Can the elites be forced to act? Replies to Roy Wilkes
Comments on socialistresistance.org2020sThree comments by Alan in the thread under “Ecosocialism: the strategic debate” on socialistresistance.org.
The publication's own web text.
Editor's note. Posted under “Ecosocialism: the strategic debate” (October 2020), which argued that since “you can't build socialism on a dead planet”, the elites must be forced to make major structural changes while capitalism still exists. Roy Wilkes called that strategy flawed: such demands are not achievable under capitalism, and winning a few years' breathing space within it would be harder than “fundamental systemic change”. Consciousness, he wrote, “shifts in leaps and ruptures”.
18 October 2020
Roy argues that it is utopian to believe that environmental reforms of any significance are achievable under capitalism. He also argues (remarkably) that such reforms would, in any case, be harder to achieve than the expropriation capitalism world-wide by revolutionary means! He puts it this way: “gaining a few years breathing space within a global capitalist economy would prove to be harder than securing the outcome that the article writes off as unrealistic – fundamental systemic change”.
This reflects the view, which he is far from alone in holding, is that global socialist/ecosocialist revolution is indeed just around the corner, and one more heave will get us there.
The SR article, he says, “sees system change within a short time frame as unrealistic because it is so far removed from existing social consciousness. But consciousness doesn’t change gradually and in predetermined stages. It shifts in leaps and ruptures. As the crisis of humanity deepens – which it will do, in the near future, very dramatically, consciousness will also change, although how it changes is an open question.”
Consciousness does indeed shift in leaps and ruptures. There are, however, huge dangers in such an approach – which snooker players call ‘hit and hope’. This is reflected in the final phrase of the sentence “although how it changes is an open question.” In other words it is just as likely to shift to the right as to the left – more likely to the right in reality since the right feeds on chaos.
Many environmentalists have rightly concluded we are facing a major societal breakdown, or series of such breakdowns, by mid-century or earlier, triggered by a generalised collapse of ecosystems, if global warming and environmental degradation is not reversed. If by then the left and progressive forces have not established a strong record in defending the planet and have not popularised the progressive measures that will be needed to do so, the initiative will swing naturally to the right.
Nor is it true, by the way, as the article argues, that capitalism will never act to save the planet however critical the crisis becomes. In the end they will act rather than go down with it. They will, however, leave it until it is far too late and will carry it out by dictatorial means and at the expense of the most impoverished and exploited people on the planet. As the article puts it “the struggle to save the planet can be defined more precisely as a struggle to save the planet in a way that is democratic, socially progressive, and ecologically sustainable”.
Editor's note. Roy replied that reasoned argument, local direct action and mass climate demonstrations had all failed to move the ruling class, and that “focusing on the defensive struggle to prevent ecological catastrophe does not raise consciousness sufficiently”: what was needed was a positive vision of a different way of life.
20 October 2020
Roy says: “Focusing on the defensive struggle to prevent ecological catastrophe does not raise consciousness sufficiently, as we know from experience.” Counterpoising engagement in the day-to-day struggle to defend the planet with to struggle to raise either popular consciousness or eco-socialist consciousness, however, does not make sense. One flows from the other.
Nor is it true that the elites are incapable of making changes, or indeed that they cannot be forced to do so. Numerous governments have, as I have mentioned, pulled the plug on the internal combustion engine(ICE) – the biggest single driver of fossil capitalism in the 20 century – which will be now be gone within 10 or 15 years. This major development is partly as a result of pressure from the environmental movement that has long exposed its impact on global warming, but also (mainly) because of the impact of the ICE on the global megacities it is constructing – which are getting even more mega all the time. On the one hand nitrogen oxide emissions (amongst many other emissions) are killing ever more people, and on the other in many such cities you can’t see to the other side of the street for most of the year. With the ICE they are simply not viable.
Editor's note. Roy answered that the European Automobile Manufacturers Association said “the internal combustion engine is not going away”, and that the problem was the car itself, not only its engine.
24 October 2020
Roy’s faith in the European Automobile Manufacturers Association is seriously problematic. Automotive manufacture is a global business and there can be no half measures as to which way it goes in this. This process (the end of the ICE) is now in my view unstoppable. It takes up to 10 years to develop a new model and once a question mark is put over the future of the ICE the rush to dominate EV market opened up. It is a logic that is beyond the industry itself to control. Ever since a date was mentioned in terms of the end of the ICE, the rush to EVs has been remarkable. Every manufacturer is rushing them out, and there is massive investment taking place to improve battery efficiency – with China a long way out in front. In my view the time scale for all this is likely to shorten rather than lengthen, particularly once the value of ICE vehicles starts to drop against EVs