The Only Logical Response to the Ecological Crisis: Rapid, Enforced Economic Contraction
Revolution
is not a runaway train but the application of the emergency brake. It is
capitalism which is anarchic, extravagant, out of hand, and socialism which is
temperate, earth-bound and realistic.
- Walter Benjamin[1]
 |
| A quote from this book appears at the end of this blog post. |
The discourse of global warming flows with
terminology that is born from the existing economic system, which is driven to
quantify and financialize nature: ecosystem services, biodiversity offsets,
carbon offsets, carbon credits, carbon footprints, carbon swaps, cap and trade,
subsidies, penalties, tax incentives, tax credits, climate accords, reduction
targets, protocols, investments in renewables, green jobs, green new deal,
energy transition, fourth industrial revolution, and so on. It is an approach
that has a long history, as the English elite in the 17th century also argued
that the enclosures that dispossessed commoners would allow for better
preservation of natural resources. While proponents of this approach accuse
defenders of the status quo of being “in denial of the science,” they
themselves are in denial about what needs to be done to put an end to the
fossil fuel economy, assuming the matter is as urgent as they claim. The denial can also
be found among radical socialists who assume a drastic reduction of fossil fuel
emissions can be managed while material progress continues. It may be possible,
but the results of that experiment are yet to come.
In the prevailing neoliberal economic order,
the belief in a particular definition of freedom is so deeply rooted that
solutions to even the direst crises have to be framed in a way that does not
encroach on this value—the freedom to get rich, the freedom to buy
whatever one can, the freedom to “make something of yourself” (the self-made
man syndrome), the freedom to take big risks to gain a big reward. This deeply held value is of course
extended from the individual level to gangsterism, to business enterprises and
to multinational conglomerates.
Thus the approach to global warming, an
emergency that apparently requires drastic action within a decade, is to tweak
human desires and market demands, and use incentives and regulations to move
the economy in the right direction so that the present system gently slides into
a new “green” economy with little disruption to our lives. Even if this
approach could work, we must recognize that there is only an illusion of
freedom involved. This new regulatory system of rewards and punishments masks
the loss of freedom that happens as citizens are herded down a path chosen by an
elite that is hoping to profit from this supposed next industrial revolution
based on the phasing out fossil fuels.
Veteran energy journalist Andrew Nikiforuk
pointed out in a recent article that both the business-as-usual approach and
the green-new-deal approach fail to grasp the severity of the problem. The
numbers just don’t add up:
To appreciate the
ambitious scale of the GND, consider the real global energy picture as set out
by Tad Patzek, a professor of petroleum and chemical engineering in Texas. If
we divide the days of the year up based on total energy use, he writes, fossil
fuels—oil, coal and natural gas—powered the globe for 321 days in 2018. (Fossil
fuels provide more than 80 per cent of the energy we consume.) Dams and nuclear
power kept the lights on for 15 days. Renewables or repeatables (solar panels
and wind turbines need to be replaced every 50 years or so) only energized the
globe for about 29 days. And most of that energy came from biomass or wood
burning. The GND wants to turn 29 days into 321 days of primary power—in a
decade.[2]
Obviously, a radical energy policy would be
necessary to reach this goal of 321 days. The green new deal is inspired by US President
Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s and 1940s, but some tend to forget that that
program succeeded because the economy was oriented toward waging war and the
exploitation of fossil fuels. It was a time when consumers didn’t have much to
buy, and people sacrificed, suffered and died. So far the green new deal is
being conceived as a gentle transition that will require none of the suffering
and personal sacrifice of war, with no war measures, rationing, or submission
to authoritarian rule. In the recent climate marches, no one carried banners
saying “ration our gasoline” or “put a quota on our air travel.” Yet the need
for urgent measures cannot be avoided. The necessary change has to be imposed
equally on everyone. Presently, some people make voluntary sacrifices, but the
majority look at their own and their neighbors’ wasteful ways and see no point
in being the only person on the block to turn off the air conditioning or give
up a business trip or vacation. Military spending and the lifestyles of the top
1% do even more to de-motivate the middle class and the poor from giving up the
comforts they have. The reductions needed, if we truly have only a decade to
turn things around, are much more than a gradual reduction of a few percentage
points every few years. It is time to do what would really be necessary to
slash fossil fuel consumption in industrialized countries.
So imagine the following as a possible agenda, and hold off on your outrage. It is intended to be provocatively extreme:
So imagine the following as a possible agenda, and hold off on your outrage. It is intended to be provocatively extreme:
__________
1.
Severely
ration gasoline and heating fuel until we learn how much renewable energy can
be produced and at what cost to the ecosystem, and what our energy “needs” truly
are.
2.
Restrict
the use of air conditioning.
3.
Nationalize
all exorbitantly large residences and partition them for public housing.
4.
Nationalize
all unoccupied residences to make them available for public housing.
5.
Retrofit buildings for energy efficiency, and redesign
urban and suburban environments for high-density communal living.
6. Nationalize major sectors of the economy: banking, natural
resources, energy, health care, education.
7.
Eliminate
first class and business class air travel and private jet travel.
8.
Ban
non-essential air travel, travel to academic conferences, sports events, junkets
etc.
9.
Ban
cruise ship tourism.
10.
Ban
international resort holidays and make citizens travel by train and bus on
vacations close to home.
11.
Cut back on the use of laundry machines and dryers—do laundry by hand, or by the power of stationary
bicycles that spin the washing drum.
12.
Restrict
hours for television broadcasts and eliminate content that serves no valuable
social function.
13.
Eliminate
vending machines.
14. Outlaw bitcoin mining because of all the electricity it consumes,
make large cuts in the energy consumed by internet servers.
15.
Establish
a democratic system of governance that will decide which important civil
servants will have to travel by air, and which projects of construction and
deconstruction require the exceptional use of fossil fuels.
16.
Establish
a system of oversight and punishments for civil servants who abuse their
powers.
17.
Eliminate
advertising, parasitic financial services, and all non-essential commercial
merchandise.
18.
Reduce
plastic waste.
19.
Eliminate
nuclear weapons.
20.
Eliminate
nuclear power plants.
21.
Restore
damaged ecosystems and manage polluted “sacrifice zones” as safely as possible.
22.
Stop
producing nuclear waste and manage what exists in a responsible manner that
will protect the ecosystem for 100,000 years.
23.
Reduce
US military spending by 70%, and eliminate overseas US military bases and the
antiquated concept of global imperial reach—other nations can de-escalate their
military forces after the US comes down to a level of parity with them.
24.
Capture
military capacities by popular revolt and rebellion in military ranks, then
shift military policy to achieving the de-growth revolution, then to defending
it from reactionary forces that want to re-establish the capitalist growth
economy.
25.
Shift
defense policy and international relations to helping other nations deal with
refugee flows and domestic chaos, especially in the former petro-states which
can no longer support their populations—large urban populations in places like
Alberta and Saudi Arabia may be untenable.
26.
Re-educate
citizens out of their habits of consuming non-essential goods and services and
energy-intensive entertainment; educate them to engage in contemplative and
artistic activities with the added leisure time they will now have.
27.
Prioritize
equal distribution of the necessities of life. The era of de-growth could
easily become an era of panic and fascist reaction, with more inequality
arising from scarcity of resources.[3]
28.
Reduce
meat consumption by 50%.
29.
Send
the newly unemployed, resulting from de-growth and de-carbonizing policies, to
agricultural collectives for retraining and employment in the new
low-energy-intensive agricultural and horticultural sectors of the economy.
30.
Divert
human resources toward education, medical care, and equitable distribution of
food and shelter and other essentials.
31.
Give
proper ideological education to the masses to help them adjust to the new
agrarian de-growth economy.
32.
Determine
what minimal level of global transportation and communication links will be
necessary to allow the peoples of the world to maintain peaceful relations.
33.
Establish
a lifetime salary and social roles for all citizens during and after the period
of upheaval. Everyone who can work must be given work.
34.
Eliminate competing political parties—there is only one
party: the party of economic de-growth and de-carbonization—no competing, parties
wanting to go back to the old ways can be allowed to form. Remember, it’s a
matter of the survival of our species, isn’t it?
35.
Carry
out severe penalties and re-education efforts for all dissidents who attempt to
revert society to its former ways—such re-education will be aimed at those who hold
onto antiquated notions of “freedom” involving ambitions to stay rich or get
rich, gamble, or amass private power through private enterprises, gangsterism
etc.
36.
Outlaw
prostitution, pornography and surrogate pregnancy. Commodification of the human
body is incompatible with an ideology that is against the commodification of
nature.
37.
Educate
boys and girls equally, and protect women’s reproductive rights. The population
problem will resolve itself over the next century if this is done, without any
need for racist eugenics policies.
38.
Focus
agricultural policy on ending war, foreign interference and plunder of poor nations
by wealthy nations. Famines have a long history. They occurred when the world
population was much less than the present 7 billion. The “breeding habits” of
certain peoples is not the problem.
39.
Revive
the knowledge of indigenous people in order to teach respect for rocks, soil, water,
all living things; live low-tech and in harmony with the environment and with
all fellow creatures.
40.
And
of course, the most urgent measure of all: ban the use of plastic straws!
__________
It should be obvious that I have written these
suggestions in order to provoke a reaction, to make it clear that they may be
necessary but are also extremely unlikely to be welcomed, at least by people
who are prospering, content with the status quo, or fearful of radical change. Everyone
knows that revolutions run the risk of failing and descending into reactionary and
counter-reactionary bloodshed, with the revolution discredited by the former ruling
class’s propaganda once it gets restored. A displaced ruling class will shed
any amount of blood in order to regain power. So I know this agenda will seem
ludicrous to many, but if we “listen to the science,” it is what the facts of
the situation demand.
Industrial civilization is not ripe for any
such revolution also because there has never been a revolutionary situation
like it. Revolutions of the past were driven by workers and peasants who wanted
their share of what the owners had, and the use of energy resources was going
to make it possible, which is why the first great national project Lenin wanted
was electrification. In contrast, this next revolution would consist of the
working class and everyone else asking to have less.
Nonetheless, we shouldn’t be too stressed
out about losing our freedom, or at least our odd concept of freedom. As a
saying goes, “It is in sickness that man becomes aware that he has limits and is
not as strong as he imagines.”[4]
Gabor Maté has pointed out in his many lectures that it is life within our
strangely free society that makes us sick. He notes, “50% of North American
adults have a chronic illness, either diabetes or high blood pressure, or heart
disease or cancer, or any number of auto-immune illnesses.” Thus it has got to
the point where we can no longer say (and never should have said, actually) indigenous
people lived miserable lives without modern health care and technology. We
could actually be healthier in a post-fossil-fuel economy. We might need to
adapt Hobbes’ dictum in order to realize that we must submit to a
nature-protecting authority (or belief system) in order to avoid lives that
will otherwise be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” under capitalism.
Gabor Maté reminded his audiences of
another concept of freedom:
When Karl Marx
talked about freedom, he talked about freedom in three senses of the word.
Freedom for him was, number one, freedom from economic necessity, freedom from
the threat to life, freedom from interference by other people, and the freedom
to express yourself, to be yourself. That’s freedom. What freedom is there in
this “free society,” the “free world,” the “freest society in history”? What
freedom is there when people are not free of economic worry, where there’s
tremendous uncertainty and fear, and lack of control? When people lack control
over their lives, they have no freedom, and they’re physiologically stressed.
When they’re physiologically stressed, that’s going to manifest in the form of
illness.[5]
The 20th century socialist revolutions
adopted many of the measures listed above and experienced a mix of successes
and failures with them. The Bolshevik and Maoist revolutions led to massive
improvements in social welfare, life span, industrial progress and so on, but
they had to carry out massive reconstruction efforts after wartime, and had to
adopt repressive measures to react to internal and external
counter-revolutionary forces—including hostile nations’ refusals to give food
aid during famines, after which these same nations called the famines genocide.
As a result, for citizens of capitalist countries, this repression became the single
defining feature of socialism, which makes a socialist solution to global
warming seem absurd to them—especially if they believe the myth that communism,
not famines with complex natural and human causes, killed a hundred million, or
a billion, or whatever number is conjured up so often by anti-communist zealots.[6]
These revolutions have much to teach us
about how to avoid their mistakes and copy their successes in rebuilding a
society from the ground up, but even socialist China now lives with the
contradiction presented by the need for a de-growth economy because it has
invested so much in promising material progress to its citizens. The American
socialist speaker and journalist, Caleb Maupin (whose knowledge
of history is laudable) has great faith in humanity’s ability to progress
beyond capitalism and find technological solutions to global warming. He finds
it regrettable that not more is being done to develop fusion energy, but he
appears to be ignorant of how it has repeatedly been the ephemeral hope of
technocrats for decades but always fails to deliver. And even if it did, a
consequence-free, limitless source of energy might create a new kind of
nightmare. What would humans do to the planet if their appetite for energy met
no limitations?
Many global warming activists underestimate
the strength of the reactionary forces that would strike back at any gains made
by an ecosocialist revolution. The entire 20th century was a civil war between
capitalism and socialism, yet the lesson seems to have been lost on many now. The
European Union recently declared that WWII was a victory over Soviet socialism,
which it equated with fascism and blamed for being in an “alliance” with Hitler
(a gross distortion of the non-aggression pact which came only after British
and French rejection of Stalin’s offer to form an alliance against Germany).[7]
Some activists are asking no questions about the billionaires who have thrust a
child to center stage of climate discourse and then hidden behind her, and they
are marginalizing those who do ask questions, as if debate on this issue should
not be allowed.
Activists need to see the stark choice that
lies ahead. In this scenario, capitalism is the unstoppable force, and global
warming is the immovable object. But citing this old paradox is not so clever
because unstoppable forces and immovable objects cannot exist simultaneously.
The paradox is flawed because it exists only in the minds of philosophers. If
there exists an unstoppable force, it follows logically that there cannot be
any such thing as an immovable object and vice versa. In the real world, the
matter would be settled one way or another by an unstoppable collision, and
when it comes to man vs. nature, nature always bats last.
Capitalism, under a green new deal or
business as usual, will lead to collapse, war and chaos, and our eventual
return to less complex ways of life. The choice is to let that happen, with all
the risks of catastrophic war (including nuclear war) and social breakdown, or
to launch the necessary revolution to mitigate the chaos that will come on the
way to our destination—which is not the fourth industrial revolution but rather
a post-carbon world littered with abandoned tailings ponds, plastic, oil wells
and nuclear waste.
Democracy for the Transition out of Fossil
Fuels
In 2018, the Canadian geneticist and
ecologist David Suzuki spoke to an Australia vlogger and said the following about the ability of the Chinese government to act
on environmental problems:
We worked with the Chinese government for three years in an area in Tibet, a big area the
size of Italy, that is the source of four of the great rivers... They're
logging the hell out of it, so we worked for three years going to meet with
officials and drinking and negotiating, then after that they trusted us. We
were saying there are alternatives to
logging. They understood that logging in the upper waters caused floods and all
kinds of down downstream effects, so we convinced them that we have economic
alternatives. They said, “OK, we agree.” Overnight the logging stopped! That's
what you can do when you don't have a democracy, but I prefer a democracy. I
really believe that, but it it's only as good as how much people are going to
be involved in it, and right now we're not… We also have to live in a very
different way. One of the major issues we have to face in the industrialized
world is that we are the hyper-consumers on the planet.[8]
What David Suzuki (a geneticists, not a
historian or political scientist) fails to note here is that his assumptions
about democracy in China are flawed. China has undertaken significant democratic reforms since the Mao era during a time when
the Western democracies have undertaken none and come under the control of
oligarchs, with inexperienced intellectual mediocrities often being elected
as heads of state. In contrast, China’s system of governance has continued to
evolve. It is a meritocracy in which the highly educated and competent rise
to the top and policies are carried out consistently over many years. Meanwhile, at
the lower levels, the reforms allow citizens to nominate and elect candidates
at local, regional and national levels. Like all democracies, it is a work in
progress. In any case, it is interesting that David Suzuki noted in this
instance the ability of the Chinese system to act decisively without corporate
interests obstructing the necessary environmental protection. In this interview
he clings to a hope that Western democracies could be improved while he seems
unaware that not everyone in the world believes Western liberal democracy is
the pinnacle of achievement in systems of governance. If you doubt that other nations have evolved better
forms of democracy, just ask yourself how Donald Trump ever could have become
president if, as under the Cuban democratic model, an elected assembly had the authority
to elect the head of state from a roster of qualified and experienced members
who rose through the ranks of educational institutions and government.[9]
China specialist Martin Jacques (author of the best-seller When China Rules the World: the End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order) wrote:
… most Westerners
still regard China’s present political order as lacking legitimacy and as
ultimately unsustainable. In the post 1945 period, Westerners have come to
believe that Western-style democracy—essentially universal suffrage and a
multi-party system—is more or less the sole source of a government’s
legitimacy. This is a superficial and ahistorical position. Western-style
democracy does not ensure the legitimacy of a regime in the eyes of its people:
Italy is perhaps the classic example, with successive governments over a long
historical period experiencing a chronic lack of legitimacy. And what of China?
Although it does not have Western-style democracy, there is plenty of evidence…
that the Chinese government enjoys high levels of support and legitimacy, much
higher indeed than those of Western governments.[10]
As stated above, the salvation of the
global ecosystem depends on the rise of single-party states that are founded on
a de-growth, non-polluting political economy. If moving beyond fossil fuel is
absolutely essential for species survival, then parties based on contrary
ideologies could not be allowed. Thus China’s or Cuba’s forms of one-party
democratic rule might be models that have something to offer to the world.
China’s success is relevant also because its path was chosen as the way to
rebuild after the complete devastation caused by decades of foreign domination
and war. If the green revolution requires sacrifice, living with less and
starting over from zero, surely the peoples who rebuilt after total war have
something to teach to nations that lack that historical experience.
The ideas covered here were inspired by a book
published in 2015 by Richard Smith entitled Green Capitalism: the God that
Failed. I conclude with excerpts from the book. With the eyes of the world
focused on the teenager Greta Thunberg, it’s a good time to remember the work
of people who have been delivering her message since long before she was born.
We are all children trying to fix the world left to us by generations past. We
are all adults leaving the world to future generations. As a teenager
forty-five years ago, I was appalled to learn how many nuclear warheads had
been built. Everyone at some time in life wanted to say, “How dare you?” or “We
will never forgive you!” but such sentiments are really beside the
point—perhaps just a step in the loss of innocence. To quote Gabor Maté again, “Would you rather be illusioned or
disillusioned?”[11]
I’m not one of the bitter old men who
denies Greta’s message and her anger, or resents the attention she gets, but my
hope is that as Greta’s thinking evolves, she will break free of the people who
brought her to Davos and join a revolution against them. The movement is yet to
reach the moment of its tennis court oath.
Richard Smith, Green Capitalism: the God
that Failed:
… it’s one thing for
James Hansen or Bill McKibben of 350.org to say we need to “leave the coal in
the hole, the oil in the soil, the gas under the grass,” to call for “severe
curbs” in GHG emissions—in the abstract. But think about what this means in our
capitalist economy. Most of us, even passionate environmental activists, don’t
really want to face up to the economic implications of the science we defend.
That’s why, if you listen to environmentalists like Bill McKibben, for example,
you will get the impression that global warming is mainly driven by fossil
fuel-powered electric power plants, so if we just “switch to renewables” this
will solve the main problem and we can carry on with life more or less as we do
now. Indeed, “green capitalism” enthusiasts like the New York Times’
Thomas Friedman and the union-backed “green jobs” lobby look to renewable
energy, electric cars and such as “the next great engine of industrial
growth”—the perfect win-win solution. This is a not a solution. This is a
delusion. Because greenhouse gasses are produced across the economy not just by
or even mainly by power plants. Globally, fossil fuel-powered electricity
generation accounts for 17% of GHG emissions, heating accounts for 5%,
miscellaneous “other” fuel combustion 8.6%, industry 14.7%, industrial
processes another 4.3%, transportation 14.3%, agriculture 13.6%, land use
changes (mainly deforestation) 12.2%.16 This means, for a start, that even if
we immediately replaced every fossil fuel powered electric generating plant on
the planet with 100% renewable solar, wind and water power, this would only
reduce global GHG emissions by around 17%. What this means is that, far from
launching a new green energy-powered “industrial growth” boom, barring some
tech-fix miracle, the only way to impose “immediate and severe curbs” on fossil
fuel production/consumption would be to impose an EMERGENCY CONTRACTION in the
industrialized countries: drastically retrench and in some cases shut down
industries, even entire sectors, across the economy and around the planet—not
just fossil fuel producers but all the industries that consume them and produce
GHG emissions—autos, trucking, aircraft, airlines, shipping and cruise lines,
construction, chemicals, plastics, synthetic fabrics, cosmetics, synthetic
fiber and fabrics, synthetic fertilizer and agribusiness CAFO operations, and
many more. Of course, no one wants to hear this because, given capitalism, this
would unavoidably mean mass bankruptcies, global economic collapse, depression
and mass unemployment around the world…
And the thought of
replacing capitalism seems so impossible, especially given the powers arrayed
against change. But what’s the alternative? In the not-so-distant future, this
is all going to come to a screeching halt one way or another—either we seize
hold of this out-of-control locomotive and wrench down this overproduction of
fossil fuels, or we ride this train right off the cliff to collapse…
If there’s no
market mechanism to stop plundering the planet then, again, what alternative is
there but to impose an emergency contraction on resource consumption? This
doesn’t mean we would have to de-industrialize and go back to riding horses and
living in log cabins. But it does mean that we would have to abandon the
“consumer economy”—shut down all kinds of unnecessary, wasteful, and polluting
industries from junk food to cruise ships, disposable Pampers to disposable
H&M clothes, disposable IKEA furniture, endless new model cars, phones,
electronic games, the lot. Plus all the banking, advertising, junk mail, most
retail, etc. We would have completely redesign production to replace “fast junk
food” with healthy, nutritious, fresh “slow food,” replace “fast fashion” with
“slow fashion”… All these changes are simple, self-evident, no great technical challenge.
They just require a completely different kind of economy, an economy geared to
producing what we need while conserving resources for future generations of
humans and for other species with which we share this planet.[12]
Other sources on this topic
August, Arnold, Cuba and Its
Neighbors: Democracy in Motion (Fernwood Publishing, 2013). From the book
cover: “August illustrates how the process of democratization in Cuba is
continually in motion and argues that greater understanding of different
political systems teaches us to not be satisfied with either blanket
condemnations or idealistic political illusions.”
Benjamin, Medea, “10 Ways that the Climate Crisis and Militarism are Intertwined,” Dissident Voice, September 26, 2019.
Butler, Phil, “On the Greta
Effect: To Be or Not To Be Right,” New Eastern Outlook, October 2,
2019.
Kunstler, James Howard, Too Much Magic: Wishful
Thinking, Technology and the Fate of the Nation (Grove Press, 2013).
Morningstar, Cory, Wrong Kind of Green.
Orphan, Kenn & and Rockstroh, Phil, “Veritable Uprising
or The (Faux) Real Thing™:
Greta and Climate Activism in a Wilderness of
Projections,”
Counterpunch, September 30, 2019.
Notes
[1]. In Terry Eagleton, Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic (John Wiley and
Sons, 2009), xi.
[2]. Andrew Nikiforuk, “The Green
New Deal Battles Business as Usual. Both Will Doom Us,” The
Tyee, August 21, 2019.
[3].
Samuel Miller McDonald, “We
Need a Fair Way to End Infinite Growth,” Current Affairs, October 1,
2019, “Since some fascists on the political fringe have begun to incorporate
sustainability and material scarcity into their justifications for nationalist
violence, there’s no reason to believe mainstream voices will side with a
socialist postgrowth agenda over the fascist variety.”
[4].
The quote has been attributed to Hacène Mazouz.
[5]. Gabor
Mate, “Why
Capitalism Makes Us Sick,” National Radio Project, Berkeley,
California, November, 2011, 11:15~. The short preceding quote is also from this
talk at the 03:22 mark.
[6].
Lawrence
E. Wheelwright and Bruce J. McFarlane, The Chinese Road to Socialism:
Economics of the Cultural Revolution (Monthly Review Press, 1970). For
achievements of the Great Leap Forward, an explanation of the famine, and a
counter-argument to the notion that Mao carried out a genocide of tens of
millions of people, see pages 38-39, 43, 45-48, 60-62. See this
leaflet for a summary of responses to common anti-communist
assertions.
[7].
Michael Jabara Carley, “The
Canadian Prime Minister Needs a History Lesson,” Strategic Culture,
September 1, 2019.
[8].
Kerwin
Rae, “Why it’s time to
think about human extinction (interview with David Suzuki),”
December 17, 2018, 53:50~.
[9].
Salim Lamrani, “Five
Questions and Answers Concerning the Presidential Elections in Cuba,” Global
Research, May 5, 2018. This interview provides an additional information
about how countries that are often condemned as undemocratic have evolved new
forms of democratic governance.
[10].
Martin Jacques, “Understanding
Chinese Governance,” author’s blog (martinjacques.com),
March 3, 2015.
[11].
Gabor Maté & Aaron Maté, “America
in Denial: Gabor Maté on the Psychology of Russiagate,” The Grayzone
Project, May 7, 2019.
[12].
Richard
Smith, Green
Capitalism: The God that Failed (World Economics
Association, 2015), 134. A shorter version of this book is available here
as a free download.
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