Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Nature, Capitalism, Crisis

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Nature, Capitalism, Crisis

Click here to access a 55 minute interview conducted by Sasha Lilley of KPFA, a listener sponsored radio station in Berkeley, CA, with an environmental economist and radical scholar Jason Moore.

Humans seem to be at war with nature -- epitomized by the system of capitalism, which plunders as it grows. But what if we understood the realm of Nature as not separate from the human realm of Society? Radical scholar Jason Moore suggests that we need to embed our critique of capitalism within the web of life on earth – so as best to oppose it.

Moore also goes on to develop the thesis that we must examine how the development of capitalism plays an integral role in organizing and altering nature on our planet Earth, and is now approaching nature's limits and causing all kinds of crises.