That's my short answer to Doug Roger's article on lessons from XR.
XR was a first mover and a unique moment of innocence. As Doug recognises, a movement had finally emerged that was not addicted to the privileged infantilism of "structureless" horizontalism. It reconnected with pre-1989 social practices while having a first, though disastrous, stab at introducing spirit into the rigid ideology of materialism.
As a young teenager, I sat in the Stockport Friends Meeting House in the early 1980s, listening to old socialists prepare people to die for the cause. It was all uphill from then on. After 15 years of pushing for social change against the overwhelming tide of Thatcherite individualism, I called it a day and went to grow veg for 20 years. The idea of revolution was objectively impossible. Then, the 2008 financial crash happened, and revolution was a structural possibility again.
In 2024, it is now inevitable.
Social theory is a function of context. We are now in the context of the highest carbon concentrations in human existence. Five years from now, the carbon budget will run out with increased emissions, leading us to over 2°C of warming in the next decade (that's one billion refugees, in case you've forgotten). Add in the locked-in effects of global dimming, the carbon lag and melting sea ice cover, and the passing of the critical tipping points.
The main scenario is now climate and political system collapse in the 2030s. This path will lead to effective extinction by the end of the century. It's a matter of watching the dominoes fall.
In the face of this, "social movement theory" is a distant dream world limited by the confines of now-zombified neo-liberal logic. The past was protests and campaigns. The future is revolution and religion. The only social theory half-relevant to our current moment is the structural determinism of system collapse and revolution.
States collapse because their elites cannot see the triggers of the regime's downfall: a toxic mix of debt, war and environmental stress. Most likely, resistance will become next to impossible over the next few years because of egoist postmodernism ("I don't have to get arrested if I don't want to") and increasing state repression. Combine that with the increased escapism as the objective reality worsens. The historical records of pre-revolutionary periods show this trend: the calm before the storm. And then, "out of nowhere" there will be a George Floyd moment, a Gaza moment, but a hundred times bigger, when millions of people will be on the streets of Western capitals. Finally, reality—the raw present moment of mass death—will be upon us.
A few million black lives in the Global South will be blotted out as the world enters wet-bulb states where people can die in six hours. Alternatively, a few tens of thousands of mainly white lives are blotted out in a Western city. My money is on Phoenix, Arizona. When I outlined how this would happen on X/Twitter, it got two million views and a torrent of abuse. What did Shakespeare say? "They protest too much."
While we wait for that moment— six months or six years away—there's plenty to do. We should learn a few key lessons from the early communists under Lenin: in particular, leadership, ideology, and discipline. A small, solid core organisation within a broader social ecology that sees the world as it is—that this system will come to an end, and the future will be ours for the taking if we are prepared to organise to take it.
The ideology must offer a vision of a stable, assembly-based democratic system as an alternative to the looming threat of violent fascism waiting in the wings. The centre, as they used to say, will not hold. Then, we need prototyped micro-designs of community mobilisation methods, tested by ongoing projects of "listening to the people." It will be action or non-existence.
And yes, as T.S. Eliot said, people "can only handle so much reality." Meaning the "reality" of secular disenchantment. The old rationalist religion of those brainy white guys in the 1700s is a bust, and instead, we need a new transcendence of the self. It won't come from yoga videos but from smiling at the prison cell wall. We are in this world, but not of it. If we think this world is all there is, the trauma of coming destruction will kill our souls before it kills our bodies.
So it's time for a good dose of Manchester dry humour. If we can truly face this together, it will be the most exciting time of our lives.
Join Roger's next "Free As A Bird" prison talk to connect with a global community of revolutionaries.
As always, you can sign up for nonviolent civil resistance with Just Stop Oil in the UK or via the A22 Network internationally.
❎ Extinction Rebellion will never happen again. Something a lot bigger will.
XR was a first mover and a unique moment of innocence