The New Dark Age

17 August, 2009 — Socialist Voice

Book Review. The Global Fight for Climate Justice: Anticapitalist Responses to Global Warming and Environmental Destruction. edited by Ian Angus. Resistance Books, London, 2009. 284 pages. C$20/US$18/£10

Reviewed by Jeff White

The fight for climate justice, as that phrase is used in the title of this new anthology, comprises struggles around a compendium of related environmental and social issues. All of these struggles arise out of capitalism’s relentless assault on the natural resources of our planet and its exploitative systems of production and world trade.

The worldwide character of the growing environmental movement is reflected in the diverse list of contributors to the book. Australia and the U.K., with active climate justice movements, are well represented here, along with writers from France, Belgium, South Africa, USA, Canada, and Latin America. Several of these 46 works have been translated from other languages and appear in English for the first time in this volume.

Many of the articles, speeches, interviews and essays provide comprehensive descriptions and analyses of how capitalism has brought humanity to the brink of ecological destruction. Many also provide useful and practical perspectives for advancing the struggle further in an anticapitalist direction. Most of the book’s contributors write or speak from an ecosocialist perspective.

A struggle for ‘humanity and the planet’

The ‘Global South,’ where imperialism and neoliberal restructuring schemes have had their most devastating effects on the land and the people, is in the forefront of activism around climate change and social justice. This book quite fittingly reflects that reality. A section entitled ‘Voices From the Global South’ presents the anticapitalist analysis and experience of some of the organized peasant and indigenous movements in South America and elsewhere who have been fighting for climate justice.

Peruvian Marxist and peasant leader Hugo Blanco calls for a return to the values and principles of indigenous culture and collectivist production modes. Evo Morales, the indigenous president of Bolivia, responds directly to the climate change crisis in a series of short statements that explicitly name the capitalist economic system, its wars, and its globalized financial and market systems as the culprits. He calls for an international movement to ‘defend life, defend humanity, and save the earth.’ Putting an end to the capitalist system is the first of his ‘Ten Commandments to Save the Earth’.

The April 2009 declaration issued by Bolivia, Cuba, Venezuela and the other member countries of the ALBA alliance at the Summit of the Americas appears in the book. ‘Capitalism is destroying humanity and the planet,’ it says. Here is its summary of ALBA’s alternative to capitalist destruction:

The global economic, climate change, food and energy crises are products of the decadence of capitalism that threatens to put an end to the existence of life and the planet. To avoid this outcome it is necessary to develop an alternative model to that of the capitalist system.

• A system based on solidarity and complementarity and not competition.
• A system in harmony with our Mother Earth, rather than one that loots our natural resources.
• A system based on cultural diversity and not the crushing of cultures and impositions of cultural values and lifestyles alien to the realities of our countries.
• A system of peace based on social justice and not on imperialist wars and policies.

In short, a system that restores the human condition of our societies and peoples, rather than reducing them to simple consumers or commodities.

It’s a remarkable declaration, coming from a group of countries almost all of which are themselves essentially capitalist. This has to be seen as a reflection of the profound internal divisions and contradictions within these countries as they fight to free themselves from the destructive legacy of imperialist exploitation and neoliberal trade policies.

The Cuban revolution, which has led the way for the whole world in sustainable agriculture and other production, is represented in two brief messages by Fidel Castro – remarkably prescient addresses given 17 years ago at the Rio Earth Summit and 13 years ago at the World Food Summit in Rome – and two recent (2008) addresses by vice-presidents of the Cuban Council of State, placing the crisis of rising food prices in the context of neoliberal trade policies and calling for structural changes to the world’s food production system.

Exposing capitalism’s ecological bankruptcy

The book provides useful material to help activists counter reformist ‘greenwashing’ policies and other false solutions. Joel Kovel provides a critique of ‘green economics’, as failing to contemplate the need to overthrow the rule of capital, while Sean Thompson extends this analysis to the capitalist response to the current financial crisis. Simon Butler demolishes the myth that ‘overpopulation’ is a primary cause of environmental destruction. Nicole Colson looks at the production of ‘biofuels’ and their negative impact on the world’s food supply, and concludes that they are no solution to global warming and the addiction to oil. John Bellamy Foster explains why there are no quick technological fixes that will allow capitalism to continue with business as usual.

Capitalism’s attempt to apply market solutions to arrest climate change – by turning carbon into a tradeable commodity – is the subject of several articles in Part 5, which is entitled ‘Privatizing the Atmosphere.’

Trade unionist Tony Kearns calls for labour activists to push their unions to take up environmental causes. Liam Mac Uaid provides a bullet-point list of ecosocialist demands that should provide plenty of strategic inspiration for activists. And I’ve only mentioned about half of the contributors to this book.

In my opinion, the best part of the book is saved for last. The final 46 pages consist of a remarkable piece by Belgian ecosocialist Daniel Tanuro. Written in the form of forty theses, it draws together all the threads of ecosocialism into a coherent theoretical framework.

Ecosocialism: red is the new green

Tanuro begins by analyzing the ecological crisis as a global crisis of civilization itself, emphasizing the extreme urgency of climate change in particular. Locating the source of the crisis in capitalist modes of production, he reviews some of the futile and harmful responses thrown up by bourgeois governments – carbon emissions trading, nuclear power generation, agrofuel production, imposition of austerity measures and restriction of rights, etc. – and emphasizes the need for structural solutions that are absolutely inconsistent with the perpetuation of capitalist economic relations.

What Tanuro calls the ‘energy question’ is, he says, central to the fundamental and necessary transition from capitalism to ‘solar communism’ – a society free from fossil energy. This transition will be impossible without the active participation of the productive classes. Tanuro projects the building of a broad movement based on mass mobilization around specific demands that link environmental struggles with issues of war, poverty, women’s rights, agrarian reform, water rights, food security, unemployment, aboriginal rights, globalization, health, and other social justice concerns.

Of particular interest is his reaffirmation of the usefulness of ‘single issue campaigns’ to build mass mobilizations, on the model of the anti-war movements. I also like the way Tanuro proposes taking advantage of the legitimacy of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to ‘force governments to accept, at a minimum, the IPCC’s most prudent recommendations’ for emissions reductions, even though those recommendations are based on optimistic and conservative assumptions about the urgency of the climate crisis, and will probably turn out to be inadequate.

Tanuro draws a balance sheet on the ecological insights of Marx and the ecological shortcomings of the Marxist movements of the 20th century, concluding that ‘the integration of socialism and ecology is a fundamental precondition for the restoration of Marxism’s revolutionary vitality,’ and calling for a ‘cultural revolution’ within the socialist movement. Socialists of the 21st century, he says, must be ecosocialists. Tanuro’s theses provide the perspective needed for the movement to formulate demands around ecological and social justice issues that challenge the rule of capital and point the way to a new society in harmony with nature.

Canadian ecosocialist activist/writer Ian Angus has done a fine job of selecting and presenting the contents of this anthology, as well as writing and translating several of the items himself. He combines current and historical material from around the world, both theoretical and practical, and all of it is highly readable. The book fills a real need in the small but growing corpus of ecosocialist literature in English, by taking anticapitalist environmentalism out of academia and into the streets.

It’s an important book, written by and for climate justice activists. I know I will be using it as a resource for years to come.

More about The Global Fight for Climate Justice, including two sample chapters and purchasing information, can be found on Reading from the Left.