Forwarded from SolarPunk
"The demand for universal health care, its crucial importance all the more revealed through the pandemic, seems an obvious focal point."
"To that goal three demands, each strategically related to the new openings posed above, might be added.
One is the demand for a onetime emergency wealth tax. This is an unashamedly populist demand, intended to appeal to a broad swath of the population without addressing the underlying issues of democratic economic control.
A second is economic conversion, an unashamedly radical demand that moves beyond the generalities of the Green New Deal and the vagueness of a “just transition” to engage workers in struggles that link the maintenance of a livable planet to the democratically planned restructuring of jobs and the economy.
Third, we need a push for greater unionization. The promise here lies not only in shifting the balance of power between groups of workers and their employers, but in unleashing a long-awaited union upsurge with the potential to transform a working class currently fragmented and demoralized into a coherent social agent capable of winning and sustaining social change."
https://jacobinmag.com/2020/08/politics-class-consciousness/
"To that goal three demands, each strategically related to the new openings posed above, might be added.
One is the demand for a onetime emergency wealth tax. This is an unashamedly populist demand, intended to appeal to a broad swath of the population without addressing the underlying issues of democratic economic control.
A second is economic conversion, an unashamedly radical demand that moves beyond the generalities of the Green New Deal and the vagueness of a “just transition” to engage workers in struggles that link the maintenance of a livable planet to the democratically planned restructuring of jobs and the economy.
Third, we need a push for greater unionization. The promise here lies not only in shifting the balance of power between groups of workers and their employers, but in unleashing a long-awaited union upsurge with the potential to transform a working class currently fragmented and demoralized into a coherent social agent capable of winning and sustaining social change."
https://jacobinmag.com/2020/08/politics-class-consciousness/
Jacobinmag
We Need a Politics That Is Not Only Class-Focused, but Class-Rooted
It’s not enough to make class the subject of our politics. We need to develop our political demands from a ferment that is rooted in class organizing and union density.
Reports this month showed how Greek authorities have pushed at least 1,072 migrants into the sea. The murderous policy is a gross violation of international law—yet faced with a harshened anti-migrant mood, other European governments have remained silent. 💔
https://twitter.com/jacobinmag/status/1299694347286450176
https://twitter.com/jacobinmag/status/1299694347286450176
Twitter
Jacobin
Reports this month showed how Greek authorities have pushed at least 1,072 migrants into the sea. The murderous policy is a gross violation of international law—yet faced with a harshened anti-migrant mood, other European governments have remained silent.…
"Since the economy writ large structures social relations and relations of power, we should also seek to expand the democratic economy more broadly through things like participatory budgeting, public banking, and democratic public ownership that disperse control as broadly as possible throughout the population.
Our individual lives and well-being are profoundly intertwined with the well-being of others. Our shared history, contemporary society, and the natural world provide the conditions that enable us to become who we are, and ultimately allow us to transform ourselves. Our technological and economic inheritance and shared fate underscore how substantive liberty has both material and social preconditions."
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/transformation/abandoning-myth-independence/
Our individual lives and well-being are profoundly intertwined with the well-being of others. Our shared history, contemporary society, and the natural world provide the conditions that enable us to become who we are, and ultimately allow us to transform ourselves. Our technological and economic inheritance and shared fate underscore how substantive liberty has both material and social preconditions."
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/transformation/abandoning-myth-independence/
openDemocracy
Abandoning the myth of independence
We need a fundamental rethink of how we understand ourselves, our institutions, and our ideas of freedom.