The activists at Extinction Rebellion tell us that we have about three to four years to act before the climate crisis approaches an irreversible course of global warming that will last hundreds of thousands of years. I believe them. In recent weeks, XR activists in the UK blockaded Amazon distribution centres on the busy shopping day of Black Friday. As could be expected, the actions resulted in a fair amount of media coverage as well as more than 30 arrests. As COP26 also demonstrated, the vested interests in power are doing nothing to stop climate change except offering promises that are contradicted by their policies. This is familiar territory. While the ecological crisis cannot replace the political question concerning capitalism, even socialist governments cannot avoid the reality that they themselves do not have a solution to the problems of economic competition, endless growth, overproduction and environmental degradation.
Why continue to sacrifice our most courageous activists? The protest strategies that have been pioneered by groups like Greenpeace and Reclaim the Streets will not be enough to spark the mass movements that are required to force governments to act. With the growing tendency towards authoritarianism, right-wing populism and fascism, the contradictions of neoliberal global capitalism are leading people away from as well as towards internationalism and socialist solidarity. Labour activism, which has been weakened by the fall of the Soviet Union and the retreat of the left into petty-bourgeois lifestyle and consumer politics, is routinely sold out by unions that do the bidding of the corporate state. Non-unionized workers no longer benefit from gains made for workers throughout the rest of society. People are working 10 and 12-hour days. Two-tier systems are denying new employees the eventual benefits of seniority. The floor is being dropped for younger workers. Offshoring and value-added sales prices in the metropolitan centres undermine global solidarity. Students are increasingly crippled by debt and precarious work conditions. Civil liberties, voting rights, abortion rights and the free press are being undermined at every turn. All of social life is securitized in the interest of the turgid billionaire class.
In this context, it is necessary for activist vanguards to develop strategies that can involve the mass of society. Most people are as aware of the dangers of climate change as they are of the dangers of COVID-19 infections and cigarette smoking. Yet democratic representation is inoperative in a post-representational era of neoliberal governance, where investors and shareholders make all of the policy decisions that politicians dutifully enact. People need a way to be involved that does not rely on the exemplary self-sacrifice of a minority of activists. Earth Day events have already been proven to be popular with the public and so something needs to be organized that will allow these people to continue with their activism in such a way that their desire to save the planet from irreparable harm cannot be ignored.
One suggestion is a global, human strike for the planet that would take place every Friday, similar to Fridays For Future and School Strike For Climate. On this “Last Friday” of every Friday, anyone who can afford to will refuse to go to work and will stay home for the planet. Last Friday can begin as a test run and move from occasional and monthly events to weekly events. This day off will give people a three-day weekend, a move towards a shorter work week that has been successfully implemented in some places. Three-day weekends have proven health benefits as well as regular work week benefits. In the context of the pandemic, it could be a better idea than having everyone out on the streets. Three-day weekends would allow people to actively protest while also using their free time to rest and do whatever they like. It would acclimatize people to degrowth or smart growth strategies and give the media a good reason to cover the climate situation. By itself, Last Friday would not create the solutions that need to be implemented, but it would allow the strategies of activists to extend to the broader society. If prepared in advance, with a globally coordinated information campaign, this worldwide work strike would support and reinforce already existing labour politics. It would at the same time extend labour politics to ecology. People who cannot take Fridays off should not be scapegoated by those who are risking the wrath of employers. Last Friday is for everyone and is not a zero-sum contest for the most radical.
Strategies of this sort are required in the absence of an effectively organized and militant left, in the context of corporate state measures that are being devised against the left, and due to the reality that the spectacle of activism is not enough to transform effective communication into actionable policy. The Freedom Rides that Extinction Rebellion leaders have argued can be used as a model for climate activism took place in a context where a large number of workers were organized in unionized workplaces and had been trained by socialist organizations. They also took place against the background of global communism, anti-colonial independence movements and a rebellious countercultural sensibility that had not yet been yuppified and deradicalized. The Freedom Rides also occurred during the postwar economic boom, when it was relatively easy to find work and buy a home. Those conditions do not exist today and in some countries they never existed. The only small advantage we have is Internet communications technology, which should not be overestimated, but which could help to launch what Yanis Varoufakis refers to as a “Progressive International.” One can imagine that the success of such a movement would lead to efforts to politicize it in the wrong direction. Regardless, its internationalist character, its labour politics and its concern for social well-being would make it a success for leftist and progressive forces. While the unevenness between so-called developed and developing countries would undoubtedly arise as a political issue, Last Friday would nevertheless burst the COPout myth that nothing can be done.
As with COVID-19, humanity possess the know-how to reduce and eliminate the harmful effects of climate change. A small number of wealthy individuals and their crony representatives in government prevent all of humanity from progressing and offer us nothing but suffering, climate disasters, militarization, doomsday scenarios and species extinction. We together are the force that can stop them, but it means putting an end to their oligarchic, plutocratic, kleptocratic and mediocratic domination. There are close to eight billion of us and a few hundred or thousands of them, about the same in disproportion as the economic inequality we have allowed them to socially engineer. They will fight us individually, as organized groups and government regime by government regime. If we stand strong, they cannot win. Either their days, as a global ruling class, will be numbered, or ours will. Humanity has produced a wealth of knowledge, culture and historical development. Nature by itself is an infinite reserve of wonder. Do not allow the wretchedness of big money and the bottom line destroy the world as we know it, our habitat, our homes. Do not allow them to make us all into nomads, scavengers, refugees, prisoners, warlords, mercenaries and corpses. Make Last Friday (or whatever else we come up with) into the First Friday of the beginning of the end for the capitalist, imperialist and fascist oligarchs of the world and their stooges. Stand strong for humanity. Keep your nationalism, religion and identitarianism in check. Don’t be chauvinistic and show solidarity with all people in struggle against injustice.
We only have a few years left to figure this out and the enormity of the challenge is dumbfounding. Let’s take some small steps forward that are reasonable, popular, actionable and that have a mass orientation. If we do not alter our way of life, we will fail. The COVID pandemic has been instructive in these terms, but it has amply demonstrated how vested interests are willing to ignore the advice of experts and sacrifice millions of human lives. We know this about them, but the onus is on us. We cannot wait for them to take the lead. We have to force social change to happen to reduce climate change.