Green Syndicalism: An Alternative Red/Green Vision

1. Class Struggles

1 1 Class Struggles Marxism, New Social Movement Theories, and Ecology What have been called the global justice or alternative globalization movements have been identified by numerous commentators as the most significant development in anticapitalist or antisystemic politics since the fall of the Berlin Wall and Soviet communism (see Routledge and Cumbers 2010). Especially since the events of Seattle in 1999 (but dating at least to the Zapatista uprising against neoliberal capitalism of 1994), the global justice movements have challenged the “End of History” triumphalism of neoliberal capitalism and posed prospects for an alternative global future based on justice and solidarity rather than profit and competition. The aggressive character of capitalist expansion, that is, neoliberal “globalization,” challenges contemporary social movements to build unity among the diversity of those threatened by the social and environmental dislocations wrought by global capital. R. B. J. Walker stresses the crucial need for social movements to develop what he calls a “politics of connection.” Social movement analysis must avoid tendencies to speak of movements as singular without giving serious attention to the difficulties encountered by attempts to form alliances or broaden participation. “Whatever the rhetorical and tactical appeal of a woman’s movement, or an environmental movement in the singular , it is an appeal that cannot disguise the differences and even intolerances among such movements” (1994, 699). Examining spaces of convergence shows not only the interactions of solidarity that strengthen the movements (and the real ongoing 2 • Green Syndicalism work involved in constructing and maintaining network relations) but also the real tensions and challenges that exist on a regular and often ongoing basis (Williams 2011). Notably, examples such as those presented in Global Justice Networks by Paul Routledge and Andrew Cumbers show the tensions and contradictions between the more mobile elites who can partake in global convergence spaces and the forced territoriality (by class, borders, racism, and gender among others ) that constrain those who are the movement on the ground in local struggles but who cannot access the global aspect of the global justice movements of which they are fundamentally part. Too often the only shared spaces or practices to receive extended analysis have been the ephemeral street spaces of the dramatic street protests outside meetings of global capital, as during the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or G8/G20 meetings. We must be sure to stress that convergence spaces, and the connections between participants , occur in disorganized and unstructured fashion, a reflection of the networked and horizontalist aspect of the global resistance to capitalism today (Routledge and Cumbers 2010). The development of so-called global justice movements has given rise to wide-ranging discussions concerning the dynamics of social change and the strategies for transforming advanced capitalist societies . These various “newest social movements” theories assert that social movements such as the women’s movements, the gay and lesbian movements, and the environmental movements represent truly novel sources of change (Halfmann 1988; Eckersley 1989; Rohrschneider 1990; Darnovsky 1995; Day 2005; Mouffe 2005; Laclau 2007; Selbin 2010). The essential tension underlying much of social movement theorizing, indeed the very thing against which these arguments are implicitly or explicitly formulated, is a strong sense of unease concerning class struggle and the position of industrial workers in collective movements for radical social change. Certainly the class locations and consciousness of participants within recent social movements (especially students and radical youth) and the issues raised by those movements (e.g., environmentalism , lesbian and gay rights, feminism, global justice, and alternative Class Struggles • 3 globalization) have posed compelling challenges to class analyses. New categories and experiences of subordination have emerged as points for mobilization, and an awareness of these categories and the practices that sustain them has played an important part in overcoming the economism of much of Marxist theory. Class must be contextualized as it is lived, and the lived experiences of class include problems of race, gender, sexuality, and environment. As John-Henry Harter (2004) argues, simply reasserting the primacy of class as a means of countering the claims of new social movements that labor is not suited to act as an agent of progressive transformation can only exacerbate the mutual distrust that exists between the different camps. However, in Harter’s view, and this is a position shared by eco-socialists and green syndicalists alike, recognition by both labor and environmentalists that they have shared concerns and a common enemy could contribute to working relationships on...