Apocalypse Now

 “The Tragedy of the Worker – Towards the Proletarocene” by the Salvage Collective, 2021

The key point of this book is to explain how the proletariat – even if it takes power across the globe – will inherit a world dissimilar to what Marx, Lenin, Trotsky or even Mao had to deal with.  A world of ‘abundance’ for all is going to be more difficult because of the wreck capital has made of the environment in the ensuing period.  This decay has not been strictly limited to capitalism of course, though the USSR understood for awhile that nature had to be preserved. That is the tragedy for the workers of the world.  Sort of like when capitalist bosses sell their company to its workers because the company’s market niche is almost dead.  Or when Democrats elect a dark-skinned mayor in a failing, decrepit city, such as happened in Newark, Detroit and elsewhere. 

While deep green ecologists think industrialization dating back to the 1700s is the problem, and hark back to a reactionary world of small farmers or hunters and gatherers, Marxists see that the real problem is ‘the capitolcene’ – whose ‘great acceleration’ took place just after WWII – 1946.  This was the beginning of the car culture, industrial agriculture and other practices, where the need for gasoline became imperative.  This is also the dating of the beginning of the ‘Anthropocene’ by many geologists.  The Salvage Collective (SC) point out that global warming began rocketing up even further after 1991, when neo-liberal imperialism became dominant. These ‘turns’ are not so long ago.

RESPONSES

With somewhat elegant turns of phrase, the SC suggests the proletariat is going to need ‘disaster communism,’ where semi-Promethean methods will be necessary.   They even discuss geo-engineering, but are not specific.  They point out that nature worship and Eco-Theology, absent concern for humans, has emerged in some precincts of disaster fascism and environmentalism, the latter from Deep Greens.  The parallel block between new age ‘naturism’ and Republican libertarianism is also seen in their joint opposition to masks and vaccines.

Green capitalism, as pushed by the Democratic Party, is only extending the disaster, according to the SC.  ‘Adaptation’ is now the mantra of continued profiteering.  The Kyoto and Paris accords, along with the IPCC, made conservative and inaccurate global plans and estimates of global warming.  Market-based carbon trading has been a bust.  The inconsistent, dithering and ‘all of the above’ mentality of the Dems complemented this failure, which was intent on maintaining capitalist normality.  The complete ‘do nothing’ approach of many Republicans and evangelicals is now consciously part of hurrying the world toward the Christian apocalypse and disaster capitalism.  As part of this, a number of governments are salivating over a trade path through the melting Arctic.  Both these parties are, of course, tied to various corporations who profit from unlimited production and extraction, no matter the cost.  The SC calls them all a death cult. Even Extinction Rebellion accepts capital, thinking moral pleas and civil disobedience will force corporations and their politicians to change.

No.

According to the SC, there are also isolated Marxists who still think ‘luxury communism’ and “3 snowmobiles in every pot” (more stuff!)  are reasonable goals.  The latter is an example of ‘productionist’ Marxism, which is unable to see beyond labor as the source of value, opposing Marx’s view.  There are some that think talking about ‘catastrophe’ is a mistake – even though the obvious emergency is bringing many people around to eco-socialism.  The SC’s literature review and advocacy of ‘salvage communism’ or ‘vegan communism’ or ‘life-boat communism’ ends up in a new stage according to them – the Proletarocene.  But it is a very dark scenario:  Given the overwhelming numbers of proletarians on the earth now, they put it this way:  “Capitalism has, 150 years after Marx predicted, finally produced enough diggers to complete the grave, but in doing so it ensured that all that was left to inherit was the graveyard.”

Let’s act before it is a complete graveyard.  Not so much a book with new facts, it promotes one somewhat new outlook, which anyone paying attention to modernity is already dimly aware of.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left to investigate our 14 year archive:  “Luxury Communism,” “Catastrophism,” "Ecological Revolution," "The Monkey Wrench Gang," "Planet of the Humans," "The Robbery of Nature," "A Redder Shade of Green," "Stop Tar Sands Oil," "This Changes Everything," "Green is the New Red." 

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

July 26, 2021