#title A plethora of tactics does not preclude a strategy
#subtitle A call for strategic literacy in the Metacrisis
#author Matthew Azoulay of Epic Tomorrows
#authors Matthew Azoulay
#LISTtitle Strategic literacy, Metacrisis
#date May 10th 2024
#source Retrieved on 21/06/24 from https://epictomorrows.com/2024/05/10/a-plethora-of-tactics-does-not-preclude-a-strategy-a-call-for-strategic-literacy-in-the-metacrisis/
#lang en
#pubdate 2024-06-29T12:12:09.927Z
#topics Metacrisis, strategy, diversity of tactics, tactics, Murray Bookchin, decentralization, climate crisis, anarchism without adjectives
** Introduction
For the winter 23–24 issue of the paper version of the Freedom journal (UK) I wrote a piece titled 'Social Ecology vs The Metacrisis.' On the 10th of March 2024 it was republished online by Freedom as 'We Need A Plethora of Tactics' with the subtitle: 'Considering “metacrisis” and the ever greater need to re-embrace Bookchin’s social ecology.' AnarchyNouveau then wrote a response piece titled 'We don`t need a plethora of tactics: we need a climate strategy,' republished by Freedom, which agreed with my article on a few points but was largely critical. The online choices of title and subtitle for my piece were those of the Freedom editorship. I feel the title change may have contributed to a partial misunderstanding of my piece by AnarchyNouveau, although I take on board some of their criticisms unrelated to this misunderstanding. In any case I thank them for furthering the discussion with a thorough, stimulating and constructive article. I will refer to them as 'they / them' throughout this counter-response, as I am unsure of how they identify. I hope this is acceptable.
As I do not want to be misunderstood any further, at the outset here I want to clearly state my purposes in writing this counter-response, at least to the extent that I am aware of what motivates me. I hope I am accurate on that count. Primarily, I want to clear up AnarchyNouveau's misapprehension as mentioned above. If I was not clear enough for AnarchyNouveau, the likelihood is that others will have equally misunderstood me, which I wholeheartedly take at least some blame for. I am still developing as a writer and communicator in general. Secondly, I want to use this opportunity to develop my ideas in certain directions more fully and indeed to develop my communicative writing skills.
Thirdly and most importantly, I want to contribute to a movement or to currents that build strategic consensus in response to the Metacrisis, because I agree with AnarchyNouveau that 'the lack of revolutionary strategic thinking on ecological struggles will be both humanity and the planet’s downfall if the revolutionary movement doesn`t get its act together soon.' In an attempt to help build consensus I will try to write in a constructive way and avoid polemics. I will also try to steer clear of ideological debate as the Metacrisis requires practical action. Whether we are social ecologists, social anarchists, anarchist communists, or whatever-else-ists, I think grounds for a broad consensus have emerged across the political spectrum in recent years, if not fully realised, from far left to moderate right, that a municipality-level relocalisation (to what extent is healthily debatable) of political economies and the technological infrastructures embedded within them, is not only desirable but necessary for the sustainable continuance of human civilization. Obviously, in an ideal world I would rather not work with anyone right of centre politically, but I don't live in an ideal world. I live in the contemporary crisis-ridden one, which is no time or place to hold rigidly onto any ideology or decision-making process as the golden one that is universally superior to any other, if that means disregarding what is actually going on in the real world in bioculturally diverse localities, and the varying likelihood of diverse communities adopting our preferred golden means.
This is not to say that radical leftists (of which I am one) should not continue to work for their agendas, if sensitive to context and the urgent imperative for pragmatic, communitarian, anti-authoritarian solutions. 'Pragmatic, communitarian anti-authoritarian solutions' in light of the Metacrisis, are not the exclusive preserve of any -isms or -ists or even of the radical left in general, which is as it should be. Humanity and the planet cannot rely on the various leftist isms and their sometimes rigid adherents to finally strike an ideological truce and then persuade the global population of 7 billion plus, to a post-capitalist utopia. This does not mean we should not strive for the highest standards of ethics. Moreover, a politically, economically and technologically decentralised world –the necessity for which is becoming mainstream– is certainly one where, potentially, anarcho-types of various stripes, as well as grassroots socialists, social ecologists, other so-called left libertarians and communitarian indigenous organisers (and please don't take my choice of labels too seriously) can advance their radically democratic visions, including the advancement of some kind of post-capitalist moral economy. Moreover, many grassroots struggles around the world, including indigenous ones, are naturally ecosocialist / ecoanarchist and have embodied their histories as such.
I am no expert on activist strategy or building strategic consensus. However, I do intuit and gather that trying to impose a single activist strategy (as in a hard strategy, with specific steps and ways of organising) on the globe, even merely by suggestion, is hardly going to affect real-world events. At the worst it is mere armchair activism and at the very worst it justifies charismatic and risky 'leaders' attracting increasingly desperate followings, because they have just the right anarchist (or insert -ist or -ism of choice) programme, which on paper indeed looks totally anti-authoritarian. The ends of a radically horizontal democracy do not justify the means of a rigidly hierarchical vanguard movement. If I identify as both a social anarchist and a social ecologist (which amongst other things, I do) that has less effect in the world than what I actually do, especially in my local community, which is not made up of social anarchists or social ecologists, although I am bound to offer education on these currents at opportune times and further, create an affinity group that can hopefully have an expanding organic impact on my locality. Meanwhile I will pursue other local action which is more broadly communitarian, useful and ethical, especially in terms of climate mitigation and adaptation but without philosophical or political labels as such.
** A plethora of tactics does not preclude a strategy
So now let me move on to specifically correct what I perceive to be AnarchyNouveau`s central misunderstanding about where I was coming from with my original article (a misunderstanding for which, as I have said, I am happy to take some blame). The core intention of my original piece, which I gather was clear to some from their enthusiastic responses, was specifically not to lay out a comprehensive climate strategy, (or strategy for what I term the wider Metacrisis, to which climate strategy would of course be integral). My core intention was rather to, in a very gentle way, orientate or remind anarchists and radical leftists of various stripes and preferred strategies (and tactics therein) as regards the urgent need for a relocalisation of culture, with a specific recommendation of Bookchin's conception of social ecology and within that, a particular focus on dialectical naturalism. I also implied that I favour a dual power approach, which of course allows a lot of room for localised strategy formation (which it would not be up to me to dictate, even were I more knowledgeable than I am). My ostensible focus on 'a plethora of tactics' which I think AnarchyNouveau took way too literally (and the phrase was not in my original article title) as opposed to a coherent strategy in response to these times of crisis, was not because I don't see the need for coherent strategy formation, but was because:
1. Regardless of my personal preferred strategic or tactical approach (which is not, by the way, French style ZADs or Occupy! style organising) a diversity of people will use and are using a diversity of both strategy-less tactics and coherent divergent strategies, whatever I or AnarchyNouveau or anyone else writes on the matter, so better to start from a place of broad inclusivity of what folk are actually doing. I was (and possibly I failed) trying to catch all 'leftist localisers' (including aspirants) and further encourage them to form alliances beyond the left, in an ethical and social ecological context.
1. Coherent and comprehensive strategy formation, whether regional, national or global, especially if we are both anti-authoritarian leftists and pragmatic climate/Meta -crisis activists, cannot in fact be directed by any particular individuals, groups, -isms or -ists, including ourselves. Rather, we have to be alert to and encourage sound strategic thinking and bridge building and get literate in the principles of 'soft' emergent strategy (Adrienne Maree Brown) as well as the hard strategy of various experienced schools and movements of social and political action (including all the -isms) and even hard military strategy. That is to say, strategic literacy and strategic consensus building (which take time) are far more important than trying to come up with a single overarching global strategy and way of organising, apparently to be imposed upon the ignorant and brokered between the various -isms and -ists by some magically chosen brokers. I agree with AnarchyNouveau that the time is now, but that also means the time is now not to fuck things up, and the time is now to listen to others. Consensus building must also be explored on the deeper philosophical level.
1. A plethora of tactics and actions does not preclude the emergence and development of an umbrella (or mycorrhizal network?) strategy that can fertilise, temper and harmonise those existing tactics and actions towards greater goals and broader bases of counterpower as well as post-counterpower directly democratic authority. Obviously, it takes very skilled organisers to build bridges between existing nodes and methods of activism, resistance and dual power, and to negotiate a contested ecosystem of theories of change. Moreover, such organisers must resist the temptation to become entrenched leaders or dictators of any particular strategy or indeed underlying philosophy, regardless of their personal convictions and commitments. This does not mean they should not pursue more specific e.g. social ecological agendas in their particular localities. Such sensitive organisational work is the work that these times of crisis most urgently demand and moreover must be ethically centred, pulling together different threads into a coherent strategic whole that is not ethically diluted although it will involve operational compromise.
1. As AnarchyNouveau showed with some of their excellent examples, bioculturally diverse communities globally have attempted to, and continue to attempt to, resist the capitalist statist hegemony in meaningful, culturally localised ways. It would be neocolonialist to view these struggles merely as practices towards or deviations from an intellectualised ideal global social or political movement. Such a philosophical view can only be valid if we simultaneously honour the strategic and cultural diversity that goes into and will always go into societal change.
Thus, AnarchyNouveau's assumptions of my lack of strategic literacy and predilection towards directionless Occupy!-style organising don`t hold. (This is not to say that mass occupations couldn't have their place as a significant tactic towards a greater goal.)
So why didn`t I offer such a sophisticated analysis the first time round? Really, the main reason is that I had in mind to make a friend of my readership, as a relatively newly published writer-activist; I wanted to start with the basic principle of the imperative for the ethical relocalisation of culture with the supporting good sense of social ecology and dialectical naturalism. In my own mind I was preparing the ground for more sophisticated additional writing (not to mention action) on these matters, but I acknowledge that AnarchyNouveau and any other readers were not to know that, and perhaps my original piece was not strong enough on its own ground. Perhaps this current piece remedies that. I hope so.
** AnarchyNouveau & New Anarchism
In the interests of building strategic consensus, let me now turn to the points on which I generally or substantially agree with AnarchyNouveau (with some qualifications). I potentially agree with more than I disagree with, and if New Anarchy or New Anarchism should be a thing, it should be an anarchism which embraces consensus building but also diversity and respectful dissent. It should be an expansive anarchism. I have already stated that I agree with AnarchyNouveau`s assertion that in these times of crisis, strategic thinking and application by revolutionaries is needed more than ever.
I can also agree with them that so-called 'specific' / especifismo-based organising amongst anarchists and indeed social ecologists can be a very valid and pragmatic approach and makes a lot of sense. There is nothing in my original article to oppose this, and the inclusion of especifismo on the Institute for Social Ecology website (the ISE which Bookchin co-founded) in the article Communalism & Especifismo renders somewhat irrelevant AnarchyNouveau's characterisation of Bookchin's analysis of the Spanish anarchists. Social ecology is a living praxis, and whether Bookchin himself fully appreciated Specific Anarchist Organizations such as The Friends of Durruti, or especifismo in general, seems neither here nor there from a contemporary strategic viewpoint. Moreover, Bookchin's social ecological communalism was more than a reaction against Spanish anarchism, integrating both dialectical naturalism (dianat, as I described in my original article) and ecological technology, through what Bookchin termed the social matrix of technology. On a related point, AnarchyNouveau stated that with his focus on libertarian municipalism, Bookchin erased the role of specific political organisations in the strategic struggle for social revolution. Although this may be relatively true, I think it is irrelevant to a living social ecology which these days includes a diversity of views, including on strategy.
Let me now quote AnarchyNouveau in full in one of their paragraphs where we probably share the greatest agreement:
Bookchin was definitely onto something, however, in exploring the municipal/community assembly as an organisational form through which to construct a re-localisation and de-industrialisation of the economy in the process of degrowth. Given that we need a rapid transition to a simplified economy based on local self-sufficiency if we are to end our dependency on fossil fuels and capitalist monocultures, local assemblies create the basis for communities to meet face to face to address the social and ecological issues which affect them.
I whole-heartedly agree with the spirit of the passage above and would only add a couple of qualifications. Firstly, Bookchin did not advocate de-industrialisation so much as re-industrialisation through a qualitative dianat-based ecological technology, not a merely quantitative de-industrialisation. Of course, an ecological re-industrialisation does indeed imply a significant level of de-industrialisation and degrowth, to the extent that an ecological technology and society would integrate a moral economy, based on communal as opposed to private property, and would not be based on mindless consumption or the pursuit of economic growth. Nevertheless, note that freedom from toil is also a theme in social ecology (partly as a reaction against the Marxist fetishisation of work). It is argued that an ecological technology would entail a degree of sophisticated design and automation, liberating people to engage in both deliberative local democracy and studied artisanship. AnarchyNouveau fails to mention these aspects in their passage above or in their wider article.
Secondly, Bookchin saw that small is not always beautiful (which I agree with) i.e. a sustainable ecological society does not necessarily mean localising every type of infrastructure down to the level of the municipality: for instance communalism could potentially work synergistically with bioregional approaches to some resources and technologies. This would not have to detract from the primacy of the municipal commune for decision making. Indeed this would be more in line with modern sensitive approaches to agriculture, agro-ecology and settlement building. For example, permaculture emphasises community-sufficiency at various scales over mere 'self-sufficiency' as the latter implies artificial boundaries on the webs of beneficial relationships which characterise energy-efficient ecosystems (including humans), sometimes over large geographical areas.
However, regardless of the two qualifications above, I should reiterate that I agree with the spirit of AnarchyNouveau's passage and it is precisely this broad spirit of ethical relocalisation –without a need for specifically social ecological qualifications in every realtime case– which I expounded in my original article. Yet if we are talking about Bookchin, we should get Bookchin right. Social ecology has a huge amount to offer and whether communities choose to adopt a comprehensive social ecological program will first and foremost depend on their understanding of what that would entail.
AnarchyNouveau further wrote:
It is shocking that today, Freedom publishes reflections on social ecology and the climate crisis in its journal without any mention of workers’ struggles against ecocide at the point of production and from within the union movement. This is commonly referred to as “green syndicalism” and has its practical expression in a number of places historically.
On this point, I hold my hands up that I should have included something of the above in my original article –nevertheless my article does not preclude it. I was writing more in the spirit of Bookchin in Post-Scarcity Anarchism where he acknowledged that class struggle and workers' struggles are still important, but chose not to focus on these. I have also made it clear I was not intending to lay out a comprehensive strategy or even strategic overview of the activist / resistance landscape. Nevertheless I thank AnarchyNouveau for correcting me on this general imperative of not excluding workers' struggles from discussion of the strategic milieu of working towards a relocalised post-capitalist, post-statist and ecological society, and I am grateful for the examples cited, especially the reminder of Judi Bari's work. For my future writing I will consider this perspective more carefully. It should also be obvious by now that I agree with AnarchyNouveau that 'all of these things [the various strategic approaches discussed by AnarchyNouveau] are possible and necessary at the same time.'
AnarchyNouveau also wrote:
No discussion on revolutionary strategy in the face of the capitalist ecological catastrophe is complete without acknowledging the need for an extreme and rapid transformation in the division between the cities and the countryside. In class society, cities are defined by their tendency toward importing resources from the countryside and generating a massive amount of waste energy.
I agree with this. Bookchin explored the ecologisation of cities in Urbanization Without Cities; although I have not read this entire work, my understanding is that it could contain a good deal of insight relevant to a thorough Metacrisis response strategy. I am not yet knowledgeable enough on this subject to discuss it further here. I recall that The Land magazine (UK) has also contained some useful information on this subject over the years.
Additionally, for our points of agreement, AnarchyNouveau wrote:
...it would be ridiculous to ignore the fact that society is not in any way prepared for successive waves of ecological disasters and extreme weather events. Rather than reacting to these spontaneously as they come, anarchists can take a long term approach: preparing communities for disaster while building communalist assemblies and organising at a neighbourhood level against gentrification, industrial pollution and the racial oppression of black, colonised and migrant communities.
Here I would reassert my point that ethical, localised crisis response and resilience building without sacrificing ethics, is an immediate concern for all of us, not just anarchists. But it is nice to see AnarchyNouveau's tying together of building communalist assemblies with crisis response, which is precisely what I implied in my original article.
Finally, for our points of agreement I would like to acknowledge the excellent passage from AnarchyNouveau quoted below. I do not want to offer any comment on this except that it has given me real food for thought for my future writing and practical organising:
However, without active work organising the rural working class, capitalist monocultures and extractivist industries won’t abolish themselves. People who are today materially dependent on extractive industry and monocultural farming to make ends meet can become frontline ecological care workers restoring the ecosystems of the future. In order to achieve these ends, these people need to be politicised in the here and now, fighting for material improvements and radical reforms over the issues affecting them via direct and collective action. The real and pressing material needs of people in the countryside need to be addressed toward building a rural movement. There is no time for elitism about the backwardness and conservatism of the countryside.
To summarise this section, I would like to propose a New Anarchism to AnarchyNouveau, perhaps otherwise known as ecological crisis response anarchism. Such an anarchism should bury the hatchets of old rivalries and schisms, regardless of whether brilliant thinkers like Bookchin were themselves skillful bridge builders in the real world (I understand it is arguable that Bookchin was not). We should follow ideas, not people. More accurately, we should follow praxes, as we continually temper and test ideas in the real world of practice. Following ideas and praxes based on our preferred philosophies (for me, dialectical naturalism) for example through small affinity groups of study and action, does not mutually exclude expansive (ecological) crisis response strategising to include a maximum number of community members –whatever locality we find ourselves in– without focusing on specific political approaches but without sacrificing the minimum of core libertarian leftist ethics, principles, and practical orientations.
Thus for instance, we can work broadly with anti-authoritarianism and 'anti-statism' (even if just, to begin with, because the State is of limited use in times of extreme crisis): but ideally working towards the complete dissolution of entrenched hierarchies; we can work broadly with localised, partially democratised economies: ideally working towards complete moral economy; we can promote generally (but not absolutely) localised appropriate usage of technology within natural limits: ideally working towards a qualitatively social-ecological technological matrix; and we can pursue localised assembly-based direct democracy: ideally working towards horizontally institutionalised confederated communes. Actors across the political spectrum in times of crisis, can agree case by case, locality by locality, on at least some measure of these principles and orientations. Of course, anti-racism perspectives / refugee support and an intersectional feminist approach as part of a movement towards ending all hierarchy, must also be robustly pursued (if you are on the anti-authoritarian left as I am), although we cannot expect that to happen everywhere. Nevertheless in times of crisis, significant relative degrees of justice for marginalised and oppressed groups could be possible within politically broad alliances on the local level: 'everyone pulling together' could be just as likely as the opposite of fascistic lifeboat communities.
Further, both a New Anarchism or ecological crisis response anarchism, and a social ecology focused on crisis response, could put aside questions of consensus versus majority-vote decision making, (possibly the biggest point of contention between social ecologists and many anarchists) and respect that different methods will be chosen by different communities on the ground. Regardless, in these emergency times it would make sense at least for the time being, to favour localised direct democracy by voting, as most people are familiar with democracy by voting on the national scale and in other associational contexts (despite that such voting is ineffective in a parliamentary democracy). So on the level of spreading a communitarian, anti-statist and anti-capitalist response to the Metacrisis, communalist social ecology as such could spread more quickly than other traditionally anarchistic forms. Local decision makers already use voting under statism and capitalism, thus local institutions can be subverted to serve social ecology. This indeed was one of Bookchin`s preferred tactics.
Social ecology, in my mentor Chaia Heller's words, entails an 'irreducible dialectical gestalt of liberatory principles.' Personally I am committed to every one of those principles but that does not exclude practical community-focused crisis response in the meantime. At the very least, aside from far left authoritarian leftists, moderate leftists, centrists and rightists, all the various currents of the anti-authoritarian left could come together under a New Anarchism or crisis response anarchism which, due to the depth of our current ecological crisis should in fact be a social ecological anarchism, with dialectical naturalism at its core. Social ecologists, in turn, don`t need to be dogmatic in distancing themselves from anarchism, as some seem to do.
** Corrections & A Suggestion
Aside from the broad areas of overlap and agreement between myself and AnarchyNouveau, I feel I should correct them on a couple of factual errors and explain a key difference in terminology between our articles, with what I hope is a useful suggestion for the activist-reader. I will deal with the errors fairly briefly as I do not want to dwell on division. The first point follows on from the discussion above.
The first error is that Bookchin didn`t disidentify with anarchism either as frivolously or as completely as AnarchyNouveau suggested in their article. I understand from one of Bookchin`s close friends who was also his student that he agonised over the decision to formally reject the label of anarchist (that doesn't mean I completely agree with his decision). Apart from his issue with so-called individualist or lifestyle anarchism versus social anarchism where he thought the former was gaining too much weight in comparison with the latter (from around the 1980s onwards), Bookchin also found seriously problematic anarchism's historical attempts to deal with power. This included a criticism of consensus decision making which shares some perspective with feminist Jo Freeman's famous essay The Tyranny of Structurelessness. Bookchin`s answer of localised direct democracy by voting, and also to institutionalise power horizontally in formalised communal assemblies, was too prescriptive for some anarchists who disparaged this `tyranny of the majority,` as they sometimes called it. But as I have written above, whether or not communalism or so-called consensus decision making are adopted on the ground in every case, does not have to be the subject of division between social ecologists and anarchists. Divergences in theory between these positions are less important than the opportunity of working together in (an always messily human) localised practice e.g. a consensus can be reached on the fairness of a particular vote.
In my view social ecology is a kind of eco-anarchism, thus 'Bookchin`s split from anarchism' has been overemphasised. In the 2005 preface to the AK Press edition of The Ecology of Freedom, which both Bookchin and others considered to be his keystone work, he did not even mention his break from anarchism. In respect to anarchism he noted only that Kropotkin had been a huge influence on him. In the 1991 introduction, included in the 2005 edition, Bookchin wrote: 'All of my writings are meant to give a coherent view of the social sources of our ecological crisis and to offer an eco-anarchist project to structure society along rational lines.' Although Bookchin 'broke' from anarchism as a movement after writing this first intro, nevertheless The Ecology of Freedom was not substantially revised after he wrote this. We could therefore reasonably define Bookchin's most important work as a branch or development of a type of eco-anarchism.
AnarchyNouveau's second error is not so consequential. They claim that 'in the imperial core, there are two communalist initiatives of note' and state that The Symbiosis Federation of assemblies across North America is one of these. I do not want the reader to be misled about how advanced this federation is, as according to contacts who have direct knowledge of Symbiosis, despite that some assemblies and projects within Symbiosis show some promise, the federation is not a fully formed or fully active organisation of fully formed or fully active participant assemblies, at the time of writing.
Finally, I would like to explain my preference for the term Metacrisis, over climate crisis or even '(climate and) ecological crisis,' in opposition to AnarchyNouveau. The Metacrisis is also commonly known as the polycrisis but that has a slightly different slant as it doesn't suggest common underlying causes to all the various crises our civilisation is going through, and there are underlying causes: ecological ones. Despite the fact that the underlying causes of all crises are ecological, I personally feel it is much better to use the term Metacrisis over climate or ecological crisis, for four reasons.
1. Calling the modern crisis a climate crisis aligns with the carbon reductionism of many very unradical, capitalist and status quo - supporting actors who are actually worsening the climate crisis by offering capitalist and greenwashing solutions, and solutions which address 'climate' at the expense of ecology and biodiversity, which include human diversity. This even extends to the IPCC whose Working Group III is pressured to recommend that governments continue business as usual whilst relying on unproven and unscaled technologies such as BECCS to solve the climate crisis at some distant future time.
1. Calling the crisis a climate crisis or even ecological crisis does not do justice to the social element of the crisis, which is the core teaching of Bookchin's dialectical naturalism. Although social ecologists' understanding of the ecological crisis is that it is a human social crisis, this would not appear to be a common insight amongst the population at large, therefore using the term 'ecological crisis' would appear to me to be unstrategic. Social ecological crisis would be better but would still mystify many, without extensive explanation (I am actually working on a book titled The Metacrisis is a Social Ecological Crisis).
1. We are going through a number of crises, all with ecological, social and political components. The climate crisis is the most obvious, but cannot be treated in isolation. All current crises are complex when addressed individually, and even more complex when addressed as a single interconnecting Metacrisis. From a strategic and educational point of view we need to look at the dynamics and manifestations of individual crises, as well as what ties them all together as 'Metacrisis,' as well as how individual crises influence one another. That's why I use the term Metacrisis as potentially the right combination of accurate, descriptive and memorable. This conception could partly be how to reach people from diverse sectors of society who are already working on individual crises but don't know how to go deeper to address underlying (social ecological) causes. Some of the various interconnected modern crises include, the sense-making crisis: that discerning the truth and making sense of it has become increasingly difficult in the modern digital landscape, feeding conspiracism and disempowering radical social and political movements; the looming immigration crisis, due to climate change; the crisis of the rise of the Far Right in times of Metacrisis; the political economic crisis of the unsustainability of capitalism, and how we transition to something else; the 'peak energy and resources' crisis; the crisis of accelerating technologies such as AI; and others. From my point of view, all these crises, whether or not expressed as Metacrisis as a whole, constitute a lack of social ecology, including a lack of embodied dialectical naturalism. There are also clear relationships between these crises which must be addressed.
1. Finally, Metacrisis is a term which is becoming mainstream, and which is specifically not usually discussed in radical political terms. For this reason I think that the discourse on Metacrisis shows potential for being steered towards robustly anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian positions, in a way that brings along or 'converts' actors who currently view Metacrisis as merely ecological-technical rather than social-ecological-political.
Thus we don`t need merely a 'climate strategy' as AnarchyNouveau suggested, so much as a strongly climate-centred metastrategy which addresses the social ecological lack at the root of all modern crises, or in anarchist terms, the abundance of hierarchy, including capitalism and the State, with all the ecocide implied. This is my suggestion to the reader-activist.
** Summary: building strategic literacy & consensus in the Metacrisis
I will now summarise the main points I have made in this article, re-ordering them according to my own expositional logic in a way which I hope grows consensus and strategic literacy.
First, the climate crisis is a symptom or feature of the Metacrisis, and should not be addressed in isolation.
Second, the Metacrisis is composed of many intersecting crises, which deserve serious study to allow effective strategic action.
Third, the Metacrisis is a social ecological crisis, or a social ecological lack.
Fourth, the living praxis of social ecology, (as opposed to a dogmatic reading of Bookchin) applied through communalism, could be the most appropriate reference point to which to orientate strategic responses to the Metacrisis.
Fifth, social ecology can be usefully viewed as a kind of eco anarchism. Social ecologists, anarchists of various kinds and other anti-authoritarian leftists need not dwell on their ideological or even practical differences in times of Metacrisis and need not dwell on historical schisms and splits, but can instead get together to help to build the ecological, ethical, localised, post-capitalist society that we all wish to see, if necessary under the banner of a New Anarchism or ecological crisis response anarchism.
Sixth, there is grounds for a broad consensus across the political spectrum from the far left to the moderate right, that the municipality-level relocalisation of political economies and the technological infrastructures embedded within them, is not only desirable but necessary for the sustainable continuance of human civilization. However, the highest standards of ethics, including as related to anti-racism and intersectional feminism, should not be sacrificed to the broad consensus.
Seventh, a relocalised world is one where anarchists, as well as grassroots socialists, social ecologists, other so-called left libertarians and communitarian indigenous organisers can advance radically democratic visions, including a post-capitalist moral economy. This does not negate the need to work with people from across the political spectrum when building local democracy and local resilience to Metacrisis –including climate crisis— shocks.
Eighth, global society is arguably already collapsing due to the Metacrisis (at least in some pockets) and in some ways things are bound to get worse (e.g. on metrics of climate), which is why the seventh point above should be tempered by the prioritization of the most marginalised and vulnerable and helping them prepare for and deal with collapse.
Ninth, in times of Metacrisis, transition and collapse, the utmost strategic and tactical diversity and strategic literacy are being pursued and must be encouraged alongside an alertness to the possibility of an emergent metastrategy which could tie together multiple threads and nodes of resistance and transformation on an ongoing basis. Such a metastrategy could be facilitated by highly skilled, undogmatic, anti-colonial and anti-authoritarian organisers, towards the goal of a just, relocalised, directly democratic, post-capitalist society. Workers` perspectives and struggles, including those of rural workers, should not be excluded from these processes, as well as the historical tactics and strategies of multiple peoples and movements, newly and variously adapted.
Tenth, specifically social ecological perspectives and solutions should be given serious and ongoing consideration when responding to the Metacrisis in the context of the ninth point above, including dialectical naturalism (unequivocally), deliberative direct democracy via confederated communes, ecological moral economy, and ecological technology within the social matrix of technology –integrating qualitative re-industrialisation, degrowth and appropriately scaled albeit democratically controlled infrastructures, from the local to the bioregional and beyond.
Eleventh, affinity groups (AGs) of study and action could help to explore the points above in theory and facilitate practical action based on these points. It is possible to start an AG with just two people. Start with study. Graduate to action.