Abstract
Given capitalism, on one hand, and violence, on the other hand, James Tyner wisely refuses to take either of them at face value, especially when they are rendered unto us by the powers that be. For these seemingly self-evident ‘givens’ are in fact produced, reproduced and occasionally contested under very specific historical and geographical conditions. Neither capitalism nor violence is a gift of Nature – not even an accursed gift. To the contrary, they are the fruits of a process of social production. To put it bluntly, capitalism lets bloom the kinds of violence – and criminality – that it desires and deserves, just as it lets bloom its very own special deliriums, disasters and catastrophes. While many wax lyrical about life in contemporary capitalism and the consumer society, usually with an all-too-sweet-and-sickly coating, Tyner persuasively argues that these fruits are rotten to the core, and that the capitalist way of life stinks to high heaven. Indeed, the title of the book could very easily have been The Violence of Capitalism or even Violence for Capitalism. For capitalism: violence. For capitalism not only needs a certain kind of violence – and needless to say its needs are many and its forms of violence are legion – capitalism is also blessed with violence and blessed by violence. Capitalism and violence go hand in hand, and their stench will no doubt linger long after the sun finally sets on their plodding through World History as a veritable carnival of cannibalism.
Now, Tyner gives an essentially Marxist account of the violence that belongs to capitalism – the forms of violence that are not only the property of capitalism but also the forms of violence that are proper to capitalism. And Tyner does a superb job of conveying to the reader the intricacies of the violence in/of/for capitalism in clear and well-illustrated terms, in five chapters that will be readily accessible to a wide-ranging readership, including undergraduate students unfamiliar with academic work on either capitalism or violence or even Marxism. In fact, the book is a wonderful primer on Marxism and its contemporary relevance for Human Geographers. In addition to the typical array of capitalist horrors, and the usual cast of disgusting characters, Tyner is especially sensitive to the forms of violent inaction that are peculiar to capitalism, particularly with respect to redundancy, abandonment and ‘letting die’. For my taste, Tyner’s discussion of the ‘market logics’ that seek to optimize the constellation of actions and inactions that make live and let die in the domain of human health was the best part of the book. I always thought that the notion and measurement of ‘Quality of Life’ stunk, and now I know why.
While there is much that I would quibble with in this book, there is one thing that I enjoyed above all – the overwhelming focus on the contemporary American situation which reminded me not only that capitalist violence is historically and geographically specific, but also that it is astonishingly peculiar. This is not to say that the flavour of capitalism where I live is any more palatable. It’s just a different stench.