For a Radical Green New Deal: Energy, the Means of Production, and the Capitalist State

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Green New Deal (GND) has emerged on the national stage as a plan to address climate change by reforming the energy system. It would be hugely expensive, and likely involve the redistribution of accumulated wealth from the bourgeoisie, and controls on carbon-intensive fractions of capital. The GND would also threaten the bourgeoisie by democratizing the means of the production in the energy sector, and possibly inspiring a wider referendum on capitalism itself. Anticipating attacks on the GND by capital, I propose that workers’ needs be placed at its center. I make this case by explaining how capital exerts power over the state, how labor can fight capital using strikes, and how the proletariat could force the bourgeoisie to submit to a state-led GND. Along the way I make the case for broadening the scholarship that focuses on energy's importance to the state by explaining energy's importance as a vital means of production and not mainly as a source of rent.