you're. welcome non-content today we discuss socialism capitalism and eco side with victor wants it to be fine for everybody to have a car and to do go on producing everything as long as everything could just be done on the basis of different kind of energy but the point is that it's not enough just to run all our private cars with solar cells the whole problem of how much is used up in the way of materials how much space is taken up and. also the fact that it's if you don't change the social configuration of power any progressive change that you might bring about can easily be undone by the same people who put them there in

the 1st place you can't use the same system to correct itself the created these problems in the 1st place. the struggle to prevent eco side now taking place across the planet is at its core a battle against corporate capitalism itself to save ourselves from environmental catastrophe and ultimately extinction there must be a radical reinterpretation of our relations with each other and the planetary systems of life on which we depend this will only happen when we embrace an alternative vision of human society one where the natural world is not a commodity to be exploited and destroyed but honored and protected as the source of life itself time is running out how as we head towards ecological collapse. can we instill new values and a new ethic in the human society how we wrest power from corporations is this

even possible joining me to discuss the climate crisis is victor wallace author of red green revolution the politics and technology of eco socialism let's define eco socialism to begin with you do in the book well the basic idea of socialism is the elimination of class divisions as ultimately the basic idea of ecology is to restore some kind of balance some kind of health in the environment and what the 2 have in common is that both clash fundamentally with the idea that production decisions should be made on the basis of a search for profits you have to get away from the search for profits whether you're looking at as an environmentalist or as a socialist and i think i feel in a way. in terms of the convergence of the 2 that the eco prefix is not really

necessary it's implied in socialism however i think it's important to add it just for political reasons i want to show to emphasize to underscore the ecological dimension of the struggle for socialism to show that it's really in everybody's interest and what does it look like. eco socialism yeah what does that world look like what would you do talk about the book the vision. well the vision is as i said one of the of a classless society. in which there would have been a considerable reconfiguration of space. there would be less need for going long distances every day to get to work there would be more. restoration of natural space green space not only agricultural space but also forest space restoration of biodiversity and again who knows how much to what extent this is possible but to the extent that it's possible and it has been done in sort of the whole idea of

regenerative that regenerative agriculture which is an important one but which to be applied on a large scale would require doing away with the agribusiness which are which levels whole areas and create specialized mono crops and then gets the pests and the pesticides and so on so you restore biodiversity that's the ecological vision a new day and the the classless aspect is integral to that because part of the whole process of bringing this about is bringing about transformations in everybody's daily life so so explain what you mean by that classlessness meaning meaning no 'd class of. privileged people who own the overwhelming bulk of the wealth in the society and who therefore make all the basic decisions about how the society is organized it doesn't mean that everybody is the same or in uniform or all that but it means that there's no the kind of the 0.01 percent that doesn't exist anymore the the that extra

wealth is is. diffused spread out through the whole society and not in the sense of redistribute it with a sense of. common. control social control over the kinds of decisions that are now made by these corporations and the people at the very top of them you talk in the book quite a bit about technology you know. points can you address that issue. well one of the characterises of capitalism a logical level is the idea that for every kind of problem there's a technological solution and so when you apply it to ecological thinking you have these. strange science fiction type ideas of shooting reflectors up into the stratosphere and so on or even less dramatically you have the idea that well. it would be fine for everybody have a car and go on producing everything as long as everything could just be done on the basis of different kind of energy but the point is that it's not enough just to

run our all our private cars with solar cells the whole problem of how much is used up in the way of materials how much space is taken up. and the also the fact that if you don't change the social configuration of power any progressive change that you might bring about can easily be undone by the same people who put them there in the 1st place you can't use the same system to correct itself the created these problems in the 1st place well and i think you're critical of these many of these ecological groups that think they can partner with corporations but you know i mean it's possible that particular corporations will take particular measures that are beneficial and to some extent it even. is compatible with their bottom line and they may save some energy expenses and so on but the but what we're

talking about here is the overall configuration of power you may have some solar enterprises but you still have what they call all of the above you still have all the oil drilling in the destruction of the. pristine wilderness and so on it requires a very different vision of not only the society we construct but a very different vision for ourselves as individuals. how does one achieve that vision what is the process by which because doesn't the vision have to come before the change. well i think the vision and the change they're mutually dependent i mean you can't get the kind of change unless people react against the current scene which means that they have they change themselves in a certain way and then inversely as you change the surroundings it becomes more possible for people to change their behavior in their interactions so for example i

think i you know i wish i didn't have to use an automobile have to wish i didn't have to own an automobile but in order for me to live without one there would have to be a different configuration to the communities and different public transportation and so on and so forth so. it's very much a mutually dependent thing that if you create environments in social environments of cooperation then that breeds an attitude that corresponds to that on the part of individuals and i mean this is this goes back to old arguments about human nature you know whether people are inherently aggressive and competitive and grasping and we know from individual experiences the people. act in a way and behave in a way that to some extent reflects their upbringing if they're brought up in a loving in a respectful way they'll turn out differently from if they're brought up in a kind of abusive way so you can expand this to the larger canvas but we've seen

but there's a corporate war. the very systems that you advocate whether it's in agriculture whether it's in transportation. it's not it's not they seek to destroy all of those efforts to rebuild an alternative yes of course the they're not going to give up power willingly so that's why there's a. urgency to develop a kind of popular understanding of the fact that these corporations are the enemy and when and that's why i argue in the book that the environmental issue is a class issue i mean in the sense that on the one hand it's true that everybody without exception has an interest in a healthy environment but on the other hand the capitalist class has an interest as you say in blocking the measures that are necessary to achieve it and so it does depend on everybody's going to the vast majority of people getting involved in order to contest and overcome this this corporate resistance which is inevitable

inescapable and happens constantly well you're watching the harsher forms of control as the idiology of neo liberalism no longer has any credibility across the political spectrum you're watching harsher militarized police wholesale surveillance militarized drones facial recognition techniques on the street the brutality that is carried out against immigrants undocumented workers you're seen in essence that corporate capitalist elite. with the collapse of its own ruling ideology. quite quite violent and quite brutal in terms of stripping us of civil liberties and using coercion as a mechanism for control you know yeah i think that's true but i think that people's

ability to see this and recognize that it's happening in every sphere of life does increase their the likelihood that they will respond in kind of constructive way to the things that the corporations could get away with because be papered over by some kind of public relations before it's being stripped away so people have an opportunity which it's the challenge they have an opportunity to act on a massive scale in response to this for the 1st time it hasn't happened yet but there are indications of it's having the very fact that you could have for example in 2016 a presidential campaign that at least. viewed the term socialism not as a negative thing that's that represents a big change i mean it's not sufficient in itself but it's an indication that there's more responsiveness to a kind of radical rejection of the established ways of doing things isn't it possible that that backlash that you describe as we've seen in europe as we see

under the trumpet ministration may in fact be a right wing backlash yeah it's possible i mean in a way both looked the same to the left on the right look to the same constituency well they're often driven by the same issues yes right i mean i was impressed by what was shown for example in michael moore's recent film fahrenheit 9 where he. you saw the democratic convention they're reading off the list of states the populations of vote going for sanders and then who's. victory was given to clinton and those very same states went for trump in the in the in the general election so that's an exam it's a real contest with it and with that kind of focus well he also in the movie exposed barack obama's betrayal of the people of flint michigan absolutely which is really i think gets to the kind of hollowness and inability of the democratic party establishment to carry out the kinds of reforms that i mean look without being

overly dramatic will save us from extinction and which you propagate or hold out in your book right exactly you know in the democratic party leadership is absolutely part of this continuing this process and it does it as glen ford put it it's not the lesser evil it's the more effective evil that keeps things going and. people with the sense that something some responsiveness to their concerns at least they think carry out rhetoric that is reality based you know even though of course they are part of the very process of eco suddenly just saw barack obama give a speech to the fossil fuel industry where. he touted the expansion of. drilling and fracking yeah exactly and that's what he was doing during his administration the u.s. became self-sufficient and so on that that was held up as a great achievement right when we come back we'll continue our conversation about ecological collapse and possible solutions with author victor wallace.

you cannot be both with the yeah you like. problem drugs don't always come from unscrupulous dealers but from pharmacies to in every state in the united states we see a very sharp increase in the number of people seeking treatment for addiction to prescription opioids it invaded america under the banner of medicine persisted with

the pain but instead of trying to wean him off though she just goes after dose after dose after dose and really became his drug dealer zulus to blame patients doctors manufacturers all the governments of. welcome back on contact we continue our conversation about eco socialism with victor all us although it's not a central part of your book in fact you don't focus much on it how do you see these corporate systems being dismantled. well it can only come through enormous popular movements it does require a political force and i do talk about the different components socially that will have to make up this political force but the exact way in which can happen it can't

really be predicted i mean one of the things i mean right now we're witnessing the yellow vests in france right this kind of outburst with a kind of recognition that all the parties are failing them i don't see it quite taking this form in the united states but nonetheless i think that if each constituency of the population each group within it whether whatever its initial concerns might be whether it's racial discrimination or gender discrimination or massage or religious discrimination all these various think they have to come to understand that their struggles are interdependent and that is something i talk about in the section of the book about intersectionality the big issue how these how each group really by itself will not be able to transform the situation even in terms of its own demands only by coming together in larger kind of class understanding as a political force and eventually in some something resembling

a political party but with a more thorough sense of educational mission of transforming people's lives as as well as just thinking in terms of elections i think that's we need to go beyond just this purely electoral all the carry on all those classes done quite a good job of erasing class consciousness even among a laugh when you argue. it has indeed although i think i think there's evidence that it's coming back and i mean even i think some of the movements of state taking place in the prisons which are primarily among racial minorities who work stoppages you work stoppages they're very much class based there where that they have to come together and and and i think that's partly why they're in the prison you know. that is why within the prison there the sub subjected to especially harsh penalties but they you have this phenomenon that many of the administrators are black people and so you can see that the mere elevation of

certain members of a minority group to a high status isn't what. it was a leftist still behind that stuff you saw it with the midterm elections you know they were counting the number of women it didn't matter whether they were proponents of american imperialism and neo liberalism and everything else it mattered just their gender you know well it's a complicated thing but i think there's some justification for thinking that if one is directly represented it will make a difference but it's obviously not a sufficient condition it's not enough to have it's important have a lot of women in there but beyond that they also have to have an attitude really that corresponds to the real vision of feminism which is a radically questioning these people are selected by the you know they select the people they want right so cynthia mckinney you know woman of color you know because she is a socialist and

a radical and denounces us imperialism is pushed out and hillary clinton one of the architects of the expansion of imperialism in the middle east including the disastrous decision to attack libya is elevated so it's not that these of course diversity gender diversity racial diversity is. this is a positive but we can't forget that that in the in the background it's the schumer's and the posi who anoint the candidates and fun they decide who runs you know that very much the case the that's why. whether women are black people who see that merely elevating someone of their. demographic trait to a high position doesn't change the basic outlook i mean you can have women in the military and the invasion of afghanistan and claiming to be liberating women and

this is nonsense so once one sees that one sees that and i think i find it more apparent in the prison movement among black revolutionaries one sees that then one is willing to think in terms of it's that it's not enough to gather one's own group even in order to have a proper policy to get away from the culture of violence towards women the culture surrounding male supremacy and militarism that really that requires more than having women in the high places who like the education are really reinforcing sexist standard sexist behavior so so to the extent that one sees that happening it's possible to come to an understanding that you have to do more than just elevate your particular demographic group you have to come together with all their nominee really elevating their demographic group because they've redefined

for instance feminism feminism is not about empowering oppressed women it is and becomes a woman c.e.o. of facebook or hewlett packard or a woman president and this is a complete inversion of what you know that 1st wave feminism and read work and others were about and i would say that's. kind of they've quite affectively redefined. what most of these movements had their genesis in the 1960 s. what all most of these liberation movements were about yeah exactly i agree totally and that's where a point that i make in my book in the chapter about searching for a message the logical constituency that the that the background of the whims of the feminism the initial thrust of it was a revolutionary throws it did involve a kind of alternative conception of what society could look for all those are broken you know exactly for a solution. how do you. how do you see us

grasping the consciousness that is vital because one can have like with the yellow vests protests. and they are reactive forces they are reacting against. attack sites or even micro himself but those are still reactive and the state can deal with reactive forces especially if they're localized and disconnected how do you see us. offering an alternative a vision a new vision which is alexander berkman and other writers appointed out is absolutely vital to propel a revolutionary movement forward. well this is really an educational function and i think the immediate kinds of things that we need are a much greater expression of the alternative media has to spread into every corner and people have to bring it directly in person to person ways with with groups of

the discussion groups they form and the alternative media is absolutely essential alternative types of schools these are part of the process so from both directions from from above and from below you have to have the structures that people can relate to which are ultimately political forces but in order to build the. receptivity to those structures you have to have this initiative taken at every level and so i think as people grasp the urgency of the situation and as we continue sort of putting forward this message and reaching into every possible corner. and reaching anyone who is discontented with the existing state of affairs even if it's not initially focused on ecology that's the basis on which a larger movement of protests can be built up an idea like the extinction rebellion the start in the u.k. and it's starting to spread into the u.s. just great explain what that is because it's a great well it's just the idea i don't i'm not familiar with it in detail but just the name itself is underlines the urgency of the struggle that we all have that

they're organizing quite large mass protests you're right they have i think this this could happen here i mean it's the us has its whole set of problems because of the extraordinary scope and diversity in different states and so on and so forth but nonetheless we do have networks that span across these differences and i think also we can learn something from looking at what people do in other countries and even latching on to some of the things they do. how do you see a very little time i mean the window is now according the last u.n. climate report is a decade. and yet of course especially in the united states we're rolling backwards in terms of environmental controls. you know expansion of drilling on public lands and we're going in the other direction. and because climate the climate crisis is kind of

a slow moving tsunami and mother time it hits us we're finished and yet if it is not palpable in a dramatic way in a daily basis yes you have the wildfires in california and this kind of stuff how do you and them and since the mass media won't even. acknowledge in many cases. global warming or climate change how do we begin to impart. this sense of urgency because it is at this point i think crisis is the right word. i'm not optimistic about it i mean the obstacles are overwhelming but i think the just the perception of the difficulty and the reaction that people have and there are so many people who are fed up in certain ways and we saw this indirectly in the in the 2016 campaign so there's a receptive audience but the need to be much more to give them in the way of

explanation analysis bringing these issues together which is what i try to do in doing the book and creating these networks where everywhere you can't go anywhere in the society without encountering people who are fully aware of the urgency and trying to do something about it and i mean this is. it's frustrating because you can't pinpoint exactly but there has to be some kind of organization and i think the the urgency of the situation is increasing people's receptivity and what i'm hoping is that it will also generate as say a proactive and not just a reactive thing as you describe it has to be proactive and as you become aware as people become aware of the connection between whatever problem they have and this larger crisis which is what i try to argue in my book then there's at least the potential for building up the kind of political force that we need to make a difference for people of color suffer most from climate degradation pollution

poisoned water eric cetera and yet the environmental movement is largely a white phenomenon. well not entirely i mean i mean for example i know someone with prison legal news is very much interest in the environmental issue and my book i've sent my book in to many prisoners with whom i'm in touch and they're very concerned about the way they respond in a positive way they recognize this is an issue it's not just an elite issues an issue that affects although of course it's not. you know but the environmental organizations are the domain of white liberals you know the sierra club you know there are environmental justice groups on that that's the that's the alternative the looking out from from below so to speak that. there has to be. a. there is something of an environmental justice who are the major spokes person of that for a long time and robert boehlert in in texas and he was the one who's called you see

insects and all that mean there are but nevertheless within the united states i think that one of the tragedies is that that very class divide has. essentially separated those are interested environmental justice. that's should be a focus of our efforts and it is indeed a focus of my ever doing even what i talk about in the book that the environment environmental movement is something that on the proactive positive side does involve everybody and most of all the people who are worst affected by the current distribution of power right thanks that was author victor wallace about his new book red green revolution the politics and technology of eco so. thank you very much it.

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