What history can tell us about combating the climate crisis
At the dawn of the 19th century, something strange was happening to the landscape of England: jarring splotches of grey were beginning to dot the grassy hills. Clouds of thick smog stained the sky and glaring metal tracks slashed through quiet fields. This was the Industrial Revolution—the period in which the rural, agrarian societies that had so long characterized the West rapidly became urban and industrial.
This shift profoundly impacted the capitalist economies of Europe and North America. It presented new avenues for wealth and prosperity and made social mobility a more tangible possibility. But it also gave a more sinister gift: the ability to exploit human and environmental resources to an unprecedented extent.
The treatment of labour that occurred as a result of industrialization is notorious. The rise of factories denigrated workers to a subhuman status, mere cogs in vast machines designed to produce wealth for their owners. Working conditions were terrible—the advent of assembly-line manufacturing required long hours of repetitive, tedious, often dangerous work, and wages were despicably low.
Moreover, this new factory system spurred rapid urbanization, and towns built to sustain small populations quickly ballooned into overcrowded cities. Here, workers lived miserably—pollution permeated the air, drinkable water was scarce, and low levels of sanitation meant disease ran rampant through the streets. The wellbeing of society was overlooked as capitalism wrung dry men, women, and children in the pursuit of profit.
But labour was not the only resource that industrialization allowed capitalism to exploit. The environment too became expendable. New inventions allowed for humanity—more specifically, the bourgeoisie—to harness the materials of the Earth in revolutionary ways. American historian Theodore L. Steinberg has described this process as a “tremendous ecological restructuring” that fundamentally altered the relationship of mankind to its home. Our planet was now a vast source of wealth, waiting to be drained.
* * *
But before we understood the extent of the damage done to our environment, the working classes were acutely aware of their suffering and resolved to take action. Through understanding their triumphs and losses, we can make an informed decision on our next steps in confronting climate change.
Since the Industrial Revolution, labour has responded to its exploitation in two major ways: revolution and reform. For examples of the former, we can look to 1848, a momentous year in which numerous revolutions erupted across Europe and either toppled or thoroughly shook the foundations of political institutions.
In France, 1848 saw two simultaneous and opposing revolutions: that of the bourgeoisie and that of the working class. Initially, however, both groups mobilized against a common foe: Louis Philippe I, King of the French. Itself empowered by a revolution in 1830, the so-called July Monarchy had become increasingly arbitrary, and in 1848, the people of Paris rose up in revolt.
In this early stage of the revolution, an impromptu alliance existed between the bourgeoisie and the workers in their shared effort to force Louis Philippe I off the throne, but the differences between their grievances and aims were quickly revealed. While the wealthy bourgeois revolutionaries discussed political ideals and drafted liberal pamphlets in the salons of Paris, the radical workers erected barricades in the narrow streets and fought for tangible solutions to their suffering. The disparity between these two concurrent uprisings was clear: while the former group wanted only to liberalize the political system, the latter demanded extensive social and economic change.
It did not take long after the toppling of the July Monarchy and the proclamation of the Second Republic for this tension to reach a boiling point. The new bourgeois-dominated government had opened National Workshops to provide jobs for the unemployed; its decision to close them enraged the rabble-rousing Parisian workers, who once again began constructing barricades and preparing to fight.
By the end of this insurrection, known as the June Days, the forces of the government had restored order—but not before leaving thousands dead in the streets. The voice of labour had been silenced by that of the bourgeoisie.
* * *
In the wake of the events of 1848, would-be revolutionaries saw the failure of the working classes to shed the chains of capitalist abuse and they despaired. In the vast Russian Empire, this disaffection was heightened by the pressure of an economy that was belatedly industrializing. Intellectuals stirred restlessly under the watchful gaze of the autocratic imperial government while strikes and protests erupted among the exploited workers in the cities.
This discontent continued to fester until 1917, when the spark of revolution was finally lit. The numerous political blunders of Tsar Nicholas II—combined with an unpopular war and devastating food shortages—reached a head in February, when the people of Petrograd rose against the imperial regime and elevated in its place a new government. This Provisional Government, dominated by bourgeois interests, shared its power in an uneasy alliance with the Petrograd Soviet, which comprised the working classes. In November, this period of dual power came to a violent end when socialist workers toppled the increasingly counterrevolutionary Provisional Government. The Bolsheviks—the leading socialist political group—now took power, symbolizing the triumph of labour over both imperial and bourgeois forces.
But the sweetness of this victory soon soured. After a brutal civil war, the fledgling Soviet state would morph into yet another autocracy, draped in a thin veneer of socialist rhetoric. The working classes would again suffer under the weight of famine and oppression, and the dream of turning Russia into a state embodying the ideals of the revolutionaries of 1917 would flicker out. The Soviet Union would march on until its collapse in the late 20th century.
It must be acknowledged that the history of working-class revolution is a long list of brief successes, all punctuated by eventual failure. From the beginnings of class conflict in the French Revolution of 1848 to the distinctly socialist Russian Revolution, the efforts of labour to throw off the fetters of capitalism have ultimately ended in repeated suppression.
* * *
But revolution is not the only way in which labour has responded to its exploitation. In 1848—the same year which saw France explode into insurrection—English workers addressed their grievances through peaceful demonstration. This was Chartism, a movement aimed at gaining rights for the working classes and alleviating their suffering. Although it had existed in England for many years, it found itself spurred to action by news of the upheavals in Paris. On a rainy day in April, thousands of Chartists gathered at Kennington Common in London to present a petition of demands to Parliament—a petition which was promptly rejected.
Despite this defeat, many of the Chartist demands were later adopted by the British government in the Second Reform Act of 1867 and the Third Reform Act of 1884. The outcome of this attempt at improving the lot of the working classes was thus the inverse of the revolution in France: immediate failure leading to eventual—very eventual—success. It took Parliament nearly two decades to enact any of the Chartists’ proposed reforms.
Although it may pale in comparison to the glorious inferno of revolution, reform thus seems to offer an enduring spark of hope. A slow-moving, dim spark—but a spark nonetheless.
* * *
While labour has long understood and responded to its exploitation, we have only recently grasped the full extent to which our environment has been abused at the hands of capitalism. We now know that change must come both urgently and fundamentally. Unless action is taken, the effects of centuries of greenhouse gas emissions will set us on a course for unprecedented global catastrophe. Capitalism, the driving force of this process, must either be overhauled or severely regulated.
So, knowing the strategies labour has taken, how should advocates of the environment move forward?
The urgent nature of the climate crisis seems to necessitate a call for immediate revolution. It is tempting to panic—will the world’s major governments, entrenched in capitalist values as they are, ever accept the need for fundamental economic change? And even if they did, would it be possible to implement the necessary reforms quickly enough? Would it not be more efficient and comprehensive to tear down existing governments and start from scratch?
But, as we have seen, even if a complete overhaul of the governments upholding the capitalist system were possible, we would likely not be able to maintain the permanent remaking of institutions and public values needed to put a full stop to climate change. Revolution, after all, is a volatile and unsteady thing. Would support for an insurrection fracture and crumble along class lines like it did among the insurgents of France in 1848? Or, like the workers of the Russian Empire in 1917, would we succeed in creating new governments only to see them corrupted into another batch of unsustainable and exploitative systems?
Perhaps what we need is a middle ground: revolutionary reform. This approach—one of fast, fundamental change conducted within the structures of existing institutions—could reap the benefits of both methods while minimizing their risks. Reform like that enacted by the British government in response to the Chartists will not suffice—it would take far too long, and the results would be far too moderate. We need vigorous, efficient reform. It must be expedited and escalated to take the necessary radical steps. At the same time, by confining our change to legal methods, we can avoid the factional conflict and lack of control that have historically characterized revolutions. We can harness the energy of the people while avoiding the fate of so many working-class uprisings.
Of course, this assumes that current governments will acknowledge the necessity of change and heed its call. If they do not—which is alarmingly likely—then we may be left with no other option but to take matters into our own hands, despite the risks.
Ultimately, although history is a giver of wise counsel, our current climate crisis is truly unprecedented. Whether one stands on the side of reform or revolution, we all must come to the same conclusion: change needs to happen, and it needs to happen now.
Comments are closed.