Letter: "One solution, revolution?"

Stuart Jordan’s article A drastic tipping point may be close (Solidarity 766) is a much needed wake-up call that climate change is not linear and there are tipping points that can lead to much more catastrophic and rapid climate change. In this case, the collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).

However I find the response that Stuart outlines to this is not the call for action our movement needs and has a danger of breeding paralysing fear.

Stuart writes “we can have no hope of avoiding these tipping points so long as the earth's natural resources and all our heavy machinery is owned as private property and exploited for profit. Social control of the means of production is the only way to avoid catastrophe and the only way to minimise the suffering of the catastrophes that are already locked in”.

On a whole number of questions including climate change Workers Liberty has always rejected an approach of “one solution revolution”, instead taking our lead from Lenin, Trotsky and Gramsci that an active intervention (and victories) in political struggles are vital in transforming working class consciousness into a ‘class for itself’ in full knowledge of its own power and historical role.

Yet the above paragraph doesn’t just suggest the only solution in the long term is the overthrow of the capital and the institution of a co-operative commonwealth on a global scale. It also suggests that only the global proletarian revolution against the rule of profit can address the specifics of climate tipping points, and even the amelioration of suffering caused by this climate change.

Is this true in terms of the immediate tipping points, or ameliorating suffering? Probably not. If tomorrow the EU, other developed countries like the UK, Canada, Australia, and the ruling oligarchy of China, decided on a crash course of decarbonisation of their economies they could succeed. The technology and the political levers for this to a large part exist already under capitalism. Such a move would have an effect on man-made climate change and reduce the risk, and delay the hitting of some key climate tipping points.

Capitalist governments under massive pressure from below could  ameliorate much of the suffering caused by rising sea levels and climate heating, even if they do it in a partial and unjust way. No doubt they would find a way to make this profitable to the capitalist class and use this to find new frontiers for exploitation.

Obviously none of this would resolve the fundamental contradiction between the rapacious and anarchic accumulation for private profit demanded by capitalism and the rhythms of natural reproduction and ecological renewal.

However it does show that socialists should be organising the labour movement around demands on governments to take action. Obviously our labour movement internationally or in the UK is not in a fit state to do this or take the fight to the government. But all the more reason to fight for renewal and for a fighting class-struggle socialist leadership. Without such leadership the vacuum will only be filled by neoliberal or far right "solutions" once the water starts lapping at enough people’s ankles that it cannot be ignored.

Stuart goes on to correctly say “through organisation and solidarity the international working class has the strength and interest to put an end to this madness [the madness of capitalist ecological destruction]”. He then goes on to point out the importance of social control of the means of production.

Stuart ends the article by saying “The first step to winning social control is to orient the workers' movement to this alarming new reality and win the argument for the ecological necessity of socialism”.

In the general sense this is true, but class consciousness does not develop in linear fashion. The workplace is a privileged zone of struggle because that is where workers can feel and see their exploitation most directly. It’s also where we can see and apply our potential strength most directly. Winning “social control” of the means of production will most likely come about through workers winning power in their own workplaces.

To win the argument over the necessity of socialism you don’t just need to persuade our fellow workers of the intellectual need for socialism but that they have the social, political and economic power in their hands, as in the lyrics of Solidarity Forever “without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn”.

We should tell people if they want to take action on climate change, it’s not enough to be convinced of the necessity of overthrowing capitalism. We must also convince them to get active and organising in their unions and workplaces to build working-class power and in a revolutionary socialist organisation trying to build a class struggle climate movement.