Please drop your questions here, in preparation for the author's arrival.
Max Ajl
Max Ajl is a doctoral student in Development Sociology at Cornell University. He currently is based in Tunis, where he is doing his dissertation research on state agricultural development policy and the politics of price fixing during the era of state-directed development and the transition to capitalist agriculture in the countryside. His fields of expertise include comparative international development, political economy of social change, world-systems theory, Middle East political economy, and rural political economy. His academic writing has been published in many venues, including Historical Materialism, MERIP, and the Journal of Palestine Studies. He has presented at universities in Tunisia and across North America, including at Cornell, Columbia, and the University of California – Berkeley. He co-edits the Palestine page at Jadaliyya.
Topics of Interest:Rural Sociology, World-Systems Theory, Political Economy, Historical Sociology, Agrarian Change, the Politics of the Global Food System, Ecological Economics, Development Theory, Colonialism, US Foreign PolicyCountries/Regions of Interest:Tunisia, Israel/Palestine, the United States
Book Summary
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.
Apperances
Millenials are killing capitalism
Video -GREEN NEW DEAL: Max Ajl and Kali Akuno
Video - Only Anti-Imperialism Can Save Us From Climate Catastrophe, With Max Ajl
Other Writings
Monthly Review
AMA Session is over, thank you everyone who participated and left preparatory questions. Thank you, once again to, Max Ajl for coming on and answering our questions.
I hope this was an insightful and educational session. Ya'll have a great weekend <3 to all comrades!
I was surprised at the critical way the "Green Revolution" was depicted in your book. And you wrote some of those same places are still struggling with famine and hunger. Is it the way the farming methods were "revolutionized" or the existence of extractive and exporting industries that are directly to blame for said famine?
I want to say, I appreciated the way you brought up planned obsolesce by companies. You can see this in the way Windows is now requiring newer cpu chips. The way Apple throttles older phones. The fact their solution to most phone/computer problems is to try and upsell you to a new version of the phone. Is it safe to say, that in an socioalist-ecology framework, we'd see more modular devices like phones and tablets that can be modified without requiring special tools to open or unglue their innards; what else do you envision?
I just want to say, that you had me at de-commoditized public spaces and 24-hour library services. I can only imagine the types of services that a 24-hour library would provide, but what would you love to see in these de-commoditized spaces?
I also want to thank you for acknowledging the importance of nature to the collective well-being of humans. "Nature", and biospheres, forests, etc. are not just useful for their carbon sink or ecological and climate regulations (wetlands as buffers to hurricanes, or water sponges during flood events); but they are also integral to the psychological well-being of humans. So the initial chapters were you discussed the plans by Neo-liberal institutions to just stick humans into Mega-cities with only some access to greenery or green spaces enclosed for luxury-experiences was bleak and really upsetting.
Have you read Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler? If so, what did you think?
What other books and organizations would you recommend to someone wanting to become more knowledgeable and active in the People's Green New Deal movement?
The farming technologies were basically a system of "betting on the strong": they relied on a set of farmers who had enough capital to access the capital-intensive technologies. So the GR was never about ending hunger. Riocha Kumar shows that there was not a foodgrain availability crisis in post-Independence India: https://www.epw.in/journal/2019/34/technology-and-society/indias-green-revolution-and-beyond.html so the important thing is to think about how the technologies were the deliberately-chosen weapons in a class war from above. I think we need to try to resist the temptation to make forces or relations of production the prime mover here -- both were important. Other options also existed at that time, above all a widespread agrarian reform, but this was blocked by regional landlords and governments. We have to remember also that famine in the modern period is also never about insufficient food, but about insufficient social power to access the food which is there, or is being exported.
I think an eco-socialist transition would have to make basically all technology open-source and popularly controlled, which would almost certainly mean we would no longer accept technologies which become rapidly obsolete.
For other work, check out the studies of Stan Cox, Keston Perry, Mimi Sheller, The Agroecology Research Corps, La Via Campesina and their working documents, Bikrum Gill.
I think you just made the /c/Libre and /c/Technology comms very happy :D. Yeah that is something I'd love to see as well!
Thank you, will do!