Debate: should we ally with 'green' capitalists? No.
You can read the Introduction to the debate here
Article originally published in Issue 3 of Rupture, Ireland’s eco-socialist quarterly, buy the print issue:
On the left at least, everyone now acknowledges the urgency of the climate crisis. We’ve heard the terrifying statistics, the potential for unstoppable feedback effects once tipping points are reached. We’ve felt it on our faces and in our bones during unseasonably hot spring days and the midsts of tropical-seeming torrents of rain. We know there’s no time to waste and we only get one shot. There won’t be time for trial and error of different strategies so we’ve got to get this right the first time.
A key strategic question is whether socialists should support reforms brought about by “green capitalists” and so, in a sense, ally tactically with green capital, for instance to build renewable energy infrastructure, which will cost billions of euro and must be “baked in” as early as possible to avert climate disaster. Or would this be a short-sighted, ultimately self-defeating strategy that sells out our long term goals for apparent short term gains?
Writing as a member of a revolutionary socialist group, it’s maybe obvious what my answer will be! But I hope to explain why and also to sketch out an alternative revolutionary eco-socialist strategy rooted in building alliances, not with sections of the capitalist class, but among all those subordinated and oppressed by capitalism, armed with the vast potential power of the working class to transform our world.
Why we shouldn’t compromise with “green” capital
Part of the problem is that “green capital” either doesn’t exist or is too small to stop climate change. Smaller, more ethical companies get out-competed because they are less efficient at externalising costs, or else get bought out or ripped off by big capital. A minor example is the takeover of the Body Shop by L’Oreal, a global conglomerate that still tests on animals. Another is BP, rebranding itself as “Beyond Petroleum'' while continuing to make the vast majority of its profits from oil and gas. Even if a “green” company manages to maintain its corporate independence, who are its investors? Overwhelmingly, the same hedge funds, finance capital and wealthy individuals that drive investment in fossil fuels and all the other unsustainable capitalist practices wrecking our planet. Under financialised late capitalism, stocks are held for an average of only 22 seconds before being traded!1
All this means that “green business”, like other forms of “ethical consumption”, remains confined to a market niche within fossil-capitalism-as-usual. The “unethical” mother company, or dominant “non-green” capital, generates the smaller market for its “ethical” opposite. Rampant destruction of the climate by industrial capitalism is what created the market for renewable energy in the first place. The idea that small green projects can be sufficiently scaled up under capitalism to stop climate change is a variety of utopian socialism that remains as “necessarily doomed to failure” as Marx and Engels predicted in the Communist Manifesto in 1848. Replicating them 100 or 1000 or 10,000 times won’t make any noticeable difference to global warming.
“Green'' capital also remains fundamentally exploitative. Like every other kind of capital, its existence depends on exploiting workers and natural resources. Companies that pride themselves on their ethics not only exploit their workers in the Marxist sense of paying them less than the value of the goods and services they produce in order to make profits, but are continually driven towards super-exploitation to survive in the marketplace. Another well-known “ethical” cosmetics company, Lush, paid its workers less than the legal minimum wage for eight years while forcing them to lift up to 500kg a day 2. A more egregious example is the mining and recycling of copper, lithium, and cobalt used in wind turbines, solar cells and batteries. “Widespread child labor”, “subjugation of ethnic minorities, toxic pollution, biodiversity loss, and gender inequality” exist “along the length of the supply chain”, from mines in the Congo to e-waste scrapyards in Ghana 3.
Beyond this, capitalism by its nature is really bad at anything that requires coordinated planning - such as decarbonising the entire global economy. Its central drive is short-term profit-making, meaning it’s anarchic and myopic. To get capitalists to sign up to any plan requires incentivising and convincing them that it’s the most profitable thing they can do with their money in the short term. Otherwise, they just won’t be interested.
Renewable energy has been talked about for decades, yet as Jonathan Neale explains, investment in renewable infrastructure has stalled:
‘After 30 years of effort all over the world, wind and solar provide less than 2% of global energy. We have given the market in renewables decades to work, and it has not.’ 4
Even in the EU, the proposed target under the European Green Deal is to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. 30 years is far too slow when the tipping point for dangerous warming over 1.5C could be reached in the next six 5. Capitalists will keep pumping out fossil fuels while the planet burns simply because it’s more profitable in the short term.
If incremental green reforms of capitalism have brought us to the gates of hell, eco-fascism is waiting in the wings to usher us in. We already know what this might look like. Climate refugees left to starve in endless camps or drown in the seas. Authoritarian population control measures. Dystopian geo-engineering projects and genetically modified frankenfoods. Crippling carbon taxes. Limits on travel and personal freedoms. The end of any prospect of meaningful growth in living standards for poor countries.
Capitalist “solutions” will always seek to externalise the costs of climate change onto humanity and nature in order to maximise profits (see box) and force us to pay the price for the (likely short term) survival of their system. A cosseted elite might survive the destruction brought on by climate disruption for a time but conditions ripe for revolution amongst the rubble would be created. Far better to prepare now than try to build socialism from barbarism later.
Marx depicted capital as coming “into the world...dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt”6. From the beginning, capitalism has been fundamentally incompatible with protecting nature, including human beings. It emerged historically from a process Marx called “primitive accumulation”, involving the plunder of land and natural resources previously held in common. Marxist geographer, David Harvey, explains how this process of “accumulation by dispossession”7 wasn't a one-off but continues today through ongoing processes of privatisation and financialisation - now of public services as well as the environment.
The classic historical example is the enclosure or privatisation of the commons by large landowners from the 14th to the 19th centuries, dispossessing millions of peasants and driving them off the land and into the cities. John Bellamy Foster8 coined the term “metabolic rift” to describe the resulting dual alienation of humanity from nature and their own labour, transforming them from direct producers, who had laboured in relative harmony with nature and consumed what they produced, into propertyless wage workers forced to sell their labour as a commodity to survive.
The immediate ecological problems this presented were soil degradation and urban pollution, arising from the spatial displacement of production and consumption. Nutrients extracted from the soil in producing food were no longer returned to it through manure but instead polluted faraway cities with sewage. In volume 1 of Capital, Marx portrayed these negative environmental externalities as inherent characteristics of capitalism that could not be resolved through technological fixes:
“...Capitalist production… disturbs the metabolic interaction between man and the earth… All progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time is progress towards ruining the more long-lasting sources of that fertility…Capitalist production, therefore, only develops the technique and the degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth—the soil and the worker.”Such fundamental contradictions between capitalism and nature clearly have a much wider relevance, revealing capitalism itself as the source of environmental crisis. The most urgent is climate change - the ultimate metabolic rift between humanity and nature, at once temporal9 and spatial.
Andreas Malm’s groundbreaking work Fossil Capital explains how from the days of steam power onwards, fossil fuels have been the midwife of capitalism, supplying an easily portable “stock” of fuel that enabled capitalists to locate production wherever labour and natural resources were cheapest and easiest to exploit while incrementally destroying the basis of human life as we know it.
Like a virus, capital’s only concern is to multiply itself exponentially by consuming life, regardless of the human or environmental cost. Its ceaseless drive towards infinite growth within a finite system has brought global resource use to twice the sustainable level yet 60% of the world lacks access to basic goods10.
Disastrous over-accumulation and colossal waste on the one hand and immiseration on the other is inevitable when a class psychopathically oriented towards “surplus extraction, elite accumulation, and reinvestment for expansion – not meeting human needs”11 remains in the driving seat. Rather than allying or compromising with them, we need to take the steering wheel off them and give it to the global working class.
So what should we do?
How do we maximise support for eco-socialist ideas and organise for a rupture with capitalism in the next 10-20 years before so much warming is baked into the system that large swathes of the planet become uninhabitable?
The first bit of good news is that, as revolutionary socialists, seeking to radically transform society rapidly rather than through incremental reform, the evidence of history is on our side. All the really major changes of the last few centuries have originated from mass movements with transformative goals rather than careful consensus-building and compromise with powerful elites. In the 20th century, the welfare state and legal equality for women were conceded in response to powerful mass movements and competition from the Eastern bloc. Future transformations will also occur because the ruling class are afraid of their lives and not because we’ve built consensus with their more forward looking parts.
The second good news for our revolutionary socialist strategy is that we have a massive, readily identifiable potential support base in the form of the multi-racial, multi-gendered global working class. Its interests are fundamentally in conflict with capitalism, whether green or not and it possesses the collective power to overturn the economic basis of capitalism through withdrawing labour from the bosses and democratically organising production ourselves. Key to awakening this unconscious giant will be uniting existing movements for environmental, economic and social justice around a shared eco-socialist programme.
As a tiny organisation, RISE can’t claim to have all the answers. However, since our inception we have sought to develop a number of key strategic and organisational ideas from the revolutionary Marxist tradition that we hope can assist in achieving these monumental goals. They include united front and transitional methods, as well as democratic revolutionary organisation.
Uniting Movements
In ‘On the United Front’ in 1922, Trotsky argued that “the Communist Party must base itself on the overwhelming majority of the working class. So long as it does not hold this majority, the party must fight to win it”. 12 Central to achieving this was for revolutionary socialists to join in common struggles with workers and organisations to their right to win reforms, raise class consciousness and confidence, and popularise revolutionary ideas as superior to the limited approach of reformist movement leaders.
RISE believes such united front methods will be crucial to uniting the multi-racial, multi-gendered global working class in the struggle for eco-socialism. Nowadays, given the low level of class consciousness and organisation, this will involve building broad coalitions, not only with clearly working class movements like trade unions and far left parties, but also with progressive social movements of a cross-class character, like the environmental, women’s and anti-racist movements.
Often, the radical wings of these movements are at least “tendentially anti-capitalist”13 but their leadership is oriented towards compromise with ruling elites and dominated by upper middle class professionals such as doctors, lawyers, architects and academics. Gramsci, conceptualised these as “traditional intellectuals”, “whose function...is that of mediating the extremes...of devising compromises between, and ways out of, extreme solutions” 14 and manufacturing consent to the continuing hegemony of the capitalist class and capitalist state as the leading, dominant force in society.15
In the context of climate change, united front methods would mean joining in common struggles with the supporters of environmental and other movements, while exposing the limitations of their reformist and pro-capitalist leaders’ tactics and dominant ideologies. The goal is to “win a majority” for eco-socialist ideas that identify the interests of these movements with those of the global working class in all its diversity, placing us - not capitalists - in the driving seat.
The alternative approach of seeking out ostensibly progressive sections of capital such as “green capital” to ally with would in practice mean subordinating the needs and interests of working class people and ceding leadership to the 1% who represent a system inextricably rooted in environmental destruction. That’s the fundamental distinction between a “popular” and a “united” front.
Whereas united front methods recognise, to quote Trotsky again, that “absolutely independent organization” is essential if we are not to lose sight of our socialist destination, proponents of popular front approaches fail to grapple with the impossibility of eco-socialists “leading” a capitalist class whose whole existence depends on the continued exploitation of workers and the planet - especially with a decade or less to spare!
Demanding the Transition
The second core element of Trotsky’s strategy for winning a majority for socialism - and that of the Comintern in the 1920s before Stalin dominated it completely - was the “transitional programme”.16 This aims to mobilise mass support for a socialist transformation by combining struggles for “partial” reforms achievable in the here and now with demands for “transitional” measures that seem reasonable and necessary but seriously challenge the logic of capitalism and point towards workers’ democratic control. The idea is to draw in the maximum number of working class and poor people into a movement, helping to simultaneously build class consciousness and confidence through successfully struggling for “partial” and transitional demands and to direct those energies towards socialism.
In the context of the climate struggle, global eco-socialism, what some would call a “maximum” demand, is our aim. Partial demands include many of the reforms suggested in RISE’s socialist Green New Deal, like a green jobs programme and a four-day week.17 A transitional demand is for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 - which is also one of the three main demands of Extinction Rebellion - with democratic committees set up in communities and workplaces to plan and oversee the transition.18 Given the huge costs this would entail not just for the fossil fuel industry but the capitalist class as a whole and the level of mass coordinated planning it would require, net-zero by 2030 poses a fundamental challenge to capitalist private property and power but is vital if we are to hold global warming to manageable levels. It points to workers and farmers needing to take control as capitalists will drag their feet, and illustrates how transitional demands can emerge organically from movements - precisely because capitalism is a system that conflicts so fundamentally with humanity and nature.
Mass support for democratic demands can also help shatter illusions in capitalism and capitalist institutions. A good example was Trotsky’s critical support for the Ludlow amendment 19, which would have amended the US constitution to outlaw non-self-defensive wars unless pre-approved by a referendum. In other words, it proposed that the people decide whether to declare war, not the capitalist state. Trotsky knew this would be impossible without overthrowing the imperialist US state, but argued there was a ‘creative illusion’ in the demand that the people decide war policy. Supporters of the Ludlow amendment would come into collision with a state that claimed to be based on democracy, thereby raising awareness of the need to go beyond the current system to win even this reasonable reform. Mass realisation of the necessity for socialist transformation was therefore best achieved through the lived experience of struggling for radical demands like these.
Analogies can be drawn today with Extinction Rebellion UK’s demand for a Citizens’ Assembly on Climate and Ecological Justice 20 , the Climate Strike demand for “system change, not climate change” and the eco-socialist rhetoric of left Greens. Right now, it’s not widely recognised in the environmental movement how many of its demands actually require overthrowing capitalism but the ‘creative illusion’ they don't can motivate people into struggle while also demonstrating the nascent radicalism of the movement.
Democratic revolutionary organisation
The third and final strand in RISE’s strategy for eco-socialist transformation is democratic revolutionary organisation. For us, this applies all the way down and all the way up - within social movements, broad left formations, inside revolutionary organisations and as the basis of a future eco-socialist society where decisions are taken via participatory economic democracy, both in individual workplaces and through democratic public ownership of the key sections of the economy such as energy and finance 21. Any strategy of compromise with green capital would mean the complete opposite. Allying with capitalists can never be democratic due to their overwhelming power and influence over the political system and dictatorship within the workplace. In stark contrast, for revolutionaries, democracy is essential - not only to enable the ideas and talents of every activist to be harnessed to the full and prevent unaccountable leaderships from emerging - but to begin the fundamental task of planning for a just transition out of fossilised capitalism and towards a sustainable eco-socialist future.
Notes
Turbeville, Wallace. ‘Gone In 22 Seconds: How Frequent Is High Frequency Trading?’ The American Prospect, 11 March 2013. https://prospect.org/api/content/f9078354-bef3-5378-8ab7-dc88647db418/.
Zimmer, Carl-Johan Karlsson, Katarina. ‘Green Energy’s Dirty Side Effects’. Foreign Policy, 18 June 2020. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/18/green-energy-dirty-side-effects-renewable-transition-climate-change-cobalt-mining-human-rights-inequality/
Neale, Jonathan. ‘RENEWABLES AND THE MARKET’. Global Ecosocialist Network (blog), 16 February 2021. http://www.globalecosocialistnetwork.net/2021/02/16/renewables-and-the-market/
Cardenas, Shirley. ‘Earth Could Cross the Global Warming Threshold as Soon as 2027’. World Economic Forum, 7 January 2021. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/01/global-warming-threshold-reached-by-2027/.
Marx, Karl. ‘Capital Vol. I - Chapter Thirty-One: : Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist’. marxists.org, 1867. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch31.htm.
Harvey, David. ‘The “New” Imperialism: Accumulation by Dispossession’. Socialist Register 40 (2004). https://socialistregister.com/index.php/srv/article/view/5811.
Bellamy Foster, John. Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature. NYU Press, 2000.
Malm, Andreas. Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam-Power and the Roots of Global Warming. Illustrated edition. London ; New York: Verso Books, 2015, Chapter 1.
HIckel, Jason. ‘Degrowth: A Response to Branko Milanovic’. Jason Hickel, 27 October 2020. https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2017/11/19/why-branko-milanovic-is-wrong-about-de-growth.
HIckel, Jason. ‘Degrowth: A Response to Branko Milanovic’. Jason Hickel, 27 October 2020. https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2017/11/19/why-branko-milanovic-is-wrong-about-de-growth.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1924/ffyci-2/08.htm
Arruzza, Cinzia. ‘From Women’s Strikes to a New Class Movement: The Third Feminist Wave’. Viewpoint Magazine, 3 December 2018.
Gramsci in Forgacs, David, and Eric J. Hobsbawm, eds. The Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916-1935. New York: New York University Press, 2000, p. 206.
Forgacs, David, and Eric J. Hobsbawm, eds. The Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916-1935. New York: New York University Press, 2000, p. 300.
O’Dwyer, Diana. ‘We Want to Live, Not Just Exist - The Case for a Socialist Green New Deal’. RISE, 19 August 2020. https://www.letusrise.ie/rupture-articles/the-case-for-a-socialist-green-new-deal.
https://extinctionrebellion.uk/go-beyond-politics/citizens-assembly/
See here under “We own it, we control it” and “Economic Democracy”: https://www.letusrise.ie/rupture-articles/the-case-for-a-socialist-green-new-deal.