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AntiCapitalist MeetUp: neoliberalism and ecosocialism [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2024-12-29

"Organized crime payments are 'just an added cost of conducting business'" As we proceed further into the second Trump regime, the ecosocialist need to deal with neoliberal market solutions emerges as more important as the US moves backward into trumpian warlord mercantilism.

Carbon trading will not meet net zero regulations as long as it seeks market solutions with minimal regulations. Carbon pollution reductions are also not the only realm of industrial capital and its associated pollution. A key example will be the rising need for rare earth minerals and the relation to US-China trade. Another example is whether attacking Mexico with special forces is truly about eradicating cartels or controlling the drug trade.

During his second presidential campaign, Donald Trump stated that he had found a way of bringing down unemployment and housing prices: Deportations of “illegal migrants” would solve these economic problems. Experts rushed to debunk his claims, but they echoed widely across the public sphere. What made Trump’s statements plausible? Were they credible because public life is shaped by the idea that we are part of a mechanism we can neither understand nor change: The Market? Is this the reason why deportations, not expanded rent controls or large-scale public jobs programs, seemed reasonable to so many people? Put differently, can “illegal immigration” become an “economic problem” because we are not used to thinking about work and prices as malleable forms of collective organization? If this is the case, a robust response to MAGA requires cultivating economic knowledge that make the world more intelligible and more malleable. For neoliberals, markets are not objects of analysis but legal structures they are entitled to design Such a response will come up against neoliberal forms of organizing public knowledge. The historian Philip Mirowski and his collaborators have documented how neoliberals created a universe of institutions that is structured like a Russian doll. The doll’s inner layers comprise think tanks that strive to reshape governance. For neoliberals, markets are not objects of analysis but legal structures they are entitled to design. These high-powered intellectual hubs propose market-based solutions to pressing concerns: Carbon offset markets, for instance, are mechanisms for buying and selling units of the right to pollute. Setting up such markets is the only legitimate form of governance for neoliberals; they dismiss almost everything else as fascism or communism. [...] From this perspective, Isabella Weber’s recent work on price formation is a Freirian project of making the world more knowable, not only a contribution to a policy debate. An expert on market construction in twentieth-century China, Weber began a public controversy at the exact point where neoliberals want debates to come to a halt: She asked who sets prices, under what conditions, and who benefits. She also outlined possible courses of action. Because her work revealed the institutional and political character of prices, it disturbed neoliberal forms of organizing public knowledge: When prices became more knowable, people no longer have to accept them as The Market Oracle’s everyday manifestation. www.postneoliberalism.org/...

The recent ecosocialism conference points us in a better direction as the US sinks into further authoritarianism.

There is no national solution to this crisis. Fighting the ecocide that threatens humanity is a global task that will require the ending of the market economy and the social and economic inequalities it creates, the dismantling of imperialism and its five centuries-long exploitation of the planet, the abolition of borders, militarism, and policing, and the social transformation of the economy from the ground up. Ecosocialism should aspire to be an international revolutionary movement that challenges the existing capitalist world order by offering a socialist, democratically planned, and egalitarian programme to meet the environmental crisis that humanity faces. Revolutionary change means being active Ecosocialists need to be active in the worker’s movement and environmental movement. Active in the trade unions, communities, and in social movements most impacted by the climate crisis. In particular, this means practical and political solidarity with refugees and immigrants and those forced to move as climate conditions make their lives impossible. Ecosocialists need to fight for reforms in the here and now and always point to a future better world by offering a programme that intends to lead to it, while challenging the idea that capitalism and nature can peacefully coexist. We also have to fight to radicalise our unions, to challenge bureaucratic inertia and turn them outwards into organisations that fight for the whole class as part of an ecosocialist strategy. We welcome people who want to join us to help develop this campaign and expand its activities. We want to transform the ideas and theories of ecosocialism into practical action. We might not agree on every slogan or theory but we need to build a mass movement in a spirit of unity and hope – one that is inclusive and fights against all forms of oppression and exploitation. Our proposed plans 1. Develop the organising strength of ecosocialism both locally and internationally. With Trump in the White House we face an even faster acceleration of biosphere breakdown. A focal point will be COP30 (Belém, Brazil) coming up late 2025. There are plans for big protests and we should spend the next 12 months helping to make the case for massive action around November 2025. We will promote and organise for major events like London Climate Action Week 2025 which will take place from the 21st to the 29th June 2025. 2. Work with the Climate Justice Coalition on mobilisations across Britain and the Global Ecosocialist Network to coordinate internationally. And all other organisations committed to building an inclusive ecosocialist movement. 3. Organise a regular meeting online under the Ecosocialism Conference banner with any individuals and left groups that might be interested to help coordinate ecosocialist strategy and activity. 4. Provide resources for people to organise their own local events (help produce leaflets, provide a speaker etc) to promote ecosocialism, engage new activists and form the basis for a wider network in the future. 5. Focus on trade union conferences next year, getting them committed to backing the COP30 protests, green transition (this will be a fight particularly in Unite and GMB who organise workers involved in the fossil fuel industry). We will liaise with other activists in the union, for instance the Unite Grassroots Climate network, to coordinate this. 6. Improve the website to have more regular articles and keep promoting it, encouraging well known people to write for it as well. 7. Develop a political education campaign to raise awareness and understanding of the crisis and the ecosocialist and social justice response. This should be organised and resourced online and in person and to reach people of all ages and should draw on our most effective communicators, activists and teachers. www.ecosocialism-conference.org/...

x x YouTube Video The story of rare earth elements (REEs): Occurrences, global distribution, genesis, geology, mineralogy and global production www.sciencedirect.com/… www.researchgate.net/...

What may happen will be the necessity to destroy some or all of the criminal cartels in Mexico, once Trump decides to attack Mexico militarily. After all, the production of avocado toast will also suffer as cartels are diversified in a number of areas.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/12/29/2293358/-AntiCapitalist-MeetUp-neoliberalism-and-ecosocialism?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=community_groups_Anti+Capitalist+Meetup+Group&pm_medium=web

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