Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
We are in the throes of a transition to a qualitatively new stage of world capitalism. Its essence is the emergence of truly transnational capital, a transnational capitalist class (TCC) made up of the owners and managers of transnational corporations, and transnational state apparatuses through which the TCC attempts to exercise global political authority.
For the past year I’ve been book touring to over 60 cities and towns across the United States and have been asked repeatedly for a direct action manual that addresses challenges we face now. The requests come from people concerned about a variety of issues. While each situation is in some ways unique, organizers in multiple movements face some similar problems in both organization and action.
In the 1970s and 80s, a series of economic policies began to take hold all over the world. These policies, and the philosophies behind them, have come to be known as neoliberalism, and they have proven to be incredibly harmful to society as a whole. During this period, factories closed, industries disappeared, jobs became scarce, and the foundation of many communities were ripped out from under their feet.
A solar revolution is transforming the lives of women in the remotest parts of Asia. They no longer have to wait decades to be connected to a power grid but are able today to exploit the huge potential of the abundant sunshine. In societies where women normally play a subservient role and spend much of their time on menial chores, solar businesses are creating a new breed of female entrepreneur who are bringing electricity to their villages.
I will present what may be the movement’s biggest task: crafting ways and means for it to actually take power across the world so that the desires of the vast majority of the world’s residents (including the non-human creatures among us) can be the benchmark against which we measure our chances for arriving in mid-century in a world characterized not by multiple crises…
2016 saw the emergence of a powerful movement against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, or DAPL, through land vital to Native communities, especially the Standing Rock Sioux. For non-Native people who have not been paying attention to indigenous rights struggles over the past several decades, the #NoDAPL movement may have served as a wake-up call to some of the injustices still confronting these communities.
Good health means more than good medical care. Many other things affect how long we live and how healthy we feel—conditions in our housing and neighborhoods, the social and physical environment of our communities, economic opportunities and the levels of stress in our lives.
It’s been pointed out countless times that humankind’s current ecological crisis stems from our conviction that we’re apart from nature. Scott Brown’s book Active Peace takes a closer look at what lies beneath this mistaken belief, which he contends has deeply wounded all of us psychologically.
The difficult work of organizing builds solidarity based not on some received story that reinforces given identities and friend-enemy distinctions but on shared action that, in taking on oppressive power, forces that power to reveal itself beyond the identities and stories that mask it. It is a radical and risky option that won’t work without transforming organizers who leave the coastal urban enclaves as well as the rural people they encounter. It is a transformation of politics by way of spiritual practice.
One argument of those who defend growth is that growth is the natural and inevitable course of the economy. Liberated from governmental or other restrictions, and left to their own powers, entrepreneurs will make an economy grow, as they are endlessly inventive in growing their own incomes.
For ecosocialists, capitalism and the Anthropocene are the global signifiers upon which all worker and environmental movements must focus with urgency. The fate of humanity in the short term literally rests upon this universalist pursuit.
Despite the rather toxic debate we’ve got into recently concerning the status of experts in the wake of Michael Gove and Charlie Gard, this doesn’t seem a great historical moment to be extolling scientific progress, the cult of the expert and ‘development’ as virtues. In fact, I think books like Mr Angry’s are part of the problem. Which makes me kind of…angry.
