Written by W.T.
Whitney and first published at People’s World
Humans may not
survive. Reports from the UN’s Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change
provoke images of land masses drowning, fleeing populations, starvation,
terrible droughts, terrible storms, migrating diseases, new deserts, and
intolerable heat. It’s an “ecological
Armageddon,” says one expert. We hear about “the sixth extinction,”
the geologic epoch that is our own. It’s called the “Anthropocene.” The name
suggests human activity and human responsibility.
It’s bad enough
to imagine blame and scenarios of dread, as if from science fiction, but add in
the presently feeble response to dire threats and we’re in a funk. If tools
were available, we’d get a lift. Marc Brodine’s book Green Strategy, reviewed
here, is about tools.
It’s about capitalism
too. For Brodine, that’s “the root cause of most of the environmental problems
we face, and is also the biggest obstacle in finding real solutions.” Those
problems stem from “wide-ranging imbalances between the ways that humanity
impacts nature and the limits of the resources that nature is able to provide.”
For Brodine, environmental abuse manifests as climate change and also vanishing
fresh water, toxins and pollutants on land and in the sea, ocean acidification,
deforestation, topsoil losses, decreasing soil fertility, disappearing species,
and the spread of infectious diseases.
Brodine
apparently regards scientist and environmental activist Barry Commoner as a
mentor. In 1997, Commoner attributed the environmental crisis to “our systems
of production—in industry, agriculture, energy, and transportation.” That year,
he predicted “global human catastrophes:
higher temperatures [and] the seas rising to flood many of the world’s cities.”
Ever-expanding
production is the hallmark of capitalism, and the role of capitalism in causing
environmental devastation is under the microscope. “[T]his new ecological stage was
connected to the rise, earlier in the century, of monopoly capitalism,” Monthly
Review editor John Bellamy Foster claimed in 1994. Judgment as to who
is responsible for global warming turns to the association of production,
fossil fuel, and emissions as the “smoking gun.”
Knowledge of
cause might have brought about strategizing. That hasn’t happened. Naomi Klein
in her 2016 book This Changes Everything blamed capitalism for
disturbing the climate, but limited her remedial proposals to civil
disobedience and lifestyle alterations.
Now the Green
New Deal surfaces in response to the environmental challenge. Separate
proposals sponsored by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others, and by Sen.
Bernie Sanders, contain what Foster calls “revolutionary
reforms.” In his opinion and that of Naomi Klein,
whose views have evolved, these reforms could lead to transformational changes.
What’s needed, says Foster, is “a mass mobilization of the entire society.”
Neither Green
New Deal proponents nor commentators have explained how that might happen. How
to launch education, organization, and unified action is left for another day.
The Labor Network for
Sustainability, The Atlantic magazine,
the People’s Policy
Project, and Resilience instead
focus on feasibilities or on the availability of resources. The Nation magazine
calls for mobilization, but offers little more.
Marc
Brodine’s Green Strategy fills
the void. The book is about developing political will, specifically about
creating a movement “capable of building the political power to implement
fundamental change.” Brodine envisions a giant coalition in which political
struggle for nature would merge with other struggles.
Or more
precisely: “A massive movement is needed, worldwide in scope, to fight
defensive battles against environmental degradation and exploitative
development. Then the movement can proceed to fight for long-term fundamental
transformation of our economies.”
The object is “broad-based unity to reach and
organize millions of people.”
His book
discusses context, science, philosophical underpinnings, environmental
organizations, past political movements, mass protests, and socialism. Facts,
observations, verdicts, and proposals fill a book larger by far in content than
in physical size.
Brodine calls
for defenders of the environment to organize politically and make linkages in
many directions to build “political force.” He envisions alliances with
“struggles for peace, justice, equality, health care, immigrant rights.” People
will be “gaining strength from each other” from a “network of mutuality,” an
expression of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Coalition-building
will be reciprocal: “All progressive struggles have an environmental component,
and successful alliances have been built…uniting environmental concerns with
economic ones.” Environmental struggles will join with peace and justice
movements throughout the world.
In his survey
of U.S. movements for civil rights and labor rights, for ending apartheid and
the Vietnam War, Brodine finds precedents for achieving unity and avoiding
hazards. He discusses problems posed by far-left politicking, mixing moral
imperatives and practicalities, and confusing tactics with strategy. He would
pursue reforms and revolutionary goals simultaneously and work with
“cross-class elements.”
The labor
movement is a crucial player, both because of labor’s organizational expertise
and because the enemies of labor are the enemies of other progressive causes.
And, “Only workers have the power to shut down the economy [and to] wrest
control of production decisions away from the capitalist class.”
Indeed,
“Working class power is the only force capable of saving humanity from
capitalism and creating a sustainable economy and sustainable environment.” The
author identifies the working class as the “vast majority of humanity that
works for a living.” He calls for collective solutions for environmental
problems, social control of resources, and “fundamental changes to our economic
system.” In essence, “socialism is a necessary precondition for the survival of
the human race, for the kind of fundamental solutions humanity needs.” The
socialism Brodine wants is “based on a scientific understanding” of
human-caused risk to nature.
Socialist
assumptions in Green Strategies are frequent but unobtrusive.
The chapter on “environmental socialism” is a high point. While perhaps not the
author’s prime goal, the book provides the reader with useful information on
the workings and aspirations of the socialist movement, which includes the
author’s own Communist Party USA. Socialists reading the book might be reminded
as to who they are. For the others, says Brodine, fighting for the environment
may be “a new path to socialist consciousness, a new way to understand the need
for fundamental economic change.”
Marxist theory
explains how change occurs. Brodine cites interconnections, “feedback” loops,
and contradictions affecting natural and social phenomena. They lead to
tensions and thus to change, which is constant. Small quantitative changes
accumulate and then manifest as one big change, a qualitative one. That’s the
so-called “tipping point.”
Looking at
societal problems, he describes new realities and struggles impinging upon the
political status quo. In theory, new political solutions follow, one after the
other. Those political processes dealing with environmental challenges are
under stress. They misfire and go on a new tack. Eventually they solidify into
a collective human effort aimed at rescue. That’s another tipping point.
Brodine is
well-equipped to author a book outlining society’s response to environmental
disaster. He has long headed the Communist Party’s environmental work and the
book demonstrates his familiarity with research findings and dialogue in the
natural sciences. Socialism, he writes, “harnesses the latest in science,
technology, and social organization.”
Virginia
Brodine, the author’s mother, must have had a lot to do with why this book
exists. A colleague of Barry Commoner, she was a prominent anti-nuclear and
environmental activist and an author (Air Pollution and Radioactive
Contamination, 1972). Her writings are collected in the book Red Roots, Green
Shoots (International Publishers, 2007).
Brodine’s
writing style is clear and cogent. The book is well organized. Readers may
object to repetition of insights and conclusions. But for this reviewer,
reiteration was useful in reinforcing the author’s main points. Any future
edition of the book—potentially a prize as the crisis advances—would benefit by
the addition of an index.
From this
vantage point, Green Strategy is a valuable and much
appreciated book. It’s a primer on forming a mass movement serving the people.
Grounded on science and on political and social realities, it’s well suited to
have an impact on what counts, which is conscious-raising in favor of collective
solutions. Above all, the book is about the survival of living things and the
integrity of nature and so has ethical thrust.
Marc R.
Brodine - International Publishers, New York, 2018
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