Assembly Project

All In: A Revolutionary Theory to Stop Climate Collapse is a book by two activists connected with the Portuguese climate campaign Climáximo, Mariana Rodrigues and Sinan Eden. I heard about All In during a Rev21 webinar with Alice Gato, another Climáximo activist, and gave it a read.

All In begins with the argument that the climate crisis will soon make revolution necessary and inevitable, then outlines a theory on how revolutionary change could happen. It is not about practicalities, such as how to start parties and protests. It’s zoomed-out and abstract theory. That may sound dry, but the book is short and urgent. You may not always agree with it. Neither did I. But as I’ve said before, the idea that climate change and other crises will make revolutionary change inevitable is one that needs to be taken seriously.

The challenge

The first section of the book makes a punchy argument for why the existing climate campaigns have been inadequate, especially given that the time to avert disaster is ticking away. As Eden puts it:

I have been a climate activist for fifteen years, which is a fancy way of saying I failed.

This builds to two bold statements:

• The capitalist mode of production intrinsically ignores, causes and intensifies the climate crisis.
• The intertwined structure between capitalism and fossil fuels dictates that stopping the climate crisis will require, imply and accompany the end of capitalism.

In addition, there are three further propositions, each described as a “pill to swallow”:

• Globalisation has created a relatively powerful “world system”. (“There is more global-state now than there was nation-state in the 19^th century in any part of the planet.”)
• It has also created a “global working class” that can challenge it.
• Saving the planet requires “ruptural” change rather than any gradual reform or reconstruction.

Are they right? Let’s leave aside for a moment the problem with defining capitalism. Certainly, the environmental problems of ‘anything goes capitalism’ are obvious. If unchecked by rules and incentives, many companies will maximise their profits at any cost, no matter the environmental harm. But markets and entrepreneurship have helped the environment too and can continue to do so, by developing new energy-efficient technology and bringing it to market.

Attempts to follow an alternative economic model can bring pitfalls too. The Soviet Union managed to cause one of the world’s worst environmental disasters so far, the destruction of the Aral Sea. These risks could be mitigated if a culture of free speech allows environmental problems to be exposed and discussed in the open.

As the authors do sometimes admit, the world is far from being simply divided between a global ruling class and an equally global working class. The latter is defined broadly in the Marxist sense, rather than the more common ‘urban blue-collar workers’ sense. Certainly, this simplified thinking can be counterproductive; successful reformers and revolutionaries have typically needed support from factions of the ruling class and faced opposition of factions of the working class, however defined. That said, this all makes more sense later on when the authors discuss how a movement can be made of many different and even sometimes opposing parts.

How to change the world

The second section discusses history, filled nicely with flowcharts about the various ways that have been proposed over the years about how to bring change.

The authors do tend to lionise revolutions and let communist regimes off the hook. The latter may not sit well with some. I share the view that we can’t solve problems of the 21st century with ideas that died in the 20th. I think that deep down, the authors share it too. They certainly acknowledge that the 21st century needs new and better approaches. That’s the whole point of the book.

Many revolutions failed at a terrible cost, from all but one slave rebellion to the Paris Commune to Egypt. Others were hijacked by extremism from within, leading to the madness of the Reign of Terror and the Stalinist purges. The focus on political revolution overlooks how revolutionary change is possible without a literal revolution, especially in democracies. Examples include the rise of welfare states in the mid-20th century and of neoliberalism in the 1980s.

Dealing with the prospect of revolution in the future requires learning from these episodes of history. It also requires heeding warnings, such as those by Murray Bookchin, that workers don’t see themselves as just workers. Salaries and workplaces are important to people’s lives, but for many people and especially the eco-conscious, it is far from the most.

For the rest of this section, and continuing through to the fourth, the authors discuss the problems of existing theories of change. In modern times, it has often relied on unexpected events. Sometimes, such as during the Arab Spring, protests appear as if out of nowhere. Or they are triggered due to “outrageous moments” getting viral attention, such as the exposing of Harvey Weinstein’s crimes or the murder of George Floyd. Other times, they are more foreseeable. But what most of those movements have in common is their poor success record.

Perhaps an extreme weather event could provide an outrageous moment. But this has not happened so far. Perhaps the 2020 wildfires got more Australians talking about climate but there are little signs of a long-term impact.

The authors also argue that there’s another problem. When discussing the approach Bill Moyer described in his book Doing Democracy on how change happens, the authors conclude that the problem is that the climate crisis requires system-wide change, not single-issue change.

The return of movement ecology

The third section also introduces the book’s most interesting idea. Whereas traditional revolutionaries hoped to create a party that could take power in a revolution, the authors suggest that a “movement-as-party” would fit better with the times. It fits with several challenges: less people are inclined to join a traditional political party; movements outside of parties and government are more a more effective vehicle for bringing social change; and change is needed throughout the entire world and not just in one country. Finally, change may happen in different ways and when no-one expects it, so how do we prepare for that?

As the authors put it: “We prepare for different scenarios.” They envision the movement as an ecology, exactly as Movement Ecology does. This appears to be making an analogy to how plants and animals form systems where they live off each other but sometimes also compete. Another useful analogy is a distributed network, where computers are connected through each other rather than hubs. The best-known example is the internet.

For example, a movement-as-party might have a political party contesting elections, a closely allied group that runs people’s assemblies and two rival groups that experiment with starting cooperatives. Elsewhere, another group does direct action protests; they don’t get on with the political party but both help each other achieve their goals.

A series of diagrams illustrate this as linked circles, where the circles represent not just organisations but also the movement’s other assets such as the concept of a Green New Deal. Many of these elements won’t interact with each other, and some may even be rivals, but their combined work drives the movement along (or nowhere).

This is revisited in the fifth section. The authors advocate “mapping” the movement to see how it’s working and whether it can be improved, such as by creating a new organisation or better connecting existing ones. This is demonstrated as adding new lines or circles to the diagrams.

They also emphasise internationalism. Local movements should give a quarter of their capacity to supporting the global coordination and, in turn, three-quarters of their strategy should come from it. That may be a hard sell to many movements, but given that climate change is a global problem, devoting a significant chunk of your effort to global coordination makes sense.

The epilogue of the book points to their website which includes a series of further articles on approaching the challenge.

As the authors say towards the end:

The task is magnificent, horrifying, and emboldening. We are not supposed to “overcome” our fears. We are supposed to find courage inside our fear, anguish and anxiety. At the end of the day, we are making sense of a world that doesn’t make sense and finding the hope to face reality with empathy and boldness.

So as I said, it’s best to focus not on what you may disagree with this book, but to focus on what’s interesting and innovative about their approach.