I am doing my level best these days to stay clear of engaging in ‘debates’ on social media. There is wisdom in knowing which fights to take on and which to walk away from. The fights to walk away from are those which can have no profitable conclusion or resolution. That pertains to those who proceed from entrenched positions and are concerned merely to score points and ‘own’ opponents, those out to negate and nullify, obscure and obstruct. It also applies to those whose direction and concern is basically fine. A mild check here could serve to sharpen up their thinking and keep them on track.
Then there are those who appear to be on side, but who are not. I have had several run-in’s now with those active and organising within the field of environmentalism. They are a particular type of environmentalist. They express an environmental concern that many of us express. It’s their means of acting upon that concern to which I object. I am sceptical of their intentions and ends, which involve social and political implications beyond ‘saving the planet,’ implications they conceal behind an overt apoliticism. I am leery of the politics of ‘non-politics,’ involving socially neutral positions that, in practice, preserve power relations and class dynamics intact.
I had reason to check one environmentalist who, seeing someone valuing the rise of the medical working class, had to sneer at such a notion. Against the words “working class” they attached a large laughing face icon, claiming to be one of those working hard “to kick out black and white thinking like that, right after colour TV came of age, just as the 60's tipped over into the 70's.”
The remark disgusted me. Here was a health worker valuing the radical upsurge and solidarity on the part of ‘key’ and ‘essential’ workers, only to be checked with a sneer and a put-down.
I have met with this response more than a few times now for it not to express a consistent mentality among a dominant strain of environmentalism. On another occasion I was informed – by an environmentalist whose work is cited by Christiana Figueres at the UN – that talk of class is ‘outdated us and them thinking.’ This is a consistent theme among mainstream environmentalism. The remarks are significant and revealing and so I check and counter them. I find it significant and revealing that the people who make these statements rarely if ever engage with me when I raise pertinent questions with respect to the class composition and class dynamics of contemporary society. I see plainly a deliberate policy here, to recruit people of skill, knowledge, and ambition to the environmental rescue squad, make a direct appeal to persuade the passive mass, and ignore the awkward squad who are politically aware and astute in between. It is a deliberate classless politics in a class society, in other words. Hence it doubles down on class and class politics wherever it finds them. That leaves environmentalism without the structural capacity to achieve the system change it purports to pursue. In truth, it does not pursue system transformation at all. ‘System change, not climate change’ is merely a slogan to mobilize the mass around pre-determined positions. The policy and its principal agents is already set. It is a passive radicalism that precludes the creative agency of actual people and their movements.
In the simplest of terms, to put “working class” in inverted commas is easily rebutted. There is most certainly a working class out there, and everyone who depends on a wage for food and shelter is a member of it. The sneer and put-down was remarkably crass at a time when the value and contribution of ‘key’ and ‘essential’ workers to society is being acknowledged at long last.
The tone struck me as significant. The merest assertion of the importance of the working class brought about a dismissive rebuke. This is class struggle. Make no mistake, behind the ‘classless’ appeal of a socially neutral ‘non-politics’ lies very specific class interests aiming at a passive revolution within the capital system.
These statements against ‘us and them,’ ‘black and white’ thinking are typical of a certain - dominant - strain of environmentalism. What is striking about these statements is the pretence of sophistication when in fact they are the merest caricature, revealing a certain level of political stupidity. What statements like these reveal is the politically 'neutral' ineptitude of a mainstream environmentalism that works within prevailing institutions even as they claim to be ‘changing the world.’ They are firmly entrenched within the very institutional apparatus that is implicated in the twin social and planetary unravelling. Hence the keenness on the part of these ‘classless,’ apolitical, socially neutral leaders to suppress talk of class and denigrate class politics. Such class politics is a threat to their dominant position within environmentalism. That dominant environmentalism is failing politically and will continue to fail politically, for the very reason it is ‘agnostic’ on class and hence lacks the structural capacity to actually undertake social transformation. Too few are prepared to address the material roots, class relations and contradictory dynamics at the heart of these convergent crises that are upon us, and so they continue to issue appeals based that lack social relevance. Those appeals imply a social identity that doesn't exist – an identity in which short-term individual good and long-term common good coincide. There is a determinate social ecology at the heart of mounting ecological crises, and if you fail to identify the social forms and socio-economic drivers of that ecology, you are heading for collapse and catastrophe, maybe with an authoritarian and austerian environmental Megamachine in between. If you are not waging class struggle from below, then rest assured the ruling class will be waging it from above. In fact, that class struggle from above has been waged virtually unopposed for far too long now, and the deleterious effects are all around us. The obsolete thinking here belongs to those lacking a critique of political economy.
Except that it isn’t simply ‘obsolete thinking,’ it is plainly ideological thinking. The classless appeal conceals a very definite class politics being practised, active, organised, well-resourced, well-connected people looking not to restructure power so much as reshuffle its personification within the same social relations. Hence the loathing of “working class” politics and, no doubt, working class people. The proletariat will remain the proletariat in any future society envisaged by such an environmentalism.
Of course there is a medical proletariat! Just as there is an educational proletariat. I should know. (you want a history of zero-hours contracts? I'd have been better off staying on the building sites.) Economist Paul Mason's point in The Guardian applies generally:
"Few are prepared to address the material roots and class dynamics of this crisis, because nobody taught them to do so. But they are clear."
Without a bridge from theoretical reason (science, knowledge of the external world) to practical reason (politics, ethics, the way facts, technics etc. are mediated in social affairs), you have nothing but the persuasive power of sweet reason. That approach has racked up decades of failure now and indicates a kind of thinking and political practice that needs to be kicked well and truly in touch, and exposed as the cowardice and evasion it is.
Paul mason, Chaos is being normalised. It is all part of Boris Johnson’s pernicious plan.
Rest assured, there have been many working hard to ‘kick out’ class analysis and class politics. It is now easy to state that ‘neoliberalism’ is the source of all our troubles. George Monbiot says so, and so leftish leaning liberals all cite his argument. The argument is superficial. ‘Neoliberalism’ itself was a response to a capitalism mired in crisis. It was itself a class politics designed to check and constrain the class power of labour and, politically, succeeded. To say that our problems lie with ‘neoliberalism’ is mistaken, and allows a reformist space to open up when in fact it has been exhausted. We are effectively being presented with an environmental reformism via the Keynesian ‘New Deal’ state, with little understanding that it was precisely such an economics and politics that was mired in crisis in the sixties and seventies. It is a time for reformation rather than reform.
To cite ‘neoliberalism’ as the problem blames an economic theory with political intent for something more systemic and structural roots – it’s called capital and class, and unless you uproot it through social transformation all that you have is the assertion that changes are the product of a changed mindset. We don’t like ‘class’ and consider it outmoded ‘us and them thinking’, and therefore class ceases to exist by a mental sleight of hand. Of course class continues to exist in the real and very much untransformed world. Such thinking is not merely a delusion but an ideological deception that ensures we remain firmly entrenched within the exploitative class system of the prevailing world. Neoliberalism was and remains class struggle from above, and it was waged powerfully by class warriors. Ranged against them have been people claiming class and class struggle to be antiquated ‘us and them’ thinking. I make no apologies for disabusing the environmental engineers of the ‘green’ public and shredding their naïve faith in sweet reason, for the very reason that they are deliberately pacifying politics to ensure possibilities for real transformation are diverted and perverted into system preservation. I check the ideologues and seek to open the eyes of the merely deluded. We live in an ‘us and them’ world and the sooner people realize it, the sooner that scientific knowledge and technological know-how might start to punch some political weight. At the moment we have a gigantic technics in the hands of political dwarves.
Having analysed the dominant forms of mainstream environmentalism recently, though, I have drawn the conclusion that the phrase ‘system change, not climate change’ is merely a slogan designed to cover a passive transition within the system from one ruling class to another – a system preservation which entrenches class and its dynamics, in fine. Of course such people want to pass over uncomfortable realities arising from class relations – they deny them consciously to save having to deal with them politically. I’ve severed my links from all such thinking and politics. The evidence is that such environmentalism is implicated in re-booting the capital system, not actually transforming anything so as to preserve planetary health. I therefore have no truck with people who deny the realities of capital and class and who are consequently deficient with respect to the critique of political economy. Such deficiency is not merely remiss, it is ideological. I know this for certain given the steadfast refusal on the part of such environmentalists to respond whenever their deficiencies are identified. They pointedly refuse to develop a class awareness.
All through the 80s and onwards such people have de facto sided with the ‘neoliberal’ class warriors against those seeking to check them. The result is that we are now where are – with bankrupted, indebted economies, corrupt, bloated finance, mounting crises that are increasingly incapable of being bailed out, divided societies, internally riven communities, food banks, massive inequality, and a degraded and increasingly destroyed planet. Congratulations to the people who worked hard to gut class from politics – you won, and in your triumph are now masters of nowhere and nothing. And yet putting yourselves forward as an environmental rescue squad equipped with the knowledge and know-how to save the world, despite being structurally incapable to do anything to turn the whole mess around. No structural capacity, no social force, and material futurity points to collapse and catastrophe.
As someone identified as a "key worker" who is continuing to work, despite being in the "at risk" category with two chronic illnesses, this could very easily be the end for me. So I'm going to tell it like it is: people who are shy of class and a critique of political economy have nothing to offer on the social transformations and transitions required to keep 'the economy' within planetary limits, for the very reason they have no idea of the capitalist beast they are trying to tame. The failure is manifest, after one climate conference after another. It's a non-politics that lacks structural capacity and social force. And I'm as angry as hell with it. Because where once I considered such politics merely misguided and clueless, I now see its determined ‘classlessness’ and social neutrality as quite deliberate and ideological. Such people will divert and pervert the space for the ecological transformation of the political rather than realize it.
In this respect, it is plain that there is an environmentalism that is a front for a new technocratic elite presiding over an austerian environmental Megamachine. This is composed of those claiming expert knowledge, a cadre of philosopher-rulers presiding over a new class system in which the poor proles like me continue to do the work. We may be ‘key’ and ‘essential,’ but have to continue to obey orders and serve economic imperatives that remain beyond democratic check and questioning. I've suspected as much for a long time. These people are well-connected at the top tables, indicating that it's not really system change such people are after at all, just a personnel change at the top, with a new class in charge. You can count me well and truly out of it. Class politics from below was well and truly extinguished throughout the 60s, 70s' and 80s, but not from above. Capital hammered labour, and classless neutral liberals sat the struggle out, no doubt priding themselves on their sweet reason. How on Earth do you think it came to this - a thoroughly iniquitous society, people in poverty, reliant on food banks, economies bankrupted and reliant on debt? At the same time, the share of income going from labour to capital has increased markedly, a result of a deliberate and successful piece of class politics from above, breaking working class resistance and solidarity as a matter of deliberate strategy. At the same time those seeking a 'third way' opted for ‘neutrality,’ a frankly complicit silence, on class. In fact, they weren’t even silent, but were very vocal in denouncing both ‘extremes.’ How very reasonable. And cowardly and complicit. The power of labour exists as a counterveiling power seeking to check an overweening power. To treat them as equal is to de facto side with the dominant power. It's the white flag of surrender, the end of society and the end of nature together. I'm involved working in the community now, because this strain of environmentalism is a busted flush.
I went and checked the social media accounts of some of these environmentalists, and sure enough I found the lionising of the usual suspects, David Attenborough prominent among them. An interview with Attenborough was posted, in which Attenborough makes this statement:
“I have no doubt that the fundamental source of all our problems particularly our environmental problems is population growth. I can’t think of a single problem that wouldn’t be easier to solve if there were less people.” (David Attenborough)
How convenient the lack of critique of political economy is for the dominant class, the personification of the socio-economic drivers of climate crisis – and other crises to boot. A classless, politically neutral “population” that says precisely nothing, merely defaults to the management of the poor proles enchained to an iniquitous and exploitative and parasitic status quo.
So run this by me again, talk of class is outdated black and white thinking, but not overpopulation? Marx is outdated but not Malthus?
I was talking to my brother yesterday, and he said there "needs to be a massive reckoning when this is done. This whole episode is only the dry run for when impact of climate change bites closer to home." Alarms and warnings have long since been issued, the reckoning has been with us a long while now. But beware the snares of the environmental Megamachine that preserves rather than transforms the capital system. Anyone who is inclined to express relief at going back to normal is deluded and had better brace themselves for a downward spiral if there is no change in an unviable status quo. This virus is flagging up iniquities - and lack of resilience - within and between nations across the planet. These ills have been engineered as a matter of political control and are remediable through concerted public action. Not just a 'new Britain,' but a new world must be born.