The Revolutionary Socialist Network, Workers
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1AR --AT: Eco-LeninismState backlashWoody, 2020 (Gus. “Revolutionary Reflections: Moving towards an ecological Leninism” rs21. December 18, 2020. https://www.rs21.org.uk/2020/12/18/revolutionary-reflections-moving-towards-an-ecological-leninism/ ///MF) 1: The State A century on from The State and Revolution, the capitalist state which Lenin spoke of is different in many ways. [12] Over the 20th century, countries like the UK saw a massive rise in state ownership and the provision of services like the NHS. Conversely, since the 1970s many nations have seen a continued rise in privatisation, with ‘public-private partnerships’ between business and the state reaching their sickly zenith in the UK, with the cronyism of key coronavirus contracts outsourced to the friends and family of Conservative MPs. Furthermore, the rise of global supply chains and new international bodies for capitalist states to interact has created a world where states are increasingly entangled and co-dependent, creating challenges for any revolutionary theory which aims for global impact. [13] There is therefore an urgent need to analyse the class nature of modern capitalist states and identify where and how the revolutionary working class are best to organise against it. Luckily, Marxist theorising around the state has not stayed still since Lenin’s day. There has been Althusser, [14] Gramsci, [15] and the Miliband-Poulantzas debate about the class character of the state, [16] as well as the emergence of Open Marxist approaches. [17] As a result, in the words of Khachaturian, ‘Marxist state theory is largely an open-ended and intellectually pluralistic research framework.’ [18] Whilst I do not intend to comment on these different theories, I wish to point to certain considerations which suggest the urgency of an ecological Leninist theory of the state. Firstly, the point pushed by both GND proponents and the ecological Leninist authors already discussed – the state apparatus has significant potential to be used as an instrument for rapid decarbonisation. However, and this is where previous accounts still have direction to travel, there is the importance of understanding the state as a product of irreconcilable class antagonism. With Dean and Heron’s article not exploring the need to wreck the state, and Malm rejecting it outright, the question of what form proletarian control takes is crucial. Ecological Leninism requires focus on the transitional stage – the dictatorship of the proletariat, which as Lenin stated, ‘will create democracy for the people, for the majority, along with the necessary suppression of the minority.’ In the period of rapid decarbonisation which ecological Leninism aims to deliver, there is the twofold problem of creating worker control over society as well as the difficulty of ensuring the forces of fossil capital cannot exert influence. On the first, expanding proletarian democracy, there is much the Leninist tradition must learn from the Bolshevik experiment and the ways in which traditions of worker control like council communism have been critical of it. This is a valuable endeavour if used to move environmentalism away from the liberal conception of ‘climate assemblies’ towards climate councils and soviets of workers. Herein is why Wall and other Marxists’ work on base-building is crucial, as those who seriously talk about building institutions of worker control. Ultimately, ecological Leninism means learning from the failure of previous revolutions in creating institutions capable of wresting responsibility from the bourgeois state and dismantling it through practical and theoretical explanations of contemporary struggles where we see worker control emerging. On the second issue of suppression, socialists must recognise that if a revolutionary movement seized state power, without continued international mobilisations, any decarbonisation effort will face new enemies of global capitalism – the IMF, the World Bank, etc. Studying how these institutions have been mobilised against socialist and social democratic states is crucial, as in addition to imperialist armies and governments, these bodies will attack any ecological Leninist regime. International eco-socialist solidarity is crucial, as repression from the enemies of a revolutionary eco-socialism risks making an ecological Leninist regime an island in a hostile sea. In this situation, the need for stability in the transitional period may lead Leninists to not only suppress their exploiters, but also any left-wing element which demands more from the regime, becoming a snake eating its own tail. In short, how to prevent violent autarky whilst regimes build for global eco-socialist revolution is a pressing issue. Ultimately, the importance of an ecological Leninist understanding of the state will be to effectively draw a line between revolutionary socialists and compromise elements within the wider environmental movement who need to be won over to the revolutionary cause.[19] In the UK and the US, the past years have seen left environmentalists compromise with movements pursuing election to state power in the hope of action on the climate crisis. The failure of these movements indicates the foreclosure of the electoral route to climate action within bourgeoise state institutions, this demands a reckoning with the class character of the state. Given the need for Malm’s speed as a paramount virtue, Leninists must build on these experiences to begin elaborating their own programme’s confrontation with the beast that is the state apparatus. Download 2.09 Mb. Share with your friends:
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