With Trotsky on a wood-powered train

"Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century" is a book by Andreas Malm, published in 2020 and probably written shortly after the initial round of anti-COVID lock downs. The work is dated April 28, 2020. 

Regardless of what you think of the climate emergency (I, for one, consider it real enough), Malm´s book is a good example of the utopianism of the eco-socialist or red-green end of the political spectrum. This is interesting, since Malm (a self-professed "ecological Leninist") goes out of his way *not* to sound utopian. He does succeed to some extent, but only by piggy-backing on the lock downs, which he (absurdly) considers a concession to the working class or common people from the side of the state or "bourgeois democracy". If lock downs are possible during a pandemic, why not implement similar measures to deal with the climate emergency? Another interesting trait is that the author *doesn´t* call for a socialist revolution to replace the present-day state (although he of course wouldn´t mind such a thing), but rather calls on the state as it is to implement the climate emergency measures (presumably pressured to do so by very angry working-class masses). 

Let´s strip the author of all r-r-revolutionary pretensions and, with Trotsky, "say what is": he is a radical reformist, who wants to capture the imperialist-globalist bourgeois state apparati and wield them against fossil fuel capitalism, something he believes is possible since the states have showed "relative autonomy" from the capitalists by imposing lock down measures during the COVID pandemic. The rational for this is that "there isn´t enough time" to avert an apocalyptic Venus scenario. The literal revolution has to wait. Interestingly, he calls this international state of emergency "war communism", and in a very candid moment, suggest that it could potentially lead to totalitarianism, but apparently believes the risk or plunge is worth taking, since doing nothing would destroy everything. Personally, I suspect Malm´s "war communism" would more likely become a new version of the globalist hybrid (or is it hydra) we already have, in which neo-liberalism and the bureaucratic apparat are intertwined, just as much as neo-liberals and left-liberals. Malm´s scenario would simply shift the power more to the bureaucratic side, perhaps with some input from "mass-based" NGO-like organizations (which are really part of the apparatus anyway). 

But even apart from that, the concrete program proposed in this book is frankly absurd. On the one hand, Malm wants to nationalize the fossil fuel companies and simply stop them from using fossil fuels. On the other hand, he has a long laundry list of *other* large-scale industrial projects he wishes to see implemented: more railroads, CCD facilities, industrial plants to make solar panels and wind turbines. Where is the energy and the fuel for all *this* to come from? Also, why doesn´t Malm mention the enormous increase of coppar mining and rare earth mineral extraction necessary for all this to happen? What about semi-conductors? And how come he never once, positively or negatively, mention nuclear power? 

Other demands are more obviously Green. The state will ban meat-eating, for instance. It will "reforest" and "rewild" the Third World by abolishing plantations, beef farms and the like. No, worse: the *imperialist* state will order the reforestation and rewilding of the global south. But what if the Third World masses (the majority of the world´s population) want to nationalize the plantations *and keep them running in order to export cash crops to the global north, then splitting the proceeds equally on the home front*? What if, heaven forfend, people rising out of poverty *want* to eat beef? Indeed, what is Malm´s solution to the overpopulation problem? If the world economy runs down, the world *will* be overpopulated, unless you think 8 billion people can be fed solely on frugal vegan food? Since the majority of the world´s population (including most of its new middle classes) are in the global south, Malm´s program really entails a massive population-reduction in those areas, but as a good leftist he refuses to see this. 

Does the author even believe in his own program? He still wants to have open borders *even during a pandemic lock down* and calls for open borders in the "war communist" future, as well. But how can a centralized planned economy set to wind down the economy have unlimited immigration? Indeed, how can *any* centralized planned economy have unlimited immigration, unless it´s hell-bent on economic growth of an almost LaRouchian nature? It can´t, of course. Malm spends an entire chapter arguing that it´s the combination of capitalism (including pre-modern merchant capital) and mobility of people that causes pandemics, but if so, economic autarky *and zero immigration* should be the logical conclusion. Or does Malm believe that only merchants (or air line passangers) carry bat viruses? 

A lock down of the native population combined with mass immigration is, I suppose, an interesting proposition...

The class position of the proposals in "Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency" is that of the lower echelons of the late capitalist bureaucratic apparatus, the out-bureaucrats or would-be planners whose proposals are somewhat more "radical" than those of their echelonic superiors. If the workers, the small shop owners, the poor, or indeed the Chinese middle classes, will give these guys a shot at power after the present round of rulers (and lock downs) fail, remains to be seen, but I have to say that it seems most unlikely. The spectre of a Trotsky riding on a wood-fueled train into a war communist future probably can´t compete with dreams of beef and pangolin wine!

The joint destruction of the contending classes is more realistic. Or perhaps fossil fuel fascism.