Monbiot attacks anarchism over climate change again

little_brother "Land of Snott"
Posts: 536 Joined: 30-01-06 Location: Midlands
Submitted by little_brother on 27 August, 2008 - 18:53.

Climate change is not anarchy's football
"In seeking to put politics ahead of action, Ewa Jasiewicz is engaging in magical thinking of the most desperate kind"
George Monbiot guardian.co.uk, Friday August 22 2008 17:00
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/22/climatechange.kingsnorthclimatecamp

in response to:

Time for a revolution
"There can be no state solutions to climate change: governments won't give up the powers that lead to environmental ruin"
Ewa Jasiewicz guardian.co.uk, Thursday August 21 2008 08:00 BST http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/21/climatechange.kingsnorthclimatecamp

What a patronising bastard Monbiot is, like he is the first to even think of the potential problems of living in a non-state society. What is more utopian that believing that a self-interested ruling class that controls the state and the capitalist economy might have the will to solve the problem of CO2 emissions? Online comments to both articles are worth reading.

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Monbiot.com started making these attacks on anarchism a while back, a couple of pages in The Age of Consent and various mainstream press articles. Some previous critiques:

George Monbiot: Muppet of the week! (Part I) - 2007
http://struggle.ws/anarchism/writers/anarcho/monbiotmuppet.html
Muppet of the week (Part II) - 2007
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/anarchism/writers/anarcho/2007/muppet2.html

Capitalist "anti-capitalism"? Whatever next? (2001)
http://struggle.ws/anarchism/writers/anarcho/monbiot.html

Monbiot on Genoa (2001)
Critique of Monbiot's discussion of the Black Block in Genoa
http://struggle.ws/anarchism/writers/anarcho/monbiot_bb.html

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But, was it anarchist or was it hippy? Monbiot's lovely long-time friend illuminates...

Monbiot, Guardian, 2008: As a friend of mine put it, “when the anarchist utopia arrives, the first thing that will happen is that every Daily Mail reader in the country will pick up a gun and go and kill the nearest hippy.”http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/08/22/identity-politics-in-climate-change-hell/

Monbiot, Guardian, 2001: Or, as a friend of mine suggests, 'the moment the anarchist utopia arrives, every Daily Mail reader in the country will pick up a shotgun and shoot the nearest anarchist'.
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2001/04/24/reversing-the-corporate-takeover/

2030, Guardian writer gets hit by friendly fire, shock.

si "communism for fun and profit"
Posts: 266 Joined: 16-01-05
27 August, 2008 - 19:30

The equivocation by which Monbiot has recently begun to push all real politics under the black name 'identity politics' and declare it almost dead (and worth finishing off) really fucks me off (and worries me a bit). If he didn't admit in that very article that he doesn't 'know how to deal with the problem of capitalism without resorting to totalitarianism', I'd accuse him of naivety. But really in failing to associate the green Apocalypse with every other excuse for a state of emergency, austerity, class warfare, he's just in step with the times - pure administration of a series of overwhelming crises (probably only on the surface, mind, not 'THE CRISIS') by a 'depoliticised' ruling class. As it is I'm just happy to have heard from friends who went to the climate camp that he enjoys waning influence. I hope that's true...

Anyway it's enough to make one sound like an RCP-er. Doesn't 2030 sound a bit far away?

Joseph K. "the thinking man's idiot"
Posts: 8525 Joined: 14-03-06 Location: Brighton
27 August, 2008 - 19:29

monbiot's dismissal of anarchism and marxism in 'the age of consent' is hilariously dishonest - he dismisses anarchism on the basis of what some hippy at newbury told him about kenyan tribes and he dismisses marx on the basis of the communist manifesto (40 odd pages from an ouevre of thousands). but then what do you expect from a 'radical' bourgeois ideologue whose only criticism of bourgeois democracy is that it isn't global (despite frequently commenting on how national bourgeois democracy frequently fails to represent 'the people').

Django
Posts: 372 Joined: 18-01-08 Location: Manchester
27 August, 2008 - 19:37

Its interesting that he feels the need to denounce anti-state politics though. His hilarious straw man arguments about anarchism aren't aimed at anarchists, but potentially interested parties who are concerned about green issues.

Django
Posts: 372 Joined: 18-01-08 Location: Manchester
27 August, 2008 - 19:41
Quote:
The issue is that capitalism involves lending money at interest. If you lend at 5%, then one of two things must happen. Either the money supply must increase by 5%, or the velocity of circulation must increase by 5%. In either case, if this growth is not met by a concomitant increase in the supply of goods and services, it becomes inflationary and the system collapses. But a perpetual increase in the supply of goods and services will eventually destroy the biosphere. So how do we stall this process? Even when usurers were put to death and condemned to perpetual damnation, the practice couldn't be stamped out. Only the communist states managed it, through the extreme use of the state control Jasiewicz professes to hate. I don't yet have an answer to this conundrum. Does she?

Wow, deep man. I've heard better analyses from a level politics students.

Jess "The heart of a heartless world."
Posts: 2226 Joined: 26-11-04 Location: Brighton
27 August, 2008 - 19:54

There's a facebook group called 'If only everyone was as sensible as Monbiot.'

sad sad sad sad sad sad sad sad sad sad

Joseph K. "the thinking man's idiot"
Posts: 8525 Joined: 14-03-06 Location: Brighton
27 August, 2008 - 19:58

true that, Django.

Monbiot wrote:
Her article is a terrifying example of the ability some people have to put politics first and facts second when confronting the greatest challenge humanity now faces.

excellent projection from a man who simultaneously points out the incompatibility of economic growth and abating climate change, whilst seeing the state and businesses as part of the solution. how is expecting organisations whose very being is defined by ever-expanding growth to be agents of the opposite less utopian than demanding a break from such social relations?

Monbiot wrote:
The issue is that capitalism involves lending money at interest.

ffs. monbiot gets his understanding of capitalism from michael rowbotham, a man whose populist anti-finance 'analysis' is ridiculously superficial (for him, everything can be solved by nationalising the money supply capacity currently held by banks). rowbotham himself borrows these ideas from ch douglas, a 30s anti-semite, and while he tries to distance himself from this at least douglas had an excuse for blaming everything on the je-, sorry bankers (incidentally rowbotham's dismissal of marx is even briefer than monbiot's, consisting of one line in 'the grip of death' saying douglas was a far superior intellect, and marx basically a simpleton). douglas' supposed 'innovation' was to notice that workers are paid less than the value of their products (!), but instead of looking at the relations of production to explain this surplus value, and being an anti-semite, he blamed the banks for swindling workers by monopolising the money supply.

consequently monbiot's whole analysis of the imperitive for economic growth under capitalism, and thus his liberal conclusion that the state is somehow an an agent against 'corporations' (rather than the collective capitalist vis individual ones), is built on sand.

plus (as i'm sure i don't need to point out here) his straw man of 'anarchism is the same as market fundamentalism' is flawed for all the same reasons, whilst ignoring the actual examples of anarchist societies in spain and the ukraine doing away with the market, socialising production etc. of course it does allow him the classic liberal 'reasonable middle-ground' posturing and an appeal to charicatures that anarchism means 'do what you like, murder at will.'

edit: fwiw i know about rowbotham/douglas et al because monbiot was one of the first people i read when getting politicised, but thankfully i met a couple of articulate anarchists/communists and very quickly rejected him after an initial flirtation. maybe this potentiality's why he's so keen to straw-man anarchist/communist ideas as in certain ways those attracted to his ideas of 'global democracy' aren't far from wanting workplace democracy too (and then... libertarian communism!)

little_brother "Land of Snott"
Posts: 536 Joined: 30-01-06 Location: Midlands
27 August, 2008 - 20:37

So that's Monbiot. What do y'all think of the article he's responding to, that of Ewa Jasiewicz who had a go at him and Scargill. Ewa incidently spoke at Sumac Centre about Iraqi trade unions several years ago, only shortly after the invasion, and continues to write about them...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/09/iraq.tradeunions

Joseph K. "the thinking man's idiot"
Posts: 8525 Joined: 14-03-06 Location: Brighton
27 August, 2008 - 20:43

ewa's kinda coming from the activisty end of anarchism and her jargon reflects that ('precariat' etc). but to be fair she does pose the question of class, even if she sees the climate camp a bit too much as a model for a future society for my liking. i think she'd do well to point out that profit and power, business and state are two sides of the same coin and anarchism/libertarian communism is about abolishing the coin (not niavely hoping one side will restrain the other a la monbiot), rather than just the simplistic anarchism of 'state = bad' which she's in danger of falling into.

weeler "temp banned"
Posts: 7281 Joined: 25-09-05 Location: Dublin
27 August, 2008 - 22:39

£200 to give monbiot a black eye.

laureakai
Posts: 252 Joined: 29-09-06 Location: Warsaw, Poland
28 August, 2008 - 09:53

All I have to say is good for Ewa and if George ever comes to town I'll be sure to go heckle him.

888 ""I think I'm having an overdose and so's my wife""
Posts: 475 Joined: 30-09-03 Location: Seattle
28 August, 2008 - 23:43

I love his ill informed dig at "identity politics" at the end.

raw "Like a fish out of water"
Posts: 606 Joined: 08-10-03
29 August, 2008 - 18:40
Joseph K. wrote:
ewa's kinda coming from the activisty end of anarchism and her jargon reflects that ('precariat' etc). but to be fair she does pose the question of class, even if she sees the climate camp a bit too much as a model for a future society for my liking. i think she'd do well to point out that profit and power, business and state are two sides of the same coin and anarchism/libertarian communism is about abolishing the coin (not niavely hoping one side will restrain the other a la monbiot), rather than just the simplistic anarchism of 'state = bad' which she's in danger of falling into.

I remember a £50 bet on the word "Precariat" appearing in the guardian - time to pay up? Though the article was written by a former member of the wombles.

afraser
Posts: 279 Joined: 16-07-05
30 August, 2008 - 21:01

I've never got the dislike of Monbiot from amongst the far left. He's not an anarchist, has never claimed to be, so what's the beef when he doesn't act like a good little anarchist? We don't go around being shocked, shocked, when other liberals, like Al Gore or Charles Kennedy or Paul Krugman or Bertrand Russell or John Maynard Keynes, say that they don't agree with anarchism. Why should we react any different to Monbiot? The man's got interesting points to make, but he's not one of us. Get over it.

His article title is correct: climate change is not Anarchism's football, any more than feminism or national liberation or anti racism or any other worthy cause is. Anarchism should be based on class struggle issues before all else. That's anarchism's football.

Climate change could be resolved well (and, crucially, fairly and democratically) by a future anarchist society. But capitalist societies could just as easily tackle the issue, albeit less fairly (with the costs likely to fall on the poor, both at home and even more in the third world).

And it won't be pretty if and when the capitalist states do start to tackle climate change. Think:
* Thousands of new nuclear power stations everywhere across the world, with greater risk of waste leakage, tens of more nuclear weapon states, and greater risk of terrorist nuclear or dirty weapon attacks, meaning increased first world militaries and tougher domestic law enforcement activity to combat that risk.
* Wars, possibly nuclear wars, being threatened or even waged against third world states which dare to burn carbon (which privilege will likely be the preserve only of the big first world corporations);
* Higher fuel and food bills for the poor in all countries;
* Economic slowdown, which is bad for the poor, but in many ways good for the rich.

Monbiot, or the mainstream green movement in general, might go along with that sort of stuff, because they see saving the planet from climate change as above all other causes. That's their right. But I won't be joining them on that road.

Monbiot's misunderstanding of anarchism later in his article may be wilful - he has been in enough debates with anarchists and semi-anarchists to know better than his simplistic 'anarchism = no government' straw man. But then we do set ourselves up for that by our choice of name.

little_brother "Land of Snott"
Posts: 536 Joined: 30-01-06 Location: Midlands
1 September, 2008 - 11:42

For interest .... Aut-op-sy list discussion, including forwarded reply by Monbiot, starts here:
https://lists.resist.ca/pipermail/aut-op-sy/2008-August/000101.html

Reason for addressing Monbiot... he's directly attacking anarchists/anarchism, whilst at same time being courted at events like CCA that are for the most part initiated and run by people who identify with anarchism. I don't really care whether we address him directly, but some discussion within the wider movement would be useful, at least to ask what impact liberal or authoritarian left arguments might be having at these events amongst the people who are participating. Probably this is already happening as another camp is already mooted:

We Really Did It – And We’ll Be Back
Post camp gathering. Manchester 26th-28th Sept
Report posted Sunday 10th August 11pm
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/home