Malm takes a slightly different approach in the book. He doesn’t frame sabotage as an end in itself but rather a method of deterrence to “let the capitalists who keep on investing in the fire know that their properties will be trashed” and to put pressure on the bourgeois state “to proclaim the prohibition and begin retiring the stock” of fossil fuel infrastructure. This chimerical proposal, hinging on a social democratic view of the neutral and pliable capitalist state, has been best critiqued by Arnold Schroder of Fight Like an Animal podcast: “Ultimately, his strategy is to sabotage his way into the hearts and minds of the people who currently inhabit the power structure. This is just one of the crazier varieties of liberalism I’ve ever encountered: this is sabotage liberalism.”
...
Can art and polemics play a role in helping cultivate such commitment, despite formal restraints or contradictions? Of course. But the “hope” and “feeling of possibility” that Goldhaber worked to generate with this film, and Malm with his book, isn’t grounded in material conditions, necessary commitments, or even an on-ramp to effective property destruction. It’s a “sabotage liberalism” that at worst will goad people into getting jailed or killed for no gain and at best waste precious time distracted by an adventurist “solution” that refuses to learn from the past or organize for a revolutionary future.
I think the core disagreement between Wilt and Malm is that Wilt thinks the oil market is really resilient and would require more than just a small guerilla war (essentially) to become unprofitable. Malm thinks an achievable level of sabotage could disrupt markets enough to make oil a bad investment. This "hearts and minds" stuff is not a fair representation of Malm's argument - he says direct action has to be a real threat on its own terms for capital to be willing to neutralize it by conceding to the less-demanding nonviolent movement. I liked the linked review better.
I think that's a reasonable representation of the debate but I disagree that the "hearts and minds" is a mischaracterization. In this context, Witt is arguing that Malm's thesis must be that sabotage can create the perception that oil is a bad investment because altering the material reality would be beyond the reach of small, isolated groups of individuals acting independently against discrete targets as portrayed in the movie. As Witt notes, state actors currently have to work to make oil scarce to maintain its profitability, and so the possibility exists that the guerrillas will just make their job easier, if not just causing a momentary blip in prices that the market will easily be able to correct through other infrastructure or means. Pipelines are the cheapest way to transport oil but they aren't the only profitable way to do so, and concluding that attacking one would have an impact requires assuming that capital is essentially persuadable and incapable of adaptation.
I suppose. I think that Malm genuinely disagrees about feasibility but that's because of a different understanding of the market/subsidy situation. The movie includes some lip service about driving up oil costs due to the increased cost of maintenance, etc. Having to recheck many other miles of pipeline. IIRC, the book says the mechanism is that the possibility of attacks (painful on a company level) will make investors warier to invest in fossil fuels, driving up the cost of capital and causing a real problem for industry, but I might be making that up. In short that the irrational market is actually where "hearts and minds" works. Personally I think Witt is probably more correct, but I don't know enough about fossil fuel finance to know if he's overstating it and falling into climate fatalism.
Anyway the things I thought were missing in the book were
a) a nuts-and-bolts explanation if the current mass climate movement is actually advanced enough to benefit from a violent vanguard. The "MLK and Panthers" theory seems well supported but there was not much analysis of the current climate movement, and since the book was written I think it's actually lost momentum because of pandemic disruptions.
b) specific strategies for causing the max disruption per unit effort/risk. Not lentils-in-tire-valves propaganda, the real sabotage. Especially because the highest concentration of leftists who want to do something are in cities, physically far from fossil fuel infra. How-to manual stuff.
This realization that actually a lot of capitalist infrastructure isn't really controlled by the market but by government subsidies is also a problem for veganism. Turns out we kind of have a centrally planned economy.
these are appealing because they place the saboteur furthest from the action, but are they really the most bang for the buck? quadcopters are good for killing people but you can't deliver an oil drum of ANFO to a pipeline that way. Most you can do is arson probably. Remember those guys who caused a big blackout by shooting at electrical substations?
i wanted like, half a book about this at least. probably necessary omission for it to be publishable but still
Honestly, in the imperial core, I would emphasis more on the learn to hack, than the quadcopters and drones. Gotta think outside the box. I feel like Malm's book may have caused a tunnelvision on the physical pipelines instead of the infrastructure that builds and maintains them. Payrolls, communications, Industrial control systems... there's a whole eco-system of interdependent systems that maintains Capital's order and they are largely digital nowadays.
Well I should have used one of slightly less plausible options from prior decades. Many great examples. Anyways looks like it's gonna be international trade not hackermans, they started banning ppls from SWIFT and started something irreversible
Don't know how i feel about everyone throwing around unabomber fantasies & Anonymous larping. But that's what I'm saying, yeah we overextended
I meant the US is running off the cliff like Wile E Coyote with the sanctions and losing the ability to sustain our nonsensical bloated financial rentier class (they're gonna make us all pay as much as it's in their power ofc)
The US has backdoors in the hardware of the chips we use in phones and computers. There are no free CPU and GPU architectures i know of. Eyeing riscv of course
That blackout was due to kinks in the power grid and was back up very quickly, there's protection on those radiators exactly for this, and they'd add more security if waves attacks happened
This assumes that the feds can't do surveillance effectively because right wingers carry out terrorist attacks effectively, but we all know the real reason they make such "oversights"
I don't think you're seeing how much volume and geographic dispersion that figure entails; it's not like they're routing it all through Penn Station.
Given the widely publicized derailment of a 1.4 mile train resulting in absolutely fuck all happening to prevent it again, I imagine it would take a complex and highly coordinated campaign just to rise above background. You're not going to accomplish much with a handful of isolated cells doing stochastic terrorism.
the oil market is really resilient and would require more than just a small guerilla war (essentially) to become unprofitable
Destruction of fossil fuel infrastructure won't necessarily make it less profitable (particularly for surviving pipeliners). But raising the perceived risk premium can shift all sorts of investment calculations, especially during periods of higher interest rates and declining fossil fuel prices.
Hah good description of someone I dated who aspired to publically humiliating herself in a closed meeting of pharma bros before getting escorted out by security & lobbying Nancy Pelosi about chronic lyme
Also critiqued in the article:
I think the core disagreement between Wilt and Malm is that Wilt thinks the oil market is really resilient and would require more than just a small guerilla war (essentially) to become unprofitable. Malm thinks an achievable level of sabotage could disrupt markets enough to make oil a bad investment. This "hearts and minds" stuff is not a fair representation of Malm's argument - he says direct action has to be a real threat on its own terms for capital to be willing to neutralize it by conceding to the less-demanding nonviolent movement. I liked the linked review better.
I think that's a reasonable representation of the debate but I disagree that the "hearts and minds" is a mischaracterization. In this context, Witt is arguing that Malm's thesis must be that sabotage can create the perception that oil is a bad investment because altering the material reality would be beyond the reach of small, isolated groups of individuals acting independently against discrete targets as portrayed in the movie. As Witt notes, state actors currently have to work to make oil scarce to maintain its profitability, and so the possibility exists that the guerrillas will just make their job easier, if not just causing a momentary blip in prices that the market will easily be able to correct through other infrastructure or means. Pipelines are the cheapest way to transport oil but they aren't the only profitable way to do so, and concluding that attacking one would have an impact requires assuming that capital is essentially persuadable and incapable of adaptation.
I suppose. I think that Malm genuinely disagrees about feasibility but that's because of a different understanding of the market/subsidy situation. The movie includes some lip service about driving up oil costs due to the increased cost of maintenance, etc. Having to recheck many other miles of pipeline. IIRC, the book says the mechanism is that the possibility of attacks (painful on a company level) will make investors warier to invest in fossil fuels, driving up the cost of capital and causing a real problem for industry, but I might be making that up. In short that the irrational market is actually where "hearts and minds" works. Personally I think Witt is probably more correct, but I don't know enough about fossil fuel finance to know if he's overstating it and falling into climate fatalism.
Anyway the things I thought were missing in the book were
a) a nuts-and-bolts explanation if the current mass climate movement is actually advanced enough to benefit from a violent vanguard. The "MLK and Panthers" theory seems well supported but there was not much analysis of the current climate movement, and since the book was written I think it's actually lost momentum because of pandemic disruptions.
b) specific strategies for causing the max disruption per unit effort/risk. Not lentils-in-tire-valves propaganda, the real sabotage. Especially because the highest concentration of leftists who want to do something are in cities, physically far from fossil fuel infra. How-to manual stuff.
This realization that actually a lot of capitalist infrastructure isn't really controlled by the market but by government subsidies is also a problem for veganism. Turns out we kind of have a centrally planned economy.
It's like my great grandpappy used to say. Learn to Hack, Learn to quadcopter.
these are appealing because they place the saboteur furthest from the action, but are they really the most bang for the buck? quadcopters are good for killing people but you can't deliver an oil drum of ANFO to a pipeline that way. Most you can do is arson probably. Remember those guys who caused a big blackout by shooting at electrical substations?
i wanted like, half a book about this at least. probably necessary omission for it to be publishable but still
Honestly, in the imperial core, I would emphasis more on the learn to hack, than the quadcopters and drones. Gotta think outside the box. I feel like Malm's book may have caused a tunnelvision on the physical pipelines instead of the infrastructure that builds and maintains them. Payrolls, communications, Industrial control systems... there's a whole eco-system of interdependent systems that maintains Capital's order and they are largely digital nowadays.
bro took Mr Robot a little too seriously
lol I've been around for much longer than Mr Robot.
Well I should have used one of slightly less plausible options from prior decades. Many great examples. Anyways looks like it's gonna be international trade not hackermans, they started banning ppls from SWIFT and started something irreversible
Because as we all know, the one thing the US is renowned for is knowing when it's been beaten.
Yeah bro I think Krugman is super smart. That's what I was saying,
Don't know how i feel about everyone throwing around unabomber fantasies & Anonymous larping. But that's what I'm saying, yeah we overextended
I meant the US is running off the cliff like Wile E Coyote with the sanctions and losing the ability to sustain our nonsensical bloated financial rentier class (they're gonna make us all pay as much as it's in their power ofc)
The US has backdoors in the hardware of the chips we use in phones and computers. There are no free CPU and GPU architectures i know of. Eyeing riscv of course
That blackout was due to kinks in the power grid and was back up very quickly, there's protection on those radiators exactly for this, and they'd add more security if waves attacks happened
This assumes that the feds can't do surveillance effectively because right wingers carry out terrorist attacks effectively, but we all know the real reason they make such "oversights"
Im gonna blow your mind. Pipelines and railroads can be sabotaged pretty similarly. Domestic oil is currently moved by over 80% in this fashion.
Is disrupting 80% of the domestic oil industry an easy market fix?
I don't think you're seeing how much volume and geographic dispersion that figure entails; it's not like they're routing it all through Penn Station.
Given the widely publicized derailment of a 1.4 mile train resulting in absolutely fuck all happening to prevent it again, I imagine it would take a complex and highly coordinated campaign just to rise above background. You're not going to accomplish much with a handful of isolated cells doing stochastic terrorism.
Destruction of fossil fuel infrastructure won't necessarily make it less profitable (particularly for surviving pipeliners). But raising the perceived risk premium can shift all sorts of investment calculations, especially during periods of higher interest rates and declining fossil fuel prices.
Hah good description of someone I dated who aspired to publically humiliating herself in a closed meeting of pharma bros before getting escorted out by security & lobbying Nancy Pelosi about chronic lyme