Callinicos begins the book by looking at the previous age of catastrophe, specifically the first half of the twentieth century which saw two world wars, the Great Depression, the Stalinist terror, the rise of fascism and the Holocaust.

 

What ties these two periods together is the economic system which underpins them both. As Callinicos emphasizes throughout his book, the multiple crises we are living through - economic, environmental (including the Covid pandemic which is itself the result of agribusiness and the encroachment of humans into natural habitats), imperialist warmongering in Europe – are the result of an economic system based on profit for the few at the expense of the many: 

“Such events cannot be seen as exogenous shocks, as mainstream economics affirms; they rise from a multifaceted structural crisis of the entire capitalist system and, more broadly, of the civilization that fossil capitalism has created. We are living what James Galbraith has called ‘the end of normal’”.

 

The last age of catastrophe ended only through the mass destruction and loss of life caused by World War II. From the post-war period until the early 1970s it looked like capitalism had been able to stabilize itself and provide (at least for workers in the global North) a social safety net and guarantee of income. However, as crisis returned to the system in the early 1970s with the return of recession, unemployment, stagflation, etc. capitalist governments the world over abandoned their flirtation with Keynesianism (the notion that government intervention could forestall crisis) and turned to neoliberalism and the notion that the market must rule, at the expense of the lives and livelihood of workers and the poor.

 

This period has seen growing attacks on public services such as healthcare, education and social housing. In exchancge the world ruling class attempts to shore up their profit margins against the falling rate of profit, predicted by Marx in Capital. But even these savage attacks have not restored health (i.e. profit rates) to their system and there is a world-wide recession looming. 

 

All the hallmarks of the last age of catastrophe are returning with a vengeance:  military conflict that threatens to spill far beyond the borders of Ukraine, the rise of fascism most clearly heralded in the heart of the system by the domination of Trump on the increasingly rightward moving GOP, a debt-ridden economic system that limps from crisis to crisis and is now threatening a world-wide recession. And that recession is already happening for countries in the Global South, as Marxist economist Michael Roberts pointed out in a recent column: 

“Since the end of the pandemic, the sharp rise in interest rates on global debt and a strong US dollar (much of global debt is in dollars) have forced yet more countries to the brink of default on payments and into further poverty.”

 

In the chapter “Revolt and reaction” Callinicos speaks to the increasing polarization the age of catastrophe is bringing: “The neoliberal version of capitalism is breaking down amid a multi-dimensional crisis that is simultaneously economic, (geo)political, and biological. The result is a crisis of hegemony, the decay of the dominant forms of bourgeois rule.”

 

This is nowhere more evident than in the belly of the beast, the US, where we may well see the spectacle of a presidential race featuring a criminal and racist thug who is spawning more of his followers daily and an ineffectual Democratic opponent who pretends to stand for progress but whose party has done nothing to fight the defeat of Roe vs Wade nor to support striking workers and which is stoking the process of a widening war in Europe through NATO expansion and sending deadly arms in a proxy war against Russia.

 

With fascists in power in Italy and Hungary and the rise of the far right in many more places it may seem we are in for some kind of replay of the debacles of the last century. But, Callinicos argues, as did Marx before him, that the outcome is not a foregone conclusion. It depends on what we do and how we organize ourselves.

 

In the depths of the pandemic Black Lives Matter was able to galvanize a multi-racial movement that spread internationally and challenged the foundations of capitalism, built as it is on the erasure and slavery of Blacks, Indigenous people and other colonized peoples. Black Lives Matter also challenged the racist climate created by Trump’s appeal to fascist groups such as the Proud Boys to ‘stand back and stand by’.

 

Similarly, the question of gender is contested territory. The emergence of a proud movement for trans liberation and for the right it has affirmed for individuals to choose their own gender has seen a backlash by both the far right and, unfortunately, by some feminists and some on the left.

 

The far right are using attacks on trans people and events like drag queen story times at public libraries as a way to spread their message of hate and to attempt to divide and conquer. This was brought home by a recent attack on an inclusive school curriculum at a school board office organized by the far right in Ottawa. Members of the Muslim community attended the far-right protest and media got pictures of young Muslim children stepping on Pride flags.

 

The far right in this instance were attempting to make use of Muslim families (whom they have also targeted in their Islamophobic rhetoric and attacks) to further their vicious and increasingly threatening presence at trans- and 2SLGBTQ+ positive events.

 

In this climate feminists who insist that trans women are not ‘real’ women are capitulating to the biology as destiny argument, which was fought against at the beginning of the women’s liberation movement. Gender was seen as a rigid and constricting set of ‘norms’ that limited women’s ability to choose their own futures. This is why it’s tragic that some feminists are capitulating to the same argument when it comes to trans individuals and their right to assert their chosen gender identity. Equally tragic is how it helps the bigots and the right divide and conquer our movements.

 

Callinicos argues that the various environmental movements against climate change and for climate justice are another beacon of hope in the current era of crisis: “These movements are immensely important because they represent a moment of political transition – from despair motivated by the immensity of the threat of climate catastrophe to willingness to take action on a massive scale, together with others.”

 

But, as Callinicos also argues, to win the struggle to save our planet we will need much greater mobilizations, which can really hit capitalism where it lives – in the generation of profits. Andreas Malm points out the folly of expecting capitalist governments and fossil fuel companies to share the sense of urgency of climate activists: “They [the ruling classes of the world] are not perturbed by the smell from the blazing trees. They do not worry at the sight of islands sinking; they do not run from the roar of the approaching hurricanes; their fingers never need to touch the stalks from withered harvests; their mouths do not become sticky and dry after a day with nothing to drink. To appeal to their reason and common sense would evidently be futile. The commitment to the endless accumulation of capital wins out every time.”

 

The level of mobilization required to create a society with new priorities which would not be those of generating more obscene profits for the fossil fuel companies while at the same time moving ever closer to the annihilation of all living things, including human beings, who are a part of the nature that is being destroyed, requires the participation of the world working class. 

 

This class is very much still, as Marx described, the potential gravedigger of the poisonous system he described in Capital. The experience of the pandemic brought home the importance of ordinary workers who kept the system going: the nurses and other health care workers, grocery workers, delivery people, workers in logistics, transit workers, etc. These are the same people who will and are suffering already the consequences of a crumbling system – a system which enriches those at the top but is taking away with both fists any gains that working class people have made – our public healthcare system, our ability to house, clothe and feed ourselves and our families – and which is consigning those in the Global South to even worse poverty, famine and displacement through the twin evils of climate change and the usury of the IMF and World Bank.

 

The New Age of Catastrophe gives a compelling picture of the destructive nature of the economic system we live under. But it ends on a hopeful note, which is  the potential of human beings to organize ourselves to overturn this system and transform it into a socialist society based on human need, not the generation of immense wealth for a tiny minority: “The terrifying prospects we face demand that everyone become part of the struggle to rescue humankind. As the great Irish Marxist James Connolly put it at the start of the first age of catastrophe, ‘the only true prophets are they who carve out the future which they announce.’”