[lbo-talk] The Planet is Fine (Carrol Cox)

[Somebody Somebody]

As the environmental crisis deepens, and the consequences of climactic change become more dramatic (storms, shortages, economic collapse of certain regions, other catastrophes, large numbers of environmental refugees, etc.) more and more people, groups, and trends will react one way or another, and even the capitalist states will react one way or another. If the social movements and working-class activists don't develop their own policy on this question, they will end up simply following this or that variant of bourgeois policy. It's true that the crisis of left-wing thought and the disorganization of the working-class movement affects the current environmental movement, but it affects all social movements. The point, however, isn't to denounce environmentalism in general, which would be an incredibly stupid and conservative policy, no better in essence then global warming denialism, but to encourage the development of a working-class environmental

 movement which will link the class struggle with the environmental struggle; fight for serious environmental measures, which must be integrated with serious measures for the protection of the livelihood of the masses; oppose market measures like cap n' trade, carbon offsets, the carbon tax and other neo-liberal frauds; and be an alternative to bourgeois environmentalism.

Somebody: This is interesting, but why isn't there already a working-class environmentalist movement? You have to use the qualifier of class here because of the implicit understanding that environmentalism is not typically a working class movement as such. Outside of Monthly Review, the Australian Green Party, and the scattered bric-a-brac of small environmentalist groups in the developing world, there is no working class environmentalist mass movement. 

We know this because, for one thing, there has never been an environmentalist revolution - not an even an abortive one. And most likely there never will be. Because environmentalism is an abstraction and not even a coherent ideology like religion, and contains with it a plethora of issues, some of legitimate concern and others mere matters of aesthetics masquerading as politics. Particulate pollution is a deadly serious matter, far more serious than carbon emissions, and kills millions every year in both outdoor and indoor pollution while we waste time worrying about making slight cuts to CO2 output - biodiversity is important only in the sense that preserving historical monuments is, as a matter of taste and preference. Our lives will be poorer for the absence of rainforest creatures mostly to the extent we choose to care about them, which is fine but worthy of charity not political agitation.

The problem with an putative working class environmentalist movement is obvious - the working class does not want to rise up on behalf of the proposition that it must consume less. There will be no multitudes forming worker's councils on the basis of demanding fewer consumer goods. On the contrary, if ever the workers are denied these things, they rise up. They will forthrightly turn power over to the bourgeoisie if they are offered a chance at consumerism, and have done so repeatedly - that is the bald, ugly truth.