- Hardcover: 288 pages
- Publisher: Flamingo (16 Jun 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0007150423
- ISBN-13: 978-0007150427
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 16 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 442,841 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Age of Consent
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Amazon.co.uk Review
George Monbiot's reputation as a campaigning journalist and proponent of social justice makes The Age of Consent a fascinating prospect. And so it proves. It is nothing less than what its subtitle calls a manifesto for a new world order, a proposal to change the way everything works. This is aiming very high indeed. Monbiot is interested in the global mechanisms that control war, peace, trade and development, and his manifesto explores the practical means by which the control of these mechanisms can be removed from the hands of the unelected rich and put into those of truly representative democratic bodies. (Many campaigners within what he calls "our movement" will be disconcerted by the briskness with which he dismisses the parallel options of anarchism and doctrinaire Marxism as useless to his purposes, concluding that a democratically elected World Parliament is the only possible solution.)
Corporations figure largely in his arguments, as you might expect, but Monbiot's analysis of their current and possible future role in a reformed world system is more nuanced than some offered by his anti-globalisation cohorts. He recognises that global trade is a necessity and that global corporations are best placed to carry this out, but only if they are properly policed, their ability to "externalise" (i.e., dump on someone else) hidden costs, such as environmental damage, rigorously controlled. As Monbiot vividly remarks, a corporation is merely a tool. When it starts demanding, or usurping, the rights of a person, it must be destroyed.
This is thought-provoking stuff. So too is his account of the creation of the World Bank and the IMF in 1944. Above all, The Age of Consent is a call to action: all its research and analysis will amount to nothing, says Monbiot, if it doesn't contribute to the process of change for which he sees a vast global will developing. He genuinely believes, and communicates strongly his belief, that the monolithic political and economic forms that constrain the poor world to its subordinate position can be changed, and offers suggestive and practical ways in which this might be achieved by direct and indirect action. Most powerful among weapons to bring about the transformation of the world is the belief in the effectiveness of collective action. This is fighting talk, powerfully delivered. --Robin Davidson
Review
praise for Captive State:
‘This book, politically speaking, is essential… Did I say essential? I meant compulsory.’ Nick Lezard, Guardian
‘After reading Captive State, I will never be able to take the government seriously again.’ Thom Yorke of Radiohead
‘Monbiot gives the Green movement a glamour it has never previously enjoyed… the originality of his thought makes him uniquely influential.’ The Times
‘It’s impossible not to take Monbiot’s arguments seriously. He raises fundamental questions about the way democracy actually works in this country.’ Mail on Sunday
‘Few get to the heart of the matter like Monbiot, and very few write a compelling enough prose to make you want to shout angry slogans about the injustices of corporate greed.’ Management Today
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
30 of 32 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book has been widely described as a "revolutionary manifesto", and that title is apt if initially disturbing. Monbiot advocates nothing less that a complete reworking of global trade and government, but incredibly he provides a coherent (if optimistic) method to achieve this.
However, perhaps the greatest utility of this book lies not in its primary aim of global revolution, but in providing clear and studied explanations of many of the more confused myths of both market fundamentalism and the amorphous "global justice" movement. It also does a creditable job of clearing the much maligned name of Maynard Keynes, as well as highlighting the fact that many solutions to today's global issues have already been proposed, decades ago.
This book will probably leave you, as it has left me, with a far more comprehensive understanding of globalisation issues, and confirmation of your suspicions that the world's corporations (and the governments that they have bought) really are the enemy. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
One key title mentioned in the book is Joseph Stiglitz' "Globalisation and its Discontents" - a book I've already highly recommended many times, and one that's well worth reading for an in-depth analysis of just how devastating the world's controlling financial agencies are to the whole world.
Further titles that spring to mind repeatedly in reading this book are Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy - (starting with "Red Mars") which feature a global revolution (albeit on this planet) and the battle to create a truly equitable world society.
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
George Monbiot has given me hope, there are alternatives to the problems facing the world - we just need to summon the will to implement them and to challenge those who say 'it was always ever thus.'
This book is worth reading (in my view) for the following quote alone.
''...almost everything I was brought up to believe is untrue. I don't blame my parents for this - they were brought up with the same self-justificatory myths of the British Middle Classes.
All nations, all classes, all tribes tell themselves stories that validate and centralize their existence. These stories are always false.''
This book is worth reading (in my view) for the following quote alone.
''...almost everything I was brought up to believe is untrue. I don't blame my parents for this - they were brought up with the same self-justificatory myths of the British Middle Classes.
All nations, all classes, all tribes tell themselves stories that validate and centralize their existence. These stories are always false.''
21 of 23 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
For anyone who thought that "anti-globalisation" protestors were a bunch of nihilists and raving revolutionary "loony left" sort of people, this book should really set you straight. Indeed the term "anti-globalisation" seems to be used most often by politicians to portray activists as a bunch of insular luddites. By contrast, it is obvious that a lot of thought has very obviously gone into this book, and its conclusion about what needs to be done with the global structures is as appealing as it is sensible.
The idea is basically that globalisation is not necessarily a harmful process per se, but without proper democratic structures in place on a global scale, it is manipulated so as to favour powerful vested interests. This idea should really have confronted anyone who has thought seriously about the future of popular sovereignty in an increasingly inter-connected world. It is unthinkable that GATS, for example, effectively hands over control of business regulation to a secret body of WTO officials - but if the proposed alternative is to throw up barriers to trade in every country that feels like it, there is enormous scope for abuse and over-protectionism. For the poorest countries, blocking and distorting trade on the part of rich countries would be disastrous, as countries receiving ultra-cheap agricultural products from Europe and the US are currently learning. The process needs regulation on a global level.
This book has received rather a cool response so far, which I don't think it really deserves (though admittedly I'm dubious about Monbiot's theory that some form of metaphysical paradigm is developing) but on the whole the proposals seem eminently worth pursuing. I would imagine that many people are keen to write off George Monbiot as a quack; and, conversely, I imagine that for many in the global justice campaign, formulating policies and so on smacks of the party political machinery that many are suspicious of. But slogan-shouting and banner-waving are surely never enough - if alternatives to the current model of globalisation do not make sense, or are simply not developed, then it seems to me there is little point in protesting at all. To get beyond all that, this book is a good place to start.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
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Monbiot describes how we can use the power of globalisation to achieve global justice, rather than trying to stop the unstoppable forces of capitalism and globalisation. Read more
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For someone whose only exam failure was a U in Economics at 'A'-Level (no, I don't know why I took it either), I am the least likely advocate of a book that confronts the 'dismal... Read more
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Age of Consent
This is a very optimistic book laying forth (as the author puts it) a manifesto for a new world order, and very plausible and inspiring it is as well. Read more
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George Monbiot was educated at Stowe School and later Oxford where he read Zoology. As a journalist he spent 7 years travelling around Brazil, East Africa and Indonesia. Read more
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Timely and visionary food for thought
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George Monbiot gives us something to aim at.
This is an excellent piece of work that manages to take our enlightenment ideal of democratic rule, where the powerful are held in check by the choices and consciences of the many,... Read more
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