Critical engagements with “Climate Change as Class War”—class critical ecomodernism

Abstract

This essay considers the import and originality of Matt Huber’s book Climate Change as Class War: Building Socialism on a Warming Planet. It identifies class critique and skillful application of the Professional-Managerial Class (PMC) concept to contemporary environmental movements as the book’s most substantive contributions, culminating in a reflective reassertion of Marxian modernism with regard to capitalist-induced climate change. It also finds lacunae in Huber’s underdeveloped theory of the state as it pertains to energy transition and in his connection (or lack thereof) between specific policy demands and working-class agency. These issues pose questions for further debate and elaboration, yet fail to overshadow the book’s generative class analysis and promising strategic proposals, which deserve widespread discussion on the activist Left. This paper is part of the SPE Special Theme “Critical Engagements with ‘Climate Change as Class War.’”