The Green New Deal and Lessons from its Namesake

Marx’s Human Essence, the Green New Deal and Lessons from its Namesake

After the dramatic human outrage and reason of the youth-led Global Climate Strike, what can be said of the political solutions emerging from the global capitalist system of nation-states?

Even as it was agreed to, the Paris Climate Accord (PCA), was deemed to be a wholly inadequate response to the scale of the problem. Accelerated climate changes since reveal the PCA as an even more feeble response to the impending catastrophe. It is, in any case, in tatters without the U.S.’s participation.

Many left liberals like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and radicals like Naomi Klein are proposing a massive Green New Deal (GND). Are there lessons from the GND’s 1930s namesake? What barriers in thought, then and now, keep humanity locked in capitalism’s theoretical construct which emerged out of its abstractions that shape every day life activity?