Global emissions fall faster than at any time on record as COVID-19 hits economies

By Peter Hannam October 14, 2020 — 

Global greenhouse gas emissions have dived at a faster rate than any time since records began as the coronavirus crushes demand for travel and other energy uses, a team of international researchers has found.

In the first six months of 2020, emissions fell 1.551 billion tonnes – or roughly the equivalent of three times Australia's annual carbon release, according to scientists, based in nations from China to the US and Germany, who published their results in Nature Communications journal on Thursday.

Aircraft emissions have dived as aeroplanes have been grounded all over the world. Pictured here are planes at a storage facility in Alice Springs.CREDIT:GETTY IMAGES

The drop of 8.8 per cent, compared with a year earlier, was steeper than during the global financial crisis that began in 2008, the Great Depression of the 1930s, the 1979 oil crisis and even world wars.

The largest monthly decline in the period came in April as the global pandemic's first wave swept through the largest European and US economies and prior to China's subsequent rebound in post COVID-19 activity.

Daily emissions – extrapolated from data such as electricity generation in 31 countries, vehicle traffic in more than 400 cities, and industrial output in 62 nations – were down 16.9 per cent versus April 2019, the researchers said.

Among the main sectors, transport recorded the biggest slump in emissions as lockdowns restricted the movement of people, sliding 40 per cent. Within that group, aviation emissions plunged almost 44 per cent, a rate that has accelerated slightly into July.

The estimates came a day after the International Energy Agency predicted full-year emissions for 2020 would be about 7 per cent lower than in 2019. The decline in fossil-fuel use has also been compounded by the relentless fall in renewable energy prices, particularly solar.

During the first half of the year, emissions in the US were down 13.3 per cent, the European Union and the United Kingdom fell 12.7 per cent.

Those in India were down 15.4 per cent while those in China – where the coronavirus first emerged – only dropped 3.7 per cent as that nation's economy rebounded.

The researchers cautioned that the reduction would likely be temporary and only tiny compared with long-run increase in atmospheric concentrations of the carbon dioxide and other gases.



"While the CO2 drop is unprecedented, decreases of human activities cannot be the answer," said Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and one of the report's author.

“Instead we need structural and transformational changes in our energy production and consumption systems," Professor Schellnhuber said.

"Individual behaviour is certainly important, but what we really need to focus on is reducing the carbon intensity of our global economy.”

Data gathered by Ndevr Environmental, a consultancy, estimated Australia's emissions from petrol in the January-June period sank 15 per cent to 13.1 million tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent and those of aviation by 44 per cent to 4.7 million tonnes.

"What is really concerning in the report is the strong rebound effect due to a lack of structural change," Richie Merzian, Climate & Energy Program Director at The Australia Institute, said.

"That is especially the case in Australia given there isn’t a single, not even one, national policy to cut transport pollution."

Pep Canadell, executive director of the Global Carbon Project, said dust, smoke and other environmental issues were being tracked and reported on using satellites and other technology, but not greenhouse gases until lately.

"Having a more real time system provides stronger and immediate feedback to society and governments on the evolution of our carbon emissions and the sectors contributing the most or being affected the most by intentional namely, climate mitigation) or unintentional (such as the COVID-19 pandemic) changes in the energy system," Dr Canadell said.

AUSTRALIA

World's largest solar farm and battery to export green energy


By Nick O'Malley
July 30, 2020 — 

A plan to build the world's largest solar farm and battery in the Northern Territory and connect it to supply power to Singapore and Indonesia has been granted "major project status" by the federal government.

Energy and Emissions Minister Angus Taylor said the $22 billion project, known as the Australia-ASEAN Power Link and backed by Atlassian's Mike Cannon-Brookes and Fortescue Metals founder Andrew Forrest, would help Australia maintain its position as a leading energy exporter.

"As technologies change, we can capitalise on our strengths in renewables to continue to lead the world in energy exports," he said.

The project, if completed, would provide Singapore with up to 20 per cent of its power supply by 2027, and dispatch power to the Northern Territory and Indonesia, earning $2 billion per year.

"The battery will be 150 times the size of [the South Australian big battery at] Hornsdale, so it's insanely large," Mr Cannon-Brookes told the National Smart Energy Summit in Sydney in December.

"The longest subsea cable at the moment is 1900 kilometres, there are a couple of others under construction, but at three and a half thousand clicks it is getting to the limit. I suspect it will still be the longest by the time it's built."

But he said the scale of the project was manageable.

"There's nothing engineering wise in the individual component parts that says it can't be built," he said.

The recognition of the project by the federal government as being of national significance this week will see it win help securing state and federal approvals.

Industry, Science and Technology Minister Karen Andrews said the project would create 1500 jobs during construction and 350 ongoing jobs.

"It's a strong statement to all Australians that despite the immediate challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic we will come out the other side stronger and industry is still investing in opportunities that will drive our economic recovery," she said.

In June Mr Cannon-Brookes backed an economic stimulus plan developed by the climate change think tank Beyond Zero Emissions that would accelerate new energy transmission and storage projects and a national housing retrofit program designed to eliminate energy bills for low-income households.

"We can build a renewable energy superpower with a very low cost of energy generation," he said at the launch of the strategy, one of several green stimulus packages made public by industry groups and think tanks since the COVID-19 pandemic stalled the economy.

"We can use this as an opportunity to electrify so much of our economy, in lots of different ways. We can use it to build a better strategically positioned economy for the future," he said.

AUSTRALIA 

Old king coal has surrendered to solar, says global power report

By Nick O'Malley October 13, 2020 —


Solar power has been declared "the new king of electricity" by the International Energy Agency in its annual energy outlook report, which finds it is already cheaper than power generated by new coal and gas developments in most countries and is providing, "some of the lowest-cost electricity ever seen".

For the first time since the industrial revolution, coal-fired power will constitute less than 20 per cent of the world's energy by 2040, according to one scenario in the report, which found the end of the coal era has been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The report has major implications for the Australian government, with Tim Buckley of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis saying it was hugely significant that the IEA was now predicting that coal was in structural decline in all of its modelled scenarios, as in previous years in some scenarios it predicted that coal demand would have continued growth at lower rates.

“It deprives Australian state and federal governments of a crutch. They have relied on the IEA modelling in the past to say there was evidence of continued growth, so has the industry,” he said.


Moree solar farm in NSW.

This year global greenhouse gas emissions will fall by 7 per cent to 33.4 gigatonnes according to the 2020 World Energy Outlook, but the agency warns that the economic slump cannot be viewed as a solution to climate change. Unless nations adopt green economic recovery policies emissions will quickly rise in the recovery, it says.

"The economic downturn has temporarily suppressed emissions, but low economic growth is not a low-emissions strategy – it is a strategy that would only serve to further impoverish the world’s most vulnerable populations,” said IEA chief Dr Fatih Birol.

Instead, governments should adopt policies to drive down emissions.

The report models four possible scenarios of recovery and energy use, ranging from one in which governments adopt policies to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 to one in which governments respond with their already stated policies. In this scenario greenhouse gas emissions bounce back to pre-COVID levels by 2023.

All the scenarios predict that coal’s peak use has already passed and cast renewables as taking "starring roles".

"I see solar becoming the new king of the world’s electricity markets. Based on today’s policy settings, it is on track to set new records for deployment every year after 2022," said Dr Birol. "If governments and investors step up their clean energy efforts in line with our sustainable development scenario, the growth of both solar and wind would be even more spectacular – and hugely encouraging for overcoming the world’s climate challenge."

The report predicts peak oil demand will hit in the coming decade, but unless governments shift policies that support its use it could plateau for years after that.

Gas demand is expected to rise in Asia over coming years under one scenario as governments use it to replace coal energy plants, but for the first time the agency is predicting that gas demand will begin to decline by 2040. Gas’s environmental credentials will be challenged by new technologies demonstrating that methane “fugitive emissions” associated with gas are causing significant harm to the climate, it says.




VIDEO https://tinyurl.com/y2yn9w4y

Professor Paul Dastoor from the University of Newcastle talks about the first public display of printed solar panels at Lane Cove. 

Pollution from coal-fired power stations in Victoria
0:15

0:15
Pollution from coal-fired power stations on the east coast

"An uncertain economic recovery also raises questions about the future prospects of the record amount of new liquefied natural gas export facilities approved in 2019," the report says. "Investors are looking with increased scepticism at oil and gas projects due to concerns about financial performance and the compatibility of company strategies with environmental goals."

Mr Buckley said the IEA’s acknowledgement of the climate impact methane emissions related to the gas industry have was also a signal of future uncertainty for the industry, though he said he did not believe it would prompt the government to reconsider its support for a gas-led recovery.

Director of the Grattan Institute’s energy program Tony Wood said it would be difficult for Australia to dismiss the IEA’s modelling because it is one of the agency's most long-standing and active members.

Kingsmill Bond, an energy analyst with Carbon Tracker, a finance and climate change think tank in London, welcomed the recognition that the world began to hit fossil fuel peaks in 2019, but said he believed it underplayed how far and fast solar costs would continue to fall.

"The IEA is forecasting a massive slow-down in the rate of fall of solar costs. Costs have been falling at 18 per cent a year since 2010," he said. "The [report] expects that the rate of cost falls reduces to just 2 per cent a year in the period to 2040. This is simply not credible."

Mr Bond also said he believed solar would continue to expand at a faster rate than that predicted by the agency's business-as-usual scenario.

.

Weekend Break: 

The North Coast's legendary sea monsters
By Julia Triezenberg For The Astorian


This drawing is a 1734 sketch of a sea serpent by Hans Egede.
Columbia River Maritime Museum


This shadowbox is just one example of the ways that sea monsters are a part of maritime imagination.
Columbia River Maritime Museum


Legends emerge in a variety of ways. While they often tell the origin stories of a particular group or place, it can be hard to pinpoint their birthplaces. There is rarely any physical evidence to prove that a legend is true. But they continue to be passed down from generation to generation, becoming a defining feature in communities.

The Pacific Northwest is no stranger to tales of mysterious creatures. Sea monsters, like the legends that talk about them, come in all shapes and sizes. They’ve become a mainstay in maritime cultures around the world. Sailors would tell these tales to give some explanation to tragedy at sea, to make their lives sound more adventurous to landlubbers or to make sure they weren’t left out of the buzz of a sea monster story. Even though there is advanced technology to explore ocean depths, researchers don’t know about everything that may be down there.


The North Coast has several tales of sea monsters frequenting local waters.


The sea serpent “Claude” was first sighted near the mouth of the Columbia River in 1934. L.A. Larson, a mate on the lightship Columbia LV-88, is believed to be the first human to have spotted Claude. Larson described Claude as, “About 40 feet long. It had a neck some 8 feet long, a big round body, a mean-looking tail and an evil, snaky look to its head.”

Other members of the Columbia’s crew confirmed Larson’s sighting, as did the captain and crew of the U.S. Lighthouse Service tender Rose.

Descriptions of “Colossal Claude” or the “Columbia River Sea Serpent” differ from person to person. While Larson said that the monster had an evil, snaky look to it, Capt. Chris Anderson of the schooner Argo reported several years later that, “His head was like a camel’s … He had glassy eyes and a bent snout he used to push a 20-pound halibut off our lines and into his mouth.”

The ship’s crews claim to have seen him for the next 20 years. Fishermen on the river reported sightings every so often. Claude hasn’t been seen around the Columbia River for about 70 years — since fishermen were telling their stories in the 1950s.

The North Coast’s second legendary celebrity is “Marvin,” who was originally spotted in 1963. In a videotape that has since been studied by some of the country’s leading marine biologists, divers from Shell Oil Co. captured footage of a massive creature moving past them.

Marvin reportedly is about 15 feet long, has barnacled bumps covering his body and swam in a spiral motion past the divers. Many scientists have examined the footage and debated how to explain Marvin’s appearance.

Some believe he is some type of jellyfish. Others are convinced that the sea monster is a remnant of prehistoric times and has only just decided to reveal itself to researchers in the last 60 years. There are also people who believe that Colossal Claude and Marvin are the same monster.

Although sightings of them have been scarce over the past few years, Marvin and Claude are still testaments to the mysticism that comes with living on the North Coast. Who knows when they may pop up again.


Julia Triezenberg is an educator at the Columbia River Maritime Museum.

https://www.dailyastorian.com/life/weekend-break-the-north-coasts-legendary-sea-monsters/article_ba4518c0-0373-11eb-bdce-dffe977dd10d.html

ECOSOCIALISM
The role of planning in the ecosocialist transition – a contribution to the debate

Saturday 25 April 2020, by Michael Löwy

The semiannual French review Les Possibles, a publication of Attac France, in its most recent issue (No 23) features a number of articles on planning for the ecological and social transition. Most are addressed to the issue of socialist planning vs. capitalist markets that was prominent in the debates of 20th century socialism. The contribution by Michael Löwy puts this debate in the ecosocialist framework that has emerged in this century. My translation of it is published below.

– Richard Fidler

Ecological and social planning and transition

The need for economic planning in any serious and radical process of socio-ecological transition is winning greater acceptance, in contrast to the traditional positions of the Green parties, favorable to an ecological variant of “market economy,” that is, “green capitalism.”

In her latest book, Naomi Klein observes that any serious reaction to the climate threat “involves recovering an art that has been relentlessly vilified during these decades of market fundamentalism: planning.” This includes, in her view, industrial planning, land use planning, agricultural planning, employment planning for workers whose occupations are made obsolescent by the transition, etc. “This means bringing back the idea of planning our economies based on collective priorities rather than profitability….” [1]
Democratic planning

The socio-ecological transition — towards an ecosocialist alternative — implies public control of the principal means of production and democratic planning. Decisions concerning investment and technological change must be taken away from the banks and capitalist businesses, if we want them to serve the common good of society and respect for the environment.

Who should make these decisions? Socialists often responded: “the workers.” In Volume III of Capital, Marx defines socialism as a society of “the associated producers rationally regulating their interchange (Stoffwechsel) with Nature.” However, in Volume I of Capital, we find a broader approach: socialism is conceived as “an association of free men, working with the means of production (gemeinschaftlichen) held in common.” This is a much more appropriate concept: production and consumption must be organized rationally not only by the “producers” but also by consumers and, in fact, the whole of society, the productive or “unproductive” population: students, youth, women (and men) homemakers, retired persons, etc.

In this sense, society as a whole will be free to democratically choose the productive lines to be promoted and the level of resources that should be invested in education, health or culture. The prices of goods themselves would no longer respond to the law of supply and demand, but would be determined as much as possible according to social, political and ecological criteria.

Far from being “despotic” in itself, democratic planning is the exercise of the free decision-making of the whole of society — a necessary exercise to free ourselves from the alienating and reified “economic laws” and “iron cages” within capitalist and bureaucratic structures. Democratic planning associated with a reduction of working time would be a considerable step forward by humanity towards what Marx called “the realm of freedom”: the increase in free time is in fact a condition for the participation of workers in democratic discussion and management of the economy and society.

Advocates of the free market tirelessly use the failure of Soviet planning to justify their categorical opposition to any form of organized economy. We know, without getting into a discussion on the successes and failures of the Soviet experience, that it was obviously a form of “dictatorship over needs,” to quote the expression used by György Markus and his colleagues from the Budapest School: an undemocratic and authoritarian system which gave a monopoly over decisions to a small oligarchy of techno-bureaucrats. It was not planning that led to the dictatorship. It was the growing limitation of democracy within the Soviet state and the establishment of totalitarian bureaucratic power after Lenin’s death that gave rise to an increasingly authoritarian and undemocratic planning system. If socialism is to be defined as control of production processes by workers and the general population, the Soviet Union under Stalin and his successors fell far short of this definition.

The failure of the USSR illustrates the limits and contradictions of bureaucratic planning with its flagrant ineffectiveness and arbitrariness: it cannot serve as an argument against the application of genuinely democratic planning. The socialist conception of planning is nothing other than the radical democratization of the economy: if political decisions should not be made by a small elite of leaders, why not apply the same principle to economic decisions? The question of the balance between market and planning mechanisms is undoubtedly a complex issue: during the first phases of the new society, markets will certainly still occupy a significant place, but as the transition to socialism progresses, planning will become increasingly important.

In the capitalist system use value is only a means — and often a device — subordinated to exchange value and profitability (this in fact explains why there are so many products in our society without any utility). In a planned socialist economy, the production of goods and services responds only to the criterion of use value, which entails spectacular economic, social and ecological consequences.

Of course, democratic planning concerns the major economic choices and not the administration of local restaurants, grocery stores, bakeries, small shops, craft businesses or services. Likewise, it is important to emphasize that planning does not contradict the self-management of workers in their production units. Whereas the decision to convert, for example, an automobile factory to bus or rail vehicle production would be up to society as a whole; the internal organization and operation of the factory would be managed democratically by the workers themselves. There has been much debate over the “centralized” or “decentralized” nature of planning, but the important thing remains democratic control of the plan at all levels — local, regional, national, continental and, hopefully, global — since ecological issues such as climate warming are global and can only be addressed at that level. This proposal could be called “comprehensive democratic planning.” Even at this level, it is planning which contrasts with what is often described as “central planning” because economic and social decisions are not taken by any “center” but democratically determined by the populations concerned.

There would, of course, be tensions and contradictions between self-governing institutions and local democratic administrations and other larger social groups. Negotiating mechanisms can help resolve many such conflicts, but in the final analysis, it will be up to the larger groups involved, and only if they are in the majority, to exercise their right to impose their opinions. To give an example: a self-managed factory decides to dump its toxic waste in a river. The population of an entire region is threatened by this pollution. It may then, following a democratic debate, decide that the production of this unit must be stopped until a satisfactory solution to control its waste is found. Ideally, in an ecosocialist society, the factory workers themselves will have sufficient ecological awareness to avoid making decisions that are dangerous for the environment and the health of the local population. However, the fact of introducing methods to guarantee the decision-making power of the population to defend the most general interests, as in the previous example, does not mean that questions concerning internal management should not be submitted to the citizens at the level of the factory, school, neighborhood, hospital or village.

Ecosocialist planning must be based on a democratic and pluralist debate, at each level of decision. Organized in the form of parties, platforms or any other political movement, the delegates of the planning bodies are elected and the various proposals are presented to everyone they concern. In other words, representative democracy must be enriched — and improved — by direct democracy which allows people to choose directly — locally, nationally and, ultimately, internationally — between different proposals. The whole population would then make decisions on free public transit, on a special tax paid by car owners to subsidize public transport, on the subsidization of solar energy to make it competitive with fossil energy, on the reduction of the hours of work to 30, 25 hours a week or less, even if this entails a reduction in production.

The democratic nature of planning does not make it incompatible with the participation of experts whose role is not to decide, but to present their arguments — often different, even opposed — during the democratic decision-making process. As Ernest Mandel said:

“Governments, parties, planning boards, scientists, technocrats or whoever can make suggestions, put forward proposals, try to influence people. To prevent them from doing so would be to restrict political freedom. But under a multi-party system, such proposals will never be unanimous: people will have the choice between coherent alternatives. And the right and power to decide should be in the hands of the majority of producers / consumers / citizens, not of anybody else. What is paternalist or despotic about that?” [2]

A question arises: what guarantee do we have that people will make the right choices, those that protect the environment, even if the price to pay is to change part of their consumption habits? There is no such “guarantee,” only the reasonable prospect that the rationality of democratic decisions will triumph once the fetishism of consumer goods has been abolished. People will of course make mistakes by making bad choices, but don’t the experts make mistakes themselves? It is impossible to imagine the construction of a new society without the majority of the people having reached a great socialist and ecological awareness thanks to their struggles, their self-education and their social experience. So, it is reasonable to believe that serious errors — including decisions inconsistent with environmental needs — will be corrected. In any case, one wonders if the alternatives — the ruthless market, an ecological dictatorship of “experts” — are not much more dangerous than the democratic process, with all its limits.

Admittedly, for planning to work, there must be executive and technical bodies capable of implementing decisions, but their authority would be limited by the permanent and democratic control exercised by the lower levels, where workers’ self-management takes place in the process of democratic administration. It cannot be expected, of course, that the majority of the population will spend all of their free time in self-management or participatory meetings. As Ernest Mandel remarked: “Self-administration does not entail the disappearance of delegation. It combines decision-making by the citizens with stricter control of delegates by their respective electorate.” [3]
A long process not free from contradictions

The transition from the “destructive progress” of the capitalist system to ecosocialism is a historic process, a revolutionary and constant transformation of society, culture and mentalities — and politics in the broad sense, as defined above, is undeniably at the heart of this process. It is important to specify that such an evolution cannot be initiated without a revolutionary change in the social and political structures and without the active support to the ecosocialist program by a large majority of the population. Socialist and ecological awareness is a process whose decisive factors are the collective experience and struggles of the population, which, starting from partial confrontations at the local level, progress towards the prospect of a radical change in society. This transition would lead not only to a new mode of production and a democratic and egalitarian society but also to an alternative way of life, a truly ecosocialist civilization beyond the imperium of money with its consumption patterns artificially induced by advertising and its limitless production of useless and/or environmentally harmful goods.

Some environmentalists believe that the only alternative to productivism is to stop growth as a whole, or to replace it with negative growth — called in France “degrowth.” To do this, it is necessary to drastically reduce the excessive level of consumption of the population and to give up individual houses, central heating and washing machines, among other things, in order to reduce energy consumption by half. As these and other similarly draconian austerity measures may be very unpopular, some advocates of degrowth play with the idea of a kind of “ecological dictatorship.” [4] Against such pessimistic points of view, some socialists display an optimism which leads them to think that technical progress and the use of renewable energy sources will allow unlimited growth and prosperity so that everyone receives “according to their needs.”

It seems to me that these two schools share a purely quantitative conception of “growth” — positive or negative — and of the development of the productive forces. I think there is a third posture that seems more appropriate to me: a real qualitative transformation of development. This implies putting an end to the monstrous waste of resources caused by capitalism, which is based on the large-scale production of useless and/or harmful products. The arms industry is a good example, as are all these “products” manufactured in the capitalist system — with their planned obsolescence — which have no other purpose than to create profits for big companies.

The question is not “excessive consumption” in the abstract, but rather the dominant type of consumption whose main characteristics are: ostensible property, massive waste, obsessive accumulation of goods and the compulsive acquisition of pseudo-novelties imposed by “fashion.” A new society would orient production towards meeting authentic needs, starting with what could be described as “biblical” — water, food, clothing and housing — but including essential services: health, education, culture and transportation.

It is obvious that the countries where these needs are far from being met, that is to say the countries of the southern hemisphere, will have to “develop” much more — build railways, hospitals, sewers and other infrastructures — than industrialized countries, but this should be compatible with a production system based on renewable energy and therefore not harmful to the environment. These countries will need to produce large quantities of food for their populations already hit by famine, but — as the farmers’ movements organized at an international level by the Via Campesina network have argued for years — this is an objective much easier to reach through organic peasant farming organized by family units, cooperatives or collective farms, than by the destructive and antisocial methods of industrial agrobusiness with its intensive use of pesticides, chemical substances and GMOs.

The present system of odious debt and imperialist exploitation of the resources of the South by the capitalist and industrialized countries would give way to a surge of technical and economic support from the North to the South. There would be no need — as some Puritan and ascetic ecologists seem to believe — to reduce, in absolute terms, the standard of living of the European or North American populations. These populations should simply get rid of useless products, those which do not meet any real need and whose obsessive consumption is upheld by the capitalist system. While reducing their consumption, they would redefine the concept of standard of living to make way for a lifestyle that is actually richer.

How to distinguish authentic needs from artificial, false or simulated needs? The advertising industry — which exerts its influence on needs through mental manipulation — has penetrated into all spheres of human life in modern capitalist societies. Everything is shaped according to its rules, not only food and clothing, but also areas as diverse as sport, culture, religion and politics. Advertising has invaded our streets, our mailboxes, our television screens, our newspapers and our landscapes in an insidious, permanent and aggressive manner. This sector contributes directly to conspicuous and compulsive consumption habits. In addition, it leads to a phenomenal waste of oil, electricity, labour time, paper and chemical substances, among other raw materials — all paid for by consumers. It is a branch of “production” which is not only useless from the human point of view, but which is also at odds with real social needs. While advertising is an indispensable dimension in a capitalist market economy, it would have no place in a society in transition to socialism. It would be replaced by information on the products and services provided by consumer associations. The criterion for distinguishing an authentic need from an artificial need would be its permanence after the removal of advertising. It is clear that for some time the past habits of consumption will persist because no one has the right to tell people what they need. The change in consumption models is an historical process and an educational challenge.

Certain products, such as the private car, raise more complex problems. Passenger cars are a public nuisance. Globally, they kill or maim hundreds of thousands of people each year. They pollute the air in big cities — with harmful consequences for the health of children and the elderly — and they contribute considerably to climate change. However, the car satisfies real needs under the current conditions of capitalism. In European cities where the authorities are concerned about the environment, some local experiments — approved by the majority of the population — show that it is possible to gradually limit the place of the private car in favour of buses and trams. In a process of transition to ecosocialism, public transit would be widespread and free — on land as well as underground — while paths would be protected for pedestrians and cyclists. Consequently, the private car would play a much less important role than in bourgeois society where the car has become a fetish product promoted by insistent and aggressive advertising. The car is a symbol of prestige, a sign of identity (in the United States, the driver’s license is the recognized identity card). It is at the heart of personal, social and erotic life. In this transition to a new society, it will be much easier to drastically reduce over-the-road transportation of commodities — a source of tragic accidents and excessive pollution — and to replace it with rail or container transport. Only the absurd logic of capitalist “competitiveness” explains the present development of truck transportation.

To these proposals, the pessimists will answer: yes, but individuals are motivated by infinite aspirations and desires which must be controlled, analyzed, suppressed and even repressed if necessary. Democracy could then be subject to certain restrictions. Yet ecosocialism is based on a reasonable assumption, previously advanced by Marx: the predominance of “being” over “having” in a non-capitalist society, that is to say the primacy of free time over the desire to own countless objects: personal achievement through real activities, cultural, sports, recreational, scientific, erotic, artistic and political.

The fetishism of the commodity encourages compulsive buying through the ideology and advertising specific to the capitalist system. There is no evidence that this is part of “eternal human nature.” Ernest Mandel pointed out:

“The continual accumulation of more and more goods (with declining ‘marginal utility’) is by no means a universal or even predominant feature of human behaviour. The development of talents and inclinations for their own sake; the protection of health and life; care for children; the development of rich social relations as a prerequisite of mental stability and happiness — all these become major motivations once basic material needs have been satisfied.” [5]

As we mentioned above, this does not mean, especially during the transition period, that conflicts will be non-existent: between environmental protection needs and social needs, between ecological obligations and the need to develop basic infrastructures, especially in poor countries, between popular consumption habits and lack of resources. A society without social classes is not a society without contradictions or conflicts. These are inevitable: it will be the role of democratic planning, from an ecosocialist perspective freed from the constraints of capital and profit, to resolve them through open and pluralistic discussions leading society itself to take decisions. Such a democracy, common and participative, is the only way, not to avoid making errors, but to correct them through the social collectivity itself.

To dream of a green socialism or even, in the words of some, of a solar communism, and to fight for this dream, does not mean that we are not trying to implement concrete and urgent reforms. While we should not have illusions about “clean capitalism,” we must nevertheless try to gain time and impose on the public authorities some elementary changes: a general moratorium on genetically modified organisms, a drastic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, strict regulation of industrial fishing and the use of pesticides as chemical substances in agro-industrial production, a much greater development of public transit, the gradual replacement of trucks by trains.

These urgent eco-social demands can lead to a process of radicalization, provided that they are not adapted to the requirements of “competitiveness.” According to the logic of what Marxists call a “transitional program,” each small victory, each partial advance immediately leads to a greater demand, to a more radical objective. These struggles around concrete questions are important, not only because partial victories are useful in themselves, but also because they contribute to ecological and socialist awareness. Moreover, these victories promote activity and self-organization from below: these are two necessary and decisive pre-conditions for achieving a radical, that is to say revolutionary, transformation of the world.

There will be no radical transformation as long as the forces engaged in a radical, socialist and ecological program are not hegemonic, in the sense understood by Antonio Gramsci. In a sense, time is our ally, because we are working for the only change capable of solving environmental problems, which are only getting worse with threats — such as climate change — which are more and more close. On the other hand, time is running out, and in a few years — no one can say how much — the damage could be irreversible. There is no reason for optimism: the power of the current elites at the head of the system is immense, and the forces of radical opposition are still modest. However, they are the only hope we have to put a brake on the “destructive progress” of capitalism.

3 April 2020

Republished with permission from Life on the Left.

P.S.


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Attached documents
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Footnotes


[1] Naomi Klein, On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal (Random House, 2019), pp. 95, 98.


[2] Ernest Mandel, Power and Money (Verso, London, 1992), p. 209.


[3] Mandel, ibid., p. 204.


[4] The German philosopher Hans Jonas Le principe responsabilité, Éd. du Cerf, 1979) raised the possibility of a “benevolent tyranny” to save nature, and the Finnish ecofascist Pentti Linkola Voisiko elämä voittaa Helsinki, Tammi, 2004) advocated a dictatorship capable of preventing any economic growth.


[5] Mandel, ibid., p. 206.

Economy
Intersecting crises and the impact in Britain
The crisis triggered by the pandemic and the economic policy of the European Union
When Chinese eat grass: the economic crisis amid the coronavirus pandemic
Impact of European policies on the Global South and possible alternatives
The International Aid the Lebanese People Urgently Need Must Not Be Used to Enforce Neoliberal Measures
Ecosocialism
Ernest Mandel and ecosocialism
Covid-19 changes everything
“Only an anti-systemic revolution, breaking with the iron laws of capitalism can open the way for a new society”
Thirteen theses on the imminent ecological catastrophe and the (revolutionary) means of averting it
Was Marx an ecosocialist? A reply to Kohei Saito.


Michael Löwy  activist of the Fourth International, is an ecosocialist, sociologist and philosopher. Born in 1938 in São Paulo (Brazil), he has lived in Paris since 1969. Research director (emeritus) at the CNRS and professor at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, he is the author of numerous books published in twenty-nine languages, including The Marxism of Che Guevara, Marxism and Liberation Theology, Fatherland or Mother Earth? and The War of Gods: Religion and Politics in Latin America.

He is joint author (with Joel Kovel) of the International Ecosocialist Manifesto. He was also one of the organizers of the first International Ecosocialist Meeting, in Paris, in 2007.

Anti-Capitalist strategy and the question of organization

Friday 12 June 2020, by Julia Camara

No matter how much time passes, or how often history is declared to have ended, the debate over socialist strategy and organization always returns. This foundational question appeared in embryo at the very start of the workers movement in the nineteenth century and was raised explicitly by Lenin when he described his perspective as “tactics as plan” and when revolutionaries split with social-democracy during World War I. [1]


Organizational and strategic questions can be considered separately, but in reality (and inevitably at the theoretical level), they present themselves as mutually related. Therefore, it is necessary to address both in order to systematically explain either. Over the course of the twentieth century, diverse combinations and conjunctural implications have given rise to many debates and concrete formulas, such as what defines revolutionary organization, the much-discussed reform or revolution, Popular Front and United Front formations, vanguard versus mass parties, entryism as a tactic, and the great strategic hypotheses that dominated the past century, of which the Insurrectional General Strike and the Prolonged Peoples’ War are only two. Rather than attempt to review each of these, this text offers some basic tools by which we can orient ourselves theoretically and in our political practice.

In these confusing times, when the political horizon has become blurry, we must bring it into focus and consider how to organize ourselves to achieve some clarity of purpose.

Some basic concepts

Our strategic understanding can be strengthened by considering several concepts developed through hard-won experience that may provide a theoretical base upon which other ideas can be arranged.

In 1915, in the Collapse of the Second International, Lenin began to develop the notion a revolutionary crisis. Lenin’s conception has been popularized as “when those above cannot, and those below will not, tolerate the situation, while those in the middle hesitate and lean towards those below,” such a situation supposes a conjunctural crisis of social relations occurring at the same time as a national political crisis. This notion emphasizes that there are particular and relatively exceptional circumstances in which the State and the system as a whole become vulnerable and, thus, can be overturned. Such a constellation of factors does not take place at just any moment and, therefore, there is a rhythm to the class struggle, one that includes ruptures and discontinuities that must be considered in terms of an understanding of crisis as a political phenomena.

Lenin’s second concept is the political event. Lenin grasped that a crisis may be detonated by any number of events, that is, the totality of contradictions inherent in the capitalist system may express themselves, in a condensed manner, in what at first glance may appear to be minor conflicts. For instance, we have seen student revolts, democratic demands, women’s mobilizations, and national conflicts set off crises. These moments of compression and eruption define what Lenin calls political events. Knowing how to detect such events, how to exploit contradictions and resolve a crisis victoriously, requires conscious intervention, that is, it requires political organization. Because when we start to discuss strategy, this already implies initiative, decision-making, a clear project, implantation in the working classes, and a certain balance of forces.

Political time, accordingly, does not march in linear fashion towards progress, rather, it is broken time, marked by crisis and interruptions of normality, opening possibilities for those who are prepared and know how to approach it. French revolutionary socialist Daniel Bensaïd spoke of empty, homogenous time and dense time, which is to say that there are periods when nothing happensand periods when, all of a sudden, time accelerates and many things happen all at once. [2] Revolutionary politics implies the mastery of this kind of political time, of knowing how to react in the face of rapidly changing events. To prepare, as Trotsky put it, for the “forcible entrance of the masses into the realm of rulership over their own destiny.” [3]

Concerning strategy

One of the recurring debates on the radical left revolves around whether we need a political party or mass movement? Or what is the relationship between political organization (the party) and the social movement?… what a century ago was called the workers’ movement.

What is clear – despite bureaucratic and populist attempts to push real-world problems to the margins of political struggle, and the pretensions of the post-autonomy theorists who claim politics can be dissolved into social struggle – is that social and political struggles form two profoundly interrelated aspects of the same endeavor, although they have their own particular rhythms, characteristics, and reality.

Political struggle, conceived properly, is not reducible to a prolongation or intensification of social struggle. Political struggle is, strictly speaking, the struggle for power. Not in a crude or “politicking” sense, but in its most profound dimension. Constructing an anticapitalist and revolutionary strategy requires the conviction that the conquest of power by the working class is possible. Otherwise, socialist politics ends up inevitably moving in another direction, limiting itself to the promotion of day-to-day resistance (in the best-case scenario) where all transformative goals are abandoned.

A revolutionary strategy implies the actuality of revolution. [4] Not in the sense that the revolution will take place tomorrow, but only that it is possible in our epoch. The actuality of revolution carries with it a sense of anticipation, of an attempt to bring the revolution into present time and to bring present to the revolution. In this sense, the revolution functions like a regulating horizon for our present-day actions, if the revolution does not form part of our political horizon from the beginning, we are unlikely to approach it. Here we enter the field of politics as a strategic art where we must put our collective capacity to develop strategic hypotheses to the test. [5] Political struggle does not operate through imaginaries, nor through improvisations, rather, it must be based on a strong hypothesis, in other words, on a well-founded bet. Yet no matter how vigorously researched and prepared, any hypothesis remains nonetheless a bet. Thus, approaching reality strategically is a precondition for victory, even if it is not a guarantee.

Understanding political struggle in this manner (the actuality of revolution, revolution as a regulating horizon, the elaboration of strategic hypotheses checked against reality) brings with it two interrelated virtues. The first is to break free from a stagist view of political struggle, one inherited from a conception of historical time belonging to classical social-democracy that fails, as we have seen, to correspond to the reality of broken political time. The second is that it allows us to respond successfully to the specific rhythms of this broken time, to anticipate crises, and to prepare for forks in the road and sharp turns.

Seen in these terms, the future is not simply the inevitable result of a chain of causes. Rather, the future is itself a cause that makes us choose one or the other decision in the present, it is the regulatory horizon of our political practice. And in turn, our ability to imagine the present is conditioned (not determined) by our understanding of the past. Escaping teleological politics – where everything happens inevitably and nothing could have been otherwise, escaping the mechanical rigidity that mistakes conditioning with determination and eliminates the subjective factor of history – is a necessary precondition for strategic thinking. Bensaïd expressed this sense with a phrase that I have always liked: “the past is full of presents that never came to fruition.”

In opposition to those who write History as an inevitability after it has already come to pass, we should follow Bensaïd’s suggestion that there is always (and always has been) a range of real possibilities. Whether or not one of them finally ends up being realized depends, fundamentally, on the correlation of forces and the level of class struggle. Typical accounts of the Spanish transition to democracy after the end of the Franco fascist regime and the often-praised Pactos de la Moncloa present a good example of how the discourse of what happened happened because it was the only thing that could possibly have happened to obscure political decisions and actions that contributed to the short-circuiting other outcomes which, at a specific moment, were also possible.

Here, by organizing to push one way or the other, we enter the field of strategy. Whether or not any hypothesis is correct will depend, among other things, on accumulated historical experience, the correlation of forces, the capacity for analyzing the national situation, the strength of the State, and a socialist organization’s implantation in and connection with the mass movement. And after accounting for all that, it is always possible to err.

In the traditions of the revolutionary left, strategy is the basis upon which to gather, organize, and educate militants, it is a project aiming to overthrow bourgeois political power. And if politics is the struggle for power, this implies working to build a majority. In other words, having the will to join in the mass, not just differentiate from it. Breaking with the minoritarian fatalism of always being different (and lamenting that nobody understands us) in order to build, in Gramscian terms, a counter-hegemonic project and not merely an alternative political expression. Trying to reverse the correlation of forces is one of the underlying questions of all strategic thinking, and the only possible method is trial and error infused with the spirit of accumulating experience and correcting mistakes. Here the role of the organization comes into play.

Concerning organization

Returning to Lenin, another of his principle contributions was the delimitation between class and party. Starting with What is to be Done?, Lenin clarified the typical confusion between the two: the party does not equal the class itself, but only a group of individuals with a certain level of consciousness and broadly agreed-upon strategies. Two questions flow from this that have sparked recurring debates on the left over the last century, namely, the debate concerning conceptions of a vanguard party and whether or not there are models for such a party that are more useful than others. We’ll return to this later. The fact is that Lenin never argued that revolutionary organization embodied the class as a whole. Rather, such organization represents a class-based project that may serve as an instrument for the optimization of the working class’ transformative power.

One important conclusion that flows from this is that, if the party is delimited with respect to the class, there must be space for more than one party. The defense of pluralism has been a bedrock principle for all revolutionary Marxist movements during the difficult twentieth century. This is true in the first place because socialist democracy can only be learned by practicing it. Secondly, and this is no minor question, pluralism is not inevitable. I’ll try to explain what I mean.

Trotsky suggested that parties, besides their well-known ambition to embody particular classes or sections of classes, are also bearers of ideology and strategic orientations. This is necessarily so because working-class ideological homogeneity is impossible – capitalism itself makes certain of this. This reality is not, in the first instance, based on conscious and massive manipulation by the ruling class, but is the direct result of economic and social mechanisms acting on the consciousness of the oppressed. The achievement of a general class consciousness among the masses – and even then not without contradictions – can only occur during a revolutionary process. Pluralism, therefore, is not only desirable in democratic terms, it is also inevitable. If revolutionary organizations, understood as such, express ideological-strategic wagers, then the existence of multiple organizations (and competition between them) is to be expected.

With respect to the notion of the vanguard, the Leninist delimitation of the party with respect to the class has often been misunderstood as a total separation, thus isolating the supposed vanguard group of enlightened individuals from the real mass movement. The history of the Bolshevik Party itself demonstrates that there can be no self-proclaimed vanguard. Instead, the historic right to act as such, as Ernest Mandel put it, must be won. And this right can only be won through participation in the heart of mass struggle. No one gets to be a leader, or to play a leading role, unless this position arises from within the struggle of the mass of the working class.

In the history of the revolutionary left, the best theoreticians have always been leaders, and many of the best leaders have made important theoretical contributions, for instance, Lenin, Gramsci, and Bensaïd himself, to name a few. The same holds true when consider people known for their practical leadership, such as Che Guevara, where we find that his theoretical production is greater than is often considered. This demonstrates how the party, the political organization, acts as a mediation between theory and praxis.

The party is the vehicle through which strategic hypotheses are elaborated, not out of thin air, but based on the combined, accumulated historical experience of its members. This accumulated experience – and its assimilation by party activists who are themselves implanted in, and learning from, different struggles – transforms the organization into a transmission belt in a double sense. The party is, in this way, as much a producer as a product of mass revolutionary action.

The second critical aspect in our conception of political organization (after properly conceiving of the party as a mediating force between theory and practice) is political strategy. A strategic party is one that not only educates and accompanies the masses, it is also capable of organizing advances and retreats, making course corrections based on rhythms and moments arising from the struggle. That is, a party that understands how to move in broken, political time.

Lastly, the party must play a leading role in an historic bloc composed of a galaxy of diverse forms of organization based on the subaltern classes in what Gramsci called civil society, this operation takes place at the social level that we spoke of earlier, a level that is distinct from the political sphere. When referring to this historic bloc, we use the term coordination (articulación in Spanish) to describe the formation of a collective will that transcends particular interests, one that becomes self-aware and counterposes itself to the dominant powers. The party’s task is to facilitate this process of coordination, generating organizing hubs (centros de anudamiento) that offer a common vision and strategic hypothesis.

This does not mean, and this is important to emphasize, establishing a political leadership the realizes a project that is external to the struggle. Remember, Mandel’s affirmation that a vanguard must with the right to lead, that is, it must be recognized as such by the masses. And as there is a plurality of political organizations, we must also understand that ideological debates and competing strategic hypotheses can only be proven in reality, something that is not possible if the contending organizations are not rooted in the mass movements. The party, then, appears as the political leadership of an historic bloc, but it achieves this position because its objective is accepted by the masses, who recognize it as their own.

Having arrived at this point, let’s review. We have been talking as if party and political organization are at all times synonymous, however, there are clearly other forms of political organization besides a party.
In the debate over party form, what we often find instead are political groups, which also organized on the basis of ideological boundaries and strategic hypotheses, but which do not function as parties but as lobbies. These organizations often lack democracy – both internally (who and how to makes decisions, participation and structures for debate, etc.) and externally – and transparency as no one knows who is a member based on what criteria, many times they even hide their existence, etc.
On the other hand, the party (or parties) should not be confused with institutions designed for the political struggle that, at specific historical moments, the workers’ movement as a whole creates. When the class as a whole identifies itself as a revolutionary alternative (when a new historical bloc arises and is articulated) the need for autonomous and unitary forms of organization appears, such institutions take on the dual roles of acting as counter-power organs within capitalist society and as instruments for the training of the masses in socialist self-management. The most recurrent historical example of these sorts of institutions are soviets, which are nothing more than the Russian word for councils. When soviet-like institutions arise, the parties (based on an inevitable and desirable pluralism) intervene in the soviets, but soviets are much more than the sum of these parties: they are the instrument that the class empowers for its own emancipation. They are, at that point, the form of political organization that mediates between the class itself and its own conscience.

Taking from Gramsci’s interpretation of Lenin, we might say that the accent should be placed on the direct social agent, on the working class. Only in this way can a dialectic be established between the class and a political leadership that prevents the party from converting itself into a body that is not only delimited with respect to the class, but separated and alien to it.

Two caveats must be added here. First, pluralism and democracy are confronted by the constant danger of bureaucratism. Both external pluralism and democracy (that is, a recognition of the legitimacy of class institutions and a commitment to participate honestly and loyally in the movement of the masses) and internal (democratic centralism understood as outlined above, featuring rank-and-file control, the permanent training of activists who are capable of understanding and intervening in debates and in the elaboration of strategy, term limits, publishing organs that are open and comradely, the right to form tendencies, and the absence of leadership by fiat, etc.) are necessary to confront this ever-present danger. Second, strong links and real implantation in living movements – in both the social field and in civil society – can act as a safeguard against bureaucratization, integration into the state apparatus, and capitalist cooptation.

Outlines of a proposal

So far, I hope it is clear how debates regarding strategy and organization intersect and interlock, in other words, it is not possible to think about what kind of organization we want without thinking at the same time about why we want it. Bensaïd posed the question like this: Is a revolution possible and do you want to fight for it. And, if so, you must determine what political instrument is necessary because, with respect to revolutionary organization, the form is part of the content.

The party form is always historically conditioned, but this raises a question about whether there are better, or more revolutionary, models as such, an idea into which many supposedly Marxist groups have repeatedly fallen and which is deeply anti-Leninist at heart. However, if there are no set forms, there are useful criteria, references, and guides as long as we keep in mind that the type of party that we must build today arises from our own concrete global situation and the balance of forces between the classes, the specifics of the crisis in which we find ourselves, and the evolution of the working-class and social movements.

The greatest challenge facing the social revolution is that it is the first in history that necessarily implies the prior awareness of one’s goal. Thus, political struggle is essential to make a revolution since it can shape class consciousness, it is a means by which to accumulate experience, and when a revolutionary crisis opens, it can act to alter the balance of forces. Conscious leadership is, therefore, at the center of the conditions of possibility for the success of the social revolution.

And in this sense, the main criteria for building the kind of party we need were provided by Lenin are still valid and correct today as long as we keep in mind that they are criteria, not models.
A delimited and active party, one which acts as an element of continuity amidst fluctuating collective conscience. This will not always mean the same thing for party members, and it is clear today that it is necessary to allow for a diversity of compromises that fit our lives under late capitalism. But it is essential to maintain a militant nucleus, and not resign ourselves to the dissolution of ties between revolutionaries or to rely on plebiscitary formulas.
A party committed to political action across the whole society. The party must not remain passive in the face of injustices, however small they may seem, it must participte in all local and sectoral battles, not merely shutting itself up on the margins of concrete conflicts. And this is true in all areas of work, be it the economic/union struggle or work in elected or other institutions.
A nimble party, capable of responding to unforeseen events. One with an internal political culture trained in and accustomed to the democratic debate that is capable of making sharp turns while remaining cohesive.
A party capable of presenting an overall vision. In other words, capable of acting with a strategic vision, formulating strategic hypotheses, and contributing to the coordination of the historical bloc through its implantation and work in social movements.
Finally, a party capable of thinking about concrete mediations and temporary forms of organization. That is, one that is capable of developing specific tactics so as to not be paralyzed in the absence of a pre-ordained script that brings the revolutionary horizon into focus.

The great challenge we face today, the question that must guide our political action, is how to advance towards the coordination of a new historical bloc that, as such, is not a simple sum of its parts but is capable of thinking of itself as a totality, one capable of opposing the dominant classes. For this to be possible, it is essential to build class structures and institutions, not in a merely economistic sense, but to go much further and establish contact and collaboration between them. We must strengthen not only combative unionism (very important in this period of crisis) but also social unionism, housing assemblies, mutual support networks in neighborhoods, social centers, the feminist movement, and all those spaces of self-organization where community ties are built, struggles that expose the system’s contradictions and promote processes of class self-awareness and self-activity.

But we must also encourage a pro-party spirit of organization. The party is not simply a participatory space or one more identity on a list, rather, it is the organization through which the political struggle takes place. It is where we come together and organize politically to create organizing and social hubs as we try to construct a new correlation of forces.

5 May 2020

Originally published in Viento Sur. Translated by No Borders News and published in two parts Part 1 and Part 2.

Attached documents
anticapitalist-strategy-and-the-question-of-organization_a6599-2.pdf (PDF - 359 kb)
Extraction PDF [->article6599]

Footnotes


[1] See Lenin What Is To Be Done” and The Collapse of the Second International.


[2] Daniel Bensaïd ““Leaps Leaps Leaps”: Lenin and politics”.


[3] Leon Trotsky The History of the Russian Revolution Volume One: The Overthrow of Tzarism”.


[4] Georg Lukacs, 1924 “Lenin: A Study on the Unity of his Thought 1. The Actuality of the Revolution”.


[5] Daniel Bensaïd 2006 “On the return of the politico-strategic question”.

Spanish state
Radiance and sunset of Podemos - reasons for a farewell
Anticapitalistas leave Podemos
Statement by Anticapitalistas on leaving Podemos
José Maria Galante “Chato” - the tenacity of the rebel
Windows, balconies and terraces for the public health service
Marxism
Questions without Answers: The Dutch and German Communist Left
Analysing global capitalism
Leon Trotsky and revolutionary art
Problems of unequal development in underdeveloped countries
Mandel and Capitalist Breakdown
Debate section
Problems with an Electoral Road to Socialism in the United States
Parliamentary action and social struggles - The experience of the Portuguese Left Bloc
Duterte is reactionary, counter-revolutionary (to the “EDSA revolution”), but not fascist – On Walden Bello’s definition of a “fascist leader”
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte Is a Wildly Popular Fascist – Now what?
Marxism, the Arab Spring, and Islamic fundamentalism
New parties of the left
Building a party at the service of new generations of activists
“The priority for the Left Bloc is clear: to increase the income of those who live by their labour”
Why we left the Awami Workers Party. Lessons to be learned
A predictable fiasco - on the outcome of the European elections and the immediate tasks for Die Linke
The Left Bloc 20 years on


Julia Camara


Julia Camara is a historian and member of Anticapitalistas, section of the Fourth International in the Spanish state. She has been active in organizing the mass feminist mobilizations and 8 March women’s strikes in recent years.



- 2020 International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

USA
Justice requires the legal system be abolished and replaced

Wednesday 7 October 2020, by Malik Miah

The decision of the Kentucky Grand Jury ‒ a secret body ‒ to not file murder charges against the two white cops who killed Breonna Taylor shows the United States legal system is criminal, unjust and needs to be abolished and replaced. [1]

During the midnight raid on their apartment, Taylor’s boyfriend Kenneth Walker fired a single warning shot at the plainclothed cops, thinking they were intruders. The cops killed Taylor, who was sleeping. To the Kentucky attorney general it was a “tragedy”, but not a crime.

Speaking at a memorial for Taylor in Jefferson Square Park in Louisville on September 23, Until Freedom co-founder Tamika Mallory stressed non-violence: “We have to understand that we have a responsibility, to the rest of this nation and to generations to come, that we conduct ourselves, again, not peacefully, but non-violently, so that the story that comes out of here is that we are not the murderers, we are not the looters, we are not the burners, we are not the ones, they did it to us, and we are only responding.”

Hours before the grand jury’s decision, legendary musician Stevie Wonder released a seven-minute video on YouTube, The Universe Is Watching Us, in which he said: “You say you believe that ‘all lives matter’. I say I don’t believe the fuck you do.”

In the US, cops have total immunity for their murderous actions. Legally, it’s called “qualified immunity”. Whatever a cop does, including murdering an innocent person, is protected.
Family demands transcripts

Taylor’s family is demanding the release of the grand jury’s transcripts. The family’s lawyer Ben Crump said on September 25: "There seems to be two justice systems in America ‒ one for Black America and one for white America."

"What did Kentucky attorney general Daniel Cameron present to the grand jury? Did he present any evidence on Breonna Taylor’s behalf?

“Or did he make a unilateral decision to put his thumb on the scales of justice to help try to exonerate and justify the killing of Breonna Taylor by these police officers? And in doing so, make sure that Breonna Taylor’s family never got their day in court.

"Release the transcript so we can have transparency. And if you did everything you could do, on Breonna’s behalf, you shouldn’t have any problems whatsoever, Daniel Cameron, to release the transcript to see you fought for all of Kentucky’s citizens.”

Crump said the decision in Taylor’s case follows a pattern "of the blatant disrespect and marginalisation of Black people, but especially Black women in America who have been killed by police.”

The legal system is rigged. The prosecutor is the only person who presents evidence to a secret grand jury. The public has no idea who is a member of the jury or whether the victim of cop violence has her side presented.
False equivalency

All violence before, during and after protests is not the same.

The media makes a false equivalency whenever any violence takes place. The implication is that if there were no protests, there would be no violence.

It’s also incorrect to say that violence ‒ whether by the right or police ‒ is the fault of demonstrators.

When peaceful protesters are attacked by military-style police and Federal government police ‒ as seen in Portland, Oregon, any response to such police violence is justifiable self-defence.

Another type of violence is initiated by right-wing white vigilantes. They infiltrate peaceful demonstrations, as occurred in Minneapolis, as the George Floyd protests began. They went to Kenosha, Wisconsin, as “friends” of the police. Their violence is blamed on the peaceful protesters, who are called “anarchists” and “terrorists” (or anti-fascists). Leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement are smeared as un-American.

Police agents provocateurs initiate property vandalism during and after demonstrations and the police blame it on non-violent protesters. While petty crimes against property do happen, this is not supported by the movement. Nonetheless, the media disproportionately targets these activities in their coverage.

The BLM movement is decentralised. It is made up of local organisations and leaders. Its website, M4BL.org, lays out its general positions and principles. There is no support for violence. It is President Donald Trump and his cohorts that invoke violence. The BLM movement is for peaceful, non-violent organising and the right to self-defence.

In addition, BLM seeks to isolate those who commit violence.

Historically, in mass demonstrations during the civil rights era, organisers had marshals to help protect the marchers from the cops.
Defeating Trump

The defeat of an authoritarian ruler rarely happens through the ballot box. In most cases, the authoritarian figure makes sure the vote goes their way.

Trump has never had the majority of popular support. He repeatedly says November’s presidential election will be rigged and a scam ‒ if he is not re-elected. He says there will be no transition of power, only a continuation of his rule. He is prepared to use unauthorised election monitors at polling booths to intimidate voters.

How is this possible?

The US Constitution never trusted the people to elect its leaders. It includes a provision in a contested election to send the decision to Congress, where each state, no matter the size of its population, gets one vote.

The Republicans control 26 state legislatures (representing a minority of voters), enough to give Trump a “victory”, even if he losses the popular vote by a large margin.

In this scenario, defeating an authoritarian president requires more than voting. The ruling class must fear rebellion — mass actions that could overthrow the current system and implement radical reforms.

It has not happened in the US since the 1860s Civil War that ended slavery and made former slaves citizens. It was the bloodiest war in US history.

Malcolm X, in a 1964 speech, “The Ballot or the Bullet”, explained why revolution (the Bullet) is the answer to national oppression and to winning full equality for Black people: “This government has failed us; the government itself has failed us, and the white liberals who have been posing as our friends have failed us. And once we see that all these other sources to which we’ve turned have failed, we stop turning to them and turn to ourselves.

“America today finds herself in a unique situation. Historically, revolutions are bloody. Oh, yes, they are. They have never had a bloodless revolution, or a non-violent revolution. That don’t happen even in Hollywood. You don’t have a revolution in which you love your enemy, and you don’t have a revolution in which you are begging the system of exploitation to integrate you into it.

“Revolutions overturn systems. Revolutions destroy systems. A revolution is bloody, but America is in a unique position. She’s the only country in history in a position actually to become involved in a blood-less revolution.

“The Russian revolution was bloody, Chinese revolution was bloody, French revolution was bloody, Cuban revolution was bloody, and there was nothing more bloody than the American Revolution.

“But today, this country can become involved in a revolution that won’t take bloodshed. All she’s got to do is give the black man in this country everything that’s due him. Everything.

“So, it’s the ballot or the bullet. Today our people can see that we’re faced with a government conspiracy. This government has failed us.

“It’ll be the ballot, or it’ll be the bullet. It’ll be liberty or it’ll be death. And if you’re not ready to pay that price, don’t use the word freedom in your vocabulary.”

The end of legal segregation and the expansion of voting rights 50 years ago occurred after Blacks fought for decades to be recognised as equal citizens. The right to vote came as mass marches demanded the ruling Democratic Party act.

Blacks were elected to office and rose to other positions in business and academia because of that mass pressure. It was a non-violent revolution.

Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965. A new Black middle class emerged in the 1970s. But the inequality for the vast majority of African Americans remains the same. The wealth gap between Black and white families has actually widened ‒ the average wealth of Black households has dropped from 10% of the average white household to 7% today. Every social gain won ‒ from school desegregation, to fair housing, to affirmative action programs ‒ is in decline, eroded or has been overturned.

Malcolm’s analysis remains valid.
Key lesson

The key lesson from the past and from months of mass protests is that reforms are possible, whoever is in power, only if those movements press forward.

To give Taylor and other victims of murderous police and state-sanctioned violence a chance for justice, the cops must be fired, prosecuted and permanently removed. Justice requires that the current legal system be abolished and replaced.

A new system must be created nationally from the ground up. The old system, including its criminal procedures, must be eradicated. The so-called police “unions” must be limited in their power to undermine oversight. Qualified immunity must be eliminated.

Most liberals reject these solutions. They believe there are only a few bad cops and bad prosecutors, but the system itself is fine and just needs some tinkering. They support public defenders for the poor, but little pressure is organised to fund them.

Their focus is on electing more progressives within the current criminal justice system, with modest reforms. BLM movement leaders demand much more.

A mass uprising, Black Power Rising, is necessary to bring radical change. Anything less will lead to more Breonna Taylor killings and exonerations for killer cops.

The white militias, the far right and Trump’s use of the state to stay in power means that a clear revolutionary vision is needed to defend and protect Black lives.

29 September 2020

Source Green Left.


Attached documents
justice-requires-the-legal-system-be-abolished-and-replaced_a6845.pdf (PDF - 366.6 kb)
Extraction PDF [->article6845]

Footnotes


[1] See also “Outrage in Louisville after police not charged with Breonna Taylor’s murder”.

USA
Capitalism Made Women of Color More Vulnerable to the COVID Recession
Fighting for Black Lives at School
Trump Refuses to Promise a Peaceful Transfer of Power Should He Lose
Pandemic, Polarization, and Resistance in the US
US Postal Service in Crisis — Why?
Anti-racism
Cop Shoots Jacob Blake: Kenosha Intensifies Racial Reckoning
Nonviolence and Black Self-Defense
Black Lives Matter & the Now Moment
Athletes Making Sports Matter
Against ‘Valeurs actuelles’ rubbish and its supporters, solidarity with Daniele Obono!


Malik Miah


Malik Miah is a retired aviation mechanic, union and antiracist activist. He is an advisory editor of Against the Current.



- 2020 International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine