About the Book

Max Ajl – ‘A People’s Green New Deal’. The idea of a Green New Deal has become a watchword in the current era of global climate crisis. But what - and for whom - is the Green New Deal? In this concise book, Max Ajl provides an overview of the various mainstream Green New Deals. Critically engaging with their proponents, their ideological underpinnings, and their limitations. Ajl goes on to sketch out a radical alternative: a ‘People’s Green New Deal’ committed to decommodification, working-class power, anti-imperialism and agro-ecology.

Resources

In this episode we interview Max Ajl, author of the new book A People’s Green New Deal.

Max Ajl is an associated researcher with the Tunisian Observatory for Food Sovereignty and the Environment and a postdoctoral fellow with the Rural Sociology Group at Wageningen University. He has written for Monthly Review, Jacobin and Viewpoint. He has contributed to a number of journals, including the Journal of Peasant Studies, Review of African Political Economy and Globalizations, and is an associate editor at Agrarian South & Journal of Labor and Society

In this discussion we talk to Ajl about his critiques of various forms of climate policy emanating from the capitalist and imperialist ruling class, and he situates the AOC/Markey Green New Deal as sharing a great deal ideologically and in terms of program with other capitalist so-called solutions to the climate crisis.

What Ajl advocates instead is an anti-colonial perspective, and a total infrastructural and agricultural transformation in the Global North, and strong solidarity movements and convergences with climate proposals coming from the Global South, such as those laid out in the Cochabamba People’s Accords.

We strongly recommend this book as key to framing what a liberatory horizon can be for climate struggle on the left.

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Max Ajl, sociologist and author, joins Breht to discuss his book "A People's Green New Deal".

Topics Discussed: the liberal Green New Deal, the history of colonialism, eco-modernism, climate reparations, the Cochabamba's Peoples Agreement, degrowth, ecosocialism, agroecology, the national question, Green Capitalism, and much more.

Max's work: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Max-Ajl

Max's Twitter: https://twitter.com/maxajl

Schedule:

Intro, Chapter 1, Chapter 2 (57 pages) - Sept 11th | Chapter 3, Chapter 4 (42 pages) - Sept 18th | Chapter 5, Chapter 6 (47 pages) - Sept 25th | Chapter 7, Conclusion (24 pages) - October 2nd

  • Invidiarum [none/use name]
    ·
    3 years ago

    What did you think the premise of the book was going to be? How did it differ from your initial expectations? I expected him to put forth a proposal for a left gnd, more on the line of what is missing in existing proposals then attacking them.

    I like his clear and bellicose style, he does't applaud clearly insufficient half measures for at least trying, he calls them out for being insufficient (european greens, take note!).

    In my heart I already knew it to be true that: imperial core develops green tech build on extracted resources and then shows developing countries how to be "eco friendly", was both chauvinistic and in itself contradictory, but he really brings this home. I'm not sure if I'm going to finish the book, since the political fight in europe is about "can we do a slightly greener capitalism/imperialism" and confronting how insufficient this is, is a bit depressing.

    Oh, and why should we look up Lisbon and Barcelona? You have not answered this, consider this my call to the manager! ;)