We need to be consistent
Article originally published in Issue 7 of Rupture, Ireland’s eco-socialist quarterly, buy the print issue:
The socialist left is not new to environmentalism. Environmentalism runs deep in the history of Marxism and other strands of radical left thought.[1] There has rarely been a substantial environmental struggle that did not see the support and involvement of socialists of various stripes.
That said, we should not be defensive about saying that the degree to which the socialist left is environmentalist has fundamentally shifted in recent years. Once, the environment was one issue among many for the bulk of the socialist left. There were always some who were highly engaged, but by and large, most socialists were on the right side of environmental struggles without seeing the world through an ecological lens. And mostly did not stay closely engaged with environmentalism through the periods in between those more notable struggles. That has changed in a very basic way: most socialists now understand that the mitigation of the unfolding climate and biodiversity disasters is a precondition not only for a socialist future but for any kind of future for humanity at all.
RISE was founded as an ecosocialist grouping. We joined People Before Profit to help build a strong ecosocialist party. We in PBP and RISE are far from the only ones who have made this ecosocialist turn. Capitalism is ultimately incompatible with environmentalism. The endless blind drive to accumulate that is at the core of capitalism, creates endless environmental destruction. Production and distribution cannot be decarbonised without derailing the circuit of capital, without challenging the logic of perpetual growth, without taking control of the economy from a capitalist class that will allow the oceans to boil for a higher return. In the famous words of Chico Mendes, “environmentalism without class struggle is gardening”.
It is true that in order to be truly Green, you have to also be Red. But there can be a kind of complacency embodied in that saying. Being socialist is not enough. Socialists do not automatically get every environmental issue correct. The answers to each environmental question do not simply flow from socialist principles. There have always been some productivist strands to socialist thought, which treat nature as something to be mastered and more efficiently exploited. There are still socialists for whom the environment is something of an afterthought, or who instinctively flinch away from advocating things which may be unpopular with a lot of working class people. To be environmentalist, you do actually have to be environmentalist.
Sometimes some of our strengths can work against us in that regard. The radical left looks for every opportunity to back working class people and communities demanding more, or defending themselves against attacks on their living standards by employers or the state. When the allocation of limited resources creates conflicts among groups of working class people, the usual socialist response is to demand more for all rather than saying that one group should lose out.
This fits well with the idea of a “Just Transition”, a key environmentalist concept originating in the American labour movement. Many people are dependent on environmentally damaging practices, for heating their homes, for their jobs, for transport. The idea of a “Just Transition” is to avoid or minimise conflict between people’s immediate, short term interests and their longer term interest in not living in a post apocalyptic wasteland. This mostly manifests itself in demands for more resources to allow workers to be retrained and redeployed, or to heat their homes in less destructive ways, or to get around without constantly relying on private cars.
““Sometimes necessary changes will unavoidably inconvenience some working-class people and create
genuine grievances.””
But there are two problems which can come with this mostly admirable approach. The first is that in some circumstances the factor creating conflict isn’t simply a resource, like state funding, that we can demand more of. The second is that sometimes necessary changes will unavoidably inconvenience some working class people and create genuine grievances. A just transition cannot mean that nobody suffers any inconvenience.
These issues tend to arise in smaller picture circumstances. Looming climate catastrophe can rightly terrify people but it can also seem quite abstract or far away. Even the biggest environmental issues, like climate change or the biodiversity crisis, are often experienced first through more localised conflicts over quality of life issues.
The inalienable rights of the motorist
The most prominent and regularly occurring set of examples in an Irish context are to do with transport and car dependency. Car dependency is created and not simply a matter of preference, but it is also real and it cannot be uncreated in a perfectly frictionless way.
Attempts to improve public transport, create pedestrianised spaces or establish safe cycling infrastructure consistently run into furious opposition from groups of people opposed to any reduction in the public space allocated to car parking and car lanes. Formal or informal campaigns regularly spring up fighting tooth and nail to preserve every bit of car dominance. These are sometimes heavily influenced by car park owners and other unsympathetic business interests, but whether we like it or not they also often have some considerable grassroots energy.
These campaigns, and the local politicians who support them, usually present themselves as being in favour of cycling or walking or public transport in an abstract, general sense, but are implacably opposed to whatever actual attempt exists to improve these things in their own locality. The cynicism of some of the arguments made to protect car dominance can be jaw dropping: a sudden overwhelming interest in the preservation of some old growth trees. Or a conviction that a bike lane could be better routed somewhere else, somewhere not in the way of my car, preferably somewhere imaginary. Or the rhetorical deployment of “the elderly”, a group that are less likely than average to own a car, to justify opposing any limitations on single occupancy car commuting. But cynicism aside there is often a genuine grievance of some kind involved.
If a road is closed to cars, residents on some neighbouring road probably will have to deal with more traffic. People who continue to drive will have to take a slightly longer route. If parking spaces are removed, it will be less convenient to drive to somewhere than it presently is. The removal of car lanes will make the commutes of some drivers longer initially no matter how much alternative ways to travel are improved over the succeeding period.
These conflicts can’t be resolved with more financial resources for the simple reason that there is limited physical space in cities and towns and what is being fought over is the apportionment of that space. In between the buildings on each side of the street, there is only a certain amount of room into which footpaths, lanes filled with parked cars, car lanes, bus lanes and bicycle lanes all must fit. This is to a considerable extent a zero sum game of the sort which socialists by temperament and strategy usually seek to avoid.
This is worsened by the physical layout of urban Ireland. We may have sprawling suburbs built in ways that both create and service car dependency, but the central parts of our cities long predate car traffic. Take Dublin as the most obvious example.
Dublin’s street plan consists of a very small medieval district, surrounded by a Georgian core, in turn surrounded by Victorian inner suburbs, in turn surrounded by more modern suburbs. So the whole central part of the city was not laid out to accommodate the car or any significant vehicular traffic. We are not dealing with a wide grid of modern roadways, but with an area of relatively narrow streets that a very large number of people are seeking to travel into and out of each day.
Car numbers get higher and higher. In 1985, not counting other motorised vehicles there were 709,546 private cars in the Republic. In 1995, there were 990,384.[2] In 2005, there were 1,662,157. In 2015, there were 1,985,130. By 2020, that number had reached 2,215,127.[3]
The population has risen. The number of households with cars rose continuously as did the number of households with multiple cars. Which don’t just take up space when they are moving, but present an ever growing demand for parking spaces. And the amount of space in the city centre and inner suburbs of Dublin and other Irish cities is static. So traffic gets continuously worse even though cars have been allowed to entirely dominate our streets.
Socialists support free, fast and frequent public transport. This is absolutely necessary to cut carbon and also a public good in itself. The free part can be solved with more money, but fast and frequent also require getting cars out of the way. A bus cannot go faster than the vehicles it is stuck in a lane with. Trams require space for tracks. Socialists support active travel but safe, segregated cycle lanes require taking space from cars. Pedestrianised streets and wider footpaths are key issues for quality of life in urban areas and greatly improve accessibility for many people with disabilities. But again implementing these things necessarily involves removing space from cars.
““Ultimately, those who want to maintain
car dominance have to be faced down.””
In an ideal world, we would be able to create a superior, efficient, ecologically sustainable transport infrastructure before inconveniencing many drivers. But that’s simply not possible because the actual building of that infrastructure depends on taking limited spatial resources from cars. There is no way to avoid this. Only a certain amount of physical stuff can fit. Ultimately, those who want to maintain car dominance have to be faced down. Groups of local residents or car commuters may often have real grievances, but they cannot be allowed a veto over necessary changes which benefit both the environment and much larger numbers of people.
For the most part, socialist activists, organisations, councillors and TDs get these issues right. I don’t mean to imply that there is some general propensity to oppose public transport or active transport facilities. Where we do get it wrong, the cause is not generally some kind of cynical electoral calculation. It’s a left-wing instinct to support people who are angry with the state over a real grievance, and to have a deep aversion to telling local campaign groups to get lost. This latter issue can sometimes lead socialists to sound like we are fudging a question even when we are not.
At risk of sounding cynical, in electoral terms, socialists have more to gain from being absolutely consistent advocates for environmentally sustainable travel, backing buses, trains, trams, bicycles and pedestrians rather than by attempting to appease the most dedicated motorists. If the main constituencies socialists are trying to organise among are “workers and youth”, to use a slightly clunky cliche, these are precisely the groups that are already more likely to use public transport and less likely to own cars. I don’t in fact advocate taking an entirely consistent stance on these issues because it might help socialists get more TDs elected. That’s a minor bonus. I advocate it because it is necessary from an ecosocialist point of view. We absolutely have to get people out of private cars and into a sustainable transport system if we are going to slash emissions. It’s not optional if we want a living planet. However, there is a growing population of people who walk, cycle and take public transport, a section of the public that is particularly open to an ecosocialist message and socialists should speak to that audience and advocate for their interests.
Many working class people are dependent on cars to varying degrees and it is vital to address their concerns by putting forward viable, attractive alternatives. Centrally this means fast, free and frequent public transport, extending that public transport network into rural areas and creating safe, pleasant, segregated facilities for active travel. Most people who are car dependent aren’t ideologically committed to being car dependent, they just live in places where the alternatives are limited, unpleasant, impractical or non-existent. The truly zealous advocates of permanent car dominance are a minority and not generally one that is amenable to an ecosocialist message in the first place.
“The unwelcome resilience of the Green Party”
It is in some ways astonishing that a party with the Green Party’s appalling record in government maintains any credibility at all as an “environmentalist” organisation. This is a party that jointly presided over the country’s largest fossil fuel extraction scheme at Rossport, the building of a motorway through Tara, even substantial cuts to bus numbers. As Laurence Cox described it in our last issue it is “a machine for greenwashing, for individualising collective issues, and for demobilising popular struggles outside the state.”[4] But to the sometimes intense annoyance of more radical environmentalists, the Greens have displayed considerable resilience as a minor political force.
This is mostly a result of branding. An organisation called the Green Party, using slogans like “Want Green vote Green” and treated by the media as the party representing environmental concerns, has an ability to benefit from environmentalist sentiment almost regardless of its actual record. But there’s another, smaller but still important, factor. While the Green Party offers no meaningful change on the big existential environmental questions, it does have a much better record on many of the smaller scale issues which don’t involve taking on the power of big capital. They do reliably propose or support bike lanes or pedestrianisation schemes and various other improvements in the public realm. Unfortunately they can even seem to own these issues. The small immediate environmental issues give them an entirely unjustified credibility on the existential ones.
It’s not just car dependency that can create certain conflicting imperatives among socialist activists. It’s important that left-wing activists integrate environmentalism into our approach to every issue with any relevance to climate change or biodiversity in particular. It can’t be an afterthought and it can’t be quietly shelved when it might be inconvenient.
Looking back on the wave of protests against restrictions on turf cutting a decade ago, few socialists were heavily involved in that movement. This was because it was mostly based in very rural areas and the socialist left was and, despite a better national spread now, still is much better organised in the cities. But insofar as socialists addressed the issue, the approach was generally to support the protests in a straightforward way as a movement among mostly poorer rural communities against an attack on living standards.
In fact it was exactly that. But there were also other issues in play. Ultimately, and it seems strange to have to say this in an ecosocialist publication, it is not desirable or sustainable for rare habitats to be destroyed so as to facilitate the burning of a fossil fuel. Ten years later, with the concept of a just transition much more firmly established, it is unlikely that many socialists, if any at all, would ignore or downplay the environmental aspect of the issue in the same way.
To give another example of an issue where in many ways justifiable popular sentiments can and often will seem to be in conflict with necessary environmental changes, take Irish settlement patterns and spatial policy. Irish homes are more spread out than those of any other Western European country. We have cities surrounded by sprawling, low density, suburbs, a countryside dotted with one off housing. This is simply unsustainable from the points of view of both decarbonisation and the effective provision of services. Yet even mentioning this unsustainability can be met with considerable hostility in both urban and rural settings; presented alternately as an attack on suburban comforts or rural communities.
Developing a set of policies and arguments (or in left jargon, a programme) for a population shift into villages and towns and increasing density in cities which can actually win people over rather than alienate them is an important task for the environmental movement as a whole and for ecosocialists in particular. We hope to begin a discussion of this question and of other aspects of a just transition in future issues of Rupture.
See for example Bellamy Foster, John “Marx’s Ecology”,, “Kropotkin’s Ecology” at https://theecologist.org/2021/dec/24/kropotkins-ecology
Irish Bulletin of Vehicle and Driver Statistics 2015
Central Statistics Office Transport Omnibus 2020.
“Learning from Each Other’s Struggles”, Rupture issue 6