Éric Pineault

Quebec’s Red Spring: an Essay on Ideology and Social Conflict at the End of Neolib Eralism

In “Quebec’s Red Spring: An Essay on Ideology and Social Conflict at the End of Neoliberalism,” Eric Pineault sees some victories emerging from the student movement’s remarkable mobilization over the spring and summer of 2012. Pineault draws on Harvey’s understanding of neoliberalism to place these events in the context of Quebec’s shift from a social-democratic or national-progressive politics to a neoliberal one. The strike, he argues, was not just about tuition fees, but was a reaction against neoliberal austerity. It was, for a short time at least, able to gain support from beyond the student movement and problematize the neoliberal order.

The capitalist pressure to extract: the ecological and political economy of extreme oil in Canada

Abstract Canada’s political economy has been reshaped by extractivist forces based in the western tar sands. The objective of this article is to propose a model of these socioeconomic forces identifying the structures and dynamics that characterize the hydrocarbon extractive sector in an “age of extreme oil” through the development of a theory of the capitalist pressure to extract “unburnable carbon.” This aspect of our model has wider significance for an ecological and political economics given the emerging policy consensus around the need to transition from carbon-based economies because the capitalist pressure to extract acts as a powerful counterforce to this ecological imperative.

From Provocation to Challenge: Degrowth, Capitalism and the Prospect of “Socialism without Growth”: A Commentary on Giorgios Kallis

ABSTRACT Giorgios Kallis argues that Degrowth, as a pluralistic convergence of both theoretical perspectives and social movements, is part of a renewal of the critique of capitalism based on the ecological contradictions of this social order. In “Socialism without Growth” Kallis engages with other, more classical, approaches that have examined the contradictions of capitalism and the material conditions for a future, ecologically viable postcapitalist social order. After a quick exposition of the lineaments of a general theory of surplus and accumulation based on Bataille, Polanyi and Georgescu-Roegen, Kallis mobilizes Marx’s theory of accumulation to examine the growth drivers of capitalism. I will argue that economic growth in advanced capitalism can best be explained as a relation that articulates capitalist overproduction to overconsumption, and outline some analytical tools that such an explanation can provide to those interested in understanding the specific growth drivers of contemporary capitalism and their social and ecological consequences. This implies moving beyond the model outlined by Marx and mobilizing concepts and categories developed by the over-accumulation approach to capitalism, those developed by some of Degrowth’s most vocal Marxist critics, such as Foster. Through my dialogue with Kallis I will try and bridge these two approaches.