History teaches us that things can change quite quickly, so let’s have hope. The devastating fires of summer 2019/20 will mark a turning point for a lot of people in Australia. Already, there is no doubt that many of us are now willing to dedicate much more time to building a movement to halt the worst of climate change and lay the foundations for a better future. Things could change very quickly.
But things don't just change. We’re contending with decades of defeat for social movements, the labour movement, and the left. This has left these forces demoralised and weak, without clear strategies for building the power that could challenge big corporations and politicians willing to sacrifice our earth for profit. People are more isolated and insecure than perhaps ever in living memory. The increasing disconnectedness of the political class, and its inability to deliver meaningful improvements to people’s lives has left many with little hope that anything can get better at all. Meanwhile, the power of the fossil fuel lobby and the billionaire press has effectively sown confusion among significant sections of the working classes. These conditions don’t disappear overnight.
The fact that Albanese’s ALP is deepening its support for coal and adopting a strategy of conciliation with the establishment should give us little illusion of the utility of simply kicking out Scomo. Meanwhile, the fact that the federal Greens, in this crucial moment, have predictably called for the technocratic non-solution of yet another Royal Commission shows just how rudderless the Richard Di Natale leadership is. We can’t expect the federal Greens in their current form to provide the alternative political pole we desperately need (despite claiming to be ‘the real opposition’).
So let’s be bold, but strategic too. I have no doubt that we will see larger rallies over the next little while - maybe, hopefully, even huge ones. Let’s help build them. But if politics is dominated by bipartisan support for fossil fuels and the Greens opposition is weak, rallies will come and go with little significant outcome, leaving people even more demoralised and disappointed. On the plus side, the emotional turning point that a lot of people will be experiencing right now - a reckoning with the fact that climate change is very much here and we are in for the fight for our lives - has probably given rise to a significant new layer of (mostly young) people who will be ready to commit themselves to ongoing work if it seems meaningfully connected to bringing about change. These people will want to do more than just turn up to a rally and then go home, but they aren’t going to dedicate themselves en masse to something that seems fanciful.
It’s clear that us leftists and progressives don’t have all the answers to this situation, so beware people with quick fixes. Yet now is not the time for abstract appeals to ‘experimentation’. The left hasn’t generally suffered from too much strategy, but rather the opposite. It’s pretty clear that we need a multi-pronged strategy of quickly rebuilding the power of our side of the struggle and creating a common sense around left responses to climate change and the other crises (economic, political) on the horizon. Here’s some thoughts from where I sit, which I hope will contribute to a conversation we’ll all be having over the coming weeks and months (not an exhaustive list, so if your preferred tactic isn’t here, don’t assume it’s because I disagree with it).
1. Winning a Broad Coalition
We need to develop credible left-wing ideas, policy and messaging capable of developing a broad coalition behind implementable initiatives. These initiatives should a) name an enemy - the multinational fossil fuel corporations, the banks, the billionaire media, etc - and b) promise a clear route to rapid decarbonisation alongside a better life for the vast majority on the basis of increased democratic public ownership, universal basic services, and some form of jobs guarantee. The recent initiative by the Queensland Greens (then taken up by the Australia Institute and AYCC) to levy the fossil fuel sector to fund the emergency response is a very good start. Rebuilding efforts should also be funded by these kinds of measures, as should future-oriented solutions to the ongoing impacts of climate change. This approach means dropping far leftist posturing, well-intentioned as it may be (such as banners that tell us to ‘Burn Borders Not Coal’ or platforms that put ‘Dismantle colonial systems of exploitation’ alongside concrete demands as if people know what that means). It also means dropping technocratic posturing. Declaring a Climate Emergency sounds all well and good, but it risks descending into a culture war, leaving a vast number of Australians rightly wondering what such a declaration would mean in practice and why we’re focusing purely on climate change rather than dealing with the bushfire emergency (or our economy) in a more comprehensive way.
2. Electoralism, But Not For Its Own Sake
Where possible, electoral wins on the basis of credible but transformative left policy should be ruthlessly pursued. These will have a huge impact on public discourse and people’s sense of what’s possible, especially if they’re based on huge doorknocking campaigns that reach out to people beyond the left bubble. Where electoral campaigning is undertaken, it should be done with a view to winning, not just ‘raising the flag’, since only through wins can left ideas begin to break out of isolation and gain credibility. However, these electoral campaigns should also function to train up, educate and support broad new layers of (paid and unpaid) organisers who are capable of leading and organising in any number of electoral and non-electoral campaigns.
3. A New Social Movement
The left talks a lot about ‘the social movements’, but it’s pretty clear we haven’t had a real one in a while. But with a whole new layer of people realising it’s time to act, we have the chance to finally build a genuine movement with deep roots in society. The climate strikes could provide a great starting point, though others could emerge soon. One possibility would be for the left and progressives outside the NGO sector to build a parallel structure to the NGO leadership of the climate strikes. This structure would complement the strikes but simultaneously raise clearer, more class-oriented and combative demands, and build deeper and more democratic grassroots modes of engagement. What these modes of engagement would look like is an open question, but they should focus on organising larger contingents to come to rallies and strikes, undertaking mass doorknocking campaigns to shift public opinion, creating genuinely exciting and enjoyable cultural spaces for people to mingle in, organising social solidarity and mutual aid where appropriate, and so forth. Leadership of left parties, the Greens and left trade unions could jointly fund a host of community organisers in different contexts and geographical areas capable of getting this approach up and running, and making it scalable and sustainable.
Disruptive protest isn’t my field of expertise, so I won’t comment extensively on that, but I would say that it is in this broad context of deep mobilisation and grassroots social dialogue that the more militant tactics of groups like Extinction Rebellion could find more fertile ground. Likewise, I’ll leave specific trade union strategy to those operating in that space, but it’s clear that waiting for a Labor government to ‘change the rules’ isn’t going to cut it. If the unions got behind a mass, ongoing climate movement with class-based demands and even put resources into social solidarity where the state’s emergency response fails, they could begin to build the social license for a more militant approach in industrial struggle, later leading to the possibility of (for example) general strikes as part of the climate strike movement.
Ultimately we’ll need an ‘ecosystem’ of different organisational forms and tactics to bring about a new common sense in society and generate the power to take on the big corporations and win, so let’s quit bickering between different groups and tactics. As Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor says, “we need a division of labour”. Let’s begin to work out how these things fit together, while also making new year’s resolutions to cut out of our diet anything incompatible with strategically building our power: shaming people for their consumption habits, engaging in endless social media culture wars, obsequiousness to the ALP, etc. The fires burnt those tactics - there’s only ashes there now.
In the opening track ‘Sunday’ off his underrated 2002 album Heathen, David Bowie croons ‘And nothing has changed, everything has changed.’ These words feel like they belong to 2020s Australia. The entire structure of capitalist power and the weakness of the left remains exactly as before. And yet, the fires of summer 2019/20 have changed everything for us; climate change is terrifyingly here, and a whole new scale of social struggle is open to us, if we’re able to grasp the moment.
Liam Flenady is a political organiser and lapsed musician based in Brisbane/Meanjin. He is a member of the Greens and is recognised as Brisbane’s number 1 Ralph Miliband stan.
Photo by Flickr user bertknot, used under Creative Commons licensing