Merger formula: Integrating the class and ecological axes

Abstract Klaus Dörre et al.’s article “Class versus climate? Transformation conflicts in the automotive industry” is a welcome, empirically rich and deeply insightful contribution to efforts to understand the intersection of class and climate struggles with helpful focus on the German automotive industry. The present commentary, however, takes issue with the analytical separation of “class” and “ecological” axes of politics. It argues a class-centered focus on relationships of ownership and power over production already is a deeply ecological approach. Theoretically, this requires moving beyond the tendency to only see “ecology” in the realm of reproduction. Furthermore, while sharing Dörre et al.’s skepticism that an ecological transformation can be expected to emerge from the workers and trade union movements, it is argued that there are no existing alternative organizational forms who could possibly replicate their potential power over production itself. In fact, as Dörre et al. say many times, it is the workers themselves who have deep knowledge and expertise on how these production systems might be transformed in the first place. That said, unions or work councils can hardly do this on their own—it requires a larger political movement rooted in working class material interests.