Andreas Malm

A cloud of smoke billows across Siberia as I write these words.

At what point do we escalate?

Do we conclude that the only thing left is learning to die

Moral pacifism says that it is always wrong to commit acts of violence. This has peculiar consequences.

Among ethical standpoints, there is no such thing as ‘contingent’ or ‘relative pacifism’. A pacifist who makes exceptions is a just war theorist.

Note that the argument is not that violence would be bad at this particular moment – say, because the level of class struggle is so low in the global North that adventurist actions would only rebound and suppress it further: words that would never pass XR lips – nor that it might be expedient only under conditions of severe repression. Instead, analogist strategic pacifism holds that violence is bad in all settings, because this is what history shows. Success belongs to the peaceful.

Slavery was not abolished by conscientious white people gently disassembling the institution.

As some recall, slavery in the US was terminated by a civil war, whose death toll still remains close to the aggregate from all other military conflicts the country has been embroiled in.

Now this provides food for thought to the climate movement. The fact that (as of this writing) it has not engendered a single riot or wave of property destruction would be taken as a sign of strength by the strategic pacifists, proof of correspondence with their ideal. But could it not also be seen as the opposite – as a failure to attain social depth, articulate the antagonisms that run through this crisis and, not the least, acquire a tactical asset?

Greta Thunberg might well be the climate equivalent of Rosa Parks, an inspiration she has acknowledged and often been compared to. But she is not (yet) an Angela Davis or a Stokely Carmichael.