YouSaid · the spoken record

Kohei Saito

lines on the record: 49
first: 2024-04-06
most recent: 2024-04-06
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Erica Chenwell said when 3.5% people stand up and do something really desperately for a change, it can cause a very radical system change in the past. So why not in the future? I think against climate crisis and against this greedy capitalism, we can do something similar. also we have to. And in that sense, we are not that bad situation. It's too early to give up. I think we can establish degrowth post-capitalism together.”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In post capitalism is growing and those modes, we have also started new groups and practices. And I think that's basically the same. I think there are more and more books written about post-capitalism and degrowth, especially in Europe. And they are also starting new movement. We still do not see kind of the revolution yet. But in 2030 years, it could bring totally different kind of system because the younger generations have very different values, standards, right already, and then there will be 40, 50 years and they will become the leaders and politicians and they will really”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Myself also started various communities and I also established a group in Japan called Common Forest Japan, which is basically an attempt together we buy forest so that we make those forests not only to preserve but make it kind of common property so that commodify, not commodify, but to commodify what is very essential to our life together. And I think we're also involved in various movements and in Japan, I don't still see, I don't know much about other countries, but in society like Japan, which is quite conservative compared to Canada or European countries, but even in that kind of countries like Japan, the new interest in degrowth, new interest.”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Enjoy any promises of capitalism, affluence, more better salaries and houses, cars. No, these are the things that are not available to many of the younger generation. So I really understand that they are looking for some more different kind of vision of course good life, but at the same time more sustainable life and more just life. And these are the things that we really have to question again or we have to seek after again, but only if we look at capitalism, I don't think the solution will be technology, more economic growth and all the story repeats itself. So in a sense, like capitalism is no longer progressive. That's my answer.”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“yeah so when i wrote this book i of course didn't expect that this book by a marxist scholar about degrowth communism could attract so much attention and it would be translated into more than 10 languages and so on so why i think something is changing i think many people thought that the marx is dead communism is all terrible and so on i think many people still do but at the same time people really especially the younger generation started to look for a more different vision because the status quo the business as usual under capitalism is really heading nowhere but disaster right and the younger generations are more exposed to the risk of climate crisis but they also do not”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have a kind of the participatory politics so that citizens boys can be more reflected in the political debate and in the process of decarbonization, what kind of cities people want to live, because often even the cities is Taken by the logic of capitalism. So I think these are the new attempts of regaining the power of democracy is already emerging, especially in Europe. And I think this kind of the boys must be even accelerated. And I think my interpretation in slowdown resonates with new attempt. And I think it resonates with the voice and demands of the younger generations. And I think this kind of the accumulation of new ideas. Creates a kind of the Sophia where we can together imagine the new alternative society which I call degrowth communism.”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And this is very hard because capitalism always requires or demands more competition, more egoistic behaviors, and it compels us to think only about money. But I still don't give up my hope because looking at many areas in the world, in the global north, there are many movements emerging, as I said, you know, the Fridays for Future is one example, but at the same time, there are also the growing networks of cities called municipalism. The municipalism is basically a new attempt. Cities like Barcelona, Paris, and Berlin, and these are the cities where it's kind of the independent from the nation state, although the cities try to”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“History of colonialism, but the Green New Deal can't even create some kind of ecological imperialism, ecological colonization in those areas. And I think it's not justice. I think when people, though the global nose that is responsible for the current situation, I think the only consistent unjust way of making the transition is basically degrowth because degrowth can reduce our excessive consumption and production so that other people in the world, basically everyone in the world can achieve a minimum level of subsistence, at least for now. And then we can wait.”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“that kind of sense of responsibility and sense of solidarity and the concept of justice is obviously very important. I think one of the problems that I have with people like Green New Deal is basically I think they also believe something good for many people, but their scope is still too narrow because economic growth Green New Deal in the US can be achieved at the cost of the people in Latin America, Africa because those decarbonization with economic growth can still require a lot of resources in those areas in the global south and those areas have historically suffered from various oppression violence and basically”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At the cost of other people. So we don't care about others. We don't have enough interest in those issues anymore. And I think that's something that we really have to avoid. And that's why, as you said, I think it's necessary to have new values. Of course, it's kind of solidarity. It's kind of the mutual aid. And I think in order to”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I think the good time where the capitalism can redistribute wells because capitalism was growing enough and then the working class movement can enjoy and we can also care about other people because we don't have to desperately work and so on is already over. I think the time coming in the next decades is basically the climate crisis getting worse, more natural disasters and more inflation, more war, more refuges, more right-wing populists and then economic inequality is also growing. So this is a very kind of depressing scenario, depressing future and then the kind of the state of nature will come back in the sense that we only care about kind of egoistic set of interests.”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“joy of new product consuming new commodities rather we do something together we build we democratically manage solar panels we or we enjoyed urban gardening or we do something together i think this is kind of the way of building a new sense of community and this is just a very small scale but at the same time without that kind of democratic management of commonwealth without that kind of experience we will not be able to fundamentally challenge the existing state of capitalism and nation state so i'm not a negator of nation state i'm not too optimistic that those like grassroots movement alone can change the system but at the same time in order to change the old vision of state socialism And in order to regain our political imagination of new society, I think we have to start from the grassroots movement and the local communities”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Solution of only hope of change is provided by that kind of top-down hierological strong leadership. But it's authoritarian. It could even lead to fascism. So it's very dangerous. And basically my attempt is to provide a different vision of change, which is more bottom-up and more kind of like grassroots movements building new kind of communities. And those communities alone cannot change the entire system. But at the same time, I think we first have to have a kind of the spheres of non-capitalist way of life by building communities where we don't really have to count on money and commodity and constant pressure to work and we don't necessarily end.”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The problem is basically we need some kind of change. I think many people actually recognize. And not just because of the climate change, but because of the war, because of inflation. I think we can, many people realize we cannot simply continue a kind of the life that what we enjoyed before the pandemic. We need a rapid change, otherwise more inequality, more natural disasters and so on. But when we try to think an alternative, we cannot really envision a new society. So what do we want? A strong leader. And I think that's why people like Trump and other countries like right-wing populists became stronger and stronger and more attractive because for many people who actually desperately suffer from everyday life,”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And everyone can place the panels on the roof of our houses and all we can communically manage. So this is a small decentralized project, which is not something the state and a big corporation can monopolize and control. So this is why renewable energies have been marginalized. So I argue that we...”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The renewable energies, like solar panels, can be managed on a communal level. So I think one of the reasons why the solar panel or renewable energies was not so much preferred by capitalist companies or by capitalism in general is that basically compared to going back to the issue of nuclear plants, that kind of gigantic technology like nuclear power can be managed in centralized manner so the state and the big corporation can make a tie and then they can build a relationship and then sort of make a monopoly situation for the sake of profit too. But the characteristic of renewable energy is basically it's a kind of network decentralized.”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Non capitalist life. So, you know, when we imagine that X or renewable energies, of course we need for the rapid kind of transition to decarbonized economy, I still argue that the state needs to do massive investment and we still have to count on the role of the state in the sense that the nation state especially, but at the same time”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I think one of the main failures of the early attempts of socialism like Soviet Union basically is that the state took over all the means of production through nationalization. And that was very top-down hierarchical planning, centralized planning, and which led to the increase of the power of the communist party and bureaucrats and leading to the kind of dictatorship which led to the disaster. So my vision of my main difference of my idea of communism from that kind of the state socialism is basically I emphasize learning from the tradition of degrowth. I emphasize the importance of bottom-up Various kind of movements and attempting the communities and Sufis of”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“cost of our daily life at the cost of our free time with friends and family so these are all the good things that are degross communism advocate for by sharing by reducing what is unnecessary by focusing more on decommodification Commonwealths is rehabilitated, and this is a society of degrowth communism.”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Equality nature. These are the things, all the things are not reflected in GDP. Japan, the GDP is decreasing, but Japan is still safe. If you get drunk, you can still drink outside and then sleep on the street, but no one steals your wallet. It's safe. But the GDP is not reflecting that security with people get drunk because of good food. Good food is not reflected in GDP. So my point is basically so many good things are not reflected in GDP. So we should stop caring too much about GDP. And at the same time, we should decommodify many basic goods and services because that increases our sense of security and it also increases equality. And then we don't necessarily have to constantly seek after economic growth at the cost of planet.”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If we focus more on what is necessary in our life and if we try to decommodify, this works against GDP. So my simple proposal of degrowth is basically is we have to decommodify many things which vaccine marks distinguishes material wealth and commodity. Can be knowledge.”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You have to work harder for it. And so it's stressful, and you are precarious because if you do the job, you all lose access to everything, what you basically need. So my idea of communism is not about asking Stalin to kill all the capitalists, but rather to decommodify this excessive world of commodities. And actually, this is bad for capitalism because everything is decommodified. For example, education is decommodified. Education no longer increases GDP. is no economic activity. So we have to distinguish that actually or we have to realize that the GDP actually includes so many unnecessary things like advertisement and weapon and war and destruction. Also, at the same time”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You don't have money, you cannot go to the hospital. Even if the hospital have enough doctors and everything because of the logical capitalism. So this is artificial scarcity. And in other countries with smaller GDP can do much better. Why? Because they decommodify the medical services, basically, which means that medical care is free. And in other countries, education is free. public transportation is almost free but in the u.s everyone has to buy a car in california especially but so these are the things that actually good for capitalism because people have to pay for education pay for medical care pay for communal communing going to everywhere but that's bad for people because you have you always need money”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Indispensable for everyone to live, right? In order to have the basic life, you need to have education, medical care. But these are the commodified. So which means if you don't have money, you cannot go to hospital even if you are sick. And this problem is very serious in the US. That's why US is the richest, largest country. In the world, the richest country in the world, but during the COVID, one million people died. This is a disastrous. But that's not because, so this is the point of my book, this is not because The US doesn't have enough medical resources, right? US does have enough hospitals, doctors, and medical medicines and everything, basically. The medical system is commodified, an artificially made scarce because of money making.”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Land used to be free or London used to be common property. Forest used to be common property. Water used to be common property. So basically people had access without paying money and they used to provide fish, vegetables and meat and so on. So everything was decommodified based because everything was common. But in order for capitalism to develop, basically everything must be commodified. And today we live in 21st century. If we look around us, nothing is common, right? Almost everything is commodified. We even pay for using toilet. We pay for buying water and we, of course, pay for education. We pay for hospitals and we pay for electricity, internet and so on. But these are the things that are.”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's why communism or society based on commons is communism, while capitalism is a society based on the logic of capital. So that's capitalism. And what is capital? The capital is basically a constant movement of value and commodity, and it's a constant expansion of this movement. So basically capitalists have money and they invest and produce new commodities and they sell it and then they try to increase the money, right? So this movement of money, commodity, money is, according to Marx, the basic formula of capital. So this is the definition, the movement of money commodity money. Capitalism, in order to grow, commodify so many things. Water used to be”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is a wonderful question. Thanks, Adam. So when I say we need some kind of degrowth post-capitalism, because degrowth is incompatible with capitalism. And my answer is basically degrowth communism. But people get kind of freaked out. Degrowth is already bad, but communism, it's so worse and the site of Kohaz is crazy. Yes, in some sense, crazy, but at the same time, I'm serious because I'm not advocating kind of going back to Stalinism and I'm not simplistic to China and I'm not even endorsing any of these. Because my definition of communism is radically different from state dictatorship and so on. Rather, my definition is communism is based on communism is a society based on common”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Different ways of thinking, but degrowth, my point is basically degrowth is incompatible with capitalism because capitalism is a system of constant growth. So degrowth must be some kind of post-capitalist society. This is a way forward.”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“bringing satisfaction in our life instead of constantly buying new things maybe we can repair we can share and we use less money so that we feel less pressure to work and spend more time with family and friends and do sports and these are the things that we don't necessarily have to constantly use money and so that's the direction so it's personally satisfying building communities and building more ecological relationship with nature so we will discuss more with in detail later but i think so this is something that we have to start thinking about instead of thinking simply about economic growth and development of technologies and some kind of consumerist life will be the future no degrowth i think”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“to abandon GDP or their constant economic growth as the measure of social progress and at the same time the growth is not a call to go back to nature abandoning all the technology we still do need technology we still do need innovations but it's a call to stop producing what is unnecessary i think in our society there are so many things that are unnecessary as i said it's private jet is an obvious example we don't use private jet i think actually even if we abandon private jet immediately we don't suffer at all right but there are so many things like that we do we really need big cars on the streets no so we actually start thinking about what we can actually reduce immediately and we can also start think about other ways of”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Crisis. And I think the solution is basically finding a way that we secure everyone's basic needs and the basic equality and justice without pursuing growth, and which I call degrowth. So degrowth is basically a demand.”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have to change and we can simply continue to buy new things and so on. But wait, many scientists say climate crisis is really dangerous and we have to do so many radical things and transformative change and so on so on. But these conclusions just buying new things because of technology. I think the scenario is a kind of ideological. The technology becomes a kind of ideology telling us that we can simply continue business as usual. No, I think this is a lie that really a lie that tried to preserve capitalism from more radical criticism. So basically my idea is that the capitalism and the economic growth are something that we must really radically question in the age of ecological.”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I'm basically the philosopher. So I argue that we need to redefine the concept because we fetishize that economic growth is really indispensable condition for affluent life. So that's why technology becomes the only solution. When we cannot change economic growth because capitalism is tied to the economic growth, only technology can increase the efficiency. And technology sounds very attractive because we don't really have to do anything. We can simply buy new car, but instead of gasoline, we can just buy electronic SUV. And then if we can satisfy our responsibility for the future generations, it sounds great, right? It doesn't really...”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To achieve anymore, because last year it's almost 1.5 degrees. But anyway, I think in order to really overcome this situation of climate breakdown, or if we really recognize the seriousness of today's ecological crisis, I think one way of really taking the responsibility The global nose is to recognize that economic growth is the core of the problem, which means that capitalism is something that we must challenge. This is why I urge that the degrowth must be on the agenda. And when the economy doesn't grow, we need to share more. So I argue that degrowth communism is the best solution against climate crisis.”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, this is some kind of incompatibility. For the sake of growth, we need something not really necessary in terms of decarbonization, but they claim that with new technologies, we can somehow also have those and not really necessary things, but at the same time, we can decarbonize. But the answer is actually not so easy. I don't think that's true. And many scientific papers actually demonstrate that for the rapid decarbonization seeking after or in the line with the Paris Agreement, this is not enough if we try to grow as before, we will end up breaking the promises of the Paris Agreement. So only consistent way with the Paris Agreement or the target of 1.5 degrees Celsius, which actually is very hard today.”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Capitalism continued to produce new materials, new models, new commodities, and they try to sell everything with advertisement. And the rich people will continue to fly with private jets, cruise ships, and individual possessed like kind of yacht and other gigantic cars. Are they really necessary? From the perspective of sustainability, not really, because we are under the climate emergency, climate breakdown, climate crisis, which really requires immediate decarbonization. But capitalism put”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know decarbonize the anti economy while also pursuing after economic growth. It's possible to achieve this in 50 years or in 100 years because it takes time to replace all the cars running currently outside by war with electric vehicles. And we also consume gigantic amount of electricity and resources every day in capitalism. We produce so many actually unnecessary things because in order to make profit, we have to constantly produce and consume. So this is actually quite wasteful economy. In order to really do the decarbonization with this system,”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, the left became very weak, and I thought that was a Green New Deal is basically a kind of new promising project for anyone who is interested in more progressive politics. But I actually thought about my experience and I listened to Greta Thunberry more carefully. And basically, she's saying that the Eternal Growth is just a fairy tale. Why? Because The time is running out. Possible”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Toyota, Tesla, and so on. And we can also change airplanes, ships, everything, everything on this planet. We have to change in order to decarbonize the entire economy, which is a tough work, but it creates this green transformation that decarbonization can create a lot of jobs for working class. whose wage has been stagnating and which has been precarious more and more. So this is actually a good thing to produce more jobs, higher salaries and economic growth and it can also overcome the problem of economic inequality and so on and so on. Which sounds quite exciting and I thought that was actually a really progressive project for the living house and the left-wing people because after the collapse of Soviet Union”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Even though we produce cars as before, those new electric vehicles do not make carbon dioxide anymore, and so on. So in this way, by changing how we produce iron, how we produce electricity, how we produce other materials that we consume every day, they claim that we can actually continue to grow without damaging planet anymore. And they were in the past some kind of solution to air pollutions and water contamination and so on. So they claim that removing carbon dioxide from the air is pretty much actually the same thing that they can do it. And furthermore, we can so produce more electricity codes and we have to replace all the cards running outside. So this is a big business chance for the economic expansion.”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Instead, they try to decouple economic growth from energy and resource usages. How? Basically by investing in those green technologies such as electronic vehicles and renewable energies and other new dream technologies so that”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“produce more cod, we produce more commodities. So basically we also use more energy and resources in order to produce them. So the problem is capitalism grows and grows. This is a basic characteristic of capitalism. Capitalism characterized by infinite growth, the capitalism that doesn't grow like Japanese economy where I live is bad capitalism and people are unhappy. So capitalism tried to grow all the time and it created various innovations and technology, which is a good thing. But the bad thing is basically it also polluted the environment and today carbon dioxide is causing a serious ecological crisis, right? So what do they do? The advocate of green capitalism don't say we should stop growth because growth is the core of capitalism.”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. So there is an important difference between the kind of idea of Green New Deal or Green Keynesianism that I also used to endorse and the new idea of degrowth communism that I put forward. So let me sort of simplify but highlight the key differences. So basically the green capitalism or green Keynesianism basically try to continue capitalism by making technology sustainable and by creating more jobs and by pursuing further economic growth. How is it possible? Because in the past there was a coupling of economic growth and energy and resource usage which means that as economy grows we actually”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That other people's like extinction rebellion just took oil and so on. At the time, Just Stop Oil didn't exist. But exposed to more desperate critiques of why don't people actually do anything about against climate change and so on. I also came to realize that I was still too optimistic. I started thinking about some more radical alternatives to the existing issue of climate crisis in relation to capitalism and other solutions. And then I started exploring new possibilities. And this is how I, in this book slowdown, came to the conclusion degrowth communism. Eco-socialism alone is not specific enough. And I try to clarify that this new idea of degrowth communism”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The time. So, my story, let's make it short. Well, at the time, I still had some kind of optimistic vision once we actually overcome somehow capitalism in socialism things becomes more sustainable. That's why I call it eco-socialism. But in a sense, I was too optimistic. So my basic solution at the time to the climate crisis was actually Green New Deal. Once we more efficiently, we plan everything in the state that some kind of public investment and create jobs for workers and we invest more in renewable energies and electric vehicles and so on. I thought with kind of the socialist planning, we could somehow deal with this issue of climate crisis. But then I encountered various younger people's movement like Greta Thunberry's Fridays for Future.”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Capitalism. So that's the basic issue of sustainability, right? And then he actually criticized that capitalism seeks only for profit. So it only cares about short-term profit and it doesn't really care about sustainability and it increases productivity and it develops new innovation and technologies in order to more effectively, efficiently exploit from nature and so on. capitalist technology actually doesn't solve environmental issues. Rather, it disrupts our metabolic interaction with nature. And he even says it creates some kind of rift in the metabolic interaction between human and nature. So that was actually my dissertation, which won the Deutsche Memorial Lights, which is called Karl Marx Eco Socialism. Basically, I'm demonstrating Marx is actually”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was that moment when I was a graduate student and I started looking at some of the notebooks that Max, he didn't publish them, but he was preparing volume two and three of Capital. Why doing that? He read a lot of books on natural sciences. And so I studied reading these notebooks hoping that there are some hints about thinking about this relationship between humans and nature. And then I luckily actually found out that Marx intensively studied, issued ecology and especially sustainability in terms of agricultural chemistry, biology, botanic and so on. He actually tried to analyze soil exhaustions, excessive deforestations, and exhaustion of the fossil fuels.”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, so I started paying attention to the issue of technology, the relationship between human and nature mediated by technology. And because I was, I still had a more kind of optimistic vision of how the development of technology will liberalate emancipate working class and so on, a very traditional Marxist kind of productivist view of development and so on.”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I'm a Marxist scholar. So basically my original interest was class struggle and the problem of working class puberty and worsening working condition and so on. But that was like when I was undergraduate. Once I experienced the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, I didn't live in Fukushima. But that was a huge shock for me. And then I came to realize that the kind of inequality and the relations of exploitation, oppression didn't simply exist between capitalist class and working class, but it also exists between cities like Tokyo and countryside because that electricity generated in Fukushima was not used by people around Fukushima nuclear power plant, but people in Tokyo. And that really realized the kind of affluent life in Tokyo.”
2024-04-06 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Need to Slow Down to Save the Planet, with Kohei Saito · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT