Book : How to Blow Up a Pipeline by Andreas Malm

Synopsis : In this text, Malm makes an impassioned call for the climate movement to escalate its tactics in the face of ecological collapse. We need, he argues, to force fossil fuel extraction to stop—with our actions, with our bodies, and by defusing and destroying its tools. We need, in short, to start blowing up some oil pipelines. Offering a counter-history of how mass popular change has occurred, from the democratic revolutions overthrowing dictators to the movement against apartheid and for women’s suffrage, Malm argues that the strategic acceptance of property destruction and violence has been the only route for revolutionary change.

Reading Schedule :

  • Sunday 7th August – Preface and Chapter 1
  • Sunday 14th August – Chapter 2
  • Sunday 21st August – Chapter 3

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Supplementary Material:

Interview With the Author

The Author on Rev Left Radio

When Does the Fightback Begin? - Andreas Malm response to critics of How to Blow Up a Pipeline

  • HoChiMaxh [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I am rereading and sort of skimming as I do so, so I'll just add my main thoughts from the section:

    The most persuasive element of this section comes with the discussion of the Dan Tong 2019 paper in Nature on committed emmisions from existing fossil infrastructure. It's a powerful lens for centring the severity of the situation while also centring the problem at hand - the power fossil capitalists currently have to demand their investments pay out. This contradiction that the interests of fossil capital are homicidally opposed to the interests of everyone else is where all eyes need to be focused: if we don't address the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie we are committing the Earth to be destroyed by them. They go, or he Earth goes - it's as plain as that.

    I think his overview of violence as an arm of successful political movements is competent, but strangely formulated. He wastes a good number of pages on Gandhi that often feel ad hominem, while only later reserving a single line for all the successful militant anti-colonial movements in history: "How did Algeria get free? Angola? Guinea-Bissau? Kenya? Vietnam?" Like that's your bulletproof argument right there why are we talking so much about MLK?

    Lastly he comes to attack the Chenoweth/Stephan book Why Civil Resistance Works, which is very good and needed as these :brainworms: has been lodged very deeply into the climate movement. His argument is fine but he really buries the lede on why this 3.5% of the population argument should be not just discarded but cynically laughed at: Maria Stephan works for the US Department of Defense and NATO, this book is essentially a colour revolution playbook in the spirit of Gene Sharp. (To Malm's credit he does mention this off-handedly later in the book)

    • EvenRedderCloud [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Definitely agree on the Gandhi thing. Malm focuses on things that Gandhi did or said at various points of his life which doesn't really address the point being made regarding the struggle for independence in India. The much better argument to make is to just point out all the other people and groups who were active in India at the time and did engage in violence against the British. Malm does bring this up but it falls secondary to his other points about Gandhi.