On BBC’s HARDtalk 5 years ago, Roger Hallam was slammed across the board for saying billions of lives were at risk. The liberal climate movements tried to refute and play down the existential risks ahead. The last few months have shown ever more clearly that he was right. After all, what do we actually think the “end of civilization” will look like?
Several new scientific papers from Ripple and Pearce have outlined that not only are billions of lives on the line, but that “richer humans will be responsible for [the] killing”. This month, the NASA Climate Scientist, Peter Kalmus, also added his voice to that position. The time for shying away from our existential reality is over. The precautionary principle dictates that these realities form and guide the mission of our lives - that only a revolution to change who makes the big decisions is going to save us.
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I’ve been following Roger for a while, and I agree with most of what he’s saying in theory. In spirit I’m a revolutionist, but in practice I’m probably more of a reformist. The scale of the change we need is so massive that there will never be a critical mass of people to make the changes needed. That just means that smaller groups will need to have bigger effects, and even though we’re aiming for complete change, even if we only get 50% of the way there that’s still much better than it is now.
It’s often easier to topple regimes than to enact significant reforms to them. The existing burearcracy/way of economic organizing has inertia: as long as it exists it will keep pushing back towards the status quo ante, and it will keep om doing terrible things where-ever the reformists don’t care enough to push for more.
You can see this with social liberalism - the reformist alternative to socialist revolution, where capitalism kept on destroying the planet and exploiting non-citizens, but hey, citizens got public services and pensions and labor regulations. Until the reformists drank the liberal kool-aid stopped being constantly vigilant, so all those privileges are getting rescinded.
It is easier to imagine the end of capitalism than to imagine humanity surviving despite capitalism.
Again, that sounds great in a random comment online, but take that line of thinking to ground.
What does that actually look like? It will inevitably be violent. Historically, based on every revolution or attempt at revolution, the end result is worse than the starting point. The most dangerous, violent, charismatic person makes it to the top and they become a dictator.
There’s no mechanism to ensure we actually end up in the desired point. Too many variables that are unaccounted for, even in Halam’s like 40-part lecture series. It all sounds great but it’s not realistic.
Historically, based on every revolution or attempt at revolution, the end result is worse than the starting point. The most dangerous, violent, charismatic person makes it to the top and they become a dictator.
This is only the case for revolutions with authoritarian marxist-leninists at the helm, which do exactly as you describe without fail.
However, anarchist revolutions which are built upon decentralizing power as much as possible so that there can be no centralized leadership from which dictatorship sprouts, has shown the opposite; that it can result in a long-term egalitarian society where there is no charismatic dictator or vanguard. This was demonstrated most clearly with the Spanish Anarchists during the Spanish Civil War, who documented how they organized in a horizontal, egalitarian way.
Rojava in northern Syria and the Chiapa Zapatista movement in Mexico (both inspired by Anarchist political theory) also demonstrate that an egalitarian society can function well for long periods without a decent into dictatorship.
Yeah I’m well aware of Rojava, Spain, and the Zapatistas. Think about the entire culture of the West, do you think anarchism would spread further than a few percent of the population?
Side note: if you’re not already aware you’d probably like the Cool Zone Media podcast network (Behind the Bastards, Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, It Could Happen Here, etc.)
Think about the entire culture of the West, do you think anarchism would spread further than a few percent of the population?
Considering how close the US was to a socialist revolution in the 1930’s before FDR tamped that out, yeah I could see it spreading. Most boomers would obviously never go for it, but the younger generations who are the most shafted by capitalism are already becoming quite favorable socialism. They’d just need to be made aware that Anarchism exists and is a viable option.
Side note:
We actually have a Cool Zone Media community on our instance, !coolzonemedia@slrpnk.net :)
Historically, based on every revolution or attempt at revolution, the end result is worse than the starting point.
The US/NATO (and other neocolonial powers such as Russia) doesn’t need to be “better off”, all they need to do is lose enough force projection that the rest of the world can make progress without getting “liberated” in response.
So many socialist revolutions would have made things better if not for the neocolonial powers using every tool in their arsenal to ruin them.
That said, I do think liberal-democratic revolutions - French, American, colour, etc. - have been improvements. I don’t think absolute monarchical colonial empires would have been any less inclined to ruin the planet.
Also, I’m not quite sure where the boundary between colonial independence war and revolution lies. The American and Haitian revolutions are called such, but the Indonesian war for independence isn’t. Many wars of independence/revolutions(?) unambiguously improved things, though again there is a lot of overlap with neocolonial fuckery that has nothing to do with the quality of local governance.
So I would be willing to roll the dice on a revolution/civil war/economic collapse in NATO countries and/or Russia tomorrow. In the rest of the world I would want to wait for good prefiguration. Though practically there is so much anti-revolutionary propaganda in NATO that I think the only way to break through is with good prefiguration.
Everybody knows the “charismatic leader” cynicism by heart. The only way to succeed at revolution in a NATO country is by showing you can topple internal charismatic leaders.
Remaining within “the law”
The second new development is that 4 Billion Dead will not be involved in organising or acting in a way a regime sees as illegal. In the increasingly authoritarian contexts we face, direct action will most likely lead to the arrest and imprisonment of people in the organisation and force its closure. 4 Billion Dead as an organisation will therefore focus, for the time being, on training, the organising of the processions, and publicising the 4 billion death reality we face.
- the about section of 4billiondead.org
Okay, bets on how long it takes for what they’re doing to be “seen as illegal” by the UK executive?
