An analysis of why the climate movement and other social struggles are at an impasse in the strategic labyrinth, and an idea of how we can get to revolution quickly and effectively.
“Never before have things gotten so out of hand. Not once in the history of mankind, not even in that of life in general.” (Total Liberation)
The collapse of all life support systems is occurring at a rapid pace right before our eyes, entire ecosystems have already collapsed, and every minute the danger that we will pass an irreversible tipping points grows. Yet the climate movement finds itself in a situation of extreme irrelevance and must contend with the fact that it is further than ever from building serious transformative power. But why is this so?
Actually, we have long known everything we need to know. This is not only true for climate science, which has provided us with more than enough information that a revolution is indispensable. It applies just as much to transformation science, which shows how such a social change is possible. But the latter is even more rigorously ignored – strangely enough, even by climate activists.
Let’s take a look at what we know.
1. Climate protection is only possible with system change. This was made clear in the IPCC’s latest summary for policy makers. The only way to reduce emissions at a pace needed to stop the total collapse of the climate is to end the economic growth imperative and initiate degrowth. Since perpetual growth is the very cornerstone of capitalism, it follows that one can no longer be a serious climate activist without wanting to end capitalism itself as soon as possible. The IPCC makes clear: sufficient climate protection is not possible in the current system. Capitalism means growth coercion. Growth compulsion means higher production and that always goes hand in hand with greater environmental destruction.
2. Reforms – efforts to protect the climate without changing the system behind the crisis – are nothing more than cosmetic. At best, they are doomed to fail; at worst, they help the profiteers of capitalism to greenwash it. What is characteristic of capitalism is its uncanny flexibility, thanks to which it can adapt to small changes in the political framework and even emerge stronger from them. When the nuclear phase-out was announced, the economy focused more on lignite. Now that the coal phase-out is on the horizon, industrial activity is shifting toward gas or – absurdly – back to nuclear. None of this is accompanied by any improvement for the climate. There can therefore be no partial victories in capitalism as long as the growth imperative and profit maximization doctrine (i.e., capitalism itself) are not abolished.
3. Systemic change, on the other hand, cannot be achieved through or with governments, but only against them. Governments today are mainly handmaidens of business. This is ensured not only by deeply rooted and institutionalized economic interests, but also by paradigms that uphold the belief that the common good can only be achieved through prosperity and that prosperity can only be achieved through growth. Parliamentary democracy and capitalism go hand in hand because they were developed for each other and are now inseparable. The government has proven to us often enough that it puts economic interests before human lives. As long as that is the case, the overthrow of the system must be accompanied by the disempowerment of the powerful. Or, to put it another way: a change of economic system is only possible through a simultaneous change of political system, e.g. towards residents’ assemblies and deliberative democracy. Of course, we can no longer hope that with enough pleas and appeals we will persuade the powerful to enforce their own disempowerment. But we can also learn from our experiences, shed our reliance on government, and understand that contemporary states, as political manifestations of capitalism, will never be our allies, but always our adversaries. Therefore, there is no point in making demands on governments.
4. We only need majorities as long as we want to implement the changes by parliamentary means. Apart from the fact that we no longer have time to rely on the democratic system, system change has never come about in this way. A system change is nothing else than a revolution and revolutions are not chosen by the majority. Instead, it takes a determined group of people doing the right things at the right moment and inspiring as many of them as possible. Therefore, it makes no sense to waste most of one’s energy trying to convince conservatives and other ignorant people until we have the majority of society on our side. Instead, we need to turn the necessary revolutionary crowd into revolutionaries and inspire them with a promising strategy (more on what this might look like later).
5. We are dealing with something that no social movement before us has ever known: massive time pressure. Given that we have already passed certain irreversible tipping points (e.g. coral reefs and permafrost), we are at over 400 ppm C02 in the atmosphere, and according to the IPCC we only have about 3 years left to avoid exceeding 2 degrees and thus absolute collapse, we have to win extremely fast. Therefore, we cannot wait for lengthy political processes such as the next elections, nor can we continue to try actions and methods that are not effective and hope that they may eventually work.
All of this means that the traditional climate activist prescription is guided by faulty assumptions on just about every point and is therefore doomed to failure. This is as follows:
We look for a single theme. We plan an action around this topic that causes a stir. We hope that the media will report it, so that we get attention and support. We hope that support for our demand will result in the government (or some other entity with power) conceding to a demand we make because of it.
The current strategic impasse of the climate movement results from ignoring these 5 points and sticking to the traditional recipe – despite the obviousness of its failure.
Let’s take a look at the alternatives that are available to us if we leave this path.
The first step would be to no longer define our goals as changes within the ruling system, but instead to change the system as a whole, which also means radically challenging the current power relations.
As a consequence, we should stop making demands. For two reasons: first, you can ask the powerful as much as you want to give up their power, they will not do it. Second, there is no single authority at all that could implement from above what would be necessary to overcome the system and to which demands can therefore be meaningfully made. This is only possible through a revolutionary process. Instead, we as a movement should set goals and see it as our own responsibility to set in motion those processes that are necessary for the goals to be achieved. For example, instead of asking the government to limit the use of pesticides and thus outsourcing the responsibility to fulfill this step to an entity that most likely will not do so, we set the goal of no/less pesticide use and actively prevent the production and delivery of that ourselves.
In concrete terms, this means that we must set ourselves the goal of abolishing capitalism within 2-3 years (because according to the IPCC and scientist rebellion, we still have so many years to achieve the climate revolution) (of course, this can also be broken down into partial goals).
Having this as a primary goal also has two key advantages for mobilization reasons. First, the focus on systemic change allows different struggles to finally be effectively combined. Instead of seeing them as either competing or interconnected but still having to divide our resources between them, we can combine all our forces, resources, and people into the overall struggle against system, domination, and oppression that benefits all sub-struggles.
Furthermore, we can finally say goodbye to the thinking in national borders that still characterizes many activist projects. This is only necessary if we focus on influencing elections and politicians. The system, on the other hand, can only be defeated globally, which is why we can and must work together worldwide. Through both, we become more diverse and stronger.
This then requires a comprehensive plan under whose umbrella interested people can be easily involved and organized. So instead of trying to reach everyone and make them passive supporters who change majorities, it’s about making enough people active supporters. Movement power comes from the combination between the amount of people and the effectiveness of people in the movement. The effectiveness of passive supporters is zero. Why should we continue to try to increase the amount of people infinitely instead of increasing the effectiveness of the people who are part of the movement? Of course, this is only possible if grassroots work is done well again, i.e. building up local groups and other things that are necessary in order not to lose potential fighters because of a lack of opportunities to participate. At the same time, a concrete, ambitious and exciting plan can also lead to this very grassroots work being taken up again with vigor, since many local groups of various movements are currently lacking above all a larger vision towards which their work can lead in the long term.
Now for what such a plan might look like: roughly speaking, any systemic change can only work if at the same time the pillars of the old system are brought to collapse and the seeds of an alternative system that can take over are sown. The point at which the old system finally collapses and the new gains space to flourish is called a revolution. Preparing the new system can in no way be postponed until after the revolution. Because one thing is certain: no matter how terrible a system may be, it is always better than starving. Therefore, people will always stabilize the old system if they cannot be made to believe that their basic needs can also be provided for in another world.
In order to destroy the old system, two things are important: first, it is necessary to analyze to the root what exactly – i.e. which resources, processes, people, paradigms, etc. – are holding the system together. In today’s fossil capitalism, these are primarily fossil fuels. These provide all the energy needed for absolutely all production, transport and administrative processes. Stopping fossil fuels brings the system to a halt. Second, we must abandon the doctrine of nonviolence, which has now become almost a religion for countless politicized people. However, nonviolence is needed only if the goal is to win over the majority of people and therefore one cannot afford to put one’s reputation on the line. If the goal is to achieve actual material change, nonviolence is the greatest opponent. Peter Gelderloos’s book How Nonviolence Protects the State brilliantly lays out the extent to which all that “science” is implausible that claims nonviolence leads to the best results and that, in fact, there has hardly ever been a movement that reached its goal without violence. Andreas Malm’s How to blow up a pipeline provides a perfect complement to this by showing how sabotage can bring about the end of fossil capitalism.
You don’t even have to be a supporter of such theories to reject nonviolence. A look at the practice is enough: If we want the end of capitalism, we will have to work with people of all possible camps who share this vision: Anarchists, environmentalists, communists, and many more. Some bring a pacifist minimum, others prefer sabotage, etc. We can let this divide and weaken us, or we can live out diversity of tactics and allow the diversity of our ways to strengthen us.
At the same time, the new system must be organized. If we want it to be post-capitalist, solidarity-based, just, democratic, and worth living in, this means building and testing the solidarity-based structures, personal relationships, and participatory structures that are necessary for this today. Rojava, the autonomous and de facto post-capitalist zone in northern Syria, has shown how years of testing grassroots democratic councils and solidarity groups can take over in a revolutionary power vacuum and establish themselves as a new polity. Local group work must therefore consist of preparing people theoretically as well as practically for revolution. This means to create an understanding of why a revolution is necessary and to support people in organizing themselves in solidarity, far away from capitalist logics, in order to overcome dependence on capitalism, and at the same time to make grassroots democratic, anarchist forms of organization such as residents’ councils tangible and to teach the necessary skills. In these councils, the crisis and ways out of the crisis can be discussed, so that the revolutionary process itself is already shaped as participatory as possible from below. Care must be taken to ensure that the organizational form allows new people to be integrated quickly. Moreover, it is precisely those people who are left behind by the current system and therefore have little to lose and much to gain who must be supported and organized. Unfortunately, these are the very people that the climate movement has often forgotten about until now. For the whole process of bringing in new people and building revolutionary relationships, the movement needs to rely more on face-to-face conversations – learning to use the power of organizing. There is no other way. Or in the words of Cesar Chavez, founder of the U.S. farm workers union, “How I organize? I talk to one person, then I talk to the next person and then I talk to another person.”
In all of this, current developments must be taken into account, which open the window for revolution by being perceptible in everyday life and by showing the constriction and defectiveness of the current system. Currently, these are above all the Corona crisis, Ukraine war and the rising cost of oil and gas and thus of food, transport and heating. These must be used to pick up people, spread system criticism and strengthen the desire for an alternative to the system.
It all has the potential to work and get us out of a seemingly hopeless situation so we can turn the tide. At the same time, it is an incredibly ambitious and challenging plan that will require all of our strength. And that’s exactly why committing to this plan, to the revolution, also means not doing everything else, but setting hard-core priorities on what has the potential to save the world. We have no more time to lose ourselves in ineffective activism. Let’s pave and walk the road towards revolution together, because the revolution needs us – urgently! Do you hear them calling already?
Machine-assisted translation of the following German-language post from the Deutschland Indymedia website: https://de.indymedia.org/node/185460
Translation originally posted at øbin.net