@mbickhardt
PhD political theory at Sciences Po Paris/Centre Marc Bloch Berlin. Philosophy, environmental Malthusianism, ecological Marxism. Research and direction of the Climate Denials Program @ diagrammes.fr @diagrammes.bsky.social
new episode out today! we discuss Horkheimer's essay "Traditional and Critical Theory", asking what actually makes critical theory critical, and whether there's any genuinely critical theory going on right now. the social totality causing all kinds of problems rn fr www.patreon.com/posts/130-ma...
No future
The world is crumbling, but Berliners are still drinking matcha latte in the sun. This city is the perfect testing ground for very late-capitalist climate apartheid
👉 Watch the full interview and explore the complementary dossier. www.diagrammes.fr/en/folders/g...
Anatole Lucet et Michèle Cohen-Halimi (ed.) - Gustav Landauer
À paraître en février 2026
On Feb 23, I’ll be debating @katharinapistor.bsky.social on the topic of beyond capitalism at Columbia University. Link to details and registration below. Please share!
events.columbia.edu/cal/event/ev...
🔥 Jan 2027
Great exchange between @evgenymorozov.bsky.social, @abenanav.bsky.social, and @leifw.bsky.social in the ideas letter:
www.theideasletter.org/issue/eterna...
Can’t find the article though
The paper also mentions the great work on geoeconomics by @mbabic.bsky.social!
#VendrediLecture 📚
Cold War Ecology. Socialist Environmental Reflexivities from the “Club of Moscow” to Harich's “Degrowth Communism” in the GDR
In @cnsjournal.bsky.social, our PhD Candidate @mbickhardt.bsky.social reflects on how socialist thinkers interpreted and reacted to The Limits to Growth.
"plan of ecological measures" - some early soviet green planning theory, maybe of interest to @cominsitu.bsky.social @abenanav.bsky.social @futurehistories.bsky.social @jakobheyer.bsky.social @christophsorg.bsky.social !
Thank you, Jan!
The link already expired, click here for full access: www.academia.edu/152457657/Co...
'Cold War Ecology. Socialist Environmental Reflexivities from the “Club of Moscow” to Harich's “Degrowth Communism” in the GDR'
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Thread Part 2 bsky.app/profile/mbic...
Camera obscura: energy as an ideologically inverted relation to nature?
Only a renewed project of social and ecological emancipation can, in Harich’s terms, move society “Forward to nature!” (Vorwärts zur Natur!) (2021, 342).
This trajectory raises urgent questions of democratic control over energy utilities and grid infrastructure, as well as the improvement of working and living conditions in the East, if its reduction to an energy colony is to be avoided.
The geography of the Cold War remains visible in contemporary German climate politics. Low labor costs and cheap land have attracted large-scale West German investment, leading eastern regions to produce more renewable energy per capita.
Whereas Kohei Saito ( @koheisaito.bsky.social) interprets Marx’s late engagement with the natural sciences and pre-capitalist societies as a turn toward “degrowth communism” (2023), this study situates its emergence in the context of socialist critiques of the Club of Rome.
Harich‘s sublation of ascetism seems to align with contemporary appeals to “radical abundance” as an ecological horizon of emancipation ( @kaiheron.bsky.social, Milburn, and Russell 2025).
By insisting that consumerist “prosperity” under capitalism is purchased at the price of “unbearable work pressure, stress, frustrations of all kinds and a cultural low point” (2015, 235),
Accordingly, Harich argues that the “workers movement” must act “in alliance with all elements of society that are mortally threatened by the ecological crisis” (Harich 2021, 125).
the eco-Marxist tradition has conceived the ecological subject formation through an alliance between the industrial proletariat and new social movements (O’Connor 1988).
While the sociologist Matthew Huber (@matthuber.bsky.social) maintains that the industrial working class remains the decisive pivot of climate justice struggles by virtue of its productive power in decarbonizable sectors (2022),
Harich articulated a model of ecosocial struggle that moves beyond the entrenched dilemma of “jobs versus environment” (Barca 2014).
In a controversy with the French Marxist Guy Biolat (1973), whom Harich denounced as a “left growth-fetishist” for defending nuclear energy and opposing environmentalist resistance to the production site of Concorde planes in the name of jobs,
His critique of the Club of Rome centered on its “capital error” of excluding the “class question” which neglects the political conditions of possibility for a post-growth society (Citation2021, 226, 272).
While Harich’s initial green Leviathan cast the nation-state as the central actor of the environmental crisis, his thought also gestured toward a different conception of the ecological subject.
In their paper “Problems of Optimization in the Planning and Control of the Environment”, the economists N. Fedorenko and K. Gofman similarly argue that “nature conservation work still receives too little consideration in the overall system of national economic planning and management” (1973, 38).
will also bring about a general rise in the temperature of the air and water, which may have undesirable consequences for mankind owing to the melting of polar ice". (1979, 13)