Why Climate Change Is Necessary for the Leap to Socialism
(page 3 of four)
[Click here to go back to page 2.]
The meaning of climate change today
From the mega perspective of human history it does not matter that the great majority of the masses today are wage slaves and not slaves who are owned by someone. Capitalism killed many millions of the wage-slaved and is destroying the planet; it is causing many species in this planet into extinction in the process of extracting surplus value. Thus despite its “high tech” and the fast development of the productive forces, capitalism is the most barbaric class society: it is causing mass extinction of species that were seen only in times of massive climate change; it is destroying the surface of the planet, making it difficult to life to adapt; and it has been killing many millions through its wars and environmental diseases; and finally it will leave billions (in Asia alone) to die from lack of food and water as the glaciers that contain the source for life are disappearing because of capitalism. I am not arguing here that no progress was made since the Sumerian Civilization in Mesopotamia. On the contrary enormous progress was make in culture and the development of the productive forces. But this is relative and must be viewed in the context of the destruction that capitalism is causing as it ignores the dire need to stop the severity of climate change. The last 6000 years class societies developed in “wet” and stable period. By releasing such a massive amount of CO2 and other green house chemicals into the atmosphere capitalism has been putting a brutal end to the wet period.
So, with all due respect for the evolution in the productive forces and “culture”, capitalism is just the highest and the last stage of class society. Unlike previous class societies where social development and a new mode of the productive forces outlived the old productive forces and forced a change (for example the development from feudalism to capitalism.), the human race so far has failed to make the change from capitalism to socialism. This is the case even though millions if not billions of workers are realizing that the productive forces generate maximum profit for the ruling class as it is devastating their life and culture as human beings. The painful truth is that great many workers in the world know about the need to transform capitalism into socialism, but there is no leadership to guide them into successful revolutions. They realize the need for the leap, but now they are unlikely to make the revolution without the “help” of climate change that will bring the collapse of capitalist civilization. We are just entering this era in homo sapiens history that should bring a leap in human development.
One may object: “But humans brought climate change upon themselves. Human started the industrial revolution. Thus climate change today, has nothing to do with the forces of nature alone”. True. But the industrial revolution that brought the pollution necessary for climate change was not a conscious choice. Capitalism was a historical link that could not be avoided. Human development via capitalism was not possible without the mass pollution that is bringing now a dramatic climate change. Thus dialectically speaking we can say that humans broke with nature through the evolution of class society. But humans cannot fully break from nature. Nature creates the homo sapiens race. Human evolution up till today was not done via “intellectual guideless” or “wisdom” of the leaders of class societies’ empires. Capitalism views nature as a source for exploitation, but they cannot fully break with nature. Nature, that is, the material basis for all life, must be suitable for living and thus it will have the last laugh. We can say that capitalism and its industrial pollution are part of “natural” evolution. It had to be done this way, there was no conscious choice or the technology to let capitalism evolve as a “green” society. The homo sapiens race was not aware that capitalist pollution would cause a massive climate change. Even if it was aware, the profit of the oil and other companies would always come first. By the time awareness of climate changed has developed, the ruling class that depends on industry, cars, and many other aspect of human life that run by fossil fuel, had no interest to make the fundamental changes to stop the earth’s warming. The liberal opposition to fossil fuel is not willing to deal with the main force behind climate change and the other environmental disasters: that is, capitalism and the fundamental need to overthrow it (Hence. once again the need for a revolutionary leadership). The green opposition pushes the complete nonsense that capitalism can reform itself and become green if we put enough pressure on its politicians. But this idealist scheme contradicts history and the material world itself. Capitalism in a period of decay and immense crisis cannot make the conversion to green industry. Industries must use the cheaper fossil fuel to generate enough profit in the struggle against the competitors. In this period of world depression and overproduction reliance of fossil fuel is bigger than ever.
Just think about it for a moment. Lately it was revealed that in 2010, carbon dioxide rose 6%, the highest ever! This level of carbon dioxide is allowed to continue to rise in the atmosphere. Just the continued release of carbon dioxide (without the other factors that is causing climate change) will bring the temperature at the end of the century to be over 5 degree Celsius higher than today. I posted an e. mail that says:
“With this rate we are all doomed. Why? Because what triggered the biggest extinction of all living in this planet (life in oceans was gone and 95% of all beings were extinct) was a temperature rise between 4-5 degrees C. That was 250 million years ago. It looks like we'll be there (4-5 degrees rise) sometime in the 21 century. And don't forget about the speed today in comparison to 250 million years ago. 250 million years ago it took thousands of years for the temp to rise 5 degrees. Now it is taking less than 100 years. Simple calculation (plus a little dialectics) tells me we have 10 to 30 years max to make a successful international (and I mean international: in every country in the world) socialist revolution. All those who call themselves Marxists should take a notice. You must change quite dramatically your transitional program and put much more emphasis on this. It matter little whether the American masses like to put their heads in the sand when it comes to this question. We must bombard them with the real urgency of this and the full truth until they take their head out of the sand or get baked there. There is no time left to mince with ‘transitional’ words by occasionally calling for workers control of the energy industry and for its conversion to ‘green’ industry. Stronger demands with harsh reminders of what capitalism is doing to wreck the planet must be used”
How Human Alienation Cripples Us and Fuel Climate Change
Here I am leaving my reputation as an “Orthodox” Marxist and use the dialectics instead of repeating formulas. Why are we still under capitalism? Clearly the socialist revolution so far failed. Most scientists say that we passed the point of no return. It is up to nature to decide how destructive will climate change be. If it is mild to moderate it will just bring down civilization as we know it. If it is severe, then the human race may be gone. Orthodox Marxism claims that the only reason capitalism is still around is because we failed to build a revolutionary leadership to lead the working class to power. Yet this is only one factor. The human race so far proven to be too primitive to bring about the social revolution that is needed to bring about egalitarian classless society based on green industry. People social and emotional make-up is thoroughly distorted by capitalistic influence. Under capitalism most of the time people are driven by forces outside of their control and understanding. Capitalistic values such as individualism (life is about me and my success in capitalism and I don’t care about the rest) instead of solidarity keep capitalism alive. Like in any other class society, under capitalism people cannot looks at life and themselves objectively. They do not use objective reasoning to arrive at the truth. People have distorted subjectivity based primarily on fear, anxiety and stress. These are gifts for the capitalist elite. It is easy to immerse such fragile and insecure people in the values of capitalism.
Human alienation with bourgeois subjective consciousness is wide-spread. It affects everybody including the entire socialist camp. It paralyzes it and disables its ability to lead the masses to socialism. As long as this is the case no leap to socialism is possible. The claim of lack of revolutionary leadership as the only reason why we are still under the boots of capital is banal. The truth is that without overcoming the bourgeois subjectivity of the so called revolutionary left it is not possible to build a revolutionary leadership. Trotsky in the book Stalin and other writing illustrates that most of the Bolshevik leaders lacked the capacity to think independently, and they reacted to events emotionally and mostly subjectively as a typical person. Trotsky did not included Lenin in this category. But Lenin brought Stalin into the Central Committee in 1913 because he was a good organizer even though everybody knew how alienated, manipulative, canning and dangerous was Stalin. This mistake by Lenin was one of the factors that brought the rise of Stalin to power. Yet we could not really blame Lenin. In these days (and today!) the alienated, individualist, power grabbing character of many “Marxist” leaders was not something that the Marxists took into account. Ultimately the number of revolutionaries who master the dialectics and are able to use it consciously were and remain too few.
This weakness of the individual helps us to understand why so many communists in the 1920’s and 30’s capitulated to Stalin and became opportunists. This is also a big factor for understanding why practically all leftists today are opportunists, sectarians or centrists. Trotsky himself examines how emotional bourgeois subjectivity was deeply ingrained in the minds of key Bolsheviks. In my writing on alienation I noted that:
“The CP leaders identify with the Soviet Union and ‘father’ Stalin to foster their power inside the mass communist parties. Their emotional security depended on their position inside the party which was dependent on their loyalty to Stalinism. But this security was achieved at the expense of feeling and thinking independently. As long as the personality remained alienated and weak, the socialist and communist parties provide the person with the security of the herd in a similar fashion to any other party and cult in capitalist society.
“This emotional immaturity can be traced to the conduct of key Bolshevik leaders in the period before Stain rose to power. In his books the History of the Russian Revolution and My Life, Trotsky examined the psychological weakness of the most important Bolshevik leaders — weakness that led to opportunistic positions before the Russian revolution and to capitulation to Stalin later. While Trotsky does not give a full analysis on the interaction between the psychology of such leaders and the objective development of the revolution, his insights are nevertheless quite revealing. Two of the key Bolshevik leaders were Kamenev and Zinoviev. This is what Trotsky wrote about Kamenev:
‘Although a Bolshevik almost from the very birth of Bolshevism, Kamenev had always stood on the right flank of the party. Not without theoretical foundation or political instinct, and with a large experience of factional struggle in Russia and a store of political observations made in Western Europe, Kamenev grasped better than most Bolsheviks the general ideas of Lenin, but he grasped them only in order to give them the mildest possible interpretation in practice. You could not expect from him either independence of judgment or initiative in action. A distinguished propagandist, orator, journalist, not brilliant but thoughtful, Kamenev was especially valuable for negotiations with other parties and reconnoitres in other social circles — although from such excursions he always brought back with him a bit of some mood alien to the party. These characteristics of Kamenev were so obvious that almost nobody ever misjudged him as a political figure. Sukhanov remarks in him an absence of “sharp corners.” “It is always necessary to lead him on a tow line,” he says. “He may resist a little, but not strongly.” ’ (Leon Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, Volume One, pages 273-4.)
“In other words, an opportunistic political character that impels one to dilute political principles, can always be traced to a weakness in the fundamental personality — to the inability to withstand social pressure and maintain independent thinking and initiative; to the fear of being ostracized, and of being a alone. It is always the case that when a person has a weak core, that person does not have a real nourishing connection to him/herself and to his/her closest friends and comrades. In such a case, political leaders including the best Marxists and socialists, cannot withstand the adverse pressure that involves the defense of big political principles. Such leaders will be driven to embrace the prevailing views of their social milieu. In the case of Kamenev and many others Bolshevik and Communist Party leaders, this meant an abandonment of independent thinking and principles, which are exchanged for the security of the herd. . . .
“Zinoviev’s opportunism was not as straight forward as Kamenev’s. Trotsky explains that on a superficial level his character seems to contain the opposite attributes to Kamenev’s political identity:
‘Where Kamenev was a propagandist populariser, Zinoviev was an agitator, and indeed, to quote an expression of Lenin, “nothing but an agitator.” . . . Lacking inner discipline, his mind is completely incapable of theoretical work, and his thoughts dissolve into the formless intuitions of the agitator. Thanks to an exceptionally quick scent, he can catch out of the air whatever formulas are necessary for him — those which will exercise the most effective influence on the masses. . . . Although far more bold and unbridled in agitation than any other Bolshevik, Zinoviev is even less capable than Kamenev of revolutionary initiative. He is, like all demagogues, indecisive.’ (Leon Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, page 285.)
“Zinoviev’s capitulation to the social pressure of Stalinism and the Communist Party can be trailed to his demagogic character. It can be traced to the demagogue’s symbiotic relationship to others in general. The demagogue needs the cheering and the approval of the people in the street to achieve unity with others, to overcome the painful separateness. But underneath rules the anxiety of the insecure person who cannot think clearly and independently. The thoughts of the subjective demagogue do not come from the ability to assess the objective situation, but from the gut feelings of the ego that knows how to say to[sic. Should be the] right things to get the caressing of the crowd. Underneath lies a damaged core that depends on the crowd’s approval to feel the self worth. Thus, Zinoviev who, depended on the approval of the crowd, also, like Kamenev, depended on the prevailing social mood of the Bolshevik party and ultimately on Stalin approval — such approval like in the case of many others Communists was more decisive than the principles of a humanistic socialist society that failed so miserably in the Soviet Union.”
The Trotskyist movement died with the death of Trotsky. The post second-world-war leaders proved to be much worse than Zinoviev and Kamenev.Today when we have perhaps the last chance to lead the international revolution before it is too late the Trotskyist movement is literally dead. We can go on and on about how Canon, Pablo and Mandel and company took Trotskyism to the swamp. A detail examination of their social alienating characters and how it connect to their bad centrist politics is outside the scope of this article. Suffice to say that the post Second World War leaders failure was decisive. Without it we cannot explain the little Stalins such as Healy, Robinson, Moreno (Argentina) etc., and their the cult followers: members who could not produce any independent thinking due to their emotional fears and dependence on the “leaders”.
Yet the need for a revolutionary leadership for the socialist revolution is more urgent than ever. The crisis of capitalism is deep and will not go away without a socialist revolution worldwide. Thousands Trotskys and Lenins (with their own individual characteristics and with deep non-alienating humanistic values and understanding) will have to emerge for the world revolution to happen. The reason why they have not emerged have to do more with the general characters of human beings under this system than the mechanical “orthodox” reasoning for the lack of a revolutionary leadership. The failure of building a leadership has more to do with the fact that all humans with very little exceptions run by subjective emotions not rational reasoning. Everybody is very subjective most of the time. Independent thinking is the extraordinary exception since subjective people with alienated bourgeois values and emotions cannot think independently. On the other hand objectivity is a rare thing. Yet without the ability to be objective it is impossible to use the dialectics. Without hundreds and more likely thousands who use the dialectic consciously on a regular basis, the building of a revolutionary leadership on the international scale (the most important requirement for the socialist revolution) cannot take place. We can hate the system until we are blue in the face, but no leap to classless society is possible as long as our emotions and personalities are determined by capitalism and the capitalist environment that we live in day in and day out. Some of us (and I mean many thousands) will have to transcend this to become real revolutionary leaders.
Why is there so little reaction to the news that capitalism and climate change are destroying all livings, including hundreds of thousands people on the planet every year? Every year there are more droughts and flooding. The number of people dying because of climate change is reaching millions. The news report that we are in middle of one the greatest extinctions of all livings on this planet. Scientists discover every year that they are underestimating how far climate change has already been developing. They tell us that unless we quickly transform our industry into green industry human civilization as we know it will be gone. Human civilization will decay to such a degree that we will have wars over scarce water and food. Millions are expected to die in the horn of Africa from droughts that are likely associated with climate change, while many thousands died in Asia and Latin America from powerful floods never seen before. The entire country of Thailand was covered with water, meaning one of the biggest exporter of rice and its capital Bangkok is/was under water!
A typical news this days goes like this:
“According to new data from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Lab, global carbon-dioxide emissions just saw their biggest one-year rise, a 6 percent jump in 2010. [¶] The striking thing is that emissions are now rising faster than the worst-case scenarios envisioned by the IPCC in its 2007 report. What would this mean for global warming? The chart on the right, from a 2009 study by MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Climate Change, lays out the possibilities. If emissions keep growing at their current pace, then the average prediction from MIT’s modeling is that the world could heat up 5.2°C by 2100. But that’s just the average. There’s a 9 percent chance that global surface temperatures could rise more than 7°C — truly uncharted territory. And as we keep adding carbon-dioxide into the air, the odds that we’ll be able to dodge a drastic rise in temperatures become very, very low.” (The Washington Post, Nov. 6, 2011)
“2011 has been a year of extreme weather, the weather service said. Parching drought in East Africa has left tens of thousands dead, and there have been deadly floods in Asia, and 14 separate weather catastrophes in the United States with damage topping $1 billion each.” (Associated Press, Durban, South Africa, Nov. 29, 2011)
A growing number of scientists think that we crossed the tipping point. James Hansen, a leading climatologist, concluded after extensive research that we are at the tipping point:
“The upshot of the combination of inertia and feedbacks is that additional climate change is already “in the pipeline”: even if we stop increasing greenhouse gases today, more warming will occur. This is sobering when one considers the present status of Earth’s climate. Human civilization developed during the Holocene (the past 12,000 years). It has been warm enough to keep ice sheets off North America and Europe, but cool enough for ice sheets to remain on Greenland and Antarctica. With rapid warming of 0.6°C in the past 30 years, global temperature is at its warmest level in the Holocene. The warming that has already occurred, the positive feedbacks that have been set in motion, and the additional warming in the pipeline together have brought us to the precipice of a planetary tipping point. We are at the tipping point because the climate state includes large, ready positive feedbacks provided by the Arctic sea ice, the West Antarctic ice sheet, and much of Greenland’s ice. Little additional forcing is needed to trigger these feedbacks and magnify global warming. If we go over the edge, we will transition to an environment far outside the range that has been experienced by humanity, and there will be no return within any foreseeable future generation.” (2008–2009 State of the Wild, my bold)
We know that if the temperature will rise 5.2C as predicted, the Earth may experience massive extinction similar to the mass extinction of 250 million years ago at which 95% of all life on the land and the oceans was gone. The scientific knowledge about the catastrophic potential of climate change is widespread. Hundreds of millions in the US and Europe alone are perfectly aware of it. Yet beside few protests the human race is silent. You think if this human race consist of millions of sane people with egalitarian values deep in their souls, climate change will not be a just discussion at the dinner table. Millions would stop their lives and stay on the streets until capitalism is overthrown and the human race will start dealing with the massive problems seriously. Everyone of us all over the world should be out on the street crying: “If I am human I must stop this mad destruction of life and my own race.” Like in the movie Network where everybody is looking out their window screaming “I cannot take it anymore”. Yet the aware millions do nothing. They are alienated and de-humanized to the point of accepting the destruction of the planet: putting their head in the sand, focusing on their survival or Yuppie success.
Demoralization and lack of leadership alone does not explain why millions are putting their head in the sand even though they know perfectly well that what is at stake is the extinction of most life and possibly the human race itself. Knowing what at stake here, every homo sapiens who is truly mature, egalitarian and loving toward humanity would stop anything in his/her life and try to stop this mad destruction of nature by capitalism. The reason why such spontaneous outrage by millions does not happen is because people who are truly mature, egalitarian and loving are rare. Most people are deeply alienated. They exist as typical self center individuals who focus on their deep insecurities, fears of themselves and others, distrust of others, attachment to a delusional enhancement of their ego, or just the need to survive under capitalism.
For a dialectical materialist being determines consciousness. That means that the capitalistic influence on the daily life and the history of the average individual in capitalism determine their state of being; in other words, their feelings and “views” (their consciousness) are not authentic. The truth is that the fears and insecurities that the capitalistic environment inflicts on us are much more powerful than the best parts of the average person humanity. The “me, me, me” consideration, or “I am too busy with this or that to survive or advance my social status” are much more powerful than “I cannot take it anymore. I am going to the street and call on the human race to overthrow capitalism to save my people, the animals and plants”.
I will not hesitate to say that the human race’s social consciousness today is as primitive as it was for thousands of years. The social and emotional consciousness will remain primitive as long as it reflect the values of class society. The planet (as we know it) and our race is facing catastrophic changes , but we choose to put our head in the sand and go shopping or watch escape programs on TV. This tells me that our race is still primitive and has not advance much emotionally since the stone age. This is so because class society cannot generate human maturity. A number of progressive psychologists determined that the emotional maturity of adults remains stuck between the age of 9 to 12. To be honest this is the case of many “revolutionaries” and “Marxists” that I met. Just from this I cannot escape the conclusion that the alienated character is as much of a factor for the survival of capitalism as the lack of revolutionary leadership and program. I am not minimizing the need for a revolutionary leadership and program. Without them no socialist revolution is possible. I contend, however, that the difficulties to build such a leadership must be traced at least partially to the human immaturity of the alienated character. 99% of people are raised by parents with emotional structure that is typical for homo sapiens growing under capitalism. In schools these emotions and values re-enforced. The relations between friends, what is considered “love”, the existence of unstable marriages and unstable nuclear family, are all based on unstable emotions and values generated by capitalist society. Economic crisis always brings the above negative emotions of the immature persons to the point of explosion.
[Click here to continue to page 4 of four; click here to go back to page 1.]