The disaster makes no doubt for anyone anymore. The massive amount of images and speeches about makes us like the world is ending. It looks like exploiting and the putting the world to work lead us straight into catastrophy. And it seems impossible for civilization to change its course. We could worry about it. We could also happy about it. What an opportunity, there is nothing to do, no battle to fight. We only have to wait patiently for the economy to continue its work of self-destruction, ending its own millennial reign all by itself. The truth is, no one seems to believe it, we all keep making plans, starting with those accused of the disaster. The future is surely very bleak – there are always a good reason to screw ourselves up or to become completely cynical – but everyone still seems to be betting on it. It’s only a matter of time before everyone becomes Eco-friendly. We all know it’s not small daily individual actions that will change the deal. A major upheaval is necessary. But which one ? For what kind of future ?

First of all, the collapse of the world has to be translated into the collapse of the dominant model. Ecology mixes up both. By desiring to avoid the first one, it saves the second one by giving it an additional chance to survive. We have to fight alongside everything that resists to devastation, but we must stop talking about ecology. It is a condition to start thinking about revolution.

Ecology is the formulation of a problem in the terms of power

Ecology is the formulation of a problem in the terms of powerNothing is less perceptible than the structural causes of climate change. We could choose to attack any infrastructure, put an end to the use of any kind of energy, there would still be no guarantee that catastrophies will stop. The civilization we are fighting against has developt an organization of such complexity that it seems unthinkable to interfere in its functioning. Let’s stop imagining what would be the best organization for a new society. Another shitty world is always possible.

Ecology is not a battlefield but a large agora where power invites all those who want to participate in its next metamorphosis. In other terms, drone agriculture and permaculture participate in side by side to the construction of tomorrow’s world. Regardless of the upheavals that are sure to occur, we can be certain that the dominant model is, as usual, restructuring itself. All of today’s ecological as so many attempts to bring power back to reason. We should not underestimate the capacity of civilization to integrate to its political logic any correction that would make it last a little longer.

As long as we speak the language of power, its logic will always triumph and future will only be a perpetuation of the present, this infernal reality we experience everyday. A future where devastation is more or less confined thanks to a bunch of engineers ready to do anything, but where the logic of domination and alienation only deepens. This dystopian future makes us vomit.

To act against a future entirely submitted to technology, ecology has however found an answer. We would just have to rediscover an authentic connection to life, to the living. Farming production on a more human scale and respectful of the environment would be a good alternative to industrial modernity and to intensive and destructive agriculture. Because the earth does not lie. This is how the old figure of civilization, the peasant, has becomes a life-savior. We must also get rid of a certain vision of the future, which wants to go back to a past order.

The living is not sacred and is in nothing superior to anything else. There are battles that take place in natural environment reduced to a cement block. They are not less important. We must fight for everything that matters, everything that is irreducible. Some things resists, and mustn’t be forced to fit into objective categories created from scratch by biologists. Its precisely by making nature an object that it’s domination and destruction has been made possible.

Civilization was not born with industrial society, it is much older. The easy way to criticize modernity badly hides the fantasy of a past way of life. We must be able to refuse both. A future which frees itself from the past and the present must stop imagining what isn’t here, and start refusing what is already here. In other words, we must avoid invoking a “pre civilized world”, as much as planning what would happen “after revolution”. To do this, it is essential to stop proposing alternatives that fit perfectly well with power, and to stop
considering all lives that withdraw themselves from the dominant model as alternatives. The future must remain unknown. It’s the only condition to be able to see a future where the dominant model comes to an end.

These last few years, ecology has politicized people by bringing together all the inhabitants of the planet under a common banner. It’s supposed to put everyone on the same page : we must save our home planet. But it’s hard not to see how this universal project strongly looks a lot like the craziest dream of all fanatics of modernity. The image of the Earth as a visible and united whole was only made possible because one day, some enlightened people found the good idea to walk on the moon.

If there is a lesson to be learned from recent uprisings, such as the yellow vests in France, it is that the battle is not between the side of Good on one side and the side of Evil on the other. Behind the barricade, there are different positions - reactionaries, reformists, revolutionaries...- which cannot reconcile. It is a mistake to believe that divisions, at the expense of unity, weaken the battles. It’s quite the opposite, it’s a historical banality to notice that revolutionary impulses are often buried by the betrayal of those who one day or another embraced the institutions that they initially fought. It is always the same story that repeats itself. Those who want to improve the dominant model always end up taking over those who want to overthrow it. This is why it is absolutely necessary to make a distinction between these two sides.

Only an insurrectional space-time is able to annihilate the greatest number of dispositives. But we are not condemned to wait. All struggles can be occasions to fight and to built a revolutionary side. The revolutionary side grows in force inside conflictuality and can make History radically shift by destroying the hegemonia of Civilization.

Let’s meet again on the 25 th of march in Sainte-Soline, France, or elsewhere so -* that revolutionary positions can grow.

publié le 25 octobre 2022