It’s complexity, stupid!

Let us then try to understand what left-wing denialism is and where it comes from. We focus, in this case, on climate denialism, but attempting to elaborate a type of understanding that applies to other areas as well.

If we know that right-wing denialism reflects very concrete material pressures – the need and interest in continuously feeding the profits of fossil capitalism – the left-wing version seems to arise from more subtle and less evident processes. We cannot exclude that, in a more indirect way, part of the left may also reflect material pressures that fuel denialism – amongst us too, social being determines consciousness. It is, however, more productive to look at the analytical biases that foster this error. Assuming that the world has become increasingly complex and, with it, the strategic challenges for the left, might be a first step towards understanding the origins of denialism in our camp. In the case of struggles for climate and ecological justice, the challenge of combining, in analysis and policy, factors of a physical, “natural” order with others that are of a social, “human” order is perhaps greater than in any other front of struggle. Note that this very division, which opposes the “natural” to the “human”, the so-called dualism, is itself very problematic and, if used incorrectly, capable of sabotaging any critical ecosocial thinking. I start from the premise that this difficulty is an important part of the explanation for the subsistence of the denialist trap in the ranks of the left.

The physical norms that govern the material world are non-negotiable, as they do not depend on the will of individuals or society. However, history and social development (and politics as a means of intervening in them), although they exist in the human realm, are also not immune to objective norms and tendencies that extrapolate the subjective will of politicians, parties and activists. Nevertheless, the laws and objective norms that govern these two worlds are distinct, operate at different degrees of abstraction and, therefore, are studied by different sciences: physics, chemistry and biology, on the one hand, history and sociology, on the other. How these two worlds interact – the physical, which primarily determines climate science – and the social – the class struggle, as we call it – is a complex problem to unravel.

Trump responds to this complexity with ultra-capitalist accelerationism and, in this, he is coherent. There are those on the left who respond to the problem with reductionism, which leads to two twin errors, apparently opposite but similar in every way: denialism and catastrophism. It may not seem so, but activists who aim to achieve climate justice by closing factories against the will of workers (a topic analysed in the previous issue of this magazine) or the former mayor Demétrio Alves and historian Raquel Varela (both left-wing) who deny climate science are closer to each other than might appear.

I argue, therefore, that on the left, climate denialism can be seen as the political consequence of reductionism in analysis.

Reducing and denying

What is reductionism? It is the analytical error of those who, faced with a complex object emerging from the combination of different elements of distinct origins, which, at first, obey different laws, choose to isolate one element from the whole, abstracting from the rest, or even denying them. Thus, a whole, always more complex than the sum of its constituent parts, is reduced to one of those parts – which makes the analysis easier, but also more superficial, if not entirely mistaken.

In the so-called hard sciences, there are long debates around these issues. Stephen Jay Gould, a dialectical materialist palaeontologist and biologist, addressed several of them: the combination of social and cultural factors with genetic ones in the formation of human intelligence and personality, for example. Against “biologistic” tendencies (but also “culturalist” ones), two forms of reductionism, Gould proposed a dialectical approach that integrated the various elements – biological, cultural, historical, or from each human being’s individual path – to understand a complex reality, human intelligence and “personality”, which emerged from the interaction and integration of these various concrete elements. [On this problem and various other fascinating subjects, read, for example, The science and humanism of Stephen Jay Gould, by Brett Clark and Richard York, or The mismeasure of man, by Gould himself.]

Furthermore, the concept of reductionism is not foreign to political analysis, particularly Marxist analysis. Much of the political battles in the history of revolutionary socialism can be viewed through this lens. More recently, the pressing issue of the intersection between race and class has been discussed from this perspective by various authors. [on the topic, read the article “Race and Class Reductionism Today” by David I. Backer]

Returning to the topic: it is possible to see the climate denialism of some left-wing figures as a consequence of a reductionist bias. Demétrio Alves, former CDU mayor, at the time of the devastating floods in Valencia, hastened to write that these had nothing to do with climate change; the problem would be the lack of urban planning and excessive construction. For some years now, historian Raquel Varela has also signed a series of invectives against the scientific consensus around climate change and those who defend it (invectives that have already received assertive responses from Miguel Heleno and Luís Leiria in two articles on esquerda.net). The historian’s “strong” argument is that important sectors of capital take advantage of the “supposed” (from Varela’s point of view) climate crisis to receive public subsidies in order to reconvert industry (automotive, for example), proceed with redundancies and various measures that increase the level of exploitation of workers, in addition to diverting public resources. Therefore, according to Raquel Varela, “global warming”, or at least its anthropogenic origin, would be a fallacy in the service of “big capital”.

Indeed, how can one deny that the lack of urban planning and unbridled construction, which override waterways and waterproof soils, were reflected in the Valencia catastrophe? Or that the automotive industry and fossil fuel giants manipulate the concept of climate transition to increase their profits in multiple ways (without even thereby cutting emissions)? The denialism of Alves, Varela and the like thus relies on elements that are not only true but even unavoidable – a policy for climate justice that forgets urban planning or the fight against greenwashing will certainly be lame. Their peccadillo is the reductionism in analysis that transforms into denialism in politics.

For a response to a complex crisis: Ecosocialism

Denialism thus emerges as the political expression of reductionism in analysis. Not infrequently, the problem lies in the defence of what is (wrongly) seen as the traditional recipe of socialist politics – the defence of wages – in opposition to responses to other contradictions of capitalism. Something like “workers first, planet later”, then decorated with seemingly more sophisticated ideological arguments – urbanism, greenwashing, etc.

This does not deny that the difficulty in reconciling physical, climatic and ecological determinations with social and political ones is real. And it does not only generate denialist unilateralities. On the other side of the mirror, we find equivalent evils. Among the movement for climate justice, not by chance, especially among its more urban sectors, based on the middle/upper classes and Western metropolises, there is also reductionism. Among part of the “climate movement”, in sectors that see themselves as “disruptive”, the climate crisis boils down to a physical, mathematical rationality: cutting or increasing emissions, meeting or not meeting scientific targets, this is how the problem is understood. In this way, the times, tactics and strategy of climate combat are determined according to technocratic goals – “ending fossil fuels by 2030”. The crisis is reduced to physics, the social factor is abstracted (who will lead the change, which classes, with which organisations, what is their awareness of this process?), politics is denied, the struggle is made unviable, defeat is guaranteed. Thus, Alves, Varela and the road blockers and paint sprayers have more to do with each other than they suspect. Some deny physics, others deny class struggle, all are reductionists. Perhaps the influence of academic methods and means, which tend to isolate elements of reality to analyse them separately in an ultra-specialised and unilateral way, prisoners of formal logic, is the explanation for this brotherhood.

Nevertheless, if we are committed not so much to criticising the shortcomings of others, but above all to building a policy and a mass movement that confront the ecosocial crisis from an anti-capitalist perspective, it would be petty to stop here.

“I can live well with others’ misfortunes”, my grandmother used to say, suggesting that we should leave others to their errors and concern ourselves with what we can do better. Perhaps that should be the focus of articles like this one from now on – spending less ink on irrelevant left-wing denialists and more, for example, on those of the far right. But if anything useful can come out of these lines, it is the call for a total – holistic as they say today – analysis and politics in the context of climate justice and ecosocial transformation. An orientation that integrates climate science and class struggle, the fight for public services and the commons, gender and race determinations, among many other factors. A programmatic response that coherently integrates the fight against lithium extraction in Covas do Barroso and the need for a real energy transition; the anti-capitalist yearnings of a “climate” youth vanguard and the class organisation of fossil industry workers; the denunciation of the false green transition made by capital with a policy of ecological planning; and all of this with the defence of public services, work with rights, the fight against various forms of gender, race or other oppression. It is more complex than the reduction, denialist or unilaterally climatic, of the crisis of capitalism to a comfortable superficiality. But it is what we have to do. Certainly, the Ecosocialist Meeting of the Left Bloc, on 22 March in Almada, will be a privileged space for these reflections – and to prepare for action, as we have no time to lose.

Anticapitalist #79 – March 2025

Manuel Afonso

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