One of the merits of this piece is that it cite references to academics who are debating the Green New Deal and related issues confronting academics who express some concern about the destabilization of our climate and the destruction of human habitat. But I think it also illustrates a lack of seriousness among people who have been inundated for most of their academic lives by capitalist indoctrination and thus exhibit some inhibitions about cutting back of the extraordinary materialist lifestyles that they have enjoyed in the Empire's academic institutions. Even Proyect exhibits some of this brainwashing when he sees Europe free of the domination by transnational capitalists in the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. Also, his views about Swedish-style social democracy is at least 50 years old and out-of-date.
Even if the Western European GND standards were adopted by a majority of politicians in the USA, there would be overwhelming forces opposed to their adoption by energy, transportation, petrochemical, and banking interests. In fact, the same array of reactionary forces would block the evolution of the USA into a Swedish-style social democracy. Unlike Western Europe, the USA is an imperialist hegemon that would resist all attempts at a New Deal of any sort, either Green or FDR-redux.Proyect finishes his essay with this statement:
Those are the realities we are dealing with and the naïve hopes of the DSA/Jacobin left will crash up against them on day one of a Bernie Sanders presidency. And those who hope in neo-Kautskyist fashion that this will precipitate a general strike and other revolutionary measures are just kidding themselves.
Let me conclude with a few words about the possible outcome of this debate in the future as economic reality will bring things to a head. In my view, there is an element of truth in Huber’s claim that workers will resist a ceiling on consumption. After all, with television ads 20 times an hour urging you to buy a car or a trip on Norwegian Cruise ship, it becomes a form of brainwashing.It appears to me that most people cited in this debate regard the subject as only an "academic debate"--much like a fashionable topic to entertain themselves over dinner in some fancy restaurant.
I suspect that a combination of ecological ruin, war, and deepening alienation of the kind that has produced an opioid crisis will eventually turn quantity into quality. Human beings are susceptible to baser temptations that an advanced capitalist economy can produce but the promise of a more peaceful life that offers leisure time and spiritual fulfillment will convince workers that giving up 5,000 square foot homes, SUV’s and meat every night of the week is worth it. A Peaceable Kingdom, so to speak.
