Global Warning - Socialism and the Environment
By Martin Cock and Bill Hopwood
London: Militant Publications, 1996. £6.95
Review by Shane Bentley
A welcome exception to the dearth of environmental analysis from the European left is Global Warning from the Socialist Party in Britain.
The Socialist Party (previously Militant Labour) was a leading force in the anti-poll tax movement which brought down Margaret Thatcher.
Global Warning aims to introduce readers to the basic environmental problems that face the planet as well as providing a socialist response to some of the controversies that exist within the environment movement.
The book takes up many of the most common debates within the environment movement. With a Marxist approach, it demonstrates that the relationship between humankind and nature is neither a case of humans being inherently evil and nature inherently good, nor a simple one of "dog eat dog". The natural world and the role of humans within are is a complex interaction of both competition and cooperation.
Many environmentalists believe that technology as such causes environmental destruction. The authors argue that it is not a question of bad technology, but a question of who exercises control over technology.
Similarly, the massive environmental destruction and starvation that occur in much of the underdeveloped world are due to the unequal distribution of resources. Responsibility is placed squarely at the feet of the private profit system.
The strategy and tactics of the environment movement are also taken up in Global Warning. The book argues against the futility of those who simply wish to persuade the powers that be to become "green", who believe that some form of green capitalism will save the day.
Lifestyle politics is seen as an individual solution that does not challenge the might of the powerful. Active campaigns that involve large numbers of people are the way forward; while consumer boycotts and direct actions can be useful, they need to be wedded to a strategy of broad mobilisation in order to be fully effective.
Global Warning argues that the final goal of such movements, and the only genuine solution to the environment crisis, is to take economic and political control out of the hands of the capitalist class, and for working people to exercise democratic planning over the economy.
Many in the environment movement, arguing against a socialist solution, would point to the experience of the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, where obscene environmental abuse occurred.
Global Warning argues that it was the usurpation of political power by a bureaucratic elite, with its policy of "industrialisation at all costs", that led to this massive ecological destruction. What occurred in these countries was not working-class democratic economic planning but bureaucratic mismanagement.
Perhaps the example of Cuba — where, despite the continuing 30-year US embargo, ecologically sustainable practices such as organic farming, biotechnology research and waste recycling for energy creation occur — could have been used by the authors to demonstrate the benefits of democratic economic planning.
The final chapter points to the central role that the working class has to play in the fight for a democratic and environmentally sustainable socialist society.
The example of the British Lucas Aerospace workers in 1975, with their unique approach to widespread job cuts, is an inspiring one. Workers, unions and community groups put forward a conversion program for the arms industry to produce more than 150 socially useful products. The Lucas Aerospace Plan captured the imagination of workers across Britain and the world.
The struggles of the Brazilian rubber tappers' union leader Chico Mendes and the NSW Builders' Labourers Federation green bans are also used to illustrate the centrality of the labour movement in the struggle for ecological sustainability.
Although useful to both environmentalists and socialists, Global Warning would have benefited from an assessment of the origins and rise of the modern environmental movement and a discussion of the international Green Party phenomenon.
Campaigns such as those against the M74 and M77 motorways in Scotland, in which Socialist Party members actively participated, are mentioned in Global Warning. Yet the role that a revolutionary organisation needs to play in the fight for ecological sustainability is not discussed.
The need for workers to fight to transform trade unions into instruments of revolutionary struggle, and the need to build a mass revolutionary socialist party, are not sharply posed.
Nevertheless, Global Warning is a useful book for those who see the need for a red-green synthesis. To paraphrase the authors, the book acts not only as a spur for further discussion, reading and debate on the areas of common agreement between socialists and environmentalists, but also helps bring these two traditions closer together.