It's a useless way to frame the issue. Environmentalism is an easy sell. It's much easier to get people to agree with socialism if you use climate change as part of your argument. But framing climate change as "first world vs third world" is just about the dumbest thing you can do because it puts everyone in the first world on the side of the corporations who are actively trying to downplay and obscure climate change.
If you make an actual, internationalist appeal for fighting climate change then you will have no problem getting people on your side. But framing the issue as "this one group of people is hogging all the resources and we need to stop them" will inevitably play into the hands of ecofascist rhetoric that views humanity as a virus on the earth.
Sorry for venting. Feel free to dunk on me in the comments
I'm blaming the richest first worlders and rightly so and I can easily do it without throwing your poor first worlders under the bus, you can't just obscure the coercive dynamic between the first and third worlds and pretend it'll just go away with woke rhetoric
If you make an actual, internationalist appeal for fighting climate change then you will have no problem getting people on your side
Um actually it's really difficult and it doesn't seem to be working anywhere important
That's what I'm saying. You can and should criticize the first world and first worlders, and analyze the dynamic between the first and third worlds, but that's different from uncritically blaming climate change on first worlders in general without any nuance. It's not about obscuring the contradiction between first and third world workers, because the contradictions between those two groups are not necessarily antagonistic.
The goal is to understand and analyze these contradictions in their entirety without writing off large swaths of the population as irredeemable or unchangable
I have already analyzed the dynamic and concluded the top 20% of first worlders ARE irredeemable and unchangeable, and that they have to be politically, socially, and materially disenfranchised for there to be any chance to salvage this mess
because the contradictions between those two groups are not necessarily antagonistic.
Doubt. The contradictions are inherently antagonistic, that's why they're called contradictions, first world labor is not competitive with third world labor, that is a fundamental antagonism that can't be squared with simple internationalist rhetoric
To paraphrase Mao, not all contradictions are inherently antagonistic. The go-to example Mao uses is the contradiction between the rural peasantry and the urban proletariat. A contradiction becomes antagonistic when it in and of itself causes an external conflict. By that token, the contradiction between first world workers and third-world workers isn't necessarily antagonistic.
Mao was sometimes known for his occasional bouts of incorrigible idealism
:mao-aggro-shining: For the sake of having/defending a revolution, Mao's position on contradiction is absolutely correct. It preserves the heart of diamat, while ensuring that it can't be weaponized against itself.
If you pretend contradictions aren't a problem, they will eventually bloom into antagonisms when the first external shocks rock the system you created, the contradictions must be SYNTHESIZED and SQUARED
Otherwise, you'll bring about the very weaponization you seek to avoid, and looking at China in the last forty years oh boy is there a lot of synthesizing needed
I'm not saying that the contradiction between first world and third world workers should be ignored. I'm saying that the contradiction can and should be resolved without the destruction/negation of one of those groups. That's what I mean when I say the contradiction isn't antagonistic the same way as the contradiction between labor and capital or between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.
I would generally agree with that, with some caveats, at last synthesis has been achieved
That framing is in my experience mostly in response to the dishonest "stats" that try to blame climate change on China or something. That rhetoric is clearly aimed to be a passivating one, and should be countered.
Consumerism is enabled, created, and reinforced by corporations and capitalism. There's nothing wrong with fighting consumerism, which is pretty much step one for fighting climate change-- but that's fundamentally different from focusing your ire on First Worlders only rather than on the corporations that actively manipulate them
People are responsible for what their governments do 🤨 people living in the west and other developed countries are responsible for the damage and impending climate collapse through their inaction and enabling of their current governments, there's no going around that. The US has contributed more CO2 emissions over the past century than the next 3 countries combined. Western capitalist interests dominate global economics and drive climate change. People live in these countries, we all share blame for allowing this to happen to varying degrees.
This is profoundly anti-marxist and incorrect, damn. People are absolutely not responsible for what their governments do because they have no control over it. That's literally the whole point of government.
Thank you for clearly articulating what my ineloquent ass could only vaguely suggest
Thats why i said to varying degrees. Americans love to detach themselves from everything their government ever did and act as though they're just being taken along for the ride, when in reality a lot of us both actively and unknowingly enable and legitimize this government in many ways. How many people are ignoring the crisis and largely just want to go back to brunch? We really gonna act like Americans haven't been the most apathetic people over the past decades? Saying no one is responsible in any way for what their country does isn't conducive to anything useful. You can't do anything? You can organize opposition and build dissent. You can work to raise class consciousness. We can go grab guns and do something about it right?
If we break the world up into equal population spheres,
Europe+ contributes 70%
China+ contributes 12%
India about 3%(Europe+ includes Russia/NZ/Aus, China+ includes Japan/Korea/Taiwan)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exports/cumulative-co2-emissions-region.svg
Language that is precise and materially accurate matters and any coherent left politics needs to use it
Hit chuds with the 'oh you don't think <our country> is able to tackle climate change? You don't think <our country> can take the lead? Are you gonna wait for China/Russia/the EU to organise something?'
It works wonders in the UK, especially on Brexiteers, and it's hilarious to watch
Are you gonna wait for China/Russia/the EU to organise something?’
It's a well known fact that Climate Change is a Chinese Hoax.
This isn't an example of identity politics. This is an example of how vulgar materialist critiques can lead you down the wrong path. There is a genuine material contradiction between first and third world workers, but that contradiction in and of itself is not antagonistic. I was trying to explain how leaving your analysis at the level of mere contradictory vs non contradictory will end up failing the movement.
