From the Communist Party USA
Green on the outside, RED on the inside
"As I participated in the People's Climate March on September 21st, 2014 in New York City, and attended the leftist Climate Convergence Conference during the two days before the march (sponsored by System Change Not Climate Change and the International Socialist Organization [ISO] but attended by about 2,500 left-wingers of many stripes), I was struck by echoes of past struggles. The history of those movements provides important lessons which the growing and developing climate movement needs to learn.
Echoes of Struggles Past
There were echoes of the anti-Vietnam War struggle, a multi-year, multi-faceted struggle that involved massive marches (though they started out small), electoral politics, congressional hearings, civil disobedience, picket lines, weekly vigils, teach-ins, draft resistance, media exposés, an exponentially growing student movement, whistleblowers, GI resistance, and millions of people learning the truth from their own experience that their government was lying to them. The movement had two competing anti-war coalitions resulting from a forced split (engineered by the Socialist Workers Party, a Trotskyite group), many kinds of organizations, and many independent activists. Nearly everyone came together for the biggest marches, but there were competing strategies (single issue versus multi-issue), multiple slogans and chants (Set the Date, Stop the War, Resist the Draft, Bring the Boys Home, Ho-Ho-Ho Chi Minh-the NLF is Going to Win), and internal conflicts and disagreements of many kinds. Some wanted the broadest movement possible, others wanted breakaway civil disobedience. Some groups degenerated into anarchism or violent resistance, others were slow and steady all the way start to finish.
There were echoes of the civil rights movement, a protracted struggle over several decades, which built on many decades of resistance and activism. There were boycotts, non-violent resistance, voter registration drives, legislative and legal efforts of many kinds, sit-ins, marches, religious coalitions, participation from sections of the labor movement, and bringing the reality of segregation home onto TV screens nightly, forcing Americans to confront racism and wrestle with its moral and political implications. There were cooperating and competing organizations (NAACP, SCLC, SNCC, CORE, and many more, including many strictly local groups), leaders who cooperated and sometimes offered competing strategies (A. Philip Randolph, Dr. King, Fannie Lou Hamer, James Farmer, John Lewis, Stokely Carmichael, Bayard Rustin, Whitney Young, Ella Baker), and groups which broke away from the main part of the movement to focus on armed self-defense rather than principled non-violence (The Deacons for Defense, the Black Panther Party, to mention a few-and not to lump them together; they were very different in many ways) or espoused a go-it-alone nationalism (The Republic of New Africa, the Nation of Islam). When Dr. King decided to speak out against the War in Vietnam, he was roundly condemned by many civil rights leaders as taking the movement into an area which should rather be avoided in order to keep as many liberal and centrist allies as possible. Later, others who had been close allies did not want to follow Dr. King into the Poor People's March movement, aimed at addressing economic as well as racial inequality.
Neither of these movements was monolithic, though they are often talked about as if they were. Negotiating the internal conflicts, bridging differences across class, racial, and gender lines, across many different kinds of organizations each with their own particular focus and strategy, was a constant challenge.
Both those movements helped radicalize a generation, brought millions into the arena of political struggle, and experienced conflicts over strategy and tactics. Both had difficulty navigating the complex balance of maintaining broad unity between center and progressive forces, and a super-radical fringe that grew out of the understandable frustration with the slow pace of change and the limitations of the struggles at various points.
Both these movements also spoke in moral, political, economic, religious, and ideological terms. There wasn't one single argument, nor any simplistic strategy that lasted decades, but a constantly flowing movement, impure, filled with temporary allies, compromises, divergent strategies and tactics, and many experiments in struggle. The history of these movements, of their ebb and flow, of their successes and failures, of their grand goals and mistakes, are a rich territory for the new activists of today.
A New Pathway to Radicalism
These echoes and many more were present in the Climate Convergence Conference and even more importantly in the 400,000-strong People's Climate March.
Again today, we have a new generation being radicalized by an issue and movement, a wave of new activists who are passionate and not constrained by the limitations of the past, who express fervent moral indignation about business as usual, some of whom have little or no previous practical experience of struggle or organization.
Again we have a mass movement which is growing, developing, building ties and coalitions, and in the process experiencing varied tugs and pulls over strategy and tactics.
Again, we have a need to project a program which can unify the broad forces necessary to create change with the forces of radicalism which correctly explain the basic, root causes of the problems we face, and fringe groups which seem to make a point of advocating self-defeating tactics.
Again we have a movement in which a crucial question is how to ally with the labor movement, parts of which are already involved, others who see themselves and their members as enemies of the movement, and many confused about what path to take. And again we have people who want to condemn the entire labor movement and the whole membership since it and they are not unified around a progressive position on all environmental issues.
In this piece I focus on attempts to divert new activists from the main line of the movement-elsewhere I have written about the lessons for the major parts of the climate change movement.
On the Nature of Coalitions
Some of the problems of the movement arise from misunderstandings about the nature of coalitions. Coalitions, by definition, are made up of people who and groups which disagree with each other. They come together around a particular issue, event, or campaign, but each organization has its own strategy and its own organizational interests. People who are becoming active for the first time often find it easy to overestimate the level of agreement in coalitions and think they are more united than they really are.
Coalitions are essential tools, ways to build trust and understanding in the process of struggle. They offer a path to larger mobilizations, bigger impacts. But they are not a substitute for ongoing organization, and we should not be confused about what coalitions are and are not capable of doing.
On Confusing Strategy and Tactics
Many problems arise from confusing strategy and tactics. Some critics cite, disdainfully, the fact that the People's Climate March organizers applied for a police permit for the march, as if refusing to talk to the police in every single instance is a principle that should never be compromised. As we learned during the Anti-Vietnam War struggle, marches, especially massive ones of hundreds of thousands, can't be run like demonstrations of twenty or thirty people. Undoubtedly, there are times, as in many of the civil rights marches in the south, when it is not feasible to get police cooperation, and that should not stop the struggle from proceeding. But when it is possible to get the police to do their job, to grant a permit, to negotiate a march route, to stop traffic so those not involved in the march don't end up hating the demonstrators, that is not a betrayal of basic principles, that is a recognition of practical reality. Only those for whom the point is to get other people into a losing pitched battle with the armed forces of the state seek to cause unnecessary problems.
No, the police shouldn't determine the course of our movements, but neither should we make it a point of pride to be obstructionist just for the sake of being obstructionist.
Correct Criticism Buried by Rhetorical Excess
There were limitations of the People's Climate March. The march organizers used corporate sponsorships to fund their work; they intentionally offered no specific demands at all, they relied on advertising to generate a bigger turnout. They offered the march as a blank slate on which any supposed "green" claim could be written. Some forces, including some of the major backers of the demonstration, were and are eager to limit the struggle to pressuring for minor reforms within the current political and economic paradigms, and remain determined to fight any effort to challenge the system or highlight it as a cause of the environmental calamities we face.
On the basis of these weaknesses, some critics try to ratchet up anger and rage in order to get around their sect-like isolation.
Chris Hedges, in an article before the march, claimed that, due to the limitations of the broad coalition sponsoring the march, the lack of specific demands, and the dire necessities of quick change dictated by the science, the march was the "last gasp of climate liberalism." He went on to say that "our only hope" for the movement rested with those who were planning civil disobedience. In his talk to a panel before the march, he at least had the honesty to acknowledge that his analysis comes close to that of the anarchists, though he refines too much on some supposed differences.
Hedges states that, "All attempts to work within this decayed system and this class of power brokers will prove useless." So how are we to organize those who are not yet as "advanced" as Hedges? Lectures? Shouting? Shaming? Talking to ourselves? Self-righteousness? None of those offer any realistic hope of organizing millions.
Hedges offers a bleak prospect, that we will not see change in our lifetimes, but says that even so we should resist because otherwise we face spiritual and intellectual death. So he suggests that we should engage in impractical and symbolic acts of resistance, and give up any real hope of change in the near term. How does he expect to organize anyone with this grim perspective? Or maybe the point is that he doesn't expect to organize very many, and that is the root of his near hopelessness.
The "Weathermen" Fallacy
Illusions about how much a march can accomplish can sometimes lead to disillusionment, to despair, to responding positively to efforts to constantly "up the ante." This was a feature of the Weathermen, an offshoot of the anti-Vietnam War and student movements, which carried out the self-destructive "Days of Rage" in Chicago, as well as several bomb plots and other dead-end schemes. The futility of such supposedly more radical tactics in service of a strategy that is no less than suicidal in the end (to the group and to some of the individuals involved) is obvious to those with a long involvement in struggles, but it can appeal to those looking for a shortcut around the protracted slog of movement building and reaching and winning a majority.
Because of their overheated rhetoric and media-coverage grabbing violent tactics, the Weathermen set the broader anti-war struggle back. Their tactics drove potential allies away. Their super-militancy ended up separating them from the mainstream movement, provided an excuse for repression, focused them inward, and placed their emphasis on personal commitment to what they perceived as the "higher" stages of struggle and personal self-sacrifice rather than on winning a majority of people. Preventing new activists from being trapped by this kind of blind alley is the reason to pay attention to similar fringe efforts right now.
More Critics
Other sharp critics of the People's Climate March condemned the march before the fact in excoriating terms. For example, Arun Gupta, in Counterpunch, claims, based on his personal experience toiling in the advertising industry, that the only purpose of the march was to generate good PR. He says, "But when the overriding demand is for numbers, which is about visuals, which is about P.R. and marketing, everything becomes lowest common denominator." He goes on, "So we have a corporate-designed protest march to support a corporate-dominated world body to implement a corporate policy to counter climate change caused by the corporations of the world, which are located just a few miles away but which will never feel the wrath of the People's Climate March." He posits a fictitious alternate reality, in which if the march was just two days later, had not gotten a police permit, and routed itself past the UN Building, then much more amazing and radical things would have happened, if only we kept ourselves pure and untainted by any hint of corporate involvement.
Gupta may look at the issue of numbers only through his advertising industry lens, and in that context numbers may be all about P.R., but the rest of us don't need to stick to such a limited view. Mass marches and massive numbers are also about proving that the movement has the strength and organizational muscle to pull off such an event-proving it to the ruling class, to the media, to the movement itself, and also to those who are considering joining the movement. It is an exhibition of power, of the ability to mobilize, of potential political clout, of mass attention to the issue, and yes, also about P.R. Demonstrating the ability to turn out 400,000 people and solve the innumerable challenges in doing so proves certain facts about the movement, about the organizations involved, about the unity it shows to the world.
Gupta also links to several other critics, like Quincy Saul, of Ecosocialist Horizons, who in advance damned the march as a "farce." Saul claims that the march had no target, no timing, no demands, no unity, no history, and no integrity. Saul says, "To invite people to change the world and corral them into cattle pens on a police-escorted parade through the heart of consumer society is astoundingly dishonest." He continues: "Climate justice requires nothing less than a global revolution in politics and production; it requires a historic transition to a new model of civilization, which will demand great sacrifice and creativity from everyone." But how is it not "lying to the people" to proclaim this but offer no realistic path to get there? Isn't it "astoundingly dishonest" to invite people to change the world and then corral them into pointless and symbolic "resistance" that is unable to organize the very millions who will determine the success or failure of the movement?
He assumes that any reform movement that tries to apply mass pressure on politicians is wasting its time because, "The powers that be are deaf, dumb and deadly, and we will waste no further time trying to pressure or persuade them." But what if the point is not to persuade them at all, but to mobilize and organize more people into the struggle, people who do not as yet have any kind of revolutionary outlook? Is that too a waste of time?
He claims it is an insult to all the people coming for the march that the organizers got a permit. Did he think to ask any of these hundreds of thousands if they felt insulted? Or does he just assume, from his Olympian perch, that what he feels is what everybody else "ought" to feel?
Saul offers, as a shortcut to organizing millions, this simple path: "The only thing that we can do to meet the deadline for climate justice is to engage in a massive and permanent campaign to shut down the fossil fuel economy. But we have to do this strategically, not in the symbolic cuff-and-stuffs that are a perversion and prostitution of the noble ideals of civil disobedience and revolutionary nonviolence. So we are going to shut down coal plants; we are going to block ports, distribution centers and railway hubs where fossil fuels are transported; whatever it takes to keep the oil in the soil. We're going to put our bodies between the soil and the sky." This is either a path to irrelevance, to time in prison, to some version of revolutionary suicide, or to all of the above, especially when completely divorced from the mass movement.
In a workshop at the Climate Convergence Conference, Saul called for people being ready to "throw themselves on the gears of the system," as if that was a path to change. It won't stop the coal industry, not unless Saul has some hidden cache of many tens of thousands of activists eager to throw away their lives in a fit of revolutionary romanticism. Such action doesn't change the system; it gives the system an excuse for intensifying repression.
There is nothing wrong with enthusiasm per se, but revolutionary enthusiasm is no substitute for revolutionary organization, nor for winning the majority of workers. Although he claims to be in favor of unity, instead of seeing the marchers as allies, Saul compares them to the enemies of the movement: "The spectacle of thousands of First World citizens marching for climate justice, while they continue to generate the vast majority of carbon emissions, brings to mind the spectacle of George W. Bush visiting New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina." In his mind, it is the fault of the people who are trying to do the right thing, who are entering the struggle, that they aren't radical enough yet! Is it really true that the marchers themselves are responsible for the majority of emissions, or did Saul just get lost in his own overheated rhetoric? A few rhetorical questions for Saul: "How many First World citizens participated in deciding to build coal-fired plants? How many First World citizens own industrial plants, or fleets of trucks, or decide to deforest old growth timber?" He is blaming the victims, brushing us all with the brush he should reserve for the capitalist class.
Even More Critics and Critiques
All these critiques are just more sophisticated versions of the Revolutionary Communist Party's endless chanting of "Revolution-Nothing Less," as if the slogan itself could magically bring forth a mass revolutionary movement. As if cranking the volume on their bullhorn up to 11 could convince anyone.
Anne Peterman, in an online article, says in the headline that "direct action is the antidote to despair" and that "the UN is worse than useless." Driven to that conclusion by the failure of the UN to negotiate a serious, binding treaty to tackle climate change, she is ready to abandon an entire arena of struggle to the liberals and the obstructionists. Instead it could be one path that could unite and rivet the international community of activists on this issue
Of course we should not have illusions about the UN as the savior of the world from climate change, any more than we should have illusions about capitalism or technology being the solution. But by ceding participation in the UN process, she unintentionally gives away weapons to the opponents of action. Direct action is indeed one tactic that can be usefully employed by the movement in particular battles, but it is not a strategy for success in the longer war against greenhouse gas emissions, it is not a substitute for a mass movement that has the actual power to create fundamental change. In her thinking, because the UN has "cracked down on dissent" at previous climate summits, it is obviously the enemy and we should stop trying to work for an international treaty. We should follow her example and be proud of getting banned from future summits, and congratulate ourselves about how much more pure we are than those who still try to pressure the UN. This approach divides the movement, the opposite of the necessary broad unity.
The False Hierarchy of Militancy
Naomi Klein, in her otherwise excellent book "This Changes Everything," almost mythologizes what she calls "Blockadia." She reports on struggles around the world, many lead by indigenous groups, that physically stop mining, pipeline construction, and other destructive corporate efforts to develop access to more fossil fuels. Many of these actions are admirable, even inspiring, and sometimes victorious, but that doesn't make them the blueprint for change under all circumstances. (I should note that Naomi Klein serves on the Board of 350.org, one of the main sponsors of the People/s Climate March-so she certainly doesn't advocate limiting struggles to blockades and civil disobedience-see my review of her book in the People's World.
Intentionally or not, the strategy that the ultra-left critics advocate either states or implies that such militant, confrontational struggles are the highest form of struggle possible, or that they are the only worthwhile form of struggle. Intentionally or not, they set up a hierarchy of types of struggle, discounting mass marches as less militant and/or less effective.
This artificial hierarchy is a false ranking of kinds of struggle. It posits mass mobilizations as less valuable than direct action, which is not as good as civil disobedience and getting arrested, which is less valuable than direct and immediate revolutionary struggle, presumably armed struggle. This gets around the need for real, in-depth analysis of the actual political situation, since all you have to do is climb up the ladder of escalating militant struggle, dragging a few people with you. No need for an actual strategy, no need to actually try and win millions to the cause.
Civil disobedience can be a very effective tactic, and in certain situations can be the only way to go, the only avenue of struggle open, especially to disenfranchised groups. But by itself it is not a strategy for all circumstances, nor is it effective unless harnessed to a mass movement as one part of a suite of tactics, and utilized only where appropriate.
This apparently more militant set of tactics, and substituting them for a long-term, coherent strategy, appeals to some of those who understand the depth of the challenge of climate change and are appalled by the way the system resists change, especially change that threatens super-profits, but don't see any realistic way out-so they fall for these unrealistic approaches. The appeal also comes from a misunderstanding of the role, and limitations, of mass marches and other more mainstream tactics.
What the March Can and Can't Accomplish
These critiques are based in part on inflating the expectations of what the march "ought" to accomplish and then knocking down that straw man. They take some justifiable criticisms of the limitations of the march and inflate them to an utter condemnation of the value of mass mobilizations.
A march, even a gigantic one like the People's Climate March, by itself cannot directly accomplish much. The results of such a march are measured in changes in public opinion, in more people who as a result get inspired to join the ongoing movement, in marking an important way-station on the way to much more grassroots organizing. It is a test and demonstration of the movement's strength, a way to make the media and the political and financial elite pay attention, a boost to the visibility of the ongoing work the environmental movement is doing. It inspires, it excites, it offers a deadline to work towards, a handle for those looking to get involved. By itself, a march does not change laws, change policies, nor can it fundamentally transform a society by itself.
The overarching need at the moment is to get millions of people in our country, and billions around the world, into motion, into the streets, into action, into organizations. For that goal, a mass march is an excellent tool. Masses learn from their own political experience, from running up against the system themselves, from trying everything short of revolution and seeing that reforms by themselves are not enough. Masses don't become revolutionary because someone chants louder or has a bigger red flag or gets arrested more often, or makes a principle out of never asking for a police permit.
But with many of the hundreds of thousands who marched that day, the left has an open door, an open door with a welcome mat, to offer a program that actually addresses the environmental crises. As Naomi Klein noted in her closing plenary speech to the Climate Convergence Conference, the march represents the current state of the movement. It does not and we should not expect it to represent some idealized manifestation of the fevered dreams of the most radical participants, who wish to substitute revolutionary romanticism for a hard look at what is actually required of us. That kind of diversion is a way to focus on the favored tactics of the few rather than the strategy of the main movement.
Another echo from past struggles is from the Battle in Seattle, where the main march of over 45,000 got very little media attention, because it was diverted to covering the tactics of the anarchists. Their window smashing and trash burning was a diversion from the real politics, which united many from both the environmental movement and the labor movement, setting the stage for the tasks of unity-building we have today.
Two Purity Traps
These critics fall into one of the two purity traps of the current environmental movement. The first trap is the idea that real revolutionary struggle is all about being politically pure, never compromising with the system, never uniting with distained liberals, as if political purity was more important than actually having an impact, more important than bringing millions into the struggle.
The other purity trap is to blame all environmental problems on population growth and on individual choice. If people would just not litter, ever, (Fox News made a big deal out of how much garbage was left on the street by the marchers), then their complaints might be worth listening to (though that would never happen-the right would just find another excuse to ignore or bash the movement). It is not the fault of the system; it is the fault of these people who are trying to change things, because they are not perfect. If people would just stop using plastic bags, or stop buying products, or stop having babies, then everything would be okay. These right-wing talking heads tell us (I'm looking at you, Tucker Carlson) that we are not really concerned about climate change-that is just a rich people's issue, while us regular people (like Tucker Carlson? Really?) have to work for a living. These are the same rich people that Tucker Carlson and his ilk lionize as the "job creators." Presumably if rich people stopped caring about climate change, they could get back to trickling down on the rest of us.
But the struggle is not about personal purity, nor about political purity. It is about motivating people, helping them get into motion and action, where they will learn the lessons of struggle. That is when our radical criticism of the system will resonate, not because the left preaches at them, but because masses of people will understand the criticism since it matches their own experience, helps them make sense of the obstacles they run into.
This requires uniting with those you disagree with, with those who are not yet ready to break with the system. It requires placing demands that are actually capable of being won; it requires winning smaller victories to give people a sense of their own power. It requires a serious recognition of the real political moment we are in.
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