Thursday, August 01, 2024

Malatesta’s Anarchist Views of Elections and Democracy

by Wayne Price

Review of A Long and Patient Work: The Anarchist-Socialism of L’Agitazione 1897—1898; Vol. III of the Complete Works of Errico Malatesta

Errico Malatesta (1853—1932) was a revolutionary anarchist-socialist, well known in his time, widely respected and loved by his comrades, and carefully watched by the police forces of several nations. He was of a generation which included significant anarchist figures, including Emma Goldman, Luigi Fabbri, Pierre Monatte, and Nester Makhno, among others. “Malatesta, whose sixty-year career is little known outside of Italy, stands with Michael Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin as one of the great revolutionaries of international anarchism.” (Pernicone 1993; p.3) He was a comrade of Bakunin and Kropotkin. Unlike either, he lived to see the rise of fascism.

Neither a profound theorist of political economy or philosophy, he was a brilliant theorist of anarchist tactics and strategy. He was also an exceptional propagandist, writing articles and pamphlets in a clear and comprehensible style, understandable to workers and peasants. He participated in union organizing and strikes, also organizing among anarchists, and publishing anarchist newspapers, in Italy and various other countries.

Born to a middle class Italian family, he made his living as an electrician and mechanic. He was imprisoned many times and sentenced to death three times. “Errico Malatesta…ranked as Italian anarchism’s foremost revolutionary.” (Pernicone 1993; p. 202) Due to political persecution in Italy, he spent over half his adult life in exile. He lived in the Middle East, in South America, in the United States, and, for about 19 years, in Britain. Dying at 79, he had spent his last years under house arrest in fascist Italy.

As a young man, he participated in a couple of fruitless little guerrilla attempts to spark peasant rebellions, without first being assured of popular support. He abandoned that for a more thought-out approach, but he never ceased being a revolutionary. Instead he focused on participation in popular struggles, such as union organizing, national rebellions, and other mass movements. He criticized those anarchist-syndicalists who believed that a revolution could be won nonviolently, by “folding arms,” just through a general strike. The capitalists and their state could not be beaten, he insisted, without some armed struggle. Because he was an advocate of popular revolution, however, he did not advocate the bomb-throwing and assassination tactics (“attentats”) of anarchist terrorists.

He was a champion of anarchists organizing themselves into revolutionary federations, rooted in the working class, the peasantry, and all the oppressed. He opposed individualist and anti-organizationalist trends in anarchism. He called his political tendency the “anarchist party,” which definitely did not mean a “party” in the modern sense of a grouping aiming at taking state power.

Malatesta’s overall views may be evaluated in His Life and Ideas (1984). This is a selection of passages from various essays (chosen by V. Richards). Arranged thematically, the book covers the major topics of his anarchism. The more recent (and larger) Method of Freedom (2014) is a selection by D. Turcato of the major writings of his life, arranged chronologically. Turcato has written a biography and an assessment of Malatesta’s ideas, Making Sense of Anarchism (2015). Carl Levy is writing a biography, to be titled, Errico Malatesta: The Rooted Cosmopolitan. Finally, The Complete Works, being organized by Turcato, aims at a ten volume collection of Malatesta’s work, covering his 60 years of political activity. It is an important undertaking and a major contribution to anarchism. (See my earlier reviews: Price 2019; 2024.)

Volume III of the Complete Works was actually the first volume published; Volumes IV and V are out, but Volumes I and II are yet to be published. (As it happens, III is the last one I read, out of order.) It covers 1897 to 1898, when Malatesta was back in Italy, between his years of exile. In these approximately two years, he was the main editor of the anarchist newspaper, L’Agitazione, subtitled Periodico Socialista-Anarchico. By this period, “Malatesta’s intellectual development matured and his anarchist philosophy achieved full expression.” (Pernicone 1993; p. 246)

Most of Vol. III is a collection of his articles from his paper, plus some interviews and reports from other papers. It concludes with the government accounts of official interviews with Malatesta, before he was sentenced to banishment to a prison island.

This review is not an exposition of Malatesta’s full political program. As might be expected, his newspaper covered many topics. However, there was a major emphasis on topics relating to democracy, republicanism, voting, and elections. That is what I will emphasize in this review—plus a little on Malatesta’s views on the origins of anarchism and its relation to Marxism.

The State and Elections

Like all anarchists, Malatesta opposed the state and capitalism (hence “anarchist-socialism”) along with all other forms of oppression (racism, sexism, national oppression, etc.). He denied that the state was neutral between the oppressors and the oppressed. Instead, the state was the main prop and instrument of the capitalist class’ rule over the working class and everyone else. It is the mechanism by which factions of the bourgeoisie settle their disagreements and make decisions. The state is an ideological prop of the system, teaching the people to love “their” king, or to think that they ruled through “democracy,” or other scams. Besides upholding the existing ruling class, the state machinery—its bureaucracy, police, military, politicians, judges, etc.—served its own interests, over and against the rest of society. (So far, this analysis is consistent with that of Karl Marx.)

Unlike Marxists, in the words of Kropotkin, “The anarchists refuse to be a party to the present state organization and to support it by infusing fresh blood into it. They do not seek to constitute, and invite the workingmen not to to constitute, political parties in the parliaments….They have endeavored to promote their ideas directly among the labor organizations and to induce those unions to a direct struggle against capital….” (2002; p. 287)

This remained a central idea of Malatesta’s. It was opposed to the liberal republicans and the reformist democratic socialists who both hoped to use the parliamentary state. The Italian republicans wanted to remove the monarchy. (Before World War I, many countries still had kings besides Italy, including the United Kingdom, Germany, Russia, Turkey, Japan, Denmark, etc.) The king of Italy, while not an absolute dictator, still held much power, which capped a corrupt, bureaucratic, police-ridden, state. Italy did have a parliament, which “represented” less than 7 percent of the population, only males. The democratic socialists (social democrats) also wanted to remove the monarchy and create a more democratic parliament—in order to move towards their conception of (state) socialism.

Malatesta challenged the republicans: What kind of republic do you want? France has a republic, Switzerland has a republic, South America was filled with republican dictatorships. In all these countries the wealthy few dominate the economy and the state. “The republic of the United States…is a swamp of corrupt politicians in the service of millionaires.” (p. 248) “The republic of the United States…being the country where government dependence on the capitalists is at its most complete and blatant.” (p. 310) (This hasn’t changed.)

Is this what you want? he asked the republicans. Does your ideal republic still have land rent, interest, profit? Does it have police, prisons, and a military? If so, your republic is not much better than a monarchy. He challenged the democratic socialists: What good is it to overthrow a monarchy, if you end up with nothing more than a capitalist republic? Is this really closer to socialism? Is a “good parliamentary republic” any more real than a “good king”?

Malatesta was not a sectarian. He worked with the republicans to fight for civil liberties, in opposition to police repression, and “forced residence” of dissidents on prison islands. He worked with the democratic socialists in organizing labor unions and strikes. If either party was to participate in a revolution, he was for a united front with them—without abandoning the anarchist program. But his agreement with either party was negative: they were against the monarchy and he was against the monarchy; but he was not for a republic. The democratic socialists were against capitalism and he was against capitalism, but he was not for a state-run socialism (state capitalism, in practice).

Anti-electoralism was a consistent part of the anarchist-socialist program, from Proudhon, Bakunin, and Kropotkin to Malatesta. But there were occasionally those anarchists who broke away from traditional views. Over the two years of L’Agitazone, Malatesta carried on a debate with Francesco Saverio Merlino. They had been close friends over many years, working tirelessly for Italian and international revolutionary anarchism.

But now Merlino had decided that a variation in anarchism was necessary, namely that they should vote for non-anarchist socialists in parliamentary elections. Malatesta wrote that Merlino had the right to change his mind. But his new views led to violations of anarchism. It would lead to endorsing candidates and participating in their campaigns. If, Malatesta pointed out, you were willing to vote for socialists, why not run for elections yourselves, since your politics are better than the state socialists?

“Protest candidacy,” Malatesta wrote, “…is not ipso facto at odds with our principles…but it is nonetheless leaving the door open to equivocation and compromise. It is the first step on a slippery slope where it is hard to keep one’s footing.” (p. 23)

It was easy for the democratic socialists to keep from engaging in corrupt bourgeois politicking—so long as they don’t get elected or if only a few get elected. They can be just protest candidates, using the elections to make propaganda. But once enough of them are elected to have some political leverage, there will be increasing pressure to make deals and get caught up in the system. The voters who elected them will demand that they provide benefits. They will become….politicians!

Other reasons were raised for running in elections which were specific to Italy. One was the advantage of being a representative in Italy, where they got free railroad passes. Some democratic socialist deputies used this to travel throughout the country, meeting workers and making speeches. Malatesta did not really object to this, “especially when one can be sure that the person elected will not be going on to play the deputy at any price….” (p. 23) But he pointed out how few representatives could keep themselves from also getting involved in parliamentary business.

Also deputies were immune from arrest and imprisonment while serving in parliament. It was repeatedly proposed that the left run imprisoned radicals for parliament. If elected they would be freed from jail for the parliamentary season. They would be able to flee the country if they chose.

This approach was used to free a number of democratic socialists and radical republicans. Malatesta did not begrudge them the use of this trick. He criticized them only if they were to actually get involved in parliamentary politics. But he felt differently for anarchists. When he was stuck on a prison island, several groups of democratic socialists offered to run him as a candidate. With all due respect, he asked them not to nominate him, as it distorted his political message.

From his prison island, Malatesta wrote, “…We anarchist socialists, who believe that the parliamentary tactic is harmful to the growth of the spirit of resistance of the people;…we, who want to educate the people to rely solely on their own organized strength in combatting political and economic oppressors…; we cannot…encourage a method of struggle that drives the people to look in…hope to those ballot boxes that we would like to see deserted and reviled….I therefore request that my name not be used in any of the electoral struggles that socialists and republicans are fighting.” (p. 456-7)

Instead, he advocated a mass movement to demand the end of the system of jailing people on these little prison islands for extended periods. Before being arrested, one of his activities had been organizing such a movement. (He escaped four months later, to a new exile.)

Suppose They Elected a Majority?

Malatesta quoted from an article by Wilhelm Liebknecht, a comrade of Marx’s and a founder of the German Social Democratic Party. “Let’s imagine…that there was a social democratic majority in parliament. What would happen? …The yearned for moment to reform Society and the State has arrived! …A new era is about to dawn!…None of this will come to pass. Instead, a company of soldiers will come up to shoo the majority away, and should these gentlemen not comply immediately, it would require only a few policemen to show them the quickest route to prison….Revolutions are not made with government permission; the socialist ideal cannot be achieved within the compass of the present state, which will have to be done away with before a new-born future sees the light of day!” (p. 31)

Both the Marxist Liebknecht and the anarchist Malatesta recognized that “the socialist ideal cannot be achieved” through elections, and both disagreed with those reformist democratic socialists who did think that voting could bring in a better society. Liebknecht was, nevertheless, in favor of running in elections and building a parliamentary party, as a way to build the present workers’ movement. Eventually he aimed at a revolution for a new, workers-run, state.

Malatesta drew a different conclusion, that of anti-parliamentarianism and electoral abstentionism. Building a parliamentary social democratic party would lead to adaptation to parliament, bourgeois politics, and capitalist society. In practice, it would lead to abandoning original revolutionary goals. And this is exactly what happened to the European social democratic parties!

As for building a revolutionary movement and organization, “why give encouragement to the people’s illusion that they are the makers of the laws and that they can amend them?” (p. 27) “Whenever the people vote, they grow accustomed to looking to Parliament for everything and cease doing things for themselves.” (p. 71)

The democratic socialists argued that there was no reason to worry that their elected members would become corrupted by participating in bourgeois parliaments. This would be prevented by the party’s discipline over them, keeping them on the revolutionary path. Malatesta was not reassured by the Marxists’ proposal of a disciplined, centralized, party. “Is it…a foretaste of the famed ‘dictatorship of the proletariat,’ which would then prove to be the dictatorship of ‘Party’ over people, and of a handful of men over ‘Party’?” (p. 27) This was written before the Russian Revolution and the rise of Leninism and Stalinism.

Malatesta was not only against the existing parliamentary republics. In principle, he opposed any idea of a parliamentary (or congressional) democratic state. He did not like a system where people met every now and then (yearly, every four years, whatever) to chose (by majority vote) someone else to be political for them somewhere far way—while they went back to obeying the laws and doing their jobs. These elected representatives would gather in the capitol and decide how the country would be run—also by majority vote. Meanwhile the people are powerless. And is the majority always right? Does it have the right to impose its will on a minority?

“We anarchists…fight to achieve a society where nobody—majority or minority—has the right to make the law and impose it on others by force, and where, consequently, there should be no place for a parliament or any other legislative power; we…want…the people [to be] organizing the new life of society tomorrow, without waiting…for any orders from above.” (p. 456)

If Not Elections, Then What?

The liberals and democratic socialists asked, If not elections, then what? How will the people assert power against the ruling elites? Or are you waiting for the Great Day, the Final Revolution, which will solve all our problems? What do we do in the meantime?

Malatesta did believe in fighting for reforms and day-to-day qualitative improvements in the lives of the working class, the peasants, and all oppressed. Some improvements could be won and make life better even now; others would not be won but would clarify the gulf between the rulers and the people. But he did not advocate struggle through the parliament or other government structures. He called for methods which encouraged the people to rely on themselves. This included demonstrations, marches, boycotts, and “riots.” Most of all, he supported the formation of labor unions (then called “resistance societies”) and, when possible, strikes to enforce their demands.

In Belgium the workers’ won “universal suffrage” through general strikes by their unions and parties. Malatesta was not interested in their goal of voting-for-all, but he was very impressed by how they won it. Over the years the Belgian workers built a movement which climaxed in national general strikes, effecting all the cities and industries. The Belgian bourgeoisie were forced to grant “universal” voting rights, against their will. It was a reformist victory won through anarchist methods!

(Something similar may be said about the later winning of voting rights for African-Americans in the U.S. South. Anarchist-type methods, of bottom-up decentralized organizing and civil disobedience, were used to win the right to vote—which was then channelled into support for the Democratic Party. I am not denying that the defeat of legal racial segregation was a victory, within the limits of capitalism.)

Malatesta argued that it would have been better if the Belgian workers had used their mass power to force the rulers to grant them improvements directly—instead of winning the right to vote which, at best, would result in electing socialist and liberal representatives who would then fight for such improvements through parliament—indirectly. (Similarly, revolutionary anarchists might have argued for the Civil Rights Movement to put its efforts into organizing unions and self-defense groups which could directly lead to better incomes and living conditions, as well as desegregation.)

To suffering Sicilian peasants, who had gotten little help from government ministries or legislators, Malatesta proposed, “Let them form many strong production cooperatives; let them insist that communal lands and the lands of the latifundists are placed at their disposal; and let them work these lands for themselves, not with an eye to trade, but so that they themselves can consume these products and swap the surplus with workers’ cooperatives that will supply them with whatever industrial products they need. The system is opposed to this….But the system…would give way—if the demands were sufficiently forceful.” (p. 77) At least it would be the basis of a struggle with possibly revolutionary results.

To return to US history: In the ‘thirties, unions were built and social benefits were won through mass strikes, including occupations of factories and fights with police. In the ‘fifties and ‘sixties, Black gains were won through massive “civil disobedience” (law-breaking), demonstrations, and rebellions (“riots”). The movement against the war in Vietnam was most effective through large demonstrations, student strikes, and soldier mutinies. The LGBTQ movement began with the Christopher Street Rebellion, and included the civil disobedience of ACT-UP. The women’s movement was part of all these rebellions. To those who say, If not voting, what else is there? we can point to the effective power of popular movements and non-electoral direct action, again and again. Malatesta would not be surprised.

(However, this is not all Malatesta had to say about voting. See the section below on Democracy and Majority Rule in Anarchy.)

Jacobinism and Marxism

There had been an antidemocratic trend in early anarchism. Malatesta admitted, “…In the [anarchists’] movement early days, there was a strong residue of Jacobinism and authoritarianism within us, a residue that I will not make bold to say we have destroyed utterly, but which has definitely been and still is on the wane.” (p. 335) “All of us, just like the other revolutionary parties, have been more or less jacobins, authoritarian ‘revolutionaries in the old sense of the term,’ that is, people who wanted to impose their program by force.” (p. 366)

That is, there were antidemocratic views among the early anarchists, of seizing power over the people and forcing them to
be free. The anarchists were influenced by the broad movement of capitalist democracy in its revolutionary era. They were heavily affected by the Jacobin authoritarian tradition (although the most revolutionary—and libertarian—trends in the French Revolution were to the left of the Jacobins). (Guerin 1977)

Malatesta does not mention Bakunin here, but refers to him as “Bakunin to whom we anarchists of today trace most directly our lineage,” (p. 296), so certainly he was among the “early anarchists.” Bakunin was known for creating secret societies and conspiracies, often just in his imagination, alongside of his advocacy of free, self-organizing, popular movements. How these tendencies of Bakunin interacted is a matter of great controversy.

To Malatesta, it was the libertarian aspects which won out in the development of anarchism. “…These days the general belief among anarchists is that anarchy…must arise from on-going struggle against all and any imposition, whether in slowly evolving times or in tempestuously revolutionary periods….” (p. 335) Bakunin’s ideas of secret societies was developed into the concept of an organization of revolutionary anarchists, self-managed, autonomous, and federated.

Malatesta blamed much of the authoritarian trend in anarchism on Marx and Marxism. (He does not mention it, but Bakunin was greatly influenced by Marxism even as he opposed Marx.) “…Our mistakes…are in large measure something we owe to marxist theory….” (p. 302) Improvement “…in our thinking and practice…is the result of our jettisoning what little marxism we had embraced.” (p. 336)

Malatesta rejected Marx’s program of achieving socialism through conquest of the state (through elections or revolution). But what Malatesta most disliked about Marxism was its nonmoral determinism. This was the belief that history was following a predetermined path, which was knowable by “scientific socialists,” and which inevitably ended in communism. Malatesta felt that this denied human freedom. Without the will and determination of the workers and oppressed, there would never be libertarian communism. But revolutionaries’ belief in such determinism was bound to become authoritarian, since they “knew” what was good for everyone and how it would turn out. (Malatesta also criticized Kropotkin for similar determinist tendencies.)

While there are disputes over just how determinist Marx actually was, a hard determinist viewpoint dominated among the orthodox Marxists of Malatesta’s time—and after. Malatesta was correct in opposing this. In general, he did not think much of any sort of philosophy. If you came to the same political and social conclusions as he did, Malatesta did not much care how you reached that conclusion. What mattered was what you were for and what you did.

Actually, Malatesta knew little about Marxist theory. For example, he correctly rejected the “iron law of wages,” which said that workers’ real wages could not possibly rise above a set minimum necessary for their survival. No, he wrote, the will of the workers to fight made a real rise in wages possible. He ascribed this wrong theory to Marx, but actually it was an idea of F. Lassalle and rejected by Marx.

However, Malatesta agreed with Marx that workers and their families were the majority of the population, who included those who were most oppressed by capitalist society and those who had the greatest interest in changing it. “…The new revolution simply has to be, chiefly, the handiwork of the organized working class, conscious of the irreconcilable antagonism between its interests and those of the bourgeois class—the formulation, propagation, and conversion of that notion into the driving force behind all modern socialism being Marx’s greatest achievement.” (My emphasis; p. 334)

The reference to the workers being “chiefly” the agent of the revolution is not the same as saying they are the “only” agent— other oppressed forces must also be part of the revolution. The above statement also says that the workers must be “conscious” in order to make a revolution—it cannot be done behind their backs, so to speak, by an authoritarian elite or an invading army.

Those anarchist-socialists (such as myself) who are still influenced by aspects of Marxism can fully agree with Malatesta that this was indeed “Marx’s greatest achievement.”

Democracy and Majority Rule in Anarchy

Malatesta rarely used the term “democracy” in these years. However, references may be found in his works which show his rejection of “democracy.” Specifically, he was in revolutionary opposition to the capitalist states of all parliamentary (“democratic”) republics. And he rejected in principle that the majority should be able to force the minority to follow its orders, any more than the minority should be able to command the majority.

But how would society make decisions in anarchy? And how should anarchists make decisions now? It has been said, “If everyone rules (democracy) then no one rules (anarchy).” If all govern, then there is no government. That is, there is no state standing over the rest of society, separate from the people. But how can everyone “rule”?

It was central to Malatesta’s views that individual freedom was only possible in society, when all people were free and cooperative. Therefore there had to be collective means for resolving disputes, coordinating activities, and making group decisions—means which respected everyone’s freedom but were effective in getting things done. It was not possible for every decision to be made with everyone agreeing all the time on everything (“consensus”). He gave examples of meetings which went on interminably and never reached a conclusion. Too many anarchists, he argued, overreacted in their opposition to the republican state. They came to reject all reasonable group procedures. “…As they had condemned political elections, which only serve to choose a master, they could not use the ballot as a mere expression of opinion, and considered every form of voting as anti-anarchistic.” (p. 17)

Sometimes, he wrote, when there are differences of opinion, people can divide and each side act on their idea and see how it works out. However, when this is not possible or efficient, “where opinion is divided over a matter…they will be handled in accordance with the will of the majority, provided that all possible guarantees are given to the minority—…the majority having neither the right nor the power to command compliance from the minority….” (p. 391)

“…If it is impossible to exactly suit everyone, it is certainly better to suit the greatest possible number; always, of course, with the understanding that the minority has all possible opportunity to advocate its ideas, to afford them all possible facilities…to try to become a majority….But the submission of the minority must be the effect of free will,…must never be made a principle, a law….” (pp. 18-19) Perhaps what is most important is that everyone has an equal chance to participate in the back and forth of discussion, that all voices are heard and taken into account, even those which do not prevail. But that only matters if a conclusion is eventually reached and a decision is made.

This is the basic idea of democracy, also called radical democracy, participatory democracy, or (in face-to-face local groups) direct democracy. Some anarchists say they oppose “democracy,” yet they support “self-management” or “autogestion” or similar terms—which mean the same as democracy. Present-day methods of “consensus” include the possibility of the minority “standing aside” so as to not “block consensus,” that is, to let the majority get its way so as to move on. Malatesta might have approved of this method.

Under anarchy people will experiment with various forms of collective decision-making (whether calling it “democracy” or not) in their communities and at their self-governing worksites. Malatesta expected that a post-revolutionary society would be experimental and pluralistic in all areas, which would include this also. (For debate among anarchists on this topic, see Massimino & Tuttle 2020.)

Conclusion

As I write this, elections are happening in a number of countries, including the United States. In the U.S.A., anarchists may consider how to apply Malatesta’s views to the choice between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. One is a semi-fascist, the other is part of an administration which has, among other crimes, participated in the mass murder of tens of thousands of Palestinians.

Many of Malatesta’s expectations have come true. Most European countries are republics, with a few “constitutional monarchs” who are mainly for show. Undoubtedly it is better and more comfortable to live in a capitalist representative democracy than in an old-style monarchy, let alone a fascist or Stalinist totalitarian state, and easier to do political organizing for anarchists. Still a minority ruling class dominates all countries and is running the world toward disaster. The democratic socialist parties have mostly given up their goals of a new and better society different from capitalism. They have become just liberal reformists at best. This includes most U.S. democratic socialists, such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. Other “socialists” have become dictators and mass murderers or their supporters. As Malatesta said, only the anarchist-socialists were continuing the liberating tradition of revolutionary socialism.

References

Guerin, Daniel (1977). (Trans.: I. Patterson.) Class Struggle in the First French Republic; Bourgeois and Bras Nus 1793—1795. London UK: Pluto Press.
Kropotkin, Peter (2002). “Anarchism” [from the Encyclopedia Britannica]. Anarchism; A Collection of Revolutionary Writings. (Ed.: Roger Baldwin) Mineola NY: Dover Publications. Pp. 284—300.
Malatesta, Errico (1984) (Vernon Richards, Ed.). Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas. London UK: Freedom Press.

Malatesta, Errico (2014) (Davide Turcato, Ed.) (Paul Sharkey, Trans.). The Method of Freedom; An Errico Malatesta Reader. Oakland CA: AK Press. 

Malatesta, Errico (2015). (Davide Turcato, Ed.) (Paul Sharkey, Trans.). Making Sense of Anarchism. Errico Malatesta’s Experiments with Revolution. 1889—1900. Oakland CA: AK Press.
Malatesta, Errico (2016). (David Turcato, Ed.) (Paul Sharkey, Trans.) A Long and Patient Work: The Anarchist-Socialism of L’Agitazione 1897—1898; Vol. III of the Complete Works of Errico Malatesta. Oakland CA: AK Press.
Massimino, Cory, & Tuttle, James (Eds.). (2020). Anarchy and Democracy: Discussing the Abolition of Rulership. The Center for a Stateless Society Mutual Exchange. Kindle Direct Publishing.
Pernicone, Nunzio (1993). Italian Anarchism 1864—1892. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.
Price, Wayne (2019). The Revolutionary Anarchist-Socialism of Errico Malatesta: Review of Towards Anarchy; Malatesta in America 1899—1900. The Complete Works of Errico Malatesta; Vol. IV.
https://www.anarkismo.net/article/31632?search_text=Wayne+Price
Price, Wayne (2024). Malatesta’s Revolutionary Anarchism in British Exile; Review of The Armed Strike: The Long London Exile of 1900—13.  The Complete Works of Errico Malatesta.  Vol. V. 
https://www.anarkismo.net/article/32862?search_text=Wayne

*written for Black Flag: Anarchist Review

 

Cosmic Anarchy and the Law of Increasing Complexity

Cosmic Anarchy and the Law of Increasing Complexity

From The Commoner UK by Simoun Magsalin

If the entire universe follows laws of natural selection, what could this mean for anarchy?

Last year, a curious paper was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Wong et al. (2023) entitled “On the roles of function and selection in evolving systems.” This team of scientists and philosophers theorized a ‘law of increasing functional information’ or the law of increasing complexity. The new natural law states: ‘The functional information of a system will increase (i.e. the system will evolve) if many different configurations of the system undergo selection for one or more functions.’ This law is proposed to be at parity with other natural laws like the laws of motion, thermodynamics, gravitational attraction, and electromagnetism.

The authors further argue that there seem to be common elements in evolving systems that constitute a natural law, to which evolution and natural selection belong. According to Wong and co-authors, evolving systems refer to a ‘collective phenomenon of many interacting components that displays a temporal increase in diversity, distribution, and patterned behavior,’ which includes not only life on Earth, but also abiotic (‘nonliving’) processes like how the atmosphere is created and maintained, how minerals form and diversify, and how stars emerge from hydrogen fusion, leading to heavier matter.

Evolving systems have three main characteristics: component diversity, configurational exploration, and selection. A system has multiple interacting units (component diversity) that spontaneously configure themselves through various processes (chemical, thermodynamic, gravitational, of course, biological) which results in multiple new configurations. These configurations are then selected based on stability, patterned behavior, or function. Through this lens, the law of increasing functional information is the law of evolution applied to all physical matter. According to this proposed law, matter in the universe can and will diversify and complexify in new configurations and these configurations will be naturally selected for depending on the viability and stability of the configuration or pattern. Of course, the paper also outlines ways by which this natural selection is interrupted through phenomena such as supernovae, planetary freezing, or mass extinction events.

Anarchists such as Peter Kropotkin and Murray Bookchin applied scientific inquiry to liberatory politics. In the same tradition, perhaps we can ask: what could the law of increasing complexity tell us about social and political life?

Cosmic Anarchy

Let us return to a story about the universe. At one point in time, there was a singularity — everything in the known universe compressed into a single point — and then it became everything we see today. A great Big Bang ordered the universe, an anarchy of energy and expansion, of space and time, of matter and antimatter. Then the stars were born, they lived, they died, and they reproduced (in that order). In the molten cores of the first suns fused the material needed for later suns, planets, and eventually, life. This whole cosmic dance is organized anarchically — if only because hierarchy and domination have no physical equivalent in the cosmos. 

In reflecting on this cosmic anarchy, we can deduce a few things. First, we learn that the cosmic order of the universe tends toward greater and greater complexity. Second, we learn that this complexity is ordered spontaneously. Stars spontaneously fuse helium and heavier elements in their cores. Meanwhile, similar spontaneity constellates the stars into galaxies and forms and seeds worlds.

These two law-like generalizations — complexity and spontaneity — also order life as we know it. What is life but the self-reproduction of chemical reactions? At one point in the history of this great Earth, chemical reactions began self-reproducing spontaneously and into greater and greater complexity until it became life. This is abiogenesis

Cosmic anarchy, then, is not merely a normative theory (i.e. what should be) but descriptive (i.e. what is). In its descriptive aspect, it suggests that the natural order of the cosmos is anarchic in nature, precisely because hierarchy and domination have no physical equivalent and that complexity and spontaneity is what prevails in the natural order of the universe. 

Later on, life became sapient — humanity. For hundreds of thousands of years, humanity lived in the same cosmic anarchy where complexity and spontaneity reigned. As far as we can tell, precursor species to humanity were already social. There does not seem to have been a time that humans lived in a ‘war of all against all,’ like a Hobbesian ‘state of nature.’

Humanity experimented widely by taking on and rejecting all kinds of social forms. They created everything from small tribes to confederations, free cities, anarchic and kingless societies. Some human societies would settle and create metropolises, only to be later abandoned when that organizational form became untenable — making it incorrect to assert that cities and urbanization somehow constitute ‘more advanced’ modes of organization over other (sometimes nomadic) forms. Whether as urban, pastoralist, or nomadic cultures, human societies bring with them past forms — functional information — and add it to the repertoire of current social forms in increasing complexity. 

When it comes to the natural world, Murray Bookchin reminds us that humanity has the unique ability to nurture and cultivate our natural and social environments, to consciously direct the fecundity and diversity of life on the planet. In this sense, humanity is unique in the cosmic history in the universe in that we are the only known beings with the ability to consciously and actively choose to develop our ecological and social environs to be more fecund, diverse, and complex, to consciously direct the cosmic order towards more complex (or perhaps information-dense) forms of life and living. 

Hierarchy

It was only quite recently in the some thirteen odd billion years of existence that the order of cosmic anarchy became punctuated by hierarchy, by the violent imposition of a rival order, by simplification under the command of a few. Yet it was not inevitable. Just as specific historical circumstances led to life on Earth (maybe something to do with the Moon and its tides, tectonic plates, solar energy, and raw power of lighting), specific historical circumstances led to the formation of hierarchy and its slow generalization towards the entire world.

Hierarchy may follow similar rules of complexification and diversification as it takes a variety of social forms. Some may be stateless societies with slavery, others large empires with various castes and gradients of power and privilege, still even others having a mix of egalitarian and hierarchical relations. But hierarchy and domination remain a rival order to the cosmic anarchic order in the universe. 

Hierarchies may be able to diversify in their own way, but hierarchical and domineering forms of social organization still function to simplify rather than complexify the world. Spontaneous action might even bring about the creation of hierarchies — consider Murray Bookchin’s postulation that reverence to elders might dialectically bring about gerontocracy and then later other forms of hierarchy — but once established, these hierarchies will inevitably act against spontaneity in favor of securing their own domination. 

Indeed, both hierarchy and domination deprive us of the vast repertoire of social forms available to human society. Hierarchy and domination are also agents for erasure of memory, forced conversion of religion, and genocide that actively simplify the world in defiance of the natural tendency towards complexification. In this sense, hierarchy simplifies the world and destroys various functional information created in the vast diversity of human society and the natural world. We need only to remember how the Spanish conquistadors burned the vast libraries of Mesoamerica, their forced conversions of conquered peoples, and the mass death they brought to the colonized. Not merely content with genocide, hierarchy also actively destroys the functional information of the natural world through ecocide — mass death of another level.

Entropy

Despite the rival order of suffering and simplification brought about by hierarchy, there is another law-like generalization of the universe, of cosmic anarchy: entropy and decay. A star reaches its breaking point and goes supernova, thereby releasing its matter into the universe, birthing new stars, and ultimately birthing life as we know it — are we not stardust? Just in the same way a tree falls in the forest; it dies, it rots, it is consumed by fungi and bacteria, and then the decay gives birth to new life. Here we see entropy spontaneously giving way to complexity, and the cycle continues anew. This is not to say that entropy is a normative value — again, it is merely a description — it merely is, and forms part of, the anarchic order of the cosmos. 

What entropy ultimately suggests is that hierarchy was not always here and will not always be here. Hierarchy is untenable in the long term. Great empires descended into ruin in the Bronze Age Collapse, the Roman Empire fell, and the great Chinese empires stagnated and dissipated. Even our current world order has an ending that everyone today is aware of: the threat of humanity-wide collapse due to the climate crisis. The question being is if we control and complement the entropy and survive it, or if it all comes crashing down around us. 

In the historical experiences of imperial decay, humanity finds and creates new niches and ultimately creates new functional information, like how the death of empires can give birth to republics. Some forms of functional information, like the Roman industry of creating garum, was historically contingent on certain forms of human organization and would fall apart under different contingencies. Hierarchy makes possible certain technologies of power that would otherwise be impossible. Roman nobility would eat nightingale’s tongues as a delicacy, a dish unthinkable to create today. Or perhaps, industrial society today makes possible nuclear energy or vast fossil fuel extraction, feats impossible under earlier forms of human organization. 

But the decay of hierarchy would make possible other free social forms that would otherwise be impossible under hierarchy, like communism. We will lose some functional information from hierarchical modes of living, many of which will not be missed. After all, what possible nostalgia could emerge from the loss of the functional information of insurance and stock markets? Humanity only stands to gain new functional information from its decay, much like how death and decay can lead to new life in complement — rather than in conflict — with the cosmic order.

The ultimate destiny of the universe is where the complexity and spontaneity of all this develops and decays to a point where the universe dies in heat death, unable to further complexify and only decay. Such is also the ultimate fate of hierarchy: it will morph, transform (sometimes spontaneously), but it will decay. The natural order of cosmic anarchy will resume. Whether humanity will live to see it is another question altogether. 

Sapience

So what now? Humanity is, as far as we know, unique in all of existence in having been endowed with sapience. We are creatures of the universe with the ability to be conscious of our existence in the universe. If, as Murray Bookchin reminds us, ‘humanity is nature rendered self-conscious,’ we can perhaps also say that humanity is the universe rendered self-conscious.

When colonizers reached the so-called Americas, they found a land of unparalleled bounty. They were unaware that the complexity and fecundity of the land’s bounty did not exist just as it was, but was actively, spontaneously, and intentionally nurtured and cultivated by a keystone species: humanity. In many parts of the world today, Indigenous peoples continue to fill the keystone ecological niche vital to the continuing complexity of the ecosystems they belong to. This is the greatest blessing of humanity: that we are endowed with the ability to consciously enrich the complexity of the universe.

We, as humanity, have the ability to nurture and cultivate the spontaneity and complexity of the universe, to direct decay towards further spontaneity and complexity, to fully realize the order of cosmic anarchy. This is then the normative aspect of cosmic anarchy: that humanity can once again choose to act not only in a complimentary manner to the cosmic anarchic order of the universe, but also to enhance it and consciously complexify the universe by adding novel functional information into the overall system.

However, like how environmental circumstances can limit the generation of new configurations in the law of increasing complexity, humanity actively limits the generation of new configurations through mass violence on ecology and on humanity itself. Humanity is rapidly decaying the world, decomplexifying it into monotones, monocrops, monocultures, and monotheisms. Genocides simplify the world. Like how a monocrop decomplexifies an ecosystem, conquests and forced conversions have made the world more progressively uniform over the multiplicity of human culture and spirituality. It was the ‘end of history,’ as some have claimed, as we transitioned into one (homogenous) kind of social form of organization with ‘liberal-democratic’ capitalism.

Species-Choice

There is only one cosmic inevitability in this universe and it is decay.

We are now faced with a choice: either we use our sapience to enrich the natural world and restore the balance of cosmic and social anarchy, or it shall be imposed upon us by the order of the universe. As many have suggested within the degrowth movement, the end of growth (read: domination) is inevitable; it is merely our collective species-choice if it is controlled degrowth or full collapse. Indeed, it is a choice before us as a species if we can complement nature’s tendency towards complexity or continue to act against it at our collective peril. 

If the order of cosmic anarchy is imposed upon us through the unsustainability of hierarchy and domination, all that we recognize of this beautiful world will be gone in self-destruction, and life and the universe will continue on without us. Without us, the universe would lose its self-awareness.

The choice has always been, as Murray Bookchin presciently noted, anarchy or annihilation.

Author’s Note

This essay was first drafted before “On the roles of function and selection in evolving systems” was published. It was first drafted with key insights and lessons learned from both anthropology and dialectical naturalism from thinkers like Peter Kropotkin, David Graeber, and Murray Bookchin. Peter Kropotkin, and Élisée Reclus, grounded their anarchism in a tradition of scientific inquiry, or the grounding of radical politics in the sciences. Kropotkin, for example, connected his observations of mutual aid among animals and humans to the theory of evolution. In this sense, we can think of the story of cosmic anarchy and the choices before us as being likewise informed by the new sciences of today, particularly by this proposed law of increasing complexity.

Special thanks as well to Samuel and Søren for reviewing and suggesting expansions to this text!

 

Laundering carbon — The Gulf’s ‘new scramble for Africa’

Published 
Kenyatta Ngusilo (C), a member of the Ogiek community, watches as his storehouse burns in Sasimwani Mau Forest, 2023. Hundreds of Ogiek people were left homeless after the Kenyan government evicted alleged encroachers.

First published at MERIP.

In early November 2023, shortly before the COP28 summit opened in Dubai, a hitherto obscure UAE firm attracted significant media attention around news of their prospective land deals in Africa.

Reports suggested that Blue Carbon — a company privately owned by Sheikh Ahmed al-Maktoum, a member of Dubai’s ruling family — had signed deals promising the firm control over vast tracts of land across the African continent. These deals included an astonishing 10 percent of the landmass in Liberia, Zambia and Tanzania, and 20 percent in Zimbabwe. Altogether, the area equalled the size of Britain.

Blue Carbon intended to use the land to launch carbon offset projects, an increasingly popular practice that proponents claim will help tackle climate change. Carbon offsets involve forest protection and other environmental schemes that are equated to a certain quantity of carbon “credits.” These credits can then be sold to polluters around the world to offset their own emissions. Prior to entering into the negotiations of the massive deal, Blue Carbon had no experience in either carbon offsets or forest management. Nonetheless the firm stood to make billions of dollars from these projects.

Environmental NGOs, journalists and activists quickly condemned the deals as a new “scramble for Africa” — a land grab enacted in the name of climate change mitigation. In response, Blue Carbon insisted the discussions were merely exploratory and would require community consultation and further negotiation before formal approval.

Regardless of their current status, the land deals raise concerns that indigenous and other local communities could be evicted to make way for Blue Carbon’s forest protection plans. In Eastern Kenya, for example, the indigenous Ogiek People were driven out of the Mau Forest in November 2023, an expulsion that lawyers linked to ongoing negotiations between Blue Carbon and Kenya’s president, William Ruto. Protests have also followed the Liberian government’s closed-door negotiations with Blue Carbon, with activists claiming the project violates the land rights of indigenous people enshrined within Liberian law. Similar cases of land evictions elsewhere have led the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Francisco Calí Tzay, to call for a global moratorium on carbon offset projects.

Beyond their potentially destructive impact on local communities, Blue Carbon’s activities in Africa point to a major shift in the climate strategies of Gulf states. As critics have shown, the carbon offsetting industry exists largely as a greenwashing mechanism, allowing polluters to hide their continued emissions behind the smokescreen of misleading carbon accounting methodologies while providing a profitable new asset class for financial actors. As the world’s largest exporters of crude oil and liquified natural gas, the Gulf states are now positioning themselves across all stages of this new industry — including the financial markets where carbon credits are bought and sold. This development is reconfiguring the Gulf’s relationships with the African continent and will have significant consequences for the trajectories of our warming planet.

False accounting and carbon laundering

There are many varieties of carbon offset projects. The most common involves the avoided deforestation schemes that make up the bulk of Blue Carbon’s interest in African land. In these schemes, land is enclosed and protected from deforestation. Carbon offset certifiers — of which the largest in the world is the Washington-based firm, Verra — then assess the amount of carbon these projects prevent from being released into the atmosphere (measured in tons of CO2). Once assessed, carbon credits can be sold to polluters, who use them to cancel out their own emissions and thus meet their stated climate goals.

Superficially attractive — after all, who doesn’t want to see money going into the protection of forests? — such schemes have two major flaws. The first is known as “permanence.” Buyers who purchase carbon credits gain the right to pollute in the here and now. Meanwhile, it takes hundreds of years for those carbon emissions to be re-absorbed from the atmosphere, and there is no guarantee that the forest will continue to stand for that timeframe. If a forest fire occurs or the political situation changes and the forest is destroyed, it is too late to take back the carbon credits that were initially issued. This concern is not simply theoretical. In recent years, California wildfires have consumed millions of hectares of forest, including offsets purchased by major international firms such as Microsoft and BP. Given the increasing incidence of forest fires due to global warming, such outcomes will undoubtedly become more frequent.

The second major flaw with these schemes is that any estimation of carbon credits for avoided deforestation projects rests on an imaginary counterfactual: How much carbon would have been released if the offset project were not in place? Again, this estimate depends on an unknowable future, opening up significant profit-making opportunities for companies certifying and selling carbon credits. By inflating the estimated emissions reductions associated with a particular project, it is possible to sell many more carbon credits than are actually warranted. This scope for speculation is one reason why the carbon credit market is so closely associated with repeated scandals and corruption. Indeed, according to reporting in the New Yorker, after one massive carbon fraud was revealed in Europe, “the Danish government admitted that eighty per cent of the country’s carbon-trading firms were fronts for the racket.”1

These methodological problems are structurally intrinsic to offsetting and cannot be avoided. As a result, most carbon credits traded today are fictitious and do not result in any real reduction in carbon emissions. Tunisian analyst Fadhel Kaboub describes them as simply “a licence to pollute.”2 One investigative report from early 2023 found that more than 90 percent of rainforest carbon credits certified by Verra were likely bogus and did not represent actual carbon reductions. Another study conducted for the EU Commission reported that 85 percent of the offset projects established under the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism failed to reduce emissions. A recent academic study of offset projects across six countries, meanwhile, found that most did not reduce deforestation, and for those that did, the reductions were significantly lower than initially claimed. Consequently, the authors conclude, carbon credits sold for these projects were used to “offset almost three times more carbon emissions than their actual contributions to climate change mitigation.”3

Despite these fundamental problems — or perhaps because of them — the use of carbon offsets is growing rapidly. The investment bank Morgan Stanley predicts that the market will be worth $250 billion by 2050, up from about $2 billion in 2020, as large polluters utilize offsetting to sanction their continued carbon emissions while claiming to meet net zero targets. In the case of Blue Carbon, one estimate found that the amount of carbon credits likely to be accredited through the firm’s projects in Africa would equal all of the UAE’s annual carbon emissions. Akin to carbon laundering, this practice allows ongoing emissions to disappear from the carbon accounting ledger, swapped for credits that have little basis in reality.

Monetizing nature as a development strategy

For the African continent, the growth of these new carbon markets cannot be separated from the escalating global debt crisis that has followed the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. According to a new database, Debt Service Watch, the Global South is experiencing its worst debt crisis on record, with one-third of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa spending over half their budget revenues on servicing debt. Faced with such unprecedented fiscal pressures, the commodification of land through offsetting is now heavily promoted by international lenders and many development organizations as a way out of the deep-rooted crisis.

The African Carbon Markets Initiative (ACMI), an alliance launched in 2022 at the Cairo COP27 summit, has emerged as a prominent voice in this new development discourse. ACMI brings together African leaders, carbon credit firms (including Verra), Western donors (USAID, the Rockefeller Foundation and Jeff Bezos’ Earth Fund) and multilateral organizations like the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. Along with practical efforts to mobilize funds and encourage policy changes, ACMI has taken a lead role in advocating for carbon markets as a win-win solution for both heavily indebted African countries and the climate. In the words of the organization’s founding document, “The emergence of carbon credits as a new product allows for the monetization of Africa’s large natural capital endowment, while enhancing it.”4 

ACMI’s activities are deeply tied to the Gulf. One side to this relationship is that Gulf firms, especially fossil fuel producers, are now the key source of demand for future African carbon credits. At the September 2023 African Climate Summit in Nairobi, Kenya, for example, a group of prominent Emirati energy and financial firms (known as the UAE Carbon Alliance) committed to purchasing $450 million worth of carbon credits from ACMI over the next six years. The pledge immediately confirmed the UAE as ACMI’s biggest financial backer. Moreover, by guaranteeing demand for carbon credits for the rest of this decade, the UAE’s pledge helps create the market today, driving forward new offset projects and solidifying their place in the development strategies of African states. It also helps legitimize offsetting as a response to the climate emergency, despite the numerous scandals that have beset the industry in recent years.

Saudi Arabia is likewise playing a major role in pushing forward carbon markets in Africa. One of ACMI’s steering committee members is the Saudi businesswoman, Riham ElGizy, who heads the Regional Voluntary Carbon Market Company (RVCMC). Established in 2022 as a joint venture between the Public Investment Fund (Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund) and the Saudi stock exchange, Tadawul, RVCMC has organized the world’s two largest carbon auctions, selling more than 3.5 million tons worth of carbon credits in 2022 and 2023. 70 percent of the credits sold in these auctions were sourced from offset projects in Africa, with the 2023 auction taking place in Kenya. The principal buyers of these credits were Saudi firms, led by the largest oil company in the world, Saudi Aramco.

The Emirati and Saudi relationships with ACMI and the trade in African carbon credits illustrate a notable development when it comes to the Gulf’s role in these new markets. Beyond simply owning offset projects in Africa, the Gulf states are also positioning themselves at the other end of the carbon value chain: the marketing and sale of carbon credits to regional and international buyers. In this respect, the Gulf is emerging as a key economic space where African carbon is turned into a financial asset that can be bought, sold and speculated upon by financial actors across the globe.

Indeed, the UAE and Saudi Arabia have each sought to establish permanent carbon exchanges, where carbon credits can be bought and sold just like any other commodity. The UAE set up the first such trading exchange following an investment by the Abu Dhabi-controlled sovereign wealth fund, Mubadala, in the Singapore-based AirCarbon Exchange (ACX) in September 2022. As part of this acquisition, Mubadala now owns 20 percent of ACX and has established a regulated digital carbon trading exchange in Abu Dhabi’s financial free zone, the Abu Dhabi Global Market. ACX claims the exchange is the first regulated exchange of its kind in the world, with the trade in carbon credits beginning there in late 2023. Likewise, in Saudi Arabia the RVCMC has partnered with US market technology firm Xpansiv to establish a permanent carbon credit exchange set to launch in late 2024.

Whether these two Gulf-based exchanges will compete or prioritize different trading instruments, such as carbon derivatives or Shariah-compliant carbon credits, remains to be seen. What is clear, however, is that major financial centers in the Gulf are leveraging their existing infrastructures to establish regional dominance in the sale of carbon. Active at all stages of the offsetting industry—from generating carbon credits to purchasing them—the Gulf is now a principal actor in the new forms of wealth extraction that connect the African continent to the wider global economy.

Entrenching a fossil-fuelled future

Over the past two decades, the Gulf’s oil and especially gas production has grown markedly, alongside a substantial eastward shift in energy exports to meet the new hydrocarbon demand from China and East Asia. At the same time, the Gulf states have expanded their involvement in energy-intensive downstream sectors, notably the production of petrochemicals, plastics and fertilizers. Led by Saudi Aramco and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, Gulf-based National Oil Companies now rival the traditional Western oil supermajors in key metrics such as reserves, refining capacity and export levels.

In this context — and despite the reality of the climate emergency — the Gulf states are doubling down on fossil fuel production, seeing much to be gained from hanging on to an oil-centered world for as long as possible. As the Saudi oil minister vowed back in 2021, “every molecule of hydrocarbon will come out.”5 But this approach does not mean the Gulf states have adopted a stance of head-in-the-sand climate change denialism. Rather, much like the big Western oil companies, the Gulf’s vision of expanded fossil fuel production is accompanied by an attempt to seize the leadership of global efforts to tackle the climate crisis.

One side to this approach is their heavy involvement in flawed and unproven low carbon technologies, like hydrogen and carbon capture. Another is their attempts to steer global climate negotiations, seen in the recent UN climate change conferences, COP27 and COP28, where the Gulf states channelled policy discussions away from effective efforts to phase out fossil fuels, turning these events into little more than corporate spectacles and networking forums for the oil industry.

The carbon offset market should be viewed as an integral part of these efforts to delay, obfuscate and obstruct addressing climate change in meaningful ways. Through the deceptive carbon accounting of offset projects, the big oil and gas industries in the Gulf can continue business as usual while claiming to meet their so-called climate targets. The Gulf’s dispossession of African land is key to this strategy, ultimately enabling the disastrous specter of ever-accelerating fossil fuel production.

Adam Hanieh is a professor of political economy and global development at the University of Exeter’s Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies. His forthcoming book is Crude Capitalism: Oil, Corporate Power, and the Making of the World Market (Verso, September 2024).