Welcome to the New Economy Journal’s fourth edition of 2020.
This issue is comprised of a robust collection of theoretical and policy-based articles, grappling with a diverse range of subjects including youth unemployment, the future of tertiary education, political tribalism and the steady state economy.
We believe this collection provides an invaluable contribution to new economy discourse. With pieces oriented towards both immediate imperatives (such as Shirley Jackson’s brilliantly articulated proposal for a “youth guarantee”) and a utopian future (see Noon’s thought-provoking essay on “library socialism”), readers are encouraged to see the struggle for immediate change as part of a wider struggle towards a brighter tomorrow. This fits well with NENA’s mission to transform Australia’s economy so that achieving ecological health and social justice are its foundational principles and primary objectives.
As the Journal is a forum for debate, we hope you’ll disagree with some of the articles in this issue. We believe that through respectful disagreement and engagement, we can sharpen our learning about how to build a new, just and sustainable economy.
Following the release of the Gibbs/Moore film, ‘Planet of the Humans’, an anti-renewable energy group has emerged from within an organisation promoting a steady state economy. For many years the fossil fuel (FF) and nuclear industries have spread misinformation about renewable energy (RE). Although these myths have been refuted again...
The following is an excerpt of Per Capita’s research report “Coming of Age in a Crisis: Young Workers, Covid-19 and the Youth Guarantee”, which was published on 18 June 2020. Australian labour force data for May shows that, for the first time since the Great Depression, almost two in three...
Australian Education Minister Dan Tehan recently announced changes to tertiary education funding intended to incentivise study for ‘jobs of the future’. As reported by the ABC‘s Conor Duffy, ‘job relevant’ Australian University course fees are to be slashed: Subjects in nursing, psychology, English, languages, teaching, agriculture, maths, science, health, environmental...
Introduction Education in Australia is guided by a national curriculum and has three cross-curriculum priorities, one of which is sustainability. These priorities are supposed to pervade all aspects of learning in school, rather than being confined to a single subject or topic. Because sustainability encompasses so much, this broad-based approach...
For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does...
This is an excerpt from James Mumford’s book ‘Vexed: Ethics Beyond Political Tribes’, which was Published by Bloomsbury in March 2020. I’ll put it bluntly. Politically, I don’t like my options. Growing up in this giddy world – b. 1981 – I’ve become increasingly dissatisfied with the alternatives on offer....
If you ever want to win an argument with a Marxist, just keep asking them for “a more material analysis”. Materialism is a catchcry of Marxists, and they weaponise it against all sorts of people: from Foucault to Chomsky, anarchists to reactionaries, Marxists see Idealism – the opposite of Materialism...
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything that you need” - Cicero The difficult thing about imagining a better world is social relations. Revolutionary Marxism call for workers to “seize and own in common the means of production”, as if this were a clarifying statement rather...
