By Joe Reynolds
November 2, 2024
Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.
Source: Lorie Shaull - A woman holds a Just Transition Now sign at a rally in Minneapolis, Minnesota
In their recent article, Tom Wetzel and Steve Ongerth reply to the “recent polemic against renewable energy” by Peter Gelderloos. While the critique of Gelderloos is valid, Wetzel and Ongerth have also not provided a realistic ‘strategy for achieving an ecologically viable future’.
Wetzel and Ongerth propose green syndicalism, “a self-organization strategy based on building grassroots unions and other kinds of social movement organizations among the working class and subordinated groups in society, to have organizations where the members are able to participate and control the decisions. These are organizations where there’s not an entrenched bureaucracy that can place limits on militant action.” This argument provides hope to many, who might otherwise give up even trying to fix the world, but unfortunately it falls short of being able to solve the problems created by capitalism. Like so many, it seems to take as a given Margaret Mead’s famous, but unfounded quote: “Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has.”
There is simply no evidence for this belief. Small groups of committed people have certainly changed parts of the world at times by building movements. However, as those changes are usually only temporary, and always limited in scope, this strategy will not solve global problems such as the climate emergency and the rise of fascism. It just won’t be able to scale up to include enough people to be effective. Every movement, simply by growing, will eventually develop “an entrenched bureaucracy that can place limits on militant action”. This is inevitable because movements are based on ideology. Maintaining the ‘correct’ ideology of a movement requires enforcement in some way. Without an ‘entrenched bureaucracy’ to do so, self-appointed ‘leaders’ tend to fill that role. Then cliques or factions develop, forcing the movement to either establish some sort of governing system (which some members will inevitably label “an entrenched bureaucracy”), or it will splinter into smaller groups. Either way, it’s just not possible for any movement to grow large enough to be effective while maintaining conditions in which “the members are able to participate and control the decisions”.
Humanity desperately needs a way to make decisions democratically and act collectively to solve global issues because currently, humanity’s collective decisions are being made by an invisible hand, based on the whims of individual capitalists as they choose where to invest their wealth to make the most profit. No nation state, and certainly not the United Nations, which is supposedly a global decision making body, has any real power over capitalism itself.
Wetzel and Ongerth go on to explain that “an essential part of the syndicalist strategy is encouraging collective forms of resistance and disruptive action such as strikes, land or building occupations, and militant mass marches. Through the building of self-managed mass organizations and mass actions, this builds confidence and a growing sense of “us versus them,” and an openness to ideas about transformation to a self-managed form of eco-socialism. And it builds the movement that has the power to ensure a democratic result in a revolutionary struggle.”
How does this actually help us solve the climate crisis though? I completely understand the frustrations leading to that way of thinking, having spent decades myself guided by the “sense of us versus them”, but have now come to the understanding that following such a strategy can ultimately only lead us to either an endless global civil war, or the extermination of all opposition by one side or the other. It sounds shocking to describe it this way, since it’s just common sense to organize with people we see eye to eye with, right? And yet, no movement has ever united all of humanity ideologically before, so why should we expect anything other than endless conflict will be the result now?
For Wetzel and Ongerth, “The potential of unionism as a force in the fight against the environmental devastation of the capitalist regime is the basis of the green syndicalist strategy.” Unionism is of course very much an ideological movement, but that’s not the same thing as how we actually organize a union. When we organize a workplace for the first time, thus creating a new union, we don’t expect ideological agreement on a mission statement—all workers are welcome and encouraged to join—then we work out the ideological issues democratically, after we’ve established the union. If the union movement had been demanding ideological agreement merely to join a union, very few unions would exist.
To solve global problems we will need to organize in that same way, without ideology in order to create a global union for all or at least the vast majority of humanity to be able to make decisions democratically and act collectively. We need to begin building an organization that all of humanity will feel welcome to join, eventually. So it can’t be based on ideology because that makes it exclusive by definition.
The potential of unionism will forever remain an unrealized potential, unless we can actually organize enough people to have an effect on how global decisions are made. Organizing based on ideological agreement automatically limits the growth of any movement, but in contrast to organizing ideologically, and requiring members to donate their time, energy and money to a specific cause, facebook has managed to organize the most people in human history simply by offering something that is useful and entertaining. The union movement can learn from this.
The internet is of course nothing more than a tool which can be used by us, or against us. It does however, provide new possibilities for organizing because it is a global, real-time communication system which has never before existed. Imagine then, if facebook had been originally created as a democratic platform cooperative instead of a profit seeking corporation. It might now have grown to be a global democratic organization of over 3 billion people, perhaps even able to demand from corporations and governments the changes we need for a better world. The problem though, that every internet platform must deal with, is anonymity.
Online ‘communities’ are not really communities at all because there is just no way to know and therefore trust each other. Our global community organization should be based on the real communities that each of us is already organized into. A simple requirement, of having to register a real community that we belong to—our workplace, school, religious or cultural community, neighbourhood… and many other possible real communities—would remove the element of anonymity from a cooperative internet platform. Each individual’s behaviour on such a platform would then be self-policing, as we all do within our communities, because they would have to explain themselves to their own community if they behave in an anti-social way on the platform. Access to the platform would require maintaining good standing in our registered community and each community in turn, must also maintain good standing with other neighbouring communities.
Obviously this could only be built in a gradual way, beginning with any programmers and other volunteers willing to offer their time to create and maintain an open source platform cooperative. The initial growth of this platform would have to take place in the same manner as any other movement for social change—by finding people who agree with the idea, but the platform must be designed in such a way that ideological agreement is not necessary for membership. In this way the platform would be capable of scaling up infinitely—something that movements are unable to do—eventually growing to include everyone. The requirement of registering a real community will prevent anonymity on the platform, making it a healthier online environment, but most importantly, it also would gradually bring grassroots communities from around the world into a global democratic network. This democratic network of communities would not automatically have the class consciousness of similar networks which have been created spontaneously in many revolutionary situations throughout history. That would have to be developed over time as the network grows and debates various ideologies.
Every revolutionary movement has failed to unseat capitalism because each has risen up alone against capitalism, isolated from the rest of the global working class. The capitalist class, unhindered by borders, has always been able to put them down. There is no shortcut to organizing the global working class, but following a flawed organizing strategy takes us in the wrong direction. If we continue to organize radical events which have no practical way of uniting globally, we remain the moles in a global game of ‘whac-a-mole’. Ending capitalism will require organizing ourselves without threatening capitalism until the organization is too large to be stopped.
This idea of course flies in the face of the long established strategic formula that has always been followed when organizing for change:
1—Develop an ideological theory.
2—Find the others.
3—Once the number of people reaches the ‘tipping point’, we can implement the desired change.
This is obviously a simplification, but the point is that while this method works quite well in achieving relatively small goals, it can’t scale up to allow us to change the whole world. It will never be possible to convince all of humanity to agree to one single ideology, which means that we cannot solve global problems with this method. However, reversing the order of the first two—organize first, then develop ideology—will allow us to organize enough people to be capable of actually changing the world, then together, democratically, humanity can decide how we will act collectively to change the world.
Source: Lorie Shaull - A woman holds a Just Transition Now sign at a rally in Minneapolis, Minnesota
In their recent article, Tom Wetzel and Steve Ongerth reply to the “recent polemic against renewable energy” by Peter Gelderloos. While the critique of Gelderloos is valid, Wetzel and Ongerth have also not provided a realistic ‘strategy for achieving an ecologically viable future’.
Wetzel and Ongerth propose green syndicalism, “a self-organization strategy based on building grassroots unions and other kinds of social movement organizations among the working class and subordinated groups in society, to have organizations where the members are able to participate and control the decisions. These are organizations where there’s not an entrenched bureaucracy that can place limits on militant action.” This argument provides hope to many, who might otherwise give up even trying to fix the world, but unfortunately it falls short of being able to solve the problems created by capitalism. Like so many, it seems to take as a given Margaret Mead’s famous, but unfounded quote: “Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has.”
There is simply no evidence for this belief. Small groups of committed people have certainly changed parts of the world at times by building movements. However, as those changes are usually only temporary, and always limited in scope, this strategy will not solve global problems such as the climate emergency and the rise of fascism. It just won’t be able to scale up to include enough people to be effective. Every movement, simply by growing, will eventually develop “an entrenched bureaucracy that can place limits on militant action”. This is inevitable because movements are based on ideology. Maintaining the ‘correct’ ideology of a movement requires enforcement in some way. Without an ‘entrenched bureaucracy’ to do so, self-appointed ‘leaders’ tend to fill that role. Then cliques or factions develop, forcing the movement to either establish some sort of governing system (which some members will inevitably label “an entrenched bureaucracy”), or it will splinter into smaller groups. Either way, it’s just not possible for any movement to grow large enough to be effective while maintaining conditions in which “the members are able to participate and control the decisions”.
Humanity desperately needs a way to make decisions democratically and act collectively to solve global issues because currently, humanity’s collective decisions are being made by an invisible hand, based on the whims of individual capitalists as they choose where to invest their wealth to make the most profit. No nation state, and certainly not the United Nations, which is supposedly a global decision making body, has any real power over capitalism itself.
Wetzel and Ongerth go on to explain that “an essential part of the syndicalist strategy is encouraging collective forms of resistance and disruptive action such as strikes, land or building occupations, and militant mass marches. Through the building of self-managed mass organizations and mass actions, this builds confidence and a growing sense of “us versus them,” and an openness to ideas about transformation to a self-managed form of eco-socialism. And it builds the movement that has the power to ensure a democratic result in a revolutionary struggle.”
How does this actually help us solve the climate crisis though? I completely understand the frustrations leading to that way of thinking, having spent decades myself guided by the “sense of us versus them”, but have now come to the understanding that following such a strategy can ultimately only lead us to either an endless global civil war, or the extermination of all opposition by one side or the other. It sounds shocking to describe it this way, since it’s just common sense to organize with people we see eye to eye with, right? And yet, no movement has ever united all of humanity ideologically before, so why should we expect anything other than endless conflict will be the result now?
For Wetzel and Ongerth, “The potential of unionism as a force in the fight against the environmental devastation of the capitalist regime is the basis of the green syndicalist strategy.” Unionism is of course very much an ideological movement, but that’s not the same thing as how we actually organize a union. When we organize a workplace for the first time, thus creating a new union, we don’t expect ideological agreement on a mission statement—all workers are welcome and encouraged to join—then we work out the ideological issues democratically, after we’ve established the union. If the union movement had been demanding ideological agreement merely to join a union, very few unions would exist.
To solve global problems we will need to organize in that same way, without ideology in order to create a global union for all or at least the vast majority of humanity to be able to make decisions democratically and act collectively. We need to begin building an organization that all of humanity will feel welcome to join, eventually. So it can’t be based on ideology because that makes it exclusive by definition.
The potential of unionism will forever remain an unrealized potential, unless we can actually organize enough people to have an effect on how global decisions are made. Organizing based on ideological agreement automatically limits the growth of any movement, but in contrast to organizing ideologically, and requiring members to donate their time, energy and money to a specific cause, facebook has managed to organize the most people in human history simply by offering something that is useful and entertaining. The union movement can learn from this.
The internet is of course nothing more than a tool which can be used by us, or against us. It does however, provide new possibilities for organizing because it is a global, real-time communication system which has never before existed. Imagine then, if facebook had been originally created as a democratic platform cooperative instead of a profit seeking corporation. It might now have grown to be a global democratic organization of over 3 billion people, perhaps even able to demand from corporations and governments the changes we need for a better world. The problem though, that every internet platform must deal with, is anonymity.
Online ‘communities’ are not really communities at all because there is just no way to know and therefore trust each other. Our global community organization should be based on the real communities that each of us is already organized into. A simple requirement, of having to register a real community that we belong to—our workplace, school, religious or cultural community, neighbourhood… and many other possible real communities—would remove the element of anonymity from a cooperative internet platform. Each individual’s behaviour on such a platform would then be self-policing, as we all do within our communities, because they would have to explain themselves to their own community if they behave in an anti-social way on the platform. Access to the platform would require maintaining good standing in our registered community and each community in turn, must also maintain good standing with other neighbouring communities.
Obviously this could only be built in a gradual way, beginning with any programmers and other volunteers willing to offer their time to create and maintain an open source platform cooperative. The initial growth of this platform would have to take place in the same manner as any other movement for social change—by finding people who agree with the idea, but the platform must be designed in such a way that ideological agreement is not necessary for membership. In this way the platform would be capable of scaling up infinitely—something that movements are unable to do—eventually growing to include everyone. The requirement of registering a real community will prevent anonymity on the platform, making it a healthier online environment, but most importantly, it also would gradually bring grassroots communities from around the world into a global democratic network. This democratic network of communities would not automatically have the class consciousness of similar networks which have been created spontaneously in many revolutionary situations throughout history. That would have to be developed over time as the network grows and debates various ideologies.
Every revolutionary movement has failed to unseat capitalism because each has risen up alone against capitalism, isolated from the rest of the global working class. The capitalist class, unhindered by borders, has always been able to put them down. There is no shortcut to organizing the global working class, but following a flawed organizing strategy takes us in the wrong direction. If we continue to organize radical events which have no practical way of uniting globally, we remain the moles in a global game of ‘whac-a-mole’. Ending capitalism will require organizing ourselves without threatening capitalism until the organization is too large to be stopped.
This idea of course flies in the face of the long established strategic formula that has always been followed when organizing for change:
1—Develop an ideological theory.
2—Find the others.
3—Once the number of people reaches the ‘tipping point’, we can implement the desired change.
This is obviously a simplification, but the point is that while this method works quite well in achieving relatively small goals, it can’t scale up to allow us to change the whole world. It will never be possible to convince all of humanity to agree to one single ideology, which means that we cannot solve global problems with this method. However, reversing the order of the first two—organize first, then develop ideology—will allow us to organize enough people to be capable of actually changing the world, then together, democratically, humanity can decide how we will act collectively to change the world.
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