Revolution or ruin?

Right now I want to bring your attention to an article by Kai Heron and Jodi Dean in "e-flux," Revolution or Ruin, because it illustrates an important dilemma in today's politics which I've been discussing elsewhere on the Internet.

Here's Jimmy Dore echoing the same sentiment, kind of.

Your politicians are assholes and you're not going to elect your way out of this, Jimmy Dore says.

Heron and Dean begin with a discussion of climate change as an existential threat to civilization. They then continue with a discussion of "progressives" who have "decided that ruin is inevitable" in light of this existential threat posed by climate change. It's not as if the fossil fuel company CEOs will suddenly become renunciates and give up their corporate profits tomorrow, and that the politicians will follow suit and start behaving as if the climate crisis was actually a crisis. So perhaps ruin is inevitable, if nobody is going to ask of the public that it does what is necessary.

Heron and Dean then go on to a critique of what they see as "politics-free" responses, including Extinction Rebellion. I had thought that their advocacy of "Citizen's Assemblies" could be made into a dual power arrangement like what you see in Murray Bookchin's "Libertarian Municipalism" or the New Afrikan People's Organization. I don't really know, since I'm not deep enough into Extinction Rebellion to make a judgment one way or another.

Heron and Dean then go on to discuss the various Green New Deal proposals, from the Green Party to Bernie Sanders to one proposed by Labour in the UK. The Labour proposal is imperialistic; the Sanders proposal relies upon a contradiction:

The answer must be that Sanders needs the carbon sector to survive, at least for a while. His GND plan is built on a contradiction: it requires the continued existence of the corporations responsible for climate change because it wants to make those corporations pay for the response. If the corporations were nationalized, or if they collapsed too quickly, they wouldn’t be able to pay.

So all of these Green New Deal and Green Industrial Revolution proposals appear to Heron and Dean as dead ends. The solution, for them, is to seize the means of production and the state and to make said entities do what is needed:

Taking responsibility means taking power and organizing society in what Marx called the interests of “freely associated workers,” or more controversially, the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” The struggles to implement the GND and GIR tell us that environmentalists are increasingly aware of the need to seize the state—and the need to develop a fighting organization with the capacity to do so.

The authors then proceed to suggest an analogy with a historical leader for that fighting organization: "climate Lenin." But Lenin's moment was 1917, and we do not live in 1917 anymore. Unfortunately, this is where the argument ends, when there was so much more to argue. One of the reasons that the progressive "deniers" think that ruin is inevitable is that they think the current system must be brought to ruin if a new one is to be erected. And this appears to be coming true!

The current situation in the United States is that the elites think they are bringing everyone else to ruin, per what Naomi Klein used to call the "Shock Doctrine," but it hasn't occurred to them that their status as elites might also be threatened by, for instance, a world in which COVID-19 spirals out of control because all remedies are owned by cutthroat capitalists demanding money that isn't there, or, for instance, a world of people living outside of empty buildings owned by landlords demanding money that isn't there. Certainly revolutionary organizations can step into this moment of sheer ruling-class idiocy, and suggest alternative modes of existence in the absence of sanity among all "Establishment" proposals.

There are, however, going to be multiple revolutionary organizations, and none of them are going to look like "climate Lenin." As I said above, this isn't 1917. We aren't in the middle of a world war, the United States isn't a weak, ineffectual state like Russia was after the February Revolution, and industrialization has proceeded a century past what it was then.

Moreover, it appears that there will have to be a great period of traumatic realization that our problems are not going to come to a sudden end if we should happen to elect Joe Biden to the office of President of the United States. I wouldn't be surprised, because (as I pointed out in a comment on one of Jodi Dean's Facebook posts some time ago) if there's a top-down vanguard party in this country with iron-fisted elite control over its rank-and-file, it's the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, America has still yet to confront the climate Lenins of the Democratic Party, those nice folks who think they can solve the problem through carbon capture and storage, natural gas fracking, and maybe a few solar panels and wind turbines here and there. Our ruin awaits. Who dares to propose revolution as an alternative? At least Heron and Dean deserve applause for that.

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Cassiodorus's picture

Nearly everyone is going to cheer on Joe Biden as he crosses the finish line in November. Then nearly everyone is going to be spending the next four years cheering on Joe Biden regardless of what he (or his surrogates) says or does, because "the Republicans are worse." Then when Joe Biden gives the store away to the Republicans and we get a Republican for President in 2024, everyone will be "omigod we gotta get a Democrat back in the White House."

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

@Cassiodorus
IMO, Biden is more dangerous than Trump because a Democratic Congress will give some opposition to Trump but none to Biden.

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

Cassiodorus's picture

@The Voice In the Wilderness You no doubt saw the vote on Bernie Sanders' proposal to cut the military budget by 10%.

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

@Cassiodorus
But i'm sure it went down in flames!

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

@Cassiodorus Biden will even get support if he smashes the BLM movement much like Obama did with OWS. What worries me most is that as American society crumbles in 2021, Biden and democrats will divert from the disaster by starting up some war most likely with Russia to show Putin what-for. Given the incompetent leadership of both democrats and republicans, by 2024 not much of a country will remain. Dystopia will be the condition for most of the country.

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magiamma's picture

I woke up this morning with jimmy’s rant in my head. I read a good part of the heron and dean article. Will have to finish it tomorrow.

This seems right

“If the rich could simply buy their way out of this crisis and only the poor suffered, why would the rich nations do anything about global warming unless the poor of the world (including the poor of the rich nations) were powerful enough to force them?” But he comes to the wrong conclusion. Chakrabarty reasons that since “such power on the part of the poor is clearly not in evidence”

Clearly the poor have it right. It’s gonna be an uphill struggle. Did you see the Guardian article thus morning on militias forming to protect some town from the protesters. They have lots of guns.

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Stop Climate Change Silence - Start the Conversation

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Cassiodorus's picture

@magiamma I didn't read the Guardian article. Could you post a link here?

Awhile ago there was a big "scare" in Klamath Falls, Oregon, about seventy miles from here, in which a bunch of the gun-toting locals came out to protect the neighborhood from "Antifa," because there was some sort of rumor being spread about that "Antifa" was going to show up. "Antifa," of course, did not show up.

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

travelerxxx's picture

@Cassiodorus

I didn't read the Guardian article. Could you post a link here?

I'm thinking the article is here.

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magiamma's picture

@travelerxxx
There is also this which paints a picture of the secret police increasingly funded by rump.

BEFORE PORTLAND, TRUMP’S SHOCK TROOPS WENT AFTER BORDER ACTIVISTShttps://theintercept.com/2020/07/25/portland-federal-agents-antifa-border

When considering the Trump administration’s actions in Portland, “it’s impossible not to recall the Department of Homeland Security’s targeting of activists and civil society organizations on the border for surveillance and criminal investigation,” ... “A lot of what’s happening here seems incredibly familiar,” he said. “From little green men, to the encouragement of far-right protesters to stage armed demonstrations outside Capitol buildings in regional areas. ... much of what’s happened in recent weeks, from the DHS operations themselves to the units involved to the government’s characterization of the perceived threat, would be familiar to anyone who’s had a close eye on the border in recent years.

And this...
'These are his people': inside the elite border patrol unit Trump sent to Portland
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/27/trump-border-patrol-troo...

That he should have selected the US border patrol as the lead agency in his new reality-TV bid to seize control of civilian streets is especially alarming ... the Bush administration drastically expanded the border patrol, almost doubling the number of agents to its current 20,000 and boosting its budget from $1.5bn in 2006 towards the $5bn it is today. The CBP now prides itself at being what it calls “one of the world’s largest law enforcement organizations”. ...

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Stop Climate Change Silence - Start the Conversation

Hot Air Website, Twitter, Facebook

Cassiodorus's picture

@travelerxxx Should we all buy guns?

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

@Cassiodorus
Fantasies of idiots who think they are some sort of minutemen fighting the Redcoats. First off, the Redcoat's muskets were comparable to the Minuteman's and the American rifles were superior. (British doctrine was to get in close and fire rapidly, not accurately. the "Wall of Lead:. same with their Naval tactics in that period. The French were actually better sailors with superior ships. The Brits got so close the hulls almost touched and fired twice as fast as the French. The press gangs could always find more sailors in the London slums). Even the dreaded "military style weapons" are no match for modern military firepower. If a successful shooting revolution occurs it will be a military revolt not yahoos with handguns and rifles. That does not preclude a Gandhi revolution.

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

travelerxxx's picture

@Cassiodorus

I was simply trying to help out with the location of the article magiamma mentioned. I've no particular opinion on that article, but I was somewhat surprised that it's taken as long as it has for the right-wingers to get their act together with vigilante groups ... er, militias.

If you want a gun, do what you will.

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mimi's picture

comes timid efforts to rebuild for survival, which then is embedded in fascism.

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Bisbonian's picture

@mimi . With some planning for an alternative, there may be other possibilities.

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"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X

Bisbonian's picture

"We aren't in the middle of a world war, the United States isn't a weak, ineffectual state like Russia was after the February Revolution,"

Just wait several months.

Moreover, it appears that there will have to be a great period of traumatic realization that our problems are not going to come to a sudden end if we should happen to elect Joe Biden to the office of President of the United States.

Exactly

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"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X

The only significant topic for everyone -- not just erstwhile Democrats, liberals and progressives -- is how do we overthrow the insane social order within the USA and its imperial domains. Of course that means that upwards of 95% of us refuse to think about it and many of those who do are too naive to have anything of value to say on the question of how to prevent the extinction of our species.

The first order of business is clarity. We are not just trying to realign the distribution of "wealth" by seizing the means of "production." We have to re-define both words, wealth and production. I get a cynical chuckle out of a common sound bite this bizarre summer in the northern hemisphere: "The CARES Act included the biggest transfer of wealth in history." No, it was the biggest gift of dollars to people who already have plenty of them in the history of the world. Wealth distribution remains static -- the rich are still rich and the rest of us ain't. The amounts of "dollars" in bank accounts have nothing to do with how much material stuff you have.

In a recent thread here, I did not pick up on this point, but I think it is more relevant in the current discussion: In response to me saying that the post-apocalyptic economy must include all of us giving up on lots of really popular crap that we don't need, a Comment went off on a rant against Coca Cola. Exactly! Soda pop and a zillion other frivolous and supposedly harmless things will have no place in any conceivable sustainable future.

Here is the rub. The status quo argument against socialism and any revolutionary project from "the left" to the working class is simple and persuasive: "Capitalism gives you the choice of what you want to do with the fruits of your own labor. Capitalism is therefore democratic. The left wants to tell you what you can have because some supposedly smart guys know better than you what is good for you. The left is therefore the real authoritarian threat."

There are lots of logical flaws in that line of bullshit, but it has kept the American working class divided for decades. We need a better answer to it than, "You are a racist." Or, "You are selfish."

For the first 67 years of my life, I remained a cockeyed optimist. I realized as of 2016 that voting was not going to change anything, but I could see clearly the deterioration and coming collapse of the American Empire. Whereas most supposed lefties either have TDS or at least profess the undeniable truth that a sleazy jerkoff like The Donald should not be President, my ultra-tinfoil retort is that nobody is "President" in the way described in The Constitution. Since JFK took the pipe, the Presidency has become a ceremonial position like a European monarch. But POTUS (as it is now called) is without any question the King of the Culture, and this guy has transferred the battle ground from over the air television to social media -- which he dominates. Twitter, with its short form, is perfect for a dimwitted wrestling villain character like Donnie Shrimpfingers.

I saw him as a necessary pre-condition for revolution. As I watched what actually happened during his term -- as opposed to the non-stop series of bombshells and invective -- he was significantly less bad than I expected. Plenty bad, to be sure. Most importantly, however, for whatever the motivation, the Democrats' bizarre campaign against Trump treated the populace to the spectacle of both major parties accusing each other of fundamental illegitimacy. "Lock her up" vs. "Putin Puppet."

Regardless of whatever irrelevant "facts" might support either of those sound bites, what America and the world have heard non-stop for the last four years is that at least half of our national leadership is a criminal conspiracy.

The subliminal message that this cat-fight delivered is, "Yes, they are both right and our national leadership is a criminal conspiracy." You can see the result as protests continue to roil in our big cities two months after the incident in Minneapolis. And, of course, you can see it in the massive clusterfuck of the pandemic response.

The Plague blew up his act, overexposing his silly schtick while disappointing many of his supporters with his bumbling and his sophomoric ego in the face of life and death problems. So long as it was Trump Against Washington, his empty state coalition held together for the most part. But now, as the ass is falling out of everything, his mojo is gone.

Unfortunately, the ass IS falling out of everything. The collapse of the American Empire has suddenly become irrelevant as our only weapon of significance is the Federal Reserve Board creating "money" to offset the lost production of the last four months. Right now the carnival hustlers are making a show of debating how much to cut the $600 per week funny money. It does not really matter. At some point the funny money will run out and the reality of tens of millions of homeless folks will materialize.

There's your revolution, right there.

Our probably impossible to solve puzzle is how to mobilize those folks behind a coherent new paradigm that establishes and maintains civil order while recreating what it means to be a citizen and a human being. We will have to give up the "freedom" to buy crap like Seven Up while somehow attaining the collective wisdom to recognize crap when we see it. Uh, and doing that without creating our own totalitarianism.

Oh, and that climate thing. Yeah, we have to remake the global economy, producing a different set of consumer goods that aren't just crap. We have to remake the social order so that most of what you use is produced near your home -- shit canning the globalization that made so many billionaires.

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I am no longer optimistic as we have no time and no means to organize ourselves into a coherent revolutionary movement. Instead, we will see millions of people desperate for shelter and food. I don't relish the idea of explaining the melting ice caps to people who will be ready to take a fracking job just to keep their kids fed.

Creativity is what we need. All of mine just became irrelevant.

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Great essay! I had been very optimistic about the next ten years as the Trump phenomenon has exposed the idiocy of our Moneyball Politics, and the Democrats were showing their true colors as the Other Wing of the Republicans. Well, ten years will be contracted down to ten months.

We better hurry up and figure out what future we want. It is being formed right now.

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wendy davis's picture

@fire with fire

well, and imagine a brighter future equally well. thank you.

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orlbucfan's picture

asinine and powerful hold delusions like organized religions have. The power hungry greedball leaders aren’t about to relinquish control easily either! :-(.

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Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

“13 Observations Made by Lemony Snicket while Watching Occupy Wall Street from a Discreet Distance”

1. If you work hard, and become successful, it does not necessarily mean you are successful because you worked hard, just as if you are tall with long hair it doesn’t mean you would be a midget if you were bald.

2. “Fortune” is a word for having a lot of money and for having a lot of luck, but that does not mean the word has two definitions.

3. Money is like a child—rarely unaccompanied. When it disappears, look to those who were supposed to be keeping an eye on it while you were at the grocery store. You might also look for someone who has a lot of extra children sitting around, with long, suspicious explanations for how they got there.

4. People who say money doesn’t matter are like people who say cake doesn’t matter—it’s probably because they’ve already had a few slices.

5. There may not be a reason to share your cake. It is, after all, yours. You probably baked it yourself, in an oven of your own construction with ingredients you harvested yourself. It may be possible to keep your entire cake while explaining to any nearby hungry people just how reasonable you are.

6. Nobody wants to fall into a safety net, because it means the structure in which they’ve been living is in a state of collapse and they have no choice but to tumble downwards. However, it beats the alternative.

7. Someone feeling wronged is like someone feeling thirsty. Don’t tell them they aren’t. Sit with them and have a drink.

8. Don’t ask yourself if something is fair. Ask someone else—a stranger in the street, for example.

I'm particularly reminded of these four:

9. People gathering in the streets feeling wronged tend to be loud, as it is difficult to make oneself heard on the other side of an impressive edifice.


10. It is not always the job of people shouting outside impressive buildings to solve problems. It is often the job of the people inside, who have paper, pens, desks, and an impressive view.

11. Historically, a story about people inside impressive buildings ignoring or even taunting people standing outside shouting at them turns out to be a story with an unhappy ending.

12. If you have a large crowd shouting outside your building, there might not be room for a safety net if you’re the one tumbling down when it collapses.

13. 99 percent is a very large percentage. For instance, easily 99 percent of people want a roof over their heads, food on their tables, and the occasional slice of cake for dessert. Surely an arrangement can be made with that niggling 1 percent who disagree.

CAN'T STOP THE SIGNAL'S ADDENDUM:

One would think such an arrangement could be made. But apparently such arrangements only get made at the point of something, like a knife, sword, or gun. Apparently they don't get made at the point of an argument.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
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Cassiodorus's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal to help with a similar such movement here in the United States.

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

11. Historically, a story about people inside impressive buildings ignoring or even taunting people standing outside shouting at them turns out to be a story with an unhappy ending.

This is such a common and repetitive theme, over time and across cultures, that I'm left wondering if all the spendy private schools just stopped teaching history. Perhaps it's been replaced with graduate level coursework in hubris.

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