 Hi, everyone. My name is Nessie Machouche and I'm a project manager at the Rosalexamble Foundation in Brussels, where I live and from where this webinar is hosted. This webinar is also co-hosted with the New York office of the Rosalexamble Foundation and with my dear colleague Aaron, who will be my wingman today. So I guess I would like to thank you again because in this time of conflict, when it's really easy to feel secluded and isolated, I think we have those, sometimes we feel that we have so much going on online and I know that we all have so many webinars going on, but it's also a place to actually feel a sense of community and being together in those very, very complicated times. So again, this new webinar series that is starting today with the first episode called Seeing Red's Internationalist Vision toward a Green New Deal has been developed by the Rosalexamble Foundation in New York and Brussels and in cooperation with Transform Europe. Transform Europe is a network of 34 European organizations from 20 countries, active in the field of political education and critical scientific analysis. And Transform is also the political foundation of the European Left Party. And also with our partners from North America, the Canadian Center for Policy and Alternative, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and the Institute of Policy Studies, both based in the US. And also, last but not least, a former colleague, Ethan Earl, a long long standing colleague at the New York office who is now a consultant and political consultant and who has been of a great help in shaping this series. Just a very, like a few words about the Rosalexamble chief tongue, we are in an internationally operating nonprofit organization for civic education, linked to the German Left Party, the LINK. We are based in Germany and in 25 officers all around the world. And we strive to develop alternative concepts and approaches for comprehensive process of social transformation. And the Brussels office operates as a think tank, reflecting on European and international issues of today's society. So now I think just before diving into the great panel that we have here today, and I know you're here for that, but just a few words of why we are starting this series around the Green New Deal or the Global Green New Deal. And this is coming from a project that was planned before the the start of the corona crisis and seen as a long-term development in the office and based on the already existing work that the foundation does on social ecological transformation core of the work of the foundation. And I think it also comes a lot from the the assessments of how daily work with partners, grassroots organizations, NGOs, civic civic educations, organizations from the assessments that we are actually facing a multidimensional crisis. And this crisis can be separated into breaking into three points. First of all, a climate breakdown that is already happening for a long time in the global south. I won't spend too much time around that. But it's very, very important to remind that frontline communities are currently confronted to climate crisis. And the corona crisis is not something that. And we are also facing economic and social crisis with a capitalist system that keeps on bringing crisis and we're bringing the same recipe of austerity for the majority of the people while continuing in increasing inequality within societies and all around the globe as well. And finally, and consequently, I would say we we are facing also a democratic crisis with many liberal democracies that are showing signs of possible collapse or at least of of hybridization into some forms that we are still sometimes far away to understand and classify. And I think this is why the question of a green new deal or the concept of the green new deal is such an interesting concept and to develop and to bring up because it refuses to separate to separate those free crisis and make really clear that they are interconnected and that by tackling the climate crisis, we first need to reorganize our social and economic organization and the way we are interdependence between the countries and also in the global north toward the global south. But seeing that, I will leave us, I will leave the pleasure of introducing the first question and my panelists. And the first question, because we have the chance today to have three speakers that are based in three different continents. And as an introduction to this series and the concept of a green new deal or radical social ecological transformation. I think we have my question will be that we have been hearing a lot about the concept of the green new deal. Sometimes without grasping what it really takes away what it really means. So we have here the green new deal, but also the green industrial revolution, the green deal meaning different things to different individual and groups. And I would like, I would love to ask what it means for our panelists and what it means in the social and political context they are involved and that they are politically and socially involved in. And so maybe as a first, for my first, this first question, I will turn to our dear Professor Walden Bello. Walden, your Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Bingmonton. You are also a senior analyst at the Banco-based Focus on the Global South. You served for a long time as a member of the House of Representatives in the Philippines. And you are an author and the co-author of more than 20 books with the latest one, Paper Dragons, China and the Next Crash, where you were already talking about the next economy crisis coming. Walden, I handle you the floor. Thank you very much again for joining us. Okay. Well, thank you to the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation for inviting me to participate in this webinar. And I'm happy to be participating with the other panelists. Well, basically, let me just begin by saying that we have in the midst of a very tremendous crisis, we don't need to repeat that at this point in time, but, you know, as my colleague Jayati Ghosh from New Delhi, URLA University, basically, she said, you know, that this is a crisis that in terms of impact will probably be worse than the Great Depression and definitely worse than what happened during the Second World War. And I think the statistics that have been coming out just bear this, you know, the U.S. first water results in terms of GDP, you know, it showed a more than 4% decline from last year. But basically, you know, we've gone in other webinars about the impact of the crisis, tremendous loss of jobs, and in particular a very, very great impact on the global south, where I am speaking right now from Bangkok. The second thing I would just like to say is, you know, that while we are focused on strategic missions and long-term and medium-term strategies for transforming the economic system, we must not forget, you know, that in the short term, this is, you know, we are going to have, in addition to COVID-19, we are going to have a very, very great crisis that could possibly lead to very widespread hunger in the global south. And where, you know, this is going to be the second place of the crisis, tremendous impact, possible widespread hunger happening. So in this connection, of course, in terms of short-term measures, we must really be thinking about, you know, among other things, why just massive forgiveness of the depth of the global south at this point in time, one of the best ways by which we could have, you know, the cushioned impact in the global south is just depth of forgiveness at this point in time. Of course, there should be massive aid happening, both bilateral aid, but we're also thinking about tremendous aid liquidity being added, you know, to the global system to, you know, to make sure that, you know, that the whole thing doesn't crash completely at this point in time. And with respect to that, we should really be thinking about things like creating a new global currency under the UN at this point. We've been talking about, you know, something that would replace the dollar. Well, this is a time by which under the ages of the United Nations, we can begin talking about creating a new fee of money that could be used to prop up global liquidity and get, you know, prevent tremendous economic crisis from what is happening. The third thing, and this comes right into your question, the concept of a new deal, of course, is a radical economic reorganization of the economy. So that on the one hand, you have a really a positive relationship between the global economic system and the environment, you know, something that there is a positive synergy and not the sorts of contradiction at this point in which the economy driven by the capitalist right for profit continually destroys the environment. And the other thing, of course, the other thing that's important to that is that we also have a reorganization of economic relationships, you know, among societies and within societies, so that we have the fostering of cooperation instead of the dog-eat-dog competition that you have under capitalism. And we have, you know, you know, the creation of positive international trade and economic relationships. Again, when we're talking about the subordination of the market, subordination of profits to the values of ecological solidarity of justice and of peace. So basically, we're talking about a very strong total transformation in terms of the way that economy human beings relate to the planet and among themselves to eliminate the alienation between the economy and ecology and eliminate the alienation among human beings that is very right under capitalism. Now, the one thing though that I would say here is that the situation in the global south is when we talk about the Green New Deal, this is mainly something that has come up in the north. Whereas in the global south, I think while the importance of the environment and our relations to the environment is definitely very central, there's also been a lot of the changes have been conceptualized under, you know, greater ending, the subordination of the global south to the north and creating more equitable trade relations and of course creating conditions of eliminating domestic inequalities. So that's, you know, the conception of a new deal is not just focused on the environment but also on the relations among groups, classes, and individuals in the centrality of equality in that context. So what I'd just like to say though is that the paradigms for change isn't just the Green New Deal. There have been, even before the Green New Deal, organizations, individuals have promoted, for instance, the globalization as a paradigm. We have also the paradigm of food sovereignty and the peasant movement and farmers have especially been pushing the concept of and strategy of food sovereignty, Vietnam, Pasina, and others, for instance. I just wanted to say that the Transnational Institute, we've just brought out, in fact, the paper that says that let's not waste, let's not have a good crisis, go to waste. This is the time for food sovereignty and that's just been made available at this point in time. And of course, there have been the paradigms of eco-feminism, emancipatory Marxism, and when there, which we see has come out from indigenous peoples in Latin America. So basically what I guess what I'm trying to say here is that the Green New Deal must be seen as one of several strategies for profound radical transformation that have emerged over the last 25 years. And the important thing is to realize that there are complementarities among these strategies. And maybe what we need to flesh out is how we can make these strategies coming from different parts of the world come together and have a very synergistic relationship that would move them forward. I have just two last points to make and it's more of, the next one is more of the question one is can we really have a Green New Deal under capitalism? And I think that's going to be a very important issue for us to discuss. The last point that I would just like to say is that of course in order to bring about a Green New Deal or other complementary alternative strategies to restructure the relations among people and off the economy to the environment, it will mean a lot of political struggle. And I think that this is something that we really must face up to. So I think on the one hand, let me just end with this one is there is this idea among the established elites that yes there is a crisis going on but we can return to normality. It's a big crisis but the system of production and consumption remains the same and the widely lit teleconference that was sponsored by Goldman Sachs which basically saw the thinking of these people that hey let's open up the economy and nothing's really wrong. The second thing perspective is the one that says that yes this is not going to be a new normal but then the changes that will be needed mainly things like oh social distancing and how do we create factories that would allow some sort of a more healthy work situation and that sort of thing. And then of course there's our perspective which is this radical transformation. My own sense here is this. One is of course the neoliberals have tremendous power at this point. Neoliberalism is undergoing a great crisis of credibility but they still have a lot of power. Let's not underestimate that. The second thing is the big challenge the neoliberals are the what we might call the radical right wing and I think the same you already have indicated that this radical right wing movements are on the rise all over the world and oftentimes they take a very vicious nationalist form and oftentimes they even adopt some of the slogans of de-globalization saying hey the economy but only for whites the economy but only for the people who've been here for a long time and as for migrants to hell with migrants we're going to close up and this even feeds sometimes to some of the environmentalist right wing thinking for instance Garrett Harding who basically said several years ago that we have life both ethics at this point in time the earth can support all of these people and of course James Lovla the guy who talked about Gaia saying hey tremendous the carrying capacity of the planet is no longer possible and maybe we should be reducing it about a billion people from 9.6 billion and so there's that sort of right wing environmentalist thinking that's feeding into the the kind of right wing political thinking that's there at this point in time where are we that's the question politically I think you know that there are these two contending forces the neoliberals who are discredited but powerful and then the rising right wing that have adopted parts of the or carried some of the slogans of the progressive movement in order to make themselves seem creditable but with a very strong racist and anti-migrant twist and where are the progressives at this point in time that's I think the big question we have to get into this political arena at this point in time and make ourselves really a political force so that's it that's my answer to your question thank you thank you so much Walden thank you so much and I yeah so many things that have that have been said and quite quite hard to summarize but I will keep with the question what are the what is the progressives side doing progressives side doing right now and and I think that's a that's an open question that we will try to to to discover actually and because you mentioned it the the great paper that you just wrote for the for the transnational institutes I would just take the opportunity as well to announce the latest cooperation we will have with a transnational institute for all this upcoming series so it's I think that will please you and a lot of a lot of other people for the this greater lies that will that that will share the series with us I will now turn to the to the second panelist that joined us today Thierry or Francois thank you very much for for joining us Thierry you're an assistant professor of political science at providence college your research focus mainly on mainly on resource extraction renewable energy climate change green technology and also the left in in America in Latin America and you recently another author of two of two books first the first book that took co-author is a planet to win where we need a green new deal so right in the topic of today obviously published by by Verso and the second one that came out this year as well is resource radicals from heteronationalism to post extractivism in Ecuador so I will ask you the the same question can you give us like your your vision of the of the green a green new deal and what does it mean in the U.S. maybe and maybe also in Latin America sure thank you and and Walden those those comments were were so amazing I'll reference some of them in in what I'm about to say I'm gonna start with just where where we are like the moment that we're in in the U.S. and to some extent you know I'll also draw some global connections and then I'll come around to sort of how what the green new deal means now and and and how to fight for it though we'll be obviously talking about that throughout the conversation so right now in in the U.S. the situation that we're in is that recently Bernie Sanders suspended his campaign for president it was a very inspiring campaign he had a very big coalition that was actually multi-racial and multi-generational and she was an explicit is an explicit democratic socialist and had also embraced a very in the U.S. context a pretty radical version of what the green new deal might be as as a key policy platform very oriented to social justice to labor rights to massive public investment in frontline communities and beyond so so that that was a campaign that many of us work very hard on you know we're sad that it is over but we do not feel I'll just you know speak for the left of the U.S. since that's where what I'm representing now I think that we do feel that that many of our ideas resonated with a very broad public and that the Bernie Sanders campaign despite being suspended now due to the way that centrist political forces consolidated against him despite that campaign being suspended it gave a lot of life to a lot of social movements and a lot of platform like a big sort of media and public platform to those movements and so we're you know still fighting and I'll talk about what what we're doing right now but that's one piece then of course there's the deep public health crisis which is made dramatically worse by the privatized health care system and lack of social provisioning and social care that we have in the U.S. it's also made dramatically worse by the deep racial and class inequalities of the U.S. we have African Americans being getting COVID at a rate that is far disproportionate to their percentage of the population we have people that are being called essential workers and they are essential but they are working everywhere from grocery stores to warehouses to hospitals and being exposed to to contagion without without proper care or paid sick leave or or anything we also are entering an enormous economic crisis of course the contours and depth of that crisis are dramatically worse in the global south as wild and beller just said but in the U.S. it's also devastating we have 26 million but the number will go up today in the coming days 26 million that have just applied for unemployment that's a historic number we have just a huge amount of the workforce is out of work and really not doesn't have the economic security to even pay rent we're going to see what happens on May 1st May Day but it might actually be a big rent strike day we'll see because so many people cannot afford to pay their rent um and so this is this is sort of the context in the U.S. right now um I want to add a couple of more elements um that are going to bring us closer to talking about what what the Green New Deal means today what the vision is and how we how we advocate for it um a few other factors the fossil fuel industry is in freefall right now the oil and gas industry that's a global condition obviously it's a global sector but it's it has some particular ramifications in the U.S. which has the U.S. has of course emerged as a number one global producer of oil and gas and a lot of oil and gas and coal firms are based in the U.S. um and already tens of thousands of people have actually lost their jobs in that in that sector in the U.S. without a just transition without any framework to help them but you know so that's that's one piece but um on the political front I'll note that the sector the the fossil fuel industry is really one of the primary political obstacles to a Green New Deal and right now that sector is in disarray so we can think about you know of course the government and of course the Trump administration is going to do what they can to bail them out and subsidize them but even with government help the sector is in crisis and that sector is I would say one of our main political enemies and so we can think about how this changes the terrain a little bit and how we can strategically orient to to the to the sector's crisis um the second piece um is is how deeply governments in the U.S. and around the world will be involved in economic recovery um meaning that the capitalist system is in a crisis right now and we know from history that when capitalism is in a crisis it even it requires even more government help to keep accumulation going it always requires government help we know that but but that government help becomes more essential in moments of crisis and also becomes more politically visible so we have an opportunity to think about and from the left of course to push our own vision of of how government should be involved in recovery that is different than what capitalists are asking for but this whole question of how does the state and capital relate is going to be very much on the table in terms of political debate so that's another piece another thing I'll I'll mention is that COVID-19 is about the sort of global pandemic crisis um and the hunger crisis and the economic devastation that's causing that Walden spoke so eloquently about are about to intersect with the climate crisis right so we get we get a lot in the U.S. especially from the right wing from those same right wing forces that Walden was talking about at the end that like the climate crisis and the green new deal are irrelevant right now but in fact that's not the case at all for a few reasons that I think are clear to many people on this call one reason and this was just spoken to in the previous comments a bit is that the same communities that are on the front line of the crime climate crisis are on the front line of COVID they are there is disproportionate impact due to political due to social and economic inequality that is that has geographic race class gender dimensions to it right so the same communities are being impacted that's one connection between them another connection between them is both require public investment and public policy oriented towards social welfare um and also public health and planetary well-being in order to address them but another even more acute intersection is that in the next few weeks and I'm speaking in the U.S. but again there's global um global kind of dimensions to all this as well but I'll just say a little about the U.S. that in the coming weeks we're going to enter into wildfire season and we all remember like the wildfires that devastated California that devastated a lot of the west coast and southwest um last year um and killed actually many people and and and had a lot of um social and economic impacts so we have wildfires coming soon it's going to be a very bad year according to the climate scientists then we have a hurricane season that of course is going to affect deeply the Caribbean the the Gulf Coast you know those regions of the U.S. and of Latin America um and so very soon we're going to simultaneously be confronting the coronavirus and be confronting the the unfolding climate crisis we know the climate crisis is already here and we also know that you know at certain times of year due to weather patterns um it is more salient and and it's going to be salient soon and we're this is going to happen at a moment where our public capacity to respond to emergency is very low it's very stretched very thin we already have as I said this privatized system of social care in the U.S. and very insufficient public funding to deal with with with emergencies and and our and our capacities are tapped by the by the by the coronavirus and so I'm not sure how we will will publicly be able to respond to needing to evacuate people from wildfires from sea level rise from hurricanes right and and to care for them and to shelter them so so those crises are going to intersect and they are going to devastate communities that are on the front lines and that and the same communities who over represent in terms of essential workers that I mentioned right so there it's like you know a triple whammy or you know and and so we need to think about how to both be in solidarity with those communities to you know activate our mutual aid networks and to think about how to provide care when the state and and and of course corporations are not but we also need to think about making very bold demands on the state and on corporations right both in the workplace and through labor strikes but also through the political arena how to make very bold demands and to not feel like because there is a lot of immediate need that it's it's it's like a distraction to talk about the world we want to create the world we want to create we need to talk about it right now because it's a you know the alternative model that we are proposing would address people's immediate needs and also I think that there is a political opening now to actually push for it and so I'll get to that and now I'll sort of come to I think answering your question a little bit more directly but I just want to sort of underline the implications of what I've been saying the fossil fuel industry is in freefall governments are going to need to be involved in economic recovery they already are COVID and the climate crisis are intersecting and so what I want to say is that we are at a critical juncture in the US and elsewhere I don't want to speak for other places in the world so I'll speak from my own context we are in a critical juncture where one of two things can happen to simplify a lot obviously there's a lot of future scenarios but to simplify a lot and I think this echoes some of Walden's comments we can either through public policy and through the way the state might help capitalism we can either just worsen and exacerbate our current model we can become more dependent on fossil fuels bail out the fossil fuel industry bail out all of the industries that pollute our environment we can create a more unequal more financialized more economically precarious system that is exactly what happened after 2008 I don't want to say too much about that because Grace is like the like one of the world's experts on this so I'm sure she you know can talk about it more than me but what we know is that the way the recovery happened after the 2007-2008 financial crisis in the US and in other places it made everything worse it increased the racial gap in wealth it made workers more precarious it made our system more financialized and more privatized it increased emissions so that's the way we dealt with the last crisis and this crisis as Walden said at the outset of his comments is even worse of worse crisis and so those same economic and political actors are going to try to double down on the existing on the existing system right and use it as an opportunity to preserve their class power and to preserve the status quo that is you know destroying our planet right so that's one path the other path is that the left social movement social justice forces coordinate like like exactly like we're doing when this web webinar I can't say how happy I am I mean almost makes me cry a little bit to see so many people from all over the world connecting and even though as Walden said we don't have to use all the same words like I don't care people use the green you deal language but we're all talking about similar ideas here we're coming together and I think that we need to do that in our local context like in our cities provinces municipalities we need to do that and nationally and trans nationally and globally right so we have this opportunity right now where some of our our our enemies are weakened where the state is going to have a role no matter what well we can put forward an alternative vision of how to recover from this crisis and I'll sort of wrap this up a little bit now and and address some parts of the question and also some things that Walden said something that I've been working on in the US along with other people is what we call a green stimulus we have written a letter I can put it in the link in the chat later we have written a letter to congress that outlines a proposal for a stimulus for an economic recovery measures that are both low carbon and environmentally sustainable and also socially just because we need to recover our economy in a way that puts us on a different track that puts us on a track towards a democratic egalitarian and environmentally sustainable economic system a new model that replaces our current model you know lay the groundwork I don't think it's we have a revolution tomorrow I mean unfortunately I wish we could but I don't think we're at that place right now in terms of our of our level of organization on the left but I think we can absolutely press for public policies from civil society and from labor unions and from all of our left forces and put pressure on our allies in congress in the case of the US we have no allies in the White House right now but in congress there are some left-wing members of congress so we're putting pressure on them I'm working with several people and a lot of different groups have endorsed this green stimulus idea and I just want to note because I know that the green deal in Europe is a very top-down capitalist kind of vision with green stimulus we are applying the green new deal the sort of much more socially just approach to to adjust transition on to renewable energy so I just wanted to clarify that because I know there are many people from Europe on the call so a green stimulus basically applies what Walden defined as a green new deal to our recovery efforts and it turns out that like applying the idea of of reorienting our whole society to be more environmentally sustainable and more socially just and specifically using public investment and the public sector to sort of help rebuild this to help build a new society is something that would help address once we are able to get back to work which we can't yet but in the coming months would actually create a lot of dignified jobs a lot of dignified livelihoods unionized jobs that people can actually work in renewable energy work in ecosystem restoration have a jobs guarantee that that guarantees that they will have work that is good high quality well-paying work to actually pay better our teachers our nurses that we view as as green jobs we think of you know care work as green work right so all of this we can fund publicly through the public sector the idea that we can't afford it or how are you going to pay for it is you know never answer that argument like the right wing right now is giving hundreds of millions of billions of dollars to bail out corporations so there's never a lack of money the question is the political will and the the sort of power on the left to make sure that we channel that public investment in a way that benefits communities and benefits the planet right and the the the last thing that that I will say here and just to reiterate also some of Walden's points we I think we also even though I've been talking more about the U.S. because you know that's partly why I'm on the call to sort of give the perspective from the U.S. I think that you know the people that I've been working with on Green New Deal politics in the U.S. have a very internationalist vision we've been involved in a variety of transnational networks a lot of them based in the Americas based in the hemisphere Latin America and the U.S. and Canada but also you know in some of you I've on this call I've been involved in in networks that involve Europe and the U.K. as well and we need to branch and broaden them to all regions of the world of course but I think what's really interesting right now is two last points that I'll make one and this this follows up on something Walden said at the end we in the global north I think we don't we shouldn't be possessive about our ideas or think we have the best ideas there are amazing ideas from Buen Vivir that Walden was mentioning to you know degrowth that comes you know a lot from Europe Buen Vivir a lot from Latin America the idea of food sovereignty that comes from all over the global south that are really essential elements and thinking of ways to create a model a social model that that that is harmonious with nature and that is socially just right so I think that this whole kind of ecosystem to use that metaphor of ideas is very inspiring and we should pay homage to people that have been developing them for many years but also see them as connected to one another and create you know spaces like the one where right now where there can be relatively egalitarian exchange of ideas because I think that's that's what the world needs right now we need to you know we can't rely on global elites to create international cooperation we need to create international and global cooperation from below using the networks that we have and building also new institutions of that are that are left-wing and that and that and that do the second thing that I want to respond to Walden's point those left-wing kind of institutions and networks that provide an alternative vision to because I completely agree with Walden's point that it's either there's either neoliberal globalism or there's right-wing kind of so-called isolationism but it's totally pro-capitalist it's not really isolationist but they use that language and I think you know the left needs to intervene and with its own vision of global cooperation that is not neoliberal that is not technocratic that is not elite but that is about you know all of these visions from a bottom up kind of coming kind of percolating from the bottom up that that we've been discussing and that specifically the left needs to have its own vision of trade the left needs to have its own vision of of of global financial institutions right like each of these are arenas that the left should be intervening in because otherwise we have this very very I think scary situation where it's like a racist xenophobic version of capitalism versus this like versus this kind of like superficially progressive neoliberal kind of vision of capitalism and those are like the only two options there is a third option and that third option is not a triangulation between those it's a complete alternative to both of those that is internationalists based in solidarity but thinking very in very sophisticated ways of how do we use trade in a different way how do we organize trade in a different way how do we completely work against like the crushing situation of sovereign debt that Walden talked about and very bold statements about debt relief how do we reorganize the financial system so that it's stable and so that it prioritizes as Walden said people's ability to to work and live and spend and not the just ability of capitalist to invest across borders right so we need to actually think about these global institutions and propose alternatives for the left because I think right now the world is in crisis and very scary things can happen in crisis but they are also opportunities to present alternative visions so I'll leave it there thank you you're muted sorry I I thought I was not you know very briefly thank you very much Fifiya for this very comprehensive presentation again and so much what he said and in a in a very strong very strong language so that's that's great and and I will keep the two two main ideas that you that you presented the link between the climate crisis and the COVID crisis that we are living on and and the the responses they they asked for both and also in terms of the of the frontline communities and this idea of the green stimulus that will allow to sort of introduce a green new deal in a way in the and in a mix with the with a just transition sort of sort of program that sounds that sounds like promising and something that is doable in a in a short short time time right now and without more time because we are running late I will turn to the first to our first panelist today and Grace Bailey thank you very much for for joining us Grace your research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research I think thank you London you are also an economics and politics commentator columnist and you're right now writing for the the newspaper The Tribune The Tribune and you are obviously a labor party activist and you just wrote a book this year stolen how to how to save the world from financialization so thank you very much for joining us and I leave you the floor to to introduce the name and thanks everyone for joining this call it's great to see us to see so many of you on the line and so yeah I guess I'll talk today a little bit about the kind of green new deal in the UK content and again as he mentioned at the beginning that you know there's been this term the green industrial revolution that's been used by some people to describe what's going on here but also talk about more generally and how the green new deal could could be used as a kind of response to the crisis that we're finding ourselves in now and how this crisis and the response to it will have to link back to what will have to be based in an engagement with the understand and an understanding of the kind of changing nature of capitalism that has been generated in the period since financial crisis but also that this coronavirus pandemic is contributing to you know so the first thing to start with is the recognition that capitalism generates crises and the crises tend to change things but they do not always change things in the way that you expect and really I think the way that we should understand crises as socialists is as opportunities that generate the potential for divergent forms of action and that action does not always have to lead inexorably to kind of progressive socialist transformation that does create opportunities where human agency can really begin to shift things now you know we can kind of see this in the wake of the financial crisis where a lot of socialists after 2008 were kind of sitting back and waiting for that crisis basically to kind of create some sort of revolution because it clearly indicated the inherent contradictions and problems generated by financial capitalism but nothing really changed until we began to organize nothing changed until you know socialists began to kind of come together from the various different divergent movements that they had splintered into during the period of kind of neo-liberal hegemony and refocus on electoral politics and I think you know that is important it's going to be important to bear in mind because in the depths of crises like this you know socialists often expect people to respond with kind of very radical and you know revolutionary zeal but actually often crises tend to generate a form of kind of small c-conservatism but people wait for everything to get back to normal it's only when things don't get back to normal that you start to see that the decline in support for the stages grow in the way that we saw around the rich world in particular kind of five or six years after the financial crisis and until today so I think you know some of the narratives that we're going to be hearing around the coronavirus crisis today are you know obviously you know we've been discussing this a lot on the call right the fact that states are massively expanding their support for the private sector how they are running massive fiscal deficits how central banks are engaging in effectively often monetary financing of their deficits i.e. they are you know creating money in order to buy government bonds something we've been told is impossible for a long time and we're going to be hearing about how this basically proves that we have enough money to do anything that we like that the renew deal is not possible and there are no resource but there's kind of an issue with this narrative I suppose which is that most people aren't going to experience this crisis in terms of the lack of a resource constraint and I think this kind of cuts to the core of the issue which is that yes we're going to be seeing more state intervention in the economy but the way that those resources are used are going to is going to be influenced by class power and class struggle and of course we have to recognize the fact that we live under capitalism which is a holistic system not just an economic system which is separate from a form of politics governed by excuse me Chris do you mind just slowing down just a little bit for our interpreters to hear thank you so much so sorry I'm always told that I speak too fast so I'll I'll try to slow down so yeah most people aren't going to experience this crisis in terms of the lack of a resource constraint because state power the power of capitalist states again you know we live in a capitalist system with capitalist states capitalist international institutions as well as capitalist businesses themselves that those resources are going to be used in a way that reinforces pre-exist the pre-existing balance of power between different classes and we've already seen basically that state power is being used in a way that supports the interest of capital often directly against the interest of labor and I think we can see this narrative kind of coming apart on that front but also in a couple of other ways so firstly this narrative that we have enough money to be able to do whatever we want it's true for imperialist economies at the core of the global system but as we've just been hearing it's certainly not true of the global south and actually you know one of the biggest and least talked about crisis that we're seeing at the moment is the mounting debt crisis that is being experienced by many states in the global south as capital flees those economies in search of kind of safe assets in the global north which is sending borrowing costs very high as meaning that some countries are on the brink of defaulting on their debts indeed even before this crisis many states were in deep debt distress anyway those structural issues that generates unsustainable levels of debt for the global south forcing them to appeal to international investors on global bond markets often you know which often demand the imposition of neoliberal policies and response is not something that's gone away and we should really be as we've just been hearing be pushing for for a debt right off for the global south which you know there was talk about that happening during the spring meetings of the IMF and the World Bank but of course nothing of the kind ended up being put on the table this is also incidentally the most important issue that Europe will be facing because none of the issues that emerged in the wake of the financial crisis at the sovereign debt crisis have been dealt with really we're still you know not much closer to what's a banking union and we're certainly very very far away from debt mutualization in Europe something that's not really likely to happen I can't see it happening ever it's given the reticence of northern european states so the divergent capacities of states to be able to borrow in order to spend to mitigate the impact of this crisis is something that we must consistently account for we must also consistently account for how that interacts with pre-existing relations of imperialism so this is not simply a capacity of access to questions of access to finance it's also about longer term issues of you know access to intellectual property it's an issue of monopolies largely centered in the global north and their relations the way that they structure relations between global north and global south it's an issue of unfair trade and tax practices of the proliferation of tax havens which facilitate the removal of capital from the global south so in all those ways you know it is really only going to be a couple of very powerful core states that are going to be able to respond to this in the way that we are we are talking about now with with effective unmitigated use of resources to support the capitalist system and of course that is the role that is currently being played by america if we look at the reemergence of the dollar swap line networks that were brought out in the media aftermath of the financial crisis everywhere every central bank in the world and a lot of lot of businesses all around the world require access to dollars a lot of them can't get access to dollars so the federal reserve has reopened these swap lines that allow central banks to swap domestic currency for dollars in order to support domestic businesses that have borrowed in dollars but which central banks are able to access that is again going to be a question of american imperial power and relationships that's again something to consider i think the second issue is it comes back to the question of the nature of the capitalist state and how its resources are used because i think it's quite clear that in the aftermath of this crisis elites and the ruling classes are going to push for a return to austerity what it's called austerity in the uk i know that in germany this is the kind of short to null black zero ideology that that enforces running a consistent current account surplus and their variance of it obviously across europe and in many other parts of the world the contraction not necessarily in the size of the state because again you can have a very big state but one that papers exclusively to the interest of capital but a removal of supports for working people and again you know often we think of this issue out of austerity as an issue of the state convincing people that you know isn't enough resources to go around and that we need to repay our debts to protect our children grandchildren which is true those are the narratives that surround it but actually austerity was not really about saving money or repaying debts it was always about a capital estate using its power to reinforce the power relationships between capital and labour basically decimating the power of organised labour decimating the the basis of the material well-being of workers and consumers in their in their states to prevent the kind of reemergence of any resistance to the status quo because obviously a heavily indebted low-paid insecurely employed worker is less likely to kind of be involved in a movement to organise and resist capitalism than someone who isn't in that position so again we have to think of austerity in terms of class power and class struggle and the ruling class is going to push for return to austerity after this crisis is done they're going to say we've spent all this money cropping up the system never mind the fact that most of this money hasn't gone to work because it's gone to businesses we spent all this money now we need to tighten our belts and we're all in this together and actually what they'll do is argue that it is working people who suffered as a result of this crisis you have to pay and pick up the bill for the support provided to huge multinational corporations over the course of this crisis and we really have to be prepared prepared for this so you know I think it's really important to always come back to the fact that policies are important narratives are important but we are not going to be able to get through this struggle we're not going to be able to rebuild on the other side without class struggle without a narrative that centres class struggle struggle between people who own the stuff that we need to produce things and those who are forced to sell their labour for a wage and yeah I think you know that means basically we need to if the response to this crisis is going to be shaped by class struggle rather than simply kind of who can come up with the best narratives or who can come up with the best ideas and we need to think more about strategy if we want which I think we all agree we want a response to the coronavirus crisis which as as Thea was just outlining is along the lines of a kind of green New Deal stimulus package where the kind of massive contraction and demand that has been associated with the lockdown measures is absorbed by a massive expansion in government spending a government spending that is directed towards decarbonising the economy and doing so in a way that's just we're going to need to think about a strategy that will allow us to argue for that and and to demand it and to and to organise for it electorally and and outside of of party politics and I think that means we need to think more deeply about how this crisis is actually changing the nature of capitalism and I think I've written quite a lot about recently and and and I have written for tribute and Jack and various other places about is how we are kind of moving into into a phase of state monopoly capitalism basically what we're seeing is a massive consolidation of power economic political power in a very small number of hands so political leaders central bankers corporate executives, financiers control an increasingly significant portion of the global economy for a number of reasons. Firstly, crises that we were we're already living in a kind of monopoly capitalism where markets are becoming ever more concentrated for a whole host of reasons, most notably the kind of big big tech companies, but crises tend to be moments where consolidation and concentration takes place even quicker because small businesses ones that are more indebted have lower margins less cozy relationships with the state fall fail and they tend to be brought up by their large arrivals especially when you have very low interest rates which allow them to borrow money cheaply to expand. At the same time those big monopolies tend to have big cash piles because you become a monopoly basically by restricting investment in order to push up the price of the goods that you're selling so they're not investing everything they're keeping in piles of cash which allows them obviously to withstand the crisis and they also have tend to have very close relationships with both banks the banks that are their clients and the state which is obviously going to use its power to kind of provide support for them so yeah we kind of we are going to emerge from this crisis with a much more monopolistic and concentrated form of capitalism where the big massive particularly the tech monopolies which are obviously doing very well out of the move online are going to survive and thrive lots of other small businesses are going to fail and big monopolies in the global north will come to control a much larger amount of economic activity. The closer relationships between those businesses and states that will emerge from this crisis are also something to think about because we will start to see massive state bailouts because we already have we will start to see the state continuing to use its resources whether that's providing cheap loans whether it's you know active bailouts whether it's measures like quantitative easing which serve to basically provide investors with liquidity that they can use to invest in other assets and thereby limiting falls in asset prices so in other words maintaining the wealth of the wealthy even whilst the rest of the economy founders all of these different tools are going to be used in the interests of capital because of the growing and increasingly close relationships between these politicians central bankers and these big power form monopolies and then again you have the kind of coordinating power of finance which sits atop all of this so if you don't bear in mind that you've got these as well as having big international monopolies you have big asset managers that are kind of single institutions that are able to control a huge amount of what goes on in lots of different public companies because they own huge stakes in those companies there's not just you know the fact that there are lots of big businesses it's also the fact that corporate ownership is even more concentrated because a lot that ownership is mediated by the existence of these asset managers which basically allocate capital and the same with the big international banks they're able to allocate capital they decide who gets investment who gets who gets loans and the coordination between finance big business and the state basically has created the existence of there was a marxist theorist called Rudolf Hilfiding who argued that capitalism would become so centralized we would basically eventually have a kind of general cartel that was responsible for kind of planning economic activity and that's kind of what we're moving towards now we've got this tiny cabal of big businesses central bankers politicians who are planning basically who gets what resources now of course this is very interesting because all the arguments against the Green New Deal the arguments against greater public democratic intervention of the economy is that states can't plan things the public can't plan things the market is chaotic it's a complex system the price mechanism doesn't work if you start planning things if the state provides support to businesses then it erodes competition of course none of those arguments apply in a highly monopolistic and concentrated form of capitalism where planning is effectively already taking place by the state but in the interests of capital this is a really important point I think it completely cuts away the kind of neoliberal Hayekian arguments against state planning these guys are already planning they are just saying they're providing you know bailouts to businesses that they think are worthy of bailouts that often includes the airline industry it could include oil fossil fuels companies it'll include any industry basically that appeals to the state for support and the state considers whether that's because they have close relationships with this business or because they're providing them with cash political donations the state considers is worthy of that support so in this sense you know the question we have is not simply arguing for a greater deployment of resources in order to decarbonise the economy the argument that we really have to be making is that this is already happening states and monopolies are already controlling what goes on in the economy what goes on in most of our lives but they're doing so in a way that benefits them they're not doing so in a way that's democratic or they're not certainly not doing so in the interests of of working class people they're doing so in the interests of the ruling classes and what this demands as well as you know pp for carers income support that write-offs rent freezes and a green new deal in the wake of the crisis what this demands is democratization of the economy so the extension of the principles of political democracy into the realm of the economy we have this big cabal that is planning so much economic activity how do we make sure that that power which does exist can be used to plan things in a way that's democratic in a way that's sustainable and in a way that benefits the interests of working people that's why it's organizing right it requires not just making arguments not just coming up with policy ideas but actually shifting the balance of power in society by bringing together all the different kind of progressive forces within a society from the labour movement to tenants unions to various social movements to you know community organizations and there's lots of those that have emerged to provide support during this time with political projects with electoral political projects in order to build a much bigger and more expansive movement capable of directly pressuring governments to you know act in a way that was responsive to working people but also in a way that spreads a sense of consciousness about these issues and encourages wider sections of society to become involved in this struggle um so that I think is is the biggest challenge we face when we're thinking about how we do a Green New Deal post crisis how we um how we argue for rebuilding in a way that's sustainable and just it's not simply the case that we need to be saying you know all this money the government spent therefore it's going to be easy for us to use that money but spend it in a way that's just I think we need to be saying look at the way that this crisis has consolidated the power of a tiny elite a tiny elite that was already abusing its power in order to consolidate its own its own wealth um that pride they have used this crisis you know there was a comment which Hannah said earlier never let a serious crisis go to waste they have used this crisis and will continue to use this crisis which has killed so many people not simply to harm working people but to enrich themselves and in response to that we need to be saying power needs to be returned to people power needs to be returned to working people in their jobs you know we need a restructuring a strengthening of the labor movement power needs to be returned to people in their communities we need decentralization democratization of the state power needs to be taken away from international institutions and handed back to people within um within uh democratically organized context uh and and power needs to be taken away uh from the central bankers and policymakers who are using their influence to promote the interests of themselves and their friends using the capitalist state to promote their own interests to the people for whom the state is supposed to be uh supposed to represent um and doing doing that actually focusing on building class power focusing on creating an oppositional narrative that highlights the class divides that do exist under capitalism and will continue to exist under capitalism because i think the only way that we get to uh the kinds of policies that you know everyone not even socialists but you know liberals and whoever else could argue for just in very different ways you know liberals will be found in the wake of this crisis saying the state needs to just um use this opportunity to have a stimulus package that you know reduces carbon emissions and makes the economy less unequal whatever but the difference between that kind of liberal arguments uh kind of you know classical liberal argument and a socialist argument is that there is an assumption here that the state if left to its own devices and if convinced with ideas and if lobbied by intellectuals will do the right thing whereas as socialists i think we have to be aware that we are talking to capitalist states that have their own sense of their own interests and the only way they will be made to listen to and respond to the demands of working people is if we are organized enough to demand things from them i think i will stop there if that's all right because i know we're going over time thank you so much race um yeah well thank you very much for for driving this like picturing this pretty dark picture in a way but also giving us the the the tools and probably the yeah the the lines to to try to to to actually reshift those uh those this power this those struggles and um and i think that's i mean we are running out of time and and i won't be able to to ask uh how all of our panelists all the questions that i i wanted to ask about uh looking at the the q&a and the question that have come up i think one thing that was uh stressed and that i i think we we we can still have a bit of comments from from the free of view is the fact that um the Green New Deal is is as well then said it is part of of order discourses of order forces of order movements and what we what we really need now is to also learn from the different uh experiences in the u.s. with with bernie sanders as as tia mentioned it's in the u.k. with the the platform for of of jamie cobin of how can we build build new new links between those the the different struggles and and also in the post-covid or in the covid crisis what do you see as new potential new alia alliances uh the one that we should avoid as well because as as walden mentioned mentioned uh we see uh possible a lie uh in the in some discourses but then realize that ecofascism is not far or or nationalism is is is always a threat so i would like to have your your view on the on the new possible alliances and and struggles that need to be made also uh we walden mentioned the the the when we read and all those global south movements how we can can we like link up uh the different uh the different class struggles together to to actually implement those those programs because what what we've seen is that the the instruments is there the ideas are there we have we have and the money is there but we need we need power and maybe that's that's a question i want to ask first to to walden and yes just as a reminder as if you keep could keep it very short in in the summer in two minutes sorry to ask you that but we are running out of time thank you oh yes i you know first of all i think that uh there's a huge potential for alliances uh uh both within the north as well as you know within the south and and and and and um you know uh you know uh north and south i mean this is these are alliances that have been building up for some time we work together in the anti globalization movement uh the the the occupy movement the you know the the resistance to the financial crisis the climate justice movement uh so uh you know we have you know this these alliances that have been forged and now we just need we need at this point to move those alliances to a newer level a stronger uh level of greater solidarity and and and a more organized level so so we're not starting from scratch uh you know uh here i mean and you know these movements have interacted internationally uh you know over the last uh you know 10 years and we've had at that level victories uh as well as defeats you know uh one victory is i think uh we we we stopped the world trade organization from being the planned you know sort of neoliberal organization in the world that would that would that would you know manage trade and in fact even going to investment uh the the world trade organization today is is is a shadow of what it was and that was because of the resistance of developing countries as well as um um progressive movements uh seattle for instance was a great synergistic event between progressive movements 50 000 people in the streets and the and and you know developing countries that that refuse to make any more concessions so uh i think we must learn uh look at those victories as well as look at those defeats and bring the lessons that we have there to this new situation that we have at this point the the the one thing that i would just like to say here an emphasize is that yes true uh grace had said you know that um they're moving into ever greater centralization uh you know uh and they still have a lot of definitely a lot of power but there's one thing i think that's emerging out of this is that the system the legitimacy of the global system and of capitalism really has been hit very very badly uh at this point and i think once the legitimacy goes and the discrediting goes uh i think that you know this is a very important step forward for movements to really push in uh and uh to be able uh to take advantage of this delegitimation that crisis has brought about to be able to push our alternatives my sense is that coming out of this crisis people will be more willing to listen to us uh so that's there and how do we translate that new listening to us into a material force that will basically um intervene uh in you know in in politics in order to move things towards a progressive direction thank you so much thank you so much well done and i will quickly ask to turn to tia if she could wrap up around this question as well sure i promise to be both uh short with my comments and speak slower at the same time somehow um i i second everything that that walden said and also grace's like excellent sort of political economy uh is sort of presentation um and so there's a lot to chew on already what i'll just add is that despite the fact that people are extremely focused on their immediate survival in the us you know we have people with unable to you know to pay their rent pay for their immediate needs and and also affected by by the the global health crisis so despite the fact that people and households are are are at in a survival mode right now um and also despite the fact that social distancing makes normal forms of left politics difficult um because we what the power that the left has is its numbers right and and the way that we display that power is through occupying public space through going on strike through actually using oftentimes our our bodies in public space to sort of send a message to power and that tool is not available to us anymore so we have to think of other ways to organize but anyway despite those two big limitations people very focused on survival and the the difficulties in organizing protests we've actually seen a lot of organizing that's been happening over the past few weeks in the us in those very constrained circumstances and i think that speaks to the political opening that that both grace and walden spoke about um in different ways and that i spoke about as well that speaks to the fact that we aren't a political opening it also speaks to the pre-existing um um past work of social movements to sort of populate the the political sphere with much more radical ideas over the past few years so i think that you know it's a testament to to our cumulative building of power of course our power is not enough and grace gave a very realistic depiction of the state of the balance of class power right now um but but it's not nothing and i think in the us at least i will say that the left is in a more powerful position than it's been in my entire 20 years doing left activism right um so without a doubt we contested national power we have people in congress we have mayors we have people in city council um we had you know the the the best year in terms of work stoppages and a strike wave this past year for since since like the new deal era i mean it's nowhere near as high as the 1930s but it's the best year for like a long time right and so we we are you know in to some extent in a better place but not exactly where we need to be but i'll just leave it with a couple of things we have had some very effective strikes recently they haven't been big in terms of numbers i'm talking about amazon workers instacart workers different grocery store you know chains and warehouse workers they have not been huge in terms of numbers but they've been very effective those strikes have won concessions from the state and from capital around protective gear around paid sick leave around hazard pay you know increased wages and we need to just keep you know supporting those strikes if we're not an actual worker in one of those workplaces to support them and for those workers you know to keep the pressure on because it turns out that in this moment even with fewer people going on strike there's more effectiveness um we also see that the the climate justice movement in the u.s. and i'm thinking of sunrise and other movements are keeping the pressure on congress and on the biden campaign to do much better and to have much better green new deal policies than that is currently on offer so i think that in a variety of ways movements are still organizing um and we just need to think extremely creatively um at the same time in terms of the limitations on protest and strikes um and also as walden said like continue to build and invigorate our networks both within domestic context and across them and if we have more time i would talk a bit more about networks i'm involved in that that are transnational and that and that involve latin comrades in latin america but i know that that i'm up on my time right now so anyone that wants to contact me is is welcome to do so thank you thank you so much for you and and i will get dressed now turn to turn to grace for the for the last words you you're already like started to to answer this question and pretty much so if you just want to maybe give also like the like with the situation in the in the uk with the probably the most heat heat country in in europe right now and and with just the start of a of a conservative uh uh government what what what is what could we foresee right now yeah um so you know i i agree um with uh both there and walden actually on that analysis of the the strength of the left and the fact that this presents an opportunity in an opening um we are undoubtedly more effectively organized we have been in at any point during the neoliberal era so really since the 1970s which is great i think the question now is how do we use our movement power to build class consciousness in in wider society and throughout the world um because that's really been a big challenge um there was an analysis of of corporalism that it was premised upon occupying the gap between the relative strength of the left in electoral politics so the fact that there was you know a left-wing leadership of the labour party and the relative weakness of progressive forces throughout wider society historically that's been the other way around we've had a strong labour movement we've had strong social movements we've had basic we've had kind of foundations of working class communities um that had their own cultures and their own institutions all those have been eroded by the pervasive individualization of our societies that have been associated with with neoliberalism so you know i think that the big task that left in the uk has now and i'm sure it's similar in other parts of the world is yes continuing to focus on electoral politics yes continuing to focus on party politics we're also focusing on building back out into wider society those progressive forces that can touch people's lives not simply in the realm of you know just when they go to the voting booth in their jobs in their communities and and everywhere else they they live and work so for me that means yes a strategy for engage for continuing to put pressure on politicians and continuing to engage in electoral politics or democratizing the labour party for pushing for policies that are going to promote the interests of working people but it also means community organizing there's really a lot that's going on now that we can build on in terms of the response to the coronavirus crisis through the emergence of these mutual aid networks those are you know providing support for people and people are going to be radicalized through their involvement in these networks i think it's really important that we kind of engage with that onwards there's also and i mean this is probably the most important thing i think this is the most important thing for organizing internationally is the labour movement you know if we're going to be seeing the emergence of these huge international monopolies we need to start thinking about how we are organizing workers vertically throughout supply chains within a big corporation how do you get workers putting together putting chips and phones in china organizing with warehouse workers for amazon in you know the rust belt of the us with tech workers in silicon valley with the people pulling those minerals out of the ground in central africa how do you get a network organizing that is centered around the experience of working for a particular organization and the experience of exploitation under that system how do you get off the ground now that is one of the biggest challenges that the left has faced and all of the people said it's effectively impossible but i think we need to really think about how we do that and i think monopolization will potentially create an impetus towards that because so many workers we concentrated in so few uh few companies um so yeah i'll stop that thank you so much thank you so much grace and i think those we those will be the the ending world and i hope that we will have the opportunity to actually tackle this question of the of the international labor movement and i think that's will be part of the of our upcoming series and i think that's what we wanted to do today is to give this also this general overview of the of what a green new deal or a radical green new deal could look like in this time of of covid crisis and to also already enter into the into some like critical question around the around power and class struggle and and also like we've been mentioning and uh and tia and and walden has been have mentioned the question of trade and all those questions will be like followed up in the in the in the coming weeks next week we have our second second episode said this time it's at seven p.m. central european time and one p.m. for the new york audience and we will we will have the chance to to have mike davis mod barlow and martin cidevan from the european parliament so thank you again thank you very much for for joining us thank you for for uh also bearing with the little sometimes complication with the the technicalities but this is and this is the the new normal in those those covid times and and as i said before at the beginning i really i really hope that this those those webinars and and will give us at the same time a sense of community and organizing both things that's that we need according to her fantastic panelists so again thank you very much for joining walden grace and tia and hopefully see you next week thank you thanks bye thanks so much this was great thanks tia grace mesim thank you walden thank you yes everybody