Social War Not Climate Chaos Meetings at Camp
Invisible Barrio | 04.08.2008 18:11 | Climate Camp 2008 | Analysis | Climate Chaos | World
Social War Not Climate Chaos! Starting Tuesday, daily meetings at the Scottish Barrio from 5-7 PM will explore how the climate crisis, a facet of the more general latest crisis in capitalism itself, can be used to build a new kind of autonomous social movement constituted as a material force...a force capable of confronting and ultimately halting capitalism. These meetings are not on the official climate camp workshop list, of course.
Social War Not Climate Chaos
It is no longer denied that we are on the brink of a human catastrophe. But blame for this crisis is often levelled against a 'collective' humanity who have harnessed industrial production for their 'common' needs at the expense of the environment.
Nothing, we would say, is further from the truth. The 'humanity' in question was dragged kicking and screaming into the industrial project by the same class of people who still lay claim to our world. The same class who continue to destroy our world and our lives for profit.
This 'crisis' then is precipitated not by humanity as a whole but by capitalism, married as it is to industrial production. The response by capital to climate change presents itself as a series of crises caused by limitation in its expansion. These crises are not just ecological. The global insecurities caused by the expansion of trillions of dollars of fictitious capital into high-risk, high-return markets like the sub-prime mortgages has managed to throw the richest economies of the world into free-fall. This economic downturn has co-incided with a rise in social warfare, such as the attacks by militias in Nigeria which has reduced oil production by a quarter. We don't need a climatologist to tell us which way the wind is blowing.
It is with this in mind that we find ourselves here at climate camp, but NOT on the side of those who would call to the state to find a solution, solutions which would include further taxation on the working class and poor, such as carbon credits and other measures of green austerity, and these can only lead to increased state control over our everyday lives. These calls to the state will only be used to consolidate state power and profitability for capital whether the technologies it employs are 'green' or not.
Nor do we find ourselves on the side of the Left-wing of capital- the trade unions,the NGO's and all electoral parties, including those so-called 'socialist' parties- which seek only to manage the economy more efficiently whilst keeping our position inside it as workers. We see these positions as opposing sides of the same coin – that is to say 'capitalist management' of the crisis that it itself created.
We see the struggle against climate change as a struggle against the world economy, the capitalist economy and the doctrines of exploitation, growth and class domination. We think that the development of a movement against all facets of capitalism, that attempts to undermine, limit, sabotage and resist the expansion of the economic, military, legal and mediated cultural nexus should be at the core of a new social movement for a free communism.
Our call is simple – social war not climate chaos!
We come here then seeking a dialogue with those who would wish to create a social movement constituted as a material force. A force capable of confronting and ultimately halting capitalism.
There will be three gatherings of the Invisible International this week.
Venue: Scottish Barrio
Tuesday: Gathering 1 - How do we exploit the crisis that climate change poses to capitalism?
5-7 PM
Wednesday: Gathering 2 - Are we capable of confronting capitalism and how to we constitute ourselves for the next week?
5-7 PM
Thursday: Gathering 3 - How do we expand the possibilities of social war in the coming years?
12:00-2:00 PM
www.invisible-international.org
It is no longer denied that we are on the brink of a human catastrophe. But blame for this crisis is often levelled against a 'collective' humanity who have harnessed industrial production for their 'common' needs at the expense of the environment.
Nothing, we would say, is further from the truth. The 'humanity' in question was dragged kicking and screaming into the industrial project by the same class of people who still lay claim to our world. The same class who continue to destroy our world and our lives for profit.
This 'crisis' then is precipitated not by humanity as a whole but by capitalism, married as it is to industrial production. The response by capital to climate change presents itself as a series of crises caused by limitation in its expansion. These crises are not just ecological. The global insecurities caused by the expansion of trillions of dollars of fictitious capital into high-risk, high-return markets like the sub-prime mortgages has managed to throw the richest economies of the world into free-fall. This economic downturn has co-incided with a rise in social warfare, such as the attacks by militias in Nigeria which has reduced oil production by a quarter. We don't need a climatologist to tell us which way the wind is blowing.
It is with this in mind that we find ourselves here at climate camp, but NOT on the side of those who would call to the state to find a solution, solutions which would include further taxation on the working class and poor, such as carbon credits and other measures of green austerity, and these can only lead to increased state control over our everyday lives. These calls to the state will only be used to consolidate state power and profitability for capital whether the technologies it employs are 'green' or not.
Nor do we find ourselves on the side of the Left-wing of capital- the trade unions,the NGO's and all electoral parties, including those so-called 'socialist' parties- which seek only to manage the economy more efficiently whilst keeping our position inside it as workers. We see these positions as opposing sides of the same coin – that is to say 'capitalist management' of the crisis that it itself created.
We see the struggle against climate change as a struggle against the world economy, the capitalist economy and the doctrines of exploitation, growth and class domination. We think that the development of a movement against all facets of capitalism, that attempts to undermine, limit, sabotage and resist the expansion of the economic, military, legal and mediated cultural nexus should be at the core of a new social movement for a free communism.
Our call is simple – social war not climate chaos!
We come here then seeking a dialogue with those who would wish to create a social movement constituted as a material force. A force capable of confronting and ultimately halting capitalism.
There will be three gatherings of the Invisible International this week.
Venue: Scottish Barrio
Tuesday: Gathering 1 - How do we exploit the crisis that climate change poses to capitalism?
5-7 PM
Wednesday: Gathering 2 - Are we capable of confronting capitalism and how to we constitute ourselves for the next week?
5-7 PM
Thursday: Gathering 3 - How do we expand the possibilities of social war in the coming years?
12:00-2:00 PM
www.invisible-international.org
Invisible Barrio
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Present your case
04.08.2008 20:21
True as far as it goes, but it doesn't go NEARLY far enough. You really need to understand WHY in the absence of your making a good case, too many of us take the "a plague on both your houses" attitude toward your feud with capitalism.
Do you understand? I am NOT saying that there is any form of capitalism which could be sustainable. Nor am I saying that I DISBELIEVE in the possibility of forms of socialism that would be sustainable. But it's up to the proponents of socialism to present models because by and large all the extant* visions of socialism are no less industrial civilization/unsustainability than capitalism.
We of the "left" have not been doing a good job with this.
* If we go back far enough in the history of socialist thinking, we can find such potentially useful models, but since most 20th Century socialist thinking considers those "not socialist" that doesn't help much. In other words, unless/until we here from you otherwise, must assume that's not what yoiu have in mind.
Mike Novack
e-mail:
stepbyspefarm mtdata.com
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