Note: The following text is a strategy memo from 2024 that I still consider relevant. It was written against the backdrop of a historic rupture in the postwar social contract between labor and capital, crystallized at Volkswagen (VW). In 2024, VW management unilaterally cancelled core collective bargaining agreements (Tarifverträge), breaking with decades of institutionalized social partnership, co-determination, and negotiated compromise. This move marked a turning point: for the first time in generations, one of Germany’s flagship corporations openly abandoned the rules that had underpinned industrial peace and shared prosperity. The memo takes this moment as a signal that the old model was no longer holding—and that new strategies, alliances, and forms of organizing had become unavoidable.
It is time for an unsparing assessment: the climate movement has become trapped in four paralyzing orthodoxies that it urgently needs to overcome if it wants to regain its capacity to act.
The four orthodoxies
The first orthodoxy is an obsession with solutions. We have presented endless technical concepts, sketched transformation pathways, and drawn up timelines. In doing so, we stopped talking about the real problem: the dramatically growing inequality that blocks any serious climate policy. While one crisis follows another, the super-rich keep getting richer. They benefit. This central problem must be brought back to the forefront.
The second orthodoxy is the moral division into “good” and “bad” industries, into allies and enemies. This artificial split has blinded us to the real lines of conflict. When workers at VW go on strike, the climate movement must overcome its own inhibitions and stand side by side with them—not because we suddenly love the car industry, but because it’s about the central question: who pays the costs of the transformation?
The third orthodoxy is the paralyzing posture of asking for permission. Instead of confidently developing and asserting its own positions, the climate movement has slipped into a pleading stance. It’s time to put more emphasis again on independent organizing and starting from everyday realities—just as has worked in the Wir fahren zusammen campaign by ver.di and Fridays for Future, and in many other beacons of hope.
The fourth—and perhaps most dangerous—orthodoxy is moral condescension toward people. The climate movement has ignored people’s intuitive intelligence for far too long. People sense very clearly that something is fundamentally off. They experience it every day at the supermarket checkout, in the desperate search for housing, in overcrowded waiting rooms, and when looking at their utility bills.
That many fall for right-wing narratives is not due to stupidity. It’s because the Right picks up on people’s real experiences and instrumentalizes them—while the climate movement confronts them with moral superiority and technical solutions. People know that climate change is being addressed at their expense. They don’t need lectures; they need a movement that fights to ensure those who profit from the crisis bear the costs.
The strategic moment: VW matters more than elections
The coming months will be decisive—but not because of the upcoming elections. From a progressive perspective, those will be lost. What matters are the labor struggles that are emerging. From December 1 onward, strikes at VW are possible. More will be decided there for the future of progressive politics than at the ballot box.
The next four years will be a period of transition. The question is not whether the Right comes to power, but whether, during this time, it will be possible to build a new progressive infrastructure—beyond the old orthodoxies, beyond the established structures that have exhausted themselves.
The strength lies in the labor movement
The climate movement must join the resurgent labor movement—not as a patronizing ally (it is too weak for that), but as part of a shared force for fundamental change. The labor movement is currently going on the offensive—while the climate movement remains stuck on the defensive.
The joint struggle for distributive justice is the key. Whether at VW, in healthcare, or in education, it’s always about who bears the costs of the necessary transformations. The answer must be: those who have benefited from the existing order—the corporations that have privatized profits for decades, and the super-rich who evade financing the common good.
From defense to offense
The era of symbolic politics is over. Tadzio Müller is right when he speaks of the “checkmate” of the previous strategy. But that doesn’t mean the end of the game—it means the beginning of a new one. A game no longer centered on moral superiority or technical fixes, but on concrete struggles over distribution.
The alternative is clear: either we succeed over the next few years in building a new progressive infrastructure beyond the paralyzing orthodoxies—or we hand the field over to the Right without a fight. The decision will not be made at the ballot box, but in the social struggles of the coming years. People are ready for these struggles—they are just waiting for the climate movement to shed its condescension and take their experiences seriously.
From December 1 onward, strikes at VW are possible.