3.2 Forming a wider social bloc from an offensive and inclusive coalition

As we look past our differences, and agree on our commonalities, it will be important to prioritize filial modes of sociation over contractual ones and a destiny shared by all. On this matter, it will be tempting to propose scattered and concurrent exit strategies for this crisis, but that would be counter-productive. Certainly, the many resulting experiments would be grounding, but this dispersal would demand more than we have to give. Making new alliances will be feasible and necessary, requiring clear definitions of inclusion and exclusion. They will allow everyone the chance to broaden their actions and perspectives. Alliances will be prerequisite to the creation of a formal coalition and its formalization within the constitution of inclusive social blocs.

To this day, neither the urgency to act nor calls for change have incited an appropriate response from heads of state and large international organizations or institutions. What’s more, agreements such as the Convention on Biological Diversity¹ or COP 21² have been reached, and watchwords along the lines of the Sustainable Development Goals³(SDG) issued. These mitigation measures are wildly insufficient in creating the needed upheaval that would adequately respond to contradictions (development of social inequalities, destruction of ecosystems, political insecurity…) instituted by the modern civilizational order and the social interests it promotes. These are conventions, agreements and objectives that, among other things, are barely adhered to, if at all, and are often not respected by the states.

Additionally, it must be noted that this axial upheaval will not come from the business sector, through its attempts at responsibilizing or humanizing capital.

This upheaval will be everybody’s problem. In the day-to-day, it is part of a long-standing commitment that has been renewed time and again over the centuries. This commitment has been expressed with calls for systemic change proposed by intellectuals, explored by ideators or different agencies, and most recently, related by progressive and critical media.

The unfolding of this emancipatory narrative is a testament to subversive experiments that are constantly being reborn from their ashes. Some have gone the way of institutionalization through a variety of associative forms or new modes of sociality. These ways of “thinking and doing differently” have taken place at the local level, and still to this day, even at the level of institutional organizations and arrangements, through processes and dynamics that test new relationships with the economy, with politics, the legal system or culture.

The transition would not be possible solely by destroying the basis of inherited materials… and replacing it with another. A new mode of production will take its place when it has a material basis of its own⁴

We must support a new system of governance whose principle task is to create a system that is mutually beneficial for humans, all living creatures and the constituent elements of the Earth system. The Earth community as a whole must share “commonalities” –earth, water, air and ecosystems – with each other in a healthy and sustainable way in order to respect everybody’s well-being. In addition, the laws must align with planetary limits and reflect biophysical realities⁵.

In other words, dialectically speaking, history is transitional, both on a daily basis and over the long term.

History is a testament to the presence of circumstantial or gradual modifications of both small and giant quantitative and qualitative leaps.
History is full of breakthrough initiatives and ideations, or ones on the fringe, of which some succeed in modifying behaviour, habits and thought processes.

Revolutions, either quiet or violent, as disruptive mechanisms of adjustment or repositioning, certainly play an important role in any transitional process.

Revolutions are catalysts of processes and accelerators of dynamics.
Revolutions put pressure on representations of a future that is shared or not, full of moments of overcoming, siloing (counter-revolutions) or travesties.

Granted, all subversive intentions that propose minor or major change are often scattered at the outset. Even if they resonate with certain people, these intentions are rarely unified and convergent. This intention, or this drive, is generally confronted with the conservative and protective reactions of aristocratic or elite interests, those in charge of, or in control of, the institutions responsible for the modalities for regulating institutional orders. Being in this dominant position allows them to filter out advantages and disadvantages in order to have these intentions for change appear either in a positive or a negative light. This implies that transitions cannot afford to engage in conflicts arising from colliding perspectives and interests. The modalities for regulating these conflicts are a major challenge.

Representation of the transition mechanisms from Marx’s analysis :

transition from feudalism to capitalism (Maurice Godelier, op. cit., p. 63)

Combinations of social formations and material modes of production (relations of production) (productive base)	Events in the evolution of the system
	NEW ADEQUATE SOCIAL FORMATION with development of a FORMER MATERIAL BASE	Period of birth and growth of the new social mode of production and decline of the former mode
NEW ADEQUATE MATERIAL BASE with the development of a NEW SOCIAL FORMATION	Period of maturation, flourishing and domination of the new mode of production
FORMER INADEQUATE SOCIAL FORMATION with the development of a NEW MATERIAL BASE	Period of decline and dissolution of this mode of production and appearance of new social forms of production
State of the economic system	Movement
‘Dialectic’ of relationships, of forces in motion
SOCIAL FORMS	Embryonic sporadic developments	Growing permanent development	Flourishing general development	Declining dissolution	In ruins vestiges

Therefore, a renewal of material bases generally corresponds with a recomposition of elites and aristocracies, or, at the very least, with a reconfiguration of social blocs with or without the ability to hold power and influence the future of societies. For over two hundred years, the work of recomposing elites and reconfiguring developmental modalities has given way to alternative proposals for deploying the hegemony of a “modern project” under the banner of liberalism.

Amid these proposals, some have exerted real influence, allowing for an upgrade of such a project. They have contributed to its evolution allowing it to move from first to second phases of modernity, and then to a third and a fourth. However, they have never yielded a new narrative, a new horizon, a new ‘social bloc’, nor a reordering of society’s major institutional spaces. This strategy was so effective, the transition essentially took the path of resilience, reinforcing the capitalist – and other – foundations of the modern civilizational order.

Analyzing great transitions throughout history that have characterized the life cycles of past civilizations would testify to many challenges overcome and failures admitted. But none of these transitions have been confronted with a situation as complex as the current one, where the entire population of the planet is simultaneously threatened by a tangible, visible and adventitious threat, as seen, on a small scale, by the COVID-19 pandemic, the invasion of the Ukraine and the present rebellion in Iran, and on a broader spectrum, by the continuous widening of social inequalities, climate instability and a deterioration of the Earth’s natural ecosystems.

In view of the utmost urgency at hand, the slow transitional process outlined by Maurice Godelier to characterize the passage from feudalism to capitalism would be inadequate in tackling the global and planetary crisis⁶. Crucially, we must respond to this crisis with speed, efficiency, relevance and caution. As key moments marking revolutionary periods have demonstrated, success will depend on forming a federation or joining forces around network leaders in order to reach the consensus required for identifying new institutional pathways, all in order to induce necessary qualitative leaps and a deconstruction of the modern hegemony’s institutional structures⁷. The challenge will be in managing a fast-tracked transition mechanism to move beyond the spirit of modernity and facilitate the emergence of an age of Awakening.

We depend on an “organized world” for our survival, devised by industry and management. Presently, this world is under threat of collapse. While progressive movements dream of a shared world, we have, against our will, inherited less bucolic commonalities, “negative” ones, in the likes of contaminated rivers and land, polluting industries, supply chains or even digital technologies. What to do with this burdensome inheritance upon which billions of people depend for the short term, all the while it is being condemned in the medium term ? We have no other choice but to learn, urgently, to restore, to foreclose and to reallocate this heritage all while maintaining judicial and democratic stakes. Up against the modernization front and the anthropology of the project, openness and innovation, all that’s left is to invent an art of shutting down and dismantling : an (anti)environmentalism where we “get our hands dirty.” (Book cover)

Notes

1
Conference on biodiversity : https://www.cbd.int/doc/legal/cbd-en.pdf.
2
The Paris Agreement : https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/the-paris-agreement.
3
Sustainable Development Goals : https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/.
4
Maurice Godelier (1990). “La théorie de la transition chez Marx.” Sociologie et sociétés, 22 (1), 53 – 81. https://doi.org/10.7202/001301, p. 63)..
5
Matthias Petel (2018). “La nature : d’un objet d’appropriation à un sujet de droit. Réflexions pour un nouveau modèle de société,” Revue interdisciplinaire d’études juridiques, 1, vol. 80, p. 207 à 239, pp. 221 – 222. On this matter, see also : Thibault Faraüs (2022). Les écosystèmes ont-ils des droits ? Ed Libel, https://www.les-communs-dabord.org/parution-les-ecosystemes-ont-ils-des-droits-par-thibault-faraus-editions-libel-fevrier-2022/.
6
Dominique Bourg et al. (2020). Retour sur Terre, 35 propositions, Paris, PUF, Hors collection.
7
Emmanuel Bonnet, Diego Landivar and Alexandre Monnin (2021). Héritage et fermeture. Une écologie du démantèlement, Paris, Divergences.