This is quite a long post but i would like to add to to this as a long term activisty sort that did work based around consumption, ecology, peak oil and permaculture.
A couple of years ago i probably would have thought 'great! it's raising awareness!' when reading about the plane stupid actions. And probably when reading posts by DLR and others would have thought ' fcking hell going on and on about w/class, how 80s! '
But over the past couple years, you could see the climate change debate going mainstream (GOOD!) but then the response mainly seemed to be making a new market from carbon emissions (BAD!) and government adverts suggesting that people turn off the lights. Then you head into the shops and see places with the lights on all the time, sometimes with each commodity lit by its own lightbulb. And various class warrior sorts would say ' you see - capital is trying to push the cost of the ecological crises onto the working class. It's called austerity and it means that life gets harder for the majority with no real change' and i went 'well thats interesting' and investigated a bit more about all this class stuff.
And it turns out that it's not about accents, flat caps, whippets, pigeons or whether you work down t'pit. And that it is really worth trying to separate the party politics vanguardy sort from the more grassroots autonomous sort, one lot are a lot more friendlier than the others in terms of getting shot after the revolution etc
There is no solidarity in sharing poverty. The exclusion of working class people in developing countries from wealth is not the result of the actions of working class people in the UK. There have been specific investment decisions , normally between those with Capital, the ruling classes of both north and south. I see parallels between say the gleaming Docklands surrounded by decaying social public infrastructure over here , and some of the new chinese megacities with skyscrapers and shanty towns in close proximity. So whilst over here the working class earn vastly more than those in the shanty towns, the relationship between employer and employee is the same. Rewind 100 years here and maybe you could say that materially conditions were the same but guess what - we got organised and conditions improved. And the same is happening now in china. which is why the chinese state and capital is starting to invest in africa. the same pattern again and again.
I think that when people bang on about class it's not because they are fetishising the working class, or think 'they' are perfect or anything like that. It is more a recognition that 'work' STILL dominates our lives. And this 'work' is based around wages, capital and profit. How and what this work actually is is determined by class interests. It's really simple. There has been a 3 decade long class war in the UK and USA.
When profit was threatened in the 70's, manufacturing (which was 70% of the UK economy) went abroad, and thats why we we now have a 70% service economy in the UK. The vast amounts of pollution generated from shipping commodities back here is a result of the profits that manufactors have made by exploiting workers and relocating to the east.
If we made stuff we needed here then there would be incredible cuts in CO2. But i can't wake up tomorrow and go 'Oh - i would like there not to be a service economy, i would like to make socially useful products in an ecological way'. Well i could - but then i would need to go to work and make some money for someone else to invest in the most profitable way that they see fit. Which probably won't be making socially useful products in an ecological way. So as an individual i don't have this power. But by building solidarity with others in the same position you do have power.
But this is vastly more difficult and unimaginable than targetting the end of the chain, consumer choices of what products and services. But all these class forces determine access to consumer goods. So basically the big hoo haa about 'cheap flights' means an inherent acceptance that therefore the way to go is 'expensive flights'. So in many ways it's a defeat. Because it is saying that those who have enough money have the right to pollute.
Also just to make clear - this doesn't mean that you are arguing for the right of everyone to pollute and consume more ok - its fcking obvious that consumption and energy use is a problem. I think i am trying to say that ecological degradation is a by product of this system and not the aggregate of individual consumer choices.
A couple of years ago i probably would have thought 'great! it's raising awareness!' when reading about the plane stupid actions. And probably when reading posts by DLR and others would have thought ' fcking hell going on and on about w/class, how 80s! '
But over the past couple years, you could see the climate change debate going mainstream (GOOD!) but then the response mainly seemed to be making a new market from carbon emissions (BAD!) and government adverts suggesting that people turn off the lights. Then you head into the shops and see places with the lights on all the time, sometimes with each commodity lit by its own lightbulb. And various class warrior sorts would say ' you see - capital is trying to push the cost of the ecological crises onto the working class. It's called austerity and it means that life gets harder for the majority with no real change' and i went 'well thats interesting' and investigated a bit more about all this class stuff.
And it turns out that it's not about accents, flat caps, whippets, pigeons or whether you work down t'pit. And that it is really worth trying to separate the party politics vanguardy sort from the more grassroots autonomous sort, one lot are a lot more friendlier than the others in terms of getting shot after the revolution etc
There is no solidarity in sharing poverty. The exclusion of working class people in developing countries from wealth is not the result of the actions of working class people in the UK. There have been specific investment decisions , normally between those with Capital, the ruling classes of both north and south. I see parallels between say the gleaming Docklands surrounded by decaying social public infrastructure over here , and some of the new chinese megacities with skyscrapers and shanty towns in close proximity. So whilst over here the working class earn vastly more than those in the shanty towns, the relationship between employer and employee is the same. Rewind 100 years here and maybe you could say that materially conditions were the same but guess what - we got organised and conditions improved. And the same is happening now in china. which is why the chinese state and capital is starting to invest in africa. the same pattern again and again.
I think that when people bang on about class it's not because they are fetishising the working class, or think 'they' are perfect or anything like that. It is more a recognition that 'work' STILL dominates our lives. And this 'work' is based around wages, capital and profit. How and what this work actually is is determined by class interests. It's really simple. There has been a 3 decade long class war in the UK and USA.
When profit was threatened in the 70's, manufacturing (which was 70% of the UK economy) went abroad, and thats why we we now have a 70% service economy in the UK. The vast amounts of pollution generated from shipping commodities back here is a result of the profits that manufactors have made by exploiting workers and relocating to the east.
If we made stuff we needed here then there would be incredible cuts in CO2. But i can't wake up tomorrow and go 'Oh - i would like there not to be a service economy, i would like to make socially useful products in an ecological way'. Well i could - but then i would need to go to work and make some money for someone else to invest in the most profitable way that they see fit. Which probably won't be making socially useful products in an ecological way. So as an individual i don't have this power. But by building solidarity with others in the same position you do have power.
But this is vastly more difficult and unimaginable than targetting the end of the chain, consumer choices of what products and services. But all these class forces determine access to consumer goods. So basically the big hoo haa about 'cheap flights' means an inherent acceptance that therefore the way to go is 'expensive flights'. So in many ways it's a defeat. Because it is saying that those who have enough money have the right to pollute.
Also just to make clear - this doesn't mean that you are arguing for the right of everyone to pollute and consume more ok - its fcking obvious that consumption and energy use is a problem. I think i am trying to say that ecological degradation is a by product of this system and not the aggregate of individual consumer choices.
. We need to be clear about what we mean by by what we say we do. In workplaces, in communities, in direct action, in electoral politics, in protests and awareness raising. Too often activists are too focussed on activity and not enough on being "reflexive" about their practise as it were.
