“Climate activists are the communists of today”,says Lord Nocktom and the more simple-minded people erupt with enthusiasm. Finally, they’ve said it in full. But here’s the uncomfortable question. What are the common characteristics of today’s climate activists and the communists of yesteryear. Sure, both groups are bigoted. And then? Because there are too many groups that hold an ideology for that to be enough.
Communists confiscated large estates, climate activists are helping to increase them. Communists loved technological progress, climate activists hate it. Communists built millions of homes, built dams and power plants, and did an incredible job in terms of general education and especially technical education. They were obsessed with the idea of raising the standard of living of the masses. Is that what climate activists are like?
Was it really the communists who were constantly addressing the fact that people were living above their means? Don’t we hear that more from liberal economists?
So what do former communists and today’s climate activists have in common? They both annoy us – so what they have in common is that they evoke the same emotions in us. What they also have in common is that the analogy has been made so often in the public sphere that we have stopped thinking about it. That’s all. Nothing else.
It is a comparison that suits those who oppose the green deal well, but at the same time defend and support the structures out of which the green deal grows. It is a simile that allows them to shield their minds from uncomfortable questions. Perhaps it would be more apt to call climate fanatics the new generation of capitalists. They are certainly closer to today’s financial speculators than to the old working class rights campaigners. But that’s an idea I don’t want to get into. The term “capitalism” can have a thousand completely different meanings.
“Let’s get out of the misleading antagonism of socialism and capitalism,” Ivo Budil urges in an article I have already quoted here, and I join him. The supposed division of regimes into socialist and capitalist made sense in its time. Today it may be appropriate for arguments over six beers, but it prevents us from understanding the world around us.
It prevents us from understanding that the key dispute is between industrial society (the society of engineers, if you like) and the ‘service society’ (meaning financial speculation). Between a society where the physical production is decisive and a society that produces only financial products and advertising campaigns. Between a reality society and a powerpoint presentation society. The differences between capitalism, socialism and the mixed model of Western Europe of the 1950s-1980s are cosmetic.