Essay by Eric Worrall
These people teach our kids: Swedish Researcher Timothée Parrique singing the praises a virulent new strain of academic Communist ideology.
Economic growth is fuelling climate change – a new book proposes ‘degrowth communism’ as the solution
Timothée Parrique
Researcher in Ecological Economics, Lund University
March 3, 2023 5.09pm AEDTI’m often told that degrowth, the planned downscaling of production and consumption to reduce the pressure on Earth’s ecosystems, is a tough sell. But a 36-year-old associate professor at Tokyo University has made a name for himself arguing that “degrowth communism” could halt the escalating climate emergency.
Kohei Saito, the bestselling author of Capital in the Anthropocene, is back with a new book: Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism. The book is dense, especially for those not fluent in Marxist jargon who, I suspect, care little about whether or not Karl Marx started worrying about nature in his later years.
And yet, the way Saito mobilises Marxist theory to make a plea for “the abundance of wealth in degrowth communism” (the title of the last chapter of his book) is as precise as it is gripping. This is what attracted my attention as an economist working on degrowth: Saito’s attempts to reconcile Marxism with newer ideas around alternatives to economic growth might bring critiques of capitalism to an unprecedented level of popularity.
Economic growth creates scarcity
Saito turns the concept of economic growth on its head. Many people assume that growth makes us richer but what if it did the precise opposite?
Read more: https://theconversation.com/economic-growth-is-fuelling-climate-change-a-new-book-proposes-degrowth-communism-as-the-solution-199572
I used to think Communism, with its famines, purges and abuses, was probably the worst system of government which could be inflicted on people.
Now I know better.
Before you dismiss the idea of Degrowth Communism as too absurd to win traction, consider that it potentially reconciles some outstanding political contradictions on the radical left wing of politics.
We all laugh about greens being Watermelons, but Soviet era Communist labor movement, with its emphasis on industrial production and material wellbeing for the workers (at least according to the brochure), never had an entirely happy marriage with the green movement.
You can see that tension playing out in today’s Australian politics, the struggle between the Australian Labor Government, which wants to preserve the jobs of unionised supporters in the coal mines, and their Green Party junior coalition partners, who want to shut down extractive industries they believe contribute to climate change.
Greens have long toyed with the idea of medieval feudalism dressed up as village scale socialism, but they failed to develop a solid connection, a clean route of succession from 20th century left wing idealogical movements. Such a connection might have provided greens the voting strength to fulfil their visions.
Degrowth Communism may be the missing link they are looking for, the bridge which can connect young green radicals with their radical left wing union activist parents. The core claim, that economic growth is a deceit which has been impoverishing ordinary people, is designed to appeal to people of all ages, to fan feelings of resentment in people who believe they are not receiving their fair share of society’s bounty.
Proponents of Degrowth Communism claim they are building on some of the later writings of Karl Marx, in which Marx apparently expressed dismay at the ecological damage caused by Capitalism, and expressed hope that Communism might be kinder to nature – which provides the succession route, the idealogical bridge which connects the 21st century green movement to 20th century radical Labor movements.
Expect to hear more about “Degrowth Communism” in coming years, I don’t think this idea is about to go away. If proponents of Degrowth Communism succeed in pulling off their re-imagining of the left, if they succeed in renewing the radical left by reconciling radical industrial activism with green communism, they could become even stronger.
It looks like the post WW2 success of the West was a high point in human civilisation culminating in the collapse of the Soviet Union and some economic liberalisation in China.
Probably all downhill from now on.
How about President Fetterman for the U.S.?
We already have President Brandon.
They want worse?
Jumpin’ Joe Bidet sometimes goes off script when struggling to read the teleprompter
A president Flusteredman will not have that problem, being unable to read the teleprompter. His wife will stand next to him and read the teleprompter as he drools on himself.
You’re accused of being an ableist.
President Flusteredman in 2024?
With Mr. Buttplug as VP.
I see Flusteredman running as
“The Big Cheese”
with the slogan
“Competence is Overrated”
Campaigns from a mental hospital,
instead of from his basement.
Wins with 95 million votes —
“counting” ends two weeks after Election Day.
Opponent Trump claims the fix was in.
Democrats claim no election fraud at all.
And life goes on.
Some interesting trivia about “Mayor Pete”. His father, Joseph Buttigieg, was the person who translated the “Prison Notebooks” written by Antonio Gramsci. He was a founding member and president of the International Gramsci Society.
Calling these people Marxists is not hyperbole at all. They literally are Marxists.
wouldn’t that be Fetterwoman
A better ticket was suggested by conservative radio talk show host Chris Plante, whose online store features a campaign T-shirt emblazoned with:
“Biden-Fetterman 2024 – It’s a no-brainer!”
Indeed, this may be a new book, yet a very old idea.
(COVID and Climate Change) are run by the same WEF crowd, with the same FUD tactics. Heck, they honed their skills on climate change.
Consider to share this overview, as it is an excellent red pill article for many reasons. Red pill a sincere but NPR BBC indoctrinated statist on one issue, and you red pill them on all.
It really has been successful with many, as it focuses on the basics and very difficult to argue with, and proves the political motivations. Challenge a friend or family member that, post reading, they will admit to at least 10 clear facts regarding “Climate Change”, they never heard on the MSM.
https://open.substack.com/pub/anderdaa7/p/global-warming?r=slvym&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
If the US and the rest of the world can shake off the new Fluid Fascism of the WEF and others and get back to developing the economies around the world including Asia and Russia, human civilization may flourish far beyond the 1990’s end of Soviet union and the giant tech capitalization. I am no fan of Putin or China but their actions of late indicate they feel threatened by something since the pandemic. We can blame China all we want but it is the West that has gone wonky under the auspices of the WHO and many other organizations.
If we can get beyond the Russian war in Ukraine and the stupid pandemic, the faster we can normalize relationships and help Russia and China and partner with them to develop Central Asia, Russia and Eastern Europe, and Africa the better. We need to be partners in order to build a stable civilization to avoid wasting money in an arms race and saber rattling. Peace, partnership and capital development is the only way to combat the rise of fluid fascism which seeks to destabilize everything and depopulate the world.
Countries like Japan, China, all of Europe need to start having a baby boom soon or they will experience destabilizing population collapse in the next 20 years. It’s time to change the movie, the song and the mantra…..and stop being afraid.
We also need to stop equivocating what stuff is. Communisms is Marxism, and Fascism is fascism. Fluid Fascism isn’t like the 20th century German Nazism it’s global and fluid. 20th Century communism does not work and only exists in remnants and symbols as an excuse for tyranny.
Only weak minded and half-educated people who allow themselves to be intoxicated with the romance of Marxist revolution want the world to be like N. Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, or like Russia where the people are as poor as church mice, or many of the other failed attempts at International socialist revolution.
Fluid Fascism— you can’t see it…. it rumbles under the myriad of misused labels and it’s smell only reeks in when you encounter it accidently in puzzling bits and pieces that never quite fit well enough together to actually see what it is.
Call it anarchy, call it communism, call is radical environmentalism, Call it corporatism…., it is parasitic of socialists and libertarians alike.
Until we have a politician who is brave enough to call it out for what it is, we will continue to have weak presidents who will not forward our country.
The greens in Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six were credible as a reasonable extrapolation of green philosophy.
Yes, but he never anticipated the rise of Fluid Fascism out of radical environmentalism. Ecco terrorism yes…. and wide conspiracies of violence but not an endemic movement of psychological warfare with a eugenics motivation at it’s core. And certainly not a a push for consolidation of capital and market control to save the planet. He never anticipated 1/2 trillionaires buying hundreds of thousands of acres to prevent cattle from feeding on it. Or a push to convince people to eat bugs. 1998 the rise of human dystopic characterization was fantasy entertainment. Fear mongering of the past 12 years was never anticipated. Nor did he anticipate the fertility rate dropping to (2019 1.3, replacement is 2.1….2021 and 2022 could be even lower) in the US and lower for Japan or China and many countries in Europe.
Blame the economy, blame tech, blame what every thing for the current horrendous fertility rate. In the end, it’s about the narrative. Change the narrative from dystopic to joy, peace and harmony and we will have babies coming out of their ears.
The main problem these days is that the crazies are publicized every day by a salivating mainstream media.
And the msm just picks up controversial content from social media feeds.
Back in the day, the crazies would just have a soapbox at the local public park on a Saturday afternoon to spruik their looney ideas. Maybe they could muster an audience of 15 people. But their rants would never make it into a newspaper or radio show.
The youngsters back then would never hear any of the crazies’ crap, because the kids would be at the beach, or at the pictures, or just riding their bikes around the place. Doing stuff.
Alas, nowadays even the schools the kids are taught at subject them to the looney ideas.
Because it’s the teacher at the front of the room who promotes the looney ideas.
Maybe I attended an inferior school but I never paid any attention to anything that the teachers had to say. School was just an intermission between the nursery and the world outside. In fact, it’s more and more obvious every day that the current western educational system is a joke. As Ivan Illich said, “It’s the longest and most expensive initiation rite in world history.
I would get bored in class and try to make the class laugh with one liners. I set a school record for time spent after 3pm in detention. And a second school record for falsely claiming I would never be back in detention again.
Teachers back then were often women who might have become doctors, lawyers and MBAs in today’s world. The smarter women.
I can not imagine the lower quality of today’s teachers. when the smartest women do NOT become teachers.
The worst teacher I ever had was a frustrated English teacher / fiction writer, who thought he should have been a famous writer. After he tortured us for years, he quit teaching and became a semi-famous writer. We are still stunned. Andrew Neiderman – Wikipedia
S. Drakulic, ‘How We Survived Communism .
. . .”: useful reference, from 1992.
Sounds like a very useful book. Just ordered a second hand copy for under US$10.
We could all start with us all driving Lara’s.
Or Yugos
And that is so true. They’ve admitted it. “Our agenda is to upend capitalism”. They don’t care about the climate…
Bingo! There are enough juicy quotes that could be pasted up here at WattsUpWithThat to make the point.
There was a famous German politician during the ‘20s, who wrote a book about what he planned to do. People at the time didn’t take him seriously.
Today if you tell the average person that the Democrats want to close all the coal mines and cap all oil & gas wells and run the entire world economy on wind mills an solar panels, they don’t believe it. “Oh that’s just talk, they don’t mean it.” They say.
Oh they mean it alright, they just don’t know what it will actually mean to them.
Or, as a friend of mine says, it’s just the Republicans trying to make a stink. Nothing here, keep moving.
funny thing? as far as I see extreme capitalism is the same thing as communism
a very few hold all the wealth n power
It is crony capitalism (too big to fail, bailouts of bad “investments” like the S&L and mortgage backed securities in the US) that takes the risk out of BIG investments. And yes, crony capitalism equates to communism IMHO.
Extreme free enterprise, where if you invest “wrong” you lose the money when your choice fails, is the opposite of communism. A reintroduction of free enterprise throughout the US and other western countries would quickly return the west to world dominance.
TRUMP’S speech a CPAC indicated that he learned from his mistakes as POTUS and has plans to correct those mistakes.
I especially liked where he mentioned the first “Reconciliation” bill passed as where much would be done. I would hope that to include the elimination of the income tax, all GREEN subsidies, all racial and sexual discrimination employment schemes, etc.
The problem is that you think government regulated monopolies are examples of capitalism.
Not really. What allows that extreme accumulation of wealth is not capitalism, it is so-called “crony capitalism,” where the rules are set up to favor “big business” in a manner that prevents competition from entering the market and allows graft by those making the rules.
“…a new kind of Communist thinking which is so extreme, it doesn’t even pretend to worry about individual wealth and wellbeing” That’s communism – rulers don’t give a damn about those they rule-Just ask anyone who escaped from a communist country. Their stories will terrify you
The thing is that the kids who buy into this fantasy all think the real “labor” will be done by someone else.
Too many people call what we have today Communism. It isn’t. It’s Fascism and/or Socialism supported by a Bureaucratic Hegemony. It’s what you see in Russia, China, and even the US today. Fascism on the economic plane is simply government control of business and capital. That is *exactly* the right description for what far too many government are today. Socialism is government ownership of business and capital. That’s what you see in Russia and Cuba.
There is no essential difference between Marxist and National Socialism. The method is the same: identify a group, steal all their property and kill them all. For Marxists, the target is the bourgeoisie. National Socialists, the target is the Jews. the fascism of Franco, Mussolini or Allende is something entirely different. The Socialism of the Marxists or Nazis requires state control of everything.
What a fine piece of Bolshevik rhetoric. One can almost taste the molotov cocktail…
Of course, continuing on my previous lecture, the economics policy of your government is your national religion. All ethic and moral resources are expended upon (xxxxxx)-ing The Economy, build your refutation from there.
Capitalist dogma tells us money is nothing, life is a game, and the money is there to keep track of who is winning. Of course, Winner takes All, thus Capitalism has the effect of concentrating wealth into distinct pools. This is the important bit:
Communism aims to collect all wealth into one pool, an impossibility while wealth is widely distributed. This leads to only one conclusion: Capitalism is the forerunner of world communism. Only through the monopolist practices of global capitalism, can the communist claim posession of the earth. As long as people can afford their own food and ammo, communism cannot thrive. As long as they can travel and talk to each other, communist ideas will be exposed as lies. The only way communism can prevail, is with a gun to every head.
“Degrowth” seems to be the bit where the big players are cashing in their chips, because the game is over, the people have been dispossessed, the roads are being left to rot, and soon the One King will be announced unto the world.
…and he will bring us all together in peace and harmony under one corporate logo…
Capitalism means wealth for everybody. The sad thing is that there will always be the fools who think that unless everybody gets the same amount of stuff, then whatever economic system one is using, is a failure.
Monopolies are impossible under capitalism, it has always taken government to create and enforce monopolies.
As I said, your economics policy is your religion.
Okay, so you agree then, capitalism is a mirage, it does not actually mean anything, it has failed.
Or, or, you agree that the existence of Monsanto/ Bayer Blackrock, Vanguard, Tysons, Nestlé etc proves my point that capitalism tends to monopolism which is the ultimate aim of communism, making capitalism the sales counter for Bolshevik world rule.
(Imagine sound of cheap hip-hop microphone hitting wooden floor)
Nope. You didn’t read what MarkW actually wrote. Monsanto/Bayer, Blackrock, Vanguard, Tysons, Nestle, etc all became neo-monopolies via government interference in the associated industries. Through regulatory control the government insures that competitors will face too steep of a cliff to ever become more than gnats.
It isn’t capitalism that tends to monopolism, it is Fascist government that tends to create monopolies in order to enhance government control of business and capital.
Please, guys, I am not attacking your faith, get off the defensive. You can misuse words like socialism and fascism all day long, it was not government that gave Monsanto license to genocide us, it was Monsanto’s well-funded lobbyists that bribed government officials into looking the other way.
Stop hating your government, it is the only thing standing between you and Soros…
Or do you have some F16 and Sidewinders under the bed?
No one is misusing the words.
Fascism – govt control of business and capital
Socialism- govt ownership of business and capital
Communism – collective ownership of business and capital
All as laid out by Marx. Each step easing the transition to the next. The problem is that the final transition has never occurred. Not in the Soviet Union, not in China, not in Cuba, not *anywhere*.
Every revolution winds up stalled either at Fascism or at Socialism. Usually because the Bureaucratic Hegemony needed to implement either refuses to go away which is needed for the final transition.
A few lines from the dictionary of Cilo: (seeing as I don’t see Marx as an authority)
Fascism: Population and government united against foreign control of industry and capital.
Socialism: Public ownership of national resources and infrastructure.
Communism: One small clique owns everything, including the population.
Capitalism (as public policy): Oligarchy progressing towards Monopoly towards Communism.
Capitalism (as private policy): Civilisation.
Globalism: Capital has access to government at all levels. At. All. Levels. That’s how homosexual porn ended up on your toddler’s school book shelf…
Funny how everyone is an expert on Marx’s work, but I never see anyone discuss his Deer Forests, a subject of much importance regarding the loss of energy, transportation and free association so hated by Klaus the Bolsch. Granted, the history of the Scotch deer forests is the only bit of Marx I remember, the rest was just a bunch of claptrap.
Funny how someone who invents his own peculiar (and completely wrong) definitions for commonly used words, declares that everyone else doesn’t know what they are talking about.
As I said, I know the tree by its fruit.
Fascism as a word cannot be found in any pre-WW2 dictionary I own, and the only official definition is from the very people whom the fascists came together to fight. If you are unaware of the “march through the institutions” I suggest you find out before you put any academic on any pedestal.
Commonly used words, when used incorrectly, do not change their meaning, only their usage. Retards can talk all day about democracy, but show me where it has ever been implemented as per the definition; “Government to the benefit of all classes”? Or do you also get stuck at the “government by representatives of all classes”? The meaning of a word does not change with usage, the usage becomes common, often wrongly. Think of Relativity; what crappalooly in this world has not been justified by a flippant “oh, it’s all relative”.
Thusly, good sir, I stand by my taxonomy, because those are the behaviours I observe from those various groups.
While economics is not quite a science, it is certainly not a religion.
Just because you can’t refute an argument is no reason to start relying on insults.
None of them are even close to being monopolies. Granted, they are big, but all of them have competitors, major competitors.
That’s what I meant to convey by using the term “neo”-monopoly. The prefix “psuedo” didn’t quite seem to fit.
They became big because of government interference (e.g. taxes, regulations, licensing, etc) restricting entry into the market segment.
Yes, there are competitors but not many. That makes it easy to become a cartel, even if not on purpose.
There are hundreds of investment firms, there are dozens of companies that provide food in this country alone, more in other countries. Under any rational definition of monopoly, even with government help, none of the examples you listed come close to being monopolies.
None of the examples you give are examples of monopolies. None are even close.
You seem to equate large with monopoly. It isn’t. Try learning some first year economics and then come back. As it is, you are just embarrassing yourself.
Sigh…
In lieu of studying some libtard’s vision of economics, I have instead learned to know a tree by its fruit. Like these on the picture:
No monopoly here, nothing to see, just keep walking, just keep walking…
As for “hunderds of investment firms”, please, how many more people must plagiarise that lady’s research who found three funds owning well over 70% of the stock market?
The Rotschild empire ridicules all economics theories!
And just to be sure, if economics theory was not religion, why the violent reaction to my blasphemy?
THE ECONOMICS POLICY OF YOUR GOVERNMENT IS YOUR STATE RELIGION.
Finis.
P.S. I walked out of my first and only economics lecture when the dude started babbling about that “sensible person” in the so-called Free Market. If I wanted an education in fables, I would have joined a seminary.
3 funds owning over 70% of the stock is not a monopoly, not even close.
In other words, when the economics professor didn’t preach what you already believed, you gave up on him.
…and if those funds use predatory business practices to absorb one after the other independent business day after day?
How large a percentage of the plastics industry must one entity own, before the small guys running out of business for lack of materials may complain about being destroyed by a monopoly? Huh?
And you know what really gets in my gall? Capitalists insist they deserve “access to government at all levels”, meaning they use legislation against their competition. THAT, my friend, is the basis of the de-industrialisation of the West and disenfranchisement of her peoples. Rich men appointing their lackeys to government as a weapon against competition, viva democracy, viva capitalism.
..and this form of capitalism has only one aim: the total subjugation of the world to one single concentration of power and wealth. COMMUNISM. Suffering. Universal slavery. Owning you.
If they did not have thios monopoly power, how long do you think their climastrology nonsense would have lasted? Would they have been able to lockj down the world for over a year? Would they have had the power to insist your child hates its genitals, and sanction you for disagreeing?
You, sir, are a monopologist!
Capitalism means opportunity for everybody, not wealth.
Let’s not believe that capitalists are always honest people and governments are not necessary. There are always Bernie Madoffs and Sam Friedmans
and your senate and industry and banks etc are FULL of them
The more power government has, the more corrupt those who run it become.
And opportunity means that wealth gets created. Is it shared equally? No. Nor should it.
Did I say anything about wanting anarchy?
What, equal opportunity rather than equal outcome?
ya reckon??
really?
pharmas and media and aggropharmas and zuckie n bezos are ALL monopolies
every ones forced decent small companies to go under n bought em out and controls markets, and minds, and life choices/ability to succeed
You, like the rest of the socialists, have no idea what the words you use mean.
None of your examples come even close to being monopolies.
Many of your examples are fields that are heavily govt regulated.
“…a new kind of Communist thinking which is so extreme, it doesn’t even pretend to worry about individual wealth and wellbeing”That’s communism – rulers don’t give a damn about those they rule-Just ask anyone who escaped from a communist country. Their stories will terrify you
No it won’t. Doncherknow, all the bad stories about communism is because nobody has done it RIGHT.
I ache for the day the pro-capitalists realise that neither has anybody proven their system.
Before you regale me with the American Dream, the internationalist corporations are literally stealing resources from foreign soil, under armed guard of the US Army, selling it as American production, then they show the figures as economic growth, while the people are fighting over space to put their cardboard tent for the night. What a great success the American Dream has become!
Capitalism is what happens when government lets people run their own lives.
Far from not being proven, it’s proven every day.
I really wish I could figure out what world you inhabit, because it bears no relationship to this one.
Those in the communist party have the wealth.
The rest share what is left.
Only a brain dead academic could come up with this kind of slop. I have so many problems with this. Number one I am against communism no matter what you label it. It doesn’t work period. Number two there is no climate crisis so we don’t have to find solutions for it. Stop letting people get away with saying things like that. Number three “degrowth communism” is just one more example of a bumper sticker slogan that low information activists can throw around because it’s easy to remember. In the same league with net zero, absolutely meaningless claptrap with no definition. The whole thing sucks.
Very true, sir, very true. The masses just love themselves some meaningless claptrap, don’t they?
Now, instead of stating the obvious, what thoughts have you on HOW we will compete with that conversational strategy?
We all agree, facts have proven inferior to their moral standing. Whereto from here, Bob? Where to? What slogans can we use to fight back?
The reason people get bullied is usually because they get caught off guard, they just cannot believe the gall of the sociopath, they have no defence against the inexplicable.
What hurtful words have you for us to fling at our psychotic bullies, Bob? Got at least an old sock with a bar of soap in the toe?
The time is past for us to analyse our situation. Retaliate, before the bastards move the goalposts again…
Clio, the answer is simple but not easy. We do not need meaningless slogans nor do we want them. Leave them for the low information numbskulls who need them. One of my favorite sayings is “Never get in a pissing match with a skunk, you both walk away stinking but the skunk will enjoy it.” We spread the truth wide and far to win over the hearts and minds of the every day person. We use plain and simple language that can be understood by a sixth grader and make our message short so they don’t lose interest. Many many short easy to understand messages letting the average guy understand that he has been lied to and cheated for decades by the very people he looks to for leadership. When he understands he will know what to do and this crap will end.
I like your skunk metaphor.
Now, about those many, many short messages: Got a list? You run a website? If you have indeed come up with some short and sweet messages, please share, so we can all use them. Waiting for the led to lose trust in their leaders ignores the basis of Faith. How do you argue against a belief that persists in the face of contrary evidence?
I am not one to declare the result justifies any method, but we are up against people who do, and they know how to capture the naive imagination. Until we learn to do that without breaking our own moral code/s, we will continue losing, and the game is almost over…
We need slogans!
What we actually need, is half of the psychologists working against us. Has anybody noticed how every public issue, from climastrology to covidiocy to toddler penidectomies are driven by psychologists, not actual scientists? …and a disturbing number of oncologists… who are as mystical in their approach to public health.
Cilo, no I don’t have a website, I am a computer dinosaur. To get the message out I always thought we should use PSA (public service announcement) to start with and anything similar to that. A few years back I was a volunteer driver for the American Cancer Society driving cancer patients to their treatments. The ACS was using PSA’s to promote themselves and I felt they were telling flat out lies. I called the ACS on their adds and they couldn’t prove me wrong but refused to change. So I contacted PSA and challenged them for broadcasting lies. They claimed they weren’t responsible for the adds they just broadcast them. So I told them I wanted to put up an add challenging the ACS add. They said I had to be a 501(c), I think that’s what it was. I can’t imagine that WUWT or Heartland or any of the other sites on our side wouldn’t qualify. The messages have to be short but I don’t see a problem with that the important part would be to state that if you have questions or comments contact us at and give an email address or website address or phone number or an address to write to. The important part is to get people asking questions. If we can do that we will have won. The messages are the easy part just say something like, Do you think CO2 is the control knob for earth’s climate, contact us and we’ll show you why it isn’t. Do you think earth will reach a tipping point and suffer runaway heating contact us and we’ll tell you why it won’t. Do you think earth is experiencing more extreme weather contact us and we’ll show you that it isn’t. I could go on and on but you get the idea. One more thing, be prepared for them to resist. We can use that to our advantage also, we go public and challenge them for blocking us from spreading the truth. It means we would have to lawyer up but I am sure we have many competent lawyers among us. Maybe even partner with Judicial Watch. We are getting our ass kicked with bumper sticker slogans when I know we could whip them easily with the truth.
I hear you, but again, you want the victim to take action, and if that was an option, it would probably not have been a victim in the first place.
“Please call us” just does not have the same emotional impact as “Oh my god, the sky is falling on our head!!!”
Bumper stickers win every time…
Well you can sit on the sidelines and cry about it if you want, I don’t care what you do.
“Degrowth communism” is just a euphemism for un-aliving a whole lot of people, more people than have been made no longer alive by all communist dictators of the past combined. We’re talking billions. “Degrowth communism”, makes it all sound somewhat less gruesome than the reality. The “degrowth” portion is somewhat redundant, as that is the end result of attempting communism anyway.
Anyone proposing this should immediately be asked for a list of the people that they want to un-alive. How many, when and by what means. Confront them with the horrible reality of what they are proposing and make them own it. Most people I have tried this approach to have stammered and stuttered and ummed and ahhed, then scurried off.
Labor was once the party for the poor and working class. They saw union membership as the primary method they could represent that class.
Modern Labor has little interest in the poor and working class. They see union membership as the primary method by which they can consolidate power within their own party.
Bill Shorten proved this over and over via his alleged dealings with the AWU in artificially increasing membership for his own ascendency to a) Parliament & b) labor party leadership.
Also exampled by the atrocious treatment dealt to his own membership … typified by in various deals like the Chiquita Mushroom debacle.
Albanese is cut from much the same cloth, just from the left of Labor rather than the right of Labor.
The problem with unions has always been that the only people that get helped by them have been the people who run them.
Every single benefit claimed by those who back unions, was actually created and provided by the capitalists that the unionists despise.
Well to quote — Without capitalism, the left would have nothing to tear down…
Empirical evidence has shown that the free trade of goods and service has not created scarcity – in fact it has created, over time, an abundance in every community that has practiced it.
‘Degrowth’ communism literally creates scarcity by fiat…
The greatest wealth is created when individuals specialize. It’s impossible for one person to become an expert at everything. Instead one person becomes an expert at one skill, then proceeds to produce a surplus of that item, and trade that surplus with others who have become experts in the things he needs.
The same is true for companies, companies that keep their focus on their core skills, succeed, companies that try to be all things to all people fail. Vertical integration as practiced in the 19th century failed completely.
The same is also true of countries, of course countries are so big and have so many people that they can become experts in more than one thing, however it is still true that no country will be an expert in everything.
It’s impossible for one person to become an expert at everything.
Tell that to leftist bureaucrats who think they are “experts” on everything — science, engineering, medicine, economics, and everything else.
Government does seem to prove that some people can be experts in absolutely nothing.
Really? College educated cunts are this stupid? Really?
…they are building on some of the later writings of Karl Marx
Practically nobody has read any of the writings of Karl Marx and it wouldn’t matter if they had because his writings are full of contradictions. The pejorative “Marxist” is a catch-all word for whatever offends free market “capitalists” at the moment. The antonym for “democracy”. The reality is that the hyper-capitalist west is swimming in socialism, state financed public education, subsidized computer chip factories, the Siamese twin pentagon-defense industry and on and on, the government has its fingers in every pie. There needs to be a new pejorative to replace Marxist, maybe Thunbergian, Gorist or Kerryian.
“…There needs to be a new pejorative to replace Marxist, maybe Thunbergian, Gorist or Kerryian…”
Nice!
Bolshevik. It is what they are, it is what they have always been, and only by emphasising that, can we guide people to the history of what the Bolsheviks have so far wrought in this world: Bloodshed, starvation, denigration, genocide, and incalculable wealth to the so-called Leaders. They hide their centuries-long genocidal campaign by taking the name of whatever libtard organisation they find in a target population, but the Bolshevik is well documented, once you learn to recognise his vocabulary (it includes a lot of vulgarity, and open ridicule of whatever it is you and yours believe in).
The Bolshevik leadership has certain views on your place in their god-given world… might as well take note.
Bolshevism is *exactly* the right word to use. It is usually associated with implementing Marxism but is really only about overthrowing a free market system and replacing it with a rigid central government of elites – who would then give up their power to a Socialistic, democratic government. This was Lenin’s view of how the “revolution” should happen.
It didn’t happen that way anywhere. The “elites” have always refused to give away their power.
In the early period in London, Marx committed himself almost exclusively to his studies, such that his family endured extreme poverty. His main source of income was Engels, whose own source was his wealthy industrialist father.
The Marx family was largely sustained much of the time by handouts from Engels, who stole the money from his employer in Manchester.
Marx himself never stinted on fine wines, food and cigars, of course.
What you are describing is Fascism – government control of business and capital. That was never part of Marx’s writings other than a transitory step toward Socialism and from there to Communism.
The problem is that once you have a Fascist government backed by the huge Bureaucratic Hegemonies we see in larger countries today, nothing ever transitions in the way Marx predicted. The Bureaucratic Hegemony would go away in a transition to actual Communism and the BH isn’t about to let that happen.
You’re right in the sense that fascist governments allow their corporate allies to retain ownership of the assets but make their decisions for them. A similar situation exists in the US where much of business activity is heavily regulated and corporate decision-making is very much circumscribed by state agencies. At the same time the government takes a fixed amount of taxes from corporations which makes the state a minority owner of the business, perhaps holding an even larger proportion of the value than the largest shareholders. The signal difference between the fascist/corporatists and the faux communist/socialists is that the former has found it more profitable to share a part of their gains with the plebs, who can then use that income to grow a consumer society. The latter is simply a bandit tyranny.
Communism has always meant poverty for the masses and great wealth for the elite.
They are finally being honest about it.
This is what kills me. You hear socialsist and communists bleating that 1% owns 80% of the wealth, or numbers like that. But under communism, .001% have 99.9% of the wealth.
There is one correlation that continues regardless of what system your country uses.
The more powerful government gets, the more concentrated wealth gets.
“…ecological damage caused by Capitalism”?
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Socialism left the better part of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union a continent-sized toxic waste site. Citizens of societies that can’t even produce basic sustainence don’t care about “the environment”. Only the affluence produced by free markets led to the environmental movement and the ability to address it.
But I do agree with one thing: If Socialism is good at anything, it’s “degrowth”.
As for the kids who may be buying into this nonsense in schools, no doubt they are all like the socialists I knew decades ago when I was a student. Absolutely none of the true believers envisioned their futures as one of “the workers”. The actual labor would be up to someone else.
When people have control over their own property, they tend not to pollute it.
Real pollution occurs when government separates control of property from the ownership of property.
BUT I don’t think there is anywhere in the world where a person actually owns their land.
If you don’t pay the government the rent, property taxes, see how long you will continue to control that land.
Now at one time in the US, if you didn’t own property, you didn’t get a vote. I would like to see that policy reinstituted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_rights_in_the_United_States
“Tragedy of the Commons”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
This might be the first intellectually honest communism. Communisum has always achieved degrowth. Now its advocates say that is a feature not a bug. At least they are honest about it.
Degrowth, sounds so much more acceptable than the policy objective of poverty and starvation doesn’t it.
Socialism is simply a desire to ‘return to the womb’
To a soft & fuzzy warm place where all your needs are perfectly catered for without you having to make any effort.
It’s a place where Zombies want to go – they think they will be reborn (come alive again)
Sensible enough.
Which of course, if you’re happy to believe in the GHGE (trash the 2nd Law) such a thing is absolutely possible – yes you can turn back time. Yes, cold objects do warm up spontaneously.
Somebody’s in for a shock – or are they? Do dead people feel pain? Or The Cold?
(if you’re still alive) wrap up warm
Random brainache: This would be one for Stephen Hawking.
We all know about Entropy (or think we do) so what about ‘Centropy‘
A conflation of centre and entropy
Do we take it that, as per The 2nd Law, The Universe is Cooling?
OK but then we run against The 1st Law and combining the two means that ‘somewhere else’ MUST be warming up
‘Somewhere else’ must exist and have ‘non-zero’ temperature else this universe would not be cooling.
(all matter/energy interactions would be 100% efficient, as per Carnot.
i.e. All interactions, forward and reverse, would be 100% if a place of Temp = zero Kelvin did exist)
What or where is ‘somewhere else’
(Hawking, bless him, would certainly have been interested, it might be a place ‘of women’
Here’s hoping they’re not all AI Squints)
A few Climate Howler Global Whiner blabbermouths said that economic growth was evil in the 1980s. There is a strong positive correlation between CO2 emissions and Real GDP. So those who oppose CO2 do oppose economic growth, whether they say so, or not.
The Global Whiners were not supposed to say so in the past.
Bad press. They are no overconfident and feel free to talk about population reduction.
Economic growth consists of two factors:
(1) Labor productivity growth, and
(2) Labor force growth
Labor force growth depends on population growth.
One way to reduce GDP growth is to reduce population growth.
That has already been happening for quite a few years in many nations, especially in Japan … although definitely not in Africa.
There are many causes of slower population growth:]
— Fewer people getting married, and they get married at a higher age — it’s difficult financially for a single person to raise a child
— The Covid epidemic seemed to significantly reduce the birth rate
— Covid vaccinations have reduced fertility, and excess deaths never declined post-Covid vaccinations, even after Covid19 mutated into the much less deadly Omicron common cold
— Children are expensive, especially when inflation outpaces earnings
— Adults and young people in the US seem to be having less sex than previous generations,
— Finally, a huge increase of people identifying as LGBGT (or whatever the latest acronym is), which is being promoted in schools, will result in more people who will never have their own children.
Whatever the cause, slower population growth results in slower labor force growth, which results in slower Real GDP growth, which results in fewer CO2 emissions. And the lunatic leftists want that.
Far too many economists today only know the Production Possibility Frontier curve as how to allocate fixed resources. They are never taught that the PPF curve can be *expanded outward” through capital investment – i.e. your “productivity growth”. It’s why so many politicians whine so much about “excess profits”, they simply don’t understand that those profits eventually get turned into capital investment which expands the PPF which then also provides more opportunities for jobs, i.e. labor growth.
It’s all part and parcel of how our education system, and that includes university, has become so bad at teaching people to think instead of just rote repetition of indoctrination “truths”.
Too many people have no understanding of what profit is.
They see that their local grocery store buys something for $1 a unit, sells it at $2 a unit, and assume that profit is 100% and they get outraged.
They forget (or completely) ignore all the other costs that have to be paid out of that $1 markup.
Labor, utilities, insurance, taxes, etc.
WTF are we playing at? The West has been under attack from Marxism since its inception! What the hell are we doing letting it win! Wake up people, this is WAR!
hmm looking at what communist places were and are..the environment seems to be far worse off frankly, ie NK chinas hidden areas etc
He’s Japanese so obviously he needs to launch Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism in Tiananmen Square with book signing to have the greatest impact.
“I used to think Communism, with its famines, purges and abuses, was probably the worst system of government which could be inflicted on people.
Now I know better.”
You’re really going to say that out loud?
What you should be doing is hanging your head in utter shame for even having such a disgusting idea.
I invite you to book a seat on the next flight to North Korea, YOU can live out your dystopian dream in real life.
I suspect book sales will already have tanked in Tianenmen Square but he could book the complete whirlwind promo tour.
If he truly believed that degrowth communism is the ideal system, he should be giving his book away. The fact that he hopes to make money on this venture completely violates the morals he’s pushing in his book.
All the proponents of communism and degrowth need to kick off the movement by being the pioneer participators! They should take their recommendations seriously by getting rid of all their stuff, creating breadlines, and slowly starving themselves to death. Power to the people!
If all was healthy and well with humanity there would be no room or need for the lying ‘news’ loops, the mass bureaucratic control freakery, the partisan censorship, the cancellations and the ‘bots’. They tell you all you need to know of our current desperately ill health, our current gutless obsession with control mechanisms, the current hatred of differences of opinion, and of the realities of truth by those who believe they are entitled to tell the rest of us what truth is and demand we believe it or else.
This will not end well for any of us. Just look at the COVID-19 revelations now appearing and shudder until you get that feeling that you will never let such a repetition of idiocy happen again on your watch.
Then there’s reality.
Communist/socialist countries have the worst impact on “the environment” of all nations.
This flows logically, since socialism in all its forms has always been, is, and will always be a failed system economically. And economically poor nations don’t have the resources to give a damn about “the environment.”
A nice anecdote is a business acquaintance who traveled to “Eastern Europe” after the “Iron Curtain” came down in the 1990s. A river flowing through a city he was in had a head of foam on it a foot thick, and the locals said there hadn’t been fish in the river for 40 years.
Marx just making up one more thing to use as an attack on capitalism is as out of touch with reality as the notion that his brainchild would ever be a success in the real world.
In socialism, there is no reward for being productive, and rewarding the unproductive just leads to legions of unproductive people, which is a recipe for economic disaster, not success.
As the saying goes, “one who does not learn from history is doomed to repeat it.”
Not Communism its Fluid Fascism
Call it whatever. Without a clear statement of the dialectics involved you can label it anything. Use a label to gain attention and shift blame. Communism is a historical dialectic between who controls capital and who is exploited by those who control capital. The antithesis is class conflict cycles of evolving anthesis and synthesis arch into the historical apex of unified capital control. The communist Utopia.
It never happened because Hegel’s dialectics are very romantic, weak and highly subjective.,,,,,and as we can see very dangerous.
The earth’s environment and people as the anthesis does not at all fit into the Marxist dialectic
Yet there is a new dialectic between the global environment and dystopia=the masses of humanity.
The synthesis is the elite and their tech and newly empowered eugenics and psychological warfare will free the global environment from dystopia while controlling all the capital and the trajectory of human population. This is not communist. It’s fascist…… 21st century fluid fascism. Depopulating the world of the dystopic human problem for the global environment is squarely fascism. It reeks of master plan, master tech, master elite…master global environment.
“Proponents of Degrowth Communism claim they are building on some of the later writings of Karl Marx, in which Marx apparently expressed dismay at the ecological damage caused by Capitalism, ”.
But of course it’s the communist countries that are totally destroyed.
Mental retardation is the only explanation
Textbook definition of capitalism, socialism, fascism and communism are not useful in the real world.
There are four questions whose answers can define a government / economic system. The questions work better than the standard textbook definitions:
(1) What percentage of GDP is from government spending at all levels?
In the US, that percentage was 34.5% in 2022, and higher in both 2020 and 2021. By my definition any percentage over 33% is socialism. Therefore, US became a socialist nation a few years ago
(2) What is the amount of government control over the private sector?
That determines the level of fascism
(3) What is the amount of government ownership of the means of production? That determines the level of communism.
(4) Can the current economic system be changed by the use of free and fair elections? The answer will “yes” for capitalism and socialism.
Most economies are hybrids.
Communist China, for one example, has a lot of private ownership along with a lot of government ownership of the means of production. That was done, starting in the 1970s, because government ownership and management was not taking Chinese people out of poverty.
Government control of the private sector was not as tight as one would expect under communism. There was pollution, shoddy product ingredients and financial / accounting fraud. Rather than try to prevent those practices, such as trying to prevent pollution, the government would severely punish people who made money with those practices as a warning to others.
A fluid globalized fascist movement does not require a identified leader, a nation or a government. It does not have to be racist, or sexist like 20th century fascism. What it requires is a dialectic, a particular idealized identity. In this case, the idealized identity is a future pristine natural world and the enemy is us the unwashed masses. Fascism is profoundly propagandistic and will seek to maintain narrative enforcement to the degree of the power it has been afforded by the power structures that it seeks to undermine or has already inculcated. It is nihilistic and anti-democratic. Representative power is considered a joke. It is elitist and corporatist.. It’s goal is total obedience to the idealized identity and it’s ultimate synthesis. It does not require geographic boundaries flags or logos. It is anti-free speech and punishing of those who do not fall in line. In the 20th century it was militaristic, today, it is covertly and loosely militaristic in the arena of psychological warfare.. It is far more sophisticated and global than it’s 20th c version.. Stakeholder capitalism fits perfectly. Fascism tends to consolidate stakeholder control of capital and markets in order to plan and execute highly efficient systems of production. This was the capitalistic system of the old fascist guard of the 20th century. Very efficient and very productive. Fluid Fascism does not require a dictator or an imperialistic impetus. What is requires is for people to be afraid and to idealize the idealized identity and believe the dream. It’s highly romantic and has not borne good fruit whenever or where ever it has risen . Eugenics is the key; It is the work of fascism to clean and protect the idealized identity. In the 20th century it targeted various identified people groups. Today it is us….our land, our food, our farms, our cars, the future four families, our future of being unafraid, our human honor, dignity and liberty.
The movement does not line up well with the liberal/conservative dichotomy….. it’s unpredictable and inconsistent. Right now young adults are in love with Marx and so anything Marxist will be read but in this case, the use of term communism is a throw away buzz word.
I think we need to think beyond the Fox news sound bites and somewhat tired categories.
There is no way to know if the fertility rate of 1.3 in the USA in 2019 was caused by eugenics inspired dystopic narrative or not. Fertility rates are very complex phenomena. Yet if the rate falls below 1.0 in 2022 then it would be worth studying the relationship between dystopic narratives and images and the desire to marry and raise families.
People used to pursue academics to grow their intellect and understanding of the natural world. Now it appears academics is a way to destroy all common sense and self reflection.