Le blog de Berliner Gazette

The economic and ecological crises of capital have long been intertwined. This can be seen not least in the heat-induced mass deaths among poor and vulnerable sections of the population – and not only in the Global South, as Tomasz Konicz argues in his contribution to the BG text series “After Extractivism.”

Struggling within the vicious circle of the ecological-economic complex shows: There is an inherent contradiction to working within systems to counter the injustices and damages they cause. We can learn from carceral abolitionists in the U.S. to counter this dilemma with “non-reformist reforms,” as J. Mijin Cha argues in her contribution to the BG text series “After Extractivism.”

The dispossessed are socially fragmented, geographically dispersed, and speak many languages. In order to fight against the capitalist regime of political and economic dispossession, therefore, a concept of alternatives is needed that renders this multiplicity productive, as Agata Lisiak argues in her contribution to the BG text series “After Extractivism,” exploring a politics of relationality.

Studying the history of the exploitation of both labor and environment in the Balkans reveals an enormous scale of destruction and dispossession. Yet even where the machinery of extractivism seems to operate as a totalizing system, resistance from below continues to emerge, as mirko nikolić shows in his contribution to the BG text series “After Extractivism” exploring the case of Serbia.

The ideology of right-wing populist resistance against the energy transition – as manifested in climate change denial – should be examined closely if one wants to penetrate the causes of a general social inability, far beyond the ranks of the right, to tackle the necessary transformation of the capitalist system, Tatjana Söding argues in her contribution to the BG text series “After Extractivism.”

In the age of green capitalism copper is the “new oil.” Since Mongolia has plenty of it, its ruling class has initiated a violent transition that brings to the fore the precarious existence of nomads – and thus serves a starting point for common struggles against the economic-ecological complex, as Shuree Sarantuya shows in her text to the BG series “After Extractivism.”

From the very beginning, anti-capitalist struggles in the Global South have been accompanied by the question of how the experience of exploitation, shared across borders, can be turned into shared politics of resistance and emancipation. Impulses for this can be found not least in artistic contributions, as Christine Okoth argues in her contribution to the BG text series “After Extractivism.”

Facing climate catastrophe, it is time to question everything that has led us to this point, not least the prevailing systems in which we organize and think production. Because they have been exposed as useless, even catastrophic, both capitalism and the rationalities of progress must be replaced by alternatives, Lukas Stolz argues in his contribution to the BG text series “After Extractivism.”

The “green” transition opens new spaces for accumulation. The cost of this is to be borne by society, especially by workers in old industries. Thus, the question here is not simply how to start the post-carbon era, but rather how to advance post-capitalism, as Stoyo Tetevenski argues in his contribution to the BG text series “After Extractivism” by tackling the coal question in Bulgaria.

The transition into a better world requires fundamental changes: economic, political, technological, and epistemic. But it also requires new dreams which make transition justice a no-brainer, as researchers Sanja Bojanic and Marko Luka Zubcic argue in their contribution to the BG text series “After Extractivism,” unravelling the sell out of Kvarner Bay in Croatia.