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!
Thanks for doing this max! A couple of questions based on what I've read in APGND (I'm only up to chapter 6 though, unfortunately!):
One passage that stood out to me was about the agroecology of North America, before European invasion. Throughout the book you make it clear that we'll have to construct similar sustainable food supply chains in the future. Do you have any thoughts on the impact climate change might have on the more traditional/indigenous agricultural techniques? Will the changing climate actually make some of those strategies untenable in the future? For instance, I live in Australia, and worry that even a couple of degrees of warming could wreak havoc on food structures here, even using traditional methods - those methods were created over thousands of years and adapted to a pre-warmed Earth, after all.
Do you see a role in the future for seasonal work, with city-dwellers spending a portion of the year doing agricultural labour, during sowing/harvesting season for example, or do you think it is more of a priority to re-ruralise the population on a more permanent basis?
And a pretty massive question for my final one: what do you think is the most important work non-colonised people in the imperial core can do TODAY to work towards a just people's green new deal? Fight for land rights? Create grassroots urban/community farming structures? Fight for political power?
One thing about agroecology is that it is an abstraction from a set of farming techniques, rather than the techniques themselves. Agroecology is about decentralization of knowledge about how to farm and using closed cycles to farm, and focusing on things like resilience, stability, rather than focusing on quantitative production. It also follows the principle of not just decentralized knowledge, but also in a sense, worker control over the production process. Although the accumulated knowledge of how to manage the landscape relies for its utility on a more or less stable landscape, and cannot easily be resurrected if the landscape changes, it's still important to keep in mind that new "forms" of knowledge and farming and landscape management can be created for when/if the climate shifts.
Q2 is tough. I just have no idea. My rough thinking is that in the north, we should start with people who want to get involved in farming whether in the countryside or the city, and create all the necessary social and cultural infrastructure, including land reform, training, but also hospitals and railways, to make that life as attractive and welcoming as possible. Only after should we raise questions of how to actually allocate labor. For now, it's an extremely speculative question.
For non-colonized people in the core: fight for non-commodified "greening" and resilience of the public infrastructure: public transportation should be basically free, and upgraded and use renewable energy, utilities should be publicly owned, green spaces should be public, built everywhere for flood abatement. Once public ownership is in place locally or municipally, we will be in a better position to shift the forms of technology that are in use. All organizing should look locally and internationally at the same time, in other words while we focus on "economic-ecological" demands for decommodified green reconstruction locally, we need to be demanding/support national sovereignty in the periphery, Indigenous liberation, demilitarization, and climate debt, which means raising consciousness about those demands and struggles within local organizing.
For non-colonized people in the core: fight for non-commodified “greening” and resilience of the public infrastructure: public transportation should be basically free, and upgraded and use renewable energy, utilities should be publicly owned, green spaces should be public, built everywhere for flood abatement. Once public ownership is in place locally or municipally, we will be in a better position to shift the forms of technology that are in use. All organizing should look locally and internationally at the same time, in other words while we focus on “economic-ecological” demands for decommodified green reconstruction locally, we need to be demanding/support national sovereignty in the periphery, Indigenous liberation, demilitarization, and climate debt, which means raising consciousness about those demands and struggles within local organizing.
Are there any initiatives or movements you can recommend to get involved with / use as rolemodels regarding this?
I think Cooperation Jackson did a lot of work people should learn from; some of the Red Nations work here has been very important. I also am sympathetic to a lot of the line struggle going on in DSA over these issues. But I don't really live in the US so I may not be as attuned as others to the good work going on in a lot of places. My sense is that there is a real struggle to look locally and internationally simultaneously.
Thanks! If you know of some good orgs in the eu, feel free to give them a callout as well
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 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.
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!
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.
Thank you, will do!
Hey-ho, in case I get occupied:
- do you think it is feasible to accept immigrants in global north in this sort of agrarian commune-like villages, which you hinted at? As a responsible farming is largely input independent this side of seeds and agrarian instruments (well, and water :angery: ) it can be kinda sorta sold as acceptable political thing, despite eco-fash rearing its head (in america, and eastern europe. western europe is too entrenched with land holdings)
- as armchair-adjacent analysis: if value form can be snapped out of existence for labor time accounting, global north/south divide might be very quickly equalized, as north goods are very labor lax. Any thoughts on such thinking?
- do you think bullshit jobs thesis holds water - i.e. rising service economy job profile in global north is not care-taker jobs being monetized and integrated into capitalism, but kinda neo-feudalism outgrowth, with diffuse serfs in global south and diffuse home servants in global north, which may hint at very dystopian system?
- how can one deal with consumption desires, even in aes countries? as someone from russia, its very troubling how for a lot of people meme of blue jeans was worth it
- Not sure I perfectly understand the question, but I think unfortunately there will be climate refugees from South to North in the years to come. Eventually thinking about that will be important, but too much of the refugee discussion including on the left in the core focuses on accepting refugees rather than clear opposition to the polarized accumulation via war and ecological catastrophe which creates refugees in the first.
- I think the presentation of this in my book may have been sloppy, but I don't think we can snap labor time accounting out of existence in the short term just about anywhere, exactly as you say, because the value form is precisely how some people command the labor and resources of others. It's a long-run goal oriented to defending the use-value of agricultural and industrial labor, especially in the third world, including the work of subsistence production and the defense and maintenance of socially useful nature.
- I thought the bullshit jobs thesis was about the fact that people just aren't doing anything in their office work, which raises the question of why they're doing it -- part of that seems like Graeber's anti-marxism, and the other part Eurocentrism -- those jobs on the one hand are maybe, or have, provided some kind of labor needed in the value chain, but on the other have been a way of weaving service workers into the neoliberal social pact.
- I don't know! It's tricky. The way I tried to address this in my book is through focusing on qualitative consumption rather than quantitative, that people do like nice things, that's OK, the issue is actually democratizing access to them and replacing cheap and bad things which nice things which last a long time, and which people may have to be more involved in actually making and maintaining.
Hi Max. I have a few basic questions I'd like to ask. I apologize ahead of time if they are answered in your book, but we are only about 2 chapters into it in the reading group, so I hope you'll forgive me.
Of the possible scenarios listed in each chapter of the book, which do you believe to be the most likely scenario and why?
What do you believe needs to happen to move the needle towards real climate action?
Do you believe the ensuing suffering from a near worst case scenario will be acknowledged by first world countries, and if so in what way?
What is your opinion of the current energy democracy movement in the United States?
Do you have a take on the GND legislation that Jamaal Bowman is introducing? https://bowman.house.gov/press-releases?ID=B6D5D80C-356C-4DA9-802D-D8348B2F40AB
You don't have to answer all of these if you don't want to.
Definitely the most likely is option number one, elite transition. but it is most likely only if the current forces in the core remain disorganized and politically and organizationally unmoored from southern movements. So, I couldn't say at all how likely that is -- it's totally unpredictable. In some ways there is a rising extremely politically conscious anti-systemic sentiment within the imperial core which cannot be wished away by capitalists, but which also has yet to take real organizational form.
The Bowman legislation is good legislation, I didn't have time to look at the technical details regarding what constitutes a retrofit and if that will be contracted out to private companies or if the state will take it on. If the former, then it is sadly just creating a new frontier for "green" accumulation.
In some ways there is a rising extremely politically conscious anti-systemic sentiment within the imperial core which cannot be wished away by capitalists, but which also has yet to take real organizational form.
What should we be looking for in the organizational form, a more central/party model ala MLs or should we be thinking decentralized cells that can successfully demand/enact change but if one falls, the rest can still struggle on?
I have also been noticing a lot more political propaganda in places you previously would not have seen. So I hope the elites are shitting their breeches. What do you think we might see in the next few years, regarding bait&switch, bribes, or political repressions of political consciousness or political movements?
I have no idea. I'm sympathetic to the party form and am not sure there is an alternative which has surpassed it in terms of changing the world. The Venezuela commune model is also important to learn from.
I would expect in the coming years (although it is already happening) there will be intensive organizational disruption of any functioning or healthy formations. There are also billions of foundation money flowing in to try to decapitate all popular movements and rope them into the Dem Party.
We vote on books, but I will make sure to advocate for Building the Commune and several other books on the Venezuelan socialist movement as it is near and dear to my heart. Thank you :D
I would check out this beautiful book from Venezuela Analysis, Monthly Review, I feel like both VA and this book aren't circulating amongst activists as I would have expected, but there's no better place to learn about the ongoing Bolivarian process, and the book is great (I have a review coming out sometime in the next year....) https://monthlyreview.org/product/venezuela_the_present_as_struggle/
They also had an interview with Millenials Are Killing Capitalism, I heard their interview! It is definitely in my TBR.
Do you have any recommendations for projects that local organizations can start pursuing today that can have a meaningful impact? I think a lot of people here are fans of Community Supported Agriculture, but I also feel like there has to be more work to do to connect the particular to the general. Would love to hear your thoughts.
I think I got to some of this below, but I also think thinking about flood resilience, tree planting, is all incredibly important. In the most abstract sense, how can we build up more local use-values that make our lives better in the present, plan for what's to come, and yet don't rely on extraction from the south? That's what I tried to think through, maybe with mixed results, in my book. So, the more green spaces, water barrels, permeable pavement, lawns with mixes of perennial native crops, etc, the better, and these could be popular campaigns in almost any locality in the US. And why not build campaigning around them with campaigning for climate debt payments and demilitarization, emphasing the latter as the production of waste and the socially destructive use of our common resources?
How do you cope with the thought that our best efforts might not be enough to combat the damage that companies will continue to do as long as they can?
I think that kind of worry and grief is completely paralyzing! We need to get rid of the corporations and try to fix the damage they've left behind for the coming generations.
I just shot him an e-mail with the link to this post. So hopefully they'll start perusing questions and responding soon.
Awesome! Glad to see it's working. Let me know if you have additional questions just do @ my username and i'll be watching this thread.
What are your thoughts of Extinction Rebellion in the UK? I personally think they are highly problematic (getting environmentally-conscious people arrested and put in databases, blocking and protesting at public-transportation nexus) is their heart in the right place, they are just amateurs, or is something more sinister possibly going on? @MaxA
I think in our moment there are a lot of people from distinct social layers and experiences getting involved in politics, and entering with a lot of liberal baggage. For all their mistakes, it's good to see XR in motion, and I think there's an opening to engage more with what they are doing.
@MaxA I think these are my last two questions:
- What advice would you want to give someone that wants to get into the field you are in, and how would you envision making important contributions, like writing a book, or engaging in development programs that are truly socialist in nature?
- What could educational systems do better in helping future generations tackle climate change? Should we be seeing land-development programs in universities with large land-holdings? community gardens from elementary all the way to high school? More classes on what the northern countries consider "the trades" (plumbing, electricians, carpentry, mechanics) to learn how to repair and upkeep the products we already have?
Lastly, I wanted to say on behalf of the Hexbear community and myself, thank you for giving us some of your time to answer these questions. It means a lot to us, we are a fairly small community but we try to be devoted to the cause and learn about building a better world. So a million thank yous for doing this!
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I think the most important is to read a lot, whether in formal academic structures or probably more beneficially, otherwise, and read material from the third world, especially stuff from the 60s-80s, before the intellectual apparatus was placed under neo-liberal siege. from there any of us can figure out how to make our contribution from the knowledge we have.
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there is a huge shaming in the US but really in most of the world about any kind of manual labor, I think educational systems need to work against that, while also enfolding ecological thinking in the "trades" (which after all require a huge amount of knowledge in the first place, and could involve even more knowledge the more ecological concerns are braided into the skilling process)
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my pleasure!
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