Guerrilla History - Socialist States & the Environment w/ Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro

Episode Date: January 14, 2022

In this episode of Guerrilla History, we bring on Professor Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro to talk about his book, Socialist States and the Environment: Lessons for Eco-Socialist Futures.  This book is an analytical and historical examination of the impact of Socialist States on the environment, and busts many myths that we hear in the imperialist core about this historical record.  A really deep dive of a conversation that will arm you with facts and historical perspective to combat the dual conservative/liberal propaganda against socialist states! Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro is Professor at the Geography Department of SUNY New Paltz and is chief editor for the journal Capitalism Nature Socialism.  His book Socialist States and the Environment is available from Pluto Press: https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745340418/socialist-states-and-the-environment/.  You can also find the journal Capitalism Nature Socialism for more invaluable anti-capitalist environmental perspectives: http://www.cnsjournal.org/.   Guerrilla History is the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history, and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present.  If you have any questions or guest/topic suggestions, email them to us at [e-mail]. Your hosts are immunobiologist Henry Hakamaki, Professor Adnan Husain, historian and Director of the School of Religion at Queens University, and Revolutionary Left Radio's Breht O'Shea.   Follow us on social media!  Our podcast can be found on twitter @guerrilla_pod, and can be supported on patreon at https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory.  Your contributions will make the show possible to continue and succeed! To follow the hosts, Henry can be found on twitter @huck1995, and also has a patreon to help support himself through the pandemic where he breaks down science and public health research and news at https://www.patreon.com/huck1995.  Adnan can be followed on twitter @adnanahusain, and also runs The Majlis Podcast, which can be found at https://anchor.fm/the-majlis, and the Muslim Societies-Global Perspectives group at Queens University, https://www.facebook.com/MSGPQU/.   Breht is the host of Revolutionary Left Radio, which can be followed on twitter @RevLeftRadio and cohost of The Red Menace Podcast, which can be followed on twitter @Red_Menace_Pod.  Follow and support these shows on patreon, and find them at https://www.revolutionaryleftradio.com/.     Thanks to Ryan Hakamaki, who designed and created the podcast's artwork, and Kevin MacLeod, who creates royalty-free music.

You don't remember den, Ben, boo? No. The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello, and welcome to guerrilla history. the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history

and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm your host, Henry Huckmacki, joined, as always by my co-hosts, Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queens University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today? I'm well, Hendry. It's wonderful to be with you. Yeah, it's been a little while since we've had a full episode, so this is going to be a lot of fun. Also joined, as always, by Brett O'Shea, host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the Red Menace podcast. Hello, Brett. How are you holding up today? Hello, I'm doing pretty good. Glad to be here.

Of course. It's always, it's always nice when we've got the full crew. And it's always nice when we have a just excellent guest that's going to be coming up on the show because these conversations really are very stimulating intellectually for me as well as hopefully the listeners. So today we've got a conversation about socialist states and the environment. And we're basing this conversation off of the book, Socialist States and the Environment, which is a pretty new book. It only came out a few months ago, written by Salvatore Engel de Maure, who is a professor at the Geography Department at SUNY New Pulse and as chief editor for the journal Capitalism, Nature, Socialism. So I guess just as my preambulatory thing before I get into, turn it over to the guys for their opening thoughts on what we're going to be looking at here. You know, socialists states get a bad rap when it comes to the environment. And they always have both when some of these state socialist countries like the Soviet Union as well as China under Mao were still there, as well as these reassessments of their legacy. generally they get pretty short shrift when looking at the environment specifically.

And this book, it does a lot to dispel a lot of those notions as more or less false notions. So it's a very interesting book, and I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Adnan, why don't I turn it over to you for your opening thoughts for the conversation that we're going to have, perhaps things that we're looking forward to, and then Brett will turn it over to you after that. Yes, great. I mean, I think this is, we can't imagine a topic of greater importance and significance than, you know, climate change and the environment. So to look at it historically, I think is very valuable for us to understand how policies have changed. And as you alluded to, Henry, socialist states have typically been characterized as terrible for the environment.

And we really need to have some perspective on this. if we're to learn anything about how to go forward and also avoid the kind of corporate capitalist ideology that is, of course, responsible. You know, capitalism is responsible for the globe's environmental devastation. So this myth of socialist states being really terrible for the environment is important to analyze and confront, and this book does an amazing job of doing that. I'm interested in talking a little bit more about his findings, but it has a really clear purpose. I think also very interesting is that we're getting a historical analysis and perspective from someone who really understands the science, you know, is an environmental scientist,

a soil scientist. So somebody who can balance the analysis of the technical data with, you know, a dialectical materialist orientation. This is very interesting, and I'm hoping to explore a little. bit more with Salvatore, you know, the consequences of taking this kind of analysis. And thirdly, I think what's interesting and I'm looking forward to in this conversation is how this fits into a broader reassessment of 20th century history that looks back on the contributions of various socialist states. In particular, I think that's something somewhat similar to, you know,

recent book, Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism, you know, there's been an interest in recovering. What were some of the positive contributions? I mean, we sometimes take the perspective in history of being very anachronistic and letting the winners write the histories and looking back on some sort of failure as inevitable. And thinking from the perspective after something has disappeared in history to think of it as a failure because it no longer exists in history, you know, for some of these, you know, Eastern European countries and the Soviet Union and so on. And so I think it's very important. One thing that we can do is appreciate some of the positive contributions. So I'm looking forward to hearing more about that since the book

made a serious case about environmentally, you know, environmental policies. And we're you know, positive contributions towards, you know, valuing the relationship to the environment under, you know, these socialist states. So I'm looking forward to this conversation and learning a lot further in our conversation because the book was already full of analysis that I hadn't come across before. Yeah, I echo those sentiments entirely, particularly the interesting perspective of having an earth scientist do this sort of work. I think adds a really a unique element to the text, having that scientific grounding, environmental scientific grounding. A couple like, you know, issues that we might be able to explore or might not be able to is

the role that development has in on environmental, like we know, is industrialization and development always environmentally degrading historically? And, you know, these, these huge socialist societies like China and the USSR, I mean, they industrialized in, in, in, you know, unprecedentedly tiny amount of time without, you know, the genocide and the slave trade that, that Europe and the U.S.

used to develop over centuries. And so, you know, is there an element of an inevitability there when you're industrializing? And this has, you know, implications for today because we have many developing or underdeveloped global South countries

trying to develop in the context of climate change. And so it does matter whether or not it's possible to industrialize and develop your society in a way that is environmentally friendly. So that's a tension that's always going to be there. And then, you know, for many reasons, the accusation that socialist states were uniquely terrible in the environment is sort of an anti-communist myth. And one of those reasons I think, and maybe we can talk about this in the episode, maybe we

get to it, maybe we don't, but it's like the role of the rise of the environmental movement proper. Like certainly people have always cared about keeping their area of, you know, environment healthy to some extent. But, you know, a lot of these, the environmentalist movement as we know it in the modern day, you know, sort of arose mid-century, you know, Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, etc. And so before that was the environmental consciousness fully there, something we can possibly explore with Salvatore. And then the last thing is just to summarize this, this discussion, even though it's historical, as I alluded to, is super important for the future because, you know, to be a socialist, in the 21st century means to be an eco-socialist. The environmental problem and the capitalist problem are, as we're increasingly aware, the same problem. And so we need to look back over history, see the successes and failures of previous socialist experiments in order to help guide us

going through the next several decades. And so for that reason as well, I think this book is really important for the left to wrestle with. I think that it's important for the left, also because this narrative of socialist states being uniquely bad for the environment is pervasive not only within the neoliberal consensus as well as, you know, more conservative circles, fascist circles, you know, this narrative is also present within the left itself, even in very, you know, very small ways, very minute ways that are just there to kind of ingrain themselves into our consciousness without us really questioning them. Something as facile as the left values quiz, for example, which is, I don't know if anybody

is aware of it, but it's like the political compass test that infinitely more people are aware of, it's tailored to people who are on the left. Because, you know, you take the political compass test, everybody ends up in the left libertarian quadrant unless you're like an outright fascist. The questions are designed in a way that everybody ends up in that quadrant. But if you're actually like a democratic socialist, if you're a council, communist, if you're a Marxist Leninist, a Marxist, Maoist, Batrotsky's, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. If you're any of these actual left tendencies, the left values quizzes like the equivalent

of the political compass to kind of disaggregate you from one another to see where your opinions would situate you in relation to these tendencies. And I remember looking at this quiz some time ago and seeing that, you know, if you fell into the only way that you could fall into the Marxist-Leninist category is if you have a had a very high score for industrialization and an absolutely terrible score for environmentalism. Now, this is a quiz that's tailored for people on the left. Like, everybody that's taking it as a democratic socialist or farther to the left. And yet even this quiz has that presupposition that, you know, Marxism, Leninism, or state socialism,

of course, being a transitionary phase on the way to socialism and communism, is uniquely bad for the environment. there is no regard for the environment. So this kind of creeps in, even in our circles, you know, listeners of this show, this creeps into our circles that state socialism and communism are uniquely bad for the environment. And this book really does a lot to argue against that. Just one other point for me before I turn it back over to the guys, and I know that we're

going to want to get to the interview pretty soon, but one other thing before I turn it back over to the guys for their further thoughts is that when we think, about state socialism, you know, Marxism, Leninism, Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, all of these different communist tendencies. The only examples that are really ever held up in terms of environmentalism are Thomas Sankara and Burkina Faso, his reforestation program among people on the left is fairly well known and is lauded as a, you know, a good environmental step. That is not known in the neoliberal consensus.

that is not known by your average MSNBC viewer. But, you know, within left circles, people know about Thomas Sankra. And Cuba sometimes is held up as an environmental, you know, good, good point or a good example of how a society that's striving for communism can also be not detrimental to the environment. So those are really the only two examples that you ever hear of this of state socialism, not being deleterious. to the environment. But this book goes pretty far away to showing that not only is it not uniquely bad, but it's actually significantly better than capitalist countries, particularly comparable capitalist countries at the same time periods and in the same periods of development, much better for the environment than these capitalist countries. Guys, any quick

thoughts before we head to the interview? I'm just looking forward to it. I think we'll have a lot to say, and Salvatore will have a lot to say. Yeah, I mean, in the book, he, one thing he does do is he separates China into three distinct periods, pre-revolutionary, Maoist revolutionary period in post-78, Deng's reform. And so I would like to also ask him about how the environmental impact and approach changed over those three phases and why he uses three distinct phases. So maybe we'll get a chance to talk about that as well. But yeah, I'm really excited for the interview. Absolutely. Very important part of the book. And listeners, before we even get into the interview, let me recommend that you check out this book because it really is an important intervention

on this front that we said creeps into popular consciousness, whether we want to be thinking about it or not. So without any further ado, let's turn over to our interview now, where we're going to be bringing on Salvatore Engel de Mauro to talk about his book, Socialist States and the Environment Lessons for Eco-Socialist Futures. And we're back on guerrilla history, and we're now being joined by our excellent guest, Salvatore Engel de Mauro, who is a professor at the geography department at SUNY New Pulse, chief editor for the journal, Capitalism, Nature Socialism, co-founder and president of Eco-Socialist Horizons, and the author of the new book, Socialist States, Socialist, and the environment, lessons for eco-socialist futures, and also just a brief mention. I know Salvatore is a long-time listener of the show himself, so worth throwing out there. Hello, Salvatore.

It's a pleasure to finally meet you. Likewise, a great pleasure. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. So I guess I'll start this conversation off with a very, I guess, a general question, but also rather pointed as to the work that we're talking about today, which is how does a soil researcher by trade, get interested in social estates and their effect on the environment

and what prompted you to write this book? Without going or digressing into a big sort of self-biographical sketch, I did my fieldwork as a post-grad in Hungary in the early 90s. And that sort of is how the two aspects got bridged.

There was this long-standing interest. best of line in histories of socialist movements anyway since I was a teen. And but I also had this passion for studying soils that developed in me. And so at some point when I was doing the dissertation work, I began putting the two together by looking at the history of state socialist Hungary and how that affected the way that soils were treated over time and how sort of science developed and what direction it took, several directions that it took over it historically. And that's all how this kind of started, this kind of connection.

And then it spilled over to other environmental aspects as well over time, and particularly my deep dissatisfaction with my experience since the early 90s, especially within the left especially in terms of how socialist states were understood or largely misunderstood and how a lot of the bourgeois ideology was adopted with respect to environmental impacts of social states, which I found appalling and kind of went against the empirical records that I was actually finding in archives in Hungary. That's fascinating. I mean, there's a bunch of things I want to follow up.

up on about that. I mean, it seems that's very interesting to have a scientist go into history in some sense. And I noted in the introduction to the work that you were talking about how scientists feel themselves pushed towards making recommendations on the basis of the crisis that they're observing in their scientific study, but they don't always have the broader social, historical, philosophical, theoretical, theoretical and conceptual understanding of what the alternatives are, what they can really recommend. And so that led me to think a little bit about what you felt could really be understood by studying the history of these socialist states when it comes to their relationship to the environment. So I'm wondering if maybe you can

cover a little bit of a kind of broad synopsis of what you think the core arguments of the book are and what it covers historically. So, yeah, thank you so much for the question. By the way, I also have been to say, I'm also very thankful to you for having this podcast because I understand how much work there is behind it. So sorry for my lapse. And I really do enjoy listening to the shows.

Maybe you should cut this out, you know, when we do the reporting finally. Anyway, with respect to the aims of the book and what historical periods it covers is basically from the early 1900s through as currently as possible I guess in terms of the data 2018 for the most part and the main motivation I alluded to earlier is really to counter this mainstream view that socialism is bad for the environment

That's one aspect, but also within the left, you know, to counter also this construct about socialist states in particular as having been disastrous, which they were not. And in fact, the main findings are that overall, and one can also include the People's Republic of China, the net impact has been positive historically on the environment. And so we get fed this kind of image of Chernobyl as be all and end all of social states. maybe nowadays would be, you know, the thick smog in Beijing or something. And, yeah, that's a way of constructing an image of socialist states that is as distorted as would be, you know, showing India through only, you know, Bhopal, or showing the United States only through the Idaho Falls. Or, for those who were not aware, there was a huge nuclear accident there.

and the site is still, you know, off-limits to most people. Or the experiments done at the expense of thousands of local inhabitants in Washington State on purpose, you know, with nuclear radionuclides, stuff like that. I mean, if one shows images like that and uses as a synector key, you know, as I guess as something that stands for the whole, then we can construct all sorts of nastiness about, anything we like. And so that is, unfortunately, what a lot of the left has engaged in is precisely that kind of reductionistic rhetoric. And so part of the motivation of the book is to, like,

to, it's really for a particular kind of left that is in that mode, in that mindset, to get out of that mindset and to be much more constructive about socialist history than what they have been. And I think a lot, you know, this would not have been possible. I should also contextualize this book in some respects. I feel compelled to do so. Because historically, this would not have been possible until recently, coming from someone in the United States or living in the United States or like Western, you know, world. In the 1990s, I would not have been published if I dared even, you know, question this kind of orthodoxy.

It is thanks to a lot of activists out there who are, you know, socialists in the real sense, who have opened up a lot of doors for the likes of me to do the, to publish this kind of research as well. Yeah, just as another way to continue this sort of introduction to people that probably have not, as of yet, read the book. Can you talk about the states that you specifically focus on in the book or give priority a place to? And I'm also curious as to whether or not in these revolutionary movements there was from their beginning, sort of conscious environmental concerns or if those came after the fact or we're seen as a side issue, et cetera, just like how, you know, how prioritized were these concerns within various revolutionary movements? So I, thanks for the question, Brett. I focus mainly on the USSR,

the People's Republic of China and Cuba. And in almost all of those cases, there were, but especially with the USSR early on, they were revolutionary not just in social aspects, but the environmental aspects, they were just cutting edge, especially in the 20s and 30s. But even later as well, they were still quite infused with, not just environmental sensibility, but also environmentally constructive actions,

in terms of policy and also practices. In China, perhaps not as much as at least, to my knowledge, but because I, you know, my reading knowledge of Chinese is very shoddy at best, I'm the same with Russian, but the level, the caliber of publications on China is such as well that I'm not so sure, you know, how much it would have been on the forefront as it was, for example, in Burkina Faso in 1983, but because that's the other, I mean, I opened the book with that for a reason too, but maybe we can explore that in some other, some other occasion. But with China, I think there was quite a bit of sensibility out there as well in terms

of understanding that you can't destroy your own environment. But at the same time, we're in such a situation that they, despite the best efforts, they had to choose, are we going to feed people or are we going to have, you know, some sort of nasty environmental impact? And they opt to obviously for feeding people and, you know, having more health. So, but there were, there were, there there were, even if more muted than the USSR, there were also environmental sensibilities from the get-go, you know, since 49. In Cuba, kind of a similar issue, but I think also it's a timing, because with the SSR in 1917, civil war, you know, all through, you know, 70 years, and then China comes in a bit later, and then Cuba still later, you have different kinds of

context, and so the level of sensibility, too, with the environment, is also, you know, so different. But in Cuba, it wasn't exactly there either, but there was already from the beginning a sense that we got to win ourselves out of this sugar cane plantation, you know, economy. And that was already going towards, you know, trying to not just diversify economically, but to have an environmental quality that would be fit, you know, that would be fit the majority of the population. So they did already start setting aside and expanding upon, you know, parks, coral reefs protection and all sorts of stuff. That was actually present already by the 1960s in spite of being constantly attacked.

So from the beginning, you see this kind of level of sensibility. It might be more muted or more open depending on the period, but it was there from the beginning. So this kind of idea that socialism came late to the environment, I think also needs to be highly problematized. I don't think it really bears out historically. And especially those who propound the view, and I can understand also historically why, where it comes from, but I still think that it's incorrect, who propound the view that, you know, maybe you have in the 1920s, you know, the USSR, you have a, you know, a great amount of effervescence in terms of ecology, and then it peaches out because of the authoritarianism and stuff like that. I think that story needs to go. It didn't pan out that way. and in fact either it continued maybe in a more muted form

and then later spilled out but much more expressly than before but it was always there and there was always this kind of sensibility within at least some quarters of communist movements that did manage to take the reins of the state if you will they always had this kind of at least one fraction of environmental sensibilities So in any case, sorry, that's kind of one of the messages that I hope people will get out of the book, too, is that it is just empirically not founded on the evidence, you know, what this understanding that socialism came late to the environment. Brief follow-up, Salvatore. So I'm going to sit back then and let the guys keep following this route of thought in just a second until I have a methodological question in a little bit. But before we get. deeper into the the crux of the argument of the book, as we were just starting to do.

You mentioned Burkina Faso, and I would be remiss to not have a brief follow-up, at least on that right now, given that yesterday was Thomas Sankara's birthday, at least on the time of recording. So yesterday was December 21st. He was born December 21st, 1949. The three of us are all huge Thomas Ankara fans, accolades. So I would be remiss. to not bring up the reforestation efforts and the broader environmental policies of Burkina Faso.

As you mentioned, you opened the book with them. Can you just talk briefly about why you decided that that was the example that you would open the book with? And perhaps if there's any broader story that we can draw from that experience in Burkina Faso, which is a very small country and was exceedingly poor at the time. That's a fantastic question. and I'm so happy to know that you're keen on the Burkina Bay Revolutionaries and Sankara as I am. He is just an incredible example to us all, like Amilkaral and so many others. I open with the Burkina Bay Revolutionaries because, again, it's a way of not so sadly saying to most, I guess, leftist,

in Western countries, if you want to call them that, that they really do miss out by having just, you know, by just looking at their navel in terms of their, you know, what part of the world they look at in terms of history. And they miss out so much that, you know, that it really hampers the development of, I guess, what I would call an eco-socialist kind of, you know, development in countries like the US.

So that's one reason, you know, it's just to remind folks, look, we've, you know, these, these instances of revolutionary activity, not only matter just because historically they happen, but they matter because if you want to have a socialism worth its name, we have to pay attention to these, what can we learn from them as well? and also see that these movements, these revolutionary movements have a lot to teach us still. And with the Burkina Beir revolution, in particular, even though it was short-lived, only four years before Sankara was assassinated

alongside with, what, 12 other comrades, and may compare be given the justice he deserves. But, you know, in just four years, the level of accomplishment was just incredible. And it also shows, that's also another reason to open up with that, how socialism and environmentalism are two sides of the same coin in some respects. In fact, there is no environmentalism without socialism. I think that was Sankara's one of Sankara's main messages and one that needs to be heated

by any self-respecting environmentalist. So it tries to draw also other kind of maybe left-leaning environmentalists who are still having, you know, as a part of their mindset, this kind of understanding that socialism is bad for the environment. Hopefully that will succeed, but I don't know. But also just this whiteness problem that we've got on the left, I have to say, it's still there. And that's part of the reason.

So there are like at least three reasons, you know, why I opened it. There were a whole bunch of things swirling in my head as I was thinking about, how do I, you know, write this up? 23% of the forests have been lost since Sankara was assassinated. I mean, that's basically what that accomplished. That French neocolonial, the reinstatement of French neocolonialism, that's what that accomplished, among other things, among others, of course, the assassination of many other socialists.

Anyways. That's wonderful. I also would love to pursue a little bit more about the whiteness, not only of the left, But specifically, really, the environmental movement, I mean, this is a real problem, or at least the way it's being led and characterized publicly. But before, you know, we might stray into that, this discussion also reminded me that when you talk about the relationship between socialism and environmentalism as being, you know, absolutely foundational and co-constitutional and inseparable,

this does remind me of these kinds of arguments that are made that might be relevant to thinking about how you position and situate these socialist states in the history of human society's relation to the environment more broadly because a lot of people would suggest that maybe they might accept comparatively speaking that some of these social estates were better than, the most rapacious examples that we have of these liberal, democratic, capitalist states like the United States or, you know, any number of European states, Western European states. But they might sort of suggest or argue that something happened that's more fundamental with industrial societies, development, and we get these arguments that have become very important, I think, in the environmental movement in the last generation or so about. the Anthropocene and dating when this decisive change happened in human relationship to the environment. And that tends to take it out of a discussion at all of, you know, the varieties or possibilities of human social, you know, industrial relations.

And, you know, the possibilities versus capitalism versus socialism, they say, well, it's all industrial society. We need to cut consumption. We need to just roll back technology is no, you know, you. real benefit or help. So I'm wondering how you parse that kind of side of the question or the argument in focusing here on the socialist states in their relationship. What do you say to those who would say, well, there might have been some comparative advantage compared to terrible capitalist societies in their most modern form, but there's a deeper

problem here in the relationship to the environment. Yeah, what a very nice way to articulate this recurring way in which politics are taken completely away from the picture. Because, well, yeah, what does one say to people who do not want to look into the political decision-making processes that are behind the car? that are behind an entire infrastructure that is anti-pedestrian. Unfortunately, that kind of environmentalism, as you rightfully kind of allude to, is very problematic because of that. And it is also, for me, one of the reasons why I often see green parties aligning themselves with whatever political persuasion will fit the bill of

reducing emissions or whatever, or at least they think so. But it's exactly because they're not willing to take into consideration of relations of power historically or at any period or issues of social equality or social justice that they become basically the next in line to fall for, you know, the CDU or whatever in Germany or, you know, SPD with neoliberal policies, which, is happening now, and of course, happened in Austria before, it's happened in Ireland. And all these things become possible and acceptable, including bombing Yugoslavia, if your aim, you know, this is back in the 1990s that for me hits home because I was actually in the countryside

in Hungary looking at the bloody jets going overhead while I was doing my soul's work. And I was really cursing those greens very, very loudly in the field, like in those days. But that's what happens, you know, if you completely evacuate. the environmental issues of politics and of social questions as they were brought up in the 19th century. It's also another... So social states,

even though they might have had some problems and some of them severe ones, at some points, they were highly localized and they were not prolonged in the way that capitalist systems you have, in terms of constant rising of more and more frequent and higher magnitude problems

instead of a reduction of them as a lot of socialist states were able to do to accomplish. So, you know, those who are actually seriously concerned about the industrialization problem as like the deeper problem should look closely at the data

and see, well, okay, with social estates, you see that with industrial level production, you can achieve better and better outcomes. And so that's another thing that, you know, one could say to those who subscribe to the view that at bottom, it's industrialization. It's an industrial way of life. Rather than it's an imperial mode of living, for example, as some have said, you know, very nicely worded, that is behind really the problem. I would like to add as well that there are also the populationists out there in the environmentalist circles that are maybe even worse.

because basically they subscribe to a very racist view in which if you have larger families, you know, so like, then that's the problem. And they should just reduce the population size. So it's like telling us are telling people who are like in reservations. Like they've been decimated over the years. There's been genocide against them. So you have to have fewer children. Thank you very much.

Well, what kind of reasoning is that, that especially with people who have had historically some of the most advanced ways of relating to. ecological relations compared to most societies in the world. So those are aspects that unfortunately still prevail in a lot of mainstream

environmentalism and need to be fought against. And this is what socialist states can show is that yes, you can improve people's lives while also over time improving the ways in which we relate to the environment in terms of lessening the impact over time. And of course

people who are, again, looking at the people's Republic of China will probably not agree with this statement. I mean, from whatever, you know, perspective, you know, including environmentalists, depending on whether one's, you know, depending how one looks at China. Anyway. Yeah, absolutely. And I have a question about China. So we're going to do a deep dive on that in a second here.

But I just wanted to lay a few more things on the ground. And I think a great way to move the conversation forward is if you could like provide some concrete examples of specific policies in the USSR, China or Cuba that were positive beneficial for the environment. I'll mention just a couple, you know, just for the sake of time and people can always explore the more the gory details, I guess, in the book, but, you know, in the USSR, in the midst of, you know, civil war, in the midst of being attacked by, what, 12, you know, countries, You know, just to try to prop up, you know, one most brutal regimes, you know, the Zaris regimes, you know, the white armies and all.

You know, in the midst of all that, they put land aside as up of ethnically, you know, there were protected ecosystems. That was incredible right there. Also, at the same time, trying to get sanitation works going where, for the most part, people were not even anywhere near any. levels of sanitation that we now enjoy. But also there were reforestation efforts under Stalin that were very successful and were very important for the long haul. So that's the USSR. I mean, that's just two examples. In terms of China, one of the first things that was done in the 1950s was a huge reforestation afforestation campaign. The land covering China had been reduced to, you know, within 200 years, to 5% being forested from, was it, like, 20 or more

percent, I can't remember now. And by the time that the reforestation and afforestation program had run most of its course, it was back to 12% of land cover. That's a huge achievement. Aside from, for the first time in the history of China, not having any more famines, you know, how do you achieve that is incredible. and also expanding, of course, cropland meant in reducing grassland areas, but a lot of these intensive croplands as well, we're not,

and I don't mention this book, I'm just learning it these days, it's like we're not necessarily the agricchemically intensive variety that we might suspect they were. So there were also efforts to have, they weren't necessarily called ecologically sustainable agriculture, But they certainly were drawing from a lot of traditions in which you can produce a lot on smaller passes of land. And that was a major achievement as well. Now, with Cuba, I mentioned already, I think, one of the first thing that was done in the 60s was protection of coral reefs,

expansion of national parks, areas in the middle of basically being assaulted by the U.S. right away. they're pigging just the tip of the iceberg, really, but the embargo and all sorts of attacks and terrorist attacks continuously for the decades afterwards. And despite of that, developing by the 1980s, what has now become the world center, in my view, in terms of research and practice,

everyday practice of agroecology, that's a major achievement as well, alongside, you know, sort of being able to feed people, you know, despite the embargo, you know, all of these things, incredible achievements socially, but also accompanied by incredible achievements environmentally. Now, agriculture being one of them in terms of laying the basis for, for those who are not familiar with this, you know, of doing agriculture with much less fossil fuel-based products, virtually no

pesticides, things like that. It takes a while. They're still working at it, but their level of development is just, I think, unsurpassed the world over. And also, like, in terms of producing at least enough vegetables

and small lifestyle production in urban areas, that's a huge feat that in Cuba are sort of breaking, I guess, exhibiting a lot of breakthroughs in terms of being able to feed people in the varios, in the neighborhoods, at such a level that has not been achieved in other cities in other parts of the world. And that means, you know, using urban land in a most ecologically friendly way, whatever, you know, that could be understood as, but still compared to

almost any other, all the other cities elsewhere, that's a much more ecologically sustainable way of living that is certainly a path forward. Sorry, those are some of the salient examples. I'm not sure. The other ones would be, maybe I should add this as well, that over time in all the social estate countries, perhaps the level of particular matter emissions rose over time and then they ebbed

and then they rose again. There were a lot of difficulties in keeping particular emissions down because of being undermined, you know, in terms of embargoes, in terms of being basically under siege. But nevertheless, the amount of CO2 emissions overall declined, the amount of methane emissions declined, all sorts of other air pollutants levels declined over time, with exceptions. And those are major achievements in countries that were, again, one should never forget that were under siege, continue to be under siege by the liberal democracies.

Yeah, so I'm going to, before I get into my question, I just want to mention it. It's kind of ironic that you've mentioned, the social Democrats and the Greens and countries like Germany, because we just recorded with Manny Ness two days ago, and I know you haven't heard it yet because it hasn't come out yet. But listeners who are hearing this episode, go back one or two episodes, and you'll find that it'll have come out a couple weeks before this episode has. And at one point I get into quite a rant about the social Democrats and the Greens in Germany. Because I lived there for about three years and we have some prominent people on the left saying there's this left insurgency in Germany.

Yes, very prominent people saying this. And well, anyway, listeners go back to the episode that we did with Manny Ness recently and you can listen to that rant because it's something that upsets me greatly. But let me get to the question at hand, which is, well, kind of two method. logical questions. Now, I know questions about methodology are not the sexiest thing in the world, and the listeners are probably, ah, methodology. But I think that this is important for us to continue the conversation in a way that is going to make sense to the listener. So I'm going to throw these two questions out and take them however you want. So the first question is related to your modes of analysis. So in the book, of course, we're looking at the impact of social

estates on the environment. And when we're looking at that, really it's, you can't look at anything in a bubble. And, you know, the book discusses that in several ways. You can't look at how these socialist states, like, came out of thin air. You have to look at how these states were previously. And you have to look at the conditions that the state was facing, whether it's an embargo in the case of Cuba, or whether it's an invasion at the founding of the state followed by a cold war in the case of the Soviet Union or whether it's the case of several hundred years of basically colonialism and imperialism in the case of China. Like these things did not come out of thin air.

But in addition to that, it's still useful to look at these states compared to capitalist states because when we're saying what is the impact of a socialist state on the environment, well, compared to what? Right. You know, you have to compare it to something in order to have a good idea of what is possible. And you put three modes of analysis out there in the book, one of which you are pretty vehemently opposed to, one which you seem to be quite ambivalent towards and one which you kind of are advocating for the adoption of in terms of getting a better view of the impact of these states. And that would be the absolutist mode of analysis, the synchronous mode of analysis and the diacronic mode of analysis. So first question, can you talk about these three modes of analysis, kind of explain how

they work and why you're advocating for the one that you're advocating for? So that's question one. And the other methodological question is not such a hard methodology question. It's more of a categorization question. And this will be one of the more contentious points, I think, of the book for listeners who, listeners, you should pick up the book. There's a lot of very important things in here. But I think that this will be one of the more contentious.

things nonetheless, which is that between 1949 and 1978, you categorize China as socialist. And post-1978, you categorize China as being a one-party socialist government governing over a capitalist economy. And it's very important in your analysis, which is why I say it's a methodological point, even though it's more categorization. It's very important in your analysis of the effect of socialism on the environment that you do have China categorized in this way. So second question, why do you have China categorized in this way? I think it may be obvious to many, but why do you have it categorized in that way? And how does that factor into your analysis? Cool. Blimey. Yeah. Fantastic questions. And for those of, for those who are not able

to afford the book, just maybe if my email can be included with the notes, just email me and I'll provide you with something, like a PDF or something, at the very least. And in any case, so the, yeah, like you were saying, Henry, there are these absolutist comparisons. And this is something that I've found. I mean, since the 90s have really made my blood curdle because, I mean, I lived in, I mean, I'm from a place on earth called the Po Valley, and in fact, the northern reaches of it in the northwest. It's one of the most polluted areas in the world. One can't tell me that liberal democracy is better than the USSR. I mean, that's just sheer nonsense. I just lived in an area where people are dying left and right of like preventable diseases

due to environmental pollution problems. And they still are. That's why COVID in the Poe Valley as such a devastating consequences a lot of people have chronic long conditions as a result of particular matter being emitted incessantly in the Pope Valley. In any case, so these absolutist comparisons,

I just wanted to make sure that people don't fall for them anymore once they read what this really means politically as well as, you know, environmentally. You cannot judge entire systems by just the worst aspects of them. You have to, of course, then put them in context, which is the next step. But if we were to do so, as I mentioned earlier, then, you know, you would reduce, you know,

and the state of India and the history of India and to Bhopal. And you would reduce all the environmental movements in the U.S. to three-mile island. You know, oh, great. So who the hell cares about? The environmental movement in the United States, look what they achieved, you know. So that's the kind of stuff that comes out oftentimes, these absolutist comparisons. what's worst. And I've seen that on the left as well. It's like, oh, and, you know, capitalism is really terrible, but, you know, but the

USSR may be even worse. No, actually, no, the USR was better. Thank you very much. And so that's the comparisons. The next comparisons will be between socialist states and, I guess, socialist governed countries and capitalist countries of different sorts, and comparing them synchronously, meaning at the same time period. You know, like how, what kind of environmental impacts they have, you know, relatively the same time period. So doing that then showed me that, well, actually, over time, that's what I said before, the air emissions were much better,

maybe not in all air quality indicators, but overall better than in countless countries. And then, you know, more or less. but then at the same time I think in that part of the chapter also suggests or maybe we should put them in some sort of context when we do these comparisons

and so I look at the world systems way if people are not familiar with world systems theory basically it's understanding that all these countries that we talk about are part of the same world capitalist world economy that prevails and so they have different levels of of, I don't know, whoever one must say,

phrase it, maybe development as a result of the fact that they have dependent economies on the core countries which are capitalists. And so there's kind of a pyramidal scheme of sorts. So one could contextualize it that way, and then you can see a little bit more just how awful the core capitalist countries, that is to say, mostly the liberal democracies are environmentally, compared to the rest.

And then you can see how in the semi-perifery, basically the middle-income countries, if you like, you have a much better effect of socialist states, maybe not at the beginning because they have to industrialize rapidly so that people can just survive after wars and whatever else, you know, hundreds of years of colonialism and stuff like that. And then it gets better. And then in the periphery, however, you don't have necessarily a better effect of socialist states in some indices of the environment, and in some you do. And one of the reasons is that becomes, I guess, hopefully clear with that kind of more contextualized comparison is that the countries in the periphery, which is majority of peoples, are really suffering horribly because they are completely underserviced with the basics just for survival. And so if having a better environment means basically having people's life, you know, shortened by decades or being dead prematurely, I'm not sure that's the way that even the, well, I'm not so sure I would say self-described environmentalists. Some of them self-described environmentalists are rather, so we say racist in that way. But some of them I think would be more sensible and say, no, we've got to have at least a minimum, you know, in which people can, can live well, that minimum was achieved in, you know, through socialism, not through capitalism,

thank you very much. So, so they're moving from there then, but I still think, you know, that we have to, at some point, you have to recognize the historical context, the conjunction, without which you can't really explain what's going on, you know, to these synchronous comparisons, these comparisons of the same period environmental impacts. And so I move on to what I think is better to do, is to say, well, what was before and what was after, these different kinds of social systems. And so that actually turns out to be, to make evident many other things that otherwise would be hidden

by looking at comparisons at the same time, you know, historically. And so, such as what you've already mentioned, you know, like a couple of hundred years of colonialism in China. You can't just, you know, forget that. And all the deforestation that happened as a consequence of that as well. You know, that is the starting point after 1949. You know, you can't really just erase that as part of the context. You can't erase, you know, I think it was like a third of mangrove forest being destroyed

from napal by U.S. imperial warfare on Vietnam. And then, you know, just pretend that Vietnam sort of, poof, you know, it's now a problem because they have a forest problem, which of course was not in their own of their making. So these are basic things that I think would make the analysis much more serious and it would show also what paths forward there could be. If, for example, there were, I doubt it's going to be the next day from today, revolution in the United States, socially spun, right?

what would we say like oh the u.s you know fails the socialists that the u.s fails environmentally because well i don't know we have hundreds of years of deforestation you know of of industrial pollution you know of three more than three thousand superfund sites and that would be blamed on socialism so that would be insane the other thing as well is like what happened after the USSR is often not talked about that's also why i want to take this diacronic or perspective, this across time, you know, before and after. Because a lot of people don't seem to realize that the RLC, actually, for the most part, it's kind of convenient not to want to realize that, the RLC, which is one of those

kind of pictures we get about the USSR, about how awful it was. Well, most of the RLC reduction happens after the 90s. Amazing. And then the other thing is that after the USSR's demise, a lot of these Zapovedniki, which were taken care of through the USSR, suddenly get chopped up in terms of the authorities supposedly taken care of these preserved, ecological preserves, and it starts to fall apart. The money isn't there. There are boundary disputes. So a lot of the things that were constructed and constructed very well through the USSR have also been made to fall apart environmentally. Of course, socially as well, because, I mean, unless people, I'm sure

listeners know about this, but, you know, after the fall of the USSR, living standards plummeted and life chances also got reduced by, what, a decade or something. It's just incredible. So it was awful, both socially and environmentally. So the achievements of the USSR can also come to light by looking at what happened after the USSR's demise. just briefly. Yeah, yeah, briefly, I'm just going to jump in. So quickly can we address the China point in terms of 78, pre-78 versus post-78, because that's going to set us up for Brett's next question. Yeah, and I'm sorry, I kind of lost track of. Yeah, it's okay. You know, you listen to the show. We like these very long, in-depth answers on the show, so don't apologize. He'd be very kind. Anyway, see, you should just stop if I'm just going too long and not answer.

I'm not trying to avoid the methodological issue, the other one, which is just as important. It's just as you say, it's fundamental to the book in some respects. Let me preface it with this, though. I had to find a way of making sense of the data. So far, in none of the works that I've read, is there a systematized way of dividing these different kinds of social systems? They're kind of haphazard. Usually the USSR is just like taken as the whole of state socialism, you know,

throughout time, which is nonsense, or countries are picked up seemingly at random, you know, whatever is convenient for the analysis. And I just couldn't, I mean, do scientific work with soils. I just, when I see that, it's kind of, oh, this is going to make my mind explode. So I needed to make sense of these data, and I decided in the end, okay, I'll think about it this way. You have socialist states like the USSR in which you've got an economy that is basically run through socialist principles, which,

whatever socialism one thinks about. I mean, within the range of socialist principles or socialist currents, whether we like them or not. And then you have economies exactly like, you know, People's Republic of China, where you start out with a socialist economy, random principles that are not too different from the USSR, especially post-1929. And then there's a switch. to have to consider that switch because it's major with the Deng reforms because you do have privatization of some sectors, but you still have the Communist Party of China in control. Whether the Communist Party of China is infused with new liberal stuff, yes, it's true. But one can't,

you know, this is not just about the people's not just about Republic of China, but it's also about Laos and about Vietnam. They go through similar issues. you still have a struggle within a party. And then, you know, what happens out of that struggle is going to be important in terms of what kind of environmental policies you get, not just, of course, social policies and that are also of world consequence, in the case of people's world of China, especially. So I thought, well, okay, people's Republic of China.

How do I, well, if I have Marxist-Leninist principles being touted, You still have schools of Marxism. They're just, they're not just going through the motions there. They actually do have Marxists there, and they are in power. They might be struggling against capitalist rotors, but that happened also under the marrow period. So what does one do with that? So I thought, okay, I'm going to put 978 as a cutoff.

And I did the same with North Korea, you know, I think it was 1974 with this kind of a major shift. And as far as I'm concerned, you know, North Korea becomes kind of like, a dynasty rather than a socialist-run kind of government or administration. But that, you know, all of these things are just to kind of provide clarity, systematize clarity. And then there's the rest, of course, there are liberal democracies, petro monarchies, whatever you want to call them, but they're all capitalist. And so I put them as capitalist states.

Now, I would love to see an alternative methodology being put in place, who've developed that contradicts mine. It would be great because the problem right now is still that we don't have a methodology where all these different political entities are sort of clarified in terms of what they are. Because if there's no clarification as to what they are, then we have no means of comparison either. So then we can just say, well, Saudi Arabia is a democracy, you know, whatever. We just invent anything, you know, according to whatever is more convenient politically at the moment. And that's exactly how things have been going.

And this is exactly what I wanted to avoid and to show that you can avoid. Again, we can and we should have debates about whether what I've done makes any sense at all. And depending on how things are re-systematized, you will have different kinds of. of, of course, not so much maybe, I guess one would have to see, but you could have different results. And that's fine. And that's be something that I hope that people will take up as an important issue, methodology. Because you see, dialectical materialism is also a method. And what dialectical materialism is, just like systematization, you know, in general, is something that is up for discussion and should be up for discussion as well. I say my

dialectical materialism, because a lot of what I'm also. trying to accomplish that book is to try to see how a dialectical materialist approach and a historical materialist approach can be useful in analyzing these different realities, you know, these different kinds of socialist policies, if you like, and to make sense. So Venezuela, for example, is also kind of a socialist government presiding over 80% private sector economy. And this is important in my view because then it suggests that you cannot take for granted this kind of division,

need division between politics and economy that runs amok in bourgeois ideology. You have to consider them together. Whether one considers people's republic of China are capitalists now or not is a huge political consequence, but also of huge environmental consequence, too, in terms of what kind of environmental policies

would exist under like a socialist socialist society, if you like. Because if one says, well, people's work with China is socialist, then all the stuff that, obviously, all the harms that have been done in the past couple of decades, especially in China, well, that's the consequence of putting socialism in a practice, you see. But if we say that China is capitalist, then we just get into the, what I say in my book is kind of a,

not me just who says this as I'm borrowing from others, you know, this kind of problem with purism in which, you know, socialism has never existed, so it's completely, you know, devoid of any problems environmentally, historically, and that's great. So it's always something that is yet to come and will never come probably because, you know, we cannot define socialism that way. It has to be, you know, classless society right away. So, yeah, well, then I guess, you know, China is not socialist, and that's fantastic. But that doesn't get us very far because we still have to deal with the, well, what are we going to do about environmental problems?

And are we just going to just say, well, just say, oh, yeah, there would be never any socialist regime. So why should we, should anyone think that a socialist anything would be useful for the environment? Because we can't draw from any historical experiences. And in fact, in the People's Republic of China, they are at the forefront of renewable energy, for example. they have more or less decided clean up the rack in terms of industrial emissions they're doing some some positive things but again one has to look historically of these things you know having a historical materialist perspective to this as well it's like when did

when did china industrialize what was happening in that conjuncture this is like early 2000s the USSR is gone okay so what we allow capitalists to completely take over Well, that's what some people would be saying. Oh, yeah, capitalists have completely taken over. And then you go to China like I had and then find out, that's not really true. I'm afraid that, I mean, if you find, you know, people who are like, who are still holding schools of Marxism and holding international Marxist conferences,

I'm afraid, you know, that's not the same as the US, is it? And if you find that, you know, someone like Jack Ma is not allowed to just carry on with whatever you want, because the state says no, that doesn't seem to me like the US. And so we have to make some distinctions. Maybe one doesn't want to call it socialist or socialist government. That's fine with me. But I think it's really important to specify, you know, what kind of political arrangements are related to what kind of environmental outcomes.

And that's the basis of systematization that I'm trying to do. Yeah, I think that's that's really interesting and helpful. And, you know, as you're talking, I was just thinking, regardless of what your position is on modern China, that reform period in 78 did shift things dramatically. And so to draw a line there in the sand and say there was something before and something different after makes sense regardless of where you come down on that question, as well as what you're saying to specify what actual political and economic system is in play so we can study it more rigorously. But I'm wondering as, uh, Just sort of the last thing about China before we move on, there's this obviously, you know, in your scheme, and I think in general, there's this obviously pre-revolutionary China, you know, century of humiliation, victim of colonialism and imperialism. You have revolutionary China, the Mao era, and then you have Deng Xiaoping's reforms 78 and onward until today, so these three basic periods. How has, and in your study, China's relationship with the environment shifted over those three periods? Well, a fantastic question. And I need to do more research on China myself, I must admit. But from what I've studied so far, especially for environmental historians, yeah, the hundred years of humiliation where humiliation are not just socially, but also in terms of relationship with ecosystems.

There were huge problems. Some environmental historians reckon that even before the 1600s or the, the 1800s, you had a commercially oriented economy for the most part, which, yeah, I suppose so. It wasn't just a subsistence-based economy, that's for sure. Whether it was a tributary state or a commercial kind of economy, I guess maybe that's still up for interpretation. But still, those hundreds of years did create the conditions by 1949, which were of, well, especially combined with, what, two, three decades of warfare, the Japanese in invasion and not just the opium wars and what came after that and all the resource extraction

for the benefits of imperial powers that call themselves liberal democracies, you know, they don't call themselves liberal democracy, it's just democracies, right? Okay, never mind. So, yeah, democracies, right? Pillaging the rest of the planet, including China. So, yeah, all of that really made for very difficult situation by, you know, 1949 when the revolution finally was achieved. Between then and in 1978, you have the need to, as I mentioned before, just feed people. You know, you have all these folks who've displaced, you know, hundreds of millions

displaced, you know, from warfare and whatnot. So they need to kind of lay the groundwork for an infrastructure that actually benefits, as many people as possible is paramount. The environmental aspects, again, as I mentioned before, is kind of muted, but it's still there, so the reforestation programs actually create huge achievements in terms of also reducing solar erosion and things like that, markedly, not in the lowest plateau, but that's another story. Some offorestation efforts have mixed results, but overall, there's some huge achievements.

And in 1978, you have this huge shift. That's when you start seeing kind of a lot more of the use of the infrastructure built or the capital accumulated through a especially peasant labor in rural communes, being, I guess, appropriated and redirected towards expanding industrialization. I say expanding because there's kind of this false notion that before 78 there wasn't any industrial base. There was, and it was thanks to a lot of communal efforts in the countryside that the groundwork was built. And Junsu particularly, I would like to recommend reading his work on this.

In any case, it wasn't immediate, you know, in 1978, because you have pockets, you know, the special economic zones and stuff like that, that get devastated. more. And then it expands. And by the 2000s, that's really when there's a much more rapid industrialization through China. And that's when you start seeing a lot more of the problems becoming very acute. And it's kind of a couple of decades of a lot of disasters in a lot of areas and quite a lot of environmental struggles that often times you don't hear about that also make their way into the party as well. I think especially in the Hu Jintao and Panyue and, you know, there are all these movements that are trying to take the party in a different direction.

And they do to some extent because we do see the consequences already of having some tangible results of producing soil pollution, water pollution. But, you know, once you have these phenomena, they're not going to dissipate over, you know, a decade. It's going to take decades of reducing the impact and cleaning up. And some of the stuff is going to be for hundreds of years, like here in the U.S. led, for example. So these will have long-term impacts. And I get the feeling that there's a lot of recognition of that within the past.

Even the people who are just, you know, GDP and nothing else will have to have recognized. This is a problem. And so the current administration, the Shi administration, are trying to make amends and change direction. But as I mentioned to some of my Marxist friends in China, it's like, well, I hope this is not the expense of the rest of the world, you know, because otherwise that's not much socialism. So that's something maybe to look out for. It's like, what is the relationship between? the level of development that is building up in the People's World of China and the resources being taken in other parts of the world. And that's something that I think is going to be crucial.

And if the road taken is going to be to reduce environmental harms within the People's World of China by increasing it elsewhere, that's going to be, I guess, that's why for me it's the Falcrum. you know, of, I guess, the environmental struggle worldwide is what's going on in China right now because of the potentially huge consequences that whatever happens within the Communist Party of China has for the rest of us. And kind of the aim of that, by the way, maybe as an aside, if I may,

is that not only should we be paying close attention to what happens within the Communist Party of China in terms of understanding the different fractions of the party and how they are, you know, sort of, um, arguing it out. They're not debating openly, of course. This is stuff that's very subtle for people like me. It's like who are used to like having family feuds and fights. But, you know, but it's just that the, um, I think there needs to be support

um, from outside as well of the, the parts of the, um, Communist Party of China that are trying to go in a kind of a, I guess it's called a green or red-green direction. Unfortunately, we have on the left this kind of tendency for like either black or white oftentimes about China, and it's really unhelpful. I find it very unhelpful because then it's like, well, you either dismiss the entire, you know, communist party of China as a project or you embrace it. And I think both are highly problematic. And instead, you know, of treating the CPC, the Communist Party of China as a homogeneous entity, it's really important to recognize, okay, to start thinking about, okay, how can we support that part of the party that is

going in a direction that is more constructive for the rest of the world? So I'll end with that in terms of that question. Yeah, very interesting, useful. This has been such a useful conversation for not only reorienting the narrative about environmental issues under socialist states, which, you know, I think there has been a move to reassess and re-evaluate that period of history and recover some of the positive contributions,

comparative, you know, the human social advantages and development, you know, of those societies. I'm thinking here of a book, you know, why women have better sex under socialism, right? And other economic arguments by Christian Godsey that, you know, said, hey, let's look at this history, put aside some of these narratives of how dour, grim, you know, totalitarian and oppressive and repressive, you know, in the image and narrative of bourgeois historians and bourgeois Western culture. And so I think this really contributes also in a very key component, not just about human society, but about the involvement. But I'm wondering, you know, since we take a kind of dialectical materialist approach fundamentally, you know, the whole point about the dialectic is that, you know, history is always changing and whatever we have inherited, we can't actually go backwards. So while we're recovering in the sense of finding some positive benefits, reevaluating our historical analysis,

We can't exactly go back to that better period. And I'm not, you know, presuming that you're advocating or suggesting that we just try to. But I think the point of this historical analysis is to really see, well, what can we take a positive benefit for our future, our contemporary and future struggles from this history? So I'd like to, you know, kind of just ask you, perhaps you can elaborate in, you know, kind of clear ways, what you think this history, you know, allows us now, you know, to envision. What are the, you know, kind of key conclusions if we're looking towards a better relationship to environment, human egalitarianism, and, you know, environmental sustainability that the socialist states and studying them and understanding what happened would allow us to,

to envision and to recommend. What do you see is this positive contribution to our future struggle? What a fantastic question as well. All of you have really hit some of the most important aspects in general, just beyond the book. You know, one of the things that the one can still take from social estate's existing ones, if I may include Gula as one of them. Is this perseverance, irrespective of which administration is perseverance in bettering the lives of most people in those countries?

Whether one wants to think about them as worker states or not, I don't think it's really so important. But just the way that they, the investments were guided, maybe it's not so evident sometimes to a lot of people, but they were guided in some respect with bettering the lives of folks in general, of the working classes. So that's one thing that I take out of that, and I think it's really important. The other thing is that taking over a state doesn't mean necessarily becoming a statist.

And I think that's one of the things that I've learned by looking at these socially state histories. I think that's one of the things that is kind of a, that hones some of the left. It's like this kind of fear that, oh, if you centralize stuff, it's bad. Look, what happened in the USSR. Yeah, well, let's see what happened on the USSR. And in fact, it was better in the USSR. There wasn't for most communities. You know, like this appreciation for national identities that you just don't have in North America.

as being one example, but also this appreciation for the environment that you still don't have in North America for another example. That was cultivated through socialist states. Now, some people might not like that who are on the left. I understand that.

And I have to admit, and you'll see this in the preface and the acknowledgement, is that I had a problem that I had to overcome myself because of all this baggage that I was brought up with about socialist states

and what can be learned from it. In fact, it was always like you can't learn anything from them. They were just bad. It was just deviations. And then the other thing is, what does one do, you know, if one is actually going to be succeeding in a socialist revolution anywhere, what does one do in terms of paring constant attacks from within and from without? How far is one to go in terms of repressing within

sometimes the impulses to go a little too far ahead, which can actually unravel the entire project. How far is one willing to go in terms of preventing the possibility of being invaded and destroyed by, for example, not developing nuclear weapons? When you are surrounded by nuclear weapons, pointed accurate. So all of these things we can learn from socialist states. How do they manage these things? Well, of course, there are going to be errors made. It could be really huge

errors made as well, ones that we're still reeling from now. But instead of like dismissing all of this, all these manifold experiences, I think can allow us to understand what is forthcoming in case we do have another social revolution that is successful. And then we'll need to, instead of going quickly back to like, oh, well, what do they do? Maybe if we already know what they did, we can avoid some of the errors. Like, for example, it might be not so important to have, you know, coerced labor early on. If one builds up in such a way as to avoid that, we might not necessarily think that we're going to be supported by working classes in other parts of the world, you know, doing a revolution. So how are we going to be then prepared for that, not just in terms of social terms,

but in terms also of safeguarding the environments where we live, you know, what kind of policies can be workable. And what are the limits of what can be done? Because, for example, in Cuba, you couldn't transform, like in Venezuela. You couldn't transform a petrol economy into, like, a diversified economy, like within a decade, as some leftist thought could be done, which is just, you know, I'm sorry, I think that's insane to think that way. And so then one can think, okay, what did the Venezuela achieve so far? And they have achieved a lot.

The communas, you know, as much as they are kind of like having a difficult time with the Maduro government. They're still there. They're still like spearheading a lot of great efforts. What do Cuba achieve? Wow, their own vaccines. Amazing. You know, all of this stuff can be achieved within a socialist state. If we just...

just throw all that away, all those experiences away. We're basically throwing away the means through which we could envision, and not just envision, but put into practice an ecologically sustainable revolution. That's, I think, is what has a stake in the end. And just like you were saying, you know, Adnan, it's not about, you can't be about going back. We can't go back to rebuilding the USSR. But in Russia, maybe what can be built back is what was done in the SSR that is of lasting consequences, of a positive consequence, the Zappovedniki, you know, the reduction in some of the CO2 emissions that was achieved, the redirection of funds towards bettering the lives of people and also of other organisms.

You know, all of that can be done. You have the basis for it in Russia still, despite Putin, despite the oligarchs. and that is not gone away and it's thanks to the millions of people who worked towards this end so all of all of that can be built as well from that base that still exists

that's another thing that I guess one could say about like learning about socialist states is how do the Vietnamese cope with be massively bombed, the locians be massively bombed and then reconstruct and still and still regardless of that

try their best to reforest. They're devastated forest. You know, try their best to improve biodiversity, you know, in spite of all these, this culling of all these organisms for the world market, that it's huge pressures on a lot of people. How do they manage? Were they managed through?

Well, back and forth between masses of people and a centralized organ. That's how they've achieved this. And I know that, that in some circles this does not ring right that they want everything from the bottom up but I'm afraid that at the world scale the bottom up is insufficient

unfortunately it seems kind of evident to me and I'm probably going to gain the enmity of a lot of comrades for saying this but I'm afraid that you know when you have the current situation of climate chaos is a clear political defeat

for leftists it is a huge political defeat because in spite of the numerous bottom-up movements that have done so much and they really should be congratulated for all their efforts and they should continue those efforts and they should be supported as I say in the book

but it's not enough. So in order to counter at the global level, we've got to scale up. How do you scale up? Socialist states can point the way in a lot of respects. What happened in Cuba, you know, with the agri-ecology being developed, is in close connection with the

Campesina is in close connection with the masses on the ground. It's not just out of the blue. There is a back and forth. That's what can be achieved with socialist states. It cannot be achieved with bourgeois democracies at all, of course. Which, of course, the direction of bourgeois democracy is for capital accumulation, so we can't expect anything from that other than destruction. I have just a brief statement. And actually, there's a lot of things that I could say. I mean, you put out so many interesting threads there, everything from national identities within the Soviet Union. This is something that's particularly interesting for me as I live in Tatarstan, which is a

Republic of Russia that has a very strong national identity. The Tataris have a very, very, very strong ethnic national identity. And that's something that I would like to explore more in the future, both in my own independent research and hopefully on the show in the future, but very interesting topic. But the main thing that I want to say right now, before I let Adnan go with his follow-up question to this, is that you mentioned Cuba and vaccines. And I know that a lot of people recently have probably seen in the news, Cuba has five COVID vaccines. Count them, five COVID vaccines, this little tiny island with a very, very small budget for anything, much less biomedical research, you know, not exactly the priority when, you know, there's food shortages at times. But they've still managed to come up with five COVID vaccines.

But a lot of listeners probably already know this. But some listeners may not know is just how advanced the biomedical capabilities of Cuba is. Cuba has a lung cancer vaccine. A lung cancer vaccine that's very efficacious. It's been found in many trials to be very efficacious against non-small cell lung carcinoma, which accounts for 85% of lung cancer cases. And not only is it a vaccine and the way that we think about it in terms of you give it to somebody preventatively and then it decreases their likelihood of developing it, it can also be used therapeutically. Once somebody already has a tumor, they can be given this vaccine and they've seen dramatic results.

This is technology that is absolutely cutting edge. And we don't know about it in the United States for many reasons. I mean, the media has never covered it. But also, the United States for years had been blocking trials of this from taking place in the United States. They've been applying for the ability to do medical trials in the United States where a lot of, you know, the publications come out from and the results from the United States would be accepted widely, globally. And the United States says, no, we're not going to import it even for trial purposes, something that, again, has been found to be very efficacious and multiple. trials and something that the listeners should look into at some point. You can just Google lung cancer vaccine and you'll find lots of articles about it, but not necessarily from the big

mainstream media sources. Or you can look up Seema V-A-X, which is the name of that. Adnan, take it away. Sorry, I just... Yeah, well, I just, yeah, I just wanted to say that your, you know, last remarks raised a lot of, I think, you know, really the kind of crucial questions and problems and maybe we'll have a few more queries on that and have a little more discussion. But I mean, I think that's exactly the kind of point of studying this history is to be prepared and to have learned some lessons about what could still be implemented very positively, what we should take from it as well as, of course, what some of the, you know, possible problems that can be caused, you know, we're in our own historical moment and it's very hard to,

adapt quickly previous structures to our current situation and circumstances, but that's exactly what we have to do in studying this history and what you've provided for us gives us some grounded materials for doing so. I think part of, when you mentioned this problem of ground up versus like state structures and taking, you know, the state and using, this is such a classic conundrum and it partly is more, you know, ideologically, a question, different orientations in the left have already made their decisions on what kinds of politics, what they're willing to do, what they're not. But I think we're dealing with a more, I think, complicated situation now where we can't dream and just envision one way

of achieving socialism from every position, you know, across the globe. There are going to be different kinds of factors. And yet at the same time, there does have to be some kind of coordination on abroad. That is one of the things we did learn from this situation is that, you know, the fragmentation, the fact that they were, you know, these social states were still working within a global capitalist order based on a commodity form that they hadn't been able to overcome that completely, you know, meant that there were, as well as, of course, imperialism and military pressure and so on. That, you know, we're not, history doesn't take place in some laboratory we can control all of those conditions. You know, it's happening in the

midst of social struggles with these structures from before. So one big problem, I think, is the whole language of emergency and crisis that we use. I mean, and it's part of left discourse, talk about capitalism and crisis, and we see it in an environmental discourse about talking about the climate crisis, only because one of the consequences is a turn towards. authoritarian type solutions. And I'm wondering if you would want to distinguish between how do you within the discourse with all of these massive structural and global challenges that cannot be resolved merely by local, you may have to have that, they've contributed so much, but you can't just rely on

local kinds of grassroots solutions for the global in one fell swoop. But within this, how do you maintain some sense of the democratic and the egalitarian? And I'm feeling like in some ways, the last year and a half, 18 months have really posed the weaknesses. You've pointed out at the very beginning. This is a failure of the left, you know, on some level that we're in the position we're in. During the pandemic, there were lots of opportunities for critique. But there was likewise also ways in which the idea of it being a. crisis and emergency also disempowered people. And, you know, and then what it has led to is

right populism being able to overtake in some areas, the struggles for freedom and to co-opt that in ways that are totally destructive for our future. And the left has not been able to rise to that challenge. So I see a similar problem and issue here. How does this story of socialist states give us an opportunity to develop a politics that could be coordinated but still be democratic and egalitarian. What models and also what temptations does emergency language pose for trying to develop such a politics? I wondered if you had any thoughts on that. It seems to be a major issue going forward for the left. It is. I don't think I would really have the temerity to give an answer.

It's probably completely wrong. I'll just say what my impressions are so far, perhaps if that's of any use. Also, hopefully others, maybe Brad and Henry can come in on that too, but just to get this, I think, an important conversation going. I agree that it's fundamental.

Some of them are age-old kind of quandaries or debates. I'm just glad that my book, be useful at all for like thinking about future anything. So if that's achieved as more than I would expect. But yeah, it's the coordination, you know, worldwide that is necessary is, I think it's also missing because of the aversion, especially in places where you have the greatest amount of resources to achieve this. There is a lack of, maybe an aversion rather than a lack, an aversion to any form of centralisation. Instead of like, thinking back of the first international and how it came apart,

some of the issues were about the level and kind of centralisation as well, and to some extent, to some extent. And I think these need not be thought about. out as democratic, egalitarian. I think that's premature. I think it's completely undemocratic to have us, you know, the systems in place we have right now and to expect that we're going to have democratic principles being instated that are going to functioning right away in terms of decision-making processes at the global level is a bit premature and I think a bit too much to ask of people to be able to achieve worldwide. If I want to have coordination

efforts worldwide. One must also understand what the different situations are worldwide, which are not necessarily conducive to have a democratic process. How democratic a process can you have within Iran at the moment in the leftist circles that are left after being decimated from the Shah and onwards? Not much. And, you know, I mean, you have to work in a clandestine way in some situations. In some situations, you don't. But in the US, I have to say, for the most part, You have to have a clandestine kind of organizing because I'm sorry, the FBI has already proven their worth over time. And I don't understand how people don't look at what happened to the Black Panther Party

and see that that's what they're going to be facing if they do anything serious at the national level in the US. And then, you know, instead, you know, there's this thing about China, so how awful authoritarian it is. Yeah, but China took about 800,000, you know, people out of poverty in the U.S. instead have the reverse trend. So there are all these issues that need to be ironed out, I think. It's not like there's one or, you know, correct answer. There are many correct answers,

but I think they need to be contextualized and coordinated. And without sort of the presupposition that there's only one way to go about it, there's a patista way is fine where they are. But it's not fine for the rest of Mexico. It's rather evident. But it must be coordinated with other realities in Mexico and beyond in order for that to be defended in the end because it's not going to take much, you know, when Chappas is going to be overrun by U.S. supported, you know, armies, they're going to be swept away.

What's going to happen then? So I think these are some of the issues that swirl in my head out of the much deeper questions that you can. Yeah, and I mean, it's in a way, an unfair question because the other side of it, of course, is that the same language, it's not that the right isn't starting to understand. understand the real problems of ecology and environment, you know, and environment, there is the emergence potentially of eco-fascism, you know, that it also has to be, you know, combated. So it's a complex issue, and I think it's so important to have some historical analysis of the

successes, the failures, but put in context of, you know, socialist states and the real meaning of environmental policy for a socialist state, because, as you point out, not everything is going to work in the same way, in both strategy or conditions, you know, around the world. There are different demands and possibilities in each of these contexts. You might if I hop in for a second. Yeah, go ahead. So, okay, two, well, I'll start with two things. Who knows, I might come up with more on the fly. But you mentioned strategies, don't work everywhere the same. And then you mentioned Iran.

So just a brief plug, since it was announced, I think earlier today on the day of recording, but I just narrated an audio book for foreign languages press on Fedai, guerrillas speak on armed struggle in Iran. And they basically say the same thing. You know, different strategies and different contexts. Sometimes you need very covert actions. Sometimes, and this is what this book was advocating for, and I'm mentioning it because it should be coming out on all the podcast apps because, you know, everything from foreign

languages press is available for free if you, if you just look on their website, should be coming out right around the time this episode is dropping. So you can just listen. If my voice doesn't sicken you, you can listen to the book or you can just check it out on their website. But they call for armed struggle as a means of recruiting masses in their specific context, but they very explicitly say that in other contexts, this would not work. Like in the United States, having a guerrilla movement to try, you know, in the foothills of North Carolina is not going to necessarily going, it's not how you're going to recruit a popular mass of support based on the context of the United States. And this follows in the climate movement as well.

You can't universalize tactics in terms of how we're going to achieve the goals that we're looking to achieve. You have to look at the specific context that you're operating under the historical juncture that your country, your community is in, as well as, you know, the power structure that be within your country. These are all things that we have to understand when we're looking at what we need to do. So that was point number one that I was going to make. And feel free to cut me off if you have something that you want to say right there. No, please go ahead. Or was it Brett that you were talking about? No, no. I mean, anybody, I guess we're kind of into the freeform section of this interview at this point, which is, you know,

always fun. But yeah, that was point number one is that we can't universalize the struggle in different contexts. The other point that I was going to make, and I think that we were kind of on the fringes of this point, and I just want to kind of push us into it, is media representation in a place like the United States. So you point out many times in the book, and this is something that all of the listeners should be well aware of is that the disasters,

ecological disasters under state socialism, they exist. I mean, there's no disputing that things like Chernobyl happened. Like, this is a verifiable fact that I just recently interviewed a friend who did some fieldwork in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Like, this is something that happens, that has happened under state socialism. But the media representation of these events is disproportionate in a way, you know, you hear Chernobyl, as you say in the book as well, is used as like a metonym to be indicative of the impact of state socialism on the environment. The Aero C, something that we talked about a little bit earlier in this interview, is used as a metonym for what happens under state socialism to the environment.

But at the same time, deepwater horizon is not talked about anymore. And even when it is talked about, it's not talked about as a failure of capitalism in itself. It's just talked about as, oh, yeah, biggest oil spill, deep water horizon, the end. That's the end of the story there. We don't talk about Lake Chad, which you mentioned several times in the book, and I was very appreciative of because nobody thinks about Lake Chad ever because it's never mentioned. You talked about the Centralia coal fire. I mean, how many people know that there's been a coal fire going on underground in Pennsylvania for what, 60 some years at this point? It's something again, you bring up in the book.

These are things that are happening metaphorically and in some cases literally in our backyard or what was our backyard until we were evacuated from Centralia because the whole town is on fire, right, underground. But that's not talked about in the media. So how do we go about cutting through the BS for the masses of people? Because people that are listening to this podcast, they're going to know that the media's depiction of these different things is going to be very skewed, very biased, very, you know, shrouding the failures of capitalism and highlighting or just flat out lying in some cases about the failures of socialism. But it's the people that aren't listening to this podcast. It's not to say that the people that listen are smarter. We're just kind of attenuated to the media narrative and the U.S. versus reality. How do we bring that message?

How do we present that message to the average person to say, hey, yeah, Chernobyl happened. But one, that's not an indicating factor of socialism. Like socialism doesn't equal nuclear meltdown. just as much as Fukushima happen in the capitalist country. You know, we're not equating those with one another. And how do we also point out that the, as you look at in the book, the overall environmental impact of capitalist countries, even under similar circumstances in terms of country positioning in a world systems approach,

the capitalist countries fare far worse, or they bear far worse impacts on the environment. How do we present that message in a way without having to, you know, have a three-hour podcast episode for something to listen to. How do we say it? Yeah, so if I may, there's, we have no way of reaching the masses in terms of the media outlets we have right now. That's not possible. We're not like in places like Venezuela where we have Telesur who can make into household terms something like Lopal and link it directly to capitalism. We don't have those means. And in fact, acquiring those means, means is not a democratic process.

And that's another thing. I'm afraid to say, I wanted to mention the SRO, for example, in the US. I think they're doing, you know, something smart, like having an alternative for arming oneself because I think that's necessary in a US context because of the arms being so diffuse in society compared to other countries, like talking about context.

But yeah, it's one way of presenting things. it would be nice, first of all, to have a coordinated effort among all these different leftist currents, which is obviously not happening, and I'm not sure if it will ever happen, but that would definitely help, but we don't have it, because then you could have a unified voice to counter all this nonsense on a daily basis. But unfortunately, the forces of aggregation seems to be weaker still compared to the forces of disaggregation among leftists. And I think it

So one of the things Would be I guess to work within leftism Whatever it is whatever current in order to To try and persuade as many people as possible Within these leftist movements, currents That the problems before us are much bigger than the differences among us And I think that's what you're all collectively working towards Which is fantastic

And And really one other thing is is really to refuse some, maybe I shouldn't name the current, but he probably would guess which current I'm talking about. Some currents that thrive on looking at China as evil, looking at the USSR as evil, looking at Stalin as pure evil, that's unhelpful. It's never been helpful. Even in the 30s, it's never been helpful. And I think that's just a wrong strategy. And it just creates more problems than is worth in terms of having a coordinated, unified voice. If one starts with that, I'm afraid that I'm guilty of it because then you were pointing

out how I myself have done that in my book. You might if I jump in right now and yeah, I might as well put that question out there then. And we'll try to be brief with it because, as I said before we hit record, it's not germane to the central thesis of the book, but I think that a lot of people that read the book may have this question, which is, and I, and I'm, if it's not obvious already, I'm highly encouraging the people that are listening to this to read the book, because there's a lot of really interesting data in it. I mean, there's graphs galore. I love, I love data. I mean, I come from science.

This is what I do. I love, love graphs and data. So a very interesting book, very useful book. But something that surprised me when I was reading the book, based on when I was looking at your work and talking to you via email, I was surprised that almost every time that you brought up Stalin in this book, you always prefaced it by saying something along the lines of the murderous and repressive Stalin regime. And I know that a lot of listeners are going to hear that and be like, what? This is surprising based on what we've heard in this interview so far. And similarly, I was surprised, especially given that it wasn't germane to the context, because when you would talk about the actual environmental impacts of the Stalin era of the Soviet Union.

It fares comparatively well in almost every metric, particularly not only compared to the United States, where it does really well comparatively, but even compared to the Khrushchev regime, which was, you know, almost immediately afterwards, after some political jiggering. But, you know, so it was surprising that we would see we have this. this instance where we have comparative good environmentally, but yet you still bring up the murderous and repressive Stalin regime all the time. I was surprised by that. Salvatore, do you care to clarify your position on that? Because I think that the listeners are going to be very interested in that. Yeah, and thanks for bringing out for the close reading.

I'm very thankful because I want to have much more critique of the work so that I can improve upon it. And this is actually you're bringing forth the grounds for me to improve the effort in future. Because it is absolutely the case that under Stalin

environmental policies were actually better than the host-jov where the biggest industrialisation drive actually happened and was rather was rather more harmful with more lasting consequences that under Stalin.

You know, one can talk about gulags, I suppose, but one can also talk about internal contradictions within the party and fifth columns that people are uncomfortable talking about, I think, still. You have a situation in which you are very much besieged, the only socialist country in the world, and there are different currents and they all obviously are trying to achieve the same thing

just that they don't believe that each other's strategy is correct and I think that's one lesson that we can probably learn from that is that if we allow this to run amok it's not going to be very useful for the grand scheme of things but I'm incorrect about you know sort of characterizing Stalin always with that epithet That's completely, I want to make amends to that because, yes, it's, yes, some respects it's true, but so it's true also of many other kinds of socialist revolutions that have occurred.

And that's something that's going to happen again with any other revolution. And that's something to unfortunately historically expect. And one thing that one can work on is what we're going to do, what is one going to do, I hope we, because I'm hoping I'll be included, but I might be the one also who's shot, or I might be the one who will be do the shooting. Either way, it's really ugly and it's really horrible. And to harp about Stalin and just the horrific aspects of what happened,

you know, to say even under Stalin is incorrect because what I wanted to get away from, and I didn't succeed in the book, is to get away from personalization. problems. And it is an entire society that is involved. It wasn't Stalin. One of the things that drew my attention to kind of the importance of steering away from this personalization and also characterization of the Salman administration is the work by Naumov and Gaye of all things. I mean, they're not exactly socialists. But they do understand that, you know,

things do get out of control, things are diffuse, the violence is not one way, it never is. And neither it was under the Stalin administration. So for what it's worth, I would say I need to make amends and not harp on about Stalin that way. Just recognize that there were some terrible things that happened. But to lay it at the, it would be like now with the Communist Party of China, authoritarian and stuff like that. It's like characterizing, you know, she as a dictator. I think that's wrong as well. Because what that does, just like I've done with respect to Stalin,

is to basically erase from view all the different kinds of currents that were present at the time that were legitimate and they were fighting it out. And under conditions of siege, the stakes are extremely high. and it should not be surprising that you would have had so many deaths. And then, of course, there's the other aspect in which the deaths are inflated under Stalin, which has been unfortunate, unfortunately, you know, you have a lot of leftists who fall for a lot of bourgeois propaganda about this still. But some of it is because it's come from within the left. Again, I'm not going to name the leftist current, but you probably already know which one I'm talking about.

And I don't think that's a correct way of going about things, especially now. It makes no sense to harp about that. One way that I try to steer clear of that, but it's difficult to succeed because it's such a polarizing, I guess, topic. It shouldn't be, but it still is, is to draw attention away from that and try to focus on the ground scheme, which is that the most violent, the most repressive,

the most deadly set of regime, that have ever existed in the history of humanity is the capitalist system. And so I wrote an editorial that has had some success in getting a lot of hits. I know it's kind of interesting in which I just say, you know, I just talk about anti-communism, which is also on the left, which is really very deplorable in my view. It really doesn't stand to reason to have any anti-communism within the left. It makes no sense whatsoever.

It's just self-destructive. And still it exists, especially in the imperial centers. not just the US, within the left. And so I want to take that, you know, this anti-communism really, I mean, in comparison to the hundreds of means of people dead as a result of capitalism, and just by war alone, you know, I just took the tally of just warfare and just showed, you know, how deadly. I mean, even if you inflict the figures of, you know,

of the 100 million so-called dead under communism, which, you know, it's a lot of bollocks. it never reached even that far, but even if it were, even if it did, you have hundreds of millions of just by war alone. And it's just scratching the surface of how deadly this system is. So if one can sort of step away from these kinds of intern assign, maybe it's not internal sign is the right word, but these kinds of different views of socialism and what needs to be done and bittering like arguing it out and still like drawing all these historical case studies to fling at each other. Instead of you, like, we looked at, well, look how deadly capitalism is and we're

going to be dead as a result of it ourselves. Maybe this could be one rallying point in terms of getting a more unified voice. I don't know. That's a hope. Yeah, and you mentioned that the deaths get inflated, but again, we never think about the deaths imposed by capitalism. So the famines that were imposed upon India by the British, for example, far deadlier than any other famines that we can really think of, you know, tens and tens and tens of millions of people by completely man-made famines, not in, in large part, due to drought as they were in, you know, the Soviet Union in the 30s. There was the big famine that everybody, you know, always writes about from this specific tendency, again, that we were mentioning earlier. But that was, there was a drought, a massive drought that

lasted for a couple of years. And of course, there was other extenuating circumstances, people burning the crops and shooting the cows, the Kulaks, I'm talking about, of course. You know, in China, the same thing. Massive droughts that lasted for years caused millions of people to die. In India, tens of millions of people die because the British wanted it to be that way. A completely different context. I mean, it was genocide. Let's be honest about it. The famines in India were genocide and nobody ever is willing to admit that. But Salvatore, we've gone for quite a while. So I'm going to ask just a brief question. It might be the hardest question of all because it is, it's supposed to be brief. And then I know Brett has a few things that he wants to say at the

end here. So here's how I want to close out my contribution to this. So in lieu of somebody reading this whole book, let's say that, you know, they've got a stack of 70 books that they have to get through first, then they're interested in the conversation. Or if they listen to this conversation and they want to boil down what we talked about and what the content of the book is for somebody who hasn't listened to this conversation. How do we present the key things that we need to know from your work that you've done here for this book in like a minute or two for the layperson? What should they know? Well, all right. Okay, so first, Capitalism is a worst perpetrator

of environmental harm in human history, number one. And this has a lot of evidence to back us out. Second, socialist states were probably one of the most constructive, environmentally constructive systems in existence in terms of having countries that exist at the moment and have existed. And third, if we want to, understand how to move forward in terms of having a kind of society that is more, I guess,

towards egalitarian, towards classless, towards stateless, and ecologically sustainable. We've got to look at social estates. We cannot go round about that. We have to look at what has been accomplished, what the errors that were made, and to recognize that the errors were also in a wider context. historical context and then to use all those

experiences to understand how to move forward yeah that's a wonderful summary absolutely just a couple points to throw out there as we're wrapping up here that has been touched on in the past several back and forths

one that 100 million number we actually on Rev left did a whole episode debunking that 100 million dead under communism lie and tracing it back to the black book of communism and it's fascist origins. So if you want to deep dive on that, definitely check that out.

And then you made a great point earlier, Salvatore, you just sort of made it in passing. It wasn't the thrust of the point you were trying to make. But the role that imperialism has and continues to play an ecocide more broadly, the United States military apparatus in and of itself pollutes more than 170 countries. These wars are devastating, ecologically, socially, economically, et cetera. And so I think a core component of an eco-eco-economic. Socialism will have to include that robust and that principle of anti-imperialism. And, you know, that's a point we come back to again and again and again on the show

because of its central importance. And then the last thing I just wanted to just to plant in people's head is we've been talking about industrialization throughout this episode. And historically, industrialization has always pretty much been synonymous with like costs to the environment. And increasingly we're seeing now this unequal world in the climate crisis where these developing countries are wanting to develop. And that has traditionally been a dirty path to development. And, you know, these post-developmental, post-industrial societies look back at them and

say, you guys can't do that anymore. You can't basically do what we already did. And so one way to solve that or one piece of that puzzle is that global north countries are going to, you know, if we really want to solve the climate crisis in an equitable and just way, are going to have to shift the stolen funds from the global south back into the global south. to help green industrialization and development processes occur, as green as they can be. And maybe they won't be perfect, but they can certainly be better than coal, for example. And so as long as the U, as the U.S., the Imperial Corps and the Global North, refuse to help developing countries develop in a way that's green, it's going to continue to worsen the crisis. And that ties in with colonialism, with imperialism, with the history of capitalism more broadly.

So I just wanted to put the finishing touches on some of those threads laid out throughout the conversation. And I'll also highly recommend an episode of RevLeft that Brett did with Max Iola on a People's Green New Deal. Max is a friend of mine. I've also interviewed him on the David Feldman show. But the interview that you did with him, Brett, fantastic. And that book is absolutely fantastic and does address that point of global north and global south, climate debt, as well as, you know, climate reparations in some ways. So definitely go check that out. That episode was within the last year.

So really, really good points, and especially the point on the military breath, really right on. All right. So we're out of time. I feel like we could have talked for way longer than we did because I still have a lot of things that I wanted to talk about. But we'll put the cap on this conversation for now. So listeners, again, our guest was Salvatore Engel de Mauro, professor of geography, professor in the geography department at SUNY New Paltz, author of the, the new book, Socialist States and the Environment, Lessons for Ecosocialist Futures, Everybody Should Pick Up This Book. It has a lot of really vital analysis in it that I think that

you can really benefit from and will certainly stimulate conversations amongst you and your comrades. So listeners, we'll be right back with the wrap up. And listeners, we're back with the wrap up on guerrilla history. We just finished our interview with Salvatore Engel de Maurer, author of Socialist States and the Environment, lessons for eco-socialist futures. And, well, that was a lengthy interview. But, I mean, honestly, we could have gone quite a bit longer. There was so much material that we were just scratching the surface up that I really would have liked to dig deeper into.

But fascinating material on a very fascinating book and a fascinating topic, something that we've been talking about. a fair amount on guerrilla history with regards to the environment. This takes a very unique look at that, an actual critical assessment, using pretty powerful analytical methods to look at the role of state socialism in environmental degradation and comparing it to capitalist models that are comparable. So very interesting. Guys, let me just turn it over to you. What are your initial thoughts coming out of the interview that we just had?

Yeah, I thought it was a great conversation. I agree we could have kept talking for a long time. Like we could have done a two-hour episode on each socialist state and their environmental policies over time. And I really appreciate Salvatore for being so generous with his time. And also, you know, allowing us to throw some criticisms on it. Like, Henry, you know, you got a chance to like, hey, here's something about, you know, the way you talk about Stalin. That is kind of interesting. And I just want to kind of poke and prod in a comradly way.

And he was totally open to that and was actually self-critical and a really impressive. way. And so I always I always enjoy someone on the left being able to take stock of their own, you know, maybe errors or flaws or mistakes or blind spots and address them. And I'm appreciative of him for doing that in a constructive way. I also just, I loved so much of it that the points about imperialism and ecocide, what, you know, the U.S. did in Vietnam, for example, what the U.S. military apparatus does to the environment to this day, I think is an interesting, an important part of this. And I didn't get a chance to mention this, you know, because we always like to point listeners and to other stuff that we've done to help them develop, you know, they're thinking

along a certain line. And I did an interview a long time ago with Chris and Gossi on her book, Red Hangover. And it doesn't necessarily focus on the environmental impacts per se, but just the broader social impacts of the collapse of the USSR and the reintroduction of capitalism in Eastern Europe and Russia. And so I think. I think with this understanding that was laid out the environmental aspect in this conversation, plus that, you could have a really, really good comprehension of just how brutal that transition back to capitalism was for the people in that area. And how it continues to shape their politics more broadly. So, yeah, I mean, a bunch of stuff we could have continued to talk about, but I just really love talking with him. And I thought he was a wonderful guest.

And hopefully we could have him back on in the future. Yeah. this was really enjoyable. I learned so much from the book and also from the subsequent conversation. And just picking up on the openness to critical perspectives and entertaining counter views, I thought that was wonderful about the conversation. But I think also I was quite impressed in reading the book and subsequently with how much Salvatore has thought about some of these conceptual issues and definitions when it comes to, you know, what are socialists states? What are the various kinds of ways of classifying or characterizing them? And he really,

you know, kind of digs deep into the literature on, you know, socialism and economic forms, state socialism versus, you know, other forms. And I thought that was a, you know, while the real strength and major contribution of the book is on environmental policies and documenting them and looking at outcomes and looking at these policies to recover a very different perspective, a very illuminating perspective on the positive contributions that social estates have made. It's grounded in a very deep and considered, you know, what we might think of as political science and Marxist conceptual analysis. I really appreciated that about the book and also about conversation with him. So that was exciting and interesting. I think the area I was very

interested also to hear his responses on was a point Brett raised in the introduction about industrial development and whether or not it is environmentally degraded, And so I raised this issue about the Anthropocene, and I thought that was quite interesting to have his take and analysis about where some of the lapses and kind of failures to really account for, you know, what happens and how states can still develop, but try and contribute positively to a different relationship to the environment, you know, under socialism. That was quite interesting to have that analyzed more thoroughly. So I really appreciated that. And then just broadly, again, about this recovery of the period of history that we're talking about from different angles and different components, whether it is about social life under socialism and human social relations or whether it's about environmentalism. This is, I think, an important contribution that this new literature is making.

It's not that we can't be critical and shouldn't be critical of some of the mistakes of previous socialist states and projects. But we have to understand also the historical conditions under which they were operating. And really, the only way to be able to learn from them is to be able to put them appropriately in their context. And I think that was very strong in the book and also in our discussion to, elucidate, you know, what the conditions were for these states that imposed constraints and limitations as well as, of course, one can say that, you know, for their time, you know, they made attempts. It had a lot of, you know, there were, you know, possibly some, you know, mistakes or things that we would criticize, but there's also something we need to preserve in, you know, as leftists

looking toward the future, we have to learn from and use these sets of experiences analyzed properly as resources. We can't just throw out this history and reject it if we're to actually build successful societies of human egalitarianism and environmental sustainability for the future. It's important. So what I liked about this was that it's evidence-based. I mean, he's looking at the evidence. You know, there's been a lot of propaganda, and then there's been also counterreactions against these states and criticisms of them. Let's look at the evidence as he does, and we can see that there are some things to learn

from and benefit from this history. I really appreciate it and hope that listeners will go out and read this book and that we'll have continuing conversations with him. Yeah, absolutely. One thing I want to make sure doesn't, the importance of this, doesn't get downplayed, even though we talked about it for quite a bit in the interview itself, is the methodological component of the interview. And I know a lot of the listeners are probably thinking, oh, God, here goes Henry again, talking about methodology. Sorry, methodology is sometimes

quite important. And within this book, it was very important. Both in the book and the conversation, very important that we look at the modes of analysis because the three different modes of analysis that he talks about in this book provide very, very different looks at what state socialism actually does to the environment compared to capitalism. If you're only looking at these absolutist modes of analysis, you can come up with any sort of data that you want. You can say Chernobyl is the biggest nuclear disaster of all time. Therefore, state socialism is the worst thing for the environment of all time. Similarly, you could also say deep water horizon was the biggest oil spill of all time. So capitalism is the worst thing for the environment of all time.

This mode of analysis does very little to advance the actual understanding of how these economic models impact the environment. Yet these are often what we hear in the media, this mode of analysis. He also talked about, as we talked about, there's two other modes of analysis. There's synchronous and diacronic. The synchronous mode of analysis, it's better. But as he talked about in the interview and he talks about in the book, there are some flaws, you know, there are some flaws to it. The diacronic mode of analysis is something that we never see talked about in the media. And yet he shows in his book, time and again, that this mode of analysis really is the most useful for us to understand how the economic system itself is impacting

the environment, because ultimately that's what we're after. We want to understand how does socialism impact the environment versus capitalism, right? So having a mode of analysis that actually isolates that component and examines it in a critical way is very important. And also the methodological point about China. You know, I mentioned China. So there's going to be controversy here. This is not taking a stand on whether or not Deng's reforms were good, bad, whether it was

socialism, communism, capitalism. It is not about that. The point is, is that regardless of how you come down on the China debate, and we know that everybody that listens to this podcast is going to have a different opinion on China as a whole, as well as Deng's reforms in 78. Regardless of how you come down, you have to admit to yourself that something changed in 78, in some way. And so we have to use that as a point of analysis that we can say there is a distinct

period here. There is a distinct period. Maybe you think it's still socialism. Maybe you think it's not. That's up to you. But you have to be honest with yourself and say that's there at 78. There was a turning point here. Brett, I don't know.

Maybe you want to say something about that. I know that you've been doing a deep dive on China lately. So I think that that's a very important point that the listeners understand. It's that when we're talking about 78 in China, we're not attacking the reforms. We're not holding up the reforms. But we are just simply stating a fact that something. materially changed and that we can use that as a point of analysis. Yeah, I totally agree.

And I think we worked through that in the episode itself. You know, I would just say, and this is kind of fun, if you stick around this long to the outro, you can hear these little hot takes and these nuggets. But, I mean, I think right now, you know, whether you're ML or MLM on this question of whether China is social, I mean, I think looking at it, it's very clear that what you have in China is a capitalist economy, right? The social relations are capitalist. The mode of production is capitalist, but it's overseen by a communist party with the intent to, once the productive forces are sufficiently developed, ideally, right, make a shift towards a socialist transition

proper. You have to build up the material foundation for that shift, and that's the idea, right? So then you can call that socialist because it technically is under the control of a communist party managing a capitalist economy or you can say hey the social relations are capitalist mode of production is still capitalist this is a capitalist society those those are i think reasonable debates but as i said in the episode no matter where you fall on that we should be very clear about what we mean by socialism like is it is it socialism if you have capitalist social relations but you have a a state that is communist that is managing it with the future hope of making a robust transition to socialism that's an interesting debate and

so much of the debate about whether China socials or not is so flippant. It's so one-sided. It's so childish. It's actually not communist wrestling in a principled way with a really difficult question. But it's like, oh, you believe that. You're a piece of shit. Or you know, you believe that. You're an ultra leftist weirdo and back and forth. And nothing, it's all a lot of a lot of heat, but no light. And so, you know, we deal with this in a little bit more complicated way. You can agree or disagree with our takes. I think we walk somewhere in the line between the ML and MLM take on China. I don't think we're wholly dogmatic one side or the other.

I think that it does depend on some extent about where China goes in the next several decades. The way I'll end this is, I was thinking about this last night. If you asked me what my position on China is, MLs and MLMs always asked me, I say, you remember that poster on Scholar, Scholar and Mulder's X-Files desk? It says, I want to believe. That's kind of where I am. And so you'll see my takes are like.

you know, I'm optimistic this can still happen while at the same time being realistic about what the actual social relations and the mode of production in operation at this moment is. So, you know, disagree or agree, but I think it's a worthwhile conversation. I think it deserves humility and nuance as opposed to dogmatic sectarianism when wrestling with that concept. And so I thought what we did in this episode was fruitful in that it at least attempted to address some of those issues. I'll turn it over to Adnan, who may be the only person who gets excited when I mentioned methodology as a professional historian, but I know that, you know, at least I have somebody in my corner on this.

Adnan, do you have any other thoughts on the conversation that you want to put out there right now, maybe for us to chat about a little bit before we close? Well, I mean, I do think, I'm glad you highlighted methodology because I told you, you're the only person. That's right. I mean, you mentioned methodology. Yeah, guilty as charged. do think it is very important how you approach and analyze history. There are ways to do it that are meaningful in other ways that don't necessarily lead good results. And I think, you know, about this whole, you know, question about China and finding the line between, you know,

established positions, I think what's great about history is that it's evidence-based. So we have to deal with the facts of the outcomes of these states. and that is really irrespective of how you want to define them. You know, so, you know, however one defines China, you know, some of the other examples, of course, the Soviet Union, and so on, however one wants to define them about whether we think this is the correct approach or not, ideologically speaking, you know, history, what's great is history sort of falsifies a lot of our ideological positions, and especially if we can, coalesce around at least understanding that whatever variety and form of, you know, government

and economy we're talking about here, it presented an alternative to the unrestrained corporate capitalism that we're dealing with that is absolutely ruinous and has been ruinous for the environment. And so what it means is that there are steps that can be taken in really existing, you know, societies to try and improve our relationship to the environment so that it could be sustainable. Did they achieve the best and most ultimately sustaining forms? You know, that's, you know, a different kind of question, but there's something to learn there. And I think looking at the evidence, and that's what's so valuable about the book and the conversation, is that, you know, going through it very carefully and being able to have the

expertise to parse the scientific data and outcomes, it's clear that these were better policies and had better outcomes. And that's something we can learn from. And so some of the other discussions can get us a little sidetracked, I think, from recognizing what's most important about this historical study, which is that there's plenty of hope and there's plenty of inspiration we can take towards imagining that it's possible in the future to, you know, sustain, you know, lives of dignity and equality, you know, with a respectful and sustainable relationship to the environment. We'll just have to figure that out in our own time and under our own conditions, because things have obviously changed since then. So take it as an inspiration. And also,

It does help also further our critique of capitalism, which is really the important point that needs to be made that a lot of the attempts, you know, the roots that environmental movement is taking very often try and reconcile itself somehow with maintaining more or less, with just certain kinds of limits, some controls and regulations, more or less maintaining, you know, the capitalist exploitation of the environment. for profit. This is not going to work, and, you know, we can see that. And this is another, you know, arrow in the, you know, quiver that we can use to advocate for the more wholesale and systemic changes, you know, that are needed, that are required to end capitalism and save the environment. These are intimately linked. And so I think that's what's valuable about this book and about the discussion that we had is that it provides material evidence for that sort of position upon which we can build a better politics for the future. Yeah, the thing that I want to just, my final note, then I'll let each of you have your final word. The thing that I appreciate

the most about this book is that it takes a preconceived notion, something that's deeply preconceived on all political sides of the debate, left, right, center, that state socialism, socialism, generally, is deleterious to the environment, and uniquely so, more so than capitalism. It takes this presupposition head on, and that is the entire point of the book, the entire point of the book. And there's so much data to back up, the argument that Salvatore makes throughout, which is that not only is it not uniquely deleterious to the environment, but it's frankly better than capitalism. There's 27 figures in this book. I just counted. There's 27 figures in this book showing everything from CO2 to sulfur to environmental footprint calculations for different

countries, capitalist, socialist, state socialist, socialist government presiding over a capitalist economy. This book, it takes this presupposition head on. And that's a lot of, that's something that a lot of people don't like to do, because when something is deeply ingrained, at first, you kind of want to tiptoe around it and kind of chip away at the edges of. it until that presupposition is no longer a presupposition. And then you can put a counter-narrative out there and you're not going to have that institutional pushback against it. But Salvatore did not do that with this book.

I mean, this presupposition is in the academy. It's in the news. It's everywhere. And he takes it head on and he says, you know, institutional pushback. Sure. Go ahead. But it's true. Socialism is not worse for the environment than capitalism.

it's better for the environment than capitalism when you take a reasonable look at the historical development of that country, the period of time of that country, the external forces on that country. And you compare it to capitalist countries, there's no question that socialist countries are better for the environment. That's not to say that they're not bad for the environment. Every country is bad for the environment, but they're better for the environment than capitalist countries. And that's what I appreciate about this book the most is the single-minded devotion to attacking a preconceived notion that is going to get pushed back, and he did it anyway. So kudos to Salvatore for putting this book together.

And that's the last thing that I want to say. But guys, your final notes, each of you. Yeah. My final notes is just to once again stress the experimentalism inherent in the socialist transition from capitalism in a historic global way. You know, with the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks ushered in a new era, where there was actually, for the first time, self-conscious working class movements in societies trying to build socialism. Now, that's never going to be done on the first go.

It's going to be multiple attempts and instantiations and multiple different conditions. And there's this open-ended nature to Marxism and this experimental nature to Marxism that I think we should always reemphasize. And looking back, yes, 100%. This is a huge myth, anti-communist myth. And Salvatore, you know, took it out at the knees. and we can we can take that information and move forward while learning from both the successes and the failures and keeping in mind that, you know, the opposite of dogmatism is this dialectical experimentation, open-endedness that is inherent in Marxism. And that's the aspect of Marxism that I always like to stress, particularly in the face of dogmatic sectarianism. So for all those reasons, and this was a wonderful book, something to keep in mind going forward.

And yeah, love Salvatore. I love to have them back on some time. Yeah, I think the interesting points we've been raising here all go back to fundamentally talking about the value of genuine historical examination and what it can allow us to do, you know, in our own struggles. So really, really, you know, taking a dialectical materialist perspective on it, we're not, you know, we can't, nobody is advocating, oh, we should just adopt, you know. the policies and go back to the path that had existed, that's impossible. That's not how history works. That's not, you know, what, you know, Marxism, you know, ever advocates. It's always recognizing and understanding that, you know, the conditions we inherit are, you know, not under our control, but what is under our control is what we do with those conditions now. And we can

learn, you know, from these histories. That's the whole point. And so I think this was a very valuable conversation to have on basically the most important, you know, most important issue confronting us today, which, and for the future, which is the intersection here between the destruction of the environment and the oppressive capitalist system. I mean, these go hand in hand. No, the solution is, you know, the solution to the environmental crisis is ending capitalism, right? And so that's, this is probably one of the most important kinds of conversations we can have in terms of learning from history. So I really appreciate it. And I'm sure that we'll have opportunities to, you know, think more about this. But I really appreciated what he brought forward in undermining, you know, something that has been a genuine impediment towards learning from, you know, the past here is to just dismiss. you know, these socialist states as terrible for the environment. That's something we have to overcome.

This book really helped us accomplish that, I think. So listeners do check it out. Absolutely. I echo that sentiment. You absolutely should check out the book. Again, our guest was Salvatore Engel de Mauro, author of socialist states and the environment lessons for eco-socialist futures. For the few people that might still be left around listening to this episode,

we know that it was a long one. Brett, can you tell them how they can find? you and the work that you're doing. Yes, you can go to www.w. www.revolutionaryleftredo.com, find all the shows, everything that we do, and go from there. Excellent. And again, for the few people that might still be straggling around or perhaps are waking up from their sleep, Adnan, can you tell the listeners how they can find you on social media and your other

podcasts, which, by the way, is excellent. Everybody should check out. Sure. Although I understand that our longest episodes happen to be some of our most popular ones. So I expect there's many of you loyal listeners still here. This is true. This is true. I know you and I have looked that up.

Our long episodes always do well. It's weird. That's amazing. So there's clearly an appetite for this kind of analysis and discussion. And if you want more of it, do follow me on Twitter at Adnan-A-Hus-A-I-N. And check out the other podcast, Henry Mention. It's called The M-A-J-L-I-S about Middle East Islamic world, Muslim diasporas, Islamophobia, and so on.

That's on all the platforms. So do check it out. Absolutely. Listeners, you can find me on Twitter at Huck-N-N-N-N-N-E-C-K-1995. You can follow the show. Keep up with everything that we're talking about online as well as all of the new releases that we're putting out by following us at at Gorilla underscore Pod. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A underscore POD, 2-R's.

And you can support the show so that we can keep doing this by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. Again, that's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. And you'll get bonus material, early access to things, some Patreon-exclusive episodes, lots of good stuff on there. So listeners, we appreciate all of the support that you give us, whether it's monetary or just, you know, online telling people that you enjoy the episodes that we do, sending it to comrades directly. Really, it means the world to us.

And we hope that you enjoyed this conversation that we had today. So until next time, listeners, solidarity. Thank you.