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A Dialectic of Talking Forests: Trotskyist Ecology Through Afghan

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A Dialectic of Talking Forests: Trotskyist Ecology Through Afghan A Dialectic of Talking Forests: Trotskyist Ecology Through Afghan Sufi Cosmology Bilal Zenab Ahmed (SOAS, University of London (PhD)) This paper argues that a Trotskyist understanding of dialectics is well-suited to be combined with a few different intellectual mechanisms present in Pashto literature, oral storytelling, and Naqshbandi Sufi cosmology, to pursue a properly Marxist understanding of ecology and climate change. Such a model of understanding is highly appropriate to the local context of Northwest Pakistan and Southern Afghanistan, and can also potentially inspire new forms of dialectical understanding, elsewhere.I focus on the Afghan poet and refugee Pir Muhammad Karwan, who wrote a collection of work about the Soviet-Afghan War while living in Pakistani refugee camps during Taliban rule in the 1990s. Karwans poetry can be roughly classified as neoplatonist, due to its reliance on local Sufi concepts like maanavi and the imaginal plane. Perso-Arabic Sufi cosmology enables Karwan to work through an intellectual matrix that both abolishes and retools concepts like the self and other, technology and organic beings, human and nonhuman species, living and nonliving objects, embodied and cognitive knowledge, and sentient and non sentient natural processes. This is clear from works like The Chinar Tree Speaks, which discusses the Soviet-Afghan war from the perspective of human and tree, and The Talking Forest, which goes further to describe a forest not just in terms of its material content, but as a network of physical and emotional processes that feels, thinks, and speaks in its own spoken and embodied language.While Karwan is explicitly discussing the Soviet-Afghan War, its possible to use his perspective as a springboard for discussing the various impacts and processes involved in climate change. Essentially, Karwans perspective is that the distinction between nature and humanity is artificial, and that even an inorganic and non sentient object has a physical, emotional, and cosmic impact. This approach pairs quite well with Trotskys writings on evolutionism, science, and the dialectics of nature; particularly so given that Trotsky is one of the few Marxist thinkers of his era to attempt to observe the dialectic in subatomic and nonhuman realms. Potentially, a Trotskyist reading of Karwan could open entirely new frameworks for dialectics, which views such diverse actors and processes as bees, deer, helicopters, melting ice caps, and the revolutionary proletarian party, on the same plane. It could also view natural processes such as climate change in terms of their emotional and spiritual content, in addition to the physical characteristics usually covered by historical materialism. This will, in turn, make it possible to sketch out new visions of proletarian governance, and new groundings for solidarity that extend across the biosphere. Class relations at the origins of Islam Ian David Morris (University of Amsterdam) Muhammad was a merchant. Historians are forever trying to explain the details of his life and the contents of the Quran with reference to his career, travelling and trading among Jews and Christians. And since W.M. Watt published his books on Muhammad at Mecca and Muhammad at Medina in the 1950s, we have even wondered if the rise of merchant capitalism frayed the bonds of tribal society, disturbing the traditional order and paving the way for Muhammads moral revolution.This paper argues that we have focused too much on trade itself and too little on the class relations that support a trading economy. Muhammad and his peers were more than merchants: they were a highly mobile class of warrior landlords who through tax, rent, interest and tribute seized and concentrated surplus wealth from the petty herdsmen and oasis farmers of Arabia.From this angle, Muhammad was not a revolutionary, but a consolidator. His new coalition did not abolish the class system, but it did unite the ruling class into a single political force. Together in their zeal for primitive accumulation with Gods blessing they went on to conquer and exploit their wealthier neighbours across the Middle East. The origins of Islam belong to the history of class struggle. Endnotes 5 panel John Clegg (University of Chicago) This is a launch panel for Endnotes issue 5 What is Commercial Capital?: Japanese Contributions to Marxian Market Theory Kei Ehara (Oita University) Shinya Shibasaki (Hokusei Gakuen University) This paper deals with Japanese contributions to the Marxian theory of commercial capital. It is especially noteworthy that Part 4, The Transformation of Commodity Capital and Money Capital into Commercial Capital and Money-Dealing Capital (Merchants Capital) ofCapitalVol.3, has been a popular area of discussion among Japanese Marxians: whereas Part 5, The Division of Profit into Interest and Profit of Enterprise, was taken up by R. Hilferding, who wroteFinance Capital in 1910, the Western literature has paid little attention to the theory of commercial capital developed in Part 4. In order to complete the introduction of Japanese Marxian economics, the theory of commercial capital is indispensable and we think it useful for all critical thinkers of capitalism to understand how and why Japanese Marxians have studied the area.The history of Japanese studies of commercial capital can be divided into three periods: the first period is from the 1950s to the 1970s and is led by Kozo Uno (1897 - 1977), one of the most influential figures in Japanese Marxian economists. A lot of people followed his argument and formed a group of scholars called the Uno school or Unoists. Consequently, the study of commercial capital has been mainly conducted by the Uno school. The first section of this paper will introduce how Uno tried to develop Marxs argument on this topic.The important figure in the second period is Shigekatsu Yamaguchi (1932 - ), who was a student of Uno and also is one of the main critics of Uno. His first book published in 1983,Kyoso to Shyogyo-shihon(Competition and Commercial Capital), stimulated fierce debates in this field of study and became one of the reference points in this period from the 1980s to the 2000s. Also, he educated many Marxian scholars at the University of Tokyo, contributing to the popularity of this theme among the Uno school. This paper will deal with Yamaguchis theory in the second section.The third period began from the 2000s. The theory of commercial capital is still one of the most popular areas of study in Japanese Marxian economics. One of the issues is how to develop and update Yamaguchis theory to understand modern capitalism. We shall describe the current achievements and the remaining issues in the third section and conclusion respectively. Eco-socialist climate policy after the yellow vests Anders Ekeland (Statistics Norway) The starting point of the paper is the reaction of the eco-socialist left to the yellow vest movement in France, exemplified primarily by the response from leading member of Attac in France, economist Maxime Combes and Andreas Malm, author of “Fossil Capitalism”, but also the response of Melenchon and the Green Party is analysed. The paper argues that the left in France, in Europe and internationally is politically paralysed on the key issue of the price of fossil fuel, in particular the price of petrol for cars. The yellow vest movement is of course not caused only or primarily by Macron’s tax increase on petrol, but it was “the straw that broke the camel’s back”. It the rise of the price of petrol that united very diverse socio-politico-economic groups into one movement. Which means that you are politically paralysed if you do not have long-term strategy for whether the price should increase or not. Because as long as fossil are cheap they will be used and no decrease, and certainly not a drastic reduction in emissions will occur. Since burning fossil fuels is directly responsible for almost 80 % of the emissions, the price of fossil fuel is the key price when it comes to climate policy. It is also the key political problem, since significantly increasing the price (= reducing emissions significantly) clearly hits the poor more than the rich and if the ruling elites tries to do that, there will be social unrest of a magnitude that the ruling elites fear more than anything. That is of course why they have not increased the price of carbon. The yellow vest movement just show that their fear was real. The price of fossil fuel is clearly the Gordian knot of climate policy. The price should increase, but that is politically impossible if it is not part of a “just transition”. The only way to increase the carbon price in a socially just way, the politically possible way to increase the price, is to combine it with strong redistribution policies. The most common way to do that is to implement a progressive carbon tax, where the tax revenue is redistributed in a “Robin Hood” way hurting the rich and benefitting the poor. While supported by some well-known eco-socialist like John B. Foster and Ian Angus, a progressive carbon tax is for most activists is a non-issue, i.e. a strategy they have not seriously considered. A few well-known eco-socialist, like Daniel Tanuro have come out clearly against a progressive carbon tax. The paper also argues that the widespread belief on the left that regulation has no consequence for the price on fossil fuels is wrong. If the “keep the oil in the soil, the coal in the hole” movement was successful in reducing the supply of fossil fuel significantly, thereby significantly reducing the emissions, it would lead to a sharp increase in the price of petrol, gas, coal – and according to carbon content – all other goods and services.
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