Mike Davis's Old gods, new enigmas and Peter Harrison's The freedom of things share common concerns about dire threats posed to the earth and humankind by capitalism and global climate change. Both agree, as Davis puts it, that 'the chaos of the Anthropocene is indissolubly linked to the broader civilizational crisis of capitalism' (p. xxii), but questions of what is to be done significantly separate them and their projects. Davis offers the possibility of hope, anchored in historical examples of rebellions and acts of unity found in past labour struggles, while Harrison explicitly refuses to offer hope, staring into the abyss with well-informed notions of the trajectory of our doom.
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