Climate Change as Class War

Building Socialism on a Warming Planet

Matthew T. Huber

• Publisher: Verso
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781788733885
• eBook ISBN: 9781788733908
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Economy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The climate crisis is not primarily a problem of 'believing science' or individual 'carbon footprints' - it is a class problem rooted in who owns, controls and profits from material production. As such, it will take a class struggle to solve. In this ground breaking class analysis, Matthew T. Huber argues that the carbon-intensive capitalist class must be confronted for producing climate change. Yet, the narrow and unpopular roots of climate politics in the professional class is not capable of building a movement up to this challenge. For an alternative strategy, he proposes climate politics that appeals to the vast majority of society: the working class. Huber evaluates the Green New Deal as a first attempt to channel working class material and ecological interests and advocates building union power in the very energy system we so need to dramatically transform. In the end, as in classical socialist movements of the early 20th Century, winning the climate struggle will need to be internationalist based on a form of planetary working class solidarity.

Notes

Introduction: Climate Change as Class War

1Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “Summary for Policymakers of IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C approved by governments,” October 8, 2018.

2Bill McKibben, “Winning slowly is the same as losing” Rolling Stone, December 1, 2017.

3Nina Chestney “IEA says global CO2 emissions rising again after nearly 6% fall last year,” Reuters, March 2, 2021.

4International Energy Agency, Net-Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector (Paris: International Energy Agency, 2021).

5“Renewables 2021 Status Report: Key Messages for Decision Makers.” ren21.net.

6Myles McCormick, “US producers begin to follow Europe with emissions pledges” Financial Times, December 6, 2020.

7Lizzy Gurdus, “Climate change will be a ‘really big’ focus for ESG investors in 2021, market analyst says,” December 16, 2020. CNBC.com.

8White House, “Fact Sheet,” January 26, 2021, “Fact Sheet,” April 22, 2021. Whitehouse.gov.

9See, Adam Tooze, “America’s race to net-zero,” New Statesman, April 21, 2021.

10Branko Marcetic, “Joe Biden Is Almost as Pro-Drilling as Trump,” Jacobin, June 3, 2021.

11Jane McAlevey, No Shortcuts: Building Power in the New Gilded Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 4.

12United States Environmental Protection Agency, “Sources of Greenhouse Gas Emissions.” epa.gov.

13I proposed this book in 2017. In the meantime, the concept of the “Professional-Managerial Class” (PMC) has exploded as a central and polarizing topic both between left and liberal politics and within different factions on the left (e.g., the Bernie Sanders–vs.–Elizabeth Warren policy debate of the 2019–20 primary campaign). I will review this debate in Chapter 3, but my general position is that a class politics for our time clearly needs to pay attention to the role of education in creating either divisions within the broadly defined working class or creating separate classes in themselves. (The political and ideological divisions remain regardless of whether we call the PMC a “class” or not.) While I think the debate over class can become pedantic—and not particularly useful politically—I will argue for a conception of the professional class as defined by a specific relationship to production.

14During the peak of working-class power in the twentieth century, socialist movements were embedded in industrial factory production. The prospect of “seizing” the means of production and transforming capitalist scarcity to socialist abundance seemed viscerally possible. Much of the “proletarian” workforce by definition had directly experienced, or had cultural memories of, their agrarian past (and had little interest in going back). In contrast, professional-class climate politics emerged in what Aaron Benanav calls the “postindustrial doldrums” where postmodern thought and ecological crisis have led many to reject industrial modernity tout court. These sentiments come out of lived reality completely severed from industrial production, which is either automated or offshored and totally invisible to the professional class. See, Aaron Benanav, Automation and the Future of Work (London: Verso, 2020, 56).

15See, e.g., Nick Dyer-Witheford, “Struggles in the Planet Factory: Class Composition and Global Warming,” in jan jagodzinski (ed.) Interrogating the Anthropocene: Ecology, Aesthetics, Pedagogy, and the Future in Question (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 75–103; 85–8.

16See, Thomas Piketty, Capital and Ideology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020).

17Eitan D. Hersh, Politics Is for Power: How to Move Beyond Political Hobbyism, Take Action, and Make Real Change (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2020).

18Stefania Barca, Forces of Reproduction: Notes for a Counter-Hegemonic Anthropocene (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press).

19Adaner Usmani calls this “disruptive capacity.” Adaner Usmani, “Democracy and Class Struggle,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 124, no. 3 (2018): 664–704. See also, Tarun Banerjee, Michael Schwartz, and Kevin A. Young, Levers of Power: How the 1% Rules and What the 99% Can Do About It (London: Verso, 2020).

20Andreas Malm, How to Blow Up a Pipeline (London: Verso, 2021), 68.

21As I write this, Extinction Rebellion Cambridge offered a useful thread on Twitter, compiling a list of ongoing and new projects in the works.

twitter.com/xr_cambridge/status/1404010271094579203?s=20. (June 13, 2021).

22However, the idea of nationalizing the fossil fuel industry has finally started to appear in socialist left circles. Peter Gowan, “A Plan to Nationalize Fossil-Fuel Companies,” Peoples Policy Project, March 21, 2018.

23Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1. (London: Penguin, 1990), 929.

24Ibid., 930.

25David Roberts, “Transmission week: why we need more big power lines,” Volts. Wtf, January 25, 2021.

26Avery Ellfeldt, “Kerr...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction: Climate Change as Class War
• I. The Capitalist Class
• II. The Professional Class
• III. The Working Class
• Conclusion: Species Solidarity at the Climate Crossroads
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• Index