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/338/ The Energy Theory of Everything ft. Matt Huber (Patreon)

Published:
2023-05-09 15:12:47
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

On who owns the power.

Matt Huber joins us to discuss his article, "Socialist Politics and the Electricity Grid", and how organised labour is central to a politics of plenty. What is the grid and who owns it? What are the limitations of a "100% renewables" approach? 

On the politics of energy, the left is divided in a similar way to the ruling class. How do we move from a strategy of 'blocking' (preventing new infrastructure) to one of 'building'? And why does a movement to limit climate change need to focus on production, rather than consumption?We conclude by discussing the conflict between struggles around "the end of the month" (living standards) and those around "the end of the world" (climate change). Readings & Links:

Socialist Politics & the Electricity Grid, Matt Huber & Fred Stafford, Catalyst

Climate Change as Class War: Building Socialism on a Warming Planet, Matt Huber, Verso

On post-neoliberalism: /326/ What Did Capitalism Do Next?, Bungacast

On de-growth: /310/ Do You Want to De-Grow?, Bungacast

On green activism: /91/ Exhaustion Revealing ft. Leigh Phillips, Bungacast

Matt's Twitter thread on Kokei Saito's degrowth communism

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Comments

Davka Smolah Collective

"From blocking to building" is already such a great catchphrase I want to put it on a placard and wave it at leftists in a public march. It brings to mind a really provocative question that I want to ask. Is a "from blocking to building" situation really that new to the Left? I had not really thought that anyone outside the trente glorieuses in the Anglo world or Western Europe really assumed there was a capitalist "growth machine" that would just keep pumping out development for "us socialists" to simply stand there and expropriate, blocking a few bad things as necessary. Have socialist movements not always aimed at a socialist mode of production, rather than a mode of blocking, of transfer payments, or of charity? If all my historical impressions are not incorrect, then it brings up a question: when did the Left forget how to be anything other than administrators of transfer payments (pace Malcolm Kyeyune, ha!)? Now to a related comment. The episode didn't really seem to address, in my mind, the "Energy Theory of Everything" as such. Is that not supposed to be a more broadly historical theory about "WTF happened in 1971?", about why governments communist and capitalist alike started having to break their promises to working people of development and rising living standards and even, in some ways, to capitalists of steady profits?

Mathieu Dube

The problem with the idea of the GND is that the most known proponent of it is a scab who voted to outlaw a transport(of all sectors!!!) workers strike. So it's going to be a steep hill. Maybe the left needs to clean itself of its political careerists if it wants to have influence on the working class.

Eli A

I agree with the orientation of Matt Huber's politics and his disdain for degrowthers and push for a pro-abundance environmental movement, but I wish you would have pushed him on a point I believe Phil has made in the past: that climate change is NOT inherently a fundamental threat to capitalism and that there is no built-in reason for climate politics to be left-wing or socialist. To the dismay of many leftists, capitalist states appear more than able to rise up to the challenge posed by climate change (as evidenced by the Inflation Reduction Act being forecasted by Goldman Sachs to amount to over $1 trillion in climate spending!). It appears to me that climate change is a total dead end for left politics because climate change is one of the few issues that is actually at its core a TECHNICAL problem with TECHNICAL solutions.