Thomas Klikauer

Climate protest

Thomas Klikauer and Meg Young review Hans A Baer's latest book, Climate Change and Capitalism in Australia — An Eco-Socialist Vision for the Future, which invites readers to imagine a world beyond capitalism.

Bullshit Business is about the meaningless language conjured up in schools, in banks, in consultancy firms, in politics, and in the media.

Against Charity
By Daniel Raventos & Julie Wark
AK Press, 2018
294 pages, $16.95

One often hears that we should “give to charity”. Is this a good idea? Daniel Raventos and Julie Wark wrote their view in Against Charity. Admittedly, the title is a give-away.

Charities aren’t new, but in modern capitalist societies, many states have legislated to regulate charities. In this way, “the crumbs from the rich man’s table can safely be given to the poor”.

Night Shift: 270 Factory Stories
David Macaray
CreateSpace Independent Publishing
Los Angeles, 2015
360 pages, US$17.99

David Macaray’s enjoyable and readable Night Shift is an exquisite study of industrial work in a US manufacturing site between the mid-1970s and the mid-’90s. Being a marvel of industrial sociology, it avoids managerialism’s dehumanisation of factory workers — e.g. human resources (HR) and of management studies that turn into an academic research object.

Game of Mates tells the story of two Australian men, the working-class Bruce and the capitalist James — two imaginary but emblematic men with very different lives.

Written by economists Cameron Murray and Paul Fritjers, these two archetypal characters are used to tell the story of economic theft across Australia.

The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas about Living Ethically By Peter Singer Yale University Press, 2015 272 pages Living up to his moral philosophical tradition of utilitarianism, with its “greatest good” principle, Australian philosopher Peter Singer's latest instalment is The Most Good You Can Do. The book — endorsed by software monopolists and corporate philanthropists Bill and Melinda Gates — is based on Singer's “Castle Lecture” at Yale University in 2013.
EM>Socialism & Modernity By Peter Beilharz University of Minnesota Press, 2009 225 pages, $47.95 (pb).
Worth Fighting For — Inside the Your Rights At Work Campaign
By Kathie Muir
University of New South Wales Press
242 pages, $27 (pb)
Corporate and White-Collar Crime
edited by John & Leonard Minkes
Sage
210 pages, $71.92(pb)