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Climate change & social movements
THE ARTICLE by Pete Dickinson, No Plan B, (Socialism
Today No.114) raised the manner in which dramatic climate change
might provoke disastrous strategic gambles by the US. This in turn
raises the issue of what forms of action might be taken by workers.
Visiting the flood-stricken areas of Britain in the
summer, Gordon Brown praised the ‘Blitz spirit’ of ordinary people
dealing collectively with the crisis. Such New Labour condescension
aside, this does raise issues about the manner in which the dramatic
effects of rapid climate change will present workers and the poor
globally with all the day-to-day problems of a capitalist system unable
to provide sufficient infrastructure or amenities. Recent events such as
Katrina and, on a much smaller scale, the fuel protests of 2000, have
highlighted the weak links in capitalism’s incredibly refined and
inflexible infrastructures, even in the industrialised world, and, of
course, any ‘adjustments’ capitalism makes in these infrastructures will
be at the expense of the poor.
If current scientific predictions are borne out and
changes are as dramatic and relatively sudden as imagined, organisations
such as tenants’ associations and community groups could become conduits
for moves towards alternative forms of distribution and amenity
organisation in affected areas. This is not to present some wild-eyed
doomsday scenario suggesting that a socialist society could miraculously
emerge from disaster, but rather to point to the manner in which
existing structures such as tenants’ organisation, trade unions and
community campaign groups might be transformed as working people attempt
to collectively deal with problems of provision and distribution.
Obvious parallels exist with aspects of the 1926 general strike.
Back in the late 1980s, in Britain, many on the left
sneered at the bold and creative approach that Militant (the Socialist
Party’s predecessor) took to working with tenants’ associations etc to
found the Anti-Poll Tax Unions, to put in place structures which unified
and led the struggle that flared up in 1990-91, yet of course this
foresight proved correct.
The ‘two stage’ approach epitomised by George
Monbiot – that capitalism first has to change its spots and somehow
initiate global, collective long-term action in the interests of all
humanity, is both a pipe dream and completely undialectical. As a
political ‘programme’ it leaves a vacuum to be filled by individualist
ethical consumer campaigns and Marshall McCluhan influenced movements
around such things as farmer’s markets, which of course cannot, in
themselves, address the collective, mass political issues which will be
at the forefront as climate change bites.
John Timberlake
London
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