Book Review: “All In”: Optimism of the Will                     

Mariana Rodrigues and Sinan Eden, All In: A Revolutionary Theory to Stop Climate Collapse, 2025

For many of us, the contrast between what is known about the climate crisis and how we go about our daily lives creates a disorienting cognitive dissonance. How does one reconcile the immense chasm between the scientific consensus pointing towards dire outcomes and the lack of concerted action to prevent them? Much less the lack of concern amongst the general population? Or the false solutions and equivocation put forth by those who do seem to understand the situation?

It is not unreasonable to suggest the anxiety provoked by this dissonance is now manifesting in all manner of grotesqueries; ascendance of the far right, geopolitical brinkmanship, the very barbarism Rosa Luxemburg warned of. It is a “time of monsters,” as Antonio Gramsci put it.

This is the “irrational rationality” that structures our feelings, our experience of the world, our daily existence. As we get ready for work, put the kids on the bus, try to relax, the vast majority of humans and the ecosystems upon which we depend are being sacrificed for the profit of a tiny few. As we brush our teeth, say our prayers, and crawl into bed, the inexorable machine grinds on and the runaway train rushes towards the abyss. Yet reaching the brake feels as distant as ever.

In place of resistance, disavowal has become the dominant strategy for avoiding today’s onslaught of indignities: I know full well … but act as if I don’t. Let’s call this acute disconnect, this ecological-breakdown-induced form of alienation and estrangement, climate surrealism.

On top of this profound anxiety and trauma we add the cynicism of our age. Nothing will change because nothing can change. We lost. They won. End of history and all that. Best to put the grand narratives behind us and do what we can to tweak the system: perhaps an “abundance agenda,” a green new deal, investment in renewables, or what the authors of the book All In: A Revolutionary Theory to Stop Climate Collapse describe as the “four-point-four-is-better-than-four-point-five movement.” Mark Fisher eulogized the defeat in a piece for k-punk: “‘revolution’ is — and has been for a long time — a malignant ghost for the left.”

Why Not Do What We Know Needs Doing?

Then from distant shores, voices boldly take up Lenin’s question of what is to be done. Somehow immune to this disavowal and alienation, these voices unabashedly ask us to go all in on global revolution. No dissonance there! Drawing on the history of societal rupture, these voices state the obvious: It is now our turn. If we say we face an existential crisis, it is imperative we act like it. Nothing else will suffice. To situate ourselves back in reality (and history) we must reject the seemingly impossible and do what needs to be done. Like a glimpse of daylight from beneath the piles of what Fisher termed “ideological rubble,” the analytical clarity causes us to blink and allow a smile to form on parched lips. Again Fisher: “Just because nothing much has happened yet doesn’t mean it won’t ever happen.”

The book All In, by Mariana Rodrigues and Sinan Eden, is written as an antidote to the current retreat into climate surrealism. The authors are members of the Portuguese climate justice group Climáximo, which has been on the front line of European struggles for a decade. In their very accessible and well-organized book, they echo a conclusion reached by a growing cohort of ecosocialist thinkers, one backed up by their experience: “The dominant class is actively choosing to terminate a livable planet for the sole purpose of keeping its power intact.”

This indictment can be a hard pill to swallow and is all-too-often occluded or obfuscated by mainstream climate activists. But as John Prine sang: “Some humans ain’t human.”  Knowing this profit-seeking class has no empathy for its victims, the list of whom is already long and growing each day, the authors contend the opposition must assume a war footing, not unlike the ecological Leninism espoused by author and activist Andreas Malm.

Capitalism is a crisis-prone system; in fact, as Stǻle Holgersen points out, it thrives on crisis. Yet what the authors describe as “outrageous moments” can also act as catalysts, at opportune times leading to a crisis of legitimacy. Our task then is to be organized and ready for such moments.

The book begins with a frank assessment of movement failure, and in an admirably self-reflective turn, they include the authors’ own. While I agree with the assertion that “we grow through error,” the harsh reality is that we have less and less time for experimentation. “Geen capitalism” always planned to “overshoot” climate goals and condemn countless species to extinction. The authors of All In believe climate realism demands we fully acknowledge the “dead” in deadlines and take it that seriously.

Describing historical “theories of change” from Jacobin to Leninist, they arrive at the “Movement Action Plan,” developed in the 1980s by the late educator-organizer Bill Moyer and beloved by today’s activists and NGOs. Eden and Rodrigues identify this playbook as emblematic of the “disconnect” between the urgency of the task at hand and the piecemeal, incremental change the method allows. This dilemma will be familiar to radicals attempting to integrate into these “big tent” mainstream groups, spaces where language is policed and system change deemed beyond the horizon of possibility. According to the authors, it is this “disconnect” between what we claim should happen and a “transformative strategy to get there” that leads to public defeatism and activist burnout.

To my mind, a good example of this debilitating disconnect occurs when mainstream organizations claim the planet faces an existential crisis, then ask their members to click on a petition. This is like calling the dispatcher to say your house is on fire and could she ask the firefighters to stop and pick up a gallon of milk on their way.

In the next section of the book the authors describe globalization as a defining factor in how our movements must organize. Claiming sovereignty has been eviscerated at the regional and local levels, they state: “Execution of the movement must be at the global level.” Where ecosocialists have generally incorporated internationalism into their programs, this call for a global “movement-as-party” is ambitious indeed. Those who follow the science understand that this massive transformation must be accomplished in time to avoid tipping points and resulting feedback loops. Rodrigues and Eden are basically arguing that local efforts at mitigation and adaptation, though necessary, won’t be enough; we can be ambitious or, as already noted, we can be dead.

 It is this sense of urgency which then directs an All In strategy that will be familiar to climate activists everywhere: stop all new fossil fuel projects, stranding industry assets — “the destruction of capital at a scale never seen before” — thereby inaugurating system change. This is where war stops being a metaphor. It is not only corporate profits that are being threatened by such an intervention. The State also has an interest in maintaining the fossil fuel energy regime and will employ all manner of coercive power to protect it.

The next proposition concerns class, and it is here we see most concretely the self-described “taste of Marxist theory” that supports the authors’ contention that capital’s “gravedigger” is “the global working class.” Believing an ecofeminist framework avoids the pitfalls of orthodox workerism, the authors claim that “earlier ambiguities and uncertainties around the processes of … class composition are now essentially settled.”

Different Ideas on “Class”

My own position is that those uncertainties are in fact increasingly unsettled. For starters, I am not convinced the term “dominant class” tells us much about our adversaries. And while my direct knowledge only extends to the United States, I suspect trends towards atomization and ethno-nationalism influence subject formation in many “developed” economies. I would argue that numerous factors, from technological modernization to cultural production to home ownership, have all but eviscerated the conscious sense of “class belonging” or of a working class “for itself” in these spaces. As a lifelong blue-collar laborer, it has not been my observation that most workers believe “their class interest lies in the abolition of the private ownership of the means of production,” as the authors contend. And their claim that “national sovereignty does not exist” ignores the fact that in the psyche of the global worker, national belonging and chauvinism is dangerously on the rise.

This in no way diminishes the importance of workers to any successful popular front alliance. My point is that we needn’t fetishize one particular agent of revolutionary change nor wait for one class element to lead. Not, given the deadline. The disorienting plunge into techno-feudalism, deliberate ecocide, and the demise of politics as such creates new antagonisms that unite altogether new class formations. Perhaps even an ecological class?

 A key aspect of the theory of change the authors propose is “ruptural transformation,” and here they use a description developed by Eric Olin Wright: Attack the state, confront the bourgeoise and, as already outlined, be clear that this is “war” against well-defined adversaries. They go on to use the historical examples of Bolshevik, Chinese, and Cuban revolutions as examples of seizing state power. The authors provide more recent examples of “ruptural mass movements,” which include Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Myanmar, Niger, Sierra Leone, and Sri Lanka. I leave it to others to judge those movements’ success or lack thereof, but we should be mindful that radical social transformation is context dependent and often fraught with contradictions and contingency.

“Pessimism of the intellect” was the first part of the motto of the PCI Journal L’Ordine Nuovo (New Order), which published the writing of Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. It certainly speaks to us today: If everything is changed, as Naomi Klein explained in her 2014 book, why does it seem the same? Or worse? If, as the authors claim, “Everyone in the movement is aware … that the capitalist system is the root cause of the climate crisis,” why do so few acknowledge it? If the COP negotiations are just bad Kabuki theatre, why do so many maintain faith in the process?

Most who have long been engaged in the struggle for climate justice (or peace, or racial equality, or human rights, etc..) will recognize such pessimism. After decades of neoliberalism, politics are hollowed out, the forces of reaction are on the rise, and Capital is accelerating us headlong into the abyss, embracing any mad techno-scheme in its quest to maintain GDP growth.

The only reply to these reactionary forces is the second part of the motto: “Optimism of the Will.” This can only mean militancy and true-hearted comrades willing to fight back. It means mustering the same degree of obstinate courage and determination Gramsci had when he wrote, in very dark times: “The thick, dark cloud of pessimism… oppressing the most able and responsible militants… may in fact be the greatest danger we face at present.^” To maintain a shred of dignity, what other choice is there?

If we are to avoid the “common ruin of the contending classes” it is long past time to show up, pay attention, and stop worrying about the outcome. The time has come to find each other and go all in.

Dave Jones is a retired fishing guide and autodidact living in western Montana. He is the father of three amazing women and husband to a fourth. He is a founding member of the Zootown Zapatistas and is active with DSA as well as with System Change Not Climate Change.

Editors’ note: The authors of All In and their allies have raised a clarion call for others to join them in rapidly shaping the global revolution they urge us to create together. You can purchase the book, find the chapter that came after its printing, and learn more about taking part in desperately needed next steps at their website, https://all-in.now/. To ground yourself further in the ideas of the book, watch the conversation Mariana Rodrigues and her colleague Alice Gato had with System Change Not Climate Change in July 2025 here on our YouTube page.

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