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Title: Climate Camp
Author: Anarchist Federation
Date: 2009
Language: en
Topics: environment, reportback
Source: Retrieved on 9 December 2010 from http://libcom.org/library/anarchist-federation-climate-camp

Anarchist Federation

Climate Camp

At the 2008 Climate Camp in Kingsnorth an open letter was circulated by

anti-capitalist campers raising concerns that the movement was

increasingly being by influenced state-led approaches to tackling

climate change. A more developed version was later published by Shift

magazine. The original argued broadly that the camp should adopt

anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian principles and objectives.

The 2009 Climate Camp, sited this year in Blackheath, London, saw

continued debate over the future direction of the struggle against

climate change. As a part of this, anarchist and libertarian communist

activists hosted a debate on what we saw as a growing trend towards

Green authoritarianism within the movement. Key concerns discussed

included the assumption within some sections of the movement that the

state can be used as a tool in combating climate change, and the general

danger of the state co-opting the green movement and stripping it of its

radical potential. While the ecological crisis is a pressing and

potentially catastrophic issue for our class, it should also be

understood as one in a series of crises, economic and political, that

are created by the very nature of the capitalist system.

A lengthy debate followed amongst campers in attendance. The points that

were most commonly raised were:

The possibility of using the state as a strategic tool for our

movement,

The urgency of climate change, and the time scale we have to work

with,

That idea that grassroots activity and state-led solutions may work in

harmony,

The need for some form of coercion to promote lifestyle change and

What “our” (ie. anti-authoritarian) alternatives are.

Following on from this debate, we felt it was important to work out what

place we, as anarchist communist militants, can have inside this

movement. It has become increasingly obvious that, despite a commitment

to direct action and horizontal organisation, anti-statism is by no

means a widely held principle inside this movement. The Climate Camp is

moving further and further away from the radical, anti-capitalist

politics of the organisations it grew out of, such as Earth First!, the

90s road protests, or Reclaim the Streets. While this movement has

equipped itself with the skills (direct action, media relations etc.)

and the knowledge (scientific analysis) to intervene in the climate

change debate, it has not really worked out what its future political

direction will be. The direct action, climate change movement has moved

over the years from being fairly politically homogeneous, to being quite

wide and diverse. While this has been positive in terms of building mass

support, this growth has not been accompanied by any real, meaningful

commitment to political debate. The result is that it is action against

climate change (whatever that may be), not any sense of shared aims and

values as a community of activists, that is holding our movement

together. With this year’s camp having less of a focus on mass action,

the real contradictions inside the movement are starting to show.

This is most strongly shown, as ecological campaigning is starting to

spread into the workplace, in the wholly uncritical way that many Green

activists have adopted the strategy and tactics of the traditional Left.

Calls for nationalisation, eco-lobbying and work within the trade union

bureaucracies have been widely accepted as legitimate tools in our

struggle. Without an analysis of capitalism, and an understanding of the

historical successes and failures of the workers’ movement, we leave

ourselves exposed to recuperation by existing political organisations

and elites (whether from Right or Left). With the possibility of a

“Green capitalism” on the horizon, we’re uncertain how committed many

activists will be in the face of a potentially carbon-reduced, but still

capitalist and therefore unstable and exploitative, economy.

The “anti-capitalism” that is common amongst camp participants is one

that objects to capitalism in its excesses, i.e. in the destruction of

the planet, not in its everyday functioning. This was particularly

obvious at the discussion on “anti-capitalism ten years after Seattle” —

while this should have been one of the more radical, politically

sophisticated discussions, the speakers still tended to present a view

that saw capitalism as a system that only really harms the most

super-exploited portions of the “Third World/Global South”’s population,

and anti-capitalism as a matter of exotic, idealised people on the other

side of the world fighting back. In this worldview, the role of

activists in Europe (i.e., everyone who was actually there for the

discussion) was simply to provide verbal solidarity with the Bolivians

and South Africans in their fight against capitalism, not to take

practical action right here and right now for our own class interests.

The class nature of climate camp has been much discussed, and we should

be careful to avoid falling into simplistic sociological views of class,

but at the same time it’s hard to imagine anyone who’s had to deal with

the miserable reality of working-class life for many people in Britain

talking about anti-capitalism as if it was simply a process of cheering

for the good guys in Asia or South America, and failing to see that any

meaningful, effective anti-capitalist movement must be rooted in the

struggle to win control over our own lives.

We feel the movement is at a cross roads. Much of the radical base has

slipped away from the camp and our ideas are being lost. This is

reflected most strongly in the changed dynamics and culture in this

year’s camp. A lack of mass action and the “softly, softly” approach of

the police meant that some aspects of this year’s camp resembled a

festival more than a political gathering. The debates and discussions in

the neighbourhoods were largely concerned with the anti-social behaviour

of campers on site towards other campers. There was even some support

for the idea of allowing the police to enter our autonomous space in the

spirit of future “good relations”. Again, this in itself shows the

naivety of many campers, and the narrow social base from which the camp

was drawn: no-one who’s had much experience of the police (whether

they’ve encountered them in the course of political activism, ecological

direct action, or just through the experience of being an ethnic

minority or “underclass” youth) could be taken in by the police’s

strategy towards the camp, which essentially amounted to a

well-thought-out PR campaign. In truth, the only real political work

that has come out of this camp is the “eco-lobbying” of the media team,

aided by spectacular “direct” action geared towards generating media

commentary (in truth, many of this year’s actions were not direct in any

meaningful sense of the word, just purely liberal protests). These are

also roles that are routinely filled by those from high income

backgrounds. The voice of Climate Camp is overwhelmingly white and

privileged.

It is true that anti-statism is not a stated principle of the camp, but

we believe that true anti-capitalism cannot be separated from

anti-statism. The state is a fundamental part of capitalism. As

anarchist communists, we reject state structures and argue that they are

incapable of either preventing climate change or creating a better

world. Instead, we focus on inclusive, participatory solutions that work

from the grass roots up, educating each other about the alternatives

that we can build today, and by extension how we see an

anarchist-communist society operating. The goal of stopping climate

change is vitally important, but so is radically changing society, and

we believe that you cannot do one without the other. The state has never

played a progressive role in society. Its purpose is to secure, maintain

and promote the power of the ruling class. Where radical movements have

arisen (in workers struggles, suffrage movements etc), the state has

fought and repressed them. Where the state can no longer just rely on

violent oppression, it incorporates some of the movement’s demands into

its existing structures in order to strengthen them. Past radical

movements have been recuperated in the same way, and there is a very

real danger of the Climate Camp being turned from a genuine movement for

social change into a lobbying tool for state reform.

With regards to the climate crisis, estimates for the time we have left

vary from 10 years to 100 months, 5 years, or years in the past

depending on who you talk to. The one thing we agree on is that time is

of the essence. There is a broad assumption amongst our critics that the

state is able to act more efficiently than the anarchist “alternative”

we are proposing. The simplest argument to raise here is that the state,

capitalism and its way of managing society have gotten us into this

mess, so it seems unlikely that they’ll get us out of it. Their way of

running the world has landed us in climate chaos, with the logic of

profit and the market economy coming before all other concerns. The

state’s purpose is to secure the status of the ruling class and protect

their profits against any potential threat, to make sure that the smooth

running of the economy is not disrupted. We have to raise the question

of whether this institution will take the drastic actions we need to

combat climate change? Is it able to act against the capitalists who

hold its reins?

The origin of Climate Camp’s politics are in radical direct action to

inspire and demonstrate how a more ecological society can work. The only

way a climate crisis can be averted is by radically changing society.

Only by a conscious effort of every person to act more responsibly can

we change how we operate, how we produce, consume (or more importantly

NOT “consume”) and live. But we believe the only way to accomplish this

is from below, by inspiration, example and education. Not by taxation,

involving the state in our lives and encouraging them to monitor our

actions. How can we possibly preach the need for responsibility and

reduced consumption whilst with its two hands the state continues to

feed capitalism’s excesses and beat down any alternative movements?

Likewise, it is naive to believe that top-down state control and

bottom-up social movements should be working side by side to combat

climate change. Suggesting that state control can co-exist with a

movement that advocates radical social change is not only

counter-productive, it is completely irrational. The state doesn’t want

us to change, it certainly doesn’t want us to stop being good happy

consumers who perpetually buy new cars, shop at super-markets and keep

voting for things to stay the same. If ultimately all we want is better

laws and state intervention on climate change, then why participate in a

movement that openly breaks the law and challenges the power of the

state?

Despite all this, there were also some very positive developments within

the camp. The involvement of campers in the recent Vestas dispute and

the Tower Hamlets strike showed a commitment to breaking out of the

Green activist ghetto. The importance of workplace organisation as a

critical tool in anti-capitalist struggle is gaining greater

credibility, and this is the direction we need to take our struggle if

we are to expand our movement, generalise our demands and take our place

as part of a continuing culture of working class resistance. We have no

doubt that anarchist communists belong inside the ecological movement.

The positive examples displayed by the organisation of the camp and its

decision making structure are important. Climate Camp potentially

represents a useful tool for workers in struggle, helping to bring the

lessons of collective living, horizontal organising and direct action to

a class that is being battered by economic recession. The future

political direction of the camp is key. We need to expand the debate and

clarify the direction of our movement. When political conservatives,

corporations, and even fascists are “turning green”, it is no longer

enough to avoid debate and declare we must simply do “everything we can”

to avert the coming crisis. At the end of our speech we posed a question

to the Climate Camp and we feel that collectively we are still far from

reaching a definitive answer.

Do we want to simply change the way that the current economy is managed

or do we want to build a truly radical society? Do we want a bigger

slice of the cake, or do we want the whole fucking bakery?