sufficient. It seems that
maintenance of the irrigation works that formed the basis for agriculture was not the main role of
either ancient Egypts central government or its bureaucrats. This is because the actual irrigation
depended more upon the extent of Nile flooding than engineering. During the whole of the ancient
Egyptian period there is no indication of a state-controlled irrigation system.97
A far more important role of the state was to deal with the different levels of food production
caused by variations in the Nile flood. As populations expanded there was a growing need for the
resolution of social conflictbetween those who had food and those who did not have enough. This
meant storing food surpluses from one year to the next and the redistribution of food from one area to
another. The proximity of almost every settlement within a few miles of the river probably explains
much of the political and religious unity of Egypt.98 This redistributive role is reflected in the
biblical story of Joseph, itself based on an older story in the Hebrew Bible. Joseph persuaded the
Egyptian Pharaoh to store surplus grain from seven fine years in order to provide for the population in
the following seven lean ones.
Egypts dry conditions allowed grain to be stored for long periods and the Nile formed a perfect
route for the distribution of food. With the invention of sails around 3350 BCE this was made even
easier as boats could use the northerly winds from the Mediterranean to travel upstream.
Thus the basis for the highly complex Egyptian civilisation developed. River trade allowed the
delivery of food and goods to royal warehouses, supporting the bureaucrats and the tens of thousands
of labourers needed to build the temples, pyramids and tombs. In turn these works helped to create
and strengthen the religious ideology that justified the position of the Pharaohs.
The two centuries of the first dynasty saw an increasingly centralised state, unifying the north and
south of Egypt. Further expansion included military conquest as far south as modern day Sudan. Trade
took place with Africa and the near-east as far as modern day Iraq. Egypt exported some of its
agricultural surplus, importing, for instance, copper from mines in Sinai.
It would be tempting to imagine that from these early beginnings there was an inevitable, if
gradual, transition towards the peak of civilisation that built the pyramids. But Egyptian civilisation
was based on the fusion of two very different regions, the north (Lower Egypt) and the south (Upper
Egypt). The unification of the two areas was violent. The earliest dynasties were marked by rebellion
and an independence struggle from the people of Lower Egypt was eventually put down by military
action by the last king of the Second Dynasty. Once this was overcome, unified Egypt lasted for the
next 400 years (2686-2160 BCE).
This period, the Old Kingdom, was the time when ancient Egypt was at its most dynamic. It was
the time when much of what we recognise today as ancient Egyptian culture was createdpainting,
writing and sculpture developed and flourished. Tomb building went from rough rectangular blocks
of bricks known as mastaba, to massive pyramids. The pyramids themselves evolved from step like
structures to the vast constructions at Giza.
This complex and extensive society rested on the enormous potential of Nile agriculture. But as we
have seen, this agriculture was limited by the changes in the Nile floods. Egyptian society put great
efforts into trying to understand these floods. But their religious beliefs also reflected the fear that the
Nile might fail them. For Egyptians the king was a living link between heaven and earth. He could
intervene with the gods to ensure prosperity for his people. Pharaohs who were unable to ensure the

fertility of the land lost their political legitimacy.99 The end of the Old Kingdom in 2160 BCE was
marked by the degeneration of the Egyptian economy, but was hastened by a series of low Nile
floods. Having failed in his duty of relating to the gods, the rule of ancient Egypts longest surviving
Pharaoh, Pepy II, ended with the complete collapse of centralised government.100
The actual cause of these failed floods was climatic, but to the Egyptian people they felt like
punishment from the gods. Around 4200 BP a period of extreme aridity is recorded across North
Africa, the Middle East and through to the Indian subcontinent. Lasting around a century, this
particular drought can be linked to the El Nio oscillation that takes place in the Pacific. El Nio is a
complex interaction between the ocean and the atmosphere but the changes it causes to rainfall
patterns have had a tremendous impact on human history. 101 In Egypts case it caused the almost total
breakdown of civilisation. The empire was broken into its constituent components and only recovered
a century later when Mentuhotep I reunited the country after a long and brutal civil war.102
The collapse of the Old Kingdom was not completely due to environmental crisis. By this time
ancient Egypt was facing economic stagnation. Local administrators were becoming increasingly
powerful, undermining the role of the Pharaoh. Important national positions in the state bureaucracy
had become hereditary, rather than being appointed by the ruler. Treasury income dropped and the
financial system was enormously strained. Since one consequence of the environmental changes was
that the Nile flood could no longer be relied on, the basis for the centralised Egyptian state fell apart.
Before the rise of Egyptian civilisation climatic changes had led to the nomadic peoples moving
out of the increasingly arid areas and towards the banks of the Nile. Nomadic peoples could avoid
smaller more localised environmental changes by moving their herds, but once society became more
rooted it also became more vulnerable to sudden changes. These changes can have devastating effects
if society cannot adapt.103
An ancient Egyptian poem, The Admonitions of the Prophet Ipuwer, gives us a sense of the
crisis that took place at the end of the Old Kingdom. The poet criticises a Pharaoh for allowing his
country to fall into chaos. The crisis is marked by the collapse of agriculture and trade, leading to
famine and lawlessness:
Plunderers are everywherethe Nile is in flood, yet none ploweth Every man saith: We know not what hath happened
throughout the land Plague stalketh through the land and blood is everywhere Men do not sail to Byblos todaylaughter has
perished and is no longer madeit is grief that walketh through the land, mingled with lamentations The land is left over to its
weariness as when one hath pulled up the flaxcorn hath perished everywhere. People are stripped of clothing, perfume, and oil.
Every one saith: There is no more The storehouse is bare, and he that kept it lieth stretched out on the groundthe king hath
been taken away by poor menhe that was buried as a hawk lieth on a bier. What the pyramid hid will become empty.104

The description of the plunder of a royal burial reflects the fears of a ruling class facing complete
destruction. The world that they knew was being thrown into confusion and chaos. The failure of the
Pharaoh to solve this problem was not simply a problem with him as an individual, but reflected a
greater crisis in the whole religious order.
The ancient Egyptian world view was based on a principle called Maata divine concept of
truth, balance, order and law. Understanding Maat is crucial to understanding the cultural dynamics
of the ancient Egyptian state. The state itself needed to be constantly checked against the ideals of
Maatshould this fail then chaos would reign throughout the kingdom. All Egyptians had some
responsibility to ensure that the forces of disorder did not overcome Maat. Maat was the gift of the
gods; its opposite, Isfet, epitomised all the chaos that challenged the balance of the world. Isfet could
mean many thingsfrom lying and lawbreaking to invasion, famine, disease and environmental crisis.

The person who had the most responsibility to ensure Maat was the ruler. The lineage of the kings
had been placed on Earth by the gods for this very purpose. The Pharaoh was semi-divine, an
intermediary between the realm of the gods and the world of humans. Upon becoming Pharaoh he was
tasked by the gods with maintaining order. This responsibility was in turn passed on to his
subordinates, officials and bureaucrats, down to lower orders. This helped created a social inertia
if Maat was a balanced world, then any upset to that balance had much wider ramifications. It is on
this basis that many later Pharaohs looked back to a more ordered past and made efforts, legal and
social, to return there.
Should this order be challenged, when, for instance, despite the kings best efforts, the Nile
inundation repeatedly failed, then the system itself was called into question. This helps explain the
anger and frustration in the Prophets Admonitions at a world beginning to be turned upside-down:
See, he who had nothing is (now) a man of wealth,
the nobleman sings his praise
See, the poor of the land has become rich,
the man of property is a pauper.105

In Egypt there were significant numbers of people in lower classes who did not work the land but
were engaged in building, maintaining or protecting the tombs and monuments of the rulers. Their role
was important to the state because it was partly through these monuments that the ideological
justification for the Pharaohs was made. A ruler who could build an enormous pyramid was
practically demonstrating his power and strength, as well as proving his very godliness.
Archaeologist John Romer has described the day to day lives of some of the better-off sections of
ancient Egypts workersthe tomb makers of the Pharaohs. 106 Three thousand years ago in a village
near Thebes in southern Egypt a small group of artisans was engaged in digging out and decorating the
tombs of the Pharaohs. We have a rich record of the lives of these workers in the form of papyrus
documents that were preserved in the hot, dry conditions of the desert. The bureaucratic Egyptian
state documented almost every aspect of the lives of these citizens, and we have a unique record of
their lives.
These men and their families led moderately comfortable lives, fed with food and beer sent from
the great storehouses of Thebes. At one point during the reign of Ramesses III, possibly as a result of
the huge building projects he initiated in Thebes, food in the granaries ran unusually low. Food
deliveries to the tombmakers village arrived late and in paltry quantities:
Tempers finally broke on 14 November 1152 BCwhen the two gangs stopped their work and marched together out of the Great
Place [the Valley of the Kings]. The senior men, the two foremen, their deputies and the Scribe Amennakht had no idea where
they had gone.

The workers staged a sit-in in the temple of one of the legendary kings of the Old Dynasty.
Stopping in such an important area demonstrated the level of their anger. We are hungry, the crews
claimed; eighteen days have passed this month, and they had still not received their proper rations.
The next morning the men struck and marched again, choosing an even more important temple to
protest in. As they said:
It was because of hunger and thirst that we came here. There is no clothing, no fat, no fish, no vegetables. Send to the Pharaoh
our good Lord about it, and send to the Vizier our superior that we may be provided for.

Finally, on the third day, temple priests took statements from the workers, before distributing
rations. This victory clearly gave the men confidence, for over the next months and years they struck

on several further occasions over many issues such as corruption or diminishing living standards.
But this early example of class struggle reflects an underlying pointthe division of societies into
classes created groups who had different interests. In these early societies the question of agriculture
and food played a central role.
Ancient civilisations and environmental crisis
Egyptian society eventually recovered from the collapse at the end of the Old Kingdom and for the
next 2,500 years continued to dominate North Africa and the Mediterranean. In part this is because of
the autonomy of Egyptian communitiesthe need to organise agriculture locally around different
irrigation systems led to a high level of independence from central authority. The majority of the
Egyptian population lived in small self-sufficient villages, rather than cities. So the Nile floods
helped create the Egyptian state, as well as providing the ability for the majority of the population to
survive the collapse of centralised power.
But this was not an automatic outcome. Other contemporary ancient civilisations did not survive
the same environmental crisis that led to the collapse of the Old Kingdom.
The Akkadian Empire, a precursor of the Babylonian and Assyrian Empires in Mesopotamia, was
based on a complex system of irrigation around the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. 107 The empire
brought together cities, such as Tell Leilan, that had prospered for centuries. Very suddenly, around
4200 BP , the population of the city and other northern areas diminished rapidly. Archaeologists
studying the remains of Tell Leilan have found half-finished buildings, with materials left abandoned
mid-work. Tens of thousands of people fled south; those who remained suffered famine and drought.
Just as with Egypt it is likely that internal social and economic problems were made worse by the
environmental changes. But the impact was enormousup to 28,000 people fled Tell Leilan hoping
to find security elsewhere.
Those in the southern half of the Akkadian Empire suffered water shortages as the river levels
dropped, but their part of civilisation survived. To protect themselves and their agriculture from the
refugees who were returning to nomadic life in the north, they built a 180 km long wall between the
Tigris and Euphrates rivers, known as Muriq-Tidnimthe Repeller of the Tidnum Amorites. The
wall prevented refugees and their cattle entering the southern region and depleting available water
probably condemning those nomads to death.
The Curse of Akkad written a century later gives a sense of the crisis:
The large fields and acres produced no grain
The flooded fields produced no fish
The watered gardens produced no honey and wine
The heavy clouds did not rain
On its plains where grew fine plants
Lamentation reeds now grow.108

Other areas in the wider region also sufferedMohenjo-daro and Harappa, two key cities in the
Indus Valley civilisation, began to decline in the same period. This civilisation flourished from
around 3000 BCE in an area that covered much of modern Pakistan and north west India. It was one of
the earliest and most extensive urban civilisations, covering well over a million square kilometres.
Also around this time a Bronze Age society in Crete vanished, probably as a result of the
environmental changes, and the Amazon suffered its driest period for 17,000 years. But in many cases

we have few or no records that tell how people were affected by these changes.109
The decline of Tell Leilan was dramatic and sudden but it was also temporary. The drying up of
this part of Mesopotamia lasted only a few centuries.110 Some 300 years after its collapse the
Assyrians rebuilt a city in the ruins of Tell Leilan. Similarly the Egyptian Old Kingdom was followed
after a century of crisis and disorder by the Middle Kingdom.
In the case of the Akkadians who survived in the south, an influx of refugees could have destroyed
their society completely. The climate changes were certainly enough to undermine the social, political
and economic status quo of the existing culture. But the collapse of whole civilisations can rarely
be laid simply at the door of environmental changes. Some authors, notably Jared Diamond, have
claimed that environmental causes were significant factors in the decline of some of the oldest
civilisations, such as Mesopotamia.111 But it should be noted that the Mesopotamian civilisation did
not collapse in 4200 BP , though there was regional abandonment of some cities as in the case of
Tell Leilan. A long historical chain links different states, civilisations and empires in Mesopotamia
over thousands of years. The city of Uruk was founded around 3200 BCE and flourished, though not
without its ups and downs, for more than 3,000 years, through the empires of Sargon of Akkade, the
kings of Ur, Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, and the conquests of Cyrus the Great of
Persia and Alexander the Great of Greece.112 This is far from a sudden or complete collapse.
There is a complex interaction between external and internal factors that can cause social collapse
in the face of substantial changes to the environment. Whether or not a society can survive such
changes depends on its ability to adapt. In the next chapter, we will explore this further by looking at
the end of the Maya civilisation.

Chapter 5

Maya collapse

The ancient Maya civilisation, which existed across much of what is now southern Mexico and
stretching as far south as El Salvador, arose from 2000 BCE. It was large in size and population, and
highly developed culturally and scientifically. It invented the first full written language, as well as
being known for astronomy and mathematics, art and impressive urban architecture.
During the 8th and 9th centuries CE the ancient Maya civilisation entered a period of decline and
collapse. In the areas that were most affected, the southern lowlands, the population decreased by
over 99 percent.113 At the same time between 800 CE and 1000 CE the Maya region underwent its
driest period for 4,000 years.
Historian Brian Fagan argues that, The fundamental cause of the Maya collapsewas at least
three major droughts that brought hunger and catastrophic social changethe unfortunate Maya had
overreached themselves and their civilisation came down around their ears.114 However, this view
of the Maya collapse, of a society failing in the face of a changing climate, is much over-simplified.
Understanding the complex interaction of environmental factors with social and economic changes is
crucial to understanding the decline of the Maya, as well as the impact of environmental crisis on
other civilisations, including our own.
Maya civilisation was a loose empire of independent city states sharing culture and trade. Despite
the drought affecting the whole of the region not all of the states were affected the same way. While
the southern lowlands suffered an enormous population collapse, some cities in the north were
expanding and continued to survive past the end of the Classical period. This is despite them being
more vulnerable to drought than the southern cities. Some northern cities, such as Chichn Itz and
Uxmal, had no natural water sources other than rainfall and were entirely reliant on cisterns. Chichn
Itz and the region around it for instance, did spectacularly well during the drought.115
Like many other civilisations in the Americas, the Maya had centuries of experience in dealing
with changing patterns of rainfall. Their agriculture was based on fertile land but lacked natural water
sources. To help their agriculture, Maya farmers developed many different ways of irrigating their
fields: dams, terracing, raised fields, canals and reservoirs. Archaeological evidence from the Late
Classic period shows Maya farmers doing everything they could to prevent environmental crisis
and having a resilient conservation ethic.116
Some 70 percent of the population were peasants and on this economic base rested a complex
class structure of priests and royalty. The kings themselves, like the Egyptian Pharaohs, were
considered direct links to the gods and, once again, a key role for the monarch was guaranteeing the
water supply. Much of their prestige and authority derived from their ability to do this. 117 The states
constructed elaborate water storage systems. Some kings even adopted the water lily as a royal
symbolthe lily can only survive in clean, still water, free from algae and pollution, and was thus a
symbol of the royal link to maintaining the water supply.118

The importance of the ruling class in the provision of water during dry periods helps us to
understand why a drought across the Maya kingdoms had unequal impacts. One study noted,
Beginning in the late 9th or early 10th century AD, public monuments in Chichn Itz de-emphasized
the king, changing from official narratives of regal actions to generalised, nontextual images of
religion, commerce, and war.119 This coincided with the rise of a new class of merchants who
exchanged goods with the rest of Mesoamerica, an area that approximates to that between central
Mexico and Nicaragua today. Earlier trade routes had mainly involved luxury goods for the royal
family. During the drought years this changed. Now Chichn Itz exported salt, chocolate and cotton
and received in return goods such as obsidian (a volcanic rock) and precious stones. Most
importantly for a population under stress from drought the merchants imported maize from regions to
the north unaffected by the changing climate.120
Anthropologist Bruce Dahlin describes how this was accomplished through radical social and
cultural changes, but also changes to the city itself:
Chichn Itz seems to have undergone a massive reorganisation in all four domains of power (political, military, economic, and
ideological) in the late 9th or 10th centuries. These reorganisations are most manifest in the shift of the centre of gravity of the site
from the emblematic public spaces of the Monjas Complex to the emblematic spaces of the Great Terrace.121

The social changes are marked physically by changes in architecture and the designs on public
buildings. Chichn Itz launched a series of wars against its neighbours as a way of dealing with the
crisis by conquering farming land. These wars were likely to have been celebrated loudly and are
reflected in the sculptures and imagery of warriors and military conquest characteristic of the later
buildings of Chichn Itz.122
More important than increased warfare was the massive expansion of trading networks throughout
Mesoamerica. Large basins were built for the mass production of salt for trade with the wider region.
There was a large infrastructure developed to improve tradingseaports, canals and causeways to
allow enormous quantities of goods to be brought into the city. Like other Mesoamerican
civilisations, the Maya had no pack animals such as mules and donkeys, nor did they have wheeled
transport. Such voluminous trade required ships. Again this expansion of trade is reflected in the
sculptures and imagery of Chichn Itzs buildings, with images of boats carrying merchants and
traders.123
Finally it seems that Chichn Itz along with other northern cities may have had a broader and
more elaborate administrative structure, involving councils and courts, rather than a steep
monarchical structure.124 Bruce Dahlin argues the shift from Old to New Chichn Itz also saw a
move to a more collective form of government and key rulers in the new city were seen less as
individuals and more as heads of state, presiding over a wider administrative government. Because
the individuals involved in this new form of government represented different branches of society,
military and mercantile in particular, their personal interests would have coincided far more with the
interests of wider society during the years of drought.
In contrast, in the south the old ruling class remained the same. They made no attempt to deal with
the coming crisis, and existing skills and arrangements, though learned over centuries, were not
enough to survive the climatic changes.
Jared Diamond argues that environmental questions are often central to the historical collapse of
ancient civilisations. His work has become enormously influential, forming the basis for university
texts, television series and a reference point for many who write on environmental questions today.

He argues that the abandoned ruins of civilisations such as the Maya are examples of people
inadvertently destroying the environmental resources on which their societies dependedunintended
ecological suicide.125
Diamond declares that he does not know of any case in which a societys collapse can be
attributed solely to environmental damage, but societys response to its environmental problems
always proves significant.126 He is right to argue that social collapse is never simply about
environmental destruction and that how a society responds to changes is one of the most important
factors determining the outcome of environmental crisis. But the choices faced by Maya civilisation
were not ones that could be made by the whole population. Seventy percent of Maya were peasants,
with generations of experience of dealing with droughts. Yet the ruling class had the power and in the
city states that did collapse it was because the existing ruling class were unable to change things in
the way that was needed. Indeed sometimes their behaviour worsened the crisis.
In examining the collapse of the Maya kingdom of Copan, historian David Webster explains that as
land became increasingly unable to support the populations, local lords manipulated the most
important resource, the land, in their own interests.* Even at a time when the agricultural base was
deteriorating, Webster points out that for some lords their households mushroomed in size and
elegance.127 He writes that one factor in the collapse at Copan and elsewhere was the failure of
both the institutional and ideological dimensions of a traditional form of leadership.128 Those
kingdoms such as Chichn Itz where society began to produce a new ruling class, based not simply
on a peasant economy but also on trade with other parts of the Americas, were the ones that were able
to survive.
What the end of the classic period of Maya civilisation tells us is that political choices made by a
civilisation cannot be divorced from other factors in society. Environmental changes will be of major
importance to a society, but rarely will they be the only deciding factor. Those Maya cities that
survived were eventually themselves sacked and looted. Chichn Itz fell in 1000 CE, although people
continued living there until the arrival of the Spanish. The Conquistador Francisco de Montejo
conquered the Maya areas in the 1530s, his son temporarily turning Chichn Itz into his capital until
he too was defeated in a siege by the local Maya people. By 1535 the Maya had forced the invaders
back out of the Yucatan peninsula, but the Spanish eventually returned and subdued the region to
Spanish interests.
The Maya were never destroyed completely. In part this is why it is wrong to talk of social
collapse. Like the Akkadians before them the Maya population fell dramatically and cities were
abandoned, yet people adapted to new forms of life. Today there are some seven million Maya,
retaining languages, customs and even a version of a ball game played during the Classic period.
Frequently the Maya have fought back and resisted colonial rule, including the brief formation of a
Maya state in the 19th century. More recently the Maya people living in Chiapas in southern Mexico
formed a part of the Zapatista movement in the 1990s as they struggled for work, land, housing, food,
health, education, independence, freedom, justice and peace.129 Their struggle continues today.

* David Webster argues drought may have been a contributing factor to the collapse in Copan but the overarching cause seems [to
be] too many people on a landscape deteriorating through overuse by humanssee Webster, 2002, p323.

Chapter 6

The Americas: a fatal impact

History does not proceed through stages, with one epoch of human existence neatly replacing an
earlier one. Different methods of organising society coexist. Small groups of hunter-gatherers still
live in remote parts of the world today operating much as their ancestors did. Few communities,
however, remain untouched by the modern world. Even if they do not have the same reliance on
motorised equipment as Western farmers do, peasant communities in China and India, for example,
will usually work the land using modern tools.
Before Europeans arrived in the Americas in the late 15th century the people of the Americas had
developed independently of changes in Africa, Asia and Europe as a result of their geographic
isolation. As Europeans settled through the American continents they encountered a rich and diverse
range of societies, from hunter-gatherer communities to large, urban class societies. The European
powers wanted to exploit the people and resources of the Americas for their own interests and this
led to clashes with the indigenous people, resulting in enormous casualties.
Those indigenous peoples who survived found their whole lives transformed. The arrival of
European settlers, soldiers and explorers helped alter the ecology of the continent. The indigenous
people found themselves dominated by completely different ways of viewing the world around them.
This chapter looks at the varied lives of the pre-Colombian peoples as well as what happened to
them during and after European contact in 1492. Understanding the ways these different societies
changed helps us grasp the shifts in the relationship between humans and the natural world.
Countless Hollywood films have painted a picture of life in the Americas before Columbus as
being that of the nomadic tribes of North Americabrave warriors living in tepees and hunting
buffalo. The reality was very different. For most people in the Americas agriculture was the main
source of food. The earliest evidence for agriculture in the Americas is dated to 9000 BP in
Mexico.130
Neither iron nor the wheel had been discovered in the Americas before the European arrival, and
nowhere on the continent did indigenous farmers have animals suitable as beasts of burden. Only the
llama existed in the Andes and this had a very limited carrying capacity. Before Columbus,
agriculture on the American continent used wooden tools and human labour. Despite this, over 40
crops, including maize, tomatoes, potatoes, peanuts and tobacco, were domesticated and agriculture
was practised on a large-scale in many parts of the continent. The famous step-like terraces used by
the people of the Andes, filled with enormous quantities of earth and strengthened with stonework,
covered a million acres.131
In North America agriculture was important for many Native Americans, but their societies were
often characterised by nomadic life. Maize was first introduced into the American south west about
3,000 years ago, but it took a further thousand years before the crop formed a substantial part of the
local diet. Today maize and varieties such as sweet corn are some of the American continents most

common crops. Similarly, when corn arrived in the east around 400 CE, it was 500 years before it
became a major food source. For most of that time maize was a supplementary food, something that
helped guard against scarcity.132
Gradually the people of the American south west found that cultivated foods could become a more
important part of their diet. Different varieties of maize and crops such as beans and corn spread
slowly across the continent. But when crops such as maize and corn were planted systematically, they
could transform communities. Particularly if cereals were grown with other crops, such as pulses
which regenerated the soil, increased yields made it worthwhile ending the nomadic life. The popular
image of hunters on the North American Plains preying on enormous herds of buffalo is wrong
because it misses the importance of the semi-sedentary villages that grew up around places such as
river valleys where food could be grown. Over the centuries these villages became more permanent.
Seasonally the villagers might leave their homes to find other foods or hunt animals, but they would
return to their homes at the appropriate time to gather the harvest.
This is not to say hunting was unimportant. For many Native American tribes animals such as deer
and buffalo had been killed for generations and not just for their meat, but for the products that could
be made from themclothing and shelter from the animal hides, string and ropes from the sinews.
But it was only with the arrival of European horses that North American people began to hunt
buffalo in the way beloved of so many films. While for some Native American tribes the hunting of
buffalo was an important source of meat, it was never the only source of food. The development of
agriculture created new sources of food for the hunters, who traded meat and hides in exchange for
food from the farmers. The development of agriculture actually led to an intensification in buffalo
hunting in the north and north western areas of the plains around 2,000 years ago.
Around this time the introduction of bows and arrows made hunting easier, but without horses it
was always limited. For thousands of years buffalo hunters had relied on the landscape itself to kill
their prey. Large herds of buffalo were guided through lanes lined with stone cairns to cliff edges.
The oldest and best known of these sites, at Head-Smashed-In in Alberta, Canada, was in use for
7,000 years. An extensive camping area below the cliffs provided everything the hunters needed to
process the carcases.133
Despite the use of sites like Head-Smashed-In, agriculture increasingly came to dominate the life
of the North American tribes. By the year 1000 CE the communities of the eastern and central plains
had become mostly dependent on the farming of maize. Hunting and gathering continued to play an
important role in obtaining food, but increasingly villages were occupied with farming for most of the
year.
The Great Plains cover an enormous area of North America. Over the centuries people found many
different ways of living there. They reacted to changes in their environment or to other wider changes.
The impact of climatic change on people living a sedentary life like the plains people could be
phenomenal. Even minor changes in rainfall or temperature could significantly alter the amount of
food that grew, or animals that were available to hunt. A particularly long dry spell that started 1,000
years ago meant that previous population growth during a more favourable climate now led to
overpopulation.134 Such pressures for natural resources could lead to competition and warfare
between villages.
But the greatest change to the Native American way of life was the arrival of the horse with
Spanish explorers. The horse was one of the Spaniards greatest military assets, but the tribes

captured horses that escaped or during battle and bred them, becoming extremely skilful riders.
Hunting and trade were subsequently so improved that several sedentary tribes such as the Dakota
and Cheyenne switched from farming back to nomadic lifestyles.
The arrival of the horse and then the rifle helped completely changed the whole life of the plains
tribes. Once small hunting parties could cover long distances and kill large quantities of animals with
the rifle, the communal nature of the hunt was undermined; war between tribes for horses and food
increased. As more and more Europeans arrived buffalo became prized and the spread of the
railroads eventually allowed the slaughter of the animal on an enormous scale for sport. The lives of
the North American tribes were finally destroyed both by military confrontation and starvation as the
buffalo were driven to the brink of extinction.135
The fame of the plains tribes has overshadowed some of the other complex and fascinating
societies that developed on the back of agriculture in North America. When European colonists
discovered the remnants of the Adena and Hopewell cultures in modern day Mississippi and Ohio
they assumed that they must be the result of a more civilised people than the indigenous people,
perhaps even a lost tribe of white people.
The Adena and Hopewell cultures thrived until around 400 CE. They built characteristic mounds of
earth, primarily as burial places for important leaders. The scale of these building works is
impressivewalls over three metres high surrounded mounds that reached nine metres. The walls
often encircled geometric figures cut into the ground up to 300 metres in width. That such monuments
could be created by a people who were essentially hunter-gatherers is astounding.136 These cultures
were not simply able to build impressive monuments; they also had extensive trade networks.
Materials such as obsidian were brought thousands of miles from what is today Yellowstone National
Park; shells and animal teeth came from Florida. Yet by the time of the arrival of European settlers
these cultures had vanished, allowing the new arrivals to believe their own myths of white
supremacy.
The assumption that the arrival of Europeans in the Americas was an encounter between advanced
civilisations from Western Europe and primitive indigenous societies is not a new one. It is
reinforced today with a myriad of films and novels that portray the native cultures as backward. In
particular a myth that Native American tribes were warlike savages has been created. The truth is
very different.
1492 and after
When Columbus arrived in the Caribbean in 1492 CE, there were many complex, extensive and
powerful civilisations across the Americas. It is quite wrong to imagine that the people of the
Americas were not developing. Whether the elaborate city states and civilisations of the Maya, Aztec
and Inca peoples, or the varied nomadic and sedentary communities of North America, the human
population had found a myriad of ways of living in an enormously varied landscape. From the plains
of North America to the woodlands of the eastern seaboard, from the Andean mountains to the
rainforests of South America, the success of different societies over centuries demonstrated that the
people of this continent were far from the ignorant savages of European myth.
I will briefly look at two of these societies, the Inca and the Aztecs. These were the biggest and
most powerful empires in the Americas at the time of Spanish colonisation. What happened to those

civilisations is the beginning of the story of the complete transformation of the Americas.
It would be a mistake to view the pre-Columbian societies as being unspoilt utopias before the
arrival of Europeans. Many of them were stable civilisations that had existed and might well have
continued to exist for hundreds of years had they not been disrupted or destroyed by European
weapons and germs. But those in South and Central America were frequently based on rigid class
societies that waged war on each other for slaves and booty and practised large-scale ritual sacrifice
of prisoners of war. Indeed, one of the reasons behind the military successes of the Spanish was their
ability to use divisions within the indigenous societies to their own advantage.
Nor should we think of the Americas being socially backward compared to European society.
Take the example of ritual human sacrifice in the Aztec Empire, which formed the basis for much
European propaganda. While the number of sacrifices by the Aztecs was large, per head of
population it was fewer than the number of criminals executed by some European countries. If
England had been the size of the Aztec Empire it would have executed roughly 7,500 people a year
twice the number executed in the empire, according to an estimate by the Spanish Conquistador
Hernn Corts.137
The political mess that was Spain at the time of Columbus contrasts with the highly complex and
organised Incan society, which despite its tyrannical nature could provide for its subjects in a way
that Spanish society could not. As one historian puts it:
The conquistadors, far from representing a superior political system, went to the Americas partly to escape social inequities and
crushing rural povertyhowever harsh an El Nio year, the Incas subjects always had enough to eat, a roof over their head and,
when of age, a plot of land to tillstorehouseswere guarantees against famine years; unlike, for example, those that devastated
(and still do) the postconquest communities of southern Peru in El Nio years Even as late as the 1790s, Spains population
declined markedly attendant on a succession of famines.138

The class societies of the Aztecs, Incas and other empires of the central and southern Americans
had their origins in much earlier civilisations. In Latin America the Olmec, Zapotec and Teotihucan
civilisations developed in modern-day Mexico and the Maya civilisation rose in Guatemala. Again
these societies were extensive civilisations. The Olmec lived on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico from
around 1500 BCE to 400 BCE and are best known for their large sculptures, particularly the detailed
carvings of human heads up to nine feet tall, made from material transported over 100 kilometres.139
The Olmec were the first civilisation in the Americas to build pyramids and irrigation systems, as
well as to invent writing. Following the collapse of the Olmec civilisation, two more civilisations
arose in the vicinity.
The city of Teotihucan in the Mexico Basin reached its zenith in 500 CE. It was an enormous
urban area, with a peak population of around 200,000 and influence in towns and cities across a wide
area. In Mesoamerica agriculture had become the dominant social form by 1500 BCE.140 The societies
there were expanding and developing right up to the point when the Spanish armies encountered them.
The Incas
Inca society was tributary. * Private property was banned and the state organised the distribution of
services and goods based on high levels of taxation. Geographically the Inca Empire was separated
into four parts, each controlled by separate bureaucracies.141
The empire was likely the most sophisticated of the pre-Columbian Americas. Even without the
discovery of iron, Inca engineering projects were astoundingtheir road network stretched from

modern Ecuador to the south of Bolivia, they built extensive terraces to extend farmland on steep
sides of the Andean mountains. An enormous network of canals, built over centuries and partly still in
use today, brought water to arid areas.
The state facilitated a particularly well-planned social organisation with workers being drafted for
the building of mines or for armies, while being supported by state finances and insurance. Incan
society was rigidly stratified, and the male population was divided into ten age groups. From five
years they had various minor roles in the agricultural process until the age of 25 when they were
subject to conscription and unpaid labour for the state until they reached 50.142 The combination of
social organisation and military force enabled the Incas to overcome all local opposition, until the
arrival of the Spaniards.143
Beginning in 1200 CE and over a 200-year period the Incas grew to conquer some of the most
fertile lands in the Andes. Their land offered superb opportunities for agricultural productionmaize
grown on the valley bottom, potatoes grown higher up, and llamas and alpacas at high-altitude
pastoral areas. They also had access to precious metals, particularly gold, putting the early Inca
civilisation in a strong position to take over and unify other societies.
Each territory controlled by the Inca state was self-sufficient in food, but tended to specialise in
one or several products more particularly adapted to the area and from which only the surplus was
exported to other regions.144 Long-fibre cotton, for instance, was grown in coastal areas and
exported all around the empire.
Thus the state, through a skilled layer of bureaucrats, was able to organise to best utilise available
labour and natural resources. These specialists planned and built the hydraulic works and roads,
organised the deployment of labour and co-ordinated trade between the empires regions. 145 Despite
limitations and large areas of land that were very poor for agriculture, the state was thus able to
afford its population a good standard of living.
The Spanish conqueror of the Incas, Pizarro, claimed that he had destroyed the Inca state with just
182 men in 1531. But to do so he had to rely on the discontent that already existed within the Inca
Empire. The component parts of the empire had been, until recently, wealthy kingdoms in their own
right. The conquest of these kingdoms by the Inca state and the imposition of Inca bureaucrats left a
legacy of anger. The Spaniards arrived in the midst of a civil war of succession, and several of the
lords went over to the Europeans side, helping them to conquer the capital. Any belief they held that
this would bring new freedom for their own kingdoms was short-lived as the Spaniards took
control.146
The conquest of the Americas by the Europeans was a catastrophe for the indigenous population.
The Spanish conquistador, Pedro Cieza de Len, who travelled widely through post-conquest Peru,
wrote, We, Christians have destroyed so many kingdoms For wherever the Spaniards have
passed, conquering and discovering, it is as though a fire had gone, destroying everything in its
path.147
The Spanish did not completely destroy the Inca civilisation; rather they took it over. Unable to
station large numbers of troops in the Americas, the Spaniards ruled by dividing the population.
Building on the complex Inca bureaucracy, the Spaniards were able to use a network of indigenous
officials to control the wider populations. This was a fragile systemSpanish colonialism relied
entirely on the loyalty of the bureaucrats, acting as an interface between the rulers and the mass of the
population.148 The Spanish administration allowed much of the Inca infrastructure to fall into

disrepair, such as the irrigation networks. As a result of this, and the diseases introduced by the
Europeans, Inca population dropped from ten million in 1530 to 2.5 million in 1560.
From 1570 onwards colonists began to convert land into large estates known as haciendas. This
was based on carving land up into private property, and relied on native labourers who were given
small plots of their own for subsistence farming. Owned by colonists, the church or loyal bureaucrats,
the haciendas helped encourage wage labour (on estates and in mines) as the dominant form of work
in the new colony.149
Colonial rule was not popular. Periodic rebellions and protests took place. These protests
culminated in the Great Rebellion of 1780 led by Tpac Amaru II. Though scoring some impressive
initial victories this rebellion was ultimately unsuccessful. But it inspired further uprisings against the
colonial rulers, and Amaru continues to inspire indigenous movements today.
Aztecs 150
The Aztec Empire was an alliance between the Mexica people of the city of Tenochtitlan and two
other, smaller city-states. The Triple Alliance, as it is known, came together out of military interests,
but the Mexica were by far the dominant part of the grouping. When Europeans arrived at
Tenochtitlan in 1519 they were stunned. Sitting at the heart of vast trading networks, stretching
hundreds of miles, the city itself was built on islands in the middle of a mountain lake. Fresh water
was brought by immense aqueducts from the mountains; hundreds of boats plied the network of
canals. With its sewers, botanical gardens and enormous temples Tenochtitlan was as large as, if not
larger than, most European capitals. Corts, who was later to capture and plunder the city, expressed
amazement when he described the city:
The temple itself is higher than the cathedral of Seville The main plaza in the middle of the city, twice the one in Salamanca, is
surrounded by columns. Day after day 60,000 people congregate there to buy and sell. Every sort of merchandise is available from
every part of the empire, foodstuffs and dress and in addition objects made of gold, silver, copper precious stones, leather, bone,
mussels, coral, cotton, feathers151

It was not just trade in goods and manufacturing that distinguished the people of Tenochtitlan and
its surrounding area. They excelled in philosophy and writing, with compulsory education for males
up to the age of 16. The writers and thinkers of the Triple Alliance produced more texts than the
philosophers of classical Greece.152 Tenochtitlan had a population of up to 200,000 when the Spanish
arrived in 1519. By this time the Aztecs had built an extensive empire, with 371 towns paying tribute
to their capital. Thousands of tonnes of food were shipped to Tenochtitlan, mostly by boat. Early
Spanish reports describe between 50,000 and 200,000 canoes serving the city.153
Like Pizarros conquest of the Inca, Cortss small force was only able to capture the Aztec
capital by building alliances with the Aztecs enemies. Again, as with the Inca, the defeat of the
Aztecs led to a decimation of the population. Disease in particular led to a population collapse, with
Tenochtitlan being left with only 30,000 inhabitants.154
The Aztecs defeat was not the result of an advanced technological society meeting a more
backward one. It is true, for instance, that the Aztec Empire did not have metals suitable for tools and
weapons. Their armour was made of thick cloth; their weapons relied on sharp but brittle obsidian.
When the Aztecs did get metal it was not in enough quantities to be used for anything more than
decoration. But this lack of metals was not a sign of backwardness. There are several reasons why

the Aztecs did not develop metallurgy, the most important of which is that they did not really need to.
They had reached a high level of civilisation based on innovative agricultural methods, which did not
require more metal tools. Until the arrival of the Spaniards their military opponents had no metal
weapons either. While much is made of the Spaniards having guns and horses, the real deciding factor
was steel armour and swords, against which obsidian is almost useless. As Chris Harman points out,
It was only when they were suddenly faced with the iron armaments of the Europeans that their lack
of metallurgy became a fatal disadvantage, causing them to be over-thrown by people who in other
respects were not more advanced.155
The idea that the European explorers who arrived in the New World were far superior to anyone
else is a myth. Had it been possible to have a worldwide overview in the years before Columbus
arrived in the Americas, it would not have been possible to predict which of the emerging
civilisations in Asia or Europe would arrive there first. Around 1000 CE the Vikings had briefly
formed small colonies in Newfoundland, before abandoning them. European fishermen had also likely
visited the Newfoundland area in their search for cod well before 1492.
The Chinese explorer Zheng He made seven voyages in total, exploring thousands of miles as far
as India, the Middle East and East Africa, between 1405 and 1433. Columbuss fleet of three ships
would have been looked upon with scorn by Zheng He, who took over 27,000 men and over 300
ships on his first voyage. His treasure ships were three or four times the length of Columbuss
flagship the Santa Mara, and could carry up to 500 people. The Ming Dynasty, however, turned
inwards and forbade further voyages.156 The way was clear for Columbus and the rest of Western
Europe to reach the Americas.
What drove the rapid colonisation of the Americas was the changing economic dynamic in
Western Europe, specifically the rise of capitalism. 157 The Europe Columbus left was not capitalist in
the sense we understand today, but increasingly its internal dynamics were dominated by trade and the
exchange of money. Columbuss attitude towards the people and resources of the New World was
shaped by this new outlook. By sailing westwards into the Atlantic he was trying to find an easier and
more profitable trade route to the Far East, the source of lucrative goods such as spices, dyes and
perfumes. The Far Eastern civilisations were advanced enough not to need European goods and so
payment was in gold and silver, meaning that once the New World had been found, there was an
incentive to strip it bare of precious metals to help fund European trade with the Far East.158
This is best summed up by a friend of Corts who arrived in the Americas a decade or so after
Columbus: We came here to serve God and the king, and also to get rich.159
The relatively small amounts of gold found at Columbuss initial landfall in the West Indies were
enough to whet appetites and inspire the search for greater riches. The discovery of big deposits of
gold and silver, such as the silver mines in Potos, was the start of the extraction of precious metals
on an enormous scale. Between 1503 and 1660, 16 million kilograms of silver and 185,000 of gold
were taken back to Spain, increasing European gold supplies by a fifth.160
The flow of wealth from the Americas to Europe was matched by the introduction to the rest of the
world of plants and foods such as maize, potatoes, beans, cotton, tomatoes and tobacco.161
The precious metals, goods and foodstuffs that poured into Europe from South America helped
play a crucial role in wider changes taking place. Anticipating a later argument in this book, it is
worth quoting Karl Marx:
The discovery of gold and silver in the Americas, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in the mines of the indigenous

population of that continent, the beginnings of the conquest and plunder of India, and the conversion of Africa into a preserve for
the commercial hunting of black skins, are all things which characterise the dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic
proceedings are the chief moments of primitive accumulation.162

The wider transformation of Europe was helped along by the colonial conquest of the rest of the
world. But the conquests also transformed the ecologies, human populations and environment of the
colonies.
Reshaping the Americas
Less than a century after Columbuss arrival in the Americas there were about 118,000 colonists in
the New World. Increasingly this new order began to dominate Central and South America. The
Europeans reshaped and reordered the landscape. Alongside this the regions indigenous inhabitants
suffered a demographic catastrophe. The people of the Americas had no resistance to the diseases
that the Europeans introduced. Smallpox, measles and typhus devastated the indigenous people, far
more than steel swords, horses, armour and muskets.
The destruction took place on a gigantic scale. Within six months of the arrival of the Spanish in
Mexico, 50 percent of the native population had been killed by smallpox; those who survived faced a
bleak future as the country was ravaged by further epidemicsmeasles in 1531 and typhus in 1546
and again in 1576.163 The diseases spread across the Americas, eventually killing three quarters or
more of the population.164
Before Corts arrived one study suggests that the population of central Mexico was just over 25
million. By 1620-25 the population was 730,000.165 This collapse in population was an enormous
disappointment for the Spanish, who had hoped to force the indigenous people to work for them
instead they would eventually import slaves from Africa.166
The natural world too was being altered in the interests of the colonists and their European
markets. As James Ferguson has written about the Caribbean:
The modern Caribbean landscape is largely man-made, the result of transplanting crops and animals from other parts of the world.
Once the islands were almost entirely covered in virgin foresttoday rainforest is restricted to a few of the volcanic islands The
crops and trees which fill the Caribbean countryside are for the most part strangers to the region introduced from outside and
adapted to local climate and conditions.167

Bananas, limes, oranges and ackee fruit were all brought to the Caribbean from Africa. Many of
the crops that would play a role in the future of South America were imported from outside.
Columbus may have arrived in 1492 with dreams of gold, but on his second voyage he brought sugar
cane and was delighted to see it take hold. In the 15th century sugar was an enormously valuable
commodity and over the next decades sugarcane plantations spread across South America.
This was a conscious reshaping of the natural world with European interests in mind. James
Ferguson points out that the most infamous importation was the breadfruit tree brought by Captain
William Bligh from Tahiti as a cheap source of carbohydrate for slaves. Even the animals
introduced have helped fundamentally change the ecology of the Caribbeancattle and goats have
helped clear the indigenous vegetation and many native birds and mammals were driven to extinction
when the mongoose was brought from Asia to control rodents in the plantations in the 1800s.168
The fates of millions of indigenous people of Latin America, and the lives of further millions of
African people destined to be shipped to the New World as slaves, were entwined with the reshaping
of the natural world. The economic future of the region was determined very early on, as South

America was stripped of its gold and silver, and its lands were transformed to produce coffee, sugar
and other export crops for Europe.
The Montagnais
In many cases the arrival of Europeans led to the complete destruction of an indigenous civilisation;
in other cases, societies were transformed. The encounters between indigenous people and Europeans
had profound impacts on social relations, organisation and culture. In order to understand this process
in greater detail, this section looks at the Montagnais-Naskapi, a hunter-gatherer community in
Canada.
The Montagnais-Naskapi were part of the present-day Innu people who live in Quebec and parts
of Labrador in north eastern Canada. They lived by hunting and trapping wild animals such as caribou
and moose, as well as smaller game such as hares, beavers, porcupines and birds. They also fished
and gathered berries. Like foraging peoples everywhere, they followed a regular pattern of seasonal
movement according to the provenience of the foods on which they depended.169 They lived in large
tents, big enough to allow 18 people to sleep. The Montagnais were highly mobile, rarely staying in
one location for more than a few weeks. During the summer they travelled in canoes manufactured
from the bark of birch trees and in the winter they travelled on snowshoes, pulling sledges.
The Montagnais lived in different sized groups depending on the time of year; in the summer they
gathered together to repair their canoes and winter equipment, fish and socialise. Later in the year,
during the autumn, smaller groups would spread out through a wider area around the St Lawrence
River, and in the winter, the main hunting season, the groups would break down into even smaller
units of between ten and 20 people. Hunting and gathering was essential to their lives as the northern
environment precluded farming.
Montagnais life in the 1600s is well documented by Jesuit missionaries who arrived from France
to civilise the native peoples. Reporting back to their superiors, the Jesuits wrote detailed accounts of
their work and the lives of the people they were trying to convert. These describe a time when the
ideas and practices of Europeans were fundamentally transforming the social relations of the
Montagnais and are a unique insight into the lives of a community of hunter-gatherers.
In the 1950s the anthropologist Eleanor Burke Leacock made a number of field trips to study the
Montagnais people. While their lives had changed dramatically in the three centuries since European
contact, she was able to still find many traces of their old lives. Her classic accounts of the
Montagnais, drawing on her study of the Jesuit accounts and her own observations, exploded many of
the myths of those anthropologists who argued that hunter-gatherer communities were based on
private property, rather than communal living.
Leacock describes the main socio-economic unit of the Montagnais as small groups of ten to 20
individuals. These groups were small, cooperative and unstableable to change to meet the needs
of the collective. Among the Montagnais there were no hierarchies in the way that we understand
them today. No property or social relationships existed that could improve an individuals social
standing or status. Getting food was not the concern of a particular section of society or one sex;
everyone took part in the hunting and collecting of food. As with other hunter-gatherers described
earlier, central to the ethos of the groups was a strong sense of collectiveness. If one group had failed
to successfully hunt food then another group would willingly share their own provisions, even if these

were in short supply.

Montagnais society was characterised by more than formal equality between men and women and
while there was division of labour between the sexes, there was no strict demarcation.170 Women
went on hunting trips and men would cook and care for children. Social relations were dominated by
generosity, cooperation, and patiencethose who did not contribute their share were not respected,
and it was a real insult to call a person stingy.171 Sexual relations were different tooboth sexes
took multiple partners and men often had more than one wife.
Relations between the sexes helped determine the wider relationships in the group, but these were
not always through the male line: often they were through the womans side, with a new husband
joining his wifes wider family. This is known as matrilocality rather than patrilocality. But the lack
of any strict adherence to one or the other led Leacock to describe Montagnais life as being bilocal,
with an emphasis on matrilocality in the past.172 High mortality meant that these connections were
fluid, so it would be wrong to see rigid social structures; in fact it seems that Montagnais society was
characterised by openness to interfamily relationships.
The way that group decisions were taken also seems radically different to what we are used to.
Collective discussion was the most important mechanism, rather than a single individual leading
others. Leadership for the Montagnais was something that constantly changed. Rather than there being
a single leader, the person considered most able to make informed decisions would step forward.
Even centuries after Montagnais societies had come under the influence of European cultures,
Leacock noticed how decision-making processes remained very different to the command structures
that are used to today:
As far as I could see, decision-making on such important issues was a most subtle processindeed an enigma to the fieldworker
schooled in competitive hierarchieswhereby one found out how everybody concerned felt without committing oneself until one
was fairly sure in advance that there would be common agreement. I was constantly struck by thecontinual effortto operate
together unanimouslyin the direction of the greatest individual satisfaction without direct conflict of interest.173

Women were at the heart of making these decisions that affected the whole group. One Jesuit wrote
that the choice of plans, of undertakings, of journeys, of winterings, lies in nearly every instance in
the hands of the housewife.174
The egalitarian, communal life of the Montagnais shocked the Europeans. Le Jeune, a missionary
who lived for several years with the Montagnais, equated civilisation with the existence of authority.
He acknowledged the positive consequences of the very different moral codes he observed among the
Montagnais:
As they have neither political organisation, nor offices, nor dignities, nor any authority, for they only obey their chief through good
will toward him, therefore they never kill each other to acquire these honours. Also, they are contented with a mere living, not one
of them gives himself to the Devil to acquire wealth.175

Despite this, the Jesuits began the task of civilising the Montagnais: Le Jeune encouraged some
to become leaders of the groups; next he encouraged them to end their nomadic life, moving to
permanent places of abode; thirdly he wanted to educate the children away from their family ties and
finally he would introduce a principle of punishment. The Montagnais did not strike their children
as punishment, and there is a moving account of their reaction when a child was due to be whipped by
the French. [O]ne of the savages stripped himself entirely, threw his blanket over the child and cried
out to him who was going to do the whipping; Strike me if thou wilt, but thou shalt not strike him.176
The Montagnais could not comprehend the values of the Europeans. One is quoted as saying to Le

Jeune, You French people love only your own children; but we love all the children of our tribe. Le
Jeune complained of the excessive love that the savages showed their children.
Within a decade, however, Montagnais adults were punishing their children through beatings,
starvation and other physical punishments. For those who had converted to Christianity, there was a
battle between tradition and the new teachings. In some cases the Jesuits even had to hold back
Montagnais converts from over-enthusiastic beating, imprisoning and starving of those who had
broken the new moral codes. Women who had sex with men outside of marriage or failed to accept
their new role were punished increasingly by the Christian Montagnais as the source of sin. Not
everyone accepted this. The old social relationships and customs were not broken immediately,
though they were rapidly undermined. Even in the 1970s some of the old religious rituals were still
practised. But there had been fundamental changes.
Why did this happen so quickly? The new moral codes that the missionaries offered with their
Bible readings are not the sole answer. With the arrival of the Europeans, the Montagnais began
quickly to find their whole economic life was being changed. The Europeans who arrived in the
Montagnais areas wanted fur in vast quantities. In exchange for this they were prepared to trade goods
that the Indian societies in Canada had never hadstrong tools and new weapons, goods such as
pots, pans and kettles, blankets and ready made cloth and new foods. Within a very short time the
native Indian communities around the new European trade centres would become dependent on these
goods.
This meant the lifestyle of groups like the Montagnais changedfrom being hunters who spent
large parts of the year travelling long distances to find food, they became people who trapped animals
for their fur. Hunting, as practised by the indigenous groups before the European arrival, was a
collective experience. Conversely, the trapping of animals was much more individualistic. One
person could manage traps installed over a wide area, with no need to work together with others
planning a hunt or stalking prey. The fur trappers were men, which meant that providing for the family
group became the central activity of the male, rather than the larger group.
There were wider changes. The small groups of Montagnais who dispersed throughout the country
after their summer gatherings would move to different areas, but these areas did not belong to any
particular group of individualssuch a concept would have had no meaning to the Montagnais before
encountering Europeans. With trapping for fur on a mass scale each trap or place where a trap was
set started to be seen as belonging to a particular individual. Thus began the idea of private property
for the Montagnais.
Prior to the arrival of the Europeans the Montagnais did have some individual propertytheir
own tools or canoe, for instance. But attitudes to this property were very different to the rigid
structures based on wealth and its inheritance that we know today. A persons tools, for instance,
might on their death be passed on to someone who needed them, or a young person coming of age who
had none, rather than being kept by a close family member who did not need them. Most importantly,
as with all hunter-gatherer societies, land was always used collectively.
The sheer scale of the developing fur industry in the Montagnais areas should be noted because
this too led to changes in behaviour and attitudes. The average annual harvest of 15,000 to 20,000
beavers in the first years of the 17th century rose to 80,000 by 1670.177 The Indians would stockpile
furs for the arrival of the trading ships, in complete contrast to their previous subsistence living. As
the beavers became, unsurprisingly, increasingly rare in the vicinity of the trading posts the

Montagnais there took on the role of intermediaries for furtrappers from further afield, upsetting the
relationships between former hunter-gatherers.
Almost every aspect of the collective, egalitarian societies that existed before the arrival of the
European trading ships was undermined by the change from hunting and gathering to trapping for fur.
As the collection of fur became the central economic activity of the Indians so everything else
changed with it. Even the bilocal behaviour described earlier was broken down, under the influence
of the missionaries and the trading posts with the development of patrilineally oriented rules for
inheritance, for instance.
This transformation was mirrored elsewhere on the North American continent. The Cherokee were
an agricultural people living in the south east of what is now the United States. Before European
contact Cherokee women had a position in society that derived from their role as agricultural
providers. Absolute equality existed at all levels in Cherokee society and women were part of both
tribal leaderships and military actions. Later this changed, as one historian explained:
The decline of hunting and the adoption of American ways during the 19th century, with the substitution of factory-made for homemade goods, may have freed the Cherokee women from outdoor labour, placing her in the kitchen and her husband in the fields,
but it also deprived her of economic independence, making her politically and legally more like her white sisters.178

As indigenous societies on the North American continent came under pressure from Europeans,
their social institutions and ideas were transformed. Even the way that indigenous people viewed the
natural world was transformed as it was no longer compatible with the needs of the new economic
life imposed from outside.
New England
The transformation of Montagnais social and ecological relations is mirrored by the changes
experienced by the indigenous population of New England with the arrival of English colonists in the
1620s. This radically altered both the lives of the native people and the whole ecology of the region.
The 17th century colonists who arrived in the area we now call New England on the east coast of
North America were stunned by the richness of the country. These new arrivals from England saw the
beauty of the landscape, but they judged it through the eyes of Europeans used to trading. There was a
particular enthusiasm for goods that might be shipped back to Europe for sale. The New World was
seen as being ripe for exploitation and the colonists often failed to appreciate the wider ecological
landscape.
Their descriptions of the New World are full of astonishment at their surroundings. Here, for
instance, is an extract from an account of a voyage in 1603 by Martin Pring of the trees he saw in
Marthas Vineyard, Massachusetts:
As for Trees the Country yeeldeth Sassafras a plant of sovereigne vertue for the French Pox, and as some of late have learnedly
written good against the Plague and many other Maladies; Vines, Cedars, Okes, Ashes, Beeches, birch trees, Cherie trees bearing
fruit whereof we did eat; Hasels, Witchhasels, the best wood of all other to make Sope-ashes withall; walnut trees, Maples, holy to
make Bird lime with and a kinde of tree bearing a fruit like a small red Peare-plum.179

Explorers and colonists like Pring viewed this nature in terms of commodities: goods for exchange
or trade, or raw materials for their farms and homes. Prings shopping list of trees was written in the
context of the shortage of firewood back in England. Deforestation in the Old World had driven the
price of wood upwards, which helps explain the enthusiasm for the different New England trees.

Another visitor explained:

Though it bee here somewhat cold in the winter, yet here we have plenty of Fire to warme us, and that a great deale cheaper than
they sel Billets and Faggots in London: nay, all Europe is not able to afford so great Fires as New-England. A poor servant here
that is to possesse but 50 Acres of land, may afford to give more wood for Timber and Fire as good as the world yeelds, then
many Noble men in England can afford to do.180

Letters home from other colonists often contain similar lists of natural commodities. James Rosier
even described coastal vegetation in Maine as the profits and fruits which are naturally on these
Ilands.181
This attitude contrasts strikingly with that of native people. New England was not a pristine natural
world. Its ecology had been shaped, consciously and unconsciously, by centuries of human habitation.
In 1600 between 70,000 and 100,000 Native Americans lived there. Living in partly nomadic
groupings, the New England Native Americans had similar attitudes towards private property and
work as the Montagnais. For them private property was limited to what you had made or received as
gifts yourself. But such property only had value within very limited contexts. There was no incentive
to accumulate more personal propertymostly because it could only be a hindrance when you and
your tribe moved onward. There was no improved social status granted to those who had more
property. If goods were not needed, or became needed by someone else, perhaps for hunting or
working, they tended to be passed on.
The New England landscape that greeted the arrival of English colonists was a patchwork of
woods and forests, together with grassy valleys, marshes and wetlands. Native Americans had learnt
to burn wooded areas, sometimes to clear undergrowth to improve hunting, or to produce areas for
cultivation. Agriculture was usually practised on a shifting pattern. Crops might be grown in one area
for a few years before the area was abandoned for somewhere else when the soil was exhausted. The
burning of wood helped clear land or improve hunting and the ashes returned essential nutrients to the
soil. This helped create conditions for fruits such as strawberries and blackberries. The burning
thinned the forest canopy allowing more light to get to the ground and warm the soil, helping nature
select for particular plants and trees. Regular burning also helped destroy certain pests. Over the
years these activities had created the New England landscape that so impressed the colonists.
William Cronon notes:
Burning promoted the increase of exactly those species whose abundance so impressed English colonists: elk, deer, beaver, hare,
porcupine, turkey, quail, ruffed grouse, and so on. When those populations increased, so did the carnivorous eagles, hawks, lynxes,
foxes, and wolves. In short Indians who hunted game animals were not just taking the un-planted bounties of nature; in an
important sense, they were harvesting a foodstuff which they had consciously been instrumental in creating.182

But because the process had taken place over many years, colonists assumed that this was the
natural condition for the countryside.
The English colonists could not comprehend the lives of the Native Americans they met in New
England. Firstly they did not understand the very different attitudes to work. For a people who
worked the fields as a substantial part of their lives, the fact that only women seemed to be
responsible for agriculture was a great shock. Back in England hunting and fishing were seen as
leisure activities for the gentry and the colonists assumed that this is what the indigenous men were
doing. Because they only saw women in the fields and men fishing and hunting, they concluded that
the males were lazy. These misunderstandings betrayed a wider difference of attitudes towards the
natural world. As one colonist wrote, As for the Natives in New England, they inclose noe Land,
neither have an settled habitation, nor any tame Cattle to improve the Land by, and soe have noe other

but a Naturall Right to those Countries.183

Except for the lands cultivated by the Native American women, the English believed that the native
people had no claim to the rest of the country because they did not actively cultivate it. One colonist
wrote that in a vacant soyle, hee that taketh possession of it, and bestoweth culture and husbandry
upon it, his Right it is.184
In turn, the natives could not comprehend the ownership of land itself. Groups or villages could
lay claim to what was growing or living on the lands for certain areas around them, but not
permanently. Moving away from the area would allow other people to use the land for their own
needs. This contrasted with the attitude of the colonialists, who saw unoccupied land as being open
to any that could and would improve it. It could only be idleness that meant the native people did
not try to exploit the abundance there was around them. One colonist noted that native work seemed to
be sweetened with more pleasures and profit than pains or care.185 Another wrote that Native
Americans were not industrious, neither have art, science, skill or faculty to use either the land or
the commodities of it; but spoils, rots, and is marred for want of manuring, gathering, ordering,
etc.186
These prejudices carry with them the political overtones of the colonists Puritan beliefs. For
them, nature existed to be used in the interest of progress. So the extensive deforestation of New
England by the colonists was not destruction, but the progress of cultivation.187 Religious beliefs
also allowed the colonists to turn a blind eye to other sufferings.
As with elsewhere in the Americas the population of New England suffered an enormous
population crash as a result of disease. Even before the arrival of the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth,
Massachusetts, disease was decimating the Native American populations. Estimates are that in the
first 75 years of the 17th century the total native population of New England fell from over 70,000 to
12,000. Whole villages were emptied, making it much easier for the colonists to take over land. This
was not seen as a tragedy by the colonists, but an indication of gods support for their labours. God
was sweeping away great multitudes of the natives that he might make room for us there.
Colonist John Winthrop summed this up when he mixed Puritan beliefs with notions of property
ownership, declaring, God hath hereby cleared out title to this place.188
But the changing population also undermined the very practices that had helped create the bounty
that so excited the colonists on their arrival. Without the indigenous populations to clear and burn the
woodland, the landscape began to change. Abundant fruits such as strawberries amazed the colonists
initially, but without the constant recreation of their growing conditions the plants did not thrive.
Woodland began to reclaim fields and cleared areas. The animal population was also affected.
As more and more colonists arrived, they cut down larger areas of forest for fuel, building
materials and export, without allowing time for it to recover. This caused the whole local ecology to
change. Removing large areas of forest takes away the shade that cools soil, destroys natural wind
barriers and causes the ground to dry out. Cleared lands in colonial New England were thus sunnier,
windier, hotter, colder and drier than they had been.189
The introduction of new crops, weeds and animals drove out native flora and fauna. Pigs were
allowed to run free and helped destroy many local plants. The vanishing number of deer and other
animals was partly due to the arrival of a completely new ecology.
One factor above all else is responsible for the destruction of the pre-Columbian ecology of New
England. This is the way that the colonial arrivals helped turn the natural world into commodities in

the eyes of the Native Americans themselves. Before the establishment of European settlements the
natives saw the natural world in terms of its use value, its potential for food, for materials or for
shelter. But once the colonialists started offering other resources in exchange for parts of that natural
world, nature began to be viewed differently. One obvious example of this is the way that the
colonists responded to predators like wolves that hunted their livestock. By offering rewards for the
killing of these animals, Native Americans saw a purpose in killing far more animals than they would
ever have needed to before. Most importantly, as with the Montagnais in Canada, the enormous
market in Europe for the fur of animals such as the beaver helped to drive these and other animals
almost to extinction within a few years.
So the pre-colonial ecology was being assaulted from all directions. On the one hand, European
agriculture led to the clearing and destruction of the enormous forests that had formed the basis for the
eco-system. On the other hand, the people who helped create that landscape were being destroyed
through disease, while the survivors were also having their perceptions of the natural world
fundamentally altered. Finally, alien plants and animals were introduced that helped drive out other
native flora and fauna. This enormous change took place over a very short period of time. In less than
200 years New England had been completely transformed. Visitors now noted the lack of timber or
the scarcity of game. The Native Americans themselves recognised what had happened and tried to
resist.
Only a few years after the arrival of English settlers in the parts of New England where the
Narragansett tribe lived, one of their sachem or senior chiefs, Miantonomo, said in 1642:
Our fathers had plenty of deer and skins, our plains were full of deer, as also our woods, and of turkies, and our coves full of fish
and fowl. But these English having gotten our land, they with scythes cut down the grass, and their hogs spoil our clam banks, and
we shall all be starved.190

Miantonomo was speaking only 20 years after the founding of the first colony at Plymouth. His
plan was to attack the English and kill men, women, and children, but no cows. Cows should be
spared because they would provide food until the deer and game returned. This rebellion was not to
be. Miantonomo was murdered by the colonists and by 1800 all the indigenous population of New
England were living in reservations, restricted to the use of the poorest soils with no game for hunting
or fish to catch. Their way of life had been destroyed.
So the arrival of Europeans, with their thirst for natural resources to export back to Europe, their
advanced technology, their ideological beliefs together with the military and social organisation that
enabled them to impose their will upon the indigenous people, resulted in the systematic undermining
or destruction of the varied ways that pre-Columbian Americans organised their lives.
They also transformed the Americas, not simply because of their guns, germs and steel, but
because they also introduced a new way of organising the human world. These new social forms
clashed with the lives of those who already lived in the Americas.
Where social organisation was not broken apart and diverted into a new direction, it was
destroyed completely. The Montagnais, whose previous lives were more in tune with the waters and
forests, the animals and bird life, the natural surroundings of their ancestors,191 now found
themselves in a vastly different world. Now society was hierarchical, marked by inequality between
the sexes, and the natural world was to be utilised purely in the interest of self-gain.
Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries the destruction of indigenous people and their environments
in the interests of capitalism continued, particularly in Latin America. Massacres, deportations and

forced labour helped depopulate enormous areas, which could be converted into farms for cash crops
and cattle. This process was perhaps best summed up by Frederick Engels:
The power of these naturally evolved communities had to be broken, and it was broken. But it was broken by influences which
from the outset appear to us as a degradation, a fall from the simple moral grandeur of the old gentile society. The lowest interests
base greed, brutal sensuality, sordid avarice, selfish plunder of common possessionsusher in the new civilised society, class
society; the most outrageous meanstheft, rape, deceit and treacheryundermine and topple the old, classless, gentile society.192

* Unlike Egypt in the time of the Pharaohs, Inca tribute was paid, not by providing a section of the harvest, but through the use of all
surplus labour. As a result, peasant familieswere kept in a state of privation from which neither enterprise nor significant equipment
could emerge All the means of investment were in the hands of the stateMazoyer and Roudart, 2006, p207.

Chapter 7

The rise of the peasant and the shaping of the modern

landscape

Slash and burn cultivation requires the clearing of trees using the axe and then fire. But once
woodland has been permanently cleared, farming requires a much more complex manipulation of the
soil. Before seeds can be planted the farmer needs to plough the ground, turning it over and burying
grasses and weeds. Using the spade and hoe this can be done over small areas such as gardens or
small fields. But farming larger areas requires a plough.
Early forms of the plough were developed in Mesopotamia and spread to nearby regions as they
too became deforested. The earliest and simplest plough, a single wooden stake fixed to a frame and
pulled by an animal, is known as an ard, or scratch plough. Unlike more modern ploughs the ard
simply scratches the soil, but it was revolutionary, allowing the farmer to cultivate relatively large
areas of land compared to tilling by hand.
Ploughing with an ard would not have been easy. Experiments with reconstructions show that they
cut into the soil to a depth of around 30 cm and will only travel a few metres before jamming. It
would have been easier than preparing a field for sowing by hand, but still backbreaking hard
work.193 Despite this, the ard was used for millennia in communities thousands of miles apart.
Depending on the area different methods of fallowing were required for this new farming. Just as
with slash and burn cultivation, the soil needed time to rejuvenate, and without the application of
fertiliser this period of fallowing could be as long as three years in hotter climates. This was
overcome by grazing animals on uncultivated lands and transferring their manure onto the fields. The
process by which farmers worked out the best ways to do this must have taken many years of
experimentationfinding the right combination of cultivated and uncultivated lands, learning to take
animals to the fields at night, getting the right combination of animals and herd size, would have taken
time and would have varied from place to place.
The process leading to the establishment of ard-based farming was, in the words of Mazoyer and
Roudart, an agricultural revolution in antiquity. Large parts of Europe had been deforested from
2500 BCE onwards.194 The more arid climates of the Fertile Crescent had been deforested thousands
of years before. But as populations grew and slash and burn spread, the forests of Europe began to
vanish. With the disappearance of forests, the switch to other forms of agriculture was not automatic:
in parts of Europe and around the Mediterranean, there were periods of abandonment and
repopulation in the Neolithic era as forests disappeared and reappeared.
But by 2,000 years ago at the beginning of the Iron Age, agriculture based on fallowing and the ard
stretched from North Africa to Scandinavia and from the Atlantic coast to the Urals and the eastern
Mediterranean. Small pockets of slash and burn cultivation continued in forested areas, and pastoral
farming in places unsuitable for ploughing. But in the main, across the wide area that we now know as
Europe, farming would be dominated for a millennium with fallowing and the plough.195

Britains changing landscape

One of the most surprising things about the modern British landscape is just how little of it is natural.
To take just one example, the Norfolk Broads have long been a destination for tourists to enjoy the
countryside. Countless books and articles have been written celebrating the ecological diversity of
the plants and animals of the area. But in the 1960s archaeological excavations found that the
hundreds of square kilometres of waterways and rivers that make up the Broads are not natural at all,
but the result of peat extraction on an enormous scale900 million cubic feet of peat was removed to
provide fuel in early medieval times, ending in an enormous flood in 1287.196
The highest moors of England such as those of the Pennines were covered in woodland until they
were cleared for farmland and villages in the Bronze and Iron Ages. While not all the clearance at
this altitude was due to human activity, these early farmers certainly accelerated the process. It was
not until the end of the Iron Age that all the moors we know today had come into existence.
Woods are often described as ancient. But few trees in the British Isles are older than a couple
of centuries and almost none of these will have grown as a result of a natural process; rather they
were consciously planted and nurtured. Woodlands are grown for raw materials and as an investment
for the future. The growth of industries such as metalworking or shipbuilding, as well as the building
of cathedrals and other structures created a huge demand for larger trees.
Imagine someone transported forward in time from the Mesolithic era 8,000 years ago. He or she
would first marvel at the lack of trees and, while they might recognise most of the flora and fauna,
there would be many things that were new to them. Common animals in Britain today such as grey
squirrels, rats, pheasants and rabbits are only recent arrivals to the British Isles.
Our time traveller would recognise most, but not all, plantssweet chestnut and sycamore trees,
rhododendron bushes, Japanese knotweed and Oxford ragwort have all arrived in Britain since
Roman times. Two of these, rhododendron and knotweed, were introduced as ornamental plants by
the Victorians, though their ability to spread and destroy other plants and undermine wider ecosystems has led many to view them as destructive pests. Some 239 species of plant are classed as
being artificially introduced to British shores with a further 363 listed as either being probably
introduced or having their natural areas of distribution extended by human activity.197
A Mesolithic visitor would also miss many animals that played an important part in their ancient
lives. Beavers no longer live in British rivers, nor do the ancient wild cattle, aurochs, that survived
on the continent until the Middle Ages. Cranes, wolves, bears and boars have also vanished. The
major reason that these animals declined is the destruction of the woods where most of them lived.
Modern agriculture, pesticides and chemicals have also played their role, as did medieval hunting,
but the destruction of the wooded landscape was the major cause of the changing ecology of the
British Isles.
In the wake of the retreat of the glaciers that began 11,000 years ago came the first colonisers of
Britaintrees, shrubs and other plants. At this time there was no English Channel separating Britain
from the continent. Trees such as birch, aspen, pine and hazel were among the first to spread. By 4000
BCE the tree coverage reached a peak. The natural spread of the woodlands had almost finished, with
particular species flourishing in certain climate niches. Apart from small areas such as sand dunes or
marshes, the British Isles would have been totally covered in what is now known as wildwood, the
natural, pre-human forest.
Almost nowhere on the British Isles does this natural forest coverage survive. In some small areas

of the European continent, particularly in the east, some primitive forests survived late enough to be
recorded in history. In North America the settlers who followed Columbus encountered such forests
and cleared almost all of them for agriculture.
The woods and forests that we see in Britain today are the product of centuries of human
management, logging and use. Many of these woodlands would have evolved naturally, but their
evolution has been shaped by the needs of people living nearby, types of local agriculture and human
industry since the time of the earliest people to arrive in Britain.
Throughout human history trees have been planted so that when they mature they might be used to
fulfil particular needs. From the Middle Ages onwards the importance of naval power to Britain led
to the systematic planting of woodland to ensure the long-term availability of wood. More recently,
following the large-scale felling of timber during the First World War, the Forestry Commission was
established in 1919 with a programme for re-forestation on a major scale, in part as a strategic
reserve of timber for the future.198
The consequence of the clearance of original woodland, and the further planting and chopping
down of trees for agriculture, towns and roads, is the creation of a completely artificial landscape. As
Oliver Rackham points out in his classic study of the history of the British countryside, nature itself
plays a role: The ordinary landscape of Britain has been made both by the natural world and by
human activities, interacting with each other over many centuries.199 But nature is merely building on
the changes that have been made to the landscape by thousands of years of human activity. There is a
complex interaction between natural changes and those made by humans.
Take the introduction of rabbits to Britain. Today they are everywhere, but rabbits were
introduced as recently as the 12th century as a luxury food. The medieval rabbit was weaker than
modern breeds and could not dig its own burrows, so landowners created artificial warrens. By the
14th century rabbits had escaped and multiplied into pests. As the rabbit population increased they
descended the social scale, their abundance and cheapness making them suitable for a Sunday lunch
for a fairly well paid craftsman by the 15th century. By the 1800s they were a staple food for the
poor. By the mid-20th century the enormous numbers of wild rabbits was a major problem for
farmers, leading to the introduction of myxomatosis in 1953, which destroyed 99 percent of the
population. Today the disease and changing agricultural practices have created a more solitary,
tougher animal.200
So a human intervention into the natural worldthe introduction of rabbits to the British Isles
then led to a wider change in the ecology of the world, exemplified by the physical changes to the
animals themselves. Thus natural changes are happening on top of human changes. These natural
changes also then impact on the human world. Rapidly expanding animal populations caused havoc on
crops, requiring another human action, the introduction of disease, to control the rabbits.
The idea that the world around us is the product of centuries of human interaction was something
that was understood very well by Karl Marx, who noted that:
the sensuous world around him is, not a thing given direct from all eternity, remaining ever the same, but the product of industry
and of the state of society; and, indeed, in the sense that it is an historical product, the result of the activity of a whole succession
of generations, each standing on the shoulders of the preceding one, developing its industry and its intercourse, modifying its social
system according to the changed needs.201

Trees have many uses. Their fruit and nuts provide food, their wood fuel and materials for
shelters. Later ancient people began to understand how to manage trees to encourage the growth of

particular types of wood. Some of the earliest Neolithic people discovered that the regrowth from
some tree stumps was more useful than the original trunk, resulting in wood useful for building
materials and tools. Hazel in particular was grown, nurtured and cut back to stimulate the growth of
large quantities of wooden rods. With materials like this, Neolithic Britons began to shape and take
control of the world around them.202
From Neolithic times people used enormous quantities of wood for housing, for firewood and
even for building tracks across marshlands. The domestic animals of the Neolithic, pigs, sheep and
goats, would have helped clear trees and bushes by eating roots and bark. Farmers felled trees to
create farmland and build homes and villages. From the Neolithic through the Bronze and Iron Ages
enormous areas of land were deforested. In the later periods wood was needed for the early metal
industry. By the time of the Romans the British landscape was largely cleared of trees. The land was
already divided up for different owners, leaving little space for natural growth or woodland.
The arrival in Britain of the Roman legions in 43 CE led to three and a half centuries of occupation.
The Romans were attracted to Britain in part for plunder and slaves, but also for the mineral wealth
that existed there, much of which was already being traded with the empire. Tin mined in Cornwall
reached Rome long before the Romans conquered Britain. Similarly, archaeological digs at Iron Age
sites in Britain have found goods imported from Roman traders on the continent.
Before the invasion the British Isles were inhabited by different tribes, which, while often in a
state of rivalry, had many shared cultural ideas and beliefs.203 These had much in common with
other Iron Age people in continental Europe, but were increasingly being challenged by ideas from
the Roman Empire. There is evidence that Iron Age elites were copying Roman ideas, dress and
language before the invasion.
With the Roman occupation of Britain, little changed in the ecological relationship between
humans and the world around them. There were some obvious changes to the landscape: the Roman
military built a great many roads, though they often took the routes, at least initially, of existing roads
and tracks. The greatest change was increased urbanisation. Today our cities are primarily economic
centres, but for the Romans urban areas were centres of government and military power, which
helped them control and subdue a wider agricultural economy. The Romans helped to lead a shift
away from society dominated by rural tribes gathered around a few strong points.
Roman influence was heaviest in the south east of Britain and diminished to the north and west.
But even in the south east, for the majority of people living outside the towns and their immediate
vicinity there was little change from pre-Roman life. Most of the rural communities continued as
before, the Romans did not introduce new farming practices and it was not until the later years of the
occupation that villas became common across the countryside, often positioned on sites of Iron Age
farms. This was also true of the placing of Roman temples and other important buildings, which were
often located on pre-existing sites.
The farms of Iron Age Britain continued into Roman times even where there were substantial
changes taking place. Hadrians Wall, for instance, built as a visible symbol of power marking the
edge of the Roman Empire, was erected in the middle of existing Iron Age farms. These lands had
been worked for years and continued to be used, expanded and developed while the wall was being
constructed around them.
Traditionally it was thought that Hadrians Wall required the clearance of immense woodlands.
The story was that the space for construction was carved out of the natural forests. But archaeological

evidence shows that this was not the case. Instead the legions built the enormous wall through lands
that had been farmed for generations. These farming communities would have provided the food for
the soldiers and their camp followers. Rather than a break with the pre-Roman societies, the
continued use of farmland around Hadrians Wall and other sites shows that the Roman occupation
expanded and built on existing social structures and organisation.204
There were, of course, Iron Age farms that did not survive the Roman occupation, but these were
the exceptions rather than the rule. In the south of Britain the Romans tended to co-opt local rulers
into their way of life. Rather than razing what had existed before, they built upon it. In some areas of
Britain there is evidence for Roman fields laid out in a well-surveyed grid but in most parts of the
British Isles farmland changed little. Other than towns, one other major change that the Romans made
to the landscape was the introduction of industry on a large-scale. But again there is some continuity
from the past. People from both the Bronze and Iron Ages had extracted material from the ground in
large quantities. The Romans took this to a new level with the systematic extraction of gold, iron,
copper and lead from sites across Britain.
This Roman industry, as well as their construction and military rule, required vast quantities of
woodfor the building of ships, homes, barracks and forts. Even the underground heating systems
that heated the hot waters of the Roman baths needed wood for the furnaces. Roman industry also
consumed enormous amounts of firewood for the making of glass and pottery.
It has been calculated that the output of one single Roman ironworks in the Weald would have
needed the charcoal produced by 9,300 hectares of woodlandand there were many different
ironworks. Using wood on this scale had a far greater influence on the British landscape than anything
during medieval times.
The end of the Roman occupation of Britain did not lead to a simple reversal of these changes
either. While the traditional view of a Dark Age of war, chaos and collapse after the Romans left is
wrong, Britain did experience economic meltdown with the departure of the legions. Villas and
towns were abandoned and industrial activity stopped. By the year 500 CE Britain had broken up into
a collection of territories ruled by different kings.205
In the years following the departure of the Romans the amount of farmland expanded. The
landscape remained pretty much as it had done since pre-Roman times with the probable exception of
the land around Hadrians Wall, which appears to have been abandoned. 206 Rather than whole
swathes of the countryside returning to unmanaged, wild forests and woods, most areas continued to
be farmed as they had been since before the Roman conquest.
On the other hand, the departure of the Romans led to an immediate decline in urban life. This
changed the demands on the countryside. Rather than needing large quantities of cereal crops to feed
an urban population and a large Roman army, farmers now switched to pasture. Gradually urban
areas did develop again. Between 600 and 800 CE towns and cities began to establish themselves
once more. Mostly these began as trading hubs. An extensive trade network re-established itself
across the British Isles with trading sites and small towns developing on the old network of Roman
roads, as well as navigable rivers. Trade continued to extend further afield, with traders from North
Africa, the Mediterranean and Europe exchanging goods with the British population. Kings and tribal
leaders of the post-Roman era were often buried with goods that had come a great distance. The
famous ship burial at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk included metalware manufactured in the eastern
Mediterranean.

The modern British landscape begins to be visible in the post-Roman world. Towns were growing
up around the country; the network of roads was increasingly filled with traders and travellers.
Monasteries were being founded and becoming centres of wealth and learning. Agriculture often
began to be organised on open field systems.
Open field farming
Open field farming involves the division of fields into parallel strips, hence its alternate name, strip
farming. This type of farming, found across Europe, was often dependent on a type of collective
agriculture where regular meetings were held at which the participants agreed on cultivation
practices and regulations, and fined dissidents.207
In the two centuries before the Norman Conquest gradual changes to the rural farming landscape
had begun to take place. Scattered farms had been reorganised into much more centralised villages,
often under the control of a manor. This new system was embraced by the new Norman landowners
who had been given the lands by William the Conqueror. It allowed them to organise their estates
much more easily. When, following the Norman Conquest in 1066, the new king wanted to know what
sort of country he now controlled, he ordered one of the most extensive land surveys ever undertaken.
Among all the descriptions of the number of pigs owned by a village and the types of watermills and
ploughs, we find a land that is barely wooded. Of the 12,580 settlements for which we have
information, only half possessed any woodland.208
The Domesday survey describes a land of 11 million hectares, of which 1.7 million were
woodland of one sort or another. This is fairly low even by modern standards. Most of England was a
sea of farmland surrounding islands of woods. By 1300 CE open field farming was widespread and
in perfect working order.209
The open field system organised land into large fields. Between two and four of these fields were
then divided into a large number of strips, and each farmer had responsibility for several strips in
each field. The strips were collected into furlongs, groups of strips orientated in the same direction,
upon which the same crop was grown. The fields were usually part of a three-year crop rotation
different crops being grown on different fields, with one field being left fallow to ensure that fertility
was not lost from year to year. Following the harvest the villages animals were released into the
fields to graze on the remaining stubble and any weeds that grew, keeping the fields manured. The
medieval plough produced a characteristic ridge-and-furrow pattern, often an indication today that
land was cultivated in this way centuries ago.210
Every year the strips were redistributed among the farmers. As a result no single farmer would
only have strips in the best land, or given over to only one crop. In an economy where animals and
ploughs were not common sharing of these and the associated work was essential.
The village of Laxton in the English county of Nottinghamshire still has its open field and strip
cultivation intact; even now the manorial court meets every winter to elect a smaller group of
villagers called the Jury.211 The Jury report to a court meeting a week or so later and the court divides
up the strips among farmers for the forthcoming year. They also decide which fields should be left
fallow and can even impose fines on those who broke farming rules in the previous year. While there
have been changes to the system and the fields as a result of modern agricultural equipment, this is a
system that has remained roughly intact since 1635.

In 1635 a four field system was in place, and there was also extensive common land on which
people could graze animals. There were strict limits to the number of animals a villager could have
and those who had too many, or allowed their animals to stray into places they should not, would be
fined by the manorial court. On 9 October 1754, for instance, two Laxton villagers were fined by the
manorial court jury as follows:
John White for Turning his Bease [cattle] into the Opens and not cutting their Horns5s 0d
Richard Hardy for his Bease Tresspassing in the Corn Fields3s 4d212
The common land itself was important to other aspects of village life. Writing about the French
village of Lournand around the year 1000 CE, the historian Guy Bois describes the commons as a
reservoir of resources. There the common woodland provided wood for fuel and building, for food
such as game, fruit or honey as well as grazing.213 The common land would have been an essential
part of life for the majority of people at this time, which helps to explain the battles that took place in
the 18th and 19th centuries when enclosure brought the open field system to an end.
The manorial court was run by the steward, a paid representative of the Lord of the Manor. It is the
centrality of this powerful figure that helps us to understand where the open field system came from
and how it survived. The early rearrangement of farmsteads into villages and the amalgamation of
farmland into open fields did not happen spontaneously. Instead there needed to be an individual or
group with an interest in making this happen, a local landowner or the church, for instance. It is likely
that tenants and villagers had a say in the process; they after all would know better than anyone the
best land or locations of springs and marshes. Francis Pryor documents the archaeological evidence
from the village of Shapwick in Somerset, England, which shows that the reorganisation of the lands
there into an open field system took place over several decades almost certainly under the leadership
of the church.214
This process of nucleation, the creation of a centralised village surrounded by open fields, over
the more decentralised, looser settlements where each home was surrounded by its own fields, took
place over a surprisingly short period of time, perhaps less than a century. 215 It would have required
the active participation of the local communities, and this continued into the new open field systems,
which would only work if communal labour was employed and this again suggests planning and
forethought.216
Reorganising farming in this way was extremely beneficial to the landowners. It allowed them to
utilise the communal nature of farming, to make agriculture more efficient and exploit larger areas.
Strip farming in Britain and the continent is also associated with developments and technological
innovations in farming equipment. These developments had long-term consequences that we will
examine shortly. But while there were improvements for individual tenants the main beneficiary was
the landowner. Francis Pryor sums up this up:
Economies of scale suggest that there is more incentive for a rich man to increase his income by thousands, than for a poor man to
put much the same effort for a net annual reward of a few pence. A new aristocratic litewas starting to emerge in later Saxon
times and these were just the sort of people who would have encouraged the process of nucleation on their estates.217

In some parts of the British Isles open field farming did not develop, precisely because life was
less dominated by feudal ties. In northern Wales freeman farmers tended to live in independent
farmsteads; there was no drive for them to undergo nucleation. Their compatriots in the south were
more tied in to feudal obligations and as a result open field systems developed there.

Open field farming was not without problems. Rearranging the strips every year allowed a more
even distribution of good and bad land, but it meant there was little or no incentive for farmers to
improve the land permanently. But open field farming was an enormously successful system that
survived for centuries. Combining crop rotation and the use of fallowing as well as animals to
provide fertiliser allowed the farming of land that would not have previously been productive.
Despite these benefits and the sharing that was part of the open field system, it was an agriculture
based on a tremendously unequal economic system. The manorial court that remains today in the
village of Laxton looks like a rather quaint form of ancient democracy. Yet in reality it was a tool for
implementing the wishes of the landowners. The vast majority of those who worked the open fields
the serfswere not free. Their lives were hard and difficult, their freedoms and rights were few and
the power of their masters was absolute.
Nonetheless, villagers and peasant communities did try to maximise their control over their lives
and their fields. In many parts of the world the democratic process was central to agricultural life at
the heart of a village community. Take the case of the Scottish population of St Kilda. 218 Over 40
miles west of the Outer Hebrides, St Kilda was the most isolated community in the British Isles. The
small population survived by scratching a living from subsistence farming, fishing and seabirds. The
birds formed the most important part of the islanders diet and were caught in vast numbers.
Agriculture alone was incapable of producing enough food to sustain the population. Oil from the
birds was also used as medicine and grease.
This isolated community was rarely visited by its landlord, who came once a year to collect rent
and settle disputes. Instead the people of St Kilda responded to the difficult situation they lived in by
organising their lives to support each other collectively and pool their limited resources. As with
open field farms St Kildas inhabitants divided their agricultural land into strips, which were
distributed out equally. People helped those less able to farm their land. As one resident recalled, If
you finished before your neighbour, you just went over with your spade and gave him a hand out.
Then, perhaps, there was a widow who couldnt work the croft; well, when theyd finished their own,
all the men went and worked the croft for the widow.219
But this was more than kindness. Mutual assistance was backed up by communal behaviour in all
areas of island life. Tools, boats and ropes were owned in common, so that everyone had a say in
their use. At the heart of island life was the Parliament, the daily meeting of all men, who discussed
what needed to be done, exchanged views and importantly told each other where they were working.
Life on St Kilda was dangerous, and collective decision making was also about looking after each
other. The villagers even organised themselves to insure against the loss of animals during the annual
round up of sheep. Those unlucky enough to lose a sheep over the cliff were compensated from other
peoples flocks. This collective life continued until the St Kildans were evicted in the 20th century.
As late as 1930 one observer described the sharing out of birds that had been collected:
Grouped around the large heap of slain fulmars stood the representatives of every family. In the rear the women and juveniles
waited; waited to carry their portion to the cottage, where the plucking would immediately begin. The larger the family, the bigger
the share. There was no such thing as payment by results.220

The democratic, communal life of St Kilda was a response to a particular set of circumstances.
Life in most feudal communities was characterised by a complex hierarchy, which left little
opportunity for ordinary people to have much of a say in day to day life.221
The most common serfs, the villeins, had more rights than others. They could own property and

usually rented a house with some land. Their rights varied across the continent, with English villeins
being unable to leave their landlords lands. French villeins could leave the manorial area, but only
on giving up all their possessions.
In return for the right to farm their own land, villeins also had to farm their lords fields or offer
similar services. In addition to this obligated labour, sometimes known as week-work, they were
expected to work for the lord during busy times of the year. This extra work was known as boonwork,
and included hay cutting, sheep-shearing and the like.222
Village life was much more dominated by the natural world than it is todaythe impact of bad
weather had far greater repercussions, for the majority of food was grown locally and crop failures
could be devastating. Materials were rough and ready, clothing was woollen, and buildings were
usually timber. With the exception of the rich, diets were limited and short on protein.
Even the available wild animals were limited. Poaching was severely punished, though as we
shall see it was not as restricted as it would later become. Work dominated peasant life: there was
always something that needed to be done. Apart from the work in the fields, weeding, ploughing or
harvesting, there were drainage ditches to be cleared, fruit and vegetables to be picked, and clothing
to be made and repaired; this was no country idyll.
This is not to say that people had no rights at all. Many customary rights that ordinary people had
in medieval times, such as the right to use common land, were later fought over in great social battles.
In England the Charter of the Forest was first issued in 1217, as a complement to Magna Carta. In
1297 the two charters were joined. While Magna Carta was concerned with the rights of barons at the
top of English society, the Forest Charter provided rights for common people, particularly Free
men. The word forest in this context did not simply mean wooded areas, but included fields or open
moorland, which had commonly been designated royal forest by previous kings. The charter often
gave rights to people to utilise land that they actually lived on, but were prevented from using.
It granted common of pasture to all those accustomed to it. Part nine of the charter said that
every Free-man may drive his Swine freely; without Impediment, through our Demesne [private]
Woods, to Agist [graze] them in their own Woods.223
In addition, freemen were allowed to make in his own Wood, or in his Land, or in his Water,
which he hath within Our Forest; Mills, Springs, Pools, Marsh-Pits, Dikes, or Earable [tillable]
Ground, without inclosing that Earable Ground; so that it be not to the Annoyance of his Neighbours.
Other rights, such as the explicit right to gather honey, were granted or confirmed. While those using
carts to carry wood were subject to a tax known as Chiminage, those who bear upon their Backs
Brushment, Bark, or Coal to sell, though it be their Living, shall pay no Chiminage.
Some of these rights had existed for many years, but most were only customary. The charter
encoded these legally. They were rights under constant threat, as economic changes meant that woods
were cleared, towns grew or landowners sought to protect their interests.
Historian Peter Linebaugh argues that these rights, as granted in Magna Carta, were a treaty
among contending forces, but he differentiates between common rights and wider human rights.
Common rights, he says:
are embedded in a particular ecology Commoners think first not of title deeds, but of human deeds: how will this land be tilled?
Does it require manuring? What grows there? They begin to explore. You might call it a natural attitude. Second, communing is
embedded in a labor process; it inheres in a particular praxis of field, upland, forest, marsh, coast. Common rights are entered into
by labor. Third, commoning is collective. Fourth, being independent of the state, commoning is independent also of the temporality
of the law and state. Magna Carta does not list rights, it grants perpetiuities.224

Such rights could be the difference between life and death for medieval peasants. Half of all
peasant families spent their lives on the verge of hunger. A period of cooling and high rainfall in the
13th century helped cause famines in England in 1272, 1277, 1283, 1292 and 1311. Between 1315
and 1319 virtually every European country lost almost all of one harvest and often more.225 The
medieval peasants constant concern about food is reflected in their culture. The mythical land of
Cockaigne was a place of relaxation and an abundance of food and drink. A 14th century poem sums
up the peasants dreams:
That Land of Cockaigne is marvellous!
It also rains in those fair parts
Custards, pancakes, pies and tarts.
Look at the riverwhat have we here?
Its currents flow with wine and beer
Claret and fine muscatel,
Sherry one can drink as well.
For a pittance all may drink there,
New or old wine, sure to please.226

The poem continues into a critique of those who live in luxury and excess in the midst of poverty.
The wealth of a minority bred anger and resentment. Occasionally this would boil over into action. In
the mid-1300s the radical priest John Ball stoked the flames of rebellion with his angry sermons:
Things cannot go well in England, nor ever will until everything shall be in common Are we not all descended from the same
parents, Adam and Eve? And what can they show or what reasons give, why they should be more masters than ourselves? except
perhaps in making us labour and work for them to spend. They are clothed in velvets and rich stuffs, ornamented with ermine and
other furs, while we are forced to wear poor cloth. They have handsome seats and manors, when we must brave the wind and rain
in our labours in the field; but it is from our labour that they have wherewith to support their pomp.227

A medium sized English village in the 1300s had around 30 families and a population of about
150. Perhaps four or five of these families paid rent to the manor, but owed no service to the local
lord. The other families had to work his land in exchange for their homes and the right to own field
strips. Trade with the outside world took place, though with the exception of a few of the lords most
important servants, no one travelled more than a few miles from their village.
The amount of work that a peasant might be obliged to give to their lord varied considerably from
place to place. In some parts of southern Italy in the 12th century peasants worked for only a few days
a year on their lords fields. In France the amount of labour given to the landlord ranged from two or
three days a month in parts of the north-east to three days a week in the case of tenants of the
monastery of Marmoutier in Alsace. In England each tenancy of Peterborough Abbey had to provide a
man three mornings a week.228
This system of obligated labour gradually broke down. In France, for instance, improved farming
technologies, such as better ploughs, reduced the amount of labour needed in agriculture. In addition,
the growth of trade introduced more money into the small dependent cultivations while at the same
time it facilitated the recruitment of wage labour. As a result landlords were encouraged to
commute the services and lords charged fees rather than demanding labour.229
Technological change and agricultural change
The changes to agriculture that took place during the late Saxon and early medieval periods would
have far reaching consequences. In particular, technological innovation reinvented the tools of

farming that had remained largely unchanged for thousands of years.

Many agricultural tools and practices are of surprisingly recent origin. We think of a tool like the
scythe as being ancient, yet its use only spread to northern Europe during the first millennium CE,
remaining rare until 1000 CE. Up until then farmers used a one-handed sickle to cut grasshard,
back-breaking work. The introduction of the two-handed scythe allowed much greater quantities of
grass to be cut, producing more hay for winter use. As a result farmers could keep larger herds of
animals, which changed the diets and made more manure available for the fields. Scythes were
expensive and needed a skilled iron worker for their manufacture, hindering their introduction to
farming communities.
But once introduced, new farming technology can make an enormous difference. The use of the ard
or scratch plough continued for many millennia, but because the ard can only scratch the surface of a
field it is of limited use; it leaves undisturbed soil between the grooves. To improve things the farmer
would sometimes scratch the soil again at right angles to the first run, helping to produce square
fields.
The first major advance in ploughing technology was the mould-board plough. This innovation
meant that soil could be turned over, rather than simply scratched. Simple ploughs that could turn the
soil have been around for thousands of years. Iron ploughs were in use in China at in the first century
BCE, but mouldboard ploughs did not arrive in Europe until the early medieval period.
A sharp, knife-like blade, the coulter, was fixed at the front of the plough. This coulter cut through
the soil and was followed by a second wedge-shaped blade known as the share. The share cuts
horizontally and the combination produces a slice of topsoil which is then lifted by the curved
mouldboard and rolled over to one side. It is this action that produces the characteristic look of a
ploughed field, a series of furrows caused by the lifting and moving of the soil.
In order to help control the direction of ploughing, Mouldboard ploughs had a runner extending
behind them which rested against the side of the furrow being cut. While this allowed for straighter
ploughing, it made the equipment harder to turn, so tended to encourage rectangular fields. This was
beneficial for open fields which could be long and narrowsome in Yorkshire were 2,000m in
length. So the introduction of the new ploughs helped encourage changing agricultural practices
across Europe, as well as the further reshaping of the landscape.
Using ploughs that could turn the soil over had dramatic consequences for farmers. Firstly, nutrient
rich soil is brought to the surface and weeds that are buried rot and return their nutrients to the field.
Secondly the furrows improve drainage on the field. Most importantly, the new ploughs allowed
farmers to prepare and plant fields much faster than previously and meant they could cultivate a much
larger area.
Mouldboard type ploughs appeared independently at roughly similar times across Europe. They
were heavier and more complex to manufacture, needing more iron. Over time they became even
more complex; later versions needed wheels. But at the same time, the farmer could be more
economical in labour and draught animals. Alongside the development of ploughing technology, other
innovations appeared. The large clods of soil left by the new ploughs needed to be broken up, which
required the introduction of the harrow.
Hence the agricultural advances of Saxon times and the Middle Ages were partly about the
introduction of new technologies, the scythe, the plough and the harrow. But technological
improvements alone could not increase the amount of crops obtained from a particular piece of land.

In order to improve the yield, a greater level of nutrients in the soil was needed. One way of doing
this was to use animal manure. The more animals used, the more manure, but this brought other
complications.
During the summer animals could forage on grassland or fallow fields, but during the winter the
farmer needed to provide feed, such as hay. The choice of animal, horse, oxen or cattle had
advantages and disadvantages. It also led to further technological needs and innovationswithout the
appropriate harness, the best draft animal in the world cannot pull a plough for long. More animals
created demand for new jobs and equipmentblacksmiths, for instanceand there were changes in
diets as foodstuffs such as cheese and butter become more prevalent, each with their own specialised
equipment.
So the changes taking place in agriculture in the Middle Ages had a much wider social impact.
Agriculture was changing, animals were more common, farms were more technological and labour
was increasingly specialised. The agricultural revolution of the Middle Ages was a complex
interaction of technological and social changes. Each change in itself made little difference to the
yields from farms, but together they transformed farming.
By the 13th century the working capital of a farmer might have included a plough, a harrow, a
roller, increased numbers of animals and buildings to protect the equipment and the crops. Contrast
this to a few centuries previously when a farmer would have had a simple scratch plough and fewer
animals and buildings. Building up the wealth to purchase the new equipment would have taken a long
time, due to the relatively unproductive farming with the scratch plough. Even the biggest estates
would have had to accumulate new equipment gradually. Those who owned equipment would share
or hire it out to other farmers who did not yet own a plough or harrow. As late as the 19th century,
between ten and 30 percent of peasants in the villages of northern Europe only had manual tools.230
In some parts of Europe, such as southern France, the old technologies remained in use for
centuries. The German Marxist Karl Kautsky noted in his 1899 agricultural study The Agrarian
Question that an 1894 survey by the United States government on the use of agricultural machinery
found that in the areas near Nice in France, the old Roman plough is still in general or frequent use
a device which merely scratches at the soil without throwing up furrows. The story was the same
in parts of Germany, one US consul reporting back that:
agricultural implements in Thuringia are extremely crude. I recently noted some old wood cuts depicting agricultural scenes from
the 15th century, and was surprised at the resemblance between the implements in the pictures and those prevalent today.231

But the changes that did occur had a profound impact on agriculture. The farming revolution led to
a doubling of cereal yields. For example, in the area that is now France at the end of the agricultural
revolution some 18 million hectares of arable land was being cultivated. In the south farming
remained mostly based on the ard and 1.3 million tonnes of cereal was grown. In the north they
switched to more modern ploughs and yields doubled to three million tonnes.232 As a result of such
changes, population increased dramatically. Between 1050 and 1300 the European population grew
from 46 million to 73 million, helped in part by a warmer climate.233
Agricultural historians Mazoyer and Roudart sum up the importance of the farming revolution:
[At] the turning point of the year 1000, Europe, overexploited and overpopulated in relation to the production capacities of the old
ard-based system of cultivation, was underexploited and underpopulated in relation to those of the new plow-based system of
cultivation.234

But in some parts of Europe those who controlled the land avoided change if they could, and for

those farmers without the capital to invest in new livestock and equipment, change was impossible.
Between the 14th and 16th centuries the British landscape of the Middle Ages gradually changed
into more specialised farming regions. As Francis Pryor comments, this was a gradual move away
from the sort of socially embedded economic system of prehistoric, Roman and Saxon times, towards
something that more closely resembles a free market.235
Once again economic and technological changes impacted upon social relations. As new
equipment became available, lords no longer needed large numbers of labourers to work their land.
This encouraged a move towards wage labour and the taxing of peasants rather than the regular
obligation that peasants had to work in their lords fields. The increased production of crops that
resulted from using the plough encouraged trade of the surplus.
Mazoyer and Roudart argue that these changes in the Middle Ages helped end agriculture based on
the large estate, supported by the obligated labour of peasants and encouraged a new rural society in
north western Europemade up of wealthy farmers and poor peasants.236 Smallholdings were
increasingly being brought together and enclosed to make larger farms. Initially, this was done
piecemeal at the behest of local landowners, but from the 16th century onwards the process
accelerated. The enormous economic and social changes that marked the end of feudalism further
encouraged the enclosure of land, as agriculture increasingly produced for a growing market
economy. Eventually enclosure took place on a massive scale driven this time by central government
in the interests and at the behest of the large landowners.
The end of feudalism
For this to happen, there had to be a political and economic transformation in society. Between 1500
and 1650 Europe was convulsed by a series of devastating political crises, wars and revolutionary
movementsthe Dutch Revolt, the Thirty Years War and the English Revolutionall arising out of
the social changes taking place.237
Feudalism had seen sustained economic growth until the 14th century, but then entered a period of
crisis and stagnation. Technology developed over this period, not just in agriculture but in areas such
as shipbuilding, armaments and manufacturing. Very gradually, within feudal society, production
began to be for the market rather than the needs of local populations. Market relations developed as
people began to buy goods from the growing towns. At the same time wage labour was increasing and
money rents replacing obligations to landlords. Networks of trade between towns, villages and
marketplaces developed and merchants and some landowners began to see commerce as a way of
making more money. They introduced mills or workshops in the towns, which produced more goods
for sale. Such small changes helped encourage more trade and more wage labour, gradually
transforming the relations of production.
As Chris Harman puts it, there were:
elements developing within feudalismwhich created nexuses of people, small groups of farmers, manufacturers in the city and
some merchants, who began to exploit labour in a new way. They see free labour as more productive than unfree labour. They
employ it systematically to pump out surpluses. This development occurs within feudalism, but in contradiction to feudalism. It
explains why the great crises of feudalism lead to the beginning of the breakthrough to a different form of society.238

Marx and Engels wrote that the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas.
Under feudalism the dominant ideas were those that justified the position of the monarch at the top of

society and the peasant at the bottom. But as social relations in society changed, the old order and its
ideology began to be challenged. For those who wanted to free up more wage labour, the old feudal
order was a barrier.
The tendency towards wage labour was partly a result of the population crash that followed the
first major outbreak of bubonic plague in the mid-1300s, which caused a chronic shortage of labour.
Even before the arrival of the Black Death Europe had seen changes in the way that lords demanded
labour from their villeins, but these changes accelerated when nearly a third of the population of
Europe was wiped out between 1347 and 1350. Labour shortages led to demands for improved
conditions or higher wages. Those peasants who went elsewhere to find better conditions were
unlikely to be sent back by landlords who needed labour on their fields. Some evidence indicates that
wages for some labourers in England doubled as a result of the shortages.239
The ruling class organised to protect their wealth. Parliament introduced legislation to restrict
wage rises and the free movement of labour. This in turn helped fuel the Peasants Revolt that shook
England a few decades after the Black Death.240 There were wider social changes as a result of the
plague. The failure of the church to protect the population from the disease led to a state of mind in
which doctrines were more easily doubted.241 Contemporary accounts reported that the crime rate
soared; blasphemy and sacrilege was a commonplace; the rules of sexual morality were flouted; the
pursuit of money became the be-all and end-all of peoples lives.242
These changes were not simply a result of the social shock of the Black Deathit only helped
accelerate nascent changes already taking place across Europe.
England in the early 1600s was somewhat of an economic backwater. Yet a class of landowners
was increasingly frustrated with the limitations of the old feudal order around King Charles I. While
they had no desire to remove the king, they wanted a redistribution of power in their own interests. In
particular they wanted an end to the kings demands on them for more and more taxes. It was the
refusal of many large landowners to pay further taxes to allow Charles I to fight an unpopular war in
Scotland that sparked the crisis. Charles I was forced to summon parliament in 1640 to deal with his
effective bankruptcy. This began the English Civil War.
Left to the landowners alone there would have been no revolutionary upheaval. While they wanted
limits on the monarchs power and regular parliaments, they did not want to see a major change in
society. However, there were other forces in English society that were coming to the fore, which had
interests that clashed further with the existing setup.
Foremost among these was a growing class of merchants, based primarily in the City of London,
who depended on manufactured goods made at home or in the plantations of the Americas. The
manufacturing industry that made such trading possible had begun during Henry VIIIs reign, when
small hamlets had developed, such as Birmingham with its single street full of smith, cutlers,
lorimers and nailers.243 These were men who still had close links to their land and peasant
backgroundone foot on the land, one on the bellows, wrote economic historian John Clapham.
The number of these workers grew gradually through the medieval period. As spinners, weavers and
iron workers became more widespread, so too spread the market for the goods that they made.
The growing importance of wage labour, combined with the changes in the countryside that were
encouraging production for the market were the beginnings of a nascent capitalist production, the
earliest stages of a system that would come to dominate the globe. But alongside the money to be
made for early farmers and traders, the changes led to the impoverishment of thousands of peasants

and the next stage in the rearrangement of the rural landscapethe enclosure of land.
The English Civil War was crucial to this transformation. It was more than a military conflict; it
was an opportunity for people in both rural and urban areas to try to resolve their grievances. For
many people in the countryside this also meant attempting to improve their lot by reversing previous
enclosures or reclaiming common land.
In taking part in these great events, ordinary people came to the fore. Their vision of the post-war
world was often radically different to those leading the armies against the king. It was frequently one
which turned the rural world on its head and had a very different relationship between humans and
nature at its core. For some this meant a future where they had enough land to feed their families and
an end to grinding poverty. For the most radical activists it meant a world held in common, without
rulers, and an end to the privileged life of a tiny minority at the top of society. These dreams were not
to be realised. Ultimately the English Civil War shaped the capitalist world we live in today, but it
also helped create a radical tradition which viewed that natural world, not simply as a source of
wealth, but something to be used, nurtured and protected.
Land and the English Revolution
Initially few of those in opposition to King Charles I wanted to see the end of the monarchy; they
wanted more rights, fewer taxes and limitations on the power of the king. In particular they wanted to
end the right of the king to abolish parliament. Two elections took place in 1640 as the king
summoned parliament to try to resolve his difficulties. These became the opportunity for many people
to air their frustrations and grievances. Though few actually had a vote, Christopher Hill writes that
the common people took an active role in the elections, often introducing an element of class
hostility.244
In many places this went much further than engagement with the elections. The next couple of years
were marked by thousands of people trying to undo many of the injustices that had been imposed upon
them by the king, the rich landowners and the church. Since land was the basis of wealth, many of
these struggles played out in conflicts over land, or access to it.
The enclosures, draining of marshlands and destruction of common land had already impoverished
many. Often peasants took the opportunity to redress the balance. Time and again villagers destroyed
fences and hedges, released their animals onto former common land and defied the sheriffs who came
to try and restore order. In the village of Buckden, now in Cambridgeshire, where the Bishop of
Lincoln had enclosed land, hundreds of women and boys, armed with daggers and javelins, in a very
tumultuous and riotous manner, entered upon the grounds, threw open the gates, and broke down the
quicksets [hedges] of the said enclosure, and turned in great herds of cattle upon the premises.245
Despite orders from the House of Lords hundreds of local people refused to end their land
occupation until they were physically removed. In December 1641 enclosures on the saltmarshes of
North and South Somercotes in Lincolnshiregranted by the kingwere thrown down and the
inhabitants took over the whole of the marshes as their common again. Also in Lincolnshire, this
time in Stamford, very poor men destroyed bridges and water courses to stop the flow of water to
mills owned by the countess of Exeter. In Burnham Water fishermen even took young oyster larvae
from the Earl of Sussexs waters and redistributed them to rivers to which he had no claim.246
Restrictions on the hunting of animals must have been particularly galling to peasants who were

constantly hungry. The enclosure of land for the raising of deer or other game was more than just the
removal of old rights; it was an assertion of class power.
Venison was a food that symbolised the wealth of the ruling class. It was gifted by the wealthy to
those they wanted to thank, or tie to them with obligations. The hunt itself was an expression of the
chivalric ideology of wealthy landowners; complex rules governed the etiquette of the hunt, reflecting
the very structure of the Royal State. Being able to hunt, to afford the large numbers of servants and
hunting dogs, to have horses and above all the time to take part, was a statement of power.
As the civil war progressed there were occasions when deer became targets for the lower orders.
From the 1620s the Earl of Middlesex had cleared and enclosed forests in Worcestershire, Somerset
and Wiltshire, the inhabitants were evicted into starvation and the woodland became the property of
the king. No wonder then, that in October 1642 an uprising killed 600 deer belonging to the earl.247
The Fenlands of East Anglia and Lincolnshire were scenes for particularly extensive rebellions.
These common lands had been an important source of fish and birds for the poorest and their loss
through large-scale draining was a major blow to a whole way of life, forcing families to depend on
wage labour rather than traditional livelihoods. Many saw this as nothing less than slavery.248
This anger from below scared many of those who might have opposed the king, leading some who
had no loyalty to Charles to side with him. The countenances of men are so alteredespecially of
the mean and middle rank of men, that the turning of a straw would set a whole county in a flame and
occasion the plundering of any mans house or goods, wrote an agent to the Earl of Middlesex,
justifying his support for the king.249
But the widening rift between king and parliament eventually led to open hostilities. While the
English Civil War is often portrayed as a series of set piece battles such as Edge Hill, Marston Moor
or Naseby, much of the war was characterised by short, sharp skirmishes and long sieges. This had an
impact on the land and its populationsoldiers must be fed and both sides could only continue to
hold their armies together through the pillaging of the countryside and villages. As the war
progressed, it required increasingly brutal methods. Massacres were common on both sides.
Thousands of people lost their lives in the battles and thousands more were injured. For the armies
who marched up and down the country, food became a constant preoccupation. Harvests had been
poor due to shortages of labour and bad weather. This lack of food, combined with low and
infrequent pay, meant it became increasingly difficult to hold the parliamentary armies together. It
was becoming apparent that to win the war something had to change. This led parliament to create the
New Model Army. This army was unlike anything that had been seen before; it was better organised,
consisting of over 14,000 infantrymen and 6,000 cavalry. But what really made the New Model Army
different was that it was ideological.
The men who were part of the New Model Army understood why they fought. As Oliver Cromwell
famously wrote, I had rather have a plain, russet-coated captain that knows what he fights for, and
loves what he knows, than that which you call a gentleman and is nothing else. This army was
immediately successful in the field, defeating Charless smaller but much more experienced army at
the Battle of Naseby in June 1645. But bringing together large numbers of men to fight a war that was
fundamentally changing the status quo had further consequences. The war had already altered the
perceptions of royalty; statues and images of the king were being destroyed and he was no longer seen
as untouchable. Ordinary soldiers were generalising their political ideas and once they started to
question the basis of feudal society, all sorts of other ideas began to flourish.

Most famously the Levellers had some influence inside Cromwells New Model Army as well as
among the wider population, particularly in London. Their name arose because they wanted to level
out the social order, to extend suffrage, give equality before the law and improve rights of religious
expression.
In October and November 1647 an astonishing series of debates took place, forced upon the
parliamentarian leaders by the most radical sections of the army, who were increasingly influenced
by the ideas of the Levellers. It is a reflection of the growing strength of radical ideas within the New
Model Army and wider society that leading figures like Oliver Cromwell were obliged to engage
with such debates. The ideas put forward by the Levellers were in direct competition to the sort of
society that Cromwell and others were trying to create. The radical MP Thomas Rainsborough put
forward a proposition with a very different agenda to that of the landowners: The poorest he that is
in England hath a life to live, as the greatest hethat every man that is to live under a government
ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government.250
A soldier, Maximilian Petty, put it even more succinctly: We judge that all inhabitants that have
not lost their birthright should have an equal voice in elections.251
In response one of Oliver Cromwells closest allies General Henry Ireton, summed up what those
he represented wanted. Reform of the existing system was the priority, a king restrained by a
parliament that represented men of property.252 The future rulers were declaring that only those of
property and wealth were to have a say in the running of the country.
On the other hand, the radical ideas were summed up in the Agreement of the People, a series of
manifestos drawn up by the General Council of the New Model Army, based on the input of
representatives of different regiments. They called for a different way of running the country, one
where parliament was elected by all men with laws that would be applied equally to everyone
together with freedom of worship.
The idea of ordinary people having their say in the governance of the country reflected the
concrete actions that men and women were already taking in the countrysidethe destruction of
symbols of enclosure, reclaiming common land rights and the stealing of game and timber from
private land.
Some of those at the bottom of English society drew even more radical democratic conclusions.
The Diggers, grouped around Gerrard Winstanley, rebelled against the notions of landownership,
believing that society could be reorganised around rural communes. They briefly attempted to enact
these beliefs by planting crops on common land. Their attempts to change the social order met with
short shrift from the local landowners who called in the army to drive the Diggers from the land.
Despite the collapse of the Digger movement, Winstanleys passionate cries against injustice and
for the right of land to be used by and for everyone still have the power to inspire today. In his
Declaration from the Poor Oppressed People of England to the Lords of Manors Winstanley
rages at the very idea that the land could even be bought and sold by individuals:
the earth was not made purposely for you, to be Lords of it, and we to be your Slaves, Servants, and Beggers; but it was made to
be a common Livelihood to all, without respect of persons: And that you buying and selling of Land, and the Fruits of it, one to
another, is The cursed thing For the power of inclosing Land, and owning Propreity, was brought into the Creation by your
Ancestors by the Sword.253

He then continues to rail against those who follow the subtle art of buying and selling the Earth
merely to get the Treasury thereof into their hands, to lock it up from them, to whom it belongs and

declares that:
the main thing we aym atis this, To lay hold upon, and as we stand in need, to cut and fell, and make the best advantage we can
of the Woods and Trees, that grow upon the Commons, To be stock for our selves, and our poor Brethrenand to provide us
bread to eat, till the Fruit of our labours in the Earth bring forth increase.254

Winstanleys vision looked backward to a mythical past when everyone had an equal share before
god, but most importantly he looked forward to a future when everyone would fully enjoy the fruits of
the earth.
Yet the final outcome of the English Revolution was far from this ideal. Any hope for radical
agrarian change ended with the defeat of the Levellers and the Diggers. Despite continued protests,
parliament passed legislation that protected the rights and interests of the landowners. Laws were
introduced that allowed further drainage of the fens, protected deer from poachers and restricted the
right to gather fuel from woodland. Parliamentary Acts in 1656 and 1660 left feudal copyhold
tenure in place. In this context, victory over the king was also a defeat for the common people.
Cromwell himself went from protecting commoners against the fen-drainers to a landowner willing to
impose the cost of draining further fens on local inhabitants, gaining 200 acres from the work.255
The beheading of Charles I in January 1649 was the symbolic expression of the defeat of the old
order. In England, Cromwell had been able to drive through the most radical change by relying on a
larger group of those who had an interest in creating a new order, best epitomised by the New Model
Army. This meant, in the words of one author, the world made safe for capitalism.256 Freed from the
legal and political restrictions of the old feudal order, the merchants and landowners who had helped
overthrow Charles I could accelerate the move towards capitalist methods of agriculture and
manufacturing.
This breakthrough was not automatic. Elsewhere in Europe similar conflicts sometimes ended with
the interests of the new order on top, but not always. Nor did they always leave the country in a state
where further economic development would be possible. Germany, for instance, was shattered by the
Thirty Years War. After the wars end in 1648 the victorious princes ruled a loose collection of
kingdoms, mutually hostile and suffering economic devastation. In contrast the Dutch Revolt, spanning
some 80 years up to the mid-17th century, ended with the victors devoted to governing using new
capitalist methods.
By the 16th and 17th centuries other parts of the world had reached a similar level of development
to that of Europe. Empires in India and China had technology and urban development on a similar or
more advanced level to that of Europe. Chris Harman writes:
These empires were not characterised by the economic backwardness in comparison with Europe which was their feature by the
late 19th century. Some of the technical advances which had propelled Europe from the old feudalism of the 10th century to the
very different societies of the 16th century could be found in all of them. They all used firearms of some sort These societies
borrowed building techniques and craft skills from one another so that, for instance, craftsmen from across Asia and Europe
worked on the construction of the Taj Mahal In all of them agriculture and diet began to change considerably with the spread of
new domesticated plants from the Americas.257

In terms of urbanisation, Asia was far ahead of Europe. Many cities were larger than European
ones until 18th century London. One estimate is that 22 percent of Japans population lived in cities
compared to 10 to 15 percent in Western Europe.258
China in the 16th century was experiencing a new age. There were new technologies in
agriculture, for ploughing, irrigation and improving the soil (and Chinese ploughs were far in advance
of European ones at this time).259 There were new developments for the manufacture of silk and cotton

on a large-scale, and until the invention of the spinning jenny and the flying shuttle in the early 18th
century European textile machinery was not significantly more advanced than in China.260 In the first
part of the 17th century there were numerous scientific and technical works published, as well as an
expansion of literature and the theatre for those in the cities.261
In rural areas peasants were increasingly paying money rents instead of being obliged to work for
landlords. As the peasantry became more prosperous, many were liable for government taxes.
Agriculture itself was beginning to produce commercial crops, such as cotton and tobacco. Chinese
production was, as in Europe, mostly concentrated in small workshops, but some of these grew to
employ hundreds and sometimes thousands of workers; for instance at the end of the 16th century
there were 50,000 workers in 30 paper factories in Kiangsi.262 Some of the goods produced in these
workplaces were destined for export around the globe.
Unlike in England though, despite economic and social crisis in the early 17th century, the new
merchant classes who based their wealth on workshops and manufacturing did not push for a
transformation of society in their own interests. Chinese society was rigidly organised by a
bureaucracy that wanted to limit the growing economic strength of the merchants. Earlier we saw how
the Ming dynasty had banned further voyages by Zheng He to try to limit overseas trade. The
bureaucracy itself was an enormous economic burden on the country. Under Emperor Wanli, for
instance, there were 45 princes of the first rank, each receiving incomes equal to 600 tons of grain a
year, and 23,000 nobles of lesser rank.263
At the bottom of Chinese society, growing protest movements arose in the face of economic
hardship. These often involved workers employed in the new industries, such as mining. Peasant
rebellions also took place in the 1630s. But the merchants and trading classes were too closely tied to
the state to be willing to move against the old order. The Ming Dynasty collapsed in 1644, the same
year that Cromwell defeated Charles I at Marston Moor. While it took only a few years for order to
be re-established under a new dynasty, the underlying weaknesses in Chinas economy and society
remained unsolved and China remained essentially a pre-capitalist society until the arrival of
Western armies and gunboats in the 19th century.
In India similar processes were taking place. By the late 16th century the city of Vijayanagara was
larger and more populous than Rome and contained 100,000 houses, from which we may infer that
its population was at least half a million.264 The majority of the population lived in small villages
with the peasants selling their crops to pay land taxes. As a result of this taxation, the Indian peasant
had just enough to live on, with no reserves to protect against famine. Despite this, it seems that the
average peasant had more to eat than his European counterpart and Mogul India had for about a
century and a half a standard of living roughly comparable with that of contemporary Europe.265 The
state was able to support the towns and cities of the empire, overseeing a great expansion of trade and
craft production. The main industry was cotton, exported to Europe and the Far East. India also
exported textiles, indigo, saltpetre and spices.
The Indian peasantry received little or no benefit from the growth in the urban economy or trade
and this unequal relationship led to the stagnation and eventual collapse of the peasant economy. In
turn this fuelled the decline of the urban economy. Agra, a city formerly of 650,000, was described as
deserted after 1712.
The peasants eventually rebelled against their appalling poverty. These revolts could involve tens
of thousands and were often violently put down. The merchants and artisans did not play a major role

in the revolts. As Chris Harman explains, the old society was in crisis, but the bourgeoisie was not
ready to play an independent role in fighting to transform it.266 As the Indian historian Irfan Habib
puts it, Thus was the Mogul Empire destroyed. No new order was, or could be, created from the
force ranged against it The gates were open to endless rapine, anarchy and foreign conquest.267
In Japan a society had developed with many similarities to European feudalism. It was heavily
influenced by Chinese culture and science, but lacked a powerful centralised state. The rise of the
Tokugawa family created the figure of the Shogun in the early 17th century. Other Japanese lords
were forced to pay homage to the Shoguns, who were the real power in Japanese society. They
forbade overseas trade, banned foreign books and repressed internal opponents.
A merchant class and a money economy developed, with some similarities to those in western
Europe during the Renaissance period.268 The arrival of the American Navy in 1853 helped create a
social crisis that led to the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Sections of the old feudal order restored the
emperor, but as the head of a government that would introduce capitalism and enable the Japanese
ruling class to withstand the threat from external capitalist powers. Rather than individual lords
benefiting from the exploitation of the peasants, the new state collected this income and used it to
create new industries, handing them over to merchants once they were fully formed. Chris Harman
notes that what happened in Japan demonstrated that the state could substitute for an absent industrial
capitalist class when it came to building industry and enforcing the new capitalist forms of work.269
Most of the world would go on to follow the Japanese path to capitalism, led by the old state, rather
than the English or French experience of revolutions led by the middling sort or the bourgeoisie
against the old order.
In the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels discussed how capitalism:
must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere [The bourgeoisie] compels all nations, on pain of
extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, ie, to
become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.270

Capitalism reshaped the political and economic worlds, but it also transformed the natural world.
Part two of this book explores that change and its consequences.

Chapter 8

Historical change

In the last chapter we looked at how the old feudal order was broken by revolutionary force. In its
place a new economic system developed based on a capitalist mode of production. In time capitalism
spread across the globe. The profound consequences for the relationship between the natural world
and the new capitalist society will be discussed in later chapters. Before we examine this I want to
discuss the process of historical change itself.
The earliest concept of history is that historical events are the result of the actions of great
individuals, exemplified by the king lists that frequently appear in ancient societies. These lists of
rulers are designed to justify the position of the current monarch by placing them as part of an
unbroken bloodline beginning with a creation myth, or a famous mythical figure. One Maya monument
at the royal city of Piedras Negras, now in north west Guatemala, celebrates the citys founder who
was supposed to have lived in 4691 BCE, a time when there were not even farming communities,
much less kingdoms in the Maya Lowlands.271
Similar king lists exist from throughout the ancient world. They are a crude way of looking at
historical change and they represent a view of history in which the mass of the population have little
input. Few historians today would reduce history to the actions of kings and queens, but the role of the
individual in history, a great general, politician or dictator, is often elevated above the wider role of
the mass of the population.
Another view of history is of inevitable progress with contemporary society sitting at the top of a
hierarchy of earlier historical epochs. History thus is just a sequence of new ideas or technologies
replacing existing ones. Viewed in this way, the history of agriculture here might be summarised as
hunter-gathering gave way to slash and burn cultivation, which led to agriculture with the hoe and
spade, then the ard, followed by the plough and finally the tractor and combine harvester. Politically
this tends to indicate a justification for the contemporary status quo, seeing the world as it is as the
pinnacle of human endeavour.
Looking at the past in this way obscures the fact that history is not a story of gradual, inevitable
advance. We have seen how civilisations rise and fail, sometimes stagnate, or perhaps find
equilibrium, becoming fixed in particular ways of living for generation upon generation. Modern
agriculture did not simply replace older forms; they often coexist side by side. As we have seen,
agriculture with the Roman plough continued in some parts of Europe until the 19th century, while
elsewhere mechanised equipment was being used.
Nature too has a history. Plants and animals have evolved, grown and gone extinct. Ice Ages have
come and gone. Climate has varied. The Earths surface has changed over eons. All these factors
have had their impacts, and continue to do so, on human history.
Archaeologists can excavate ruins, academics can examine old documents in archives and
anthropologists can observe humans in their modern environment and attempt to understand past

societies. But history is more than the sum of these things.

Human history cannot be reduced down to any one particular moment. The study of how Maya
society organised itself at 800 CE for instance, is the examination of a particular human culture at its
apogee. But to limit the study of Mayan civilisation to this moment would be to ignore the rise and
then the decline and transformation of the civilisation. As we have seen, the decline of the classic
Maya civilisation cannot solely be understood as due to external factors, in this case environmental
changes. Such factors interplay with the specific social and cultural aspects of the existing society
without taking all of these things into account we cannot hope to understand the complex process of
historical transformation. History is best understood as the process of change.
Historical materialism
Karl Marxs view of history avoids the trap of trying to isolate a particular historical point from
preceding history or contemporary factors. His materialist conception of history attempts to explain
the general patterns and experience of history by basing itself on the material realities of human
society. Marx argues that there is a pattern to history, but it is not the story of great individuals,
brilliant ideas or inevitable progress. For Marx history is the pattern of social change that arises from
the actions of men and women, but not in circumstances of their own choosing.
Engels summed up the basis for Marxs theory of history:
Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that
mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc; that therefore
the production of the immediate material means, and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people
or during a given epoch, form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on
religion, of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they must, therefore, be explained, instead of vice
versa, as had hitherto been the case.272

For Marx the fundamental condition of all history was that before different humans can build
cathedrals or pyramids, create laws and legal institutions, or new technologies, they first of all must
find ways of obtaining the basic necessities of life. Marx argues that the particular economic
organisation of human society, the way that society gets these basic necessities, determines the nature
of the society that can be built up on it.
What distinguishes humans is their ability to consciously shape the natural world through their
conscious labour. The labour process is the:
appropriation of what exists in nature for the requirements of man. It is the universal condition for the metabolic interaction
between man and nature, the everlasting, nature-imposed condition of human existence common to all forms of society in which
human beings live.273

As writer Jonathan Hughes comments, since the labour process involves the appropriation of
non-human nature to satisfy human needs, Marxs assertion of its transhistorical necessity can be seen
to imply the existential dependence of humans upon non-human nature.274 This is reinforced by
Marxs assertion that labour is a natural condition of human existence, a condition of material
interchange between man and nature, quite independent of the form of society.275 This has important
ramifications for those who wish to see a sustainable society of some sort in the future, for it means
that in such a society humans will continue to further alter the world around them through the
productive process.
At any point in history humans have all sorts of tools, knowledge and resources that contribute to

the production of our material needs. Marx and Engels termed these the forces of production. The
forces of production develop through time, as humans invent new processes and improve existing
tools. In turn this development may transform human society. One example of this is how the changes
to agricultural practices enabled communities to sustain larger populations.
The productive process has several parts that impact upon the natural world. It is dependent on
naturally given raw materials and upon naturally given instruments of production. The latter may
include objects such as stones used as tools in primitive labour processes; tools and machines
manufactured out of natural materials; and even the earth itself which serves as an instrument of
labour in agriculture.276 The productive process also requires the natural systems, physical,
biological and climatic, upon which production depends.277
Because the productive process changes nature and can have detrimental impacts (such as
pollution) upon the wider natural world, the development of the productive forces over time can
increase the amount of environmental degradation. Some argue that the development of technology in
particular inevitably leads to greater and greater amounts of environmental destruction. For instance,
in a 1991 article entitled The Ecological Challenge to Marxism Reiner Grundmann writes:
Mankind in its earliest stages, with primitive technology, could not affect its environment in the same way as mankind can today:
the axe and fire could not, even under conditions of most careless use, cause dangers which were in the least comparable to
present dangers which arise out of the use of nuclear or chemical technology.278

While there is some truth in Grundmanns statement, there are also dangers. It assumes, for
instance, that all technological development will worsen societys environmental impact. More
importantly, it ignores the fact that the real problem is not technology, but the way that technology is
used. As we will see in a later chapter, the scale of the environmental problems caused by capitalism
is not simply to do with technology, nor just because capitalism is a world-wide system, but is rooted
in the particular way that production is organised for profit. In addition, the productive forces of
society should not be reduced down to technology. They also include the skills and knowledge of how
to use technology, so their development also includes the potential to develop less environmentally
damaging methods of production.
Production does not take place through individuals acting alone; it is a social process. There are
cooperation and coordination and there are wider social relationships between all those people in a
particular society that determine how production takes place and how the products of the process are
distributed. These human interactions are known as the social relations of production. Karl Marx
writes:
definite social relations are just as much produced by men as linen, flax, etc. Social relations are closely bound up with productive
forces. In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in
changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations.279

So the social relationships that develop through organising production in a particular way within
society determine the wider nature of that society. For Marx the history of society is the history of the
changes in the way that humans have organised production, and in turn, this means it is also a history
of the changes in the way that humans have transformed the natural world around them. For this reason
Marxs concept of history is particularly useful for any study of the ecological impact of human
society.
Changing the way production takes place in society changes the wider social relations too. We
saw this in the case of the Montagnais Indians. The arrival of European fur traders forced a change in

Montagnais society from a semi-nomadic life of hunting and gathering to one where individual
property began to dominate and production was for exchange, not use. This in turn changed all the
social relationships within society. For the first time men became the dominant producers, changing
the relations between the sexes. Permanent leaders arose and property ownership became more and
more important.
The relations of production might simply be the way that hunter-gatherer communities organise
their lives to ensure there is enough food to eat. But with the development of class divisions in human
society the relations of production have exploitation at their heart. One group in society, the ruling
class, lives off the surplus produced by the majority. Class societies themselves vary through history,
from slave owning societies like those in Ancient Rome and Greece to feudal relations between lord
and peasant, to the capitalists and workers. Marx called these different forms of society modes of
production.
The way production is organised is not the only determining factor in history. Marx recognised that
ideas, politics, legal relations and the state also play a role. These he termed a superstructure that
arose out of the economic base, taking different forms depending on the nature of the production. In a
famous passage in the preface to his A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy Marx
writes that:
In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely
relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these
relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political
superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions
the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but
their social existence that determines their consciousness.280

So along with a particular way of organising society arises a set of ideas. Thus the transformation
of society from one mode of production to another involves not just revolutionary changes in
production, but changes in the ideas of society.
Class struggle
With the division of society into classes, the exploiter and the exploited, comes a struggle between
these classes for their interests. This is why Marx and Engels argued in the Communist Manifesto:
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf,
guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an
uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large,
or in the common ruin of the contending classes.281

The particular relations of production at different moments in history reflect a particular stage in
the development of the forces of production. And central to this is the particular way that the surplus
is extracted from the producer.
But because the social relations within society are closely bound up with productive forces this
means that the productive forces in society can at times hold back further development of that society.
As we have seen with the tumult of 17th century Europe, the further development of the productive
forces can require a change or a revolution in social relations. Again Marx sums this up:
At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of
production orthis merely expresses the same thing in legal termswith the property relations within the framework of which

they have operated hitherto. From these forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then
begins an era of social revolution.282

For such changes to happen there has to be a group in society interested in changing them. The
enclosure acts were forced upon the people of rural Britain because sections of the ruling class
needed changes to land ownership to develop their own interests. But such changes are not
necessarily automatic. There are plenty of examples in history where those at the top of society have
seen fit to resist change as it threatens their own position. In part this inertia arises because the
dominant ideas in society serve to justify and protect the position of the ruling class. They are also
supported by guards, soldiers or police who help to prevent other forces in society challenging the
status quo.
So even when technological development or the increase in scientific knowledge has created the
potential to increase the productive forces this does not automatically occur. What is important is
whether the dominant social relations in society have an interest in encouraging the process of
development.
At any point in history there are contradictions within the dominant mode of production. These
reflect the differing interests of the competing classes in society, so times of social crisis occur when
the developing forces of production clash with the interests of those at the top of society who are
trying to maintain their position.
This means that the move from one mode of production to another is not simply a gradual process,
but requires revolutionary change. There may be gradual changes that take place within a system,
culminating in much larger and more profound change. Chris Harman describes the way that:
small changes in the forces of production lead to small, cumulative changes in the social relationsuntil these challenge the wider
relations of society For instance, an increase in the number of journeymen working for the average master craftsman in a
medieval city is not a change in property relations. But it does change the social relations in the town in a way which may have
very important implications.283

The gradual changes going on within a society represent new and growing forces. Again, as
Harman puts it:
Any growth of the productive forces, however slow and piecemeal, leads to a corresponding change in the objective weight of the
different classes in society. And some ways of developing the productive forces lead to qualitative changes, to new ways of
extracting a surplus, to the embryos of new exploiting and exploited classes.284

For these new classes to break through and become the dominant forms of organising society there
must be a forcible confrontation between the old ruling class and those representing the new interests.
This, for instance, is what happened with the break between feudalism and capitalism, the
revolutionary conflicts between the old and the new order. The victory of one class or the other
determines whether society moves forward or regresses.
This is most obviously seen during the English Revolution discussed earlier. For the new evolving
bourgeois class to be successful, it had to defeat the old feudal aristocracy. This required the
mobilisation of large numbers of people to defeat the kings armies. Once this victory was achieved,
capitalism was free to develop unrestricted by the old order.
Capitalism is a system based on wage labour. Wage labour had begun and developed under
feudalism, but for it to become the dominant way of organising society required those who had an
interest in exploiting labour to break the hold of the old order. For this to be successful there had to
be a corresponding change in concepts of ownership. Laws governing access and rights to use
waterways, forests and natural land were transformed. In the next chapter we will look at how

these processes were completed after the great European revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries
and how we reached the modern agricultural world we see today.

Chapter 9

The development of modern agriculture

The law locks up the man or woman

Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from off the goose.
The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine.
The poor and wretched dont escape
If they conspire the law to break;
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law.
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back.
Anonymous, 18th century protest against English enclosures285

The food crisis that shook the world between 2006 and 2008 brought home to millions of people the
problems of modern agriculture. Rapid price increases for basic foodstuffs meant that millions around
the globe found themselves unable to afford to eat. Between those two dates the prices of staple foods
such as corn, rice, wheat, soybeans and vegetable oils rose dramatically. In a few short months at the
end of 2006 the price of corn rose 50 percent. In 2008 food prices were double those of the previous
year. The millions who already went hungry were suddenly joined by millions more. 75 million
people were classed as hungry; a further 125 million were suddenly pushed into extreme poverty.286
In 2007 footage of Tortilla Riots flashed across the world as tens of thousands of Mexicans
protested against enormous increases of 60 percent in the cost of corn, which comes from US farms.
According to the Financial Times it was only because food prices fell back to a lower level that the
Mexican riots did not turn into a popular uprising.287 But the January 2007 riots were only the first in
a long line of protests. Demonstrations took place in Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal, Indonesia,
Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Yemen, Egypt, Haiti and a further 20 countries. 288 Food prices did fallby
May 2010 the costs of wheat and maize were approximately what they had been three years
previouslybut since then prices have risen significantly. The United Nations Food and Agricultural
Organisation annual Food Price Index in the years 2011 to 2013 was higher than in 2008.
But if we look closer at the list of countries that experienced riots over price rises we see
something noteworthy. These are not countries without agriculture. It was in Mexico for instance,
where up to 70,000 people protested and rioted, that maize was first domesticated. For centuries the
country had produced enough maize to feed its population. Mexico had been a net food exporter in the
1970s and in the early 1990s, but by the end of the first decade of the 21st century it was dependent
on imported US corn.289 Similarly Egypt was once the breadbasket of the ancient world. But now,

according to the Financial Times, it imports nearly all its meat, all its wood, and all its grains,
including most of the fava beans used for making foul, a staple food.290 Valuable agricultural land is
no longer used to produce food for hungry Egyptians; instead it is given over to the production of
export crops for European markets, including fruit, vegetables and flowers.
In 2008 among Senegals top 20 exports were foods such as groundnut oil, wheat, beans,
watermelons and tomatoes. Other Senegalese agricultural products exported included tobacco, cotton,
molasses and cattle hides. In the same year Indonesias biggest export was 14.3 million tonnes of
palm oil almost all which was destined for agrofuels for the US and European markets. But the
country also exported $1.8 billion of coffee, $855 million of cocoa and $159 million of tea.291
Here is the contradiction. Today, in some of the poorest countries in the world, as people starve,
food is exported out of the country. Why is land that could be used to grow food to fill hungry bellies
instead producing luxury products for countries thousands of miles away?
Agriculture in the modern world is an enormous contradiction. Some 925 million people are
classed as undernourished by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation. 292 This means
they go hungry almost every single day. Thirty percent of the worlds population are anaemic,
principally because of iron deficiencies in their diet. Most of the worlds hungry live in the
developing world, but even in the richest countries, millions of the poorest suffer from lack of food.
Thirty six million Americans live in food insecurity, meaning they have difficulty meeting basic food
needs; 17 percent of US children under five are at high risk of developmental damage because of
malnutrition.
The world is able to produce enough food so that nobody need starve, yet millions go hungry. At
the height of the food price crisis of 2006 to 2008 more food was produced than was needed to feed
the worlds population at current levels of demand. Over the last 20 years food production has grown
by 2 percent every year, outstripping population growth.293
The total agricultural population of the world is around three billion; of these 1.3 billion actually
work on the land. There are only 28 million tractors in the world, which means that the majority of the
worlds farmers have never used one. The worlds agriculture, in terms of numbers of people, is still
very much based on the labour of animals and humans. Despite technological advances since the
Second World War, despite the Green Revolution,* 400 million people grow crops to feed a further
one billion using only manual tools. No fertiliser, no tractors, no animals and no pesticides. 294 They
farm as generations have farmed before themlong hours of hard manual labour.
To understand these conundrums we have to look at the political and economic interests that have
dominated the globe over the last few generations; in particular the subjugation of the poorest parts of
the world to the interests of the richest nations. Organisations like the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) have in the decades since the end of the Second World War
implemented a set of policies that, in the words of Walden Bello, have had the broader aim of
accelerating the capitalist transformation of the countryside.295
These changes are not recent, however. The transformation of agrarian practice began in England
in the 16th and 17th centuries with the enclosure of land and the expulsion of the peasantry. Looking
in more detail at those processes will help us better understand how we arrived at modern
agriculture.

Changes to the land

At the beginning of the 19th century agriculture was still Britains single most important industry. As
late as 1811 agriculture, forestry and fishing contributed over one-third of the gross national
productand it was the state of the harvest which was still the most significant factor in determining
change in the national income between one year and the next.296 Science and technology were
becoming part of everyday life for farmers. It was a time of innovation, of attempts to introduce
science into agriculture. Model farms were designed and built based on the most modern of ideas.
Agricultural societies were formed and journals published to promote the latest innovations.
Selective breeding was introduced during this period to improve livestock. Animals grew larger,
produced more milk, more wool, and could pull heavier loads.
In 1701 Jethro Tull invented the seed drill, a machine to spread seeds evenly, though it did not
become popularly accepted until the 1730s. Around the same time iron ploughs became widely used.
In 1730 the Rotherham plough was patented, introducing a stronger, triangular design which reduced
the weight. Innovation followed innovation in 18th century agriculture, but the spread of technology
was slow and uneven: some Norfolk ploughs had iron-plated mould-boards by 1721 and some Essex
ploughs by 1756. However, plating occurred much later in the more backward areas of England and
wooden mould-boards were still in use in some places in the 1820s.297 Farmers and agricultural
workers were no longer restricted in their movements like their medieval forebears, but they still
rarely travelled more than ten miles from their place of birth. The adoption of new forms of
technology like improved ploughs occurred because farmers saw them used by neighbours in nearby
villages.
Technological innovation did not stem from a single centre. One census for the village of
Cardington in Bedfordshire shows that in 1782 half the population were agricultural workers and
their families; a quarter of the population were tradesmen or craftsmen, such as blacksmiths,
carpenters, wheelwrights, butchers and bakers. In 1770 almost all ploughs were made by such
craftsmen in the local village. It is these craftsmen who would have come up with the innovations that
gradually spread around the neighbouring villages.298
Another big change to agriculture in these years was the switch to farming without fallowing. The
introduction of new crops like turnips meant that fields did not need to be left empty for their nutrients
to be renewed. All of these innovations meant greater efficiency and thus enormously more food able
to be produced.
Yet this agricultural revolution took centuries to spread across Europe. Associated with it were
major social, political and economic changes that transformed the countryside.
Whole regions of eastern and southern Europe remained stuck with old farming practices until
quite recently. As the agricultural historians Mazoyer and Roudart point out, the reason for not
introducing these improved farming practices was not technical: Rotations without fallowing were
known in Europe several centuries before the development of the first agricultural revolution.299 Just
as it took time for new ploughing technology to spread throughout villages, new agricultural practices
were slow to disseminate.
One of the biggest barriers to change barriers was the existing rights of those who already lived,
worked and farmed the rural landscapein particular, the right of common use of land. Common land
was essential to rural life. Access to forests or waterways meant that those living in the countryside
could get firewood or building materials, or supplement the meagre diets obtained from small

holdings. Common grazing was also an important part of rural life, particularly for the poorest
farmers. In many places farmers might have the right to grow their crops on their land, but after the
harvest those lands returned to common use. For those with little land of their own these grazing
rights were essential to ensure that their animals could feed. There was a mutual interest because the
animals helped manure the soil for the following years crops.
But these arrangements had their limitations. Farmers could not plant crops at any time they liked
because during a fallow period the seedlings would be destroyed by grazing animals. Thus the
landowner might want to try to protect his own fields from common use by excluding others rights of
access. This enclosure of land, involving the digging of ditches, laying of hedges or building of fences
would frequently meet with resistance from those excluded.
Enclosure had been a fact of life from early in British history. Francis Pryor argues that it was
accelerated by the wetter climate of the Little Ice Age which encouraged a switch from arable to
pasture. Early enclosures were often the result of neighbouring landowners, who felled woodland
and enclosed common land to provide large pastures for sheep. The resentment at the rich who
began to reshape the rural landscape in their own interests is summed up by William Tyndale, who
wrote in 1525, Let them not take in their common neither make park nor pasture, for god gave the
earth unto men to inhabit and not sheep and wild deer.300 This resentment often broke out into open
resistance at the changes being forced on ordinary people.
The enclosure of land was much more complicated than simply changing ownership. Those who
drove the enclosure movement forward wanted to change what was meant by ownership of the land.
Rather than natural resources being available for use by anyone who needed them, they should only be
used by those who owned the land. This transformation was symbolised by the fence or the hedge
preventing access to land, woods or forests.
Whereas in the past the rural worker might have snared a couple of rabbits to feed his family, this
was now criminalised. The British parliament, dominated by wealthy landowners, seemed to delight
in passing laws to restrict the hunting of game. In the first 60 years of the 18th century there were
only six acts directed against the ordinary poaching of small game. In the next 56 years 33 such acts
reached the statute book.301
There were already restrictions on who could hunt and these were very much class restrictions
an act passed in 1671 prevented the hunting of game by anyone who did not own land worth 100 a
year, or various other property qualifications. While this effectively made hunting available to only
the wealthiest in rural society, there were many loopholes. Later acts closed these and introduced
vicious fines and punishments for poaching. A further act passed in 1770 punished night-time
poaching with up to six months imprisonment for a first offence. Being caught twice meant up to a
years imprisonment and a whipping. Later sentences included transportation and hard labour.
Increasingly poachers formed gangs to protect themselves from the gamekeepers, and
confrontations between gamekeepers and poachers reached warlike proportions with frequent
fatalities. The enormous scale of the criminalisation of poaching is reflected in the number of
prosecutions.
In the 1840s as many as one in four convictions in Suffolk were for poaching offences and as late
as the 1880s some 20 percent of cases heard in parts of rural Oxfordshire were for similar crimes. In
1843, 7.5 percent of all convictions nationally were made under the game laws; in 1870 there were
10,580 prosecutions and the number of offences peaked at just below 12,400 in 1877.302 Agricultural

historian Pamela Horn argues that it was over the question of the hunting of game that the greatest illfeeling and friction arose between rich and poor in rural society.303
The acts of law created simmering discontent. Landowners expected their tenants to protect and
encourage game animals ready for the hunting season. No matter that partridges and pheasants might
eat the corn growing in the fields and ruin the crops; it made them all the plumper when it came to the
hunting season. More than one tenant farmer must have secretly hunted game or destroyed nest sites of
birds he saw as a pest.
For those agricultural workers for whom the occasional rabbit or bird supplemented their diet,
game laws were more than an inconvenience: they were a major restriction. The leader of the
National Agricultural Labourers Union, Joseph Arch, helped lead the Revolt of the Fields in the
early 1870s, and in 1873 he gave evidence to a parliamentary select committee on the game laws:
The plain truth is, we labourers do not believe hares and rabbits belong to any individual, not any more than thrushes and blackbirds
do To see hares and rabbits running across his path is a very great temptation to many a man who has a family to feedand so
he may kill a hare or a rabbit when it passes his way, because his wages are inadequate to meet the demands on them, or from
dire necessity, or just because he likes jugged hare as well as anybody else.304

The Highland Clearances

In 1792 Ross-Shire in northern Scotland rose in insurrection against the introduction of sheep and
destruction of their livelihoods. In July of that year some 200 people gathered in Brea and brought
together all the flocks of sheep from the surrounding parishes. For eight days they drove up to 10,000
sheep away from their lands. The local landowners united against the common people to secure
property, restore order and stamp out the suspicion of sedition. 305 The rebels were clear on what
they wanted: a reduction of rentsand increased availability of arable land so that the price of
bread could be reduced for the sake of the poorand an end to the enclosure of common pastures.
Eventually local landowners with the support of the military led an attack on the rebels and snuffed
out the uprising.306 The Ross-Shire insurrection shocked the establishment and demonstrated the anger
of ordinary people, impoverished by the economic changes taking place in the Highlands of Scotland.
The introduction of sheep to the Highlands was part of a much wider transformation of the rural
economy towards capitalist agriculture. The process had many of the same characteristics as the
enclosure of land in England, but it was more drawn out, more vicious and left a historical legacy of
anger and class hatred.
In the 1700s Scottish landowners were finding themselves increasingly hampered by a growing
population and escalating debts. For the landlords the blame lay with the small tenants, the crofters,
whose way of life they saw as a barrier to the further development of the land. The process of wiping
out their traditions was enormously destructive and it reshaped the rural landscape and ecology.
Up until the 1770s the Scottish Highlands were dominated by the clan system. The clans were
similar to the feudal system elsewhere in Europe, communities based around a powerful landowner
who collected rents and was owed commitments from his clan members.
The clans came under pressure through the 1700s. Increasingly the system was at odds with
developing capitalism. Following the failure of Charles Stuart to lead an insurrection with the help of
the Highland chiefs, the clan system began to disintegrate. The chieftains plight was summed up in
the early years of the 19th century by James Hogg, a lowland tourist and farmer, who complained
that he:

cannot endure to hear of a Highland chieftain selling his patrimonial property, the cause of which misfortune I always attribute to
the goodness of his heartunwilling to drive off the people who have so long looked to him as their protector, yet whose system of
farming cannot furnish them with the means of paying him one forth, and in some situations not more than a tenth of the value of
his lands.307

This vision of the paternalistic landowner, beset by debts and tenants who could not afford
adequate rents, was useful to the landowners. They claimed the mantel of the old clan chiefs, but did
not want to bear the burden of looking after the clan. Marx observed that to do this, the chiefs
transformed their nominal right to the land into a right of private property, and as this came up
against resistance on the part of their clansmen, they resolved to drive them out openly and by
force.308
As the system broke down, landowners tried to find ways of improving the economic viability of
their land. As in England, one of the key economic driving forces north of the border was the
Napoleonic Wars which broke out in 1793. From the early 1700s onwards rising cattle prices had led
a number of landlords to clear tenants from their land in order to introduce livestock. Prices
continued to increase throughout the wars, but were eclipsed by the rise of another commodity
wool. The French naval blockade of Britain meant imported Spanish wool was no longer available
and wartime prices inflated dramatically. At their peak in the early decades of the 19th century wool
prices were up to 400 times higher than just before the wars.309
Such opportunities proved irresistible to landlords. Clearing people from their land and replacing
them with sheep was one way to dramatically restore the declining fortunes of the estates. Eric
Richards, a historian of the clearances, described how the quiet march of the sheep led, over the
course of a century, to the forced removal of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children from
land their families had occupied for generations.310 These evictions took many forms. Sometimes
families were gradually forced out, through raising rents steadily till they were unaffordable or
constantly relocating them to increasingly marginal land. Others were forced out by armed men and
watched as their homes were burnt or demolished. Many ended up on the streets of Scotlands major
towns, reliant on charity. Thousands more found themselves on ships bound for the colonies facing an
unknown future.
The introduction of sheep required high levels of investment and for many landlords it was a
gamble. No mode of farming requires a greater capital to set it going properly, remarked one
agriculturist in 1795. Landowners saw the change purely in terms of the money they could make. One
contemporary expert on sheep farming, Sir John Sinclair, wrote that under sheep, the Highlands
would be six, if not ten times more valuable than under cattle.311 Sinclairs experiments with sheep
breeds were designed to maximise the profitability of the estates. So valuable were these sheep that
in one instance Sinclair shod a flock of Spanish Merino sheep in leather boots to protect them from
harm. Those former tenants forced off their land without shelter, food or prospect of work may well
have wondered at those who cared more for sheep than for people.
Sheep farming led to a transformation of the way that the Highland landscape was owned and used.
Eric Richards writes that as the clearances changed the tenantry; the ownership of the land itself was
also altering across the region.312 Instead of the landowner having to collect rent from dozens of
individual families, he now only needed to collect from a much smaller number of sheep farmers who
he hoped would be much more financially secure. The Island of Lewis illustrates the scale of the
transformation well. In 1800 an adviser to the landowner calculated that the entire population of the
island could be reduced to 150 shepherds and their families. A small number of others could be

employed gathering seaweed, but the remaining 10,000 people would have to leave.313
Many landowners tried to offer assistance to their former tenants, but such apparent kindness
masks the economic trap the landowners found themselves inthey faced bankruptcy unless the use
of the land was transformed. Some major landowners created grand improvement plans for their
estates to achieve this. The lands were to be reserved for sheep and a few shepherds. The tenantry
were to be pushed to the fringesworking in the kelp or fishing industries with a small amount of
land to farm. If they were unwilling or unable to do this, then the landlord might pay them to emigrate
to the colonies. Not surprisingly, the majority of these enterprises failed. For a people who had
farmed their own small plots of land for centuries a sudden conversion into seafarers and fisherman
was almost impossible and often the land found for them on the coast was inadequate to feed their
families. Refusal to agree to these changes was interpreted as resistance to change or laziness on the
part of the Highlanders by the landlords. The next step was forced eviction, aided by the law. John
Sinclair commented at the time that in no country in Europe are the rights of proprietors so well
defined, and so carefully protected, as in Scotland.314 In 1853 a radical newspaper, the Northern
Ensign, complained that the act which warrants forcible ejections is dated 1591foisted upon
Scotland when feudal barons and heritors ruled the roost in the Scottish Parliament.315
When tenants refused to be evicted, with stone-throwing crowds meeting officials and burning
their legal papers, the government would send policemen and troops to back up the rights of the
landowners.
The resistance to the clearances was rarely successful, though as public opinion shifted against the
landowners in the later part of the 19th century there were a number of successful rebellions that
forced landlords to give up on the clearance of villages.316
Discussion of the clearances often focuses on the inevitability of change. Some argue that the old
order was no longer viable and a new order needed to be createdso the clearances were a
necessary tragedy that could have been handled better. To look at it this way is to view the problem
only through the eyes of the landowning classes. They needed change because they wanted to keep
their own ancestral lands and the incomes they felt they had a right to. While they claimed these
rights, they saw no rights extending to the common people who lived on their estates. In 1853 Sir John
McNeil, the chairman of the Board of Supervision for the Relief of the Poor, commented that one
clearance was solely to recover possession of the land occupied by tenants who paid little or no
rent, for the purpose of letting it to tenants who would pay rent.317
This was put more bluntly by the county historian of Inverness in the 1890s, who said of those
evicted, that it was not to promote their comfort that they were sent away, but too often to satisfy the
greed of those who disposed of them, and in not a few instances they were evicted from lands fertile
enough to have sustained them in comparative comfort.318 So desperate were landlords to move
people that in one case the owner was prepared to pay ten times the annual rent to ensure his tenants
emigration to Canada.319
Yet as critics of the clearances pointed out, the same landowners who now talked about
overpopulation of the Highlands had encouraged immigration to their estates in better times. The new
sheep-based economy was not necessarily any more stable than the old one based on subsistence
farming. In a number of cases, areas that had been cleared for sheep were then cleared again for deer
when the economy went into downturn at the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
The sheep introduced onto the Balmoral estate in 1833, for instance, were replaced with deer in

1848.320 A later occupant of the estate, Queen Victoria, exemplified the attitudes of many landowners,
particularly those whose who purchased old bankrupt estates. They declared a romantic love of the
Highlands, influenced by poets and novelists like Sir Walter Scott, and set about reshaping them to fit
in with an imaginary landscape devoid of people.
The act of creating this landscape began with the eviction of thousands of families and the
introduction of cattle, followed by sheep. The backdrop to this was the breaking down of the old clan
order and the parcelling up of Scotland into private property. When, in many places, the sheep were
in turn cleared to introduce deer, the Scottish landscape was again reshaped. In 1848 Robert Somers
reported in the Times that:
In the Highlands, new forests are springing up like mushrooms From east to westfrom the neighbourhood of Aberdeen to the
crags of Obanyou have now a continuous line of forests Sheep were introduced to the glens which had been the seats of
communities of small farmers; and the latter were driven to seek subsistence on coarser and more sterile tracts of soil. Now deer
are supplanting sheep; and these are once more dispossessing the small tenants, who will necessarily be driven down upon still
coarser land and to more grinding penury. Deer-forests and the people cannot coexist. One or other of the two must yield The
clearance and dispersion of the people is pursued by the proprietors as a settled principle, as an agricultural necessity, just as trees
and brushwood are cleared from the wastes of America or Australia.321

This passage hints at the only alternative that the small tenants had. The forces ranged against them
were enormous and any alternative that existed to the improvement of estates through the clearance
of the tenantry could only have relied on the ability of the tenants themselves to resist the changes
or, as Somers might have put it, their refusal to yield.
The claim that the crofters had on the land was rarely recognised by anyone but those sympathetic
to their case. But as the clearances continued, so did the number of people prepared to speak out. The
introduction of the Crofters Act of 1880, which bestowed some rights on the crofters, was a belated
recognition of the legitimacy of their claim. Under the act, clearances were outlawed and some
crofters gained extraordinary security of tenure as well as a legal mechanism to arbitrate rents.322
While in no way perfect, the act was the result of a wave of resistance and organisation on behalf of
the people of the Highlands in the later part of the 19th century which even led to the election of
radical MPs from the Highland Land League.
But the act came too late for many tens of thousands who had suffered in the earlier clearances.
The Highlands of Scotland were very much at the periphery of the British economy. At the beginning
of the clearances the country was marked by an enormous difference between rich and poor. The
clearances took place to maintain this disparity of wealth and further concentrate land ownership into
a small number of hands. Even today in the Scottish Highlands and Islands fully half of the private
land, over 3.6 million acres, is owned by fewer than 100 landowners and three quarters of it is
owned by around 300.323
One of the great ironies of the clearances is the role that many of those evicted went on to play.
Scottish families evicted from the fringes of the British economy often found themselves at the
frontiers of the New World. In Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States the tragedy of
the Highland Clearances was repeated on an even larger scale as those who had lost their land in
Scotland founded farms and towns. In doing this they helped to kill, displace and evict many
aboriginal peoples from their own lands.
The assault on the commons

The enclosure of land, the Highland Clearances and the removal of access to common land were
about imposing capitalist relations on the countryside. It was the beginning of the process that led to
the establishment of modern industrial agriculture. It required the physical destruction of communities
and the transformation of legal rights. It fundamentally reshaped the countryside. Alongside this there
was a corresponding change in the attitudes of people towards the concept of land ownership.
On common land, whether forest or wetland, natural resources such as game, fruit or wood might
develop spontaneously, without human intervention. Cultivated land requires human action. As
Mazoyer and Roudart put it, viewed from this perspective, the private possession of land appears
first of all as a means to collect the fruits of labour invested there.324 Those who wanted to increase
their profit from labour on their fields had to remove anything that limited their ability to work the
land as they saw fit. Because common access to land by others for grazing reduced the farmers
ability to benefit from his own labour, common rights had to end. Putting up fences is the outward
expression of this changing economic relationship to the landscape. The richest peasants and
landowners benefited most from this. They had the money to build fences and plant hedges. They also
might own the equipment and livestock to properly exploit the new fields in the way that they wanted.
The poorest, in particular those with little or no land of their own, lost out.
The economic historian of England R H Tawney located changing ruling class attitudes towards
the land in wider changes towards the end of feudalism, even before the English Civil War. These
charges marked the transition from the mediaeval conception of land as the basis of political
functions and obligations to the modern view of it as an income-yielding investment. Landholding
tends, in short, to become commercialised.325
This process was not only taking place in the British Isles. Legal changes were being introduced
across Europe to remove rights that people had enjoyed for centuries, particularly in the case of rural
life. The young Karl Marxs early political development was shaped in part by the injustices he saw
with the introduction of laws which made it illegal to gather fallen wood for fuel or fruit and berries
from the forest. By removing this ancient right, the Prussian state was strengthening private property
and the rights of the rich. In 1842 Marx explained the process in an article in the Rheinische Zeitung,
the newspaper he edited, commenting on the parliamentary debate:
An urban deputy opposed the provision by which the gathering of bilberries and cranberries is also treated as theft. He spoke
primarily on behalf of the children of the poor, who pick these fruits to earn a trifling sum for their parents; an activity which has
been permitted by the owners since time immemorial and has given rise to a customary right of the children. This fact was
countered by another deputy, who remarked that in his area these berries have already become articles of commerce and are
dispatched to Holland by the barrel. In one locality, therefore, things have actually gone so far that a customary right of the poor
has been turned into a monopoly of the rich.326

The destruction of the commons had its ideological side as well. It is one thing forcing people off
the land with legislation or at the point of a bayonet, but unless justification can be found, it simply
looks like naked greed. One advocate of improved farming in the 18th century argued that access to
common land limited the economic and moral character of the villagers:
The possession of a cow or two, with a hog, and a few geese, naturally exalts the peasant, in his own conception, above his
brethren in the same rank of society. It inspires some degree of confidence in a property inadequate to his support. In sauntering
after his cattle, he acquires a habit of indolence. Quarter, half, and occasionally whole days are imperceptibly lost. Day-labour
becomes disgusting; the aversion increases by indulgence; and at length the sale of a half-fed calf, or hog, furnishes the means of
adding intemperance to idleness.327

These ideas had a long pedigree among the rich; So long as they may be permitted to live in such

idleness upon their stock of cattle they will bend themselves to no king of labour, wrote one
Elizabethan surveyor of cottagers living in Rockingham Forest, in Englands East Midlands.328
For the rich, common rights allowed peasants to have ideas above their station. They could keep
livestock that they had no right to be able to support, at least in the eyes of those who thought the poor
should labour all day long. For them, enclosure was about improving the lives of the peasantry,
ending their laziness and encouraging hard workincreasing the richs own wealth was of course a
happy consequence of this.
England had many hundreds of acres of waste and barren lands, and many thousands of idle
hands; if both these might be improved, England by Gods blessing would grow to be a richer
nation, wrote Samuel Hartlib in 1649. King James I went further; for him the draining and enclosure
of Sedgemoor in the early 17th century were a religious work.329
By the mid 1700s the impulse to switch from grain to wool was weakening, land becoming
scarcer, labour more abundant, while grain prices rose sharply. 330 Enclosures were now driven by
the desire to improve crop yieldsand the amount of profit to be made from the new agricultural
methods.
Enclosure meant different things in different parts of the British Isles. It is usually understood as
the conversion of common land and open fields into single farms. Clearly, in the case of open fields
that had been strip farmed this meant displacing all the individuals who had farmed those strips.
Enclosure might also mean the ploughing up of pasture previously used for sheep or cattle.331 Once the
land was enclosed the rich owners could set about making themselves even richer. The amount of
food grown did rise dramatically. Corn output increased from almost 15 million quarters * in 1750 to
19 million by 1800 and 25 million by 1820.332
Figures comparing open and enclosed parishes in Northamptonshire in 1794 and 1795 show that
enclosed farming gave improved yields of 7.3 percent for wheat, 15.1 percent for barley and 42.6
percent for oats.333 The geographical expansion of farming was also extensive. In addition to the
enclosure of common land, cultivation spread to hillsides and places which now seem utterly remote.
Writing in the 1960s one economic historian pointed out that abandoned Napoleonic era ploughing
equipment could still be found far up on the chalk downs and Dartmoor and out on the New Forest
heathsa long way away from contemporary fields.334
Despite this huge expansion of cultivation, during this time Britain went from being a grain
exporter to a net importer. The rural population was growing, with an increase in the number of
people working on the land, but the share of the total population working in agriculture dropped.
Agriculture in 1801 employed only about 35 percent of the work force as compared with 45 percent
three decades earlierbut it was not until the second half of the 19th century that rural depopulation
became a major force.335
The rural changes were not simply about improvements to agriculture. Enclosing common land and
forcing people from their homes was a fundamental part of the rise of capitalism. Karl Marx called
this process primitive accumulation, arguing that it produced the beginnings of the wealth the early
capitalists needed to invest to kick off the production cycle. It also created workers who were free
to enter the new factories. For Marx, primitive accumulation was nothing else than the historical
process of divorcing the producer from the means of production.336 Only by separating the rural
workers from their land could the labourer be freed up to sell his or her labour power to someone
else.

The displaced peasantry lost more than just their land; they lost any semblance of the economic
independence that they may once have had. The new agricultural methods often required more
workers to bring in the larger crops and more specialised jobs were created in the countryside. But
the loss of the right to keep animals on common land, hunt game or gather wood was a bitter blow.
Now, for the majority of the rural population, survival depended on wage labour. As William
Cobbett put it in 1806, a new rural world had been created with two classes of men, masters, and
abject dependants.337
Historian E P Thompson puts it even more starkly:
In village after village, enclosure destroyed the scratch-as-scratch-can subsistence economy of the poor. The cottager without
legal proof of rights was rarely compensated. The cottager who was able to establish his claim was left with a parcel of land
inadequate for subsistence and a disproportionate share of the very high enclosure cost. Enclosure (when all the sophistications are
allowed for) was a plain enough case of class robbery, played according to fair rules of property and law laid down by a parliament
of property-owners and lawyers.338

The implementation of the law may have been legal and proper. Yet it could make no allowance
for ancient rights of access, ownership or tenancy which might prove to be invalid at law although
they were endorsed by the collective memory of the community.339
The landscape itself was reshaped by the enclosure process. In England the sudden erection of
hedges and fences changed the way the countryside was used. Instead of crossing open fields to reach
your destination, roads now had to be used. The countryside of private fields separated by hedges
which we know today is the product of this time. Hedges from the period of the Enclosure Acts are
noticeable for their uniformity, usually planted in straight lines with only one species of tree. 340 The
countryside was being parcelled up in a regimented and controlled way. Wood from the trees planted
within hedges could also provide a useful cash crop for the future. These changes happened very
quickly, as a historian of the British landscape summarises:
A villager who had played in the open fields as a boy, or watched the sheep in the common pastures, would have lived to see the
modern landscape of his parish completed and matured, the roads all made, the hedgerow trees full grown, and new farmhouses
built out in the fields where none had ever been before. Everything was different: hardly a landmark of the old parish would have
remained. Perhaps here and there the old man would have found some evidences of the former world: the windmill of his younger
days still standing in the corner of a new field, though now derelict and forlorn, or the traces of the former strips in the ridge-andfurrow of the new pastures, but not much else.341

Before the 1750s enclosures were a result of agreements between landowners and were minor in
scale compared with what was to come. From 1750 onwards enclosure was the result of
parliamentary acts. Between 1761 and 1844 more than 2,500 acts dealt with more than four million
acres of open fields. As a direct result of the Napoleonic Wars and the need to expand agriculture, a
further three quarters of a million acres of waste land were enclosed between 1760 and 1801,
requiring another 500 acts.342
We have seen that during the early years of the English Civil War fences and hedges were torn
down as peasants took revenge on those landlords who had stolen their land. The enclosures of the
18th and 19th centuries also saw resistance, though the few examples of localised rebellion were the
exceptions rather than the rule.
In Otmoor in Oxfordshire, England, for example, enclosure was successfully resisted in 1801 and
1814-15, and while enclosure did eventually take place, as late as 1830 anti-enclosure feeling
remained strong enough to lead to rioting and the throwing down of fences.343 But by and large
enclosure took place with sullen acquiescence.

This seeming lack of resistance has to be understood in the context of the power and strength of
those arrayed against the peasantry. E P Thompson has pointed out the difficulties for those who
wanted to confront an alien culture and an alien power, particularly when most of those who faced
losing land and rights would have had little experience of the legal procedures, never mind the ability
to read and write.344 London was far away and travel expensive. Few could have taken up the battle
in the courts. What resistance there was tended to be more physical and if we only have details of
major confrontations with the state and its power, we can be sure that minor acts such as the
destruction of hedges and fences took place in many parts of England. Resistance to enclosure would
have been tempered by the role of the state in enforcing the enclosures. In 1799 anti-enclosure
struggles in Wilbarston, Northamptonshire, required two troops of yeomanry to be used. This use of
physical force was a consequence of government belief that enclosure must be driven through in the
national interest.345
Transforming producers into wage-labourers
The huge number of enclosure acts enforced a completely new set of property relations in the
countryside. As one agricultural labourer is said to have commented, Parliament may be tender of
property: all I know is that I had a cow and an Act of Parliament has taken it from me.346
Despite the growing output from newly enclosed lands this was a time of severe food shortages
and price rises. In part this was the result of war with France, as well as a series of bad harvests.
Parliament intervened with legislation to conserve grain stocks. The use of agricultural products for
non-food purposes was also banned. Other foods were encouraged; the potato was particularly
beloved as a way of feeding the poor, with seed potatoes being given to poor families in some parts
of the country to encourage their use. The starving poor were to be helped only if they were obedient
and accepted their lot: Prefer those poor who keep steady to their work and go constantly to church,
and give nothing to those who are idle, or riotous, or keep useless dogs, read one piece of advice in
1795.347
Those whose lands and villages were enclosed faced a grim future. On average rents doubled in
areas that had been enclosed.348 In Wiltshire farm rents went from between 15 and 40 a year to
between 100 and 400 after enclosure.349 The switch to seasonal wage-labour led to further
impoverishment as well as deliberate attempts by the wealthy to keep wages down. The war with
revolutionary France played its role too; E P Thompson identifies the general counter-revolutionary
tone of this time as being one factor in the general impoverishment of the rural labourer. 350 The poor,
who had been pushed off their land and lost their rights, were now rogues who would undermine
the national interest through their laziness and refusal to partake in wage-labour on the land.
By freeing the peasant from the chains binding them to the land a new working class was created,
free to sell their labour power to the industrial capitalists. But the process resulted in new chains that
bound the worker even more tightly. As Marx summarises:
The immediate producer, the worker, could dispose of his own person only after he had ceased to be bound to the soil, and ceased
to be the slave or serf of another personthe historical movement which changes the producers into wage-labourers appears, on
the one hand, as their emancipation from serfdom and from the fetters of the guilds But, on the other hand, these newly freed
men became sellers of themselves only after they had been robbed of all their own means of production, and all the guarantees of
existence afforded by the old feudal arrangements. And this history, the history of their expropriation, is written in the annals of
mankind in letters of blood and fire.351

The process was a brutal and violent one. Marx points out that conquest, enslavement, robbery,
murder, in short, force, play the greatest part in the creation of the new capitalist system.
For those who remained in the countryside, work as labourers on other peoples farms beckoned
as the only way to make a living. The landless workers who formerly would have produced food and
materials to clothe themselves on their own land now had to obtain these things at the market. So the
process of depriving the rural population of their land and forcing them into industry also helped
expand the market for the products of that industrialisation.352
While the enclosures pushed people from the land, there was no guarantee that they would find
work. The war years had been uneven for other, non-agricultural industries. International trade was
disrupted by blockades of European ports. In particular industries that had relied on trade with
France were badly disrupted. Some industry did well; clothing manufacturers underwent a minor
boom producing uniforms for the British Army. Where there were labour shortages, demand was
more likely for skilled workers. Skilled weavers were said to be scarcer than a jewel in Wiltshire,
but this was small solace for an unskilled labourer. 353 The transformation of industry from small
cottage-based units to large factories powered by steam was beginning. As the 18th century became
the 19th, these large-scale enterprises would be the destination of those displaced from the land.
Marx concluded:
The spoliation of the churchs property, the fraudulent alienation of the state domains, the theft of the common lands, the usurpation
of feudal and clan property and its transformation into modern private property under circumstances of ruthless terrorism, all these
things were just so many idyllic methods of primitive accumulation. They conquered the field for capitalist agriculture, incorporated
the soil into capital, and created for the urban industries the necessary supplies of free and rightless proletarians.354

The world after the Napoleonic Wars 355

Landowners and large farmers did very well out of the Napoleonic Wars. The high prices that
resulted from bad harvests and naval blockades were a boon for them. Yet by the end of the war
prices were dropping. The 1813 harvest was one of the most abundant in history and wheat prices
dropped by more than half compared with their peak the previous year. 356 With the end of the war on
the horizon and the prospect of cheap European imports of corn returning, landowners called for
restrictions on imports. In 1815 parliament passed the Corn Law. This was an attempt to protect
British agriculture from cheap imports. Under the law imported corn could only be sold when the
price of domestic corn reached a certain level. Even as the bill was passing through parliament
critics were already pointing out its inadequacies.
Despite the Corn Laws protective measures, the price of corn fell during years when harvests
were good. The collapse in prices was made worse by the demobilisation of military troops, some
400,000 of whom suddenly had to find work, and a general post-war depression in industry. 357 Taxes
remained at their wartime high levels, causing further difficulties and resentment.
After 1815 life in the countryside was difficult for farmers and labourers, debt stalked those who
had bought land and equipment during the boom years and many were forced to sell. Pamela Horn
points out that one consequence of this was that the number of farmers occupying their own holdings
fell. Because the land was often sold to larger landowners or the rising new gentry the consequence
was that divisions between landowners and those who worked the land increased.
Despite the depression, per-acre yields of wheat improved, rising by 16 percent between 1815-19
and 1832-36. During the same period the population of England rose by almost 4 million.358 This

improvement enabled a section of farmers to make profits despite the lower prices that cereals
fetched at the market. The introduction of agricultural innovations undermined those farms that did not
change their practices in part because they helped to drive market prices down still further. There
were also environmental factors that helped further the problems in the fields. The expansion of
cultivation during the Napoleonic Wars meant that soils that had been profitable during the war years
could no longer compete with more arable areas. These lighter soils benefited in particular from new
agricultural practices.
The boom that marked the war years was followed by a crash in prices, which had the effect of
increasing the tendencies towards capitalist agriculture across the country. Modern agricultural
methods increased grain yields dramatically and those unable to compete went out of business. For
the ordinary labourer this was a time of uncertaintyaverage wages fell from 12 to 15 shillings in
1814 to 9 to 10 shillings eight years later. Unemployment was highin some parishes in Sussex 60
percent of labourers were unemployed during the winter. Unemployment levels of 30 percent were
common elsewhere.359 A petition to parliament from Devon pointed out that the poor-houses were
filled with agricultural labourers deprived of their usual employment.
Many rural farmers and workers could not afford to pay their rents:
On the Bolton estate near Basingstoke tenant farmers were assisted during 1815-16 by the writing off of arrears of rent
elsewhere tenancies were surrendered. In Durham and Northumberland during the spring of 1816 76 farms, covering over 20,000
acres, were advertised to let In Cheshire even the cheesemakers were unable to pay their rents Prices of wool, cattle and
horses at the Chester fair were also reported to have fallen heavily.360

Despite the dire situation in the countryside expenditure on helping the poor was down a quarter in
1830 on the period 1815-20.361
Much of the anger at rural unemployment was directed against the introduction of agricultural
machines, which were blamed for the lack of work. Machine-breaking had taken place previously
during the Napoleonic Wars, when the Luddites smashed textile looms. With the growing rural
economic crisis, similar actions spread to the countryside as early as 1815 and continued into the
following year. The unrest returned in 1822 with more machine-breaking taking place in East
Anglia.362
Despite the fact that military force was used to suppress the movement, it seems that the riots
themselves had some effect. A number of parishes prohibited the use of threshing machines, and
labourers would tour villages to check farmers were not using the equipment. These early riots were
a taste of what was to come. Far more widespread rioting and protests took place in 1830.
A particularly bad winter at the end of 1829 and a poor harvest in 1830, together with news of a
revolutionary uprising across the Channel, created the situation for a general wave of rural anger.
Unemployment was an ever-present threat and concern for the future was certainly the driving force
behind what were to become known as the Swing Riots. The labourers often sent threatening letters to
figures in local establishment, signed Captain Swing.
In their history of the uprising Hobsbawm and Rud remark that rural workers:
must have faced the spring of 1830 with the memory of cold, hunger and unemployment, and the reflection that another winter like
the last was more than flesh and blood could bear. Fear of the winter was the cause given (together with low wages) for the
riots in Marden [Kent], and we can be quite certain that the men of Marden were not alone in their sentiments.363

Those who burnt the first threshing machine near Canterbury at the end of August probably had no
idea that their action would be the first of many over the coming months. Along with machine-

breaking, the rural workers tried a number of other tactics including arson; threatening (or Swing)
letters; wages meetings; attacks on justices and overseers; riotous assemblies to extract money or
provisions, or to enforce a reduction in rents or tithesor even of taxes.364
The widespread rising shocked the establishment but they soon ended it with physical force.
Almost 2,000 people were tried in courts19 of them were hanged; 481 were transported to
Australia, including some who had done nothing but write letters; and 600 others were imprisoned.
The sight of machinery being destroyed and mass meetings of rural workers was shocking to the
landowners and wealthy farmers. As Hobsbawm and Rud explain:
For them the rising was not the last kick of a dying animal, but the first demonstration that a hitherto inert mass, active at best in a
few scattered areas and villages, was capable of large-scale, co-ordinated or at least uniform movement over a great part of
England. It was fortunate that they had risen in isolation, but not inconceivable that they might rise again in conjunction with the
much more readily mobilised movements of factory and city.365

When the Poor Law Amendment Act was passed in 1834 authorities trod carefully for fear of
provoking a violent response. Memories of 1830 were still fresh in their minds when protests by the
poor against new workhouses or changes to poor relief began to break out. One example was the men
of Wroughton, Wiltshire, who demonstrated against a proposal to alter the workhouse by
collectively marching out of church and smoking their pipes in the cemetery.366
It is during this period that six men in the village of Tolpuddle in Devon, south west England,
formed the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourersan early attempt at a union. For swearing this
illegal oath the Tolpuddle Martyrs, as they became known, were transported to Australia. The
campaign to win their release became an enormously popular cause in England.
The last major upsurge of resistance took place in 1843-45. Part of this moment of struggle was the
Rebecca Riots in Wales when men, often dressed as women, destroyed toll houses as symbols of
repressive taxation. Incendiary attacks and protests continued into the 1860s, though on a smaller
scale and dissipated over a wider area. The tendency of the larger collective actions to be replaced
by isolated hayrick burnings and terrorist actions is probably a result of the defeats suffered by the
rural workers.
Hobsbawm and Rud note a change in the character of the struggles after the defeat of the 1830
uprising:
[A] new note of embittered despair, a dark atmosphere of hatred and vengeanceit was as though the labourers had at last
realised that they were not Englishmen with rights, but slaves; that their demand for the modest and subaltern life in a stable
hierarchical but not in principle unjust society had been a mistake, because the rest of society did not accept that there was justice
and that they had rights.367

Prices began to rise again from the late 1830s onwards and the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846
did not lead as many had feared to a sudden inrush of cheap foreign corn. Part of the reason for this
was the weakness of European agriculture, though from the 1870s onwards British agriculture did
begin to suffer due to competition from cheaper imported wheat. The impact of the Great or Long
Depression (1873 to 96) led some to look back on the preceding 25 years as the Golden Age of
English agriculture, yet this rosy view of the past masks a time when agriculture was struggling to
adapt to changes and new methods.
The census of 1851 shows that that year was the peak for rural employment in Britain. Increasing
numbers of labourers were leaving the fields to look for work in the new factories and cities of
Britain. Thousands had already emigrated to Canada, Australia and America. Many more would now
leave the land hoping things would be better in the growing towns. Twenty years later there were

more people working in domestic service than in farming. By 1880 the number working in agriculture
had fallen to approximately one in eight of the working population; by the start of the Second World
War the corresponding figure was one in 20.368
For the first time in history more people could work in non-agricultural jobs than were involved in
food production. The revolution in farming required to make this possible had its roots in changes that
had been gradually taking place in British agriculture for over a centurythe introduction of new
crops such as turnips, the use of new farming practices such as crop rotation, to name but two.369 But
the consequences of these changes facilitated further fundamental changes in the non-agricultural
economy.
Once again we see how developments in the forces of production, the agricultural revolution,
created changes in the social relations of production. These changes in agriculture were an essential
requirement for the industrial revolution which needed vast amounts of labour for its factories. There
was a symbiotic relationship between the new agriculture and developing industry. The large
agricultural surplus was swallowed up by the workers in the factories, and the products of those
factories were often needed by those working the fields. Some industries, particularly textiles, also
relied on agricultural produce such as wool.
So the agricultural revolution helped feed the industrial revolution, which in turn stimulated the
market for food and materials from agriculture. As Mazoyer and Roudart point out, this is why in the
16th and 17th centuries, the agricultural revolution developed first around textile centres in Flanders
and England.370
British agriculture by the end of the 19th century was in a dire state. From the 1860s onwards
Britain had become increasingly reliant on cheap imported wheat from the US and its colonies. By the
1880s wheat imports from the US alone were almost equal to production at home, with huge amounts
coming from Australia, Canada and India. By the beginning of the First World War five million
tonnes of wheat was coming from abroad every yearthree times the amount grown in Britain. To
combat this, much of British agriculture had switched towards animal rearing and dairy production,
but by the end of the century even these products were being challenged by cheaper imports.371
Ultimately, the intensification of farming during the Napoleonic War years and the ongoing trends
post-war led to the first great crisis to hit modern agriculture. This crisis was different to those that
had gone before. Before the early 1800s most agricultural crises were a result of natural factors. Crop
failures or shortages were considered acts of god, circumstances over which the farmer or wider
society had little influence. Yet the soil fertility crisis that began in Britain and was subsequently
observed in other newly developing capitalist economies from the 1820s onwards was the product of
the new intensive farming methods, combined with the changing demographics of capitalist society.
The crisis of soil fertility
Since the beginnings of agriculture farmers have understood that growing plants gradually depletes
the fertility of the ground. Over the centuries they have come up with a variety of ways to regenerate
the soilslashing and burning trees to leave enriching ash, leaving fields fallow or growing
particular plants.
The turnip, as we have seen, allowed 17th century farmers to introduce a quadrennial rotation,
known now as the Norfolk Rotation after the English county where it was first invented. Linked to

the raising of sheep, in this four-year rotation fields were sown with clover, then cereal, then turnips
and then cereal again. This meant that fields did not have to be left fallow for a year, and dramatically
improved capacity. It also led to an increase in the amount of work required throughout the year. Now
the farming calendar might include two harvests as well as the planting and harvesting of non-cereal
crops. Animals were used in greater quantities for their manure, which had to be stored, transported
and spread. Thus the improved farming techniques led to greater pressures on farmers, labour and
equipment.
The urban world was also changing. Rural population in Britain grew by 28 percent between the
1820s and the 1850s, but the total population of Britain increased by half. After 1851 the urban
population of Britain outnumbered the rural population and from then onwards the rural population
declined inexorably. By the beginning of the new century less than a quarter of Britains population
lived in rural areas. This dramatic urban growth is associated with the enormous industrial expansion
that took place during the same period. Towns and cities grew dramatically, bringing many
opportunities for work in the new industries. While wages might only be roughly the same as those for
agricultural workers, and living conditions worse, there were other incentives. Pamela Horn argues
that in the new towns opportunities for economic advance beckonedandthe social and political
pressures of squire and parson were absent.372 While factory life was in no way free of oppression
and exploitation, agricultural life looked worse.
The enormous expansion of urban dwellers meant problems for agriculturemost obviously the
lack of agricultural workers to bring in the crops to feed the growing cities. One of the ways that
farmers could offset this was the introduction of machinery to mechanise the agricultural process. We
have seen how this led, in the early part of the 19th century, to riots and machine-breaking by
agricultural workers who faced losing their livelihoods. But in times of labour shortages such
machinery was essential.
The introduction of the reversible plough is a good example. Before its introduction it was only
possible to plough sloping fields in one direction as the soil turned over downhillso labourers
would have to move the plough back to top of the field before beginning to plough again. A reversible
plough had two sets of equipment mounted around a central axle, which allowed ploughing in both
directions. Moreover, the reversible plough had better mechanisms for setting the depth and angle of
the ploughing so that only one worker was needed instead of the usual two. One estimate is that on
sloping fields this innovation reduced the working time of animals by a factor of two and the
working time of humans by a factor of four.373
Alongside the labour-saving abilities of the new technologies was an associated deskilling of
agricultural work. Take, for instance, this description of the sowing of turnip seeds, though the
process would be much the same for clover and mustard:
When the seed was sown by hand the sower had a small seed-bowl on his chest; this was secured by a leather band which went
round his neck. He took the small seed between his finger and thumb and sowed in step; that is, as his left foot came up, his left
hand dipped into the seed-bowl and scattered the seed. It was a skilled job to sow with both hands and keep in step as the rhythm
could very easily be broken. If this happened the sower would have to stop and start again, as a break in the rhythm meant a blank
patch in the sowing. Few men, too, could judge the amount of seed to sow at each pinch of the thumb and forefinger: turnip seed
was sown at the rate of half a pint an acre and if the sower dug too deeply into his bowl with his thumb and forefinger he would
not make his seed last. Not more than one or two men on each farm could sow at the necessary rate with two hands. Most men
were only able to sow with one. This was necessarily slower.374

The introduction of the seed barrow or broadcast seed-drill rendered these skills unnecessary.

The industrialisation of agriculture laid the basis for modern farming. Think of the enormous wheat
fields farmed in the US by gigantic combine harvesters, or the factory conditions in European farms
their roots lie in the changes that took place in the fields and farms of the 1800s. This was when
science turned its gaze to the countryside. The Royal Agricultural Society (RAS) was founded in
1838. Within a few months of its foundation the RAS was offering prizes for essays on topics such as
Insects Prejudicial to Plants and founded the first agricultural colleges and research stations in the
1840s.375 Agricultural Societies flourished across Britain allowing farmers to debate the best methods
of improving yields and stock. Agricultural shows mushroomed as farmers publicly displayed their
best animals. Gentlemen farmers invested tens of thousands of pounds in improving their farms,
sometimes with enormous returns.
The use of artificial fertilisers became a major issue for agriculture in the mid-1800s. Properly
used, they could improve soil fertility and hence crop yields. Because farmers could artificially
improve the soil, they did not have to naturally rebuild the soil by following one crop with another.
Instead they could choose crops to plant and use the relevant fertiliser to replenish the earth as
needed. From the end of the 19th century and into the next British farmers increasingly chose cash
crops such as potatoes, carrots, cabbages, peas and beans for sale in the towns.376
In 1842 the first fertiliser factory was founded by John Bennet Laws. Laws was from a wealthy
landowning background, was educated at Eton and Oxford and was fascinated by the effect of manure
on plant growth. His experiments led to collaboration with the chemist Joseph Gilbert and together
they made significant contributions to agricultural science.
By the beginning of the 20th century mainstream universities such as Cambridge, Manchester and
Birmingham were helping to diffuse this knowledge into a new generation of scientific
agriculturalists.
Fertilisers rapidly became widely used: Men who would not listen to the lectures of professors,
or read the articles of chemical experts were worried by persistent agents for the sale of patent
manures into giving them a free trial.377 Once the effect of using fertiliser was seen in practice the
farmers rarely looked back.
Plants grow by combining water drawn from the soil with carbon dioxide (CO2) taken from the
air. This reaction needs the energy from sunlight and is known as photosynthesis. Plants mainly live
on water and carbon dioxide, but they also need various minerals that are dissolved in the water they
absorb. In the 1840s the German scientist Justus van Liebig demonstrated that it was chemical
compounds of nitrates and phosphates that made the soil fertile.
When a plant dies or waste is excreted by an animal, the matter remaining contains all sorts of
chemicals that are useful to other plants for growing. As this organic material decomposes, these
important materials return to the soil and can form the basis for further plant growth. A farmer
wanting to improve the soil is trying to increase the levels of nutrients, so they add chemicals. Today
in the developed world most of these chemicals are manufactured in factories.
The fertility of soil in a particular region depends on all sorts of factors. Most important is the
general climate, the amount of rainfall and sunlight, but also significant are the levels of nutrients in
the soil. Over time soil fertility changes, usually for the worse as crops remove nutrients from the
soil. This problem is made worse when the nutrients are taken away and not returned. Imagine a
simple farm. Grass on this farms only field grows, nourished by adequate rain and sunlight. A single
cow grazes on the grass, ingesting the chemicals. Some of the nutrients and plant materials are

returned to the soil via the cows manure. The rest of the plants chemicals are used by the cows
body to grow or enter the atmosphere as the digestive process produces gases such as methane. If our
imaginary farm was completely ignored by farmers, the cow would eventually die. Over a period of
time its corpse would rot and the chemicals slowly return to the soil, ultimately used as those from the
manure have been, by further grass growth.
But this is not how real farms work. Plants and animals grow using the nutrients from the land and
are then removed to be sold and eaten elsewhere. The chemicals do not return to the soil.
As people were displaced from the land and driven into growing urban areas, this problem
became more acute. The growing separation between town and country meant that nutrients from
agricultural land were taken hundreds of miles away to the towns and cities. In most towns collectors
of night soil might sell it to farmers for manure. But even in medieval times the amount of waste
was at staggering levels. One estimate for medieval London, a city of 40,000 people, was 20 tonnes
of waste each day. Much of Londons medieval waste was dumped by boat into the estuary. It was not
until the 1830s that the citys authorities began to install underground sewers, but even then most
people still used private cesspools.378
Unfortunately, rather than use this waste to improve agriculture, it was dumped straight into the
Thames. Some people, like the sanitation campaigner Edwin Chadwick, understood that things could
be organised more rationally. In the 1840s his vision for a sewage system was one which:
cleansed the city but helped restore the organic balance between the urban and rural environments that the industrial revolution
was destroying. He wanted to see fresh water brought from the countryside into the cities, and human waste[used] as fertiliser
to grow more food for the cities.379

This was not to be. Londons sewers were massively expanded in the 1860s by William
Bazalgate, and were dumping the capitals waste into the Thames far downstream.*
A growing urban population had to be fed by the countryside, yet the nutrients from the food were
not returned to the farmland. As Laws himself pointed out, The first step of agriculture is
exhaustion. Everything that was taken from the farmland reduced the fertility of the soil.380
Before artificial fertilisers became common there was a desperate search for other natural
fertilisers. Bone dust fertiliser made from animals killed in slaughterhouses or whaling was
commonly used in the early years of the 19th century. The Narborough Bone Mill in Norfolk was used
to grind shiploads of human bones brought from exhumations in German cemeteries. In the 1820s and
1830s farmers in Europe raided the Napoleonic battlefields for human bones to use for fertiliser. A
saying at the time went One ton of German bone-dust saves the importation of ten tons of German
corn.381
A further source of natural fertilisers was the islands around the globe covered in seabird
droppings (guano). The widespread crisis of soil fertility led to countries scrambling to control tiny
islands covered in guano, particularly those off the coast of Peru. This guano had been used for
centuries by Peruvian farmers, but suddenly it became a highly valuable international commodity. In
turn this led to intense competition between the navies of different countries to control particular
islandseven today the US controls tiny specks of land in the middle of the ocean as a result of the
guano annexations.
Britain was importing hundreds of thousands of tons of guano by the late 1840s. It was one of the
best natural fertilisers and such was the demand that Chinese workers were imported into Peru to dig
it for export. Conditions were awful. Workers were physically punished if they did not meet their

daily quotas, the smell was appalling and guano dust penetrated the eyes, the nose, the mouth. Food
was inadequate and some employers worked with the British to import opium to pacify the workers.
Mortality rates were consequently high. In the first 15 years between 25 and 30 percent of workers
died digging out guano to improve the fields of Europe and America. Between 1849 and 1874, 90,000
Chinese labourers were taken to Peru. Over 10 percent died on the way. 382 In 1856 the Nautical
Magazine commented that few probably are aware that the acquisition of this deposit, which
enriches our lands and fills the purses of our traders, entails an amount of misery and suffering on a
portion of our fellow creatures, the relation of which, if not respectably attested, would be treated as
fiction.383
Such was the value of the deposits that countries invested millions of pounds in maintaining
control of the islands. At least two wars were fought over control of particularly prized pieces of
land in which the military forces of the US, Britain and other European powers played a behind the
scenes role. Rather than enriching the South American states, the export of guano tended to leave them
more dependent on foreign investment and capital. In 1890 Chile exported almost a million tons of
guano under the control of British industry. When the Chilean president Jos Manuel Balmaceda
announced that he wanted to nationalise the guano industry civil war broke out, with the British
government backing his opponents. After the British navy blockaded Chile a defeated Balmaceda
committed suicide and the British Ambassador wrote smugly that the British Community makes no
secret of its satisfaction over the fall of Balmaceda, whose victory, it is thought, would have implied
serious harm to British commercial interests.384 Not for the first time had an imperialist intervention
been fought in the interests of British capital, though possibly this is the only war fought over access
to bird shit.
The needs of European and American agriculture had to be subsidised by the use of natural
resources from around the world. For this to happen, thousands of labourers lost their lives and
developing economies became shackled economically to Britain and America. In order to avoid the
collapse in soil fertility at home, governments ruthlessly exploited the rest of the world.
As the German chemist Justus Liebig wrote, Britain deprives all counties of the conditions of
their fertility Like a vampire it hangs on the breast of Europe, and even the world, sucking its
lifeblood without any real necessity or permanent gain for itself.385 It is a pattern which continues to
be part of modern agriculture.
The use of artificial fertilisers along with the increased use of technology, including the
introduction of motorisation through the steam engine and later the internal combustion engine, has
been termed the Second Agricultural Revolution. Some scientists believed that improved methods
and the introduction of technologies to farming would lead to continuously increasingly yields.
In some parts of Britain farmers failed to introduce fertiliser use. In 1861 the RASs journal
referred to the north of the Isle of Wight being a century behind in practical agriculture. 386 Books
and pamphlets, such as the RASs 1891 text book Elements of Agriculture, were produced to educate
farmers about the scientific basis to agriculture.
In 1909 Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch invented an industrial process for the manufacture of
ammonia, a key chemical in the production of nitrogen based fertiliser (as well as explosives).
Nitrogen is a key nutrient for plant growth and while abundant in the atmosphere it is in a form that
plants cannot access naturally. The process extracted nitrogen from the air and converted it to a form
that could be used to manufacture fertiliser. The German chemical giant BASF bought the rights to the

Haber process and began manufacturing fertilisers from 1913. Today the industry is worth millions of
dollars and large-scale industrial farming would be impossible without it.
The improvements offered by the Second Agricultural Revolution did not come cheaply, as one
farmer pointed out in 1887: While the field laughs with grain, it is more than possible that the owner
groans at the cost of its artificial fertiliser.387 But there was an additional cost, unrelated to the
required investment.
Over-reliance on artificial soil stimulation led to the loss of a deeper understanding of the best
way to farm. As one author has commented, Instead of meeting head-on the dilemma of revitalising
soils under a system of shorter leases, or exploring how the new off-farm fertilisers and feeding-stuffs
might be grafted on to old rotations, a highly sustainable system of local recycling seemed no longer
relevant.388
The development of agriculture outside Britain
In this section I want to briefly trace the agrarian changes that took place from ancient times to the
colonial period. It is not intended as an exhaustive account of world agriculture, but to attempt to
understand the historical basis for the contemporary world agricultural system.
South America389
Having stripped the gold and silver from the Inca the Spanish conquistadors then took over the mines
of the Andes and began redistributing land. Much of the land went to the Spanish Crown, but that
belonging to the Inca religious institutions went to the Spanish church.
Spanish settlers or soldiers were granted land, as well as the right to demand tribute labour from
the indigenous population. Reserving the best land for themselves, the colonists pushed the local
population onto marginal land. These colonial estates, which developed in various forms throughout
South America, were known as haciendas. They depended on expropriating and enclosing land, in
order to undermine the access of indigenous farmers to their means of subsistence. This combination
of land and labour made a type of landed property structurally very similar to the manor of European
feudalism.390
In addition to working on the hacienda land, the peasants had small plots for subsistence farming.
There were also obligations on other peasants. In Peru, for instance, those peasants who did not work
on a hacienda were still expected to pay tribute to the colonial power in the form of labour on land or
in the mines. Landlords who wanted to enlarge their farms as profitability rose needed to extract more
labour from their tenants, or increase the numbers working their land. This helped encourage a
transition from labour rent to wage labour.391
The colonial powers introduced new plants, animals, farming practices and tools. Agriculture in
countries like Peru was geared towards export. Sugarcane, cotton, cattle, tobacco, rubber, quinine
and coffee were produced in vast quantities for export to Europe. African slaves were brought over
to work in the fields. Between 1550 and 1650 around 650,000 Africans were shipped to Spanish and
Portuguese America.392
In Peru it was the large landowners and merchants who got most from the agricultural export
industry who led the struggle for independence from Spain, winning it in 1821. Peru nevertheless

remained closely tied to the interests of European powers. The Spanish unsuccessfully tried to reestablish themselves in 1863 and in 1890 the UK created the Peruvian Corporation which gained a
70-year lease with the right to exploit oil, guano and railroads, as well as the free use of seven ports.
From the 1870s to the 1920s Latin America experienced an agricultural export boom which further
expanded the hacienda system. The estates could be tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of
thousands, of acres in size. Government intervention helped ensure that the haciendas had the labour
they needed and could expand as required. In southern Mexico:
a state willing to support the planters with force explains the virtual enslavement of masses of Mayas and Yaquisin Mexico
beginning in the 1870s, in Guatemala where the reduction of Indian lands was accompanied by anti-vagrancy laws, in Bolivia
where two thirds of the rural population became dependent on haciendas, and in fact throughout the Andean spine, the resources
and means of independent livelihood of a great many rural people were reduced.393

The end of slavery meant that mass immigration was needed in some countries to fill labour needs.
Between 1847 and 1874, for instance, a quarter of a million Chinese indentured workers were
brought to plantations in Cuba and Peru.394 But forcing many people from their land and forcing them
into wage-labour in haciendas also created enormous areas of poverty. Many people, unable to find
work or without enough land to survive, moved to the cities.
Peru, for instance, is today is one of the most unequal societies on Earth. About a third of the
population is classed as poor, the majority of them living in the countryside, where the poverty rate is
over 50 percent. The poorest tend to be those from an indigenous background. Today in many parts of
Latin America the struggle for social justice remains centred on land questions. The next chapter
looks at some of these struggles.
India 395
European settlers did not appropriate land on a large-scale in India as they did in South America.
Instead, under British rule, Indian peasants were encouraged to produce commodities such as cotton,
rice, wheat and opium for export. At the same time Britain saw India as an enormous market for its
own manufactured goods. These cheap imports helped destroy Indias own manufacturing and
increased the ruralisation and peasantisation of India.396
The 1793 Permanent Settlement that the British put into effect in Bengal through Governor-General
Cornwallis was an attempt to introduce the enterprising landlord to the Indian economy. They also
wanted to keep the tax income but stay out of the administration of the system. To do this, they
retained the previous Mogul tax-collectors, the zamindars. The British received 90 percent of the
revenue the zamindar collected from his peasant tenants. Cornwallis saw in the zamindar someone
who might become an enterprising English landlord who could establish prosperous cultivation along
the lines of the farming practised back in England.397 Under the Mogul system the zamindar was not a
formal property owner, but the British gave him a right to own land, and the right to evict tenants. For
the first time in India land could be sold. Eventually this led to a transformation in social relations in
rural Indiathe Bengal peasantry became a rustic proletariat and Cornwalliss benevolent,
improving landlord a Calcutta rentier.398
Despite the building of railways and canals by the British, the development of the Indian economy
did little for the vast majority of people. An enormous boom in exports during the latter half of the
19th century transformed the countrys agriculture yet, in the words of historian Mike Davis:

peasant agriculture, even in the most dynamic cash crop sectors, remained radically undercapitalized. Only moneylenders, absentee
landlords, urban merchants and a handful of indigenous industrialists seemed to have benefited consistently from Indias renewed
importance in world trade.399

At the same time traditional Indian agricultural practices were transformed by the British who cut
off communal access to grassland resources and dissolved the ancient ecological interdependence of
pastoralists and farmers.400 The British drove pastoral farmers off the land by imposing punitive
grazing taxes as part of a campaign against nomads and shifting cultivators whom they labelled as
criminal tribes. By insisting on land being private property, all pre-existing rights to land were
under threat. This even included access to water which in most of India had previously been
communally managed as a common resource. The British linked water rights with land ownership,
effectively removing access to water from millions. Thus the problem of water scarcity was created
for the first time.401
The cotton industry in Berar provides a useful example. The Manchester Chamber of Commerces
Cotton Supply Association had selected the region for specialised cotton monoculture in 1853. The
Association oversaw the complete transformation of Berars social order. In the old balutedari
system local castes exercised managerial control over a complex network of social production
including communal irrigation and cotton weaving.402 Now the British reorganised Berar, an area of
7,000 villages and 10.5 million acres of cultivatable land, into the new khatedari system.
The new system was characterised by brutal and unilateral exploitation. The Berar cotton
industry was being developed in order to provide a buffer for the fluctuating supply from North
America, to protect prices back in Liverpool. The British were not interested in developing the local
economy, certainly not the khatedars who were running the cotton farms. The system was enormously
successful for the British; vast quantities of cotton were being sent from Berar to Manchester by the
late 1860s and the cultivated area doubled by 1890. At the same time local taxes and cheap imports
destroyed local manufacturing and drove many former artisans into wage labour in the cotton fields.
As Mike Davis explains, Although massive sums of capital were sunk into the Associations export
infrastructurenone of it percolated to the village level where degraded sanitary conditions,
especially the contamination of drinking water by human waste, spread cholera.403
At the same time the switch to mono-culture cotton and grain farming for export made the people of
Berar more vulnerable to drought. During the famine of 1899-1900, 143,000 Beraris died from
starvation, though the province exported tens of thousands of bales of cotton and 747,000 bushels of
grain. Other parts of India suffered dramatically from the switch to crops for export. Through the late
1800s Indian grain from the Central Provinces Narmada Valley became increasingly important for
Britain, particularly when crops failed elsewhere (such as Russia). Despite the boom in grain
exports, those producing the crop rarely benefited. Davis writes that:
Official policies had inexorably laid a basis for an agrarian crisis between 1891 and 1901 that created famine, wrecked the wheat
economy and exposed the Central Provinces [of India] to bankruptcy. Once again the inflexible revenue demands of the
government drained capital from the countryside and put tenants at the mercy of a top stratum of malguzards [landowners] who
were no longer bound by any of the patrimonial obligations of the pre-British village system, ruthlessly combined the functions of
moneylender and grain merchant.404

While the malguzards made great wealth, the majority of people were increasingly impoverished.
At the same time, the British government increased taxes on the basis of boom prices. But when
British importers switched to cheaper grain sources, the Narmada farmers were ruined. By the
beginning of the 20th century peasants in this famous wheat growing area were living off imported

food.
Thus forced commercialisation of the Indian agrarian economy resulted in massive wealth
inequality. The majority of the population were driven into deeper poverty. More horrifically, these
policies set the stage for death on an enormous scale. Between 1876 and 1902 some 12.3 to 29.3
million Indians died as a result of famine.405 By tying India into the world capitalist system, Britain
made sure that when drought arrived huge numbers were vulnerable to starvation. As Karl Polanyi
summarised:
The actual source of famineswas the free marketing of grain combined with local failures of incomes Failure of crops, of
course, was part of the picture, but despatch of grain by rail made it possible to send relief to the threatened areas; the trouble was
that the people were unable to buy the corn at rocketing prices, which on a free but incompletely organised market were bound to
be a reaction to a shortage. In former times, small local stores had been held against harvest failure, but these had been now
discontinued or swept away into the big market Under the monopolists the situation had been fairly kept in hand with the help of
the archaic organisation of the countryside, including free distribution of corn, while under free and equal exchange Indians
perished by the millions.406

Russia
Leon Trotsky began his classic History of the Russian Revolution by pointing out that the
fundamental and most stable feature of Russian history is the slow tempo of her development, with
the economic backwardness, primitiveness of social forms and low level of culture resulting from
it.407
On eve of the First World War Russia was barely an industrial economy. The vast majority of the
population worked in agriculture, which contributed almost half the national income. Russias foreign
trade was predominantly foodstuffs. Agricultural productivity was low, and the majority of the
population lived in small villages that were effectively self-contained, self-sufficient units. These
villages were run by a mir. The mir distributed strips of farmland to the inhabitants of the village,
which were then periodically redistributed. The land was owned by a relatively small number of
landowners and those who worked it, the serfs, had few rights. They were not permitted to leave the
place of their birth and were obliged to pay their landlord in both labour and goods. At the top of this
feudal order were the Tsar and his family.
This arrangement survived until the emancipation of the serfs in 1861. The peasant population at
the time was around 40 million and of these just over half were in personal bondage to the Russian
gentry.408 A number of liberal politicians understood that the backward nature of Russian society
was hampering further economic development. As a result, when emancipation came it was on terms
favourable to the landlords. A two-year transition period was introduced during which the peasants
still had to fulfil obligations to the landlord. Some common land was given to the landlords and the
former serfs had to pay redemption fees for their land. The abolition of serfdom undermined the
existing feudal economy, but it did not automatically lead to a transformation to capitalism. As the
Russian revolutionary Lenin explains, the transition could not take place at once, because:
the conditions required for capitalist production did not yet exist. A class of people was required who were accustomed to work for
hire agriculture had to be organised on the same lines as any other commercial and industrial enterprise and not as the business
of the lord. All these conditions could only take shape graduallythe old Corve system of economy had been undermined, but not
yet completely destroyed. The peasants farms were not entirely separated from those of the landlords, for the latter retained
possession ofcut-off lands [common land], the woods, meadows, watering places, pastures, etc. Without these landsthe
peasants were absolutely unable to carry on independent farming, so that the landlords were able to continue the old system of
economy in the form of labour-service.409

Thus what occurred in the aftermath of emancipation was a transition economy that contained
elements of the old feudal order as well as new capitalist relations. So landlords would still have
their land worked by peasants with their own tools, as well as hiring workers for shorter periods of
time. Landlords still expected peasants to work their land in exchange for leased land and some
villages continue to bear the name of Corve of such-and-such a landlord.410
The emancipation of the serfs removed a major barrier to industrial growth, freeing up labour to
work in industry. But despite some economic developments, such as the expansion of the railways,
things continued to get worse for the peasants. One estimate was that at the time of emancipation
about one quarter of the peasants received land allotments inadequate to support themselves. By 1910
the proportion had risen to over a half. Central agricultural areas were worst hit and acute distress
followed harvest failures. Most problematically, the average peasant landholding declined in size
following emancipation. Even after 1861 it was difficult for peasants to leave their homes and look
for work in the cities and between two and three million peasants had no land at all.411
The failure of 1861 to adequately provide for the needs of the Russian peasantry sowed discontent
for the future. In the early years of the 20th century Russia was convulsed by enormous social
discontent. While the centres of these mass revolutionary movements were the great working class
cities such as St Petersburg and Moscow, the peasantry took part as well. Leon Trotsky describes
how, during the 1905 Russian Revolution:
The peasant movementdeveloped four main types of struggle: takeover of landowners lands accompanied by eviction of the
landowners and wrecking of their estates with the object of extending the lands available to peasants for their own use; seizure of
grain, cattle, and hay and felling of forests, for the immediate satisfaction of the needs of famine-stricken villages; a strike and
boycott movement aimed either at reduction in land rents or wage increases and, finally, refusal to supply recruits or pay taxes and
debts.412

In the aftermath of the unsuccessful 1905 Revolution, Trotsky noted that what was needed in
Russia was:
a free farming economy at a high technological level, which would multiply the overall income from the land, could be developed on
the estates torn from the idle hands which now possess them. But such American-type farming is only conceivable in Russia if
Tsarist absolutismwere totally liquidated. The complete formula for the agrarian problem is as follows: expropriation of the
nobility, liquidation of Tsarism, democracy.413

For Trotsky, as well as for Lenin and his revolutionary party, the Bolsheviks, the land question
was central to a vision of transforming Russian society.
The First World War sucked millions of peasants into the armed forces. As the war progressed
and conditions worsened, the revolutionary mood returned. By raising the demand Bread, Peace and
Land the Bolsheviks were able to bring together the mass of the peasantry with the power of the
organised working class. This force, organised by soviets of workers, soldiers and peasants, was
able to seize power during the insurrection of October 1917.
In the immediate aftermath of the revolution the Congress of Soviets of Workers, Soldiers and
Peasants Deputies passed the Decree of Land written by Lenin. This began:
The landlords property in the land is annulled immediately and without any indemnity whatever. The landlord, appanage,
monastery and church estates with all their goods and chattels are given in charge of the town land committees and county soviets
of peasant deputies until the Constituent Assembly. The confiscated property is placed as a national possession under the
protection of the local soviets. The land of the rank-and-file peasants and rank-and-file Cossacks is protected against
confiscation.414

The revolution had relied on an alliance between the workers and peasants and the Decree on

Land was designed to cement this in place. But soviet power was an essentially urban phenomenon,
and thus the peasants would only remain loyal to the revolution if they benefited from itIn the
peasants eyes, the revolutionhad only one purpose, and that was to give him a farm.415
In the aftermath of the revolution. Russia suffered imperialist invasion and civil war. The
Bolsheviks were forced to expropriate food from the countryside to fuel those fighting for the survival
of the revolution, further undermining the relationship between the peasants and workers.
The precise attitude to take towards developing the countryside was a central argument among the
leadership of the Russian Revolution, particularly after Lenins death in 1924. Leading socialists took
a variety of different positions on the question of the rural economy, which were tied up with debates
about how to move forward after the failure of revolutionary movements in Western Europe. The
positions of both the left and the right among leading Bolsheviks differed over the crucial question of
the economic approach to rural areas.*
The development of Soviet industry required vast quantities of food. In the eyes of many Soviet
economists, this required the development of larger farms. But this contrasted with the interests of the
peasantry. The poorest farmers and agricultural labourers, the batraks, aspired, like every other
peasant, to become an independent farmer, to have more land and more implements with which to
cultivate it. He would perhaps have been prepared to join an agricultural collective, the regime at that
time not being in the least interested in collectivisation.416
While recognising the existence of rural poverty, government policy offered very little to the
poorest and was in no position to offer agricultural technology to the peasantry. Indeed incentives
offered by the Soviet government tended to benefit the middle and richer peasants. Rather than
encouraging collective farming, financial contributions tended to reinforce the general trends
towards individual farming by increasing wealth inequality in rural areas.
The sheer backwardness of the Russian rural economy was a major problem for the Soviet
government. In 1928 5.5 million peasant holdings were still using a wooden plough and there was
virtual ignorance of multiple crop rotations. As late as 1929 the Ministry of Finance classified 35
percent of peasants as having no horse or cow, and so few implements that they could not work land
unless they hired tools.417
In this context, simply offering technological help was not enough. Indeed, as Moshe Lewin, a
historian of the Soviet peasantry, comments, the Soviet leadership had begun to regard the tractor
almost as if it were endowed with supernatural properties which would solve all their difficulties for
them. In this, they were guilty of a rather too superficial interpretation of Marxs theory concerning
the leading role which would be played by the forces of production.418
The years 1928 and 1929 were crucial ones for the Soviet government and the peasantry. During
this period Stalin defeated in turn the left and the right opposition and took control of the Soviet
leadership. These years also saw an economic crisis and a near famine situation. The growth of
Soviet cities increased demands on the peasants for more food, and the regime had to force peasants
to sell food during the procurement crisis. Increasingly the procurements took on a violent nature,
with peasants being fined and imprisoned if they failed to provide food.
Stalin too did not initially believe in collectivisation as anything but a gradual process, requiring
the gradual application of socialist principles in agriculture.419 By 1928 though, Stalin was talking
about the peasantry as a class apart and began to look for ways to accelerate the process of rural
development to avoid future crises. In order to justify this to the Communist Party, Stalin turned to the

increasing demonisation of the kulaks, the richer peasants. From 1929 he waged war against the
kulaks, leading to the deportation and deaths of millions of peasants.
By the late 1920s Stalin had abandoned the idea of international revolution and looked to the
creation of socialism in one country. This isolated the country from the support that successful
revolution in the industrialised world would have brought.
Stalins vision for the development of industry meant squeezing the countryside more and more.
Forced collectivisationthe replacement of individual farms with large collective oneswas seen
by Stalin as the only way to control the food production of 25 million individual farms. In April 1929
the draft of the Five Year Plan produced at the Communist Partys 16th Party Conference still saw
agriculture as dominated by private farming at the end of five years.420 But by January 1930 the
leadership of the Communist Party had an entirely different vision: It can be established without
doubt that within the five year period instead of the collectivisation of 20 percent of the sown area
proposed in the five year plan we will be able to resolve the task of collectivising the overwhelming
majority of peasant households.421
The number of collectivised households went from five million on 1 January 1930 to 8.1 million a
month later, 14.3 or 14.6 million on 1 March and peaked at 15 million on 10 March. There followed
a temporary decline of the excesses of forced collectivisation, but the pressure to join collective
farms quickly returned. By 1932 almost 62 percent of peasants were in collective farms.422 In terms of
food production, collectivisation was not a success. Between 1927/8 and 1931/2 grain output went
down by 8 percent but the amount procured went up by 173 percent.423
As the Marxist Tony Cliff concluded, Collectivisation made possible speedy industrialisation not
only because towns were fed, but also because a considerable amount of grain was available for
export, to pay for imports of machinery The other side of the coin of squeezing grain surpluses
from the peasantry was the terrible famine of 1932-33.424 Estimates vary for the numbers that died as
a result of this famine, but it is perhaps as high as 6.5 million.
By the 1930s the regime had lost its aim to develop the Russian economy in the interest of the mass
of the population. Now Stalins ambition was to compete internationally with the capitalist powers.
Collectivisation freed the agricultural products for the needs of industrial development, removing
the peasantry from their land and turning many of them into workers on collectivised farms. Others
became reserves of labour power for industry. Forced collectivisation in the Soviet Union mirrors
the processes that took place in England, making possible the development of industrial capitalism.
But while the enclosures and clearances took place over centuries, the peasantry in Russia was
forced from its land in a few years.425
Marxs critique of capitalist agriculture
Marx understood how the development of industrial capitalism in one part of the world had the effect
of shaping the agricultural economies of the rest of the world. In Capital he writes:
the immediate effect of machinery is to increase the supply of raw material: thus, for example, the invention of the cotton gin
increased the production of cotton. On the other hand, the cheapness of the articles produced by machinery and the revolution in
the means of transport and communications provide the weapons for the conquest of foreign markets. By ruining handicraft
production of finished articles in other countries, machinery forcibly converts them into fields for the production of its raw material.
Thus India was compelled to produce cotton, wool, hemp, jute and indigo for Great Britainlarge-scale industry, in all countries
where it has taken root, spurs on rapid increases in emigration and the colonisation of foreign lands, which are thereby converted

into settlements for growing the raw material of the mother country A new and international division of labour springs up, one
suited to the requirements of the main industrial countries, and it converts one part of the globe into a chiefly agricultural field of
production for supplying the other part, which remains a pre-eminently industrial field:426

But he also understood that the industrialisation of agriculture in the developed world was storing
up problems for the future. Karl Marx was fascinated by these developments, particularly the work of
Liebig and other agricultural scientists. He developed this into a deep critique of contemporary
agriculture that rested on his wider understanding of the dynamics of capitalism.
Capitalist production collects the population together in great centres it disturbs the metabolic interaction between man and the
earth, ie it prevents the return to the soil of its constituent elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; hence it
hinders the operation of the eternal natural condition for the lasting fertility of the soil.427
He continues:
Moreover, all progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil; all
progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time is a progress towards ruining the more lasting sources of that fertility.
The more a country proceeds from large-scale industry as the background of its developmentthe more rapid is this process of
destruction. Capitalist production, therefore, only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of the social process of
production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealththe soil and the worker.428

For Marx, the fact that it was possible to improve the soil by restoring its fertility showed that
agriculture could be rationally organised. But where he differed from the scientists and economists
working on the problem is that he did not believe that such a rational agriculture could exist within
the boundaries of the existing capitalist system. Further, he understood that the particular trends of
capitalism, increasing as they would the separation between town and country, could only lead to the
further depletion of the soils fertility, one of the original sources of wealth. Because the only
alternative for industry was to deplete the natural resources of other parts of the world thus depriving
other nations of the ability to feed themselves, capitalism itself continued to undermine its agriculture.
Recent work by Marxists such as John Bellamy Foster has shown how Marx developed these ideas
into the concept of a metabolic rift between humans and nature under capitalism. Chapter 11 looks
at this further.
The development of agriculture through the 20th century only confirmed Marxs analysis. Rather
than agriculture becoming more rational as scientific understanding has increased we find a food
system which has failed to develop large-scale sustainability and fails to deliver food to the hungry,
while producing enormous wealth for a small number of corporations.

* The Green Revolution was a large increase in crop yields in the developing world during the 1960s and 1970s through the use of
artificial fertilisers, pesticides and the development of new strands of high yield crops such as maize, rice and wheat.
* A quarter is a measure of grain equal to 8 bushels or just under 300 litres.
* This should be contrasted with arrangements on the Continent. By the 1890s some 5,000 hectares of land outside Paris was being
fertilised by liquid manure from the citys sewers, producing abundant food and vegetables. As late as the 1980s 2,000 hectares of
sewage farms were still operating outside Paris. A similar system in Berlin was also popular though was overwhelmed by urban
growth. [See Reader, 2005, pp213-216.]
* The twists and turns of these debates are complicated and would require more space than is available here. I recommend Lewin, 1968;
Cliff, 1991 and Gluckstein, 1994 as excellent starting points for understanding this period.

Chapter 10

Agriculture in the 20th century

With the dawn of the new century agriculture, even in the industrialised countries of Europe and
North America, still carried with it the imprint of earlier times. Farmers are often slow to take up
costly and expensive innovations even when their track record at reducing labour time and improving
yields is well established. One estimate has it that in 1900 only around 10 to 15 percent of nutrients in
farming came from mineral or artificial fertilisers. The new century saw farming in the developing
world rapidly change with a number of different trends.
As we have seen the first of these trends was the increased importance of artificial fertilisers. The
second was motorisation. By 1900 agriculture had already been transformed to a certain extent by the
steam engine. Instead of growing for a local market, animals and foodstuffs could now be sold
hundreds of miles away.
In Britain taking cattle to London, the biggest market for agricultural produce in the country, could
mean long distances. Travelling this far on foot reduced the market value of the animals as they lost
weight. Railways changed this dramatically. Evidence given to a government committee heard that
land within five miles of a railway station in 1863 had 7 percent higher rents than elsewhere. The
first British railway opened as a passenger line between Stockton and Darlington in 1825. By 1848
there were some 5,000 miles of line and 43 percent of gross receipts came from carriage of
goods.429
There was an international aspect to this as well. The spread of the railway network across
Europe meant that even the most backward agricultural regions could bring their produce to markets
much further afield. The steam engine facilitated the exploitation of the further reaches of the world
the carriage of millions of tonnes of guano needed large, reliable transport. But at the other end of the
scale steam engines rarely changed work on farms. Only on the largest of farms was it worth
introducing bulky engines to draw heavy ploughs. It would not be until the arrival of the internal
combustion engine that it became practical to farm with motorised vehicles.
The Second World War
A long-term decline in the total land in Britain being used for agriculture was briefly halted by the
two world wars.430 The threat of naval blockade in both conflicts meant serious attempts were made
to return to more self-sufficient agriculture. In 1917 and 1918, 1.2 million hectares were brought back
to farming, but following the war the support for farming was dropped by the government, leaving
many farmers feeling betrayed. Guaranteed prices for food ended in 1921 prompting a crash in the
price of wheat. By 1934 it was at the lowest level for almost 300 years. Between the wars life as a
farmer or an agricultural worker was hard and poorly rewarded; 10,000 a year left the fields to find
work in the cities. As one writer commentated, These were years of deflation, of low economic

activity: in the United States, the years of the dustbowl, of the rape of the earth by ruthless
monoculture; in West Europe, years of intensified protectionism, without whichFrench agriculture
would have ceased to exist.431
The beginning of the Second World War brought with it a renewed effort to grow more and more
food. In Britain over the course of the war an extra six million acres of arable land were created. In
the same period the area cultivated for potatoes doubled. The total land available for crops was
almost at the level of its peak during the 1860s. Farmers received a subsidy of 2 for every acre of
grassland they ploughed over and turned into arable land in 1939. Nothing short of a centralised
agricultural transformation was taking place.
A modern Domesday book was written, documenting what every farm produced; what its soil
was like and what state its buildings and equipment were in. In some cases the government took over
badly run or unproductive farms. The loss of rural men to the armed forces was countered by the
centralised drive to recruit agricultural workers. Eighty thousand women formed the Womens Land
Army taking on rural jobs such as ploughing or felling trees. Later, they were joined by 40,000
Italian prisoners of war.
One immediate consequence of the drive to dig up grassland was that livestock farming was cut
back enormously. Vast numbers of animals such as pigs and poultry which return little to the soil
were destroyed. Output of meats like beef decreased dramatically, though there was an increase in the
total number of cows producing milk. Mixed farming, such as the growing of crops between orchard
trees, made a return. The remaining fens of the East Anglia were drained, woodland cleared and even
the heights of Montgomeryshire were cleared of brackenand provided enough potatoes to feed the
whole of Manchester.432
This radical transformation required huge cash injections from the government. It also required the
introduction of motorised equipment and mechanisation on a gigantic scale. We know about the
government taking over industrial production during the Second World War, guiding manufacturers to
transform production to aid the war effortwe are less used to thinking about agriculture in this way.
Just as factories were converted from producing cars to aircraft and tanks, agriculture too required a
detailed centralised plan. But this plan was driven less by a desire for rational agriculture and more
by military desperation.
During 1942, when the threat from German submarines was at its highest, the government urged
that farmers put forward their maximum effort without regard to the effect on crops obtainable in
1944 or subsequent years.433 Such measures were an attempt to rectify the previous years rationing.
The average dietary calorie levels were at their wartime lowest during 1940-41 and the government
feared that hunger would threaten their ability to wage the war on the home front.434 Perhaps they also
remembered the food riots and demonstrations that had helped spark the revolutions that ended
Russian and German involvement in the First World War. The strategy worked: after 1941 rationing
levels meant that the average diet was better than before the war.435
At the end of the war there were still 545,000 farm horses, but the 56,000 tractors on British farms
in 1939 had mushroomed to 230,000 by January 1946 and the number of milking machines increased
by 60 percent between 1942 and 1946. As the historian Angus Calder comments, the degree of
modernisation had occurred in six years which might have taken decades in peacetime.436 He
continues, Agriculture was draggedinto the 20th century, the ploughman servicing his tractor and
the farmer calculating his needs for fertilisers drew closer in spirit and attitudes to the engineers and

manager who made, among other things, the new farm machinery.437
One agricultural journalist wrote that the revolution in farming in the British Isles since the war
led to it being barely recognisable from its pastif a farming Rip Van Winkle of the inter-war years
were to waken, he would scarcely believe what he saw; and, presented with the tools of his trade
would not known how to use them.438
This then was the transformation that took place in six years in Britain, a country effectively under
siege in wartime conditions. The enormous amounts of cash given to Western Europe by the US after
the Second World War as part of the Marshall Plan were in large part responsible for a similar
modernisation of agriculture on the continent. Farming in Europe and North America was now done
by tractor with artificial fertilisers.
The use of artificial fertilisers exploded after the Second World War. In 1900 world consumption
of the principal mineral fertilisers was four million tons. By 1950 it was over 17 million tons and
130 million by the end of the 1980s. This had a correspondingly dramatic effect on yields. At the start
of the 20th century, grain yields of 10 quintals per hectare were obtained with manure. In the 1950s
this could, with the use of artificial fertilisers, reach 30 quintals. Today yields are up to 100 quintals
per hectare with the use of large quantities of fertiliser.439
The introduction of mechanised farming also transformed rural communities. During the first half
of the 20th century almost half of the agricultural labour force was released from their labour by the
introduction of machinery, providing still more people for industry in the cities. Time savings were
enormous; modern methods allow farmers to produce a hectare of corn with an input of only 11 hours,
110 times fewer than if it was done by hand.440
Many accounts of the changing agricultural practices at this time indicate that those who moved
from agricultural work to life in the factories had their lives improved by more steady work and
better wages. The agricultural historians Mazoyer and Roudart describe the changes as liberating.
In his classic account of life in the English village of Akenfield, first published in 1969, Ronald
Blythe interviews the master of the local Agricultural Training Centre. He describes how the
agricultural worker has adapted to the changes that have taken place since the end of the war with
almost no strife. Factory farming, mechanisation, everything his father understood turned upsidedown.441 The best village men who were heading off to work in nearby towns, worked in the
factories in a way your ordinary conventional industrial worker will never workreally hard, but
never gets used to the kind of average days work which has to be put in a factory and he cant
understand the kind of bargaining which goes on in industry between the workers and their
employers.442
Work on the farm had changed as well:
The employers dont want quality work any more. They want young men who will stay with their tractors until the moon is up.
Most of these farm-machine operators cant hedge, ditch, stack, use a scythe, thatch or do a fraction of the things which went into
labouring. It is the skill needed to control the machine rather than doing good agricultural work which motivates them. To be
perched on the top of a 130-h.p. tractor is to be perched on the top of their tree.443

Farming under neoliberalism

At the end of the 20th century and the start of the 21st world agriculture was dominated by the global
economic policies known as neoliberalism. David Harvey describes what this means to the nation
states:

The neoliberal state looks to further the cause of and to facilitate and stimulateall business interests, arguing that this will foster
growth and innovation and that this is the only way to eradicate poverty and to deliver, in the long run, higher living standards to the
mass of the population. The neoliberal state is assiduous in seeking the privatisation of assets as a means to open up fresh fields for
capital accumulation.444

Thus we see cuts in state spending, the privatisation and dismantling of public services, and the
opening up of economies. In agriculture, neoliberalism means the dismantling, in developing
countries only, of all price support mechanisms which existed earlier for stabilising prices for
peasant producers and a sustained attack on peasant-owned or occupied land.445
The international body most associated with neoliberalism is the World Trade Organisation
(WTO). Launched in December 1995, the WTO inherited a number of trade agreements from preexisting bodies, but for the first time agriculture was included as part of international trade
agreements. This had proved to be a major point of contention in negotiations. For the rich nations,
the setting up of the WTO was part of a strategy to reshape the global economy in their interests. Both
the European Union and the US had strong domestic arrangements for subsidies to their own
agriculture. But this was precisely what they wanted to dismantle in the developing world. As Raj
Patel comments, the aim of the EU and US was to keep their strategic reserves of food, while forcing
countries in the Global South to cede sovereignty of their agricultural suppliesthe EU and US were
ableto develop a system of agricultural supports that, in essence, let them continue to subsidise
their farmers while countries in the Global South signed away precisely this right.446
Since the mid-1990s trade agreements have forced developing countries to open their borders to
cheap, subsidised food from the developed world. Simultaneously, developing countries were urged
to remove domestic protection for their own agriculture. After independence many former colonies
had instigated such protection to enable them to break free of the unequal trade arrangements that had
been imposed upon them by their former colonial rulers. Governments dismantled their systems of
protection for domestic farmers, their systems of grain procurement and distribution. This made them
dependent on food imports, but the neoliberal idea was that countries should produce crops for export
to raise capital to pay for imports.
Unfortunately this strategy of export specialisation failed. Utsa Patnaik explains what happened:
The promises of increased export earnings and ability to access food from global markets proved misleading and false even before
the current inflation started. First, with dozens of developing countries following the same policies of exporting much the same
products, the unit dollar price of their exports declined and terms of trade moved against them Second, even if foreign exchange
is not a constraint, governments do not privilege the interests of the poor.447

As a result, millions of ordinary people in rural areas of the developing world have been further
impoverished, driven into debt or displaced from their lands. Millions more face food insecurity as
their agricultural economies have been restructured towards cash crops for export.
The story of Lee Kyung Hae, a 56 year old farmer from South Korea, sums up the experience of
millions. Lee had been a farming activist since 1979 and a leading member of South Korean farming
unions. Driven to activism by the destruction of traditional farming and the lives of his fellow rural
workers, Lee organised against the way that international trading agreements were impoverishing
South Korean farmers. In September 2003 a major protest took place outside the Cancun conference
of the World Trade Organisation. Lee committed suicide on the police barricades outside the meeting.
In his last public statement before he killed himself, Lee explained his plight and that of thousands of
fellow farmers, not just in South Korea, but around the developing world:
Korean farmers realised that our destinies are no longer in our own hands. We cannot seem to do anything to stop the waves that

have destroyed our communities where we have been settled for hundreds of years.
Farmers who gave up early have gone to urban slums. Others who have tried to escape from the vicious cycle have met
bankruptcy due to accumulated debts. For me, I couldnt do anything but just look around at the vacant houses, old and eroding
Widely paved roads lead to large apartments, buildings, and factories in Korea. Those lands paved now were mostly rice paddies
built by generations over thousands of years. They provided the daily food and materials in the past. Now the ecological and
hydrological functions of paddies are even more crucial.
My warning goes out to all citizens that human beings are in an endangered situation. That uncontrolled multinational
corporations and a small number of big WTO Members are leading an undesirable globalisation that is inhumane, environmentally
degrading, farmer-killing, and undemocratic. It should be stopped immediately. Otherwise the false logic of neoliberalism will wipe
out the diversity of global agriculture and be disastrous to all human beings.448

Tragically, the numbers of farmers committing suicide has grown enormously around the world.
India embarked on a neoliberal economic policy in 1991. Since then government protection for
famers has been virtually removed. As a result farmers have been driven into debt in their
thousands. Before 1991 there were no mass peasant suicides owing to debt, but between 1998 and
December 2008 there were 198,000 suicides and specifically debt-driven suicides have claimed
over 60,000 peasant lives over the last decade.449
As we have seen already, agriculture in the colonial and developing world has long been geared
towards producing goods for export to the richer world. Without the plantations and farms of South
America, India or Africa there would have been no sugar, cotton, tobacco, tea or countless other
commodities for the markets of Europe.
The introduction of neoliberal policies then is in many ways only the continuation of earlier
economic processes. As Patnaik comments, the colonised Indian peasant starved while exporting
wheat to England and the modern Indian peasant is eating less while growing gherkins and roses for
rich consumers abroad.450
In India neoliberal policies have reversed decades of improvement to food output. Per capita
production of food grain fell from 200 kg in 1900 to 136kg in 1946. After independence in 1948,
output grew to 183 kg per capita in the early 1990s. At the beginning of the neoliberal era in 1991
India took away state protection for the agrarian economy and output is now back at 1950 levels.
Similar trends can be seen in sub-Saharan Africa over the 1980s, with both total outputs and output
per capita declining.451 In the largest and most populous countries of sub-Saharan Africa export crops
grew between 6 and 13 percent annually, but basic food staples showed an absolute decline or grew
at less than 2 percent. Per capita consumption of staple foods declined. Over the same period five of
the six most populous nations in sub-Saharan Africa saw average calorie intakes decline.452
So in Africa structural adjustment programmes helped turn the continent from the food exporter that
it was in the 1960s to a chronic food importer today. The imposition of export-oriented
production was in part to enable African countries to generate the currency needed to service their
foreign debts.453
The production of crops for exports has led to a decline in food sovereignty in the developing
world. By growing cash crops, countries are supposed to be able to make enough money to purchase
imports from other countries that can supply their food needs. But as we saw in the case of India
under British rule, switching to cash crops like cotton makes whole areas vulnerable to price
fluctuations and drought. Today we are seeing similar processes on a much larger scale.
Some writers such as Patnaik see the neoliberal process as fuelling the further development of
capitalism in the developed world, part of a new process of primitive accumulation, sometimes
called accumulation through encroachment or accumulation through displacement. Henry

Bernstein sums up the debate by asking, Does globalisation represent a kind of climax of a worldhistorical process of peasant elimination which until now has proceeded unevenly and incompletely
acrossthe history of capitalism? The end of the peasantry has long been predicted, yet the
peasantry or small farmers continue to exist even in the face of the interests and pressures of global
capitalism.*
Today both Europe and the US continue to use subsidies on a large-scale to protect their
agricultural industries. In the rich countries of the OECD nations subsidies totalled $252 billion in
2011 (19 percent of total farm receipts).454
In the 1960s and 1970s European subsidies meant the purchase of farm crops when the price fell
below certain levels. The Common Agricultural Policy taxed imports and subsidised exports in an
attempt to reduce Europes reliance on imported goods. While this was successful in some ways, the
policy got a bad press when overproduction led to butter mountains and milk lakes. Since the 1990s
there has been a slow attempt to reform Europes subsidy policy. According to the journalist George
Monbiot, however, subsidies in Europe remain the most blatant transfer of money from the poor to
the rich. The main subsidy, the single farm payment, is paid per hectare (at the time of writing in
August 2013, it is approximately 200 per hectare). As Monbiot points out, this unrestricted system
benefits the larger (richer) farmer because it reinforces their economies of scale, helping them to
drive smaller farmers out of business.455 Attempts to reform this, through capping the subsidy or
reducing the rate after a certain number of hectares, have been blocked in particular by the British
government.
In the US subsidies also tend to benefit the rich. More than 80 percent go to households much
wealthier than the average American family. Vincent Smith, a professor of agricultural economics,
points out that in 2013 the US Farm Bill offered substantial cuts to nutrition programs targeted to
relatively poor families while continuing and even increasing six-figure government handouts to
thousands of millionaire corn, peanut, wheat, soybean and rich farmers.456 The 2013 bill was
eventually passed after major amendments, including the removal of the cuts to Food Aid, but the
version that was passed retained the support for big agribusiness. As the Financial Times
commented, it doled out hundreds of millions of dollars in generous subsidies to the sugar industry
and other businesses.
WTO agreements did allow developing countries to subsidise their agriculture, but in ways that
did not distort trade. Many developing countries have had to resort to massive subsidies to protect
their farmers. Chinas subsidies to agriculture were $160 billion in 2012; Brazils around $10
billion; and in India support for wheat and rice has increased by around three quarters between
2005/6 and 2010/11. Indian subsidies for fertiliser, electricity, irrigation and seeds also rose over the
same period by 214 percent to nearly $30 billion. Chinas and Indias subsidies now dwarf those of
the US and EU.457
Some see such subsidies as the only hope for agriculture in the developing world in the face of
heavily subsidised agriculture in the West. Sam Moyo, for instance, calls for:
New regional integration strategies based on holistic agrarian reforms and aimed at collectively reversing the decline of domestic
food production and food consumption, including protection from external shock and dependency, are crucial. These have to
counter the current market-based functional regionalism by building a popular regional industrial framework that systematically
reverses the current opening up of the region (through trade and monetary harmonisation), which has reinforced the mal-integration
of Africa into the global economy Food sovereignty requires policies which defend the African peasantrys land rights and the
internal home markets.458

No one who is concerned by the plight of the poorest people in the world can disagree that
developing countries need to have strategies to combat the unequal nature of the world trade system.
The problem is that without challenging the logic of capitalist farming, even within developing
nations, the poorest will continue to lose out. Just as subsidies in the rich nations benefit agribusiness
and the richest farmers disproportionately, subsidies in poorer countries are unequal in impact.
Turning oil into food
While the majority of the worlds farmers have never seen a tractor, agriculture in the developed
world would grind to a halt without the internal combustion engine. As a result agriculture is a
significant contributor to world emissions of greenhouse gases. The majority of these emissions are
methane from livestock, nitrous oxide from the soil and CO2 from the burning of fuel. Other parts of
the agricultural cycle are also highly energy intensivefrom the production of artificial fertilisers to
the transport of food from farm to market and beyond.
John Bellamy Foster has observed that modern agriculture has become the art of turning oil into
food.459 This dependence on mechanisation can be summed up by comparing US agriculture with that
of Mexico, which relies much more on traditional farming methods. In the US 160 litres of oil are
used per tonne of maize. In Mexico the equivalent figure is less than five litres.460
Part of the enormous increase in food production is a result of the expansion of farming to less and
less arable land. In order to make this land viable and to constantly improve the fertility of land
already in use, large quantities of fertilisers are needed. The production of these fertilisers requires
lots of fossil fuels. In particular, nitrogen fertiliser is produced by a process fuelled by natural gas
the source of which is increasingly fracking. The run off from nitrogen-based fertilisers into
streams, rivers and eventually the oceans is responsible for algae blooms which can kill whole areas
of the sea.
Soil erosion and the depletion of soil nutrients remain major problems for farmers. In 2007 in the
US for instance, 28 percent of all cropland was eroding at a rate that will mean farming cannot be
sustained indefinitely. The nutrients lost must be replaced using artificial fertilisers20 percent of
the total energy input into corn production is a result of trying to replace lost nutrients.461
There are many ways to reduce this soil loss and reduce the amount of artificial fertilisers used,
including changes to farming practices such as crop rotations or cover crops; structures like ditches
and terraces or techniques to build up natural organic matter. 462 But the barrier to doing this on
modern farms is not the particular practice of individual farmers, but the way that farming itself has
become dominated not just by machinery, but by neoliberal ideas. Speculation in food prices is one
example of this. The hoarding of food by multinational corporations against future prices rises is the
final separation of farming from the lives of people who rely on the food. As one Kansas wheat
farmer says, Were commoditizing everything, and losing sight that its [sic] food, that its something
people need Were trading lives.463
Capitalist agriculture, just as with any other arena of production, is performed in the interest of
profits. The trends that we have seen over the 19th and 20th centuries are associated with the
development of a global agriculture geared towards that aim. As farming has become more and more
dominated by technology, it has transformed itself to maximise the profits that can be made. Thus we
see the trends in Europe and the US towards large-scale farms that can best use heavy technology on

mono-cropped land.
Throughout the 20th century the domination of US food production has reshaped global agriculture.
As powerful farming corporations expand their exports, local producers cannot compete. The
expansion of the American Smithfield multinational into Eastern Europe has driven almost all of
Romanias pig farmers and over half of Polands out of business. Their expansion into West Africa
has had similar impacts, driving local farmers out of business by selling imported pork at half the
price of that produced locally.464
This drive to export to other parts of the world has destroyed local farming concerns, but it has
also helped to shape agriculture in the interest of western economies. Cash crops grown in the
developing world increase the dependence on imports, locking those countries into a world economy
in which agriculture is driven not by the needs of people, but the profits that can be made.
The US overseas food programme has always been geared towards protecting US interests abroad.
During the 1960s and 1970s the US helped drive the Green Revolution in much of the developing
world. At that time severe droughts in India and Pakistan were threatening the lives of millions of
people. The US saw the Green Revolution as having the potential to strengthen their position abroad.
In their view, hungry people might revolt and such movements were unlikely to further the interests of
the US. The environmental historian J R McNeil writes that the Green Revolution:
received its greatest supporton the frontiers of the communist world from Turkey to Korea, and recommended itself as a means
to blunt the appeal of socialist revolution The rice programme in particular originated from American anxieties about the possible
spread of Chinese communism after 1949.465

The Green Revolution was also popular among governments that wanted to limit demands for land
reform, particularly in Asia and Latin America. As McNeill comments, To state bureaucracies it
seemed to show a way to urban industrial society, and hence to wealth and power A more efficient
agriculture, particularly an export-orientated one, could build up capital needed for industrialisation
and at the same time get labour off the land and into factories.466
In 1954 the US passed Public Law 480, the Agricultural Trade Development Law. Five years later
President Kennedy renamed this as Food for Peace, declaring Food is strength, and food is peace,
and food is freedom, and food is a helping hand to people around the world whose good will and
friendship we want.467 The Food for Peace programme shipped large quantities of food to hungry
parts of the world. Yet the aid, like the Green Revolution, was less about helping people and more
about strengthening US influence. Food for Peace would ship wheat to parts of the world that had
never relied on the crop before, helping to create future markets for US wheat farmers. Today the aid
programme has also become a mechanism for bailing out US commercial agriculture. Oxfam, who
have been highly critical of the use of Food Aid programmes to further economic interests, quote the
US government: When allocating assistancepriority is given to agreements that provide for the
export of US agricultural commodities to those developing countries which have demonstrated the
potential to become commercial markets.468
Oxfam have demonstrated how when food prices are low and there is a surplus on the market US
aid increases, effectively subsidising US agriculture at precisely the times that the least amount of aid
is needed.469 Aid is also used to cement US markets in place. Just as cheap exports can undermine
local production, aid is used to undermine other exporters. One example comes from Jamaica in the
1990s. Throughout the decade imports of rice to Jamaica came from Guyana, yet the sudden
swamping of the market with rice from the US made it unviable for Guyanas farmers to export to

Jamaica. Many lost their businesses and others had to find alternate markets. Food aid destroyed
local markets and producers and made Jamaica more dependent on the US economy.470
Food aid, along with other aspects of US foreign policy, has been a negative experience for the
developing world. Yet the Green Revolution did demonstrate the potential to feed humanity. With a
growing number of mouths to feed, the switch to using new crops in the developing world meant that
food production doubled long before the predicted doubling of the worlds population. The one part
of the developing world left untouched by the Green Revolution was Africa, where local crop strains
were never developed like those in Asia. Partly as a result of this food production in Africa failed to
keep up with population growth.471
However, it is important to understand the wider impacts of these major changes to food crops.
Traditional crops have often been developed over centuries to fit particular soils and climates. The
Green Revolutions new strains, developed in laboratories by mixing and matching crops from
around the world, often worked well in good soils, but in more marginal climates and farm lands they
were not as successful. The new strains have other disadvantages that mean they can be particularly
inappropriate for the developing world. They are often much thirstier than traditional crops and
require large amounts of chemical fertilisers. Thus the crops of the Green Revolution were more
appropriate for richer farmers with money to spendsomething that was not common among the
majority of Asias farmers.
The Green Revolution also encouraged single-crop farming. This tends to benefit from large fields
and the heavy use of machinery. At the same time the reduction in biodiversity increases the threat
from pests, leading to an increased reliance on pesticides. In turn, this use of chemicals increased
illness among farmers and the poisoning of wider eco-systems. Finally, mixed agriculture can protect
a farmer against losing their entire harvest in the event of crop failure.472
Farming for profit
The shaping of a global food market in the interest of the dominant economic power creates enormous
contradictions. Countries that were former breadbaskets have become net importers of basic
foodstuffs. The transformation of world agriculture into a profit making system dominated by
multinationals means that those unable to afford to buy food go hungry.
Free trade was designed to be the mechanism that could both feed the world and make everyone
wealthier. At the 1996 summit of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation governments
signed a final declaration designed to emphasise the importance of trade to food security: We agree
that trade is a key element in achieving food security. We agree to pursue food trade and overall trade
policies that will encourage our producers and consumers to utilise available resources in an
economically sound and sustainable manner.473
Tying food security to unfettered trade was supposed to:
liberalise world agricultural markets by ending subsidies to inefficient producers, tear down tariff walls, and end the practice of
holding government-controlled food stocks. World market supplies will then move to where need is greatest World priceswill
rise, which will be good for the farmers who are profitable in the deregulated markets Consumers will pay less, benefiting from
the efficiencies created by sharper competition.474

Yet despite the increases in food prices, most farmers have seen little or no benefit. Despite rising
food prices, the cost of seed and fertilisers has increased. As a result, a small number of agribusiness

multinationals have seen their wealth rise dramatically. In 2007, at the height of the food crisis,
profits for food processing giant Cargill rose 36 percent. Another food conglomerate ADMs profits
rose by 67 percent. Monsanto, one of the worlds largest seed companies, saw its profits rise 44
percent.
The tea industry can serve to illustrate how large companies dominate the world food system and
the impact this has.475 Today 15 million people worldwide are employed in producing the drink, in an
industry worth $4 billion. Millions more are dependent on the wider tea economy, so that in India, for
instance, some 11 million people rely on tea production. Tea is an enormously important export crop,
making up 13 percent of Kenyas exports and 15 percent of Rwandas. Tea production is dependent
on a complex network of individuals, producers, landowners, pickers, and traders. Tea is usually
grown on large estates by hired workers, who are often women, working for low wages. In Kenya a
plantation worker can earn $3 a day; in India it is usually less than $2. The large number of
plantations and tea producers is funnelled into a smaller number of buyers. Ultimately a tiny number
of companies control the tea trade. As one report says:
Just six companies reportedly account for two thirds of the tea traded at the Mombasa tea auction in Kenya, where most African
tea-producing countries trade their tea Four companiesUnilever (who produce Lipton and PG Tips), Tata Tea (who produce
Tetley), Van Rees (a tea trading company) and James Finlay (a tea packing company)dominate, with Unilever, the largest,
buying 12 percent of the worlds black tea.476

Around 40 percent of the profits from the tea trade go to these multinationals. A further 40 percent
goes to retailers, packagers and processing companies, who are usually based in the developed
world. Only a tiny percentage gets to those who actually grow and pick the tea. As one report from
the International Labour Organisation puts it, The effort of the manufacturers-retailers is to restrict
costs at the production stage in order to reap high profits at points located higher on the value
chain.477 As a result of this unequal structure millions of people across the world are vulnerable to
attempts by multinationals to reduce costs and maximise profits.
Rather than producing a more level playing field, the free market produces an even more
centralised system dominated by a few enormous multinationals, with local producers more restricted
than ever before. The wealth of the multinationals that dominate the growing, processing and
distribution of food is almost incomprehensible; food processor Nestls 2007 profit was $9.7
billion, greater than the combined GDP of the 65 poorest countries in the world.
Corporations like these dominate agriculture to such an extent that they can alter government
policy, prices and drive smaller companies out of business. 478 The centrality of free market interests
mean famine is a more likely outcome of food crisis rather than supplies being moved to where they
are needed. In addition, the IMF has insisted that countries in debt on the world market should sell
their strategic food reserves in order to pay off loans. The lesson learnt from thousands of years of
agricultural practicesthat food should be stored against future hungeris being undone in the
interests of corporate wealth.
The future of farming
Over the centuries much has been written by those who want to put forward their vision of a rational
agriculture. Radical writers have been at the forefront of this. As we have seen, Marx and Engels
were fascinated by the history of agriculture, the part that rural changes played in the formation of

capitalism and the way that the separation between town and country underlined the artificial rift
between human beings and the natural world. But they never produced a detailed account of what
rational agriculture would be like.
Many of those who built upon their work did try. In 1899 the German Marxist Karl Kautsky wrote
a detailed analysis of agricultural history, The Agrarian Question. In the same year the Russian
revolutionary Lenin published an account of Russian agriculture in The Development of Capitalism
in Russia. The question of the peasantry was to preoccupy Lenin for the rest of his life, as Russia
remained a country dominated by its rural population. As we have seen, the peasantry played a
crucial supporting role in the success of the Russian Revolution and there were extensive debates
about the way forward for agriculture in the context of the development of the Soviet economy.
Today radical politics in Europe and North America rarely concerns itself with agriculture or the
people who work the land. In part this is due to the low numbers employed in the industry. In 2012 in
the UK only 481,000 people worked in agriculture, less than 2 percent of the total work force. But
viewing the rest of the agricultural world through the experience of farming in the developed nations
leads us to misunderstand the lives of half of the worlds people.
In many former colonial countries and former Eastern Bloc nations, the majority of peasants do not
have enough land to feed their families. Instead most of the land is part of large estates, such as South
Americas latifundia. The peasants must work on these farms, which are thousands or tens of
thousands of acres in size, for long hours and minimal pay. These farms, which are not only well
equipped but have access to large areas of land at low cost and to some of the lowest paid workers in
the world, can produce large quantities of food at a relatively low cost. Mazoyer and Roudart
suggest that a worker on less than $1,000 a year can produce more than 1,000,000 kilograms of
cereals at a far lower cost than American or European farmers, who can only compete on the
international market because they are the recipients of subsidies.479
But latifundia are unusual when we look at farming in the majority of the world. Small-scale farms
are responsible for the majority, two thirds, of world food production. In the late 1980s in Latin
America for instance, 16 million peasant farms, each with an average size of 1.8 hectares,
representing a third of cultivated land, grew 51 percent of maize, 77 percent of beans and 61 percent
of potatoes for domestic consumption. Today 80 percent of African farms33 millionare small
farms with two thirds of farms below two hectares and 90 percent below ten hectares. Over half of
small farms in the world are in China, 23 percent in India. The majority of the 200 million rice
farmers in Asia do so on land less than two hectares and China has probably 75 million rice farmers
using methods effectively unchanged in the last 1,000 years.480
As we face a future of increasing homogenisation of crop types and the destruction of traditional
crops and farming methods, we should reflect on the loss of centuries of farming experience geared
towards local environments, communities and trading networks.
It is common sense in the West to think that the only way we can feed an expanding population is
through extending the large-scale mono-cropped farming that dominates Europe and North America.
Yet it is actually small farms that are likely to be at the forefront of feeding the world in the shortterm future. There are a number of reasons for this, but most simply, small farms are often better at
producing food than large-scale mono-cropped agriculture. Those working small farms tend to have
more local knowledge and interest in their crops than people labouring for others on estates or vast
industrial farmsand this can improve yields and safeguard the land for future use.

A World Bank report on agriculture in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Ecuador showed
smaller farms being three to 14 times more productive than larger farms.481 The reason is that they are
usually based on polyculture rather than single crops. A large monoculture farm growing a single
crop, corn for instance, may well produce more corn per hectare than a polycultural farm. But if we
consider the total crop produced on the smaller farm, where corn is perhaps grown together with
beans, squashes, potatoes and fodder for animals, then the total amount of food produced is much
higher. Planting multiple species of crops on the same land reduces losses due to weeds and disease,
and makes more efficient use of nutrients, water, light and space. Two or more crops grown on the
same land sometimes over-yield, producing more than if they were grown on the same area
separately.
Polyculture also means mixing crops and animals. Cattle producing manure for fields is an obvious
example of the benefits, but there are many others. South east Asian farmers often encourage ducks,
pigs and even carp to share their rice paddies to great effect. Thus by farming more intensively on
smaller areas, small-scale farmers can make more profit per area of land than larger monoculture
farmers.482
Small farms have reduced impacts on the environment. In part this is because they may use fewer
pesticides or fertilisers. Certainly polycultural farming encourages ecological diversity in plants,
animals and insects, as well as local variations in crop species.
Such farms are better able to survive environmental disaster and climate change. In 1998
Hurricane Mitch killed 9,000 people and caused enormous destruction across Central America. One
estimate was that Honduras lost half of its agricultural crops, while 70,000 houses were damaged.483
In the aftermath, a study by the Campesino a Campesino (Peasant to Peasant) movement compared
almost 2,000 sustainable and conventional farms throughout Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala.
They concluded that farms that practised sustainable methods, such as intercropping (polyculture) and
cover-cropping (crops planted to improve soil fertility and bio-diversity) suffered less damage than
nearby farms growing monoculture crops. The difference was significant; the sustainable farms had
20 to 40 percent more topsoil and less erosion than the others.484
Many of those who campaign for more rational agriculture point to the importance of organic
farming. Organic farming is an understandable reaction to farming with large amounts of chemicals.
Rather than relying on artificial pesticides and fertilisers, proponents of organic farming encourage
the use of mixed cropping, crop rotations, natural pest controls and manure. Organic farming can have
real benefitslike mixed cropping it can also be more resilient to environmental change. Because
organic agriculture emphasises the addition of material to the soil, this helps to improve drainage,
reduce erosion and boost crop yields. But organic farming can be much more labour intensive.
Would a rational agriculture only rely on organic methods? Not necessarily. In our rejection of the
irrationalities of modern agribusiness, we should be careful not to throw out the baby with the
bathwater. Colin Tudge, a campaigner for enlightened farming puts it well: Organic farming need
not be the absolute requirement But it should be the default position: what farmers do unless there
is a very good biological reason to do something else.485
A complete rejection of non-organic intervention in farming would blindly ignore the real benefits
that artificial products can bringbe it fertiliser when rainfall has been inadequate or pesticides
when crops are threatened by a particular insect. The problem is not the technology itself, but the way
that modern agribusiness has developed to maximise profits with the overuse of chemicals and

technology.
Is genetic modification part of the solution?
Genetically modified (GM) crops are often put as a solution to world hunger. The companies that
manage them argue that their products will increase yields, reduce dependence on pesticides and
fertilisers and improve nutrition. Yet the reality is very different.
Making GM crops today is a complex process that involves engineering work inside a plants
DNA. In some respects, this is no different to what farmers have been doing for thousands of years
crossing plants or animals, or improving crops by selective breeding. However, modern technology
allows scientists to do this on a different scaleresults are quick, instead of taking years as the
farmer waits for new crops to mature or animals to breed. In recent years thousands of new plant
species have hit the market, including new types of cotton better resistant to pests or Golden Rice
with more vitamins.
The problem with GM foods comes not from the science itself, but from the interests of those
corporations who engage in it. The producers of GM seeds are enormous multinationals. Companies
such as Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta dominate the market, earning billions of dollars from the sale
of their products. These companies make enormous claims for their products, yet campaigners against
them argue there are real problems. Let us look at the poster crop of the GM multinationals, Golden
Rice.
Every year up to half a million children go blind due to inadequate amounts of vitamin A in their
diet. Half of these children die within a year of losing their sight. The industry answer to this was
Golden Ricerice strains that have been engineered to produce beta-carotene in the edible part of
the grain. When eaten, beta-carotene is converted into vitamin A. Rice that has been genetically
altered in this way has a yellow colour, hence its name. The GM companies argue that by eating
Golden Rice instead of traditional varieties, children can obtain higher levels of vitamin A in their
diet and this will help avoid the vitamin deficiency that causes blindness.
Yet according to a 2001 report by a coalition of groups critical of Golden Rice, eating 300 grams
of golden rice can only provide at most 20 percent of an adults daily vitamin A requirement. The
report notes that children have a lower requirement of vitamin A, but 300 g of rice a day is way too
much for a child. In the Philippines, pre-school children consume less than 150 grams of rice a day. In
principle then golden rice will only supply a little over 10 percent of the daily vitamin A needed by
preschool children.486
But even if the manufacturers claims were accurate, using GM rice to solve the question of
vitamin deficiencies in children is missing the point. The reason that many of the poorest children
suffer from vitamin A (and other nutrient) deficiencies is because of a lack of variety in the foods that
they eat. As we have seen, one of the consequences of the Green Revolution was a tendency towards
monocultures of staple crops such as grain or rice. This has led to imbalances in food production and
diet in many countries. Those countries with vegetable consumption of more than 200 grams of
vegetables per day do not have vitamin A deficiency as a major problem It only takes two
tablespoonfuls of yellow sweet potatoes, half a cup of dark green leafy vegetables or two thirds of a
medium-sized mango in a day to meet the vitamin A requirement of a pre-schoolchild.487
The problem is that tens of thousands of children are at risk of going blind because their families

cannot afford to purchase any other food than rice. As a recent study points out, Even before the
global food crisis [2007-2008] pushed up prices of staples, many poor people were already finding it
difficult to afford balanced diets containing essential micro-nutrients.488
So the lack of vitamin A and other nutrients is crucially a consequence of poverty. A 2007 study
confirmed this. The study estimated the lowest cost of a daily diet that would meet the nutritional
needs of a family of two adults and three children (one under two years of age) in Bangladesh,
Burma, Ethiopia and Tanzania. The figures are low, ranging from US$ 0.72 in Tanzania to US$ 1.27
in Ethiopia. The authors then compared these costs to household incomes. They discovered that:
many could not afford the healthy diet79 percent of households in Bangladesh, all households in Ethiopia, and the very poor in
Burma and Tanzania. The going rate for a days unskilled work would just cover the cost in Bangladesh and Tanzania, but not in
Ethiopia where it was worth only 69 percent of the cost, and even less in Burma where it covered only 50 percent of the cost.489

The use of Golden Rice does nothing to alter the social inequality that leads to an inadequate diet.
In this case GM crops are treating a symptom, not the cause of a problem. It is also a specific
symptom. Vitamin A deficiency in adults and children is unlikely to occur without other nutritional
deficiencies, yet Golden Rice does nothing to challenge these.
Here lies the crux of the problem. Blindness in children caused by the lack of vitamin A is rooted
in a social and economic system that cannot provide a decent diet to millions of people. Solutions that
do not address this question can only result in the reinforcement of the problem. The companies
behind Golden Rice are not interested in feeding the world, but in selling their products. Even if their
products matched the manufacturers amazing claims they only maintain the status quo.
Many campaigners are concerned that GM manufacturers like to use GM crops as a poster
crop490 for their other products enabling them to imply their motives are humanitarian, when in
reality they are motivated by profits. AstraZeneca for instance, the company that signed the first deal
with the inventors of Golden Rice, announced it would waive fees for the development of the rice, for
humanitarian reasons.491 The GM industrys public relations departments are too clever to simply
pretend that their rice is a magic solution that can ignore wider issues. Instead they suggest their
product is only part of a wider solution.
The Rockefeller Foundations Golden Rice Project states:
We wish that everybody in the world had access to a varied diet, capable of covering all nutrition needs of the population. Yet, a
quick reality check teaches us that in many regions of the world this goal will not be achieved any time soon We are happy to
see the success of ongoing fortification and supplementation efforts, and we are convinced that Golden Rice will be able to
contribute to these programmes and narrow down the existing gaps.492

At their worst, GM crops are used to lock farmers into unequal relationships with seed companies.
Since the profits of these companies stem from the ability to sell seeds, their practices are geared
towards encouraging the further sale of their products in the future. This practice reaches its extreme
with terminator genes whereby a seed produces a healthy plant, but that plants own seeds are
sterile. Instead the farmer must return to the manufacturer and purchase more seeds. In some cases
farmers who have bought GM seeds have been sued by companies like Monsanto for saving seeds to
plant the following year as this breaks their contract with the multinational.
Other GM crops lock farmers into particular methods of farming. They force a reliance on certain
pesticides or fertilisers. Monsanto produces a herbicide called Roundup. It also sells Roundup Ready
seeds that are resistant to it. Farmers that use the herbicide need to also buy the seeds or risk their
crop.

A recent report by a coalition of non-governmental organisations and campaign groups shows that
despite the claims made by the corporations, GM crops have not led to improved yields in a single
crop. The 2011 Global Citizens Report on the State of GMOs shows that instead of reducing the use
of pesticides and herbicides, the opposite is true. Supposedly the introduction of strains that are
resistant to herbicides would allow farmers to control threats to their crops. Instead they led to super
weeds and super pests able to tolerate the chemicals. In the US 15 million acres have been taken
over by weeds resistant to Roundup herbicide.
The consequence is that farmers are using more chemicals. Companies that produced the resistant
crops now market different versions of the herbicides. The ongoing war on weeds and pests leads to
a growing dependence on new and improved pesticides which in turn need to be replaced when they
no longer work effectively.
Another problem is that GM crops can cross over into other non-GM crops. In Aragon, Spain, for
instance, since 2005 over 40 percent of organic grain has traces of genetically-engineered material. In
Canada the widespread growing of genetically engineered canola has contaminated nearly all the
conventional canola and in so doing wiped out organic canola production.493
There are also concerns that GM material might be transmitted to humans. One way that this could
happen is if animals are fed on feedstuffs that are made in part with GM crops, and the animals milk
or meat is then consumed. The British Food Standards Agency web guidance on GM varieties used in
animals feed admits that:
DNA fragments derived from GM plant materials may occasionally be detected in animal tissues, in the same way that DNA
fragments derived from non-GM plant materials can be detected in these same tissuesno technique is currently available to
enable a valid and reliable tracing of animal products (meat, milk, eggs) when the producer animals have been fed a diet
incorporating GM plants.494

A 2013 study by Hungarian researchers concluded that it was possible for DNA fragments which
are large enough to carry complete genes [to] avoid degradation in the digestive tract and through an
unknown mechanism enter the human circulation system.495
Genetic alteration of plants (or even animals) using modern technology is not the same as the
gradual changes made to plant genetics over many years of selective breeding by farmers. These
changes have taken place at a different pace, allowing changes to be observed in the real world.
Major genetic changes made in a laboratory can operate very differently once introduced onto farm
land and many scientists have expressed their concern that the introduction of GM species can lead to
wider environmental impacts.
GM crops are a particularly extreme example of the way that agribusiness, dominated as it is by
powerful corporations, has shaped agriculture in the interests of its shareholders. They are the sharp
point of an agriculture that is shaped not by farmers, but by supermarket chains, multinational
corporations and businessmen in board rooms.
Those who oppose GM crops are often accused of being anti-science. Science and technology
have been an integral part of agriculture for thousands of years. But GM crops are not simply the
latest technological development. They could have potentially disastrous impacts on the food we eat,
the crops we grow, the weeds and pests that farmers have to contend with and the health of humans
and animals.
The problem is not science. The problem is that GM crops are being rolled out by companies
that see them as a new way to make massive profits. Opposition to GM crops today is not anti-

science; it is part of the struggle for a more rational agriculture, based on human and environmental
needs, not short-term profits. Indeed, as we shall see in the coming sections, GM crops are not
necessary to adequately feed the worlds hungry.
Population growth and food
Early in 2012 the worlds population hit seven billion. The previous milestone, six billion, was
reached in 1999. Only slightly over two centuries ago the worlds population was one billion. The
rate of increase has been phenomenal; readers who are over 45 have lived through the doubling of the
Earths population.496
This increase in population has caused concern for generations. Most famously in 1798 the
Reverend Thomas Malthus published the first of a series of essays that argued that population growth
would always outstrip available food supplies. According to Malthus, when unchecked, population
grows geometrically, doubling every cycle, like the mathematical progression that begins 1, 2, 4, 8,
16. Food supply on the other hand, he argued, only grows arithmetically1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. Within
two and a quarter centuries, Malthus said, the ratio of population to subsistence would be 512 to 10,
meaning famine for the majority of society.497
Malthuss arguments were ideological, not scientific. The lack of evidence to back up his figures
did not worry him; instead he was arguing that the hunger and poverty that bedevilled the poor were
inevitable. Malthus believed that the only limitations on population were hunger and disease, or vice.
He thought that vice reduced population because of the spread of diseases such as gonorrhoea or
syphilis, but also because he believed that promiscuity reduced fertility. Clearly the Reverend was
not suggesting that an increase in vice was thus a good thing. He also rejected birth control because it
encouraged non-procreative sex that damaged the morals of the lower classes.
At the heart of Malthuss theory was the idea that any attempt to create a fairer society was
doomed to failure. Populations would inevitably collapse under the weight of hunger, disease and sin:
Man cannot live in the midst of plenty. All cannot share alike the bounties of nature. Were there no established administration of
property, every man would be obliged to guard with force his little store. Selfishness would be triumphant.498

Malthus was writing in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789. Everywhere people were
inspired by the declaration of libert, galit, fraternit. A new world was being opened up, but the
ruling class in Britain could only look on in fear. For their counterparts over the Channel, the
revolution had meant the guillotine.
So Malthuss writings were a polemic against those who argued for a more just and fair society.
The opening lines of his most famous work, An Essay on the Principle of Population, begin by the
author explaining that they were intended as a response to the works of the radical writer William
Godwin whose own polemics were directed against the evils of private property. Malthuss
arguments led him to believe that not only was a better society impossible, but poverty was
inevitable. Charity such as the Poor Laws, which offered limited help to the poor, only made the
situation worseencouraging the poor to have children they could not afford and reduced the food
available for others. As Malthus put it, The quantity of provisions consumed in workhouses upon a
part of the society that cannot in general be considered as the most valuable part diminishes the shares
that would otherwise belong to more industrious and more worthy members.499
The 1803 edition of his essay summed up the callous consequences of his beliefs: With regard to

illegitimate childrenthey should on no account whatever be allowed to have any claim to parish
allowance The infant is, comparatively speaking, of no value to society, as others will immediately
supply its place500
Those who argue today that the world is too crowded are rarely motivated by the same
arguments that Malthus was. Few would, one hopes, argue that the poor and hungry should not receive
aid or assistance in the way that Malthus meant, but some do come close. The self-declared leading
population charity in Britain, Population Matters, formerly known as the Optimum Population Trust,
believes that a sustainable population size for the UK may be lower than 20 million. The influential
writer James Lovelock believes that we would be wise to aim at a stabilised [world] population of
about half to one billion, a task he describes as unpalatable.501 While the modern neo-Malthusians
do not yet call for the withdrawal of charity to the poor and the hungry it is a small step from their
current ideas.
The 20th century has seen repeated attempts to whip up panic about an overpopulated world. In the
early 1950s the Population Council was set up to campaign and argue against aid being provided to
the developing world, for fear that it would build up ever larger populations on the basis of
charity.502 Funded by influential and wealthy individuals such as John Rockefeller III, it also
included those who believed that births should be increased, but only among genetically superior
individuals.503 In the 1960s Paul Ehrlichs bestselling book The Population Bomb warned the world
that a growing population would soon exceed the capacity of the planet. This preoccupation with
population was in part to do with the politics of the Cold War. The US was concerned that growing
populations would be short of food and this would encourage revolt playing into the hands of the
Soviet Union.
But Malthus was wrong and so were the panic mongers of the postwar period. As we have seen,
technological improvements such as the Green Revolution have enabled us to feed the massive
population growth that has taken place since the Second World War.
Climate change has encouraged renewed discussions on population. Once those who would
control population worried only about food; today they also worry about the extra emissions
produced by increasing numbers of people. Many concerned about the relationship between the
environment and population point to a simple equation: I=PxAxT.
Here the impact (I) of humans on the environment is a product of Population (P) multiplied by
Affluence (A) and Technology (T). Any increase in any of the factors increases the damage to the
planet. This is a very simplistic analysis. It can, for instance, foster the idea that there is a general
equivalence between population changes in say, Vietnam or Bangladesh and the US or Europe. Yet
this is not true, as Fred Pearce notes: The poorest three billion or so people on the planet (roughly
45 percent in total) are currently responsible for only 7 percent of emissions, while the richest 7
percent (about half a billion people) are responsible for 50 percent of emissions.504
This means that an increase in population in the majority of the world has much less of an impact
upon the environment than a similar increase in the developed world. This is not simply a question of
maths, but also of ideology. All too often those concerned with population increases only point to the
rapid growth in population in the developing world with predictable, racist conclusions. Yet people
in those countries have a negligible impact upon the environment when compared to the developed
economies.
The problem with the IPAT equation is that it implies that the rest of the world should remain in

poverty, while those lucky enough to live in the developed world can continue as we are. Like
Malthus, we are in danger of creating ideologies to justify the status quo. But as I will demonstrate
later, it is entirely possible for us to change our impact upon the natural world in a sustainable way.
Rather than technology being part of the problem as the IPAT equation implies, it can be part of the
solution. But there is another problem; this is the question of the social system we live under.
Some of the most trenchant critics of Thomas Malthus were those very radicals the Reverend was
trying to discredit. Marx and Engels expended much energy tackling Malthuss writings. Marx was
particularly vocal; declaring Malthus the reverend scribbler, he denounced Malthuss ideas as a
great libel on the human race.
While also pointing out the ability of the world, through the expansion of agriculture and
technological innovation, to feed growing populations, Engels went on to approach the population
question from a radically different point of view. If there is not enough food, he asked why is too
little produced? Engels answered his own question:
Not because the limits of productioneven today and with present day meansare exhausted. No, but because the limits of
production are determined not by the number of hungry bellies but by the number of purses able to buy and to pay. Bourgeois
society does not and cannot wish to produce any more. The moneyless bellies, the labour which cannot be utilised for profit and
therefore cannot buy is left to the death-rate.505

The brutal reality of Engelss words has been shown time and again when famine has struck. Some
20 years earlier potato blight devastated the staple food crop of Ireland. A million and a half people
died and a further million emigrated to find food and work.506 During the worst of the Irish Famine the
major preoccupation of the British government was that famine relief must not undermine the price of
food on the open market. As millions starved, prices rocketed. The governments position was that
famine offered traders an opportunity to make profits. Speculators made fortunes out of corn while the
government refused to intervene. Fearing the impact on private business, Sir Charles Trevelyan, the
Treasury Assistant responsible for famine relief, repeatedly refused to allow food to be sent to the
starving. Trevelyan was a pupil of Malthus.
The disaster that hit Ireland was not natural. Other countries suffered from potato blight but did not
experience mass starvation. The disaster was a result of the relationship between the British state and
the Irish people that had left them impoverished and reliant on a single crop, coupled with the refusal
of the government to allow relief for fear of upsetting those who profited out of the sale of food. In
1847 in the midst of the famine Ireland produced a bumper harvest of grain. The face of the country
is covered with ripe corn, while the people dread starvation The grain will go out of the country,
sold to pay rent, wrote the government officer in charge at Limerick.
Many people who died as a result of the famine could have survived if the authorities had done
more to help. The British government spent just over 7 million on famine relief from 1845 to 1850.
This contrasts with the 20 million given to West Indian slave owners as compensation following the
emancipation of the slaves in the 1830s, or the 70 million that was spent on the Crimean War a few
years later.507
In 1876 in India failed rains caused famine in Madras. Despite above average crops elsewhere in
the country, millions of people starved. Indeed much of this surplus had been shipped to Britain. But
once again the importance of the free market ensured that those who starved did so to maximise
profits for a few. As Mike Davis comments, British antipathy to price control invited anyone who
had the money to join in the frenzy of grain speculation. Instead of the railroads allowing food to be

shipped to famine regions where it was needed, food was taken to the markets with the highest prices.
The journal The Nineteenth Century commented, The dearth was one of money and of labour rather
than food.508
The death and displacement of millions of Irish and Indian people in these two examples were not
the result of a simple failed harvest or potato blight, but a consequence of colonialism and economic
policies that prioritised profit. There was food available, but the hungry could not afford it. Through
the 20th century this has been repeated time and again.
In the 1970s famine struck the West African Sahelian nations. All but one of the affected countries
produced enough to feed their populations. In the 1980s 31 countries suffered drought in sub-Saharan
Africa, yet only five suffered famine. Today there is 15 percent more food available than 20 years
ago, but often counties with high levels of malnutrition are net exporters of foodIndia, for instance,
exported millions of dollars of wheat in 1995, despite 200 million of its population going hungry.509
The United Nations Hunger Task Force has shown that if the developed nations gave just 0.7
percent of their GNP in aid, world hunger could be halved, but they must also reform trade practices
that hurt farmers in hungry countries, andstop dumping cheap agricultural products on these
vulnerable markets.510
The question of feeding the worlds population today remains urgent. However, estimates that the
world population will reach up to 11 billion by 2050 should be examined with caution. There is also
strong evidence that population rise is reaching a plateau. The UN suggests that the worlds
population will stabilise by 2100. Some indications are that it may well decrease.
In his book PeopleQuake Fred Pearce argues that already more than 60 countriescontaining
approaching half of the worlds populationhave fertility rates below national replacement levels.
This includes countries as diverse as China, Thailand, Iran, South Korea, Brazil and Vietnam. At the
current rate of decline, the worlds fertility rate will be below replacement level soon after 2020
on current trends the worlds population is primed to start falling for probably the first time since the
Black Death in the 14th century.511
If fertility rates stay the same in countries such as Italy and Germany their populations will fall by
over 80 percent by the end of the century. Currently around six million babies are born annually in
Europe. Thats two million less than needed to maintain the population and four million less than
were being born at the beginning of the 20th century. The population of Russia is dropping by half a
million every year.512
The precise reasons why birth rates are falling are complex. Economics, politics and education
are some of the factors, and they vary from country to country. In some parts of the world wider
social changes such as the Green Revolution had enormous consequences for birth rates. The newer
crops tended to require a move towards more industrial farming, but required less labour on the
farms, so families tended to get smaller.513
But even if the worlds population rise does not level off or decline in the next century, there is
still the potential to feed increasing numbers of people.
Sustainable diets?
Before we look at how agriculture has the potential to feed the worlds population healthy and
sustainably, I want to look at the impact of diet upon the environment. An argument that is often linked

with overpopulation is that we cannot feed the world sustainably, particularly if people want to have
the same diet as those in richer nations.
The UKs Vegetarian Society argues in its pamphlet, Why it is Green to go Vegetarian , that
studies on world food security estimate that an affluent diet containing meat requires up to three
times as many resources as a vegetarian diet. Going vegetarian is an easy way to lower your own
environmental impact and help ensure worldwide food security. It is certainly true that some diets
do have a large environmental footprint. We will see later, for instance, that production of meat and
milk can require large quantities of water and the rearing of cattle produces large quantities of
methane. But the problem is not diet on its own, it is the way that agriculture and food production
have become tied into a system based on profit. Rather than seeking to produce healthy, sustainable
food, the food industry is trying to maximise its profits.
So instead of producing quality meat from animals that have led healthy, cruelty-free lives, we are
instead offered cheap, tasteless, mass-produced chicken, pork and beef. The diets of the developed
world high in meat content are not conducive to long-term health and they undermine the basis for
sustainable agriculture.
Nor is the use of animals on farms and the production of meat itself the problem. Properly
managed cattle grazing on grasslands can lead to the land becoming a carbon sink. When grass is
quickly and heavily grazed the plants die off and their roots, within which atmosphere carbon has
become concentrated, are buried. Carbon trapped like this remains in the soil. So by encouraging
highly intensive grazing, then moving the cattle to another field, the soil is left in an improved
condition. In fact despite the cattle producing methane, the soil absorbs more carbon than is
released.514 Generations of farmers have, without having any knowledge of the greenhouse effect,
practised precisely this form of cattle rearingmoving their animals around fields and noting the
improvement of the soils for the next years crop rotations.
The modern meat industry designed around producing large volumes of cheap meat for the
supermarkets is the problem, not the consumption of meat itself.
The priorities of modern agriculture have also changed the animals on todays farms. Modern pigs,
for instance, have been bred to need rich food like cereals. Some pig breeds do well feeding on grass
but are considered uneconomic and have declined in recent times.515 Reintroducing animals like these
or breeding others should be part of more mixed and integrated farms in the future. Rather than
feeding pigs the expensive crops from cereal farming we could feed them the parts of the cropsthe
grass and the stems that we ourselves cannot eatavoiding this waste.
Instead of large monoculture farms, we need farms that mix crops and livestock together thereby
reducing their reliance on artificial chemicals and enjoying higher yields and better food.
However, this is precisely the opposite of the strategy offered by government to farmers. The
British government conclude in their 2011 report The Future of Food and Farming that to feed nine
billion people, agriculture must produce more food through the spread and implementation of
existing knowledge, technology and best practice, and by investment in new science and innovation,
and the social infrastructure that enables food producers to benefit from all of these.516
But this is a recipe for more of the same. Despite the concern of the reports authors about those
living in food insecurity, or for the growing threat of increased famine as a result of climate change,
their only solutions lie in the extension of the unsustainable agricultural system that fails to feed the
world today.

According to The Future of Food and Farming in the four decades between 1967 and 2007 world
crop yields grew by 115 percent, despite the area of land being used by agriculture only increasing by
8 percent. Today there is a world total of 4.6 billion hectares of land under cultivation. 517 In Britain
the average wheat yield is about eight tonnes per hectare, enough to provide at least a basic
nutritional diet for 20 people. Agriculture is not as productive as this everywhere in the world, but in
some parts it is more productive rather than less, particularly where using mixed crops.518
Enormous areas of land suitable for agriculture remain unused. In Africa, according to the UN
Food and Agricultural Organisation, between Senegal and South Africa only 10 percent of 400
million hectares of suitable land is farmed.
So in theory there is plenty of agricultural capacity to feed the projected growth of the population.
Bumper grain crops in 2007 produced one and a half times the food needed and production continues
to outstrip population growth. Despite this, people starve.519
The problem, as Engels pointed out 150 years ago, is a system that feeds people based on whether
they can afford to pay. The logical consequence of this is that if the price is right, agriculture will
grow crops not for food but for other markets, even as people go hungry. One example of this is the
way that crops are being grown to make biofuels.
Approximately 40 percent of corn grown in the US is used for ethanol for vehicle fuel. The
increased demand for biofuels, which may hit 172 billion litres by 2020 (up from 81 billion in 2008)
has helped to drive the cost of food up.520 One study by the British charity Action Aid suggested that
food prices could rise 76 percent by 2020 given current targets for biofuels.521 This would create an
extra 600 million hungry people. Biofuels are supposed to be a low carbon alternative to oilthe US
demands that 10 percent of fuel for transport comes from plant sources; the EU says that member
countries must source almost 6 percent of transport fuel from renewable sources. In practice this
will almost all come from plants.
Despite receiving large amounts of renewable subsidies (some 80 percent of US government
support for renewable energy) biofuels are not sustainable energy sources. Ethanol from sugarcane
needs over 2,000 litres of water for every litre of fuel produced; corn ethanol needs between 10 and
1,000 times the amount of water depending on where it is produced.522 There is a long delay in seeing
benefits from the production of biofuels. One study concluded that it would take 167 years before the
environmental benefits of converting land to biofuel crops were felt. In the first 30 years of this
production, emissions from corn ethanol [are] nearly double those from gasoline.523 Another
concern is that emissions of nitrous oxide emissions from increased use of fertilisers on biofuel crops
would cancel out any benefit from carbon reductions.
The rush to produce biofuels leads to forest clearance on an enormous scale, increased pollution,
drainage of water sources and the displacement of people. It also means letting people starve while
food is burnt for fuel, or land that could have produced food grows inedible crops as biofuels.
Increasingly, foreign multinationals are purchasing large areas of land in the developing world to
produce biofuels. A 2013 report by the campaigning group GRAIN documents 293 land grabs
between 2002 and 2012 totalling 17 million hectares where the intention is to grow biofuels.524
During the recent food price crisis, 40 million hectares of arable land, half of it in Africa, was
bought. Mostly this was by private corporations who were gambling on the price of food staying
high.525
In May 2011 the Guardian reported that half of the biofuel land in Africa is owned by British

companies. One company, Sun Biofuels, leases 8,000 hectares in Tanzania growing jatropha curcas, a
Central American flowering plant that produces oil-rich seeds. The chief executive of Sun Biofuels
sums up his companys philosophy:
Our company produces sustainable and ethical biofuels We would welcome higher sustainability standards, but you do have to
balance this with economic development. If you are a local and need a job, you probably arent worried about whether the orangutans sleep at night.526

According to the UN World Food Programme 40 percent of Tanzanias population, some 17.5
million people, live in chronic food-deficit regions where irregular rainfall causes recurring food
shortages while 38 percent of children under five are malnourished. Jatropha curcas is inedible.
The biofuel land grab is being driven by European companies. In order to meet European
Commission targets for biofuel use, millions of hectares of land in the developing world are being
bought up, and huge numbers of people are being displaced. The companies that drive this are
exporting land grabs and importing profits.
Today the world has the ability to provide for the current population and a growing one. The
barrier to doing that is an agriculture geared towards the interests of a small number of very large
multinationals. Throughout history agriculture has constantly been revolutionised. If we are to meet
the challenge of the environmental crisis and feed the population of the 21st century, we need another
such revolution.
Land struggles today
Many of the best writers on agriculture understand that the limitations of our current agricultural
system are due to capitalism, but often they reject anti-capitalist solutions. For instance, Colin Tudge
argues that while we need the end of neoliberalism and of finance capitalismwe do not need a
Marxist revolution. We merely need to return to the common-sense capitalism that was described and
acted upon by the founders of the modern United States.527
In the next chapter we will explore further why the problem is not just finance capitalism, but
capitalism itself. But because Tudge and other critics of industrial agriculture work on the basis that
the future of farming is limited by the existing system their vision of future agriculture ends up being
utopian in its ambition. Rather than challenging the priorities of the multinationals, the solution Tudge
puts forward is for individuals to take up farming in sustainable ways and create alternative
agriculture. For instance, he writes that some city dwellers should begin with a window box, then
move up to an allotment, followed by a larger allotment, then livestock and then full blown farming.
While individuals may well follow this path, and there are numerous examples of individual farmers
who produce excellent food, much more sustainably than industrial agriculture, Tudges vision is
clearly not a solution for everyone.
Such islands of enlightened farming would be at the mercy of the market and the larger, powerful
agricultural capitalists. One of the problems with modern agriculture is the way that farming has
become concentrated in the hands of large producers who have swallowed up and squeezed out small
farmers. In the US today there are a million fewer farms than there were 50 years ago, but more food
is grown and more animals are raised than previously. However enlightened farmers might be they
are vulnerable because of an economic system which is stacked against them.
If the major barrier to sustainable agriculture is the system of profit, then that system must be

challenged. Farming reforms may well bring about impressive changes in small areas of the world,
but if the wider, global structures of agribusiness are left intact, they will remain little more than
small farm oases in a wider sea of monoculture agriculture. What is needed is a much larger-scale
challenge to the priorities of agriculture under capitalism, and this means a movement from below. As
a result, some of the most inspiring examples of agriculture today are those being enacted by peasants
seizing control of land and farming it for themselves.
In China, for instance, there have been enormous numbers of riots and protests against governmentdriven land seizures as land is taken away from farmers for development. Between 2007 and 2009
there were over 90,000 mass incidents each year. Some two million Chinese farmers are
dispossessed each year. Often these protests involve a few hundred people; sometimes they grow into
huge rebellions involving thousands and are frequently responses to land grabs. In December 2011,
for instance, the people of the southern Chinese village of Wukan rose in open rebellion against the
sale of their lands.
Elsewhere small-scale land occupations have taken place as people try to find ways to survive the
economic crisis. In Andalusia, Spain, workers and the unemployed have worked as part of the
Andalusian Trade Union to lead land occupations. In one case, in Somonte, farm lands that were due
to be auctioned off have been occupied by unemployed workers who have begun to grow food for
their own use and to sell on the local market. Such examples may be on a very small-scalethe
example at Somonte has created jobs for 50 people on 400 hectaresbut in a region with extremely
high unemployment that traditionally relies on the agricultural economy, this could well become the
focus for further struggle.
Around the globe rural workers, small farmers and peasants have built some impressive
organisations. The international farmers federation, Via Campesina, founded in 1993, has become an
important part of global agricultural debates, not just in terms of demonstrations but in offering an
alternative strategy for agriculturefood sovereignty.
The Brazilian Landless Workers Movement, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra
(MST) is one of the most important components of Via Campesina. The MST lead land occupations,
reclaiming it for the landless peasants and the urban poor. The organisation has become the enemy of
politicians and feared by multinationals for its destruction of fields planted with GM crops. But most
impressive is its core strategy of land occupation.
Recently the MST have developed beyond simply being a movement for agrarian reform. Now
they see themselves as being part of a wider struggle against the priorities of capitalism. While
continuing to fight for the rights of farmers, the MST want an agrarian practice that transforms
farmers into guardians of the land, and a different way of farming, that ensures an ecological
equilibrium and also guarantees that land is not seen as private property.528
The MST has been very successful, forcing the Brazilian government to settle over 370,000
families. The MST takes itself and its supporters seriously. Their bottom up-democracy helps to
explain the success of their programmes over those of the governments. The MSTs supporters do not
simply occupy land; they must first join encampments with limited shelter and food and water
supplies. The prospective settlers wait here for a permanent place, but while serving this
apprenticeship, they prepare themselves for their future life.
The nucleo is the MSTs basic organising unit. It is organised to maximise involvement:
Each nucleo is comprised of two co-ordinators (one man and one woman) and a representative to the sectors of production and of

environment, health, security, political formation, education. This organicidade seeks to ensure that each individual person has a
tarefa, a task or action that benefits the settlement as a whole, at the same time as awakening a process of self-education and
responsibility in each person.529

By taking those involved at the bottom of agricultural transformation seriously, the MST builds a
powerful movement. Education is important and they have set up colleges and universities, insisting
on women playing a leading role, making experts who visit encampments accountable to the
community they work for. They also learn from their errors. In the 1980s the leadership of the MST
attempted to enforce cooperative farming on their supporters. It was, in the words of one leading
member, a disaster. Today they offer a choice between co-operative farming and individual farms,
providing information on both methods, both pros and cons. Increasing numbers, particularly those
from urban areas, are choosing the co-operative route.
MST farms are not perfect. They are still buffeted by the vagaries of the international economy.
Because the products from MST farms do not confirm to their normal standardised products,
supermarkets may refuse to buy from them. But the organisations focus on struggle and selforganisation demonstrates how a more sustainable and democratic agriculture might start.
The debate around collective farming that has taken place within the MST raises interesting
questions for the struggle for sustainable farming.
What would future farms look like?
The first thing to consider is farm size. The majority of farms in the world are small in size and
provide the largest sources of employment for the rural poor. It is only in the developed,
industrialised world that large-scale farming tends to dominate. We have seen that are many
advantages to small farms; they can be more productive, resistant to environmental problems and
more sustainable. But are they the future?
The term small farm is also problematic. A small farm in, say, India would be very different in
size from a small farm in the US. What constitutes small depends on a variety of factors.
The small farm as an economically viable unit that can provide livelihood to a household will
vary in size depending on a number of factors such as land productivity or the type of crops being
grown. To give some indication though, a 2008 background report on farming presented to the World
Bank used a crude assumption that a small farm was classed as one being less than two hectares in
size.530 Using this figure, the authors estimated that roughly 90 percent of the worlds farms are
small.531
But there is enormous variance. In Latin America, for instance, small farms make up 28 percent of
farms (about 1 percent of total farm land), compared to 67 percent for the Middle East and North
Africa (24 percent of total farm land), 62 percent for sub-Saharan Africa (56 percent of land) and 82
percent for South Asia (47 percent of total land). 532 These variations demonstrate the variety of
different methods of farming, crops, population densities and markets that characterise each region.
Marxists have often argued that there was a long-term trend away from small-scale farming. Lenin
wrote, The fundamental and main trend of capitalism is the elimination of small production by largescale production both in industry and agriculture.533 But contrary to expectations small-scale farming
has thrived in most parts of the world. Even in the developed West small farms show no sign of
disappearing completely. Taking Britain as an example: the average farm is 57 hectares, compared to

a European average of approximately 20 hectares. Numerically though a minority of larger farms farm
the majority of the land. There are approximately 300,000 British farms and of these 14 percent are
over 100 hectares; 65 percent of British farm land is in the hands of these largest farms.
In Britain the 1970s saw a rapid growth in average farm size, followed by a period of
fluctuation in the last three decades of the century. Throughout this period larger farms increasingly
came to dominate. A survey of British farms in the south east of England between 1961 and 2000
showed that those over 300 hectares went from being 12 percent of agricultural land to 33 percent at
the turn of the century, increasing their average size by 35 hectares. In the same period there was a
decline of 10 percent in the number of surveyed farms in the smallest size category (around 20
hectares), though the proportion of medium sized holdings remained fairly constant.534
Similar processes occurred in the US with a long-term trend towards fewer but larger farms. But
even here smaller farms persist. In 2007 the US agricultural census showed that 91 percent of US
farms were classed as small (defining small as less than $250,000 in annual sales) but the long-term
trend is towards fewer but larger farms.
One of the determining factors for farm size in the developing world has been the role of
colonialism. Different colonial powers encouraged particular agricultural practices in the parts of the
world that they administered. This may have been driven by a need for a particular crop, and may
have reshaped agriculture towards an entirely new form of farming. In New Zealand, for instance, the
landscape was completely transformed in a few decades for sheep and cattle farming.
There are also local factors. Lower quality land which is more suitable for pasture tends to be
farmed in larger units. The converse is also true. Other factors such as the availability of
mechanisation or the amount of available labour all play their role in determining average farm size
in particular areas of the world.535
In both Africa and Asia farm sizes declined through the last century. 536 In most parts of the
developing world there is a growth in the amount of land farmed by small farmers. The World Bank
report mentioned earlier notes that in most countries surveyed fragmentation of farms is taking
place, the average size of small farms is falling and the total land farmed by small farmers is
growing.537
Trade liberalisation and globalisation tend to encourage larger-scale farms, particularly because
they favour the development of supermarkets.538 Supermarkets tend to be foreign owned
multinationals and encourage a particular reliance on centralised suppliers, needing large quantities
of standardised produce which often acts against small farms. In the developing world the rise of the
supermarket has taken place at a frenetic pace. Throughout the 1990s Latin America experienced the
same increase in supermarkets share of the food market as the US had in 50 years. While in some
parts of the developing world supermarkets remain peripheral to the food industry, in many countries
they are increasingly dominant.
To understand the persistence of small farms we need to look at a number of different factors. In
many parts of the world, particularly the former colonies, small farmers were by-passed by
capitalisms penetration of agriculture and their continued persistence reflects the fact that the
primitive accumulation was uneven and protracted.539 As we have seen, some writers today argue
that there is a new wave of primitive accumulation which is completing the agricultural
transformation that took place with the rise of capitalism in Europe.
Walden Bello argues, for instance, that the market let agrarian reform driven by institutions of

global capital such as the World Bank is causing the latest phase in the transformation of agriculture
from pre-capitalist or feudal relations of production to fully fledged market relations.540 This is to
misunderstand the extent to which agriculture in the developing world is already tied into the global
capitalist system, a process that began in the 16th and 17th centuries and continues today. There is
ongoing accumulation by dispossession as peasants are driven from their land through land grabs
by large multinationals and small farms are under threat from other economic forces, such as the
development of supply chains associated with supermarkets. But there are other factors that boost the
persistence of these farms.
Firstly though, we need to examine the term peasants. Its a term that brings to mind the peasants
of the middle ages, labouring on a lords land. But this is not necessarily a helpful term. It is more
useful, as Henry Bernstein points out, to define small farmers as petty commodity producers.541 But
alongside these petty commodity producers are often large numbers of people who primarily work as
waged labour on other peoples land, together with some subsistence coming from their own land.
One reason this system persists is that it can be in the interest of capital to leave the actual farming
to the small farmers. As Bernstein points out, It can be more difficult for capital to reap the same
rate of profit, and to continue to do so through expanded reproduction, in farming compared to
industry. In industry you can introduce technologies that raise the productivity of labour virtually
indefinitely; its much more difficult in farming.
Thus big capital in agriculture tends not to be found in farming, but in the upstream sectors of
farming; seed, chemical, machinery and fertiliser companies and at the other end, downstream in
distribution, retail and processing where they can make higher profits.542
Secondly, because farming relies on natural processesyou have to wait for crops to grow or
animals to matureit ties up capital. Capital can only extract surplus value from labour during the
actual production process, so in agriculture a gapopens up between labour time and production
time. Finally, because small or family farms rely on their own labour, or have to hire in occasional
seasonal workers, they can produce commodities more cheaplythey do not have to pay the various
costs associated with the capitalist control and supervision of the labour process.543 For capitalist
farmers, labour costs are variable, but for the family farm it is an all year round fixed cost that
includes even those who cannot work.
So the seasonal needs of agriculture, particularly during harvest or sowing periods, helps
encourage the continued existence of people who can sell their labour at certain times of the year and
survive on their own land for the remainder. Mexican economist Julio Boltvink argues that
agricultural capitalism can only exist in symbiosis with poor peasants, prepared tosell their
labour some days a year.544 He explains that rural poverty continues precisely because capitalist
agriculture needs a wider peasantry:
Peasant poverty is determined by the seasonality of agriculture expressed in unequal labour demands throughout the yearand the
fact that in capitalism, prices only incorporate (as costs) the wages of days that have effectively been worked and paid for. Since
peasant producers compete in the same markets as capitalist firms, and act as price takers in them, the prices of their products can
only reward for days that have been effectively worked. In other words, the social cost of seasonality is absorbed by peasants who
thence have to live in permanent poverty, which makes them errant proletarians in search of additional income.545

A final factor in determining the persistence of small farms in the face of the encroachment of
capitalist agriculture is the resistance of the farmers themselves. Organisations such as the MST or
Via Campesina struggle to protect and extend the interests of small farmers.
But we should be wary of simply celebrating the continued existence of small farms for the sake of

them. We have seen there are often extensive benefits to small farming compared to large-scale
industrial farming. We are also aware that the dispossession of people from their lands causes
hardship on an enormous scale and one solution to that is for peasants and the landless to take over
land. But small farms often only exist on the back of lots of back-breaking work. As weve seen, most
of the worlds farmers produce food without the benefits of technology and modern equipment. That
occurs because of an agricultural system driven by the need to make profit.
We shall see later how a sustainable, socialist world would be based on the common interests of
people and planet. In that society the pooling of knowledge, experience and resources would lead to
improvements for everyone. Thinking about agriculture in this way, we can see the benefits of smallscale farms, but also understand that those farmers on their individual plots will be losing out on the
benefits of collective working. Historically farmers have always shared equipment and helped out
with the work of others in their village or local area. It is the natural instinct of a farming community.
It would be ridiculous to believe that in an economy dominated by a more collective experience that
the barriers between farms would not break down.
In countries dominated by a peasantry, mass revolutionary movements may well lead to the
strengthening of the situation of small farmers. As Tony Cliff wrote in the 1960s:
Social factors are also likely to strengthen the individual farm. The rural poorlabourers and small peasants alikewill have their
cravings for a plotor a decent-sized plotof their own satisfied by the seizure or distribution of the large estatesthis is bound
to strengthen the social forces conserving individual farming.546

But these farmers under a socialist society will be beset by other factors that will:
undermine the individual farm by showing it to be too narrow a mode of existence for the agricultural population, whose appetite
for a better, easier and more cultured life would be whetted with improved conditions The socialist regime, by raising living
standards all round, assuring security of employment and comprehensive pensions for old age and sickness, will deflate the value of
economic independence represented in the private ownership of the farmsocialist prosperity, by attraction, will graduallyin
the very long runpersuade the peasantry to give up their individual farms.547

There is nothing wrong with large farms; the problem is the interests that shape those farms in the
contemporary world. A future sustainable agriculture may well begin with peasants recreating and
expanding small farms. It will likely continue with those people working closer and closer together,
sharing the benefits of polycultural and mixed farming, but beginning to view their land as parts of a
much wider agricultural area; one in which the interests of the farmers and the soil they work, as well
as those they feed, are paramount.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Before we can explore what a future, sustainable world
might look like and how we can get there, we need to examine in greater depth what it is about the
system we live in that makes it so destructive.

* An excellent Marxist introduction to these debates is Bernstein, 2010.

Chapter 11

Capitalism and nature

Capitalism is an enormously dynamic system. It produces tremendous wealth, incredible innovation,

yet at the same time it breeds poverty and destruction. Nature is a source of materials for the
production processes of the system, and the natural landscape is constantly redrawn in its interests.
Environmental destruction follows from the very way the system is organised. This chapter looks at
what drives the system and what makes it so destructive, as well as examining different aspects of
capitalism that are particularly relevant to its environmental destructivenessreliance on fossil fuels,
creation of waste and short-termism.
The development of capitalism in England was rooted in the enclosures that forced tens of
thousands of people from their lands, stealing common land and destroying ancient rights. This made
it possible to further reshape the developing capitalist economy, which sucked millions into new
factories and workshops. The natural world did not escape either. The countryside was redesigned
for cash crops and husbandry. Small farms that once fed families and communities were replaced
with sheep walks. Forests vanished, colonies were sucked dry of raw materials, metals and coal
were dug out of the ground at an unprecedented rate, animals hunted to near extinction for their fur,
hides, ivory or just for the sake of killing.
It is true that before capitalism trees were cut down, rivers dammed, animals hunted and
occasionally driven to extinction; but capitalism has both expanded and accelerated these processes.
Today for the first time since the dinosaurs vanished from Earth we are driving species to extinction
faster than new ones are evolving. As climate change gets worse, as habitats are destroyed and urban
areas encroach further into rural spaces, this can only accelerate.
The enormous growth of the cities that marks the development of capitalism in Britain is one
obvious change to the countrys landscape. But there have been other changes such as the parcelling
up of the countryside into small fields as a result of the enclosures of the 1800s. Even this has not
remained unchanged. Since the Second World War the ever-increasing use of giant machines in the
fields has made small fields impractical. Between the end of the war and 1974 a quarter of a million
kilometres of hedges had vanished along with those animals that nested within them and the diverse
plants that lived in their shelter. 548 We could also mention how two thirds of Dorset heath lands have
been turned into farming land, or the decrease in grasslands, or the water meadows of Southern
England that have now ceased to exist.549
The Second World War was an important moment of change for the British countryside. The
massive expansion of agriculture that took place during the war years and the increased reliance on
machinery and new technology has been one of the most important driving forces in reshaping and
creating the modern landscapes.
Governments too have been part of this. In Britain in 1919, for instance, the newly set up Forestry
Commission was charged with a massive programme of afforestation, to create a strategic reserve

of timber for the future. But rather than trying to re-establish woodlands, stocked with a natural
variety of trees, the commission oversaw the introduction of a small number of fast-growing species,
such as the Scots pine, and spruce trees from Norway and the US. Forestry since the war has
overseen the replacement of native species with a small number of conifers, managed by methods best
described as tree farming, leading to a decline in the variety of trees.550 This loss of genetic variety
and generic plantations of trees helps to spread disease. Dutch elm disease has existed for millennia
but government policies that select for a few types of profitable species have made trees ever more
vulnerable.
The coal that drove the industrial revolution and the soot and smoke it produces when burnt had
their own impact on the countryside. With the concentration of industry in new, expanding urban
areas, pollution from fires had a much greater impact than ever before. In the 1980s the UK was
known as the Dirty Old Man of Europe as its pollution, blown in the prevailing winds, caused acid
rain over countries such as France, Germany, Norway and Sweden.
But the problem goes further back. In her 1784 poem, Colebrook Dale, Anna Seward noted:
Grim Wolverhampton lights her smouldering fires,
And Sheffield, smoke-involvd; dim where she stands
Circled by lofty mountains, which condense
Her dark and spiral wreaths to drizzling rains
Frequent and sullied551

Emissions from the earliest of factories destroyed some of the most vulnerable plant species in
surrounding areas. The relative lack of lichen in the Lake District, downwind of the large factories of
Barrow-in-Furness, when compared to the similar ecological area of Snowdonia is a microscopic
example of the impact of industrialisation upon the natural world.552
Soil loss on land used for modern agriculture takes place 30 times faster than it does naturally.
Humans move earth today ten times faster than nature did before we evolved.553 Rising sea levels are
drowning land and destroying coast lines at an accelerating rate. In the US wetland loss is taking
place at 400,000 hectares per year.554
Nowhere in the world has escaped the destruction wrought by this economic system. From the
highest mountains to the depths of the oceans, from the deserts to the atmosphere itself, capitalism is
destroying the planet.
Accumulation: capitalisms driving force
To understand why capitalism is so destructive to the natural world, we need to understand how it
worksand why it is a very different system from previous class societies.
Capitalism is a system of commodity production based on the exploitation of the working class by
those who own and control the means of production. Unlike earlier class societies, this exploitation is
hidden. In feudal societies the lord made his peasants and serfs give over a portion of their working
day or the produce of their land to him. This naked exploitation was backed up by force. The lord
could, and frequently did, evict those who could not or would not give over his share. He could
afford to pay armed men to enforce his actions and the exploitation was justified by an ideological
system and set of beliefs that argued that the status quo was ordained by god.
Under capitalism a worker in a factory or call centre or any other work place produces goods and
services. In return, he or she receives a wage from their employer. Superficially it looks like a fair

exchange has been made. The worker has produced something for their employer and with their
wages they can purchase the necessities of life. But because the value created by the worker on a
daily basis is far greater than the wages they receive there is a surplus value created. This surplus
value is the basis for a companys profits.
The exploitation of the feudal peasantry was limited by the needs of the lord and his entourage.
These needs were extensive; they had castles, manor houses and estates to maintain and a large
number of individuals such as servants and guards to feed. But there were limits to this exploitation.
Once the lords needs had been satisfied, his conspicuous consumption paid for, there was no real
need for further exploitation.
But there are no such limits to exploitation under capitalism. Production is organised on the basis
of competition. Each company competes with all the other companies producing the same
commodities or services. Now there is a need for every company or employer to stay ahead of their
competitors; no capitalist can afford to stand still. This means that the exploitation of their workers is
a continuous process and the surplus value received is not consumed but rather used to reinvest and
expand production further. This process is known as accumulation and it is one of the reasons that
capitalism is such a dynamic system. At its simplest some of the surplus value extracted from the
workers is reinvested in new equipment, more efficient processes and technologies or research into
new ways of producing commodities. If an individual capitalist does not do this, his competitors will.
Their ability to produce more and cheaper commodities using new processes undercuts those who do
not reinvest, which might lead to a particular capitalist going bankrupt.
This is a very simple explanation of the internal workings of capitalism. The exploitation of
workers to produce surplus value has all sorts of other consequences. By increasing this exploitation,
by cutting wages, or making workers work harder and longer, the capitalist can increase the amount of
surplus value extracted and thus increase the amount available for reinvestment. Exploitation under
capitalism is the source of the ongoing conflict between capitalists and workersthe struggle to
increase or reduce exploitation.
The centrality of the accumulation of wealth to capitalist production led Marx to declare,
Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets! It is the centrality of the accumulation of
wealth in this way that is of greatest importance to understanding the ecological relationship between
capitalist society and the natural world. It is because of this dynamic that capitalism relates to nature
completely differently to previous human societies.
Capitalist production creates the conditions for the universal appropriation of nature, as Marx
puts it.555 Nature becomes something to be used as part of the productive process. Marx writes that:
For the first time, nature becomes purely an object for humankind, purely a matter of utility; ceases to be recognised as a power
for itself; and the theoretical discovery of its autonomous laws appears merely as a ruse so as to subjugate it under human needs,
whether as an object of consumption or as a means of production.556

Under capitalism nature is either a source of raw materials for the productive processcoal,
wood, water, etcor it is a dump for the waste of the productive process. Think of how fossil fuels
are extracted from under the ground, burnt to produce heat or generate energy and the by-products are
released into the atmosphere. But further to this, what the production process achieves is the
production of nature itself. This might seem contradictoryafter all, the normal definition of nature
would be something that precedes or is outside of the productive process. Marxist geographer Neil
Smith explains:

In its most material appearance, the natural landscape presents itself to us as the material substratum of daily life, the real of usevalues rather than exchange-values But with the progress of capital accumulation and the expansion of economic development,
this material substratum is more and more the product of social production.557
He continues:
Human beings not only produce the immediate nature of their existence, but produce the entire societal nature of their existence
with the generalisation of commodity production and exchange relations, previously isolated, localised groups of people are knitted
together in a concrete social whole. They are united as a societal whole no longer through the general unity of social individuals,
but through the societal institutions that have necessarily developed to market and the state, money and class, private property and
the family. Society as such, clearly distinguishable from nature, emerges. Through human agency, a cleavage is created between
nature and society, between a first nature and a second nature. The latter comprises exactly those societal institutions which
facilitate and regulate the exchange of commodities.558

While second nature has been shaped by human activity, it is not immune to natures physical
forces such as gravity, but it is now also subject to the influence of human society. 559 The production
of nature in this sense is not unique to capitalismas we have seen, humans have always transformed
the natural world. But before capitalism, second nature was clearly the nature produced by human
activity, in opposition to the inherited non-human nature. 560 Now that human influence is obscured
perceived instead as, for example, the invisible hand of the market.
Capitalism is unique in that for the first time human beings produce nature at a world scale.561 So
Marx could write that the nature that preceded human historytoday no longer exists anywhere
(except perhaps on a few Australian coral-islands of recent origin). 562 As Neil Smith notes, the
whole of the existing world is changed, first nature is deprived of its firstness, its originality.563
This is because, under capitalism, the transformation of the natural world is in the interest of profit,
not need: Capital stalks the whole earth. It attaches a price tag to everything it sees and from then on
it is this price tag which determines the fate of nature.564
Smith continues, What is an abstract potential in the origins and fundamental character of human
labour becomes a reality for the first time under capitalism. It is not just the immediate or the local
nature of human existence that is produced under capitalism but nature as a totality. Marx puts it that
capitalism strives for the universal appropriation of nature.565 Thus capitalism produces the
material world in its own image.566
Because the capitalist system is based on competition, capitalist production is organised around
the short term. What matters to capital is not the impact upon the planet in a year or a decade, but next
months profits. When companies do plan for the future, it is on the basis of the potential to make
money, not the interests of the planet or the people they employ.
Writing in 1876 Engels described the consequences of such a short term outlook, in words that
could have come from a modern environmental campaigner:
As individual capitalists are engaged in production and exchange for the sake of the immediate profit, only the nearest, most
immediate results must first be taken into account. As long as the individual manufacturer or merchant sells a manufactured or
purchased commodity with the usual coveted profit, he is satisfied and does not concern himself with what afterwards becomes of
the commodity and its purchasers. The same thing applies to the natural effects of the same actions. What cared the Spanish
planters in Cuba, who burned down forests on the slopes of the mountains and obtained from the ashes sufficient fertiliser for one
generation of very highly profitable coffee treeswhat cared they that the heavy tropical rainfall afterwards washed away the
unprotected upper stratum of the soil, leaving behind only bare rock! In relation to nature, as to society, the present mode of
production is predominantly concerned only about the immediate, the most tangible result; and then surprise is expressed that the
more remote effects of actions directed to this end turn out to be quite different.567

Thus the system of accumulation can only degrade the natural world in order to maintain its
existence. Even those capitalists who recognise the destructive nature of the system are powerless to

do anything about it for fear of losing out to their competitors.

John Bellamy Foster has pointed out how the natural world has become externalised. For
mainstream economists air pollution caused by a factory is not treated as a cost of production
internal to that factory; rather it is viewed as an external cost to be borne by nature and society.568
For those organising production today, the impact upon the natural world is something that is borne by
wider societyhealth services pick up the cost of treating those who become sick as a result of
pollution; governments must bear the cost of dealing with acid rain or floods.
Again, as Engels put it, Classical political economy, the social science of the bourgeoisie, in the
main examines only social effects of human actions in the fields of production and exchange that are
actually intended.569
The constant drive to increase profits has consequences for nature. One example of this is
companies that try to reduce costs by illegally dumping dangerous waste into rivers or on waste
ground with little concern for the consequences for people or the local environment. Sometimes this
can have an impact on a much larger scale. In December 1984 there was a major release of methyl
isocyanate (MIC) from a Union Carbide pesticides factory in Bhopal, in north central India. MIC is a
tremendously dangerous chemical. Some 8,000 people died immediately as the gas cloud engulfed
their homes and up to 20,000 have died since as a result of exposure. A further half a million were
injured with between 50,000 and 70,000 people suffering permanently. Bhopal has gone down in
history as the worlds worst industrial accident. 570 The environmental legacy is also terrible. A 2009
study found water two miles from the abandoned plant containing pesticide at levels 40 times the
Indian safety standards. A charity, the Sambhavana clinic, has found that one in 25 children are born
with congenital birth defects.571
Bhopal was more than an accident. It was the consequence of a whole series of choices made by
the factorys management in the context of changes to the wider world. In the early 1980s a series of
famines and crop failures had reduced the ability of farmers to purchase pesticides. The Bhopal plant
had been built in order to provide pesticides for the Green Revolution and this reduced income meant
that Union Carbide had taken a decision to scale down and close the plant, relocating to more
profitable areas.
By the time of the disaster the plant itself was operating on a reduced scale. In particular this
meant that the number of staff working with MIC was half what it should have been and there was no
maintenance supervisor working at night. Readings were taken every other hour, rather than hourly. 572
Concerns over safety were high enough that the workers trade union had made protests to the
company but had been ignored. One worker was fired for a 15-day hunger strike over conditions at
the plant.573
The safety equipment that did exist was not working properly. The alarm on the MIC tank had not
worked for four years and the equipment meant to neutralise toxic discharges had been turned off
three weeks previously. As Joel Kovel puts it, Virtually every relevant safety instrument, from
shutdown devices to monitoring tools, to temperature gauges, was either in short supply, or
malfunctioning, or designed improperly.574 Seventy percent of staff had been docked pay for refusing
to break safety routines.575
At every stage leading up to the tragedy at Bhopal, the hidden hand of capitalism shows itself. Why
build a dangerous chemical plant near slums in one of Indias poorest cities? Clearly because labour
would be cheap and there would be limited restrictions on the companys activities. Why cut safety

and sack those who spoke out? Because this was one way to reduce costs and maximise exploitation.
One of the tragedies of the events in 1984 was that Bhopals health and emergency systems were
utterly unable to cope. The citys minimal infrastructure (no sewage system, limited clean water)
made the environmental disaster worse. As Edward Broughton comments, Future management of
industrial development requires that appropriate resources be devoted to advance planning before
any disaster occurs. Communities that do not possess infrastructure and technical expertise to respond
adequately to such industrial accidents should not be chosen as sites for hazardous industry.576
Union Carbides behaviour in Bhopal demonstrates that the question of environmental destruction
and its impact upon people is less to do with accident and more to do with a corporate culture that is
shaped by the need to maximise profits. Bhopal might be a particularly obscene example of these
priorities, but it represents the way that companies and corporations view the world around them as
being secondary to their interests. On the day that the Indian government decided not to prosecute
Union Carbide, the value of their stock shot up. As Kovel points out, the rise in stock value shows
that Wall Street knew then that business could go forward, and that the orderly extraction of profits
from the South had become more secure.577
There was no change in the industry on a wider scale as a result of Bhopal. Nobody took the
opportunity to question the need for such dangerous chemicals in the first place. As a result, an
estimated three million people per year suffer the consequences of pesticide poisoning with most
exposure occurring in the agricultural developing world. It is reported to be the cause of at least
22,000 deaths in India each year.578
Bhopal exposes the way in which the culture created by the pursuit of maximum profits can cause
untold damage to the environment, workers and the wider population. This is also true of the wider
culture created by the capitalist system. Socialist and environmental activist Jonathan Neale
describes how a generation of managers, bureaucrats and politicians in the United States were so
indoctrinated with the neoliberal ethos of modern capitalism, that when Hurricane Katrina hit New
Orleans in 2005 they were unable to respond to the disaster.
As thousands of the poorest of the city waited for help because they had been too poor to leave in
advance of the hurricane, they were ignored by their politicians. Neale explains:
For 20 years city and state governments had cut welfare programmes and all forms of aid for the poor, the elderly and the
disabled. Instead mayors saw their job as saving money and bringing affluent residences and businesses back in to the central city.
Senior managers had long since stopped listening when their workers on the ground complained about what they couldnt provide.
To ram through neoliberal policies, managers had to ignore the cops on the beat, the emergency technicians, the classroom
teachers and case workers. When disasters struck, the managers were already hard wired to ignore the frantic phone calls from
their people on the streets.579

The consequences of this were that thousands of people suffered far more than they should have
done in the wealthiest country on earth. Fire and police services were told not to intervene. President
Bush would not allow the navy to evacuate wounded to their hospital ship. Bus companies that
offered free travel out of the city were ignored.
The tragedy of New Orleans played out across the worlds television screens. The message it sent
was that in the US in the face of environmental disaster, politicians were more concerned about
appearing on message than helping the sick and the dying. As the world faces an increase in
extreme weather as a result of global warming, it is a salutary lesson.

Commodities
Humans have always produced things, whether they are tools, crops, houses or works of art. Yet
under capitalism commodity production has become an end in itself.
Some environmental campaigners see production itself as the problem. They argue that the more
things that are made, the greater the damage to the planet and the more precious resources are used up.
This leads to calls for society to produce less or for individuals to consume less. For instance,
Friends of the Earth Internationals website urges us to Consume Less, Live More! 580 An article in
the Scotsman newspaper claimed that Scots consume about three times more resources than their fair
share.581
The problem with this approach to solving environmental problems is that it avoids asking
questions about why so many goods are produced in the first place, why some parts of the world
consume far more than others and what determines the types of commodities produced.
To answer this we must return to the processes at the heart of capitalism. As each company tries to
maximise profits, it produces more and more things to sell. Sometimes this leads to over-production,
a situation in which more goods exist than can be sold and an economic crisis can follow.
Consumers are encouraged to purchase more and more. Part of this is done through the advertising
industry, which helps to encourage consumers to purchase products and services. Advertising itself
utilises a tremendous amount of resourcesin 2008 it was worth $613 billion582but its waste is not
simply financial. Advertising sucks up resources and creativity. The bright neon lights of the
advertising hoardings in Piccadilly Circus or Times Square are a testimony to this through their sheer
waste of energy.
More nefariously, the advertising industry creates markets for products we do not need,
encourages us to spend more and have more, to dispose of goods and replace them with newer
models, to create artificial desires. The advertising industry as we know it is part and parcel of
capitalism. Yet it contributes nothing to our lives.
If advertising is one example of how we are encouraged to own and purchase more, another
related factor is the way that the act of purchasing itself is supposed to make us feel better. In the
1920s the repeated purchase of goods began to be marketed as a life affirming activity. According
to one marketing consultant at the time, It is the ambition of almost every American to practise
progressive obsolescence as a ladder by which to climb to greater human satisfactions through the
purchase of more of the fascinating and thrilling range of goods and services being offered today.583
Following the Second World War manufacturers increasingly used obsolescence to encourage
further purchases. Part of this was creating fashions. Just as the clothing industry tries to get us to buy
new outfits every season, so other industries soon followed suit. In the 1950s General Motors
decided to change the design of every car each year. Other manufacturers followed. Ford hired a
former stylist of womens clothing, George Walker, as its chief car designer. A Ford executive
explained that the annual change cycleis essential for competitive reasons. The change in the
appearance of models each year increases car sales.584
This invention of fashion in everything from cars to mobile phones involves tremendous amounts
of wasted production. It is made worse by the way that many manufacturers design their products to
fail after a certain period of time so that they have to be replaced. In 1939 the US corporation General
Electric designed light-bulbs to burn out quicker than they needed to, in order to force people to
purchase replacements.585 Today we have become used to our purchases only lasting a few years and

resigned to the fact that we cannot get them repaired, it being cheaper to replace than repair.
The computing industry is particular infamous for this. Microsoft constantly replaces its operating
systems with newer versions which then drives other software manufacturers to release new versions
of their own products. At the same time hardware manufacturers produce ever more powerful
computers needed to run the updated software. It is rare that these changes lead to users doing
anything new on their computers.
While this might seem irrational from the point of view of societys collective interests, it is very
much a conscious process. The term planned obsolescence was first used in a 1932 pamphlet by
Bernard London, as an answer to the Depression:
I would have the government assign a lease of life to shoes and homes and machines, to all products of manufacture, mining and
agriculture, when they are first created, and they would be sold and used within the term of their existence definitely known by the
consumer. After the allotted time had expired, these things would be legally dead and would be controlled by the duly appointed
governmental agency and destroyed if there is widespread unemployment.586

Brook Stevens, a founding member of the Society of Industrial Designers, put it this way:
We make good products, we induce people to buy them, and then next year we deliberately introduce something else that will
make those products old fashioned, out of date, obsolete It isnt organised waste. Its a sound contribution to the American
economy.587

This might be a sound economic strategy for companies trying to sell products to consumers, but in
the wider sense it really is organised waste. It is wasteful in terms of the resources and energy used
to manufacture goods, as well as the creativity and human labour power that are required. It is also
tremendously destructive for the planet.
Karl Marx understood that the system would soon produce more than could be purchased and
would need to expand existing consumption: The production ofsurplus value, based on the
increase and development of the productive forces, requires the production of new consumption.588
He continues that this requires that the consuming circle within circulation expands as did the
productive circle previously. Firstly quantitative expansion of existing consumption; secondly:
creation of new needs by propagating existing onesthirdly: production of new needs and discovery
and creation of new use values.589
Marx saw that capitalism would need to constantly find new outlets and desires for its
commodities. He also hints here at the way in which capital would have to find new markets for its
goods, spreading itself over the globe. This would lead to a world where nation-states were prepared
to use force on other countries to impose their goods, or control markets and raw materials.
The advent of mass production and the use of modern technology have accelerated the production
of commodities. One consequence of this is that the extra commodities produced helped to contribute
to the enormous amounts of waste created under capitalism. Heather Rogers has pointed out that in
the United States over the last 30 years, rubbish output has doubled. Today almost 80 percent of US
products are used once, then thrown away.590
Alienation591
It has become a clich for people to describe earlier human societies as being closer to nature or
more at one with the world. This is often an understandable reaction to the monstrous reality of the
modern world, where humans are dwarfed by the world they have created, both in terms of the

structures we have built, and also in the way that we are removed from the natural world upon which
we rely.
At the same time, those of us living in the developed world are constantly offered goods and
services to improve our livesthe latest gadget, car or fashion which will make our lives complete.
But for most of the worlds population, even in the wealthiest countries, such objects are far from our
grasp; they remain things to aspire to, or dream of for a time when we win the lottery.
The world we live in has created marvels. Yet they mean little to most people. Modern agriculture
has the potential to feed billions of people, yet almost a sixth of the population are undernourished.
We regularly put astronauts into space, yet over a billion people survive on less than a dollar a day.
This difference between potential and reality is not just a characteristic of modern capitalism. Karl
Marx captured it wonderfully when he wrote:
Labour produces wonderful things for the richbut for the worker it produces privation. It produces palacesbut for the worker,
hovels. It produces beautybut for the worker, deformity. It replaces labour by machines, but it throws one section of the workers
back into barbarous types of labour, and it turns the other section into a machine. It produces intelligencebut for the worker,
stupidity, cretinism.592

Marx captures here the insanity of the system, calling to mind modern cities and workplaces. Marx
could have been describing the poorest areas of London which lie in the shadow of Canary Wharf,
workers in Chinese factories driven to suicide or the growth in unemployment as economic crisis
destroys jobs.
As we have seen, the ability of people to shape the natural world forms the basis for all of human
society. But as our relationship to nature changes so too does the way it impacts upon our lives. In his
1844 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts Marx explains how workers could create nothing
without nature, which provides both the material for their work, the space for that work and the
necessities of life for the worker. But capitalism has helped to further estrange us from that natural
world. Over half the worlds population now live in towns and cities and the way that we rely on
nature and human labour to change it is now obscured by the experience of working life in factories
and offices, or the way that our food is pre-packaged in supermarkets.
But most importantly for Marx, our ability to labour has been turned into a commodity under
capitalism. Workers have to sell their labour power to capitalists to survive. It is the transformation
of human labour into a commodity, which gives rise to the various dimensions of alienation that Marx
analysed.593
By selling their labour power, workers lose control over it and as a result they lose control over
the very thing that makes them human. The products of human labour seem to dominate rather than
liberate us. Writing in 1856, Marx summed up this contradiction:
On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces, which no epoch of the former human history had ever
suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman
Empire. In our days, everything seems pregnant with its contrary: Machinery, gifted with the wonderful power of shortening and
fructifying human labour, we behold starving and overworking it; the newfangled sources of wealth, by some strange weird spell,
are turned into sources of want; The victories of art seem bought by the loss of character.594

Marx identified four aspects to alienation: the separation of the worker from the product of his or
her labour; from the labour process itself; from our human nature; and from each other.
Workers are alienated from the object or the service they produce, because the result of that work
is owned and controlled by someone elsethe capitalist. These objects that a worker produces then
end up dominating over the worker:

The worker puts his life into the object; but now his life no longer belongs to him but to the object What the product of his labour
is, he is not. Therefore the greater this product the less he is himself. The alienation of the worker in his product means not only
that his labour becomes an object, an external existence but also that it exists outside him, independently as something alien to him,
and that it becomes a power on its own confronting him. It means that the life which he has conferred on the object confronts him
as something hostile and alien.595

From this flows the second part of Marxs theory, the way in which workers are separated from
the process of labour. Despite managerial slogans of partnership, workers have no real say in the
work that they do or the conditions under which they labour. The things shaping their lives,
boardroom decisions and machinations in parliament or the vagaries of the wider economy, appear as
incomprehensible forces.
And the process of work is not just out of the control of workers: it is in the hands of those hostile
to the workers own interests, those bosses, managers and shareholders trying to increase exploitation
to improve their profits.
On modern production lines this process has only intensified. Now the worker is further separated
from the products of his or her labour by playing only a small part in a much larger operation. In the
past a skilled craftsman made a product from start to finish; in modern factories workers repeat the
same process over and over again as they create a single part of a larger product.
Thirdly, Marx pointed out that the very thing that makes us humanour capacity for social labour
has been taken from us. The product of our labour is not ours. The thing that differentiates us from
those animals that build nests, dams, or hivesour ability to produce universallyfree from
physical needhas now become its opposite. Alienated labour, Marx says, estranges from man his
own body, as well as external nature and his spiritual aspect, his human aspect.
Finally, as a result of all this we are alienated from each other. Under capitalism, workers
consciously and unconsciously turn against each other. Workers compete against each other for jobs,
for pay rises, for promotion. We are set against each other to make it easier to rule us. But we are
also, of course, alienated from those who exploit us, because of the relationship that they have to our
labour power. As Marx writes:
[If] the product of his labour, his labour objectified, is for him an alien, hostile, powerful object independent of him, then his position
towards it is such that someone else is master of this object, someone who is alien, hostile, powerful, and independent of him. If he
treats his own activity as an unfree activity, then he treats it as an activity performed in the service, under the dominion, the
coercion, and the yoke of another man.596

In this context we can now understand that wrench that took place when people were forced off the
land and into the cities during the reorganising of the world that took place with the enclosures, the
clearances and the destruction of the commons. The violence of those changes has its roots in the need
to forcibly change peoples whole way of life. Instead of working for themselves, their families and
the wider community, people now had to sell their labour power to others. This necessitated a
physical transformation of the world, but also a mental change. Those who resisted this had to be
coerced.
Capitalism depends on a relationship of exchange on the market. As Dan Swain explains, in the
market everyone appears as an independent, autonomous agent who possesses something to exchange,
and it is through this process of exchange that capitalism organises itself. It still involves a
relationship of exploitation, but it is one which takes place through the apparently free buying and
selling of commodities in the marketplace.597 Workers own a commodity, their labour power, which
is bought by a capitalist.

The consequence of this is that we relate to people through commodities. Relationships between
humans come to look like relationships between objects. Marx called this commodity fetishism, a
definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation
between things.598
Contrast this with earlier forms of production where goods were produced for their use value. The
use value of an object, be it a plough or a bushel of corn, derives from what use it can be put to.
Under capitalism what becomes important is not the use value of a commodity but its exchange value
in short, the ability to sell it.
So under capitalism we have become dominated, not by the exchange of commodities that we
need, but by ones that are valuable to exchange. Every aspect of our lives becomes shaped by this.
Even something as fundamental to our humanity as our sexuality becomes a commodity. The sex
industry is worth billions a year, and womens bodies are used to sell everything from cars to food. In
turn this reinforces the idea that women are sex objects, further distorting sexual relationships. Our
sexuality becomes shaped by ideas that are alien to us, imposed from outside and shaped by the
exchange of commodities.599
As capitalism developed we also became further estranged from the natural world that we rely on.
We have already seen how Marx developed this point through examining the first great environmental
issue of modern capitalism, the depletion of soil fertility. He used the concept of the metabolism
between humans and nature to sum up the ongoing relationship, or interchange between humans and
the natural world: Labour is, first of all, a process between man and nature, a process by which man,
through his own actions, mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism between himself and
nature.600
Under capitalism there is a metabolic rift between humans and nature. For Marx this rupture
could only be healed when a society organised the relationship between people and nature
differently:
Freedom in this field can only consist in socialised man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with nature,
bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of nature; and achieving this with the least
expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, their human nature. But it nonetheless still remains a
realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which,
however, can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis.601

The metabolic rift we experience under capitalism is part of that system. As Engels explains there
is great urgency in solving this:
Abolition of the antithesis between town and country is not merely possible. It has become a direct necessity of industrial
production itself, just as it has become a necessity of agricultural production and besides, of public health. The present poisoning of
the air, water and land can be put [to] an end only by the fusion of town and country.602

There is a danger in interpreting Engelss words here too literally. Engels was not advocating a
return to a rural life for workers; rather he was trying to show how capitalism has entrenched us in
particularly irrational ways of living. Breaking down the barriers between town and country was one
way of undermining human estrangement from nature. But that could only happen as part of abolishing
the system that created the rift in the first place. Specifically this means ending the system of selling
labour as a commodity.
Waste

Capitalism has a waste problem. Never before in the history of human societies has so much been
discarded. In the past the vast majority of people were too poor to own much. What they did own was
used over and over again and things were manufactured for a lifetimes use. A local village
blacksmith would hardly have survived for long if the tools he manufactured had built in
obsolescence.
Under capitalism we produce tremendous amounts of rubbish. Much of this is single-use materials
packaging or disposable items. The UK generates 288 million tonnes of waste per year; 32 million
tonnes of this is household waste and seven million tonnes is food. Even though rates have increased
dramatically over the last decade, today only 40 percent of household waste is recycled. Over half of
municipal waste in the UK is dumped in landfill.603
From the 1930s onwards most cities constructed enormous landfills in which waste could be
buried. No one knows how many landfill sites there are worldwide, but some of them are enormous.
Before its closure in 2001 the Fresh Kills Landfill site that served New York was 2,200 acres in size
and the rubbish was piled higher than the Statue of Liberty. When the site was built in the 1940s it
was unlined so toxic chemicals easily entered the local water. Even today, despite the fact that the
rubbish is capped over, methane can be smelt and chemical leaks continue.604
Burning the waste can reduce the problem of storage, but it does not stop the environmental
impact. Burning contributes greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and in 2000 the United Nations
Environment Programme highlighted that almost 70 percent of the worlds emissions of highly toxic
dioxins came from the burning of municipal waste.605
The waste problem is not going away; it is getting worse. One of the biggest culprits is packaging.
This makes up around a third of waste and according to a 2009 survey only 60 to 65 percent of
supermarket packaging is recyclable.606 Much of this waste would be plastic, which lasts for
centuries.
The waste problem is expanding outwards from the developed nations. The processes that have
taken place in the richest countries over the last decades, the replacement of reusable containers with
disposable ones for instance, are now occurring across the globe. But the developed world is still the
greatest source of rubbish. The US produces almost a third of the worlds garbage.
The situation we find ourselves in is a result of the way that the interests of business and their
power in society have played out, particularly since the end of the Second World War. In the 1950s
waste was becoming a big problem. The extra commodities being manufactured were joined by
increasing amounts of packaging and a tendency towards disposable products. The packaging was
beloved of advertisers and manufacturers as it was another way to encourage consumers to make
purchases. Disposability, particularly in the form of the plastic bottle and tin cans, allowed packaging
companies to sell their goods over and over again and the manufacturers to change designs rapidly.
Previously the bottles and containers had to be collected in and reused. Now this aspect of the
production cycle could be bypassed.
In particular, this had a big economic impact in the US. The drinks industry had been dominated by
many different local bottling plants, their markets limited by the necessity of returning bottles to the
plant. With the advent of disposable containers, these companies could be ignored. Between 1947
and 1970 the number of local bottling companies in the US dropped from 5,200 to 1,600.607
As Heather Rogers explains, this led to further changes for consumers, as the expanding national
brewers drained the regionals businessindividually bottled six-packs designed for take-home

consumption replaced old-fashioned keg distribution to taverns. Supermarkets favoured disposable

packaging because it meant they did not have to store and return it to suppliers. So, across the country,
more packaging was being created and the responsibility for what to do with it was being shifted onto
the consumer at the end of the supply chain.
All this waste had to go somewhereoften scattered in public areas. As early as 1953 one US
state, Vermont, enacted legislation banning the sale of disposable bottles, driven by farmers who
found their cows eating containers that had been thrown into their fields. But the packaging industry
fought back. Within a few months of the Vermont legislation, the American Can Company and the
Owens-Illinois Glass Company (inventors, respectively, of the disposable can and bottle) formed
Keep America Beautiful (KAB). With other corporations such as Coca-Cola and the Dixie Cup
Company who had similar concerns, they initiated well-funded campaigns to persuade Americans that
there was a new problem in societylitter, caused by litterbugs, a term invented by KAB. KAB
rapidly became a major organisation with a membership of 70 million. It produced books for schools
about the problem of litter, funded anti-litter campaigns and welcomed any legislation that cracked
down on individuals who carelessly tossed their trash.
The invention of the concept of litter was tremendously successful for KAB. Four years after it
was passed, the Vermont law banning the sale of disposable bottles was defeated. KAB turned the
anger at the empty packaging strewn across America away from the packaging companies and onto
individuals. By the 1970s KAB was seen as a major environmental player and today its website
proudly proclaims that: Long before being green was fashionable, Keep America Beautiful formed
in 1953 when a group of corporate and civic leaders met in New York City to discuss a revolutionary
ideabringing the public and private sectors together to develop and promote a national cleanliness
ethic.608
Today KAB acknowledges support from its Leadership Partners who give more than $1,000,000
to the group. These partners include cigarette manufacturer PhilipMorris and the worlds leading
bottled water company Nestl Waters. Smaller donors include Coca-Cola and Wrigley who gave
between $200,000 and $500,000. McDonalds is also a partner. 609 Since all of these companies
manufacture and sell products notorious for producing litter, it is in their interest to be portrayed as
caring about the environment and acting to reduce waste. The KAB logo helps create that impression,
without doing anything to reduce packaging or waste.
Over the 50 years of its existence KAB has had to fight a number of battles for the right of its
affiliates and partners to continue to produce disposable packaging. The 1970s saw a number of
states passing laws, in the face of heavy opposition from packaging companies, banning disposable
containers. The first deposit law was passed in Oregon in 1972, imposed a five cent deposit on all
drinks cans and bottles. It was tremendously successful. A year after it was passed litter was down
35 percent and 385 million fewer beverage containers were consumed, energy savings were
enough to heat 50,000 Oregon homes and the bill was very popular among voters. As other states
tried to follow suit, packaging companies and KAB fought back.610
Packaging companies tried a new tactic. They reaffirmed choice as being part of the American
way of life. Any restriction on consumers right to purchase disposable containers was un-American.
By linking this with the US economic crisis of the 1970s, corporations were able to undermine the
legislation that had been passed. Your advocacy of a national beverage container deposit bill is
directly counter to the presidents war on inflation and his concern for unemployment, wrote the

president of Pepsi-Cola to the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Heather Rogers
points out that using their PR machines and vast war chests, industry spread the word that what was
good for the environment was bad for labour.611
Yet manufacturers argument that reduced consumption meant job losses is not borne out by the
facts. Surveys by the EPA showed that the anti-deposit law passed in Oregon actually led to job
increases.
Eleven US states continue to have anti-deposit laws. In 2009 Oregon extended its law to cover
water bottles and it continues to have a very high level of success in reducing waste and encouraging
reuse of bottles, yet new legislation in other states is still met by opposition from concerned
manufacturers.
There are parallels between the contemporary recycling industry and the way that organisations
like KAB have shifted the onus onto the consumer. Today large numbers of people recycle waste.
Local councils across the UK encourage the sorting of recyclable materials from non-recyclable
rubbish. A 2002 survey by MORI in the UK showed that many people wanted to recycle more and
thought that recycling was a positive thing. They felt restricted in their ability to recycle because of
the lack of availability of collection schemes or knowledge of what could be recycled. Between 2002
and 2006 the amount of recycling in the UK increased by 27 percent. New targets for the European
Union aim to reach 75 percent recycling of waste by 2025.
These are noble targets, but they treat the symptom, not the disease. What we really need is a
reduction in the amount of rubbish, and this means reducing the amount of products and packaging
manufactured in the first place and a return to reusing instead of recycling.
The obsession with waste as a product of individuals or their households masks a bigger issue.
The total amount of waste produced by all sectors in the UK was 289 million tonnes in 2008. Yet
only 31 million tonnes (11 percent) of this was from households. The majority of waste comes from
the private sector35 percent of waste comes from the construction industry, mining and quarrying
make up the second largest proportion (30 percent) and the third largest comes from the commercial
and industrial sector (23 percent).612
So despite the public perception, and the efforts of organisations like KAB and its equivalents
worldwide, the real problem of blame for rubbish in modern society is not the individual consumer
but big business. The blame lies with huge corporations which can make higher profits by inventing
disposability and single use containers. It also lies with those companies that produce enormous
quantities of waste as a by-product of their industrial production. This is not to say that people should
not recycle or put litter in the binbut the real problem lies elsewhere.
A major part of the problem is capitalisms lack of planning. Capitalism constantly produces too
much. This overproduction is an inevitable consequence of a system where production is for profit.
Once a market is found for a particular commodity, the capitalists pour resources into satisfying
demand, until the point is reached when more goods are manufactured than can be sold at a profit.
Crises of overproduction occur as goods that cannot be sold build up. It should be noted that this is
not because there isnt necessarily a need for these manufactured goods, but because people cannot
afford to buy them. In January 2009 the Guardian reported on the tens of thousands of cars that were
unsold due to a slump in demand. Despite production being cut, car firms were still producing cars,
even though existing stocks could not be sold.
Overproduction is a regular occurrence in the capitalist system. For instance, in 1999 half the US

wheat harvest went unsold; in 2003 the Wall Street Journal wrote, US factory usage is at its lowest
level in more than 20 years; hundreds of jetliners are mothballed and the rest fly more than a quarter
empty; rising apartment vacancies are forcing landlords to cut rents; and unemployment is at an eightyear high. In short, too much supply is chasing too little demand. In 1997 China manufactured one
million shirts a day in addition to the 1.5 billion already in warehouses. There were also ten million
unsold watches, 20 million unsold bicycles and 100,000 stockpiled vehicles.613
The resources put into manufacturing these unsold goods may end up being wasted, if goods are
destroyed or rust away in storage. Thus the unplanned nature of production, based as it is on
competition and not rational planning, wastes natural resources and human labour as part of its day to
day operation.
We saw this most clearly with the advertising industryan industry that only exists to promote
more consumption, and is consequently a drain on resources and human labour. Another example of
waste within capitalism is the arms industry, most obviously because of the sheer madness of
spending huge resources on manufacturing commodities designed to destroy life.
Despite a global recession, worldwide military spending rose in 2009 to 1,040 billiona 50
percent increase on the amount spent in 2000. The US is the biggest culprit; its military spending has
increased by over 60 percent since 2000, and accounts for over half of the total worldwide spend.
The increase in spending was higher though in some parts of the developing world. China was the
second highest spender in 2009 and India the ninth.614 The figures might be contrasted with the $15.6
billion spent worldwide on AIDS research in 2009.615
Because capitalist production is geared towards profit, the waste from the production system is
often considered acceptable, because dealing with the waste would increase costs too much despite
the wider ecological and economic implications.
For example, industrialised fishing is based on the idea that vast quantities of fish can be caught
together. Innovations such as sonar have helped fishing transform itself from an industry based on
small crews in small ships into one involving enormous vessels and huge quantities of fish. Inevitably
unwanted fish and marine life are also caught in the nets. With industrial fishing the unwanted catch
might also include juveniles of the target fish as well as other species. These trash fish are often
ground up and thrown backfurthering the depletion of marine lifeand this occurs on a staggering
scale; one estimate has an average of 27 million tons of fish discarded annually. In the US over a fifth
of fish caught is discarded as unwanted.616
The unwanted fish are no longer able to breed, further depleting fish stocks. Other sea creatures
that might feed on them have reduced food levels and this in turn undermines the whole marine
ecosystem. The scale and practice of fishing under capitalism lead directly to the extinction of
species and the destruction of marine ecologyas well as the long-term undermining of the fishing
industry itself.
Marx understood that waste was inherent to capitalist production. In a fascinating section of his
book Capital, he discusses the way that capitalism extends the utilisation of the excretions of
production and consumption.617 Here Marx is distinguishing between the waste byproducts of
industry and agriculture on the one hand and those from human consumption on the other. Capitalism
could try to reuse the waste from industrial production, and where it was financially worthwhile this
would happen. Efforts are also made to reduce the waste, such as improvements to machinery.
But Marx particularly noted that human shit, which was of the greatest importance for agriculture

was wasted. He describes in the third volume of Capital the enormous waste under capitalism of
this important resource, remarking that in London, for instance, they find no better use for the
excretion of four and a half million human beings than to contaminate the Thames with it at heavy
expense.618
Marx wrote the first draft of this volume of Capital between 1863 and 1867. Only a few years
previously, London had suffered the Great Stink. A very hot summer combined with a Thames
overflowing with raw sewage led to parliament agreeing to the build the London sewage system.
These did not solve the problem that Marx was highlightingwaste matter was still dumped in the
river rather than being reused for agriculture, but further downstream from the centre of population so
it did at least allow MPs to sit in parliament without the smell upsetting their sensitive noses.
The fossil fuel economy
Capitalism requires enormous quantities of energy. Its reliance on fossil fuels has serious
consequences for production and the environment.
Coal was the first of the fossil fuels to be utilised on any scale. Like the others, oil and natural gas,
it has its origins in plants and animals that lived millions years ago. Coal comes from the remains of
trees and plants that formed the enormous forests which covered the Earth in the distant past. When
they died, some of those plant remains became exposed to extremely high pressures and temperatures
underground. The materials were compressed together, and in the absence of oxygen, changed
eventually into coal. Oil and natural gas have their origins in tiny sea creatures. When they died, they
fell to the seabed and were covered by more material. Eventually heat and compression converted
them into oil.
Because they originate from animals and plants fossil fuels are composed of hydrocarbons,
complex chemicals that are predominately made up of hydrogen and carbon. These chemicals burn
easily, releasing tremendous amounts of energy for their mass. The carbon combusts in air to produce
CO2 and the hydrogen forms water with oxygen from the atmosphere.
Fossil fuels then are highly concentrated energy. You get much more energy from a piece of coal
than from burning a piece of wood that weighs the same.
For most of human history humans got their energy from burning wood or other plant material. This
was usually enough to cook or keep warm. By classical times, we had learnt to use other forms of
energy, wind and water, to drive simple machines to grind corn or cut wood. During the Middle Ages
some parts of Europe became short of wood, as the forests had been decimated, and coal was
increasingly used. The large amounts of energy that could be obtained from coal allowed machines
that could do much more work than the simple ones of earlier times. The industrial revolution was
driven by the steam engine, powered by coal.
The first commercially viable steam engines were available in the early 1700s. From then
onwards, the development and improved efficiencies of steam engines became one of the most
important technological tasks for the developing industrial economies. For instance, one of James
Watts innovations, using steam to drive a piston, reduced the amount of coal needed by three
quarters. Other innovations reduced costs and size, allowing machines to be built into factories, or
put on wheels to drive trains.
The industrial revolution was utterly dependent on fossil fuels. The concentration of energy in

fossil fuels means that relatively lightweight engines, driven initially by coal and then by refined oils
could be manufactured. As a result, fossil fuels have become central to the modern economy. The
quest to obtain access to, protect, and find new sources of fossil fuels is a major preoccupation of
modern states.
Coal drove the industrial revolution for over 200 years, but the last century was the oil century. In
1900 the world produced 150 million barrels of oil. In 2000 the figure was 28 billion and in 2006 31
billion were pumped out of the ground.619 Today oil is used at a phenomenal rate. In 2009 the US
consumed just less than 19 million barrels a day, 22 percent of the total. No other country comes
close; China used 8.6 million barrels daily, Britain, both a significant consumer of oil and producer
of greenhouse gases, used 1.6 million barrels, less than 2 percent of the worlds total. To put this into
perspective, a super-tanker of oil must arrive at a US port every four hours.620
Many economists and scientists are concerned that we are close to or have passed the point of
peak oil production. Since 1981 there has been a widening gap between the amount of oil extracted
from the ground and the amount of new reserves being discovered. It is this shortfall that in part forms
the backdrop to attempts to extract oil from even more difficult locations, the Canadian tar sands, or
Alaskas Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or new processes such as fracking.
Extreme energy sources like these or others such as deep water drilling are economically viable
because of the high price of oil. But obtaining oil in this way is enormously damaging to the
environment. For instance, recent years have seen a massive expansion in the opening up of the
Canadian tar sands to obtain bitumen. By 2010 some 200 billion Canadian dollars have been
invested, making the tar sands the worlds biggest energy project. As a result, since 2001, Canada has
been the largest source of oil for the US economy. 621 But the tar sands project comes with an
enormous environmental cost. An area of forest the size of Florida will be eventually destroyed, 622
but the production of bitumen from the sands is itself very destructive. To make one barrel of oil from
tar sands requires digging two tons of dirt. The dirt is treated at plants that produce vast quantities of
CO2 and other greenhouse gases. As a result, every barrel of bitumen produced from tar sands creates
three times more CO2 emissions than normal crude oil.623 Each barrel of tar sands oil also requires
three barrels of water; on an annual basis the tar sands project uses as much water as a city of two
million people and burns enough natural gas to heat six million homes every day.624
In 2004, for instance, Canadian oil and gas production, including the tar sands, produced 150
million tons of greenhouse gases, a 51 percent increase since 1990.625 It is very energy inefficient to
produce fossil fuels like this. On average it takes one barrel of oil to produce between 20 and 60
barrels of cheap oil. But the equivalent of one barrel of oil gives only four or five barrels of bitumen
from tar-sands.626
Other forms of extreme energy can be equally destructive. Just weeks after President Obama gave
the go ahead for further oil and gas drilling at new offshore sites in the Gulf of Mexico, Alaska and
areas of the Atlantic, there was an explosion at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. Eleven workers were
killed instantly and hundreds of miles of coastline were polluted as some five million barrels of oil
leaked into the sea. The oil that leaked was some of the most remote ever accessed. Deepwater
Horizon was operating in water a mile deep, and drilling two and a half miles further below the
seabed. It is the complexities of reaching oil like this that made the leak so difficult to control. It also
makes obtaining oil in this way very inefficient. Deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico requires
burning the equivalent of one barrel of oil to produce between 4 and 16 barrels.627

Hydraulic fracturing or fracking is another form of extreme energy, one that originated in the US
but has begun to reach Europe. Fracking is a method of reaching shale gas, natural gas trapped deep in
the ground in spaces in rocks. Conventional drilling cannot obtain gas like this, so instead high
pressure fluids are pumped into the rock, fracturing it and releasing the gas. There are many
environmental problems associated with fracking. Because fracking requires enormous quantities of
water, there are concerns about potentially carcinogenic chemicals leeching into groundwater (and in
some cases causing tap water to become flammable near US sites), and the changes underground have
led to earthquakes.
The opening up of extreme energy is a reflection of the high prices of fossil fuels. But it is also a
symptom of a system hooked on fossil fuels. Energy sources like the tar sands or fracking will not be
able to compensate for the long-term decline in conventional oil production; at best they will delay or
slow the process. As Andrew Nikiforuk concludes, Canada is implausibly digging up and
replumbing an area the size of Nepal, not to save the world or to ensure its own energy security but to
keep wealthy oil companies in business and to supply a fading empire with dirty oil.628
In 2012 the British chancellor of exchequer, George Osborne, reaffirmed his opinion that gas had
to be a core part of the countrys energy mix until 2030. His government significantly cut subsidies for
renewable energy and is encouraging the fracking industry. As we shall see, this flies in the face of
the scientific consensus that in order to avoid catastrophic global warming we need to leave the vast
majority of fossil fuel reserves under the ground. So why is the system doing the exact opposite?
Since the Second World War the need to secure sufficient access to oil has been a major part of
the foreign policies of most national powers. When the US entered the war it was thought to possess
over 50 percent of the worlds oil, but at the rate it was using it to fight Japan and Germany, there
was thought to be only 13 years supply. 629 In anticipation of this, pre-war US governments had begun
trying to secure a foothold in other oil-rich areas.
The biggest single source of oil, over 250 billion barrels, a quarter of the worlds known total,
lies under the sands of Saudi Arabia. US influence in Saudi Arabia began in 1933 when the Standard
Oil Company obtained a 60-year lease. By the Second World War Saudi Arabia was considered
important enough for President Truman to fly to the area to meet with the king and create a strategic
alliance. Saudi Arabia received the promise of US military support, technology and funding and the
US solidified its grip on world oil.
Controlling access to oil reserves is a major preoccupation of the US. Most obviously it needs to
maintain its own supplies. But controlling oil also means having an influence on other countries that
also rely on oil. This is not to say that every decision taken by a US president is motivated purely by
oil; they are also interested in protecting their own markets, driving out governments that challenge
US interests or ideologies, or bolstering their allies.
Today the importance of oil to the world economy is reflected in the size and wealth of the oil
companies. Seven of the top 20 public companies in 2011 were oil giants with combined assets of
$1,837 billion.630 These companies have an enormous political and economic power, which
frequently clash with wider environmental and social interests. To examine this, it is worth looking at
the 2001 National Energy Policy (NEP) produced by the US government.
The NEP was set up because of growing concern in US government circles over the availability of
fossil fuels. During 2000 there had been a series of high-profile blackouts in the US as demand for
power exceeded capacity. Rising fuel prices had encouraged protests and President Bush spoke in

March 2001 of an energy crisis and declared that the country needed more sources of energy:
There are no short-term fixes The solution for our energy shortage requires long-term thinking and
a plan.631
One could be forgiven for interpreting this as giving the go ahead for a more radical overhaul of
US energy policies. Talk in the NEP report of their concern for reliance on foreign powers that do
not always have Americas interests at heart 632 could have led to an attempt to reap the benefit of the
countrys enormous potential renewable energy, or fund and invest in efficiency and energy reduction
schemes. However, the NEP was not to be about this at all.
The government body was staffed by officials from the US departments of State, Commerce and
Energy. The senior official was Dick Cheney, a former CEO of the oil services company Halliburton.
Other officials included a former vice-chairman of the energy company Enron, as well as several of
that companys former consultants. Another key figure in the NEP Development Group was the US
Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham, who had met with 109 representatives of energy firms in the
five months leading up to the publication of the report.
These men represented the vested interests of the oil corporations. Their stubborn desire to ensure
that fossil fuels remain the mainstay of US energy policies ensured that when the NEP was published
it committed and encouraged the government onto a road of deepening and strengthening US reliance
on oil, and an expansion of the oil economy. In the main this meant an increased reliance on oil from
the Middle East.
Despite limited proposals in the NEP for funds for research on alternative energy sources, the plan
is an environmental nightmare. Proposals to increase domestic oil production centred on permission
to allow drilling in the nature reserves of Alaska. Yet the expansion into US oil production from
Alaska, containing perhaps ten billion barrels of oil, is a drop in the ocean, reducing US reliance on
overseas oil by a mere 3 percent for the next 20 years.
Since the publication of the 2001 report we have seen the US engaged in protracted wars in the
Middle East. The military invasion of Iraq began with the securing of oil terminals and installations,
long before other military and civilian targets were reached. Even before the war began, Cheneys
former employer Halliburton was awarded an uncontested contract to repair damage to oil
installations.
Increasingly the US is relying on oil from sources outside the Middle East,* though in 2011 OPEC
estimated that 54 percent of proven oil reserves were in that part of the world.
The long-term interest of the most powerful economy in the world towards oil supplies helps to
shape the entire world economy. For countries such as the UK oil is still enormously important to the
economy. Royal Dutch Shell and BP were the first and fourth largest companies listed in the UK in
2011. The economic strength and interests of the oil multinationals, and the corporations associated
with the fossil fuel economy, the automobile industry, rubber companies, aviation and road lobbies,
remain a powerful section of capital that is not prepared to relinquish ground to alternative interests.
The oil company ExxonMobil, the worlds most profitable corporation, made $10 billion profit in
the third quarter of 2005 alone, and has funded over 120 organisations of what might charitably be
called climate sceptics, part of what George Monbiot has labelled The Denial Industry.633 They
have helped to spread the belief that climate change is not caused by carbon dioxide, that scientists
are unsure, or divided and that environmental campaigners threaten to ruin the economy. Collectively,
multinationals like ExxonMobil have deliberately blurred and confused the debate around global

warming, imperilling us all.

The oil corporations and the associated companies have enormous historical investments in
technology, machinery, infrastructure and personnel. Despite their minimal efforts to convince us that
they are interested in renewable energies, their primary concern is the continuing profits to be made
from oil. Should they continue to proceed down this route, the climate change caused by the emissions
from these fossil fuels will cause enormous destruction. Preventing this means challenging the
priorities of those corporations and the governments that rule on their behalf.

Top sources of US imported oil: Canada (28 percent), Saudi Arabia (13 percent), Mexico (10 percent), Venezuela (9 percent), Russia
(5 percent), www.eia.gov/energy_in_brief/article/foreign_oil_dependence.cfm

Chapter 12

Urbanisation

In 2010 for the first time in human history over half the worlds population lived in urban areas. The
growth of the urban population has been phenomenally rapid. Despite cities having existed in one
form or another for 6,000 years, the number of people living in them has been relatively low until
recent times.
At the start of the 19th century just 10 percent of the worlds population was urban. A century later
the figure was between 20 and 25 percent. In 1990 40 percent of the worlds population were city
dwellers and only two decades later it had reached half. This rapid growth is set to continue. The
World Health Organisation predicts that by 2030 some 60 percent of the worlds population will be
urban and 70 percent by 2050. Half of all urban dwellers live in cities with populations of between
100,000 and 500,000; fewer than 10 percent live in megacities of more than ten million.634
The first towns and cities
As early as 9600 BCE over 500 people lived at a site called Tell es-Sultan, near the river Jordan.
This town, popularly known as Jericho, was built during the pre-pottery Neolithic age. Within a
few hundred years the population had doubled. Famously the inhabitants of Jericho constructed a
large stone wall and circular tower possibly for defence from floods or mud flows.635
Sites such as Jericho should be distinguished from early settlements that may have been built by
hunter-gatherers. Those were lived in for short periods of the year before the inhabitants moved
elsewhere to locate different food supplies. Permanent settlements only became possible with the
agricultural revolution.
Another early urban archaeological site, atal Hyk, lies in southern Turkey. Sometimes known
as the worlds first city it dates to around 7000 BCE. At times atal Hyk was home to perhaps
10,000 people, but archaeological excavations suggest that it was more of an overgrown village than
a cityat atal Hyk there was no evidence for full-time craftsmen, merchants, priests and civil
servants living off the surplus of a rural hinterland. Each family produced its own food, and also
made pottery (and other items) for themselves as required.636
So atal Hyk seems to document a move from the nomadic hunting and gathering lifestyle
towards the sedentary life.637 This required the agricultural revolution and is likely to have been
accompanied by a shift in belief systems, symbolism and ritual. It is clear from the sites art that this
did indeed occur at atal Hyk, in particular a unique wall painting which depicts the town in front
of Hasan Dag, a volcano some 120 km away. This is the earliest known picture of humanitys
presence in an identifiable landscape.638
The volcano was an important source of material for atal Hyk and reflects the importance of
the volcano to the economic well-being of the town. Other art, such as moulded clay heads of bulls

built inside living spaces, seem to depict the symbolic domestication of the wild brought into the
urban environment.
The agricultural revolution meant that towns like Jericho and atal Hyk could support
individuals who didnt directly work the land, but had other specialities.
Gordon Childe argues that such craftsmen might not be able to be supported all year round by a
single village, and may have had to live by going from village to village.639 But as towns grew they
could begin to support full-time specialist craftsmen, transport workers, merchants, officials and
priests. While most inhabitants of early towns would still work the surrounding land, towns and
cities became sites where classes who did not themselves procure their own food became
concentrated.640
The further development of cities, with irrigation works or monumental architecture, symbolised
the concentration of the social surplus, often in the form of public buildings. Childe points out, for
instance, that every Sumerian city was from the first dominated by one or more stately temples But
attached to the temples were workshops and magazines, and an important appurtenance of each
principle temple was a great granary.641
By 4,500 years ago Mesopotamia, of which Sumer was a part, concentrated 80 percent of its
population into cities. The growth of cities required enormous amounts of food to be produced in the
agricultural hinterlands. A city of 40,000 needed three tonnes of barley a day. This necessitated the
growth of a state bureaucracy. Four thousand years ago in Babylon every adult male received a
monthly ration of 60 litres of barley and every woman 30 litres. Thousands of urban dwellers
received these rations and in return were expected to be available to work for the city.642
Other ancient cities had to develop even more complex arrangements. In 123 BCE Gaius Gracchus
enacted laws establishing the right of every Roman citizen to a grain ration at a fixed cost. This was
extended in 62 BCE by the tribune Clodius. Four years later he abolished payment for the grain
entirely. Then providing free grain to Romes citizens became a primary task of Romes government,
though non-citizens and slaves were supplied by private merchants. By the time Augustus became the
first Roman Emperor in 27 BCE, Rome supplied free grain to 320,000 citizens (480,000 further
women, children and slaves obtained their food on the market). Some 5,000 tonnes a week of grain
were supplied from conquered territories in North Africa, Spain, Sardinia and Egypt.643
Outside of Italy, only a minority of those who lived under Roman rule lived in towns and cities.
We saw earlier that life for the majority remained very similar to that before the Roman era. The
decline of the Roman Empire meant that Roman cities served little or no practical function after the
fall of the empire.644
The towns of the post-Roman era and the medieval age grew out of the markets that were needed
by villagers. They also produced manufactured goods on a small-scale. A ninth century account of the
development of the Belgian town of Bruges describes this process:
In order to satisfy the needs of the castle folk, there began to throng before [the princes] gate near the castle bridge traders and
merchants selling costly goods, then innkeepers to feed and house those doing businessthey built houses and set up inns where
those who could not be put up at the castle were accommodated. The houses increased to such an extent that there soon grew up
a large town, which in the common speech of the lower classes is still called Bridge.645

The growth of market networks and the trades associated with the towns began to transform social
relations. Most traders in towns like Bruges would have been little more than shopkeepers but they
could begin to shape the local economy. A butcher could pay peasants to specialise in certain

livestock, for instance. Chris Harman points out that:

Urban traders often influenced life in the countryside in another way, by encouraging less prosperous peasants to take up industrial
crafts in the countryside The merchant would provide the raw materials to rural workers, who would transform them into
finished products in their own homes.646

Changes such as these began to change how the feudal lords behaved. Some tried to strengthen
serfdom, using violence to increase the exploitation of the serfs. The other option was for the lord to
accept the full implications of the developing market system and to get his income as rent from lands
farmed in a capitalist manner.
Thus the economic strength of the towns shaped the rural areas but was dependent upon themthe
historic source of what Marx and Engels describe as the antagonism between town and country.
They describe how:
the existence of the town impliesthe necessity of administration, police, taxes, etc; in short, of the municipality, and thus of
politics in general. Here first became manifest the division of the population into two great classes, which is directly based on the
division of labour and on the instruments of production. The town already is in actual fact the concentration of the population, of the
instruments of production, of capital, of pleasures, of needs, while the country demonstrates just the opposite fact, isolation and
separation.647

The capitalist city

The separation of town and country existed before capitalism, but it is only when the peasantry have
become separated from the land, driven into the cities or turned into rural wage labour, that there is a
final separation between town and country. The development of both town and country is then shaped
by capitalist relations.
The Marxist geographer Neil Smith explains how cities are shaped by the needs of capital:
Only with the development and expansion of industrial capital did the centralisation of productive activity come to supersede the
market function as the determinant of urban development. If the urban scale as such is the necessary expression of the
centralisation of productive capital, the geographical limits to the urban scale (not to be confused with the administrative boundaries
of a city) are primarily determined by the local labour market and the limits to the daily commute. With the development of the
capitalist city there is a systematic differentiation between the place of work and the place of residence, between the space of
production and the space of reproduction.648

Not only does capitalist urbanisation transform our physical landscape; it also changes how we
think about spacecreating for the first time the idea of the private home separate from the
workplace.
In his marvellous environmental history of Chicago William Cronon explores how the growth of
the largest city in the American Midwest helped transform both the environment and the economy of
the US. The town of Chicago was located in an area that allowed it to utilise enormously varied and
extensive natural resources. Large forests, prairies full of bison, land to be divided up for agriculture
and extensive waterways to the eastern cities. Before the prairie could be opened up for the raising of
cattle and the growing of grain, the bison had to be cleared away. The hunters who massacred the
animals in their thousands were also transforming a complex eco-system:
The bison met their end because their ecosystem had become attached to an urban marketplace in a new way. The very market
forces that had led hunters nearly to exterminate the species now encouraged other people to find a suitable replacement Even
before the bison had entirely gone, their heirs apparenthorses, sheep, and especially the longhorn cattle were already
beginning to make buffalo country their own. Called into being by the same urban markets that had sent the hunters scurrying
across the plains in the first place, the new herds would be tied to the cities by the same iron rails that had turned the plains into a
slaughterhouse.649

The prairies were also opened up to agriculture. Chicago sucked in vast quantities of grain,
encouraging grain farms to spread over a huge region. In the early days the farmers around Chicago
would bring their grain and sell it direct to an eastern buyer, but own it until it reached New York or
other eastern cities. But grain is easily classed into different types and quantifiable into fixed weights.
Quickly Chicago grain merchants centralised the purchasing and resale of the grain. Now farmers
sold their crop in Chicago, pouring it into enormous elevators with the grain from all the other farms.
In return, the farmer received a receipt entitling him to a sum of money, or an identical amount of
grain:
A person who owned grain could conveniently sell it to a buyer simply by selling the elevator receipt and as long as both agreed
that they were exchanging equivalent quantities of like grainrather than the physical grain that the seller had originally deposited
in the elevatorboth left happy at the end of the transaction. It was a momentous change The grading system allowed elevators
to sever the link between ownership rights and physical grain, with a host of consequences.650

This commodification of grain had the effect of creating a market in grain futures. Speculators
could buy and sell grain receipts on the market, betting on the future price. Inevitably this led to the
issuing of more receipts than there was grain, and market crashes followed price booms. Thus the
countryside for hundreds of miles around Chicago had been transformed in the interest of capitalism,
and the needs of the massive cities to the east. Despite being a product of natural processes, grain had
been transformed into a commodity. To understand wheat or corn in the vocabulary of bulls, bears,
corners, grades and futures meant seeing grain as a commodity, not as a living organism planted and
harvested by farmers as a crop for people to mill into flour, bake into bread, and eat.
Part of what made this transformation possible was technology, in particular the railroads built in
the early 1800s that linked rural areas to Chicago and thence on to the east coast. With this
technology, capitalism could overcome natures own processes:
Summer must be made to seem like winter so that the great factories could continue their work all year. Deaths hand must be
stayed to extend by hundreds and thousands of miles the distance between the place where an animal died and the place where
people finally ate it.651

The railroads removed the isolation of the rural areas, tying them closer to urban areas, and
leading to what Karl Marx called the annihilation of space by time. The telegraph allowed the
instantaneous transmission of grain prices set on the east coast to the stock markets in Chicago.
Chicagos farm areas became tied to the wider market interests.
Wherever the network of rails extended, frontier became hinterland to the cities where rural products entered the marketplace.
Areas with limited experience of capitalist exchange suddenly found themselves much more palpably within an economic and
social hierarchy created by the geography of capital.652

The reality of mass industrialised cities was well described by Charles Dickens in his 1854 novel
Hard Times. Dickens describes the imaginary Coketown in Northern England:
It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was
a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which
interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river
that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day
long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of
melancholy madness.653

Coketown could have stood for any number of English towns and cities. Those who ended up
working in the factories and mills of the new cities were mired in poverty, appalling housing, dirt and
squalor. Yet they also found themselves in the midst of enormous wealth.

In his famous 1845 study, The Condition of the Working Class in England, Frederick Engels
recounts the story of how, in Manchester, he met a member of the bourgeoisie, perhaps a factory
owner. After Engels had described to him the bad, unwholesome method of building, the frightful
condition of the working-peoples quarters and said that he had never seen so ill-built a city, the
man responded that there is a great deal of money made here.654
Capitalism needs the city. But this is not simply because cities concentrate the means of
production. The Marxist David Harvey argues, for instance, that because capitalism is driven by
production for accumulation, urban areas play a particularly active rolein absorbing the surplus
product that capitalists are perpetually producing in their search for surplus value.655 He points out
that the urban property market has absorbed a great deal of the surplus capital directly through new
construction (both inner city and suburban housing and new office spaces) while the rapid inflation of
housing asset prices backed by a profligate wave of mortgage refinancing at historically low rates of
interest boosted the US internal market for consumer goods and services.656
But this is a double-edged sword, for it was precisely the bursting of the debt bubble, based in
part on housing loans, which led to the economic crisis that began in 2008.
Escaping the city
On the back of the exploitation of workers in enormous mills and factories, and the impoverished
lives of the workers in the slums of cities like Manchester, the capitalists could make a great deal of
money, but they also wanted to escape from the reality of their system. Engels describes how the rich
built their homes far from the poorest areas, living in:
remoter villas with gardens in Chorlton and Ardwick, or on the breezy heights of Cheetham Hill, Broughton, and Pendleton, in free,
wholesome country air, in fine, comfortable homes, passed once every half or quarter hour by omnibuses going into the city. And
the finest part of the arrangement is this, that the members of this money aristocracy can take the shortest road through the middle
of all the labouring districts to their places of business without ever seeing that they are in the midst of the grimy misery that lurks
to the right and the left.657

To escape the city even further, the rich created holiday resorts, designing them to represent a
romantic view of rural life. Thus urbanisation led to the creation of new, artificial, areas of nature
outside the cities. The bourgeois of Chicago found their oasis of calm in resorts that were created
around the lakes of Wisconsin. These areas of beauty were transformed in order to ensure that
visitors did not miss out on any of their home comforts. As golf courses, hotels and marinas were
built, advertisers concluded that nature itself had been improved upon: nature did her best; man
came and successfully did the rest, said one 1902 brochure.658
The creation of such pastoral retreats for the rich was combined with a move in the 19th
centuries towards the creation of parks that would benefit all of the population, in particular the
working class who laboured in dirty factories and lived in dark slums.
Parks were supposed to echo the countryside to allow the visitor to escape the city. Frederick Law
Olmsted, who was involved in the design of many urban parks including New Yorks Central Park,
believed that:
The park should, as far as possible, complement the town The beauty of the park should bethe beauty of the fields, the
meadow, the prairie, of the green pastures, and the still waters. What we want to gain is tranquillity and rest to the mind.659

In 1833 the British government created a Select Committee on Public Walks to look at increasing

the provision of public spaces and for the comfort, health and content of the populations of the
countrys cities. Manchester was singled out as a city of heavy industry and pollution and by 1864
three parks had been opened in Manchester and Salford for people to enjoy a country like
environment. These were public spaces, unlike the older, private parks, and the designers hoped that
members of all classes would mingle and relax in them.
The recreation of the countryside in miniature within the cities was matched by the creation of
artificial parks and landscapes outside of cities. Despite their seemingly natural state, the enormous
national parks like Yellowstone or Yosemite in the US are artificial environments:
From the management of wildlife to the alteration of the landscape by human occupancy, the material environment bears the stamp
of human labour; from the beauty salons to the restaurants, and from the camper parks to the Yogi Bear postcards, Yosemite and
Yellowstone are neatly packaged cultural experiences of environment on which substantial profits are recorded each year.660

Can the city be sustainable?

What of the environmental impact of urban areas themselves? Cities clearly produce enormous
amounts of pollution. But this is because of their centralisation of industry, commerce and people.
Perhaps surprisingly, studies show that city life has less of an impact, per person, than life in rural or
even suburban areas. New York, for instance, is responsible for 1 percent of the USs total
greenhouse gas emissions, but contains 2.7 percent of the countrys population.
This is not to downplay the amounts of pollution from the city. In 2010 New York was responsible
for 54.3 million tonnes of carbon; 96 percent of this came from the burning of fossil fuels.661
In cities people share resources; they have public transport networks and live close together. Some
cities are better than othersfor instance, each New Yorker is responsible for an average of 6.5
tonnes of carbon a year, while someone living in Houston emits 15.5 tonnes. The restrictions on space
in New York reduce distances travelled; apartment blocks insulate each other, reducing energy use. 662
The provision of public transport and city infrastructure can reduce pollution even further. Stockholm
has emissions of 3.4 tonnes per capita, in particular by promoting public transport, as well as
developing a widespread bike cultureso that on a winters day 19 percent of Stockholmers will be
using bicycles [This] rises to 33 percent in summer.663 These emissions could be compared to a
Europe-wide average of 10 tonnes per capita, or a US average of 22 tonnes.
Historically, cities concentrate workers together in huge numbers. As we shall see later, cities thus
become the focus for class struggle against capitalism, leading to the potential to reclaim the city
for the inhabitants, rather than the capitalists.
Building on the work of the French Marxist philosopher Henri Lefebvre, David Harvey sees the
city as a focus for potentially explosive anti-capitalist protests, demanding the Right to the City.
For Harvey this means to claim some kind of shaping power over the processes of urbanisation,
over the ways in which our cities are made and remade, and to do so in a fundamental and radical
way.664 *
By their very place in capitalism, cities become the focus for class struggle and in the aftermath,
fearful of future urban unrest, the bourgeoisie redesign their cities to try to prevent further rebellion.
In the aftermath of the 1848 revolution Baron Haussmann was commissioned to rebuild Paris.
Famously he constructed boulevards wide enough to allow cavalry to wheel about, and difficult to
block with barricades. But he also erased whole areas that had held revolutionary significance and

designed the city to make visible the sites of centralised power. The Rue de Rivoli extended to
provide a line of site between the Place de la Bastille and Pariss central barracks.665
But the provision of green space itself designed initially to allow workers to escape the
drudgery of their lives can itself become a focus for struggle. In New York in the 1980s, as federal
funds dried up under President Reagan, the citys government began a process of gentrification of the
Lower East Side, a poor, working class neighbourhood. The city government believed that it had
lost control of these spaces, particularly Tompkins Square Park. Neighbourhood groups organised to
defend their space in an August 1988 protest when demonstrators chanted, Whose park is it? Its our
fucking park. Tompkins Park became the an occupied space, as squatters, homeless groups and
organisations moved in until forced out in December 1989 by mass police action.
Neil Smith points out that that this began as a struggle over the park but its scale expanded
geographically until it defined the whole neighbourhood as part of the political expansion of the
struggle to include different groups and kinds of organising as well as different locations.666
A similar process took place more recently in Istanbul, when small protests against the possible
destruction of Gezi Park mushroomed into enormous demonstrations across Turkey, politically
generalising to raise many different demands from the government.
But attempts to reduce the environmental impact of life in cities, or even more radical attempts to
occupy spaces within urban areas in the interests of the majority of the population, will be limited by
the wider nature of the capitalist system and the state that protects its interests. It is notable, for
instance, that the occupiers of Tahrir Square in Cairo inspired millions of people across the globe.
But it was only when mass strikes had broken out, themselves in part inspired by Tahrir Square, that
the Egyptian Revolution brought down the dictator Mubarak in 2011.
The struggle for the right to the city cannot be separated from wider challenges to capitalism. In
the final chapters we will look at how a future sustainable society can be built through an alternative
to capitalism. But first we must look at capitalisms great environmental crisisclimate change.

David Harveys work on the Right to the City is best summarised in his book Rebel Cities (Harvey, 2013). I recommend Swain,
2012b, for a fraternal but critical engagement with some of these ideas.

Chapter 13

Climate change

Despite the importance of climate change to our history and contemporary society many people
remain confused about what it means. Partly this is because of the disinformation sown by some
politicians and organisations. As we saw in the previous chapter, some of these organisations have
every interest in undermining a more general awareness of what climate change is, what it is caused
by and what we can do to combat it. So this chapter begins with an overview of the science of climate
change. We will then look at the wider environmental crisis we face and potential solutions.
What is climate change?
The very words climate change confuse. The Earths climate has always changed. The extent to
which this takes place is best illustrated by our planets ice ages, when climatic conditions across the
whole globe were dramatically different from what they are today. The last ice age began about
120,000 years ago and at its peak ice covered the whole of Canada and Scandinavia and most of
Britain and Germany. At the height of that ice age the future locations of cities such as New York,
Detroit and Chicago were covered in ice that was half a mile thick. Some of the thickest ice-sheets
were two or three miles thick. With all the water locked up in these ice-sheets the worlds oceans
were hundreds of metres lower. Britain was joined to continental Europe; Australia was part of a
wider continent that stretched from Tasmania to New Guinea.
The climatic changes between ice ages took tens of thousands of years. The rise and fall of sealevels, the expansion and retreat of enormous glaciers, have all made their mark on the world we see
today. The slow expansion of glaciers carved valleys and shaped mountains from the Andes to the
Alps, to the moors of northern England.
One thing that should be noted is that small changes in temperature can have quite dramatic
consequences. The Little Ice Age that took place between the 16th and 19th centuries was only around
one degree Celsius below modern temperatures. Yet this was enough to cause regular freezing of
rivers such as the Thames and the Rhine. If this happened today it would be considered astonishing.
The frost fairs that occurred in the 16th and 17th centuries were occasions of celebration, yet the
gaiety displayed on contemporary engravings masks the crop failures, famine and failed rains that
were common during this period of cooling. Culturally the Little Ice Age is reflected in the paintings
of the 16th century Flemish painters Pieter Breugel and his son who portrayed peasant life in a time of
snow and frozen lakes.
There are many different, interacting reasons why the climate has changed. Ice ages for instance,
are caused by periodic changes in the Earths axis of rotation and orbit around the sun.
But the climate change that we are concerned about today is primarily the result of the systematic
burning of fossil fuels. There are other factorsmethane produced by cattle, for instancebut the

dominant cause of global warming is the use of fossil fuels that has taken place on an enormous scale
since the industrial revolution.
Since the dawn of the industrial era, humans have pumped around 200 billion tonnes of CO2 into
the Earths atmosphere and we continue to release more. Existing warming is also stimulating the
further release of greenhouse gases from places where they have been trapped for millions of years.
CO2 is the most important greenhouse gas. It is exhaled by humans and animals and is essential to
the photosynthesis that takes place in plants. Carbon dioxide is thus already present in the atmosphere
in small amountsaround 0.04 percent by volume. CO2 is important for another reason; it helps to
keep the planet habitable. Earths atmosphere extends approximately 60 miles above sea level. Not
only does the atmosphere provide us with the oxygen we need, it also helps to protect us from harmful
ultraviolet radiation from the sun. The presence of carbon dioxide is particularly important because it
is this that causes the greenhouse effect. Energy from the sun is trapped within the atmosphere by the
greenhouse gases. The more of these gases, the more energy can be trapped. Without an adequate
amount of these gases in our atmosphere the Earth would be cold and dry like the planet Mars. Too
much in the atmosphere and our planet would be unbearably hot, like the planet Venus where the
greenhouse effect traps so much heat that surface temperatures can melt lead.
It is not only carbon dioxide that contributes to the greenhouse effect. There are several other
gases, such as methane, which in the atmosphere at certain altitudes make a significant contribution to
global warming. Without these greenhouse gases, the Earth would be around 15.5 degrees Celsius
cooler than it is with an atmosphere.667 As climate scientist Henry Pollack says, it is the greenhouse
effect from these tiny amounts of gases that makes Earth the water planet, the blue planet, rather than
just another of the many icy bodies of the solar system.668
If the amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere vary then the greenhouse effect gets stronger
or weaker. Variations in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have been responsible for
climate change in the distant past. These natural changes and cycles have a wide range of causes, not
all of which are yet understood. But they should not be confused with the anthropogenic (human
caused) global warming we can observe happening today.
By delving deep into the environmental records of our planet, scientists can produce very detailed
pictures of the planets climate going back hundreds of thousands of years. Just as beds of lakes,
rivers and oceans are made up of layer upon layer of materials that fall to the bottom, building up
strata which can tell us much about historical climate, vegetation and atmospheric content, similar
layers builds up in ancient ice. As snow falls, it traps air in pockets and bubbles and with each year
that passes these bubbles are trapped further and further down. The weight of the snowfall above
gradually compresses the snow into ice and this builds up a historical record of the worlds climate
over time. By drilling down and extracting ice cores, scientists can analyse the bubbles of trapped
air and determine what the atmosphere was like thousands of years ago.
One core from the Russian research station at Vostok in central Antarctica was 3,600m deep. The
bubbles trapped in the ice from the core allow scientists to reconstruct the atmospheric make-up up to
420,000 years in the past.
The first thing that is apparent from the information obtained from the Vostok core is that there is a
very strong correlation between atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and world
temperatures. The core covers the periods of the last four ice ages, and they show a remarkable
regularity over a period of 100,000 years. Other ice cores that stretch further into the past show a

similar periodicity and relationship between temperature and CO2 concentrations. What we also see
is that during the extended period covered by the cores, the concentration of CO2 within the
atmosphere varied between two pointsapproximately 200 parts per million (ppm) during the depths
of the ice age and 300 ppm during the warmth of the inter-glacial periods.
At the beginning of the industrial revolution concentrations of carbon dioxide were at 280 ppm. By
1958 levels had reached 315 ppm, much higher than at any point during the previous 800,000 years.
In May 2013 concentrations reached 400 ppm. In other words, the great majority of the increase in
CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has taken place in the last 50 years.
In their 2007 report the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) argued that there
is a very high confidence that the net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of
warming. They continue:
Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed
increase in anthropogenic GHG [greenhouse gas] concentrations. It is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic warming
over the past 50 years averaged over each continent (except Antarctica).669

But in their 2013 report the IPCC said:

It is extremely likely that human activities caused more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature
from 1951 to 2010. This assessment is supported by robust evidence from multiple studies using different methods.670

These statements reflect the growing concerns of scientists that global warming, caused by the
historical and ongoing emissions from our society, will have a profound effect on our future climate.
The IPCC itself commissions no independent research, but brings together the views of hundreds of
scientists. As a result, it has been accused of conservatism as it attempts to reflect the range of
scientific views. As we shall see, many scientists are arguing that the situation is far worse than the
IPCC suggests.
The temperature changes we are talking about are relatively small. At the moment scientists
greatest concern is that society tries to avoid an average temperature rise of 2C above pre-industrial
levels. Two degrees are a minor increase in temperature. It might be the difference between you
deciding to wear a coat outdoors or not. But if the average temperature across the globe increases by
this amount it can have an enormous impact on the climate.
When we think about heat, we imagine temperature. A hot day makes us warmer. But a more
scientific explanation of heat is that it is the transfer of energy. So when heat is trapped inside the
atmosphere through the greenhouse effect this means that there is more energy within the confines of
the Earths atmosphere. In the past the amount of greenhouse gases has been at a level such that the
energy trapped gives us the weather systems and climate we are used to. As we contribute more
greenhouse gases to the atmosphere more energy is trapped and less can escape. This is why there is
a very strong likelihood of links between more extreme weather and global warming. In the past
scientists have been wary of saying that there is a direct link between global warming and specific
incidents of extreme weather. This is because it is very difficult to attribute a single event (a
hurricane, for instance) to an increase in global temperatures. What scientists have to do is work on
averages. The effect of a warming world is to increase the average number of hurricanes or other
events.
But in February 2011 an important paper in the journal Nature argued that it could be shown that
there was a link between the increases in greenhouse gases from human activities and heavier falls of

rain or other forms of precipitation. As the scientists involved wrote, We show that human-induced
increases in greenhouse gases have contributed to the observed intensification of heavy precipitation
events found over approximately two thirds of data-covered parts of Northern Hemisphere land
areas.671 The researchers claimed that this was the first formal identification of a human
contribution to the observed intensification of extreme precipitation.672
In mid-2011 an international grouping of climate scientists and institutions united to argue that the
links between global warming and increased extreme weathers were now undisputable. In particular
fundamental changes had occurred that would affect the whole climatic system. One of these changes
was the warming of the oceans. The large bodies of water that dominate planet Earth act as heat sinks
for the climatic system by drawing energy out of the system. But as the oceans and seas warm their
ability to absorb further energy is reduced.
The consequence of this measurable warming of the oceans is that weather that we considered
unusual a few years ago will be increasingly common. The extra energy in our atmosphere can play
itself out as stronger winds, more frequent and more energetic hurricanes and cyclones, as well as
warmer average temperatures. These higher temperatures cause snow and ice to melt, droughts, heat
waves and wildfires to increase.
In early 2011 NASA reported that the previous year was the joint warmest on record, one degree
Fahrenheit (just over half a degree Celsius) higher than average temperatures between 1951 and
1980. NASA also showed that global warming does not simply lead to hotter weather. Sea ice helps
to insulate the atmosphere from heat in the oceans. When the Arctic ice melted in the winter of 2010,
it increased the local temperatures by allowing the heat from the oceans to escape. As a result of this,
parts of Canada had a winter 18 degrees warmer than normal. But a secondary effect was to change
the wind patterns, pouring cold air on Europe. This demonstrates one of the unusual impacts of
global warming; in the short term at least, it can lead to extremes of cold weather in regions of the
world.
The social consequences of such extreme weather events and fluctuations in weather can be
enormous. Some of these are short termflooding, cold snaps or heat waves can kill large numbers
of people and destroy infrastructure. The insurance company Munich Re estimated that 2010 was one
of the worst years for natural disasters. Nine tenths of these were weather related, and included
floods in Pakistan and Australia and a Russian heat wave that killed 56,000 people.673
The 2010 floods in Pakistan were a textbook example of how extreme weather can overwhelm a
countrys ability to cope with disaster. Resulting from heavier than usual monsoon rains in July and
exacerbated by melting glaciers, approximately a fifth of the country was flooded, affecting 20
million people. As the floods spread, they contaminated groundwater and wells, spreading disease at
a time when emergency services were already struggling to cope. The flooding caused millions of
pounds worth of damage, destroying crops and infrastructure. Power stations flooded and the power
cuts further hampered rescue and recovery.
As extreme weather events become more common, societys ability to deal with them will be
further stretched. In the developing world in particular, recovery from major environmental disasters
can take years. A year after the Pakistani floods tens of thousands of people were still homeless.
Further flooding in August 2011 destroyed millions of homes, submerged enormous areas of land and
killed hundreds of people.
The impact of global warming cannot simply be measured by the threat from extreme weather

events. The longer-term and more gradual threats are equally dangerous. One example of this is the
way that agriculture is affected by a warming world. Studies show that, for every degree of warming,
rice yields fall by 15 percent. Increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere can improve yields, but
other factors mitigate this. Pollution from cars and aircraft is increasing the amount of CO2 in the
atmosphere, but it is also increasing levels of ozone. Ozone has a negative effect on the yield of
crops, cancelling out the effect of the increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The expected
increase in ozone levels in China, for instance, will cause maize, rice and soybean production to fall
by over 30 percent by 2020.674
One of the most powerful images of global warming has been the melting of the snows of
Kilimanjaro. There has been an ice cap on the top of Africas highest mountain for 12,000 years, but
in the past 90 years over 80 percent of it has melted. This has accelerated in recent years with over a
quarter of the cap that existed in 2000 gone by the end of the decade. This is also true of ice around
the world, which is melting even faster than during the warming that followed the Little Ice Age
Projections for the future indicate that it will likely continue to do so and at an accelerating pace.675
On mountains around the world glaciers and snow caps are vanishing.
The disappearance of permanent snow caps and glaciers will have an enormous impact on
people.676 A quarter of the worlds population relies on water from glaciers for drinking and
agriculture. Even larger numbers of people depend on the annual melting of snow for farming.677
Countless villages and farms in Peru and Chile can only exist because of the water that runs off the
Andes from snow and ice hundreds of metres above. A warming world means that the ice and snow
that make up these water sources are never replenished. The capital of Bolivia, La Paz, gets all of its
water as well as generating all of its electricity from the run-off water from glaciers. Similarly,
Perus capital, Lima, relies on glacial water for its sewers. A World Bank report from 2009 warned
that the loss of the glaciers in the Andes, now at their lowest extent for 5,000 years, would affect 80
million people.678
Fifteen thousand glaciers flow from the Himalayan Mountains. The melt water from these
contributes just under half of the water for the three main rivers of South Asia, the Ganges, Indus and
Brahmaputra. The rest comes from the monsoons and mountain snowmelt. A billion people rely on the
water from these rivers. Once the glaciers vanish, the water levels will drop dramatically. One study
showed that the Indus River would increase its water flow by up to 90 percent during the first half of
this century, as the glaciers melt, and then drop back to between 30 and 90 percent of current
flows.679 A study in the US of the Sierra Nevada Mountains suggested that the melt water that
irrigates the crops of California could drop by 70 to 80 percent in the first half of this century. 680 As
one scientist comments, One quarter of Earths population will, within another few decades begin to
be affected significantly by lesser snow-fall and glacial ice loss. That number translates into almost
two billion peopleand most of them live in Asia.681
Environmental journalist Fred Pearce points out that glaciers help to stabilise river flow.
Glaciers absorb highly variable monsoon rains and provide a strong, regular flood pulse in the
summer melting season.682 This consequence of global warming is to create more uncertainty in the
future availability of water.
Every area of the worlds ecological systems will be changed by a warming world. The
temperatures of the worlds oceans are increasing. In addition the oceans absorb around a third of the
CO2 emitted.683 Because this has been happening since the beginning of the industrial revolution, the

process has slowed global warming considerably. It has also made the oceans about 25 percent more
acidic than they were at the beginning of the industrial revolution.
Exactly what this means is not fully understood. But we do know that marine life such as shrimps,
coral, crabs and lobsters as well as microscopic creatures such as plankton find it harder to grow
their shells in a more acidic ocean. With weaker shells these animals will not survive as long and this
will in turn have a negative effect on the creatures that feed upon them. Already we have seen
extensive dying off of coral reefs. Such reefs are particularly vulnerable to more acidic, seas and as
they die, the shelter they provide for countless different types of marine life disappears too.
Unequal impacts
There should be no doubt that global warming will bring tremendous destruction to human society as
well as the wider natural environment. The impacts will be felt foremost in the developing world.
The poorest nations have the least resources to spend protecting their infrastructure and populations
from extreme weather, and rebuilding after disaster. There are a number of ways that this manifests
itself. Consider how comparable tragedies play out differently in the poor and the rich world.
A 1984 study looked at the impact of natural disasters between 1960 and 1981. During this period
Japan suffered 43 disasters with an average of 60 deaths per disaster, Spain suffered 12 disasters
with 250 deaths per disaster. In contrast, Ethiopia over the same period suffered 16 disasters with
6,440 deaths per disaster, Bangladesh suffered 63 disasters with 10,050 deaths per disaster, China
suffered 20 disasters with 12,350 deaths per disaster.684
Global warming will initially hit the poorest countries worst. But that is not to say that the rich
countries will escape. New Orleans, the first city to be destroyed by environmental disaster in
modern times, is after all in the richest country in the world. However, New Orleans shows very
clearly that environmental disaster will impact unequally even within the wealthy nations. As the
former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Nobel Peace prize winner
Rajendra Pachauri said, Its the poorest of the poor in the world, and this includes poor people even
in prosperous societies, who are going to be the worst hit.
Those in charge of New Orleans were well aware from simulations and exercises what could
happen to the city if a large hurricane hit. The year before Hurricane Katrina a simulation had
predicted 60,000 deaths if a category 3 storm hit the city. When it was clear Katrina would hit New
Orleans, Mayor Ray Nagin delayed giving the emergency evacuation order. He was under pressure
from hotel owners who were worried about losing revenue. When he finally gave the order to
evacuate, he made it mandatory. But this meant little to large sections of the population, a quarter of
whom had no cars, who could not leave. The US government did nothing to set up evacuation areas or
shelters in safe areas. Private buses and trains left empty because people could not afford to buy a
ticket and the government did not order them to be commandeered. The City of New Orleans had
almost 800 school buses that it could have used to evacuate people, but they remained in their parking
lots. The victims of the hurricane were the poorest who had no means of escape, or places to go.685
These were the people the Bush administration demonised as looters, rapists and violent thugs, when,
trapped in their city, they broke into shops to find clean water and food to survive.
Despite the impact of Hurricane Katrina on our consciousness today, it remains only one of a
number of environmental disasters that have destroyed the lives of thousands of people. The

disproportional impact upon the poorest communities and the way that the impacts exacerbate existing
divisions within society can be shown by the second most devastating hurricane to impact the US to
date.686
In 1928 heavy rainfall from a category 4 hurricane caused the levels of Floridas Lake
Okeechobee to rise, breeching its dyke. Around 2,500 people were killed by the resultant floods.
While the destruction covered neighbourhoods of the wealthy and the poor, the death toll was highest
in the poorest areas. Three quarters of the dead were black and most of them were farm workers.
A recent report of the accident summarised the aftermath:
Black survivors of the hurricane were forced to handle much of the task of recovering victims bodies Anger has simmered for
decades in West Palm Beachs African-American community over disparate memorials for black and white storm victims. In the
segregated cemetery of the time, 69 white victims in a mass grave received a proper marker. A mass grave in a paupers
cemetery for 674 black victims was never marked and was forgotten. It has shared space at various times with a dump, a sewage
plant and a street extension.687

After the hurricane the USs Army Corps of Engineers built a dyke to replace the inadequate one.
Now, 80 years after the disasters, as neo-liberalism has run rampant through the US economy and
public spending has been drastically reduced, dykes like the one that keeps the waters of Lake
Okeechobee back have suffered 40 years of neglect.688 The population of the surrounding areas are
once again under threat at a time when hurricanes are increasing in number and intensity.
Such class differences are not restricted to the US. In wealthy countries of Europe such as France
or Britain, people die in their thousands when the weather gets too hot or too cold. In Britain every
winter thousands of pensioners die from hypothermia because they cannot afford to heat their homes.
For every degree Celsius that temperatures fall below average there are 8,000 extra deaths in
Britain.689 People also die when the weather is unusually warm. The summer of 2003 was the hottest
since the 1500s. As a result of the heat wave 70,000 additional deaths occurred in Europe. 690 This
includes an excess of 18,000 deaths in Italy and 15,000 in France.691
These deaths are largely avoidable. In most countries victims of the heat wave were the elderly
and the vulnerable, people who live alone or have extra care needs. The scandal of the deaths in
France centred on inadequate social care. Many health professionals take annual leave during the
August months, but the real issue is one of preparedness. Northern France is not used to extremely hot
weather so few retirement homes had air conditioning, for instance.
In many parts of the world summer and winter temperatures are much higher or lower than the
seasonal weathers of northern Europe. In countries such as Russia society is more used to dealing
with extremes of cold, so a colder winter does not result in the extra deaths it does in Britain. The
point is that the excess deaths do not result directly from the ambient temperature, but from peoples
ability to deal with that temperature. If your city has ensured that air conditioning is installed in old
peoples homes, the population have been educated in what to do when the weather turns hot and
medical care is available, then you stand a better chance of surviving extreme weather. However, it
will be the poorest who suffer the first and the greatest. It is those who have the least money who are
unable to purchase warmer clothes or turn the heating on or install air-conditioning.
The impact of climate change will be worsened by the unequal nature of society. We live in a
world where wealth is concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority. Today over a billion people live
on less than $1.25 a day, 2.6 billion have no toilet or latrine and almost 900 million have inadequate
access to drinking water. As the climate crisis worsens, these people will be hit hardest and, in most
cases, first. But their numbers will also swell. As sea water rises and contaminates fresh water, as

glaciers melt and rivers dry up, the number of thirsty people will increase. New Orleans in 2005
provides a grim metaphor for this unequal impact. Just as those who could afford cars and had
somewhere to go evaded the immediate destruction from Hurricane Katrina, those with wealth will
initially be able to avoid suffering from climate change.
But even the wealthiest will not be able to buy their escape from some of the environmental
scenarios we face as the world continues to warm.
Feedback mechanisms and runaway climate change
Global warming is already causing ice to melt and oceans to warm. Sometimes these changes
themselves cause further global warming. This is known as feedback and the mechanisms by which
it can happen are of great concern to scientists. They warn that with enough global warming we might
reach a tipping point beyond which there is no return.
The most obvious example of a feedback mechanism is the way that a microphone and speaker
combination sometimes causes a loud screech if placed incorrectly. A small sound picked up by a
microphone is amplified and reproduced from the speaker. This louder noise is then picked up by the
microphone again, amplified and emitted for a second time. The cycle repeats rapidly and very
quickly a small noise turns into an unbearable one. So a feedback mechanism is one where a source
produces an effect that reinforces the original source and so builds the effect further. In climate
science there are a number of these effects, which lead to further warming as the planet gets hotter. I
will describe just two.692
If you ever look through a telescope at the planet Mars the most striking detail that can be seen,
even with a fairly low powered instrument, is the ice caps. The reason that Marss ice caps are seen
so easily is that ice is an excellent reflector of light and hence energy. * The ability of a surface to
reflect light is known as its albedo; the higher the albedo, the better the surface is at reflecting energy.
Earths average albedo is 30 percentalmost a third of the Suns energy that reaches the surface is
reflected back into space. In the Arctic the albedo is 70 percent, while in an ice-free ocean it is 20
percent.
This means that Earths ice-caps are an excellent mitigator of global warming. They help to reduce
the amount of energy that is trapped inside our atmosphere, because more of it is reflected back into
space. But as the world warms, the total amount of ice at the poles, on mountains or trapped in
glaciers reduces. Warmer summers mean that more sea ice melts than in the cooler past. By the end of
the last century the summer sea ice had diminished by some 25 percent from its mid-century
extent.693 But because the albedo of the oceans and seas is less, an area of the Earths surface that
once reflected over two thirds of the suns energy now only reflects 20 percent. This difference is
heat that is absorbed by the oceans.
In its simplest terms global warming causes ice to melt; this means that more energy is absorbed,
rather than lost to space; the world warms even more than it would have done if the ice had not
melted; in turn more ice melts, faster than it would otherwise have done. This feedback mechanism
accelerates climate change.
This change is already having a local impact. As Fred Pearce explains, around the Arctic, spring
arrives earlier and faster:
As lakes crack open, rivers reawaken and the ice and snow disappear, the landscape is suddenly able to absorb heat. The cold

trap of reflective white ice is sprung and temperatures can rise by 10 degrees Celsius in a single day.694

The acceleration is not limited to the different albedo of ice and open water. As the Arctic warms,
trees and other plants are able to move northwards, inhabiting areas that would once have been too
cold for them. Snow does not stick to the branches of the trees easily, so even during the winter there
is a darker area of lower albedo caused by woodland, further hastening warming.695
A second area of the world where feedback mechanisms are important is the Amazon rainforest.
Stretching for over two million square miles the forest contains millions of different species of plants
and animals. It is also the largest living reservoir for carbon dioxide on the planet. The trees of the
rainforest, some as high as 40 metres, store some 70 billion tonnes of carbon together with a similar
amount trapped in the soils.696
The carbon stored in the Amazonian plants and trees is equivalent to decades of human emissions.
One study by climate scientists at the Hadley Institute calculates that at current rates the stored carbon
in the Amazonian rainforest will shrink to 15 billion tonnes by the end of the century, enough to
accelerate the rate of global warming by 50 percent.697
Is this possible? The droughts that occur as the world warms will have an enormous impact upon
the rainforest. In 2005 annual rains failed in the Amazon as a result of much higher than normal
temperatures out in the Atlantic. The drought dried out the rainforest, killing trees and causing forest
fires. Just like coal, as trees burn they release their stored carbon into the atmosphere. An earlier
drought in 1998 caused extensive damage to the Amazonian rainforest: 400 million tonnes of carbon
was released, equivalent to 5 percent of that years human emissions.698 Recent studies have shown
that despite decreases in the rate of deforestation of the Amazon forests, the number of fires is
increasing.699 One reason for this is the increased fragmentation of the foreststhere are more edges
that are vulnerable to accidental fire damage, particularly from nearby villages. As the study points
out, The higher probability of a drier Amazon in the 21st century predicted by some global
circulation models, and consequent increasing drought intensity and frequency, may push Amazonia
toward an amplified fire-prone system.700
This is an academic way of warning of the danger of climate feedback effects in the Amazon. As
the world becomes warmer, drought is increasingly likely and where drought leads, fire follows.
Forest fires always cause carbon emissions, but the fires in the Amazon rainforest have the potential
to release enormous quantities of carbon into the atmosphere, which in turn increases the likelihood
of further drought and further fires. The rainforest is also an important source of water for most of
South America. Up to half of Argentinas rain may come from the Amazon rainforest. 701 If the forest
burns, droughts spread across the continent, people go thirsty and crops fail. Studies also show that
the waters that evaporate from the rainforests carry energy up into the atmosphere, helping to create
winds. These winds are linked to the winter storms over Europe, which means that drought in the
Amazon could be a precursor to drought in Europe.702
Tipping points
The last time the Earth was warm enough to be completely free of ice was 55 million years ago, as a
result of the release of vast quantities of methane from the ocean floor. This led to a global
temperature rise of around 10 degrees Celsius, and drove around two thirds of the creatures living in
the sea extinct. The scale of extinction was on a par with that which occurred when the dinosaurs died

out, yet despite the sudden and dramatic nature of the warming (taking place in a few centuries) it also
helped to trigger the further evolution of mammals and encouraged the spread of the ancestors of
horses, zebras, rhinos, camels and cattleand primates around the world.703
The trillion tonnes of methane gas that escaped the sea bed 55 million years ago should be
compared to the estimated one to ten trillion tonnes trapped there today. The methane is fixed in, or
below unusual crystal lattices known as clathrates. Methane clathrates are held in position by the low
temperatures and high pressures in the depths of the oceans. As the oceans warm there is potential for
millions of tonnes of methane to be released into the atmosphere again. Today the ocean temperature
is lower than it was 55 million years ago, but it is warming much faster. As Fred Pearce points out,
the pace of change may be as dangerous as the extent.704
If this happens it is unlikely that the warming effect will be as beneficial to mammals as it was 55
million years ago. It will encourage and add to the other accelerating processes such as the melting of
the ice. The possibility then for the worlds climatic systems to pass a tipping point is real.
In climate terms, a tipping point is when an environmental system moves from one steady state to
another steady, but radically different, state. Imagine yourself gradually pushing over a glass of water.
Initially the glass tilts, until suddenly it over-balances. From the steady state of a glass of water you
have moved to one marked by spilt water and broken glass. Climatic tipping points are passed when
further changes to the environment become inevitable. When this occurs the feedback mechanisms that
cause further warming will run out of control and further warming will be certain. It may not be the
melting of the ice caps that marks the point; it could be the melting of the arctic tundra, with its
enormous quantities of trapped methane, or a number of other processes, but once that climate crosses
a certain point, further change will be inevitable.
For many years climate scientists and environmental activists hoped to keep the global temperature
rise below two degrees above pre-industrial levels. The two degree threshold marked the point when
scientists believed that global warming would pass its tipping point. The two degree rise can be
associated, very roughly, with an atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide of 450 ppm. This was
the international target set by the IPCC in its 2007 report.
By preventing concentrations exceeding 450 ppm scientists hoped that we could limit global
temperature rises to within two degrees. This would still be catastrophic for millions of people. For
instance, over a billion people are expected to suffer water shortages or droughts and resulting
famines at two degrees of warming. But it would avoid runaway change.
But more recently leading figures in the scientific community have called for much tighter targets
than previously. In 2008 James Hansen, one of the worlds foremost climate scientists and director of
NASAs Goddard Institute for Space Studies, argued that the safe level of CO 2 in the long term is 350
ppm.705 Hansen is not alonein August 2009 a study by 29 scientists, including Hansen, argued that
350 ppm could not be passed without risking unacceptable environmental change.706 So concerned
is Hansen that he has been repeatedly arrested on protests against the expansion of the coal mining
industry.
The problem is that atmospheric concentrations are already at 390 ppm having risen from 280 ppm
at the start of the industrial revolution. So we need to be reducing emissions of greenhouse gases
much faster and more urgently than has been called for so far. CO2 in the atmosphere decreases
naturally over time, so if it is not replaced the atmospheric concentrations fall.
Two bodies representing more than 80 of the poorest and most climate-vulnerable nations, the

Alliance of Small Island States and the bloc of Least Developed Countries, have also joined calls for
CO2 concentrations to be reduced to 350 ppm. In 2009 Hansen warned that:
Our home planet is dangerously near a tipping point at which human-made greenhouse gases reach a level where major climate
changes can proceed under their own momentum. Warming will shift climatic zones by intensifying the hydrologic cycle, affecting
fresh water availability and human health. We will see coastal tragedies associated with storms and continuously rising sea levels.
The implications are profound, and the only resolution is for humans to move to a fundamentally different energy pathway within a
decade. Otherwise, it will be too late for one third of the worlds animal and plant species and millions of the most vulnerable
members of our own species.707

Water crisis
Global warming is not the only environmental crisis that we face. There are numerous other examples
of local and global environmental problems. All of them are made worse by the economic and
political priorities of capitalism.
Just over 70 percent of Earth is covered in saltwater oceans. Fresh water is mostly trapped as ice
at the poles or in glaciers. The majority of the remainder is in natural underground reservoirs known
as aquifers.708 These are what we tap when we dig wells deep into the ground. Sometimes the water
is ancient water, trapped there for tens of thousands of years and not replenished. These reservoirs
are enormous but finite and will eventually run dry. By a twist of historical fate many of the worlds
largest aquifers are actually beneath deserts. Under the Sahara lie three enormous aquifers, one of
which, the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer, is the large freshwater source on Earth containing around
60,000 cubic kilometres of water. 709 It forms an important strategic resource, sitting beneath some of
the driest countries on EarthEgypt, Chad and Libya. Enormous though the Nubian Sandstone
Aquifer is, it is nevertheless a finite resource. Some of the water is a million years old, but most
drained down to the rocks where it is trapped today around 50,000 years ago when the local climate
was much wetter. Since the climate has now dried these aquifers are no longer replenished.
We can dig down to reservoirs like these, but it costs money and as the water level drops the costs
rise. The expense of these operations is one reason why many people go thirsty.
The use and abuse of the planets water systems could serve as a perfect metaphor for the way that
capitalism utilises natural resources. The oceans have become a dump for the wastes of the
production cycle. Water is essential to our society, and not just because we need to drink it to stay
alive. Water is an important part of manufacturing industries, particularly agriculture. A kilogram of
sugar requires 3,000 litres of water for its production; a kilogram of coffee is even thirstier, requiring
over 20,000 litres of water. Grain and wheat are also water-intensive to produce, using around 1,000
litres per kilogram. This means that animals fed on grain or wheat concentrate the need for water for
their own products. A quarter pounder hamburger needs a startling 11,000 litres of water and a litre
of milk requires between two and four times that volume of water. 710 The hidden need for water to
produce food and other agricultural products such as cotton creates an unseen trade in water. When
one country imports clothing from another there is an unseen exchange of water. Many drier countries,
like those in the Middle East, could not produce enough food based on the water they have available
they effectively import water in the form of the food they purchase from other countries.
But it is not just agriculture. The production of a single ton of steel needs almost three quarters of a
million litres of water. Water is an integral part of the production process of everything from paper to
glass. The quantities of water that flow in rivers, sit in aquifers or are frozen in glaciers seem

enormous, but the way that we use water is more than capable of sucking these resources dry.
Over thousands of years the oceans provided an easy way to discard the wastes from society. But
only with the dawn of modern industrial processes has this started to significantly impact upon our
water systems.
Since the mid-1970s international law has made it illegal to dump waste into the oceans. But this
has done little to prevent the seas becoming contaminated. Greenpeace say that 10 percent of the 100
million tonnes of plastic produced every year ends up in the seas. Pollution like this, as well as the
increased amounts of CO2 absorbed by the oceans and the chemicals and artificial fertilisers that are
washed off fields into the rivers and thence the sea, are significantly impacting upon the oceans
ecological systems.
While fishing can drive species of marine life to extinction, agricultural pollution can also
seriously harm water ecologies. The fertilisers that end up in the seas and oceans have exactly the
same effect as they are intended to on farm landtheir nutrients lead to a enormous expansion of life
forms such as algae, bacteria or seaweeds. In turn these use up the oxygen in the water, leading to
dead zones where fish suffocate. Around 150 of these dead zones have already been identified.
Two authors, Brett Clark and Rebecca Clausen, comment that a dead zone is the end result of
unsustainable practices of food production on land. At the same time it contributes to the loss of
marine life in the seas, furthering the ecological crisis of the world ocean.711
Without even considering the deliberate dumping of waste in the oceans, this link between
unsustainable practices on land and their impact on the sea is characteristic of capitalisms
relationship with the natural world. We have seen how the desire for profit means that longterm
impacts of the productive process on the environment are ignored. The situation is grave. Clark and
Clausen point out that some scientists argue that if current fishing practices continue, then marine
ecosystems and fisheries around the world could collapse by the year 2050.712
The building of dams around the world has been one way that governments have tried to store
water against future shortages, to reduce flooding or to generate hydroelectric power. But the building
of dams is itself a double-edged sword. At times of heavy rainfall the dams can become a liability,
the reservoirs behind filling with gigantic amounts of water that threaten to breach the concrete walls.
The building of a dam often symbolises power and industrial might. At the dedication of the
Boulder Dam, later renamed the Hoover Dam, President Roosevelt spoke about the way that the dam
symbolised the conquering of the natural world. Indias first prime minister, Nehru, described dams
as a modern temple. Yet the building of dams like these is often a further example of attempts to
control nature with little consideration for the lives of people, or the long-term consequences.
Chinas Three Gorges Dam is the worlds largest hydroelectric power scheme. It was also
designed to reduce flooding on the Yangtze River. Yet the construction required the relocation of over
a million people and well over a thousand towns and villages were drowned by the enormous lake
that grew behind the dam. But within five years of its completion Chinese officials were already
admitting to serious environmental problems. An official statement talked of urgent problems that
need to be addressed, such as stabilising and improving living conditions for relocated people,
protecting the environment, and preventing geological disasters.
The physical failures of dams can threaten the lives of thousands of people downstream and these
disasters are not uncommon322 Chinese dams have failed in the last 50 years and thousands more
are reported to be at risk of catastrophic failure. Reports from China claim that the politicians are

happier building new dams dazzling peoples eyes than repairing old ones.713
The building of enormous waterways as a symbol of power and strength is not new and certainly is
not limited to China. For many, the Hoover Dam in the US represents attempts to defeat economic
depression. In other parts of the world enormous hydraulic projects seek to demonstrate the power of
governments and states over the natural world and their people. This has a long precedent. We saw
how the Maya state used its ability to provide drinking water during the dry season to legitimise its
rule. This is no less true in parts of the world today.
The use of the Nubian Aquifer is one example of this. In the early 1990s Libyas former dictator
Colonel Gaddafi began building an enormous network of pipes to bring water from the aquifer to the
farms far away on the coast of Libya. At a cost of around $30 billion, Gaddafi hoped to bring millions
of tons of water to help feed the country. Yet despite the involvement of companies such as
Halliburton the project failed to deliver on its promise. The actual amount of water delivered to the
fields is minimal. Given the rising cost of bringing water from deeper and deeper under the desert to
the coastal fields, the project is more about image than substance. Wheat grown with this water is
among the most expensive on Earth and is yet another example of the irrational use of natural
resources.714
But the irrational waste of important water resources is not limited to the developing world or to
countries run by dictators. The Western world is similarly wasteful. In recent times the British capital
has frequently been classed as having water shortages. Yet two billion litres of water (around a third
of the total) is lost in leaks from underground pipes and the Environment Agency reported a 6 percent
rise in such leaks in 2003Enough water leaks from mains pipes to supply half the households in
England, said Baroness Young, the former head of the agency.715
Fred Pearce describes how the Rio Grande, the fifth longest river in North America, sometimes
barely reaches the sea. Millions of tons of water are extracted for farming and drinking water, but
the wastage is huge. Only about 40 percent of the water reaches the crops and evaporation in the hot
sun takes more than two metres of water a year from the reservoirs. As a result of a treaty signed in
1944, the US is legally owed a third of water that flows into the Rio Grande from tributaries that
begin in Mexican territory. Over 50 years later the Mexican population is much higher and has a
greater need for water, yet it still has to export water to its powerful neighbour. In 2004 American
farmers were claiming a billion dollars in compensation for crop failures in previous years. Mexican
engineers are building canals and plugging leaks to enable them to meet their debts to the US, but this
water is currently used by Mexican farmers and, as Pearce concludes, the tragedy is that to meet
their immediate obligations to deliver water to Texas farmers, the Mexicans are imperilling the future
of their own underground water reserves.716
We are used to thinking of some resources, primarily fossil fuels, as being limited. We are less
likely to think of resources such as water as being similarly limited. For those of us in the West the
availability of fresh drinking water or food in the supermarket is something we take for granted. Yet
the way that the system we live in uses that water inefficiently and irrationally demonstrates its shortsightedness. Water as much as oil is increasingly becoming a resource that needs to be defended by
laws and force of arms. Access to fresh water is already a battleground for people in the Middle
East. The Israeli state is happy to allow golf courses and lawns to be watered while Palestinians go
thirsty, for instance. As global warming melts glaciers and ice caps, water shortages will become an
increasing problem for millions of people. A system which views natural resources as something to

be used and polluted in the quest for profit is in no way capable of ensuring that everyone has access
to the water they need.
Few if any governments in the world will be able to avoid spending money to mitigate the effect of
climate change on their population. Some countries will face greater problems than othersa fifth of
the Netherlands, home to a fifth of the population (3.4 million) is below sea level. Several large
Dutch cities, including The Hague, Amsterdam and a large part of Rotterdam, are near sea level.
Nineteen percent of the countrys GDP comes from this area. Even without further sea level rises a
third of the population, some six million people, are at risk from flooding.717 These risks are one thing
for the relatively wealthy Netherlands, but other countries at risk are often in the poorest parts of the
world.
Bangladesh, one of the most densely populated areas of the world, is frequently portrayed as the
country most at risk from climate change. The threat is not just from increased sea levels; millions of
people live near to the banks of one of the countrys three great rivers. Heavy monsoon rains
frequently lead to the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers flooding enormous areas of land. A
sea level rise here of one metre would permanently flood almost a fifth of the land, home to up to 15
million people.
Flooding problems in the Netherlands and Bangladesh illustrate how sea level rises do not simply
impact on coastal regions. As sea levels rise it is harder for water from rivers to escape, which leads
to them backing up. Floods are forced back into the hinterlands, causing further destruction far from
the sea. In the Netherlands river dykes protect inland areas back along the course of the river.
As sea levels rise existing dykes will need to be expanded and strengthened to protect inland areas
from flood waters. But this may not be enough in Bangladesh. A sea-level rise of one metre can be
expected to cause flood waves of over nine metres. The cost of building dykes to withstand such
volumes of water will be enormous. There is also resistance to building the vast, long dykes as they
encroach on agricultural lands.718
Even temporary floods can bring enormous problemsfresh water and farmlands can become
contaminated with salt, diseases such as cholera can spread and the habitats of malaria-carrying
mosquitoes expand. If land is lost or infrastructure destroyed people will leave to try and find safer
places to live. The 2.5 metre tall, 2,500 kilometre long barbed wire fence that India has erected along
its border with Bangladesh is supposed to prevent smuggling, but a secondary, more sinister purpose
may well be to prevent future refugees from fleeing the impact of climate change.
Even countries that do not have large amounts of low-lying land like Bangladesh will suffer from
rising sea levels. Millions of people now live in vast cities like Shanghai and Lagos; both of these are
less than two metres above sea level. In modern Egypt a fifth of the population and farmland are at
similar levels.719
Sea levels are increasing at an accelerating rate. From 1900 they increased at between one and 2.5
millimetres a year, but since 1992 a rate of three millimetres a year has been observed.720
This is consistent with the increased rate of glacial melting in Antarctica and Greenland. As one
scientist comments, If ice spillage to the sea continues throughout this century at the rate observed in
its first decade enough ice will enter the oceans to raise sea level three feet (0.91m). If we include
the expansion of water as it warms, the increase in sea levels will be just less than two metres within
the current century.721
In their 2007 report the IPCC pointed out that sea level rises would continue from historic

emissions, even if greenhouse gas concentrations were to be stabilised.722 Unchecked the situation
will get far worse. The reduction of polar ice and the melting of the Greenland ice sheet during the
last interglacial period meant a sea level that was four to six metres higher than the last century.723
Solutions
We need more than adaptation and mitigation to avoid complete disaster. What is urgently needed is
the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to the levels suggested by James Hansen. This will require
enormous investment. There will need to be immense social changes in how we organise our lives
and our transport, generate our energy, grow our food, and build our homes and workplaces.
It would take a far longer book than this one to describe in detail the strategies that are needed to
reduce emissions to levels that will prevent catastrophic climate change. I want to outline some
general strategies and encourage readers to look into more detailed plans elsewhere.724
As we have seen, capitalism is a social system dominated by the burning of fossil fuels. It is
possible to measure with quite some accuracy where in the economy those fuels are burnt, and hence
their contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. From these figures we can get some idea of what
changes need to be made to reduce emissions.
Firstly, how much do we have to reduce emissions by? It has become common to propose
reduction targets by particular dates. Jonathan Neale in his book Stop Global Warming: Change the
World calls for the reduction of global emissions between 60 percent and 70 percent. And we have
somewhere between ten and 30 years to do that.725 Similarly Lester Brown of the Earth Policy
Institute calls for an effort to cut net carbon dioxide emissions 80 percent by 2020.726 *
How effective such targets are will depend on when they are implemented. Reducing emissions by
80 percent by 2020 will have a much greater impact than if it is only done by 2030. Since both
scenarios might be seen as successful, offering targets like this can let those in power off the hook as
immediate action can be avoided, because politicians can always claim to be doing something in the
future.
Hansen and his colleagues have shown that if global emissions were reduced by 6 percent a year
from 2013 onwards together with a major programme of reforestation to help extract CO2 from the
atmosphere then we could reach the target of 350 ppm by the end of the current century. 727 Time is
now of the essence because the increasing rate at which CO2 is being pumped into the atmosphere
means that the longer we delay reductions, the longer it will take to get to 350 ppm. Waiting till the
year 2020 means that we cannot reach 350 ppm before 2300 and waiting a further ten years beyond
that date will mean the target cannot be reached before 2500.
The required reforestation programme would be on a scale never before seen. The amount of CO2
that Hansen argues we would need to extract from the atmosphere is of the order of 100 gigatons
equivalent to the entire deforestation that has occurred since the industrial revolution began. Hansen
does not, however, argue that we need to replace all the forests destroyed in the last few centuries;
there are other strategies that should be implemented. Improved practices in agriculture, for instance,
can lead to that industry becoming a carbon sink leading to a net reduction in atmospheric CO2.
Reforestation on its own is not a solution to climate change. Hansen and his colleagues offer it as a
method to extract atmospheric CO2 at the same time that emissions are being reduced. Should the

trees be cut down and burnt at a later date then the carbon will be re-released back into the
atmosphere. Reforestation can only work as part of a wider strategy of reducing emissions of
greenhouse gases.
Electricity generation
Until recently the worlds largest emitter of greenhouse gases was its largest economy, the United
States. In recent years the US has been overtaken in this regard by the worlds fastest-growing
economy, China. In 2009 China was responsible for just over a quarter of the worlds emissions. The
US put out just over 21 percent of the emissions. In third place is India with 5 percent of emissions.
As a whole, Europe is responsible for 14 percent of emissions; the UK comes in tenth with 1.7
percent. Bangladesh, the country threatened so much by global warming, emits under 0.2 percent of
worldwide emissions, and comes 56th in this league table of polluters.728
For most industrial countries emissions of greenhouse gases tend to follow a pattern. The largest
source is invariably the generation of electricity; this is followed by industry, transport and then other
sources such as agriculture. For instance, total annual emissions of greenhouse gases for the UK in
2009 amounted to 566.3 million tonnes carbon dioxide equivalent.* That year electricity production
was the biggest cause of UK emissions (35 percent), transport came second (22 percent), business
and residential use of fossil fuels were responsible for 29 percent together, with agriculture
contributing 9 percent.729
Variations tend to flow from regional differences; Poland has much higher emissions (56 percent)
from its energy sector, for instance, because of its dependence on coal for fuel. At the other extreme,
emissions from energy generation in Iceland are less than 1 percent because of the importance of
geothermal energy there. However, most developed countries follow the rough pattern that we see in
the UK.
The three largest sources of global emissions, electricity generation, industry and transport, give
us an indication of how we can begin to tackle the problem. The first and most urgent task is a rapid
switch from fossil fuel based energy generation to the use of renewable energies. Modern wind and
water turbines as well as solar panels are excellent ways of producing emissions free electricity from
wind, water and the sun, and costs of the technologies have declined as they become more commonly
used.
Two studies have shown that the vast majority of the energy we use across the world could come
from renewable energy sources. A 2009 report published in Scientific American by two scientists,
Mark Jackson and Mark Delucchi, concluded that within 20 to 30 years 100 percent of our energy
could be obtained from renewable sources.730 Most of this energy would come from wind and water
sources. In this plan, 51 percent of energy would come from the wind, necessitating the installation of
3.8 million wind turbines worldwide. If this figure seems impossibly high, the authors point out that
the world manufactures 73 million cars and light trucks every year.
Jacobson and Delucchi also argue that nuclear power cannot be part of the solution. Nuclear
power produces vast quantities of dangerous waste, it carries the potential for accidents like those at
Chernobyl or Fukushima, but most importantly from the point of view of tackling climate change it is
not low carbon. The authors point out that nuclear power results in up to 25 times more carbon
emissions than wind energy, when reactor construction and uranium refining and transport are

considered.731
A 2012 study examined saturation wind power potentialthe maximum amount of energy that
could be generated from a particular geographical area. The authors concluded that by utilising all
areas, wind power could generate a maximum of 250 terawatts of energy. There is no fundamental
barrier to obtaining halfor several times the worlds all-purpose power from wind.732
A more recent report from the IPCC again demonstrates the feasibility of producing vast quantities
of energy from renewable sources. The Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate
Change Mitigation was published in May 2011. 733 It is an immensely detailed examination of
hundreds of different scenarios and concludes that, in the most optimistic view, renewable energies
could meet up to 77 percent of world energy needs by 2050. This is the headline-grabbing figure, but
in their detailed analysis the authors write that many scenarios indicate a doubling of RE
[Renewable Energy] deployment or more compared to today. Over half of them show renewables
producing over 17 percent of energy by 2030, with this increasing to over 27 percent by 2050.734
Both of these reports are important because they demonstrate that it is entirely possible to make a
significant switch from fossil fuel based energy to renewable sources in the timescale required to
meet the targets suggested by scientists. But renewable energies do have their detractors. One of the
common arguments is that these energy sources are intermittent. A windless, cloudy day and turbines
will slow to a halt and solar panels stop producing energy. But looking at renewable energy in this
way is to start from the problems, rather than the potential. All too often the perception of renewable
energy is of a handful of wind turbines on a hill. No serious energy policy can proceed with that
model. In order to realise Jacobson and Delucchis plan, we will need to fill deserts with solar
panels, stretching for miles upon miles.
Britain sits on a continental shelf which is ideal for siting wind turbines. Offshore turbines can be
larger and tend to receive regular and stronger winds. If the wind does not blow in one part of the
country, it is likely to be blowing elsewhere and should the whole country be becalmed, then other
renewable sources exist. It is worth noting that when averaged over the course of a year, wind and
solar energies are very predictable. While there needs to be further research, it is also increasingly
possible to store this energy for times when it is needed. One example of how this might work is the
pumping of water to reservoirs high in mountains at times of low energy use and releasing it to drive
turbines when needed.
Some forms of renewable energy are extremely reliable. In March 2011 the British government
gave the go ahead for ten turbines to be installed on the sea bed between the Scottish islands of Jura
and Islay. Between these islands there is a very strong and reliable tidal stream. These turbines are
first major UK project of their kind and will have a capacity of ten megawatts. Despite years of
research into tidal and wave energy this potential source of reliable renewable energy is at a very
low level of development.
Our current, highly centralised methods of producing energy are enormously wasteful. One
estimate is that over two thirds of energy generated at power stations in the UK is wasted, most of this
through inefficiencies at the point of generation or as the electricity is transmitted through cables to its
destination.735 The huge cooling towers at many coal plants vent enormous amounts of waste heat from
the burning of fossil fuels. Generating energy locally from renewable sources means lower emissions
as less energy needs to be made. Alongside the introduction of renewable energies, the aging cable
network, the National Grid, needs to be updated to reduce losses.

Placing turbines on the sea bed or far off-shore helps to avoid one of the most common complaints
about renewable energy, that the turbines used to generate power are an eyesore and destroy
landscapes. Those who complain about ugly wind turbines probably rarely notice the power lines
strung between pylons that bring electricity to the most remote of places. In the 1970s newspapers
complained about the national grid leading to Birdcage Britain but today few would question the
need for the cables.736 While it is likely that we will become increasingly used to seeing turbines, a
rational energy policy would place these in prime locations and those will usually be offshore.
Reducing emissions from industry
In 2004 industry was responsible for around 36 percent of global emissions, producing 9.9 billion
tons of CO2.737 Over half of this came from just three sectorscement manufacturing, oil refining and
steel manufacturing. Half of these emissions (4.8 billion tons) were a result of the industrial use of
electricity. Thus one part of the solution to reducing emissions from this sector is the reduction of
energy use. This can be illustrated by looking at emissions from the production of steel.
Steel manufacturing requires lots of energy to heat the iron ore so that iron can be extracted and
then refined further into steel. Modern blast furnaces are designed to reduce the amount of energy
used, but there still remain large differences between the amounts of CO2 produced by different
plants. In Brazil 1.25 tons of CO2 is produced for every ton of steel, in the US the figure is two tons
and in China and India it can be up to 3.8 tons. What this demonstrates is that some methods of
producing steel are more efficient than others. Reducing emissions from industry means generalising
the best methods in manufacturing across the whole sector. * It also means examining how the products
of particular industries are used. Perhaps emissions from the cement industry could be reduced by
changing the way buildings are manufactured, or the materials used. The increased use of renewable
energy should reduce the amount of oil refining that takes place, but the transformation of our
transport infrastructure would also have an impact.
Of course, this will require money. The steel industry, the cement industry and other such
corporations have vast amounts of money invested in existing plants and machinery. Governments
will have to challenge the power of those corporations and force them to invest in changes that will
reduce emissions. I will look at how that can happen in the final chapter.
Transport
Transport is one of the largest and most obvious polluters. It is a growing source of emissions in the
developed and the developing world. The biggest problem is the way that we travel, dominated in the
developed world by individual cars that burn large quantities of petrol or diesel. The production of
these fuels is in itself a significant source of emissions and reducing the amount of oil used for
transport is an important task.
The importance of individual car use in the developed world is a striking example of the irrational
way that our lives are organised under capitalism. As Jonathan Neale points out, as well as being
responsible for 45 percent of carbon emissions from global transport, cars make you stressed and
driving everywhere makes you overweight.738 In terms of both local and long distance travel, public

transport is much more efficient and better for the environment. Studies show that switching from cars
to buses and trains would lead to significant reductions in emissions. For instance, UK figures show
that a switch from cars with two to three passengers to buses or trains led to emissions reductions of
80 percent for a similar journey. Studies for Poland and Canada show similar figures depending on
the number of passengers.739
The biggest single step that we can make towards reducing transport-related emissions in
developed countries is to encourage freight transport off roads and onto railways. Globally 70
percent of transport emissions are a result of car and lorry usage.740 Switching freight onto railways
reduces emissions by 92 percent741 and would be an excellent start to reducing transport emissions,
but we also need to change how we distribute freight around the country. One example of this is the
emissions associated with the distribution of food, so called food miles.
The practices of some supermarket chains have led to ridiculous situations whereby food is
produced in one part of the country, packaged in another part and then finally sold back at the other
end of the country. However, we should be wary of simply thinking that the distance travelled by an
item of food (or indeed any other freight) is a marker of how damaging it is to the planet. Moving
large quantities of goods by ship is a particularly efficient way of getting them around the world. It is
possible that goods brought halfway around the world by sea have a lower carbon footprint than if
they are imported by lorry from a neighbouring country.
Finally, an improved transport infrastructure would allow us to enormously reduce one of the most
polluting parts of industryaeroplane flights. Travelling by plane produces vast quantities of
greenhouse gases. Long haul flights produce 110 grams of CO2 per passenger kilometre, over seven
times the amount produced by hauling a tonne of freight one kilometre by train.742 Out of 473,000
flights from Britains Heathrow airport in 2006, 100,000 of them were to destinations served by
existing train connections. The top destination from Heathrow was Paris, which is served from
central London by an excellent rapid rail link. With the expansion of high speed services throughout
Europe it increasingly becomes feasible to travel abroad without using aircraft.743 Britains Rail and
Maritime Transport Union believes it is possible to replace between a fifth and more than a third of
all flights using Heathrow with journeys by rail.744 Rail fares in the UK are among the highest in the
world, and must be reduced if we are to encourage renewed use of railways above road transport.
The problem lies in the privatised railway system, and a key step in the battle to reduce emissions
from the transport sector should be the renationalisation of UK public transport systems.
And contrary to popular belief, restricting flights will not hit the poorest people taking a cheap
flight to a well-earned holiday. A 2009 Civil Aviation Authority survey of UK airports showed that
the average salary of a leisure passenger using Newcastle airport was 37,663. This was the lowest
in the country. The average salary of a business passenger at Heathrow was 79,335. Both long haul
and short haul flights remain the preserve of the more well-off sections of the population.* This is not
to say that those on lower incomes do not fly, but that flights are dominated by higher earners who can
fly more often.
If we are serious about tackling climate change, the number of flights will have to decrease. That
does not mean stopping people holidaying abroad. The first step would be to reduce business flights.
A third of flights through Heathrow are business orientated and are often offered as perks. The face to
face meetings that they mostly facilitate can be replaced with online meetings. The majority of other
flights, particularly short haul destinations in Europe from British airports, can be replaced by train

travel.
Social justice
I have tried to demonstrate that it is entirely possible for us to solve the question of climate change
within the short time frame that we have. Rather than provide a detailed plan of how to do this, I have
instead tried to demonstrate in the broadest of brush strokes the type of measures that need to be
implemented. What I have also tried to show is that the solutions are available today. We do not need
to wait for some future technology to be invented before we can set about tackling the climate
emergency.
Some argue that solutions like nuclear fusion are an alternative as they could supply near limitless
energy for virtually nothing. The danger with these magic bullet answers is that they do not yet
exist, and diverting resources towards making them work can be a distraction from the real task of
implementing existing technologies in the battle to reduce energy emissions. That said, we should also
recognise that the amount of money being put into research into alternate and new forms of clean
energy is a fraction of that spent on the military, or finding new fossil fuel sources, or bailing out
failing banks. The problem once again comes down to the priorities of a capitalist system.
The lack of direct investment in technologies such as public transport, the improvement of
electricity grids and research into tidal power or improvements to wind turbine technologies is one of
the biggest barriers to dealing with climate change. Yet even from a financial viewpoint, the cost of
not dealing with climate change will be much higher than ignoring the problem.
But the solutions to climate change can have positive effects far beyond environmental questions.
Many of the changes outlined above would improve the lives of millions of people around the globe.
As I write this the economic situation globally is bleak. In Britain over the last few years
environmentalists and trade unionists have come together to argue that solving the question of climate
change is not just good for the environmentit should be an opportunity to create jobs. The Campaign
against Climate Changes One Million Climate Jobs programme has outlined in detail how different
sectors of the economy could be redesigned to create jobs and reduce emissions.745 The report shows
that there is the potential for 425,000 jobs in renewable energy, 175,000 in improving buildings,
300,000 jobs in public transport and 100,000 further jobs in industry and education.
The report argues that these jobs, with workers employed through a National Climate Service will
return money back to the economy. Costing 52 billion but bringing tax incomes and reducing
unemployment benefits, the real cost to the British economy of creating a million climate jobs is only
18 billion a year. If that seems a large amount it should be judged against the 850 billion used to
bail out the banks in 2009. The cost of not acting on climate change is, as we have seen, likely to be
catastrophic for millions of people. But it is also expensive from an economic point of view. In his
economic analysis of the impact of climate change Nicolas Stern concluded that the cost of stabilising
atmospheric CO2 to 500 to 550 ppm would be 1 percent of global GDP by the year 2050. 746 Stern
estimates that the costs of inaction would be enormous. Extrapolating from current costs, he argues the
expense of dealing with extreme weather alone could be up to 1 percent of global GDP.
The European heat wave of 2003 discussed earlier cost $15 billion.747 A 2012 report, Valuing the
Oceans, by the Stockholm Environment Institute put the economic costs from the impact of climate
change on the oceans at $2 trillion if temperatures increase four degrees by 2100.

In Sterns worst case scenarios the global GDP is reduced by up to 3 percent if the world warms
by two to three degrees. At five degrees the economic cost would be up to 10 percent. 748 Though by
the time temperatures have risen this much, humanity would be facing runaway climate change and it
is unlikely, except in the minds of economists perhaps, that our economy would be functioning in
anything like a normal way.
Stern estimates that even without emissions reduction the cost of protecting buildings and
infrastructure from the impact of a warming world would be $15 to $150 billion a year in the OECD
countries.749
There are problems with Sterns report, not least in his limited ambition to stabilise at a
concentration of 450 ppm. Yet the figures demonstrate that even mainstream economists recognise that
the price of inaction is far greater than the costs of creating millions of climate jobs.
But we should not ignore the other benefits from action on climate change. These are the social
benefits of improving homes, transport and emissions. In Britain 82 percent of energy use in homes is
for heating. British homes are old and leaky10 percent have no insulation of any type. One of the
simplest ways to reduce energy use is to install cavity wall insulation. Such insulation is a relatively
straightforward process, which can pay for itself in a few years as well as reducing emissions. But of
the 17 million British homes that could have cavity insulation, only six million do. A government
programme to insulate the remaining 11 million homes would employ thousands of workers, reduce
energy bills and emissions, as well as cutting the numbers of people who are at risk of hypothermia in
the winter.750
Similar side benefits occur with every aspect of our plan to tackle climate change. Reducing car
use and increasing buses, trams and trains would reduce congestion, accidents and noise levels.
What is true of Britain is true elsewhere in the world. The British One Million Climate Jobs
campaign resonates with trade unions and environmental campaigners across the globe. A similar
campaign in South Africa has won support from the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the
South African Metalworkers and Mineworkers unions.
Unsurprisingly in a time of unemployment and austerity a plan to solve the environmental crisis
through the creation of climate jobs is popular among organisations representing working people. But
this also reflects the growing awareness and concern over environmental issues among trade unions
internationally. The willingness to engage with the real questions of reducing emissions on the part of
trade unions contrasts dramatically with the lack of leadership from governments and politicians.
Despite the logic to these plans, governments are unwilling to enact them. Politicians and
governments are unwilling to invest in change, partly because doing so means challenging the
priorities of their friends in big business.
Instead of radical action we see rhetoric and bluster from politicians. Time and again international
conferences on climate change end with few commitments being agreed. From the extremely limited
pledges of the 1997 Kyoto treaty to the chaos of the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009,
politicians have failed to take urgent action. After the failure of the UN Earth Summit in Rio in 2012,
the charity Oxfam denounced the participants as, Paralysed by inertia and in hock to vested interests,
too many are unable to join up the dots and solve the connected crises of environment, equity and
economy. The poorest people on earth are paying the highest price.751
Rather than the economic crisis offering the opportunity to do something about climate change, it
has become an excuse for inaction. Given the urgency of the need for radical change the final chapter

looks at how we can get the change we needand how a sustainable world would work.

The Martian ice-caps are made up of frozen carbon dioxide as well as water ice but this does not negate this point.
It should be noted that both these figures are based on the assumption that CO2 concentrations should be restricted to between 400
and 450 ppm (Neale) and from exceeding 400 ppm (Brown). Both books were written before the publication of James Hansens
2008 paper urging a 350 ppm target.
*
Because there is a mix of greenhouse gases included in these figures, for ease of use they are measured in terms of the equivalent
amount of carbon dioxide.
*
The low value for emissions from Brazilian iron and steel industry is in part due to the use of charcoal for fuel. Charcoal produces
much less CO2 provided it is sourced sustainably.
*
In 2008 the mean annual earnings across all UK employee jobs was just over 26,000.
*

Chapter 14

The future sustainable society

Without rapid and radical change to our system the future is bleak. Capitalism is undermining the
ecological basis for human survival on planet Earth. Society, as it is currently organised, is simply
not sustainable. The dynamic of capitalism rests on the exploitation of workers and peasants and the
systematic degradation of the natural world.
In this final chapter I want to explore two crucial questions. Firstly what a sustainable society
would look like and secondly how it can come about.
Politicians, technologists, journalists and writers continue to explain how we can make the system
more sustainable. Many of their solutions involve individual choices: changes to the way that we, as
individuals, live our lives. This is perhaps best summed up by former US Vice President Al Gores
film An Inconvenient Truth. His description of the threat from climate change is extremely thorough.
Yet it falls down completely in the last few minutes of the film. Here Gore explains how we can do
our bit to stop environmental catastrophe. He encourages us to use more energy efficient light bulbs,
increase the air pressure in our car tyres to reduce petrol consumption and so on. Yet such individual
lifestyle changes cannot come close to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by the extent that they are
needed to prevent runaway climate change.
Some would argue that these changes are important. Every little helps, they will say. But the
problem is that we are told that this is enough. We are tricked into thinking that if we recycle our
rubbish, then the world will be saved. No one, certainly not Al Gore, discusses how we reduce the
emissions from industry, transport and agriculture. The problem for Al Gore, as his record as a
former US Vice President shows, is that raising these other questions becomes a challenge to the
system and its priorities. Without a challenge to the capitalist system itself, we cannot hope to see the
radical changes needed to prevent catastrophic climate change.
One of the things I have tried to show in this book is that for the majority of human history the
different societies that our ancestors have lived in have been radically different, not only in terms of
interactions between people, but also in terms of our relationship with the natural world.
In the language of the 21st century, for most of human history our ancestors lived sustainably. The
changes we have made upon our surroundings have rarely been at the expense of undermining our
own existence. Even when they have been, such as the destruction of the large North American
mammals that formed the food supply for the Clovis people, this destruction was localised. The
extinction of large game in North America might have been a catastrophe for the tribes that hunted
them, but it did not undermine the basis of developing human communities in Europe, Asia or Africa,
nor did it have any impact on the planets wider ecology.
This view contrasts with those who argue that the fault is with humans themselves. For them,
ecological destruction is a direct result of human civilisation: nature is pristine before human arrival.
In this they echo Enlightenment philosopher Rousseau: All is good when it leaves the hands of the

Author of all things; all degenerates in the hands of man. Yet it is not humans as a species that are the
problem, but their social organisation.
Today the changes to the natural world threaten our global civilisation and they require global
solutions. Such statements can appear meaningless; they could after all be uttered by any number of
politicians or heads of United Nations bodies that have promised radical change in the past.
However, the radical change we do need must be global and must involve the root and branch
reorganisation of human society.
This is not a question of technology. Numerous reports have shown how the technical expertise
exists to dramatically reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Nor should a sustainable society require
a return to some pre-technological way of living. The environmental journalist George Monbiot
demonstrated in his 2006 book Heat how a modern economy can be decarbonised while remaining a
modern economy. His thought experiment showed how we could continue to live in a highly
technological society and reduce our emissions by 90 percent by 2030.752
The barriers to a sustainable world lie with an economic system that is geared to maximising
profit through the accumulation of wealth, and those politicians who govern in the interests of that
system.
Readers will have their own examples of what a sustainable world would look like. For starters I
would suggest that a sustainable society would use renewable energy over fossil fuels. At some point
in the future humans will have to get their energy needs completely from renewable sources. In the
short term, in the developed world we will have to move towards 80 or 90 percent of energy from
wind, wave, solar and tidal sources.
Our cities and towns need to be redesigned, along with the distribution networks for industry and
agriculture. Reducing food miles is an important part of this, yet this should not necessarily mean that
we are restricted in the foods we can access. Properly organised the world has the capacity for
almost unlimited renewable energies. Agriculture powered by alternate sources could continue to
deliver bananas and strawberries to northern Europe during winterbut perhaps we do not need this.
A return to a more seasonal diet of vegetables and fruits might reflect an interesting move away from
the bland diet that we have grown used to more recently. A sustainable society would thus also be
one where our diets are not shaped by the supermarkets and the agricultural practices that stem from
their limited vision of choice, all too often flavourless foods from diminishing varieties of plants.
Our sustainable world would clearly be one in which waste is reduced enormously. Single-use
products must be replaced by ones that use resources more efficiently and rationally. I imagine a
return of the electric milk delivery floats, collecting bottles and containers for reuse as well as
delivering fresh milk and other products. Recycling would continue, but on a smaller scale. In a
sustainable world, the social waste endemic to capitalism through the arms and advertising industries
must end.
Like the more sustainable societies of our human past, collective activity would form a much
larger part of our lives. Organising collective institutions such as kitchens, creches and laundrettes
would be one way to reduce the amount of goods produced, but they would also allow us to reduce
energy use and improve quality without further draining resources. Such changes would undoubtedly
also improve our home lives, reducing stress and housework. Our very towns and cities might be
redesigned. Why commute for hours on roads clogged with cars, if publicly owned mass-transit
systems, powered by renewable energy, became a reality?

Planning
But in many ways these are superficial changes. The most fundamental and important change that must
occur in the transition from capitalism to a sustainable world is the creation of a rationally organised
system of democratically planned production.
Planned production has many advantages over the unplanned, irrational production that
characterises capitalism. Under capitalism the driving force is competition. This leads to overproduction and waste. In our sustainable world, production would be on the basis of societys wider
needs. Planning was very much a part of the vision that Marx and Engels had of a socialist society,
where the social anarchy of production gives place to a social regulation of production upon a
definite plan, according to the needs of the community and of each individual.753
In addition to encouraging the sharing of information and resources in the common interest,
planning allows society to deal with unforeseen circumstances. Today coping with a flood or a
famine might depend on luck in how much food is stockpiled or how well equipped the emergency
services are. A planned economy would enable us to produce more to build up a stockpile of
emergency materials, or in the event of a disaster change production to meet urgent needs. Under the
unplanned free market, companies only produce what is profitable, not what might be needed. People
starve or remain homeless after natural disasters because they do not have the money to buy what they
need. Thousands of families who lost their homes during Hurricane Katrina now live in trailer parks
with no hope of seeing their homes rebuilt.
But unforeseen circumstances are not the only uncertainty in production. Under capitalism,
production occurs in competing blocks of capital. This means that exactly what is produced, and how
much of it, is inherently uncertain. Under a planned economy we would have a much better
understanding of what was needed and what was being produced, helping to reduce this uncertainty.
Planning production in turn would reduce waste, energy use and resources.
Because competing companies are terrified of being overtaken by their competitors, they hide their
knowledge. Under a rational system, knowledge would not remain the property of one corporation,
but would be shared for collective interests.
Think of the way that drugs companies guard their secrets, yet under any rational society every
medical researcher in the world would benefit from the latest research on combating disease. Even
under capitalism the sharing of information has enormous benefits. Non-commercial open-source
software is produced through the collaboration of thousands of individuals across the globe. Few
technicians or scientists could do their day to day work without the help of colleagues around the
world on anonymous internet discussion boards.
Computer technologies themselves will be very important to the organisation of a society based on
the rational organisation of production. Modern computers have the power to rapidly process
millions of complex calculations. Planning and organising for the needs of millions of people will
need such power. The enormous processing ability of modern database languages would surely be a
powerful tool for the planning of production.
Democracy
Unfortunately, the very term planned economy brings to mind for many people the bureaucratic
command economies of the Soviet Union and the former Eastern Bloc countries.

This was a top-down view of planning. In essence the idea was that if the planners could bring
enough information together in one point, combining knowledge of what was needed by a population
with an understanding of what resources were available and what the productive capacity was, then
you could make decisions to provide for everybody. The problem is that this did not work. As Tony
Cliff wrote in the 1950s:
In Russiathe government decides almost everything. If, however, by the term planned economy, we understand an economy in
which all component elements are adjusted and regulated into a single rhythm, in which frictions are at a minimum, and, above all,
in which foresight prevails in the making of the economic decisionsthen the Russian economy is anything but planned.754

The problem however with the Russian economy was not simply the weakness of the top-down
planning, but what the planning was for. The badly organised and mismanaged economy did make
huge steps forward, dragging up the backward productive forces and rapidly expanding them. But it
did this not in the interests of the mass of the population, but in the interests of competing
economically with the industrialised West. As Cliff pointed out:
From a socialist standpointthe decisive criterion is not the growth of production per se but the social relations accompanying this
tremendous development of the productive forces. Is it or is it not accompanied by an improvement in the economic position of the
workers, by an increase in their political power, by a strengthening of democracy, reduction of economic and social inequality, and
a decline of state coercion? Is the industrial development planned, and if so, planned by whom, and in whose interests?755

Clearly in Russia planning was not organised by the mass of the population, or in their interests.
For planning to work, it must involve all those who are involved in or affected by the production
process. Under capitalism a tiny minority of people make decisions about what is produced. While
corporations do make plans, this is not done in combination with other sections of the economy but in
the interests of their own profits.
At times capitalist states have introduced planning in their economies for limited periods. One
example was during the Second World War when various countries transformed their production in
the interests of the war effort. In Britain agriculture was centrally organised, farmers being directed
and supported to ensure they maximised their food output. Particular crops were emphasised and meat
production was reduced in the interest of growing more grains and vegetables.
More famously this also happened in the arena of industrial production. The number of warplanes
made is one indication of this. Britain made 3,000 planes in 1938, 8,000 in 1939, 15,000 in 1940 and
20,000 in 1941.756 Doing this required the conversion of factories and workplaces, as well as
employing thousands of new workers, including women being brought into the factories. Under these
circumstances even the old competition and guarding of trade secrets broke down:
Fordwere called in to work with Rolls Roycewho handed over the blueprints of their magnificent Merlin engine Ford broke
the craftsman tailored machine down to suit their own methods, and by the end of the war they were employing seventeen
thousand workers in a big new factory in Manchester Fords parts had to be, and were, interchangeable with those from Rolls
Royce.757

The Second World War demonstrated that state planning of production was possible and the
capitalists were amply rewarded for their assistance. Yet such examples are rare. Even with the
enormous threat from climate change no government in the world has yet instructed manufacturers to
begin the mass production of wind turbines. In fact the opposite has happened. In Britain in 2009 the
then Labour government failed to keep open the only wind turbine plant in the country, which was
being closed by its parent multinational for business reasons.
Allowing mass participation in the process of decision making will begin to overcome the insanity
of a system geared towards the interests of a small minority. How might this work?

Take climate change. Capitalisms way of dealing with the environmental crisis is to encourage
the market to solve the problem. This is epitomised by the conclusions of the Stern Review on the
Economics of Climate Change. Published in 2006 at the behest of the British government, Lord
Sterns document is a detailed and comprehensive investigation into the question of climate change.
For Stern, Climate change presents a unique challenge for economics: it is the greatest and widestranging market failure ever seen.758
Lord Stern is a former chief economist and vice-president at the World Bank. His statement did
not represent a conversion to anti-capitalist ideas; instead it reflected his belief that the free market
had not been given enough free rein to deal with climate change. At the heart of the Stern review and
capitalist environmental solutions are market mechanisms known as trading schemes. Countries or
corporations participating in such schemes are allocated credits. These credits permit the emission of
a certain amount of pollution. Purchasing more credits earns the right to pollute more.
The ability to sell unwanted or unused credits on the open market is supposed to encourage
companies to find ways of being more efficient or reducing their own emissions. Yet the reality is that
the mechanisms are open to exploitation. Companies can purchase credits from elsewhere and sell
them on. Credits can be earned by promising to make environmental improvements (to plant a forest
in Africa, for instance). These schemes are open to abuse and are often based on dubious science.
Such free-market solutions have a long history in environmental legislation and are based on the idea
of a perfect, incorruptible market-place.759 The reality is somewhat less refined. Emissions Trading
Schemes have had limited value in reducing emissions, though they have helped make some
companies extremely rich.
Contrast this with what would happen under a democratic, planned economy. Climate change is an
international problem. It cannot be dealt with on a national scale. So, just as under capitalism
scientists and politicians gather at international conferences to discuss the problem, we can imagine
similar representatives gathering to debate solutions. But under capitalism the decisions taken at such
conferences are limited by the national interests of the countries which take part. In our sustainable
world, productive interests are collective. So we can imagine more favourable outcomes to our
international sessions.
Dealing with climate change means reducing emissions. Exactly how this is done will vary from
country to country, region to region, city to city. The more developed parts of the world contribute far
more to emissions than the developing world.
If in every workplace, every city, every local community, people were asked to come together to
plan the reduction of emissions, we would be able to draw on the knowledge and experience of tens
of thousands of local experts in tackling the problem.
Take transport. In every bus or train depot, every town council transport department and every
vehicle factory, there will be workers who understand the contribution that they make to the overall
transport infrastructure and how it could be improved.
Before this can work there needs to be co-ordination and networking. It is one thing if a group of
city planners sit down and decide that their city centre will be redesigned to reduce car use by large
increases in the number of trams, trains and buses. But if there is no matching increase in the
production of these vehicles, or no plan to hire new bus and tram drivers, than the plans will remain
useless.
So a planned economy where ordinary people are making the decisions needs to be based on a

network of overlapping and inter-related bodies. This is not to develop bureaucracy for the sake of
bureaucracy, but to facilitate co-ordination at every level. If every workplace and community in a city
elects representatives to attend meetings of relevant other bodies, this is one way that the needs of
every different group can become known and acted upon.
Let us say that in our imaginary city, striving for sustainability, those involved in transport decide
that they need to co-ordinate their work. They would put a call out for a meeting of representatives of
everyone concerned, inviting people from every bus, train and tram depot, relevant council
department and relevant trade unions. On the agenda at this meeting is a discussion about the
reduction of transport emissions. The group might decide this means a major increase in bus and
coach travel. The workers might first decide that in order to do this they need an increase in the
number of trained mechanics and bus drivers as well as the number of vehicles on the road. Initially
this might mean that more buses are out of the depot at any one time, but the bus fleet is aging and the
mechanics report that some of the buses will not last more than a few months of increased use and,
additionally, older vehicles tend to be the most inefficient. So the group decides that the city needs to
obtain some newer buses, but ideally these need to be electric rather than diesel as the figures that
they have obtained from the National Climate Service show that electric buses are more efficient and
produce less carbon dioxide than diesel ones.
So after these meetings everyone returns to their relevant departments to report back on the
conclusions. No doubt this produces further debate. Some of the mechanics argue that they do not
know about electric buses, they have no experience of them, but there is a town down the road that
does, and perhaps they could get some training there. This reporting back or accountability is very
important to our planned economy. It allows those who selected the delegates in the first place to
judge whether their views have been put across fairly. It also allows groups to select different
delegates if things change.
Given the free rein to do so, those involved could probably think of endless ways to improve
public transport, to reduce car use and to improve the amount of travel options. But this should not be
about forcing changes, by banning car use for instance, but the active stimulation of transport systems
to make public transport cleaner, faster, less crowded and more pleasant.
Crucially though, reports also need to be made upwards. Decisions made at our transport meeting
have an impact on local workplaces and communities. But they have repercussions for people
elsewhere that need to be communicated. If our city is going to increase the number of electric buses
being used, they need to be manufactured and delivered. This will require a factory somewhere to be
asked if the demand for new vehicles is possible. If it is what will this mean for the aluminium plant
that the factory works in conjunction with? Under capitalism an order for new vehicles would be
made to a factory and the management would instruct the workers to begin production. But under our
participatory economy, those who work at the factory would be able to judge whether it is the best
thing for them to be doing. They might understand, for instance, that there is only limited capacity for
production and an order for ambulances from elsewhere should take precedence.
There are many criticisms to be made of this rather simple thought experiment. One of them might
be that everyone spends too much time in meetings. But anyone who has worked in the public sector
knows that this is already true. Under capitalism many meetings are an end in themselves rather than a
means to an end. If people felt that their contribution was valued and listened to, then meetings would
be likely to become useful, rather than things that have to be endured until the end of the working day.

There is nothing inherently wrong with meetings and if we are truly going to empower people to make
decisions they should have the freedom to discuss all the consequences properly. Think back to the
disaster at Bhopal; almost every worker in that plant was concerned about decisions being taken
about health and safety. Their input into the production process would have prevented the needless
suffering of tens of thousands of people, and the pollution of a large area of land.
Under capitalism representatives of different sectors and industries meet and discuss all the time.
Despite their mutual competition, the leaders of big business constantly meet to discuss and debate,
and rarely are such meetings in the interests of wider society, as Adam Smith pointed out: People of
the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a
conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.760
But because under our vision of society we are organising production in the collective interest
rather than for private gain, meetings on local, regional, national or international level of all those
involved in particular sectors or industries will not be about conspiracy. Rather they will be about
ensuring that the interests of ordinary people come first.
This outline of a radically different method of organising society may sound like a fantasy plucked
from thin air by the author. But in reality it is based on the short glimpses of different methods of
organising society that we have seen through capitalisms history.
Creating the new world
A more sustainable world is one where humans will use less energy, more efficiently and
predominantly from renewable sources. On a day to day basis, they will travel shorter distances,
sharing their transport with other people, eat foods mostly grown locally and have longer holidays to
ensure travel abroad by rail is practical. They will produce less rubbish, in their homes and in the
productive processes that are central to society, reusing materials rather than discarding them and
sharing facilities rather than trying to own everything. The work that they take part in will be
organised in the interests of wider society rather than for the profit of a tiny minority. Production will
be planned and the largest possible number of people affected by or involved in the production
process will take part in those decisions.
Some readers will no doubt complain of the vagueness of my suggestions for what a sustainable
society might look like. This is deliberate. In part this is because more detailed suggestions and
arguments have been made elsewhere. More importantly it is because I believe that the detail of how
a sustainable world will be organised will have to come out of the struggle to create that world.
Take one vision of a democratically planned society, radical US academic Michael Alberts
detailed imagining of a society based on participatory economics, Parecon:
A participatory economy is built on workers and consumers councils, balanced jobs complexes, remuneration for effort and
sacrifice, participatory planning, and self-managed decision-making. It therefore rejects private ownership of the means of
production, corporate workplace organisation and markets and/or central planning. In place of rule over workers by capitalists or
by coordinators, parecon is an economy in which workers and consumers together cooperatively determine their economic options
and benefit from them in ways fostering equity, solidarity, diversity and self-management. Parecon is classless.761

Alberts vision is compelling. His detailed explanation of how such an economy might work, from
the short term in local communities and workplaces, to the longer-term planning that would enable
society to deal with large-scale problems such as climate change, is convincing. But one thing is
missing. How would the councils he sees as central to the planning come about? Moreover, how

does society move from one dominated by the individualism that characterises capitalism, to the
collective mindset that would need to be dominant in a more rationally organised system?
The democratically planned economy that I outlined in the previous section is very similar to that
discussed by Michael Albert. This is because it originates not in imagination, but in historical events.
Two such events have fundamentally shaped the ideas of many of those who want to create a
different society. The first of these was the Paris Commune. In March 1871 the workers of Paris rose
up and took control of their city. After a lifetime of writing and organising against capitalism, Karl
Marx was inspired by the Paris Commune to see the potential for the future organisation of a socialist
society: It was essentially a working class government, the product of the struggle of the producing
against the appropriating class, the political form at last discovered under which to work out the
economical emancipation of Labour.762
A manifesto of the time declared that the proletarians of Paris amidst the failures and treasons
of the ruling classes, have understood that the hour has struck for them to save the situation by taking
into their own hands the direction of public affairs.763 As part of the revolt, the working people of
Paris had got rid of the old state power, creating their own to defend their interests against the old
order. The first decree of the Commune was for the arming of the people and the suppression of the
existing army.
Marx explained how the Commune worked:
The Commune was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible
and revocable at short terms. The majority of its members were naturally working men, or acknowledged representatives of the
working class. The Commune was to be a working, not parliamentary body, executive and legislative at the same timevested
interests and the representation allowances of the high dignitaries of State disappearedthe whole initiative hitherto exercised by
the State was laid into the hands of the Commune.764

Those involved in the Commune had a vision for a system spanning the whole country:
In a rough sketch of the national organisation which the Commune had no time to develop, it states clearly that the Commune was
to be the political form of even the smallest country hamletrural communes of every district were to administer their common
affairs by an assembly of delegates in the central town, and these district assemblies were again to send deputies to the National
Delegation in Paris, each delegate to be at any time revocable and bound by the mandat impratif [formal instructions] of his
constituents.765

The creation of the Paris Commune transformed the city and its people. Marx commentates how
even though the police had been expelled along with the old order, crime seemed to have vanished as
the people of the city collectively organised for their futures. No more corpses at the Morgue, no
nocturnal burglaries, scarcely any robberies; in fact, for the first time since the [revolutionary] days
of February, 1848, the streets of Paris were safe.766
Many contemporaries noted the central role played by women in the struggle of the Commune.
They took an active part in the defence of the commune, but they were not allowed a vote. The
Communes short lifespan, a mere 72 days, did not give enough time for many such contradictions to
break down, though part of the problem was that the radicals who dominated the leadership of the
Commune often did not believe that women should have an equal voice.
But the Paris Commune remained isolated. It did not spread as hoped across France and as
reactionary troops loyal to the old order gathered at Versailles, the Communards failed to confront
and try to win them to their cause. Artillery first shelled Paris and then the troops invaded. Thousands
of men and women were massacred; many of those who survived the bitter fighting on the barricades
were lined up and shot.

Despite its brief existence, in the Commune we can see the potential for a new form of society, one
not imposed from above, but developing organically from the needs of ordinary people struggling
against the old order. As the European working class developed and grew in the 20th century, this
vision of a society based on democracy from below was to reach new heights with further struggles,
in particular the revolutionary wave that swept across Europe at the end of the First World War.
The seizure of power by the working class during the Russian Revolution of 1917 was the highest
point of this struggle. Despite what happened afterwardsthe invasion by hostile powers, the
isolation of the revolution internationally and the rise of Stalins bureaucratic power basethe
revolution gives us further glimpses of how a society organised from below might work.
The Bolshevik led insurrection of October 1917 was the culmination of years of working class
struggle in Russia. The growing deprivations of the First World War led to increasing numbers of
strikes and protests. In February 1917 the country exploded into open revolution. In the capital,
Petrograd, workers and soldiers elected democratic bodies in their factories, workshops and
regiments to express their views and organise their struggle. Such bodies, workers councils or
soviets, had a history in Russia. In an earlier revolution of 1905 they had helped organise the
revolution and now, 12 years later, the workers of Russias cities once again created their own
organisations: By early March soviets were coming into being in all the principal towns and
industrial centres.767 A sense of the process of revolution is given by Leon Trotsky, one of the
leading figures of the revolution: Immediately after the February revolution the parties came out
from underground, trade unions arose, continuous meetings were held, there were soviets in every
district.768
Despite the continued existence of the old order, the soviets had to begin to try and take control of
things themselves:
The bread-lines had given the last stimulus to the revolution. They also proved the first threat to the new regime. At the very first
session of the Soviet a food commission had been created. The government bothered little about feeding the capital The task lay
on the Soviet In a series of sessions of the Soviet a whole system of measures of military socialism was adopted, including the
declaring of all grain stores public property, the establishment of a definite price for bread, to accord with similar prices for
industrial products, state control of industry, a regulated exchange of goods with the peasants.769

Unfortunately these systems collapsed in the face of the old state power. For such radical changes,
the power of the old state needed to be broken, just as it had been in Paris in 1871.
It was the existence of growing democratic organisation inside workplaces across Russia that
meant that the seizure of power in 1917 was a mass event. In thousands and thousands of factories,
large and small, ordinary workers were taking control of their own lives and beginning to run the
workplaces in their collective interests. In Kevin Murphys history of a Moscow factory over the
course of the revolution, he notes how the workers were not simply concerned with the selfish
improvement of their own lives: A 23 April factory general meeting unanimously voted that skilled
workers should refuse excessive wage rates and demanded that these funds be given to non-skilled
employees.770 They passed motions against the ongoing war, demanding to quickly restore relations
between socialists of all countries to make preparations for peace.771
And their self-confidence meant that the workers themselves introduced major changes. Murphy
writes that employees immediately implemented the eight-hour working day when they returned to
the factory in early March and notes that this was not an isolated incident. When the Moscow Soviet
passed a resolution for an eight-hour day in the city, the workers in many factories had already
implemented it.772

In June 1917 the workers factory committee issued a 16-point set of demands. These far-reaching
requests called for, among other things, space for the workers committee and for general factory
meetings, lecturers and other cultural-educational activities, improved toilet and washing facilities,
sick pay, maternity leave, money upon the birth or death of a child or relative, and holiday leave.773
These demands might seem minor today, but in the context of the time they were significant
improvements to workers conditions. As Murphy notes, The need for a regular meeting place shows
that the employees top priority was the strengthening of their own organisation, and the special
demands raised in the interest of women illustrate workers willingness to be more inclusive.774
The taking of state power by the workers in October 1917 meant that working people had taken
power for the first time. The leader of the Bolsheviks, Lenin, declared at the first meeting of the
Petrograd Soviet after the successful insurrection that they would now proceed to construct the
socialist order. But this was hampered from the start. Russia was an economically backward
country; its population still dominated by the peasantry, its industry was undeveloped compared to the
rest of the developed world. Lenin and other leading revolutionaries hoped, with much justification,
that workers in other countries, such as Germany, would follow their lead. This would mean that
Russia was not isolated on the international stage.
Revolutionary waves did indeed spread: soviets and workers councils were formed by
revolutionary masses across much of Europe. The First World War was ended not by international
diplomacy, but by the strikes and mutinies that made it impossible for Germanys leaders to continue.
But the German Revolution failed to take power and Russia was left isolated. It suffered from the
invasions of over a dozen foreign armies and a brutal civil war, designed to destroy the revolution
itself. Eventually Stalin was able to seize the reins of powerthe masses on whose energy and
determination the revolution had been built were depleted by war and hunger. From the mid-1920s
onwards, Russia ceased to be a society based on democracy from below, but a bureaucratic
distortion of that. Stalin suppressed opposition, forced through industrialisation at the expense of tens
of thousands of workers and peasants, and destroyed collective organisation.
The first few years of revolution gave a glimpse of how society can be rebuilt out of the struggles
of ordinary people. The workers of the factories demonstrated their ability to organise and run their
own lives in the interests of ordinary people, not a tiny layer at the top.
But the Russian experience also demonstrates that revolution is not just about industrial workers.
The peasantry played a central role in that struggle. Understanding the important of the peasantry was
crucial to the Bolshevik Party. Their slogan Bread, Peace and Land brought together the key
demands of workers, peasants and soldiers. The revolution saw peasants taking over land themselves
in enormous numbers, and as we have seen, one of the first acts of the new government after the
soviets had taken power was to legitimise that process.
Today millions of peasants across the globe dream of owning enough land to support themselves
and their families. The examples from Brazil demonstrate that movements based on redistributing
land and challenging the priorities of capitalism can be popular and successful. Taking control of the
land is the first step in creating a rational agriculture and breaking the logic of agribusiness.
In the developed world, where agriculture has a much smaller workforce, struggles may be
different to that in countries with a mass peasantry. But to break the hold of multinationals on
industrialised farming will require class struggle in the countryside of the developed world as much
as the developing.

We have seen how the forced collectivisation of Russian agriculture by Stalin caused misery and
death for millions of peasants as he attempted to accelerate the industrial development of the country.
We have also seen how, in countries dominated by the peasantry, mass revolutionary movements may
well lead to private farms getting an initial new lease of life, as peasants seize land or redistribute
large estates. But a successful socialist revolution would provide the lead to the gradual breakdown
of individual farming, explains Tony Cliff:
the organisation of agriculture in cooperative farms is bound to be an extremely slow process The process of the transition of
agriculture from individual to collectivist methods will thus be the result of the abundance of wealth and culture in highly developed
societies. Individual farming will not be overthrown, but sublimated Capitalist pressure is not able to eliminate the small farm;
socialist prosperity, by attraction, will graduallyin the very long runpersuade the peasantry to give up their individual farms.775

This is a dramatically different vision of the collectivisation of agricultural production than that
imposed by Stalin in the 1930s or Mao in the 1950s.
If we are to create a sustainable society, we need to transform the relationship that society has
with the natural world. In the very first instance, this means the creation of a society based on the
needs of people and planet, not the needs of a few individuals. As we have seen, this world will have
to be one where production is organised democratically and collectively. Marx and Engels, and
countless revolutionaries before and after them, called such a society socialist. Few of those
revolutionaries will have understood the ecological importance of their dreams. But as we have seen,
the core ideas of Marxism, indeed of the whole idea of a democratically planned economy, are based
on the rational interchange between nature and human society.
But such a world cannot be imposed or legislated for; its existence goes directly against the
interests of the powerful corporations and those that represent them. It requires the revolutionary
transformation of society.
At the heights of revolution, ordinary people begin to transform society and themselves. This is
also true of every collective struggle, whether a one-day strike or a mass demonstration for
democracy; ordinary working people begin to learn how they have the power to change things. At the
highest points of struggle this leads to an understanding that workers can run society for themselves.
In 1956 the people of Hungary rebelled against their Soviet rulers. Once again they created the
organisations of democracy and workers control that have characterised so many mass revolutionary
movements. Peter Fryer, a socialist journalist, went to Hungary to report on events. He described the
network of committees that had sprung up across the country:
In their spontaneous origin, in their composition, in their sense of responsibility, in their efficient organisation of food supplies and
civil order, in the restraint they exercised on the wild elements among the youth, in the wisdom with which so many of them
handled the problem of Soviet troops. And, not least, in their striking resemblance to the workers, peasants, and soldiers councils
which sprang up in Russia in the 1905 revolution and in February 1917, these committees, a network of which now extended over
the whole of Hungary, were remarkably uniform. They were at once, organs of insurrectionthe coming together of delegates
elected by factories and universities, mines and army unitsand organs of popular self-government which the armed people
trusted.
Of course, as in every real revolution from below there was too much talking, arguing, bickering, coming and going, froth,
excitement, agitation, ferment. This is one side of the picture. The other is the emergence to leading positions of ordinary men,
women and youths, whom the AVH [the political police] domination had submerged. The revolution thrust them forward, aroused
their civic pride and latent genius for organisation, set them to work to build democracy out of the ruins of bureaucracy. You can
see people developing from day to day, I was told.776

The crimes of Stalin, committed in the name of revolution, have helped to undermine the very idea
of revolutionary change. Any opposition was ruthlessly exterminated, any notion of workers control
or involvement in the democratic process was destroyed. It was Russian tanks that destroyed the

flowering of democracy and workers control in Hungary in 1956, just as they had done in East
Germany a few years previously and would do again in Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Poland in 1981.
Stalins economic policy was designed to catch up and overtake the industrialised West. Doing
this meant making workers labour harder and for longer. Stalins Russia exploited ordinary people
just as the capitalists did. His victory was in effect the defeat of the Russian Revolution. The isolation
of the revolution internationally enabled Stalin and his followers to argue that Russia needed to look
inwards. By building what he called socialism in one country Stalin turned his back on a
revolutionary strategy to overthrow capitalism, creating a state capitalist society that competed with
the other capitalist powers on the same terms.777
The accelerated industrialisation that Stalin imposed on the Russian economy destroyed the lives
of millions of people. It also involved the ruthless degradation of the natural world. For Stalin and
those who formed his bureaucratic ruling class, the environment was something to be utilised for his
ends, as summed up by one Stalinist planner who called for a profound rearrangement of the entire
living worldall living nature will live, thrive and die at none other than the will of man and
according to his plans.778
Such views led the Soviet Union to some of the worst environmental disasters in human history
the destruction wrought by the explosion at Chernobyl, or the drying up of the Aral Sea. The Aral Sea
was one of the largest lakes in the world, with a thriving fishing industry. As a result of ill thought out
irrigation plans designed to enormously extend the Soviet Unions cotton industry. Once the fourth
largest lake in the world, today the waters have almost vanished. Rising salt levels have destroyed
the ecology and the fishing industry has long gone leaving behind economic disaster and mass
unemployment.
Despite the awareness that the destruction of the Aral Sea was a potential consequence of the
irrigation projects, no one was prepared to speak out against them. This is hardly surprising, yet it
demonstrates how far from things had gone from the ideals of the Russian Revolution.
The vision that nature is simply a tool for furthering economic plans would have been alien to
those who made the revolution. Many of the revolutions leaders, their ideas rooted in Marxism, had
a radically different approach to the relationship between nature and human society, one far closer to
the one I have outlined in earlier chapters. Even as late as 1937, Nikolai Bukharin, a Bolshevik who
had helped lead the revolution, wrote about the relationship between human beings and the natural
world, while in a Stalinist prison awaiting execution.779
One of Russias oldest nature reserves, Astrakhansky Zapovednik in the Volga delta, owes its
origins to the Russian Revolution. In the early 20th century this region renowned for its wild fowl
was being decimated by unrestricted hunting and egg collecting. Concerned scientists managed to get
an audience with Lenin in 1919 and he approved plans to create a nature reserve to protect the area.
This was not a one-off. In 1920 Lenin, at the urging of several scientists, created a nature reserve in
the Urals, the first anywhere by a government exclusively aimed at the scientific study of nature.780
A genuine revolutionary tradition will have to rescue the idea that humans are part of a wider
natural world. Historically revolutions have made few, if any, demands about environmental
sustainability, or what we might loosely describe today as green issues. As I write this we are
seeing new waves of mass revolutionary activity in the Middle East and as climate change leads to
real consequences for people around the globe, environmental questions may well become central
demands for such movements.

But the people at the heart of the movements I have described would no doubt have a very different
view of how the society they were trying to create would relate to the natural world and its resources.
In the fight against the madness of a system driven by profit, people will begin to view the world very
differently. Those Peter Fryer described talking, arguing, bickering are likely to have a far better
vision of society than those who currently rule in the name of the multinationals and the capitalist
system.
But the process of revolution is important too. Those who took part in the Paris Commune or the
Russian Revolution transformed themselves. The Russian Revolution was not simply marked by the
toppling of the Tsar and a declaration of workers power: everything from the organisation of family
life, to attitudes towards gays and lesbians, was transformed. This was not imposed from above by
well-meaning revolutionaries, but was an organic part of the revolution.
During struggle old attitudes broke down and new ones were created. The attitude towards the
wider world was also changed, as those who made the revolutions began to understand the old order
and build the new one.
Under capitalism we live as individuals. The process of creating a world through collective
revolution helps to shape a collective interest that is crucial if we are to see sustainability as part of
our future.
The introduction of capitalism involved the forcible destruction of any sense of nature being the
collective property of the majority of people in society. Whether it was the enclosures, the Highland
Clearances or the enormous number of poaching laws introduced by parliament in the British Isles,
this was the new capitalist ruling class establishing the idea that property rights were central to their
new society. Nature was not for everyone. Only a minority could own land to hunt deer and rabbits,
cultivate food or enjoy forests. Capitalism could only work if collective notions were broken down in
favour of individualistic private property.
Human history is marked by a myriad of different ways of organising our societies. Alongside
these, the relationships that have existed between people have been as diverse as the societies that
exist. The development of capitalism forced a particular set of attitudes towards private property
upon us. For many, the idea that things might be as different in the future as they were in the past
seems a fantasy. Yet if the history of capitalism teaches us one thing, it is that the exploited people
will always resist, and when they resist, they change the world and themselves.
Karl Marx wrote about how our lives are fundamentally shaped by the type of society that we live
in: Men developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this
their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by
consciousness, but consciousness by life.781
Capitalism has existed barely a few centuries. In that time it has reshaped the planet on a scale
unimaginable to our ancestors. There is no part of the natural world that has escaped the systems
tentacles in the never-ending quest to create profits. Along the way the system has destroyed the lives
of millions of people, caused ecological catastrophe on an unprecedented scale and begun to
undermine the very basis for human society itself. Those at the top of society are unable or unwilling
to divert resources towards dealing with the environmental crises.
If there was no opposition the future would be very bleak indeed. But millions of people around
the globe are waking up to the madness of the system. In the last few years we have seen a rebirth of
the mass movements that can fundamentally transform society. In Egypt in 2011 a revolution,

involving hundreds of thousands of people, with mass strikes by workers, brought down a hated
dictator. The Egyptian Revolution inspired millions of people around the globe. Thousands protested
and occupied their own cities in protest at the austerity measures that force ordinary people to pay for
the economic crises.
Such examples of resistance have a long tradition. Those who resisted the enclosures and the
clearances, those who fought to free themselves from the tyranny of kings and lords, were part of the
wider struggle for a better world. The people of the Paris Commune or the Russian Revolution were
trying to create a system based, not on the interests of a tiny minority, but in the collective interests of
millions. In the 21st century the struggle for justice and freedom can no longer be separated from the
struggle to stop environmental catastrophe.
Writing 150 years before anyone understood global warming Karl Marx knew that without
revolutionary change it would not be possible to heal the metabolic rift between humans and the
natural world. Though Marx did not use the word sustainable, it is a concept that is part of his vision
of a socialist world:
Even a whole society, a nation, or even all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the globe. They
are only its possessors, its usufructuraries, and, like boni patres familias [good heads of the household], they must hand it down to
succeeding generations in an improved condition.782

The process of revolution will transform the world, but it will also change us. To those living in a
sustainable socialist world, the notion of private ownership of nature will seem insane. No longer
will the production process be separated from its impact upon the environment. Nor will decisions be
made that have long-term negative consequences for the people of the Earth.
Today we face an enormous challenge if we are to avoid environmental disaster. The biggest
barrier to this is an economic system organised in the interest of profit. Human history is full of
amazing examples of ingenuity from our ancestors which helped them overcome environmental
problems. But it also has many examples of the failure of societies that were unwilling or unable to
deal with environmental crisis. Today we must draw on all the lessons of our past in order to destroy
capitalism and build in its place a sustainable, socialist world.

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Notes

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19

20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41

Introduction
Neale, 2010b.
Empson, 2012.
Patterson, 2009, p87.
Patterson, 2009, p91.
Patterson, 2009 p85.
Chapter 1
Marx and Engels, 2007, p48.
Speech at the graveside of Karl Marx (1883), Marx and Engels, 1991, p411.
Engels, 1991, pp346-347.
Finlayson, 2009, p41.
Stringer, 2011, p110.
Stringer, 2011, p110.
Stringer, 2011, p108.
Harman, 1994, p100.
Harman, 1994, pp100-101.
Marx, 1990, p284.
Stringer, 2011, p108.
Flannery and Marcus, 2012, p7.
Behringer, 2010, p44.
The debate on the role of humans in the North American mega fauna extinction is summed up well in Ward, 1998, from which this
conclusion is taken.
Chapter 2
Finlayson, 2009, p4.
Finlayson, 2009, p7.
Finlayson, 2009, p8.
Finlayson, 2009, p12.
Mithen, 2005, p107.
Finlayson, 2009, p13.
Finlayson, 2009, p32.
Leakey and Lewin, 1992, p194.
Finlayson, 2009, p41.
The story of the discovery of the first almost complete skeleton from this period is told in Leakey and Lewin, 1992.
Finlayson, 2009, p53.
Leakey and Lewin, 1992, pp46-47.
Weiner et al, 1998, and Stringer, 2011, p140.
Stringer, 2011, p139.
Stringer, 2011, p139.
Finlayson, 2009, p54.
Finlayson, 2009, p107.
Stringer, 2011, pp165-166.
See Finlayson, 2009.
Stringer, 2011, p221.
Stringer, 2011, pp51-54.
Mithen, 2004, p11.

Chapter 3
42 Lee, 1979, p205.

43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61

Leacock, 2008, p109.

Graeber, 2011, p79.
Lee, 1979, p348.
Lee, 1979, pp343-344.
Flannery and Marcus, 2012, pp32-37.
Cronon, 1983, p62.
Gurven and Kaplan, 2007, p326.
Gurven and Kaplan, 2007, p334.
Gurven and Kaplan, 2007, p335.
Lee, 1979, p203.
Sahlins, 1978, p27.
Sahlins, 1978, p34.
Lee, 1979, chapter 9, particularly table on p278.
Quoted in Lee, 1979, p204.
Sahlins, 1978, p27.
Marshall and Hildebrand, 2002.
Page, 2004, p60.
See Evans-Pritchard, 1971.
Mithen, 2004, p4.

Chapter 4
Mazoyer and Roudart, 2006, p13.
Childe, 1946, p43.
Childe, 1946, p43.
Pryor, 2004, p110.
Pryor, 2004, p111.
Mazoyer and Roudart, 2006, p72 and Bourke and Hardwood, 2009, p14.
Diamond, 1998, p97.
Material on Bronze Age farming based on Pryor, 2011, and Reynolds, 2011.
Pryor, 2011, p96.
See Pryor, 2004, Chapter 9.
Myllyntaus, Hares and Kunnas, 2002, p282.
Mazoyer and Roudart, 2006, p119.
Myllyntaus, Hares and Kunnas, 2002, p274.
Moore and Vaughan, 1987, p535.
Moore and Vaughan, 1987, p526.
Moore and Vaughan, 1987, p 527.
Moore and Vaughan, 1987, p 537.
Myllyntaus, Hares and Kunnas, p286.
Myllyntaus, Hares and Kunnas, p269.
Myllyntaus, Hares and Kunnas, pp274-75.
Harman, 1999, pp22-27, provides an excellent overview of this process.
Sahlins, 1963, p289.
Sahlins, 1963, p291.
Quoted in Harman, 1994, p116.
Harman, 1994, pp120-121.
Harman, 1999, p27.
Engels, 1991, p467.
Odani, 2012.
McKie, 2011.
Alesina, Giuliano and Nunn, 2010, p3.
Material on the earliest Egyptian civilisations based on Mithen, 2004, pp500-502; Shaw, 2003; Fagan, 2005, pp147-166 and Marshall
and Hildebrand, 2002.
93 Fagan, 2005, p160.
94 Mazoyer and Roudart, 2006, p145.
95 Fagan, 2005, pp164-165.
96 Material on the rise of the Egyptian state, see Hassan, 1997 and Wenke, 1989.
97 Hassan, 1997, pp52-53 and p55.
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92

98 Wenke, 1989, p135.

99 Behringer, 2010, p52.
100 Shaw, 2003, pp106-107.
101 See for instance, Davis, 2009.
102 Fagan, 2005, pp169-173.
103 Shaw, 2003, pp106-107 and Fagan, 2005, p173.
104 Cottrell, 1966, p59.
105 Goelet, 2003, p22.
106 Romer, 1984, pp118-123, 165-166.
107 On the collapse of the Akkadian Empire, see Linden, 2006, pp49-55, 149-164 and Yoffee, 2010.
108 Linden, 2006, p53.
109 Linden, 2006, p53.
110 Cullen et al, 2000, p382.
111 Diamond, 2006, p48.
112 Yoffee, 2010, p179.
Chapter 5
113 Diamond, 2006, p175.
114 Fagan, 2005, p238.
115 Dahlin, 2002, p337.
116 McAnany and Negrn, 2010, p153.
117 Webster, 2002, p241.
118 Lucero, 2002, p815.
119 Mann, 2005, p278.
120 Mann, 2005, p278.
121 Dahlin, 2002, p333.
122 Dahlin, 2002, p334.
123 Dahlin, 2002, p334.
124 Dahlin, 2002, p335.
125 Diamond, 2006, p6.
126 Diamond, 2006, p11.
127 Webster, 2002, p324.
128 Webster, 2002, p320.
129 From the Declaration of the Lacandn Jungle, quoted in Selfa, 1997, p75.
Chapter 6
130 Mazoyer and Roudart, 2006, p191.
131 Mann, 2011, p203.
132 Page, 2004, pp60-61.
133 Fagan, 2011, pp114-117.
134 Page, 2004, p62.
135 Page, 2004, pp203-205 and Fagan, 2011, pp117-119.
136 Flannery, 2007, pp242-243.
137 Mann, 2005, pp120-121.
138 Cahill, 2010, pp219-221.
139 Flannery, 2007, p248.
140 Mazoyer and Roudart, 2006, p84.
141 Klein, 2003, p18.
142 Mazoyer and Roudart, 2006, p207.
143 Klein, 2003, pp19-20.
144 Mazoyer and Roudart, 2006, p198.
145 Mazoyer and Roudart, 2006, pp208-209.
146 Cahill, 2010, pp226-227.
147 Mann, 2005, p129.
148 Cahill, 2010, p224.
149 Marcel and Roudart, 2006, pp212-213.
150 For material on the Aztecs, I have drawn on Mann, 2005, pp112-128, and Harman, 1999, pp161-168.
151 Quoted in Harman, 1999, p161.

152 Mann, 2005, p121.

153 Reader, 2005, pp183-184.
154 Reader, 2005, p185.
155 Harman, 1999, p168.
156 Gelber, 2008, pp88-89.
157 See Haynes, 1992.
158 Haynes, 1992, p64.
159 Elliott, 2002, p65.
160 Elliott, 2002, p183.
161 Mazoyer and Roudart, 2006, p190.
162 Marx, 1990, p915.
163 Elliott, 2002, p292, and Zinsser 1935, pp255-257.
164 Mann, 2011, p12.
165 Mann, 2005, p129.
166 Mann, 2005, p131.
167 Ferguson, 1999, p5.
168 Ferguson, 1999, p6.
169 Leacock, 2008, p47.
170 Leacock, 2008, pp37, 141.
171 Leacock, 2008, p34.
172 Leacock, 2008, p183.
173 Leacock, 2008, pp71-72.
174 Quoted in Leacock, 2008, p48.
175 Quoted in Leacock, 2008, p35.
176 Quoted in Leacock, 2008, p58.
177 Leacock, 2008, p44.
178 Quoted in Leacock, 2008, p240
179 Quoted in Cronon, 1983, p21.
180 Quoted in Cronon, 1983, p25.
181 Cronon, 1983, pp20-21.
182 Cronon, 1983, p51.
183 Quoted in Cronon, 1983, p56.
184 Quoted in Cronon, 1983, pp56-57.
185 Quoted in Cronon, 1983, p55.
186 Quoted in Cronon, 1983, p56.
187 Cronon, 1983, p126.
188 Quoted in Cronon, 1983, p90.
189 Cronon, 1983, p123.
190 Quoted in Cronon,1983, p162.
191 Leacock, 2008, p38.
192 Engels (1876), 1991, p499.
Chapter 7
193 Reynolds, 2011, pp28-32.
194 Mazoyer and Roudart, 2006, p219.
195 Mazoyer and Roudart, 2006, p229.
196 Rackham, 1995, pp358-359.
197 Ratcliffe 1984, p94.
198 Ratcliffe, 1984, p88.
199 Rackham, 1995, pxiii.
200 Rackham, 1995, pp47-49.
201 Marx and Engels, 2007, p62.
202 Rackham, 1995, p73.
203 Pryor, 2005, p44.
204 Pryor, 2011, pp184-190.
205 Wickham, 2009, p151.
206 Wickham, 2009, p151.
207 Rackham, 1995, p164.

208 Rackham, 1995, p75.

209 Quoted in Rackham, 1995, p172.
210 Rackham, 1995, p164.
211 Material on Laxton is taken from the extensive collection of manuscripts, data and photographs in Nottingham Universitys Laxton
Medieval Village Learning Resource available online at www.nottingham.ac.uk.
212 Minutes of proceedings at the Laxton manorial court, 1754,
www.nottingham.ac.uk/manuscriptsandspecialcollections/documents/elearning/laxton/laxton-transcripts2.pdf.
213 Bois, 1992, p41.
214 Pryor, 2011, pp254-258.
215 Pryor, 2011, p257.
216 Pryor, 2011, p254.
217 Pryor, 2011, p258.
218 Descriptions of life on St Kilda is from Steel, 1981.
219 Quoted in Steel, 1981, p82.
220 Steel, 1981, p47.
221 Descriptions of life in Middle Ages based on OBrien, 2004, and Ziegler, 1986.
222 Clapham, 1963, p97.
223 Quotes from the Charter of the Forest from Linebaugh, 2008, pp296-300.
224 Linebaugh, 2008, p45.
225 Ziegler, 1986, p32.
226 Mahamdallie, 2008, p81.
227 OBrien, 2004, p28.
228 Duby, 1968, p206-210.
229 Duby, 1968, p208.
230 Mazoyer and Roudart, 2006, p270.
231 Kautsky, 1988, pp98-99.
232 Mazoyer and Roudart, 2006, pp281-283.
233 Behringer, 2007, pp74-81.
234 Mazoyer and Roudart, 2006, p286.
235 Pryor, 2011, p341.
236 Mazoyer and Roudart, 2006, p292.
237 Section on changes in feudalism based on Harman, 1999, pp178-183, and Harman, 2006.
238 Harman, 2006, p 133.
239 Ziegler, 1986, pp244-245.
240 OBrien, 2004, p17.
241 Ziegler, 1986, p278.
242 Ziegler, 1986, p279.
243 Clapham, 1963, p190.
244 Hill, 1991, p21.
245 Manning, 1978, p141.
246 Manning, 1978, p142.
247 Purkiss, 2006, pp353-354.
248 Hill, 1991, p53.
249 Hill, 1991, p23.
250 Robertson, 2007, p69.
251 Robertson, 2007, p69.
252 Purkiss, 2006, p490.
253 A Declaration from the Poor Oppressed People of England (1649) in Winstanley, 2011, p29.
254 Winstanley, 2011, p33.
255 Hill, 1991, p56, and Hill, 2000, pp251-253.
256 Carlin, 1983, p32.
257 Harman, 1999, p220.
258 Pomeranz, 2000, p35.
259 Pomeranz, 2000, p224.
260 Pomeranz, 2000, p54.
261 Harman, 1999, p221.
262 Harman, 1999, p222.
263 Harman, 1999, p223.

264 Basham, 1975, p201.

265 Spear, 1975, p47.
266 Harman, 1999, p228.
267 Quoted in Harman, 1999, pp228-229.
268 Harman, 1999, p366.
269 Harman, 1999, p367.
270 Marx and Engels, 2003, p8.
Chapter 8
271 Webster, 2002, p119.
272 Marx and Engels, 1991, p411.
273 Marx, 1990, quoted in Hughes, 2000, p95.
274 Hughes, 2000, pp95-96.
275 Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy quoted in Hughes, 2000, p96.
276 Hughes, 2000, p123.
277 Hughes, 2000, p123.
278 Quoted in Hughes, 2000, p127.
279 Marx, 1978b, p103.
280 Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy in Marx and Engels, 1991, p173.
281 Marx and Engels, 2003, p5.
282 Marx and Engels, 1991, pp173-174.
283 Harman, 1998, p28.
284 Harman, 1998,p43.
Chapter 9
285 Quoted in Boyle, 2003, p33, who dates it to the late 18th century, possibly as early as 1764.
286 Food and Agricultural Organisation, September 2008, quoted in Bello, 2009, p1.
287 Financial Times, Tortilla riots give foretaste of food challenge, 12 October 2010, www.ft.com.
288 Holt-Gimnez, 2010, p208.
289 Bello, 2009, p48.
290 Bush, 2009, p63.
291 Export figures from the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations at www.fao.org.
292 FAO, 2010, p10.
293 Holt-Gimnez, 2010, p209.
294 Figures in this section are from Mazoyer and Roudart, 2006, p13.
295 Bello, 2009, p46.
296 Horn, 1980, p13.
297 Brunt, 2003, p449.
298 Brunt, 2003, pp471-475.
299 Mazoyer and Roudart, 2006, p332.
300 Pryor, 2011, p342.
301 Horn, 1980, p173.
302 Horn, 1980, p180 and p181, and Osborne and Winstanley, 2006, pp189, 190.
303 Horn, 1980, p172.
304 Quoted in Horn, 1980, p181.
305 Richards, 2000, p91.
306 Richards, 2000, p91.
307 Richards, 2000, p112.
308 Marx, 1990, p890.
309 Richards, 2000, p71.
310 Richards, 2000, chapter 5
311 Richards, 2000, p79.
312 Richards, 2000, p112.
313 Richards, 2000, p45. The conflict between crofter and landlord on the Isle of Lewis is brilliant described in Hutchinson, 2003.
314 Richards, 2000, p73.
315 Richards, 2000, p277.
316 Richards, 2000, chapter 18.
317 Richards, 2000, p262.

318 Richards, 2000, p267.

319 Richards, 2000, p201.
320 Richards, 2000, p187.
321 Quoted in Marx, 1990, pp892-893.
322 Richards, 2000, p301.
323 Wightman, 1999.
324 Mazoyer and Roudart, 2006, p336.
325 Moore, 1981, p6.
326 Rheinische Zeitung, No. 300, Supplement, 27 October 1842, available at www.marxists. org/archive/marx/works/1842/10/25.htm.
327 Quoted in Horn, 1980, pp52-53.
328 Hill, 1991, p50.
329 Hill, 1991, p51.
330 Moore, 1981, p7.
331 Horn, 1980, p50.
332 Horn, 1980, p50.
333 Turner, 1982, p11.
334 Jones, 1968, p10.
335 Horn, 1980, p38.
336 Marx, 1990, p875.
337 Horn, 1980, p53.
338 Thompson, 1991, pp237-238.
339 Thompson, 1991, p239.
340 Rackham, 1995, p202.
341 Hoskins, 1971, p179.
342 Hoskins, 1971, p185.
343 Horn, 1980, p55.
344 Thompson, 1991, p240.
345 Horn, 1980, p55.
346 Horn, 1980, p51.
347 Horn, 1980, p40.
348 Thompson, 1991, p241.
349 Horn, 1980, p56.
350 Thompson, 1991, p242.
351 Marx, 1990, p875.
352 For a useful summary of this process, see Patterson, 2009, pp123-126.
353 Horn, 1980, p58.
354 Marx, 1990, p895
355 Material on Agriculture in Britain after the Napoleonic Wars is from Horn, 1980, and Jones, 1968.
356 Horn, 1980, p72.
357 Jones, 1968, p10 and Horn, 1980, p73.
358 Jones, 1968, p13.
359 Horn, 1980, p85.
360 Horn, 1980, p76.
361 Hobsbawm and Rud, 1969, p76.
362 Horn, 1980, pp88-89.
363 Hobsbawm and Rud, 1969, p85.
364 Hobsbawm and Rud, 1969, p97.
365 Hobsbawm and Rud, 1969, p282.
366 Hobsbawm and Rud, 1969, p283.
367 Hobsbawm and Rud, 1969, pp285-286.
368 Horn, 1980, p129, and Sayers, 1967, p106.
369 Pryor, 2011, p474.
370 Mazoyer and Roudart, 2006, p338.
371 Sayers, 1967, pp109-110.
372 Horn, 1980, pp255-256.
373 Mazoyer and Roudart, 2006, p359.
374 Evans, 1965, p88.
375 Horn, 1980, p237.

376 Sayers,1967, pp111-112.

377 Quoted in Horn, 1980, p239.
378 Reader, 2005, pp209-210.
379 Reader, 2005, p212.
380 Sheail, 1995, p184.
381 Turner, 1981.
382 Foster, Clark and York, 2010, p360.
383 Quoted in Foster, Clark and York, 2010, pp361-362.
384 Quoted in Foster, Clark and York, 2010, p369.
385 Quoted in Foster, Clark and York, 2010, p351.
386 Quoted in Horn, 1980, p240.
387 Sheail, 1995, p180.
388 Sheail, 1995, p182.
389 Material for South America in this section from Mann, 2011, Mazoyer and Roudart, 2006, and Bernstein, 2010.
390 Bernstein, 2010, p44.
391 Bernstein, 2010, p45.
392 Mann, 2011, p303.
393 Bernstein, 2010, p46.
394 Bernstein, 2010, p46.
395 I am grateful to Sopan Joshi for his suggestions for this section.
396 Bernstein, 2010, p49.
397 Moore, 1981, p345.
398 Spear, 1975, p97.
399 Davis, 2009, p312.
400 Davis, 2009, p328.
401 Davis, 2009, pp328-331.
402 Davis, 2009, p313.
403 Davis, 2009, p315.
404 Davis, 2009, p318.
405 Davis, 2009, p7.
406 Quoted in Davis, 2009, p9.
407 Trotsky, 1992, vol. 1, p3.
408 Falkus,1972, p47.
409 Lenin, 1977, pp193-194.
410 Lenin, 1977, pp194-195.
411 Falkus, 1972, pp49-50.
412 Trotsky, 2005, p145.
413 Trotsky, 2005, p36.
414 Trotsky, 1992, vol. 3, p330.
415 Lewin, 1968, p145.
416 Lewin, 1968, p52.
417 Lewin, 1968, p28-30.
418 Lewin, 1968, p274.
419 Lewin, 1968, p161.
420 Cliff, 1993, p30.
421 Cliff, 1993, p30.
422 Cliff, 1993, p33.
423 Cliff, 1993, p34.
424 Cliff, 1993, p34.
425 Cliff, 1993, p36.
426 Marx, 1990, pp579-580.
427 Marx, 1990, p637.
428 Marx, 1990, p638.
Chapter 10
429 Horn, 1980, p242.
430 This section based on Calder, 1992, pp418-430.
431 Beresford, 1975, p4.

432 Calder, 1992, p422.

433 Calder, 1992, p421.
434 Calder, 1992, p404.
435 Calder, 1992, p404.
436 Calder, 1992, p423.
437 Calder, 1992, p430.
438 Beresford, 1975, p7.
439 Mazoyer and Roudart, 2006, p386.
440 Pimentel, 2010, p250.
441 Blythe, 1972, p194.
442 Blythe, 1972, p195.
443 Blythe, 1972, p195.
444 Harvey, 2006, p25.
445 Patnaik and Moyo, 2011, p8.
446 Patel, 2008, p97.
447 Patnaik and Moyo, 2011, pp38-39.
448 Lee Kyung Haes statement, 2003, from asianfarmers.org (accessed September 2011)
449 Patnaik and Moyo, 2011, p40.
450 Patnaik and Moyo, 2011, p40.
451 Patnaik and Moyo, 2011, p34.
452 Patnaik and Moyo, 2011, pp34-36.
453 Bello, 2009, p84.
454 Economist, 22 September 2012.
455 Monbiot, 2013.
456 Vince Smith, A Farm Bill Bait and Switch, 17 June 2013 at www.usnews.com (accessed August 2013).
457 Jason Clay, Are Agricultural Subsidies Causing More Harm Than Good?, Guardian, 8 August 2013, and Domestic Support and
WTO Obligations in Key Developing Countries, DTB Associates, September 2011, www.dtbassociates.com (accessed August
2013).
458 Patnaik and Moyo, 2011, p80.
459 Foster, 2010, p81.
460 McMichael, 2010, p65.
461 Pimentel, 2010, p242.
462 Pimentel, 2010, p242.
463 Quoted in Magdoff and Tokar, 2010, p11.
464 Magdoff and Tokar, 2010, p22.
465 McNeill, 2000, p222.
466 McNeill, 2000, p222.
467 Quoted in The History of Americas Food Aid, at www.usaid.gov (accessed August 2011).
468 Oxfam, 2005, p21.
469 Oxfam, 2005, p19.
470 Oxfam, 2005, p18.
471 Pearce, 2010, p88.
472 Pearce, 2010, pp88-89.
473 Murphy, 2010, p104.
474 Murphy, 2010, p105.
475 Section on the tea trade based on Fairtrade Foundation, 2010.
476 Fairtrade Foundation, 2010, p6.
477 Fairtrade Foundation, 2010, p7.
478 Murphy, 2010, p111.
479 Mazoyer and Roudart, 2006, pp13-15.
480 Altieri, 2009, pp104-105.
481 Bello, 2009, p13.
482 Altieri, 2009, p105.
483 Guiney and Lawrence, 1999.
484 Altieri, 2009, p108.
485 Tudge, 2011, p68.
486 Biothai et al, 2001, p5.
487 Biothai et al, 2001, p4.

488 Keats and Wiggins, 2010, p26.

489 Keats and Wiggins, 2010, p26.
490 Patel, 2008, p136.
491 Biothai et al, 2001, p1.
492 Quotes from goldenrice.org (accessed September 2011).
493 GRAIN, May 2013.
494 GM material in Animal Feed, UK Food Standards Agency website www.food.gov.uk (accessed August 2013).
495 GMWatch, 2013.
496 Pearce, 2010, p5.
497 Malthus, 1970, p75.
498 Malthus, 1970, p134.
499 Malthus, 1970, p97.
500 Second Essay, An Essay on the Principle of Population, quoted in Foster, 2002, p143.
501 Lovelock, 2007, p181.
502 Quoted in Pearce, 2010, p56.
503 Pearce, 2010, p57.
504 Pearce, 2010, p242.
505 Marx and Engels, 1934, p199.
506 Woodham-Smith, 1964, p411.
507 Russell, 2005, p226.
508 Davis, 2009, pp25-28.
509 Choonara and Robinson, 2008, p2.
510 Russell, 2005, p212.
511 Pearce, 2010, p151.
512 Pearce, 2010, p117.
513 Pearce, 2010, pp88-89.
514 Tudge, 2011, pp77-78.
515 Tudge, 2011, p76.
516 Foresight, 2011, p166.
517 Foresight, 2011, p15.
518 Tudge, 2011, p67.
519 Holt-Gimnez, 2010, p209.
520 GRAIN, February 2013, pp2, 9.
521 Tokar, 2010, pp125-126.
522 Tokar, 2010, pp127-128.
523 Tokar, 2010, p131.
524 GRAIN, February 2013, pp12-18.
525 GRAIN, 2010, pp140-141.
526 Biofuels Boom in African as British Firms Lead Rush on Land for Plantations, Guardian, 31 May 2011.
527 Tudge, 2011, p49.
528 Material on the MST from Bello, 2009, pp128-131 and Patel, 2008, pp204-214.
529 Patel, 2008, p206.
530 Anrquez and Bonomi, 2007, p9.
531 Anrquez and Bonomi, 2007, p30.
532 Anrquez and Bonomi, 2007, p34.
533 Cliff, 1980, pp11-12.
534 Walford, 2005.
535 Eastwood et al, 2006.
536 Eastwood et al, 2006, pp3-4, particularly chart 2.1.
537 Anrquez and Bonomi, 2007, p10.
538 Eastwood et al, 2006, p43.
539 Bernstein, 2010, p95.
540 Bello, 2009, p65.
541 Bernstein, 2013, p162.
542 Bernstein, 2013, p164.
543 Bernstein, 2010, p94, and Bernstein, 2013, p165.
544 Boltvinik, 2012, p2-3.
545 Boltvinik, 2012, p2.

546 Cliff, 1980, p32.

547 Cliff, 1980, pp32-33.
548 Ratcliffe, 1984, p81.
Chapter 11
549 Ratcliffe, 1984, p82.
550 Ratcliffe, 1984, p87.
551 Quoted in Hoskins, 1971, p222.
552 Ratcliffe, 1984, p90.
553 Pollack, 2010, p165.
554 Pollack, 2010, p168.
555 Marx, 1973, p409.
556 Marx, 1973, p410.
557 Smith, 2010, pp49-50.
558 Smith, 2010, p65.
559 Smith, 2010, p68.
560 Smith, 2010, p66.
561 Smith, 2010, p77.
562 Quoted in Smith, 2010, p77.
563 Smith, 2010, p77.
564 Smith, 2010, p78.
565 Smith, 2010, p79.
566 Smith, 2010, p83.
567 Engels, The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man, 1991, pp348-349.
568 Foster, 1999, p123.
569 Engels, 1991, p348.
570 Material on Bhopal is based on Broughton, 2005, and Kovel, 2007.
571 R Ramesh, Bhopal water still toxic 25 years after deadly gas leak, Guardian, 1 December 2009.
572 Kovel, 2007, p33.
573 Kovel, 2007, p33.
574 Kovel, 2007, p33.
575 Kovel, 2007, p33.
576 Kovel, 2007, p37.
577 Broughton, 2005.
578 Broughton, 2005.
579 Neale, 2008, p227.
580 www.foei.org/en/get-involved/livemore (accessed August 2012).
581 Johnston, 2007.
582 Allen, 2011, p178.
583 Rogers, 2005, p113.
584 Rogers, 2005, p114.
585 Rogers, 2005, p113.
586 London, 1932.
587 Allen, 2011, p179.
588 Marx, 1973, p408 quoted in Rogers, 2005, p112.
589 Marx, 1973, p408.
590 Rogers, 2007, p231.
591 An excellent introduction to Marxs theory of alienation is Swain, 2012a.
592 Marx, 1981, p65.
593 Swain, 2012a, p36.
594 Marx, 1856.
595 Marx, 1981, pp63-64.
596 Marx, 1981, pp70-71.
597 Swain, 2012a, p47.
598 Swain, 2012a, p47.
599 Swain, 2012a, pp52-53.
600 Marx, 1990, p284.
601 Marx, 1978a, p820.

602 Engels, Anti-Dhring, 1877, quoted in Swain, 2012a, p75.

603 UK figures from Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs www.defra.gov.uk.
604 Rogers, 2005, p1.
605 Rogers, 2005, p5.
606 Meikle, 2009.
607 Rogers, 2005, pp136-137.
608 Our History section on KAB website at www.kab.org (accessed July 2011).
609 Corporate and Foundation Partners section on KAB website at www.kab.org (accessed May 2012).
610 Rogers, 2005, pp147-149.
611 Rogers, 2005, pp151-152.
612 Figures from DEFRA, Total UK waste generation by sector at www.defra.gov.uk (note that I have rounded the figures).
613 Easterling, 2003.
614 Madslien, 2010.
615 Figure from the AVERT HIV and AIDS charity.
616 Clark and Clausen, 2008, p100, and Harrington et al, 2005.
617 Marx, 1978a, p101.
618 Marx, 1978a, p101.
619 Brown, 2008, p28.
620 Nikiforuk, 2010, p31.
621 Nikiforuk, 2010, p2.
622 Nikiforuk, 2010, p4.
623 Nikiforuk, 2010, p129.
624 Nikiforuk, 2010, pp3-4.
625 Nikiforuk, 2010, p128.
626 Nikiforuk, 2010, p16.
627 Moerschbaecher and Day, 2011.
628 Nikiforuk, 2010, p191.
629 Klare, 2004, pp28-29.
630 Forbes Fortune 2000 list, 2011 available at www.forbes.com.
631 Klare, 2004, pp56-57.
632 Klare, 2004, p57.
633 Monbiot, 2006, p27.
Chapter 12
634 Reader, 2005, p7, and World Health Organisation www.who.int.
635 Mithen, 2004, p56-61.
636 Reader, 2005, p16.
637 Reader, 2005, p17.
638 Reader, 2005, p20.
639 Childe, 1950, p7.
640 Childe, 1950, p11.
641 Childe, 1950, p12.
642 Reader, 2005, p31.
643 Reader, 2005, pp57-59.
644 Reader, 2005, p89.
645 Reader, 2005, p87.
646 Harman, 1999, p156.
647 Marx and Engels, 2007, p69.
648 Smith, 2010, p182.
649 Cronon, 1991, p218.
650 Cronon, 1991, p116.
651 Cronon, 1991, p255.
652 Cronon, 1991, p92.
653 Dickens, 2000, p18.
654 Engels, 1982, pp301-302.
655 Harvey, 2013, pp6-7.
656 Harvey, 2013, p11.
657 Engels, 1982, p79.

658 Cronon, 1991, p381.

659 Cronon, 1991, p380.
660 Smith, 2010, pp80-81.
661 Hollis, 2013, pp300-301.
662 Hollis, 2013, pp301-302.
663 Hollis, 2013, p324.
664 Harvey, 2013, p5.
665 Douglas, 2007, p39.
666 Smith, 2010, pp231-232.
Chapter 13
667 Pollack, 2010, p140.
668 Pollack, 2010, p140.
669 IPCC, 2007, p5 (emphasis in original).
670 IPCC, 2013, pp127-128.
671 Min, S, et al, 2011, p378.
672 Min, S, et al, 2011, p380.
673 Connor, 2011.
674 Monbiot, 2006, p7.
675 Pollack, 2010, p199.
676 Material on glaciers based on Pollack, 2010, pp199-202.
677 Pollack, 2010, pxi.
678 Pollack, 2010, p202.
679 Pearce, 2006a, p147.
680 Pearce, 2006a, p148.
681 Pollack, 2010, p202.
682 Pearce, 2006a, p148.
683 Pollack, 2010, p184.
684 Dooge, 2004, p15.
685 Neale, 2008, p226.
686 Sharp, 2003.
687 Sharp, 2003.
688 Dorling, 2011, pp150-151.
689 FPH, 2004, p2.
690 Robine, J-M, et al, 2008.
691 Larsen, 2006.
692 The best single explanation of the role of feedback mechanisms can be found in Pearce, 2006a, on which some of this section is
based.
693 Pollack, 2010, p122.
694 Pearce, 2006a, p138.
695 Pearce, 2006a, p139.
696 Pearce, 2006a, p91.
697 Pearce, 2006a, p95.
698 Lynas, 2007, p28.
699 Arago and Shimabukuro, 2010.
700 Arago and Shimabukuro, 2010, p1275.
701 Pearce, 2006a, p95.
702 Pearce, 2006a, p96.
703 Pearce, 2006a, p125. Information on methane warming is from Pearce, 2006a, chapter 16.
704 Peace, 2006a, p126.
705 See Hansen et al, 2008, and Foster, Clark and York, 2010, p426.
706 Rockstrm et al, 2009, p473.
707 Quoted in Foster, Clark and York, 2010, p152.
708 Pearce, 2006b, p33.
709 Pearce, 2006b, p67.
710 Pearce, 2006b, p21.
711 Clark and Clausen, 2008, p108.
712 Clark and Clausen, 2008, p108.

713 Figures and quotes on China from Pearce, 2006b, p169.

714 Paragraph on Libya based on Pearce, 2006b, pp67-71.
715 Pearce, 2006b, p28.
716 Pearce, 2006b, p54.
717 Schenau, 2009, p65. I am indebted to Mark Kilian for help in translating this paper.
718 Information on Bangladesh from Butzengeiger and Horstmann, 2004.
719 Titus, 1990, p3.
720 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sealevel.html.
721 Pollack, 2010, p258.
722 IPCC, 2007, p16.
723 IPCC, 2007, p9.
724 In particular, I recommend Neale, 2008 and 2010a, Monbiot, 2006, and Brown, 2010.
725 Neale, 2008, p25.
726 Brown, 2008, p67.
727 Hansen et al, 2011, p12.
728 2009 figures from the United States Energy Information Administration www.eia.gov.
729 DECC, 2011.
730 Jacobson and Delucchi, 2009.
731 For more on nuclear power and climate change see Empson, 2011, and Caldicott, 2007.
732 Jacobson and Archer, 2012.
733 IPCC, 2011.
734 IPCC, 2011, p142.
735 Greenpeace, 2005.
736 Pryor, 2011, p605.
737 Figures in this section from Neale, 2008, pp91-94.
738 Neale, 2008, pp80-82.
739 Figures from Neale, 2008, footnote 50, pp267-268.
740 Neale, 2008, p80.
741 Monbiot, 2006, p147.
742 Figures obtained from Monbiot, 2006, pp147, 173.
743 Stewart, 2008, p4.
744 Stewart, 2008, p11.
745 Neale, 2010a.
746 Stern, 2006, pxiv.
747 Stern, 2006, pviii.
748 Stern, 2006, pix.
749 Stern, 2006, pxxi.
750 Figures in this paragraph from Monbiot, 2006, pp65-66.
751 Quoted in Empson, 2012, p54.
Chapter 14
752 Monbiot, 2006, pxii.
753 Engels, 1991, p405.
754 Cliff, 1988, p95.
755 Cliff, 1988, p104.
756 Calder, 1992, p444.
757 Calder, 1992, pp447-448.
758 Stern, 2006, pi.
759 For more on the failures of Emissions Trading Schemes, see Lohmann et al, 2006, and Bhm and Dabhi, 2009.
760 Smith, 1991, p116.
761 Albert, 2004, p155.
762 Marx, 1991, pp276-277.
763 Marx, 1991, p272.
764 Marx, 1991, p274.
765 Marx, 1991, p275.
766 Marx, 1991, p282.
767 Trotsky, 1992, p220.
768 Trotsky, 1992, p237.

769 Trotsky, 1992, p238.

770 Murphy, 2007, p48.
771 Murphy, 2007, p47.
772 Murphy, 2007, p47.
773 Murphy, 2007, pp50-51.
774 Murphy, 2007, p51.
775 Cliff, 1980, p33.
776 Fryer, 1986, pp44-45.
777 See Cliff, 1988.
778 Quoted in Kovel, 2007, p225.
779 Foster, 2000, pp226-228.
780 Foster, 2000, p243.
781 Marx and Engels, 2007, p47.
782 Marx, 1978a, p776.

Index

!Kung people of Botswana 23, 25-27

Accumulation 8, 28, 169, 172, 203, 208-212, 242, 280; see also primitive accumlation
Acid rain 207, 212
Admonitions of the Prophet Ipuwer, The, Ancient Egyptian poem 48-49
Advertising Industry 216, 228, 281
Africa 7, 14, 16, 18-20, 21, 23, 27, 36-37, 44, 46, 58, 67, 68, 69, 70, 153, 171, 172, 174, 176, 179,
196-197, 201, 253, 278, 280, 285, drought and famine in 192; lack of Green Revolution 177; small
farms in 181, 202; unfarmed land in 195
Agricultural population, changes in England 124, 135, 136, 139, 141, 144, 146; today 123
Agricultural Revolution, in Antiquity 83; links to Industrial Revolution 144-145; Middle Ages 98100; Neolithic, see Neolithic Revolution; Second 151-152
Agricultural Trade Development Law (US) 176
Agriculture and the rise of class society, see Neolithic Revolution 39-42
Agriculture, centres of origin 30-32; earliest forms 27-28, 29-32; genetic modificationsee
Genetically Modified Organisms; Medieval 98-200; Bronze Age 32-33; open field, see Open field
farming; slash and burn 33-37, 38-39, 82, 83, 113; use of fallow land 40, 82, 83, 90, 92, 99, 125,
145
agrofuels 122; see also biofuels
AIDS 228
Air travel 274-275
Akkadian Empire 51-52, 57
Albert, Michael 289
Alienation 218-223
Amazon 38, 52, 259-260
Americas, arrival of Europeans 60-68;
depopulation post 1492; 65,69, 78 ecological reshaping of 68-81; European perceptions of nature
in 75-76; extraction of gold and silver by Europeans 68-70
An Inconvenient Truth (film) 279
Ancient Egypt, Collapse of Old Kingdom 47-49;
early agriculture 44-46; role of Pharaoh 47-50; strike by tomb makers 49-50
Ancient Greece 66, 117
Ancient Society, Lewis Morgan 11
Antarctica 249, 250, 267
Aral Sea 297
Arch, Joseph, agricultural trade unionist 127
Arctic 14, 252, 258, 261

Arms industry 228

Australia 19, 132, 133, 142, 143, 144, 145, 211, 247, 252
Aztecs 62, 66-70
Ball, John 96
Bangladesh 185, 190, 255, 267, 270
Bemba, slash and burn farmers in Zambia 36-37
Bhopal Disaster 212-215, 288
Big Man, influential figure in tribes 40-41
biofuels, see agrofuels 196-197
Bison, see Buffalo
Black Death 102, 193
Bolshevik party 159, 160, 291, 293, 294, 297
Bone dust, see fertiliser
Boonwork 94
Boxgrove Quarry 16
Brazil, land struggles in 199-200
Bruges 238
Buffalo 31, 58, 59, 60, 61, 240
Canada, see Tar Sands 24, 42, 60,70-75, 133, 144, 187, 231, 232, 252
Capital, Karl Marx 162-163
Capitalism 8, 10, 67, 81, 111-112, 120, 136, 138-140, 157, 162-164, 172, 180, 197-198, 206, 208218, 239-242
Carbon dioxide 148, 230, 231, 235, 248-250, 253, 254, 259, 261-262, 268-269, 270, 273, 287
Cash cropping 36-37, 39, 81, 137, 148, 155, 170-174, 176, 206
atal Hyk 236-237
Charles I, King of England 102-103, 104, 108-109, 110
Charter of the Forest, The 94-95
Chicago 240-241, 243, 247
Childe, V Gordon, Marxist archaeologist 29-30, 237
Chimpanzees 14, 18
China 20,21, 31, 98, 173-174, 181, 227-228, 231, 251, 255, 264-265, 269, 273; failure to make
transistion to capitalism 110; Ming Dynasty 67, 109-110; protests 198; see also He, Zheng
Cities, first 236-239; megacities 236; Roman 238;
sustainability 244-246
Class society, origins of 39-42
Class struggle 50, 118, 120, 245
Cliff, Tony 162, 205, 283-284, 294
Climate change 7-9, 182, 190, 235, 266-268;
definition 247-254; tipping points 260-262
Climate Jobs Campaign 276-278
Clovis people, North America 280

Coal 206, 207, 210, 229-230, 261, 270

Cockaigne 96
Collectivisation 160-162, 294-295
Colonialism 36-37, 41, 57, 61, 62, 65, 67-69, 75-81, 152-153
Columbus, Christopher 62-63, 67-69
Common Agricultural Policy 173
Common Land 91, 94, 103, 104-107, 125-126, 133-138, 140, 157-158
Communist Manifesto, The (Marx and Engels) 112, 118
Condition of the Working Class in England, The (Engels) 242
Copenhagen (UN Climate Conference) 7, 278
Coral 66, 211, 254
Corn Laws 144
Corts, Hernn, Spanish Conquistador 62, 66-68, 69
Cotton 54, 64, 66, 68, 110, 111, 122, 153, 154-156, 162-163, 171, 172, 263, 297
Crofters Act, 1880 132
Cromwell, Oliver 106-108, 110
Crop rotations 90, 92, 144, 161, 175, 183, 194
Darwin, Charles 11
Davis, Mike 154-156, 192
Deforestation 8, 13, 32, 38-39, 76, 78, 82-83, 196, 206, 230, 259, 269
Diamond, Jared 9, 52, 55-56
Dickens, Charles 242
Diggers 107, 108
Domesday Survey 90
Domestication of animals and plants 8-9, 30-32, 44, 59, 109, 122
Dutch Revolt, The 101, 109
Earth Summit 7, 278
Egypt 246, 262, 267, 299; see also Ancient Egypt
El Nio 47, 63
Emissions Trading Schemes 285
Enclosures 10, 91, 101, 104-105, 107, 119, 123, 125-126, 127, 129, 133-138
Engels, Frederick 11, 13, 42, 102, 115, 180, 191, 196, 211, 222-223, 242
English Civil War 103-112, 133, 137
Enlightened farming 183, 198
ExxonMobil 235
Famine 40, 48, 49, 51, 63, 95, 111, 156, 159, 161, 162, 188, 191-193, 195, 213, 248, 282
Fertile Crescent 30-31, 44, 83
Fertiliser 92, 148-152, 167, 168, 175, 178, 182-183, 186, 203, 264
Feudalism 10, 92-04, 101-104, 108-109, 120, 128, 130, 133, 153, 157-158, 208
Fire, use of by early humans 20-21
First World War 85, 145, 157, 159, 291, 293

Fishing industry 130, 228-229, 264, 297

Food Aid 173, 177
Food Crisis, 2006-2008 121, 179-180, 185
Food For Peace 176-177
Forests 18, 19, 34-36,77,84-85, 89, 94-95,125-126, 133-134, 207, 229, 259, 269; see also
Deforestation
Fossil fuels 175, 206, 210, 229-235, 270-272
Foster, John Bellamy 164, 174, 212
Fracking 175, 231, 232
France 70, 97, 99-100, 138-139, 207, 256-257, 290-292
Free trade 178-180
Future of Food and Farming, The (UK government report) 195
Genetically Modified Organisms 183-188
Glaciers 22, 84, 247, 252-254, 257, 258, 262-263, 266
Golden rice 183-186
Gore, Al 279
Green Revolution 123, 176-178, 184, 190, 193, 213
Greenhouse gases, see carbon dioxide 7, 8, 174, 224, 231, 244, 248-251, 268-270
Guano 150-151, 153, 165
Hadza, people of Tanzania 26-27
Hae, Lee Kyung, farming activist in South Korea 162
Hansen, James 261-262, 268-269
Harman, Chris 14-15, 42, 67, 101-102, 109, 111, 112, 119-120, 238-239
Harvey, David 169, 242, 245
He, Zheng, Chinese explorer 67, 110
Heat Waves 252, 256-257, 277
Highland Clearances 127-133
Highland Land League 132
Historical materialism 10, 114-118
Homo erectus 20-22, 43
Homo ergaster 20
Homo sapiens 21-22
Hungarian Uprising, 1956 295-296
Hurricane Katrina, see New Orleans 216-255-257, 282
Hurricanes 182, 251
Ice Age 22, 28, 125, 247, 248, 250, 253
Inca civilisation 62, 63-65; conquest by Spain 64-65, 66, 152
India 7, 11, 51, 58, 67, 68, 109-111, 154-157, 163, 171, 172, 173, 176, 179, 181, 192, 193, 200,
212, 214, 228, 267, 269, 273
Indus Valley Civilisation 44, 51
Industrial Revolution 144, 149, 207, 230, 248, 250, 254, 269

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 250, 261, 268, 271

International Monetary Fund (IMF) 123, 180
Inuit 24
IPAT equation 190-191
Iraq 234
Iron Age 83, 84, 87, 88
Irrigation 37, 40, 45, 46, 50, 51, 63, 65, 109, 155, 173, 237, 297
Japan 111-112, 233, 255
Jericho 236-237
Jesuit missionaries 71-73
Kautsky, Karl 99, 180
Keep America Beautiful 225-227
khatedars 155
Kilimanjaro 253
Klasies River Mouth, South Africa 16
Kyoto Treaty 278
Labour power 15, 136, 139, 162, 217, 219, 211, 221
Land grabs 196, 197
Landless Workers Movement, Brazil 199-200, 204
Latifundia 181
Leacock, Eleanor Burke 24, 71, 72
Lefebvre, Henri 245
Lenin, V I 293; attitude to peasantry 159; on economic development 158, 180, 201; on the land
question; role in creating first nature reserves 297
Levellers 106, 107, 108
Liebig, Justus van 148, 151, 163
Little Ice Age 125, 248, 253
London 76, 103, 106, 109, 138, 165, 219, 275;
sewage 149, 229
Lucy, early proto-human skeleton 19
Luddites 142
Magna Carta 94-94
Malthus, Thomas 188-192
Mammoths 17, 22
Manorial Court 90-91, 92
Marx, Karl 11; on history 10, 13, 114-118; on loss of forest rights 134; on rise of wage labour 136,
139, 140
Maya, society 53-57, 62, 63, 113, 114, 265; Spanish conquest 57, 153
Mesolithic era 16, 84
Mesopotamia 31, 51, 52, 82, 237
Metabolic rift 164, 222, 299

Mexico 53,54, 57, 59, 63, 69, 122, 153, 174, 234
Monbiot, George 173, 235, 280
Monocropping 155, 156, 166, 175, 181, 182, 184, 195, 198
Monsanto 179, 184, 186
Montagnais People (Canada) 24, 42, 70-75, 76, 79, decision making 72; transformation of economy
73-74, 80, 117
MST, See Landless Workers Movement
Napoleonic Wars 129, 131, 137, 140-142, 145, 150
National Agricultural Labourers Union 127
National Energy Policy (US) 233
Natural disasters 214, 182, 214, 252, 255
Neanderthals 22
Neo-liberalism 169-172, 175, 214, 215, 256
Neolithic Revolution 9, 10, 26, 29, 30, 34
Nestl 225
New England, 75-80; Native Americans 25
New Model Army, The 106, 107, 109
New Orleans 214-215, 255, 257
New York 223, 225, 240, 244, 245, 247
Nile, The 43-49. 50
Norfolk Broads 83
Norman Conquest of England 90
North American native peoples 25, 58-61, 70-80, 117
Nuclear fusion 276
Nuclear power 116, 271
Nuer, people of Sudan 28
Obama, Barack 7, 232
Obligated labour 94, 97, 101
Oil 153, 174, 196, 229-235, 266, 273, 274
Olmec, early civilisation in modern Mexico 63
Open Field (Strip) farming 89, 90-92, 93, 98, 135, 137
Organic Farming 182-183, 187
Origin of Species, The (Charles Darwin) 11
Oxfam 177, 278
Pakistan 43, 51, 176, 252
Paris 149, 245, 275
Paris Commune 290-291, 298-299
Parks 243-244, 245, 246
Participatory economics (Parecon) 289
Peasant Revolt 102
Pizarro, Francisco, Spanish conquistador 64, 66

Plankton 254
Planned obsolescence 216,217
Planning 227, 228, 283, 289, during Second World War 166-167, 284; failure of in USSR 283-284;
socialist 286-288
Plough 36, 42-43, 82-83, 90, 97-99, 109, 124,135, 146, 160, 166, medieval 90, 98; mouldboard 9798, 124; scratch or ard 82, 97, 99, 114
Poaching 94, 108, 126, 298
Pollution 54, 116, 196, 207, 212, 244, 253, 263, 264, 285, 288
Poly-culture farming 182,205
Poor Laws 143, 189
Population 188, 193; changes in rural Britain 124, 135, 136, 139, 141, 144, 146; growth 100, 188190
Primitive accumulation 68, 136, 140, 172, 202
Pring, Martin (explorer) 76
Puritans 78
Putney Debates 106-107
Rabbits 84-86, 126, 127, 298
Railways 154, 158, 165, 274, 275
Rainforest 14, 1619, 38, 62, 69, 259, 260
Rebecca Riots 143
Recycling 226, 227, 281
Renewable energy 196, 232, 234, 235, 270-272, 276,281, 288
Roman Empire 117; Britain 87-89; grain supply in 238
Russia 39, 156, 157-162, 180, 193, 234, 252, 257, 283, 284, 296-297; 1905 Revolution 158-159,
292, 296; 1917 Revolution 159, 167, 180, 291-294, 298-299; backwardness of rural economy
157-158; collectivisation 160-162, 294-295; emancipation of the serfs 157, 158; environmental
disasters 297; peasantry 157-162, 180, 293, 294
Rwanda 179
Sahara 262
Second Agricultural Revolution, 151-152
Second World War 123, 144, 166-168, 207, 233, 284
Senegal 122, 195
single crop farming, see monocropping
Slash and burn cultivation 33-37, 38-39, 82, 83, 113
Slavery 69, 70, 117, 153, 192
Small farms 181, 182, 200-205
Smith, Adam 288
Smith, Neil 210, 211, 239, 245
Social Brain Hypothesis 14
Soil erosion 175, 182, 183
Soil fertility 33, 34, 47, 90, 145-152, 163-164, 175, 182, 188, 193, 222

South Africa 7, 16, 195, 278

Spain 62, 68, 153, 187, 199, 238, 255
St Kilda 93-94
Stalin, Joseph 161, 293, 294-295, 296
State, links with origin of class society 41-42
Stern Report, The 277, 285
Stockholm 244-245
Stonehenge 33
Strip farming, see Open field farming
Structural Adjustment Programmes 172
sub-Saharan Africa 172, 192, 201
Subsidies 169, 173-174, 178, 181, 196, 232
Sugar 69-70, 153, 171, 173, 196, 263
Supermarkets 187, 194, 200, 202, 203, 219, 224, 266, 274, 281
Swidden agriculture see slash and burn cultivation
Swing Riots 142
Tanzania 26, 185, 197
Tar Sands 231-232
Tea 122, 171, 179
Tell Leilan, Akkadian city 51-52
Terminator genes 186
Thirty Years War 101, 109
Three Gorges Dam 264-265
Tidal Power 276
Tipping points, see Climate change
Tobacco 59, 68, 110, 122, 153, 171
Tolpuddle Martyrs 143
Tortilla riots, see Food crisis
Town and country, separation 149, 164, 180, 223, 239
Tractor 113, 123, 161, 167-169, 174
Transport, emissions 174, 244, 270, 271, 273-275, 279, 287
Trotsky, Leon 157-159, 292
United Nations Environment Programme 224
United Nations Food Agricultural Organisation 122, 123, 178, 195
United Nations, Climate talks 7, 278, 286
United Nations, Hunger Task Force 193
United Nations, World Food Programme 197
Vegetarianism 194
Via Campesina 199, 204
Vitamin A 184, 185

Wage labour 65, 97, 100-103, 105, 120, 136, 138-140, 153, 154, 155, 239
Waste 149, 195, 206, 210, 212, 216-218, 223-229, 263-265, 272, 281, 282
Water Crisis 262-268
West Indies 62, 68-70
Wheat 29, 31, 44, 45, 121, 122, 123, 135, 140, 141, 144, 145, 147, 154, 156, 166, 171, 173, 175,
177, 193, 195, 227, 241, 263, 265
Wind power 271-272
Winstanley, Gerrard 107-108
Women, changing place in Cherokee society 75
Women, role of in pre-class society 24, 26, 27 42, 71-72
Womens oppression, origin 42-43
World Bank 182, 201, 203, 253
World Health Organisation, 236
World Trade Organisation 169, 170, 171, 173
Wukan, China, 198
Yellowstone National Park 61, 244
Yosemite National Park 244
Zapatista movement 57