Tuesday, June 12, 2012

An ecosocialist beginning

At a meeting of interested ecosocialists in Auckland on 12 June 2012, it was agreed that - prior to launching any kind of organisation - we needed to open a space for cross-organisational discussion of ecosocialist theory and practice in Aotearoa / New Zealand.

This blog is my personal attempt to open up that space.

People + Planet is an attempt to start an "electronic journal" of ecosocialism in Aotearoa / New Zealand. The principled basis of this journal rests on two threads:

  1. Anticapitalism - the concept that the capitalist mode of production is responsible for not only regular and worsening economic crisis, but environmental devastation and terrible effects on the cultural and spiritual health of all human beings. Therefore, for the survival of our species and well-being of our planetary ecosystem, it must be superseded by a new, economically democratic global order that puts people and planet before profit.
  2. Antiproductivism - the concept that economic growth should not be the sole or even the primary measurement of social wealth and progress. An accumulation of "stuff" does not produce human happiness, and any new order has to take into account concepts of alienation, commodity fetishism, social atomisation and the "metabolic rift" between people and planet.
These are only a "bare minimum" for ecosocialist discussion. In Aotearoa, no discussion of a new social order can be meaningful without including the perspective of the tangata whenua of this nation and the issue of Te Tiriti ō Waitangi. In addition, I personally believe that the Pirate platform - that is, reform of copyright, patent and intellectual property relations to break down corporate control over information and productivity, to the benefit of both content creators and the broader culture - must also be vital. But that's just my opinion.

Therefore, any contribution to this blog which deals with anticapitalist or antiproductivist themes is welcome. Comments will be moderated with a light hand - racist, misogynist or homophobic comments will be deleted on sight, while off-topic, personalised or trolling comments will be policed thoroughly.

This blog is in desperate need of regular contributors, and an editorial board. All volunteers will be gratefully accepted.

Questions? Comments?

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3 comments:

  1. Keep it simple stupidJune 13, 2012 at 1:13 AM

    Great start, I guess the challenge is trying to hold up a superior model, current, past or future, and then finding a way of agreeing on which model we will work together on.

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  2. AlternzJune 13, 2012 at 3:31 AM

    I think the future I want is the same as the one you want but I don't think we will get there if we define the problem using amorphous concepts like "the capitalist mode of production" and "profit".

    We need to explore more deeply what it is about the current economic system that "is responsible not only for regular and worsening economic crisis, but also for environmental devastation and terrible effects on the cultural and spiritual health of all human beings."

    I agree that that is what is happening but what do you think is the mechanism that makes it happen.

    ReplyDelete
  3. DaphneJune 14, 2012 at 2:19 AM

    Well, I don't think that either "the capitalist mode of production" or "profit" are amorphous terms. In the Marxist tradition, they have pretty precise definitions.

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