This appeal was published on August 23 by the British group Anticapitalist Resistance. This is an important initiative, but its success will depend whether it involves a wide range of ecosocialist currents in launching a non-sectarian and action-oriented coalition.
Capitalism is destroying the planet’s ecosystem for profit, so we must build an international eco-socialist movement rooted in the working class to expropriate businesses, end imperialism and borders, and transform the economy to prioritize human need within planetary limits.
Capitalism is killing the planet. Every day the news gets worse. The desperate drive for profit is tearing apart the ecosystem and now planetary boundaries have been torn down as carbon and other greenhouse gases accumulate.
Internationally millions are aware of the scale of the crisis, but too often people feel paralyzed or helpless to respond. This isn’t the same as removing CFCs or tackling acid rain. The problem of fossil capitalism goes right to the very basis of our society and how the economy is run.
Governments have declared climate emergencies but none are taking the measures needed to overcome this growing crisis. Companies green wash whilst tearing more carbon out of the ground for profits. The Conference of Parties (COP) have been meeting almost every year since 1995 and yet the majority of greenhouse gas emissions has happened since then.
Meanwhile pro-fossil capital lies and false information circulates among conspiracy theorists circles as the far right seeks to transform global warming into a culture war issue which they can then reject as being ‘woke’. Right wing populists take power and accelerate the environmental devastation – the logic of a death cult.
Some environmental activists are focusing on small-scale direct action to raise awareness. Whilst these people are very brave, risking assault and prison, such actions by themselves cannot build a mass movement that can solve the real problem – overthrowing capitalism.
We reject an approach that relies on techno-fixes. As long as technology is in the hands of corporations or billionaires then it will not be used properly to create a better world. We also refuse to collapse into despair. We also reject the view that humanity and the planet is doomed – humans are capable of incredibly wonderful acts that can change the world but as long as we struggle under capitalism we are being crushed and held back.
Anticapitalist Resistance is issuing this call to launch an eco-socialist movement. We are hosting a conference in the autumn to discuss some of these issues and we aim to launch an eco-socialist movement that is rooted in the trade unions, the communities, social movement and our workplaces. Such a movement has to tackle the big issues; expropriation of business and private wealth, socializing housing and land, ending the market economy, dismantling imperialism, fighting for abolition of borders, militarism and policing, social transformation of the economy from the ground up.
Since it is economic activity that is driving Global Warming and other environmental crises, workers will be crucial in not just stopping fossil capital but also building a new economy based on human need within planetary limits. The working class is not just those people in trade unions, it is the billions of people on this planet who rely on their wages to survive, who are exploited and oppressed by capitalists. This includes people who rely on benefits, or are pensioners, or students.
We want to emancipate ourselves and end capitalism as a system which continues to degrade our environment and planet leading to this point of crisis. We recognize that Britain is made of different nations and the environmental struggles will take their own forms. We will need specific demands in the nations as well as international action – none of the problems that global warming raises can be solved nationally.
Ecosocialism 2023 will be held in the autumn, discussing the way capitalism is hostile to the environment, whether we need degrowth and what an eco-socialist movement and strategy will look like. We need to turn theory into action if we are to have any hope of stopping runaway global warming.
If you would like to be involved in helping to organize the conference then please contact us at info@anticapitalistresistance.org
ReadIng this call for anti-capitalist action, I am struck by the fact that its essential points have been made countless times before. “In pursuit of profit the capitalist mode of production is killing nature and humans’ . And the solution is also essentially the same – ‘lets have a conference and start a movement’. In my own 60 years of anti-capitalist activism I have heard the same abstract ideas and proposals repeated every half decade or so. I have attended more than a dozen or so of them myself only to witness the self-selected groups in attendance, manoeuvre and compete for leadership of the ‘movement’ and in doing so recreate and perpetuate essentially the same, intellectually led, hierarchical, male dominated organisational structure that capitalism took over from feudalism. In practice these ‘leaderships’ were invariably sectarian and dogmatic to boot, with constructive criticism and self criticism, sidelined, outlawed or fiercely attacked the nearer it got to identifying any flaws and malpractices.
The whole point about movements and revolutions, which are of course necessary for changing modes of production, is that they don’t arise from conferences of well meaning people, who argue mostly about just whose abstract ideas are best, – the perennial ‘battle of ideas’ debates between ‘vanguard’ leaders – but from practical changes among ordinary people who start to take practical steps to change themselves and their practices in response to the steady collapse of the existing system. From a working class perspective a conference on analysing and correcting past and present left sectarianism, intellectual domination, and political dogmatism, might produce a movement better fitted to assist the working classes when they start to make practical steps to create the new form of living out of the ruins of the old.
The idea of taking over industrial capitalism and redirecting its old or new technology along non-profit lines is no longer viable. All extractive mass production from nature (inoganic or organic) for hierarchical mass societies on the present scale of billions is clearly unsustainable. At the intellectual level; humanity now needs to be judged from the standpoint of nature, not nature from the standpoint of humanity. At the practical level ordinary working people are the ones to be encouraged to have conferences aimed at producing practical solutions to how they live not at producing grand sounding abstract theoretical blueprints for ‘future progress’.
Regards, Roy (www.critical-mass.net)
I really like the ideas expressed: ecosocialist revolution, capitalism by its nature being a destroyer of our ecology, the need for action, etc. As well, the call for an international movement is essential. I have a disagreement: you note that people are feeling powerless, but don’t expand on that. In part, the feeling of powerlessnes is a correct understanding of the present circumstances of most of us. Changing that requires both action and an appreciation of the ideological strength of capitalism. And to add to your fine introduction, this year, around the globe, we may be facing the start of global tipping points. James Hansen said: ‘Uh-oh, now what?’ The climate has seemingly reduced the time we have to create social/political and economic changes. One of the very basic things we have to get a grip on is how long do we have to create system change. Is it a realistic time frame? If not, then what? I am well aware that there is no exact dates or consequences to tipping points. But they do auger in dynamics that will not respond to any amount of good will. Along with all the other complex analyses that we must do, what if we don’t have enough time is the question awaiting us.