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Thank you so much 
for your kind introduction.

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I think now you know about my book,
Karl Marx Eco-Socialism.

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Today I'm going to talk 
about something new.

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In the last section, people talked
about the feasibility of the transition.

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But I think this section
is more about imagining utopia,

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because I think one 
of the main importance

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of the humanities today, 
in the Anthropocene,

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is about regaining a new 
kind of utopia or imaginary,

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because the capitalism became
such an obvious fact to us.

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But I think 
within capitalism,

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we cannot really solve
this problem of climate crisis.

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That's why we need to imagine
a much more radical,

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different kind 
of future today.

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And also, this is my love 
call to diagnose people,

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because I think
based on my new reading of Marx,

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- you know, some Marxists
treated degrowth people very badly,

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but I'm friendly and supportive 
of the view of Degrowth.

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So this is what I'm going 
to talk about today.

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I'm going to share 
my PowerPoint,

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and since the time is

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quite limited, I go

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as fast as I can.

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Today I'm going to talk 
about the climate crisis

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and ecological revolution,
and I deal with three different kinds

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of imaginative 
future vision.

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And I criticize two 
and I defend the last one

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that eco-socialism, basically.

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We are living 
in the Anthropocene.

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I think we talked 
about it yesterday.

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So I'm not going through this.

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But the situation, it looks like the end
of the future, as Bill McKibben argued.

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But this end of nature did not realize
any human domination over nature.

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Rather, what we are witnessing today is
increasing uncontrollability of nature.

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And some people talk about 
the return of nature,

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the extinction of species, desertification,
super hurricanes, soil erosion,

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- that these are problems that humans 
cannot really adequately solve.

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So after 30 years 
of the famous

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Fukuyama's declaration
about the end of history,

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what we are 
witnessing under this

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celebration of global capitalisms

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is the end of 
human civilization.

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The whole point is:

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We need a much more radical

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vision, a much more radical 
theoretical framework.

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I'm not going to talk 
about how fast we need

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to reduce the carbon dioxide
because everyone knows about this.

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But the whole point is that
it seems very unlikely that we can attain

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zero carbon emission by 2050

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with this current pace 
of economic growth.

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That's why people 
are talking about

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"System change, not Climate Change"
everywhere.

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But the point is or the question is:
What kind of systemic change do we want?

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That's I'm going to talk about.

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One is, of course, 
Green Capitalism.

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People talk about the 
Green New Deal everywhere.

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And I characterize Green New Deal
as Climate Keynesianism.

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I'm not rejecting 
Green New Deal as such,

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but I'm basically 
criticizing here

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Climate Keynesianism,
the kind of Green New Deal,

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as suggested by the supporters
of the Green Capitalism.

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In this context,

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the pandemic is a 
very interesting case.

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Pandemic marks

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the end of the neoliberal austerity
and the beginning

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of the new age 
of the fiscal stimulus.

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It's very surprising
that even politicians

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and big corporations 
are welcoming

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the government 
spending increase.

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And I think these people 
have been talking about austerity

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for such a long time, but now they're
talking about green investment a lot,

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because this is a kind of
welcome situation for many corporations.

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It opens up new opportunities
for huge investment

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to revive the real economy
stagnating in the last 20 years.

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But now they can even get the support
from the government.

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And this is also the end 
of the financial capitalism.

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So pandemic creates 
the situation

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that is characterized by two ends:
The end of neoliberal austerity

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and the end of 
financial capitalism.

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So they are going to go into using
this Green New Deal policy,

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invest in solar panels, electric 
vehicles and whatever

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they really need to rebuild
the entire social infrastructure.

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So we we are witnessing 
the opening up of new

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ways of investing 
in the real economy.

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So they expect

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or they hope that this economic 
growth, through the greening

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of the entire economy,
offers a possibility to attain

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the broader consensus,
not just among the elites,

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but also from the lower and middle
class in the Global North:

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creating new jobs,

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you know, booming economy,

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rising wages and 
rising demand, etc..

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But this is nothing but the formation
of a new kind of the "imperiale Lebensweise",

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the imperial ways of living, in 
the age of the climate crisis.

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As Markus Wissen and 
Ulrich Brand discussed

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the "imperiale Lebensweise"
after World War II.

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But this is a new phase
in the climate crisis.

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It will only lead to 
ecological imperialism, I assume,

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not just because of 
the myth of decoupling.

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As Kallis and Hickel 
convincingly demonstrated

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we have not witnessed
any absolute decoupling

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in the current growing 
system of economy.

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But also the problem is that 
Green Capitalism is not fast enough

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to tackle the climate crisis,
especially because short term profit

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is not compatible with long term
universal metabolism of nature.

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But also the problem is that 
Green New Deal basically strengthenes

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the ecological imperialism
and unequal exchange of labor,

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resources and environment,
environmental damage.

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This is very characteristics
to "imperiale Lebensweise"

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The reducing of CO2 
in the Global North

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by building solar 
panels of electric vehicles

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or whatsoever is realized
only through intense,

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much more intensive and extensive
robbery of nature in the Global South.

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And this tendency is already becoming
apparent in the last few months,

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in the rising price of lithium,
the cobalt and nickel

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and the other kinds of rare
earths is just prices going up

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because all the countries are now
expecting a the huge demand in the future.

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So in this 
ecological imperialism,

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the capital accumulation 
can go on and on,

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but not a free and just 
sustainable development.

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So the economic crisis can be 
postponed successfully,

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but ecological crisis 
becomes only worse

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and severe, especially 
in the Global South.

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So we need to challenge
much more radically the green capitalism.

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I don't have time
because I want to talk about Marx

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in the second half,
so I'm not really arguing in detail.

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But many people, like Kallis
and Hickel, already demonstrated,

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that this kind of Green New Deal
doesn't really work.

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Only works for 
the Global North.

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So I think in the Anthropocene,
even though Chakrabarty

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doesn't really want to talk
about capitalism anymore,

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in the Anthropocene, I'm not sure if she
talked about capitalism yesterday, but

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she doesn't talk about capitalism,

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but I think if we really, 
want to solve

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this problem of climate crisis,
we need to challenge capitalism.

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And that's why there's a growing interest
in Ecosocialism and Degrowth

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And we're invite it today 
as speaker, I hope.

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I'm basically defending

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the position of eco socialism,

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but I also want to show 
that eco socialism

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is quite compatible 
with Degrowth,

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and the Marxist vision of ecosocialism
is compatible with degrowth, too.

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However, as Zala just talked
about in the introduction,

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Marxism is quite a notorious
for the Promethean vision of future.

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Prometheanism is basically about 
absolute domination of nature

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through technologies.

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And the problem is,

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that the eco socialism 
is not always green,

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it's rather brown, I would say,

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and I have been 
trying to demonstrate

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that eco socialism 
is green.

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And Marx himself was quite seriously
interested in the problem of ecology.

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But again, this is what 
I have been confronting

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in the last few years,
is that this defense: the passionate

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defense of Prometheanism,
even among the left!

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Ray Brassier famously 
defended the Prometheanism,

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and he basically called for 
reviving of the Promethean idea

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as the central 
identity of Marxism.

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And there is a clear affinity

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between Marx and the eco modernism
like Breakthrough Institute, etc.,

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and those people basically argue
that Anthropocene already signals

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too much intervention in nature, 
too much human intervention.

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So we cannot retreat 
from this situation.

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... once famously 
called it the ...,

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but it's basically
about necessity of further

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human intervention
or further control of nature

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for the sake of the survival of humanity,
if not human emancipation.

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So some Marxists argue for
further usage of nuclear power plants,

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geoengineering, all the 
negative emission technologies.

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And they even criticize

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the degrowth movement
as a kind of "folk politics".

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"Folk politics" basically means
that it's just local small scale

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and minoritarian social movements
that doesn't have any impacts

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upon the global capitalism.

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We need to challenge the system,
says Zizek for example,

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we need to really challenge
the global capitalism as a world system.

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So, "folk politics" is a very inadequate
way of challenging this system.

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Like the Occupy movement,
that didn't change anything.

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That's what they say.

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People like Aron Bastani 
in his book

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"Fully Automated Luxury 
Communism" basically celebrates

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the new technologies

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as the foundation 
of post-capitalism.

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They hope that the 
technological development

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under capitalism creates 
post-scarcity future

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and it will ultimately
"blow capitalism sky high".

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That expression comes 
from the "Grundrisse".

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But obviously, Marx did not 
simply praise the capitalist

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development of productive forces
as a progress of history,

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simply because 
of the fact

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that technology under capitalism 
is not neutral at all.

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This is what he 
argues in "Capital":

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the problem of productive 
forces of capital.

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The point is basically, that 
productive forces of capital

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is about increasing 
productive forces

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for the sake of domination 
over workers and nature.

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The capitalist development of 
technologies is not about

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liberating workers from work.

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It's about disciplining them,
controlling them, commanding over them.

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It only reinforces
the regime of capital.

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It only builds further 
domination over workers.

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And Richard York 
and Clark also argue

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that the captilalist technology

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as a productive force 
of capital can only shift

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the metabolic rift,
but it can never really repair it.

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That's the problem

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that we just witnessed in
my critique of the Green New Deal.

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It's just about "imperiale Lebensweise"
in the global north, but the problem

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is simply shifted to somewhere else
and to some other kind of people.

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But the problem of
the rift remains all the time.

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So what I problematize,

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what I see in Bastani
is the poverty of philosophy

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or poverty or imagination,
because Bastani can imagine

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a post-capitalist
and a post-scarcity future

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only based on 
capitalist technologies

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such as EV and electric 
vehicles and solar panels,

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more artificial meat
and asteroid mining, etc..

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But this is not the 
way that we should be aiming.

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Why?

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- By the way, this is my new 
book, "Das Kapital im Anthropezän"

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and it just appeared 
in Japanese. -

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Basically, I'm arguing
for de-growth communism

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But what I argued 
in this book,

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- I'm currently writing an 
English version of it -,

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but if I very 
roughly summarize:

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What we witness in Bastani is 
the persistence of Capitalist Realism:

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"It is easier to imagine the end
of the world than the end of capitalism."

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That's Mark Fishers' 
capitalist realism.

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I'm calling for regaining

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much more radical 
post-capitalist imaginary,

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because without such imagination,
ecological revolution

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ends up simply 
demanding accelerating

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what already exists, such as 
basic income, modern monetary theory,

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Green New Deal, global tax, 
full automation...

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simply accelerating
what already potentially exists.

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It's not really different from
what capitalism offers.

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That's my conviction, and that's 
also what Zizek points out

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as the paradox 
of radical policies.

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Here's what it means: In order
to realize the ideal kind of basic income.

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Green New Deal, or modern monetary theory,
because, you know, basic income

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could be utilized by more conservative
people to cut social welfare, etc..

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So if you want to have 
really emancipating

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kinds of Basic income or Green New Deal,
the power of the social movements

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must be so strong, really strong,

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so strong that even
we can overcome capitalism!

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Because otherwise conservative people
or right wing people simply dominate

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the basic income and they 
use it for other purposes.

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So we really need 
to have a strong power

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to beat those enemies.
But if we can beat enemies,

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why do we preserve capitalism?

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If we can be enemies,
we should simply abolish

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capitalism as such.

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So the main 
contradiction is that

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they want to have some radical 
vision through radical policies,

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like Modern Monetary Theory, 
or basic income or whatsoever.

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But they want to conserve
fundamental characteristics of capitalism,

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such as wage labor, market
competition and economic growth, etc..

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So these are not very convincing
ways of imagining an utopia,

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because utopia can be more 
characterized by: less work,

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more commons, more creative 
activities, sex or whatsoever.

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But this is something
that has been seriously

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marginalized and oppressed under 
the capitalism mode of production.

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And in order to bring up
this kind of marginalized utopia

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back into the table again,
I think it is also necessary

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to redefine abundance 
and scarcity.

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And this is why the humanities
is very important, because we can

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have this new definition of these 
concepts so that we can have

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a more non-productive
post-scarcity society.

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00:17:31,520 --> 00:17:34,200
And this is also 
conducted recently

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by Benavan, in his 
critique of full automation.

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But in any case

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I do this by going 
back to Marx.

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And the problem is 
that basically under capitalism

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we can never have abundance.

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Capitalism is a system that is

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ultimately essentially 
characterized by scarcity,

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because capitalism aims at endless growth
endless capitali accumulation.

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So it is really,
no matter how much it develops,

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it is always scarse. 
And capital also creates

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scarcity through commodification
of the entire world.

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And this is what John Bellamy 
Foster problematizes

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is paradox of wealth
or the Lauderdale paradox.

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It just is about 
how the increase

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of private wealth
is fundamentally characterized

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00:18:28,920 --> 00:18:33,200
by the decline
or decrease of public wealth.

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00:18:35,040 --> 00:18:38,040
Because if we remember

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about primitive accumulation,
it's about

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00:18:42,560 --> 00:18:45,000
dissolving the commons

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00:18:45,000 --> 00:18:48,040
in order to create 
the private wealth.

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00:18:48,040 --> 00:18:51,800
So from the beginning, 
capitalism,

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00:18:51,800 --> 00:18:56,320
is characterized
by this creation of artificial scarcity.

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That's the first 
negation of capitalism.

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00:19:01,080 --> 00:19:04,840
Primitive accumulation 
is the beginning

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of this creation of 
artificial scarcity

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for the sake of increasing 
private riches.

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00:19:12,720 --> 00:19:17,280
And Marx quite consistently, 
argued that

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the second negation,
"die Negation der Negation"

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00:19:20,960 --> 00:19:24,600
as the rehabilitation 
of the earth,

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00:19:25,000 --> 00:19:30,120
He says that the capitalist 
production begets its own negation.

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00:19:30,760 --> 00:19:32,520
This is the negation 
of the negation.

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00:19:32,520 --> 00:19:35,020
It does not re-establish 
private property

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00:19:35,120 --> 00:19:37,240
but it does indeed establish

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00:19:37,240 --> 00:19:41,280
individual property on the basis
of the achievement of the capitalis era,

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00:19:41,720 --> 00:19:46,360
namely cooperation and the possession
in common over the earth, "die Erde"

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00:19:47,000 --> 00:19:50,000
and the means of production
produced by labor itself.

305
00:19:50,760 --> 00:19:54,080
So Marx is quite equal socialist
here, right?

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00:19:54,360 --> 00:19:57,600
That the Earth, "die Erde"
doesn't belong to anyone.

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00:19:57,600 --> 00:20:00,840
It just it must be a common.

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00:20:02,280 --> 00:20:05,280
And I, when I read this,

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00:20:05,320 --> 00:20:09,240
I realized how ecological 
Marx could be.

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00:20:09,240 --> 00:20:11,760
And I started

311
00:20:11,760 --> 00:20:15,720
doing research in his notebooks
and I realized more and more

312
00:20:16,040 --> 00:20:20,640
how his engagement 
with ecological issues

313
00:20:21,640 --> 00:20:26,200
was actually much deeper than 
other people previously assumed.

314
00:20:26,840 --> 00:20:29,960
And I showed this by editing 
the Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe.

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00:20:30,040 --> 00:20:33,320
But I'm not going 
into detail of this.

316
00:20:33,360 --> 00:20:37,560
But anyway, Marx clearly 
regarded the rehabilitation

317
00:20:37,560 --> 00:20:41,840
of sustainable production
as the central task of socialism.

318
00:20:41,840 --> 00:20:46,040
That's why I call his 
socialism eco-socialism.

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00:20:47,840 --> 00:20:50,640
And this is the view 
that Marx already

320
00:20:50,640 --> 00:20:54,560
developed in "Capital" Volume 1
for example, in this passage here.

321
00:20:55,320 --> 00:21:00,240
But the problem is that
there are some passages that seem

322
00:21:01,320 --> 00:21:04,320
kind of contradictory,

323
00:21:04,440 --> 00:21:07,800
and one passage is this one, 
in the critique of the Gothaer Programm

324
00:21:07,960 --> 00:21:09,640
written in 1871, after "Capital".

325
00:21:09,640 --> 00:21:13,360
Here he seems 
quite Promethean.

326
00:21:13,600 --> 00:21:16,360
He says in this famous passage.

327
00:21:16,360 --> 00:21:20,120
"In a higher phase 
of communist society,

328
00:21:21,120 --> 00:21:24,240
after the productive forces 
have also increased

329
00:21:24,240 --> 00:21:29,520
with the all-round development
and all the springs of the common wealth,

330
00:21:29,560 --> 00:21:33,360
"genossenschaftlicher Reichtum"
flow more abundantly

331
00:21:33,640 --> 00:21:37,560
- only then can the narrow 
horizon or bourgeois right

332
00:21:37,560 --> 00:21:41,640
be crossed in its entirety,
and society inscribe on its banners:

333
00:21:42,080 --> 00:21:45,880
From each according to his abilities
to each according to his needs."

334
00:21:46,320 --> 00:21:49,840
So here he's saying about how 
the wealth flows more abundantly

335
00:21:49,840 --> 00:21:52,840
and that people 
can consume a lot.

336
00:21:52,880 --> 00:21:57,480
And that's why people like 
H. Daly, the famous conomist

337
00:21:57,840 --> 00:22:03,120
of the state economy, 
criticized this passage.

338
00:22:03,120 --> 00:22:08,600
He says how Marx is 
determinist and economy growth

339
00:22:08,600 --> 00:22:12,960
is always crucial
in order to have abundance, etc..

340
00:22:14,040 --> 00:22:16,680
But it doesn't make 
sense, right?

341
00:22:16,680 --> 00:22:22,320
Because, if Marx was already ecological
in Capital Volume 1, written in 1867,

342
00:22:22,640 --> 00:22:25,640
why was he so 
naive in 1871?

343
00:22:26,080 --> 00:22:27,240
And I think one 
important hint

344
00:22:28,640 --> 00:22:31,920
is this expression

345
00:22:32,560 --> 00:22:35,680
the abundance of 
"genossenschaftlicher Reichtum".

346
00:22:36,320 --> 00:22:40,160
So it's not about abundance

347
00:22:40,160 --> 00:22:43,160
of private wealth.

348
00:22:43,960 --> 00:22:50,060
He says: We need to overcome the 
"narrow horizon of burgeois right".

349
00:22:50,040 --> 00:22:54,600
If we want to have the 
abundance of material wealth,

350
00:22:55,080 --> 00:22:58,560
if you want to have more
and more of what we as individual

351
00:22:58,560 --> 00:23:03,840
can consume, we are still trapped
in the narrow bourgeois horizon.

352
00:23:04,560 --> 00:23:06,840
But we need to overcome this.

353
00:23:06,840 --> 00:23:07,920
This is what he says.

354
00:23:07,920 --> 00:23:12,720
And then we have the true 
abundance of wealth,

355
00:23:13,040 --> 00:23:16,040
as "genossenschaftlicher Reichtum", 
the common wealth.

356
00:23:16,680 --> 00:23:18,000
And this is very 
interesting, actually.

357
00:23:18,000 --> 00:23:21,240
If you read in this way,
Marx is basically talking

358
00:23:21,240 --> 00:23:24,480
in this "Negation 
der Negation"

359
00:23:25,120 --> 00:23:28,120
about re-habilitating 
the common wealth

360
00:23:28,360 --> 00:23:31,840
and that's the foundation
of the abundant society.

361
00:23:31,880 --> 00:23:35,000
The post-scarcity 
society is about

362
00:23:35,680 --> 00:23:40,120
rehabilitating this abundance
of "genossenschaftlicher Reichtum",

363
00:23:41,840 --> 00:23:45,080
not consumptionist
material goods.

364
00:23:46,640 --> 00:23:52,280
So I want to say that the abundance
of the "genossenschaftlicher Reichtum"

365
00:23:52,280 --> 00:23:56,480
is not equivalent to the 
unlimited access to abundant goods.

366
00:23:56,600 --> 00:24:00,720
Otherwise, communism society
would simply repeat the same form

367
00:24:00,720 --> 00:24:03,720
of private riches 
of capitalism.

368
00:24:03,720 --> 00:24:07,360
Since primitive accumulation
created artificial scarcity.

369
00:24:07,600 --> 00:24:11,480
Communism reverses the order
with the aim of recovering

370
00:24:11,680 --> 00:24:15,680
the radical abundance
of the common wealth, making it

371
00:24:15,680 --> 00:24:19,040
equally accessible to everyone 
at the cost of private wealth.

372
00:24:21,400 --> 00:24:24,720
So I'm running out of time.

373
00:24:24,720 --> 00:24:27,720
So I'm going to my conclusion 
Its basically:

374
00:24:27,960 --> 00:24:32,920
Marx' eco-socialism
is characterized in the following way:

375
00:24:33,720 --> 00:24:38,600
It is based on Marx conviction
that the capitalism is a system

376
00:24:38,600 --> 00:24:43,920
with perpetual scarcity due to its drive
for unlimited capital accumulation.

377
00:24:43,920 --> 00:24:44,960
It can never end.

378
00:24:44,960 --> 00:24:48,000
It needs more and more
and it creates abundance.

379
00:24:48,000 --> 00:24:50,200
But it's always caracterized 
by scarcity.

380
00:24:50,200 --> 00:24:51,200
So they want more.

381
00:24:51,200 --> 00:24:55,200
That's how we are now facing 
this climate crisis.

382
00:24:56,160 --> 00:24:59,160
And against this 
unlimited growths.

383
00:24:59,160 --> 00:25:03,720
Marx was basically arguing
for rehabilitating the abundance

384
00:25:03,720 --> 00:25:06,160
of common wealth.

385
00:25:06,160 --> 00:25:08,480
Abundance of wealth
through commonification.

386
00:25:08,480 --> 00:25:11,520
That's the 
"genossenschaftlicher Reichtum"

387
00:25:11,520 --> 00:25:14,520
in that passage of his critique
of the Gothaer Programm.

388
00:25:14,880 --> 00:25:17,880
an increasing commons
and reducing work time

389
00:25:17,880 --> 00:25:22,760
and increasing time for non-consumptionists
activities such as art, sports, sex

390
00:25:22,760 --> 00:25:27,440
care work or whatsoever, as well
as decreasing the environmental damage

391
00:25:28,080 --> 00:25:33,520
can be quite central
to Marx's own eco socialism.

392
00:25:33,520 --> 00:25:36,320
That's my point. Of course, thats 
eco-socialism, you can simply say so,

393
00:25:36,320 --> 00:25:40,320
but also Marx' own view
was quite compatible with this.

394
00:25:40,760 --> 00:25:43,880
And although Kate Soper 
in her recent book

395
00:25:43,880 --> 00:25:46,880
criticized Marxism,

396
00:25:47,840 --> 00:25:51,200
but I think what she suggests
as "alternative hedonism"

397
00:25:51,200 --> 00:25:56,640
is quite compatible with 
my own reading of Marx text

398
00:25:56,960 --> 00:26:01,960
and this is really the new culture,
and this is the topic of our section.

399
00:26:02,280 --> 00:26:05,240
So the system is changing
and the new culture emerges

400
00:26:05,240 --> 00:26:10,400
or the transformation of the system
must be accompanied by the creation

401
00:26:10,400 --> 00:26:14,640
of new values and a new culture,
because otherwise we end up

402
00:26:16,240 --> 00:26:18,720
with producing 
more and more.

403
00:26:18,720 --> 00:26:23,240
And that's why I want to highlight 
eco-socialism without growth,

404
00:26:23,360 --> 00:26:26,520
this is what Kallis says, 
it quite compatible with Marx

405
00:26:26,600 --> 00:26:29,600
own vision opposed 
to scarcity societies,

406
00:26:29,720 --> 00:26:33,360
and it is precisely
our radical alternative

407
00:26:33,520 --> 00:26:36,720
to capture this abundance
in the age of climate crisis.

408
00:26:37,240 --> 00:26:37,960
Thank you so much.

