Covid-19 Capitalism: Big Farms Make Big Flu

8 Week Reading Group:

The year 2020 has brought together a devastating viral pandemic and what is shaping up as the deepest cyclical crisis of capitalism in history. Covid-19 is not the first such episode rooted in the risky practices of capitalist agribusiness, as detailed in Rob Wallace’s Big Farms Big Flu. We need to set ourselves to the task of how to respond that will have an impact on the causes of the circumstances we are facing as a species. To do this requires organizing and knowledge of the science that is behind the origins and spreading of Covid-19 so that our anti-capitalist activities and campaigns can be effective both in the short and long term.

Rob Wallace’s book is an indispensable handbook to the inevitable pandemics stemming from agribusiness. Monthly Review is making it available at a big discount until April 17. We at the MEP are hosting an online reading and discussion group to share the comprehensive research and writing that is contained in Wallace’s book. We will cover all seven sections, plus the two-part update being published in Monthly Review’s next two issues.

From the Introduction to Big Farms Make Big Flu:

“…humans have built physical and social environments on land and sea that have radically altered the pathways along which pathogens evolve and dispense.

“Pathogens, however, are no mere protagonists, buffered to and fro by the tides of human history. They also act of their own volition, if you will excuse the anthropomorphism. They display agency. And they have by their evolutionary changes forced agribusiness to the bargaining table, a place where that ilk, given their prior successes, think they excel.”

The book is offered by Monthly Review in paper at $10 or as an ebook at $5 until April 17: https://monthlyreview.org/product/big_farms_make_big_flu/

Fees for the MEP zoom sessions are sliding scale; no one is turned away for inability to pay.