Monthly Archives: July 2021

In a previous article, I condemned attempts by some American Christians to justify or excuse the hideous sin of American slavery. I focused most my attention, however, on the single passage of 1 Timothy 1:10.

Given space limitations, I was unable to treat the broader question of slavery in the Bible, particularly in the New Testament. Here, I want to build on my previous article, discussing how the New Testament approaches slavery and its implications for modern Christians.

I will focus on the New Testament, not because I regard the Old Testament as uninspired or unimportant, but because I believe there are interpretive difficulties at work in Christian readings of the Old Testament that I cannot address adequately in this article.

While I wish to be sensitive in my treatment of the biblical text, I also must be honest. The bottom line is the New Testament does not directly condemn slavery. The New Testament presupposes the existence of slaveryhumans legally owning other humans as propertyand never challenges this institution head-on.

If one adopts certain approaches to biblical interpretation, it is easy to justify slavery even today by appealing to various biblical texts like Ephesians 6:5-9 and Colossians 3:22-4:1. Christians at many points in history have done exactly this, and we must be honest about that fact.

But for those of us who believe God has spoken and continues to speak through Scripture, the New Testament seemingly condoning slavery gives us much pause. We rightly reject slavery as immoral, yet our Bible seems not to do so. How can we make sense of this inconsistency? Must we embrace slavery, or reject biblical authority?

I think neither. I believe Christians can and should believe in biblical authority and reject slavery. We can do this by paying close attention both to the biblical texts and to their ancient contexts.

One reason the New Testaments apparent support for slavery strikes us as so problematic is because it appears quite inconsistent with other parts of the Bible. For example, Paul famously states in Galatians 3:28: There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus (NASB).

In Galatians, Paul is challenging segregation and preferential treatment within the Galatian churches based on ones Jewish identity or lack thereof. Paul regards segregated fellowship as a functional denial of the gospel itself (Galatians 2:11-14). James echoes this point, lambasting churches who would show preferential treatment to wealthy members and visitors (2:1-7).

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Passages like those I mention above have been key pillars in many Christians historic battles for justice and liberation of the underprivileged. So, how do they fit with passages like Ephesians 6:5-9 and Colossians 3:22-4:1?

The Ephesians text holds a vital portion of the answer. After spending verses 5-8 giving instructions to enslaved people regarding how best to serve their masters, Paul concludes in verse 9 by saying: And masters, do the same things to them, and give up threatening, knowing that both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no partiality with him.

Paul is also quite direct in his letter to Philemon, where he encourages the slave owner Philemon to receive back Onesimus no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a beloved brother, especially to me, but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord (1:16).

The New Testament presents a vision of the church in which enslaved people and their masters are equals in Christ. Segregation and preferential treatment in the church are forbidden. While Paul and the other apostles do not tear down the master/slave hierarchy directly, they do undermine it. The early church even had leaders who themselves were enslaved.

While this may be encouraging to modern Christians uncomfortable with the New Testament witness on slavery, my answer thus far does not resolve the issue fully. How could abolitionists who outright have attacked slavery claim the Bible for support?

The key here is the gap between the ancient world of the Bible and our modern world. When the New Testament was written, Christianity was a tiny and obscure sect. The church had virtually no social, economic or political power. It was a decentralized ragtag band of religious weirdos.

If the early Christians had sought to wage a full-scale societal war on slavery, they would not have won. They simply did not have the means or the clout. Rather, the New Testament church sought to embody an alternative community, a new society in miniature that upheld different values and operated by different rules. In so doing, the New Testament church bore witness to Gods redemptive and liberating work.

This has profound ramifications for the modern church. Unlike the New Testament church, the Western church in most times and places throughout our history has been a dominantoften the dominantsocial, political and cultural force. To take the New Testaments instructions regarding slavery and apply them literally today is to ignore the massive gap between the New Testaments context and our own.

The New Testament church planted the seeds of slaverys end, but many Christians have failed to tend and water those seeds properly. We still are called to be an alternative community, to bear witness to Gods redemptive and liberating work. One way we do that today is pursuing justice for others, which includes breaking the chains of slavery.

Joshua Sharp is a writer and Bible teacher living in Waco. He holds a Master of Divinity degree from Truett Theological Seminary. The views expressed are those solely of the author.

Excerpt from:

Voices: Revisiting the New Testament and slavery - Baptist Standard

Pennsylvania is poised to become another battleground in the growing fight over teaching race and racism in public schools.

Two Republican state lawmakers have introduced legislation that would constrain how schools teach the concept of race and the conflict over critical race theory, or CRT, will likely become a key part of the upcoming Pennsylvania governors race.

That has a coalition of educators and politicians who oppose the efforts to put limits on teachers sounding an alarm. They worry that replacing Gov. Tom Wolf, who is considered a liberal Democrat and is term-limited, with a conservative could be the difference between such a bill passing and being vetoed.

My fear is that Republicans have already stated publicly that this is what theyre running on in the 2022 campaign, said Tamara Anderson, one of many local educators organizing against these attacks with Black Lives Matter Week of Action-Philly. So this isnt going to just go away, its going to continue. How prepared are we on this side, not just to go into battle, but to protect our teachers and our students rights? Because that is who they are threatening.

Most K-12 schools are not actually teaching critical race theory an academic framework for examining how laws and institutions perpetuate systemic racism. But the term has become a catchall among those who want to limit how schools teach about Americas legacy of slavery and segregation.

House Bill 1532, sponsored by two Republican state representatives, Russ Diamond and Barb Gleim, is the latest attack by conservatives on what they argue is critical race theory being taught in schools. Chalkbeat has tracked at least 27 state-level efforts attempting to restrict educators from discussing systemic racism, critical race theory, and The 1619 Project, which was published by The New York Times and developed by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones.

The Teaching Racial and Universal Equality (TRUE) Act, as the Pennsylvania bill is called, would limit how schools teach concepts related to racism. In their memorandum, the two lawmakers say schools should be teaching that every individual is equal under the law and that no individual should ever be labeled superior or inferior simply due to their race or genetic makeup.

Democrat State Rep. Chris Rabb argues that if Democrats do not have a solid gubernatorial candidate going into the March primary, the debate around teaching race in schools will be a major issue in the race for governor, tilting swing voters.

Wolf, whose term ends January 2023, would turn down such legislation, according to fellow Democrats. But the state has bounced from red to blue leadership and back over the last 20 years, so anything is up for grabs next year, including language surrounding teaching race in the classroom.

If we have a conservative who replaces a liberal Democrat, which I would call Gov. Wolf, then this has the ability to become state law, Rabb said.

Names floated as possible Democratic candidates for governor include Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro and Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney. On the Republican side, former congressman Lou Barletta, state Sen. Doug Mastriano, Montgomery County Commissioner Joe Gale and former U.S. Attorney Bill McSwain top the list.

Bartletta and Mastriano, who are staunch supporters of former President Donald Trump, have said publicly they do not support what they believe is critical race theory being taught in school.

We will never, ever, ever teach critical race theory in Pennsylvania while Im governor, Barletta said earlier this month. We are not going to teach children to hate each other. In fact, we are going to teach them to learn our history and be proud of our country we live in.

Anderson, the teacher opposing the bills banning CRT, fears the mislabeling of critical race theory by conservatives will ultimately affect curriculum. She says school districts across the state could adopt language from the legislation and ban any teaching of race, including topics such as segregation, redlining, or Juneteenth.

Anderson mentions two events where concerned educators can get involved. National Weekend of Action to Teach Truth is Aug 27-29, led by the Zinn Education Project, Rethinking Schools and Black Lives Matter at School. And Oct. 14 is the national day of action, organized by the National Black Lives Matter at School. The date is George Floyds birthday and will address the targeting of teaching about race, Anderson said. Organizers are asking teachers in Philadelphia and across the country to decolonize their curriculum by starting Saturday schools and freedom schools on the weekend, including in states that have banned CRT.

Conservatives pushing anti-CRT bills paint the framework as a threat of sorts against white Americans, said Rabb. Others have raised concerns that, without the proper guidance, academic leaders and politicians can adopt simplistic views of what it means to teach in culturally responsive ways.

In Rabbs view, that is just a ploy to distract voters from other issues such as voter suppression, increasing the minimum wage, and climate change.

This is a very sexy boogeyman because it hits all the buttons, Rabb said, adding that the more attention the issue gets, the more likely a critical mass of Americans will believe critical race theory is divisive as opposed to the racism and sexism that is divisive that critical race theory seeks to address in good faith.

Its a bitter irony, said Rabb, because by embracing critical race theory and embracing diversity perspectives and contributions related to these matters, we can have difficult conversations in good faith to move us forward together as a society.

But Jay McCalla, a well-known political commentator who served in the administrations of former Democratic mayors Ed Rendell and John Street, told Chalkbeat he doesnt think critical race theory will be a big issue and will not drive Black voters in Philadelphia, who traditionally vote Democrat.

I think it matters very much in the Republican Party who beats the drum loudest to back critical race theory, but I dont think its an animating principle for Black voters, said McCalla, who also served as former managing director for the city Were going to be focusing on the Democratic candidate who talks about violence and how hes got a plan to curb gun violence.

Pat Christmas, policy director at the Committee of Seventy, an election watchdog group in Philadelphia, says Trump and his politics will also impact the dynamic of the governors race.

I think its fair to say his politics are very attractive to some Republican voters across the state of Pennsylvania, but very unattractive to others, Christmas said. Whether its critical race theory or education funding or election reform and voting rights. All these issues are going to be quite important.

In the meantime, the local coalition opposing the anti-CRT legislation is also seeking to get Philadelphias Board of Education to take a stand, said Adam Sanchez, who teaches social studies at Central High School.

We want the board to say that regardless of what happens in the legislature, were going to continue to encourage our teachers to teach about racism and teach about the truth and the past of this country, Sanchez says.

The School District of Philadelphia is the only district in the state that requires students to take an African-American history course to graduate.

These issues will not go away, Rabb said. We have to have these earnest discussions because if people think critical race theory is talking about victimization and talking about how white people are inherently bad, that is our point of reference, weve already lost the argument.

More:

Educators say teaching about race could be at stake in governors race - Chalkbeat Colorado

A woman and man cutting endive lettuce in the Imperial Valley. (David Bacon)

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If the Senate passes the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, and President Biden signs it, US growers and labor contractors will benefitbut most farmworkers will not.

Undocumented farmworkers need and deserve legal status in this country. They have fed us, not just during the pandemic but for as long as weve had wage labor in agriculture.

But farmworkers, along with all other undocumented families, need and deserve a bill that provides legal status without imposing the notorious H-2A and E-Verify programs as the price. Growers need labor, but farmworkers need a sustainable future that promises dignified and well-paid work, not just for this generation but for generations to come.

The Farm Workforce Modernization Act passed the House once under Trump, and then again this spring. With no discussion of its possible negative impact, every Democrat in Congress voted for it except Maines Representative Jared Golden. Yet this bill, presented as a legalization program for undocumented farmworkers, will likely lead to the replacement of as much as half of the nations current farm workforce by workers brought into the United States by growers using the H-2A guest worker program. That, in turn, will cement in place the existing deep poverty in farmworker communities, and make it much more difficult for farmworkers to change this. MORE FROM David Bacon

Rosalinda Guillen, director of the women-led farmworker organization Community to Community in Washington state, has a long history of pushing for equitable opportunities for farmworkers and their families to build community. The nations farmworkers, she says, should be recognized as a valuable skilled workforce, able to use their knowledge to innovate sustainable practices. Most are indigenous immigrants, and have the right to maintain cultural traditions and languages, and to participate with their multicultural neighbors in building a better America. This bill instead treats farm workers as a disposable workforce for corporate agriculture.

Last year growers were certified to bring in 275,000 H-2A workers. That is over 10 percent of the farm workforce in the United Statesand a number that has doubled in just five years, and tripled in eight. In states like Georgia and Washington, this program will fill a majority of farm labor jobs in the next year or two.

The H-2A program has been studied in many reports over the last decade, from Close to Slavery by the Southern Poverty Law Center to Ripe for Reform by the Centro de Derechos de los Migrantes to Exploitation or Dignity by the Oakland Institute. All document a record of systematic abuse of workers in the program, and the use of the program to replace farmworkers (themselves immigrants) already living in the United States.Current Issue

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In 2019 the Department of Labor punished only 25 of the 11,000 growers and labor contractors using the program despite extensive violations; the punishments were small fines and suspension from it for three years. The Farm Workforce Modernization Act continues this abuse, and will accelerate sharply the replacement of the existing workforce.

The bill freezes the minimum wage for H-2A workers, already close to minimum wage, for a year, and opens the door to abolishing the wage guarantee entirely. This will not only hurt H-2A workers themselves. It will effectively push down the wages of all farmworkers.

A long record documents the firing, deportation, and blacklisting of H-2A workers who organize or strike. Familias Unidas por la Justicia, the new union for Washington farmworkers, has helped those workers protest, but seen them forced to leave the county over and over again as a result. Growers are currently permitted to violate antidiscrimination laws by refusing to hire women or older workers. The Farm Workforce Modernization Act does not protect them.

The bill, however, does have a provision making it mandatory that growers use the notorious E-Verify system to check the immigration status of workers, and refuse to hire anyone undocumented. This provision will have an enormous impact. Half of the nations 2.4 million farmworkers are undocumented. While some will qualify for the bills tortuous legalization program, many will not. Denying jobs to hundreds of thousands of farmworkers will cause immense suffering for their families. This would be a bitter reward for feeding the country through the Covid crisis.

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Those who qualify for legalization will be required to continue working in agriculture for a period of years. Losing employment will therefore mean losing their temporary legal status, making it extremely risky for them to organize unions or strike. Growers, meanwhile, will use the H-2A program to replace domestic workers who cant legalize or who leave the workforce for other reasons, including local workers who organize and strike. There are no protections in the bill at all for farmworkers right to organizeeither for H-2A workers or workers who are living here.

This is a very threatening scenario for farmworker families. Ramon Torres, president of Familias Unidas por la Justicia, says, In Washington state we have fought with labor contractors and growers for years to protect farmworker rights, of both H-2A and resident workers. Our lived experience tells us what the impact of this bill will be.

Excerpt from:

This New Law Would Be Good for Growers, Bad for Farmworkers - The Nation

Millions of spectators tuned in Friday to watch the opening ceremony of the delayed 2020 Tokyo Olympics. But will the behind-the-scenes happenings keep viewers coming back for the next two weeks even more than the feats of athletic prowess?

Students in one UNLV virtual classroom are poised to find out.

Their assignment? Watch the Olympics with those questions in mind: How do topics like race, gender, class, politics, sustainability, and mental health intersect with the games and play out on the world stage?

Were going to see all of those elements take place in the Tokyo Olympics, said Kendra Gage, an assistant professor in the Department of Interdisciplinary, Gender, and Ethnic studies who leads the Topics in Sports History: The History of the Modern Olympics course.

The Olympics is an area we can study to see changes that have occurred and still need to occur in our society and the larger global society as well.

Students in Gages class, which has been offered several times at UNLV over the past 10 years, will produce individual podcasts that compare and contrast Olympic history with the present day.

I love sports but I especially love the Olympics, Gage said. There is just so much history that can be unpacked.

We checked in with Gage to get the scoop on some of the readings and conversations she expects to stoke discussion among her students, as well as the media and viewing public.

It all started in the 19th century with one man: Pierre de Coubertin. After traveling abroad to the U.K. and America, he was frustrated with the academic and physical educational systems in his home country of France. In short, he was part of high society and thought many of the French were in todays terms lazy and needed to do better at expressing cultural values to the world.

His idea? Recreate the ancient Greek Olympics as a vehicle to bring nations together and as a platform for people to showcase health and cultural progress, highlight fair and equal opportunity, and to display cultural expression.

Coubertin created the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1894, and in a nod to the ancient Greek Olympics the first games were held in Athens in 1896.

The event was an immediate success, and the second games were held in Paris. Interestingly, the third games in 1904 encountered a bit of a hiccup. The event was held in St. Louis a small city at the time that was hard for international spectators to reach by boat then train and was therefore attended by a mostly U.S. contingent. However, it was held alongside the St. Louis Worlds Fair, another international expo that also featured games, so most of the publics focus was on that rather than the Olympics. In fact, some participants were surprised to receive Olympic medals because they thought they were competing in the Worlds Fair games.

Rather than winning, early on the emphasis was on participation and bringing together nations in a neutral environment that wasnt meant to be political. But politics are inherently a part of sports especially when you build them on a platform to express nationalism and against a backdrop of World Wars and the Cold War, where nations are trying to prove theyre a superpower.

The only times the modern Olympics have been canceled was in 1916, 1940, and 1944 both because wars meant the event wasnt a safe place and the IOC didnt want politics involved. However, politics came into play very loudly from the start and continue to be entrenched today.

In regards to gender, the Olympics grappled with gender issues from the first games. No female competitors were allowed, as Coubertin felt womens only roles should be as spectators and to put crowns upon winners' heads.

For the second games in Paris, 22 women participated in high society sports like archery and lawn tennis. In 1904, a few women were allowed to compete in basketball and boxing. They were exhibition sports, rather than an official part of the games, but those were the first barriers to be broken. Today we see more female athletes because the IOC has been committed to gender balance.

I like to use the 1936 Olympics as an example because it was held in Berlin. Hitler was in power and there was a large call in the U.S. to boycott the games. Organizers balked at the controversy, calling the event a site of neutrality devoid of politics. American Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage traveled from the U.S. to Germany for a tour, where he was assured that all competitors would be treated equally and that the German team would allow Jewish athletes. He came back and convinced the U.S. to participate. Even Black newspapers like the Chicago Defender called on Black Americans to show their place in the world. Today, we know that the games were leveraged as a platform for Hitler to show his dominance in the world, and it's the first time we see politics play out in an overt way on the Olympic stage.

Relatedly, Brundage eventually became known as Slavery Avery because of his own history of sexism, racism, and anti-Semitism. That partially includes the 1968 Olympics when two Black track stars Gold medalist Tommie Smith and Bronze medalist John Carlos were kicked off the U.S. team after raising fists, now known as the Black Power Salute, on the award podium while the national anthem played. Brundage, who was then president of the International Olympic Committee, was instrumental in getting Carlos and Smith kicked out of the Olympic Village.

The impact of the Cold War is another big one. There was an us vs. them tension between the United States and the Soviet Union, which exploded in a fixation on the medal count as a means of showing superiority. This was evident in the 1980 Miracle on Ice hockey match, where the U.S. defeat of the Soviets was seen as a shift in the balance of power in the Cold War.

Initially, Olympic athletes were supposed to be amateurs they collected no pay for participation in any sort of sports. That evolved over time because the Olympics became much more commercialized. To do that, you have to use pro athletes and, to fund training, you need brand endorsements from companies.

Pierre de Coubertin was a member of the aristocracy, so he wanted the games to focus on gentlemen's sports and they dont take pay for play. That changed when the Soviet Union started to participate. They took young kids to Moscow for vigorous training. At first, people around the world were opposed and saw it as manipulation and oppression. But the Soviet Union did so well that others began to replicate their model.

The U.S. started club sports, where kids as young as 3 or 4 would participate. And it came to a head with U.S. participation in basketball when NBA players became involved in the Olympic games. So, the idea of amateurism is completely out the window.

Now we see people who are generally paid decently to play at this elite level. And thats another interesting facet: Some athletes rely on their Olympic performance to get brand endorsements afterward and therefore continue to train and make a living.

An extreme example was Jim Thorpe, a Native American athlete whose 1912 Olympic medals and records were stripped because the IOC discovered he was paid $25 per week to play semi-professional baseball prior to competing. In that era, it was common for athletes to play professionally before Olympic competitions but use pseudonyms to avoid detection. Thorpe didnt change his name and therefore came under fire. His medals were posthumously returned to his family and there are calls for his records to be restored as the rightful sole champion. Thorpe has been called one of the greatest Olympians of all time.

Yes, absolutely.

For example, not all of this years games are being held in Tokyo. The locations are spread throughout the country. In the future, we might see a main host city with other cities involved to alleviate both the costs and environmental impact of the Olympics.

With that said, we need future host cities to consider ways to make the Olympics more eco-friendly. I just watched a program on the Las Vegas water shortage. Would hosting the games here further strain our resources? It has nothing to do with the games themselves, but must be addressed on the global stage. So far, Tokyo has been called the most eco-friendly of the games, but I'm curious to see final reports. The 2028 games will be in Los Angeles and will likely impact Las Vegas directly, so our leaders should start anticipating that.

Also, gender equality needs to be addressed. We still see global wage gaps between men and women, and the Olympics is another platform to discuss that. The IOC itself has very few women within its organization, so the organization should address that as well.

Last, Id say that Im always a big fan of watching which new sports they add each time. The five newest are skateboarding, karate, surfing, sport climbing, and a re-introduction of baseball and softball. Several of them show a mesh, with the X Games meeting the Olympics, which is an interesting transformation. It shows how sports are evolving, whats popular, and whats not.

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More Than the Games: The Olympics and the Global Spotlight on Societal Issues - UNLV NewsCenter

A review of Capitalism and the Sea: The Maritime Factor in the Making of the Modern World by Liam Campling and Alejandro Cols (Verso, 2021), 20

Capitalism and the Sea is an engaging new study of capitalisms transformation of the human relationship to the sea. It uses a Marxist approach to understand how capitalism constantly reinvents itself to maximise profit and, in the process, intensifies exploitation, privatises vast areas of the sea and commodifies the species that inhabit them. The book is divided into sections on circulation, order, exploitation, appropriation, logistics and offshore. However, it is the excellent chapter on appropriation that offers the pivotal argument, detailing how changing capitalism remodels and reshapes how society interacts with the seas and oceans. These reflections demonstrate how capitalists have been able to extend property relations created on land into all those parts of maritime space that modern technology allows them to reach.

Liam Campling and Alejandro Cols carefully describe how capitalism transformed the conventional forms of trade that went before it. Before plantation slavery formed new markets based on the commodification of human beings and their transportation on slave ships, it was necessary to develop the fundaments of a capitalist credit system such as stock exchanges and bills of exchange, an early credit instrument that acted as a store of universal value (p42). The sea became the subject of centuries of intense legislative activity designed to reproduce the land-based property relations at sea. By the early 17th century, the struggle over maritime law had become whether the sea was to be free, mare liberum, or closed, mare clausum? Did territorial sovereignty extend into the sea? Could states control which ships went where and what the ships masters and owners did when they got there?

For the British state, the dominant imperial power in the 19th century, freedom of the seas meant the right to enforce its own economic interests. Thus the British navy attacked China in 1839 to force it to accept imports of opium, despite Chinese attempts to fight an epidemic of addiction. There were legalistic sleights of hand that removed hindrances to trade during wartime such as the Declaration of Paris in 1856, which allowed enemy goods to be transported under neutral flags.

With their detailed accounts of these sorts of machinations and manoeuvres by competing states, Campling and Cols demonstrate the impossibility of understanding the development of capitalisms relationship to the sea without an appreciation of the role of colonialism and imperialist rivalry. The British Empire ruled the waves when it subsidised the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O) to run a mail service to its overseas territoriesa function that later widened to include carrying settlers, narcotics, colonial troops and imperial administrators (p82). However, as Germany and Japan became centralised states and industrial powerhouses, they developed their own military and imperial ambitions that began to challenge British naval dominance. Similarly, the United States navy was massively expanded and modernised from the 1880s onwards. Nevertheless, Britain continues to pursue a position as an imperialist naval power to this day, as shown by the recent launch of the 3 billion warship HMS Queen Elizabeth. This new aircraft carrier is an attempt by the British state to flex its fading imperial muscleand a valuable tool for currying favour with squalid regimes in North America and the Middle East that are hungry for military cooperation with Western states.

Capitalism and the Sea also describes how capitalist states have shaped big business on the high seas. One example of this was the web of national and international deals made through the conference system of shipping cartels, under which state subsidies were used to exclude competition from rival economies. States also heavily subsidised their own capitalists in order to incentivise the development of national fishing fleets because investors often refused to risk money in ventures that could literally sink, taking all their capital with them. Of course, they were less concerned about losing workers to accidents and drowning: people were often much cheaper to replace than fishing gear and boats. Even now, fishing fleets in advanced capitalist economies often receive massive state subsidies.

Throughout capitalisms history, states have also developed various ways of laying claim to fish, and Campling and Cols reveal how the strongest states were able to overturn existing fishery-ownership conventions in the 20th century. Before the Second World War, both Spain and Japan developed large, technologically advanced distant water fleets that generated huge profits, soaked up unemployed labour and acted as a naval reserve. These fleets caught much of the tuna processed in the expanding canneries that were providing cheap food to a rapidly expanding global working class. Indeed, in 1941, the ability of capitalists from different states to move and fish on the high seas was effectively written into the Atlantic Charter, agreed between the US and Britain. According to the Charter, the end of the war should enable all men to traverse the high seas and oceans without hindrance because the seas did not belong to any one state. Nonetheless, as the war finished, the US was able to limit Japans distant water fleet, reducing competition to its own fishing industry and ensuring Japanese fishing boats could not be used as a military reserve. Moreover, national states also moved to maintain exclusive control over the seas and fisheries adjacent to their own land.

After 1950, these manoeuvres often included smaller nations struggling for national sovereignty and seeking to protect their resources from incursions by capital based in the biggest imperial powers. The USs claim to exclusive rights to mineral resources miles off its coasts after the Second World War became the precedent for the creation of exclusive economic zones (EEZ). EEZs, in which states claim special rights over marine resources, were codified in the Third United Nations Conference on the Sea between 1973 and 1982. This was an important step in the further imposition of property relations on the sea. Where previously fishers took as much of the free gift of fish as their skill, equipment and luck allowed, they now had to pay to access fisheries. States that owned EEZs gained rent from other states that wanted access, effectively appropriating part of the surplus value created by the labour of foreign fishers working in its waters.

EEZs were shaped by the legacy of 19th century imperialism, and maps of these territories often mirror the colonialism of this period. For instance, France has the largest total EEZ in the world, including the vast area around its colony of French Polynesia, a collection of 118 geographically dispersed islands and atolls in the South Pacific Ocean. Through such relics of its colonial past, French capital has access to enormous maritime resources. In comparison, China has a very small EEZ relative to the size of its population.

How much respect states really displayed towards EEZs depended on the structure of their national fishing industries. The US had heavily invested in its distant water fishing fleet and tried to prevent tuna stocks being considered part of EEZs. Its boats simply continued to fish in the EEZs of less powerful states without paying for access. When the Solomon Islands tried to detain US-owned boats in order to prevent them fishing illegally in its waters, the US simply repaid the value of the boat and catch to its owners. It then deducted these costs from the aid money that the Solomon Islands received.

EEZs have not been imposed in the same way on the sea floor, which was declared the common heritage of humanity by the UN General Assembly in 1970. However, these areas may become a site of new struggles when capitalists develop the technology to plunder the bottom-most parts of the sea that are currently unreachable.

Capitalisms expansion into every aspect of human interaction with the sea has involved a long process of disciplining workers. Indeed, it is a testament to hundreds of years of class struggle that so much of the infrastructure of modern capitalist shipping and fishing is designed to undermine class solidarity and trade unionism. New, highly mechanised container ports with relatively few workers have been built away from established harbours with their traditions of portside solidarity and their neighbourhoods of unionised dockers, fishers and seafarers. For a few dollars, ship owners can register vessels in a state other than their own under a flag of convenience (FOC), allowing them to avoid national tax regimes and health and safety regulations, and circumvent trade union rights. However, Capitalism and the Sea reminds us that the dockers in the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) refused to unload FOC ships that had neglected to sign up to ITF agreements in the 1990s. This action successfully pressurised ship operators to prevent their crews from unloading cargoes from non-compliant ships. This provides a glimpse of the power of workers to challenge capitalist power on the sea.

Both ship owners and operators, which are often separate businesses, regularly deny responsibility for accidents and abuses on their vessels. Campling and Cols detail how operators use racism, the threat of unemployment, language barriers and the isolation experienced by maritime workers to undermine solidarity. Working regimes in commercial fisheries and shipping are often tightly hierarchical and prison-like. Instructions are orders and disobedience is a serious offence.

Huge shipping corporations, such as Denmarks Maersk, pay crew from the Global South far less than those from the US and the European Union for doing the same work. There is a long, racist history of workers being denied shore leave and crews being left unpaid and unable to get home when companies go bust or their owners walk away. Campling and Cols note 367 such abandonments since 2004, although they do not mention the practical solidarity from activists, dockers unions and other trade unionists that have supported crews with food, money and tickets home. They do, however, discuss examples of how fishers unions have sought to defend their members jobs by appealing to the national interest. This framing has often undermined workers ability to organise in cases where a single boats crew is made up of workers from different countries. All this cuts against the simple fact that fishery workers from different countries share the same problems.

There is a vast system of law and regulation that applies to work in fishing and shipping, but enforcement of workers rights and health and safety safeguards can be very lax. Because of this, these industries see persistent slavery, trafficking of fishers between boats, and physical and sexual violence, including murder, theft of wages, as well as systematic neglect of health and safety. Campling and Cols record these problems in detail and offer occasional glimpses of how workers can organise a serious fight for better conditions and wages.

With the historically low levels of strikes across the world on land and sea before the Covid-19 pandemic, capital can appear very strong against workers isolated from trade unions and their own communities. Nevertheless, class struggle is inherent to capitalism, and the maritime sector is no exception. Many seafarers have protested and struck in extraordinarily difficult circumstances. Gazan fishers went on strike when two were killed by the Egyptian navy in November 2020. Workers from Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu, India, began an indefinite strike over the arrest of nine fishers by the Sri Lankan navy in January 2021. Californian crabbers also struck over wholesale prices; they failed to win everything they wanted but got more than if they had not fought back against the wholesalers. There are many other examples over the past two decades of marine workers striking and protesting all over the world, including in Chinese shipyards, Canadian container ports and Middle Eastern docks. Workers have been arrested, jailed and killed, but many others have won, sometimes aided by solidarity from other workers and trade unions.

One disappointing aspect of Capitalism and the Sea is that it talks so little about women fishers and seafarers. The authors do note:

During the age of sail, women were regularly on board ships in port and the wives of warrant and junior officers regularly went to sea and worked on the ship. Women would also disguise themselves as men to work as crew and, more rarely, as marines (p112).

However, the only other substantial reference to women explains, Rates of exploitationcannot be understood in the absence of unpaid human labour, not leastbut not limited tothe social reproduction of human beings, which is disproportionately provided by women (p111). This limits the work of women in fishing and seafaring communities to unpaid social reproduction, ignoring the work of female wage labourers in coastal areas such as those who processed herring by hand in Norway, Britain and Iceland throughout the 20th century. The women employed to bait hooks for line fishing are also passed over. Despite these omissions, the authors do note that, as well as the women working in canning factories around the world, there have been many other examples of female workers employed in fisheries and waterborne trades.

Today, with their destruction of the oceans ecosystems, capitalists are showing just how powerful they can be. Nevertheless, the commodification of marine species and the damaging of ecosystems with climate change has also had repercussions for capital. One such repercussion was the re-emergence of piracy off the coast of Somalia and in the Gulf of Aden in the first decade of this century. In these areas, communities have been under pressure from climate change, industrial commercial fishing and foreign intervention from states such as the US. Campling and Cols point out that international campaigns against the pirates have repurposed imperial outposts in Dubai, Djibouti and the Seychelles. Tellingly, however, the operational headquarters of the Horn of Africas Maritime Security Centre is based in Hertfordshire, England.

The campaigns against piracy reveal much about the priorities of capitalist states. There has been too little international cooperation to prevent slavery, murder and sexual violence at sea or even illegal fishing. Little joint action has been taken to protect the seas fragile ecosystems despite the fact that their destruction poses a threat to the survival of the entire planet. Nevertheless, states have swung into action to protect the profits of owners and operators of container ships, oil tankers and other bulk carriers in regions where pirates operate. Framed by these failures and false priorities, Capitalism and the Sea is an important and rewarding read, as well as a valuable addition to the growing body of work studying capitals relationship to ecology and the destruction of the environment on which we all rely.

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