Every Saturday, Economic Alternatives selects books for you that are worth reading. This week, we recommend: Tax evasion d’Attac and VAP; Towards the ecology of war by Pierre Charbonnier; The wheat wars by Alessandro Stanziani and Contemporary Anthropology by Anne-Christine Trémon.
1/ “Tax evasion”, by Attac and VAP
With pedagogy, the book dissects the mechanisms of tax avoidance and looks at the battles and measures which make it possible, little by little, to reduce it.
When, at the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s, everyone thought that tax evasion and tax havens represented only a marginal part of the world economy, a few experts from Attac took the matter seriously. serious. Working group, first publications, educational explanations, the association launched into the battle to place the subject at the heart of the political debate.
A quarter of a century later, as the problem is still far from being resolved, Attac is once again putting the work into practice with a new publication which follows the same principles: decryption, pedagogy, analyzes based on the latest expert studies. . Each end of the chapter takes the form of a comic strip signed Pauline Vuarin (VAP), just as educational, more embodied, more militant.
A real industry
Those who open this book will see that tactics aimed at not paying one’s fair share of taxes go back a long way, all the way back to Antiquity. However, tax avoidance has not followed a linear progression over the centuries; it is above all a phenomenon which developed its tools during the 20th century.e century. The proposed inventory clearly shows that tax havens are not just small sunny islands: they are found in American states, in Switzerland, in the European Union, in the web that constitutes the United Kingdom and its dependencies. .
An original chapter offers a summary of the various information leaks made possible thanks to whistleblowers (LuxLeaks, Panama Papers, Offshore Leaks, etc.) and takes the opportunity to present the protagonists of the real industry that represents fraud. and tax evasion.
The experts who wrote this book naturally emphasize how difficult it is to quantify the weight of this industry economically. But, while we wait for better – especially from those who seek to minimize the phenomenon – we will be left with the 80 to 100 billion in tax revenue lost each year in France.
Find the right path
The book widely applauds the work of NGOs and investigative journalists who help fight against the democratic poison that tax avoidance represents. On the other hand, praise is less heard for the last fifteen years of work carried out under the aegis of the OECD on behalf of the G20. If we can read that“it would be wrong to say that nothing has been done to combat tax evasion”the title of the chapter (“When the mountain gives birth to a mouse”) leaves no doubt as to the analysis proposed.
From this point of view, the associations which are mobilizing on the subject must find the right path between positively recognizing the progress made, at the risk of being accused of naivety and losing the most demanding activists, and denigrating the progress, at the risk discouragement.
The book ends with the fascinating testimony of John Christensen, a man who has played a key role in global mobilizations against tax havens for more than twenty years. He describes how, with others, they were at the heart of impactful international activism, made up of networks, expertise and communication to denounce and act against these escapes in broad daylight.
Christian Chavagneux
Tax evasion. A whole story, by Attac and VAP, Attac and Editions de l’atelier, 2024, 144 p., €18.
2/ “Towards the ecology of war. An environmental history of peace”, by Pierre Charbonnier
What if one of the major obstacles blocking the global climate transition was… peace? This is the disturbing hypothesis which structures this work by the philosopher Pierre Charbonnier. The relative stability of international relations since 1945 has been made possible by liberal faith in the pacifying virtues of trade as well as by the energy intensification enabled by fossils (coal, oil). We must now get rid of this “carbon peace” in order to re-embed peace within planetary limits.
Since the war in Ukraine, which highlighted the risk of dependence on Russian fossils, the transition has “been invested with a strategic significance that it did not have before”notes the author, thus defining “the ecology of war”. Critical of current global climate governance which has made people believe in the possibility of a consensual ecology, Pierre Charbonnier calls for greater consideration of the colonial heritage that pervades the subject. In short, to support the countries of the South financially and technologically in order to ultimately hope to create a “post-fossil” coalition capable of bringing in the last recalcitrants.
Hear Martin
Towards the ecology of war. An environmental history of peaceby Pierre Charbonnier, La Découverte, 2024, 324 p., €23.
3/ “The wheat wars. An ecological and geopolitical eco-history”, by Alessandro Stanziani
This masterful fresco by historian Alessandro Stanziani shows that, as much as the money it is sometimes used to designate, wheat is literally the sinews of war, and not just economic. This cereal, even more than the others, constitutes an illuminating entry into understanding the political and economic tensions of the last three centuries.
From the construction of nation states to the Ukrainian conflict, including colonial enterprises and the two world wars, wheat is an issue that often goes unnoticed, whether it is used as a weapon or as the very issue of territorial conquests. . Today, more or less peaceful land grabs show that the old state logic has not disappeared. Against the backdrop of growing inequalities and ecological disaster. An impressive amount that is a must-read!
Igor Martinache
The wheat wars. An ecological and geopolitical eco-history, by Alessandro Stanziani, La Découverte, 2024, 340 p., €22.
4/ “Contemporary anthropology”, by Anne-Christine Trémon
Anthropology is still too often perceived as an exotic discipline consisting of reporting on the way of life of distant peoples. Nothing could be more misleading, as shown by this overview of research carried out in this area and grouped into fourteen very tight but very accessible chapters, which address particularly burning questions for all societies: the State, governance, gender, migrations, memory, urbanization and, of course, ecology.
The economy occupies a special place and in fact crosses most of the chapters (as well as the question of exploitation within relatives). If we find well-known figures like Marcel Mauss, Karl Marx, Karl Polanyi or David Graeber, we also discover many other works and debates which underline a number of limits and impasses of the neoclassical paradigm (however imported into anthropology by a current current to formalization). In short, a manual to put in everyone’s hands, not just those of students!
I. M.
Contemporary anthropology, par Anne-Christine Trémon, Coll. U, Armand Colin, 2024, 400 p., 35 €.
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