Re: [Marxism] NYRB review of Naomi Klein
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * CC:Socialists can't just criticize neoliberal and liberal responses. We must actively support and build the movements that are confronting the climate crisis. What ecosocialists can learn from Naomi Klein http://climateandcapitalism.com/2014/11/23/ecosocialists-can-learn-naomi-klein/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] NYRB review of Naomi Klein
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * [reply inline / bottom-posted] on Thu, 20 Nov 2014 22:36:34 -0500, Marv Gandall via Marxism wrote: On Nov 20, 2014, at 10:27 PM, Ratbag Media via Marxism marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu wrote: The level of myopia flagged by some of the purists who seek to denigrate Klein's perspective amazes me. [...] I may be mistaken, but I'd be surprised if she means by the end of capitalism the economic and political expropriation of the bourgeoisie and the replacement of private by public ownership of the major industries, as happened in the USSR, China, and Cuba, consistent with the traditional understanding of the socialist movement. Naomi seems to have more in mind a radical reform of the system and strict regulation of the corporations. [...] Socialism in one country - as in USSR, China, and Cuba - is a dead end and as we have seen turns into its opposite. Stalinism and its junior off-shoots of Maoism, Gueverism, Enverism, etc. did and will get us nowhere fast. In fact, these sub-standard 'socialist' ideologies have to be overcome as barriers to the socialist/communist advance that the world and its people need. And how anyone can begin to imagine that the environment cannot be of primary concern to Marxists and a Marxist program is incredible. Capitalism and its ever-readiness to extract profit regardless of consequences is what is damaging workers' and other working people's lives and the planet as whole. One way or another, capitalism will kill us if we don't stop it. Naomi Klein is an important writer and her contribution to the debate on capitalism's destruction of the planet is something no Marxist can ignore. -- Jim (j...@redunity.org) on 21/11/2014 NUJ 024828 _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] NYRB review of Naomi Klein
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On Nov 20, 2014, at 11:30 PM, Joseph Green via Marxism wrote: Klein prettifies the carbon tax, and does not recognize it as a market measure, no better than the rest of them; This is the purest ultraleft idiocy. As I have pointed out--and as Green absurdly ignores--the capitalism system is not about to be overthrown by a proletarian revolution, not in less time than we have before the human environment is irrevocably destroyed. Our struggle therefore absolutely must center on demands for effective measures operative within the logic of the capitalist system. Effective carbon taxation is not merely better--it is the ONLY way to make the intensification of pollution so UNPROFITABLE that the capitalist market totally abandons it and is forced, by its own logic, to recognize and act on the real, and ever-increasing, profitability of investment in the whole range of maturing carbon-eliminating energy technologies. Shane Mage This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, kindling in measures and going out in measures. Herakleitos of Ephesos _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] NYRB review of Naomi Klein
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Ted Glick makes an argument very similar to Shane's here: http://ecowatch.com/2014/11/17/naomi-klein-this-changes-every-thing/ It's certainly true, as Shane and Ted say, that the odds on making a socialist revolution in time to save the planet and its species are frighteningly small. But that doesn't mean pushing only those demands which supposedly make continuing pollution profitable. It means building a global movement for socialism which alone -- even short of revolution -- has the power to force substantial cuts in emissions. And which in consequence means a movement giving millions of workers the awareness that they have to go all the way because they see capital and its NGO allies dragging their feet. Given the current weakness of movements for socialism, especially in the biggest polluting countries (US and China), we need to think strategically about demands which build those movements, and argue for them to take up transitional climate demands. What's more, a workers' movement fighting for confiscatory carbon taxes is more likely to scare the ruling class into substantial cuts in emissions far more than a movement which starts with an acceptable demand which lowers profits just enough to nudge the bosses to shift their investments from dirty to clean industries. On Fri, Nov 21, 2014 at 8:51 AM, Shane Mage via Marxism marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu wrote: POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On Nov 20, 2014, at 11:30 PM, Joseph Green via Marxism wrote: Klein prettifies the carbon tax, and does not recognize it as a market measure, no better than the rest of them; This is the purest ultraleft idiocy. As I have pointed out--and as Green absurdly ignores--the capitalism system is not about to be overthrown by a proletarian revolution, not in less time than we have before the human environment is irrevocably destroyed. Our struggle therefore absolutely must center on demands for effective measures operative within the logic of the capitalist system. Effective carbon taxation is not merely better--it is the ONLY way to make the intensification of pollution so UNPROFITABLE that the capitalist market totally abandons it and is forced, by its own logic, to recognize and act on the real, and ever-increasing, profitability of investment in the whole range of maturing carbon-eliminating energy technologies. Shane Mage This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, kindling in measures and going out in measures. Herakleitos of Ephesos _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/ options/marxism/acpollack2%40gmail.com _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] NYRB review of Naomi Klein
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * It was a typo. It should have been obvious from the context that I meant UNprofitable. On Fri, Nov 21, 2014 at 10:04 AM, Shane Mage via Marxism marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu wrote: POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On Nov 21, 2014, at 9:18 AM, Andrew Pollack wrote: Ted Glick makes an argument very similar to Shane's here: http://ecowatch.com/2014/11/17/naomi-klein-this-changes-every-thing/ It's certainly true, as Shane and Ted say, that the odds on making a socialist revolution in time to save the planet and its species are frighteningly small. But that doesn't mean pushing only those demands which supposedly make continuing pollution profitable... How about reading what I wrote? The whole point is to make continuing pollution UNprofitable. On Nov 20, 2014, at 11:30 PM, Joseph Green via Marxism wrote: Klein prettifies the carbon tax, and does not recognize it as a market measure, no better than the rest of them; This is the purest ultraleft idiocy. As I have pointed out--and as Green absurdly ignores--the capitalism system is not about to be overthrown by a proletarian revolution, not in less time than we have before the human environment is irrevocably destroyed. Our struggle therefore absolutely must center on demands for effective measures operative within the logic of the capitalist system. Effective carbon taxation is not merely better--it is the ONLY way to make the intensification of pollution so UNPROFITABLE that the capitalist market totally abandons it and is forced, by its own logic, to recognize and act on the real, and ever-increasing, profitability of investment in the whole range of maturing carbon-eliminating energy technologies. Shane Mage This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, kindling in measures and going out in measures. Herakleitos of Ephesos _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/ options/marxism/acpollack2%40gmail.com _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] NYRB review of Naomi Klein
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On Nov 21, 2014, at 9:18 AM, Andrew Pollack via Marxism marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu wrote: It's certainly true, as Shane and Ted say, that the odds on making a socialist revolution in time to save the planet and its species are frighteningly small. But that doesn't mean pushing only those demands which supposedly make continuing pollution profitable. Given the current weakness of movements for socialism, especially in the biggest polluting countries (US and China), we need to think strategically about demands which build those movements, and argue for them to take up transitional climate demands. What's more, a workers' movement fighting for confiscatory carbon taxes is more likely to scare the ruling class into substantial cuts in emissions far more than a movement which starts with an acceptable demand... Concretely, is there much difference in the demands favoured by the established environmental organizations and the left-wing of the environmental movement? I'm not referring to the customary differences of strategy, nor the theoretical differences about whether it is possible to achieve the necessary reforms short of a sweeping change in capitalist property relations. What are the acceptable demands that Andy and the eco-socialist movement would reject, and what respectable environmental groups are advancing these? _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] NYRB review of Naomi Klein
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Socialism in one country = socialism in no country. T Socialism in one country - as in USSR, China, and Cuba - is a dead end and as we have seen turns into its opposite. Stalinism and its junior off-shoots of Maoism, Gueverism, Enverism, etc. did and will get us nowhere fast. In fact, these sub-standard 'socialist' ideologies have to be overcome as barriers to the socialist/communist advance that the world and its people need. And how anyone can begin to imagine that the environment cannot be of primary concern to Marxists and a Marxist program is incredible. Capitalism and its ever-readiness to extract profit regardless of consequences is what is damaging workers' and other working people's lives and the planet as whole. One way or another, capitalism will kill us if we don't stop it. Naomi Klein is an important writer and her contribution to the debate on capitalism's destruction of the planet is something no Marxist can ignore. -- Jim (j...@redunity.org) on 21/11/2014 NUJ 024828 _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/thomasfbarton%40earthlink.net _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] NYRB review of Naomi Klein
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Here’s a link to another review of Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything, this one by Elizabeth Kolbert in the latest New York Review of Books. Kolbert is sympathetic to Klein’s analysis of the climate crisis and her indictment of governments and liberal green organizations who offer misleading reassurances that the looming catastrophe can be averted without major changes to the status quo. But, like some other reviewers, Kolbert thinks Klein’s various proposals to resolve the crisis through “managed degrowth” and “regeneration” are too vague to be meaningful or, like carbon taxes, “hardly seem to challenge the basic logic of capitalism.” This, despite the fact that Klein is avowedly anticapitalist, although her rhetorical flourishes about “changing everything” though a global environment movement are arguably aimed not at the system’s overthrow as purging it it of its rapacious, unregulated, “neoliberal” character which thwarts popular efforts to rid it of its worst features. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/dec/04/can-climate-change-cure-capitalism/?utm_source=feedburnerutm_medium=feedutm_campaign=Feed%3A+nybooks+%28The+New+York+Review+of+Books%29 _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] NYRB review of Naomi Klein
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On Nov 20, 2014, at 4:42 PM, Marv Gandall via Marxism wrote: Here’s a link to another review of Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything, this one by Elizabeth Kolbert...Kolbert thinks Klein’s various proposals to resolve the crisis through “managed degrowth” and “regeneration” are too vague to be meaningful or, like carbon taxes, “hardly seem to challenge the basic logic of capitalism.” This, despite the fact that Klein is avowedly anticapitalist, although her rhetorical flourishes about “changing everything” though a global environment movement are arguably aimed not at the system’s overthrow... http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/dec/04/can-climate-change-cure-capitalism/?utm_source=feedburnerutm_medium=feedutm_campaign=Feed%3A+nybooks+%28The+New+York+Review+of+Books%29 Not aimed at the system's overthrow? Such criticism is beyond stupid, ultra-left of ultra-left. Greenhouse-gas-fueled economic growth, still proceeding apace, threatens imminent collapse of human civilization, perhaps even of the (last unextinct) human species itself. The overthrow of the capitalist system (ie., the worldwide proletarian democratic communist revolution) is at best somewhere far beyond the horizon of present historical possibility. Therefore any measures to stop increasing and then start reducing atmospheric carbon gasses can only be effective not by challenging but by OPERATING IN CONFORMITY WITH the basic logic of capitalism.” That is why the central program of any green, socialist, working class, even progressive political movement has to be the immediate introduction of a comprehensive, substantial, and annually increasing carbon tax-- taxation that would make all forms of carbon pollution, starting with the worst like coal and tar-sands, uneconomic (ie., unprofitable, loss- making) synchronically with the concomitant increase of increasingly profitable pollution-control technologies and pollution free (mainly solar and aeolian) energy supplies, an increase that is (in the latter case) inherently unlimited. This must be central to the Hawkins/Jones- style Green presidential campaign that we have to envisage for 2016. Shane Mage This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, kindling in measures and going out in measures. Herakleitos of Ephesos _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] NYRB review of Naomi Klein
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * I was describing the nature of Klein’s “anticapitalism”, not making a value judgement about it. Some would and have forcefully argued that her approach is fundamentally social democratic (I agree) and that you can’t stop climate change unless you expropriate the capitalists politically and economically (that remains to be seen). On Nov 20, 2014, at 5:33 PM, Shane Mage via Marxism marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu wrote: On Nov 20, 2014, at 4:42 PM, Marv Gandall via Marxism wrote: Here’s a link to another review of Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything, this one by Elizabeth Kolbert...Kolbert thinks Klein’s various proposals to resolve the crisis through “managed degrowth” and “regeneration” are too vague to be meaningful or, like carbon taxes, “hardly seem to challenge the basic logic of capitalism.” This, despite the fact that Klein is avowedly anticapitalist, although her rhetorical flourishes about “changing everything” though a global environment movement are arguably aimed not at the system’s overthrow... http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/dec/04/can-climate-change-cure-capitalism/?utm_source=feedburnerutm_medium=feedutm_campaign=Feed%3A+nybooks+%28The+New+York+Review+of+Books%29 Not aimed at the system's overthrow? Such criticism is beyond stupid, ultra-left of ultra-left. Greenhouse-gas-fueled economic growth, still proceeding apace, threatens imminent collapse of human civilization, perhaps even of the (last unextinct) human species itself. The overthrow of the capitalist system (ie., the worldwide proletarian democratic communist revolution) is at best somewhere far beyond the horizon of present historical possibility. Therefore any measures to stop increasing and then start reducing atmospheric carbon gasses can only be effective not by challenging but by OPERATING IN CONFORMITY WITH the basic logic of capitalism.” That is why the central program of any green, socialist, working class, even progressive political movement has to be the immediate introduction of a comprehensive, substantial, and annually increasing carbon tax--taxation that would make all forms of carbon pollution, starting with the worst like coal and tar-sands, uneconomic (ie., unprofitable, loss-making) synchronically with the concomitant increase of increasingly profitable pollution-control technologies and pollution free (mainly solar and aeolian) energy supplies, an increase that is (in the latter case) inherently unlimited. This must be central to the Hawkins/Jones-style Green presidential campaign that we have to envisage for 2016. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] NYRB review of Naomi Klein
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * The level of myopia flagged by some of the purists who seek to denigrate Klein's perspective amazes me. The ready penchant for 'one solution/revolution' is just indulgent phrase mongering. The core question that Klein's book asks is what are we going to do? and how are we going to do it? Asks...that's it's main contribution given that capitalism is THE problem. That's the debate, the discussion right there. Now if we have an agreement that the problem IS CAPITALISM then we are way way ahead in the green movement -- ideologically -- than we've been for yonks. To argue that Klein isn't up to the task (whereas we Marxists are) merely serves to marginalise the socialist revolutionary left. The fact is that the Marxist left generally IS NOT up to the task because it treats climate change as a sideline issue. So what does that confront us with, what sort of program do we need to generate and promote? You gotta have a revolution or else!' is not that program. In effect a good bit of that essential program is embedded in Klein's book. She may skirt some of the DIY but at least she has the guts to argue that we are being screwed because of what is generic to capitalism. I think Richard Smith's Climate Crisis, the Deindustrialization Imperative and the Jobs vs. Environment Dilemma is an excellent response to Klein, but even there he is standing on her shoulders, so to speak, and using her POV to advance the discussion. .http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/27226-climate-crisis-the-deindustrialization-imperative-and-the-jobs-vs-environment-dilemma Theres' this whole new discussion opening up that seeks to transcend the social democratic program being proffered by the green parties because these reformist greens are wedded to capitalism. Indeed, the penny is dropping that they are -- or may indeed be --part of the problem and NOT the solution. Klein's book is reflective of that. dave riley _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] NYRB review of Naomi Klein
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Naomi Klein is not a theorist, but a talented writer who reflects the views of a certain section of the movement. Her talk of challenging capitalism reflects the mood and language of a section of the movement that wants to do something militant and challenge various reactionary policies, rather than being a description of an alternative to the capitalist system itself. I wrote the following brief review of her book for the Detroit Workers' Voice emailing list: *** October 8, 2014 RE: Naomi Klein on capitalism vs. the climate About This changes everything --- Naomi Klein's new book, This changes everything: capitalism vs. the climate, deals with the climate disaster that is already beginning. It is a vigorously written book, and its best sections discuss issues glossed over in tamer presentations, such as the faults of the Big Green, the looming threat of geo-engineering, and the failures of market solutions. Among the issues taken up in the book: * the environmental crisis isn't just another cause, but will increasingly be connected with the whole range of economic and political problems facing us. It will involve not just some minor tinkering with some items in government budgets, but major social, economic, and political changes. It will require the end of market fundamentalism and unregulated capitalism, a turn towards regulation and planning, a reorientation of agriculture, changes in the social and economic position of the masses, and different relations between the developed and developing countries; * the environmental cause must be connected to the struggle for welfare of the masses, such as the provision of jobs; * it denounces market solutions such as carbon trading, carbon offsets, and carbon markets, and points to their insufficiency or even harmfulness. But, unfortunately, Klein prettifies the carbon tax, and does not recognize it as a market measure, no better than the rest of them; * it castigates Big Green (the major bourgeois environmental groups) for its connections to corporations including oil companies like BP, Chevron, and Shell Oil. Big Green includes, among others, the Sierra Club, the Nature Conservancy, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the National Wildlife Federation, and the World Resources Institute. One of the book's chapters is entitled The Disastrous Merger of Big Business and Big Green. This is a merger that has even been institutionalized in coalitions such as the United States Climate Action Partnership. Klein writes that The big, corporate-affiliated green groups don't deny the reality of climate change, of course--many work hard to raise the alarm. And yet several of these groups have consistently, and aggressively, pushed responses to climate change that are the least burdensome, and often directly beneficial, to the largest greenhouse gas emitters on the planet--even when the policies come at the direct expense of communities fighting to keep fossil fuels in the ground. ... The 'market-based' climate solutions favored by so many large foundations and adopted by many greens have provided an invaluable service to the fossil fuel sector as a whole. (pp. 198, 199) * it exposes the nature of the frightening geo-engineering solutions that are being proposed: space mirrors; spaying seawater into the sky; alternatively, spraying sulfate aerosols into the sky; fertilizing the ocean with iron; covering deserts with vast white sheets; etc. * it surveys the struggle and views of the more militant section of the environmentalists. One chapter, for example, is Blockadia: The New Climate Warriors. Indeed Klein's book represents something of the consensus view of many climate warriors, thus reflecting both the strengths and weaknesses of their views. Some of the book's weaknesses are that it evades such major questions as the attitude the movement should take to the Democratic Party or to the trade union bureaucrats; it doesn't really put forward a new plan for how to build an effective movement separate from Big Green; while talking of challenging capitalism, it dwells far too much on capitalism's bad philosophical ideas rather than on what the alternative is; and it sometimes overlooks the capitalist class, such as when it attributes Obama's betrayal of his environmental promises to his ideological ideas, rather than to his being the political leader of the bourgeoisie. Klein also seems to think that better moral appeals will build the movement. And if she denounces the bourgeois revulsion
