This piece contains quite a good canvassing of the current socialist political climate, but it appears lacking in discussion of Climate Change and it’s relationship with a revival of anti-capitalist movement.
I have a lot of problems with Capitalism theoretically, but in practical terms it’s most unquestionable error is in the role it played in decades of Climate Change inaction and ecological destruction. Foster Wallace decried the existential emptiness of capitalist consumer society, and yeah that sucks, but if left alone by activists Capitalist systems would quite possibly destroy the entire planet or if we’re lucky only kill hundreds of millions of people who had no part real part in the system’s insatiability.
Some left thinkers I respect a lot are saying we might be choosing between socialism and ‘climate justice’ for the third world, or eco-fascism.
With Facebook recently installing Breitbart in their ‘quality news’ section, I’m not happy just fence-sitting and letting capitalists reorganise society in response to our climate emergency.
> As the Berlin Wall crumbled in 1989, so too, it seemed, did the dream of socialism.
Did the author actually live in East Germany? Nobody forced anyone to break down the wall. That wall was a symbol of oppression. People died trying to escape that damned “dream of socialism.” Not too many people died trying to get in to East Germany. Dream of socialism? More like a nightmare. I hate to sound like a grandpa, but “kids these days..”
There is the constant refrain of “socialism (or communism) would be great if it worked as designed.” But it never can work as designed because human beings are involved. Orwell and Animal Farm was correct in the depiction of socialism/communism.
“On ne fuit pas d'omelette sans casser des oeufs“
Of course the omelette never gets made, no matter how many eggs are broken.
But Orwell himself was a socialist and did not conflate socialism with communism, or either with authoritarianism or totalitarianism. If anything, Animal Farm was a critique of Leninism and Stalinism. So, what, Orwell was a näive idiot who just happened to write a good book?
I have a lot of problems with Capitalism theoretically, but in practical terms it’s most unquestionable error is in the role it played in decades of Climate Change inaction and ecological destruction. Foster Wallace decried the existential emptiness of capitalist consumer society, and yeah that sucks, but if left alone by activists Capitalist systems would quite possibly destroy the entire planet or if we’re lucky only kill hundreds of millions of people who had no part real part in the system’s insatiability.
Some left thinkers I respect a lot are saying we might be choosing between socialism and ‘climate justice’ for the third world, or eco-fascism.
With Facebook recently installing Breitbart in their ‘quality news’ section, I’m not happy just fence-sitting and letting capitalists reorganise society in response to our climate emergency.