Red is the new green.
The return of class-based environmental politics
In spite of the importance that Brexit played in this British general election, the centrality of climate change in the public debate was definitely an issue the main parties were forced to engage with. In order to address the class issue at the heart of climate breakdown, the Labour party put together a radical agenda to transform the economy and respond to the twin social and ecological crises. To illustrate recent developments in Labour’s environmental position, it appears important to situate the evolution of green politics in light of past and present political economic contexts.
The green movement is a broad church that encompasses different groups with radically opposed positions on both the root causes of environmental breakdown and the solutions to tackle the crisis. If lately the environmental movement appears increasingly concerned with class politics, this had not been the case since the neoliberal turn of the 1980’s, which shifted the focus from a broad political agenda to an individual framing. Back in 1960’s and early 70’s, environmentalists in the Global North were already divided against other groups campaigning on social and labour rights. However the political context of the time favoured positive alliances, such as among anti-war and pro-environment and anti-nuclear groups, which were essentially all dealing with issues of political nature.
In a nutshell, the environmental movement around the seventies was one of so-called political ecology. It was centred on a critique of the political economic model of the time, in terms of the ecological and social limits to growth, while simultaneously raising concerns with issues facing people in the Global South. Against this backdrop, the degrowth discourse — a critique of modern societies’ obsession with increased material production — was essentially attached to the post-development movement. For degrowth advocates, the development agenda was nothing more than a disguised neo-colonial project to impose the “Northern” way of life as the unique economic model while encouraging the plunder of resources from the South for the benefit of the Global North.
The economic neoliberal order imposed a drastic change to environmental politics. Green issues became riddled with concerns around individual consumption focussed upon strategies to shop sustainably and ethically. People were told that through the addition of individual efforts to reduce their consumption and buy responsibly they would help foster greater change. These green consumerist messages became advocated by the big environmental NGOs and civil society organisations as well as political parties. This neoliberal environmental agenda was inevitably most successful among a certain social class, essentially of a white middle-class background, who have the means to engage in activities of “sustainable” consumption and access these highly priced consumer goods.
More recently, the greater focus given to the climate justice movement helped foment a critique of the predominantly white privileged environmentalism of the North by focussing on the lives of people most impacted by climate breakdown. Thanks to these groups, it opened up the debate on intersectional issues of class, gender and race and brought the attention to the need for radical system change in order to tackle climate breakdown. This new environmental politics is especially popular among the young generation who grasps the dire need to effect systemic change given how ineffective strategies around individual consumer responsibility have been over the past 40 years.
In the UK, the Green party — alike most Green parties in the Global North — adopt more or less pro-social positions towards issues of gender equality, LGBTQIA+ and migration to quote a few. However, this green agenda is still most successful among a certain category of the population, mainly of a white privileged background. Indeed, the Greens’ reluctance to actively engage with issues facing working-class people, such as in-work poverty, de-industrialisation or economic austerity, and put these at the centre of their campaigns is a rather striking reflection of their positioning — or lack thereof — on the political spectrum. If traditional green parties do not mention issues of class and power it might be down to the reformist lens through which they view capitalism. This can seem quite contradictory for a political force that advocates for seemingly progressive social and ecological policies. But most Greens might not necessarily view capitalism as the root cause of climate breakdown. Rather, they might put the blame on economists’ obsession with GPD growth and propose alternative ways to measure progress focussed on wellbeing. However, these will not prove useful unless they tackle the drive for compound growth at the heart of capitalist economies, which ultimately rely on a constant accumulation of wealth through the exploitation of both people and nature.
It is no secret that the Labour movement in the UK has been controversial through its support for environmentally harmful industries to protect jobs at all costs. This is unsurprising considering the party’s strong ties with workers’ unions, which have not yet properly engaged with the importance and the consequences of the climate crisis. This is where the idea of a just transition comes into play, which guarantees that workers in polluting industries receive adequate training and re-skilling to work in green and renewable energy sectors. This concept is nothing new and has been popular among Greens for some decades already. However, there might be a few reasons why this strategy hasn’t so far produced the awaited results. First of all, issues of economic power remain among the strongest barriers to keep burning fossil fuels and protect jobs in these sectors. Indeed, fossil fuels are central to the workings of our modern capitalist economies, also deemed the age of fossil capital. It is therefore essential to make use of the disciplinary power of the State to reclaim public ownership of these corporations and reform their entire business model based on resource extraction and profit seeking. In this view, Labour’s traditional alliance with workers’ unions could play in their favour by helping to move those industries towards green sectors. Indeed, for the just transition to come into effect one will have to engage with all actors of the political economy.
The policy proposal of a Green New Deal (GND), adopted by Labour at this year’s party conference, opens up a radically new political terrain on which these new social contracts have the potential to take shape. More than a programme for green jobs, a GND offers the possibility to shift the ownership structures of our economies from capital to labour by giving people a direct say in the workings of the economy. However, environmentalists who support the degrowth agenda have often been quite sceptical of socialist programmes. Rightly so, their critique lie in the productivist framing traditionally associated with socialist proposals, which does not account for the bounded capacity of the planet and the need to drastically reduce consumption to preserve the continuation of life on earth. On the other hand, current GND framings, such as Labour for a Green New Deal, offer the chance to shift away from a productivist agenda through their emphasis on international solidarity and social justice, which radically challenges the resource extractivist model on which our economies are based.
Besides, the degrowth conception hasn’t so far paid much attention either about how to organise social production in a degrowth or post-growth economy. This should indeed be a central concern if we are to shift economic model entirely. An understanding of how capitalist economies work is a pre-requisite to move beyond a growth-centred paradigm.
Alliances between the traditional green and red movements are desperately needed to foster the long-awaited socio-ecological transition and move toward a new eco-socialist model. However, considering how far apart Labour and Green parties can be on the political spectrum does not make matters easy. A fructuous collaboration between these groups will indeed not be possible unless environmentalists are at last willing to challenge the workings of our capitalist economies and put working-class people at the heart of the change.
