the world’s biggest investor in clean energy research
<sarcasm>Yes, please tell me more about how green capitalism is going to save the world.</sarcasm>
You may find it interesting to read or watch something on the topic. I would strongly recommend End:Civ, and to a lesser degree Planet of the Humans which is way less interesting from a political perspective, but has great explanation of why “green” capitalism isn’t green and “renewable” energies aren’t renewable.
TLDR: “clean energy” and technological innovation won’t save us (source: tech person myself, please don’t trust us to make serious decisions for the future of humanity). only less consumption a serious deconstruction of the car/concrete society, high ecological standards (think no paints, no plastics, no concrete in daily life) and a serious fight against planned obsolescence (and intellectual property of any kind that makes it possible in the first place) might have a chance to save humanity, not exactly as we know it (over-abundance and misery) but as a society of reasonable-abundance and justice.
China didn’t withdraw from the Paris Agreement, the USA did.
Sure. I’m not here to vilify China and defend western empires. I’m an anarchist, i strongly oppose any State though i don’t take a neutral stance when it comes to military interventions. My heart stands with the Kurds and the Palestinians and all the oppressed peoples on this planet. Fire to all colonial empires, even France (my birthplace) and China!
Firstly, you conflated my statement on investing in clean energy with green capitalism. Investing != Capitalism. If you don’t get that please let me know and I can explain further.
Secondly, as a fellow technologist, and someone whose undergrad program director was a not so closeted anarchist, I understand the argument you’re making and have also read several books that advocate for depopulation, an end to consumerism, a return to small scale societies, and the like. I understand your argument and my response is that based on the current trajectory of global society the policy objectives you are arguing for are untenable without a revolution in the United States and Europe concurrently (at least within a 20 year time span).
The reality is capital flight is a real practice with the advent of transnational corporations.
My logic for arguing for technology is that we’re not likely to see a revolution in any major western power anytime soon because of the economic weight of the global financial system and imperial hegemon of the USA. Until we reach a crisis point there will not be the change you’re advocating for. However, much like how Britain overbuilt railways in the 18th century, or the internet stock mania led to the current tech firms dominance today, the creation of for example, lead free perovskite solar panels, open source grid distribution technology, and other sustainable technologies, will allow us to love more sustainably after the crisis.
My interpretation of your argument is that you think we’ll somehow transition to a low resource use economy (realistically how besides revolution?) and then live for decades with low technological progress and forget about the rapid expansion of technology that’s possible under the exploitation of people via capitalism? I don’t see it.
I do hope I’m wrong of course, I particularly hate planned obselesence lately (among all the other terrible things).
you conflated my statement on investing in clean energy with green capitalism
Not exactly. You specifically mentioned China, which is an industrial capitalist nation.
advocate for depopulation, an end to consumerism, a return to small scale societies
I don’t promote depopulation or small-scale societies. I understand the Neo-malthusian anarcha-feminist analyses from the 19th century (Émilie Lamotte for example) but since then the material conditions have changed greatly: humanity is now producing more commodities that the entire planet needs, and industry started planned obsolescence in the 1920s (years after Lamotte’s death) to make sure people would keep buying.
So yes i’m advocating for the end of consumerism (the cult of consumption), but not necessarily against consumption itself, as long as it’s done following ethical/environmental/cooperative standards.
the policy objectives you are arguing for are untenable without a revolution
I like to hope otherwise, but i agree with you. According to Lucy Parsons (a founder of the IWW), the coming change can only come through a revolution, because the possessing class will not allow a peaceful change to take place; still we are willing to work for peace at any price, except at the price of liberty.
the creation of (…) sustainable technologies
That would be nice, except it’s clearly not what’s happening. First, because as a tech person you sure know commercial interests are always higher priority than technical/ethical interests. Second, because even if we do come up with better batteries or lead-free solar panels, that’s only the tip of the iceberg.
There is no such thing as clean energy on a big scale. I’m not saying it’s entirely impossible (just like aliens) but there’s nothing even close to that anyone is currently researching. Energy is easy to produce/consume in small quantities, but big cities are by all criteria a human failure: more concrete (very polluting, requires a lot of fossil fuels and sand), bigger/centralized energy/food consumption (far away from production sites).
live for decades with low technological progress and forget about the rapid expansion of technology that’s possible under the exploitation of people via capitalism?
Well i’m not against “progress” when it is measurable, and actually serving the people. But, as Kirkpatrick Sale points out (not advocating for the man’s other analysis): Progress is the myth that assures us that full-speed-ahead is never wrong. Ecology is the discipline that teaches us that it is disaster.
So if slower progress is the way to ensure that life can go on on this planet, i’m all for it. If we can achieve progress without murdering millions of species and actively poisoning most water streams, i’m all for it.
But currently the situation is such that actual destruction of the environment keeps on growing on a global scale: more concrete, more deforestation, more electricity for smart toasters and cryptocoins for your Alexa-powered fridge, more highly-polluting electronics materials in all aspects of human life, more lithium-powered wireless devices everywhere…
So the situation is exponentially getting worse (as you may notice from taking a look at “natural” disasters of the past decades). The only way technological progress could save us is:
all governments and industries worldwide stop producing new products, and pool all their resources into research for renewable/durable materials
which as a consequence, requires eliminating both intellectual property and planned obsolescence, which are key pillars of modern capitalism
I would love this scenario, but honestly i don’t find it more realistic than a global revolution. In case you are not noticing, more and more people are struggling for food and water and other basic services, while there is an abundance of those on a global scale. Most rivers we know of on the planet are currently undrinkable due to human pollution, so we are actually fighting for survival as a planet.
Whether we’ll have a global revolution to dismantle industrial capitalism? Not sure. I sure hope so, but i’m not confident at all. What i do know with 100% certainty is that the alternative of relying on the good will of industrialized nations will not take us anywhere. Why am i so confident this is not happening? Let me explain. All colonial empires around the globe in the past decades are:
very concerned with material sovereignty and securing supply chains for all critical resources (including international disputes about water!)
more strictly enforcing their borders, and setting up massive recruitment campaigns for the military, including the return of (previously-dismantled) military service and mandatory nationalist indoctrination (like here in France)
working to secure international support in case of conflict (like France joining NATO under Sarkozy)
working to privatize/secure huuuuuuuuuuge areas in case of a global collapse of civilization (heard about Putin’s castle on the black sea? privatization of public lands across America/Europe?)
All of the big colonial empires, France, USA, China, Russia, Israel, Turkey, Brazil, India, Japan… They’re all preparing for increased adversarial access to resources and for the next world war. Why should i trust them, who’ve never done anything good for the people, to worry about us or the environment?
Additionally, if you believe the answer may come from the private industry, you may realize there’s only two ways industry is trying to tackle the environmental problem:
bring more technology to “fix” problems introduced by technology, for example claiming IoT-powered vertical farms full of electronics or producing more eco-destructive, sterile GMO seeds will be be more ecological than traditional permaculture (which is completely delusional)
forget about earth and go colonize mars, no learning anything from the past but rather hoping for more resources to extract and more places to pollute/destroy (hey maybe entire Earth can be a space dumpster where noone can breath, once all the privileged folks have moved to Mars, if that ever happens)
So i have no faith in private industry either. We are left on our own to fix our problems, as was always the case. Whether a global revolution against capitalism and all forms of domination will take place is ensure. What’s more certain is that those people in power will never question the status quo in meaningful way.
I don’t disagree with a lot of your statements, except I don’t understand why you think the market socialist country that executes it’s billionaires when they step out of line is a industrial capitalist country.
I would also suggest you haven’t provided any solution to the issues you have raised. How do we go up against the world powers you have listed that are working to secure their supply chains to embed the status quo? My argument is you can’t without revolution.
the market socialist country that executes it’s billionaires when they step out of line is a industrial capitalist country.
China has nothing “market socialist”. It’s an industrial nation with a strong State apparatus, a quite comfortable middle class and a bunch of billionaires, and hundreds of millions of people working for misery wages (or not working at all in some parts of the countryside, whose ethnic minorities are undesired when not cleansed). Whether they execute a single billionaire or not, what would i care? By all definitions China is a capitalist country, though maybe private property is slightly less sacred over there and being a billionaire can’t get you out of every single situation like in the west. Just because the State is more powerful than a couple individuals does not mean it’s not capitalism.
Even when China was not “by all definitions” a modern capitalist economy (before the 80’s), it was already a “State capitalist” country. Why? Because there were poor and rich people, people working for survival while others reaped the benefits, people producing and people counting the resources, people listening and people making decisions, etc… OK the State was the boss taking all for itself, and the State did not enjoy private competition. Still, in regards to daily life for the commoners, this makes no fucking difference: a prison is a prison, a factory is a factory, a boss is a boss, and exploitation is exploitation, even when labeled with a sickle and a hammer and a red flag.
Market socialism is when autonomous communes trade their respective goods and ensure everyone is well-off (some kind of anarchy). The kind of impoverishing tyranny that took place in USSR/China has nothing (by all definitions) to do with socialism. Unless you consider people having more power and more resources than others is “socialism” in which case you’re not even a marxist, who recognize the dictatorship of the proletariat to be a step backwards to secure advances towards socialism/communism. But of course history has taught us again and again that opposing freedom in order to secure freedom is never going to work (war on drugs? war on terror? etc…), and expropriating self-organized communes/producers/cooperatives in order to feed the power hunger of wealthy leninist/maoist sociopaths (the Central State) will never lead to communism because that’s the exact opposite of it in almost every aspect.
Interested in how the bolsheviks hijacked then destroyed a genuine popular revolution they were barely a part of in 1917? You may enjoy some Emma Goldman, Piotr Kropotkin, etc… There’s even a whole opus called Bloodstained: One hundred years of Leninist Counterrevolution if you want to go into details. If you enjoy movies more, i definitely recommend watching Libertarias, a movie about the Free Women movement during the Spanish revolution (1936) which provides a rather accurate depiction of how the communist party (supported by Stalin) destroyed the revolution from within in order to seize power (leading to the victory of Franco’s troops).
you can’t without revolution.
Sure. I don’t see any other way either. I mean i’d like to think the elite will fix everything for us, but as we all know it’s definitely not happening.
Well thank you too. To be fair ii’m really unfamiliar with political philosophy or social sciences. I have some high-level understanding of some concepts (autonomy, kyriarchy/privilege, cultural hegemony, engineering of consent, private property, state terrorism, etc…) but i would certainly not consider myself a theorist. My step into anarchism was not books (at least at first), but comrades criticizing my ideas/practices and lending me a hand to open new doors through life (sometimes quite literally).
Reflecting upon it, i think that’s one of the main reason i never fell into marxism. Too much jargon and complicated language for me to understand some seemingly-simple things. I very rarely had the same feeling of inferiority (someone talking with all their knowledge) when reading anarchist content, which is usually either first-person accounts (blogs/zines) or uses very simple language (newspapers, popular education conferences).
And about the recommendations, they’re just few of the so many interesting reads you can find online or in your local cooperative library. I’m not advocating for these resources as the holy bible of anarchism, because we have no such thing as a holy bible. Countless persons have contributed to the great body of anarchist literature over the years and despite the fact i strongly disagree with some anarchist analysis (eg. the nihilists), i would be incapable to give you a single author/book that could be a complete introduction to my understanding of anarchism as a constant struggle against all forms of domination/exploitation. Anarchism i understand as a mental/social/practical toolkit to understand and dismantle power structures, not as a fixed set of goals (that’s a common difference between anarchists and marxists).
<sarcasm>Yes, please tell me more about how green capitalism is going to save the world.</sarcasm>
You may find it interesting to read or watch something on the topic. I would strongly recommend End:Civ, and to a lesser degree Planet of the Humans which is way less interesting from a political perspective, but has great explanation of why “green” capitalism isn’t green and “renewable” energies aren’t renewable.
TLDR: “clean energy” and technological innovation won’t save us (source: tech person myself, please don’t trust us to make serious decisions for the future of humanity). only less consumption a serious deconstruction of the car/concrete society, high ecological standards (think no paints, no plastics, no concrete in daily life) and a serious fight against planned obsolescence (and intellectual property of any kind that makes it possible in the first place) might have a chance to save humanity, not exactly as we know it (over-abundance and misery) but as a society of reasonable-abundance and justice.
Sure. I’m not here to vilify China and defend western empires. I’m an anarchist, i strongly oppose any State though i don’t take a neutral stance when it comes to military interventions. My heart stands with the Kurds and the Palestinians and all the oppressed peoples on this planet. Fire to all colonial empires, even France (my birthplace) and China!
Firstly, you conflated my statement on investing in clean energy with green capitalism. Investing != Capitalism. If you don’t get that please let me know and I can explain further.
Secondly, as a fellow technologist, and someone whose undergrad program director was a not so closeted anarchist, I understand the argument you’re making and have also read several books that advocate for depopulation, an end to consumerism, a return to small scale societies, and the like. I understand your argument and my response is that based on the current trajectory of global society the policy objectives you are arguing for are untenable without a revolution in the United States and Europe concurrently (at least within a 20 year time span). The reality is capital flight is a real practice with the advent of transnational corporations. My logic for arguing for technology is that we’re not likely to see a revolution in any major western power anytime soon because of the economic weight of the global financial system and imperial hegemon of the USA. Until we reach a crisis point there will not be the change you’re advocating for. However, much like how Britain overbuilt railways in the 18th century, or the internet stock mania led to the current tech firms dominance today, the creation of for example, lead free perovskite solar panels, open source grid distribution technology, and other sustainable technologies, will allow us to love more sustainably after the crisis. My interpretation of your argument is that you think we’ll somehow transition to a low resource use economy (realistically how besides revolution?) and then live for decades with low technological progress and forget about the rapid expansion of technology that’s possible under the exploitation of people via capitalism? I don’t see it. I do hope I’m wrong of course, I particularly hate planned obselesence lately (among all the other terrible things).
Not exactly. You specifically mentioned China, which is an industrial capitalist nation.
I don’t promote depopulation or small-scale societies. I understand the Neo-malthusian anarcha-feminist analyses from the 19th century (Émilie Lamotte for example) but since then the material conditions have changed greatly: humanity is now producing more commodities that the entire planet needs, and industry started planned obsolescence in the 1920s (years after Lamotte’s death) to make sure people would keep buying.
So yes i’m advocating for the end of consumerism (the cult of consumption), but not necessarily against consumption itself, as long as it’s done following ethical/environmental/cooperative standards.
I like to hope otherwise, but i agree with you. According to Lucy Parsons (a founder of the IWW),
the coming change can only come through a revolution, because the possessing class will not allow a peaceful change to take place; still we are willing to work for peace at any price, except at the price of liberty.That would be nice, except it’s clearly not what’s happening. First, because as a tech person you sure know commercial interests are always higher priority than technical/ethical interests. Second, because even if we do come up with better batteries or lead-free solar panels, that’s only the tip of the iceberg.
There is no such thing as clean energy on a big scale. I’m not saying it’s entirely impossible (just like aliens) but there’s nothing even close to that anyone is currently researching. Energy is easy to produce/consume in small quantities, but big cities are by all criteria a human failure: more concrete (very polluting, requires a lot of fossil fuels and sand), bigger/centralized energy/food consumption (far away from production sites).
Well i’m not against “progress” when it is measurable, and actually serving the people. But, as Kirkpatrick Sale points out (not advocating for the man’s other analysis):
Progress is the myth that assures us that full-speed-ahead is never wrong. Ecology is the discipline that teaches us that it is disaster.So if slower progress is the way to ensure that life can go on on this planet, i’m all for it. If we can achieve progress without murdering millions of species and actively poisoning most water streams, i’m all for it.
But currently the situation is such that actual destruction of the environment keeps on growing on a global scale: more concrete, more deforestation, more electricity for smart toasters and cryptocoins for your Alexa-powered fridge, more highly-polluting electronics materials in all aspects of human life, more lithium-powered wireless devices everywhere…
So the situation is exponentially getting worse (as you may notice from taking a look at “natural” disasters of the past decades). The only way technological progress could save us is:
I would love this scenario, but honestly i don’t find it more realistic than a global revolution. In case you are not noticing, more and more people are struggling for food and water and other basic services, while there is an abundance of those on a global scale. Most rivers we know of on the planet are currently undrinkable due to human pollution, so we are actually fighting for survival as a planet.
Whether we’ll have a global revolution to dismantle industrial capitalism? Not sure. I sure hope so, but i’m not confident at all. What i do know with 100% certainty is that the alternative of relying on the good will of industrialized nations will not take us anywhere. Why am i so confident this is not happening? Let me explain. All colonial empires around the globe in the past decades are:
All of the big colonial empires, France, USA, China, Russia, Israel, Turkey, Brazil, India, Japan… They’re all preparing for increased adversarial access to resources and for the next world war. Why should i trust them, who’ve never done anything good for the people, to worry about us or the environment?
Additionally, if you believe the answer may come from the private industry, you may realize there’s only two ways industry is trying to tackle the environmental problem:
So i have no faith in private industry either. We are left on our own to fix our problems, as was always the case. Whether a global revolution against capitalism and all forms of domination will take place is ensure. What’s more certain is that those people in power will never question the status quo in meaningful way.
I don’t disagree with a lot of your statements, except I don’t understand why you think the market socialist country that executes it’s billionaires when they step out of line is a industrial capitalist country. I would also suggest you haven’t provided any solution to the issues you have raised. How do we go up against the world powers you have listed that are working to secure their supply chains to embed the status quo? My argument is you can’t without revolution.
China has nothing “market socialist”. It’s an industrial nation with a strong State apparatus, a quite comfortable middle class and a bunch of billionaires, and hundreds of millions of people working for misery wages (or not working at all in some parts of the countryside, whose ethnic minorities are undesired when not cleansed). Whether they execute a single billionaire or not, what would i care? By all definitions China is a capitalist country, though maybe private property is slightly less sacred over there and being a billionaire can’t get you out of every single situation like in the west. Just because the State is more powerful than a couple individuals does not mean it’s not capitalism.
Even when China was not “by all definitions” a modern capitalist economy (before the 80’s), it was already a “State capitalist” country. Why? Because there were poor and rich people, people working for survival while others reaped the benefits, people producing and people counting the resources, people listening and people making decisions, etc… OK the State was the boss taking all for itself, and the State did not enjoy private competition. Still, in regards to daily life for the commoners, this makes no fucking difference: a prison is a prison, a factory is a factory, a boss is a boss, and exploitation is exploitation, even when labeled with a sickle and a hammer and a red flag.
Market socialism is when autonomous communes trade their respective goods and ensure everyone is well-off (some kind of anarchy). The kind of impoverishing tyranny that took place in USSR/China has nothing (by all definitions) to do with socialism. Unless you consider people having more power and more resources than others is “socialism” in which case you’re not even a marxist, who recognize the dictatorship of the proletariat to be a step backwards to secure advances towards socialism/communism. But of course history has taught us again and again that opposing freedom in order to secure freedom is never going to work (war on drugs? war on terror? etc…), and expropriating self-organized communes/producers/cooperatives in order to feed the power hunger of wealthy leninist/maoist sociopaths (the Central State) will never lead to communism because that’s the exact opposite of it in almost every aspect.
Interested in how the bolsheviks hijacked then destroyed a genuine popular revolution they were barely a part of in 1917? You may enjoy some Emma Goldman, Piotr Kropotkin, etc… There’s even a whole opus called Bloodstained: One hundred years of Leninist Counterrevolution if you want to go into details. If you enjoy movies more, i definitely recommend watching Libertarias, a movie about the Free Women movement during the Spanish revolution (1936) which provides a rather accurate depiction of how the communist party (supported by Stalin) destroyed the revolution from within in order to seize power (leading to the victory of Franco’s troops).
Sure. I don’t see any other way either. I mean i’d like to think the elite will fix everything for us, but as we all know it’s definitely not happening.
Thanks for the recommendations I will give some of these a read. It’s always enjoyable debating with knowledgeable theorists.
Well thank you too. To be fair ii’m really unfamiliar with political philosophy or social sciences. I have some high-level understanding of some concepts (autonomy, kyriarchy/privilege, cultural hegemony, engineering of consent, private property, state terrorism, etc…) but i would certainly not consider myself a theorist. My step into anarchism was not books (at least at first), but comrades criticizing my ideas/practices and lending me a hand to open new doors through life (sometimes quite literally).
Reflecting upon it, i think that’s one of the main reason i never fell into marxism. Too much jargon and complicated language for me to understand some seemingly-simple things. I very rarely had the same feeling of inferiority (someone talking with all their knowledge) when reading anarchist content, which is usually either first-person accounts (blogs/zines) or uses very simple language (newspapers, popular education conferences).
And about the recommendations, they’re just few of the so many interesting reads you can find online or in your local cooperative library. I’m not advocating for these resources as the holy bible of anarchism, because we have no such thing as a holy bible. Countless persons have contributed to the great body of anarchist literature over the years and despite the fact i strongly disagree with some anarchist analysis (eg. the nihilists), i would be incapable to give you a single author/book that could be a complete introduction to my understanding of anarchism as a constant struggle against all forms of domination/exploitation. Anarchism i understand as a mental/social/practical toolkit to understand and dismantle power structures, not as a fixed set of goals (that’s a common difference between anarchists and marxists).