February 27
GUEST: Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro, Fulbright Scholar and Associate Professor of geography at SUNY New Paltz, talks about the writings of Joel Kovel and how capitalism is the enemy of the emerging eco-socialist movement to save our planet.The Enemy of Nature
As global warming continues unabated and the planet becomes more unlivable, people are giving socialism another look.
Perhaps large majorities are now realizing that capitalism makes billionaires, but does nothing for the rest of us. And as our neoliberal system gets more and more extractive, there is less and less for the vast majority to live on. As the richest country in the world, there has always been some excess left over for the middle class. But greed has no logical boundaries, and much of the US population is now living paycheck to paycheck.
Revolutions are born of desperation. There was the desperation of the electorate that put the demagogue, Donald Trump, into the White House. Perhaps voters in 2020 will put Bernie Sanders into office too. Polls of Democratic voters all across the country show that they now view socialism more favorably than capitalism, the latest one being from Texas and California.
Will a revolution in values save our planet? Certainly not the phony revolutions of Clinton, Obama or Trump, all puppets of the rich elite. But just maybe Bernie will create something different, some evolution of our democracy before we give up on it entirely.
Joel Kovel wrote that capitalism is incapable of saving itself or the planet. Devastation is in capitalism's DNA. Perhaps we will come to that conclusion ourselves as our world collapses around us and we desperately look for another way.
