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wanderinggoy's review against another edition
3.0
Nice ideas. Twenty years on, they haven’t materialised.
unisonlibrarian's review against another edition
5.0
Rather than being a book about teenage promiscuity, the subtitle of this book is “A Manifesto for a New World Order”. As with many books of this nature it begins by trying to shock the reader, claiming that “Marx was wrong”, and “Marx laid the blueprint for Stalinist tyranny in the Communist Manifesto”. Despite this the author then goes on to explain his own manifesto which confirms many of the things Marx spoke of, such as egalitarianism and the withering away of the nation state. However, this was not a dissection of Marxist philosophy and so should not be viewed as one in the summing up.
There are some fantastic ideas here to foment revolution to bring the poor and rich closer together, financially, geographically and metaphysically. Not least a World Parliament without assumption on elected officials. No presumption is given to which way people will vote, but the essential point is that democracy should be the driving force between any real change in global governance. As it is today, the distorted voting that goes on in the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund and The UN Security Council among many others, are blatantly loaded in favour of the rich, developed mainly Western nations by whom these bodies were created.
There is an interesting chapter rescuing Keynes from Keynesian thought and the Bretton Woods process and some sterling propositions on financial security which proves that capitalism as it stands and was created will eventually destroy itself (written before the crash of 2008/09). One of the most thought provoking areas of the book was the current trend towards coercion by the IMF towards third world countries to liberalise their economies to provide growth and national prosperity. Monbiot goes on to prove that almost all the rich nations grew their economies through violent protectionism and only sought to liberalise their own economies once completely they were completely secure. The nature of liberalisation in the modern vernacular is to strip a country of national wealth and resources, giving them to private companies based overseas, who themselves as independent of the nation states in which they are based, continue an uninterrupted localised protectionism.
Things must change, and Monbiot bemoans the emotions he stirs at the end of the book. Far from want us to think things should change, the author wants us to do something to change things, to involve ourselves in change and immerse ourselves in his manifesto alongside other forms of activism and to do something, try and make a difference and attempt to make the world a fairer place. If we think alone, nothing happens.
There are some fantastic ideas here to foment revolution to bring the poor and rich closer together, financially, geographically and metaphysically. Not least a World Parliament without assumption on elected officials. No presumption is given to which way people will vote, but the essential point is that democracy should be the driving force between any real change in global governance. As it is today, the distorted voting that goes on in the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund and The UN Security Council among many others, are blatantly loaded in favour of the rich, developed mainly Western nations by whom these bodies were created.
There is an interesting chapter rescuing Keynes from Keynesian thought and the Bretton Woods process and some sterling propositions on financial security which proves that capitalism as it stands and was created will eventually destroy itself (written before the crash of 2008/09). One of the most thought provoking areas of the book was the current trend towards coercion by the IMF towards third world countries to liberalise their economies to provide growth and national prosperity. Monbiot goes on to prove that almost all the rich nations grew their economies through violent protectionism and only sought to liberalise their own economies once completely they were completely secure. The nature of liberalisation in the modern vernacular is to strip a country of national wealth and resources, giving them to private companies based overseas, who themselves as independent of the nation states in which they are based, continue an uninterrupted localised protectionism.
Things must change, and Monbiot bemoans the emotions he stirs at the end of the book. Far from want us to think things should change, the author wants us to do something to change things, to involve ourselves in change and immerse ourselves in his manifesto alongside other forms of activism and to do something, try and make a difference and attempt to make the world a fairer place. If we think alone, nothing happens.
johnnylyne's review
3.0
Like Out of the Wreckage, I found the ideas in this book really compelling and I continue to think Monbiot is a great progressive thinker. In contrast to the former book however, the manifesto in The Age of Consent felt nigh on impossible to achieve and actually made me feel very pessimistic about representative democracy and its ability to deal with the challenges posed by globalised institutions and companies.
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