Video: Climate, coronavirus and capitalism

rs21 hosted a discussion on Andreas Malm‘s forthcoming book ‘Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century’, introduced by Gareth Dale. In the book Malm argues that COVID-19 is one instance of a trend of ‘global sickening’ with an increase in pandemics driven by climate change and deforestation displacing wild nature into new contact with large urban populations. A century ago Lenin saw the crisis of war as an opportunity to end the system that produced wars. Malm argues for an ‘ecological Leninism’ today and draws a provocative parallel with war communism for a state-driven economic transformation to tackle climate breakdown.

The video doesn’t include discussion in the breakout groups, but notes taken by participants along with information shared in the zoom chat are available here.

For further information see Andreas Malm’s interview in Jacobin and video with Critical Theory in Berlin. Malm’s book is due out in September 2020 from Verso.