Ecosocialism and catastrophe

Abstract

Facing Catastrophe is the latest published effort of Carl Boggs, a professor of social science in southern California and the author of numerous books on social theory and on international activisms of various sorts. It’s ultimately a book about the future. To be sure, it’s a book about the present moment, which it characterizes as an “impasse.” So in dwelling on that present moment, it’s a book about approaching that future, such as can only be hazarded a guess. Perhaps we could say it’s a book about how people are not approaching the real future, the one with the disasters up ahead, and going with corporate hegemony, meat-production, resource-extraction, and the “McDonaldized society” instead. The conclusion to the chapter about politics makes the “impasse” result of all of this quite clear. Boggs says: