PARTISAN!

Mila V, Canberra

In a recent letter to Partisan, comrade Max J criticised the RCO Central Committee’s letter to Rising Tide attendees. They argued against attempting to turn Rising Tide communist, against green politics, and against the idea that climate change is bringing an end to the world. I would like to respond to these points, especially because I wrote this letter on behalf of the central committee.

On the first point, no one is under the impression that Rising Tide can be turned communist. This is not what the letter was intended to do. Rising Tide is dominated by a liberal activist clique. This clique is linked with climate NGOs, pro-green technocrats, and green small business owners. These people are not, and generally will never be, communists. The point, as comrade Max put it, is to win what people we can over to communism and communist unity. The protagonist of our politics is the working class who have nothing to lose but their chains.

On the second point, comrade Max stumbles. Just because we should recognise that the demands of a global revolutionary struggle may require the re-industrialisation of certain areas, this would only be an unfortunate temporary measure. We must recognise that most of human production is not for human needs. Unnecessary production should be eliminated. Unnecessary waste should be eliminated. This means moving away from coal power and towards renewable energy. It means investing in research into green technologies, such as green steel. Implementing this would result in “de-growth”, even if we could reject “degrowth communism” for other reasons. This is what a green economy would look like. In this sense, I support a green economy. If anyone’s politics are being “watered down”, it certainly isn’t mine.

I believe all the above without also believing that we cannot ever use coal, or steel, or nuclear power, or that we must never alter the environment for human benefit. I do not see these concepts as contradictory, but a necessary part of communist politics. I want the day-to-day and generation-to-generation reproduction of society to be under the collective and democratic control of the entire species. This is basically communism. This requires a system of production and consumption that is sustainable and renewable.

Thirdly, and perhaps more controversially among the RCO, I am scared about climate change. I do not believe that the world is ending. Though, I stand by the statement in the CC letter that “the world is dying”, even if it is a slow death. I believe that our best-case scenario is one where Elon Musk has his way and CFCs are deployed into the atmosphere, artificially lowering atmospheric temperature. In this scenario, we can still expect future generations to inhabit an undead planet constantly wracked with frequent natural disasters, desertification, and mass forced migrations. All of this terrifies me. All of this will lead to immense suffering. I don’t think for a second that admitting to this makes me a left-populist reformist who has abandoned class politics or historical materialism. As I have said before, I believe that such arbitrary personal emotions have political potential in the context of material class conditions.

That said, I’d like to admit where our letter was wrong. Comrade Max ends their letter with the following statement:

It’s all well and good to tell Rising Tide, well we’re this and we support that. But what good is it going to do if Rising Tide doesn’t care? It’s empty proselytising, and no one likes a proselytiser. We’re becoming a caricature of ourselves if our answer to every problem is “we need a mass communist party”. Of course we do, but we can’t just repeat that over and over and over again hoping people spontaneously decide to become Partyists (or whatever we call it now). We need to actually present a strategy and real, programmatic demands that can win over working people, union militants, and disorganised socialists.

The central committee’s letter should probably have included relevant RCO minimum demands. I also agree that we need to present a more concrete strategy, though such a strategy would be a more detailed version of “we need a mass communist party”.