DeepSummary
The podcast episode features an interview with Matt Huber, a professor of geography at Syracuse University, discussing his new book 'Climate Change as Class War'. Huber argues for a Marxist perspective on addressing the climate crisis, focusing on the working class and militant labor unions. He critiques mainstream climate activism for centering on individual carbon footprints and consumption habits rather than addressing the capitalist mode of production and social relations at the root of the issue.
Huber advocates building working-class power through strategic organizing in key sectors like the electricity industry, which is highly unionized. He proposes a three-pronged strategy: socialists joining these unions to build a radical presence, union leadership promoting political education on climate issues, and harnessing workers' ability to strike and leverage their control over production.
The discussion emphasizes the need for climate politics to speak to the material needs of the working class majority through programs like decommodifying housing, energy, and healthcare. This would build confidence in a socialist movement that can improve living standards while restructuring production for decarbonization, in contrast to proposals that raise costs and place burdens on workers.
Key Episodes Takeaways
- Mainstream climate activism focuses too heavily on individual consumption and lacks a class analysis, missing the root issue of capitalist production
- A Marxist, working-class approach centered on labor unions is needed to transform the social relations of production driving emissions
- Key sectors like the electricity industry should be strategically organized through rank-and-file efforts, political education, and worker strikes
- Climate policies must deliver material gains like decommodified housing, energy and healthcare to rally working-class support
- Building working-class organization and counter-power through unions and parties is crucial, not just electoral politics
- Professionals and NGOs dominate climate activism now but fail to speak to working-class material needs
- Climate change is a 'class war' requiring socialist politics to overcome the capitalist class driving the crisis
- The professional-managerial stratum's politics are disconnected from workers' experience and inadequate for the climate struggle
Top Episodes Quotes
- “To understand really, where these profits come from, we have to go into the hidden abode of production, and we have to get away from the surface of the economy in exchange and in market prices. And we have to actually go into production to see the source of profits, which is the brutal exploitation of workers in this zone of production.“ by Matt Huber
- “So after that really high level gambit at state power lost, I think there's really no shortcuts, as Gene McAlevy would put it, there's no really other alternative. We have to start building organization parties and union power and building that working class power in places we're starting to see the pretty exciting movements of unionization and Starbucks and Amazon and other places.“ by Matt Huber
- “If we look at history, the way to kind of beat this back is to actually develop forms of organization that can counter that power. And traditionally, obviously, those are things like trade unions and things like political parties.“ by Matt Huber
- “We should recognize that unions also are these enormous institutions that have a lot of resources and money and power already, and that if we actually have visionary leadership, we can actually channel those institutions in ways that can actually achieve huge political goals really quickly.“ by Matt Huber
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Episode Information
Revolutionary Left Radio
Revolutionary Left Radio
7/1/22
Outro music: 'Highwomen' by The Highwomen
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