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Reading about the carving up of the remains of the USSR in the 1990s was wild. I knew it was bad but reading about the sheer scale of the money grab was something else, state companies being sold off for next to nothing to then make the new owner billions in just the first year whilst the people starved. Simply disgusting. My main problem with this part of the book, though, was that there wasn’t very much mention of what things were like for your average Russian - there was the occasional mention of it like when people were essentially forced into selling their company shares to wealthy businessmen for a pittance, however Wood never really brought a focus on this or looked at it in depth, his focus is almost entirely on the Russian elite. I haven’t read chapter 3 yet though, so maybe he goes on to cover this there, but I definitely feel the book would benefit from a better discussion of how everything the author is writing about actually affected the Russian working class - something akin to The Shock Doctrine’s chapter on post-soviet Russia would’ve been nice. Although, I suppose you could argue that Wood wouldn’t really be writing anything new with that, and that it isn’t really the focus of the book, which I guess is fair but surely its an important factor that’s worth covering more?

Going back and rereading The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State since I never actually finished it.

Also reading How to Blow Up a Pipeline for the book club, the last discussion post for it will be up tomorrow and then we’ll probably do a vote for the September pick in the middle of next week.

You mean he doesn’t actually show us how to make explosives? Damn, what a lib lol

I thought this final chapter was by far the best in the whole book. Malm uses the chapter to address the fatalism and pessimism that all too often paralyses so many who recognise anthropogenic climate change, or even just in the left generally really. He takes some of arguments that you commonly see surrounding the impossibility of averting climate apocalypse - “we’re already doomed anyway, even if we did take action”, “We might have a chance to prevent it but it’s never going to happen anyway”, you know, all the usual “its easier to imagine the end of the world, than the end of (fossil) capitalism” stuff - and he smashes them to the ground. In case that isn’t enough, he also uses examples such as the Nat Turner rebellion and the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and makes a convincing call for action even if it really was too late - which it isn’t anyway. Then he finishes the chapter with a warning against deep ecology, which I think he could’ve developed a lot more but I guess he didn’t have the time in this short piece.

I highly recommend others to give this chapter a read, even on its own if you haven’t read the preceding chapters. We too often see misery and despair in leftist spaces when it comes to topics like this (and admittedly, I like a climate-induced dystopian hellscape joke as much as the next leftist) but despair will get us nowhere, so - to paraphrase Tony Benn - “toughen up, bloody toughen up”.

“Climate fatalism is for those on top; its sole contribution is spoilage. The most religiously Gandhian climate activist, the most starry-eyed renewable energy entrepreneur, the most self-righteous believer in veganism as panacea, the most compromise-prone parliamentarian is infinitely preferable to the white man of the North who says, ‘We’re doomed – fall in peace.’ Within the range of positions this side of climate denial, none is more despicable.”

Yes, I must say the idea that in the last couple decades the left has largely fallen into a state of doomerism, other-blaming, victimhood, and ineffective lifestyle politics quite convincing. We really do need a kick up the arse.

I thought the structure of this chapter was a bit odd. Malm starts with some examples of violence that could be carried out, beginning with destroying oil pipelines and infrastructure and looking at some instances where this has been done by other movements in the past such as the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and the fight against the Shah in Iran with some pretty good success and not a lot of costs. Malm highlights oil infrastructure as a clear weak spot, one which can suffer great damage at the hands of a small group of people. I think Malm is correct that the targeting of this infrastructure could form a crucial part of a global climate movement although this would need to be coordinated on a mass scale and I’m not too sure how you could go about convincing people in oil-dependent states to join in.

Then Malm goes onto a movement he was involved in that went around deflating the tyres on SUVs, the way the project grew with more and more people joining in, the way the right and the owners of these cars responded and the subsequent reduction in sales of them. This is when I think the structure gets a little weird since he then switches to a discussion on the differences between emissions generated out of necessity and emission generated for luxury and the importance of targeting the later rather than the former (which Malm is definitely correct about) but then eventually he goes back to the idea of deflating or keying SUVs again. Feels quite clunky, doesn’t flow too well. But, as for the idea of targeting SUVs, I think it could be a decent idea but I’d be worried about expending too much energy on this one thing to the detriment of other useful activities, I also think it could make more sense to be looking at targeting dealerships and showrooms, making not worthwhile to sell the cars in the first place rather than just trying to get them off the streets once they’ve already been sold. I think it’d be better optically too.

Then there’s a discussion about what violence is, what terrorism is, how these fit into the climate movement, arguments against violence, etc. Which are fine but again this feels out of place and I feel a lot of it was unnecessary here as most of this was already covered in the first chapter.

I really thought the best part of the chapter was the final part with Malm’s examination and critique of XR. He critiques the movement for some of their tactics such as being close to the police or encouraging their members to get themselves arrested. He also links back to his discussion of not targeting people generating survival emissions by looking into instances where XR have targeted working class people using public transport, something any climate movement should obviously be supporting rather than trying to disrupt. Malm identifies XRs white, middle class, liberal membership and their lack of any real serious solutions to the climate problem or any critique of capitalism as the reasons why they’d make such blunders. However, he himself doesn’t really offer any solutions to avoid this beyond referring back to the need to target luxury emissions. He basically just says “make sure you only target the rich” but offers nothing for how XR or any future groups can stop/avoid being a movement full of white, middle class liberals who make such awful decisions and have such milquetoast demands in the first place.

Not red.

I have very mixed feelings about this book so far. Malm begins with describing the actions and strategies of climate activists he was involved with in the 1990s, who seemingly used the exact same tactics as are being used today: nonviolent civil disobedience causing as much disruption as possible, often while wearing a funny outfit. He then looks at the three “cycles” of climate action that have occurred since 2000. Malm shows how each one has been more or less the same tactics-wise as the one preceding it but that each “cycle” has grown massively in terms of the number of people participating, with the latest one involving millions of people globally until it was abruptly cut short by the pandemic.

Malm then examines the situation at present and the likely path going forward with masses of wealth still being poured into fossil fuels and plans to expand fossil fuel use and extraction further for decades to come. The foot is well and truly still on the accelerator despite the efforts of the climate movement and something really needs to change if we’re to stop it.

This is when Malm begins looking into the arguments for nonviolent protest, both moral and strategic, and breaks down why these are foolish or at times just downright nonsensical. He shows the absurdity of moral nonviolence through pointing out the very real need for violent self defence in some instances. He then also lays out the arguments used by proponents of strategic nonviolence - such as the XR leadership - and the complete ahistoricism of them. Instances of successful movements from ending slavery to ending the UK poll tax are held up by some of those in the climate movement as evidence of the success of nonviolence over violence. Malm does a very good job of dismantling these and showing how all the movements regularly brought up actually relied heavily on violent methods to achieve their victories. I think this was probably the best part of the book so far, even if it was incredibly frustrating having to read arguments along the lines of “abolishing slavery was achieved through the marketplace of ideas rather than the barrel of a musket”.

My problem with the book so far is that Malm seems to be presenting the exclusion of violent tactics from the climate movement as the primary concern holding the movement back or at least that violence is necessarily logical next step when purely peaceful means have not worked. However, we know that climate and environmental movements in the past have used violence as part of their strategy. This has historically included sabotage, destruction of equipment, tree spiking, arson, bombings, and even violence against people. But were these past movements any more or less successful than the present-day ones? If it wasn’t the lack of violent action holding these groups back, then what was it that accounts for their failure to effect change? Were these movements too small? Too clandestine? Doing the wrong kind of violence? Something wrong with their organisational structure? What can we learn from these? Well, we don’t know because, at least up to now, Malm hasn’t bothered looking into them. Its almost as if to Malm the climate movement began in 2000 and he presents the suggestion of adopting violent tactics as something completely new despite it being a tried and tested method for climate and environmental activists for many decades now.

My second problem is that the book seems to be absolutely absent of any class analysis whatsoever. I find this really quite shocking since we know from Malm’s other works (Fossil Capital) that he is very well aware of the inextricable link between the use of fossil fuels and capitalism and he has argued elsewhere that in order to move away from fossil fuels and constrain the climate catastrophe as much as we can, we will have to radically alter our social relations. For me, this is the crucial thing missing from the climate movement. A big part of the focus should be on revitalising working class organisations, strengthening the labour movement, trying to bring in trade unions, doing things that will pose a real threat to the foundations of fossil capital and open up an avenue for radical change and a green socialist future. The movement is instead almost entirely focused around students, celebrities, and middle class activists engaging in symbolic acts of resistance that cause disruption and inconvenience and have, granted, helped generate a lot of momentum to the movement but still ultimately pose very little threat to the system that Malm has so brilliantly examined in his other works.

For me, the climate movement needs to move away from this kind of symbolic resistance where individuals are merely wanting to be seen as at least “doing something” for the sake of doing something, even if that something isn’t really achieving any meaningful results. I don’t reject Malm’s calls for violent tactics to be adopted in and of themselves, but applied to the current movement they would simply continue and extend this kind of individualist pseudo-“resistance”. By seemingly ignoring the need to change the overarching strategy and structure of the climate movement and to reignite class politics, it almost feels like Malm has forgotten everything he’s written about in the past and now believes we can win by all just becoming little Ted Kaczynskis.

What was even more frustrating was the part where he talks about the youth climate strikes and at one point mentions that some workers in Germany walked out in solidarity with the strikes and with the blessing of their trade unions. But that was all. He didn’t look into this further, didn’t look at how this could be replicated or broadened, what the circumstances were that lead to it. It was the prime opportunity to link his very correct critiques of the climate movement with the rest of his works and the need he has identified to challenge capitalism but he didn’t do it. All it got was a passing comment.

Anyway, there’s basically a lot of good in the book, it so far has some decent critiques of the current movement and provides good counters to common arguments from those who believe nonviolent action is the only way. But the critiques do not go nearly far enough, and the key class element is totally absent. Yes, destroying the mining machinery would probably do more good than briefly occupying the mine, but surely we can all agree it would better still if the workers themselves destroyed their own bosses’ machinery? I really hope I’m wrong and being way too harsh and that Malm does look into this more in the next two chapters, but I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see.

Forgot my password and made a new account. Can you guys give me some internet points so I have enough to do this week’s book club post, plz n thnx.