The End of Which Ideologies? Strategies and Tactics of Radical Leftist Movements in the Anthropocene

Abstract

Has there been an "end of ideologies", as Daniel Bell claimed in the 1950s? Or even the "end of history" and the triumph of liberalism in the world of ideas, as Francis Fukuyama argued in the 1990s? While both "ends" are rightly ridiculed as chimerical, the aim of this paper is to revisit them and find the more subtle meanings behind big terms like "ideology" and "history." Although, as every theorist of political ideas knows, ideologies are an intrinsic part of politics, it is also evident that ideologies that would carry a collective and universalizing agenda are in retreat to ideologies that are more improvisational in their strategies and focused on defending the individual. History is then undoubtedly in motion, but at the same time, instead of a utopian horizon, we are increasingly confronted with apocalyptic visions.

Within such a roughly defined framework, I want to trace the various strategies and tactics that have developed within environmental movements since the mid-twentieth century. In particular, I am interested in how the cocktail of different "ends" has mixed with the rise of the climate movement and the condition of necessity for radical societal transformations within a decade or two.

Among the various debates between prominent intellectuals of the environmental movement, I will focus in this paper specifically on the debate between Andreas Malm and Tadzio Müller. While Malm, from a Leninist position, defends direct action as a strategic tool, Müller, although coming from an anarchist position, subordinates direct action to a counter-hegemonic strategy.

The question is whether this mixing of ideological positions, strategies and tactics can be considered a step towards the re-creation of an ideology with a collective and universalising agenda, as outlined, for example, by one of the few pure ecological ideologues of the second half of the twentieth century, Murray Bookchin, in conjunction with the strategy of so-called dual power. Or should we understand it more as a manifestation of an improvised splintering of forces within a disunited movement that has essentially given up any hope of universalizing positive change?