5 responses to “Socialists and environmentalists – what do we have to learn from each other?”

1. 

   jimjay

   February 12, 2008 at 8:26 pm

   Interesting topic Liam – good luck with it

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2. 

   Jason

   February 12, 2008 at 8:40 pm

   Quite interesting. I think the focus on transitional demands in the final slide is worth developing and making more explicit.

   It needs therefore to focus on the demands for workers’ control both of struggles and services- nationalisation in itself won’t achieve anything in terms of the environment without working class democratic emergency plan to avert further catastrophe and deal with what we’ve got already.

   I’m not quite sure what you mean when on 28 you say trade unions can become revolutionary- they can but only when the majority of members are running the union on an explicitly revolutionary basis.

   Finally, I think there is an analogy between revolutions, organic growth and crisis- whether earthquakes, environmental or economic- in the sense of exponential feedback, for example captured in Lenin’s notion of workers’ democracy of the soviet or workers’ council as the germ of a new power, writing of the 1905 Petrograd Soviet

   “That was the face of the new power or rather its germinal form- since the victory of the old power destroyed the young shoots very early on.”
   http://www.permanentrevolution.net/files/1917%20Pamphlet3.pdf p12

   Or Trotsky’s exhilarating descriptions of revolution in his History:

   “The psychological moment when the soldiers go over to the revolution is prepared by a long molecular process, which, like other processes of nature, has its point of climax. But how determine this point?…

   … A revolutionary uprising that spreads over a number of days can develop victoriously only in case it ascends step by step, and scores one success after another. A pause in its growth is dangerous; a prolonged marking of time, fatal. But even successes by themselves are not enough; the masses must know about them in time, and have time to understand their value. It is possible to let slip a victory at the very moment when it is within arm’s reach. This has happened in history

   A great ro1e is played by women workers in relationship between workers and soldiers. They go up to the cordons more boldly than men, take hold of the rifles, beseech, almost command: “Put down your bayonets – join us.” The soldiers are excited, ashamed, exchange anxious glances, waver; someone makes up his mind first, and the bayonets rise guiltily above the shoulders of the advancing crowd. The barrier is opened, a joyous and grateful “Hurrah!” shakes the air. The soldiers are surrounded. Everywhere arguments, reproaches, appeals the revolution makes another forward step.”

   Chapter 7 http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/ch07.htm

   In other words, we need to make sure that in every workplace and community we are promoting the idea that working class people themselves should control and run services, not profit and that collective action can win, at first in small steps and then, exponentially, from very small beginnings we can spread- grow even- that action across whole nations and the world.

   Both natural and historical processes have long periods of apparent freezing, then slowly at fist, the ice begins to crack, then in a rush, everywhere water is flowing. As has often been recounted a bacteria reproducing every twenty minutes and, if all survived, would exceed the mass of the earth by 400 times within just forty eight hours (but don’t panic they get killed quickly enough that particular nightmare scenario isn’t too likely unlike the real catastrophe of capitalist global warming!)

   Nothing will change unless or until we learn to think and act differently not as individuals as you rightly say but as collectives, organised together into a new form of power, the collective power of working class community democracy. If we can spread the germ of collective organising then we really do, via the maths of exponential growth, have the power to take over the world before capitalism kills the planet and with it all of us and our children.

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3. 

   a very public sociologist

   February 13, 2008 at 12:28 pm

   By coincidence I blogged about something last night that might be useful for your presentation, Liam – a critical look at carbon credits

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4. 

   Paul Cooney

   February 13, 2008 at 5:32 pm

   Good to see this Liam. More and more of us are already acting to bridge the “gap” that exists. I’m ex-Labour, a long time TU activist, (Unison branch secretary / Trades Council activist), socialist and active Green Party member. No one organisation has the solution within their grasp and we must continue to debate / co-operate and organise together.

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5. 

   prianikoff

   February 15, 2008 at 7:41 am

   Global Temperature Trends: 2007 Summation:-

   “The year 2007 tied for second warmest in the period of instrumental data, behind the record warmth of 2005, in the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) analysis. 2007 tied 1998, which had leapt a remarkable 0.2°C above the prior record with the help of the “El Niño of the century”. The unusual warmth in 2007 is noteworthy because it occurs at a time when solar irradiance is at a minimum and the equatorial Pacific Ocean is in the cool phase of its natural El Niño-La Niña cycle. ”

   in full:-
   http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2007/

   2007 July-Dec Surface Temperature anomaly (degC)
   Map data:-

   “The map reveals that the greatest warming has been in the Arctic and neighboring high latitude regions. Polar amplification is an expected characteristic of global warming, as the loss of ice and snow engenders a positive feedback via increased absorption of sunlight. The large Arctic warm anomaly of 2007 is consistent with observed record low Arctic sea ice cover in September 2007.”

   

   Source: Goddard Institute for Space Science

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