ŷ������

What would the Green New Deal look like if the Global South mattered?

Preamble:
--2021 was a year of growing urgency; formally studying/working in public health and seeing global capitalism’s abysmal handling of the pandemic further emphasized how unprepared our political economic system (my “extracurricular�� study) is to much-greater ecological crises. Given the lack of social imagination around me (work/university/life), I’m further prioritizing social research.
--I checked off several must-reads in 2021, including :
-Marx's Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1
-Hudson's The Bubble and Beyond and Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance
-Utsa Patnaik's The Agrarian Question in the Neoliberal Era: Primitive Accumulation and the Peasantry
-an unexpected gem was Hickel’s synthesis of degrowth + decolonization in Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
...So, to start 2022 strong, let’s pair this with Ajl’s synthesis of Green New Deal + decolonization:

Highlights:

1) Global North’s Green New Deal:
--Let’s start with the easy part: exposing the imperialist technocracy behind Western “progressives��:
a) Add “green�� to business-as-usual: the fine-print of mainstream/some “progressive�� Green New Deals (including AOC/Markey) is green capital/markets. This is the “creative destruction�� of capitalism, shedding contradictions of ossifying capital (ironically, fossil capital in this case) and stimulating the idle savings of wealth hoarders to expand the capitalist logic: private accumulation via commodification. This entails private enclosures of social property/value to enforce market exchange (now: carbon markets, ecosystem services pricing), financed by externalizing risks/costs onto society while rewards are privatized (State insurance getting bailout-savvy Wall Street on board).
…what this political economy jargon means in the real world is green = the new business (World Economic Forum), so the global poor (who have no market value in a money-based market society) need to be cleared off the greenery (suddenly valuable in green capitalism: biofuel, carbon off-setting for corporations via monoculture forest conservation, financial speculation, etc.) they reside on (the new “Enclosures��).
b) Such private enclosures require violence, thus a green military (ex. snake Democrat Elizabeth Warren’s Department of Defense Climate Resiliency and Readiness Act).
c) If green capitalism still seems too abstract, consider the raw materials costs of a green transition while Global South demands for sovereignty and trade justice are pushed to the margins.
…Western ivory-tower dreams of “H������-�������ٳ��� (Edward O. Wilson)�� where half the earth is reserved for conservation), decoupling capitalist growth from material use, Green Revolution technocracy/lab meat (Fully Automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto), etc. have clearly spent little efforts engaging with Global South realities.

--For activists, the more interesting part is debating ‼������������پ������� with Western radicals like Naomi Klein (On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal) and Noam Chomsky/economist Robert Pollin (The Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet) who are clearly aware of Global South realities, but see enough in “progressive�� Green New Deals to support them strategically.
--Regarding socdem (social democratic, i.e. “democratic�� politics + capitalist economics), Ajl distinguishes socdem policies vs. socdem as a historical phenomenon. The former can have its uses, but we need to review the latter to evaluate strategic ‼������������پ�������. Socdem’s shining achievement was the post-WWII Western welfare state; this was not the handout from Enlightened liberal capitalism (indeed, FDR could never expand his New Deals to sufficiently resolve the Great Depression since his fellow capitalists would rather adopt fascism and/or profit from WWII); the welfare state was a forced compromise to prevent the challenge of global Communism. Today, the capitalist class derailed Bernie/Corbyn; where is the external challenge?

2) Global South’s Environmental Justice:
--A key responsibility of radical intellectuals is to expand the social imagination of their audiences, in this case the Global North censored from Global South realities (we can start with Chomsky’s own Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies and take the next step with Vijay Prashad on imperialist ideological censorship: )
--So, my main issue with the cited Klein/Chomsky presentations of the Green New Deal is their failure to center today’s external challenge: Global South decolonization in the age of growing multi-polarity (decaying Western casino capitalism while China builds). Much like how the Global South were innovating expansive human rights during 20th century decolonization (obscured by the Global North “Cold War�� framing; co-opted by liberal “human rights��: The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World), this decolonization process once again is miles ahead in terms of innovating a path towards a global ecological society (Environmental Justice movements).
--Thus, Ajl centers the (as well as the The Red Deal: Indigenous Action to Save Our Earth and on-the-ground experiments):
a) Climate debt/reparations + Rights of Mother Earth: mealy-mouthed liberals have no problem in token “recognition�� of oppression. The Global South are pushing for concrete actions; these are not siloed in academia either, as the Global South has led Environmental Justice movements since the 1990s to organize summits to plan/popularize/enact where possible these concepts: debt owed by Global North states for colonizing the atmosphere + burdening the South’s opportunities for development and adaptation to climate disasters, common-but-differentiated responsibility for global states, Rights of Mother Earth, recognizing migration rights, technological transfers and dismantling Western monopolization of intellectual property, etc. If you need an intro on the economics of imperialism, see: The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions.
b) Agrarian Question + food sovereignty: the aforementioned Global North technocracy is steeped in eco-modernism, thus assuming away the monstrosity of industrial agriculture: biodiversity cleared for energy-intensive (chemical fertilizers + pesticides + vast machinery) monocrops eroding soil fertility, used to feed mass-torture “livestock�� or biofuels or simply wasted on the capitalist market to ensure profitable prices. Global capitalist production is the glorious system of destructive overproduction amidst starvation. Global North monopolizes food staples while Global South are forced (through “free trade�� “comparative advantage��) to export exotic cash crops. Thus, food sovereignty is a centerpiece in decolonization (The Agrarian Question in the Neoliberal Era: Primitive Accumulation and the Peasantry), with the re-localization of food as part of agroecology experiments (native ecological food production experience + scientific experimentation, re-imaging our social life’s relationship with the land rather than simply romanticizing historical petty production).
c) National Question + anti-militarism: the US military itself is not just a key polluter; imperialism’s boot actively prevents decolonization (Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations). It does not help that “progressives�� like AOC concede to imperialism right when Global South states are terrorized by imperialist-sponsored coups (“what Venezuela really needs right now is more democracy��) or downplaying the difficulties of anti-imperialist development (“petro-populism�� labels). The empire’s domestic poor are weary of being recruited for endless wars while returning to rust belts and opioid crises; let’s not forget socdem hero Obama extinguished the Bush-era anti-war movement while even con artist Trump campaigned with anti-war rhetoric.
--If we return to ‼������������پ�������, it should be clear that socdem parties (US Democratic Party, UK Labour Party, etc.) are a major obstacle and far behind the internationalist capacity of even the Global North public (Vietnam Syndrome, anti-nuclear weapons, anti-WTO Battle of Seattle, anti-war on Iraq, etc.). The problem with concessions as a strategy is sooner or later you concede everything.

Next Steps:
--Author Max Ajl and Jason Hickel were recently ; I wish they discussed DiEM25's progressive Green New Deal for Europe with Yanis Varoufakis. Lots to unpack regarding ‼������������پ������� given Varoufakis is on the council of Progressive International with Naomi Klein, Vijay Prashad (anti-imperialist communist: Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism) and Nick Estes (Red Nation: The Red Deal: Indigenous Action to Save Our Earth).
--I'll continue to look for more materialist analysis of global energy use, Earth Systems limits, infrastructure, waste, etc., to better compare/prioritize solutions (ex. with agroecology), but I must admit it is exhausting how research is dominated by undiagnosed liberalism (ex. Limits to Growth, EROI, etc., despite some of their useful technical tools: Thinking in Systems: A Primer). This pathology manifests in flare-ups of salivary frothing of the mouth with repeated utterances of the word ※��������DZ�ܱ����پ��Dz��� when triggered by social policy application. For a full diagnosis, see: Too Many People?: Population, Immigration, and the Environmental Crisis
--With a clearer centering on what we should be fighting for, we can return to “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will�� and consider the various scenarios we might confront. To me, this is a better use of ‼������������پ�������. So, I’m looking into war-time economies in anticipation of nationalist crisis management. Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (I'll eventually stop trashing that book) seems less relevant than the escalation of crises forcing radicalization (both Right and Left)��