LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment

Friday, February 18, 2022

'The Informal Colonialism of Egyptology: From the French Expedition to the Security State', in: Marc Woons and Sebastian Weier (eds.), Critical Epistemologies of Global Politics, Bristol: E-International Relations Publishing 2017, pp. 182-202.

Christian Langer

2017, Marc Woons & Sebastian Weier (eds.). Borders, Borderthinking, Borderlands: Developing a Critical Epistemology of Global Politics

2023 ViewsPaperRank: 5.9241 Pages

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Location: Bristol

More Info: pp. 182-202

Publisher: E-International Relations Publishing

Publication Date: Jun 1, 2017

Publication Name: Marc Woons & Sebastian Weier (eds.). Borders, Borderthinking, Borderlands: Developing a Critical Epistemology of Global Politics

Theories of Resistance: Anarchism, Geography and the Spirit of Revolt

Simon Springer

Richard J White

6115 ViewsPaperRank: 7.0269 Pages

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Space is never a neutral ‘stage’ on which social actors play their roles, sometimes cooperating with each other, sometimes struggling against each other. Space is a product of interrelations, and is always under construction. Its co-constitutive role in the development of social relations is multiple and complex: a reference for identity-building and re-building; a material condition for existence and survival; a symbol and instrument of power. However, as much as space has been made instrumental for the purposes of heteronomy (from class exploitation to gender oppression to racial segregation), space (spatial re-organisation, spatial practices and spatial resources) is also a basic condition for human emancipation, i.e. for autonomy and freedom. Recognising the way space has been used for resistance, especially in those more specifically left-libertarian contexts (from the early anarchist organising efforts in the 19th century, to the Paris Commune, to the early kibbutzim, to the makhnovitchina in Ukraine, to the socio-spatial revolution during the Spanish Civil War, to the contemporary re-birth of left-libertarian and sometimes specifically anarchist praxis among social movements such as Mexican Zapatistas) is important. Here, a greater understanding of space can teach a great deal about both limits and potentialities, particularly in relation to the possibilities and tasks of re-purposing and re-structuring the built environment, changing images of place, and overcoming old and new boundaries of all sorts.

The militant media of Neo-Nazi enviromentalism

(in: The Environment in the Age of the Internet, Heike Graf ed., Cambridge 2016)

Steffen Werther

150 ViewsPaperRank: 1.638 Pages

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German Studies,

Environmental History,

Community Ecology,

Nationalism,

Ecology

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The idea of an ecologist neo-Nazi seems, at first, ridiculous. Is one to imagine skinheads biking, in formation, bringing their milk-cartons to recycling centers? Well, no, not exactly: but many neo-Nazi parties have an environmentalist side to their party platforms. Neo-Nazi politicians espouse many standard environmentalist planks; neo-Nazi websites condemn pollution; neo-Nazi youth spend time cleaning parks. Indeed, environmentalism and militant xenophobia seem oddly compatible. In this article, we will look at how neo-Nazi websites and print media wed the slogans, symbols, visuals and narratives of the radical patriot to those of the Heimat-loving environmentalist, resulting in a surprisingly coherent media frame.

Nature, the Volk, and the Heimat - Narratives and Practices of the Far-Right Ecologist, in: Baltic Worlds, 2013, Vol. VI:2.

Steffen Werther

Madeleine Hurd

53 Views7 Pages

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German Studies,

Environmental Studies,

Right-Wing Extremism,

Extreme and Far Right

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THE DEEP GREEN DELUSION:

Vitalism and Communal Autarky

DrChris A James

329 Views123 Pages

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Environmental Philosophy

A treatise on the contradictions in the environment movement, in particular deep green ecology.

https://www.academia.edu/36891699/THE_DEEP_GREEN_DELUSION_Vitalism_and_Communal_Autarky

Contents:

THE EMERGENCE OF DEPOLITICIZED GROUPS.

POST-MATERIAL ACTIVISM.

E.F.SCHUMACHER AND ENVIRONMENTCAPITALISM.

THE IMAGINED TRANSITION.

LIVING BY DEFAULT.

RETREAT FROM PROTEST.

THE APOCALYPTIC DISCOURSE.

THE ANTHROPOSOPHY OF RUDOLF STEINER.

COROLLARY.BIBLIOGRAPHYINDEX.

The Deep Green Delusion: Vitalism and Communal Autarky.

Since we can’t stop poor people from breeding, let’s build fences to keep them out. And let’s ask the world’s biggest polluters to pay for the fences

[David Attenborough]1

Introduction.

I have been in the social movements since the 1960s. I was still in school when I attended my first mass rally in London. I have been an environmental activist since the 1970s, but after so many years I have had to rethink my commitment, not because I have ceased caring for nature, but because I believe nature has become a euphemism for the re-enchantment of the world as myth and mystery, a tendency that has its roots in anti-Enlightenment Romanticism and the minority traditions.

I contend therefore that the deep green ecology thatches risen as a solution to fast capitalism, over-consumption and climate change, is a delusion. I argue that mainstream environmentalism has failed so it has been usurped by a more radical and discursive deep ecology movement; currently the fastest growing green movement across the western world. However, I contend that deep ecology is much more than a niche environmental formula; it is secular theology with connections to mysticism and the pessimistic philosophies, biological determinism and anti-humanism. I argue that the world needs growth and it needs environmental protections, it does not need cults and superstitions. There is nothing to be gained by a return to the wilderness except misery and an intense struggle for survival. Further, I argue that primitive localization coupled with pessimism and social biology would reduce the world’s food supply which could cost the lives of millions of people, especially in the underdeveloped world.

Indeed, deep ecology combined with archaic mysticism running alongside the authoritarian state has a dark history; there are always problems in creating states with states.

1 UK Guardian [2012] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/18/david-attenborough-big-business. Retrieved 22nd January 2012.

Geopower. On the States of Nature of Late Capitalism

Federico Luisetti

2019, European Journal of Social Theory

2307 ViewsPaperRank: 1.122 Pages

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The article argues that environmental planetary discourses have coalesced into the Anthropocene crisis narrative and reformulated the state of nature apparatus of Western political theory. The Anthropocene, as an ecological state of nature of late capitalism, casts light on the logics of geopower, which assembles species thinking, a fascination with nonlife and sovereignty, and the imaginary of extinction and mutation. Geopower shifts governmental technologies from human populations and their ‘milieu’ to nonhuman species, energy flows and ecosystems, from political economy and biopower to Earth science and systems ecology. This configuration of power suggests a shift in the neoliberal agenda and imposes the Earth as a political personage, generating threatening political myths and figures of chaos and sovereignty, such as Gaia, Chthulu and Climate Leviathans.

Gaia, Goddess of the Anthropocene?

Federico Luisetti

458 ViewsPaperRank: 2.23 Pages

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Feminist Theory,

Social Contract Theory,

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As one of the figures of the emerging states of nature, a symptom of the preoccupations of neocolonial and decolonial political animisms, Gaia confronts Western political philosophy, political theology, and political ecology. She is not the sovereign of the Anthropocene but the goddess of an age that is still searching for its rituals and shamans, it constitutions and insurrections.

Demons of the Anthropocene. Facing Bruno Latour’s Gaia

Federico Luisetti

1037 Views20 Pages

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As proposed in 2012 by the 3th International Geological Congress, the Anthropocene is the geological epoch of the Quaternary Period following the Holocene, the age that accounts for the transformation of humans into a force shaping the Earth, and of human actions into a geological phenomenon. Current debates on the Anthropocene are introducing new figures of impersonality, modes of political agency that are shaking the certainties of modern political philosophy. A key protagonist of this epistemic turn is Gaia, the Earth, the Greek Mother of most Western gods. Borrowing from James Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis and addressing the Earth beyond the organisms/environments, humans/nonhumans divide, Bruno Latour has turned Lovelock’s planetary vitalism into the cornerstone of a new state of nature. Latour’s Gaia is a philosophical demon replacing Hobbes’s Leviathan and introducing a new political theology of nature. As in Roberto Esposito’s biopolitical naturalism, Gaia’s archaic relations with things and bodies suggest a return of animist and totemist paradigms and confront political philosophy with unprecedented questions.

The Dynastic Wealth of US Oligarchs Is a Threat to Democracy

A new report estimates that $21 trillion of that wealth will pass internally within America's already dynastically wealthy families between now and 2045.

A billboard truck from MoveOn calls on Senator Marco Rubio's office to increase

federal taxes to big corporations on May 17, 2021 in Tampa, Florida.

(Photo: Gerardo Mora/Getty Images for MoveOn)

CHUCK COLLINS

February 7, 2022

by Inequality.org

There is an understandable focus on new wealth technology billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, especially as their wealth surges during the pandemic.

But it is equally important to understand how multi-generational wealth dynasties are deploying dynasty trusts and other elaborate tax dodges to sequester trillions and dodge inheritance taxes.

A recent ATF report on billionaire campaign contributions found that US billionaires made a combined $1.2 billion in political contributions in the 2020 election cycle, ten percent of all campaign contributions.

Wealth managers have pointed to a substantial intergenerational transfer of wealth, recently estimated at $68 trillion, as baby boomers pass on wealth to the next generations. But most of this wealth is passing within the upper canopy of the wealth forest, between the already wealthy and their heirs.

A new report, from the Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF), estimates that $21 trillion of that wealth will pass internally within America's already dynastically wealthy families between now and 2045. The report, "Dynasty Trusts: Giant Tax Loopholes that Supercharge Wealth Accumulation," estimates that these wealthy families will avoid as much as $8.4 trillion in estate and generation-skipping taxes between now and 2024, by using dynasty trusts and other currently legal loopholes (assuming current estate tax rules).

"Dynasty trust" is the term for a variety of wealth-accumulating structures that remain in place for multiple generations to ensure their fortunes cascade down to children, grandchildren and beyond undiminished by wealth-transfer taxes. They typically are employed by estates of $10 million or more.

The ATF report points out that the $8.4 trillion sum—an average of $350 billion a year over 24 years—is equivalent to the cost of over four Build Back Better plans costing $1.75 trillion each over ten years. About half of the $8.4 trillion is equivalent to the cost of 24 years of the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC), that was included in the House-passed BBB bill and is estimated to reduce childhood poverty by 40%. The expanded CTC costs about $1.6 trillion over 10 years, or roughly $160 billion a year.

The report describes the activities of the wealth defense industry—the tax attorneys, accountants and wealth managers—who are "paid millions to hide trillions" on behalf of their wealthy clients.

"The choice is clear," the report declares. "We can fix our broken estate and gift tax system and stop the concentration of an ever-larger share of America's wealth inside enormous dynasty trusts, or we can trust our democracy to a handful of trillionaire trust fund babies."

The report underscores the warnings from an June 2021 IPS report, "Silver Spoon Oligarchs: How America's 50 Largest Inherited Wealth Dynasties Accelerate Inequality." Without reforming estate and gift-tax laws, the U.S. will continue to see the concentration of wealth within several hundred ultra-high net worth families, forming oligarchic power blocks.

History buffs will enjoy the sections of the new ATF report that traces the history of U.S. wealth-transfer taxation from Teddy Roosevelt's 1910 clarion call for an estate tax that increased "rapidly in amount with the size of the estate" and was "properly safeguarded against evasion."

The report further documents the aggressive moves of estate-planners to diminish or zero-out tax liabilities and the usually delayed and often ineffective efforts by the IRS to block their ploys. For example, many of the loopholes deployed by the ultra-wealthy artificially depress the value of family assets for tax purposes and create trusts that enable families to aggressively avoid estate and gift taxes. This allows for virtually unlimited intergenerational transfers of wealth from one generation to the next.

Tax avoidance isn't the only concern, as these oligarchic concentrations of wealth and power pose political threats to our democratic system. A recent ATF report on billionaire campaign contributions found that US billionaires made a combined $1.2 billion in political contributions in the 2020 election cycle, ten percent of all campaign contributions.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Chuck Collins is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies where he co-edits Inequality.org, and is author of the new book, "Born on Third Base: A One Percenter Makes the Case for Tackling Inequality, Bringing Wealth Home, and Committing to the Common Good." He is co-founder of Wealth for the Common Good, recently merged with the Patriotic Millionaires. He is co-author of "99 to 1: The Moral Measure of the Economy" and, with Bill Gates Sr., of "Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes."