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The great screw up and the case for intellectual self defence : Comments
By Richard Hil and Lester Thompson, published 14/10/2008'Casino capitalism', 'robber barren capitalism', 'the greed machine' - call it what you will - the corporate financial orgy has come to a shuddering halt.
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Harvey doesn’t make a simplistic equation ‘US=imperialism’. His book is a detailed exploration of the ‘capitalist and territorial logics of power’, i.e. accumulation by dispossesion (global but US-led) and the neo-con project. I agree that attempts by the US elite to maintain global dominance have disadvantaged most ordinary Americans - Chalmers Johnson writes well on this - and now that more Americans are waking up to this, perhaps we will see some positive political change in that country.
Hegemony is indeed underpinned by a conservative common sense. However, Gramsci also theorized that a counter-hegemony could be fashioned by working towards producing epochal shifts in that common sense. This is what I am talking about in relation to ecological economics. I am not suggesting ‘easy accommodation of irrationality’; I am pondering what is likely to be the most effective political strategy to work towards progressive change, given the current prevailing conditions, including the fear-mongering of the mass media. I am interested in how we can move beyond fear to positive action, without having to go through the necessity of telling large numbers of people that they have been brainwashed. I may be wrong, but I don’t think that that is likely to be a politically effective strategy.
I am more than happy to disagree with you politely on this, and I wish you luck in your efforts to convince most Australians that AGW is a globalist-funded hoax. I do take exception at your suggestion that mine is not an ethical approach; I think I have made it abundantly clear that my vision is for a socially just & environmentally sustainable future for this country & the planet, and that this requires transformative political and economic change. I fully accept, and said in a previous post, that AGW can be, and has been, co-opted by commercial interests. However it can also – and is being – employed in other ways to advance entirely different agendas. Far from being futile or servile, I see this as a potentially fruitful form of Gramscian counter-hegemonic politics. Tell us about your political strategy.