Critiques/Re-orienting/Critical Views and Re-views/Re-thinking
Development, Capitalist Development, Sustainable Development
Developing a Philosophically Grounded Alternative to Capitalism: A Marxist-Humanist Perspective (New)
by Peter Hudis
There is no more important task facing us today than to refute the claim that "there is no alternative" to capitalism. The assertion that humanity is now forever fated to endure one or another form of capitalism dominates public discourse East and West,
North and South and represents the foremost barrier to generating opposition to imperialist war, economic injustice, and environmental destruction. It may once have been possible to get by with the idea that struggles against various forms of oppression will undermine the foundation of existing society to the point that leftist theoreticians could then step in to suggest the ultimate solution. However, that standpoint is no longer viable. Masses of people around the world today want an idea of what kind of society can replace capitalism even before entering the struggle. The foremost challenge facing us to address the question "what happens after" the revolution before it occurs.
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by Peter Hudis
There is no more important task facing us today than to refute the claim that "there is no alternative" to capitalism. The assertion that humanity is now forever fated to endure one or another form of capitalism dominates public discourse East and West,
North and South and represents the foremost barrier to generating opposition to imperialist war, economic injustice, and environmental destruction. It may once have been possible to get by with the idea that struggles against various forms of oppression will undermine the foundation of existing society to the point that leftist theoreticians could then step in to suggest the ultimate solution. However, that standpoint is no longer viable. Masses of people around the world today want an idea of what kind of society can replace capitalism even before entering the struggle. The foremost challenge facing us to address the question "what happens after" the revolution before it occurs.
Read Full Text Here
Rethinking Sustainability
By Jonathan Mark Harris (Editor)
Bringing together the thoughts of economists, political scientists, anthropologists, philosophers, and agricultural policy professionals, this volume focuses on the issues of sustainability in development. Examining such topics as international trade, political power, gender roles, legal institutions, and agricultural research, the contributors focus on the missing links in theory and practice that have been barriers to the achievement of truly sustainable development.
Any theory of sustainable development must take into account economic, social, and environmental dimensions. Until recently, the question "What is development?" was often answered predominantly from the economist's perspective, with high priority being assigned to expansion of economic output. Social, political, institutional, and ethical aspects have often been neglected. But now that sustainable development has become a broadly accepted concept, it is impossible to maintain a narrowly economistic view of development. For this reason, the varied perspectives offered by the contributors to this volume are crucial to understanding the process of development as it relates to environmental sustainability and human well-being.
The selection of articles is meant to be stimulating and provocative rather than comp-rehensive. They are roughly divided between those dealing with broad theoretical issues concerning the economic, political, and social aspects of development (Part I) and those presenting more applied analysis (Part II). The common thread is a concern for examining which factors contribute to making development socially just and environmentally sound.
Rethinking Sustainability will be of interest to economists and social scientists, development professionals, and instructors seeking to offer their students a broad perspective on development issues.
Jonathan Harris is Senior Research Associate, Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University, as well as Adjunct Associate Professor of International Economics at Tufts University Fletcher School of Law.
Any theory of sustainable development must take into account economic, social, and environmental dimensions. Until recently, the question "What is development?" was often answered predominantly from the economist's perspective, with high priority being assigned to expansion of economic output. Social, political, institutional, and ethical aspects have often been neglected. But now that sustainable development has become a broadly accepted concept, it is impossible to maintain a narrowly economistic view of development. For this reason, the varied perspectives offered by the contributors to this volume are crucial to understanding the process of development as it relates to environmental sustainability and human well-being.
The selection of articles is meant to be stimulating and provocative rather than comp-rehensive. They are roughly divided between those dealing with broad theoretical issues concerning the economic, political, and social aspects of development (Part I) and those presenting more applied analysis (Part II). The common thread is a concern for examining which factors contribute to making development socially just and environmentally sound.
Rethinking Sustainability will be of interest to economists and social scientists, development professionals, and instructors seeking to offer their students a broad perspective on development issues.
Jonathan Harris is Senior Research Associate, Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University, as well as Adjunct Associate Professor of International Economics at Tufts University Fletcher School of Law.
The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing From Crisis to Sustainability
By James Gustave Speth
“How serious is the threat to the environment? Here is one measure of the problem: all we have to do to destroy the planet’s climate and biota and leave a ruined world to our children and grandchildren is to keep doing exactly what we are doing today, with no growth in the human population or the world economy. Just continue to release greenhouse gases at the current rates, just continue to impoverish ecosystems and release toxic chemicals at current rates, and the world in the latter part of the century won’t be fit to live in. But, of course, human activities are not holding at current levels — they are accelerating, dramatically. It took all of history to build the seven-trillion-dollar world economy of 1950; today economic activity grows by that amount every decade. At current rates of growth, the world economy will double in size in fourteen years. We are thus facing the possibility of an enormous increase in environmental deterioration, just when we need to move strongly in the opposite direction."
Marxism and Natural Limits: An Ecological Critique and Reconstruction
Many on the left find a source of hope in the realignment of ‘green’ and socialist perspectives. I believe they are right to do so, and I share the hope. But it remains true that important currents within Green politics and culture are hostile to socialism (as they understand it), whilst the response of the socialist left to the rise of ecological politics has, in the main, been deeply ambiguous. In what follows I attempt to do two things: first, to demonstrate that these tensions and oppositions have deep roots in the most influential intellectual tradition on the left, and, second, to provide some new conceptual ‘markers’ which I hope will play a part in facilitating the growing Red/Green dialogue.
Marxist-Humanism and the Struggle for a New Ecology
The future of an ecological critique of existing society, if not the existence of society itself, depends upon halting capital’s relentless drive for self-expansion. That the global self-expansion of capital is producing rampant destruction of natural habitants, innumerable species, and social cohesion has become so evident as to hardly invite serious challenge. Far more challenging, however, is the question of whether capital’s destructive course of self-expansion can be stopped before it consumes the lifeblood of the planet itself.
Marx’s Vision of Sustainable Human Development
With global capitalism’s worsening poverty and environmental crises, sustainable human development comes to the fore as the primary question that must be engaged by all twenty-first century socialists in core and periphery alike. It is in this human developmental connection, I will argue, that Marx’s vision of communism or socialism (two terms that he used interchangeably) can be most helpful.
Nature, Neoliberalism and Sustainable Development: Between Charybdis & Scylla?
At this point in history, policy thinking about human relationships with Nature seems unable to escape either the whirlpool of Neoliberalism or the mist-shrouded dangers of sustainable development. On the one hand free-marketeers tout an overt subordination of every aspect of the world to private property, commodity production and quick profit making; on the other, the critics of such short term calculus search for ways to continue the same processes indefinitely. What a choice!
Karl Marx, Ecologist
“Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not owners of the earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations.”
An Ecosocialist Critique of Sustainable Development
Maintaining growth through sustainable degradation
The Idea of Sustainable Development
How very different macroeconomic history begins to look if Nature is included as a capital asset in production activities.
The Antinomies of Modernity and Sustainability?
Developing an Indian Perspective on Governance and Responsibility
Changing Cultural Values and the Transition to Sustainability
Modeling this cultural shift as a substitution phenomenon shows the values of modernity being rapidly replaced by the values of transmodernity and suggests an important turning point in progress towards sustainability
The Earth Charter
We stand at a critical moment in Earth's history, a time when humanity must choose its future. As the world becomes increasingly interdependent and fragile, the future at once holds great peril and great promise. To move forward we must recognize that in the midst of a magnificent diversity of cultures and life forms we are one human family and one Earth community with a common destiny. We must join together to bring forth a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace. Towards this end, it is imperative that we, the peoples of Earth, declare our responsibility to one another, to the greater community of life, and to future generations.
Sustainable Energy
Renewable forms of energy that do not cause a negative impact on the surroundings express recognition and gratitude for the interdependence of all things.
Squaring the Circle
The concept of sustainable development has played out in industrialized countries since 1987. It
examines the theory and practice of sustainable development in the context of three criticisms (it is vague, attracts hypocrites and fosters delusions), and argues for an approach to sustainability that is integrative, is action-oriented, goes beyond technical fixes, incorporates a recognition of the social construction of sustainable development, and engages local communities in new ways. The paper concludes with a description of an approach to sustainability that attempts to incorporate these characteristics.
Towards Sustainable Self-Determination
Rethinking the Contemporary Indigenous-Rights Discourse
Envisioning a Sustainable Future for Archives
A Role for Visual Analytics?
