History of the World in Seven Cheap Things

A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet

paperback, 312 pages

Published July 30, 2018 by University of California Press.

ISBN:
978-0-520-29993-1
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4 stars (1 review)

Nature, money, work, care, food, energy, and lives: these are the seven things that have made our world and will shape its future. In making these things cheap, modern commerce has transformed, governed, and devastated Earth. In A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things, Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore present a new approach to analyzing today’s planetary emergencies. Bringing the latest ecological research together with histories of colonialism, indigenous struggles, slave revolts, and other rebellions and uprisings, Patel and Moore demonstrate that throughout history, crises have always prompted fresh strategies to make the world cheap and safe for capitalism. At a time of crisis in all seven cheap things, innovative and systemic thinking is urgently required. This book proposes a radical new way of understanding—and reclaiming—the planet in the turbulent twenty-first century.

(source: University of California Press)

1 edition

Historical background to "Less is More"

4 stars

I'm pretty sure I requested this from the library because it was referred to in "Less is More", and I think it works well to provide a more detailed historical background to that book, with the degrowth economics/politics stripped out. Suffers a little bit from the framing as capitalism has to be explained in terms of the cheapness of seven things, and that feels more natural in some chapters than others. The conclusion didn't really work for me, but if you skip that, it probably works pretty well as a "this is how capitalism has created the conditions for its dominance" book.