Critical engagements with “Climate Change as Class War”—author response

Abstract

In this paper, author Matthew Huber responds to all contributions on the SPE Special Theme about his book Climate Change as Class War: Building Socialism on a Warming Planet (Verso, 2022). This paper is part of the SPE Special Theme “Critical Engagements with ‘Climate Change as Class War.’”

Keywords:

• Class
• climate change
• Matthew Huber

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

About the author

Matthew T. Huber teaches in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York, USA.

Notes

1 Akbulut, “Critical Engagements,” 176.

2 Akbulut, “Critical Engagements,” 177.

3 Akbulut, “Critical Engagements,” 177.

4 Moody, On New Terrain, 38, 105.

5 Akbulut, “Critical Engagements,” 176.

6 Blanc, Red State Revolt.

7 Akbulut, “Critical Engagements,” 179.

8 Holloway, Change the World.

9 Hobsbawm, How to Change the World.

10 Cameron, “Critical Engagements,” 172.

11 Cameron, “Critical Engagements,” 168.

12 Cameron, “Critical Engagements,” 169–170.

13 Cameron, “Critical Engagements,” 171.

14 Fields and Fields, Racecraft; Combahee River Collective, “Collective Statement”; DuBois, Black Reconstruction; Robinson, Black Marxism.

15 Cameron, “Critical Engagements,” 169, 172.

16 Cameron, “Critical Engagements,” 168, 171.

17 Alter, “How the Well-Educated.”

18 Cameron, “Critical Engagements,” 171.

19 Cameron, “Critical Engagements,” 171.

20 Mair, Ruling the Void.

21 Katz-Rosene, “Critical Engagements.”

22 Ritchie, “Many Countries” and Vadén et al., “Decoupling for Ecological Sustainability.”

23 Katz-Rosene, “Critical Engagements,” 182.

24 Katz-Rosene, “Critical Engagements,” 182.

25 Lenin “Left-Wing Communism.”

26 See Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis, for such an account of the ruthless hold on power of the neoliberal Right, even when its core ideologies were largely discredited in the post-2008 era. See Bevin’s If We Burn for an analysis of the same era of failed mass protest movements around the world and the Left’s avoidance of more centralized political or party organization.

27 Michaels and Reed, No Politics but Class Politics.

28 Shattuck, “Critical Engagements.”

29 Herron, “Great Unfettering.”

30 Shattuck, “Critical Engagements,” 157.

31 Shattuck, “Critical Engagements,” 157.

32 Shattuck, “Critical Engagements,” 157.

33 Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, 84.

34 Panitch and Gindin, Socialist Challenge Today.

35 Shattuck, “Critical Engagements,” 158.

36 Ikeler, “Critical Engagements.”

37 Ikeler, “Critical Engagements,” 153.

38 Ikeler and Limonic, “Middle Class Decline?”

39 Ikeler, “Critical Engagements,” 151.

40 I should add that when it comes to Trump’s base, we must also add the petty bourgeoisie: a bloc of small business owners that, in my estimation, lives in a quite different world than liberal professionals (although, see Evans, Nation of Shopkeepers, for another view).

41 Hoare, “Moral Minoritarianism.”

42 Akbulut, “Critical Engagements,” 176.

43 This did not serve my slick three-part structure of the book very well, but I concede as much in the book. See Huber, Climate Change as Class War, 118–19.

44 Ehrenreich and Ehrenreich, “The Professional-Managerial Class.”

45 Piketty, Capital and Ideology.

46 US Census Bureau, “Educational Attainment.”

47 Miliband, State in Capitalist Society.

48 Aronoff, “Case for Pool Party Progressivism.”

49 Taylor, “Rural Electrification Administration.”

50 Liu, “Critical Engagements.” See also Liu, Virtue Hoarders.

51 Liu, “Critical Engagements,” 162.

52 Liu, Virtue Hoarders.

53 Stokes, “I Turned My House.”

54 Liu, “Critical Engagements,” 165.