‘The poisons are already in here with us:’ framing for ecological revolutions from below

ABSTRACT

Below is a transcribed talk by Peter Gelderloos. This talk emerges from the book tour for The Solutions are Already Here: Strategies for an Ecological Revolution from Below. This talk polemically recapitulates themes within the book, advocating for an anti-authoritarian ecological revolution and, consequently, chastising the terms ‘climate crisis’ and Anthropocene. The lecture extends beyond the book’s content. Confronting the audience and challenging its reader, the lecture delves into how authorities administer ecological crisis, which extends to criticizing the dominant institutions and science. This includes exploring how people are disembodied and separated from their habitats, thinking ‘like a state’ or planner, and, consequently, stifling their imaginations and working against revolutionary futures. This lecture also discusses the important qualities and directions for a decentralized ecological revolution from below, what to avoid, ideas to consider, and outlining a general direction for collective struggle.

KEYWORDS:

• Revolution
• Green Capitalism
• resistance
• climate change
• anarchism

Acknowledgements

The author want to thank Aryhma for organizing this lecture, filming it, and making it available. Likewise, he want to express his gratitude to Marina Garcia Morante for their suggestions and help with the transcription. Moreover, the editors at Globalizations deserve special acknowledgment for encouraging critical content to advance discussion and debate in different formats within academia.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For a detailed example, see: Dunlap (2022a) Ecological Authoritarian Maneuvers: Leninist Delusions, Co-optation & Anarchist Love. Available at: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alexander-dunlap-ecological-authoritarian-maneuvers (accessed 2 May 2023).

2 In support of this claims, consider Sovacool et al. (2020), Dunlap (2022a, 2023b) and Dunlap and Marin (2022).

3 Further affirming this point and connecting it to the state, Esteva (2023/2009, p. 171) writes: ‘We lose or abandon our perspective not only by looking to the top (mirar hacia arriba) but by thinking that we are seeing from the top (ver desde arriba). In our eagerness to hold state power we begin to think lie a state (Scott, 1998). A long tradition political theory and practice has accustomed us to adopting this view from above – as if we were already up there – and to attributing almost magical powers to abstract entities like the state. The political imagination thus become carried away with grand theory and imperial visions, and we lose any sense of reality.’

4 This disembodied view of the world, in Foucauldian terms (1998/1978, 2007/1978, 2008/1979), is known as biopolitics or biopolitical gaze. Scott (1998), moreover, outlined this perspective and vision more direct terms in Seeing Like a State. This also relates to ‘linear perspective vision’ that originates in art history and is a perspective that has come to predominate see Dunlap (2019).

5 The concern expressed above deeply resonates with Ivan Ilich's (1977, 1978) discussion on 'radical monopolies' and 'disabling professionals.'

6 One participant in the audience said: ‘It’s not a queen. She’s a mother.’

7 This description matches Gustavo Esteva’s (2023, pp. 137–138) call for a radical rejection of universalisms: ‘It means courageously and intrepidly embracing cultural relativity [as opposed to cultural relativism]: the fact that no one person or culture can summarize or present the totality of human experience; that there is no one or several truths (truth is incommensurable): that the only legitimate, coherent, sensible attitude in the face of the real plurality of the world is radical pluralism.’

8 See Bonanno (1998 [1996]) on the relationship of quality versus quantity in movements and struggle.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Peter Gelderloos

Peter Gelderloos is an independent scholar, social movement participant and author of numerous books. This includes How nonviolence protects the state (2005, South End Press), Anarchy works (2010, Ardent Press), The failure of non-violence (2013, Left Bank Books), Worshiping power: An Anarchist view of early state formation (2017, AK Press), and The solutions are already here: Strategies of ecological revolution from below (2022, Pluto Press).

(Transcription and Introduction): Alexander Dunlap is visiting research fellow at Global Development Studies Department, University of Helsinki. He has authored: Renewing destruction: Wind energy development, Conflict and resistance in an American context (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019) and, the co-authored, The violent technologies of extraction (Palgrave, 2020) and the co-edited volume: Enforcing ecocide: Power, policing & planetary militarization (Palgrave, 2022).