Sparking A Worldwide Energy Revolution: Purpose, Structure, and Contents — Book Excerpt
AK Press’s newest book, Sparking A Worldwide Energy Revolution: Social Struggles in the Transition to a Post-petrol World will arrive at the warehouse any second (and remember to take advantage of the 25% discount through the next month). In the midst of the global rage against BP and their catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf, it’s our distinct pleasure to present this exciting new collection. At 688 pages, it’s an ambitious book. The energy sector is changing dramatically and if we want to avoid being led by panics, peaks, and disasters, we’d better start investigating our options. Sparking provides no easy answers but it does map out the complex relationships between energy production and consumption, technology, and the capitalist relations that drive them. There’s nothing else like it. Read on for an excerpt from the Introduction, by Kolya Abramsky.
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As the many chapters in this book show, a wide range of social struggles are emerging in relation to energy. An understanding of these struggles is important in order to assess both short-term priorities for collective action, as well as longer term strategic orientation within struggles that may take several years to bear fruit, if indeed they ever do. The book aims to pose strategic questions as to how to open up spaces that can bring about and mobilize the kind of mass social and political force that is necessary for an accelerated transition to a decentralized, equitable, and ecologically sensitive energy system, which contributes to a wider process of building emancipatory relations. In particular, an important aim of this book is to highlight the importance of ownership, labor, land, and livelihood in relation to a discussion of energy resources, their infrastructures, and technologies. The different chapters point to the fact that in order to get to the root of the problems, struggles in the North and South have to develop a collective global process to take decisions concerning energy.
Above all, the aim of this book is to contribute to a process of ensuring that any future transition to a new energy system is part of a wider movement to construct non-capitalist relations that are substantially more egalitarian, decentralized, and participatory than the current relations. It strives to offer long-term perspectives in order to discern where axes of conflict and rupture lie, as well as where possibilities for common struggle in the short term might exist. In addition to the crucial question of which energy sources and technologies are the most suitable, there is also the question of how energy is used (or not used), in what quantities, and for what purposes.
If we make these decisions through capitalist markets, we end up stressed out, overworked, and murdered, divided and pitted against one another, while the planet goes to hell. If we make these decisions through the capitalist state, we end up repressed, silenced, and manipulated into believing that the sacrifices that are required of us to deal with this “emergency” and “crisis” are worth the suffering, since it will be the final crisis, and there will never be another “crisis” again, while in fact it will merely open up a new cycle of more of the same.
The book seeks to contribute to an appreciation of the open and political nature of the “energy crisis” and its “solutions,” and to question the idea of “transition” as something fixed and predetermined. While technology is, and will surely continue to be, of great importance, the process of building an emancipatory post-petrol energy system will not be the inevitable result of technological fate. If such a system is to emerge, it will largely be the result of collective human activity and choices, intentional or otherwise. There is no single “transition” process waiting to unfold that already exists in the abstract. Multiple possible transition processes exist, and the actual outcome will be determined through a long and uncertain struggle. These struggles are already rapidly taking shape, and in all probability we are only in the very early phases of this process. This book seeks to help orientate people within these emerging conflicts so that they can actively anticipate, prepare for, and sharpen these struggles.
Many different actors and voices play their part in the energy sector, and the sector is criss-crossed by multiple conflicts and alliances. This book seeks to create a space where different voices from around the world, who come from different areas the energy sector, can share information and listen to one another. In doing so, the aim is to contribute towards the building of a critical common analysis, or rather map, of the current worldwide “energy crisis.” It is hoped that this can help strengthen people’s ability to act collectively in order to intentionally shape future developments in the energy sector in ways that contribute to a rapid and smooth transition process, in the face of worldwide economic-financial and political crisis.
However, it is hoped that this book will go beyond information exchange and the development of common analyses. By bringing organizational processes that are frequently working in isolation into contact with one another, or at least making them known to each other, it is anticipated that the book may be able to contribute to concrete organizational processes, both in the short and longer term. As such, it is intended to be a networking tool that can contribute to building the kind of collective social force that is capable of bringing about an emancipatory “transition process.”
Rather than appealing to politicians and “official decision makers,” this book especially seeks to reach self-organized grassroots organizations with similar ideas and principles and from all continents, in order to contribute to the emancipatory potential of renewable energy within the context of wider social change. It is hoped that the book can make a significant contribution towards already existing networking processes between organizations, and the development of common communication tools to encourage increased exchange and knowledge of each other’s work, foster ongoing links and the creation of longer term collaborative initiatives. For this reason, to ensure it has a maximum impact possible, Sparking A Worldwide Energy Revolution is being published under a Creative Commons License. Translation into other languages is encouraged.
It is hoped that this collective work might contribute to strengthening people’s collective capacity for exchange and support between different struggles in defense of livelihoods, rights, and territories related to the global energy sector. This includes several aspects: on the one hand, rural communities throughout the world, including indigenous communities and communities of African descent, who are struggling against the negative impacts of extraction, processing and transportation of energy resources and the associated infrastructures. And on the other, workers in the existing energy sectors, as well as energy-intensive industries, and their communities and dependants who are struggling to protect their livelihoods in the face of the far-reaching structural changes that have begun and that are likely to intensify in the years ahead.
Another aim is to encourage people’s capacity for exchange and mutual support of different struggles in defense of common/collective/cooperative or public ownership and control of energy resources, infrastructures, and technologies. This includes fossil fuel resources and associated infrastructures (such as electricity generation and distribution), which are being privatized due to bilateral, regional, or multilateral free trade and investment agreements. And it also includes renewable energy resources, infrastructures, and technologies, which are coming into the sights of investors. A big challenge is to develop proposals and interventions collectively that allow these vital resources to aid in the collective self-reliance of community organizations.
The book also seeks to create a conceptual framework for laying the foundations for solidary, upward-leveling relationships between workers in different branches of the energy sector, and the avoidance of downward-leveling competition between them. A key question resulting from all this is: how can workers in the different areas of the sector avoid being pitted against one another in competition (which would almost certainly result in a downward-leveling relationship)? It will be important that workers across the different branches are able to build a process based in solidarity and mutual support, which aims at upward leveling between them.
This collection also seeks to create a framework for thinking about what kind of long term collaboration and cooperative projects and initiatives in non-commercial renewable energy technology transfer, open source technology research, education, training, and grassroots exchanges might be both useful and possible. This is especially important in relation to three broad social groupings: a) rural communities (communities and communities of African descent) whose territories contain abundant renewable energy resources; b) urban tenants and home owners, who could implement major changes in residential energy production and consumption patterns, c) energy sector workers in the fossil and nuclear industries, as well as workers in energy-intensive industries, whose livelihoods may be directly threatened by a transition to a new energy system.
Finally, the book also seeks to contribute to a long term strategic debate about how, and for what purposes, wealth is produced and distributed in society, and how people’s subsistence needs are met, as part of a shift to a new energy system. The key means for generating society’s wealth and human subsistence include: land, water, energy, factories, schools, etc. Especially important in this context are energy-intensive industries, such as transport, steel, automobiles, petrochemicals, mining, construction, the export sector in general, etc. The kind of far reaching change in the relations of production and exchange that are necessary for the scale and pace of the required energy shift, are difficult to imagine without these key means of generating wealth and subsistence being under some form of common, collective, participatory, and democratic control that is based around serving human needs rather than the profit needs of the (currently existing) world-market. However, following years of market-led reforms, and immense concentrations of wealth and power, we are very far from this reality. The dominant political strategy for achieving change is now, for the most part, rooted in a discussion of how to achieve minor regulatory reforms (at best including state ownership) rather than a more fundamental shift in control and ownership structure. This is true even in quite progressive and radical circles. Consequently, we urgently need to discuss what kind of short term interventions might help make such a political agenda more realistic to achieve in the near and medium term future.
The book is constructed in four sections, with fifteen parts and sixty chapters. The chapters combine analysis with stories of concrete developments and struggles. It starts by documenting the conflictive nature of the existing, predominantly-fossil-fuel-based energy sector, and then moves on to trace the emerging alliances, conflicts, and hierarchies that are starting to define the globally-expanding renewable energy sector. The final section of the book poses the question of whether a transition to a new energy system will take place within the framework of capitalism or as part of a process to create new social relations that seek to go beyond capitalism.
The book has been carefully structured to be read as a whole, from beginning to end. In this way, it seeks to build a collective map, based on the view as seen from some of the many different players within the sector. The chapters have been ordered in such a way as to trace relationships step-by-step in order to construct, from the bottom up, a view of the energy system. The result is an understanding of the worldwide energy system as a self-organizing, emerging whole that consists of many interrelated parts but which is larger than the sum of any of these individual parts. At the same time, it seeks to show that the future of this system is inherently uncertain and open. The focus of the different chapters moves back-and-forth between particular local dynamics within the energy sector to this wider systemic and global whole. Through this back-and-forth process a clearer understanding of the overall energy system is created, and is actually constructed through the very process of tracing the relations that exist between separate but interdependent parts that shape one another.
For this reason, readers are strongly encouraged to read the book in its entirety, from start to finish, but of course it is also possible to browse the book, as one would with an encyclopedia. Each chapter is a self-contained piece and can be read on its own and in whatever order the reader chooses. However, it is worth bearing in mind that reading it in this way will not give an overall sense of the world’s energy system as a whole, so an important goal of the book will be lost.