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The Dialogues on the Experience of War program supports the study and discussion of humanities sources that address the experiences of military service and war from a wide variety of perspectives. In recognition of the importance of the humanities in helping Americans to understand the meaning and experiences of military service and war, Dialogues projects encourage veterans and nonveterans to reflect collectively on such topics as civic engagement, veteran identity, the legacies of war, service, and homecoming. Project teams should include humanities scholars, military veterans, and individuals with relevant experience.

This publication explores the development of civic engagement, the factors that influence its development, and the impacts of civic involvement on the individual, community, and society. The Psychology of Citizenship and Civic Engagement is about people’s connections with their communities, and the profound impact these connections can have on their health and well-being. Being active in a neighbourhood association, volunteering with a charitable organization, working for a political party, fighting for social justice on behalf of a marginalized group, or singing in a community choir all have positive outcomes. Unfortunately, however, there are many, particularly among those who are poor, powerless or marginalized, who are not involved in their communities, and who don’t get a chance to realize these benefits. The Psychology of Citizenship and Civic Engagement brings together a large body of research from psychology and other social sciences to tell the story about why some individuals are engaged in their communities while others are not, and how their involvements affect not only their own well-being but the welfare of their communities and even their country. The various environments where individuals live, learn, play, pray and work also affect their community involvements. Family environments, as one might expect, have a profound influence on the civic engagement of children. Parents influence their children’s civic activities by encouraging their children’s involvement, by serving as role models of engagement, by transmitting their values through discussion with their children, and by linking them to community organizations. Studies show, for example, that children whose families discuss politics in the home are two or three times as likely to follow politics, sign petitions, and volunteer when they became adults, compared to children whose parents didn’t discuss politics. School and neighbourhood environments have a similarly profound influence on young people’s civic participation. Children who attend schools that provide opportunities for students to do community service, encourage respect among students and teachers, and offer a wide range of extracurricular activities, are much more likely to become active citizens when they reach adulthood. Young people who live in neighborhoods with youth organizations such as a YM-YWCA, or a Boys and Girls Club, are also more likely to become civically engaged adults. Larger social environments, such as the state, province or country in which individuals reside also influence the extent to which they participate in civic activities. Countries that have high levels of materialism, economic inequality, and political systems in which individuals do not wield equal power in influencing government decisions, tend to have citizens that spurn government and participate less in civic life. The book then questions the impact of civic engagement on individuals by looking at how civic participation affects the well-being of young people, adults, and society in general. Young people that participate in civic life by joining clubs and teams, volunteering, or participating in their church, mosque or synagogue, benefit in many ways. They are less likely to smoke, abuse drugs and alcohol, engage in delinquent acts, become pregnant, or drop out of school. They are more likely to have high self-esteem, a greater sense of social responsibility, and healthier social relationships. Civically involved adults also have greater self-esteem and better personal relationships. Additionally, they have fewer illnesses, lower levels of depression, and they even live longer! Studies have shown, for example, that older individuals who volunteer in their community, compared to those who do not, experience a 40% to 50% reduction in mortality during their senior years. Civic participation affects not just individuals, but entire societies. Neighborhoods with higher levels of civic participation have a greater sense of community, lower levels of crime, and citizens who are healthier and happier. States and countries with greater proportions of civically engaged citizens have lower rates of disease, mental illness, and suicide. They, too, have lower crime rates, as well as having greater economic prosperity, better-educated children, and more effective governments. The last section of the book examines the “why’s and wherefores” of civic engagement – why it has such a significant impact on well-being, and what kinds of involvements are most conducive to enhancing well-being. They also discuss the ways in which scientifically generated knowledge can be used to enhance civic engagement so that individuals and society can reap the benefits of greater involvement. The scientific evidence that civic engagement is good for individuals and society is substantial and it is compelling. The task now at hand is how to use this evidence to achieve more engagement and all the benefits that follow from it.

The threat of biological warfare seems remote to most industrialized and developing nations. However, the threat of bioterrorism, in which biological agents are used by extremists as weapons against civilian populations, is a matter of concern. Nations and dissident groups exist that have both the motivation and access to skills to selectively cultivate some of the most dangerous pathogens and to deploy them as agents in acts of terrorism. Although a bioterrorist attack is difficult to predict, the consequences of a successful attack could be devastating and cannot be ignored. Bioterrorism and its effects can impose heavy demands on the public health care system which will be called upon to handle the consequences. An effective public health care system with strong disease surveillance, rapid epidemiological and laboratory investigation, efficient medical management, information, education and communication (IEC) will be required to counter any act of covert or overt bioterrorist attack. In India there has been no documented case of bioterrorism so far. For this very reason we need to know and learn about this form of terror before it becomes a formidable challenge to our public health system and the society [1]. Historical Perspective: The use of biological weapons has been reported as early as the sixth century B.C. when contamination of water supply with the fungus Claviceps purpurea (rye ergot) by the Assyrians had been reported. The hurling of the dead bodies of plague victims over the walls of the city of Kaffa by the Tartar army in 1346 and the spreading of smallpox via contaminated blankets by the British to the Native American population loyal to the French in 1767 are the most frequently cited episodes of poisoning [2]. In the recent past, mycotoxins (fungal toxins) were reported to have been used in Afghanistan in the form of what is popularly known as ‘yellow rain’. The growth of religious cults and extremist political groups also increases the threat of bioterrorism today. The most significant biological attack in the United States (US) was the intentional contamination of restaurant salad bars with Salmonella by a religious cult in Oregon in 1984 [2]. In September 2001, the American public was exposed to anthrax spores as a bioweapon delivered through the US postal system. The centre for disease control and prevention (CDC) identified 22 confirmed or suspected cases of anthrax during this attack. These included 11 patients with inhalational anthrax, of whom five died and 11 patients with cutaneous anthrax (seven confirmed), all of whom survived [2]. What is bioterrorism? Bioterrorism is the intentional release or threat of release of biologic agents (i.e. viruses, bacteria, fungi or their toxins) in order to cause disease or death among human population or food crops and livestock to terrorize a civilian population or manipulate the government [3]. Is bioterrorism a legitimate threat? Epidemics of plague in India, avian (H5N1) influenza in Hong Kong, ebola haemorrhagic fever in central Africa and Nipah virus (NiV) infection in Malaysia and Singapore required national and international response. During the plague and ebola investigations, concerns regarding possibility of bioterrorism were raised, though not supported by subsequent findings [4]. Investigations into these outbreaks has taught us a number of important lessons. The challenges posed by biological weapons are availability of multiple agents and delivery means, variable incubation periods, high mortality rates and potential for geographic dispersion of the agent (due to travel) during the incubation period. At times prompt identification or distinction between a bioterrorist attack and natural disease outbreak may be difficult. Many of the important prophylactic drugs/vaccines may not be available during a bioterrorist attack or have limited shelf lives and cannot be stockpiled. Even today, at least 17 countries are known to have a biological weapons program. Consequent to the collapse of the erstwhile Soviet Union, microbe stocks and technology appear to have passed into terrorist hands [5]. Bioterrorist attacks could be caused by virtually any pathogenic microorganism. However micro organisms (like virus, bacteria, fungi or toxins) to be effective as a bioterrorist agent should consistently produce a given effect, death or disease, at low concentrations. The agent should be highly contagious, have a short and predictable incubation period. The target population should have little or no immunity against the organism. The agent should be amenable to economic mass production, difficult to identify in the target population and little or no prophylaxis or treatment should be available with the native population. The bioterrorist agents with highest priority are the causes of anthrax (Bacillus anthracis), botulism (Clostridium botulinum), plague (Yersinia pestis), smallpox (variola major), tularaemia (Francisella tularensis) and viral haemorrhagic fevers (filoviruses and arena viruses). There are many other common foods or water-borne agents that could potentially be used in a bioterrorist attack [6]. The biological weapons as per the CDC classification are classified into three categories, Category A, B and C, as given in Table 1, based on the priority of the agents to pose a risk to the national security and the ease with which they can be disseminated [7]. The microbiological agents are listed in Table 2. Common signs, symptoms and clinical syndromes caused by bioterrorism agents are given in Table 3. Table 1 Classification of agents of bioterrorism Category A Category B Category C High priority agents include organisms that pose a risk to national security because they are: • Easily disseminated • Cause high mortality • Cause public panic and social disruption • Require special action for public health preparedness. Second highest priority agents include those that are: • Moderately easy to disseminate • Cause moderate morbidity • Require enhanced disease surveillance and public health diagnostic capacity Third highest priority agents include emerging pathogens: • That could be engineered for mass dissemination in the future • Have potential for high morbidity, mortality and major health impact Open in a separate window Table 2 Agents of Bioterrorism Category A agents Category B agents Category C agents • Bacillus anthracis (anthrax) • Clostridium botulinum toxin (botulism) • Francisella tularensis (tularemia) • Variola major (smallpox) • Yersinia pestis (plague) • Filo viruses • Ebola virus (Ebola hemorrhagic fever) • Marburg virus (Marburg haemorrhagic fever) • Arena viruses • Junin virus (Argentinian haemorrhagic fever) and related viruses • Lassa virus (Lassa fever) • Alpha viruses • Eastern and western equine encephalomyelitis viruses (EEE, WEE) • Venezuelan equine encephalomyelitis virus (VEE) • Brucella species (brucellosis) • Burkholderia mallei (glanders) • Coxiella burnetii (Q fever) • Epsilon toxin of Clostridium perfringens • Ricin toxin from Ricinus communis • Staphylococcal enterotoxin B A subset of Category B agents includes pathogens that are food or waterborne. These pathogens include but are not limited to: • Cryptosporidium parvum • Escherichia coli O157: H7 • Salmonella species • Shigella dysenteriae • Vibrio cholerae • Hanta viruses • Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis • Nipah virus • Tickborne encephalitis viruses • Tickborne haemorrhagic fever viruses • Yellow fever Open in a separate window Table 3 Clinical syndromes caused by bioterrorism agents [2, 7, 9] i. Inhalational Anthrax. Abrupt fever, respiratory distress, chest pain. Widened mediastinum Gram +ve bacilli in sputum. Treatment is with Ciproflox 500 mg 12 hourly or Doxycycline 100 mg 12 hourly or Clindamycin 900 mg thrice daily for 60 days Prophylaxis post exposure: Ciproflox 500 mg 12 hourly or Doxycycline 100mg 12 hourly for 60 days. Anthrax vaccine i. Small Pox Fever with papular rash that begins on the face and extremities and uniformly progresses to vesicles and pustules; Clinical with laboratory confirmation; Treatment: Supportive. Prophylaxis: Vaccinia immunization i. Botulism Acute bilateral descending flaccid paralysis beginning with cranial nerve palsies. Electromyography (EMG): augmented muscle action poten toxin assays of serum, faeces or gastric aspirate can be done. Treatment: Supportive, Equine antitoxin. Prophylaxis: Administration of antitoxin. i. Brucellosis Irregular fever, chills, malaise, headache and pleuritic chest pain. Gram-ve coccobacilli in blood tial / bone marrow culture. Serologic testing and culture available. Treatment: Intramuscular Streptomycin 750 mg to 1 g daily for 14 to 21 days with Doxycycline 100 mg 12 hourly for 6 weeks. Prophylaxis: Vaccines based on live attenuated B. abortus strain are of uncertain value. ii. Pneumonic Plague: Severe Pneumonia, shock, hemoptysis, cyanosis, gastrointestinal symptoms Gram -ve bacilli/coccobacilli in sputum, other confirmatory tests. Treatment: Streptomycin intramuscular or intravenous 1.0 gm thrice daily or Doxycycline 100mg twice daily or Chloramphenicol 500 mg 12 hourly. Prophylaxis: Doxycycline 100mg 12 hourly. Formalin Fixed Vaccine. ii. Viral Haemorrhagic Fevers Fever with mucous membrane bleeding, petechiae, thrombocytopenia and hypotension. Definitive testing available. Treatment: Supportive Ribavirin in recommended doses. Prophylaxis: Vaccine for yellow fever. ii. Encephalitis (Venezuelan, Eastern, Western) Encephalopathy with fever and seizures and/or focal neurological deficits. Serologic testing available. Treatment: Supportive Prophylaxis: Attenuated cell-culture propagated live vaccine. TC-83 only partially effective. ii. Tularaemia (Typhoidal, Pneumonic) Fever, chills, rigors, headache, myalgias, sore throat; Substernal discomfort, dry cough. Gram-ve bacillus in smears / cultures. Chest radiograph shows infiltrate/effusion. Definitive testing available, Treatment: Streptomycin 1 g 12 hourly for 14 days Prophylaxis: Doxycycline 100 mg 12 hourly for 14 days iii. Ricin Aerosolized Fever, chest pain and cough progressing to respiratory distress and hypoxemia not improving with antibiotics. Chest radiograph shows Pulmonary Oedema, ELISA test on sputum or immunohistoichemical techniques for direct tissue analysis to confirm diagnosis. Treatment: Supportive. No antitoxin yet available. No Prophylaxis available. iii. T2 Mycotoxin Abrupt mucocutaneous and airway irritation including skin (pain and blistering), eye (pain and tearing), gastrointestinal (bleeding, vomiting, and diarrhea) and airway (dyspnea and cough) Treatment: Supportive. No antitoxin yet available. Prophylaxis: No Prophylaxis available presently. iv. Staphylococcal entrotoxin B Acute onset of fever, chills, headache, non-productive cough and myalgia with a normal chest radiograph. Profuse watery diarrhoea, if ingested. Enterotoxins may be detected in environmental samples using a variety of antibody-based tests. Treatment: Supportive therapy. No Prophylaxis available. Open in a separate window The routes of entry of biological weapons into the human body are mainly inhalation, contact (skin / mucous membrane) and the gastrointestinal tract. Methods of delivery could be through bomblets delivered by aircrafts or use of spray tanks mounted on aircrafts/tall buildings. The agents of anthrax, plague, brucellosis, smallpox, viral encephalitides and viral haemorrhagic fevers can be aerosolized and distributed over large geographic areas. Other methods include delivery by post or by deliberate infiltration of infected animals, vectors and pests through the international border. In preparation against biological weapons attacks, newer methods for early detection/warning have been devised by certain countries e.g. the BioWatch program in the US, which uses a series of pathogen detectors colocated with air quality monitors. These detectors collect airborne particles onto filters which are later manually collected at regular intervals and analyzed for potential biological weapon pathogens using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) techniques. It is expected that this system will provide early warning of a pathogen release, alerting authorities before victims begin to show symptoms and providing the opportunity to deliver treatment earlier. However the deployment of such bioterrorism detection system may not be viewed as an appropriate response to the current threat [8]. In the event of a bioterrorist attack the most important step is the identification of the event. The cause of a disease or even the occurrence of something unusual may be very difficult to determine, especially if the initial cases are few. Any small or large outbreak of disease should be evaluated as a potential bioterrorist attack. Doctors in hospital out patient departments (OPDs), private practioners and family physicians could play a vital role in the initial recognition of a potential bioterrorism attack. Familiarity with the infectious agents of highest priority can expedite diagnosis and initial management leading to a successful public health response to such an attack. The first to notice could be a hospital laboratory seeing unusual strains of organisms, an epidemiologist keeping track of hospital admissions or even pharmacists distributing more antibiotics than usual. A bioterrorist attack may be difficult to distinguish from a naturally occurring infectious disease outbreak. A single diagnosed or strongly suspected case of smallpox, inhalational anthrax, cutaneous anthrax (with no known risk factors compatible with naturally-occurring disease), viral haemorrhagic fever (in a patient with no international travel history) or more than one case of pneumonic plague, pneumonic tularaemia (with at least one laboratory confirmed case, no known compatible risk factors and occurring in a brief time period) or a higher than expected number of unexplained morbidity and mortality in a brief time period within a defined geographic region should point towards possibility of a bioterrorist attack [9]. Public health emergency preparedness and response to bioterrorist attack: The responsibilities of public health agencies are surveillance of infectious diseases, detection and investigation of outbreaks, identification of etiologic agents and their modes of transmission and the development of prevention and control strategies. The measures needed to prevent and control emerging infections are strikingly similar to those needed to check the threat of bioterrorism. Maintaining effective disease surveillance and communication systems are fundamental components of an adequate public health infrastructure. Ensuring adequate epidemiologic and laboratory capacity are prerequisites to effective surveillance systems. One approach to early detection is “syndrome surveillance”, in which electronic symptom data are captured early in the course of illness and analyzed for signals that might indicate an outbreak requiring public health investigation and response. Syndrome surveillance has been used for early detection of outbreaks to follow the size, spread and tempo of outbreaks, to monitor disease trends and to provide reassurance that an outbreak has not occurred. Syndrome surveillance systems seek to use existing health data in real time to provide immediate analysis and feedback to those charged with investigation and follow-up of potential outbreaks. The model of large scale exposure to the agents of bioterrorism (by use of vaccines and antibiotics) has dramatic potential for saving lives and expense [10, 11, 12]. The public health approach to bioterrorism must begin with the development of local and state-level plans. Close collaboration between the clinical and public health communities is also critical. To effectively respond to an emergency or disaster, health departments must engage in preparedness activities. Completion of the following five phases of activities prior to an incident are essential for successful response to a bioterrorist attack [13]: (a) Preparedness phase: This phase includes actions to be taken by different agencies to ensure required state of preparedness. These include evaluation of the laboratory facilities and upgrading the same, evaluating the hospital preparedness in emergency response and case management in case of an imminent attack, conduct training of health professionals, rapid response team (RRT) and quick response medical team (QRMT) who would be the first responders, work out the legal provision and their implications, ensure that requirement of safe drinking water is met, ensure availability of adequate stocks of medicines and vaccines, coordinate with security organization, organize mock drills for health professionals, government departments, animal husbandry, security, law enforcing and other agencies so as to assess their preparedness levels to act in case of an attack, prepare contact details so that communications is unhampered during an attack. Public should be kept aware about imminent attacks so that voluntary reporting is encouraged. It is important to carry out review of situation based on current information of threat perception. (b) Early Warning Phase: The early warning in the surveillance system includes activities like case definitions, notification, compilation and interpretation of epidemiological data. Early detection and rapid investigation by public health epidemiologist is critical in determining the scope and magnitude of the attack and to implement effective interventions. (c) Notification Phase: It is mandatory to report any unusual syndrome or usual syndromes in unusual numbers to appropriate authorities. The activities in this phase include rapid epidemiological investigations, quick laboratory support for confirmation of diagnosis, quarantine, isolation, keeping health care facilities geared for impending casualty management and evolving public health facilities for control. (d) Response Phase: In this phase the activities include rapid epidemiological investigation, quick laboratory support, mass casualty management and initiation of preventive, curative and specific control measures for containing the further spread of the disease (Table 4). In order to achieve them, following steps can be followed: (i) Assess the situation: Initiate the response by assessing the situation in terms of time, place and person distribution of those affected, routes of transmission, its impact on critical infrastructure and health facilities, the agencies and organizations involved in responding to the event, communicate to the public health responders, local, state and national level emergency operation centres for event management etc. (ii) Contact key health personnel: Contact and coordinate with personnel within the health department that have emergency response roles and responsibilities. Record all contacts and follow-up actions. (iii) Develop action plan: Develop initial health response objectives that are specific, measurable and achievable. Establish an action plan based on the assessment of the situation. Assign responsibilities and record all actions. (iv) Implementation of the action plan: The RRTs/QRMTs investigate the outbreak/increase in the disease incidence, collect samples and send it to the identified state/national laboratory for testing. Hospitals are alerted for receiving the patients and their treatment. If necessary tented hospitals are set up. Methods to control the disease and quarantine measures are instituted. Once the disease is identified, treatment protocols are sent to all concerned by the fastest possible means. Standard operating procedures (SOP) for laboratory testing is made by the identified laboratory and the same is sent to all the hospital laboratories and district hospitals for implementation. Laboratory reagents are distributed to the concerned laboratories. Public is taken into confidence to prevent any panic. The list of ‘Do's and Don'ts’ are circulated thorough the print and electronic media. Hospitals ensure appropriate isolation, quarantine, waste disposal and personal protective measures. All contaminated clothing and equipment are carefully disposed of by incineration. An impact assessment team assesses the impact of the attacks on humans, animals and plants. Table 4 Epidemiologic response to suspected/confirmed bioterrorism events The epidemiologic preparedness and investigation checklists may be useful in the epidemiologic response planning process: (a) Confirmation Specimens to be forwarded to a reference laboratory for laboratory confirmation (b) Notification If disease scenario meets the definition for bioterrorism, local, state and central bioterrorism response partners will be notified, the RRTs/QRMTs will be activated and serve as the core epidemiologic rapid response team (c) Coordination Several types of personnel may be required for the epidemiological investigation like interviewers, environmental health inspectors, disease control investigators, epidemiologists, data entry operators and data managers (d) Communication Information from the outbreak investigation is communicated to other bioterrorism response partners (e) Epidemiological Investigation 1 Hypothesis generating interviews with the initial cases 2 Case definition based on initial hypothesis-generating interviews 3 Case finding by local and state public health officials through alerts to multiple potential reporting sources 4 Case interviews using a uniform questionnaire 5 Data analysis for epidemiologic investigation and contact tracing activities in a coordinated manner (f) Contact tracing For diseases transmissible from person-to-person, all possible contacts are identified and interviewed All clinical and epidemiologic information is entered into a database All contacts are referred for vaccination, prophylaxis, isolation and/or quarantine as appropriate and kept under active surveillance (g) Laboratories Questions regarding specimen collection, packaging, storage and shipment should be clear (h) Expanded surveillance If the disease outbreak is thought to involve animals, public health officials from the vector borne / veterinary health will be informed (j) Overt or announced bioterrorism threat This is guided by the intelligence and law enforcement agency which coordinates the epidemiologic investigation All information e.g. time, place, mode and/or contents of the release made available to public health personnel Open in a separate window (e) Recovery Phase: The setbacks suffered as a result of the bioterrorist attack are restored and lessons learnt in this phase are incorporated in the future preparedness plans. The damage done to the public health facilities and the essential items utilized during the response phase are replenished. Public advisories are issued regarding restoration of normalcy. The RRTs compile and analyze data to identify the deficiencies experienced in the implementation of the response measures. The necessary modifications are then incorporated in the contingency plan for future [11].

Representations are developed by drawing on and incorporating existing representations of related objects. Through communication, people try to understand new scientific concepts such as ‘biodiversity’, relating these concepts to already existing representations of more familiar objects. As such, the understanding of a new object becomes anchored (Moscovici 2000). Through the process of anchoring, people attribute certain characteristics to biodiversity, partly based on representations of more familiar concepts like nature, landscape and cultural diversity. Thus, an analysis of public understanding of the concepts of biodiversity has to take social representations of such related concepts into account. Overall, prior experience, knowledge and the social context shape social representations. Therefore, different groups such as farmers, foresters, or urban and rural people may hold different representations of biodiversity. In turn, this has important implications for public and stakeholder responses to biodiversity management policies and measures. As social representations of objects tend to inform attitudes towards concrete behaviour related to the object, analyses of social representations used by different groups of the general public may shed light on the reasons for public protest against and lack of support for management approaches (Buijs et al. 2006; Fischer and Van der Wal 2007).

The neoliberals rather sought to keep markets untouched by politics, to keep politics insulated from the emotional demands of the uneducated masses, and to avoid rent-seeking behavior from capitalists. But they also sought deregulation, privatization and an end to redistribution through taxation. In addition to redistribution, they opposed other measures of what they decried as “social justice.” They bore a general hostility to politics and the social in favor of a world dominated by what they believed was the spontaneous order produced by markets and traditional morality. These are the norms by which we live today. So while “actually existing neoliberalism” is very different from the dream of the founders, it was nonetheless spawned by that dream.

To refresh your memory, the World Health Organization (WHO) is championing the creation of what it calls wellbeing societies, in which equitable health is achieved within the ecological limits of the Earth. "Equitable health" is not the same as equal health, but is about ensuring that we all have a fair opportunity to be healthy, minimizing inequality as much as possible. Inequality has health consequences: As the WHO Commission on the Social Determinants of Health memorably put it in 2008: "Social injustice is killing people on a grand scale." Thus, high levels of inequality are incompatible with a wellbeing society. But inequality does not just happen. Instead, as the World Inequality Report 2022 noted: "Inequality is a political choice, not an inevitability." That political choice is not only killing people on a grand scale, it is creating much social strain and mental and physical ill health through poverty, marginalization, social exclusion and alienation, resulting in what Nobel Prizewinning economist Sir Angus Deaton calls the "diseases of despair." The World Inequality Report notes that the period from 1945 or 1950 till 1980 "was a period of shrinking inequality in many parts of the world." At the same time, and perhaps contrary to our usual modern expectations, these were times of "fast productivity growth and increasing prosperity, never matched since" for the countries of the West. The report goes on to note: "The reason why that was possible had a lot to do with policy - tax rates were high, and there was an ideology that inequality needed to be kept in check, that was shared between the corporate sector, civil society and the government." That all changed with the advent of neoliberalism as the dominant ideology, first implemented by Margaret Thatcher in the U.K. and Ronald Reagan in the U.S. As a consequence, the report notes, "contemporary global inequalities are close to early 20th century levels, at the peak of Western imperialism." Deaton, a self-professed believer in social democratic capitalism who is now chairing a review of rising inequalities in the U.K., says "today's inequalities are signs that democratic capitalism is under threat." To address this, as the 2008 WHO Commission put it in one of its three key recommendations, we have to "tackle the inequitable distribution of power, money, and resources." Thirteen years later, the World Inequality Report made much the same point: "Addressing the challenges of the 21st century is not feasible without significant redistribution of income and wealth inequalities." So how should that be done? The World Inequality Lab, source of the World Inequality Report, has what is really a very simple proposition: "A modest progressive wealth tax on global multimillionaires." They point out that wealth - or at least, one form of it, namely property - is already taxed pretty much all over the world. But it is a flat tax, not progressive - the very rich pay the same rate on their property as the average citizen. Moreover, much of the wealth of the very wealthy is in stocks and bonds and other forms of wealth, not property. So their recommendation is to expand the property tax to encompass all forms of wealth, not just real estate, and to make it progressive. Such a tax, they find, ranging progressively from 0.6 per cent to 3.2 per cent of total wealth, would generate $1.74 trillion each year, or 1.6 per cent of total global incomes, that could then be "reinvested in education, health and the ecological transition." As they note, "it would be completely unreasonable not to ask more of top wealth-holders in the future, especially in light of the social, developmental and environmental challenges ahead."

These results have important implications. First, they suggest that a purely market-based green growth strategy is likely to have serious negative side effects. These side effects may be corrected by complementing environmental policies with strong social policies, such as working-time reduction, a guaranteed jobs programme, and a wealth tax. Second, the results suggest that degrowth can dramatically reduce environmental impact and lead to improved social outcomes (for example, more leisure time, higher employment and greater equality), provided the appropriate policies are in place. Third, a Green New Deal, with an explicit focus on achieving a just transition, may represent a compromise that advocates of both green growth and degrowth can support.

Universal Basic Income (UBI) is on the rise. Pilot programs providing income on an unconditional basis are being implemented at national, provincial and municipal levels in places like Finland, Scotland, Kenya, the Canadian province of Ontario, the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands, and Oakland, California. Anti-work advocates see UBI as a victory against neoliberal productivist ideology and subjectivity (what some have referred to as “homo economicus“). Workerists see UBI as a way of tipping the balance of power in favor of labor. While these qualities of basic income are ones worth aspiring to, the policy contains macroeconomic deficiencies if adopted universally. In addition, UBI advocates overlook one of the fundamental questions of power in political economy: Who controls the means of production? One way to address this question is through a self-managed socialist job guarantee. That is to say, providing a job to anyone who wants one, within a self-management institutional framework. UBI as Hyperinflationary Economist Pavlina Tcherneva has argued there could be disastrous results from wide-scale implementation of UBI. In a paper from 2006, Tcherneva argues that solely implementing UBI would lead to “stagflation,” i.e., “low employment and high prices.” She writes: In order to coax [UBI] recipients back into the labour market, employers will need to offer higher wages (which, at first approximation, is a desirable result). However, soon thereafter, these same employers will also raise prices, to cover the increases in wage costs. As a consequence, rising prices will erode the purchasing power of the [UBI] payment, which will affect particularly those recipients who did not return to the labour market. To maintain the objective of the universal guarantee and provide just levels of standard living, there will be pressure to revise the [UBI] benefit upward. If this happens it will further induce some exit from the labour market, drop in output, a compensatory rise in wages and prices and further drop in [UBI] purchasing power. This vicious cycle renders the income guarantee self-defeating. Note that, if the benefit is continually increased — the income guarantee becomes not just inflationary, but hyperinflationary. Within a political-economic climate preoccupied with budget-neutrality (i.e., balanced budgets; running no fiscal deficits), “if taxes are raised … they will also induce workers on the margin to exit the labour force.” This coupling of a rising UBI to compensate for increased prices, with rising taxes (again, partially resulting from an obsession with budget-neutrality), will result in declining output. UBI as Oppressive Volunteerism Besides macroeconomic incoherence, other issues emerge. Tcherneva points to the likely stigmatization of those who do not work. More than this, UBI points to the emergence of a new subaltern class, as UBI “does not deal with the loss of skill and deterioration of human capital that result from unemployment.” Nathan Tankus, a research scholar at Modern Money Network, has noted that, “If you distributed to everyone the same amount of IOUs regardless of whether they worked, production will fall into volunteerism and the community has no method of insuring that work is distributed equally or that production continues at adequate levels given the goals of the community.” This holds the potential for exacerbating gender and racial inequities. UBI programs hold the potential to actually fit quite well into a neoliberal paradigm. Some see UBI as administratively efficient; this ethos could evolve into one that only further perpetuates decreases in welfare provision and accompanying decreases in public employment. In support of a pro-UBI article in the Wall Street Journal, John Daniel Davidson has written in the conservative-leaning magazine The Federalist that, “Instead of the sprawling mess of welfare programs we have today, the idea is to end all social welfare programs and instead just cut everyone a check.” This is hardly an end to neoliberalism; it is an intensification of it, as every individual is granted a certain sum of money to fulfill their status as a good and abiding consumer. With UBI — and the presumably unchanged state and capitalist control of credit — one’s status as a consumer is perpetuated while their status as a worker is tentative and subject to elimination. Capitalist control over the means of production remains intact, and the finance, insurance and real estate sectors continue to go unchecked and unconstrained. A Chartalist Understanding of Money The hyperinflationary argument is not the same argument against raising the minimum wage. Tcherneva’s argument against UBI stems from an understanding of money — and the operation of inflation — that radically departs from orthodox economics. Government-backed full employment programs have faced elites that opposed them on fiscal grounds, and thus took steps to reduce or limit the scope of full employment programs. The classic lament of the liberal is that while the aims of the left are sound, we cannot achieve those aims because we must truck with a finite store of money, sourced from the rich. Contra the liberal understanding of money is a framework known as “chartalism.” What chartalism teaches us is that money is infinite — only resources are finite. Those who understand chartalism understand that government with its own currency (known as a sovereign currency) does not borrow money from “bond vigilantes” to spend. Rather, it spends first and then collects taxes. The US dollar is a sovereign currency (unlike, say, Greece, which does not have authority over the euro). It is the power of the US government to impose tax obligations that gives the dollar its value. A chartalist understanding of money implies that a monetarily sovereign government can afford to employ all who seek employment, without first seeking money from rich people. The Job Guarantee: History of a Non-Reformist Reform The real reason that elites resist full employment programs is because they facilitate class consciousness and help build dual power. This elite resistance is exactly the reason why the left must press all the harder to make full employment a reality, and take charge of its policy design. Full employment both requires class consciousness and creates it. In this regard, there are three full employment programs worth noting: the French National Workshops of 1848, the Argentine Jefes program and the Indian National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. The French National Workshops in 1848 Marx chronicled the French National Workshops in his classic The Class Struggles in France. The National Workshops were an attempt to implement the Revolution’s “organization of work” in the ferment of 1848. Unclear in what this meant, local elites outside of Paris resisted the creation of the Workshops. Only when workers rose up to demand the formation of the Workshops in their locales did the elites relent in some cases. Across France, local governments organized everything from “charity workshops” to full on bridge-building and public works programs. While some National Workshops were the domain of only unskilled labor, in others, disgruntled artisans and skilled craftsmen demanded the socialization of their labor. Contra their reputation in some circles, it has become apparent that the National Workshops mobilized large sections of the French proletariat and delivered real wage gains, before elites destroyed the program. Naturally, elites resisted the Workshops as a waste of public resources and a locus for radical political agitation from the working class. Not all localities established national workshops, and even where the workshops emerged, there was a constant struggle between local elites and workers over who would control wages, hours and working conditions. It was in the industrialized cities of Paris, Lyon and Marseilles, where relations between workers and elites were most volatile, that the National Workshops had the greatest scope and effect. Funding for the National Workshops largely came from the state, and not the local municipalities. The activities funded included not only unskilled labor but also public works, textiles manufacture and even railroads. The more sophisticated projects emerged out of worker uprisings, where workers demanded the socialization of skilled labor enterprises. Even with state funding, there were still budgetary shortfalls and financial difficulties; for example, Marseilles attempted to borrow 4.5 million franc from the central government to complete projects. The industrialized cities faced a “collapse of the domination of the notables over the working class and the emergence of working class consciousness….” The workshops played a “key role in pitting the working class against the state and thus in shaping a common consciousness among the lower classes.” Perhaps because of this, at the end of June of 1848, the government closed the National Workshops. Argentina’s Jefes y Jefas Program in 2002 In 2000-2001, Argentina faced a near-revolutionary situation in the streets. Manufacturing facilities were expropriated and converted into worker cooperatives. Unemployment reached 25 percent at the peak of the crisis. The government of Eduardo Duhalde responded in 2002 with the Jefes program, which offered a job to each head of a household with children. The deployment of the Jefes y Jefas program in 2002 was an attempt to stabilize prices and provide employment. The program supported the creation of local municipal councils to oversee community projects, such as drainage works, community centers, domestic violence shelters/services, food kitchens, public health and child care. Participants reported high levels of satisfaction with the work they did in the program, with 90 percent either satisfied or very satisfied. Although measurements of impact on overall employment were mixed, it is known that from 2002 to 2005, unemployment decreased by 50 percent from previous record levels. The project overall raised GDP by 2.4 percent, and employed 5 percent of the population within four years of initiation. Women made up 64 percent of participants, and reported great satisfaction with the work they did through the program. The program did face opposition from business communities, as the program became the de facto minimum wage in rural areas where much work fell below the minimum wage. Some opposed the entry of women into the labor market. There were also reports of corruption, namely the use of Jefes program funds for political and electoral organizing. Additionally, some economists considered care work to be nonproductive work. Efforts to expand the program to allow multiple household members to participate were blocked out of concerns over the financial cost of the program. In an effort to wind down the program, a faction of government officials moved to reduce or eliminate job creation and substitute direct cash payouts. In interviews with participants, economists Randall Wray and Tcherneva found not a single participant who preferred the cash payments to working. Argentines valued being out in the community and having a sense of doing something, and this exceeded the simple cash wage. This effect was especially pronounced among women participants, many of whom had only worked within the home, which is unfortunately not formally valued within the economy. India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) — 2006 to Present Since 2006, India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) has legally guaranteed 100 days of employment to every rural household in one of the world’s most populous nations. The employment guarantee program is still ongoing, and has to date facilitated over 15 million projects, stabilized rural wages and diminished wage differentials between men and women. India’s NREGS program has a statutory requirement of 30 percent female participation — and in most areas, the cohort of women has exceeded 30 percent. Some states report that women’s participation is in the range of 40 percent to 52 percent. This is particularly impressive, given that the government of India prescribes only certain types of projects as permitted under the employment guarantee scheme, and most, if not all of those projects require heavy manual labor. Within NREGS, there is hardly any difference between the wage rates of men and women. The program has had a wider effect on the wages of both men and women. In one study, the daily average wage increased by 5.3 percent, calculated via data from 2000-2011, with a sample size of 249 districts across 19 states. Wages in the NREGS program have increased through 2011, but fallen since 2012. Over the breadth of India, however, the impact of the employment guarantee scheme has been highly variable. NREGS has had good performance in Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and Kerala, due to strong institutions and/or civil society organizations. Unfortunately, some localities provided zero workdays to participants, and, according to Jonathan Pattenden, a researcher at the University of East Anglia, the employment guarantee scheme has performed worse in “states with greater degrees of inequality and poverty, such as Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Odisha.” Pattenden goes on to say that “in some states, classes of labor [were] too weak to challenge the dominant class.” Local elites have attempted to block NREGS programs by the use of their local electoral bodies. Unlike the Jeffes initiative, the employment guarantee scheme made use of pre-existing representative electoral bodies at the village level. These local assemblies appear to often be dominated by high caste elites, who use slow payment of wages and bureaucratic rules pertaining to project signoff to stifle the staffing of NREGS projects. Panttenden finds that there is corruption at local levels, though “corruption associated with Gatekeepers is best understood as struggle between dominant and labouring classes over the distribution of public resources.” Although the National Workshops, Jefes and NREGS took place in different places and cultures, what becomes clear is that all programs faced significant elite resistance, while also facilitating increased worker consciousness and, in two cases, significant advances in gender equality. A Self-Managed Socialist Job Guarantee Economist Darrick Hamilton has argued that a job guarantee program would do away with Wall Street bailouts during financial crises. For one, labor would increasingly free itself from the control that the finance, insurance and real estate sectors have secured over the economy. Second, according to Tcherneva, in a nutshell, during recessions jobless workers would find employment in the public sector at the fixed [job guarantee] wage. Total government spending rises to relieve deflationary pressures. Alternatively, when the economy recovers and non-government demand for labor increases, [job guarantee] workers are hired into private sector jobs at a premium over the [job guarantee] wage. Yet, as Tcherneva writes, some contend that public employment programs would be “a logistical nightmare.” One logistical solution is for local-level participatory administration, design and programming. Economist Mathew Forstater remarks that “community and neighborhood organizations, NGOs, and nonprofit enterprises will be the primary institutions employing job guarantee workers, and that workers themselves will have a voice in initiating and organizing the projects.” Hamilton has argued that job guarantee workers could be unionized. Furthermore, a job guarantee program need not recreate capitalist relations of production. Instead, according to Forstater, the job guarantee program “has the potential for creating spaces for noncapitalist social relations.” Job guarantee initiatives could be designed to provide the necessary tools, training and incentive-structure to form enterprises that are community and worker self-managed, both empowering workers and experimenting with new forms of property relations. Forstater himself writes that, “Just as [job guarantee] activities can be designed to pollute less or to use more labor-intensive methods, they can also be designed to be less hierarchical and more egalitarian, with more consensus-based decision making.” To cast all of this in more explicitly left discourse, a self-managed socialist job guarantee program is possible. Besides simply outright creating publicly owned cooperatives, there are a few specific ways we might go about imagining and administering a job guarantee program. Participatory Budgeting as a Tool for Marshalling Socialized Labor Marshalling associative labor in a job guarantee program through participatory budgeting is a possibility. For example, political scientist Benjamin Goldfrank cites a process wherein a community lacking sufficient currency for participatory democratically chosen projects drew upon volunteer labor from the community to directly implement projects. The potential for participatory budgeting processes to marshal and draw on labor power need not be confined to the rare example of community members volunteering their time and skills. Participatory budgeting processes and job guarantees could be coupled in such a way that brings the best out of both. In more egalitarian job guarantee processes, needs are identified and projects are proposed by the community in neighborhood assemblies to dictate how funds should be spent. In many job guarantee processes, bureaucrats tell participants that more imaginative complex project-ideas simply cannot be implemented due to fiscal and labor constraints. A job guarantee program would undercut this discourse. It would provide capacity to make such projects feasible and prioritizable. Processes similar to job guarantee — or adjoined to job guarantee — could be essential for leveraging job guarantee to effectively meet community needs and complete those projects most socially desired at different “thematic” and geographic levels and scopes. Similar to Argentina’s Jefes program, individuals and various groups can design and develop their own jobs. For administrative and startup logistical purposes, these could be connected to relevant nonprofits or cooperatives. This leads to drawing on the example of Mondragon, a cooperative of cooperatives with 80,000 worker-owners. Learning From Mondragon Until the 1990s, Mondragon’s Caja Laboral — the cooperative bank — facilitated entrepreneurship and “intrepreneurship.” The former involved creating startup cooperatives from scratch. The latter meant spinning out current activities and functions from within an existing cooperative into a cooperative with expanded capabilities and an enterprise identity of its own. A job guarantee program could be administered in this way, with existing — but under-supported, understaffed and underdeveloped — activities spun out into their own cooperative entities and enterprises. The understaffing of service-provision would no longer exist. Experimentation with more creative, malleable and cooperativist units rooted in and more responsive to distinct communities could be structurally incentivized. In addition, proposals for public banks could be given a more participatory and democratized character, and services and income provided to those who cannot work can also be adjusted upward. A Free Associational Labor UBI’s aim of a society of “free labor” — or no labor at all — is appealing, but it is individualizing and lacks coordinating devices. With a self-managed socialist job guarantee, free labor would be an associated and socialized labor. At the same time, it would socialize the deployment of capital to meet community needs. Tcherneva likewise stated at a talk that the job guarantee program is an institutional vehicle — a coordinating mechanism — for addressing social needs, “as [a] place to come, and to truly nurture participation.” Participatory budgeting, at its best, has been used to allot funds through the seeds of a distinct non-state logic. A similar non-state associationist logic can be deployed to cooperatively determine, assign and administer publicly-backed labor. As illustrated above, there are a number of overlapping ways that needs and desirable social projects could be identified at different scales. These include utilizing a variety of participatory forms, through both an intensification of the existing, and in experimentation with the imagined. A job guarantee program could be leveraged to meet needs, identified and solved through a multichannel participatory fashion. It could be utilized to rapidly democratize work itself.

Following the resolution introduced by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ed Markey, the term Green New Deal (GND) has become the gravitational center of climate action debates. On the one hand, conservatives, as well as some leftist circles, designate the AOC-Markey resolution as “socialist”. On the other hand, the term GND was first made public by Thomas Friedman in his NY Times column as a capitalistic and patriotic project which serves as “the basis of a new unifying political movement for the 21st century” (p.4). It comes as no surprise that so much political confusion accrues around the concept of a GND. Max Ajl’s A People’s Green New Deal is the best leftist response I have read to the discussions whirling around this notion. It is clear-minded and well written. Politically, it constructs a consistent, uncompromising, anti-imperialist vision, well aware of the fact that tamed horizons are easily coopted and rearticulated by the ruling classes thanks to the elasticity of capital accumulation. Theoretically, its foundations are found in the “inherently polarizing” frameworks of dependency theory, world-system analysis, and (environmentally) unequal exchange (p.14). Ajl evaluates GND proposals not only on the basis of targeted changes in physical production, but also in terms of their systemic implications. Some GNDs aim to preserve or strengthen capitalism, while others are designed to attack or abolish it (p.3). Correspondingly, the book is divided into two parts. The first one is concerned with what Ajl calls Capitalist Green Transitions (p.16) or “ruling class agendas” (p.20), while the second part sketches his vision of a People’s Green New Deal. The Existing GNDs Chapter 1 provides a bird’s eye view to various ‘green social control’ programs, which aim to mitigate the worst consequences of climate change, and mobilize an ‘emergency’ discourse to do so. Ajl’s critique is not confined to easy philanthropic targets such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It extends to more appealing social democratic proposals brought up by writers and politicians like Jeremy Rifkin, Ed Miliband, and Mariana Mazzucato, who share a great deal of enthusiasm for new technologies and green jobs unlocked by public-private partnerships, that is, for fixing and saving rather than attacking and abolishing capitalism. The next chapter discusses the green transition of modernization theory from both the left and right. The author traces the roots of contemporary eco-modernism to Rostow’s original modernization theory which emerged as a reaction to the ‘threat of communism’. For Ajl, ecological modernization theory, perpetuated by centers like the Breakthrough Institute, has the intention of deflecting attention from systemic drivers of the ecological crisis rooted in social and economic relations, and frame the crisis as a purely technological challenge. Its counterpart on the left is the accelerationist current, which shares the same techno-fantasies, forgetting that ‘technology as such’ does not exist, as any technology emerges and functions in particular social settings. Chapters 3 and 4 engage in a critical analysis of the existing GND proposals. Ajl starts by distinguishing between three main brands of progressive politics: i) the left-liberal attempt that aims to render current energy use fully renewable, while promoting increased energy use in the Global South and maintaining capitalist property structures; ii) the green social democratic (or being-nice-to-the-South) vision which prescribes lower energy use in core countries along with a redistribution of income, and grants to southern countries; iii) the degrowth or eco-communist solution with considerably lower energy use in the core, decommodified infrastructure, and massive technology grants to the South (p.58). Ajl is very critical of the first two camps mentioned above. Progressives like Robert Pollin who narrow down the debate to the question of replacement of fossil fuels by green and renewable energy sources not only turn a blind eye to other crucial aspects of the multidimensional ecological destruction, but also obscure the exploitation, suffering, and deprivation likely to increase as a result of imperial political engineering to extract the required raw materials from the periphery. The book is rife with examples of such ‘interventions’, coups, and sponsoring of suppressive regimes to secure the flow of cheap raw materials. The author is right on point in saying that hiding behind the cloak of pragmatism used to justify such restricted interventions to capitalist markets is nothing more than an ideological commitment to the notion that there is no alternative to capitalism. In a world of class divisions and imperial hierarchies within and between countries, getting capital on board with a program corresponds to making the working classes and the oppressed pay the price for it. Social Democracy, Yesterday and Today In his reflection on various social democratic proposals, Ajl introduces an analytical distinction between ‘social democracy as a bundle of policies’ and ‘social democracy as a historical form of capitalism’. The former comprises rights like free health care and education, a decent infrastructure, low levels of inequality, and so forth. The latter one represents a barely tamed capitalism that existed for a brief period following WWII. It was marked by class compromise, relentless value extraction from the periphery, and most importantly, the conceived threat of communism in flesh and blood – the USSR, Maoist China, and numerous Marxist national liberation movements (p.76-7). I am not totally convinced that this distinction between the two meanings of social democracy is warranted, as the two are much more interconnected than they might appear in the light of this distinction. Those ‘bundle of policies’ at least partially presuppose the conditions pertaining to the second meaning. When it comes to the AOC-Markey resolution, Ajl notes that the “danger lies in identifying an anti-racist Green Keynesian tract as a ‘transitional program,’ anti-capitalist, or related to eco-socialism.” (p.81) He gives due credit to the proposal for relating the climate crisis to social crisis, but is quite critical of the use of ‘national security’ as a framework to placate the established order. When the resolution discusses the global dimensions of green transition with an emphasis on the U.S. as the international leader, it employs the usual language with signs of imperial conceit. This is supported by its silence on the U.S. military, which would be the 47th largest polluter if it were a country (p.155). All these points aside, it is striking that even so many on the left designate a resolution which makes no reference whatsoever to capital accumulation and class conflict as eco-socialist. The first part of the book closes with a succinct summary statement of Ajl’s position on green social democracy: i) it is not achievable through current electoral strategies; ii) even if it were, it would intensify and deepen the existing practices of extraction, exploitation and deprivation especially in the Global South; iii) it is misleadingly being marketed as eco-socialist; and iv) its compromised horizon limits our political imagination, and prevents us from reaching a further horizon (p.94-5). My caveats pertaining to the first part of the book are rather minor and secondary. I do not fully understand, for instance, why the concept of carbon budget as such is problematic. Ajl notes that it ignores the interests of some relevant parties, and are of probabilistic nature (p.62). It is true that the mainstream arithmetic of carbon budgets does not adequately reflect social and political conflicts which are essential for an eco-socialist perspective. Yet these objections pertain to the frameworks in which carbon budgets are employed, and not, in my opinion, to the concept itself. In fact, Ajl himself uses the concept in his discussion of the precautionary principle, rightly underlining that the debate is primarily political rather than technical (p.63). A People’s GND The first chapter of the second part provides the core elements of Ajl’s vision for a People’s GND, with which I sympathize to a great extent. Thus, I will rather focus on the points where I have reservations or questions to deepen the discussion from a comradely perspective. The first point on the eco-socialist agenda in the North is, according to Ajl, to build local action which “needs to be autonomous from national politics and the two-party system” (p.100). Taking root in local struggles, working with people to empower people is a must. Once the meaning of this empowerment is extended to supporting and sustaining local small producers in a programmatic way, however, we might easily end up pursuing a petty bourgeois vision rather than an eco-socialist one. The emphasis on building “autonomy and decentralized power into the transition” (p.101) is not misplaced, but somewhat one-sided. Without a functioning national-level counterpart rooted in working-class interests and an ultimate vision of eco-socialism, neither local self-sufficiency nor local ecological action is likely to survive or prevail. Migration flows and policies, wage differentials, tax and subsidy policies, as well as the state’s hard power come to mind at this juncture. Large scale power and pressure must be confronted with large-scale organization and struggle. Nonetheless, this is not to favor ‘national’ over ‘local’, but rather a reminder that it is not an either-or question. I believe Ajl is in fact aware of this dialectical relationship. The second pillar of his vision is thus a new labor regime with the aim of “democratic and worker-controlled production wherein workers also control the surplus and decide collectively where it goes.” (p.102) Steps in this direction can be direct, through co-ops and the socialization of the surplus, or indirect, through wage increases alongside significantly reduced working weeks. In addition, he mentions the need to ensure that labor pertaining to social reproduction is compensated through direct welfare payments, and to gradually socialize such work (p.104). I fully sympathize with all these points. However, the socialization of the surplus and establishing of workers’ control in production require a discussion that cannot be avoided, namely that of a revolution. The indirect method of boosting wages and cutting working hours, on the other hand, is a very far possibility in the absence of massive productivity leaps or other changes that help cut production costs drastically. The pillar of his vision pertaining to industry and manufacturing emphasizes the re-localization of production, the fostering of decentralized manufacturing hubs that share knowledge, pushing for planned longevity and repairing, and a transition of energy use in production. Although I share the push for a more even geographic organization of production, I still find the emphasis on decentralization and re-localization of production somewhat one-sided. One of the questions that comes to my mind is that of economies of scale. The latter, along with other sources of productivity increases, is the material basis of the shortening of the necessary working day for Marx and Engels. There is a tendential conflict between shorter worker hours and risking economies of scale. Ajl, and also degrowthers for whom a shorter working day is foundational, might hence want to reconsider this point. An obvious merit of Ajl’s text compared to the degrowth literature at large is that he recognizes that such a “People’s Green New Deal is about building eco-socialism”. This directly relates to the question of abolishing capitalism and constructing a new mode of production, rather than contemplating some vague vision of post-growth or post-capitalist society. I must also note that Ajl’s differs from the degrowth literature at large insofar as it does not engage in “[…] rejecting goods transport on a large scale and a socially complex, modern, and interwoven world.” (p.111) What could add to the strength of his case is a discussion of the relations, tools, and mechanisms that would gradually curtail away and replace the market mechanism as the organizing foundation of generalized commodity production. He speaks of eco-socialist planning several times in the book. To what extent does this entail large-scale coordination and some degree of centralization? I think it is important to avoid conflating the spectrum of central-decentral with that of democratic-undemocratic, which is a widespread but undue shortcut that blurs debates around planning.

In response to this central challenge – which is readable as yet another dimension of the deepening grip of advanced expulsive capitalism’s relentless extractivism – activists interviewed by the authors highlighted the need to develop a class-conscious environmentalism, an ‘anti-purity’ politics, and overt decolonization as core strategic elements of the degrowth agenda. Finally, the authors analyse the Green New Deal (GND) as a promising ‘non-reformist reform’ for the degrowth movement to pursue. The authors conclude that the GND, which rose to prominence after they had conducted their interviews, presents a possible route by which to combine class-conscious environmentalism, anti-purity politics and decolonial imperatives in one strategic programme. GND’s appeal to multi-racial working-class people (it prioritizes job creation), the authors suggest, might help to inoculate GND politics against fossil capitalist class interests – thus holding out hope of progress. And, while the GND is far from ‘pure’, the authors note that Indigenous activists and anti-colonial settlers within the GND movement are moving it into decolonial directions. Accordingly, the GND creates the possibility of meaningful political resistance to neoliberal imperatives. Whether or not – and the degree to which – the pervasive extractivism destroying human and more-than-human lives, beings and systems the world over can ultimately successfully be addressed by the strategies discussed in this edition, it is clear that these strategies are energetic signs and modes of active, prefigurative solution-seeking. The authors signal to the reader that there are hopeful signals of nascent shifts and developments moving law, politics and economics in a more life-generative direction, but also that there is clearly so much to struggle for (and against). There is such a profound need for scholars, practitioners, activists, communities and others to continue to reach for alternative ways of co-living, and to do so in imaginative, daring and paradigm-exceeding ways.

Of the three short, medium and long-term policy categories outlined above, neoclassical economics is only useful for assessing the one that considers the medium term; and only then for price-based policies. However, all three of the policy areas outlined above play in some way to the relative strengths of post-Keynesian economics. The first, short-term policy area relates strongly to human behaviour. Many of the lowest-cost ways of reducing greenhouse gas emissions are through efficiency measures. These efficiency measures are often cost-effective but in the current market are not taken up. The reasons for a lack of take-up are regarded by mainstream economics as market failures (and ignored altogether in CGE models). Examples include information gaps (e.g. most householders do not know how to improve the efficiency of their homes). Some groups may lack the necessary access to finance and there are also principal agent problems relating to rented homes. In contrast to the results from current neoclassical models, it seems pretty clear that leaving things to the market will not produce the best outcomes. The second, medium-term policy area is more relevant to the decisions taken by firms. Pricing instruments may help to guide these decisions but there are other factors too. For example, institutional structure is important. The degree of competition in a particular sector can impact on outcomes. Policy makers usually wish to know where the costs of decarbonisation will be borne; assumptions about perfect competition and the full pass-through of economic costs do not provide useful information on this topic. Finally, technology development will be critical to any successful decarbonisation strategy. Assessments that do not include endogenous representations of technology development will provide a biased estimate of the outcomes for implementing climate policy. The issue of finance cuts across all three policy areas. A transition to a low-carbon economy will require substantial amounts of investment (see e.g. IEA, 2018) and the global economy is likely to become more capital-intensive and less energy-intensive. Without an understanding of how the financial system works, it is not possible to provide a realistic assessment of the main decarbonisation policies (Pollitt and Mercure, 2018). In particular, the ‘crowding out’ effects of investment in neoclassical models (in which a fixed money supply dictates that higher energy-sector investment leads to lower investment or consumption elsewhere) is one of the main drivers of negative outcomes in their results, but also at odds with the observed reality. The indicators that policy makers require are in general similar to those that Keynes originally set out to address. First and foremost, elected officials and civil servants both focus primarily on the number of jobs created and lost. After that they need a range of socio-economic indicators that show both the absolute levels and distributions of wealth within society. Nevertheless, despite all the advantages that post-Keynesian economics has to offer, it remains the case that the majority of policy analysis carried out is based on CGE models and other optimization based approaches. This can sometimes lead to rather dubious policy conclusions. For example, analyses conducted by global institutions often use CGE analysis to show that carbon taxes provide the ‘optimal’ way in which to reduce emissions. However, this analysis is doing little more than reproducing the neoclassical assumptions on which the model was founded. In addition, the set-up of CGE-based analyses typically rule out the possibility of green-growth and environmental double dividends by assumption. Every policy that is entered into the model (usually a carbon or fuel pricing measure) acts as an additional constraint on the model’s optimisation, meaning that results can only get worse. This has led to a popular conception that climate policy can only have negative economic impacts, and the role for policy makers is to minimise the costs. In reality, there is little evidence from anywhere in the world that climate policy has led to substantial reductions in GDP and household incomes.

I would invert the question to ask who is not a neoliberal today. A governing rationality like neoliberalism organizes and constructs a great deal of conduct and a great many values without appearing to do so. It produces “reality principles” by which we live without thinking about them. Thus, almost everyone in workplaces, social media presentations, educational institutions, non-profits, the arts, and more is governed by neoliberal norms. It’s quite hard to escape neoliberal rationality, including for those who imagine that they are radically critical of it. Consider, for example, how many left intellectuals use their social media profiles—Twitter, Facebook, etc.—not to build the Revolution, but to promote their books, speaking gigs, and ideas in order to boost their market value. This has become so ubiquitous that we hardly notice it.

The scientific community has focused the agenda of studies of climate change on lower-end warming and simple risk analyses, because more realistic complex assessments of risk are more difficult, the benchmark of the international targets is the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to <2°C, and the culture of climate science is to try to avoid alarmism [1]. Current fires, prolonged droughts, floods and heat waves, together with the consequent food insecurity, civil unrest and migrations, however, are opening the eyes not only of most scientists but also of most people all over the world to the need for considering, at least, the potential catastrophic effects of the collapse of ecosystems and society due to the current emergency of climate change. The projections for the climate of the coming decades are, as we all know, worrying. The worst-case scenarios in the 2022 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report project temperatures by the next century that last occurred in the Early Eocene, reversing 50 million years of cooler climates within two centuries. The Pliocene and Eocene provide the best analogues for near-future climates [2]. Climates like those of the Pliocene are likely to prevail as soon as 2030 and unmitigated scenarios of emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) will produce climates like those of the Eocene for the coming decades. This situation is particularly alarming because human societies are locally adapted to a specific climatic niche with a mean annual temperature of ∼13°C [3]. We can thus logically expect that current and future warming may easily overwhelm societal adaptive capacity. These climate projections could be even more detrimental if models would not neglect, as they currently do, feedback in the carbon cycle and potential tipping points that could generate higher GHG concentrations [4]. Examples include the apparent slowing of dampening feedbacks such as the natural carbon-sink capacity [5,6], the loss of carbon due to increasing frequencies and intensities of fire at northern latitudes [7], droughts and fires in the Amazon [8] or the thawing of Arctic permafrost that releases methane and CO2 [9]. This feedback is also likely not proportional to warming, as is sometimes assumed. Instead, abrupt and/or irreversible changes may be triggered at a temperature threshold [7]. Particularly worrying is a ‘tipping cascade’ in which multiple tipping elements interact in such a way that tipping one threshold increases the likelihood of tipping another [4,10]. Climate change also interacts with other anthropogenic stressors such as changes in land use, loss of biodiversity, nutrient imbalances, pollution and an overuse of available resources that are crossing the planetary safety boundary limits and operating as a possible catastrophic mix. This mix may exacerbate society vulnerabilities and cause multiple indirect stresses such as economic damage, loss of land and water, and food insecurity that can merge into system-wide synchronous failures. These cascading effects are not only biophysical or biogeochemical, but they also affect human society, generating conflicts, political instability, systemic financial risks, the spread of infectious diseases and the risk of spillover. For example, there is evidence that the 2007−10 drought contributed to the conflict in Syria [11]. Anthropogenic climate change interacting with these other stressors could thus cause a global catastrophe, in a worldwide societal collapse. Kemp et al. [1] have reminded us that although we have reasons to suspect it, such potential collapsing futures are rarely studied and poorly understood. The closest research is the search for evidence of tipping dynamics and estimating thresholds, timescales and impacts of potential tipping points [4]. We advocate for considering them while using the available knowledge acquired from historical and prehistorical examples of local and regional collapses, transformations and resilience of human societies also driven by climate and unsustainable use of resources (Fig. 1). Figure 1. Integration of elements indicating: (i) examples of approaches to determine ancient environmental change and societal complexity; (ii) a regional/local ancient collapse described by an example from Mayapan, the largest Postclassic Mayan city [20]; and (iii) the modern potential global collapses described by Kemp et al. [1]. The figure shows the interconnected nature of climate change, unsustainable use of resources and civil unrest. It also highlights the relevance of ancient technologies and management strategies to mitigate the consequences of the complexity of climate change (e.g. Refs [20–25]). Open in new tabDownload slide Integration of elements indicating: (i) examples of approaches to determine ancient environmental change and societal complexity; (ii) a regional/local ancient collapse described by an example from Mayapan, the largest Postclassic Mayan city [20]; and (iii) the modern potential global collapses described by Kemp et al. [1]. The figure shows the interconnected nature of climate change, unsustainable use of resources and civil unrest. It also highlights the relevance of ancient technologies and management strategies to mitigate the consequences of the complexity of climate change (e.g. Refs [20–25]). Climate change together with turbulent political rivalries and resource mismanagement that have hindered solving underlying problems have played key roles in the collapse or transformation of numerous previous human societies. Variables associated with temperature have been identified as the most strongly limiting factors to the growth of populations of European hunter-gatherers during the late Pleistocene [12]. Droughts have also been identified as drivers of stress and collapse. Thanks to analysis of tree rings from Juniperus trees coupled with 13C stable isotope analysis, it was possible to determine the impact of a multi-year drought on the Ancient Anatolian empire of the Hittites that collapsed >3000 years ago [13]. More recently, the Central American Mayan civilization built cities supporting populations of ≤100 000 and reached its peak about 800–1000 CE before collapsing due to a major transformation of its political and social structures and the unsustainable use of their environment, especially by deforestation and erosion [14]. Similar collapsing processes occurred in, e.g. the Roman Empire, Greenland-Iceland Norse culture [15] and Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean [16,17] These prehistorical and historical data demonstrate that societal collapse rarely has a single cause but is often due to many biophysical and socio-economic stressors, including climate, overexploitation of resources and societal conflicts. The study of collapses of previous human societies, in many cases associated with changes in climate and resource scarcity such as those that currently characterize anthropogenic global change on our planet, sheds light on worst-case scenarios for the coming years and decades of climate change, but also on how to overcome them, on possible resistance and resilience [18,19]. For example, bioarcheological data from Mayapan (Yucatán, Mexico) indicate that Mayan political and economic structures in the shape of a network of small Mayan states persisted until the Spanish colonization, indicating some amount of regional resistance and resilience [20] (Fig. 1). In addition, the diet of the lowland Maya may have been more varied than what was previously thought. According to ethnographic and ethnobotanical assessments, the diet was potentially complemented with drought-resistant indigenous plants [21]. Other examples of cultural and technological practices are the reservoirs built around the temples of Angkor Wat, the Sri Lankan reservoirs that have provided irrigation water for cultivation for 2000 years and the terraces built to mitigate the risk of flood and to support agriculture [22,23].

Wouldn’t you like to live in a world where the government didn’t interfere in your private life, where you paid minimal taxes, and were free to do whatever you wanted as long as it didn’t infringe on others freedoms? Well then, you might be a libertarian… Or you might not. Libertarianism is a sexy concept right now. You might have heard about it because of third party candidate Gary Johnson, or from the Republican Bernie Sanders, Ron Paul. Or you turned into one overnight after completing Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. But what do libertarians believe in? The core value of libertarianism is “small government,” which is a vague concept meaning pretty much whatever any individual Libertarian wants it to mean. So, anything from keeping the government out of your bedroom to the privatization of almost every function of government from education to the police force can fall under the libertarian agenda. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that fiscally conservative Republicans are more likely to vote libertarian than Democrats. However, on social issues ― some of the libertarian policy positions are actually more progressive than a Occupy Wall Street drum circle. The Libertarian stance on social issues include making prostitution legal and legalizing all drugs ― even the good ones. Libertarians also believe that no military action should be taken against foreign nations unless the U.S. is attacked first. All of which sounds great to me. What doesn’t sound as great are the libertarian ideals on the economic front. Libertarianism comes down to belief that the principles that drive a free market economy can be applied to how humans govern themselves. It’s this idea that an invisible hand that guides the free market will also drive human interaction with social order. This foundation is one that I disagree with, when unchecked ― man motivated by self-gain will not ultimately do the right thing. This is why there are criminals, those who commit crimes even when there is a system that actively tries to prevent it. The whole purpose of civilization should be to ensure that everyone is fed, clothed, housed and NOT to create the conditions so that the few can secure a substantially greater portion of resources while others are left with virtually none. In a libertarian society, who protects the unprotected, who defends the rights of the defenseless? Even libertarians acknowledge that a free market will drive a larger wealth disparity ― which some believe will be offset by the trickling down of wealth and technology. But wealth inequality paired with deregulation creates an opportunity for haves to rule the have-nots. This is one of the many reasons for regulation ― to ensure that the rich few do not impose their will unjustly or destructively on the poor multitudes. Another libertarian belief is the idea that the government should not be allowed to impose its will on the citizenry. However, in a truly free market that promotes freedom of contract and de-regulation ― employers have a right to force rules that would never be permitted in our current Democratic systems. Libertarianism is a rich man’s ideal. It ostensibly gives ultimate freedoms and choice to everyone at the cost of helping the helpless. It completely ignores the reality of economic forces, which compel the poor to take jobs they don’t want and live where they don’t want to just because they have to. While individual freedoms extending to property rights are in the forefront of the core principles of libertarianism ― deregulation and a free market economy that will lead to an even bigger wealth gap sounds like the prologue to the movie Elysium starring Matt Damon. Or Snowpiercer. Or any other dystopian future pic where classism runs rampant and the massive lower income classes rise against their small but incredibly wealthy oppressors. If you want to understand what would happen in a libertarian society, watch the movie Elysium. That’s a libertarian utopia. Where the wealth disparity is abysmal and the eroding middle class has fully shifted well below the poverty line. Yes, we will likely continue to make technological advancements, but increasingly in service to a narrower and narrower segment of the population. You may see the poor or underclass as weak ― the “losers” in the giant meritocratic experiment that is the libertarian ideal, but weak as they are, there are going to be a hell of a lot more of them than there are of you. So in the hopes of avoiding the fate of the monarchy during the French Revolution, maybe it’s best to retain welfare and at least a modest social safety net ― if for no other reason than to keep them from grabbing their pitchforks and turning on you. Think of it as a “Riot Tax.” This is what happens when the poor majority revolts against the wealthy minory In the end, libertarianism is similar to communism. On the face they’re both noble, but impossibly ambitious theories ― one has individual freedom as its core principle and the other, equality. However, in practice, both concepts lead to outcomes that aren’t as pure. Unlike communism, we have yet to see libertarianism crumble after application, but, given the current state of the Republican party, we may see it’s influence soon enough.

At the same time, barriers to opportunity, including discrimination and disparities in access to employment, education, and health care, remain enormous and keep poverty rates much higher for some racial and ethnic groups than others. While government programs have done much to narrow these disparities in poverty, further progress will require stronger government efforts to reduce poverty and discrimination and build opportunity for all. Between 1970 and 2017 the poverty rate fell for all groups, but it fell even more for Black and Latino people: by 27 and 24 percentage points, respectively, compared to 8 percentage points for white non-Latino people, we calculate.[1] Even with this reduction, poverty rates for Black and Latino people remained far above the white poverty rate.[2] Our series begins in 1970, the first year that data on Latino ethnicity are available, and ends in 2017, the latest year that data on underreporting of key government benefits are available. (Rather than the official poverty measure, this report uses a variant of the Supplemental Poverty Measure, which among other advantages incorporates the value of non-cash and tax-based benefits, as we detail below.) Economic security programs have become more effective at reducing poverty and racial disparities over the last five decades. In 1970, families’ government benefits and the taxes they paid lowered the white poverty rate by 3 percentage points and the Black poverty rate by 2 percentage points, and left the Latino poverty rate unchanged. In contrast, in 2017, accounting for government benefits and taxes lowered the white poverty rate by 12 percentage points, Black poverty by 16 percentage points, and Latino poverty by 12 percentage points. (See Figure 1.) FIGURE 1 Economic Security Programs Increasingly Effective at Reducing Poverty, But Disparities Persist For children, government programs played an even larger role in lowering poverty and narrowing racial and ethnic disparities. Between 1970 and 2017, the Black child poverty rate fell by 35 percentage points, the Latino child poverty rate by 32 percentage points, and the white child poverty rate by 10 percentage points (but, again, poverty remains far lower among white children than Black and Latino children). More than half of these declines were driven by the increasing poverty-reducing effectiveness of government assistance at lifting families’ incomes above the poverty line. (See Figure 2.) FIGURE 2 Economic Security Programs Increasingly Effective at Reducing Child Poverty, But Disparities Persist Moreover, many studies have found that assistance programs like nutrition aid and health coverage improve children’s long-term trajectories; some of the poverty reduction stemming from, for example, improved educational attainment is due to investments in nutrition and health care years earlier when adults were children.[3] Despite this progress, past and present discrimination in both private markets and public policies left poverty rates in 2017 more than twice as high among Black (20.9 percent) and Latino (20.1 percent) people than among white people (9.8 percent). Child poverty reflected the same dynamic, with Black and Latino child poverty rates at 21.3 and 20.3 percent, respectively, compared to 8.3 percent among white children. Even in the relatively strong pre-pandemic economy, many households struggled to afford rent and other necessities.[4] In 2016, 1 in 3 Black (33 percent) and Latino (34 percent) workers earned below-poverty wages,[5] as did nearly 1 in 5 white workers (19 percent), according to the Economic Policy Institute.[6] These figures are not much lower than they were in 1973 (38 percent for Black, 37 percent for Latino, and 23 percent for white workers). What’s more, the economy of 2017 bears little resemblance to today’s, and early evidence suggests that the pandemic and downturn have worsened longstanding economic disparities by race and ethnicity. Jobs in low-paying industries — disproportionately held by people of color — were down more than twice as much between February and December 2020 as jobs in medium-wage industries and nearly four times as much as in high-wage industries.[7] Women of color have experienced especially sharp losses.[8] Policymakers could make substantial progress in reducing the gaping racial disparities in poverty and access to opportunity by expanding the scope and reach of effective policies, such as housing vouchers, tax credits, and food assistance. The Biden Administration’s emergency relief proposal could cut child poverty in half and cut Black and Latino poverty by a third.[9] Two policy packages that a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) panel recently evaluated would cut in half both the child poverty rate and the gap in poverty rates between white children and Black and Latino children.[10] A proposal to make housing vouchers available to all eligible families put forward by President Biden during his campaign would reduce the white-Black poverty gap by up to a third and the white-Latino poverty gap by up to half. That proposal, combined with two tax credit proposals that Vice President Kamala Harris endorsed during the campaign, would reduce racial and ethnic poverty gaps by even more.[11]

One such idea is that of community organization -- the idea that people can and should come together to talk about what matters to them, and then work together to successfully change their communities. As this idea is a common thread woven throughout our work, we'd like to use this chapter to make it explicit, and try to explore it more fully. So, then, on the following few screens (and in the next few sections) we'll do just that. In the remainder of this section, we'll give a general overview of community organization -- what it is and how you do it. We'll also give brief explanations of different ways of looking at community organization. Although all of the strategies we will discuss have quite a bit in common, it may be helpful to separate out and compare different approaches in order for us to look more clearly at our work. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO ORGANIZE FOR COMMUNITY CHANGE? Community organizing is the process by which people come together to identify common problems or goals, mobilize resources, and, in other ways, develop and implement strategies for reaching the objectives they want to accomplish. As you can see, it's a big idea -- it's really a way of looking at all of the work that we do. Because of that, it encompasses many of the other ideas discussed in the Tool Box. For example, effective community organization will generally include: Gaining an understanding of the community. The first key step is learning what the community is like, and what is important to its residents. Generating and using power. There are many types of power; depending on the nature of your organization and your long term goals, your organization may have (or need) different types. Different kinds of power include: Political or legislative power -- for example, you could work to pass laws to make it more difficult for young people to get hold of alcohol or tobacco Consumer power -- your organization might organize a boycott against a company whose policies are environmentally unsound Legal regulatory power -- your organization might take a delinquent landlord to court Disruptive power -- employees of an organization might go on strike as part of a demand for better working conditions Articulating issues. A crucial part of effective organizing is being very clear about what people find important, and what you feel should be done about it. Planning purposeful action. Action planning is central to effective community organization. Involving other people. Community organizing works in large part because of the strength that exists in numbers. The idea that "what we can't do alone, we can often accomplish together" is what community organization is all about. Generating and using other resources. While involving many people is at the heart of any community organizing effort, a group will need to obtain other resources as well. These may include cash, gifts in kind, and other forms of donations or support. Communicating with your community. There are many ways to effectively get the word out and let the community at large in on what you are doing, why you are doing it, and why they should be a part of it. An important point to remember is that community organization is fundamentally a grassroots process. It's not about an outside "expert" telling a community what it should work on. Instead, it's about community members getting excited about something, and using that energy to create change. In short, community organization is all about empowering people to improve their lives, however that might be best done. A fundamental lesson for the community organizer is that you don't organize people to do something you think should be done; instead, you find out what is important to people in the community, and then help them reach their goals. Community organizing, done right, leads to a shift in power: you're building a power base among a broad group of people. Many times, community organization is done among those who have traditionally been denied a voice, or whose needs have been ignored -- the poor, the homeless, certain minority groups, etc. WHY SHOULD YOU ENGAGE IN COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION? Organizing members of a community -- no matter what your goals might be -- has some general advantages that will occur if the work is well done. These advantages include: A greater ability to bring about the changes you want to see. The collective voice of many people working together on a problem is usually much more powerful than a single voice. Empowerment. Involving people (especially those who haven't traditionally had much power) in improving the conditions which shape their lives can increase people's sense of their own worth and capabilities, helping them to live more fulfilling lives. Increased self-sufficiency among community members. Organizing people to bring about change helps maintain a high level of ownership by people for their own destinies. Ultimately, this reduces the amount of outside help that will be needed. Increased social support. By bringing together diverse groups of people who are working for the same cause, people get the chance to talk and learn with others they may not have met otherwise. Both professionally and socially, community organization offers ample opportunity for growth and enjoyment among those who come together. Greater equity in the society. When people gain control over the forces that shape their lives, it changes the balance of power in the community, spreading it more broadly and distributing it more nearly equally. That, in turn, changes for the better the circumstances of those with the least power, making for a more just society. WHAT ARE EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES IN COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION? There are many different ways for a community to bring about the changes it wants. In the Community Tool Box, those we are most interested in are those in which people come together to improve life in their communities. This occurs in different ways, and for different reasons. Thus, there can be slightly different ways of looking at the process of organization. The four ways that follow will be discussed in more detail in the subsequent sections of this chapter. Organization for locality development. Also known as community development, locality development focuses on community building by improving the process by which things get done. For example, it emphasizes the ideas of community competency--the ability of the community to solve its own problems by learning skills such as group facilitation and critical thinking that are crucial to community work -- and through working to build harmonious relationships among people from different racial, ethnic, and social-class groups. A lot of weight is put on how people think and feel about things. The idea of "helping people help themselves" is key to this concept. Organizations such as the Peace Corps and VISTA offer good examples of what we mean by locality development. Social planning or policy change. Whereas locality development focuses primarily on the process of working together, social planning focuses on getting results. That is, it emphasizes solving specific social problems, such as a lack of adequate housing or a very high crime rate. Delivering goods and services and avoiding the duplication of those services are important ends in this type of organizing. It is often initiated by community officials or planners, or as the result of state or federal programs.

Turning a blind eye. Giving someone the cold shoulder. Looking down on people. Seeing right through them.

These metaphors for condescending or dismissive behavior are more than just descriptive. They suggest, to a surprisingly accurate extent, the social distance between those with greater power and those with less — a distance that goes beyond the realm of interpersonal interactions and may exacerbate the soaring inequality in the United States.

[Sawyer Phinney - Department of Geography., Rethinking geographies of race and austerity urbanism, 1-21-2020, https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/gec3.12480]\\SShah

Taking Roberts and Mahtani (2010) conceptualization of race as central to the reproduction of neoliberal urbanism, rather than simply a consequence or unfortunate outcome of it, calls on scholars to do more than map how processes of neoliberalization have racialized results and instead focus on the ways neoliberalism is fundamentally raced∂ understanding that such policies reinforce racial hierarchies and racist ideologies in society. To show this, they draw∂ on shifts in media discourses that previously demonized new immigrants to now a focus on the utility and productivity of immigrants for benefitting Canada's economy growth—depicting a relationship between racialization representation in fostering neoliberalism (p. 251). They call on scholars to explore austerity urbanism post-2008 in the∂ context of ongoing state rescaling as a social process that is connected to neoliberal regulatory regimes that draw on∂ discourses of individual responsibility and anti-welfare redistribution that actively produced racialized bodies∂ (Roberts & Mahtani, 2010, p. 248).∂ To address the interconnections between race and austerity that is sensitive to the inter-scalar conditioning of∂ governance and policy, Bonds (2013) refers to as a “relational racialization” that examines the co-production of race∂ and economic processes, and how racialized difference is constitutive of the economy—where race is not only∂ embedded but also a precondition for the functioning of economic systems. Such approach requires a “centralizing∂ of race” (Price, 2010, p. 3) on topics of political economy. Geographic studies on recent topics such as residential∂ segregation, redlining and racist lending practices, transportation agendas, all demonstrate the ways in which race is∂ linked to forms of governance, certain cultural ideologies, and state apparatuses, to provide certain elements to sustain the circulation of capital that is geographically embedded. In the work on austerity urbanism, this means thinking∂ about the uneven spaces of austerity policies, decades of downloading public service responsibilities to local governments that has intensified post-2008 in conjunction with systems of institutional racism to narrow-in on who∂ “austerity bites” within cities themselves, and why the consequences of austerity impact racialized groups the most∂ severely.∂ 4 | RETHINKING AUSTERITY URBANISM THROUGH THE LENS OF∂ RACIAL CAPITALISM∂ Critical theories of race have given scholars the analytical tools to unpack the ways in which capitalism engages with∂ racialized concepts to further reproduce itself in the urban. A growing number of scholars (Lowe, 2015; Pulido,∂ 2016, Ponder, 2018; Ranganathan, 2017;Bonds, 2019 ; Danewid, 2019 ; Ponder & Omstedt, 2019) are conceptualizing austerity urbanism as part of a larger process of racial capitalism. Those writing on racial capitalism argue that∂ capitalism depends upon the social construction of race to reproduce and extract value whereby “economic value is∂ derived from devaluing spaces, places, and labour of racialized groups of people” (Ponder, 2017, p. 15). As Melamed∂ (2015) asserts, “capitalism is racial capitalism” (p. 77), and this is revealed by two historical examples of processes of∂ racial capitalism that have shaped geographies of development in the North American context: settler-colonialism∂ and chattel slavery.∂ Within geography, there is increasing attention on racial capitalism as it relates to how racial difference and∂ inequality are produced, and most importantly, how is that relative valuation gets operationalized in the contemporary urban (Lowe, 2015; Ponder, 2017). This means exploring not only how ideas and practices of the devaluation of∂ race circulate throughout state restructuring processes but also how they become institutionalized, and the implications this has for the racially subordinate and dominate. To attend to the racialization of urban austerity through the∂ lens of racial capitalism, geographers are exploring topics of social reproduction (Ponder, 2018; Bhattacharya, 2018),∂ financialization (Bonds, 2019; Ponder & Omstedt, 2019; Danewid, 2019), and political ecologies of racial capitalism∂ (Pulido, 2016; Ranganathan, 2016). This growing literature centers on the notion that capitalist relations depend∂ upon the social construction of race to provide and extract value. This means thinking about how processes of∂ racialization are being baked into the social and material workings of capitalism itself, and how state-restructuring∂ regimes are connected through institutions that facilitate capital accumulation in ways the perpetuate racial hierarchies. Understanding such correlation cannot be fully grasped by simply examining austerity urbanism as reduced∂ only to class relations, but instead, urban state restructuring needs to be understood as part of a larger historical and∂ ongoing imperialist terrain (Danewid, 2019, p. 4).∂ Looking at the financialization of racial property regimes, Bonds (2019) examines property in Milwaukee∂ through the lens of racial capitalism and centers property as a race-making institution. Her work shows the ways∂ in which the criminalization of Blackness augmented Milwaukee's segregation and constituted disinvestment in∂ Black neighborhoods. Bonds theorizes the politics of residential property, which include policies protecting of∂ white properties and resistance to this, as connected to practices of policing of urban space (p. 5). Race is shown∂ to work not as an intersecting force, or as the literature on austerity urbanism suggests, as an unequal outcome∂ of capitalist processes. Instead, anti-Blackness is essential to the very workings of capitalism and its reproduction∂ over time and space.∂ Similarly, Bledsoe and Wright (2019) go further in their work on racial capitalism to illuminate how antiBlackness in fact conditions the realization of capitalist reproduction. They suggest that capitalism's recent round of∂ accumulation requires “spaces that were once marginal or peripheral to the perpetuation of capital accumulation∂ becomes sites of appropriation precisely because the (Black) populations occupying them receive no recognition as∂ viable spatial actors” (p. 13). This assumed from of “a-spatiality” of Black populations contributes to places in need of∂ appropriation and removal. Such spatial arrangements devalue Black populations as inhuman and spaces attached to∂ Black populations are deemed as lacking a legitimate form of occupation and usage for capital accumulation. The reliance on capital through such notions of “empty, lifeless, Blackened spaces” have contributed to practices of uneven∂ development through practices such as white flight, gentrification, urban renewal, incarceration, and policing (p. 13).∂ Austerity urbanism, then, needs to be understood as a governance strategy used to facilitate such practices that rely∂ on the ever-present logics of anti-Blackness. To understand race working as a process, both Bonds (2019) and∂ Bledsoe and Wright (2019) show the ways in which anti-Blackness works as a precondition for capitalism allowing it∂ to constantly renew itself by associating spaces with Back populations as open for dispossession, occupation, and∂ appropriation.

There is an enormous disparity between the wealth of Black and white Americans. According to the 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances, the median white household has a net worth of $171,000, 10 times the net worth of the median Black household, $17,100. In other words, Black households are overrepresented among the poor and working class, and underrepresented among the upper-middle class and the wealthy. The poorest 20% of American households have a net worth of less than $4,700; many of these households have a negative wealth due to debt. Of these households, 26% identify as Black. The richest 20% of American households have a net worth of more than about $500,000; 3% of these households identify as Black.

Unfortunately, policymakers have often put the responsibility for fixing centuries of racial inequity back on the shoulders of Black people. For decades,  that personal choices explained racial disparities. These claims have been thoroughly debunked. As economists Trevon Logan and Darrick Hamilton :

In 1974 Scott King co-founded the National Committee for Full Employment/Full Employment Action Council (NCFE/FEAC) to fight for legislation that guaranteed jobs for all Americans. Guaranteed jobs for all who wanted them—regardless of race or gender—had long been a goal of Scott King’s and the black freedom movement. But in a time of rising inflation and unemployment, and fearing a growing backlash against the civil rights agenda, Scott King believed that guaranteed jobs were also necessary to mollify fears of economic competition on the part of white workers. In the 1940s her father’s sawmill was burned to the ground two weeks after its opening, following his refusal to sell to it to a white man. She knew that shared feelings of precarity could provoke racist violence just as much as they might elicit solidarity. Scott King’s struggle for guaranteed jobs to anyone who wanted one was as tactical as it was moral.

In current debates, demands for guaranteed jobs and demands for a basic income are often framed as diametrically opposed. But for Scott King and the broader black freedom movement, these were coupled together. Scott King was an ardent advocate for the National Welfare Rights Organization’s calls for a guaranteed annual income (which, in contrast to some basic income schemes, always emphasized the need for a cash benefit of a living wage). But she spent more time campaigning for guaranteed jobs. In these proposals, there were income guarantees that would be provided for those who are unable to work due to age, ability, or care-giving responsibilities. The goal was to expand the welfare state through social movement victories, not impose workfare.