Mike Phipps reviews The Economics of Killing, by Vijay Mehta, published by Pluto, price £14.99 pbk and Capitalism: a structural genocide, by Garry Leech, published by Zed, price £12.99 pbk.

Why did the global economy crash in 2008? asks Vijay Mehta in his new book. The immediate cause, as we all know, was the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US, fuelled by cheap credit – but why was credit so cheap? Why were US interest rates so low? Part of the answer lies in China’s voluminous appetite for US treasury bonds, but why did China use its growing wealth to buy these bonds?

It would have preferred to invest its surplus dollars in buying US goods, services and, well, corporations. Ultimately, what China wanted to buy was the US military-industrial complex, argues Mehta.

For security reasons the US has long banned the sales of arms or “dual use” (military and industrial) technology to China. The 2008 crisis suggests that the US economy cannot survive without reconsidering that policy.

Alternatively, it could restructure its economy away from the colossal sums spent on military-industrial production, but there are many vested interests which would oppose that. In 2012, the Defense Department had a budget of $553 billion, not including $150 billion for military operations in Iraq –  which US troops officially left last year – and Afghanistan.

This is a sum greater than all the military expenditure of the rest of the world, despite the US representing only 4% of the planet’s population. Where it all goes is anyone’s guess: in 2010, the US Government Accountability Office said the Defense Department’s financial statements were “un-auditable”.

A great deal of the money goes to companies like Lockheed Martin which tender for contracts in a usually secret and non-competitive bidding process, a form of corporate welfare. Huge sums go to foreign states, such as Israel, as long as they keep buying from US companies. Such deals are conveniently exempt from WTO rules.

The US is happy to sell technology to countries that already have it, while it freezes poorer ones out. Turning down China unbalanced the US economy to the point of collapse.

Sell arms to China or restructure the US economy? There is a third option: the US could simply not pay back China its debts. By printing more dollars, the US can devalue its currency on global markets. Since the debt to China is owed in dollars, this is one of the ways to reduce it. Some say the US is already doing precisely this. China, of course, may not react kindly to being swindled.

• Mehta attempts to quantify the human impact of US global militarism: forced migration, refugees, pollution, ill health and more – but Garry Leech’s book takes on this task more comprehensively.

He starts with case studies from Latin America. Over 500 years after the Spanish Conquest, oil companies came to the Amazon basin to extract oil – with disastrous consequences on the people and environment of the region. Texaco alone spilled 16.8 million gallons of oil into the Ecuadorian Amazon. Other companies dumped untreated chemicals and industrial solvents, causing rates of cancer, miscarriages and birth defects significantly higher than elsewhere.

Is this just an extreme case, asks the author, or is there a pattern? Is there something fundamentally genocidal about capitalism?

The North America Free Trade Agreement, foisted on Mexico by the Clinton Administration, dispossessed about two million Mexican farmers of their livelihoods and lands, because they couldn’t compete with subsidised US agricultural imports. The resulting social breakdown has produced unprecedented violence, expressed through the turf wars of drug cartels and the huge rates of urban femicide. In India too, global neoliberalism has driven farmers into inescapable debt. Since 1997, more than 200,000 have committed suicide.

Neo-liberal globalisation is having a horrendous impact on families and communities. In El Salvador, people fled the civil war in the 1980s with good reason. Today they flee the structural violence of capitalism at an even faster rate – 700 El Salvadoreans leave daily. One third of the country’s population now lives in the US, sending home remittances that amount to almost 20% of GDP.

Nowhere is life more precarious than sub-Saharan Africa. Fifty years ago, Africa was a net exporter of food. Today, the continent imports 25% of its food, partly because the World Bank and the IMF require countries to produce non-food crops for export in order to acquire the foreign reserves that can service their debts. Food “aid” from advanced countries like the US is often more focused on finding markets for surplus US agricultural products than on helping people in need. The resulting hunger and malnutrition open the continent to the rapacious private health care industry and exploitation by western pharmaceutical companies.

Both these books contain a vast amount of material about the murderously destructive nature of capitalism and are highly recommended.

Mike Phipps reviews Rare Earth, by Paul Mason, published by OR books, price £10.

Meet Brough, a washed up reporter in negative equity who lost thousands in the dotcom crash. “Only his deftness at expenses scams left him in the black at the end of each month.” While on a routine TV shoot in China’s wild west, he stumbles on a major story involving industrial pollution, a public health scandal and the role of below-the-radar business cartels smuggling and fixing the market in precious metals. Within minutes, all kinds of unpleasant characters are in hot pursuit to ensure his scoop doesn’t see the light of day.

Paul Mason’s first novel is a fast-paced comic road trip full of sharp observations about the new China – very funny and, be warned, very rude. It’s also a broader meditation on the moral dilemmas of mainstream journalism. If Chomsky gave a theoretical explanation of the processes that lead to “manufactured consent” in the media, Mason is keen to convey the human dynamics that foster self-censorship by reporters.

After a battle with his ruthless Cheltenham Ladies College-educated producer, corporate executives and lawyers who are determined to avoid controversy, Brough is forced to dilute the story that nearly costs him his life. ‘“Okay,’ Brough took a long breath. No riot cops, no arrests. No piece to camera on a barricade. Just a factory and an allegation, the clear Beijing sky, peach blossoms. ‘Can China’s government manage the vast challenge of cleaning up its industry in the midst of economic downturn?’ he imitated himself: ‘Only time will tell.”’

Towards the end of his perilous journey, Brough meets an old communist general, a man from another age. In a reflection which may be Mason’s own, he says, “With the storming of the Bastille humanity enters a long swing to the left, during which the masses become the ideal human type; self-sacrifice and freedom became ideals.” Referring to the Chinese regime’s brutal massacre of dissidents in Tiananmen Square, the general continues, “Are you prepared to consider the possibility that 1989 began the era of the, as you put it, ‘arsehole’: the individualist, the egotist, the businessman, the sexual predator, the human being perpetually separated from society by the self-selected soundtrack on their iPod?”

This is a hugely enjoyable book. Is news gathering really like this? The insufferable arrogance of some of Brough’s colleagues seems a bit exaggerated, but by how much, Mason leaves us guessing.

Rare Earth is available from OR Books http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/rare-earth/

Mike Phipps reviews singer-songwriter Sean Taylor’s new CD Love Against Death.

“I’m an unwilling member of the generation defined by neo-liberalism,” says Sean Taylor, “one of Thatcher’s children, who became one of Blair’s adults. This album is a howl against both, a direct challenge to a world where we are judged by what we consume rather than what we contribute.”

There’s a lot of howl and challenge here, with songs about trade union rights, unemployment, heroin addiction and the 1984-5 miners’ strike. Yet these bluesy, acoustic songs are overwhelmingly upbeat and optimistic in tone.

Not many people can write a song inspired by Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine, or have such a great line as “Kinnock was a sell out”. What’s impressive about Sean’s songs is that they are both thoughtful lyrically and very musical to listen to. That would be connected to the superb production and mixing done in Austin, Texas which gives this set a very soulful feel, reminiscent of the legendary John Martyn.

Love Against Death is Sean Taylor’s fifth album and his most political to date. Here’s his take on the TUC March for an Alternative last year:

“People of the world we have to unite
For the flame of the love we have to ignite
Wipe away the poverty, wipe away the greed
I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees
The time has come, the choice is here
Open up your arms, you got nothing to fear.”

What’s not to like?

Stephen Beckett reviews Standing for Something: life in the Awkward Squad by Mark Seddon, Biteback Publishing, £18.99.

Mark Seddon joined the Labour Party aged just 15. He was editor of Tribune for 13 years and an elected member of the Labour Party National Executive Committee for eight years, where he became part of the Grassroots Alliance’s resistance to New Labour in general and Tony Blair and the war in Iraq in particular.

Mark’s new book Standing for Something: life in the Awkward Squad is well written (as you should expect from a journalist) but it is also often humorous and passionate. It is a considered, poignant and deeply personal account of Britain under New Labour from the point of view of a fully paid up member of the Awkward Squad.

Mark provides a glimpse into the power-struggles that go on behind the scenes at Whitehall. He describes how he “scurried around the corridors of power, gaining a unique perspective on the activities of Blair, Brown and Mandelson – and of less familiar figures that played their part in the story of New Labour.”

Mark’s career has taken him far from the UK. In 2005 he set up the New York Bureau for Al Jazeera English TV, and became the network’s first United Nations correspondent, filing from more than 20 countries on four continents including Haiti, Syria and North Korea. Standing for Something features Mark’s account of some of those experiences. It is here that I would have liked to have read more – but perhaps Mark is saving these stories up for his next book.

Although biographical, the book is not typical of the genre. There is no strict adhesion to a time line – the book is structured into topics that jump around chronologically. It is evenly spread between labour movement politics and Mark’s time as a foreign correspondent with Al Jazeera. With 40 chapers – some only two or three pages long – this book is an easy to read and hard to put down.