Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

A disappointing piece by Naomi Klein , I think. Klein, the critic of ‘neoliberal’ capitalism, fails in a long piece to include a couple of paragraphs analysing the political economy of Egypt in the broader regional and global capitalist relations. Instead, ‘human rights’, ‘civil society’ and the authoritarian regime occupy her analysis. The piece should have been ‘In solidarity with Alaa’.  The interactions of geopolitical powers and capitalist interests are completely absent. There is only a passing mention of ‘anti-capitalist politics’, but not the functioning of capital in Egypt, Israel, the UAE, the US, France, the UK, etc. Klein, who in  No Logo  ushered in a new generational critique of commodity culture, and who in  The Shock Doctrine  established herself as perhaps the most prominent North American critic of neoliberal disaster capitalism , signals that she has now, in  William Morris 's famous metaphor, crossed "the river of fire" to become a  critic of capitalis

"The climate and ecological crisis cannot be solved within today's political and economic systems", the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg argues . "That isn't an opinion. That's a fact,” she added. I agree with you, Greta. The question is: what is the nature of the alternative political and economic system?  Capitalism is a very dynamic system albeit destructive, and not only to nature but also to human body and soul. But it always seeks a way to mitigate that destruction for its own survival. Advances in technology and productivity are contradicted with obscene inequality and different forms of violence by state and non-state agencies. I think that capitalism and capitalist institutions will be able in the short term to delay a climate catastrophe or minimise its impact on the rich countries. In the long term, however, the contradictions of the system are manyfold and there is no room for optimism.