“How to Blow Up a Pipeline” by Adreas Malm, 2021
This book by a direct-action environmentalist is reacting to the impotence of present attempts to fight or limit the carbon industries, of which there are many. Since 1995 and COP1, emissions have only gone up, while no government, international body or industry has really done what is necessary to stop runaway global warming except talk. Malm knows this is because the carbon capitalists are voluntarily allowed to get away with whatever they want in a 'free' market system.
His theory is that pacifism and mass civil disobedience is only one tactic in any revolutionary struggle, which is what this is. Malm constructs the book as a polemic against the false 350.org / McKibben or Extinction Rebellion (XR) methods that posit peaceful struggle only. His main targets are pacifist authors Chenoweth and Stephan backed by those organizations. He calls their theory 'strategic pacifism,' which ignores the real history of how social change is made – in India, in the southern U.S. re Jim Crow, in Nazi Germany, in Iran or Egypt, in the struggle against slavery and apartheid, in Vietnam. Their official 'histories' of the virtues of complete pacifism white-out the actual facts. Oddly, Naomi Klein also did this in her book This Changes Everything, but has a positive blurb on Malm's book jacket.
In the process, heroes of pacifism like Gandhi are put under the microscope. Gandhi himself supported the English and offered to recruit Indians for WWI, the Boer War and the Zulu wars. Gandhi threatened the English that if they didn't make a deal with him, more radical elements would prevail. MLK had weapons for personal self-defense, while SNCC and the SCLC used armed defense guards. Slavery was defeated by a civil war. The Left in Germany had fighting groups that opposed fascist street fighters. Nazi Germany was eventually crushed by armed action, not 'turning the other cheek' as recommended by Gandhi. In Egypt, the victory over Mubarak was achieved after 15 days of mass fighting against police, where many police stations were burned. In Iran the overthrow of the Shah was done by mass, violent insurrection. In South Africa, cuddly Mandela advocated both mass peaceful protest and sabotage and guerrilla warfare. Even recently, the George Floyd protests would have been ignored - until the 3rd Precinct police station in Minneapolis burned down.
Pacifism is a tactic, not a strategy. Sometimes it works, sometimes just up to a point. Most overthrows happen peacefully at first, until they run up against the brutality of the state. Sometimes it is accompanied by the threat and actuality of great violence, as was clear in the U.S. Civil Rights movement. Malm wants this method applied to the environmental movement too. His weakness here is that he ignores political or labor struggle, as he was disappointed by the actions of the Greens and Social Democrats in relation to German brown coal. He finally focuses on the middle-class character of 350.org and XR, who are moralistic outfits 'above' politics. He does not suggest the overthrow of capitalism. Let's see what he wants to do.
Damage or destroy new carbon-emitting devices.
Deactivate old carbon-emitting devices. Assets and carbon will be 'stranded' or written off.
What would this look like in practice? Tiny bands of saboteurs and mass actions that would hide the sabotage? Point #2 is problematic, as who is going to want the gas feeding their furnace cut off in the winter? Or electricity to their air conditioner killed in the hot summer? This is because global warming requires a complete 'rewiring' of the infrastructure, one capital is not capable of doing presently. In fact thieves and reactionaries are targeting electric transformers even now. How does Malm square this?
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| German activists stop brown coal train |
Malm would be selective and minimal, attacking 'coal wharfs' and 'steam yachts.'(?) And perhaps executive jets. He hopes these pinpricks will stimulate “the states' to begin limiting or decommissioning across the board, as he says only 'the state' is really capable of this. Addressing the title of this book, Malm (and the industry) know pipelines are vulnerable. This has been shown in many countries like Nigeria, Palestine, South Africa, Yemen and India, where the MEND, PFLP, ANC and the Houthis wrecked them, while the Naxalites destroyed coal infrastructure.
He recommends 'quiet' sabotage in Europe like deflating SUV tires in affluent neighborhoods. He reasons that the consumption of the rich is one of the bigger problems, citing many statistics. It is the difference between luxury and subsistence emissions. As a result, he advocates attacks on 'luxury emitting devices' held by the bourgeois and bureaucratic enemies - cars, yachts, houses, planes, etc. There is a class angle to global warming, not just between societies but within societies, and this has been proved statistically now.
Malm goes on to discuss tree squatting, anti-development encampments and occupations, burning carbon construction vehicles and warehouses, poking holes in pipelines, invading brown coal plants and other forms of accurate and focused “righteous property destruction.” Property is not sacrosanct. He is against righteous violence aimed at guilty people however. He addresses the issue of 'terrorism' – which cannot be applied to property destruction, but is now being thrown at environmental activists by corporations and the state. He engages in a polemic with 'climate fatalists' like Roy Scranton and anti-political, middle-class author Jonathan Franzen, calling their fatalism a 'bourgeois luxury.' Climate fatalism means all is lost, so why do anything? He discusses the clear usefulness of individual acts of carbon reduction; opposes deep ecology's hostility to any kind of 'industrial' civilization and their plans of destroying it with tiny groups; and reminds us 'monkey-wrenching' achieved almost nothing... though his tactics borrow from monkey-wrenching.
Malm advocates this plurality of tactics, which will engender debate, but that is the actual nature of real movements. Given he has ignored several quite important 'tactics' I'd say his quiver is not yet full. He's mostly ignored the political and labor realms, the issue of war, has not advocated eco-socialism, has a very narrow focus on coal/oil/gas and seems to think capital can be changed. He's widening the environmental action debate from its dominant parade format, which is good, but that is it.
By the way, what is Lanchester's Paradox? It is why the wider environmental movement has not yet resorted to sabotage and other forms of property violence, given the scale of the problem. And yes, the book title is a come-on of sorts. A film with the same title will be forthcoming.
P.S. - Class gap within countries on carbon emissions greater than between countries: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/31/emissions-divide-now-greater-within-countries-than-between-them-study
Prior blog reviews of this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “How Non-Violence Protects the State” (Gelderloos); “This Changes Everything” (Klein); “Rally Against Enbridge and Line 3,” “Climate Emergency,” “Levers of Power,” “Red State Rebels” (St. Clair); “Native Tongue,” “Hayduke Lives!” (Abbey); “The Coming Insurrection,” “Red Gas” or the words 'global warming' or 'pacifism.'
And I bought it at May Day Books!
Red Frog
January 13, 2023
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