ABSTRACT
Extinction Rebellion (XR) has emerged as one of the most active and prominent faces of the environmental movement around the world today. A defining feature of XR is its support for the strategy of civil disobedience – the practice of non-violently breaking the law to advance social, political, or environmental causes. While XR is a decentralized movement, its most prominent spokespeople have not aligned themselves with ecosocialism or class-based struggle. In this chapter, we consider whether XR in particular, and practices of civil disobedience more generally, might be needed to advance the vision of an ecosocialist society. After providing an introduction to XR, we offer a legal and political analysis of civil disobedience and consider whether and in what circumstances it might be justified within in a liberal democracy. We conclude our discussion by briefly considering how XR can learn from socialist debates about the tension between crowds and structures.
