Review | Lifehouse

Adam Greenfield argues that the key battles over climate are lost and activists should focus on adapting to the results of that failure. Pete Cannell responds that the only possible choice is to keep fighting for social change.

In October 2012 hurricane Sandy wrought havoc on the eastern seaboard of the US. The storm surge overwhelmed New York’s sea defences and destroyed the homes and livelihoods of many thousands of working-class New Yorkers. The response of the city authorities was slow and totally inadequate. In its place, networks built a year earlier through Occupy Wall Street stepped in to mount a huge programme of mutual aid which became known as Occupy Sandy. Adam Greenfield, the author of Lifehouse, was one of the volunteers.

2024 was the first year that global average temperatures exceeded pre-industrial levels by 1.5°. Each year since 2022, global average temperatures have increased at an unprecedented rate. Year on year, global heating is matching the most extreme end of the range of possibilities predicted by climate scientists. And, while energy generated from solar and wind power increases apace, fossil fuel use is at an all-time high and greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. Even if there were a massive shift to a low carbon economy tomorrow, rising temperatures, extreme weather and rising sea levels are baked into the global system for decades, probably centuries, to come. 

In his new book Lifehouse: Taking Care of Ourselves in a World on Fire Greenfield responds to this scenario by arguing that attempts to mitigate climate change have failed.  He makes three assumptions:

that a so-called ‘green energy transition’ will not take place in time to prevent the most consequential drivers of change from happening; that reparative ’geoengineering’  will not be attempted at the necessary scale or, if attempted, will not work as intended; and that in the time available to us, we will not invent some other technology capable of siphoning carbon from the atmosphere at the necessary scale, and rescuing ourselves that way.

Considering this, he calls on activists to redirect their efforts to adapting to the inevitable consequences of that failure. The core of the book draws on his experience of Occupy Sandy, the ideas of social theorist Murray Bookchin and other examples of collective social organisation including the Black Panthers and Rojava. 

Providing our own commons

The climate movement has always included activists who have argued for a return to nature, a retreat to a rural life that would involve rejecting all aspects of modernity. Greenfield’s position is different.  He recognises that most of the world’s population live in big urban centres and will likely continue to do so.  Building on his Occupy Sandy experience he suggests that every area needs to develop a Lifehouse, a building or complex of buildings that would form a focus for mutual aid, care and support for the local community – a place to meet and organise, find and share skills, grow food, provide medical services and much more. In any given urban area there would be many such sites. 

Greenfield expects that the deepening impact of the climate crisis will have a disrupting effect on the operation of the complex interconnected system that is 21st century capitalism.  This is certainly true. He also assumes that the retreat from state provision of public services that has developed in the neo-liberal era will continue.  He argues that:

if the state withdraws from [the provision of public goods] then there is only one possible response, which is for populations to self-organize to provide their own commons.

Accepting this, Greenfield then pays little attention to the state as he develops the Lifehouse concept.  I think this a profound mistake for reasons which I will attempt to address in the rest of this review. 

Greenfield’s articulation of Bookchin’s ideas recognises real problems with the Lighthouse model.  He notes that local systems of mutual aid may well be predicated on exclusivity, racist or misogynist ideas. Clearly the survivalist movement in the US is an example of this.  And in response to the cost-of-living crisis in Britain the far right was, and remains, proactive in setting up food banks and spaces where people could seek support.  His response is to suggest that the Lifehouse model should include an assumption of connectedness or confederation with other Lifehouses. He also notes that Lifehouses are likely to attract hostile responses from the state or from non-state reactionary forces. Again, I think this is right. While states welcome some forms of substitution for welfare services – typically charity run food banks and other services – they are much less keen on initiatives that involve collective working-class organisation.

The repressive state

The Lifehouse model assumes explicitly that it is possible to organise outside the state and alongside the state.  Greenfield argues that we should start building Lifehouses now. But almost everywhere that brings you up against a state that is increasingly repressive and intolerant of dissent, in a context of militarism, racism, misogyny and transphobia and the growth of the far right.  If we forswear mitigation and throw all our energies into adaptation it seems to me that we are in effect surrendering the ground to reaction. Greenfield notes at one point that a dystopian future might yet include small, favoured patches of relative normality, refuges for the rich. We can be sure that such enclaves would be armed to the teeth. On the other hand, if we focus on adaptation and turn to building Lifehouses our small patches of mutual aid and cooperation would have no such defence.

I want to argue that the alternative is to take system change seriously. That means breaking and replacing the capitalist system.  I’m conscious that here and now that might seem as utopian as the idea that we can remodel the world as a connected web of confederated Lifehouses.  I’m open to the idea that a sustainable world might look something like Adam Greenfield’s vision.  But the key challenge is surely how we can turn the world upside down and end the system which is driving us to disaster?  And here socialists have a historic responsibility.  

It’s clear that the climate crisis is systemic. The capitalist system has driven huge increases in material wealth through the exploitation of human labour and through commodification of the environment and material world. The system depends on continual growth and is incompatible with sustainable existence on a finite world. Revolutionary socialists have always argued that if those who labour seize the means of production, the fruits of human labour could be shared equally.  We talk about a world to win that could provide comfort, leisure and security for all. Today, however, the world we inherit is one where, as a result of the environmental damage caused by two centuries of industrial capitalism, the conditions of human existence are far more inhospitable than was the case previously.  The socialist revolution would necessarily apply the emergency brake to runaway climate change, but it can’t stop the damage that has already been done. The conditions for human existence in a world without capitalism will present a challenge for survival. Many of the world’s major cities will be underwater, there will be mass migration as some areas become too hot for human habitation and food production will be under huge strain in a world where extreme weather events are far more frequent. 

Socialists can’t promise a future of what has been called ‘fully automated luxury communism’. But we can expose the lies and deceptions of mainstream bourgeois governments and the far-right populists who are jockeying to replace them with the promise of a return to some earlier and mythical time of comfort and security. No such promise is possible in a world on fire.  Of course, exposing the lies is only possible if there are demonstrably possible alternatives and that’s our task to develop and popularise. 

The global working class

The wealth of the capitalist ruling class is built on the labour of generations of workers around the world and the blood and bones of the untold millions who were murdered through war and colonisation as capitalism spread around the globe. It is a system of great power and sometimes open, sometimes concealed, brutality. However, it depends for its existence on a global working class. Moreover, in this era of late capitalism it depends critically on complex systems and long global supply chains that can break if key workers withdraw their labour or under the impact of extreme weather events.  It’s brittle and vulnerable. That’s why Adam Greenfield’s argument for giving up on mitigation is so wrong.

Winning political arguments about who’s to blame for the crisis and how to ensure a secure future for all is not easy. In hard times it’s necessary for the left to articulate ‘freedom dreams’. Part of the argument has to be about a new economy that provides that security. But it also needs explicit recognition that the system that puts profit before the lives of people and trashes the life chances of future generations has to end. Achieving that goal requires a compelling vision and building collective power in workplaces and communities around the world. Along the way some states may be forced to make concessions and take mitigating action – but the only sustainable end game is the overthrow of those states.

This critique of Lifehouse is not an attack on mutual aid.  Practices of mutual aid are a vital and necessary part of working-class resistance – most notably in the urban centres of the global south. At times they may be essential to sustain class struggle and community survival but always against the state. To build sustainable centres for collective support and organisation requires the development of networks of resistance built through class struggle.  And if we do that then we can aspire to so much more.

Lifehouse is published by Verso Books