N-Lighten Me

How Neoliberals Unleashed Capital Against Democracy

This episode discusses the book:

Schmelzer, Matthias. Freedom for Capital, Not People: The Mont Pèlerin Society and the Origins of the Neoliberal Monetary Order. Verso Books, 2025.

This episode introduces the book:

Christian, D. L. (2003). Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities. New Society Publishers.

This episode presents the book, How Silicon Valley Unleashed Techno-Feudalism: The Making of the Digital Economy, by Cedric Durand

This episode discusses the book:

Carton, W. & Malm, A. (2025). Long Heat. Verso.

Presents the book: Guillibert, P., & Reeck, M. (2025). Anthropocene Communism: Land and Capital in the Age of Disaster. (1 ed.) New York: Verso Books.

Presents the book:

Salleh, A. (2025). Decolonize Ecomodernism! (1st ed.) London: Bloomsbury Academic.

In the 21st century, the old colonial attitude of terra nullius, meaning a vacant place free for the taking, still lurks behind the global economic expropriation of people's lands and bodies. Today, that theft is rationalized internationally by ecomodernist policy. This book engages with the patriarchal-colonial-capitalist mindset of the contemporary Androcene and its threats to life on Earth, including global warming and nuclear risks, mining and the gene trade, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and digital coloniality. Ariel Salleh spells out the social and ecological contradictions set in motion by neocolonialism. Inspired by decolonial thinkers from Arturo Escobar to Tyson Yunkaporta and critics of technology like Vandana Shiva and Shoshana Zuboff, she argues that dispossession of First Nation peoples' livelihoods is not healed by consumerism in the name of development. Breaking with ecomodernist policy, such as the tech fix of mainstream environmentalists, Salleh contests the patriarchal-colonial-capitalist imperium and its advocacy of Green New Deals, Earth Governance, Sustainable Development Goals, and Smart Futures. Worldwide, many decolonial activists see through the zero-sum imagination and its Earth Summits. Youth, too, are defying the capitalist ruling class extinction trajectory, and some even challenge the fashionable post-human ideology circulating in high-tech quarters. Beyond exchange value, these Others of the Androcene are calling for self-governing bioregional futures, respectful of indigenous skills; they want local food sovereign economies, which meet people's needs while protecting nature's metabolic value. Spelling out the biopolitical violence of digitalization and genetic engineering, this book traces two decades of creative defiance by global peoples' movements against the contradictions of ecomodernist development and its ongoing imposition by nation-states and international agencies.

presents the book, Anderson, C. R., Bruil, J., Chappell, M. J., Kiss, C., & Pimbert, M. P. (2021). Agroecology Now!: Transformations Towards More Just and Sustainable Food Systems. Springer Nature.

Costa, César Augusto, and Carlos Frederico Loureiro. 2025. "The Decolonization of Nature According to Enrique Dussel." Latin American perspectives. https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X251390389.

This article offers a reflection on the political decolonization of nature using the perspective developed by Enrique Dussel. This perspective is grounded in a critique of the modern/colonial world-system.The analysis examines how Eurocentrism influenced the interpretation of nature in Latin America. It also explores how the concept of nature was appropriated by coloniality to serve a commercial purpose. The foundation of coloniality, modernity, and Eurocentrism lies in the radical Cartesian dualism that separates “reason” from “nature”. Under this framework, nature is viewed as an object to be exploited for profit and the accumulation of capital. Dussel argues that this 500-year-old civilizational system has reached its limits, specifically in the environmental destruction of nature. Furthermore, the danger to life does not lie in technology itself, but in the use of capital as the criterion for the selection of technology.The authors argue that Dussel’s Politics of Liberation contributes towards liberating nature from a Eurocentric matrix. Achieving this liberation requires epistemic disobedience against the genuine foundations of Western concepts and accumulated knowledge. This political perspective aims to liberate nature in the periphery from the clutches of peripheral capitalism. Dussel proposes that we overcome modernity, capitalism, and Eurocentrism through a new global age called "transmodernity," where the demands of life on Earth necessitate a change in our ontological attitude regarding nature, work, property, and other cultures. This framework impacts various social groups, including indigenous populations, women, Black communities, and workers, who are victimized by the Eurocentric matrix.

#LatinAmerica #EnriqueDussel #PoliticalLiberationOfNature #ModernColonialWorldSystem #Eurocentrism #Transmodernity #EpistemicDisobedience #DecolonizationOfNature #ColonialityOfPower

Malm, Andreas. 2016. Fossil capital : the rise of steam-power and the roots of global warming. London ; New York: Verso.

Dive into "Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming," a foundational history that challenges conventional explanations for our climate crisis. This insightful podcast explores the unique conditions of the British Industrial Revolution, arguing that the ascent of steam power was not an inevitable triumph of technology or a response to the scarcity of energy. Instead, it exposes a history rooted in social domination.We reveal how the power derived from fossil fuels was dual in meaning and nature—both energetic and interpersonal—from its inception. Capitalists chose coal and steam primarily because it offered control and efficiency that natural flows like water could not. Steam provided a "ticket to the town," freeing mills from remote watercourses and facilitating the enforcement of discipline against the "annoying idiosyncrasies of human workers".Trace the intense class conflict that accompanied this transition, culminating in moments like the 1842 "Plug Plot Riots," where workers tried to stop the engines, viewing steam as a "giant monster" and agent of degradation and doom. This history demonstrates that the fossil economy was consolidated through superior physical force exercised by a tiny fraction of Homo sapiens.Today, we face a critical challenge: an urgent, planned transition to renewable "flow" energy is opposed by powerful "vested interests". By connecting the past to the present, this podcast argues against the simplistic "Anthropocene" narrative (the geology of mankind) and proposes a more accurate name for our epoch: the Capitalocene—the geology of capital

accumulation.#FossilCapital #SteamPower #IndustrialRevolution #ClimateChange #Capitalocene #ClassConflict #FlowVersusStock #GlobalWarming #VestedInterests

Malm, Andreas. 2016. Fossil capital: the rise of steam-power and the roots of global warming. London; New York: Verso.

"How capitalism first promoted fossil fuels with the rise of steam power The more we debate about the catastrophic implications of climate change, the more fossil fuels we continue to burn. How did we get caught up in this mess? In this masterful new history, Malm claims that it all began in Britain with the rise of steam power. So why did manufacturers turn from traditional fuels, notably water, to steam? Overturning established theories of the transition and offering a radically new view of our warming world, this study shows how steam was adopted as a superior source of power. Two centuries later, the inheritors of that power continue to profit from "business as usual," as the world heads toward irreversible catastrophe. Malm examines the history of resistance to fossil fuels and surveys the obstacles to the transition to renewable energy so urgently needed today. Then as now, energy choices are determined in struggles over power"--