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 1Sunday 14th August – Chapter 2- Sunday 21st August – Chapter 3
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Supplementary Material:
When Does the Fightback Begin? - Andreas Malm response to critics of How to Blow Up a Pipeline
This chapter (titled "Breaking the Spell") is the heart of the book, directly making case that ultimately it is strategic at this stage in the climate struggle for the movement to have organised militant arms, similar to PFLP to the PLO, IRA to Sinn Fein, Black Liberation Army to the Panthers, etc, and that the degree of action required depends on the degree to which it may aid in pushing the movement forward without alienating it from regular people. The discussion takes place in the context of a global North whose activists seem categorically unwilling to adopt or even discuss options of escalation of tactics that he argues is wildly disproportionate to the severity of the problem, especially since the true victims of the crisis are spatially separated from the primary causes of the crisis - this inertia is the "spell" he aims to break.
I think the strongest part of this section is his forcing of a logical ratchet later in the chapter - he asks the reader to imagine a world that has already enjoyed a 6C increase in temperature, and suggests at that point we should assume that targeting fossil infrastructure for sabotage would be supported by almost everybody. If we accept this premise, we must also accept the logical conclusion that it would be too little, too late. That is, the temporal nature of the crisis is such that if we ever get to a place where the increase in temperature is too great, the correct time to have taken up force against it is in the past not in the present. Through this lens, knowing people are already dying in the global South (and North) from climate change and that the ruling class of the global North shows no interest of curbing emissions but rather expanding fossil infrastructure further, one is forced to engage with the question of "if not now, when?"
His pivot from SUV deflation pranks into discussing personal luxury emissions. He makes a very strong outline of what it is precisely about being rich that means you emit far more than the rest - with all this money you live a fantasy life where you can do whatever you want, meaning owning (and heating) a giant home, having a huge family, flying around the planet whenever and wherever you want, buy giant personal vehicles, own personal jets and yachts, etc. That principally it is these behaviors that add up to make a major difference. The paper he cites about 300 superyachts emitting more carbon in a year than the 10 million people in Burundi is a good one, and I share it with my classes every year. As he does in the first chapter, he focuses the reader on the center of the problem - the ownership class - but here he furthers the argument because it is not just they who build and maintain both fossil infrastructure and the hegemony that supports them, but also that with the wealth they enjoy they end up emitting an obscene and highly significant amount of CO2.
That being said, I think he does confuse things a little when he brings this back to SUVs. Maybe it is true in some countries in Europe that an SUV a symbol of membership to the 1%, but that is not really true where I live at all. He is a little vague and playful about whether SUVs should be targeted as apparently they were in France last week, but they shouldn't be confused with private jets or yachts. That being said I was surprised to read that the IEA says SUV adoption has been the second-greatest driver of climate change since 2010 - I'm not saying they're blameless but if he argues we need to make sure we're targeting the ownership class, there simply isn't enough ownership class to own all these SUVs.
I have more to say but looking up I already have a huge block of text no one is going to read. I'll leave off by just adding that I really like that he takes care to cite his sources well, I end up using these sources in discussions of climate change and they're almost always good sources.
Yeah for sure. He talks in detail about how the specific actions chosen should be carefully weighed against the level of support the movement has and how mortified the local population feels about property damage. He contrasts the public perception of direct action in France to the US, where the same action may aid the movement in France but cause widespread public outcry if done in the US. He is clear to argue that at this point in the climate struggle the escalation should very seriously aim to not take human life.
I should also add that he takes time to make clear why activists should push back on anyone calling these actions terrorism. People on this very site would do well to read this section as many here are all too willing to adopt the framework of the right here, which conflates violence against property with violence against innocent civilians.
I thought the structure of this chapter was a bit odd. Malm starts with some examples of violence that could be carried out, beginning with destroying oil pipelines and infrastructure and looking at some instances where this has been done by other movements in the past such as the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and the fight against the Shah in Iran with some pretty good success and not a lot of costs. Malm highlights oil infrastructure as a clear weak spot, one which can suffer great damage at the hands of a small group of people. I think Malm is correct that the targeting of this infrastructure could form a crucial part of a global climate movement although this would need to be coordinated on a mass scale and I'm not too sure how you could go about convincing people in oil-dependent states to join in.
Then Malm goes onto a movement he was involved in that went around deflating the tyres on SUVs, the way the project grew with more and more people joining in, the way the right and the owners of these cars responded and the subsequent reduction in sales of them. This is when I think the structure gets a little weird since he then switches to a discussion on the differences between emissions generated out of necessity and emission generated for luxury and the importance of targeting the later rather than the former (which Malm is definitely correct about) but then eventually he goes back to the idea of deflating or keying SUVs again. Feels quite clunky, doesn't flow too well. But, as for the idea of targeting SUVs, I think it could be a decent idea but I'd be worried about expending too much energy on this one thing to the detriment of other useful activities, I also think it could make more sense to be looking at targeting dealerships and showrooms, making not worthwhile to sell the cars in the first place rather than just trying to get them off the streets once they've already been sold. I think it'd be better optically too.
Then there's a discussion about what violence is, what terrorism is, how these fit into the climate movement, arguments against violence, etc. Which are fine but again this feels out of place and I feel a lot of it was unnecessary here as most of this was already covered in the first chapter.
I really thought the best part of the chapter was the final part with Malm's examination and critique of XR. He critiques the movement for some of their tactics such as being close to the police or encouraging their members to get themselves arrested. He also links back to his discussion of not targeting people generating survival emissions by looking into instances where XR have targeted working class people using public transport, something any climate movement should obviously be supporting rather than trying to disrupt. Malm identifies XRs white, middle class, liberal membership and their lack of any real serious solutions to the climate problem or any critique of capitalism as the reasons why they'd make such blunders. However, he himself doesn't really offer any solutions to avoid this beyond referring back to the need to target luxury emissions. He basically just says “make sure you only target the rich” but offers nothing for how XR or any future groups can stop/avoid being a movement full of white, middle class liberals who make such awful decisions and have such milquetoast demands in the first place.
offers nothing for how XR or any future groups can stop/avoid being a movement full of white, middle class liberals who make such awful decisions and have such milquetoast demands in the first place.
Rather than try to persuade people to become socialists for the upteenth time, he shrugs and says ‘fuck it, just blow up an oil pipeline’.
Which would, to be fair, be an improvement over where XR’s currently at. And you only need a few people in the larger group of XR to actually do it.
Okay, but 1) if, as Malm argues, a group is targeting the wrong people and making the wrong decisions largely due to the backgrounds of the people who make up that group, I don't see how violence would solve that. Would they not still be identifying the wrong targets but this time with worse outcomes? And 2) A smaller group of people doing acts of violence within a broader movement is already near enough where the climate movement is at, or at least where it was at until recently. If this is what Malm is arguing for then what is new or different that will change things? Is it simply a question of scale?
1 - The people who break free from liberal sensibilities enough to be willing to use violence are unlikely to fall prey to those same sensibilities when picking targets for their violence. Particularly if the messaging of ‘use violence’ is paired with ‘at an oil pipeline, not a bus depot, stupid’, as it is in this book.
2- The current climate movement is bigger than ever, and yet the number of radicals willing to use violence is smaller than ever. A return of the Weather Underground would be preferable right now. Faith in liberal democracy is at an all-time low, and the issue of the carbon crisis is bigger than ever. A few bombings would force polarisation, and there’s a decent chance that enough people would fall down on the ‘pro bombing’ side that it snowballs.
‘Adventurism doesn’t work’ is a product of its time. In retrospect, nothing else worked either, and where it did (Russia), adventurism helped it along.
It’s also hard to ignore how successful ISIS was in propagating with propaganda of the deed in the west, despite having a target audience in the single digits of population, being disaffected Arab/Muslim youth. It took near full mobilisation of the security state and a couple of forever-wars to crack down. Compared to that, a more radical climate movement has a lot going for it.
There’s a reason vegan anti-factory-farming activists were treated with the same security apparatus as ISIS back in the early 2000s, and why every second villain was some extremist environmentalist. The state recognises it as a viable and threatening ideology.
This comment is very interesting in it's implications, and possibly worthy of it's own struggle session/discussion.
Yeah I can see it coming up a fair bit for this book, but also could be worth making a separate thread too, since idk how many people actually read the book club thread.
Hopefully as we move through the book, it’ll come up in the wider site.
Fuckin Thank You for saying the shit i've not wanted to say on the open web/to a group of judgemental marxists
The people who break free from liberal sensibilities enough to be willing to use violence are unlikely to fall prey to those same sensibilities when picking targets for their violence. Particularly if the messaging of ‘use violence’ is paired with ‘at an oil pipeline, not a bus depot, stupid’, as it is in this book.
Fair point.
The current climate movement is bigger than ever, and yet the number of radicals willing to use violence is smaller than ever. A return of the Weather Underground would be preferable right now. Faith in liberal democracy is at an all-time low, and the issue of the carbon crisis is bigger than ever. A few bombings would force polarisation, and there’s a decent chance that enough people would fall down on the ‘pro bombing’ side that it snowballs. ‘Adventurism doesn’t work’ is a product of its time. In retrospect, nothing else worked either, and where it did (Russia), adventurism helped it along.
My problem with this book isn’t that I’m against this kind of violence, it’s the way in which it is presented as the medicine to cue all the ills of the climate movement. Add violence to the movement at present and sure, it may well lead to an increase in the size of the movement and if something like oil infrastructure is targeted then it would obviously strike a blow against emissions producers. We’ve certainly seen the ways in which displays of property destruction like what Malm talks about can galvanise a movement in the past couple of years – The burning down of the police precinct was spectacular and inspiring and almost certainly lead to the BLM movement exploding in the way that it did. There was a similar effect in the UK with the tearing down of the statue of Edward Colston, but obviously to a much lesser extent.
My problem, however, is that while spectacular displays of violence could be useful for getting people behind the movement, it will mean almost nothing if there are no mass organisations there to channel and direct that momentum. To use the Floyd protests again, the violence rose millions to their feet and out into the streets but, once they were there, it didn’t really go any further. It was the biggest protest movement and mass civil unrest in the west probably in most of our lifetimes, but yet, it more or less petered out after a couple of months with very little (non-symbolic) progress made.
Propaganda of the deed doesn’t work precisely because it does not contribute to a collective social struggle against the system, its quite individualist and, beyond the damage inflicted by the deed itself, it doesn’t really offer a serious threat to the system. You’re absolutely right that organised collective action has failed a whole bunch of times, however, there have been numerous instances of it succeeding. Even in all the places where it has not succeeded in overthrowing the established order (which I’m not actually advocating for anyway) it has everywhere lead to concessions and smaller victories that POTD simply hasn’t. I’d rather follow the strategies that have succeeded at least a little bit than the one that hasn’t.
I agree that we should not shy away from violence in these battles, and that it has been a crucial part of past victories, but this was always and should always be entrenched within broader popular movements. We saw this in Hammer and Hoe with the black communists organising and violently resisting in Alabama in the 20s/30s/40s. Likewise in This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed with the civil rights movement. We can even look at some of the examples Malm gives such as the movements in Nigeria against companies like Shell – Malm tells us about the violence, the destruction of oil infrastructure, etc. but he doesn’t discuss at all groups like MOSOP that managed to organise more than half the Ogoni people in that struggle. It’s a similar story for the ANC in South Africa.
So my gripe is not that Malm is advocating violence, its that he is doing so while not saying a mumbling word about the wider strategies and organisation. For me, he is presenting violent action as the silver bullet that will finally succeed, which just isn’t the case, there’s so much more to it. Unless the climate movement moves away from the half-arsed slacktivism and informal organisation structures like XR and tries to build some real power, then any group attempting to engage in violence will likely just end up like the Weather Underground, the George Jackson Brigade, the Black Liberation Army, the RAF, etc. – all mostly either dead or in prison.
Also, as a side note, you’re right that the climate movement is bigger than ever and its definitely a more salient issue but honestly I'm willing to bet that like 70% of the x millions that have taken to the streets are literal school children. I think we can both agree that would have to change before they’d be ready to support a bombing campaign lol.
It’s also hard to ignore how successful ISIS was in propagating with propaganda of the deed in the west, despite having a target audience in the single digits of population, being disaffected Arab/Muslim youth. It took near full mobilisation of the security state and a couple of forever-wars to crack down. Compared to that, a more radical climate movement has a lot going for it.
I disagree with the framing of this, you’re putting the cart before the horse. The forever wars and things like the patriot act weren’t done in order to stop terrorism. Rather, the terrorism provided the necessary justification that enabled those to happen. When you frame it like that, you’re buying into the narrative used to justify the wars and the state repression rather than seeing them for the acts of western imperialism driven by greed, oil, the military industrial complex, and the desire to entrench even further the US influence over the middle east.
Also, I disagree that the increased number of attacks with the rise of ISIS had much to do with them being better at POTD and so getting more people to act. I think its much more connected to a change in strategy in which instead of having cells of people doing a low volume of high-skilled acts of terror (as in prior to the 2010s), you now just have roughly the same number of individuals go out and do an increased volume of lower skilled acts of terror.
There’s a reason vegan anti-factory-farming activists were treated with the same security apparatus as ISIS back in the early 2000s, and why every second villain was some extremist environmentalist. The state recognises it as a viable and threatening ideology.
I mean, you can say this about near enough any threatening ideology to the present order. Also, I don’t know for sure, I’d guess there’s probably no movement that’s received more attention from state security agencies historically than the labour movement.
I am very very sorry that I wrote so much.
Just chiming in to say that I'll be a bit late with this book since I've been saving it for travels, but as I go through it I will absoltely be visiting these threads again.
Hey comrade @EvenRedderCloud can we get this pinned on the front page like last week?
Also I'll be a little later with my response today, I have a busy morning. Hopefully I'll have a little more time to interact with other people's interpretations than I did last week too, this afternoon is pretty open for me.
We need "organize with your close comrades to blow up a pipeline (to avoid climate apocalypse and build socialism"
I mean that basically is what the book is I'm not sure how the book you're describing would be much different. Malm is an eco-Leninist.
Maybe I'm misreading it, or am too unfamiliar with his general body of work and ideological output
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I've joined the book club! Will try and catch up for next week.
Same, I’m just jumping in on this chapter. Just gonna assume the first couple of chapters were ‘here’s why climate change is bad’.
Anyone else have difficulty commenting on Perusall iOS? It’s 50/50 whether highlighting a given paragraph will make the ‘add comment’ button appear.
It might be that you're highlighting too much text, it will usually only let you highlight a few lines per comment. Let me know if its still acting up.
Caught up on chapter 1 and half of chapter 2 so I'll just share the thoughts thus far.
I enjoyed the historical context that is used in his reasoning. Maybe it's only because he is a Marxist, but the historical materialism matters, and I'm glad he is able to lay it out in a more coherent manner than just "oh well MLK asked nicely, unlike that mean bad guy Malcolm X". I think he makes a good case that a radical flank is important for any social movement to gain real ground.
I wonder though, is that radical flank always meant to be ablative, to take the brunt of imperial forces such that the non-violent movement is able to carry the ball across the line?
![[Book Club | Discussion] How to Blow Up a Pipeline by Andreas Malm, Chapter 2](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/9Uoox9A7M6.png){kind=link}