The Lifeboat News
[ Message Archive | The Lifeboat News ]

    Re: Graeber got it. Archived Message

    Posted by Ian M on September 5, 2020, 10:08 am, in reply to "Graeber got it. "

    Solid concluding statements:

    'People chanting: “System change, not climate change” understand that the economy as currently structured is not capable of averting climate catastrophe. No economy driven by the endless extraction of profit — which is to say no capitalist economy — is capable of it.

    The YCL’s banner spoke to that important truth. If XR’s leaders continue to ignore it, all their talk of radical action is just so much hot air.'

    Have to agree. The follow-up twitter thread failed to properly address this:

    https://twitter.com/XRebellionUK/status/1301516652811620355

    'Extinction Rebellion UK
    @XRebellionUK
    For anyone losing their [shit] over socialism and XR, stating that we aren’t a socialist movement is not the same as saying we reject socialism.

    From the offset, like it or not, we have been an “and” not an “or” movement.

    Breaking the traditional impasse of oppositional politics is not the same as appeasing the side with which we may not agree.

    It’s a hard route to take, because it means that we will likely have to talk to people we’ve spent a lifetime ‘hating’.

    But for the avoidance of any doubt, we don’t hate socialism, we hate the assertion that socialism is the sole silver bullet that will avert ecological collapse.

    Capitalism on the other hand can largely #### right off. We’re not idiots, any more than we are eco-fascists.

    But if we are to win, the level of debate has to step up a notch. Activists and scientists and economists and spiritualists (and all kinds of ists) have got to sit round the same table and work out where their isms intersect, not where they disagree.

    And if that means sometimes having to hear (or heaven forfend accept) other viewpoints that’s exactly the sodding point because this shitstorm we are in doesn’t give a shit about our fragile self-determining Life of Brian differences.

    The people who [Fuel pump] it, delight in our squabbles, feeding the chaos and distraction. And the [Earth globe]? She’s doing what she has to, because there is no time.

    We all know that Nero fiddled while Rome burned, but are we seriously going to niggle while our home does the same?

    It’s not the time to lose our shit, it’s time to shit or get off the pot. #ExtinctionRebellion are here to be the change, in all it’s joyously intersectional diversity.

    So let’s mix our isms, and all become ALCHEMISTS.'

    Only 'largely' f* right off? And we have to 'hear' and even 'accept' viewpoints like "The Earth is made of inanimate resource materials waiting to be converted into consumer products" and 'get round the table' with people who view things that way? For this twitter hero at least (and prob a significant portion of XR, though not all of its membership for sure) it's still about debating with people who somehow have the wrong ideas and need to be educated out of them. Pure liberalism in other words.

    'Liberalism also diverges from a radical analysis on the question of the nature of social reality. Liberalism is idealist. This is the belief that reality is a mental activity. Oppression, therefore, consists of attitudes and ideas, and social change happens through rational argument and education. Materialism, in contrast, is the understanding that society is organized by concrete systems of power, not by thoughts and ideas, and that the solution to oppression is to take those systems apart brick by brick.' - https://deepgreenresistance.net/en/resistance/liberals-radicals/liberals-radicals/

    A 'joyous,' 'diverse,' 'intersectional' debate with capitalists who are profiting from the killing of the earth is a total waste of time. They aren't driven by ideas or beliefs but by the concrete material rewards society offers to them for their sociopathic behaviour. Even if their minds are changed, all that means is that they will be bounced out and replaced immediately by some other conscience-free cipher. I think any serious environmental movement should exclude anybody talking in terms of 'ecosystem services', 'natural capital', 'offsetting' or other corporate pr terminology from the outset. Otherwise they've lost before they've even started, and are playing into the elite strategy to water down and eliminate any radical challenge that might be presented to the status quo.

    cheers,
    I

    Message Thread: