"Fossil Capitalism Won't Die a Natural Death": On the Limits of Non-violence and Reformism on a Burning Planet
Abstract
This review essay discusses How to Blow Up a Pipeline and Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency by Andreas Malm. The texts are read not as academic research (presupposing methodological neutrality and objectivity of the author), but as an attempt to use the language and arguments of social sciences to revive strategic debates inside the climate movement, with the author openly disclosing his political positions and trying to convince others.
Malm argues that the climate movement is now paralyzed by two myths: social-democratic temporality and non-violence. Both are based on flawed logic that advocacy and reformism can convince capitalism - as the primary cause of climate change - to commit suicide before it is too late, and on false historical analogies declaring that pacifism - not only towards people but towards private property as well - is strategically advantageous.
But, he argues, since the climate crisis will only get worse and it is the status quo that creates and deepens it there is no time to wait. The climate movement should escalate conflict and directly attack capitalist economic system, not worrying too much about public support.
Each book is thus an attempt to imagine an alternative to the movement's current strategy: climate sabotage in the case of How to Blow Up a Pipeline and ecological leninism in Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency.