Malm was referenced quite positively in the book we’ve just covered - The Price is Wrong because he apparently captures some of the useful features of steam that allowed it to dominate over water as a source of power at the dawn of the industrial revolution. Here’s a review.
If you look at Schumpeter, many of the big economic cycles (creative destruction) seem to link to an energy source - eg the arrival of oil, and when aviation took off in the 50s. I’m hoping this book might give us some of the insights about the ways Capital has maneuvered around these changes in history. @nickMasonSmith what do you think?
and Brett Christophers reassures us that the next book by Andreas Malm is also going to be worth reading!
@HeatherSmith My ereader tells me I am about halfway through Fossil Capital so this is an incomplete assessment:
The Price is Wrong (to me) shines brightest in the pithy quotes from those working in renewable energy financing. Similarly, Fossil Capital is most convincing when Malm quotes directly from British industrialists of the era (for example in transcripts of Parliamentary inquiries into conditions in factories). They did not choose steam engines over waterpower because it was cheaper - the coal was very costly and the engines were quite inefficient - but steam engines afforded them significant control over labour because of fossil power’s space-time flexibility. ‘All other factors being equal’ thinking would suggest that steam had to be cheaper to be adopted, but Malm shows (like Christophers does) the other important factors and how they can dominate price.
One challenge of doing this for the book club is that he spends a lot of time establishing an argument (‘the transition to fossil power happened because it was cheaper’) so that he can rebut it. I suspect this is because it a PhD thesis that was turned into a book. The class analysis may also challenge readers unprepared for it (think of the complex history behind the common putdown ‘Luddite’, for example). I’ll post more thoughts when I finish the book. But it’s certainly a refreshing take on the industrial revolution.
1 Like