{"id":3673,"date":"2021-07-22T17:29:09","date_gmt":"2021-07-22T21:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tempestmag.org\/v01_2020\/staging\/?p=3673"},"modified":"2021-07-28T13:05:30","modified_gmt":"2021-07-28T17:05:30","slug":"building-eco-socialism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/2021\/07\/building-eco-socialism\/","title":{"rendered":"Building eco-socialism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"dropcap\">T<\/span>here\u2019s nothing more important today than the politics of climate change. How societies respond to global heating will increasingly shape all political life.<\/p>\n<p>A People\u2019s Green New Deal by Max Ajl, an associated researcher with the Tunisian Observatory for Food Sovereignty and the Environment and a postdoctoral fellow with the Rural Sociology Group at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, gives us some insightful analysis of different political approaches to global heating (a term I prefer since it packs more punch than global warming) and many good ideas about how society should be changed to respond to capitalism\u2019s ecological crisis. However, the book is much less helpful for thinking about the political strategy we need to make these changes.<\/p>\n<p>Although some hard right-wing politicians are still intoxicated by the climate change denial nonsense that organizations funded by fossil capital have been spewing for years, smarter ruling-class strategists are planning for what Ajl calls \u201cGreen Social Control.\u201d This \u201caims to preserve the essence of capitalism while shifting to a greener model in order to sidestep the worse consequences of the climate crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The European Commission\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/science\/europe-climate-rules-1.6102053\">announced<\/a> measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union are an example of this approach. It\u2019s what Joe Biden had in mind when he appointed John Kerry as a Special Presidential Envoy for Climate. It\u2019s also the vision of the Climate Finance Leadership Initiative, a group of finance capitalists headed by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. It\u2019s a vision that Ajl skewers.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pullquote\">[The book offers] good ideas about how society should be changed to respond to capitalism\u2019s ecological crisis\u2026[but] is much less helpful for thinking about the political strategy we need&#8230;<\/aside>\n<p>Ajl notes \u201cBecause there is no capitalism that exists apart from the violent hand of the state, such plans emphasize the national security sector\u201d (it\u2019s no coincidence that in his new role Kerry serves on the National Security Council). It\u2019s very much an imperialist project for which using \u201cthe physical land bases of Africa, Asia, and Latin America as carbon farms and for biofuels will allow for CO2 offsets of whatever cannot be decarbonized and may allow for the continuation of a fuel-based modern and hierarchical order, at least for a few of the planet\u2019s people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A People\u2019s Green New Deal demolishes ecological modernist thought (ecomodernism). Ecomodernism treats technology as politically neutral and imagines that global capitalist growth can be \u201cdecoupled\u201d from greenhouse gas emissions. The book takes on both ecomodernism\u2019s right-wing version\u2014for example, the ideas of the Breakthrough Institute and the EcoModernist Manifesto\u2014and the left-wing variant defended by people such as Aaron Bastani, the author of the <a href=\"https:\/\/climateandcapitalism.com\/2019\/06\/22\/gee-whiz-communism-is-sure-gonna-be-keen\/\">book <\/a>Fully Automated Luxury Communism and (not mentioned by Ajl) Leigh Phillips.<\/p>\n<p>Ajl cuts through the confusion about degrowth\u2014a loose current of ecological thought whose supporters call for less energy and natural resource use in rich countries and reject the growth of Gross Domestic Product as a goal\u2014rightly arguing, \u201cSome sectors, such as agroecological food production, public transport, primary healthcare, and renewable energy, need to grow incredibly fast\u201d in decommodified ways, while \u201cothers must disappear: the military, non-renewable energy production, chemical fertilizers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He makes a strong case that transitioning to renewable energy generation isn\u2019t enough: in the Global North, energy use also needs to be reduced for the sake of global justice, to allow people in the rest of the world to use more energy while moving away from fossil fuels. When faced with the need to limit global heating as much as possible, and in keeping with the precautionary principle, which calls for taking action to prevent problems even when there is uncertainty about them, we must \u201cput all human energy to work in a just transition, and\u2026 move as fast as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A People\u2019s Green New Deal doesn\u2019t spare the most influential kind of climate justice politics. It poses the question \u201cGreen social democracy or eco-socialism?\u201d and looks critically at the version of the Green New Deal (GND) championed by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez among others, which it accurately characterizes as a program for \u201cdomestic anti-racist green Keynesianism,\u201d and at the more left-wing politics of Naomi Klein and the multi-authored book A Planet to Win. Ajl argues that GND reforms won\u2019t be won without mass social struggle, that green social democracy is pro-imperialist (Ajl\u2019s best example is plans to produce millions of electric vehicles in the United States using lithium mined in South America), that the GND legislation drafted by Ocasio-Cortez and others shouldn\u2019t be called ecosocialist, and that we need a movement for ecosocialism, not green social democracy.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pullquote\">\u200b\u200bA People\u2019s Green New Deal doesn\u2019t spare the most influential kind of climate justice politics. It poses the question \u201cGreen social democracy or eco-socialism?\u201d<\/aside>\n<p>The second part of the book lays out the alternative that forms the book\u2019s title, \u201cbuilding eco-socialism.\u201d The book lays out a range of ideas for radical reforms of work, urban life, construction, transportation, manufacturing, and agriculture (discussed at greatest length). It argues emphatically for anti-imperialist internationalism, and that the imperialist countries owe the rest of the world a massive climate and ecological debt that must be paid. It insists that countries of the Global South must have the right to determine their own futures, and that settler colonialism must be dismantled.<\/p>\n<p>A People\u2019s Green New Deal gives us a good ecosocialist critique of important currents of climate politics. Its argument for reducing energy use in imperialist countries as well as transitioning from fossil fuels is valuable. Its anti-imperialist orientation pushes people in the United States\u00a0 and other advanced capitalist countries to avoid the common mistake of ignoring or not thinking seriously about most of humanity when thinking about climate politics. The book\u2019s insistence that capitalism with green social reforms would still be capitalism, even under \u201cdemocratic socialist\u201d governments, is important. Its broad vision of alternatives is generally persuasive. All this makes it worth reading.<\/p>\n<p>Yet readers also need to understand that Ajl\u2019s politics are a kind of ecosocialism from above in the Maoist tradition of <a href=\"https:\/\/cominsitu.wordpress.com\/2014\/05\/10\/the-universality-of-marx\/\">Samir Amin<\/a>. It\u2019s right to reject green social democracy, but unfortunately the way the book argues its case can be an obstacle in persuading people who need persuading. European social democratic governments have shown that social democracy is no threat to the most violent imperialist domination of the Global South, but saying there\u2019s \u201clatent fascism even in halcyon social democratic models\u201d smacks of how in the late 1920s and early 1930s Third Period Stalinists dubbed social democracy \u201csocial fascism.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The way the book is argued is also disconnected from the actual existing climate movement in the United States. Instead of thinking in terms of what demands are best-suited for building a mass movement for climate justice in which ecosocialists are a constructive radical wing\u2014an important question socialists should ask when assessing proposals for climate justice reforms\u2014Ajl asks the movement to embrace his ecosocialist politics. His approach to other proposals for a GND is similar to dismissing the demand to end legal restrictions on access to abortion in the United States because that demand isn\u2019t a radical program for reproductive freedom for persons of all genders (it isn\u2019t), or like rejecting the call for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam because it wasn\u2019t a call for victory to the National Liberation Front.<\/p>\n<p>This is a sectarian method. In contrast, the politics of socialism from below focuses on <a href=\"https:\/\/againstthecurrent.org\/atc043\/p4958\">how to fight for reforms<\/a>, not which specific reforms we demand, as what most distinguishes ecosocialism from green social democracy in the here and now.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3675\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3675\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3675\" src=\"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/system-change-not-climate-change.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/system-change-not-climate-change.jpg 640w, https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/system-change-not-climate-change-600x450.jpg 600w, https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/system-change-not-climate-change-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/system-change-not-climate-change-400x300.jpg 400w, https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/system-change-not-climate-change-200x150.jpg 200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3675\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">FridaysForFuture protest Berlin 2\/22\/2109; <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:FridaysForFuture_protest_Berlin_22-02-2019_18.jpg\">Photo<\/a> by Leonhard Lenz<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Ajl doesn\u2019t lay out much of a strategic approach for fighting for what he advocates or a clear conception of socialism. Yet a <a href=\"https:\/\/socialistforum.dsausa.org\/issues\/winter-2020\/against-campism-for-international-working-class-solidarity\/\">campist<\/a> socialism from above\u2014one that treats the conflict between the \u201cimperialist camp\u201d (the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Israel etc.) and the \u201canti-imperialist camp\u201d (China, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Syria etc.) as the most important political division in the world\u2014is evident in passing comments about \u201canti-systemic states of Latin America\u201d and elsewhere.<sup>1<\/sup> Consistent with these politics are a flawed theory of imperialism and an exaggerated emphasis on the role of \u201cCommunist\u201d states and movements in achieving broad welfare states. (Ajl uses the term social democracy for what I call broad welfare states. I believe social democracy is better reserved for a specific kind of reformist politics.)<sup>2<\/sup><\/p>\n<p>A striking aspect of A People\u2019s Green New Deal is how it says almost nothing about the rising capitalist power of our time\u2014China\u2014which the book describes as a \u201csemi-peripheral\u201d country rather than one locked in inter-imperialist rivalry with a declining United States. Without question, the main enemy is at home, but not acknowledging the role of China and its greenhouse gas emissions\u2014which aren\u2019t limited to those generated by manufacturing goods in China for export to the West\u2014in the global climate politics of our time is a political mistake.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, this book will encourage some supporters of anti-capitalist ecological politics to think they have to choose between left ecomodernism of the kind <a href=\"https:\/\/monthlyreview.org\/2017\/11\/01\/the-long-ecological-revolution\/\">often published by Jacobin<\/a> and anti-ecomodernist and campist ecosocialism, <a href=\"https:\/\/peopleandnature.wordpress.com\/2021\/04\/13\/chinas-co2-emissions-are-soaring-but-in-monthly-reviews-world-they-are-flattening\/\">which Monthly Review promotes<\/a>. But there\u2019s also an ecosocialism from below that isn\u2019t ecomodernist and whose anti-imperialism isn\u2019t campist.<\/p>\n<p>When read critically, A People\u2019s Green New Deal is a useful resource for people who want to practice this kind of ecosocialism but readers would also do well to read Ian Angus\u2019s Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System as well as articles by <a href=\"https:\/\/theecologist.org\/profile\/gareth-dale\">Gareth Dale<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/peopleandnature.wordpress.com\/about\/\">Simon Pirani<\/a>.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"half\" \/>\n<h5>Notes:<\/h5>\n<p><small><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Ajl\u2019s outspoken campism is visible in his interviews and Twitter posts.<\/li>\n<li>Ajl\u2019s discussion, which relies a great deal on Amin\u2019s theory, suggests a misleading picture of global patterns of capital accumulation and does not recognize China as an imperialist power. For a classic critique of an important aspect of Amin\u2019s theory, see Anwar Shaikh, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/0BxvNb6ewL7kOSmE5WjVmaXFQdFk\/view?resourcekey=0-f5RCfMu0k2va_yLEr2Eatg\">Foreign Trade and the Law of Value<\/a>.\u201d For an excellent start on developing a better marxist theory of imperialism see Todd Gordon and Jeffery R. Webber, \u201cComplex Stratification in the World System: Capitalist Totality and Geopolitical Fragmentation,\u201d Science and Society 84:1 (2020).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><\/small><br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><strong>David Camfield<\/strong> reviews Max Ajl\u2019s new book, A People\u2019s Green New Deal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":3679,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[88,86,33,141],"class_list":["post-3673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-ecosocialism","tag-environmental-justice","tag-international-solidarity","tag-review"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/pgnd-test.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}