On 11/13/20 11:11 AM, Richard Modiano wrote:
"Any serious ecological Leninism would seek to take in hand, inspire,
defend, lead, help organize, and consolidate those movements. Any
plausible ecological Leninism would have to be built on existing
strengths. But in entering conversation with the people in those
movements, it would find ideas very different from the
capitalist/red-eco-modernist smorgasbord lately on offer from London.
It would find such people neither want nor believe in fantastical
geo-engineering technology. It would find most of them want climate
debt repayments. It would find they are interested in agriculture. It
would find that some of them have tightly organized mass parties,
eager for interlocutors, allies, and comrades in the metropolis. "
https://brooklynrail.org/2020/11/field-notes/Corona-Climate-Chronic-Emergency
<https://brooklynrail.org/2020/11/field-notes/Corona-Climate-Chronic-Emergency>
I've known Malm for quite a number of years ever since I reviewed a book
about Iran he co-wrote over 12 years ago. I also know Ajl who has backed
off from the Assadism he used to spout, even writing a pretty good
analysis of how neoliberalism was mostly responsible for the Syrian
revolution.
(https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328200416_The_Political_Economy_of_Thermidor_in_Syria_National_and_International_Dimensions).
He has also written some damned good stuff about ecosocialism.
What I don't get is the fury that goes into these debates on the
ecosocialist left, with the tag team of John Bellamy Foster and Ian
Angus versus Jason Moore. Trying to get the "correct" angle on the
environmental crisis reminds me a bit of the fable about the blind men
and the elephant. One only knows it by the tail, another by the trunk,
etc. I read Foster and Moore and get a lot of good insights from both. I
am sure if I get around to Malm and Ajl's forthcoming book, it will be
the same thing. The truth is that there is a disjunction between
ecosocialist theory and the practical tasks of building a mass movement.
With Moore referring to Foster's errors as being based on "Cartesian
dualism", I felt like I was back in grad school.
I can't say much about Ajl's book review since I haven't read Malm's
book but I do wonder why he would be implicitly compared to Leigh Phillips:
"Huge portions of the eco-modernist agenda are decanted into a Leninist
container: direct-air carbon, capture, and storage, half-earth, and
veganism, one liberal biologist pipedream after another, presented as
though we can simply take over capitalist technology or socio-ecological
planning and turn it to popular ends."
It's always best to cite the author you are dumping on, after all.
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