Palm Oil

The Grease of Empire

by Max Haiven

Out now, from Pluto Press

Description and Endorsements
Events
Reviews, Articles & Media
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Art by Amanda Priebe

The above video was preared for the Berliner Gazette’s 2022 project After Extractivism.

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Description

It’s in our food, our cosmetics, our fuel and our bodies. Palm oil, found in half of supermarket products, has shaped our world. Max Haiven uncovers how the gears of capitalism are literally and metaphorically lubricated by this ubiquitous elixir.

From its origins in West Africa to today’s Southeast Asian palm oil superpowers, Haiven’s sweeping, experimental narrative takes us on a global journey that includes looted treasures, the American system of mass incarceration, the history of modern art and the industrialisation of war. Beyond simply calling for more consumer boycotts, he argues for recognising in palm oil humanity’s profound potential to shape our world beyond racial capitalism and neo-colonial dispossession.

One part history, one part dream, one part theory, one part montage, this kaleidoscopic and urgent book asks us to recognise the past in the present and to seize the power to make a better world.

Table of Contents

Whose grease?

Whose punishment?

Whose fetish?

Whose weapon?

Whose fat?

Whose surplus?

Whose sacrifice?

Whose story?

Endorsements

Whether you're reading this on a screen or a printed page, you're implicated in the global palm oil trade. In this lovely book, Max Haiven takes us on a whirlwind tour of how that came to be, guiding us through the workings of the global engines that have long been lubricated by the grease of empire.
Raj Patel
Author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System and co-author of Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice and A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things
Powerfully demonstrates how, by following the history of a key commodity, we can reconstruct the logic of imperial capitalism: its destruction of land and bodies, its drive to constantly reduce the means of our reproduction, its relentless production of oppressive regimes. The story it narrates is crucial for our understanding of the terrains of struggle and the material conditions of solidarity between different social justice movements.
Silvia Federici
Author of Caliban and the Witch and Revolution at Point Zero
Powerfully demonstrates how, by following the history of a key commodity, we can reconstruct the logic of imperial capitalism: its destruction of land and bodies, its drive to constantly reduce the means of our reproduction, its relentless production of oppressive regimes. The story it narrates is crucial for our understanding of the terrains of struggle and the material conditions of solidarity between different social justice movements.
Andrew Ross
Professor, NYU and author of Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel and Sunbelt Blues: The Failure of American Housing

Interviews, Excerpts & Articles​

CBC interview on Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire and other interviews and reviews
29 May 2022
The Sacrificial Altar of Extractive Capitalism: Notes on Abolition and Transition (Mediapart/Berliner Gazette)
02 May 2022
Far from Ukraine, Putin’s War Worsens Palm Oil Crisis (Boston Review)
27 April 2022
Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire (excerpt)
01 April 2022

Reviews

Palm Oil is more than merely a good book. It is a model for historical scholarship that engages an exhausted public.
Jacobin 20 January 2023
...Its value is in the synthesis of disciplines, materials, and sources that allow the author to trace interconnections between the macro- and micro-level. It reveals the normalization of cruelty and the fetishization of markets in the cosmology of late capitalism without getting lost in extended theoretical and philosophical considerations, making it accessible to readers of wide backgrounds from the those interested in the history of the modern palm oil industry, to college students and to food researchers. It’s goal, in which it is very much successful, is to educate our awareness to the necessity of change at a global scale, one that requires “transforming ourselves not only in terms of how we imagine and cooperate but in the very way we, collectively, cooperatively compose and recompose our bodies, minds, and societies."
Food Anthropology 16 January 2023
Haiven’s goal, which he quickly surpasses, is to present a totalizing picture of palm oil to the reader; by the end of the book, the picture he paints transcends the subject of palm oil. Densely informative and beautifully written, Haiven’s book falls somewhere between a work of academic inquiry and a politically inspiring pamphlet—a valuable addition to the current scholarly trend of tracing global social histories of select commodities.
Left History 4 December 2022
Palm Oil emphatically points out that it makes sense to foreground class analysis and struggle in the palm oil industry if we are to identify prospects for collective emancipation.
LSE Review of Books 29 July 2022
The political aims of the book are laudable, convincing, and urgent... [though] the reader may sometimes feel that they miss the subtleties of the human stories that are central to the story.
New Mandala 4 July 2022
[Haiven's] Palm Oil is a compelling and illuminating call to action by an author at the top of his game.
Sidebar 1 May 2022
Packed with searing data points, rich case studies, and emotive prose, Haiven’s Palm Oil offers an accessible, almost bite-sized, if mind-bending in scope, introduction to the ways that transnational capital shapes our world. Tentatively, too, it charts a path forward, with our foodways and their workers at its center.
Life & Thyme 29 April 2022
Haiven’s book is woven through with threads of resistance, tracing the victories of trade unionists, Indigenous protesters, and others who have dared to imagine an alternative to environmental vandalism, suffering, and death... His message is clear: our species built this network of human sacrifice, and we have a responsibility to face its full implications. If, through collective effort, we can bring it about, we also have the power to end it.
Protean Magazine 28 April 2022

Media

Events

Past

8
May
Berlin book launches: Half Earth Socialism & Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire (15h)
Moosdorfstr. 7-9, Berlin (12435)
FB event

Free and open to the public.

A double book launch event for:

Half Earth Socialism: A Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change and Pandemics
by Drew Pendergrass and Troy Vettese

and

Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire
by Max Haiven

Moderated by Cassie Thornton

Max Haiven will be joined by economic anthropologist and activist Julio Linares and researcher and critical practitioner Sina Ribak.

Troy Vetesse and Drew Pendergrass will be joined by Francis Tseng, designed of the half.earth simulation.

The event takes place in the hall of the Moos community at 7-9 Moosdorfstr. There will be snacks and drinks for sale.

Organized by RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab. Hosted by the moos residency program.

Supported by Pluto Press and Verso Books.

In cooperation with Berliner Gazette’s “After Extractivism” project.

With beer sales from FemAle.

 

Access and hygiene

  • The moos hall and its toilets are accessible to those using wheelchairs, though not certified as such.
  • Please avoid wearing strong scents.
  • The event will be in English.
  • Masks are recommended, though the space is well-ventilated.
  • Attendees are kindly asked to test for Corona before arriving (there is a test centre next to the Treptower Park station, on the river)

Schedule

  • 15h – doors open
  • 15h30 – panel: Palm Oil
  • 16h15 – intermission
  • 16h30 – panel: Half Earth Socialism
  • 17h15 – party in the hoff