<nettime> The Precariat and Climate Justice

[Alex Foti <alex.foti@gmail.com>]

Im gonna address Brian's crucial points and then will turn to Felix's.
Sorry for being so late in answering, but Great Recession is biting
and so I lost one of my two jobs and had to scramble for another
source of income... u know the life of precarity that awaits gen x+y+z
now worsened by the slump.

First objection: does green capitalism really exist? Well Soros
and most moneyed venture capitalists (like dorr or perkins&C) are
heavily betting on solar and renewables. On FT a HSBC study says
that environmental sectors could surpass aerospace this year. Plus
Oscar-Nobel Gore, Wash-Oslo Obama, Lord Stern and IPCC are pushing
strongly in that direction and have unimaginable access to global
media. Barroso wants Europe to outcompete the others on this. Hatoyama
wants to cut emissions significantly, and Friedman says green tech
is the new sputnik visavis China. Let's see what happens in Beijing
shortly, although Copenhagen is likely to fail in providing a new
framework for accumulation (new climate treaty), which is what big
corporations want but the US and China (and also India and Brazil) are
unlikely to deliver in December. >

Second point, Brian writes:

> This is the heart of your economic argument (productivity boost or
> not and its redistribution), so I wonder what you see as a possible
> fourth industrial revolution (or maybe a fifth, 'cause a lot of
> people start with water mills and then put railroads and steam
> in before in before steel and electricity). Couldn't capitalism
> already grow, and grow intelligently and greenly, on the basis of an
> egalitarian distribution of informatic production? You know, genetic
> engineering is more or less informatics, it's DNA interpreted on the
> informational model. I'd say neoliberal aka financial capitalism
> is a failed regulation of informational production. Is what we
> need a green regulation of informationalism that clears out all
> the financial waste, or is informationalism consubstantial with
> financialization and do we need something entirely different?
> Anyway, I'd like to hear more about the next revolution if you see
> it in the wings!

Yes! neoliberalism is the failed regulation of informationalism! As an
anarchoautonomist I need something really different, but my prediction
is that green (and non-securitarian) regulation of informationalism is
probably the best we can achieve through our struggles.

In passim about anarchogreens, basic income theory, immaterial growth:
yes, this is my solution to the cognitive and entropic riddles (negri
meets bookchin?;), no theorists of the reddito d'esistenza (they now
like to call it that way) have yet to uncover the link, in fact Andrea
Fumagalli has just proposed we write something togethere on basic
income and climate justice. Given the severity of the recession, basic
income is attracting consensus also on the reformist left. On the
other hand, many anarchogreens just want the fall of industrialism,
in which they include informationalism (in a paradoxical way, on the
NLR Gopal Balakshrinan is also making the argument that 30 years
of informationalism have been largely irrelevant for the basics of
capitalist dynamics).

>> Increasingly, the Italian and German traditions of autonomia are
>> intertwined with anarchist, antifascist and antiracist strands to
>> form an anarchoautonomist synthesis across Europe. A generation
>> totally oblivious of 20th century ideological disputes does not
>> distinguish between anarchist and autonomous resistance: on the
>> barricades, all you see is black hoodies fighting state repression
>> and corporate domination.
>
> Alex, tell me, isn't there a major major major problem of political
> articulation right here? You say the aim of the anarcho-autonomist
> wing is SMASH THE STATE. But all your argument says TRANSFORM
> STATE CAPITALISM. Where's the bridge? We know it in practice:
> education, social services and income redistribution, give people
> what they want and what they need. But doesn't there have to be some
> redefinition in theory of the basic aim, if only to avoid getting
> chucked in the terrorist bucket by the fascist fossil capitalist
> types who are really still a majority? Or a damn powerful big loud
> uberminority anyway? I think the question is serious, because so
> far, every ultraleftist upsurge produces a stronger fascistoid
> reaction and I am not sure those days are over...

Man, Brian, you really got me there! Yes, you could say mine is
an anarcho-reformist piece if such thing existed, and that's why
some anarchogreens found it unpalatabale. If i can find refuge in
non-teleological dialectics (aristotle rather than hegel) i'd say that
only riots and barricades are gonna put the pressure need to bring
about the redistribution of wealth and reorganization of production we
need to survive as informational civilization to the climate crisis. I
don't think that leftist riots today would risk causing a fascistoid
backlash. The securitarian discourse in europe is mostly based on
xenophobia. Economic riots have occurred in 2008-2009 in Europe, East
and West. In countries of the old soviet bloc they've mostly taken a
rightwing form, and a leftwing form in pre-enlargement EU. It'd be
different if precarious and immigrants, anarchoautonomists and young
muslims joined forces in a permanent way, as we saw last year in some
very inspiring episodes. In that case, the shit would hit the fan, and
Europe would be set ablaze. > > Nobody wants a vanguard and not me
either, but don't we have to think > seriously about a class fraction
that can mediate between the excluded > precariat and the clueless
green capitalist liberals? You know, my big idea > now is that the
whole thing stands or falls on the capacity to really take > over the
universities, and then all the smash the state folks think I'm a >
proto-traitor...

I'd say this. These are gloomy times of political radicalization and
of proud identities. With respect to a decade ago, people aged 18-30
are a lot angrier and ready to fight. They won't compromise on any
form of capitalism, but might subscribe to a postcapitalist platform.
Who could be the mediators? On the social front, I'd say new types of
unions (biosyndicates) addressing youth, women, immigrants could be
brokers, because even revoutionary unions have to bargain (should we
import the japanese freeter model in europe?); on the political front,
I'd say that now that the greens are becoming the new socialdemocrats,
it falls onto them to find the new social compromise that reconciles
accumulation with social and ecological needs: Cohn-Bendit will have
to propose more than green liberalism to definitely bury the PS and
the SPD.

ciao fratello and see you all in Copenhagen! lx





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