The author afaik is a degrowth type that seems to be slowly moving leftwards, but I'd say that he is a socdem still and definitely not anti-imperialist enough. Also values modern monetary theory and his solution to fixing problems was essentially "print more money" in a podcast I just listened to.

Western academia never calls it what it is, but this guy still seems one of the better commentators. I base this on the way he has over the years actually followed the science on climate change mitigation and now pretty firmly seems pro-China for that as a result. That at least is sort of intellectually honest. The bar with Western academia isn't high though.

[–] MLRL_Commie@hexbear.net 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Yeah Jason Hickel has been moving much further towards principled socialism. Connecting racism to anti-imperialism and the related economic base aspects is what he's currently improving on. I started following him like a decade ago when I got sent an article about degrowth from him, and was totally unimpressed. Then Max Ajl critiqued his degrowth but pointed out its value like 5 years ago and I came back to him, and he had improved and it was very clear that he went from socdem to democratic socialist. Still not good but the right direction, with clear shifts in analysis that could only lead to Marxism. I think he's very much there now, but still growing out of some small western brainworms and trying to avoid the key words all too much and work empirically as opposed to ideologically/philosophically. His new website is pretty nice for talking to non-commies https://globalinequality.org/

[–] StillNoLeftLeft@hexbear.net 3 points 1 month ago

Yeah currently reading his Inequality book, because it's something I can cite in my uni essays without anyone batting an eye and it allows me to inject the type of stuff I want to inject into my writing.