Advance notice - Richard Greeman UK Tour

US ecosocialist Richard Greeman is to tour the UK with speaking dates in November, and judging from his posts on the International Ecosocialist Network E-lists he should be worth a listen -

Richard Greeman, the writer and longtime activist, will be touring Britain this November speaking on Ecosocialism and promoting his new book of political essays, Dangerous Shortcuts and Vegetarian Sharks. Richard is eager to meet with fellow Ecosocialists and to spread the good word to activists and sympathisers through talks at bookstores, universities and meetings with political groups.

Richard's tentative schedule includes London (Nov. 6-10), Liverpool (Nov. 11-13), Glasgow (Nov. 15), Edinburgh (Nov.15-17), Newcastle (Nov.18-20) and back to London, (Nov. 21-23).

More information:

To see covers, blurbs, and free downloads of Greeman's new book Dangerous Shortcuts and Vegetarian Sharks go to www.lulu.com/ content/923573

Biography: Longtime U.S. socialist Richard Greeman was awarded his Columbia Ph.D in April, 1968 while occupying the University as one of the radical leaders of the student strike. He is best known for his translations and studies of the Franco-Russian novelist and revolutionary, Victor Serge, whose posthumous novel Unforgiving Years, has just been published by N.Y. Review Books, translated and introduced by Greeman. He is one of the founders of the Praxis Research and Education Center in Moscow, Russia, and lives in Montpellier, France.

For reviews and presentation of Unforgiving Years go to
http://www.nybooks. com/shop/ product?usca_ p=t&product_ id=7159

"Ecotopia is a bet you can't refuse. Global capitalism in crisis is structurally unable to halt ecocidal productivism and the looting of the environment for quick profit. As a result, the planet is likely to become uninhabitable in two or three generations as tendencies like global warming, nuclear proliferation, flooding, epidemics, food shortages, air/water pollution and destruction of human communities increasingly combine in destructive synergy.

If there remains a marginal (say 1 in 100) chance for human society to survive, it would entail replacing the competitive profit system with a planetary network of producers -- a cooperative commonwealth or democratic socialism. Against the near certainty of planetary catastrophe under capitalism, we must bet on the unlikely dream of a harmonious, healthy ecosocialist world. The `Ecotopian Bet' is one we can't refuse.

Let us then begin by dreaming the dream, by imagining a technically feasable, ecologically sustainable post-capitalist future and historically possible roads leading to it.
One such road, based on theories of cybernetics, chaos, emergence and an idea of Cornelius Castoriadis, I call the New Archimedes Lever. It involves connecting the historically proven lever of solidarity with a philosophical fulcrum (planetary consciousness) and a global electronic platform (the Internet) in order to `lift the earth' before it succumbs to capitalist ecocide.