Summary + Notes

(Numbers in the parentheses correspond to Kindle location numbers)

1. Introduction:

We’ve known the connection btwn emissions and climate change since 1970s (287)
- Mainly western European genocidal/slavery-based American systems mark the beginning of the ecological crisis (287)
- A small fraction of humans have political-economic power to induce environmental destruction which is offloaded onto the least powerful (334)
- People drive cars not beacues they want to but beacues of social relations (public transit made unavailable, etc.) (370)
- Even if commodities were made ecologically—> the accumulation of capital pressures production to constantly increase commodity sold— endless resource use and waste generation (379)
  - To change this; must change society so people use less— equal access to neccesities— not a few people dictating who has access (387)
- Capitalocene is too narrow (398)
- CO2 concentrations in atomosphere havente been seen since 3 million years ago (449)
- Capitalism— predicated on compelling working majority to produce (unpaid/unrecognized) ever-increasing amounts of goods and services for business oweners to raise of maintian profit rates and others to get profits from rent (465)
- Moralising about malfeasance leads to local improvement but derails efforts to comprehend the larger causes (475)
- A system based on producing endless stuff for endless sales means innumerable unsustainable levels of resource use (495)
- “Repairing only what rests on rotting foundations is to build a self-deceiving impression of stability” (504)
- 10% of humanity emit roughly 50% of GHG (549)
- Free market is free to a minority and very costly /deadly to the majority (549)
1. Populationists: must pretend away capitalist inequality to prove their point (559)
2. “Green” capitalism: enviro problems are result of mismanagement, technical incompetence not systemic failure (569)
- Capitalist reformism — vague postcapitalism is deemed preferable to actually existing socialism (588)
- A stationary economy (steady-state) is antithetical to capitalism— Business are individually compelleed to grow through fear of punishment— reduced competitiveness, profit, and bankruptcy (613)
- “Economic growth fails to reduce unemployment, poverty, and income inequality, and is limited by finite resources” (613)
- Ecosocialism tries to bring together socialists and environmentalist principles in one (633)
  - struggling for social equality through seizing social control of the means of life (633)
  - development of biophysically sustainable egalitarian (classless) communities worldwide (645)

2. A Historical Sketch of Socialism

Principal characteristics of capitalism- divisiion of people according to class and economy based on endless accumulation of captial (818)
Socialist achievements historically have frequently been incomplete or severely curtailed (868)
- Socialism is the struggle for more substatiative democracy (868)
Jacobnins— turn state instituions into gradual extension of political rights to all (927)
Anarchism— stressed the inseperability of state and capitalism and they must be toppled simultaneously (924)
Parliamentarianism— seeking to build socialism through government institutions in capitalism (980)
Marxsists— 2 stages to communism—
- 1st: dictatorship of the proletariat
- 2nd: communism (1002)
Red Army repelled 14 countries by 1922 (1042)
Mongolian revolution was 2nd successful socialist revolution (1053)
US invaded Russia in 1918-1920, and China in 1900-1901 to suffocate revolutionary sentiment (1131)
The capacity and prevelance of self-subsistence peasants made socialism redundant in some parts of Africa (1224)
Burkinabe Revolution (Burkina Faso) is an example of ecosocialism? (1257)
- pan-African Marxist Thomas Sankara led the revolution (1257)
Aims:
1. Self-reliance based on local resources
2. Democratisation of society
3. Establishing gender equality
4. breaking existing models of development (1267)