Is Solidarity collapsing into XR?

I am alarmed that Solidarity’s ecological politics is collapsing into a callow regurgitation of Extinction Rebellion and its offshoots.

First, Stuart Jordan continues his quest for natural laws leading us toward a nightmarish dystopia. Last month he suggested we’re all doomed by entropy, or at least not getting far by recycling materials. Next the Jevons paradox, casting doubt on the use of renewable energy such as wind turbines and solar power. Without renewables and recycling, few modern alternatives are left to fossil-driven capitalism, never mind for socialism.

Second, the paper carries another plaint by Zack Muddle, justified by the spread of diseases, to demand “we must seek to phase out almost all animal production, and limit wildlife trafficking and consumption”. Aside from erroneous assumptions about farming, this is a call for the bourgeois state to impose veganism as the only means of subsistence, irrespective of the tastes of billions of workers and peasants across the globe.

Both Jordan and Muddle share some common traits.

First, they share a deep-seated fatalistic determinism by all-powerful, trans-historical forces — overexaggerating natural laws and what they regard as the drives of capitalism. Marxist class analysis is glaringly absent.

Second, they diminish the necessary emphasis on human agency, through science, technology and centrally — working class action, which are at the heart of the socialist project.

Third, they end up with reactionary politics. Their demands do not mobilise workers to fight to improve their situation. Both effectively advocate reductions to working class living standards in the name of saving the planet. Their proposals have more than a whiff of authoritarianism.

Perhaps both claim they are speculating about the programme of a future workers’ government, to make socialism more ecological. They need to take a reality-check. There won’t be socialism without a self-confident mass working class movement, built around demands by workers to make their own lives better.

Of course any burgeoning labour movement has to put ecology at the heart of its politics. Socialists can play a useful role propagating for this. But it is not our job to uncritically promote liberal green austerity for our class. Socialists want class-conscious workers to fight for their own universal interests. Workers won’t fight for socialism if it means self-immiseration.

Paul Vernadsky, London

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“Callow regurgitation”?

Paul Vernadsky clearly doesn’t recognise some basic ideas of Marxist ecology. If he did he would understand that it’s not XR that informs my writing, but the work of John Bellamy Foster, Paul Burkett and their co-thinkers - Marxists who Paul has promoted for over a decade (but seemingly without much grip on what they are actually saying).

Paul suggests I’m against renewable energy and recycling. Not so. I’ve merely argued - following Burkett et al - that there are limits to what capitalist societies are willing to recycle and limits to the extent that renewables under capitalism can yield ecological benefits. In fact I’ve described those limits quite precisely in terms of Marx labour theory of value and Marx own observations in Capital. I’ve further shown, week in, week out, how this theory makes sense of the empirical evidence. Paul should read the words I’ve written. This analysis of the inherent wastefulness of capitalism isn’t doom mongering. It’s the basis for hope that working class living standards could be maintained and even improved with a planned economy, even in a ecologically degraded world.

As for the question of human agency, I’ve both explained why capitalism means ever growing material throughput (Jevons) and why this drives ever escalating ecological crises (entropy law), and what workers can do about it. I’ve advocated worker-led slowdowns and universal basic services, i.e. a slowdown in economic life *without* negatively impacting on working class living standards. This is a generalised version of the common Marxist demand for a shorter working week for no loss of pay.

Paul does not recognise my description of the problem, does not recognise the Marxist theory and does not support my proposed solutions. But that’s a problem of his perception and I suspect a hangover from the productivist illusions of 20th century socialism.

His wild extrapolation and straw manning should not distract from the fact Paul has neither attempted offer an alternative picture of reality nor a programme for working class action. It’s incumbent on him to explain how his alternative (whatever it is - unending growth plus techno fixes?) is compatible with either a programme of working class action or halting escalating ecocide.