September 15th 2022 was a big day for the climate movement. The owner of Patagonia – a large multinational corporation producing wearables – transferred 98% of his shares (worth 3 billion dollars) to the newly established Holdfast Collective, a foundation aimed at fighting climate change. Are we at the dawn of a new type of capitalism, where profit is made to work for nature rather than against it?
For decades, we – legal scholars and teachers – have helped weaken the law by presenting it as ‘lagging behind’, as a feeble and inept tool of government, transferring thus much of its normative power into the hands of the most powerful market actors. We can, and have to, change this.
If the economic advancement of the lender states is at least in part attributable to the access to the markets of the debtors, then the latter have a right to solidarity and political redistribution of economic benefits. Building solidarity – as a basis for political redistribution – in Europe from such premises would not be impossible: it is very much in contrast with the self-righteous attitude adopted by lender states today, and condoned by much of mainstream economic theory.
13. September 2025
Giovanni Capoccia
12. September 2025
Anne Peters
12. September 2025
Anne Peters