Book Review: Juice, by Tim Winton

Written by: Josh S. on 10 January 2025

Juice is set in a bleak future, severely damaged by climate change, ravaged by fire, heat and increasingly unreliable weather. The population is largely ground down, demoralised and compliant. Meanwhile, the environmental destroyers- ruthless, profiteering corporations, gangs and clans, hole up in luxury in heavily fortified citadels.

Some (in fact many more than are apparent on the surface) rebel and fight back, motivated by anger, morality and hope. A sophisticated, international, underground organisation- the Service, exacts revenge by attacking and eliminating environmental corporate criminals. However, over time, the Service loses its way; it becomes complacent, and unclear about its purposes, objectives and strategies.

Juice is beautifully written, and quite breathtaking in the breadth and depth of its imagined detail.

Some valuable points can be drawn from this novel.

1. Our climate is being changed and the planet damaged inexorably by rapacious, profiteering capitalism. How bad it will get before socialist societies rein in the damage and start the repair process is anyone’s guess.

2. The fatalism and docility of the bulk of the population is akin to the imposed ignorance, superstition and fatalism of medieval peasantry, under the pressure of feudalism and the fear-imposing spiritual domination of the church.

But, there is still life and light. People are resilient. They can lift their eyes, imagine a better future, and look to fight back.

3. But anger and hope are not enough (as Winton seems to grasp, intuitively at least). Nor are acts of sabotage, terrorism or elimination, divorced from broad mass political agitation and organisation. (The recent assassination of the CEO of a US health insurance company is hardly going to bring down the vast, vicious, profiteering US health exploitation industry).

A scientific ideology to guide the revolt; a political program to chart the way forward to build alternative power and structures; and agitation among, and mobilisation of, the people to win support for fundamental change, are required.

4. This last point should give pause for thought to the impatient and fervent, who are attracted to seemingly revolutionary Gueveraist and Gonzaloist notions that the militarisation of all revolutionary organisations, and purely military actions, will spark uprisings and engender political support for revolution. This has never been successful, nor is it at all likely.

5. Equally, those who laud pure spontaneity need to understand that unorganised, sporadic uprisings are no match for experienced, extensive, extortionate evil. Sustained political organisation, strategy, patience and, discipline are required, to challenge and replace capitalism.

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