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Abstract

This letter was collaboratively written with dozens of aligned groups. As the weeks of action called by Extinction Rebellion were coming to an end, our groups came together to reflect on the narrative, strategies, tactics and demands of a reinvigorated climate movement in the UK. In this letter we articulate a foundational set of principles and demands that are rooted in justice and which we feel are crucial for the whole movement to consider as we continue constructing a response to the 'climate emergency'.

In all the existing literature on survival in heterogeneous economies, the rate at which an agent vanishes in the long run relative to another agent can be characterized by the difference of the so-called survival indices, where each survival index only depends on the preferences of the corresponding agent and the properties of the aggregate endowment. In particular, one agent experiences extinction relative to another (that is, the wealth ratio of the two agents goes to zero) if and only if she has a smaller survival index. We consider a simple complete market model and show that the survival index is more complex if there are more than two agents in the economy. In fact, the following phenomenon may take place: even if agent one experiences extinction relative to agent two, adding a third agent to the economy may reverse the situation and force the agent two to experience extinction relative to agent one. We also calculate the rates of convergence.

Chapter 1: Introduction to Periodizing Capitalism -- Chapter 2: Capitalist Development and Theories of Imperialism -- Chapter 3: From Monopoly to "Late" Capitalism -- Chapter 4: Periodizing Really Existing Capitalism of the 1980s and 1990s -- Chapter 5: Regulation School, Social Structures of Accumulation, and Intermediate Theory -- Chapter 6: The Japanese Uno-Sekine Approach to Marxian Political Economy -- Chapter 7: Problematizing Capitalism in the Era of Globalization and Financialization -- Chapter 8: Landlordization of Capitalism and Extinction of an Economic Species -- Chapter 9: Concluding Words

Contrary to what Foucault argued, modern biopolitics is inherently thanatopolitical, i.e., it is a politics of life premised on a politics of death. This becomes clear when non-human elements are given greater relevance than Foucault afforded them. Since the reproduction of life results from interdependencies between species and abiotic elements, multispecies relations are at the core of 'a power to foster life or disallow it to the point of death'. In modernity, biopolitical interventions in what Foucault defines as the milieu are intended to foster the lives of (certain) human populations, while they are also premised on killing non-human species. This occurs whether these species are needed to make humans live (e.g., as food) or whether they oppose the goal of fostering the lives of human populations (e.g., as pests or weeds). The ongoing proliferation and acceleration of the extinction of non-human species is one of the extreme manifestations of this thanatopolitical drive of biopolitics, showing that biopolitics promotes death to the point of eliminating entities and relationships on which the reproduction of life depends, which makes it increasingly difficult to keep intervening with the goal to 'make live'.

Die Klimaschutzbewegung Extinction Rebellion (XR) bringt neben ihrem radikalen Protest durch zivilen Ungehorsam auch Narrative und Praktiken der Achtsamkeit zum Einsatz. Bewegungsinterne Leitlinien umfassen zahlreiche standardisierte und achtsamkeitsbasierte Gefühlsvorgaben und Selbsttechniken, die zum Zweck eines nachhaltigen Zusammenlebens vor allem das Wohlbefinden der Einzelnen forcieren. Diese subjektzentrierte Perspektive rückt vor dem Hintergrund von XRs politischem, an Gemeinwohl orientiertem Ansatz das gegenwärtig höchst populäre Gefühlsprogramm in ein neues Licht. Angesichts der soziologischen Kritik an der Achtsamkeit, die vorrangig deren Tendenz zur Entpolitisierung, Privatisierung und verstärkten Eigenverantwortung anprangert, wirft XRs neuartige, politisierte Rezeption zahlreiche Fragen auf. Der Beitrag zeigt daher anhand einer qualitativen Analyse von öffentlichen Dokumenten und Regelwerken, inwiefern die für ihre individualistische Disposition kritisierte Achtsamkeit in einem politischen Kontext eingesetzt wird und welche ambivalenten Folgen daraus sowohl für die Klimabewegung als auch das Konzept der Achtsamkeit selbst hervorgehen. Darauf aufbauend wird dargelegt, wie institutionalisierte Gefühlsprogramme in einer dezentral organisierten Bewegung ordnungsbildend und als Kontrollinstanz wirken können.