There are no non-radical futures
These crises guarantee a radical future in a rapidly changing world. What is at stake is " in which direction?"
"It is very difficult to transform globalization and the flow of capital. What politics can do is to create appropriate tools and incentives and set the rules so that private sector activity can support social priorities. To create another economic system without stock exchanges, banks, etc. is probably in the realm of utopia.
- Stefanos Kasselakis (new leader of SYRIZA), National Herald, 19.5.2023
Ι. The climate
The title phrase derives from a quote by climatologist Kevin Anderson, a professor at the University of Manchester. Stated perhaps as a variation on Naomi Klein's 'no more non-radical options'.
The choice is between immediate and profound social change or waiting a little longer for chaotic and violent social change. In 2023 the window for this choice is rapidly closing
His perspective is based on the certainty that the future will see either an extraordinarily radical restructuring of human activity or a cascade of climatic and environmental calamities that would undermine the fundamental preconditions for the survival of human society. The latter will lead to chaotic, radical and rapid changes in the organisation of the world system, increasing conflicts triggered by a new period of shortages and scarcity. The action required - yesterday already - to limit to the extent feasible an unlivable near future for humanity, should be lightning quick - historically speaking - and should overturn, not maintain, the basic precepts of this global social and economic system. The existing socio-economic system, as even the IPCC now acknowledges, is not compatible with climate stability, and this includes various versions of 'green capitalism'.
Nor is it simply the energy model (which requires a complete overhaul within a decade or two of the way humanity produces energy). Adapting to the changing climate requires investments that overturn the privatisation of infrastructure (the insanity of privatising energy in the midst of a climate transition shows clearly how seriously the challenge is being taken), it requires internal consensus and egalitarianism, but also solidarity with the developing world (for which a 'space' for development must be provided), challenging the intellectual property regime, and requiring that the precedent of plundering its resources for corporate profits is to be prevented from recurring. There is no significant indication of any policy moves in that direction; institutional public debate and announcements at the various COPs seem more concerned with "greenwashing" persistently destructive options than with actually addressing an existential crisis for humanity. Even the Pope has expressed dissatisfaction about the obvious conflict of interest with the United Arab Emirates' apparent conflict of interest in hosting the upcoming COP28...
The choice is no longer simply between socialism and barbarism, but between socialism and the collapse of human societies. Official plans to mitigate the effects of the climate crisis, the proposals to slow it down, are largely pretexts for preserving the established order by pretending that we are addressing the threat. The invocation of individual responsibility for something that, on the scale we are talking about, affects the systemic way in which societies function, is a communicational stratagem designed solely for that purpose. There is no way to follow a timely path to zero greenhouse gas emissions within a framework that maintains the hegemony of the profit motive and that allows current inequalities to be perpetuated.
If, however, the radical economic and social transition required to avoid the collapse of human civilization does not come, the alternative - beyond a chain of increasingly frequent disasters leading to chaos - is equally radical: as I have pointed out elsewhere, one way to attempt to temporarily manage the crisis as an opportunity for capital, without endangering current privileges, while widening inequalities, is a generalized eco-fascism: abandoning ecosystems and infrastructure to collapse for the many, under strict regimes of repression, while a small fraction of the world population (or so they assume) will be protected in special safe zones, siphoning off any profits for as long as they exist.
The groundwork for the foundations of such a permanent emergency state, its basic prerequisites and militarized infrastructure, is being intensively prepared already in the present.
II. A state of exception
This suffocating environment has been established ever since the last concocted war, the "war on terror," starting with the US, the product of an informal "Public Private Partnership"—although the boundaries between the US state and the digital oligarchies are unclear—that restricted privacy, expanded surveillance, and allowed state and corporate interference in personal expression and choice. This has constructed a fragmented, monitored, and police-controlled world that in the late 20th century would have been considered a dystopian fantasy.
Biometric data on every public document, generalised surveillance by private companies and the recording and archiving of the minutest online activity, generalised government wiretapping, but also the almost worldwide covering of inhabited space with means of surveillance and sensors – and the Internet of Things is coming to plug every remaining hole – all add to the tools already in the hands of the security authorities and the secret services of every state.
And it's not just the US: the European Council, as well as individual countries, have been involved in efforts to ban the encryption of private communications on various messaging apps ("Viber", "Whatsapp", "Messenger", etc.) Europol (involved in other privacy violation complaints) is demanding full access to the data from every conversation that has been or will ever be recorded. They have already been instructed to erase the data they keep stored. We are at the dawn of an era of legal mass and horizontal surveillance by state authorities - already common in many European countries (practices that are of course global), despite the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights.
Meanwhile, police repression is on the rise globally, with the US leading the way in murderous arbitrariness. It is not at all evident, propaganda aside, that most Western and Westernised post-democracies are, let alone will remain, more 'free' in any substantial way than the various - properly or erroneously termed - 'authoritarian regimes'. The hegemonic Western country that calls itself "the largest democracy in the world" and considers itself a model of democracy and rule of law, has the highest number of people in prison or under some kind of confinement of any major country in the world. Britain is a world champion of surveillance. The Anglo-Saxon world was first, but Euro-liberalism is also undermining the democratic traditions of EU states, albeit at varying rates. The confusion grows deeper since for the West, any government that does not submit to its dominance is deemed authoritarian and is subject to disastrous sanctions, while any government that goes along with its hegemony is considered - at most - some kind of 'imperfect democracy', for which the best strategy for improvement is to maintain contacts and trade, but also to transfer tools of coercion that can be used on its population.
It is no coincidence that all this is combined with the recognition of the general deterioration of democracy standards worldwide.
III. The War
The emergence of China, in particular, and the formation of BRICS challenge US hegemony. After Europe's self-inflicted economic wounds in the aftermath of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, under US-orchestrated sanctions that have hurt EU economies more than Russia - an act of spectacular economic suicide - the final blow appears to be on the way, with Europe seemingly determined to join the US in the great new cold war with China, Europe's largest trading partner. The rise of tensions between the two major blocs is already resulting in increased militarisation and widespread internal or transnational 'proxy wars' around the world. After many years, the fear of global nuclear annihilation has reared its head even more ominously.
Dragging societies down a warpath necessitates more erosion of the rule of law, intensification of censorship in one form or another, increased 'defence' spending at the expense of social spending, and neglect of the environmental crisis. The refugee flows that arise and will arise as a by-product of war, will feed the far-right rhetoric - in the West - which in turn will reinforce the regime of 'perpetual war', with nationalist screeds. Permanent war is an excellent way, after all, to silence the – “traitors” obviously – who denounce not only the war itself, but also the consequent hardships and the deterioration of the lives of citizens - whether due to a food, energy or social crisis, but also to maintain lethal embargoes on target countries that defy Western hegemony.
It is clear that keeping the world's countries out of the coming wars of hegemony will require a sharp confrontation with the militarism and warmongering that is slowly becoming the status quo. A status quo which will be de facto positioned on the extreme right, with all that this entails.
IV. The far-right onslaught
Over the last few years, the political landscape in Europe has seen the growth of a reactionary far right in a variety of forms across the continent. Whether by electing presidents and prime ministers, joining governmental alliances, offering support to governments, or having a significant presence in parliaments. Among the major countries, Italy is already in the hands of Meloni's "post-fascists", France may end up with Le Pen as President in a few years, and in Germany the AfD is on the rise. It is quite unclear whether and to what extent the extreme centre - whether led by Macron or Mitsotakis, or in collaboration with the far right - has genuinely distinct governance qualities.
In the US, bipartisan warmongering has met the far-right social and economic agenda of the Republicans, perhaps the most unhinged political party of the global far-right, where Christian fundamentalism mixes with a culture of violence.
However, as long as the political dilemma remains one of neoliberal post-democracy-technocracy versus a populist far-right, quietly neoliberal, authoritarianism, the latter will gain ground.
In Latin America a more robust left than on other continents now has to face not the centre-right but the darkest far-right as a structural political opponent, in an increasing number of countries. The Bolsonaro episode in Brazil is also indicative of how social forces are ordered around the most reactionary social atavism. India is practically ruled by a native Indian fascism. The trend is global. The successive crises of capitalism have reinforced nationalism and intolerance, and its political representatives have not - as we know well in Greece - the slightest hesitation in allying themselves with the neoliberal parties.
The fiction of "normality"
The list of crises - some would say: the manifestations of the capitalist crisis - is long. And in each of its instantiations the resulting pattern is clear: the planet is on a course that goes beyond the natural limits that make it sustainable for human beings, liberal bourgeois democracy as we knew it is kicking the bucket either because of the disaffection of citizens and the sweeping diffusion of propaganda; either because of the transference of powers, however formal, from the sphere of popular co-decision to the sphere of technocratic management; or because of a new regime of multiple forms of violence embracing the planet and embraced by a growing proportion of the - many and varied - losers of previous periods. The 'new normal' is characterised by persistent economic, democratic, and social slippage in the face of numerous uncertainties. If one recognizes Greece in the above description, one can 'console' oneself that similar trajectories to ours are experienced -at least- by most Western, but not only Western societies. The title of this article is therefore somewhat misleading: there are no more non-radical presents either, and what remains to be decided in the future is simply the character of the forced and predetermined radical transformation of the world system. To paraphrase the new leader of SYRIZA: to maintain this financial system with its stock exchanges, banks, etc. for a long time is probably in the realm of utopia. The challenge for the left is how to fight the battle for the character of the ongoing transition. How will it fortify itself against an annihilating, armed future?
[By Mihalis Panayiotakis, translated from Greek original, first published on Kosmodromio, Oct. 6 2023]