/320/ Aufhebonus Bonus (Feb 2023)
Added 2023-02-07 07:01:00 +0000 UTCOn your questions and criticisms.
[Patreon Exclusive]
A bumper episode as we respond to your points from December through to the end of January. We discuss 'political capitalism', where the left is today, atomisation, degrowth, disciplining the working class, critical cinema, and family abolition.
Comments
I really liked George's point about degrowth (and green thinking in general) putting the outcome first - that we should put the democratic determination first and rely on the process to produce a good outcome. But what is remarkable about this moment is that the outcome is actually to some degree already prescribed. The giant objective discontinuity of climate collapse sets us this challenge: knowing the outcome of continued growth in production at the current rate (or at the increasing rate necessary to meet the needs of the developing world) as we do, come up with an authentic democratic response that doesn't impoverish workers, burn entire regions of the earth or crash civilisation all together… This is a situation where democrats and leftists have to respond to the objective, external reality. I don't want to sound like a stuck record but if insurance companies, bureaucrats, industry, Davos man, silicon valley and finance capital can all apparently plan a response why can't the left?
Steve Bowbrick
2023-02-09 19:35:33 +0000 UTCAs a dedicated urbanist, I think the problem with Caspers argument regarding the value of degrowth is not about space, but it’s that the real median/mean standard of global living is probably best reflected by a working class person who is middle income by the standards of the developing worlds urban metropolis’s but lower middle class (or perhaps a touch lower) by the standards of the west. While it’s certainly commendable that much of the developing worlds urban populations have come so far over the past few decades, there is still an enormous amount of growth and development that has to occur to provide true prosperity to the vast majority of the non western world. The average urban citizen in the world is not somebody living in NYC or London, it’s somebody living in Jakarta or Manila or Cairo, where standards of development and infrastructure still require enormous work, to say nothing of areas such as rural Honduras or Tanzania. Redistribution is necessary for sure, but it’s simply not enough
jkjkjkj
2023-02-09 05:29:50 +0000 UTC
