Isn´t this one of the postmodernist philosophers mocked by Andreas Malm years ago? One of the guys who proposed that maybe oil is sentient? But Thomas Sheridan seems to like this speculative turn in continental philosophy (he mentioned "Cyclonopedia" in his previously linked conservation with ChatGPT, as well).
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| En sionistisk T-Rex jagar en liten Lundaprofessor |
Jag undrar vad Malm anser om Sveriges NATO-ansökan. Han stödde nämligen NATO:s intervention i Libyen mot Gaddafi och uppmanade den dåvarande svenska högerregeringen att skicka JAS-plan för att backa USA. Malm måste vara glad över att NATO-medlemmen Turkiet stödjer Hamas och snart ska få F-16 från Förenta Staterna.
Eller nej?
Och att Lunds universitet värnar yttrandefriheten är givetvis skitsnack. Tror någon att en frispråkig sverigedemokrat hade fått vara professor i Lund? Nä, just det. Eller ens en Gaddafi-anhängare...
"White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism" is a recent book by Andreas Malm and the Zetkin Collective, the latter being Malm´s co-writers. The bulk of the book was written shortly before the COVID pandemic, but has a postscript dealing with certain aspects of it. The title of the work is a rather obvious reference to Frantz Fanon´s "Black Skins, White Masks". Let me first say that if you are an early 21st century leftist of a somewhat more intellectual bent (but not *too* intellectual), this might be just what you have been looking for. Malm, a Swedish climate activist, weaves together the climate crisis with racism, fascism and capitalism in this near-encyclopedic survey of the White and Western far right and its hot takes (pun intended) on climate change. The authorial collective is named after the German Communist leader Clara Zetkin, who wrote one of the first Marxist analyses of fascism in 1923.
My own take on the book is that although Malm does say interesting things, I nevertheless felt strongly frustrated when reading it, perhaps because I´m a "recovering leftist". The left I used to sympathize with was very different from the early 21st century SJW-ish/identity politics/postmodern kind of left to which Malm (at least broadly) belongs. Ironically, I might have been closer to the real life KPD than the Zetkin Collective! Today, my mental universe is so different from the main author´s that I initially found a meaningful polemic difficult to even conceive, but it seems I just may have found the right wave length, after all!
Malm´s analysis of fascism differs in some ways from the "classical" Marxist one. He believes that the standard analyses de facto treats fascism as an alien force within capitalism. Fascism is either seen as a bourgeois response to the organized attempts by the working class to abolish capitalism, or as an atavistic pre-capitalist reaction. That is: if capitalism is left undisturbed, threatened neither by a militant workers´ movement nor by a feudal throwback, it will *not* turn fascist, but presumably develop "normally" in a "liberal" way. However, Malm argues, the present situation disproves this, since fascism is on the rise *in the absence of* a radicalized working class or pre-modern Vendées. Capitalism, it seems, breeds fascism by its normal dynamic. (I think Slavoj Zizek might have a similar take.)
Malm, of course, connects this to the unfolding climate crisis. In short, capitalism and modern imperialism are dependent on fossil fuel, making fossil capital the most important faction within the bourgeoisie. This dependency inevitably drives climate change, leading to social conflicts, wars, refugee crises, chaos and potential collapse. *This* is what makes fascism an inevitable product of the system´s own internal laws of motion, not just a momentary political tactic the powers-that-be occasionally resort to. Fascism is the last line of defense of fossil capital when the latter becomes a threat to human survival, yet refuses to yield. This explain why most fascists are climate change denialists, indeed denialism has become a central part of their message (topped only by opposition to immigration and Islam) and the more the crisis unfolds, the more pushed to the fore it is. The same is true of proto-fascism and indeed of the capitalist class itself. True, some fascists claim to be "Green", but Malm believes that this is just a kind of "green-washing". The voting record of the "True Finns" in Finland (who claim to be ecologically woke) shows that they really suppport fossil fuels when push comes to shove, in their case peat (of which Finland has an abundance). Likewise, the National Alliance in France consistently vote against all climate regulations, despite also claiming to be green (I note that France gets most of its electricity from nuclear power). Malm doesn´t rule out a truly green fascism at some point in the future, but current trends rather point towards a "fossil fascism". The program of such a regime would be to protect capitalism by defending the White nations against "the Other", meaning mostly poor non-White peoples, both those in the Third World and those already living in the West. To accomplish this, fascists will try to unite all Whites regardless of class. He believes that a substantial portion of the White working class has or will be won to the fossil fascist perspective. So will various "declassed petty bourgeois layers".
Of course, this makes no sense if you believe in a strictly materialist interpretation of history, and I think Malm realizes this. Please note that Malm *denies* that the colored peoples are responsible for the climate crisis, but if so, it makes no sense for the bourgeoisie to exclude them, if the point of fossil fascism is to somehow save capitalism. Then it´s better to promote mass immigration to the West, drive down wages, and use the cheap labor to make fossil fuels great again! Malm is brave enough to grab the bull by the horns, stating that perhaps fascism is at bottom an irrational phenomenon. It´s connected to White status issues and ditto anxiety. As somebody once said: "If a White man can´t be higher up than a nigger, what can he be?" Indeed, the Whites who vote fascist and deny the climate crisis might be psychologically damaged by strong narcissism and a Freudian death-wish.
Since the White working class is essentially written off in this scenario, Malm must call for new alliances, principally with non-Whites (including non-White workers) both in the metropols and the global south. His analysis is strongly "racialized" on this point. To Malm, fossil capitalism is an inherently White project to dominate non-Whites. It´s almost as if he believes in a kind of "bribe theory" from the outset, in which the working class struggles of the early 20th century were just a paranthesis. However, the wretched of the earth aren´t the only possible allies in the Malmian scenario.
Another is the imperialist state itself...
In the postscript, Malm argues that the capitalist state´s anti-pandemic measures during the COVID outbreak (including lockdowns and mask mandates) are a "post-political moment" and the first example of how the states somehow respond to the needs of the people. This positively bizarre analysis of the COVID crisis is expanded in another recent book by Malm (without the Collective this time), "Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency", in which the author calls on the climate change movement to capture the existing states (rather than overthrowing them in outright revolutions) and use their power to smash fossil capital. Is it really possible that Malm could have missed the enormous transfer of wealth to the super-rich that has taken place during the pandemic *with the help of precisely this state*, rather starkly revealing that nothing "post-political" is going on after all? In "White Skin, Black Fuel", when Malm discusses the lock downs, he writes off those "declassed" by them as "petty bourgeois layers" ready for fascism - does this refer to, say, Somali shop-owners in Minneapolis bankrupted by the lockdowns and then attacked by Malm´s Antifa buddies? Or is the chronic emergency so woke that it only hits Trump-voting evangelicals in the Idaho panhandle who own anti-gay pastry shops?
There is another potential ally to the climate change movement: Green capital. Malm doesn´t discuss this at length, but he does believe that some sections of the capitalist class might survive the destruction of fossil capital by simply capturing the alternatives, such as wind or solar. Might not *they* become part of a popular front with the Greta Thunbergs of the world? If not, why not? Perhaps its safer to simply take over the bridge...
As already mentioned, "White Skin, Black Fuel" frequently operates in a mental space somewhere to the left of La-La Land. For starters, there is nothing about China, the second biggest emitter of CO2 in the world. China is, of course, "colored". If the color is red or jade is perhaps another matter, but it´s certainly a highly centralized economy. India isn´t mentioned either, something actually admitted in one sentence by the author-collective. But India is *governed by a party Malm and the Collective should consider fascistic*. Unfortunately for their racialized analysis, the Indian Aryans are also non-White, but perhaps the strongly pro-Muslim Malm will one day write about the BJP due to its anti-Muslim policies? One also wonders whether narcissim and death-wishes are really purely White character traits, or whether they might also exist among more colored kins, among jihadist warriors, perhaps, the Chinese neo-rich or Hindu communalists...
As for overpopulation, Malm is right that the poor in Mozambique (his favorite example, since that nation was hit by a devastating cyclone on the same day as the first international climate strike in 2019) don´t contribute much to global warming while being disproportionately hit by it, but China *does* contribute, and India will in the future if the BJP somehow catches up with the CCP, meaning that an additional two billion "colored" people will enter the orbit of fossil capital. If Malm´s analysis of fossil fascism is correct, then the PRC and India will be just as big purveyors of its proto-version as Donald Trump or Hans Rosling, indeed, they might even become the first actual fossil fuel fascists (or at least the first really dangerous ones) since they are already in power in large nations (the CCP even being the sole legal party in China)! And what would stop runner-ups from becoming fossil fascists, too? Malm does discuss Brazil, but obviously only because Bolsonaro is a White right-winger. Why no discussion about neighboring Venezuela, the entire economy of which is based on oil? Indeed, why can´t there also be a "fossil Communism" (pun unintended) or "fossil left-nationalism" in the Third World *or even a fossil democracy in the Western nations*?
At bottom, the problem is that modern civilization simply can´t do without fossil fuel. White people want to keep it, colored people want to claim it, nobody (except maybe some seriously declassed petit bourgeois) want to abolish it, indeed, nobody but such people has any *objective material self-interest* in doing so. The idea that wind, solar and other exotic energy sources will make everyone in the world (all the projected 11 billion) just as prosperous as (locked down) middle class Europeans (OK, they have to take the train to Grönköping instead of flying to Phuket) is just another Green-leftist conceit. The future probably does belong to fossil fascism, and in a distant future even eco-fascism, but we might also see people vote in fossil fuel governments in democratic nations, ironically enough precisely because they are democratic and hence must respond to the felt needs of the electorate, rather than post-politically sheltering them in place. But yes, the democratic polity might decide on reforms Malm would find horrendous, perhaps even proto-fascist, such as less immigration, pipelines to Russia (or why not *Byelo*russia) and so on.
In contrast to the Zetkin Collective, I don´t claim to have any solutions to our present predicament. I do have a prediction, however. Barring a sensational technological breakthrough, or a massive and coordinated international mobilization in favor of a de-carbonized economy with thorium reactors (which would be extremely expensive and detrimental to the environment in other ways than climate change, but of course still worth trying if at all possible), what the world will see is a "bellum omnium contra omnes", or less eruditely put "use up the last fossil fuels and then duck", perhaps dominated by the Russian Federation and China, and then a general collapse of modern civilization, followed by centuries of tribal warfare and dragon-ships...
"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.
"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 lockdowns. 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 lockdowns, which he (absurdly) considers a concession to the working class or common people from the side of the state or "bourgeois democracy". If lockdowns 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 lockdown 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 lockdown* 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 lockdown 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 lockdowns) 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.
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