This book on confronting the climate crisis contains some valuable arguments, but is confused about capitalism and how to overthrow it, argues Richard Allday

With the election of Trump in the US, climate deniers and their right-wing supporters across the globe are cock-a-hoop. In the UK, we have witnessed the loss of 2,000 jobs at the Port Talbot steel plant in Wales; the closing of the Grangemouth refinery in Scotland; and the announcement of the closure of Luton’s Vauxhall plant. That’s nearly 5,000 jobs directly, with potentially five times that in the supply-chain and service sector.

Add to this the manufactured outrage of the Countryside Alliance at being expected to pay half the rate of inheritance tax, and you can already hear the recidivist right rehearsing their attacks on the ‘woke lunacy’ of Labour and its green agenda.

Expect ‘man of the people’ Farage to outperform Badenoch and company, as he presents himself as the voice of reason, standing up for the working man (always the working man for our Nige; a woman’s place is not really considered a topic worth pursuing – too woke).

And given the political bankruptcy of Starmer’s Labour, we can expect nothing other than backpedalling from them. Our side should welcome an accessible primer putting the case for a green alternative, and for the first half of this book, I thought we had found it.

The blurb at the front and back of this book is unremittingly positive. The debunking of the myths disseminated by climate deniers and their press is clear and concise. It is a book that halfway through, I thought I would recommend – albeit with reservations. Unfortunately, it flatters to deceive.

To be honest, I should have seen the warning lights right at the start. The introduction (p.3) promises: ‘This book is a crash course in the economics of capitalism and the political strategies capable of overcoming it.’ That ‘crash course’ starts with seven pages entitled ‘What is capitalism’. To then avoid any mention, at all, of the political analyst most associated with a critique of capitalism (Karl Marx) seems perverse. Maybe they have never heard of him? They certainly have not understood him, or they would not make the crass statement (of workers) that ‘they work for the purpose of exchanging the value of their work (wages) on the market’ (p.7). If we did that, the system would implode. Marx is very clear (as are a number of bourgeois economists) that workers do not get ‘the value of their work’ as their wages. If they did, there would be no profit for the capitalist. This, crudely, is the underpinning  economic reality of capitalism, sometimes referred to as the Labour Theory of Value. I should have taken this as a warning, and skipped the remaining 200+ pages.

Individuals are not the problem

I am pleased I did not, because the first half of the book does contain some useful insights and arguments. One is its insistence, time and again, that the individual is not the source of the problem; it’s not individual consumer choices, not lifestyles, not citizens as consumers, that are the root cause of climate change. ‘A large part of our consumption is not so much “desired” as it is imposed’ (p.18), e.g. the need for a car to get to work; the low wage which precludes buying premium-price organic food. The examples pile up, describing how the market limits our ability to choose freely. But they also point out that individual consumption is not the main driver of climate change.

Ironically, they illustrate this fact by pointing to the gross (in every sense) consumption of one individual, Roman Abramovitch: ‘… Abramovich’s personal consumption (by way of his 163-metre yacht, private Boeing 707, numerous houses, luxury cars, and so on) was at least … equivalent to the emission of more than seven thousand cars driven for one year…. [But this is] … nothing compared to  Abramovich’s responsibility as a capitalist in oil and gas production …. In terms of climate impact, capitalist Abramovich is equal to 31 million cars’ (pp.20-21).

They go on to quote (n.9, p.242)  a 2022 Oxfam report, to the effect that the ‘world’s 125 richest billionaires produce emissions equivalent to the whole of France (67.75 million people).’ Specific examples like these are used to effect in puncturing common climate-denial myths: It’s the result of overpopulation: ‘…the most polluting countries are also those with the lowest population growth levels. For example, between 1980 and 2005, the United States was responsible for 3.4% of the world’s population growth but 12.6% of its CO₂ growth’ (p.34).

Or: the argument that technological progress means more efficient use of resources: ‘It’s calculated that modern engines have on average a 20 per cent efficiency rate … Most of the energy consumed by a car is lost in heat’ (p.41). Or, more striking (p.42), the fact that US and Canadian ‘manufacturers and publicists celebrate cars with consumption as low as five litres per hundred kilometres. However, this was already the average fuel consumption of cars in Europe in the 1950s.’

Probably the most useful chapters are those that expose the claims that we can halt climate change without fundamentally challenging the system. Chapter 3 exposes the abject failure of carbon capture as a viable solution (p.47) and worse still, the hypocrisy of it, e.g. the fact that 35% of captured carbon is used in oil production to maximise extraction (p.49). Likewise, Chapter 10, on carbon markets, provides some well-researched demonstrations that using capitalism to solve capitalism’s excesses is self-defeating.

These demolitions of widely-promoted myths are useful additions to our armoury, and are presented in ordinary, easy-to-understand, everyday English – and full marks to the translator, Charles Simard, for this. However, I still think you would be better off negotiating a deal with your local bookseller to buy the first half of the book, for half the cover price, and s/he can pulp the rest – use it for compost or something – because the second half steadily declines in worth.

Notions of democracy

Part 2 of the book is worthy, but I can’t help feeling that the authors could have saved themselves a lot of trouble by reading Counterfire’s Socialist Explainers: Short answers to big questions series – in particular, Lucy Nichols addresses the subject of Myth 11 (that human nature makes capitalism inevitable, pp.115-124) and compresses it into 750 words; Dominic Alexander does the same, addressing the subject of Myth 12 (that economic planning can only mean Stalinist-style planning, pp.123-131).

One reason for the weakness of the latter part of this book, and my frustration with it, is that the authors themselves are not clear in their analysis. It is evident that they identify with the dispossessed in the world; it is equally clear that they are opposed to capitalism and in favour of what they call ‘economic democracy’ (by which I think they mean socialism). But they are not clear about how to achieve that change.

Myth 15 (pp.157-164) addresses the frustration many climate activists feel that progress in tackling climate change is too slow, and that ‘democracy’ is too slow in reacting to the urgent need. And while their defence of democracy is positive, it is both limited and contradictory. The notion of ‘Citizens Assemblies’ to which they seem so partial are actually anti-democratic.

Fundamental to any socialist notion of democracy is the principle of accountability: that decisions should only be made by people elected by, answerable to, and recallable by, those they represent. The creation of the Citizens’ Convention, of which they speak so glowingly (p.161) fails on each of these counts.

The warning lights started to flash when they claim that the Convention, which emerged  ‘in the wake of the Yellow Vests popular protests (Gilets Jaunes) illustrates the benefits of greater democracy’ [my emphases].

They explain (p.161) that the ‘one hundred and fifty members of this independent convention … were chosen by lottery.’ In what sense is that democratic? Representative? They were selected ‘to establish a representative sample of the French population (according to gender, age, level of education, socio-professional categories, department and geographical area)’  – which rather begs the question: who decided the categories of person who should be selected?

I notice there is no mention in those categories of race, or religion? And to whom was it accountable? For all their capitalised references to Indigenous Peoples and the Global South, the authors seem peculiarly blind to the institutional racism of the French state which seems replicated in the criteria employed to select their ‘representative sample’.

We should remember that the Gilets Jaunes was a deeply ambiguous movement; representing, undoubtedly, a frustration with the government, but it was a populist and demagogic movement, viewed favourably by Marine Le Pen and her Rassemblement National (her rebranding of her father’s Front National) as well as, later, Mélenchon and elements of La France Insoumise. That doesn’t make it necessarily reactionary, but it certainly wasn’t inherently progressive. The original focus of protest was the rise in fuel duty and was used as a stick to beat ‘les Verts’ (‘the Greens’). Remember the fuel protests against Gordon Brown?

Co-operatives or revolution?

This confusion, allied with a touching faith  in the efficacy of a wide and diverse (I almost said hodgepodge) list of alternative initiatives sees the book descend into wishful thinking  rather than strategic analysis.  ‘Developing Autonomous Economic Spaces’ proposes support for initiatives such as ‘community groups, independent media, ecovillages [?] digital platforms, local currencies, and cooperatives’ (p.206) and implies the readiness of the state (!) to defend workers’ ‘expropriation’ (the authors’ term) of industrial enterprises.

Unfortunately, our history shows us the inability of the best-intentioned co-ops to withstand the pressures of the capitalist economy in the long run – the Triumph/Meriden motorcycle co-op; the Tower colliery in Hirwaun, Wales are among the best known, and both fell victim to the market eventually. The authors are aware of this, which makes their advocacy more puzzling. Indeed, co-ops ‘are moving in the right direction, but they cannot, by themselves, overthrow the institutions of capitalism … To protect and extend cooperative initiatives, we need to rely on public funding and, in the long term, on profound changes in the economy’ (p.208). This does not really help us understand the role these initiatives will play in achieving said economic change.

Nor does it sit well with their analysis, in their opening section, of these ‘alternative economic organisations’ (co-ops, non-profit organisations, small neighbourhood cafes etc.) where we read ‘they represent only a small portion of a society’s economic activity, and their power of action is overall limited’ (p11).

And eventually, unfortunately, the book descends into farce: ‘Seizing state power is one of the last steps in the transition process’ (p.217). If the ‘transition process’ is intended to mean the transition from capitalism to a more democratic social order (socialism?), then seizing state power should be slightly higher on the agenda, surely?

Possibly not, in the eyes of the authors who blandly assert (still on p.217): ‘We also need to think about ways of resisting capitalists’ attempts to sabotage the economy following a power takeover (for example, via an investment strike, as in Salvador Allende’s Chile).’

Rather more to the point, but apparently not worth discussing here, would be to ‘think of ways of resisting capitalists’ attempts’ to overthrow violently the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende’s Chile in a military coup resulting not just in the murder of Allende but also of 4,000 socialists, trades unionists and community activists, the internment of a further 40,000, and nearly half a million Chilean refugees fleeing into exile.

To sum up, one option could be to follow my recommendation to strike a deal with your local bookseller to buy half the book, for half the price. Better still (and cheaper) buy Elaine Graham-Leigh’s Marx and the Climate Crisis. It’s only £5. You can order it from Counterfire. It’s shorter. What’s not to like?