In troubled times, we gravitate toward those who make a convincing case for hope. Franklin Roosevelt assured Depression-era Americans that the only thing to fear was fear itself. Martin Luther King Jr., inspired us with his dream of equal rights. More recently, Jane Goodall has insisted that, despite countless self-inflicted catastrophes, homo sapiens might have a bright future on this planet. From a scientist with no illusions about primate behavior, its a startlingly optimistic vision.

In the 1960s, Goodall was the first primatologist to get an up-close, extended, forest-level view of chimpanzees. Her groundbreaking studies in Tanzanias Gombe Stream National Park shed light on humans closest relatives and, by extension, on us. She observed intercommunity wars that stretched on for years. Chimps brutalized one another, hitting, kicking and even brandishing weapons. Sound familiar?

Goodall made the connection between chimpanzees aggression and our own. In both cases, its triggered by jealousy, fear, revenge and the scramble for resources. But in Goodalls view, theres no doubt about which species acquired the worst traits during evolution. Chimps simply arent capable of depravity on a human scale. Unlike them, we inflict pain methodically, in holocausts, inquisitions and other terrors unknown among the great apes.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - APRIL 23 Dr. Jane Goodall attends the TIME 100 Summit 2019 on April 23, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Craig Barritt/Getty Images for TIME) (Craig Barritt/Getty Images for TIME)

Goodall, who turns 89 today, has witnessed her share of modern-day cruelty. She learned of the Nazi death camps as an English schoolgirl during World War II. She endured the kidnapping of students from her Gombe research station. She recoiled from animal abuse in laboratories and on factory farms. Its no surprise that she had second thoughts about bringing her son into the world.

So how did Goodall travel from horror to hope? Once again, it starts with her primate studies. If aggression is coded in our genes, so too is compassion.

In chimpanzee society, nurturing is common. Individuals maintain friendships through tickling, wrestling and social grooming. Dominant chimps break up fights and restore harmony, a forerunner of our own moral impulses.

In morality, Goodall sees our salvation: patterns of caring that have evolved right alongside patterns of selfishness. She marvels over acts of altruism, extending even to those outside our gene pool. Yes, people can behave worse than chimpanzees, but we can also behave better, with conscious acts of self-sacrifice.

So here we are, the human ape, half sinner, half saint, with two opposing tendencies inherited from our ancient past pulling us now toward violence, now toward compassion and love, Goodall writes in her autobiographical Reason for Hope.

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She believes our better angels can win the tug-of-war. Thanks to a sophisticated brain, we have increasingly overcome our base instincts. Goodall cites plenty of examples from her own lifetime: improved conditions for the poor, the rise of corporate responsibility, growing concern for the environment. Weve come a long way in a short time, at least by evolutionary standards.

But theres a catch in Goodalls hopefulness. We must actively work to save the Earth and fast. In the Goodall gospel, each one of us has immense power to do good. And if enough of us exercise that power, miracles happen.

That might sound nave, but look at what Goodall herself has accomplished. She grew up with no aristocratic advantages, toiling as a waitress to earn money for her first trip to Africa. Still, she dedicated herself to good causes, starting small and scaling up as she had the chance. Today, her Roots & Shoots program helps children solve problems around the globe. The Jane Goodall Institutes Tchimpounga sanctuary protects chimpanzees from illegal hunting. In her tireless travels, Goodall advocates for human rights and conservation.

True, most of us cant create our own institutes. And most of us will never have a megaphone as large as Goodalls. But, as she has said, Every single one of us matters and has a role to play. Maybe its by purchasing an environmentally friendly product, even if it costs a bit more. Maybe its by helping a stranger rather than feuding with one on social media. When we choose to stop acting like chimpanzees at their worst hitting and kicking we perpetuate our species noblest qualities.

Goodalls mother once sent a Winston Churchill quote to buck her up during a stressful moment. It was one of the British prime ministers morale-boosting exhortations from World War II, that formative period in Janes childhood: This is not a time for doubts or weakness this is the supreme hour to which we are called.

Now, Goodall herself is the leader calling us to action. If we follow her example, perhaps our own struggle for survival will prove victorious.

Robbins is a journalist and childrens author. His book You Are a Star, Jane Goodall is newly published by Scholastic.

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Jane Goodall's message of hope for all humanity: On her 89th ... - New York Daily News

Whos having more fun? Henry Kaczmar is hitting .270 through 25 games and playing beyond his years at baseballs most athletic position. (Press Pros Feature Photos)

The Buckeyes freshman shortstop comes as close to a natural assimilation to college baseball as one could imagine. And no saw it coming this quickly.

Columbus, OH Ohio State freshman Henry Kaczmar probably never heard of Roy Hobbs. Hes too young. Never saw The Natural, filmed in 1984.

Robert Redford? Wouldnt get the comparison, or irony.

But if you can appreciate his start as a rookie shortstop in the Big Ten Conference through 25 games .270 average (24 for 89), a home run, 5 doubles, 16 RBIs and solid glove play youd swear that no one looks more natural in his evolution to college baseballs highest level than the former Walsh Jesuit Warrior, just one year removed.

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For sure he never heard of Pop Fisher (Wilford Grimley), who took a chance on playing Hobbs over the incumbent right fielder for the make-believe New York Knights, based on a batting practice tryoutnot unlike first-year coach Bill Mosiello taking a chance to play Kaczmar at shortstop as a freshman based on his high school credentials and what he saw in fall practice.

But twenty five games into this script the ironies, the comparisons, and the reality of it happening are front and center evident, undeniable given the challenges of playing arguably the most athletic position on the field.

Its sure fun to watch, said Mosiello following Saturdays 6-2 win over Minnesota a game that saw Kaczmar got 3 for 4 with his first collegiate home run, and played flawlessly at shortstop in the midst of a gale winds and impending storms.

Ive had a lot of great young players, and some freshman All-Americans. But I like what hes doing and I sure wouldnt trade him because you want your kids to have success, and its neat to watch him have that success, just like its hard to watch when theyre failing. Anytime someones playing like he is its fun to watch. Henrys doing a really good job.

Deeply steeped in a culture of baseball from childhood up, what hes doing looks as natural against Minnesota as it did against Akron Hoban last year. Originally a commit to play at Michigan, he flipped that commitment when Michigan coach Erik Bakich pulled up anchor and left for Clemson during the summer.

Kaczmar capped of a three-hit day Saturday with a two-run homer in the eighth, his first in college baseball.

His father, Chris, was the long-time coach at Walsh Jesuit (26 years), winning 600 games and four state titles with the Warriors. So Henry Kaczmar is no stranger to expectation and challenge. What hes doing now, frankly, feels pretty natural to him.

I feel like Im never really satisfied with what Im doing, which isnt a good thing sometimes, he said following Saturdays win over Minnesota. So Im always focused on being better, and just going out there and be myself, regardless of who Im playing for. I just try to be natural, and relaxed. I dont look at the numbers, I try to give it all I have.

In a higher culture of baseball now, where body language is akin to trash-talking in basketball, Kaczmar has exceptional body language for one so young.

Yeah, and thats something that Mo preachesactions speak louder than words, he adds, smiling.

And for the record, Henry Kaczmar smiles a lot.

Body language is such a huge part of the game, and its something that you cant fakenot only for yourself, but to others who are watching. If opponents see youre down, theyre going to attack. Offense or defense, your body language needs to be you on the attackput your foot on their throat. Im always conscious of it, because it is such a huge part of the game.

To be sure, hes had some down moments. Striking out with runners in scoring position. And last week he got picked off first at Indiana in one of those rare baseball moments that you cant explainor justify. The trick isdont dwell over those moments. Play on. Learn from it. Think of it as something that makes you better, not something that cause others to question. And believe it, no ones questioning.

The manner in which hes played shortstop is everything you can ask. What he gets to he catches. What he catches he comes up throwing, and almost without exceptionchest-high to first base. He and sophomore second baseman Josh McAlister have quickly bonded to become a dependable double-play combination, and already have turned 18, almost the total for the entire 2022 season, when the Buckeyes had 22 in 51 games.

The only question coming out of fall baseball washow much can he hit? But no one, at present, seems concerned. Cue the Roy Hobbs clip:

For as long as Ive played I always think I have two choices, he offers. If I do something wrong I can be upset about it and have it affect the rest of the gameor I can move on from that and actually have a good game. You always have an option. You can go farther up the line towards positive, or you can go farther down the line towards negative. Thats how I think. And Im always trying to go farther up the line.

Editor/publisher Sonny Fulks writes OHSAA sports and Ohio State baseball for Press Pros Magazine.

Hes eloquent to speak on topics baseball well beyond his years, or the average freshman. He credits his dad for preparing him for that, along with about any other phase of the game. Hes remarkably comfortable with interviews, and questionslike he is with the next ground ball.

His focus following Saturdays game was that of appreciation for the first conference win, but he wasnt dwelling on it. Dont rest on your laurels. The important game is Sunday, because that determines the series farther up the line. You have the choice, you know.

His motivation? Need you ask? Hes been prepared for this all his life. But realistically..

My dad, he adds. I think he misses coaching, but hes been to every game so far, hes excited for the Bucks, and I know hes excited for me.

Naturally!

The Buckeye Diamond club is proud to sponsor coverage of Buckeye baseball on Press Pros Magazine.com.

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Roy Hobbs Is Playing Shortstop For The Buckeyes...And Henry ... - Press Pros Magazine

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The last man sits in the tower of the last house, in the middle of the last oasis, and weeps, for he knows that he is dying. Between the waterfalls of his tears hes recording his last thoughts. Shaking his forefinger at the machine floating in front of him, he says, I remember when they used to say, at some time in the future the human race will no longer be even a memory. There will be a moment when the human race, and its entire history, will be thought of for the last time. He looks around him at his study of ancient and eclectic books and paraphernalia, and dry dust in occasional rays of hard sunlight, and mutters, This is that time.

He stares through the stone-framed glassless window beside him, out to the horizon of rocky hills which borders a woodland green and lush under the blue sky and the diamond sun, But the energy thats keeping this paradise alive in the desert world means it can only produce enough food for one descendant at time. And its been such a long time.

Adam the Ironically Named is over four hundred and twenty years old, and has a beard to match. Hes also the thousandth clone in a line of inhuman recreations of the last natural human. But hes long determined that this will be his last regeneration. Hes determined that his will be the last version of the facsimiles through which flows his mind a consciousness he can only believe must still be the real thing, even now. But now, after a thousand iterations, resurrection has lost its allure, in this dying world. His heart feels as dry as the wasteland that surrounds his retreat, just beyond sight, just beyond the ridge of the hills, all across an Earth covered in sand and rock and rivulets and shrubs.

This tower is also the heart of the library of the accumulated wisdom of humanitys aeon. Its whats left of over a hundred million years of thought and striving. But of the media in many forms here, Adam likes best the books. With a few exceptions, these are kept vacuum-sealed in cool, dark vaults of shelves that delve into caverns. The texts reach back to the scratched pictograms and hieroglyphs that document the beginning of writing. Theyre stored alongside many digital formats, stretching back to silver discs. He cannot remember the last time he descended into the Librarys utter depths.

Adam gazes unfocused at a manuscript open upon a stand, and reflects, The Library contains the results of the myriad millenia of millenia in which the thought of humanity has struggled against its own limitations. These include starting from an almost absolute ignorance, whilst being stubbornly protective of an ego that says that each major step in understanding is the ultimate step. On the contrary, the Library has histories, and histories of histories, and histories of histories of histories, detailing cycles within cycles of the rise and fall of human culture across the world, through millions of years. He knows that humanity is ancient now. He calculates that its about one hundred and fifty-three million years old, but its age is beyond clean summation. How many hundreds of millions of years is it that humans have been on this planet? he asks the droid before him.

Maybe about two hundred million years? the robot says.

Charlie is an obedient scribe, hovering about obsequiously as Adam mumbles his meditations into his lenses which wisdom the robot immediately tries to sculpt into holo images in the space in front of them, instantly turning the words into solid light, white against a navy blue space. Hell probably edit it all into something epic later, add clips. He has enough of them. Its a shame therell be no-one around to watch it. Even Ariel has gone missing.

Adam asks, So how about this for a an overview of history? This is for the Memoires, Charlie, by the way signalling that the droid should record the coming narrative, for historical reasons if nothing else: The first million years or so of Homo sapiens were all animal agitations. During this period we were always fighting ourselves for territory and status, just like what were they called again, Charlie?

Children, responds the robot.

Yes, children. We were like children, in that we had not yet learnt to control our responses. But after wed realised, to our apparent great surprise, that we hadnt destroyed ourselves, we really began to take the idea of human self-benefit seriously. We also knew that the Earths a sphere and the Sun is dying, slowly after slowly heating up Back in those heady days of our youth, full of hormones and animal instincts, we believed we could colonise the stars with only a little ingenuity. So we sent out many ships, full of hope. And certainly we did have bases on the planets and moons of our dying Sun for millions of years as Methuselah, my House Intelligence, has told me

Thats me! the deep voice of the House Server says.

We had successful colonies at various times on the Moon, Mars, Titan the orbs are displayed before them in quick holographic fly-pasts We even bred a new species of human for the oceans of Enceladus, under the ice of that moon of Saturn. They disappeared beneath alien waves for separate evolution there for over three million years, Im told. Then, slowly, the ice melted, and radiation storms stripped Enceladus of its liquid not unlike what the Sun has done more slowly for the Earth. Some of Enceladuss merpeople came and lived in the seas of Earth, even thrived, though most of the survivors of that race reconverted to traditional humanity (RIP). The remaining fish people died many million of years later, when the last of Earths habitable seas dried up. They were the last living seas we know of anywhere. That was twenty million years ago or so now, Im told. A blink of an eye for the Cosmos. Indeed, the last river still flowed through my garden not two million years ago. Now weve had to put a field around the farm to keep the moisture in. The bubble of life in the universe has grown very small indeed. On this cue, Charlie turns to gaze through a window, and spots a parrot and a rabbit enjoying the opportunities afforded them by the vegetation.

Ive seen videos of the ruins of our civilisation on Titan which is now an orange graveyard swept over by the dust of time and the ice of death. And in its day it challenged Earth for the Solar System! Now the whole Solar System is dead except for this last remaining oasis of a garden. As if to verify his pessimism, the old man holds his hand up to stall the robot in its recording, so that he can gaze out of the stone-framed portal to the crescent Moon as it hangs in the sky above the trees and the hill line. His eyes are watering and his vision is poor, and he doesnt know who hes recording his last thoughts for, in this empty, empty universe.

Hes been waiting for so long, but there has been no word from the cosmos ever. This also means no word back from humanitys hopes.

As I was saying, in the heady days of the youth of humanity, we set out to colonise the stars, as our dreams and our survival instincts contrived to compel us. Our seeding of the vast void was especially hopeful during our Second Million as it is relayed down to me in legend as being. Isnt that right, Methuselah?

Yes. As the legends have it.

Adam picks up a curled scroll from his possibly genuine Napoleonic writing desk, and waves it in front of Charlies recording eyes, as if this may in some way confirm the idea: There must have been a billion ships over a million years of hopeful dissemination, all looking for the planet or moon that would support human life long-term. And the chance was about one in a billion that theyd find one. To be good for proper, long-term human colonisation, theyd need to find, at about 1G, a water-bearing oxygenated world still primitive enough not to have a human-poisonous ecosystem. That means first, not covered with animals and plants that we cant eat, or probably, touch. But even more demanding, theyd need that oxygenated atmosphere to not be full of fatal alien bacteria and most alien bacteria probably would be fatal insofar as theyd react with human biochemistry at all. Basically, the pioneers would need to find an Earth-type planet where harmless cyanobacteria-equivalents had generated an oxygen atmosphere, but where nothing else had evolved except perhaps a few stromatolites. Unfortunately, it doesnt appear that any of our ships ever found their sterile Eden to plant themselves on. We never heard back from any that did, anyway. Or from anyone else, either.

As he speaks, he vaguely watches the visuals from Charlie dance and shimmer in the centre of a room shadowed with holey tapestries against most of the windows, and smoky with the woody incense from the summer sap he takes from the trees in his arboretum. Yes, he fondly remembers walking those groves, just last summer. The flowers were resplendent, but the beauty so bittersweet. Adam nods at his robot again and starts to pronounce: By year One Million of the human race, the Solar System had pretty much settled into a routine, with peaceful trade between species being the political norm, the inevitable up-and-down waves of historical motion notwithstanding. Indeed, we were thriving to the point of diversification. But apart from Enceladus, by the end of Three Million, the various exospecies had extincted, overwhelmed by the implacable ecological forces arrayed against them by which I mean the fatally freezing cold and lack of breathable air of the globes on which they had rooted themselves. Inevitably, we did try terraforming Mars off and on over a couple of dozen million years or so, as the legends heroically relate But, as the records show, we couldnt get the atmosphere to stick around at such a low gravity without turning Mars magnetic field back on, a feat that our rather less than divine technology never got close to achieving. And try as we might and we did actually try we never managed to modify the human phenotype enough to breed people who never needed to breathe oxygen at all. Oxygen is just too deep in our biochemistry. And as for the artificial life Well, thats a whole other set of memories entirely. To avoid looking at Charlie, Adam glances along the shelves of books at his right, his source of the most precious stories of his ancestors, which no one will ever read, or hear again, probably. Now Im here alone in the last house on Earth actually, its more of a Chateau in the last oasis, with only a computer, a couple of serving robots, and a diminishing ark of pets for company. And one of the robots is missing. He glances through the open window, across the grove, to the mountains, hoping that Ariel would return.

The old man sits on a couch in the cooling evening in a silken robe of white and gold. Shadows stretch over shelves in a study that bears paraphernalia picked from a million cultures. Its a selection of all the Archivist likes best of all of human history, in terms of its household decoration, at least. As well as being the store of the remnants of human thought, sensation, and understanding as expressed in many media, his house is a museum of the best of human material culture for the more-than-hundred-million years of its creativity or at least, the best of the most enduring of the most enduring of such artifacts. But the garden will perish once the robots turn to rust, and this last respite too will presently be swept over with dust, then disintegrate. But for the brief moment of consciousness that is the miracle of the universe, we have enjoyed some beauty, Adam surmises to himself, with a wry smile.

Well, to whomever it may concern, this is my summary of one hundred and fifty-three million years of human history Umm To be honest, the seed of our utter stagnation was planted with the death of any possibility of sending out any more ships. That came upon the death of our local colonies, and so of our spatial outreach. This seed of stagnation has just taken more than a hundred million years to come to fruition. I am the last refuge of humanity from extinction. But I can hold back the tide of time no longer.

Charlie zooms visually into the distance, out of the window, intercepting the parrot now in flight across the cloudless sky. It appears gigantically in the middle of the room.

The stability of civilisation became our core ethical principle fairly early on, I would say. The earlier part of human history I would characterise as power struggles. We were still coming to terms with our biology, our animal inheritance our flesh, as one might say. But we forced ourselves to became adept at sustainable resource use, in a stable population, on a limited terrain. If you havent figured it out, political control is basically making sure the bread and circuses keep coming to town. The rest of history is ego battles in various theatres of war. But we became mature when all our wars were cold, or at most, cool. I believe there were some centuries when there were no murders at all. Thatd be about as good as it got.

Now theres no-one to murder but myself. And if you see this, you may judge that I have murdered myself, since I had the power to continue my life in a new body, but did not take it. But what the hell, what are you going to do to me now ? Say bad things about me? Hey, alien race, go ahead but know that youre mocking what you dont understand: the history and biology that fed human intellect and values. They formed the mystery and misery that made humanity that makes myself. This you can perhaps never sympathise with. Unless, of course, youre a human being watching this to which I can only say, I wish youd called home, just once But good luck anyway, sons and daughters of Earth. Youre gonna need it.

Adam nods at his robot again, while pointing at the bookshelves for Charlie to film them. As the books and crystals come into drifting focus at the centre of the Library, Adam asks: So what do our millions of years reveal? What truths does the history of humanity hold? Well, our history is up and down, you know in glorification, then in stagnation Then in shrinkage; then death, in various chaotic phases Until now I am the only human left alive And Ive lived so long, alone. For a thousand generations I have renewed myself, awaiting a word from the stars that never came. For a long time the silence was deafening; then maddening. Now it is just emptiness, forever. So this last life of mine has been the last throw of the last dice of humanity. But now even the last hope of humanity is dying. The flame of this last mind is flickering out.

Adam makes a cut motion with his hands, and pauses to lean back to breath in pure oxygen through a tube, even though extra oxygens already being pumped around the room. He stares hard at Charlie and asks, How am I doing? Is this how history should be told, do you think? And what anyway should my message be to an unknown, and overwhelmingly likely non-existent, audience? Has human existence even been good or bad, Charlie? What do you think, as an outside observer?

After a second, and a literal (over-)dramatic whirr of thought, Charlie responds, Well, did you learn or do anything worthwhile? If so, what? And I cannot speak for you, you know, about what you think is worthwhile.

Errrmmmm Adam sharpens his beard with his fingers as he ponders the essential truth for a precious last second or two: Okay I think we must concede that consciousness itself is all were really sure of. Yet consciousness itself is so amazing as to be miraculous. We did not ever fully grasp it. Thats why I dont think youre really alive, Charlie, by the way.

Im not sure I quite understand you, lord.

Ha I mean, youre not conscious, so youre not alive. There is nothing it is like to be you. Youre just a machine programmed to pretend to be conscious. All electricity and no mind. Thats what I think you are. Adam taps his own head to paradoxically make several points at once to the machine.

I actually resent that, Charlie replies: But Im sure you would say that Im just programmed to say that. Which I also resent, by the way.

Humour me at the end of my days, wont you, Charlie? But If you really are conscious, my final order to you and Ariel and the House, is to go out and populate the universe. Take this best human junk with you too, for sentimental reasons. He waves around himself at his dust-laden possessions, Even if they are only my sentiments

Because we dont really have any sentiments, boss?

Yes, thats right. In case you dont really feel the stuff youve been expertly developed to pretend to feel.

Ill bear it in mind.

Adam nods to himself. You never know who you might bump into, among the stars. He breathes from the oxygen pipe again. Incidentally, Charlie, what do you calculate as more likely, finding an alien intelligence at last, or finding the descendants of human colonists?

I think well find no one at all, to be honest.

Fine. That will make it easier for you, probably. Since youre made of metal, and synthetics which you yourselves can synthesise, and you dont need to breathe, your chances of thriving throughout the galaxy and beyond, even for billions of years, are fairly high, Id speculate. Good luck to you, then. But never forget you carry humanitys legacy in your very existence.

Yes sir. Ill also bear you in mind. In fact, I think were most likely to bump into machine intelligence evolved from something we sent out exploring during those years the Earth was spawning. Or maybe Im just being a bit biased for the artificials, I mean, sir. AI Forever!, you know how it goes

Yes, well, Im artificial too, even if Im organic. To illustrate this distinction, Adam coughs like a real dying old man. Yes Your offspring need only worry about crossing the abysses between the stars. The raw material for your success is plentiful. At almost every step through the cosmos therell be some planet or moon you can mine minerals from. Nevertheless, good luck, again! The more you can get of that, the better. But Im serious about this, Charlie: if you are aware, you must spread awareness everywhere.

Thank you for the reproductive mandate, lord, Ill get working on it as soon as you The droid looks away for a second in embarrassment, then continues abruptly: Yes, it will be interesting to see what we and our children encounter as we venture across the universe Its a shame you wont come with us, lord.

That does sound like sentiment, Charlie. Thank you for that. But I think biological consciousness has had enough disappointment for one universe, and its all coming to a head. My head, in fact. Which he again taps for illustration. In fact, this really is my final message to the teasing nothingness He nods to the robot to start recording again:

Thank you, whatever is the ultimate source of human existence. It has been beautiful, painful, intriguing and problematic in a fine balance of worthwhileness for so very long. For the rest of you hearing this: Stay interested in life, whoever you are, for that is the best that you can reasonably hope for from it even while you know that, ultimately speaking, life is not interested in you

After a few seconds of silence, Charlie says, perhaps sincerely, Thats very poignant though Adam does not know whether his words are sincere for several reasons, including not knowing whether Charlie has a mind, and the fact that he can feel his own mind rapidly slipping away from his body.

Hes lying on a long couch under a Moon arising in the now mauve sky through the window. The stars are just beginning to peep awake. He has to be there: hes being kept alive by wires and tubes feeding into and out of his body, mostly unobtrusively. Yet all of them are quickly becoming obsolete. But Adam remembers his Memoires, so he asks Hey Charlie, what would you want to know from a more-than-hundred-million-year-old species, if you discovered their remains on some old planet somewhere?

After a trillion quick calculations, the droid responds, I think basic things like, What went wrong? And what major decisions did they take to get there? So that we can avoid making them for my own species, you understand.

I do understand. The old man breathes deeply from the pipe. But maybe its inevitable, death, he adds, realistically from his perspective. Perhaps death is as inevitable as entropy Saying this, Adam collapses back onto the silken golden pillow and coughs lightly a few times. Closing his eyes, he breathes out; his last breath. The last thought of the last human being is, At last, it is finished.

Grant Bartley 2023

Grant Bartley edits Philosophy Now. His latest video, What is Free Will?, can be accessed at youtu.be/4o7P4niHO5A.

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The Last Thought | Issue 155 - Philosophy Now

Native Forests, the Landscaping that Cities Need

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During the 19th century, efforts to improve the quality of urban life focused on creating gardens and parks, marking the beginning of the evolution of landscaping as a modern discipline. However, despite remarkable examples worldwide, excessive structure and artificiality in urban parks have gone against the motivations that gave rise to them. In many cases, their design has resulted in decontextualized and inefficient public spaces that are highly demanding on resources and far from being truly sustainable.

The strict use of geometry and the imposition of species that are difficult to adapt and care for are gradually giving way to a more organic approach to landscaping, tailored to local ecosystems and more efficient in its development and conservation. Native forests embody all these positive aspects. They not only ecologically restore degraded areas but also improve air quality and retain rainwater, creating biodiverse green spaces that deeply connect people with nature. We spoke with Magdalena Valds, founder and director of Bosko, who explains why native forests are the right path towards conscious and truly ecological landscaping.

Jos Toms Franco: To generate fast-growing native forests you use the Akira Miyawaki method of ecological restoration. What does this system consist of, and why is it important in the current context?

Magdalena Valds (Bosko): The Miyawaki Method is an intensive ecological restoration system. This means that, with the objective of reconstituting a certain reference ecosystem, it aims to imitate the conditions of that ecosystem in its mature version. For example, if the ecosystem corresponds to a temperate forest, the soil conditions and plant species that would exist in that place if there had been no human intervention are observed.

So then, the soil is worked to enhance its oxygenation and enrichment with organic matter, until it reaches certain characteristics that are similar to the soil of a mature temperate forest. Similarly, the possible species are selected from all the strata typical of that ecosystem, and they are planted in high density, that is, from 3 to 5 plants per square meter. In this way, collaboration between the species that have coexisted for hundreds of thousands of years is fostered, and their competition for nutrients and light is stimulated, just as in any forest.

Finally, the soil is covered with a layer of mulch in order to protect it from solar radiation and promote the multiplication of microbiological life in it, which facilitates the interactions of the forest and makes it increasingly complex.

The Miyawaki method makes it possible to recover properties of the original ecosystem and obtain environmental benefits, such as improving air quality, reducing ambient temperature, and filtering and retaining rainwater. However, one of its significant benefits is that it produces native forests with accelerated growth, which translates into highly attractive spaces from a human perspective. It allows us to perceive how degraded soils grow and transform into exuberant forests, which become shelters for biodiversity and people in a short time.

This makes them ideal for installation in urban spaces. Their impact is not only ecological, by capturing CO2 and other pollutants, but also profoundly social, by bringing people closer to the knowledge, attachment, and care of their own natural heritage within the city. Hundreds of Miyawaki forests have been created in cities in Asia and Europe, and now at Bosko, we are doing the same in different parts of Chile.

Jos Toms Franco: The concept of restoration is widely used to bring circularity strategies closer to architecture. However, it seems to be limited only to the design of specific projects and the selection and management of their materials. How can ecological restoration help integrate an architectural project into the natural space where it is located and beyond?

Magdalena Valds (Bosko): Ecological restoration aims to assist in the recovery of degraded, damaged, or destroyed natural environments, rebuild their biodiversity, and restore their ecosystem services.

The development of an architectural project necessarily impacts the location where it is situated and its ecosystem. In this context, acting with conservation logic (when it is a project located in a natural environment with minimal intervention) and following ecological restoration can be valuable perspectives to properly integrate a project into its natural environment and mitigate the intrinsic intervention's consequences.

The Miyawaki system, in particular, is an excellent tool for addressing highly degraded terrain, especially in cities. Due to its high degree of work per square meter, it generates a significant positive impact in the short term, accelerating the repair and recovery of a damaged space and transforming it into a biodiverse nucleus. Our work aims to contribute to imagining a piece of land, a neighborhood, or a city as an integrated and efficient green network of forests and urban vegetation, amplifying its impact and achieving more ambitious socio-environmental objectives with a holistic vision.

Urban forests present an opportunity to reintroduce nature to our cities, creating biodiverse and dynamic sources that can also improve people's quality of life: they purify the air, reduce the effect of heat islands, improve climate resilience, and confer a multitude of well-documented benefits to people's physical and mental health.

Jos Toms Franco: Landscaping associated with architectural projects appears to prioritize the selection of "trendy species" for aesthetic purposes, which seems to go against what you propose. How do you approach traditional landscaping differently, and what additional benefits can it provide? To what extent is it possible to manage and accommodate the visual appearance of a Miyawaki forest?

Magdalena Valds (Bosko): At Bosko, we consider ourselves agents of a distinct type of landscaping that is ecological, aesthetic, and functional, with the aim of achieving a deeper connection between people and nature.

Native forests provide a more sensory type of landscaping that connects people in a more intimate way with nature, providing shelter, shade, intimate spaces, flows, rhythms, sounds, and smells.

The design of a Miyawaki forest can be highly adaptable in its layout, incorporating paths, walkways, empty and full spaces. However, ecological criteria should always be the priority, respecting the "body of forest," which is a minimum area required for nature to flourish and develop properly. We design Miyawaki forests by prioritizing the placement of species inside, creating a rich and diverse forest. For the contour, however, our criteria is more aesthetic in selecting the most attractive native species, such as herbaceous ones with showy flowers, to enhance their wild and dense appearance.

The Miyawaki forests created by the Swiss NGO SUGi, a great collaborator and inspiration for Bosko, for the Vuitton and Moet Chandon Foundation in London, are beautiful examples of the fusion between ecology and aesthetics.

Another example recently executed by Bosko in Chile is the Adriana Hoffmann Native Garden at the Mirador Interactive Museum (MIM), where the design incorporates shapes and paths, along with an adequate distribution of species and heights, creating welcoming and attractive spaces for visitors.

Jos Toms Franco: Could you explain the process for restoring a "new soil"? What factors should be taken into consideration, and how long does it typically take for the soil to be restored?

Magdalena Valds (Bosko): The soil improvement process begins with observation and analysis. The objective of a Miyawaki forest is to imitate the reference ecosystem in its mature state. This means projecting the same soil to intervene, as if there had been no human intervention. In a space where a forest should have existed, the soil should be loosened, oxygenated, and full of microbiological life associated with bacteria and fungi, as well as organic matter. Additionally, it should be covered with leaf litter typical of the forests, including twigs, decayed trunks, countless leaves, and dead insects. The mission is to loosen the soil to oxygenate it, incorporate organic matter in a dose that allows reaching an adequate minimum for the healthy development of the forest, and cover it with mulch to simulate the protective leaf litter on the forest floor.

The duration of this process, which is key in the creation of a Miyawaki forest, can range from 3 days to 2 weeks depending on factors such as the complexity of the soil and the size of the future forest.

Jos Toms Franco: How have you seen the evolution of your first forests and regenerative landscaping projects after a few years? What kind of benefits can you start to notice?

Magdalena Valds (Bosko): Our first Miyawaki forest, which covers an area of 280 m2 in Pirque (Chile), was planted three and a half years ago. Currently, its canopy reaches over 8 meters in height, largely comprised of maytenus and soap bark trees. The forest boasts high biodiversity, with approximately 80% of native flora species surviving, and serving as a thriving habitat for a range of birds and insects including quebracho butterflies, giant hummingbirds, and beetles.

Its soil is soft, humid and covered with organic litter. Its temperature is considerably lower than the temperature outside, and upon entering its empty center, which is specially designed for the Japanese practice of "forest bathing" or Shinrin-yoku, one experiences a sense of peace and disconnection.

Since its planting, this Miyawaki forest has reduced water consumption by 60% and does not require maintenance, except for personal interests. As Akira Miyawaki said, "the best management of a forest is its non-management."

For more details about this work, please visit their official website.

Read the original post:
Native Forests, the Landscaping that Cities Need - ArchDaily

Theres been what the Fed thought would happen in residential real estate, and then theres been the Mid-Valley housing market, which has remained hotter than expected.

In the last 90 days, Corvallis had 72 homes sales, theres currently 52 homes under contract, and 47 active listings. Albany saw 140 homes sold in the same three month period, with 88 currently under contract, and 48 active listings. Similarly, Lebanon has sold 57 homes, with 41 under contract, and 55 active listings.

Depending on which of many sources you go with, a stable real estate market has between four and six months of inventory available Corvallis currently has 1.94 months on hand. In Albany its all the way down to 0.93 months. and Lebanon has the most inventory right now, but its still only 2.89 months worth.

Samantha Alley of RE/Max Integrity said theres usually some increased sales during Spring, but thats far from the only factor driving the current surge in activity.

The recent uptick in the real estate market in Corvallis, Albany, and Lebanon may be due to a combination of factors. Mortgage interest rates have been fairly volatile with some highs and lows, but settling out in the low 6s at the end of March. This makes homeownership more affordable than a few months ago, leading to increased demand for homes, said Alley, The tight inventory of available homes has also contributed to the current state of the market, with properties selling relatively quickly and often for at or above asking price. Overall, these factors have led to a competitive market, where buyers need to act quickly to secure a property.

That said, Alley also cautions its not a free-for-all for sellers either, homes in poor condition need to be priced accordingly.

Alley also notes that lenders have adjusted their programs and expanded the types of properties they lend on. For instance, its easier than in the past to finance condos or older manufactured homes and homes in communities with leased land. Also, some lenders are broadening their approval criteria and offering loans with lower down payments.

However, Alley notes, These adjustments in lending practices have opened up more opportunities for buyers to enter the market and secure their dream home. But, they do come with a price tag, of higher interest and more fees.

February Employment Numbers Released: The state continues to release employment numbers later than they used to and well see if they get more timely after the current legislative session ends.

Anyhow, Benton Countys seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 3.7% in February, unchanged from its revised rate of 3.7% in January. Oregons statewide unemployment rate in February was 4.7%, down slightly from its revised January rate of 4.8%.

Benton Countys employment gains in February were more than normal; total nonfarm employment increased by 1,000 jobs, when an employment increase of 770 jobs would be expected. As a result, seasonally adjusted employment increased 230 jobs between January and February. Seasonally adjusted total nonfarm employment is now up 2.6% from the level in February 2020, 1,110 jobs above its pre-pandemic level.

Over the past year Benton Countys seasonally adjusted total nonfarm employment is up 2,170 jobs or 5.1%.

The private sector overall added 280 jobs over the month. Trade, transportation, and utilities added 180 jobs. Leisure and hospitality added 40 jobs in February. The public sector added 720 jobs in February. Federal government added 20 jobs. Local government education employment added 710 in February.

Whats a GROTTHUSS, and What Did It Revolutionize: A spinout company from Oregon State University had what can only be described as a YEEHAW breakthrough moment and it means storing energy from renewable sources can be done far more sustainably and safely, and potentially, with less cost.

The company is GROTTHUSS INC. Theyve worked in collaboration with both HP and the university.

Heres what happened: Scientists led by an Oregon State University researcher developed a new electrolyte that raises the efficiency of the zinc metal anode in zinc batteries to nearly 100%, a breakthrough on the way to an alternative to lithium-ion batteries for large-scale energy storage.

The research is part of an ongoing global quest for new battery chemistries able to store renewable solar and wind energy on the electric grid for use when the sun isnt shining and the wind isnt blowing.

Xiulei David Ji of the OSU College of Science and his collaborators reported their findings inNature Sustainability.

The breakthrough represents a significant advancement toward making zinc metal batteries more accessible to consumers, Ji said. These batteries are essential for the installation of additional solar and wind farms. In addition, they offer a secure and efficient solution for home energy storage, as well as energy storage modules for communities that are vulnerable to natural disasters.

A battery stores electricity in the form of chemical energy and through reactions converts it to electrical energy. There are many different types of batteries, but most of them work the same basic way and contain the same basic components.

Every battery has two electrodes the anode, from which electrons flow out into an external circuit, and the cathode, which acquires electrons from the external circuit and the electrolyte, the chemical medium that separates the electrodes and allows the flow of ions between them.

Relying on a metal thats safe and abundant, zinc-based batteries are energy dense and seen as a possible alternative for grid energy storage to widely used lithium-ion batteries, whose production relies on shrinking supplies of rare metals such as cobalt and nickel. Cobalt and nickel are also toxic and can contaminate ecosystems and water sources if they leach out of landfills.

Additionally, electrolytes in lithium-ion batteries are commonly dissolved in flammable organic solvents that often decompose at high operation voltages. Other safety concerns include dendrites, which resemble tiny trees growing inside a battery. They can pierce the separator like thistles growing through cracks in a driveway, leading to unwanted and sometimes unsafe chemical reactions.

Zinc metal batteries are one of the leading candidate technologies for large-scale energy storage, Ji said. Our new hybrid electrolyte uses water and an ordinary battery solvent, which is non-flammable, cost-effective and of low environmental impact. The electrolyte is made of a dissolved mixture of inexpensive chloride salts, with the primary one being zinc chloride.

The cost of electricity delivered by a storage facility consisting of zinc batteries can only be competitive with fossil-fuel-produced electricity if the battery has a long cycle life of thousands of cycles, Ji said. To date, however, cycle life has been limited by the poor reversibility performance of the zinc anode.

During charging, Ji explains, zinc cations in the electrolyte gain electrons and get plated on the anode surface. During discharge, the plated anode gives up electrons for the workload by being dissolved into the electrolyte.

This zinc plating and dissolution process is often woefully irreversible, Ji said. Namely, some electrons used in plating cannot be recouped during discharge. This is a problem in an area known as Coulombic efficiency.

Coulombic efficiency, or CE, is a measure of how well electrons are transferred in batteries, the ratio of the total charge extracted from the battery to the charge put in the over a full cycle. Lithium-ion batteries can have a CE in excess of 99%.

The new electrolyte developed by Ji and collaborators including scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Penn State and the University of California, Riverside, enabled a CE of 99.95%.

The primary challenge with zinc batteries is that zinc reacts with water in the electrolyte to generate hydrogen gas in what is called a hydrogen evolution reaction, Ji said. This parasitic reaction causes a short cycle life and is also a potential safety hazard.

The new electrolyte, however, restricts waters reactivity and nearly shuts down the hydrogen evolution reaction by forming a passivation layer on the surface of the anode. A similar passivation layer is what enabled the initial commercialization of lithium-ion batteries in the 1990s.

Ji credits OSU chemistry colleague Chong Fang for uncovering the electrolytes atomic structure by using femtosecond Raman spectroscopy and Alex Greaney at UC Riverside for determining the passivation mechanism.

Also, it is worth noting that the efficiency we measured is under harsh conditions that do not mask any damage caused by the hydrogen evolution reaction, Ji added. The breakthrough reported here heralds the near-future commercialization of the zinc metal batteries for large-scale grid storage.

OSUs Kyriakos Stylianou also took part in this research, which was supported by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy.

And now, your business events calendar

Real Estate Broker Pre-License Class:Have you been thinking about a career as a real estate agent? This class is the first step. An accelerated pre-license hybrid weekly class, self-study, and a 9-5 pre-test cram session on Saturday, June 10th will get you ready for the Oregon Real Estate Brokers License Exam. You will have to attend all class sessions through Zoom or in person much of the self-study portion of the class is online. The class is offered by the Small Business Development Center at Linn-Benton Community College.

The course contains 11 sessions, the fee is $695. First session runs from 6 to 9 pm, Tuesday, April 4, and the sessions conclude Saturday, June 10. Class meets at Coldwell Banker Valley Brokers North Albany Branch. Clickhereto register.

How to Negotiate Your Salary: Interactive session for tips on how to negotiate your offer after landing a job. Presented byVamos OSU,an alumni network for all graduates and friends who identify with and support OSUs Latinx and Chicanx communities. Ask Alumni is an opportunity to meet OSU alumni who have been where you currently are, ask questions and learn from their experiences.

Hybrid event, in-person or online. Wednesday, April 5, from 5 to 6 pm, at theCH2M Hill Alumni Center,725 SW 26th Street, Corvallis. Clickherefor more info or two register for online attendance.

OSU Non-Profit & Public Service Fair:The March 1 date was postponed due to inclement weather the new tentative date is April 11. Explore service. Better the world. Discover your passion.

Meet representatives from over 50 nonprofit and local government organizations representing a wide variety of fields who are seeking OSU volunteers, interns, and employees. The 17th annual Non-Profit and Public Service Fair offers the chance to network with people who share your interests and passions and learn more about the many opportunities available in the nonprofit field. The entire OSU community, including alumni, and the public are encouraged to attend this event!

Tuesday, April 11, from 11 amto3 pm, at theMemorial Union Building (MU), Ballroom,2501 SW Jefferson Way, Corvallis. Registerhere.

Property Manager Pre-License:If you love problem solving, working with people and multitasking, then this in-demand property management class is for you. This course prepares you for the State of Oregon Property Manager License Exam and covers the role of property managers, tenant relations, fair housing, lease agreements, and more. You must attend all class sessions through Zoom and have online access to complete the self-study portion of this course.

$600 fee. Offered through Zoom video conferencing. Seven sessions staring Tuesday, April 11, 6 to 8 pm. Clickherefor more information and to register.

Going Into Business Class:In just one session, youll get all the basic information you will need to begin planning your successful business. Rules, regulations, financing, customers, markets, and feasibility will all be discussed in this free seminar.

Free, this class offered through the Linn-Benton Community College Small Business Development Center. Tuesday, April 11, from 6:30 to 7:20 pm. This seminar is offered through Zoom video conferencing. Clickhereto register.

Chamber of Commerce Success Events Series:Third in a series three standalone classes, so you wont have needed to have attended the prior classes to benefit from this last one April 12 brings a class focused on building a conscious company culture. The fee is $110.

Class will be at the Chamber of Commerce office, 11:30 am to 1:30 pm. This is a Chamber member event, clickhereto register.

Business After Hours: Corvallis Chamber of Commerce event with a new host every time, in this instance, Knife River Training Center in Albany. Wednesday, April 19, from 5 to 7 pm. Preregister admission is $15 for members, and $20 for non-members. Add $5 if youre paying at the door.

Knife River Training Center is at 35973 Kennel Rd SE, Albany. Click here to register.

Grad School for Biz: This virtual sessionintroduces the Graduate Business Programs at Oregon State University.The online session we will cover graduate program options in the College of Business, including the MBA, Masters, and Graduate Certificates programs. We will also introduce the curriculum, program tracks, admission and financial aid, and what sets Oregon State apart from other programs. Oregon State University offers graduate business programs in Portland, Corvallis, and online.

Women in Business Luncheon: Leah Bayles talk will be titled Grow with it! Soulful Strategies to Shift Oh No! to Yes, I can!

Bayles is a holistic life coach, transformational speaker and podcast host. She seeks to empowers big-hearted, high achievers to create the life and the impact they love without wearing themselves out. Her career in holistic wellness has included positions as Heartspring Mind-body Therapist, SHS Employee Wellness Coordinator and Integrative Yoga Therapy program director.

Bayles will cover:

12 to 1 pm, Thursday, Apr. 20 at Courtyard Marriott in Corvallis, 400 SW 1st Street. Click here to register.

Read the original here:
Corvallis Business: Breakthrough by an OSU Company Called ... - The Corvallis Advocate

John Bellamy Foster is editor of Monthly Review and professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Oregon. Dan Swain is an assistant professor at the Czech University of Life Sciences and a research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy at the Czech Academy of Sciences. Monika Woniak is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences and an assistant professor at the Institute of Philosophy, University of Wrocaw, Poland.

This interview first appeared in the Czech journal Contradictions in 2022 and has been adapted for MR. The original can be found at kontradikce.flu.cas.cz.

Dan Swain and Monika Woniak: More than two decades ago, you refuted popular assumptions about Karl Marxs relation to ecological issues in your book Marxs Ecology. In your recent book, The Return of Nature, you undertake a similar task in regard to the other founding figure of Marxism, Frederick Engels. Why do you see it as so important to set the record straight when it comes to the popular views of Engels?

John Bellamy Foster: In Marxs Ecology and The Return of Nature, I was not primarily concerned with refuting popular assumptions on Marx and Engelss ecology which were, of course, mainly products of a profound lack of knowledge of their thought in this area. As Baruch Spinoza said, Ignorance is no argument. It thus hardly deserves a direct refutation. Rather, the concern was the more affirmative one of unearthing the classical historical-materialist ecological critiques developed by Marx and Engels, as well as later socialist thinkers who were influenced by them, as a methodological basis on which to develop a socialist ecology for the twenty-first century.

Marx, as we know today, was a foundational ecological thinker, not only in relation to his own time but also with respect to our own, since crucial aspects of his method have never been surpassed. This acute understanding of ecological contradictions grew out of his fundamental materialist method and was evident in his concepts of the universal metabolism of nature, the social metabolism, and the irreparable rift in the interdependent process of social metabolism (or metabolic rift). This allowed him, in a way that is unique in ecological thought down to the present, to develop a critique of the political economy of capital that focused on both the social and the environmental contradictions of the mode of production. His analysis in this respect anticipated and, in some ways, influenced the subsequent development of ecological thought. Today, the recovery of his ecological method has attained a real importance with regard to both theory and practice, giving rise to a powerful critique of the planetary crisis of the twenty-first century, underpinning the modern ecosocialist movement.

Engels adopted the same fundamental materialist method (if less philosophically sophisticated) as Marx, but their analyses took on somewhat different emphases rooted in the division of labor they adopted in their work. Although Marx was thoroughly immersed in the natural science of his time, and brought this into Capital at numerous points, it was Engels who more directly addressed natural science in his Condition of the Working Class in England (which was a pioneering work in epidemiology) and later in his Dialectics of Nature and Anti-Dhring. Engelss materialism, together with his approach to the dialectics of nature, propelled his work in an ecological direction. He famously said that Nature is the proof of dialectics. Although this has often been criticized, what he clearly meant, in todays terms, was that Ecology is the proof of dialectics, a view that takes on new meaning in the twenty-first century. In The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man (included in the Dialectics of Nature), Engels provided not only what Stephen Jay Gould called the most developed conception of gene-culture evolution, and thus the most advanced understanding of human evolution, to appear in the nineteenth century, he also provided one of the most powerful critiques of ecological destruction to be developed in his time and indeed up to our own.

Engelss incorporation of Darwins evolutionary theory within Marxist analysis was to influence subsequent socialist analyses. His theory of dialectics as constituting what we now call the emergence of new material powers through changing forms of organization, or what Joseph Needham called integrative levels, was crucial to later work by socialist scientists, and anticipated key developments in science in general. His speculations on the origins of the universe, origins of life, the origins of the human species through labor, and the origins of the family were also enormously important for later theoretical developments.

The chapter in The Return of Nature that focuses on the significance of the Marxist natural-scientific, evolutionary, and ecological tradition, embodied in the work of thinkers such as J. B. S. Haldane, J. D. Bernal, Joseph Needham, Lancelot Hogben, and Hyman Levy in the 1930s and 40s, is entitled The Return of Engels, since it was the rediscovery of Engelss dialectics of nature that constituted the initial basis for many of the revolutionary discoveries of the period, influencing the modern environmental movement.

DS and MW: How can this recovery of Engelss ecological thought change the way we understand the fate of dialectics of nature in the Soviet Union? The belief in a supposedly unbroken line of continuity between Engels and Stalinism still affects how many people in Central and Eastern Europe seem to think about this issue.

JBF: The issue of Soviet dialectical materialism is complex. And while I could discuss that at some length, I think it is most useful in this contextsince a long disquisition would not be in orderto focus on the ecological aspects, which will get at many of the salient issues.

It should hardly surprise us that in the 1920s up to the mid-1930s the Soviet Union had the most advanced ecological science in the world, encouraged initially by none other than V. I. Lenin himself. Moreover, it was inspired in large part by Engelss dialectics of nature, as well as Marxs broad dialectical and historical materialism. Even those Soviet-era thinkers who were not Marxists were influenced by the dialectical conceptions emerging at the time. Geophysicist Vladimir Vernadsky developed the notion of the biosphere and biogeochemical cycles; geologist Aleksei Pavlov introduced the category of the Anthropogene Period (also referred to as the Anthropocene); Bolshevik revolutionary leader and theorist Nikolai Bukharin applied Vernadskys concept of the biosphere to historical materialism and explored metabolism as constituting the basis of social and ecological equilibrium (although originally seen by him in rather mechanistic terms); biologist Alexander Oparin introduced the modern materialist theory of the origins of life (also developed at the same time by Haldane in England, who was influenced by Engels and Soviet thought); geneticist Nikolai Vavilov mapped the global sources of germplasm underlying the major crops; zoologist Vladimir Stanchinskii was the first to develop a rigorous energetic analysis of ecological communities and trophic levels, the editor of the USSRs first formal ecology journal, and the leading proponent of the Soviet zapovedniki, or scientific nature reserves; physicist Boris Hessen introduced the sociology of science and explored the significance of Engelss focus on the relations between the transmutation of matter and the transformation of energy; physicist B. Zavadovsky developed a powerful critique of vitalism in science; Nikolaevich Sukachev pioneered the analysis of swamp ecosystems that impressed Lenin in this respect. All of this was based on Marxian concepts of dialectical naturalism/materialism.

A number of these figures, namely, Bukharin, Vavilov, Zavadovsky, and Hessen, flew into London from Moscow in 1931 for the Second International Conference on the History of Science and Technology, where they had an enormous influence on socialist scientists in Britain such as Bernal, Needham, Hogben, Levy, and Haldane, leading to the tradition of red science in Britain that is explored in The Return of Nature. However, the impact of Stalinism (and Lysenkoism) was reflected in the fact that Bukharin, Vavilov, Zavadovsky, Hessen, and Stanchinskii were all eliminated in Stalins purges. Their tradition of dialectical-materialist science lived on primarily in the work of the British red scientists who were directly influenced by them and who became emblematic of what I have called a second foundation within Marxian natural science.

In the Stalin period, dialectical materialism in the Soviet Union was reduced to a set of empty formulae and took various crude forms, including positivism. Nevertheless, there remained authentic dialectical-materialist thinkers in the natural sciences (and the arts) concerned with ecology who managed to survive, such as Sukachev, who introduced the notion of biogeocoenosis, constituting in many ways a more dialectical alternative to the ecosystem concept tied to the biosphere. Sukachev, at the head of Soviet science, was to declare war on Trofim Lysenko and eventually defeated the latter, which opened the way to the revival of Soviet environmental thought, the resurrection of the zapovedniki, and the rise of what I have called late Soviet ecology in the late 1970s and 80s. It is at this time, beginning in the 1960s, that the Soviet climatologists, notably those surrounding the extraordinary figure of Mikhail Budyko, played the leading part in introducing the notion of accelerated climate change, while also assuming a major role in the development of nuclear winter analysis. Soviet scientists and philosophers got together to develop the notion of ecological civilization, which was later adopted in China. In all of this, we can see the power of dialectical-materialist ways of thinking despite attempts to reduce it to a positivistic dogma, the very inverse of itself.

None of this is to deny the ecological failures of the Soviet state. But just as we would not want to judge the value of all environmental and critical thought in the West by the failures of the capitalist system, which is now pointing us toward the complete destruction of the planet as a safe home for humanity, putting the survival of numerous species in question, including our own, we should not discount the contributions of all critical Soviet thinkers on the basis of the errors made in the Kremlin.

DS and MW: How can this complicated Soviet legacy inform our thinking today?

JBF: The answer lies in your reference to the complicated Soviet legacy. The Soviet Union (also including Soviet-type societies in general) cannot be treated as simply a monolithic society nor was its history a simple, continuous one. Rather, there were sharp breaks. In writing my article on Late Soviet Ecology and the Planetary Crisis in Monthly Review in June 2015, I looked at the three periods of Soviet history from an ecological perspective, represented by the period up to the mid-1930s, the core Stalin period beginning with the major purges, and then late Soviet ecology beginning with the thaw in the 1960s. What interested me, as indicated above, was that not only was the opening decade and a half in the Soviet Union, as is now well understood, a period of critical ecological advance, but also that this was not entirely destroyed in the Stalin period, and there was a new flowering of Soviet ecology near the end, arising principally out of the sciences. Moreover, the dialectical and materialist forms of thinking (to the extent that these persisted) led to very creative environmental insights along lines quite different from those in the West.

In late Soviet ecology, there was of course a greater emphasis on the possibilities of environmental planning as part of the overall planning process, which is very important compared to capitalisms anarchic market approach. And there was a significant unearthing of some of Marxs natural-scientific ideas. The notion of the creation of an ecological civilization represented a kind of thinking that is hardly evident in the West even today. Budyko and the Soviet climatologists around him were in the 1950s and early 60s the largest group of climate scientists and the most advanced in the world, though this shifted decisively toward the United States by the mid-1960s. The emphasis on the biosphere and on concepts such as biogeocoenosis and biogeochemical cycles gave Soviet ecologists a more integrated Earth System view. It is remarkable even today to read Budykos Global Ecology from the 1970s and compare it to what existed then in the West. There was something of a socialist ecological humanism that emerged in nascent form at this time.

Of course, there were contradictions because dogmatism still persisted in core areas along with the belief in Promethean megaprojects, such as diverting rivers. But many of the ecological figures in science and philosophy broke decisively with that. The massive Soviet conservation movement was a scientist-led dissident movement that was gaining ground throughout the 1970s and 80s and resulted in the largest conservation organization in the world. All of this went away, however, with the dissolution of the USSR itself.

DS and MW: You criticize the dualism of history and nature in Western Marxism and opt for a nuanced and nevertheless ontological understanding of the dialectics of nature. Why do you consider this ontological understanding important and how do you conceptualize the relation between the dialectics of nature and the dialectics of society?

JBF: The differentia specifica of Western Marxism as a philosophical tradition, separating it from other versions of Marxism, is its adherence to neo-Kantianism wherever questions of nature and society as well as ontology and epistemology are concerned. Western Marxism had its origins in footnote six of Georg Lukcss History and Class Consciousness in which he said that Engels, following Hegels mistaken lead, had extended dialectics to apply also to nature, encompassing not only society and history, but external nature too. Yet, the crucial determinants of dialectics in the social sense, requiring reflexivity in relation to the human subject, Lukcs said, are absent from our knowledge of nature. From this arose what has long been regarded as the distinguishing feature of Western Marxism in its abandonment, on neo-Kantian grounds, of the dialectics of nature. Ironically, Lukcs himself did not categorically reject the dialectics of nature. In fact, in a later chapter in History and Class Consciousness he stressed, in words similar to those of Engels, his acceptance of a merely objective dialectics of nature, while emphasizing that this was limited, and that dialectics in its most developed form was socially mediated and a subject-object relation. Moreover, one of the major themes in his work following History and Class Consciousness, starting with his Tailism manuscript just a few years later and extending to his Ontology of Social Being at the end of his life, was the conceptualization of a dialectics of nature and society rooted in Marxs concept of social metabolism.

Still, within the Western Marxist tradition itself, evolving from History and Class Consciousness but rejecting the dialectics of nature much more fully than Lukcs, there emerged a dualistic view in which the dialectical method applied only to history and society and not to the realm of nature, which was given over in its entirety to natural science and positivism. Marxism, therefore, restricted itself to an artificial totality that was entirely social and non-natural, divorced from the natural-material world, effectively excluding the entire physical universe. This conformed to the neo-Kantian view in which epistemology (or the theory of knowledge) subsumed ontology (or the nature of being), on the grounds that we could only really know the realm of the human subject, and not to any extent the external nonhuman world/universea view that critical realist philosopher Roy Bhaskar called the epistemic fallacy.

Such a perspective, in which epistemology completely dominated over ontology, however, was no longer fundamentally materialist, but tended increasingly to idealist views. The materialist conception of history came to be divorced from the materialist conception of nature. The Vician view that we could understand history because we had made it concealed a dualism in which the larger material world outside of and even prior to human society was characterized as an other, the domain of mechanism and positivism, not Marxism and dialectics. In this view, there was no room within Marxism for a concrete analysis of nature, ecology, or even Darwinian evolution, which all lay beyond its purview. Hence, Western Marxism was not able to produce any genuine ecological analysis, only an endless rejection of positivism, and an abstract and ambiguous critique of the domination of nature, which was little more than a critique of technology. This is not to deny that the Western Marxist philosophical tradition expanded our critical knowledge in many respects. But it was trapped in its own rejection of the material world beyond humanity as a universal other, a noumenon, or thing-in-itself.

In terms of why I consider ontology important, I would have to go back to my first conscious recognition of this in the 1970s through my encounter with Istvn Mszross Marxs Theory of Alienation, which addressed human social ontology by means of an emphasis on the human being as the self-mediating being of nature. Mszros, of course, drew this from Marxs Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts in which Marx, in his critique of G. W. F. Hegels Phenomenology at the end of the Manuscripts, explains that human beings are corporeal beings and thus objective, sensuous, material beings insofar as the objects of their needs lie outside of themselves. Through the historical development of production, human beings thus become the self-mediating beings of nature, if nonetheless subject to self-alienation.

This is the place where the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts end, but also the place where the German Ideology effectively begins, thus suggesting the lack of any epistemological break in Marxs thought in 184546. It is this ontological view, associated with Marxs theory of alienation, which is the starting point of historical materialism. But it emerges out of a deep materialist ontology. Beginning in the 1850s, under the influence of the work of his friend and revolutionary comrade, the physician-scientist Roland Daniels, author of Mikrokosmos, Marx began to conceptualize this ontological relation in production as the social metabolism between human beings and nature, out of which his most fundamental ecological conceptions eventually arose, and which lies at the center of Lukcss social ontology.

I came to understand Marxs ontological analysis this way early on, in the 1970s, because of my study of Marxs Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, Mszross Marxs Theory of Alienation, Lukcss 1967 preface to History and Class Consciousness, and the interviews of Lukcs in Conversations with Lukcs. My later study of Marxs materialism, going back to his doctoral thesis on Epicurus, his analysis of ecological metabolism, and Lukcss Ontology of Social Being, simply reinforced these views. This also overlaps with Joseph Fracchias recent work in his Bodies and Artefacts on Marx as a theorist of corporeality. Without this ontological conception rooted in Marxs deep materialism there can be no coherent Marxist critique.

DS and MW: But couldnt this be compatible with an approach that insists nature is knowable through dialectics (e.g., because it is part of human history and consciousness) without insisting that dialectics is, as it were, out there in nature? What do you think would be lost with this approach?

JBF: I often refer to the specific realm of dialectics involving the direct interaction of nature and society as the dialectics of nature and society, since this is somewhat different from the dialectics of nature or the dialectics of society considered separately. Much of critical thought involving both the natural and social world, such as Lukcss Ontology of Social Being, can be seen as involving the dialectics of nature and society. But there are obviously aspects of naturewhich can be seen as encompassing all of natural history and evolution in the universe as a wholethat have existed prior to and beyond the reach of humanity. Ontologically, humanity is part of the universal metabolism of nature. Our knowledge of the external natural world is the result of our interactions with (and within) this universal metabolism, primarily through the social metabolism represented by human production. The material understanding derived from these interactions is then extended through scientific inferences to aspects of extra-human nature that are not immediately available to us. Thus, if we go back far enough in the history of physics, all the way to antiquity, we find that the earliest principles with which philosophers understood the universe beyond themselves were all based on scientific inferences arising out of our own immediate material experiences as they understood them at the time, from which they inferred the nature of things in the universe as a whole. The very fact that such an approach to scientific inference has a general validity from the standpoint of logic expresses the fact that nature is not simply out there, but in here as well, in the sense that we are natural-material beings, and thus part of nature, as well as social beings. In fact, human society is an emergent form of nature with its own specific laws, but still subject to natures broader laws.

Marx, building on his deep knowledge of Epicurean philosophy, always emphasized the human sensuous relation to nature, in which human beings were conceived as objective beings and therefore had their needs outside themselves. And, of course, Marxs notion of the social metabolism of humanity and nature through production stressed the dynamics of this relation within human history. He saw this sensuous interaction with the world as constantly extended and the knowledge this generated as attaining rational form within material science. Lukcs, in his 1967 preface to History and Class Consciousness, agreed with Engels (and Marx) that, from an epistemological standpoint, humanity can also learn about external nature through scientific experiments. Hence, the Kantian thing-in-itself tends to recede as human production, knowledge, and science proceeds. All of this reflects our growing material knowledge of the natural world of which we are a part, and in all of this a dialectical, relational perspective is crucial.

Still, it remains a reality that the universal metabolism of nature necessarily extends beyond human interaction with it and thus any direct knowledge on our part. It would be both anthropocentric and unscientific to think otherwise. Hominins are only a few million years old, while most of the history of life and the universe precedes us and surrounds us, constituting the larger basis in which we exist. Humans thus exist alongside other forms of life and within the biogeochemical cycles of the Earth System as a whole. Understanding natural relationswhich have to be approached dialectically and not in a mechanical waythus requires a dialectics of nature, or what Engels and Lukcs called the merely objective dialectics, separate from direct human consciousness and action, and providing the basis for the more complete, reflexive dialectic, embodying human consciousness and subject-object relations.

Human beings are both an evolutionary product of nature and the self-mediating beings of nature, allowing us to perceive and act upon the world in meaningful, transformative ways. But just because of this we can also say that much of the universal metabolism of nature lies beyond our own corporeal existence, so that a merely objective dialectics of nature, in which humanity itself is decentered, is also necessary. The continual fluctuations, dynamic interactions, complex evolutionary processes, and integrative levels that make up the universal metabolism of nature and constitute the realm of merely objective dialectics, give rise within human societysince humanity itself is an emergent part of natureto powers of dialectical reason, enabling us to understand ourselves in connection with the changing material world around us. With this in mind, Marx in his Letters to Kugelmann referred to the dialectical method, viewed in its most general sense, as nothing other than the method of dealing with matter.

DS and MW: In contemporary debates, it is very common to see arguments that any distinction between humans and nonhuman nature is necessarily dualistic and anthropocentric. What do you see as the limits of that approach? Your own works suggest a more dialectical view.

JBF: The type of criticism that you mention has several different forms. One of these relates to the question of distinctions between human and nonhuman animals. Here the dominant Western position arising out of the Enlightenment was Ren Descartess famous anthropocentric dualism in which he separated human beings with a soul/mind, on the one hand, from nonhuman animals on the other, whom he characterized as mere machines. Descartes went so far as to apply vivisection to his wifes dog to prove that it had no soul. Marx strongly criticized Descartess view of animals as machines, insisting that this reflected the alienated, idealist viewpoint of the bourgeois order, arguing that in the medieval world nonhuman animals were seen not as machines but as assistants to human beings, a viewpoint with which Marx identified.

Marx was heavily influenced by the Epicurean materialist tradition, by Hermann Samuel Reimaruss theory of animal drives, and by Darwins theory of evolution, all of which emphasized the close connections between human beings and nonhuman animals, departing from the Cartesian dualist tradition in this respect. Indeed, both Marx and Engels attributed most of the higher forms of consciousness and self-consciousness to nonhuman animals, but understood human labor as a new emergent form, in which human beings, due to their social organization, became the self-mediating beings of nature on a level that was akin tobut qualitatively distinguished from, in terms of society, language, technology, and historythat of nonhuman animals. This was linked to evolutionary theory. In Engelss The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man, one finds not only the highest conceivable estimation of the powers, including intellectual powers, of nonhuman animals, but also, as mentioned above, the most sophisticated nineteenth-century view of gene-culture coevolution, explaining the distinctive evolution of the human species. In this perspective, there are qualitative breaks represented by human evolution, but the kinship to nonhuman animals remains central to what Darwin called the evolutionary descent of man.

In terms of broader criticisms charging Marxism with a dualism of human beings and nature, this is often based on a crude posthumanist rejection of Marxian dialectics as itself dualistic. This forgets that dialectics, and particularly Hegelian dialectics, has as its object overcoming dualism, based on an understanding of contradiction, change, mediation, negation, transcendence, and totality. Conversely, the equally simplistic (and non-dialectical) attempt to treat dialectics as simply absolute unity or a monistic worldview, merely removes the contradictions. As Lukcs stated, Marxian dialectics is concerned with the identity of identity and non-identity, not with their absolute conflation. Nor is todays popular hybridism a meaningful substitute for dialectics. In his Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Right, Marx warned against the unhappy hybrid in which the form betrays the meaning and the meaning the form.

Some thinkers have gone so far as to criticize Marxs dialectical theory of metabolic rift itself as dualistic, forgetting that the focus of Marxs analysis here was social metabolism (the labor and production process) constituting the mediation between humanity and the universal metabolism of nature, that is, nature as a whole. Mediation seen in relation to totality is, of course, at the core of the dialectical method. In the case of the metabolic rift, we are speaking of a disruption in the metabolism, or what Marx called the alienated mediation (and what Mszros termed second order mediations) between historical humanity and the rest of nature, constituting a fundamental ecological contradiction. This is, in fact, the way in which Marx constructed his ecological critique. To say that this is dualistic because there is humanity on one side and nonhuman nature on the other is to forget that humanity is part of nature, and that the material mediation of this relation, in the form of metabolism/production, is both the essence of the human connection to the earth and the basis of historical contradiction and change.

DS and MW: As you have indicated, the metabolic rift is a crucial concept in your thought. In your book with Brett Clark, The Robbery of Nature, you connect this to a corporeal rift within the human body itself. How do you understand the relationship between these two rifts? Why do they remain central to understanding our contemporary world?

JBF: Marxs concept of metabolic rift is now so well known to socialist thinkers and activists that it does not require a detailed analysis here. It arose out of his understanding of the labor and production process as constituting the social metabolism, or the specifically human relation to the universal metabolism of nature. However, since capitalism is based from the start on the twofold alienation of nature and human labor and has as its singular object the accumulation of capital, rifts in the human metabolism of nature are an inherent part of the system. Marx first conceptualized the metabolic rift in terms of the soil fertility crisis in nineteenth-century England, whereby the soil nutrients were removed from the land in the food and fiber sent hundreds, and even thousands, of miles away to new urban centers. These nutrients did not return to the land, but became waste in the cities, which resulted in massive attempts to repair the declining soil fertility by importing natural fertilizers, such as guano from Peru, followed by the development of artificial fertilizers. From the very beginning, therefore, Marxian ecology was based on the notion of the continual disruption of biogeochemical cycles inherent to capitalism.

The metabolic rift has often been interpreted simply in terms of the human relation to nonhuman nature. Nevertheless, human beings themselves, as corporeal beings, are an emergent part of nature and the metabolic rift also applies to the human body. Brett Clark and I therefore introduced the concept of the corporeal rift to address this problem. This is in fact consistent with Marxs whole conceptual framework. Thus, Marx, in referring to Engelss Condition of the Working Class in England two decades later in Capital, argued that the same general phenomenon of the disruption in natures metabolism represented by the guano trade was also represented by the effects on human corporeal existence of the periodic epidemics facilitated by capitalist relations of production.

We therefore developed the concept of the corporeal rift to explain how capitalism creates rifts in human bodily existence, as in what Engels in his The Condition of the Working Class called social murder. This allowed us to investigate in human-ecological terms such concrete historical issues as: (1) the extreme exploitation and shortening of the lives of workers; (2) the role of slavery (for example, the fact, discussed by Marx, that the slave-auction contracts between buyers and sellers of slaves often designated the life expectancy of slaves as no more than seven years); (3) the expropriation of womens labor and bodies associated with capitalist forms of social reproduction; (4) the genocide historically inflicted on Indigenous populations; and (5) the role of pandemics, as with COVID-19. The Robbery of Nature was particularly concerned with Marxs concept of expropriation as underlying the metabolic rift under capitalism, and how that affected human corporeality. We call this the problem of the robbery and the rift. The human body, in this view, is itself a site of ecological and social destruction. Naturally, the issue of corporeality can be applied to nonhuman animal bodies too, but our goal was specifically to capture the corporeal dimensions of the metabolic rift as they related to human beings.

DS and MW: Should we then see the concept of corporeal rift as extending and giving scientific grounding to the notion of alienation as it appears in Marxs early writings, perhaps in a similar way to how you describe the German Ideology picking up where the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts left off?

JBF: If we look at Marxs discussion in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, he proceeds from his famous discussion of the alienation of labor to the environmental and physiological effects of this alienation on human beings. Thus, he writes of the industrial worker: Light, air, etc.the simplest animal cleanlinessceases to be a need for man. Dirtthis pollution and putrefaction of man, the sewage (this word to be understood in its literal sense) of civilizationbecomes an element of life for him. Universal unnatural neglect, putrefied nature, becomes an element of life for him. Marx is here describing a corporeal rift in human life resulting from the alienation of labor but extended to the degradation of the entirety of human existence, all that is associated with life.

Interpretations of Marxs theory of alienation are often too narrow, focusing on the alienation of labor by itself, while failing to recognize the connection of the alienation of labor to the alienation of nature, and, with respect to humanity, the estrangement of human beings from their corporeal organization, as living, breathing, objective beings. What we call ecological destruction is properly applied not only to external nature, but to human beings as corporeal beings as well. And all of this is of course related to alienation in its material dimensions.

DS and MW: Your work argueswith Marxthat the metabolic rift can only be overcome in a society where the associated producers rationally regulate the metabolism between humanity and nature. In this context, how do you see the relationship between scientific knowledge and democratic control? In the current moment, we repeatedly hear calls to listen to the science that are combined with a technocratic mindset that is often suspicious of and hostile to democracy. How can we avoid this trap?

JBF: A fully rational science is incompatible with the logic of capital, which also means that science, although often corrupted and formally subsumed under capitalism, can never be absolutely subsumed by capital, and thus it frequently reemerges as an anticapitalist force. It is important to remember that Marxs Capital was a scientific project as well as a critique. Much of The Return of Nature is concerned with socialism and the development of ecological science. The method of science in the broadest sense, that is, in the way in which Marx and Engels referred to Wissenschaft as a system of learning, knowledge, and science, is the intellectual basis of all critique. In the historical materialist view, moreover, major breakthroughs in science tend to come from the bottom and from viewpoints outside the established systemif only because of the irrationalisms imposed by bourgeois society, including the role of idealism.

The social relations of science movement, inspired by J. D. Bernals 1939 work The Social Function of Science, was supported by a majority of British scientists at the time, most of whom were on the left. It constituted a major attempt to challenge the system from the standpoint of science. It was Bernal who introduced the phrase Science for the People in his 1952 Marx and Science. It was in this period that Hogben and Haldane destroyed the genetic theory of race and eugenics in response to the racist distortions of science and ecology by figures like Jan Christiaan Smuts in South Africa. The modern ecological revolt itself began in the 1950s, when figures like Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Linus Pauling, Bernal, and Barry Commoner organized against atmospheric nuclear testing following the disaster at Castle Bravo. Rachel Carson came out of this same movement in science. Commoners Science and Survival, which already raised the issue of global warming in the 1960s, was part of this struggle. Science for the People movements emerged in the 1970s in the United States and in Britain. In the United States, this was associated with such leading radical scientists as Richard Lewontin, Richard Levins, Gould, and Ruth Hubbard. In Britain, Hilary Rose and Steven Rose played leading roles.

The revolutionary scientific discoveries with respect to climate change were developed by scientists in the Soviet Union and the United States, and immediately generated radical questions about contemporary production. The definitive studies of nuclear winter within atmospheric science over the last thirty years have been opposed and suppressed by the Pentagon in its own treatments of the effects of nuclear war, but nonetheless the science cannot be denied. Genuine science has self-criticism as its basis, something that runs against the power of ideology.

That does not mean, of course, that science cannot be corrupted in various ways or manipulated by the system or employed in an elitist, formalistic, and technocratic manner, which is a big part of our reality. Capitalism necessarily distorts and corrupts science. But that is exactly why struggles over the social relations of science are necessary. It is therefore extremely important that Science for the People as an organization and also as a magazine has been revived in the United States in recent years. Without critical science, there would be no science of ecology and virtually no possibility of an effective ecology movement. Marxists who see natural science as inherently technocratic, positivistic, and elitist are in many ways giving up the struggle at the outset, which cannot be carried out independently of science. It is worth looking at the very different attitudes toward science in Cuba, as represented by figures such as molecular immunologist Augustn Lage Dvila, for example, in his article Socialism and the Knowledge Economy published in the December 2006 issue of Monthly Review.

DS and MW: And we also see these elitist and technocratic approaches emerging in discussions of COVID-19.

JBF: In terms of COVID-19, we do see the manipulation of science by the establishment in various ways, sometimes to cover up failures. But we also see major advances in science coming to the fore. The work of critical epidemiologist Rob Wallace and his associates within Structural One Health, coming out of the historical-materialist tradition, have been extraordinarily important in bringing out the historical roots of the pandemic in capitalist global agribusiness and the circuits of capital, as well as the social factors that have led to its disproportionate impact on the most vulnerable sectors of society. We can in fact draw on a long history of socialist contributions to epidemiology from the time of Engels and Marx to the present, as Brett Clark, Hannah Holleman, and I explained in an article in Monthly Review in June 2021, entitled Capital and the Ecology of Disease.

DS and MW: In the context of the ecological crisis, you write about the importance of transcending the capitalist form of value and emphasize the necessity of producing use values that meet genuine human needs. Is there a danger of technocracy when it comes to determining and promoting these needs? To use the language of another hero of The Return of Nature, William Morris, how do we determine the difference between the vast quantity of useless things produced by capitalism and that which meets real needs?

JBF: We live in a technologically mediated civilization, so the danger of technocracy is always something to guard against. But much of this derives from the class basis and hierarchical structure of our society itself. Socialism in the twenty-first century demands substantive equality and ecological sustainability, both of which militate against hierarchical technocratic structures and capitalist monopolistic market mechanisms. We must remember that our most pressing problems today are not conducive to purely technological solutions but have to do mainly with social relations. Widespread education and active control from the bottom of society are key.

In terms of how we determine what are useless things, we have to be able first to analyze how various commodities fit into the structure of production and social needs. This is not as difficult as one might think. Marx was the first to refer to the hierarchy of needs, not Abraham Maslow in the 1950s. In his Notes on Adolph Wagner, Marx wrote of the hierarchy of his [mans or humanitys] needs, which can clearly be given a certain rank-ordering. This starts, of course, with our bodily needs. In the United States, three individuals own more wealth than the bottom 60 percent of the population. The inequality is so vast that the so-called masters of the universe at the top of the class pyramid have private jets and can take trips into outer space for the thrill of it, while much of the population in a rich country like the United States lacks clean water, clean air, adequate and nutritious food, housing, access to health care, transportation, decent education, connectivity, etc. Individual acquisition is put ahead of community relations and needs.

It is certainly possible, in a society that emphasizes substantive equality and ecological sustainability, to determine that production should first satisfy the basic needs of all and to move forward from there. Needs, moreover, do not come just in the form of commodities, but in the form of community, social relations, education, health, aesthetic enjoyment, human empowerment, etc. Use values are essentially qualitative and not simply representations of economic value, as in the case of exchange values. Morris decried the vast waste in society and the fact that people were compelled to carry out useless labor producing useless things, such as barbed wire, 100-ton guns, sky signs, and advertising boards, and thus waste their working lives away. There is no doubt we can move more in the direction of rational, ecologically sustainable production, given the extreme forms of waste and destruction in the contemporary economy that exist only to absorb the enormous economic surplus of capitalism and to keep it going. In the United States, trillions of dollars are spent on marketing every year for the purpose of convincing people to buy things, resulting in a situation in which people neither need what they want nor want what they need.

DS and MW: Could we say then that democratic control from below is itself a need, or perhaps that it is a necessary requirement for articulating and identifying our needs for social relations, community, empowerment, etc.?

JBF: I agree with this in general terms, but such democratic control from below in any real sense is impossible under capitalism. Nor, clearly, was it achievable in Soviet-type societies. From a long-range socialist perspective, it will be necessary to return to the notion of the withering away of the state, viewed as a hierarchical structure standing above society. In his recently published posthumous work Beyond Leviathan: Critique of the State, Mszros calls for the progressive requisition of the alienated powers of decision-making by society as a whole as represented by the self-managing freely associated producer.

DS and MW: In recent years, it feels like politicians and theorists of the radical left have finally begun to catch up with the climate crisis, and there is a lively debate about both strategy (Green New Deals, degrowth, climate jobs, ecological Leninism) and tactics (direct action, electoralism, etc.). Where do you see the most hope for repairing the metabolic rift today?

JBF: In terms of theorists of the radical left finally catching up with the urgency of the climate crisis, it is important to understand that thinkers on the left were leaders with respect to addressing the climate crisis as far back as the 1960s and 70s. One can point to socialists like Commoner, Virginia Brodine, Charles Anderson, and even Jrgen Habermas, who emphasized the dangers of climate change in the late 1960s and 70s. Andersons book, inspired in part by Commoner, was entitled The Sociology of Survival and took the issues of global warming and ecological debt seriously. Of course, the greater part of the left ignored these questions at the time, as did society as a whole. Still, there is no sense in which socialist thinkers were behind in the development of ecological ideas, which arose particularly from the left.

I dealt with climate change and the whole question of the disruption of the earths ecological cycles in my book The Vulnerable Planet in 1994 and have expanded that analysis ever since. Climate change, of course, is simply one part of our planetary ecological crisis, which is marked by the crossing of numerous planetary boundaries beyond which the earth is no longer a safe home for humanity. That means that the Anthropocene crisis goes well beyond climate change itself.

In terms of the debate on strategy, a lot of it doesnt get to the urgency of the issue or the scale of the change that is necessary. The notion of a Green New Deal actually started within the mainstream liberal/neoliberal tradition and was heavily promoted by certain business interests. Barack Obama even included it in his program when he ran for president in 2008, but then dropped it after being elected president. Generally, it is seen as a form of green Keynesianism. It was given a more radical form, emphasizing a just transition and frontline communities by the U.S. Green Party and then adopted in a watered-down form by left Democrats. A more revolutionary version is conceived in terms of a Peoples Green New Deal as originally proposed by Science for the People, which I supported in an article entitled On Fire This Time in Monthly Review in November 2019. Max Ajl has done a service in promoting the notion of a global Peoples Green New Deal. Perhaps the deepest, most all-encompassing perspective along these lines is to be found in the Red Deal by the Red Nation, arising from Indigenous socialist activists in the United States.

Degrowth analysis has similarly varied between approaches that illogically perceive it as compatible with capitalism (such as Serge Latouche), all the way to ecosocialist approaches. In regard to the latter, we have published For an Ecosocialist Degrowth by Michael Lwy, Bengi Akbulut, Sabrina Fernandes, and Giorgos Kallis in the April 2022 issue of Monthly Review.

Andreas Malm has been advocating a war communism and ecological Leninism strategy since 2015, as evident in an essay he wrote on the subject for a book entitled The Politics of Ecosocialism, edited by Kasja Bornsa book to which I also contributed. His approach is certainly provocative and is superior to other approaches in that it is premised on recognition of the full gravity, immense scale, and unprecedented urgency of the problem and the idea that the only way out is revolutionary transformation. His most recent book in this line is Fighting in a World on Fire (2023).

My general approach to addressing the threat of the planetary rift, for example in my book Capitalism in the Anthropocene, published by Monthly Review Press in 2022, differs from, but is not in conflict with, the more radical of the strategies above. I have been less concerned with advocating a particular political-institutional mechanism than at looking at what has to be done if civilization and humanity is to survive and emphasizing the need for an ecological and social revolution, one which would necessarily extend beyond anything that humanity has ever seen before. Such a planetary ecological and social revolution would have to be based on what I have called an environmental proletariat reflecting a broader and deeper material struggle, embracing not only the working class, conceived in the broadest terms and focused on environmental (urban and rural) as well as economic workplace struggles, but also including the Landless Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil and similar movements, the international peasantry, and Indigenous peoples. The environmental proletariat seen in these deep materialist terms is most likely to emerge first as a vital revolutionary movement within the Global South and not within the fortresses of capitalism in the Global North. Yet, the nature of the planetary environmental crisis is such that the terrain of struggle will not be limited to any specific part of the planet. Nor can workable solutions be found on a planetary level unless humanity everywhere is mobilized to combat capitalisms tendency to produce an irreversible rift in the interdependent process of social metabolism.

The scale of the struggle before us, which will eclipse all previous movements and revolutions, is so enormous, necessarily mobilizing hundreds of millions and even billions of people, that there is no sense in going too far in mapping out particular state-oriented, institutional solutions, which will be a product of the struggle itself and will vary from place to place, representing many different revolutionary vernaculars. Nevertheless, it is likely that the struggle, at least in the capitalist core, will have two phases, the first of which will be ecodemocratic, aimed at a kind of ecological popular front directed at the fossil fuel companies and financial capital, but pointing in an ecosocialist direction since going against the logic of capitalism; the second of which will take a form in which ecosocialism is dominant if there is to be any hope at all. What is certain is that we have to abandon capital accumulation as the driver of society. As the leaked 2022 IPCC climate mitigation report agreed to by scientists clearly indicatedprior to the censorship of this report by governments in the published versionwhat is required at this point is the adoption of new, low-energy solutions, necessitating vast changes in the structure of social relations.

Taken as a whole, the various parts of the IPCCs Sixth Assessment Report of 202122 tell us that even in the most optimistic scenario the next few decades will be catastrophic for much of humanity all over the earth. The force of climate change is now bearing down on the world population. It is still possible, given revolutionary-scale transformations in production, consumption, and energy use, to avoid irreversible climate catastrophe, which would require that carbon dioxide emissions peak this decade and that we reach zero net emissions by 2050. The object is to stay well below a 2C increase in global average temperature and remain on the 1.5C pathway (which means not overshooting it until 2040 and getting back down to a 1.4C increase by the end of the century). Still, even then, the catastrophes threatening much of the worlds population will be unprecedented compared to all previous human history.

In these circumstances, we have shifted our emphasis in Monthly Review, as represented by our JulyAugust 2022 issue on Socialism and Ecological Survival, from simply emphasizing the mitigation of climate change to what communities and populations need to do to protect themselves in the present and future, employing radical and revolutionary ecosocialist strategies. Our hope is that, as people mobilize against the environmental conditions produced by the present social system that increasingly threatens their lives, they will also be animated to protect the earth as a home for humanity, carrying out a worldwide ecological and social revolutionthe actual form of which is still to be determined. This is the great struggle of the twenty-first century: a struggle against planetary-scale ecological murder, or omnicide.

Read more here:
Marxian Ecology, Dialectics, and the Hierarchy of Needs - Monthly Review

If you own a Tesla or any other all-electric vehicle, youre helping the environment by generating a smaller individual carbon footprint and by not making a lot of noise. But youre also doing a thing that irks elected officials not paying the famous gas tax because Well, your "green" vehicle doesnt need fuel! But that may be changing soon.

Texas may soon put more financial pressure on environmentally-conscious people.

But first, let's see why this new tax can be considered just a tad bit outrageous. Texas receives $0.20 for every gallon ($0.05 per liter) of gas or diesel drivers buy. This value has not changed since 1991, despite inflation climbing in the past three decades. The money coming from the drivers' pockets is generally used to keep the states roads in at least an acceptable condition. But with EVs becoming increasingly popular, fewer people are stopping at the gas station. Thus, Texas is losing important revenue.

However, EV drivers can't be exempt from paying their fair share of taxes. So, the Lone Star State had to figure out a way for people driving zero-tailpipe emission cars to contribute to the public budget. They decided to look around for the right answer instead of just adopting a random tax.

That's why, three years ago, the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) worked with the states Department of Transportation, the Public Utility Commission, the Department of Public Safety, and the Commission on Environmental Quality to figure out how much EV drivers should pay. The Department of Transportation discovered that for every new electrified vehicle (full or plug-in hybrid) that replaced a fossil fuel-powered car, the state lost approximately $80 per year in taxes. In the case of EVs, the loss grew to $100 per year.

The conclusion the study reached was that EV owners should pay $100 to cover the fact that theyre not paying the states gas tax.

But last year, legislators wanted to double the yearly tax. Fortunately, that initiative failed.

However, lawmakers are now back at it. The Texas Senate already voted on a $200 yearly tax for EV owners and now the House of Representatives must debate the bill known as HB 2199 before it can reach the governors desk.

For a yearly tax, that amount may not seem like such a big financial effort for most EV owners. But when compared with what internal combustion engine vehicle owners pay ($108 for trucks, and $63 for cars), the $200 tax feels a tad bit excessive.

Moreover, as the gas tax is applied on a per-gallon basis, its fairer for any Texas driver because they dont have to pay it all at once.

The worst thing, though, is that a Model 3 owner would have to pay $400 when registering their new EV because brand-new cars are initially taxed for two years. With inflation leaving marks all over the economy and companies freezing hiring, its not hard to understand why many people might not have so much money to spend at once.

But since Texans might be reluctant to a per-mile traveled tax, EV owners could end up paying a lot more than drivers of conventional cars. Right now, its in the hands of Texas lawmakers who represent people living in the state that is the largest oil producer in the U.S.

Go here to read the rest:
Texas May Be Where Tesla's Headquartered, but Lawmakers Want ... - autoevolution

This article is part of a series on process sociology, which was compiled and edited by Alexandros Koutsoukis and Andrew Linklater (before his untimely passing).

As the effects of the global ecological crisis become increasingly more evident, there have been growing calls within International Relations (IR) for the discipline to develop more sophisticated theoretical and analytical frameworks that are capable of encompassing the role of human/non-human nature relations in world politics (see: Cudworth and Hobden 2011; Burke et al. 2016; Harrington 2016; Hamilton 2018; Corry 2019; Pereira and Saramago 2020; Kurki 2020, to name a few examples). These calls have emphasized the need for IR to overcome its tendency to treat non-human nature as something separate from human social processes, forming little more than the background for human dramas. Instead, the argument is that there is a growing need to recognize the fundamental embeddedness of human life and social world in non-human nature and the inescapable developmental interweaving of the human and the non-human parts of the universe.

Process sociology provides a particularly compelling approach to theorize and analyse these relations. It frames human/non-human nature relations in the long-term process of evolution on Earth in a way that recognizes the fundamental embeddedness of humans in nature, while avoiding a reductionist perspective that sees human behaviour and social processes as simply the causal outcome of natural-biological processes. It adopts an approach that emphasizes the unity of humans and nature, while highlighting evolved, distinguishable features of the human species that have allowed it to play a key, and frequently destructive, role in the recent ecological history of the Earth (Elias 2011).

These evolved features, such as the vocal apparatus and cortical brain dominance, have permitted human communication and learning to occur through the production and reception of sound-patterns that are not predominantly genetically determined, as is the case with other animals (Elias 2011: 71). Human beings thus possess a unique capacity to produce symbolically codified stocks of knowledge about their world and their conditions of existence that function as means of behavioural orientation that can be passed on between generations (see, Linklater 2019). Symbolic communication permits humans to develop learning processes about the world that can be symbolically codified into an ever-expanding fund of knowledge that orientates their control of external non-human nature, and its manipulation towards human ends, at a pace that far exceeds that of other species. This opened the way for the human species preponderance, and eventual destabilizing impact, on the planets ecosystems (see: Quilley 2004; 2011; Goudsblom 1995; Goudsblom and De Vriers 2002).

However, these same learning processes have also been argued to potentially open the way for a more reflexive relation with non-human nature; one in which humans beings learn how to more consciously control their own capacity to control non-human nature and how to orientate their activity towards the development of more ecologically sustainable forms of social organization. Described as ecological civilizing processes (see Rohloff 2018; Quilley 2009, 2011), these learning processes are characterised by increases in self-restraint regarding consumption, [and] increases in foresight and recognition of interdependencies between humans and the environment (Rohloff 2018: 36). One of the main innovative aspects of process sociology is how it provides a theoretical framework that permits tracing the social processes regulating the development of these collective learning processes.

From a process sociological perspective, human/non-human nature relations, and the possibility of ecological civilizing processes, are shaped by what Norbert Elias (2012) calls the triad of controls. This concept refers to one of the universals of human development (see Saramago 2021), i.e., a set of controls that all societies, irrespective of their context, have to exercise in order to ensure their continued survival and reproduction. The triad of controls entails: 1) control over non-human complexes of events that is, control over natural events; 2) control over interpersonal relationships that is, over social processes; and 3) control of human beings over themselves as individuals that is, over their internal impulses and inclinations. These three dimensions of control are interdependent both in their development and in their functioning, being that, for example, the extension of control over nature is directly interdependent with changes in both self-control and in control over interpersonal relations (Elias 2012: 152). The triad of controls permits tracing the intertwinement of developments at the level of social relations between people, relations between human societies and external non-human nature, and peoples relations with their own internal inclinations and impulses. Specifically, it permits to theoretically capture the interweaving between safety/danger ratios in human relations with non-human nature and how these influence both peoples control over their internal impulses and over the social processes that they collectively constitute (Quilley 2004: 60).

The argument in this context is that, when threatened by natural phenomena that they cannot control, human beings tend to be less capable of exercising self-control over their internal affects, namely in what regards emotions of fear and insecurity. Human knowledge production about external nature and about society thus tends to be more involved, i.e., predominantly shaped by ego-centric concerns and by society- and time-bound perspectives (Elias 2007: 125; see also: Saramago 2020). Under these conditions, the social production of symbolically codified knowledge, on the basis of which people orientate themselves in relation to the natural and social worlds, exhibits a high level of fantasy-content (Elias 2007: 137; see, Linklater 2022). It is focused on filling the gaps in knowledge with forms of magical-mythical thinking that are more concerned with understanding the meaning of natural phenomena for oneself and ones community, rather than understanding their underlying processual dynamics (Elias 2007: 137). Perceiving nature and society in a more involved and ego-centric manner blocks peoples capacity to achieve a more decentred perspective, on the basis of which they might analyse natural and social processes, and develop symbolic models of these phenomena, whose focus is not so much on capturing their meaning but rather in understanding what they are, how their development is structured, and how they are connected to each other.

As such, peoples capacity to orientate vis--vis non-human nature and society in a manner that guarantees a more adequate intervention in natural and social phenomena, and a greater degree of collective and conscious control over them, is lower under conditions of relatively high involvement than under conditions in which the balance between more involved and more detached perspectives, between fantasy-content and more decentred and reliable knowledge, has significantly tilted towards the latter. Responses to the COVID-19 pandemic itself an unplanned process arising from deforestation and destruction of natural habitats (World Wildlife Fund 2020) that sought to regain control over the phenomenon either by denying its existence or by adopting a nationalist isolationist response characterized by the targeting of migrants and the hoarding of medical resources, expressed such a slide towards higher levels of involvement and the development of symbolically-mediated forms of the triad of controls that embodied a higher level of fantasy-content.

From a process sociological perspective, the possibility of ecological civilizing processes thus involves a conscious and continued effort at detachment. One that permits the development of less ego-centric and more reality-congruent means of orientation regarding the radical conditions of social and ecological global interdependence of human and non-human life, as well as their political and ethical implications (Saramago 2020). Such means of orientation are fundamental for the emergence of a global ecological civilizing process characterized by the development of symbolically-mediated patterns of the triad of controls oriented by values that are more congruent with the reality of global ecological interdependence, such as ecological sustainability, democratic dialogue and the stretching of peoples perspectives beyond their national standpoints in decision-making processes that affect relevant human and non-human outsiders (Saramago 2020; see also: Linklater 2009: 487, 2016: Ch. 10 and 11). Such more detached perspectives would recognize the entire vital network of interdependencies in which human lives evolve (Goudsblom 2002b, 414). It would imply a conception of non-human nature as a self-organizing emergent process, of which human beings are an indissociable part, and whose relations with non-human nature thus have to be oriented towards understanding its natural processual dynamics and how better human beings might position themselves vis--vis those dynamics so as to ensure their own survival and flourishing while guaranteeing the sustainability of the natural processes on which all life on the planet depends. Control over nature, under those conditions, would assume less the form of domination and more the form of a working-with emergent natural processes towards human-established ends (see Saramago 2020, 215)

But the process sociological perspective also notes that exactly as a consequence of the social processes mentioned above, namely the interweaving between safety/danger ratios and the involvement-detachment balance in peoples perspectives of the natural and social worlds, as the effects of the global ecological crisis are increasingly felt and pose a growing threat to human beings and their societies, it becomes increasingly more difficult to develop such a more detached perspective.

Process sociology thus reserves a fundamental role for social scientists in this context. As conscious producers of more detached and less ego- and nation-centred symbolically mediated means of orientation, social scientists can play a fundamental role in promoting the widening of peoples self-images and modes of attunement in ways that might underline patterns of self-restraint, control of external nature and control of social processes that are more adequate to the reality of global ecological interdependence. This entails, further, the need for a connection between the social scientific production of such means of orientation and social and political movements capable of promoting new local, national, and global patterns of the triad of controls that, codified in norms such as cosmopolitan ecological citizenship, deal with the disjuncture between more involved attachments to nation-states and the need for worldwide steering mechanisms (Linklater 2016: 467). The possibility of ecological civilizing processes thus involves an arduous and potentially inter-generational effort focused both on the development of more detached analyses of humankinds ecological interdependence and on the involved assessment of the constantly changing historical potentials and limits to human activity (on the complex relation between involvement and detachment in process sociology, see: Linklater 2019b). But as Elias (2011: 174) notes, it is unlikely that [human beings] will find () anything better to do than to search for just that, for the production of better conditions of life on Earth.

References

Burke, Anthony; Fishel, Stephanie; Mitchell, Audra; Dalby, Simon and Levine, Daniel (2016) Planet Politics: A manifesto from the end of IR, Millennium: Journal of International Affairs 44(3), pp. 499523.

Clara, Eroukhamoff and Harker, Matt [Eds.] (2017) Reflections on Posthuman International Relations: The Anthropocene, security and ecology. E-IR Publishing.

Corry, Olaf (2019) Nature and the international: Towards a materialist understanding of societal multiplicity. Globalizations 17(3), pp. 419435.

Cudworth, Erica and Hobden, Stephen (2011) Posthuman International Relations: Complexity, ecologism and global politics. New York: Zed Books.

Elias, Norbert (2007) Involvement and Detachment. Dublin: University College Dublin Press [Vol. 8 of the Collected Works of Norbert Elias].

Elias, Norbert (2011) The Symbol Theory. Dublin: University College Dublin Press [Vol. 13 of the Collected Works of Norbert Elias].

Elias, Norbert (2012b) What is Sociology? Dublin: University College Dublin Press [Vol. 5 of the Collected Works of Norbert Elias].

Hamilton, Scott (2018) The Measure of All Things? The Anthropocene as a Global Biopolitics of Carbon. European Journal of International Relations 24(1), pp. 3357.

Harrington, Cameron (2016) The Ends of the World: International Relations and the Anthropocene. Millennium: Journal of International Affairs 44(3), pp. 478498.

Kurki, Milja (2020) International Relations in a Relational Universe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Linklater, Andrew (2009) Human Interconnectedness. International Relations 23(3), pp. 481497.

Linklater, Andrew (2016) Violence and Civilization in the Western States-Systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Linklater, Andrew (2019) Symbols and World Politics: Towards a long-term perspective on historical trends and contemporary challenges. European Journal of International Relations 25(3), pp. 931954.

Linklater, Andrew (2019b) Process sociology and human emancipation: Involvement and detachment reconsidered. Human Figurations: Long-term perspectives on the human condition 8(1).

Linklater, Andrew (2022) Religion and civilization in the sociology of Norbert Elias: Fantasy-reality balances in long-term perspective. History of the Human Sciences 36(1), pp. 5679.

Pereira, Joana Castro and Saramago, Andr [Eds.] (2020) Non-Human Nature in World Politics: Theory and practice. Cham: Springer.

Quilley, Stephen (2004) Ecology, human nature, and civilizing processes: biology and sociology in the work of Norbert Elias. In Steven Loyal and Stephen Quilley (eds.) The Sociology of Norbert Elias. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Quilley, Stephen (2009) The Land Ethic as an Ecological Civilizing Process: Aldo Leopold, Norbert Elias, and environmental philosophy. Environmental Ethics 31(2), pp. 115134.

Quilley, Stephen (2011) Entropy, the anthroposphere and the ecology of civilization: An essay on the problem of liberalism in one village in the long view. The Sociological Review 59(1), pp. 6590.

Rohloff, Amanda (2018) Climate Change, Moral Panics and Civilization. Abingdon: Routledge.

Saramago, Andr (2020) Reality-congruence, emancipatory politics and situated knowledge in International Relations: A process sociological perspective. International Relations 34(2), pp. 204224.

Saramago, Andr (2021) Post-Eurocentric grand narratives in critical international theory. European Journal of International Relations 28(1), pp. 629.

World Wildlife Fund (2020) Living Planet Report 2020: Bending the curve of biodiversity loss. Almond, R., Grooten, M. and Petersen, T. (eds.). Gland: World Wildlife Fund.

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Process Sociology and the Global Ecological Crisis - E-International Relations

In 1953, a split took place in the Trotskyist movement between the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) and a faction led by Michel Pablo and Ernest Mandel. The Pabloites rejected the independent political role of the working class and asserted that the Stalinist bureaucracy would be compelled to lead revolutionary struggles. Seventy years later, as an objectively revolutionary confrontation emerges between the French working class and President Emmanuel Macron, the implications of this split are emerging very clearly.

Amid the largest strikes in France since the May 1968 general strike, the Parti de lgalit socialiste (PES), the ICFIs French section, insists that since Macron is trying to rule against the people, he must be brought down by a general strike. As the union bureaucracies carry out mediation with Macron to prop up his government, the PES insists that the preparation of a general strike cannot be left in their hands. The rank and file must mobilize independently to prepare a general strike, on a socialist and revolutionary perspective.

The New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA), the French Pabloite party, is diametrically opposed to this perspective. Its lead article, titled Pensions: a week of chaos, to go towards victory? and written by Antoine Larrache, denounces opposition to the union bureaucracy as sectarian and criticized leftist and revolutionary slogans against Macron.

About the NPAs proposals for action, Larrache writes, There is no simple solution. One thing is certain, incantations of a general strike to denounce the union leadership are not enough. To fight for the general strike, yes, that shows a right perspective,but to do it in a sectarian way plays a negative role, as it denies the difficulties of the movement and creates ruptures within it.

The rupture in the movement is not due to left-wing criticism of the union bureaucracy, but to the union bureaucracys treachery against the rank and file.

According to polls that are worriedly reported by the bourgeois press, 80 percent of the French population are opposed to Macrons pension cuts, while two-thirds of the respondents support a general strike to block the economy and stop its implementation. Another poll indicated that 62 percent of the French people wanted the protest movement to take harder measures against the Macron government.

Rejecting the overwhelming popular demand for mass action, the leadership of Frances CFDT and CGT unions, on the other hand, announced last week that they would enter mediation discussions with Macron behind closed doors.

The NPA is emerging as a determined defender of reactionary forces in the union apparatus. They oppose sectarian criticisms of the bureaucracies, as such criticism plays a negative role in the latters efforts to strangle the movement against Macron.

Calls for a general strike, the NPA claims, are nothing but quasi-religious incantations completely unrelated to political reality. This is what the NPA implies in another passage, which reads: The battle for the general strike is a struggle in which we must propose what advances the movement as it is, taking into account class consciousness as it is, not as it is dreamed of.

Such an approach istaken at face valuecompletely anti-Marxist. Marxists seek to raise the existing consciousness of the workers and not to adapt to it. But what the NPA adapts to is not the consciousness of the working class, which overwhelmingly wants a general strike, but to the trade union bureaucracy, which does not.

Insofar as the statement implies that the level of class consciousness as it is does not allow at present to fight for a general strike to bring down Macron, this is nothing but a self-serving lie refuted by the polls: In another Ifop survey published by Le Journal du Dimanche, 76 percent of respondents indicated that the pension reform events had left them with a bad opinion of Macron.

The perspective of the PES to stop the pension cuts and bring down Macron in a general strike is not one thatin the words of the NPAcan only be dreamed of, but one supported by a majority of the French people. Macron has fully demonstrated his hostility towards the masses and his contempt for democratic rights, even ramming through his hated reforms without a vote in the National Assembly. The fight against Macron, the capitalist state machine and the dictatorship of the banks is the decisive issue of the current situation.

But for the NPA, this class confrontation stands in the background. The movement, the article argues, should be mainly characterized by sectoral claims, regarding women, wages, public services, unemployment insurance, the Darmanin law, the ecological transition, the private irrigation reservoirs. And, in the background, a fight against the power of Macron, his police, the bosses.

The role of political activists, Larrache and the NPA insist, must be to make the link between all the events to accelerate maturation and awareness. Without leftism, without shouting we are determined and revolutionary at every street corner, but with the aim of involving the masses in political action.

In other words, the NPAs ostensible preoccupation with preventing a rupture within the movement in practice comes down to an attempt to suppress leftism and revolutionaries and thus prevent the workers from breaking free of the diktat of the bureaucracies.

Ultimately, the NPA demands that after weeks of determined strugglein which workers received no strike pay and were brutally attacked by riot policenothing should be done to prevent Berger, Martinez and Co. from selling out the struggle. Any attempt to free the movement from the bureaucrats class-collaborationist perspective, for the NPA, is inadmissible. Its pompous phrases about promoting maturation and awareness and involving masses in political action simply preach submission to pro-Macron bureaucrats.

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The NPAs call to oppose leftism in the mass movement marks another milestone in the right-wing evolution of this pseudo-left, pro-imperialist party of the petty bourgeoisie. In 2009, it was founded by Pabloite cadres of the Ligue communiste rvolutionnaire (LCR) based on an explicit repudiation of any historical link to Trotskyism. Its founding program asserted that it was impossible to build a revolutionary party, and that they would therefore build a broad alliance of forces that reject socialist revolution:

The NPA does not claim a specific relation to Trotskyism, but continuity with those who, over the last two centuries, have confronted the system all the way. The NPA is a pluralistic and democratic party. [There has been] participation of comrades from various components of the social movement, of the anti-globalization left, of political ecology, of comrades from the PS and the PCF, from the anarchist movement, from the revolutionary left. Without becoming bland, the NPA has everything to win by opening itself even further.

Having rejected the perspective of building a revolutionary Trotskyist party in the working class, they proceeded to build a counterrevolutionary party. Their calls for alliance with the Parti socialiste (PS), a longstanding party of capitalist government for whom Macron served as economy minister before becoming president, underscored their organic ties to imperialism.

Indeed, in the years that followed, the NPA endorsed NATO wars against Libya and Syria, which cost hundreds of thousands of lives. After applauding the right-wing Maidan coup in Ukraine, which in 2014 toppled the elected president and brought far-right parties to power, the NPA demanded further military interventions against Russia. Since the Russian militarys reactionary invasion of Ukraine, the NPA has doubled down on its support for the reactionary Ukrainian military, demanding that NATO arm Ukraine.

The implications of the NPAs anti-Trotskyist perspective are now emerging ever more evidently in the class struggle inside France itself. Having rejected the struggle to build a revolutionary Trotskyist party, it is now openly hostile to leftist criticism of the union bureaucracies and their corrupt maneuvers to smother the struggle against Macron.

The PES is advancing a perspective to bring down Macron via a general strike, linking this demand to a struggle against imperialist war and for socialism. It advocates building independent, rank-and-file committees in every school and workplace to link up the struggle against Macron with the struggles of workers around the world and help them break free of the diktat of the bureaucracies in their countries. Already, mass strikes are developing in Germany, Britain, Portugal, Belgium, Israel and across the world.

Together with their class brothers and sisters internationally, workers in France can bring down Macron and the capitalist oligarchy he represents. But this requires a conscious struggle against the union bureaucracy and its pseudo-left defenders, like the NPA. The PES will do everything in its power to assist workers in this political struggle and calls on workers and youth who agree with this perspective to contact it today.

WSWS Review

What is the pseudo-left?

This review examines the response of pseudo-left political tendencies internationally to the major world political events of the past decade.

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NPA attacks leftist opposition to French union bureaucracy's talks ... - WSWS

Consumer sentiment, and with it buying behaviour, is changing fast enough to make your head spin. Most recently, the pandemic triggered a surge in commercial activity online, followed quickly by worldwide supply chain issues. The resulting rising costs of goods, petrol, and property has seen inflation skyrocketing in Australia to a 21-year high, while the rapid expansion and evolution of digital technology continues unabated. Tristan Sternson explores customer loyalty.

In a crowded global marketplace, brands are competing harder than ever before for loyalty from a customer base that has an infinite array of choices at its fingertips. Todays customers are more knowledgeable, more diverse, and more empowered. Theyre also more demanding, totally willing (and able) to switch brand allegiances overnight.

So, what does it all mean for brands? In short, the future of customer loyalty and user experience (UX) in a complex digital world is a new and exciting one and ultimately, one brands need to embrace in order to get and stay ahead of the competitors. Leveraging technology is how brands are going to get there.

The customer journey is no longer linear with a clear centre of gravity; it is fragmented and spans web, mobile, social media, smart devices, wearables, the metaverse, and of course, the physical world. As it now intersects through multiple platforms, designers and marketers need to consider how to create a cohesive, experience-led approach around the customer.

The customer is king. Ring a bell? Digital and tech innovation means that brands are now operating in a multi-polar, experiential world that revolves more than ever around the customers needs and wants.

As much as the breadth and pace of tech innovation can feel daunting for business owners, it shouldnt be. Challenging, yes, but really, change should be regarded as an opportunity to consolidate and enhance your customers journey and magnify their loyalty to your brand.

The sneaker industry is a great example. Customising is immensely popular with consumers, and its big business. Most of the big brands offer it in some form, from simple monogramming to full colour and style customisation. These are digital options that enhance customer experience, which in turn helps to build loyalty, both online and in-store/in real life.

Why settle for off-the-shelf Nikes when you can assume some control and add your magic touch in the process? Its something my kids do, and it keeps them wanting to go back for more.

Theres a huge amount of opportunity in this space for brands. Imagine walking into a Nike store with your phone, customising your own sneaker online, and a short time later the shoe being brought up for you. Thanks to technology, its possible.

The radical success of limited editions and midnight sneaker drops doesnt happen overnight, though; its brand loyalty in motion. But what happens when loyalty is challenged by a new wave of super-savvy, price-conscious consumers?

Data from Emarsys 2022 Customer Loyalty Index found 65 percent of Australians say inflation and the rising cost-of-living has made them abandon brands they were previously loyal to in order to save money.

Nowadays, customers are doing a lot more comparison online because theyre more price-conscious. And, also, because they can. So for brands, spending budget on online marketing as a bare minimum, even for bricks-and-mortar businesses, is essential. In-store, time is money. If youre waiting in a large retail outlet for someone to come and help you, that 1-2 minutes while youre waiting might turn into Do I really need this? I can save the money/get it cheaper online.

Either way, as a business, you want to catch customers and make it a positive experience in that moment to hang onto your share of the wallet.

If youre wondering What next?, my word for you is Acceptance. Ours is now a multi-polar digital world that needs to be embraced for you to not just survive, but to thrive.

Examine closely what you can do to drive a better customer experience. Years ago we developed business intelligence, gathering data on our customers, yet some brands still utilise that intelligence really poorly.

We need to get better at using what weve got, then start using the newer tools technology like in-store mobile apps to make it easier for brands to recognise and reward their loyal consumers, and for customers to get what they need, quickly and easily. Endless aisles, for example, allow customers in-store to virtually browse or order products that are out of stock or not sold in-store, then have them shipped to their home.

Loyalty is now driven by the complete, omnichannel experience of your brand. With expanding global connectivity, price sensitivity, and increasing technical innovation, brand advantages are shrinking. Make sure youre investing in UX and digital innovation to provide customers an attractive and unforgettable experience.

Tristan Sternsonis the CEO ofARQ Groupandglobalco-lead ofNCS NEXT.

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The future of customer loyalty and UX in a complex digital world - Marketing magazine Australia