Alt fails – movements aren’t strong or sufficient (Malm)
Woody 20 [Gus Woody, 12-18-2020, "Revolutionary Reflections," rs21, https://www.rs21.org.uk/2020/12/18/revolutionary-reflections-moving-towards-an-ecological-leninism/, SMarx, JTong]
War communism – Malm
This leads us to Malm, whose ecological Leninism is focused predominantly on the period of War Communism and the struggles of the early Bolshevik regime to establish itself. Rather than Roosevelt’s New Deal period in the 1930s, to which GND organisers look for historical analogy, Malm argues decarbonisation would look more akin to the War Communism of the 1920s. Here, the Bolsheviks were surrounded by both imperialist powers and the forces of capital, as well as considering how to transform production. Today, any attempt at staving off climate breakdown will require a fight against fossil capitalists and imperialist states keen to pollute, as well as the struggle to wrest control of production.
In Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency Malm identifies three principles of Ecological Leninism as a political project. Firstly, ‘turning the crisis of symptoms into a crisis of the causes.’ In simple terms, just as the Bolsheviks sought to turn the imperialist World War One into a crisis for capitalism more generally, today ecological Leninism requires turning the chronic emergencies of climate disaster and zoonotic diseases into a general crisis for the capitalist system. In the face of escalating symptoms, there is a need to rapidly build for a revolutionary preservation of life.
This leads to the second principle of ecological Leninism – ‘speed as paramount virtue.’ We all know the 12 years to avert climate catastrophe projection made by the IPCC 1.5 report two years ago. If the atmosphere is like a bathtub rapidly filling with carbon which will remain there unless removed, ecological Leninism understands the urgency of reducing and ultimately reaching negative emissions; it demands revolutionaries who understand every second counts in the fight against barbarism.
Finally, Malm argues that the last principle of ecological Leninism, in a similar vein to Dean and Heron, consists of leaping ‘at any opportunity to wrest the state in this direction’ and turn society away from catastrophe towards direct public control. Crucially, his vision of this is not in line with the more optimistic vision of progressive GND proposals, or ‘luxury Communisms’. Instead, the idea of War Communism, of the Bolshevik state attempting to lead a transformation of Russian society whilst facing war, famine, and fuel shortage, reflects the sort of dire circumstances that any ecological Leninist regime would face. Attempting to mitigate and adapt will not be pretty, it may bring emancipation but will be hard work in difficult conditions. Here, Malm’s argument resembles similar sentiments expressed by Salvage’s editorial collective:
The earth the wretched would – will – inherit, will be in need of an assiduous programme of restoration. While we may yearn for luxury, what will be necessary first is Salvage Communism. [6]
In this Communism, caught between salvage and war, Malm goes further than Dean and Heron. Where their arguments against state-phobia lead them towards the necessity of the state apparatus’ growth, Malm rejects the Leninist doctrine of demolishing and replacing the state altogether. In his words – ‘all we have to work with is the dreary bourgeois state, tethered to the circuits of capital as always.’
War Communism here shifts to a violent pessimism, where all we can do is mobilise a variety of strategies to cut these tethers. Malm seems deeply sceptical about the possibility of the formation of alternative institutions of dual power. Ecological Leninism, contra Dean and Heron, need not imply a party or ‘any actual Leninist formations capable of seizing power and implementing the correct measures.’ The possibility – the urgent necessity – of building such formations is not really discussed, despite the very same pages recognising that these years of chronic emergency ‘can be expected to usher in pronounced political volatility.’
Malm attempts to have his ‘Lenin cake’ and eat it: he argues ecological Leninism should raise the consciousness of spontaneous movements and route them towards the drivers of breakdown, whilst he avoids really discussing how to approach Leninist organisation and the formation of working class power to rival the state. Malm falls into the trap of creating a dichotomy between waiting for revolution and acting within existing social movements to pressure the bourgeoise state. The possibility of working class agency that bucks these two categories is foreclosed.
This points to an absence at the heart of Malm’s ecological Leninism. It is a Leninism without a revolution of 1917, focused instead on the difficulties of the Bolshevik government during the Civil War and on Lenin’s wagers during the First World War. It has little to say about the act of building movements capable of intervening in revolutionary situations, tipping them towards revolutionary outcomes. At the same time, as Tugal has eloquently pointed out, Malm’s ecological Leninism is without a revolutionary subject. [7] Rarely in his book does Malm speak of the role of working class struggle within any ecological Leninist project, and as a result he seems pessimistic about the formation of working class power which could rival the state, laying the bedrock for a Leninist project. As Max Ajl points out:
One thumbs in vain through this book for any mention of the people who are not hypothetical, who are struggling in small, desperate, sincere, and hopeful ways for a better world. On this big, beautiful, desperate, poor, devastated planet are there no social forces which meet Malm’s standards for the subject or agent of ecological revolution or ecological Leninism? [8]
Ultimately, if climate Leninists are to retain the desire to smash and replace the bourgeois state, there is a need to analyse how actually existing working class and peasant movements may organise to build the institutions necessary for a situation of dual power. The question is how to build these bodies whilst simultaneously mobilising for maximum climate action in the present. Malm’s otherwise engaging work requires these insights to flesh out a programme of ecological Leninism suitable for our times.
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