How Should We Understand an Anti-Capitalist Psychology of Community?

Climate Justice, Capitalism, and the Political Role of the Psychological Professions

“…Most have, in fact, aligned with capitalist ideology by stressing adaptation to and individual responsibility for climate change, thereby obscuring the origins of climate change in the capitalist mode of production (Fernandes-Jesus et al, 2020). However, because all struggles always entail struggling psychologies as well as oppositional politics (Malherbe, 2022), we believe that there is a political role for psychological practitioners involved in social movements committed to climate justice. We situate this article within the small but growing body of critical and socially situated psychological work that takes seriously the capitalist origins of climate change.…”

“…Capitalism contains within it what Marx called contradictions, or competing interests, that impact the climate negatively (Malherbe, 2022). Here, historian Ellen Meiksins Wood’s words remain prescient.…”

“…There is a justifiable reluctance from some climate justice activists to work with psychological practitioners. This reluctance relates to the history of the psychological professions depoliticising and pathologising progressive social change-making efforts, as well as the ideological alignment of many of these professions with capitalism (Malherbe, 2022; Teo, 2018). Therefore, the psychological practitioner’s involvement in climate justice activism must be determined by social movement actors themselves, rather than disciplinary dictates.…”

“…Solidarity-making is a psychologically fraught process precisely because individuals, united in their political commitments, may not take to one another on a personal level. We do not always like the comrades with whom we struggle (Malherbe, 2022). Additionally, we see a range of priorities, tactics and strategies across – and even within – different climate justice movements, which can cause rifts among those committed to the same political goals.…”

“…However, it need not be. Psychological practitioners can work with activists to hold such tension and engage continually with it in an effort to ensure that climate justice solidarity is driven by internal tensions (learning from, reflecting on, and changing with such tension), rather than become stifled, immobilised or fractured (Malherbe, 2022). It is with tension that climate justice activists, working with psychological practitioners, can ensure that the solidarity relation is not predetermined or imposed, but rather democratically negotiated in response to the demands of liberation from the capitalogenic trinity.…”