Take up the struggle for transformation

Take up the struggle for transformation!

By Tomasz Konicz / June 1, 2025

[This article posted on 6/1/2025 is translated from the German on the
Internet, https://www.konicz.info/2025/06/01/den-transformationskampf-aufnehmen/.]


For a militant awareness of the crisis

A contribution to the discussion on the strategic orientation of
emancipatory practice in the socio-ecological system crisis.

arranca #56, Summer 2024, Tomasz Konicz

Link: https://arranca.org/ausgaben/nichts-zu-verlieren/den-transformationskampf-aufnehmen

It is a classic ploy of reactionary ideologues to play off social
issues against climate protection. From the AfD to Sahra Wagenknecht,
from Friedrich Merz to Klaus Ernst, when it comes to preventing
climate protection measures, they like to portray themselves as
advocates of the “little man” who is in danger of falling by the
wayside. And, as with all ideology, there is some truth to this. The
grain of truth in this narrative is that the climate struggle, as
conducted within capitalism, does indeed increase pressure on wage
earners. The “climate activists” of the Last Generation stress
commuters who are late for work. For wage earners, climate protection
manifests itself in the form of rising energy prices or the costs of
home renovation passed on to rents. And finally, millions of wage
earners in Germany work in the fossil fuel industries. They can
sometimes only reproduce their labor power by manufacturing combustion
engines.

So, rat catchers of all stripes have an easy time exploiting the
social consequences of the contradiction between economy and ecology.
The lie that turns this narrative into ideology is precisely that it
ignores this fundamental contradiction between capital and climate.
The capitalist system has to burn up ever-greater amounts of resources
in commodity production in order to make more money in its endless
drive for profit. Since wage labor is the substance of capital, all
increases in productivity lead to an increase in the output of goods
and thus also in the global production machine's hunger for resources.

And all late capitalist societies are, in a sense, dependent on this
process of global destruction in the form of wages and taxes. This is
indeed a contradiction that cannot be resolved within capitalism.
Capitalism is full of such contradictions. And this contradiction
pervades all wage earners, such as those in the automotive industry,
who are paying off their terraced houses and financing their
children's studies, while it is becoming increasingly clear what a
murderous ecological price this will have.

The climate crisis only makes it evident that the working class, as
“variable capital” within capitalist destruction, is not a
revolutionary subject and that class struggle is a simple struggle for
distribution. How should emancipatory forces now deal with such
demagoguery, which plays off the social crisis of capital against the
ecological crisis? Well-meaning, old-school Marxists often make
seemingly helpless attempts to construct a consensus between economic
class or “worker interests” and climate protection, which also ignores
the late-capitalist abysses outlined above. Instead, it is time to
clearly state what is at stake in order to aggressively address these
contradictions and the systemic crisis underlying them, rather than
sweeping them under the rug. The fact that wage earners must choose
every day between social survival in the here and now and climate
collapse in the coming years is an expression of the need to overcome
capitalism's compulsion for growth.

Saying what is really going on

Consequently, there is a necessary, radical response to all
demagoguery that pits climate protection against the capitalist
interests of wage earners: the struggle for systemic transformation.
Capital not only fails to reconcile social and climate issues, but is
also simply incapable of solving either the climate crisis or the
social crisis due to its compulsion to exploit, fueled by escalating
contradictions. Consequently, capital must be consigned to history.
This is the correct response, not only to all demagoguery, but also to
the dual crisis of capital—instead of constructing some kind of
revolutionary subject that unfortunately does not exist. To put it in
the jargon of old-school Marxism: the worker would only become a
“revolutionary subject” if he no longer wanted to be a worker.

Since there is in fact no class in itself that could function as a
revolutionary subject by virtue of its position in the production
process, the only hope is for the emergence of a radical crisis
consciousness among the population that would serve as the basis for
an emancipatory transformation movement. That is why it is crucial in
all practical efforts to tell people what is going on with regard to
the crisis in order to develop an awareness of the nature and depth of
the crisis in which we find ourselves. Capital, as a blindly
processing, fetishistic dynamic of exploitation, is reaching its
internal and external limits of development, thereby depriving human
civilization of its social and ecological foundations. The collective
overcoming of the capitalist system is thus becoming a matter of
social survival. And this is precisely what must be communicated to
people in all the concrete struggles that are flaring up as a result
of the contradictions and upheavals escalating due to the crisis.

Crisis competition, survival instinct, and sublimation

The sense that the system is in a serious crisis is omnipresent. And
the intensifying upheavals are giving rise to the usual interaction
between social decline and increasing competitive behavior. It is
precisely this crisis competition, fueled by the naked instinct for
survival, that is contributing to the barbarization of capitalism and
the rise of the New Right—which cloaks this crisis competition in
racism, nationalism, anti-Semitism, religious fanaticism, and so on.
This unconsciously practiced survival instinct, caught up in the
escalating late-capitalist everyday competition, must be “sublimated”
within the framework of emancipatory practice. This refers to the
conscious reflection on the unconscious causes of social action, in
this case the interaction between competitive thinking and systemic
crisis processes. Just as the blind survival instinct of market
subjects only accelerates the crisis dynamic and opens the door to
barbarism, a reflective collective urge to survive, which has assured
itself of the necessity of overcoming capital for the survival of
society as a whole, could be a powerful motivating factor for
emancipatory forces in the struggle to transform late capitalism. A
radical awareness of the crisis is therefore aware of the insolubility
of the socio-ecological capitalist double crisis and the necessity of
system transformation for survival.

What is the struggle for transformation?

A revolution is therefore not necessary, as capital is
self-destructive. And the transformation process is actually already
in its early stages. The crisis is unfolding as a fetishistic,
uncontrollable process throughout society, developing in waves, driven
by competition and the market, without regard for the views and
calculations of those caught up in the capitalist treadmill. Even if
wage earners refuse to believe it, even if all relevant sections of
the population cling to capitalism, the system will collapse under its
own internal contradictions. What comes next, however, remains
open—and that is precisely why the struggle for transformation must be
waged. Post-capitalist society could sink into barbarism or realize
moments of emancipation. Much is still possible. Since the course of
this upheaval is also open-ended, the open term “transformation” is
used here to encompass all possible types of coordinated, chaotic,
peaceful, or violent transitions to a different social formation
(including the impending transition to collapse).

In fact, the struggle for transformation is already raging, but it is
not perceived as such. The crisis dynamics are being carried out by
escalating global and internal social conflicts, with the rise of the
New Right and the danger of authoritarian, fascist crisis management
currently making anti-fascism the central front line between
reactionary and progressive forces. This is why the cross-front
activities within the left are so devastating. The concrete struggles
currently being waged by the self-eroding political camps will
determine the direction in which capitalism, now in its death throes,
will stumble.

The struggle for transformation is therefore about understanding the
concrete struggles currently fueled by the socio-ecological global
crisis of capital as part of a broader struggle for the concrete
course of the inevitable systemic transformation, and about
consciously leading these struggles in order to spread awareness of
the crisis among the population. It is the great, very real common
ground that minimizes competition between movements, as it can bring
the different progressive movements to a common denominator, uniting
them as part of a common struggle for an emancipatory transformation
process. There is no need to hallucinate about intra-capitalist
convergences of interest between “class warriors” and climate
activists, since both movements are part of a single movement.

It is therefore crucial to be aware of the consciousness with which
the current protests and struggles are being waged, even if their
concrete course does not necessarily differ greatly from the reformist
struggles inherent in the system. The objective of such a consciously
conducted, apparently systemic conflict—climate struggle, wage
struggle, anti-fascist protest, demonstrations against the dismantling
of democracy, defensive struggles against social cuts, etc.—changes as
soon as it is imbued with a transformative consciousness—that is, when
it is understood and propagated as an early phase of the struggle for
transformation. The path becomes the goal: the self-organization of
people in the corresponding opposition movements must therefore
already be driven by the desire to develop moments of post-capitalist
socialization.

Thinking in the crisis

It is no longer a question of repairing the ailing system, but of
finding optimal ways out of the permanent capitalist crisis through
concrete struggles, precisely because a collapse of capital into
barbarism and collapse would mark the final defeat of the left. The
left must therefore understand the crisis as a process unfolding in
waves, and consequently think in terms of processes and developments,
perceive existing social structures as in a state of decay, identify
the decisive contradictions, and, in anticipation of the enormous
upheavals to come, create the best social conditions and the optimal
starting point for emancipatory transformation. This always raises the
very concrete question of which political structures and social power
configurations should prevail in the next wave of crisis. The crisis
process unfolding behind the backs of the subjects can affect late
capitalist societies with very different structures. They may be
oligarchic, pre-fascist or bourgeois-democratic, more egalitarian or
class-based, nationalist or cosmopolitan, secular or religiously
fascist, and so on.

Class struggle, driven by a radical awareness of the crisis, can
function as a seed form and partial moment of the struggle for
transformation, just as the climate struggle can. A clear stance
against fascism and crisis opportunism—the open propagation of
transformation is also the best antidote to opportunism—must therefore
be accompanied by an integrative approach that reaches as far as
possible in order to create the optimal conditions for transformation
through the formation of broad alliances. The difficulty of such an
alliance policy lies, on the one hand, in locating forces that have
the potential to steer the further transformation process in an
emancipatory direction and, on the other hand, in bringing radical
crisis awareness into these movements.

In doing so, however, it is important to avoid hierarchizing the
struggles into class-struggle main contradictions and other secondary
contradictions. Class-based conflicts in wage struggles or social
protests can only serve to overcome their false immediacy in the
course of the struggle if they are treated as equal to other social
struggles, such as anti-fascism, climate activism, anti-militarism,
feminism, the defense of democracy, sexual self-determination, etc.,
within a transformative movement. By bringing a radical awareness of
the crisis into the mix, social struggles, protests, or redistribution
struggles would become moments of transformative struggle that would
quickly escalate as social or ecological tipping points, which are
likely to coincide more and more often, are crossed.

Even short-sighted practical approaches such as class struggle, often
conducted with a false sense of immediacy, and counter-proposals that
are blind to the constraints of subjectless, late-capitalist rule,
such as the post-growth and degrowth movements stuck in niche
thinking, could be amalgamated here in the concrete, consciously
conducted struggle for a post-capitalist future. The progressive
struggle for transformation would be the fusion of both impulses, the
struggle for the survival of the civilizational process, which can
only be maintained through the realization of social alternatives.

The concept of emancipation also emerges from the struggle for
transformation—it is an emancipation from social fetishism, i.e., from
the alienation of subjects through social dynamics that these subjects
themselves unconsciously produce through market forces. This can only
be achieved by a movement that is aware of its own situation. That is
why it is important to tell people what is going on, because only a
conscious struggle for a post-capitalist future, resulting from an
understanding of its necessity, could possibly give rise to moments of
emancipation. The struggle against the dismantling of democracy in
late capitalism would then have to be waged as a struggle to maintain
nonviolent paths of transformation, precisely because the crisis will
encourage an authoritarian flight into belief in the state.

The orientation toward a post-capitalist social formation could not
only put a stop to the authoritarian lust for power of the
conservative elements of the traditionalist camp, it could also
undermine the reactionary narrative of consumer renunciation: in a
post-capitalist society, human needs would be freed from the
straitjacket of the commodity form. This liberation of needs from the
compulsion to consume goods could thus save massive resources without
being perceived as a renunciation of consumption.

It is therefore necessary, despite all evidence to the contrary, to
fight to shape the inevitable process of transformation that will
inevitably bring an end to the current state of affairs and whose
course and outcome are still open, through a conscious movement. In
the process, the seeds of a post-capitalist society must already begin
to appear, consciously shaped in an egalitarian, grassroots democratic
process of understanding. System transformation is inevitable; what
matters is steering it in a progressive, emancipatory direction. There
is no alternative to tackling this seemingly megalomaniacal
undertaking, as the system threatens to collapse into barbarism as it
follows its destructive momentum. The transition of capital into
history represents the final capitalist constraint.