From the Boston Political Education Editorial Committee
PEWG Blog is excited to present a conversation between Adam H from Boston DSA Housing Working Group and Samuel Stein, author of "Capital City" (2019, Verso) on the real estate state & capital, gentrification and the housing crisis, tenant organizing, equitable housing and the Green New Deal, and more! Check it out below (the interview …
Continue reading "The Power to Remake Our Cities: An Interview with Samuel Stein"
On Wednesday, August 22nd, about 50 people gathered at the Cambridge Public Library to hear four members of Boston DSA speak on an introduction to ecosocialism.This article is a recap of the concepts discussed at the panel and discusses the central tenets of ecosocialism, and ongoing ecosocialist struggles within DSA nationwide.
The capitalist exploitation of nature and labor are two sides of the same coin. The labor process is always something in which humans and nature participate. It is in the very fibers of nature that labor becomes congealed as value that can be captured by capital, the commodity becoming a vessel through which labor-power is quite literally extracted from human bodies. Yet, just as humans come to see themselves as distinct from the natural world, we also come to see capitalism as distinct from the extractive economies through which it feeds on the planet.
There is a widespread problem in capitalist nations within the Global North, of conflating GDP with “standard of living”, and equating possessions and access to technology with personal well-being. Economic growth, in practice, means growth for the few privileged individuals and growing inequality for the rest. It is an obvious moral obligation to mitigate the destruction wrought by growth-induced climate change for vulnerable communities and future generations. We must rethink the modern meaning of the words “needs” and “well-being” in order to imagine a revolutionary post-growth future.
We participate in this grand illusion of uncritical domination through our dates to botanical gardens, our Instagram-worthy hikes, and our family camping trips. So, if we can’t forge a proper connection and respect for what’s natural through the integration of our current culture, does this mean the proper solution is to hike the Appalachian Trail for 6 months? Should we fully capitulate to nature? What I hope we’ve come upon through this analysis is to realize that there were various discrete historical events related to the development and spread of capitalism (from the so-called “enlightenment” and the industrial revolution, to the imperialism of Baconian science) which has brought us to this inflection point in the development of humanity and nature. The very fact that climate change is such a political issue necessarily exposes it to dialectical examination.