A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet

Nature, Money, Work, Care, Food, Energy, and Lives. These are the seven things that have made our world and will continue to shape its future. By making these things cheap, modern commerce has controlled, transformed, and devastated the 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 uprisings, Patel and Moore demonstrate how throughout history, crises have always provided fresh opportunities to make the world cheap and safe for capitalism. At a time of crisis for all these seven cheap things, innovative systemic thinking is urgently required. This book proposes a radical new way of understanding-and reclaiming-the planet in the turbulent twenty-first century.