Ecosocialism can rescue us from ecocatastrophe

Written by Bert Oliver and first published at Thought Leader

In Ridley Scott’s film, The Martian, there is a scene near the end that sums up the often ignored value of the earth. Astronaut and botanist Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is sitting on a bench in a park, shortly after having been rescued from a very lonely existence on the red planet, Mars.

He notices the new, green leaves of a small plant in front of him on the ground, smiles, leans forward and, gently putting his fingers underneath the newborn plant’s leaves, says something like “Hello there!” This simple scene condenses one of the crucial “messages” of The Martian, that, compared to the vast majority of other planets, which are probably as barren as Mars, Earth is a veritable paradise.

And, although this is nowhere thematised in the film, it is time for people to start waking up to the saddening fact that humans, driven by an economic system voracious for “growth”, are busy destroying this paradise. Too many people simply bury their proverbial heads in the sand when they hear or read a statement like the one I have just made – unless they sit up and take notice, and do something about it, nature in all its glory will, in the not-too-distant future, probably be visible only in nature documentaries such as those made by David Attenborough.

If you don’t believe me, you could read this keynote address by one of the most uncompromising thinkers of our time, Joel Kovel. It is called “Ecosocialism as a Human Phenomenon”, and was delivered at the International Ecosocialist Conference in Quito, Ecuador, in June 2013. Things have got much worse since then, but judging by Kovel’s considered assessment of the global situation regarding the condition of natural ecosystems, it was already quite bad then.

Kovel opened the address with the remark, that: “We live in an epoch of radical crisis. From the economic side, we see intractable stagnation and vicious class polarisation. And from another side, which I shall call the ecological, we find that the dominant system of production appears hell-bent on destroying the natural foundations of civilisation as it thrashes about in response to economic difficulties.”

If this seems far-fetched to readers, it is probably because mainstream news sources, which are all controlled by the dominant economic forces of our time, downplay the bad news, with the result that most people are not aware of the true dimensions of the looming crisis. Consequently they are so far removed from acknowledging it that, as Slavoj Žižek, philosopher and psychoanalytical thinker extraordinaire, has shrewdly observed, people evidently find it harder to imagine the end of capitalism than the end of the world as we know it.

And yet, the “end of the world as we know it” may not be in the realm of the impossible, or even the improbable. One of the things Kovel invites his audience to reflect on in his address on ecosocialism is the following: “ … consider the activities of the Monsanto Corporation, fully protected by the Obama administration, as it engages in lethal forms of production that will, in just one instance of depredation, finish off honeybees world-wide through its nicotinamide pesticides.

Thus we anticipate a future without pollinators, sacrificed on the altar of accumulation. The disregard for what nature has evolved over four billion years beggars the imagination. Indeed, if corporations are persons, as the US Supreme Court insists, then the Exxons and Monsantos of the world are better described as suicide bombers in the service of accumulation than as rational economic actors.”

How many of us have ever thought about what should be rather obvious, if we remember what we learned in primary school, namely, that bees fulfil an essential function in nature across the globe – pollinating plants. That is, they make sure, in the course of collecting pollen for honey, that trees and other plants reproduce.

What would happen without them? All the plants that depend on them for reproduction would eventually die – and that is a lot of plants, including trees, all of which are responsible, in turn, for producing oxygen in the process of photosynthesis. Hence, without bees, which are being wiped out systematically by Monsanto in its frenzied quest for more profit, most of the planet’s vegetation would be destroyed, and without the latter all oxygen-breathing creatures, including us humans, would be in deep trouble.

Is this so hard to grasp? And if some, if not most of us, are really the rational creatures we are supposed to be, why are we not doing something about it, such as hammering our governments to censure companies like Monsanto – which, incidentally, is probably also responsible for a host of health problems that people are increasingly experiencing across the world, such as auto-immune diseases like gluten and lactose intolerance, which result in coeliac disease.

Why, you may wonder. In addition to producing the pesticides that are destroying the honeybees, this behemoth company, Monsanto, and other companies like it, are responsible for introducing genetically modified plants into agriculture, and some medical researchers I have spoken to are convinced that the foods made from such GM plants affect human physiology and gastronomy in extremely adverse ways. This should not be surprising – as a species, we developed in close proximity to nature (of which we are, after all, a part), and genetically speaking our bodies are primarily capable of digesting and benefitting from foods such as fruits and vegetables that formed part of our ancestors’ diet.

So how do we combat the economic system that not only allows Monsanto and Exxon to operate, but actually encourages them to do so, the egregious damage that they inflict upon nature notwithstanding? Kovel’s answer is that there is only one option, namely to switch to what he calls “ecosocialism”, an economic system that is not intent on accumulation and profit at all costs, but instead promotes production without depletion of natural resources, because unlike capitalism, it does not set humans up as if they are nature’s adversaries, but accepts that humans – social ecologies – and natural ecologies are interrelated and (could be) mutually sustaining. But let me quote Kovel at length here from the keynote address referred to above:

“Ecosocialism makes a very large claim that must be realised in a host of individual and often seemingly disparate instances, or paths. There is, in other words, no privileged agent of ecosocialist transforming. The agents of transformation emerge interstitially, which is a fancy word for anywhere contradictions ripen and manifest themselves as transformative opportunities: a storm, a mine, a pipeline, a toxic dump, even a classroom, or an individual mind undergoing spiritual development.

Each ecosocialist path is a place of production – for paths have to be made – as well as one of the resistance against the form of production whose banner is capitalist accumulation. We can also think of these as zones of emergence, as contradictions mature and open up on different vistas; hence we can call them ‘horizons’ of various kinds … a horizon is by definition some way off; yet it can also be brought closer, through devising ways of struggle. Often these processes can be formulated in terms of the ‘Commons’, by which is meant collectively owned and organized spaces … forming new conditions of Commoning unifies productive zones and can come to connect them.

“All this bears more than a superficial resemblance to the building of ecosystems, which in the ecosocialist mode of production comes to stand in the place that capital reserved for the commodity. Capitalism may be defined as generalised commodity production; just so is ecosocialism definable as generalisable ecosystem production—this being, however, ecosystems of a definite kind conducive to the flourishing of life … ”

And guess what? Because so-called developed countries are quite removed from older, pre-modern modes of production, compared to countries in the global South – in South America and Africa, for instance – these countries are in a position, according to Kovel, to resist the further expansion of capital and cultivate ecosocialist economies instead. This, in his view, is the only option open to us if we want to avoid an ecological disaster of global proportions. In his words: “Ecosocialism or Ecocatastrophe!”

What Does China's 'Ecological Civilization' Mean for Humanity's Future?

Written by Jeremy Lent and first published at Common Dreams

Imagine a newly elected President of the United States calling in his inaugural speech for an “ecological civilization” that ensures “harmony between human and nature.” Now imagine he goes on to declare that “we, as human beings, must respect nature, follow its ways, and protect it” and that his administration will “encourage simple, moderate, green, and low-carbon ways of life, and oppose extravagance and excessive consumption.” Dream on, you might say. Even in the more progressive Western European nations, it’s hard to find a political leader who would make such a stand.

And yet, the leader of the world’s second largest economy, Xi Jinping of China, made these statements and more in his address to the National Congress of the Communist Party in Beijing last October. He went on to specify in more detail his plans to “step up efforts to establish a legal and policy framework… that facilitates green, low-carbon, and circular development,” to “promote afforestation,” “strengthen wetland conservation and restoration,” and “take tough steps to stop and punish all activities that damage the environment.” 

Closing his theme with a flourish, he proclaimed that “what we are doing today” is “to build an ecological civilization that will benefit generations to come.” Transcending parochial boundaries, he declared that his Party’s abiding mission was to “make new and greater contributions to mankind… for both the wellbeing of the Chinese people and human progress.”

It’s easy to dismiss it all as mere political rhetoric, but consider how the current President of the United States came to power on the basis of a different form of rhetoric, appealing to the destructive nationalism of “America First.” In both cases, it’s reasonable to assume that the rhetoric doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Just as Trump’s xenophobic vision spells potential danger for the world, so could it be that Xi’s ecological vision could offer a glimpse to a hopeful future?

A transformative vision

In fact, this is just the type of fresh, regenerative thinking about transforming the current global economic system that many in the environmental movement have been calling for. And this hasn’t been lost on some leading thinkers. David Korten, a world-renowned author and activist, has proposed expanding the vision of Ecological Civilization to a global context, which would involve—among other things—granting legal rights to nature, shifting ownership of productive assets from transnational corporations to nation-states and self-governing communities, and prioritizing life-affirming, rather than wealth-affirming, values.

Within a larger historical context, it’s not too surprising that this vision of “harmony between human and nature” should emerge from China. As I’ve traced in my book, The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning, traditional Chinese culture was founded on a worldview that perceived an intrinsic web of connection between humanity and nature, in contrast to the European worldview that saw humans as essentially separate from nature. Early Chinese philosophers believed the overriding purpose of life was to seek harmony in society and the universe, while Europeans pursued a path based on a different set of values—which have since become global in scope—driven by “conquering nature” and viewing nature as a machine to be engineered.

Furthermore, Xi’s rhetoric does seem to be grounded in at least some reality. Two months before Xi’s speech, China announced they were more than doubling their previous solar power target for 2020, after installing more than twice as much solar capacity as any other country in 2016. This new target—five times larger than current capacity in the U.S.—would entail covering an area of land equivalent to Greater London with solar panels. They are similarly exceeding their wind power targets, already boasting more capacity than all of Europe.

As a result, China has recently halted previous plans for building more than 150 coal-fired power plants. In electric cars, China is leading the world, selling more each month than Europe and the U.S. combined, with more aggressive quotas on gas-guzzlers than anywhere else in the world, including California. Additionally, China has the world’s most extensive network of high-speed trains, and has already passed laws to promote a circular economy where waste products from industrial processes are recycled into inputs for other processes.

China's industrial avalanche

Some observers, however, are far from convinced that China is on its way to an ecological civilization. Economist Richard Smith has written a detailed critique of China’s quandary in the Real-World Economics Review, where he argues that China’s political-economic system is based on the need to maximize economic growth, employment, and consumerism to an even greater extent than in the West. These forces, he claims, run diametrically counter to the vision of an ecological civilization.

There are compelling arguments for why this makes sense. Beginning in the 19th century, China suffered more than a century of humiliation and brutal exploitation from Western nations as a result of its relative military and industrial weakness. After Mao Zedong’s death in 1978, Deng Xiaoping transformed China’s economy into a hybrid of consumer capitalism and central planning that catapulted China to its current prominence on the world stage. Astonishingly, China’s GDP is more than fifty times greater than at the time of Mao’s death, the result of a growth rate approaching 10% per year for four decades.

This achievement, perhaps the most dramatic economic and social transformation of all time, is bringing China back to the dominant role in global affairs that it held for most of history. Within a decade, China’s GDP is expected to surpass that of the US, making it the world’s largest economy. It is just in the early stages of a profusion of record-breaking industrial megaprojects of a scale that boggles the mind. It plans to extend its influence further through its Belt and Road Initiative, a vast infrastructure and trading project encompassing sixty countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa, envisaged as a 21st century version of the famed Silk Road.

This industrial avalanche comes, however, at great cost to China’s—and the world’s—environmental wellbeing. China is by far the world’s largest consumer of energy, using over half the world’s coal, a third of the world’s oil, and 60% of the world’s cement. Astonishingly, China poured more cement in three years from 2011 to 2013 than the US used during the entire twentieth century! China is also the world’s largest consumer of lumber, as Smith describes, “levelling forests from Siberia to Southeast Asia, New Guinea, Congo, and Madagascar.” 

These are just some of the forces that draw Smith to the conclusion that Xi Jinping’s vision of an ecological civilization is untenable. “The hyper industrialization required,” he writes, “to realize this China Dream of great power status compels him… to let the polluters pollute, pump China’s CO2 emissions off the chart, and thereby bring on the ecological collapse not just of China but the whole planet… Xi Jinping can create an ecological civilization or he can build a rich superpower. He can’t do both.”

Intimately placed between heaven and earth

Or can he? That is a crucial question with ramifications for all of humanity. While it is clear that future economic growth at anything close to China’s historic rate is untenable, there is a more nuanced question that poses the possibility of a sustainable way forward for both China and the world. Once China has regained its status as a leading world power, can it achieve yet another transformation and redirect its impressive vitality into growing a life of quality for its people, rather than continued consumerism? Is it possible that Xi Jinping is sowing the seeds of this future metamorphosis with his vision of an ecological civilization?

There is urgent awareness among thought leaders around the world that continued growth in global GDP is leading civilization to the point of collapse. Movements are emerging that call for “degrowth” and other approaches to a steady-state economy that could allow a sustainable future for humanity. But how can we break the death-grip of a global system built on continually feeding the growth frenzy of gigantic transnational corporations voraciously seeking a never-ending increase in profits to satisfy their shareholders? Along with the grassroots citizen movements emerging around the world, is it possible that China could pioneer a new path of sustainability, steering its citizens back to the traditional values that characterized its culture over millennia?

Even if China could achieve this redirection, the continuous human-rights abuses of its authoritarian government raise further questions. An ecological civilization—as envisaged by Korten and many others in the environmental movement—seems inconsistent with a centralized bureaucracy forcing its rules on citizens through coercion and repression. For China to genuinely move in this direction, Xi would need to be prepared to devolve decision-making authority and freedoms back to the Chinese people. It’s a tall order, but not necessarily inconceivable.

For those living in the West, it would take a tremendous dose of cultural humility to accept philosophical leadership from China on the path to a flourishing future for humanity. But, if we are to get to that future, we must recognize the structural underpinnings of Western thought that brought us to this imbalance in the first place. A thousand years ago, Chinese philosopher Zhang Zai expressed a realization of connectedness with the universe in an essay called the Western Inscription, which begins with these words:

Heaven is my father and earth is my mother, and I, a small child, find myself placed intimately between them.

What fills the universe I regard as my body; what directs the universe I regard as my nature.

All people are my brothers and sisters; all things are my companions.

Is it possible that this deep recognition of human interconnectedness, rooted in traditional Chinese culture, could form the philosophical basis for a future ecological civilization? The answer to this question may ultimately affect the future wellbeing, not just of China, but of the entire human family.

Jeremy Lent is an author and founder of the nonprofit Liology Institute. The Liology Institute is dedicated to fostering a worldview that could enable humanity to thrive sustainably on the earth. His current book, The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Future, (Prometheus Books, May 2017), is based on a simple but compelling theme – culture shapes values, and those values shape history.

What would a US/UK Trade Deal Look Like?

A much vaunted, by Brexiteers anyway, US/UK trade deal, once we have left the European Union (EU) is homing into view. The prime minister, Theresa May, refused to rule out including the NHS in any future deal with the US. The Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable, put this question to May in Parliament on Wednesday:

“The prime minister knows that one of the key objectives of American trade negotiators in any future deal after Brexit is to secure access for American companies to business in the NHS,” he said. “Can she give an absolute guarantee that in those negotiations the NHS will be excluded from their scope? And can she confirm that in her conversations with President Trump she’s made it absolutely clear to him that the NHS is not for sale?”

May fell back on her standard line of ‘getting the best deal for Britain,’ vacuous nonsense that we have come to expect from her. Her press secretary also later refused to answer the question when journalists pressed him on it, saying it is very much a hypothetical question. Well, it is not hypothetical because preliminary talks have already begun between officials of the US and UK governments.

The government’s own assessments calculate that a trade deal with the US would add only 0.2% to UK GDP, but has the potential to impact heavily on the UK’s public sector generally. As well as our current environmental standards for food, and the ability to honour our commitments to reduce carbon emissions.

But first, let us look at the impact on the NHS and health provision generally. In 2017 the UK government spent almost £150 billion on public health provision. This is money which is largely off limits for private companies, although they do take some of it already, through Public Finance Initiatives.

The US, when trying to negotiate the failed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), attempted to include the British NHS (and other EU nation’s health services) into the deal. Although President Trump has now pulled out of some these deals, it is a racing certainty that any new trade deals with US, will include this sector.

You can see why they would want to include it, as the UK is a relatively small economy compared to the US, which has an economy six times the size of the UK. There is not really anything else as valuable that we can offer to the US in a trade deal.

The US is also far less dependent on a trade deal with the UK, than the UK is for one with the US. At the moment, US exports to the UK account for only 3% of total exports, whereas the US accounts for 13% of UK exports. The US has a huge internal market too, which is where most of their trade comes from.

So, what kind of deal can be expected? According to Global Justice Now it is likely to include:

Corporate courts’ that allow foreign corporations to sue governments outside of the national legal system to challenge things like environmental protection or public health policy.

Locking in privatisation of public services, including of the NHS.

Undermining our climate change commitments.

In particular the type of trade deal that the US would be looking for with the UK would want to ensure things like ‘Standstill’ clauses which prevent public services that have already been privatised or opened up to private finance initiatives from ever being brought back into public hands.

Also ‘Ratchet’ clauses which specify that if any further services are privatised, they also cannot afterward, be returned to public ownership. So much for taking back control, more like giving more control to multi-national corporations.

On food and farming the US government has always been clear that our (EU) food and farming regulations, which prevent the sort of high-intensity, high-chemical, low-animal welfare farming common in the US, are a ’trade barrier‘. Any deal will likely look at stripping away regulations on pesticide, antibiotic and hormone use in farming.

On the environment we are likely to see rules, already proposed in other US deals, that make discriminating between different sorts of fuels impossible. In other words, supporting renewable technologies when fossil fuels could do the job could become the basis for a trade dispute, adjudicated on by a trade tribunal, outside of domestic law.

The EU is far from perfect, but compared to the alternatives, it is by far a bettter trade deal than we will get from anywhere else. The Tories are prepared to abandon our environmental protections, and put our public services up for sale. There is no rationale for this other than satisfying the Tories ideological zealotry to de-regulate employment and environmental protections and open up public services to the corporate vultures. Is this what we really want?  

Tory Government in Chaos Blames Everyone Else for the Chaos

A mere nineteen months on from the European Union (EU) referendum, the Tory government is to attempt to come to an agreement among themselves on Britain’s future arrangements with the EU, once we leave the organisation. Meetings are being held tomorrow and Thursday of the Cabinet sub-committee on Brexit. That it has taken so long to attempt this is in itself a shocking indictment of our rulers, but I have no confidence that we will be any the wiser after these meetings.

The latest instalment in this long running debacle concerns the European customs union, and whether or not Britain will still be in it, or something very similar to it, when we leave the EU. A Downing Street spokesperson said at the weekend that Britain definitely will not be in ‘the’ or ‘a’ customs union with the EU, but did add that a customs ‘arrangement’ was something else entirely. All of this dancing on the head of a pin is of course to try and keep the Tory party together, which is descending into open civil war.

This was preceded by the Brexit minister, Steve Baker, calling into question his own department’s assessments on the likely impact of different scenarios for the economy after we leave the EU, none of which were as good as remaining. He was later forced to apologise. But arch-Brexiteer, Jacob Rees Mogg went further, claiming that the ‘figures were fiddled,’ which drew stinging criticism from former senior civil servants. They are only filling a vacuum where the political leadership ought to be. This whole thing can’t be done without the civil service either, so insulting them is likely to make matters worse.

And this was preceded by the prime minister, Theresa May saying that EU nationals would have no right to stay in the UK if they come during the transition period after we formally leave the EU in March 2019. The EU has made it clear all along that there will be no transition deal if all of the normal rules are not followed. Another example of the prime minister and the government saying they want something from the EU, that the EU are unwilling to concede.

First it was the EU, then the judges, then the Governor of the Bank of England’s fault, and now it is the civil service. The Tories blame everyone for the government’s own incompetence in handling this process. 

Getting back to the customs union; staying in it is the only realistic way to avoid having border controls on the island of Ireland, with the resultant danger this would pose to the Northern Ireland peace process. Even this might not be possible without remaining in the European single market as well.

Turkey is in a customs union with the EU, but not the EU or single market, but this does not cover agricultural products, which is covered by a separate bilateral agreement. The EU can export to Turkey tariff-free, while maintaining tariffs on Turkish goods. Turkey can make trade deals with other nations, but is bound by customs union rules.

This type of arrangement might speed up importing and exporting of some goods (but not services), from delays that border checks between the UK and EU would involve, but it might not keep the border in Ireland open. The EU would run the risk of food imports getting into the EU via Ireland, which may not meet it standards, particularly from the US. Brexit is incredibly complex, but the number one priority must be not doing anything that threatens the snail like progress on the peace process in Northern Ireland. For obvious reasons.

I fully expect the outcome of this week’s sub-committee meeting to be Theresa May making a speech beginning with the words ‘let me be clear’ and going on to say something which is anything but. A retreat into the magical thinking of everything will be OK in the end because the EU will give us what we want, once we make our minds up what that is. Regardless of what the EU continues to rule out.

It seems to be the only way to please both wings of the Tory party is to play this game of pretend, but at some stage hard choices will have to be made by the government, and at this point it is likely May will be removed from office by Tory MPs, which in turn could lead to her replacement losing a vote in Parliament which brings down the government. This would inevitably lead to a general election, where the Labour Party will have to come clean on its own intentions. The country can then decide which approach it wants.

This looks to me to be the only way we will get ourselves out of this dreadful situation we in are in now. From start to finish, this whole thing has been about the Tories, not anything or anybody else. The blame game has to stop, so the country can get on with its life. We need a change of government, sooner rather than later.

Red and Green: The Ecosocialist Perspective

Written by Michael Löwy and first published at Radical Ecological Democracy

The contemporary international political economy is marked by a great contradiction. On a planet characterized by finite resources, the economy is predicated upon an absurd and irrational logic of infinite expansion and accumulation. With its fossil fuel based operations continually spewing carbon into the earth’s atmosphere, the capitalist system’s productivist obsession with profit has brought humanity to the brink of an abyss. Climate change is accelerating much faster than predicted – the accumulation of CO2, the rise in temperature, the melting of the polar ice, the drought, and the floods: everything is happening too quickly. In fact, the scientific assessments are now perceived as being too optimistic. The question is: after a certain level of increase in temperature – say six degrees – would the planet still be inhabitable for our species?

How should we respond to this enormously frightening scenario? We have seen that partial reforms are completely inadequate. The failure of the Kyoto protocol, for instance, illustrated that it was impossible to meet the dramatic challenge of global warming with the methods employed by the capitalist free market, such as the emission rights stock exchange. What is needed is the replacement of the micro-rationality of profit by a social and ecological macro-rationality, which demands a veritable change of civilization. It is, however, impossible to work towards that change without a profound reorientation aimed at replacing contemporary energy sources by clean and renewable ones, such as wind or solar energy. The first question, therefore, concerns the issue of control over the means of production, especially decisions on investment and technological change, which must be taken away from the banks and capitalist enterprises in order to serve the society’s common good.

Ecosocialism is an attempt at providing a radical civilizational alternative, based on the fundamental arguments of the ecological movement and combining them with the Marxist critique of the capitalist political economy. It’s an economic policy founded on non-monetary and clearly articulated extra-economic criteria: ecological equilibrium of the earth and fulfillment of the social needs of its people. Ecosocialism, thus, questions the Marxist notion of destructive progress inherent in capitalism. This new dialectical synthesis has been well articulated in the works of a broad spectrum of authors, from James O’Connor to Joel Kovel, Ian Angus and John Bellamy Foster, and from André Gorz to Elmar Altvater. It is as much a critique of “market ecology”, which does not challenge the capitalist system, as much as that of “productivist socialism”, which ignores the issue of natural limits.

The possibility of an ecosocialist transformation rests on public control over the means of production and planning. It is characterized by a democratic and pluralist debate at all those levels where decisions are to be taken, and a process by which different propositions are submitted to the concerned people, in the form of parties, platforms, or any other political movements, ultimately leading to the election of delegates. This rigorous form of representative democracy, however, must be complemented, and corrected by direct democracy, where people choose directly between major options at the local, national and, even global level.

The passage from “destructive progress”, which accompanies capitalism to the final stage of socialism, is a historical process, a permanent revolutionary transformation of society, culture and mentalities. This transition would lead not only to a new mode of production, and an egalitarian and democratic society, but also to an alternative mode of life, a new ecosocialist civilization. It would be beyond the reign of money, beyond consumption habits artificially produced by advertising, and beyond the unlimited production of commodities that are useless and/or harmful to the environment. It is important to emphasize that such a process cannot begin without a revolutionary transformation of social and political structures, and the active support of an ecosocialist program by the vast majority of the population. The development of socialist consciousness and ecological awareness is a process, where the decisive factor is people’s own collective experience of struggle, from local and partial confrontations to the radical change of society.

The countries of the South would have priorities somewhat different from the global north. They would need to build critical infrastructure, which is not currently uniformly available to its people – railroads, hospitals, sewage systems, roads etc. But there is no reason why this cannot be accomplished with a productive system that is environment-friendly and based on renewable energy sources. These countries would also need to grow great amounts of food to nourish their population, but this can be much better achieved by an agricultural system based on family-units, cooperatives or collectivist farms, rather than by the destructive and anti-social methods of industrialized agro-business, based on the intensive use of pesticides, chemicals and GMOs.

To dream and to struggle for green socialism does not mean that we should not fight for concrete reforms, which are needed urgently within the existing system. These include a general moratorium on genetically modified organisms, a drastic reduction in the emission of the greenhouse gases, the development of public transportation, the taxation of polluting cars, the progressive replacement of trucks by trains, a severe regulation of the fishing industry, as well as the phasing out of pesticides and chemicals in the agro-industrial production.

These urgent eco-social demands can lead to a gradual process of radicalization. We must not accept limits on our aims according to the requirements of the capitalist market or of “competitivity”. Each small victory, each partial advance can immediately lead to a higher demand, to a more radical aim. Such struggles around concrete issues are important, not only because partial victories are welcome in themselves, but also because they contribute to raise ecological and socialist consciousness. These victories will promote activity and self-organization from below, and ultimately to a radical and revolutionary transformation of the world.

Michael Löwy, a Brazilian by birth, has lived in Paris since 1969.

Presently he is an emerit Research Director at the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research), and lecturer at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris. Michael’s books and articles have been translated into twenty nine languages. Among his main publications are:

Georg Lukacs : From Romanticism to Bolshevism, Verso, 1981;

Romanticism against the current of modernity (with Robert Sayre), Duke, Duke University Press, 2001;

Fire Alarm. Reading Walter Benjamin’s ‘On the concept of history ‘, London, Verso, 2005;

Franz Kafka,  Subversive Dreamer,  Ann Arbor, Michigan University Press, 2016.

The Kurds, crags and Kalashnikovs

Photo: Delil Souleiman/Syriac Military Council

Written by Fouad Oveisy and First published at Rabble.ca

An anonymous movement

Last summer I visited one of Montreal's famous anarchist bookshops to browse through the local resistance literature and, perhaps, find an affordable copy of Murray Bookchin's works somewhere on the shelves. Luckily I did find a collection of interviews and essays by Bookchin, a thinker and activist whose anarchist and ecological writing and thought has been fundamental to informing Abdullah Öcalan's turn away from Stalinist Marxism, toward the groundbreaking theory of Democratic Confederalism. Öcalan is the imprisoned leader of the banned Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK), and the spiritual theorist and strategist of the egalitarian and ecofeminist Rojava revolution in the Kurdish north of Syria.

Incidentally, while I was there at the bookshop going through leaflets and pamphlets in French and English, a random Montrealer popped into the store to ask the shopkeeper if he had anything by Öcalan in store. Despite my lacking knowledge of the French language, I knew the shopkeeper responded that he had never heard of Öcalan, but before I had a chance to intervene, the customer had unfortunately disappeared into the St. Laurent Boulevard's Sunday crowd once again. Afterwards, I had a conversation with the shopkeeper about Rojava's paradigm-shifting practice in the Middle East, and even went out of my way to give him a sort of mini lecture on how Öcalan's theory of Democratic Confederalism has been fundamental to the multi-ethnic and democratic praxis of the Rojavans throughout the current Syrian civil war.

That day I left the bookstore bookshop feeling somewhat guilty for making the shopkeeper feel embarrassed about knowing next to nothing about Öcalan, Bookchin and Rojava, but I recount this story here because for me it crystallizes how the Rojava movement's resistance has been waged in near anonymity from the very first days of its humble beginnings. The likes of Noam Chomsky, Michael Hardt, David Harvey and even Slavoj Žižek have since voiced their support for this movement, and other thinkers and activists have supported its resistance in one way or another. However, the general import of this movement, as a concrete alternative to the hegemony of imperialism, dictatorship and fundamentalism in the Middle East, has been largely buried under the barrage of nationalist and reactionary voices and media that dominate the Syrian civil war news cycle.

Painfully, voices and movements from the anarchist, post-colonialist and Marxist left have chosen to attack and even undermine the aims, strategies and achievements of the Rojava revolution. They correctly state that Rojava's People's Protection Units (YPG) and Women's Protection Units (YPJ) have relied on American military aid and cooperation in their resistance against the forces of the Islamic State (IS). And they go on to state that as mere instruments of the U.S. imperialist agenda in the region, the YPG/J are only tools used and discarded by the Americans, once their aims in the region have been realized. These critical voices have found renewed resonance in the wake of Turkey's recent "Olive Branch Operation," which has been waged with tacit approval from the White House and aims to invade and ethnically cleanse Afrin, the canton to the west of the now two famous cantons of Kobani and Cizîre.

Nonetheless, it is most necessary to demonstrate the hypocrisy of such claims and voices, and to situate the manner and history of YPG/J's cooperation with the Americans as way of emphasizing the importance of voicing support for this movement not only against Erdogan's aims in Syria and Turkey, but critically, in favour of the possibilities the Rojava revolution harbours for the entire Middle East region.

Kalashnikov vs. BGM-71 TOW

The U.S. foreign policy in Syria, particularly during the Obama administration, has been widely criticized and continues to be hotly debated. Nonetheless, the origin of YPG/J's cooperation with the Americans can be traced to the U.S. decision to back the Free Syrian Army (FSA) during the initial stages of the Syrian civil war: after it became clear that despite military aid and financing from Americans as well as Saudis, backing a losing FSA side would only imperil the U.S. interests in the conflict, the Americans had no choice but to rely on the forces of the YPG/J, if they were to remain a player in Syria. In turn, the YPG/J accepted the U.S. request for cooperation mainly because after the fall of Mosul to IS in Iraq, arguably no army in the Middle East could withstand the firepower of the American arms surrendered to IS by the fleeing Iraqi army. Moreover, as the only truly independent actor in the Syrian civil war, the Rojavans had been never invited to any talks on the Syrian crisis (until this last round), and required backing from one the big four (U.S., Russia, Iran, Turkey) to be involved in discussions over a federalist vision of Syria they were only too eager to join.

There were moreover two important historical caveats concerning the background to this new cooperation. First, from the onset of the Syrian conflict, the Syrian Kurds in the Rojava region had refused to take part or take sides in the civil war; their political and military activity had been limited to protecting their regions from radical militant groups such as IS and, more importantly, to overseeing the implementation of Öcalan's Democratic Confederalist vision, by filling the local vacuum of state power created as a byproduct of the war. Only when IS brought the war to the doorsteps of Rojava, did YPG/J relinquish their radical passivity. Second, even though the Rojavans' heroic resistance during the siege of Kobani is remembered as the "Stalingrad" moment of the war against IS, the high cost and casualties of this battle had made it painfully evident that to rebuke the Americans, and to continue to resist the likes of IS (equipped with American BGM-71 TOWs) with second-hand Kalashnikovs bought on the black market, would inevitably lead to the surrender or destruction of the Rojavans' freedom, ideals and praxis. This is especially true in view of the fact that every other national and independent faction in Syria were highly armed and financed from the beginning of this war, by the Americans, Russians, Iranians or the Saudis.

All the same, the cooperation between the YPG/J and the U.S., which began as a tactical and intelligence partnership in particular battles, and evolved into training and limited arms support for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) during the closing stages of the war against IS, cannot be described as a one-way scenario of YPG/J reliance on the U.S. and its imperialist aims and strategies in the region. Quite the contrary: it is the U.S. that has no partner in Syria but the YPG/J. Indeed, the YPG/J have operated entirely independently of U.S. demands throughout this Syrian conflict and have, on numerous occasions, acted against American aims and interests. In fact, it is only recently after the defeat of IS and with the announcement of the formation of the 30,000 strong SDF army along the Turkish border, that this partnership had transformed into a more strategic coalition.

Therefore, if it is fair to criticize the YPG/J for giving U.S. strategy in the Syrian conflict a lifeline, it is equally unfair to criticize the YPG/J for choosing to arm their democratic, feminist and egalitarian cantons (against the forces of war criminals like IS and Assad) over appeasing the so-called anti-imperialist ideals of intellectuals and voices here in the West. It is, in fact, hypocritical to flatten the Syrian battlefield into a purely imperialist chessboard arrayed with proxy pawns, and so to reduce the stakes and aspirations of Rojavans's paradigm shifting practice by casually comparing them to the ethnic and/or religious agendas of other factions involved in the Syrian conflict. Forces that are backed by countries with petit imperialist and expansionist agendas, such as Russia, Iran and Turkey, and which have moreover continuously refused Rojavan overtures toward an all-Syrian but democratic cooperation and partnership.

No friends but the mountains

As the famous saying goes, the Kurds, the largest group of stateless people in the world, "have no friends but the mountains." And if the war campaign against the canton of Afrin is being framed in the media not only as the latest rejected pilot in the Kurds' quest for democratic self-determination, but also as a melodrama of their betrayal and abandonment by the U.S., it is necessary to emphasize in contrast that the YPG/J are only victims of their own success.

Analysts and strategists may correctly point to imperialist plans for dividing Syria across sectarian lines, as the Turkish incursion into Afrin will not merely severe it from its sister cantons to the east, and force it to either realign itself with the Russians or risk full invasion by the Turks and their extremist allies. Rather, it also aims to establish a Sunni dominated corridor from Turkey all the way to Iraq (via the opposition dominated areas and Sunni midlands antagonistic to Assad's rule) that could cut off the Kurdish areas' access to the sea (via the mainly Shi'ite areas to the south-east) and lead to the complete isolation and containment of Rojava from all sides. It is true that this is a scenario that best serves the U.S. interests in the region, as it appeases Turkey's fear of the Kurds; pacifies Assad; does not cross the Russian red line of losing access to its Mediterranean military base in the Assad-controlled region; and most importantly, by way of the Sunni corridor, splits Iran's threatening access to Israel via a "Shi'a Crescent" that extends from Iran to Israel through Northern Iraq, central-southern Syria, and finally, the Hezbollah-controlled southern Lebanon.

Geopolitical interests aside, however, weakening Rojava is important to the U.S. foreign policy for a more strategic reason. The ideological danger of Rojava's political alternative to the "business as usual" of the Middle East outweighs, for both Western imperialism and regional expansionism, the importance of safeguarding their strategic stakes in land, sea and commerce. The Rojavans' hybrid tactical strategy of Dual Power and democratic organization effectively overcomes the cynicism around both revolution and reform that haunts the post Arab Springs and Green Movement Middle East, and its stateless motto is essentially nationless in a region plagued by sectarianism. Indeed, if the Middle East is the Gordian knot of world politics and peace, then it is Rojava's practice that has brought race, gender and class together, against a regional chessboard arrayed with imperialist, fundamentalist and nativist actors. And it is precisely here, because of this existential threat to the order of late neoliberalism, that Rojava is a victim of its own success and its out-dated partnership with the U.S. The tacit agreement held by all the opposing sides involved in the Syrian conflicts with regard to the Turkish invasion of Afrin is only a testimony to the seriousness of this threat. An isolated Rojava could then be weakened and gradually picked apart via embargos, land blocks and no fly zones, in the same way that other paradigm-shifting revolutions elsewhere were contained and derailed before.

Therefore, the Rojavas need vocal support here in the West not in order to save them from abandonment by the U.S. Indeed, the people and defenders of Afrin have never asked for solidarity from governments and institutions here in the West, as they are keeping out Erdogan's forces on their own just fine. Rather, it is from the Western governments' continued interference in Syria that the Rojavans must be protected. The leftist organizations and movements here in the West must step in to save the civilians in Afrin from the same fighter jets and tanks their governments sell to the Turkish military. It is in view of such considerations and nuances that it is important to not approach the Syrian stalemate from a morally reductive or superior standpoint.

In his seminal piece on the Rojava Revolution, Michael Taussig asked if in the clash between Rojava and IS we were "facing an 'Hegelian moment' in which two symmetrically opposed contenders have erupted onto the stage of history?" With the elimination of IS at the hands or Rojava, we must now ask if the elimination of Rojava via Turkey's endgame is in truth an attempt to ensure that no history takes place in the Middle East, and that things go back to their neoliberal normal with the end of the war. It is high time that the Rojava Revolution emerged from anonymity.

Fouad Oveisy is a PhD student in Critical Theory and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine. His research is focused on the intersections between realpolitik, critical theory, and post-revolutionary strategy and literature.

Famous Victory for People Power over the Privateers – No Social Cleansing in Haringey

The Haringey Development Vehicle (HDV), a £2 billion public/private housing deal between Haringey Council in north London, and construction company Lendlease, is all but dead in the water. Claire Kober the Labour leader of the council, has said that she will not stand for re-election in May’s local government elections. Kober has been the key driver of this property deal, which would have bulldozed thousands of social housing properties, and be replaced with high cost homes for sale or private rental.

Kober has said all existing social housing tenants will be offered homes in the new developments, but similar schemes in other parts of London have promised this, but the homes have failed to materialise. Residents in Haringey have not been prepared to take Kober at her word, and a huge resistance campaign to oppose the deal which was cooked up on a Lendlease owned yacht at the Cannes property development fair in southern France, was formed.

It is highly unlikely that Kober would have still been leader of the Labour Group of councillors after this May’s elections as many of the councillors who supported this deal, and Kober as leader, have been replaced with candidates who oppose HDV. She claims in an apparently open resignation letter, although I’ve been unable to find the full text, to having become ‘disillusioned’ with sexism and bullying, by unidentified people in the Labour party. She has yet to provide any evidence of this though.

If this is true, then of course it should be condemned, but I have to say that it has the look of Kober trying to play the victim in all of this, rather like white racists will often claim that they are discriminated against. I live in Haringey, and have been around local politics for quite a few years now, and I can tell you that Kober is no shrinking violet, who has run the council in an autocratic way. If she has evidence of her being abused then let’s see it.

The mainstream media have tried to make this into a story of a Momentum take-over of the local Labour party. I know that the Labour party has attracted a lot of new members locally, but it has been the policy of HDV that has been unpopular with local people generally. These stories are just ‘red scare’ propaganda. It is totally untrue that this is to do with anything other than the HDV policy itself.

The Labour party NEC, now with a left majority, did suggest some mediation on this issue, between the different factions in Haringey Labour party, but Kober turned this offer down, for as yet unspecified reasons. She has shown no attempt to compromise on this issue, or even listen to anyone who disagrees with her on HDV, preferring to try and railroad it through with the support of only members of her inner sanctum in the Cabinet.

The NEC has been criticised for interfering in local decisions, and I don’t know what the Labour party rules on this are, but I seem to remember Neil Kinnock interfering in local decisions in the 1980s, in Liverpool. Pot and kettle, and all that. 

Kober has support from some MPs and council leaders on the right of the Labour party, which does demonsrate that the Labour party still has some way to go before it is totally transformed into a proper social democratic party. Rumours are circulating that Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, is set to offer Kober a job in charge of housing, London wide.  

The Stop HDV campaign, is supported by the Greens, like me, and Lib Dems locally, as well as resident’s groups and trade unions and many locally in the Labour party who are not Momentum members. Haringey’s two Labour MPs are also against HDV. It hardly sounds like a bunch of Bolsheviks does it?

We are still waiting for a ruling from the Judicial Review, in the High Court, brought and crowdfunded for by local resident Gordon Peters, into the legality of the HDV scheme. What in the end though has stopped this development going ahead is politics. A community campaign that spread into the local Labour party, has forced a change of plan. It is a powerful example of what politics can achieve after all of the despair of recent years; the neo-liberal juggernaut has been brought to a shuddering halt in Haringey.

No formal decision has been taken to end interest in HDV or to try and renegotiate it yet, but there is a meeting next week that will probably take a decision to at least put it on hold. Stop HDV have called a demonstration and lobby outside Wood Green civic centre on the evening of the meeting, 7 February. I don’t think there is enough time, even if there was the will, to get this through now before the elections in May anyway, so I expect the demonstrators will be celebrating.