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.
If you appreciate the work we do, we continue to try to put out about an episode a week, if you are able to support us by becoming a patron of the show for as little as $1 per month, you can help continue to make this show possible and accessible for those who cannot afford to make such a contribution.
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
I have grown to deeply deeply hate the Gates Foundation, what a bunch of gross human monsters.
Anybody that reads the book is going to be in for a
treatstruggle session on vegetarianism and veganism for climate change.haha, I was reading them as a vegan being like "c'mon dude most of us are cool, I just don't wanna murder animals I don't think we'll single handedly solve climate change":powercry-1:
Literally listening to the RevLeft interview with the author just now and got to that part literally seconds before seeing this post,
I found those parts super interesting and almost wish he delved into them even more
This is the first work of, I guess political economy that I've read, so there were some terms that were confusing to me. Thank you to everyone that answered my questions on the perusall!
I suppose it’s to be expected with a piece of political economy, but I almost feel like this is written slightly more verbosely than it has to be? I’ve become a big proponent these days of writing for the widest audience possible - it’s one thing to not ‘dumb down’ ideas, but another to use plain language. Felt like he reached for the thesaurus a little bit while writing this, not sure if anyone else noticed it.
Otherwise it’s a great little treatise so far, I don’t think there’s so much in the first few sections that will be news to most of us, coming from an already left perspective - the fact that AOC and Bill Gates shouldn’t be the horizons of vision when it comes to solving the climate catastrophe should already be apparent.
The centering of climate change and climate change ‘solutions’ as an expression of imperialism is brilliant, really something that should be stressed. The idea of unequal exchange not just of commodities but of emissions is great.
I’m really trying hard to be less doomer on climate at the moment. I feel like this book gets across the gravity of the situation without being paralysingly bleak.
I really liked the perspective of the atmosphere undergoing an enclosure type of control by the imperialist core and that we need to frame the discussion like that from now on.
I was pretty horrified at the idea of walling off nature into "carbon sink forests" or "nature preserves" while every lives in a bleak ass city with no parks and no decommodified public spaces. It makes the chinese city designs that popped up in /c/urbanism, even more exciting.
This quote made shudder. He is discussing some of the financial and ecological engineering being discussed amongst the wealthy elite and their priests. And what they think they can get away.
To put a green spin on such world-scale ecological-financial engineering, hand-of-god fantasies about Half Earth are gaining ground, imagining half of "Nature" immured from hordes of polluting souls - annoying human components of the "Anthropocene" — through wide-scale conversion of human-inhabited areas to CO2-drawdown farms and fortress conservation in which the wealthy world can luxuriate through luxe safaries, while clustering humans into the other half
@Nagarjuna @notthenameiwant @MasterCombine @LibsEatPoop @glimmer_twin @panopticon @RedCloud It's book club discussion time!
I'm in the middle of "What is to be Done" right now, but I'll catch up later this week. Did you ever hear back from Ajl?
I got his e-mail and I have to send him the details but I am juggling a million things.
I'll add podcasts and other resources into this post in a little bit.
@Nagarjuna @notthenameiwant @MasterCombine @LibsEatPoop @glimmer_twin @panopticon @RedCloud
So what I'd like to ask those who got started reading: What did you think the premise of the book was going to be? How did it differ from your initial expectations?
What concepts or terms gave you trouble, or are confused by? What can we do to help clear it up.
Overall the introduction and first two chapters offer a fairly critical view of the "GND" style proposals provided by capitalists or succ dems, do you agree or disagree with the author in his critiques?
Do you have any questions on the concept of agroecology? on the concept of degrowth economics?
What additional demands would you add to the cochamba agreement?
The author discusses green technology as a siren call, do you think the arguments laid out are well-founded?
I found his focus on humanity's ability to commune with nature rather refreshing are there any arguments of his, or of the left, you felt most drawn to?
Lol thanks for these questions. I had no idea what to type otherwise than just "holy shit what a book!"
What did you think the premise of the book was going to be? How did it differ from your initial expectations?
I 100% thought it was gonna be a socdem-like book about the green new deal which is why I wasn't really that interested in reading it. I was completely fucking wrong, obviously. Like, almost every sentence in the book is gripping and makes me giddy.
are there any arguments of his, or of the left, you felt most drawn to?
The idea of today's technology being welded onto the hands of bourgeoisie, making it impossible to simply "take over the state machinery and use it for good" is completely mind-blowing me to. I'd never even thought of that and it just fills me with dread.
What concepts or terms gave you trouble, or are confused by? What can we do to help clear it up.
His stuff about veganism rubbed me the wrong way. Like, I get his point about capital/technological intensive industries like Beyond Meat and stuff are beyond useless for combating climate change, but that doesn't mean we can't eat rice and beans goddammit!
Also, the idea is to prevent the association of "meat" with "wealth" in ex-colonial nations which is what usually happens when their GDP increases and we see a corresponding increase in their meat consumption. Like, we all want Bangladeshis to be healthier. But we don't want Bangladeshis to be into factory farming.
His critiques of Bastani and FALC are incredible.
His stuff about veganism rubbed me the wrong way. Like, I get his point about capital/technological intensive industries like Beyond Meat and stuff are beyond useless for combating climate change, but that doesn’t mean we can’t eat rice and beans goddammit!
I feel like his veganism critiques are primarily coming from an indigenous, sustainable raising of animals. In the RevLeft episode he gives the example of how the buffalo was actually very important for the grassland ecosystem of the Midwest and their near-extinction helped cause the dust storms of the 1930s. He also draws a line between some vegan advocates, animal rights, and malthusian or misanthropic beliefs, which in my opinion is more like "don't throw the baby with the bathwater" type problem.
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! ;)
I'm enjoying the reading so far! I haven't listened to the podcast episodes yet, so most of the work right now is discussing how the Green New Deal as envisioned in the imperial core is inadequate and enables imperialism while saying little about any alternatives. I suppose he has to address the shortcomings of the current plans before discussing improvements, however. Will stay tuned!
The revival of malthusian arguments and the way world elites would rather dump every person into cities and then wall off "nature" it's some bleak shit.
I'm hella behind. Just getting ready to start chapter 1. The introduction definitely has me interested though....
Take your time, I will make sure to link back to each thread so you can make your way through then as you catch up.
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