Available: Civilization, Oikos and Progress
Atle Hesmyr has now published Civilization, Oikos and Progress
Atle Hesmyr is a Norwegian who has spent all his life studying, writing, carpenting and gardening. Apart from writing his own essays and poetry, he has translated several books from English into Norwegian, such as Peter Kropotkin's The Great French Revolution, G. D. H. Cole's A History of Socialist Thought, vol. I and II, and Murray Bookchin's Remaking Society. The experiences made after twenty years of organic gardening are reflected in the essays of Civilization, Oikos and Progress—experiences which have convinced the author that future progress is still a possibility within reach around the world, granted the proper priorities made by the public at large at crucial crossroads in the decades ahead.
Here is a description of the book:
Civilization, Oikos and Progress is a collection of essays on the foundations of civilization and the various developments within western civilization since its inception in ancient Greece and all the way into modernity. It includes analyses of the agrarian basis of civilization, and draws parallels to former civilizations in the Indus valley, Mesopotamia and Egypt as well. The idea of progress and its prospects in our age is discussed in several of the essays, as well as the challenges posed by the environmental crisis and the uneven distribution between rich and poor in the world today—notably the discrepancies as regards the allocation of resources between the affluent western world and the exploited Global South.
The book makes a strong case for direct democracy as a viable alternative to the present disempowerment of the public around the Globe. The highly important role of sustainable agriculture and agro-ecology as the fundamental basis of any civilization is discussed throughout the book, especially with respect to the prospects of retaining a viable civilization in our era and the corresponding prospects for further progress—in the western world as well as in the Global South and the East.