Welcome to Green Social Thought’s collection of labor and economics articles. Take a deep dive into green economics and labor perspectives. As advocates for environmental responsibility and social justice, we bring you insights into a transformative economic approach that challenges the status quo, particularly degrowth and union and worker rights.
In a world grappling with the consequences of excessive consumption and environmental degradation, degrowth stands as a bold alternative. Our articles explore the the green vision of reshaping our economic landscape, with a particular focus on scaling down unnecessary and detrimental aspects, such as military expenditures and empowering workers through unionization.
Explore the economic implications of embracing degrowth policies, from redefining prosperity to creating resilient and inclusive communities. Exploration of economic alternatives that prioritize people and the planet.
I argue the need for the left–however defined–to directly challenge the US Empire, Capitalism, and the Global Climate Crisis, which are interlinked. It argues that Capitalism has failed working people and cannot be reformed and supporting the US Empire is only making things worse, while enhancing the global climate crisis.
Big business is co-opting what now is a worldwide local food movement by shifting the focus to “regenerative” agriculture. This narrower focus on just the mode of production obscures the vital importance of shorter distances. Shortening the distances between the farm and the consumer and creating more self-reliant economies is the biggest threat to global corporations.
This is a very detailed examination of AFL and AFL-CIO foreign policy program between the 1940s and 1990s, showing not only their efforts but the process by which they carried out this work. Focuses on anticommunism to rationalize its repressive work against workers around the world, with especially strong focus on the work of the American Institute of Free Labor Development (AIFLD) in Latin America.
To counter the white saviour industrial complex in global AI governance, a shift towards more inclusive and equitable practices is necessary, that places positionality and reflexivity at the centre of global AI governance and overall ELSP research on the digital economy. Inclusive representation is paramount, voices from the Global Majority and marginalised communities should be included in global AI governance discussions.
Some advocates are calling for more community-owned electricity providers, or public power, instead of investor-owned utilities. Public power utilities would be owned by community members and controlled by local government, giving ratepayers a more direct say in decisions about electricity sourcing or rate changes.
Capitalist society has a dynamic tendency towards constant technological change — change in products, methods of production, and in the ways workers are managed in the production process. I am going to suggest that capitalism has a very distinctive way of developing technology that is inherently conflicted — it provides human benefits but is also highly destructive in various ways. The destructive character of capitalist technological development is rooted in autocratic control and exploitation of workers and a constant tendency to externalize costs onto workers, the larger community, and nature.
Argues that unions in the US–and by implications elsewhere–need to reject business unionism for social justice unionism by using their power in workplace to not only back workers there, but to back working people in work places AND in the community, at the local, national and/or global levels. Either we work for good of all, or today’s unions die a long, slow, painful death.
Relying on capital to deliver an energy transition is a dangerously bad strategy. The only way to deal with this crisis is with public planning. On the one hand, we need massive public investment in renewable energy, public transit and other decarbonization strategies. And this should not just be about derisking private capital – it should be about public production of public goods.
