Victor Wallis, Red-Green Revolution: The Politics and Technology of Ecosocialism

Victor Wallis, Red-Green Revolution: The Politics and Technology of Ecosocialism (Toronto and Chicago: Political Animal Press, 2018) 222 pp., $18.25

In the thirty years since James Hansen's landmark testimony before the US Congress little has been done to mitigate the effects of global warming, let alone eliminate their cause. On the contrary, everything has been done to accelerate and amplify their impact. Thirty more years like this and the earth may not be habitable by our species. Red-Green Revolution takes a sober view of this bleak situation, eschews any hint of evasion or palliation, yet nonetheless offers a thorough diagnosis and a plausible remedy. An ambitious agenda is set out in nine chapters each dealing with specific aspects of the problem. We are spared, however, the litany of woes that so often follows any mention of the theme. Instead Red-Green Revolution is a dissection of the key conflicts that have arisen over the last fifty years among environmentalists and socialists, reformists and revolutionaries as well as between these differing points of view. Indeed, the book provides a useful survey of these conflicts while presenting an argument of its own in each case. Throughout, Victor Wallis upholds the philosophical method of Marx and Engels, while showing that method's complementarity with the soundest ecological arguments, whether they derive from scientists, indigenous people or the broader range of forces engaged in this epochal battle.

From the outset, Wallis posits ecosocialism as the only response capable of comprehending the magnitude of our dilemma and solving it. In so doing, he enters disputes that gave rise to ecosocialism in the first place. Briefly put, there are those (e.g., James O'Connor) who've sought to diminish Marx's importance by blaming the "disappointing ecological record of twentieth-century socialist regimes" on "a propensity to uncritically extol economic growth" presumed to be found in Marx's writings. An opposing view, represented by, among others, Paul Burkett and John Bellamy Foster, argues that ecological thinking was integral to Marx's analysis of capitalism and furthermore flows necessarily from Marx's and Engels' philosophical method. Ecology is in this sense only one example, albeit a prime one, of the importance of overcoming the impulse to “diaggregate” from the various struggles against domination – treating them as separate from each other and from the broader struggle against capitalism – as was fashionable among “new social movement” theorists of the the post-1970 period.

On this basis, Wallis proceeds through other disputes. Not surprisingly, a key focus is technology. Three chapters engage the question in different registers, from defining technology and concomitant notions of progress, to a comparison of socialist and capitalist technology, to technology's deployment in various sectors such as agriculture, telecommunication and medicine. Wallis shows how novelty and innovation, fetishized in the capitalist worldview, are commonly misapprehended by opponents of capitalism. "Technophilia," the euphoric embrace of each successive implement promising to liberate humanity from drudgery and want, must be scrutinized and demystified. Wallis unequivocally states, "technology may be discerned in anything from a single device to a whole network of relations, involving, among other things, machines, resources, producers, and users. It also encompasses particular configurations of space, such as patterns of vegetation on agricultural land or the construction layout of communities. The totality of a technology can never be neutral (in terms of its impact on social relations), but this is not necessarily the case for every particular component of the technology. Many if not most devices have a dual potential, conditional upon such questions as how numerous they are, who has access to them, and what impact their production or their use has upon the natural environment and upon human health (mental as well as physical)" (48).

Wallis points out, for example, how agriculture and transportation have suffered because the wrong technologies have been developed in spite of better ones being available, pesticides and automobiles being cases in point. The damage done by such technologies is self-evident but it's not the damage alone to which Wallis calls attention. The damage can, in many cases, be undone, but only if we repudiate the quasi-religious faith in whatever is purported to be an "advance" by defenders of the profit motive. Qualitatively different criteria are required: of progress, of expertise, of knowledge acquisition and dispersal – from as well as to – the populace. Wallis proposes a thought-provoking formulation, "organized popular intelligence," to express the integration of, for example, agricultural knowledge acquired over centuries by peasants with the latest discoveries in biology and chemistry. He furthermore cites socialist practices, for example in Cuba, that demonstrate the efficacy and potential of such an approach.

Similar controversy surrounds "green capitalism," so-called by some who believe that cleaning up the mess admittedly wrought by a rapacious system can be achieved by making such cleanup profitable. Capital's propagandists (e.g., Al Gore) argue that market forces may have gotten us into this mess but they can nonetheless be used to get us out. Surprisingly, some leftist critics advance similar notions. Wallis cites Neil Smith supporting market-force solutions in the Socialist Register, declaring environmentalism a spent force, and relying furthermore on a questionable proposition advanced by Michel Foucault, namely, “In fact, power produces: it produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth.”

Immediately, we are confronted with a contemporary reiteration of an age-old philosophical dispute: idealism vs. materialism. Or crudely stated, "humans produce nature" vs. "nature produces humans." Wallis refers to Marx quoting 18th century Italian political economist Pietro Verri, “All the phenomena of the universe, whether produced by the hand of man or indeed by the universal laws of physics, are not to be conceived of as acts of creation but solely as a reordering of matter.” This principle is of course derived from the Greeks, especially Democritus and Epicurus, but it had, in Marx's time, been confirmed by empirical evidence. It had furthermore been expanded by geological and biological discovery to include the age of the earth – clearly pre-dating human existence, and natural selection – locating our species' origin and inevitable demise. Nature was greater than the gods humans had invented to explain phenomena; indeed, homo sapiens was not nature's purpose, destiny or center. That these discoveries were contentious in the nineteenth century is not surprising since they undermined Biblical authority and broke the power of the Church. But that they arise anew is more than surprising, it is the measure of our defeat. Monsieur Foucault notwithstanding, the notion that we "produce reality" dovetails nicely with the outlook of Exxon or Shell that ecological ruin will be averted by our technology, our productive capacity, our "power." Engels, especially, struggled relentlessly against such arrogance. He famously warned of "nature's revenge" for humans presuming to be its master. Now, such folly has led us to the brink of our own extinction.

The question necessarily follows: who will form a "mass ecological constituency." This requires taking stock of the vast numbers of individuals, organizations and social movements already engaged in the struggle. On the basis of this overview, the question of class emerges as central, not only as a lens through which to look, but as an irreducible fact. Society is divided into classes whether we acknowledge it or not and this bears directly on our prospects for success for several reasons. First, a "mass ecological constituency" must be majoritarian. Not only are the effects of the crisis being suffered by vast numbers of people, but the numbers required to bring about the necessary change must be majorities of the human population. Obviously such majorities do not consist of the privileged few who would sooner see the world come to an end than their class's control of it.

Secondly, class is not to be confused as one among many forms of oppression. Class runs through all forms of oppression because it designates dominator and dominated, controller and controlled, master and slave. There is no "victim's olympics," or hierarchy of suffering, in which class is at the bottom, middle or top. All social relations as well as relations between human beings and nature are suffused with ranking, inequality, suffering and injustice. Presently, the clearest manifestation of class is the ecological crisis itself: who bears the burden and who obstructs the solution. Yet among the obstacles in our path are divisions among the very majorities who must rise together if we are to change the world.

To address this dilemma Wallis takes full account of the "new social movements" emerging from the 1960s, their strengths as well as weaknesses, concluding that: "the demands made by the new social movements were amply justified. Moreover, particular groups were able to organize around those demands more effectively than the Left had done, often duly incorporating (as did the Black Panthers) a radical understanding of class power. What failed to develop, however, was a comprehensive movement bringing together all the oppressed constituencies. It is at this level that New Social Movements discourse fell short. Intersectionality theory has sought to go beyond NSM theory by expressly focusing on the links among the various oppressions. But the influence of the NSM outlook has persisted, in the failure of intersectionality theorists to see the class-configuration of power as playing a distinctive role, operating in a dimension of its own, and affecting with its sweeping capabilities the overwhelming majority of the population—in contrast to the various more specific lines of oppression, each with its own primary constituency and without the policymaking attributes (corporate or governmental) of the dominant class" (182f).

Yet the imperative to study, struggle, organize and transform society is inescapable. Wallis introduces the concept of "conversion," to encapsulate the many levels, from global planning to household economy, necessary to the process. Conversion has cogency due to its expression of the dialectic of our historical moment. The very nature of the crisis presents opportunities hitherto unimaginable-or at least only imaginable in science fiction-like scenarios. That everything must change in order that we may continue to exist is the starting point for something entirely new.