We created this podcast in recognition that there are a number of podcasts for the American “left,” but many of them focus heavily on the organizing of social democrats, progressives, and liberal democrats. Aside from that, on the left we are always fighting a war of ideas and if we do not continue to build platforms to share those ideas and the stories of their implementation from a leftist perspective, they will continue to be ignored, misrepresented, and dismissed by the capitalist media and as a result by the general public. Our goal is to provide a platform for communists, anti-imperialists, Black Liberation movements, ancoms, left libertarians, LBGTQ activists, feminists, immigration activists, and abolitionists to discuss radical politics, radical organizing and share their visions for a better world. Our goal is to center organizers who represent and work with marginalized communities building survival programs, defense programs, political education, and counterpower. We also plan to bring in perspectives on and from the global south to highlight anti-capitalist struggles outside the imperial core...
http://millennialsarekillingcapitalism.libsyn.com/website
episode 239: "Build From Existing Strengths" - Max Ajl on Theories of Political Ecology
In this episode is the conclusion of our 2 part conversation with Max Ajl.
Max Ajl is an educator and a researcher and the author of A People’s Green New Deal, which we highly recommend and had a previous discussion of back in 2021. He is also the associate editor of Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy.
Here we continued our discussion of his piece “Theories of Political Ecology: Monopoly Capital Against People and the Planet."
In this section of the conversation we talk about China’s role in the world system and Max discusses the question of imperialism with regard to China, specifically on the African continent. From there we get into a discussion of degrowth, what Ajl sees as its strengths and weaknesses as a camp of ecological thought engaging at a popular level. We also dig deeper into Max’s interventions in the realm of ecologically unequal exchange, something we began to discuss in part 1 of the conversation.
We thank Max Ajl for this conversation and will include links to a bunch of the citations in the show notes as well as to the article we’re discussing and Agrarian South Journal.
We recorded this conversation way back in early August, but this is the first episode we’ve released since the most recent phase of Palestinian Resistance to apartheid and colonialism began on October 7th and since the apocalyptic Israeli siege on Gaza began as a form of collective punishment. We want to express our unequivocal solidarity with the Palestinian people in this time in their anticolonial struggle, and enduring the crimes against humanity that the Israeli state is enacting on the whole population of Gaza. We will be looking to do some more work on that specific topic soon. But for now we want to make sure to relay that to our listeners along with this episode.
Links/Citations:
“Theories of Political Ecology: Monopoly Capital Against People and the Planet.” by Max Ajl (the subject of the episode)
https://www.agrariansouth.org
Ching Kwan Lee's The Specter of Global China
The Future is Degrowth
Jason Hickel
Ali Kadri
Danny Faber
Vladimir Kontorovich
Zeyad El Nabolsy - pieces on Cabral