Capitalism: A Structural Genocide

Garry Leech

In the wake of the global financial crisis, and ongoing savage government cuts across the world, Garry Leech addresses a pressing and necessary topic: the nature of contemporary capitalism, and how it inherently generates inequality and structural violence.

Drawing on a number of fascinating case studies from across the world–including the forced displacement of farmers in Mexico, farmer suicides in India, and deaths from preventable and treatable diseases in Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as the unsustainable exploitation of the planet’s natural resources–Leech provocatively argues that global capitalism constitutes a form of genocide against the poor, particularly in the global South.

Essential and eye-opening the book questions the legitimacy of a system that inevitably results in such large-scale human suffering, while going beyond mere critique to offer a more egalitarian, democratic and sustainable global alternative.

Contents

Introduction
1. What is Structural Genocide?
2. The Logic of Capital
3. Structural Genocide: The Cases of Mexico and India
4. Structural Genocide: The Case of Sub-Saharan Africa
5. Structural Genocide: The Truly Inconvenient Truth
6. Legitimizing the Illegitimate
7. The Socialist Alternative
Conclusion

About the Author

Garry Leech is an independent journalist and editor of Colombia Journal (www.colombiajournal.org). He is the author of several books, including Beyond Bogotá: Diary of a Drug War Journalist in Colombia (Beacon Press, 2008) and Crude Interventions: The United States, Oil and the New World (Dis)Order (Zed Books, 2006). He is also the co-author of The People Behind Colombian Coal: Mining, Multinationals and Human Rights (Pisando Callos, 2007). Leech is a lecturer in Political Science at Cape Breton University.