How to blow up your pipeline

"How to Blow Up a Pipeline" is a book by Andreas Malm published this year, but based on a manuscript written before the COVID pandemic. Malm is a self-professed "ecological Leninist" and an activist in the anti-climate change movement. Swedish by birth, he teaches "human ecology" at various colleges and universities in Europe. Or at least I think he does. I admit that I never met him IRL!

I´m not a Marxist, but I do find it a bit funny to criticize Malm from a kind of faux Marxist perspective. If you are an orthodox Marxist (or non-ecological Leninist of the old school), there is a lot to complain about in Malm´s writings. Of course, Malm himself would probably find such a criticism meaningless - he doesn´t deny a strong dose of heterodoxy, justified by the fact that the climate crisis is so serious that we simply can´t wait for a classical socialist revolution according to all the right Marxian-Leninian prescriptions (although such would presumably be preferable). But then, that´s what the revisionists always say, isn´t it? ;-) 

However, even from a more mainstream political perspective, there are serious problems with his approach to things. "How to Blow Up a Pipeline" is a good example. At first glance, it sounds much more radical - even slightly anarchistic - compared to "Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency", another recent Malm book in which he comes across as more "reformist" (at least relatively speaking!), wanting to capture the present-day state rather than overthrowing it, and then wield its power to attack the fossil fuel industry. In "How to Blow Up a Pipeline", Malm expounds at length on the need for sabotage or ecotage, not as a all-time strategy to be sure, but as a very important tactic, perhaps even a necessary one under present circumstances. The sabotage should be directed against the fossil fuel industry and/or its varied manifestations (say SUVs on a gentrified city street). Malm expresses surprise at the fact that the current climate change movement is so peaceful and civilized that it virtually never carries out sabotage actions of any kind. A partial exception to the rule is the notorious attempt by XR in Britain to shut down the London metro, but since no property was damaged, even that wasn´t "sabotage" as usually defined. 

There doesn´t seem to be any contradiction between mass sabotage actions and a "reformist" perspective. One of the examples adduced by Malm is the suffragete movement in Britain before World War I, when thousands of women activists demanded that women be granted the right to vote. They apparently carried out mass sabotage actions of various kinds (I admit I had no idea). Sabotage can also be a way to express solidarity with (or even give aid to) revolutionary struggles elsewhere, as when activists in Sweden and other European nations sabotaged Shell petrol stations during the 1980´s and 1990´s in solidarity with the ANC in South Africa, rebels in Nigeria, and so on. (Malm doesn´t mention the 1980´s anti-Shell campaign, but I´m old enough to remember the turmoil it created on the Swedish left.) Malm also discusses violent struggles of various kinds, usually in the global south, such as the Palestinian intifada. And no, he doesn´t like Gandhi. Exposing *him* seems to be quite the sport among radical leftists!

From a classical Marxist perspective, the most obvious problem with Malm´s mass sabotage advocacy is that "mass" isn´t the same thing as "working class" or "labor movement". Indeed, workers and labor are mostly absent from Malm´s book, hardly surprising since they usually work in the fossil fuel industries targeted by the saboteurs (who are mostly middle class kids from Malm´s college classes). Malm´s mass sabotage strategy turns out to be a call on the middle class climate change movement to become more radical, rather than a call on labor unions to use their raw power to shut down the economy - come to think of it, the only social power that shut downs anything in Malm´s books is the state, when pressured or captured by the middle class activists! Nor is this surprising, since the Green program would lead to more hardship for the workers in the global north, this according to Malm´s other bok "Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency". Enforced veganism, no flying, no cars, less international trade and (curiously) more open borders, are all part of the policy mix. True, Malm claims that wind turbines and solar panels will somehow save the day, that the masses in the Third World will accept "rewilding" (a "rewilding" strangely enough ordered by the new Green govs of the global North) and that overpopulation isn´t a problem, but these are the usual Green conceits which simply can´t pass muster. What will *actually* happen is clear even from "How to Blow Up a Pipeline", but somehow, Malm doesn´t see it or perhaps doesn´t care. 

In the last chapter, Malm mentions a series of radical Green protests in eastern Germany that managed to shut down the fossil fuel industry, if only briefly. They involved sabotage actions in which the author participated himself. Almost as an afterthought, Malm mentions that there was a backlash with fascistic thugs attacking the Green activists *in an area of east Germany were the right-wing party Alternative for Germany is very strong*. In other words, the backlash had the full support of the local population, which further suggests that the Green protesters were from somewhere else. This, of course, is what will happen in the future if and when the climate change movement turns to mass sabotage. The "masses" (the real ones) will turn to the right-wing populists and fascists, and listen even less to the climate activists than ever before, probably even cheering on the stormtroopers fielded to dispose of their presence. And what will the eco-Leninists do then? 

Perhaps they will respond in kind, turning to eco-terrorism. However, a more likely option is that they will tie themselves even stronger to the pseudo-Green faction of the globalist establishment, demanding repressive measures against the "masses" and step up the political campaigns to capture the state apparatus for themselves. Indeed, the crypto-anarchist perspective of this author simply dooms him to vacillate between adventurism and de facto reformism, the latter probably winning out in the end. 

Is this our future, then? A class conflict of sorts, but one between a Green or Greenwashed globo-liberal climate despotism and a fossil fuel populism or even fascism, with the working class supporting the latter...

We will find out within our lifetimes. At least that much is certain.