Liberation is a historical and not a mental act. Communists
do not oppose egoism to selflessness or selflessness to egoism, nor do they
express this contradiction theoretically, either in its sentimental or in its
high-flown ideological form; they rather demonstrate its material source".
The German Ideology by Marx and Engels[1]
"From the standpoint of a higher economic formation,
the private property of particular individuals in the earth will appear just as
absurd as the private property of one man in other men",
Karl Marx[2]
From the start, it must be said that this book is a
thoroughly reactionary, pessimistic, anti-Marxist and anti-working class diatribe.
A reader would be hard press to find a more right-wing publication this year.
It is to Verso's eternal shame and damnation that it collaborated with its
publication.
Despite containing a few left-wing phrases, the word
communism is mentioned a few times. But even when they do this, they distort
and pervert Marxism. Like in this quote from Marx, What the bourgeoisie produces,
above all, are its grave-diggers taken from The Communist Manifesto, which is
correct what follows is a perversion of Marxism they continue (the) "tragedy
of the worker, must be her grave-digger as long as she works for capitalism.
Capital never extracts energy from the Earth, but it makes a taxing withdrawal
from the worker's body".
The authors have nothing to do with Marxism. The basic
premise of this book is that Mankind is doomed unless it reverts to a pre-capitalist
society and that the working class must share some of the blame for the state
of the planet because it is a by-product of the development of capitalism.
While the authors of this book would like to think that
their political outlook and solution to Mankind's problems are new, you can
trace their political outlook to that of The Frankfurt School. The authors share
the same form of subjective idealism that believes in the primacy of thought
over matter, the very opposite of Marxism.
As Tom Carter writes, "Theodor Adorno and Max
Horkheimer, two leaders of the Frankfurt School, concluded that the
Enlightenment was to blame for all the authoritarianism and barbarism that
characterised the first half of the 20th century, because it was all the
inevitable result of a misguided attempt to exert control over nature through
science and reason. Adorno would go on in Negative Dialectics (1966) to claim
that all systemic thought is inherently authoritarian.[3]
The Tragedy of the Worker's main critique of Classical
Marxism is that it is anthropocentric—that it is only bothered about human
needs. The author's viewpoints are of an ecocentric philosophy that is
nature-centred.
As Joel Kovel, long-time editor of the journal Capitalism
Nature Socialism, writes, "We believe in the intrinsic value of nature,
and believe that the highest expression of this is the global reclamation of
the commons, which we call ecosocialism".[4]
It must be said that these so-called radical environmentalists have nothing to
do with socialism or even Marxism. In many ways, they use these terms much like
the Nazi's did in the 1930s to fool the working class and hide their reactionary
agenda.
While the political outlook of this so-called radical environmentalist
stems from the Frankfurt School, the authors of this book, for the most part,
came out of a bitter split in the British Socialist Workers Party in 2013[5].
Their reactionary perspective that was tolerated and in many ways shared inside
the SWP for so long says more about the SWP than it does about the authors of
this book.
As Chris Marsden writes, "The dispute has focused
almost exclusively upon allegations of rape made against a leading member of
the party and the mishandling of the charges by the SWP's Disputes Committee.
The opposition is led by unashamedly referred to as the party's "celebrity
members", such as Richard Seymour, who runs the blog Lenin's Tomb, and
fantasy writer China Miéville. It draws support from academia and the Socialist
Workers Party Students Societies. Their views are posted widely, and internal
documents are routinely leaked to hostile publications. Attempts by the SWP
leadership to pose as an orthodox opposition to such positions are a
transparent fraud. The SWP has incubated the elements involved in the
anti-leadership faction and their politics. They draw on positions advocated
for years by the party.
The Tragedy of the Worker was reviewed in the SWP's main
theoretical journal, the misnamed International Socialism by Ian Angus.[6]
Angus makes mild criticism of the book but offers an olive branch to the
authors, saying, "Because of the unfortunate tendency of the left to treat
every disagreement as grounds for ostracism, I must stress that this is a
disagreement among environmental activists, and I raise it intending to advance
our common project, which an open discussion of our differences can only
strengthen".
Angus completely ignores the confused, desperate, and deeply
pessimistic approach these authors have to global climate change. Take this
quote "In the era of Marx and Engels, and in the long century after,
communists dreamed of liberating humanity and enjoying a world of plenty,
sharing in abundance. Had October inaugurated a new era of revolutions, had
barbarism's reign ended a century sooner, perhaps that is the world we would
have. If Communism – automated or otherwise – was possible at that moment, we
hypothesise that now, as we race past tipping point after tipping point, it is
no longer – at least not before a long and difficult age of repair. From our
benighted vantage point, the birth, growth and exploitation of the working
class have been inextricable from biocide and catastrophe. That is to say,
global proletarianisation and ecological disaster have been products of the
same process. The Earth the wretched would – will – inherit, will be in need of
an assiduous programme of restoration. While we may yearn for luxury, what will
be necessary first is Salvage Communism"[7].
It is hard to work out where to begin in attacking this
reactionary nonsense. This idea that we could "salvage Communism" is
hardly original. As David North points out, Michel Pablo made a similar
approach in the 1950s. North writes, "The outbreak of the Korean War in
1950 provided a degree of political credibility to the conception that the
United States was preparing for all-out war against the Soviet Union. Still
occupied with a discussion that centred on the process through which the social
character of the buffer states had been transformed under Stalinist auspices,
Pablo seized upon the possibility of war, converted it into an imminent inevitability,
and made it the starting point and centrepiece of a new and bizarre perspective
for the realisation of socialism. Adopted at the ninth plenum of the IEC of the
Fourth International in 1951, the theory of "war-revolution" argued
that the eruption of war between the United States and the Soviet Union would
assume the form of a global civil war, in which the Soviet bureaucracy would be
compelled to serve as the midwife of social revolutions.
In the schema worked out by Pablo, the international proletariat
ceased to play any independent role. Instead, all political initiative in shaping
world events was attributed to world imperialism and the Soviet bureaucracy.
This was spelt out in the document, suggestively entitled "Where Are We
Going?" The theoretical essence of his perspective was spelt out as
follows: "For our movement, objective social reality consists essentially
of the capitalist regime and the Stalinist world. Furthermore, whether we like
it or not, these two elements, by and large, constitute objective social
reality, for the overwhelming majority of the forces opposing capitalism are
right now to be found under the leadership or influence of the Soviet
bureaucracy".[8]
To conclude, this book is deeply reactionary and pessimistic.
The authors seem to want to wallow in
their disorientation and pessimism, saying, "Salvage has earned its
pessimism. There is much to be pessimistic about. Fascist politics have not
enjoyed a better climate since 1945. The climate crisis is underway and
bringing with it yet further fecund material for a reconstituted far-right. The
organisation and militancy of the working-class continue to fray, as does the
revolutionary tradition. Hope is still precious; it must still be
rationed. Yet, having yearned for our
pessimism to be proved wrong and been giddied by Evental shifts which allow for
habitable outcomes to be war-gamed, Salvage is tentatively open to a more
generous ration of hope. Salvage, recognising that the catastrophe is already
upon us and that the decisive struggle is over what to do with the remains, is
for the Communism of the ruins.[9]
The authors are a collection of disillusioned petty bourgeoisie
pseudo lefts who, even if they believed which I doubt that the working class could
solve the climate crisis, they do not believe that now. They see the working
class as passive and collaborates with capitalism in bringing about Mankind's
destruction. Not a revolutionary class that can fight for a socialist cause that
will nationalise giant corporations and banks under workers' control and
abolish capitalism and the nation-state system.
[1] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch03f.htm
[2] Capital Vol. III Part VI- https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch46.htm
[3] The ideological
foundations of Critical Race Theory- https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/08/30/crit-a30.html
[4] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10455752.2019.1710362
[5] See Britain’s Socialist
Workers Party descends into factional warfare
Chris Marsden-14 February 2013- https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/02/14/swps-f14.html
[6] Anthropocentrism versus
ecocentrism: notes on a false dichotomy
Issue: 171-Posted on 23rd July 2021- http://isj.org.uk/anthropocentrism-versus-ecocentrism/
[7] The Tragedy of the Worker:
Towards the Proletarocene
by Salvage Editorial Collective | January 31, 2020
[8] The Heritage We Defend-
[9] https://salvage.zone/about-2/
