The Limits to Capitalist Nature: Theorizing and Overcoming the Imperial Mode of Living (Transforming Capitalism)

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.\nThe Limits to Capitalist Nature\nTheorizing and Overcoming the Imperial Mode of Living
By Ulrich Brand, Markus Wissen Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd.Copyright © 2018 Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78660-156-8\nContents
Acknowledgements, ix,
1 Theorizing the Imperial Mode of Living: An Introduction, 1,
2 The Crisis of Global Environmental Politics and the Imperial Mode of Living, 9,
3 Crisis and Continuity of Capitalist Societal Nature Relations, 23,
4 Strategies of a Green Economy, Contours of a Green Capitalism, 39,
5 The Valorization and Financialization of Nature as Crisis Strategy, 53,
6 Socio-Ecological Transformation as the Horizon of a Practical Critique of the Imperial Mode of Living, 71,
7 Towards the Democratization of Societal Nature Relations, 85,
8 Overcoming the Imperial Mode of Living: Political and Strategic Implications, 97,
Notes, 107,
References, 113,
Index, 137,
About the Authors, 141,\nCHAPTER 1
Theorizing the Imperial Mode of Living
An Introduction\nIn recent years, progressive forces in many parts of the world have been confronted with a new opponent: authoritarian populism. The rise of Trump in the United States, the UK Independence Party in the United Kingdom, Front National in France and the AfD (Alternative for Germany), the fundamentalist backlash against the Arab Spring as well as the apparent end of the cycle of progressive governments in Latin America signal that it is not simply a neo liberal capitalism anymore that the left has to fight. Instead, an even more dangerous enemy has emerged out of a conservative-neo liberal bloc that for a long time dominated the political, social and economic development of countries in the global North, and that now, in a situation of still unresolved multiple crises (of the economy, state finance, political representation, social reproduction, environment, including climate change, energy, food), does not seem capable anymore to cope with the contradictions that it itself has intensified.
The neo liberal business as usual, consisting in the subordination of ever more social spheres under the rule of the capitalist market and thereby worsening the living conditions of millions or even billions of people, is no longer considered as the normal way things have to go. We do not understand neo liberalism primarily as policy reforms (as the concept of the neo liberal Washington Consensus suggests; see Williamson 1990) but as profound societal transformation including the logics of power relations that are inscribed into relations of states, (world) markets and civil society, of class and gender structures, of subjectivities and societal nature relations. The neo liberal counter-revolution since the 1970s, for instance, was a shift not just in economic policies but also in societal class and power relations, of dominant logics (Harvey 2006; Plehwe, Walpen and Neunhoffer 2006; Springer, Birch and MacLeavy 2016). The 'post-democratic' domestication of social conflicts in many countries, through which neo liberalism managed to present itself as a quasi-natural order to which there is no alternative, does not seem to be viable anymore (Crouch 2004; Bluhdorn 2013a,b). Instead, it is politicized in a reactionary manner that makes things even worse, particularly for those without the 'right to have rights' (Hannah Arendt 1994: 296), that is, the majority of refugees who fled their home countries in search for a better life or even for the purpose of their mere survival.
But what exactly is it that the authoritarian and neo liberal right has successfully addressed (Bruff 2016), where does it obtain its strength from and why has the left in many countries not been able to politicize the crisis since 2007/2008 in a progressive way? Responding to these questions is not only crucial in order to understand the fundamental transformations that the world is currently going through and