[ My focus shall be on what we can do, as activists, to help
translate humanity’s remaining capacities into the necessary praxes,
into the collective actions that will permit us jointly to say: “We
did our damned best!”]
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REBELLION AGAINST THE LEGALIZED ROBBERY  
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Yanis Varoufakis
November 21, 2022
Socialist Project
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_ My focus shall be on what we can do, as activists, to help
translate humanity’s remaining capacities into the necessary praxes,
into the collective actions that will permit us jointly to say: “We
did our damned best!” _

, Socialist Project

 

The following commentary was written by Marxist economist, politician
and former Finance Minister of Greece Yanis Varoufakis. He follows the
first part of the debate “Ecological Catastrophe, Collapse,
Democracy and Socialism” between the renowned American intellectual
Noam Chomsky, the Chilean exponent of the new ideology of Collapsist
Marxism Miguel Fuentes and climate scientist Guy McPherson. One of the
main characteristics of Varoufakis’ comment (who describes himself
as a “Libertarian Marxist”) is offering a balanced review of some
of the main ideas expressed earlier in this debate. The latter from
the perspective of the implications of current geopolitical events
such as the Russo-Ukrainian war and what Vafourakis has defined as the
beginning of a new Cold War. Varoufakis’ commentary thus constitutes
both a necessary update and an informed closure of the first part of
this ongoing discussion.

The first part of the debate between Noam Chomsky, Miguel Fuentes and
Guy McPherson and the critical comments of John Bellamy Foster and Max
Wilbert can be found here: marxismoycolapso.com
[[link removed]].

— Marxism and Collapse

Our Task? To Inspire the Rebellion Against the Legalized Robbery of
People and Earth, Even if it is Too Late

Have we, humans, passed the point of no return down the path to
ecological ruin? Does ruin-without-end loom black across the land, the
air, the oceans? I hope not but, regardless, I don’t think it
matters. What matters is what we do. And how we do it. From now on.
Until our last breath.

Sure enough, three centuries of industrialization dictated by the
logic of capital pushed us into a hideous predicament: Whatever we do
from now on may, I acknowledge, prove insufficient for preventing the
collapse of organized human society. Even so, radical humanists ought
to think it _necessary_ to do our best to resist civilizational
collapse. As an old-school Marxist once taught me, what is necessary
is never unwise, never futile, never worthless – even if it is as
hard to accomplish as hitting a bullet with another bullet fired from
a handgun while riding a runaway horse.

I am no climate scientist, so I shall say nothing about our proximity
to the point of no return. Instead, I shall focus on the political
economy of what it means to do our best in view of our capacities and
in the face of ecological and civilizational collapse. My focus shall
be on what we can do, as activists, to help translate humanity’s
remaining capacities into the necessary praxes, into the collective
actions that will permit us jointly to say: “We did our damned
best!”

The Final Battle

Two of our greatest obstacles: Baseless optimism is one. And
self-indulgent pessimism is the other. In fact, I would go so far as
to proscribe prognosis altogether. Prediction is not our friend. We
know everything we need to know in order to act: humanity is on a path
to ruin without any guarantee that we can turn back. That’s enough
knowledge. Unlike astronomers seeking to predict the trajectory of a
faraway comet, our current task is not, and should never be, to
predict the trajectory of climate change. Astronomers have the luxury
of knowing that the phenomenon they study (the comet) doesn’t give a
damn about their predictions of its trajectory. We don’t have this
luxury. Our predictions, to the extent that enough people take them
seriously, are crucial determinants of what people do. Thus, the
phenomenon we are struggling to fathom and control (e.g.,
humanity-driven climate change) cares deeply about our predictions
and, in an infinite regress, is bound violently to react to them –
rendering our predictions useless and, potentially, causing us to lose
any control over the phenomenon we might have had.

What should our task be, once forecasting is out? My answer is: To end
the legalized robbery of people and Earth fuelling climate catastrophe
and the broader ecocide. Even if it is too late, at least let’s go
out with a revolutionary bang. Let the last feeling we have be that we
did what we could, albeit belatedly. To accomplish this, we must
inspire the multitudes to join our rebellion. But to inspire them, we
need to articulate a Program that addresses people’s hearts and
minds. What should that Program consist of? This is the pressing
question.

In the Face of the Collapse of Civilization:
The Need for a New Revolutionary Program

Our Program should avoid excessive optimism and the insinuation that
climate change is a technical problem calling for a technical fix.
Smart technological solutions funded by clever public finance will not
save the Earth just because they are feasible (even if they are!).
Equally, it would be a terrible defeat for progressives to dismiss the
capacity of science, technology and public finance to be part of a
Program that succeeds in saving humanity and the planet. Giving up on
humanity and its collective ingenuity may be tempting in times like
the present, when war is once more turbocharging the fossil fuel
industry. Alas, such defeatism is impermissible for progressives.
This, our darkest hour, is precisely the time when we, progressives,
radicals and revolutionaries, must give back rational hope to those
who have been deprived of it.

Which brings me to the debate between, on the one hand, Noam Chomsky
and, on the other, Miguel Fuentes and Guy McPherson.1
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As ever, when it comes to passionate debates between radicals whose
objectives coincide but who disagree regarding strategy and
constraints, it is important to take a step back so as to appreciate
the room for synthesis. In the following paragraphs, I shall attempt
such a dialectical synthesis for one purpose: to establish the common
ground that is a prerequisite for a common Program that inspires the
multitudes to coalesce internationally so as to end the legalized
robbery of people and Earth.

Let me begin with Noam’s position, which I understand intimately
having myself been a proponent of a Green New Deal since 2001. A large
public investment in humanity’s green transition (Noam suggested
2%-3% of global GDP, I raise this to at least 5%) can make a decisive
dent in our collective carbon footprint. Public financial instruments
can be constructed to mobilize these funds globally. Exponential
technological advancements in solar, wind, green hydrogen, organic
agriculture, etc. are feasible. Technically (both in terms of
engineering and public finance), an effective green transition is
possible without a revolution, under the present global exploitative
system. However, the operative word here is: Technically.

Politically, I cannot see how the current oligarchy-without-frontiers
will allow the green transition to happen. Green Keynesianism will not
work for the reasons Michal Kalecki gave decades ago to explain why
the original Keynesianism would never be allowed to run its course. In
short, because even if the bourgeoisie panics and adopts Keynesian
(today Green Keynesian) policies to save its skin, the very moment
these policies begin to bear fruit, and well before they do their job,
the ruling classes will abandon them in favour of their usual
extractive, austerity-driven policies. It is in the capitalist
class’s nature to block the very road that leads to its own
salvation.

So, why do people like Noam Chomsky and myself still put forward Green
New Deals or Green Keynesian-like policy proposals? Are we so naïve
as to imagine that our sensible arguments will win over the capitalist
oligarchy? I assure you dear reader that we have no such illusions.
No, the reason we do it is because their mere advocacy is full of
revolutionary potential. Let me explain this by comparing three
different strategies of how to approach the many who are impervious to
the language of us radical leftists – with a view to mobilizing
them. Compare and contrast three things we could say to them:

Strategy 1: “Nothing will save humanity except revolutionary
socioecological changes that include (A) the socialization of property
rights over the means of production and (B) painful decisions on how
to de-grow our economy in favour of Nature and of our cultural and
spiritual lives. Join us!”

Strategy 2: “Humanity is doomed. We are past the point of no return.
The collapse of our ‘civilization’ is inevitable. Let’s embrace
collapse and see how best to organize whatever life survives within
the ruins.”

Strategy 3: “Here is a bunch of policies that can be implemented
today, even under the existing system, to shift massive funds to the
green transition, to provide basic public goods to everyone,
especially in the Global South, to eradicate unpayable debts, to pay
you a basic income wherever you live on the planet, etc.”

The Need for a Green New Deal?

Strategy 1 involves telling people out there the naked truth about the
need for a revolution which they, nevertheless, are unprepared
psychologically to fathom, let alone to stage. Indeed, Strategy 1 will
cause anyone who is not already a card-carrying revolutionary to yawn
and move on, with their heads tilted to the floor, unable to muster
any enthusiasm for joining us to rebel against the systematic looting
of people and planet. Similarly with Strategy 2, which will probably
only benefit psychoanalysts whose clientele will burgeon, not to
mention end-of-the-world prophets of doom whose congregations will
grow. Only Strategy 3 stands a chance of mobilizing those whom we, the
radical left, have failed to mobilize. Here is why.

If the policies of our Green New Deal make sense in the mind of
reasonable people who are discontented with the grim social and
ecological realities surrounding them (yet who are no
revolutionaries), it should be possible to convince them that these
policies, technically, can be implemented immediately. Without a
revolution. Within the current system (like, for example,
Roosevelt’s neutering of the banking sector did not require a prior
overthrowing of capitalism). Once this realisation is planted in
people’s heads, it is plausible that a radical question will hit
them: “If these things could be done today to benefit humanity,
without some socio-ecological revolution, why on Earth are the
authorities not doing them?”

It is at that point that the ears and minds of the many will be
readied for the explanation which only radicals can offer them: That,
yes, though technically feasible, these policies are ignored by an
establishment solely interested in profit that is maximised by methods
that destroy lives, ecosystems, capitalism’s own sustainability
even. That will be the point when we, radicals, will get our chance to
influence the many, to radicalize them.

As I was reading Miguel Fuentes’s and Guy McPherson’s rejoinders
to Noam Chomsky, I was struck and concerned by their embrace of
defeat. Sure enough, I understand their radical rejection of baseless
optimism and of those who treat ecological disaster as a technical
problem. On the other hand, it seems to me that if civilizational
collapse is the answer, we are asking the wrong question. That if the
Left must fall back onto a neo-Malthusianism, which places its hope on
death as the only possible cure to the plague that is humanity, we
have lost our way. We, the Left, were defeated at a planetary scale in
1991, and since then we have been failing to recover, despite the
occasional revolutionary moments that revived our spirits temporarily.
But vengeance and defeatism are lazy forms of grief. Giving up on
humanity because humanity gave up on us, on the Left, is an affront to
the values the left was born to serve.

Wishful thinking, of a Keynesian or social democratic kind, is not the
answer either. Without a socio-ecological revolution humanity is
doomed. Green Keynesianism will never be implemented to any degree
equal to the task. As for the green technologies developed under
capitalism, which could make a difference (e.g., green hydrogen), they
will never be developed fully by a system which has a natural
propensity to continue cannibalizing what remains of our commons. The
delicious irony is that for a fully-fledged Green New Deal to be
implemented a revolution must precede it. And there’s the rub: For a
revolution to precede any Green New Deal, we need rational rage to
overcome the hearts and minds of people who are not yet
revolutionaries. To engender this rational rage, the many need to be
exposed to our Green New Deal policy proposals, to be convinced by
them before watching the establishment shoot these proposals down.

Then and only then might the rational rage that is necessary to
motivate them crawl up their spine, bolstering it enough to cause them
to join us in rising up, _en masse_, against the incessant looting of
people and Earth. •

This article first published on the meta
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Endnotes

* The first part of the debate between Noam Chomsky, Miguel Fuentes
and Guy McPherson and the critical comments of John Bellamy Foster and
Max Wilbert can be found here: marxismoycolapso.com
[[link removed]].

Yanis Varoufakis is a Marxist economist, politician and former Finance
Minister of Greece (2015). He is the co-founder of DiEM25
[[link removed]].

The Socialist Project

In the early 21st century, it is imperative that the Left begin a
sustained process of organizational redevelopment, experimentation and
struggle. Neither capitalism nor neoliberalism will fade from the
planet based on the momentum of their own contradictions, or as result
of new technologies. The SP is a Toronto-based organization that
supports the rebuilding of the socialist Left in Canada and around the
world. Committed to the development of a more free, democratic, humane
and sustainable society than the one we live in, the SP opposes
capitalism out of necessity and supports the struggles of others out
of solidarity. We support struggles aligned with working class
emancipation, anti-oppression, democratic self-determination,
planetary sustainability, and peace. We do not propose a fast route
out of capitalism, claim a ready alternative to take its place or
extol any one Left tendency. We engage the concrete limits and
possibilities of emerging struggles within and against capitalism _as
it is_ today with an eye to making a different kind of future.

* Climate Crisis
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* Green New Deal
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