Green Politics, Class Consciousness and Petty Opposition

There is an age-old criticism that the democratic process is too slow to handle crisis situations, and while that's usually an argument for weirdos to advocate for fascist, autocratic, or fascist autocratic systems, I want to pull the focus away from those people, and towards the mechanics behind that slowness, because while there's an intuitive understanding behind "democratic equals slow" it's often chalked up to a diversity of opinions on a topic, that's not necessarily all there is behind it. Democratic advocates aren't generally slower thinkers and most importantly don't actually care about every issue on the ballots politically. There are, for example, mathematical strategies to aide in decision-making, when the options are essentially equal to the observer, and if aiming for an optimal solution. The entire industry of insurance is based in it. Sometimes there is even factual evidence to support a specific vote, doing away with all the risk-theory and value politics questions, but still, political opinions and actions emerge that seem fundamentally incompatible with the existence of such evidence, which have to start somewhere.

Climate politics faces a unique problem. It's a universal life or death question, with solutions that have been established ages ago. Yet, most political systems refuse to implement the solutions - with a wide array of justifications. Firstly, I think most people would be in agreement that in general, governments currently prioritize short-term state finances over climate solutions. Whether this is how things should work, is for everybody to decide for themselves, though I don't think I'll be able to finish this essay without stating my very predictable case in this matter. Unfortunately there are very few things helping the climate situation that are also incidentally profitable right this second, and unfortunately most people in power have never had the opportunity to practice delayed gratification (This isn't technically true, but there are studies correlating socio-economic status with lower children delay discounting, so I thought this was an apt joke to make. I'm opposed to the usage of this correlation for the construction of an argument in this, or most contexts.). When it comes to making these decisions, the capitalist class is forced to choose between climate solutions or the next quarterly report. Tragically, the financial situation of the state however, need not necessarily reflect on the financial situation of its citizens. As of June 2022, Turkey has a lower debt percentage than most states in its political and geographical vicinity while their citizens are facing an inflation rate of over 70%. Considering the empiric decoupling of state finance and the populations' quality of life, it's remarkable that whenever the issue of climate politics is discussed, it takes the following format: We want to do X, but for that we have to sacrifice Y. And then the person posing the question turns directly into the camera, points at the audience through the screen and says: "Can you personally right now sacrifice Y without any alternative means to replace it?"

Put like this, the conversation is transparently incomplete, but this is functionally the extent to which the conversation is executed. In actuality, this isn't a point towards climate politics, but rather against the system that refuses to engage with the problem, because if one were to take apart the argument, the following question naturally arises: Why is there no alternative means to replace the functionality of "Y", or is "Y" always unquestionably necessary? Often times the answer to that question is deeply rooted in the very base of capitalist fallacies, leaving the pondering skeptic to either adopt a defeatist mindset and assume that "that's just how things are" or to question said bases.

A practical example for this comes with the eternal debate about fossil or gas fuel. I'll focus on gas, as its position in European politics is a unique one at the moment, which happens to illustrate the system at its breaking point quite nicely - to the detriment of low-income members of the proletariat.

Burning carbon-based fuels of any kind on an industrial scale is never without significant drawbacks on the environment. Be it gas, or oil, the evidence of the negative effects of such has been looked into and zeroed in on ever since Eunice Newton Foote in the 1850s. Since at least 1988, there has been a push for green technologies by the natural science communities. It's intensified massively as time went on, and the effects creep closer and closer to ones own back-yard, but most cities are still designed around cars, the pleasure cruise industry and short flights have grown, as has the military-industrial complex.

Free-Market Capitalism is fundamentally incompatible with climate change policy. Corporations cannot but favor the cheaper resource, in order to maximize capital, and once capital stops mattering as such, growth, in order to remain competitive and retain capital. I'm sure somewhere in the back of ones mind, this rings true, if people were to apply this to gas companies for example. Yet, when the conversation does come up on a national - that is media - level, something odd happens: A good part of the conversation begins shifting towards the things that supposedly need to be sacrificed in order to avert a crisis that's "probably definitely coming", but that's also "more or less a few decades off". When the question becomes whether to be cold that winter, or whether something non-specific might happen in 30 years, suddenly the cost seems disproportionate. This is obviously still a question of framing. One can trivialize most things this way. I don't know enough about the people asking the questions in these deceptive ways personally, so I don't want to assume intent, but the simple fact that this line of reasoning is reflected in the citizenship seems interesting in of itself.

Often, it seems that there exists a little bit of a detachment from the political process in the average citizen, that separates their daily reality and the processes that allocate the resources, and thus dictate their reality. Much of the fatal lapses in the systems faced by contemporary governments stem from choices made in the name of capitalism several years in the past. Back to the example of European gas. The prime supplier of gas for states in Western Europe is Russia, a state currently trying feverishly to reassure all onlookers that their leader still has good ideas, no really I promise. For many countries - many NATO countries as well - this means that every Euro worth of gas they use to run factories and heat buildings buys a bullet to be used in an unlawful invasion of a sovereign countries, turned against combatants and civilians alike. After all, there is no war without war-crimes.

This puts many political parties in front of the moral quandary: Either keep paying the Russian Imperialism Apparatus, or find a different source of fossil fuel energy, since the infrastructure for carbon-neutral energy sources weren't established despite the long standing agreement that they would be a neat thing to have. Now, I admit that this is an uncomfortable position to be in, especially if one happens to be a part of the designated green party, but I find it difficult to think of this as any particular sort of achievement on their part. This is mainly due to the fact that's stated ad nausea whenever issues of climate change come up: We could have done the work, or rather, the bourgeois ruling class could have done the work. If they had, this problem wouldn't exist in the form it does. It's not like there wasn't enough pressure from the scientific community over the years, nor demand from the populus, however, the way the populus approaches this issue is somewhat undetermined. Often, having the conversation reframed into hyper-specific questions about legislation, the sacrifice debate or a question of fairness for what's usually loosely referred to as the "middle class" can derail the debate into a disorganized mess, frustrating activists and young idealists while the genuinely interested but maybe somewhat uninformed come away confused, allthewhile somewhere in the background there's somebody that's secretly very relieved that they don't have to explain why they've been consistently making bad political decisions.

In the end it comes down to class consciousness of the citizenship. Political conversations aren't just about the issue, but also always about the people participating in it. It's a large part of why I have difficulties enjoying political debates between mainstream politicians. They might disagree on the minutiae of the issue, but rarely actually advocate for fundamental change. The data does usually exist either way, making the debate as it is a little bit pointless, and listening with the predefined mindset that the people talking don't actually have the interest of the population in mind, changes the outlook on these issues drastically. Implicit in this scene finds itself an explanation of the longer-running behavior of how capitalist systems approach the climate crisis. Clearly there is a demand from the population to do something on the political level, but many of these measures would not be compatible with bourgeois interests, especially when followed to their consequent ends. They then apply the same tricks they do every time their interests conflict with the demand of the population, that is using the bourgeois aspirations of the class-unconscious parts of the proletariat. It's a rallying of petty bourgeois opposition, if you will, though of course in a society saturated with capitalist values, the people answering to that call won't necessarily all be part of the petty bourgeois. It allows the bourgeois to cripple the decision-making process not only in the political process, but in the minds of the population. It trivializes the stand-still, while pointing the blame at a number of non-distinct concepts, such as reality or human-nature (I initially considered sourcing these defenses, but a lot of the ones I found came directly from think-tanks with dubious backgrounds and opinion pieces by Randian weirdos, so I hope the reader recognizes this as the snide dig at magical thinking it is). These are very much only a good argument, if one already happens to agree with the conclusion to the argument. Class conscious criticism here tends to directly address the reasoning leading to the failings and defangs the usual deflections fairly easily, because it allows the structuralist critiques to take priority over questions of whether a hypothetical person can still enjoy a pleasure-cruise with their family.

Now, suppose there was an increase of class consciousness within the proletariat, what would follow? Outspoken class consciousness, I think, is the best shot for achieving reforms. It puts pressure on specific offices that implies direct consequences, if the issues are not sufficiently addressed. It balances the scale, so to speak.

Interestingly enough, bourgeois circles tend to exhibit a strong sense of class consciousness, although they might not use this vocabulary directly. There is an understanding that they make their living in a fundamentally different way than the proletariat, and that class mobility is not standard for members of either class.

Class consciousness in the proletariat does cover a baseline of democratic pressure that can better steer a political apparatus. Therefore it's a problem, if a political system actively discourages the formation of class consciousness. Usually however, a class conscious proletariat has the tendency to break down the barriers between the classes, usually by doing away with the means that enables the existence of the oppressive one. There is an argument to be made that the suppressing of proletarian class consciousness is a central element of capitalist systems, as proletarian class consciousness is diametrically opposed to the basic tenets of capitalism either way. The emancipation of the working population must be understood to be an international endeavor, which makes outsourcing cheap and exploitative labour inacceptable. In light of international crises such as the climate crisis, or a global pandemic, which under capitalism are approached as a zero-sum game, the socialist approach might actually be the only effective solution in the first place. Rosa Luxemburg highlights the role of competition as a driver of action under capitalism in her work The Accumulation of Capital, and she states that competition in a free market requires a measure of growth - presumably one that exceeds that of competitors. In global crises, this devolves into a staring contest, where all countries wait for the others to blink, so they can gain some lead in the infinite struggle to have pretty looking quarterlies. This way, the statement Socialism or Barbarism seems almost prophetic, since the time spent in the staring contest is paid in the lives of proletarian civilians, first in the imperial periphery, and later in the imperial core. Not that I care too much about the following point, but the proletariat's labour is the basis of the bourgeois' sociological existence, but their very literal existence. No amount of yachts, apartheid emeralds and NFTs are going to pay for essential products that don't exist. Not only then are capitalism and green politics incompatible, so are capitalism and sustained human existence.