By Ian Angus, Climate and Capitalism, October 7, 2011
Meetings
such as this play a vital role in building a movement that can stop the
hell-bound train of capitalism, before it takes itself and all of humanity over
the precipice. Building such a movement is the most important thing anyone can
do today – so I’m honored to have been invited to take part in your
discussions.
 |
| Angus delivering his presentation to Climate Change Social Change conference in Melbourne, Australia, October 2, 2011 |
****
One
hundred and fifty years ago, Karl Marx predicted that unless capitalism was
eliminated the great productive forces it unleashed would turn into destructive
forces. And that’s exactly what has happened.
Every
day we see more evidence that capitalism, which was once the basis for an
unprecedented wave of creativity and liberation, has transformed itself into a
force for destruction, decay and death.
It
directly threatens the existence of the human race, not to mention the
existence of the millions of species of plants and animals with whom we share
the earth.
Many
people have proposed technological fixes or political reforms to address
various aspects of the global environmental crisis, and many of those measures
deserve serious consideration. Some of them may buy us some time, some of them
may delay the ecological day of reckoning.
Contrary
to what some of our critics claim, no serious socialist is opposed to partial
measures or reforms – we will actively support any measure that reduces, limits
or delays the devastating effects of capitalism. And we will work with anyone,
socialist or not, who seriously wants to fight for such measures. In fact, just
try to stop us!.
But
as socialists, we know that there can be no lasting solution to the world’s
multiple environmental crises so long as capitalism remains the dominant
economic and social system on this planet.
We do
not claim to have all the answers, but we do have one big answer: the only
basis for long-term, permanent change in the way humanity relates to the rest
of nature, is an ecosocialist revolution.
If we
don’t make that transformation we may delay disaster, but disaster remains
inevitable.
As
the headline on Climate and Capitalism has always said: “Ecosocialism or barbarism: There is
no third way.”
But
what do we mean by ecosocialism? And what do we mean by ecosocialist revolution?
What
is ecosocialism?
There
is no copyright on the word ecosocialism, and those who call themselves
ecosocialists don’t agree about everything. So what I’m going to say reflects
my own perspective.
Ecosocialism
begins with a critique of its two parents, ecology and Marxism.
Ecology,
at its very best, gives us powerful tools for understanding how nature
functions – not as separate events or activities, but as integrated,
interrelated ecosystems. Ecology can and does provide essential insights into the
ways that human activity is undermining the very systems that make all forms of
life possible.
But
while ecology has done very well at describing the damage caused by humans, its
lack of social analysis means that few ecologists have developed anything that
resembles a credible program for stopping the destruction.
Unlike
other animals, the relationship between human beings and our environment can’t
be explained by our numbers or by our biology – but that’s where ecology
typically stops.
In
fact, when ecologists turn to social questions, they almost always get the
answers wrong, because they assume that problems in the relationship between
humanity and nature are caused by our numbers or by human nature, or that they
are just a result of ignorance and misunderstandings. If only we all knew the
truth, the world would change. All we need to do is to tinker with taxes and
markets, or maybe advertise birth control more widely, and all will be fine.
The
lack of a coherent critique of capitalism has made most Green Parties around
the world ineffective – or, even worse, it has allowed them to become junior
partners in neoliberal governments, providing green camouflage for reactionary
policies.
Similarly,
many of the biggest green NGOs long ago gave up on actually building an
environmental movement, preferring to campaign for donations from corporate
polluters. Because they don’t understand capitalism, they think they can solve
problems by being friendly with capitalists.
In
contrast, Marxism’s greatest strength is its comprehensive critique of
capitalism, an analysis that explains why this specific social order has been
both so successful and so destructive.
Marxism
has also shown that another kind of society is both possible and necessary, a
society in which destructive capitalist production is replaced by cooperative
production, and in which capitalist property is replaced by a global commons.
What
we now call ecology was fundamental to Marx’s thought, and, as John Bellamy
Foster has shown, in the 20th century Marxist scientists made major
contributions to ecological thought. But on the whole, the Marxist movements of
the 20th century either ignored environmental issues entirely, or blithely
deferred all consideration of the subject until after the revolution, when socialism
would magically solve them all.
What’s
worse, some of the worst ecological nightmares of the 20th century occurred in
countries that called themselves socialist. We only have to mention the nuclear
horror of Chernobyl, or the poisoning and draining of the Aral Sea, to make
clear that just eliminating capitalism won’t save the world.
Now
there is an easy answer to that – we could just say that those countries weren’t
socialist. They were state capitalist, or something else, so criticism of their
environmental crimes is irrelevant. But green critics will rightly call that a
cop-out.
People
in the Soviet Union and the other soviet bloc countries thought they were
building socialism. And for most people worldwide that was what socialism
looked like.
So
whether we call those societies socialist or give them some other label, we
need to answer the underlying question: what makes us think that the next
attempts to build socialist societies will do any better than they did?
Our
answer has two parts.
The
first is that eliminating profit and accumulation as the driving forces of the
economy will eliminate capitalism’s innate drive to pollute and destroy.
While
mistaken policies and ignorance have caused some very serious ecological
problems, the global crisis we face today isn’t the result of mistaken policies
and ignorance – it is the inevitable result of the way capitalism works.
With
capitalism an ecologically balanced world is impossible.
Socialism
doesn’t make it certain, but it will make it possible.
The
second part of the answer is that history is not made by impersonal forces. The
transition to socialism will be achieved by real people, and people can learn
from experience.
This
is demonstrated in practice by Cuba, which in the past 25 years has made huge
strides towards building an ecologically sound economy, and which has
repeatedly been one of the few countries that meet the WWF’s criteria for a
globally sustainable society.
The
lesson we must learn from that achievement and from the environmental failures
of socialism in the 20th century is that ecology must have a central place in
socialist theory, in the socialist program and in the activity of the socialist
movement.
Ecosocialism
works to unite the best of the green and the red while overcoming the
weaknesses of each. It tries to combine Marxism’s analysis of human society
with ecology’s analysis of our relationship to the rest of nature.
It
aims to build a society that will have two fundamental and indivisible
characteristics.
▪
It will
be socialist,
committed to democracy, to radical egalitarianism, and to social justice. It
will be based on collective ownership of the means of production, and it will
work actively to eliminate exploitation, profit and accumulation as the driving
forces of our economy.
▪
And it
will be based on the best ecological principles, giving top priority to stopping
anti-environmental practices, to restoring damaged ecosystems, and to
reestablishing agriculture and industry on ecologically sound principles.
A
sentence in John Bellamy Foster’s The Ecological Rift precisely and concisely explains
ecosocialism’s reason for being.
“There
can be no true ecological revolution that is not socialist; no true socialist
revolution that is not ecological.”
What
is an ecosocialist revolution?
When
we say revolution,
we are talking about a profound change in the way humans relate to the earth,
in how we produce and reproduce, in almost everything humans do and how we do
it.
What
we’re aiming for is not just a reorganization of capitalism, and not
just changes in ownership, but for what Fred Magdoff, in an article in a recent
issue of Monthly Review, calls “a truly ecological
civilization – one that exists in harmony with natural systems.”
Magdoff
lists eight characteristics that such a civilization would have.
It
would:
1.
stop
growing when basic human needs are satisfied;
2.
not
entice people to consume more and more;
3.
protect
natural life support systems and respect the limits to natural resources,
taking into account needs of future generations;
4.
make
decisions based on long-term societal/ecological needs, while not neglecting
short-term needs of people;
5.
run as
much as possible on current (including recent past) energy instead of fossil
fuels;
6.
foster
human characteristics and a culture of cooperation, sharing, reciprocity, and
responsibility to neighbors and community;
7.
make
possible the full development of human potential, and;
8.
promote
truly democratic political and economic decision making for local, regional,
and multiregional needs.
As
Fred Magdoff says, a society with those characteristics would be “the opposite
of capitalism in essentially all respects.”
Not
easy or quick
Achieving
such a change is absolutely essential – but we should not delude ourselves that
it will happen simply or quickly.
I’ve
found that most environmentalists and most socialists seriously underestimate
just how big a task we have set ourselves, how big the change will have to be,
how difficult it will be, and how long it will take.
Forty
years ago, in 1971, Barry Commoner, one of the first modern socialists to write
about the environmental crisis, estimated that in order to reverse the
environmental destruction that he could then see in the United States and to
rebuild industry and agriculture on an ecologically sound basis, “most of the
nation’s resources for capital investment would need to be engaged in the task
of ecological reconstruction for at least a generation.”
The
rate and extent of environmental destruction has accelerated rapidly in the
four decades since Commoner wrote that. The time required and the cost of the
repairs and reconstruction have increased substantially.
For
example, the United Nations recently estimated that it will take 30 years to
clean up the devastating damage caused by Shell Oil in the Ogoni peoples’
homeland in the Niger Delta. That’s for an area of just 386 square miles –
about one-ninth the size of Sydney.
The
Niger Delta is a particularly horrible example of capitalism’s ecocidal role,
of course, but there are many more examples around the world, enough to dash
any hope for an easy turnaround.
That
means that the title of my talk today is a little misleading. I can’t tell you
how to make an
ecosocialist revolution, because the necessary changes will take decades, in
circumstances we can’t predict.
What’s
more, the transformation will undoubtedly require new knowledge, and new
science.
To
paraphrase Marx, there is no recipe book for the chefs of the ecological
revolution.
Getting
to the starting point
But
what we can and must discuss is, how to get to the starting point.
One
of the pioneers of revolutionary socialism and environmentalism was the great
British poet and artist William Morris. In 1893, he described the starting
point this way:
“The
first real victory of the Social Revolution will be a the establishment not
indeed of a complete system of communism in a day, which is absurd, but of a
revolutionary administration whose definite and conscious aim will be to prepare and further, in
all available ways, human life for such a system …”
We
could combine William Morris’s statement with Fred Magdoff’s terminology, to
summarize the central goal of the ecosocialist movement today:
“A
revolutionary administration whose definite and conscious aim will be to prepare and further, in
all available ways, human life for an ecological civilization.”
In
our new book, Too Many People?, Simon Butler and I express that idea this way:
“In
every country, we need governments that break with the existing order, that are
answerable only to working people, farmers, the poor, indigenous communities,
and immigrants – in a word, to the victims of ecocidal capitalism, not its
beneficiaries and representatives.”
And
we suggest some of the first measures such governments might take. Our
suggestions include:
▪
rapidly
phasing out fossil fuels and biofuels, replacing them with clean energy
sources;
▪
actively
supporting farmers to convert to ecological agriculture; defending local food
production and distribution;
▪
introducing
free and efficient public transport networks;
▪
restructuring
existing extraction, production, and distribution systems to eliminate waste,
planned obsolescence, pollution, and manipulative advertising, and providing
full retraining to all affected workers and communities;
▪
retrofitting
existing homes and buildings for energy efficiency;
▪
closing
down all military operations at home and elsewhere; transforming the armed
forces into voluntary teams charged with restoring ecosystems and assisting the
victims of environmental disasters.
Our
suggestions aren’t carved in stone, and I’m sure many of you in this room can
think of many other essential changes.
For
other valuable ideas about what such a government would do, I encourage you to
also look at the “short term agenda for environmental activists” in the final
chapter of What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About
Capitalism,
by John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff, and at the program proposed here in
Australia in the Socialist Alliance Climate Charter.
I
stress that we shouldn’t wait for an ecosocialist government to make those
changes. On the contrary, we should be fighting for every one of those measures
today, as central elements of our fight for a better world.
Those
are first steps, just the beginning – building a fully ecological civilization will
involve much more.
The
longer it takes us to build a movement that can get the process started, the
more difficult the ecosocialist revolution will be.
Majority
participation
I
have stressed the complexity and size of the task before us not to discourage
you, but to underline another essential point. Social changes this sweeping
will not happen just because they are the right thing to do.
Good
ideas are not enough. Moral authority isn’t enough.
An
ecosocialist revolution cannot be made by a minority. It cannot be imposed by
politicians and bureaucrats, no matter how well meaning they might be.
It
will require the active participation of the great majority of the people. In
Marx’s famous words: “The emancipation of the working class must be the act of
the workers themselves.”
This
is not because democracy is morally superior, but because the necessary changes
cannot be carried through, and will not be long-lasting, unless they are
actively supported, created and implemented, by the broadest possible range of
people.
Only
majority support and involvement can possibly overcome the opponents of change.
The
only way to overcome the forces that now rule, the forces of global
destruction, is to organize a countervailing force that can stop them
and remove them from power.
That’s
another fundamental truth about revolutions – there is no such thing as a
win-win revolution, where everyone gains and no one loses. In a real
revolution, the people who had power and privileges in the old society lose
their power and privileges in the new.
A few
of those people may join in the revolutionary cause, and if so we will welcome
them to our cause. But most of them probably will not support the majority.
Today,
as in every human society for thousands of years, there are powerful social
groups that benefit from the existing situation, and they will resist change no
matter how obvious the need for change may be.
We
only have to look at the present US Congress or at Australia’s Parliament to
see powerful people who will resist change even to the point of destroying the
world.
The
climate change deniers are not isolated cranks. They are well-financed
politicians, backed by some of the world’s richest corporations, and they are
prepared to bring the world down to protect their power.
You
know, whenever we talk about revolution, the powers that be accuse us of
plotting violence. In fact, most of the ecosocialists I know are pretty
nonviolent in their personal lives. I admit that many of us in Canada like
hockey, and I’m sure there are some footy fans here today, but that doesn’t
translate into our political outlook.
We
don’t want violence, and we will be pleased if the transition to ecosocialism
is entirely peaceful.
Unfortunately,
unlike in professional sports, what happens in a revolution isn’t entirely up
to us.
As we’ve
seen in many countries, the democratic election of popular governments by huge
majorities has never stopped defenders of the old order from trying to regain
power through violent means.
And
as the people of Venezuela and Bolivia have shown, the best way to minimize and
counteract the violence of the reactionaries is to mobilize the largest
possible number of people to defend the revolutionary process.
A
tale of two cities
What
forces will determine the outcome of the global environmental crisis in the
21st century? Less than two years ago we had a strong foretaste of the class
lineup.
In
December 2009, the world’s rich countries sent delegations to Copenhagen with
instructions not to save the climate, but to block any action that might weaken
their capitalist economies or harm their competitive positions in world
markets.
And
they succeeded.
The
backroom deal imposed by Obama was, as Fidel Castro wrote, “nothing more than a
joke.” The follow-up deal that they negotiated in Cancun was no better.
The
Copenhagen and Cancun meetings made it clear that our rulers do not want to
solve the climate and ecological crises. Period.
They
place their narrow economic and electoral interests before the survival of
humanity. They will not change course willingly.
Five
months after the Copenhagen meeting, a very different meeting took place in
Cochabamba, Bolivia.
At
the invitation of Bolivian president Evo Morales, some 35,000 activists, many
of them indigenous people, came from more than 130 countries, to do what Obama
and his allies refused to do in Copenhagen – to develop an action program to
save the environment.
They
drafted a People’s
Agreement that
places responsibility for the climate crisis on the capitalist system and on
the rich countries that “have a carbon footprint five times larger than the
planet can bear”.
The
World People’s Conference adopted 18 major statements, covering topics from climate refugees to indigenous rights to
technology transfer, and much more.
It is
impossible to imagine such a program coming out of any meeting of the wealthy
powers, or out of any United Nations conference.
Those
two meetings, in Copenhagen and Cochabamba, symbolize the great
divide in the struggle for the future of the earth and humanity.
On
one side, a meeting dominated by the rich and powerful, determined to save
their wealth and privileges, even if the world burns.
On
the other side, indigenous people, small farmers and peasants, progressive
activists and working people of all kinds, determined to save the world from
the rich and powerful.
The
Cochabamba conference was a big step towards a global movement that can
actually change the world. It showed, in a preliminary way, the alliance of
forces that must be forged in each country, and internationally, to end the
environmentally destructive capitalist system.
We
need students and academics and feminists and scientists – but we will not be
able to change the world unless we win the active participation of working
people, farmers, indigenous peoples and all of the oppressed.
These
are the forces that the green left must ally with. These are the forces that we
must win to the perspective of ecosocialist revolution.
What
to do now?
Now
at this point, you should be asking, “How can we do that? How do we win mass
support for the program and objectives we know are essential?”
That
is exactly the right question to ask. Because if we can’t translate our ideas
and our program into action, then our ideas are irrelevant, and so are we.
To
cite another famous comment by Marx, our task is not just to explain the world,
our task is to change it.
As
Marxists, we use our analysis of the world as a basis for determining what to
do. First we ask, “what’s going on?” Then we ask, “What is to be done?”
When
we ask those questions today, we are all intensely aware that although the need
for revolution is very clear to us, we are in a minority, not just in society
at large, but even within the left and within the environmental movement.
As
Marxist scholar Fredric Jameson has written, we live in a time when for most
people, “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end
of capitalism.”
Most
green activists do not see capitalism as the primary problem – or, if they do,
they don’t believe an ecosocialist revolution is possible or desirable.
So
the key task before us is not to proclaim the revolution from every street
corner, but rather to find ways to work with the broadest possible range of
people as they are today.
The
Latin American Marxist Marta Harnecker has expressed it this way:
“Being
radical is not a matter of advancing the most radical slogans, or of carrying
out the most radical actions….
“Being
radical lies rather in creating spaces where broad sectors can come together
and struggle. For as human beings we grow and transform ourselves in the
struggle.
“Understanding
that we are many and are fighting for the same objectives is what makes us
strong and radicalizes us.”
It is
through struggles for change that we can win the people who today find it
easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
We
cannot artificially create majority support, but fortunately we can depend on
capitalism and imperialism to help us.
Long
ago, Marx and Engels said that what the bourgeoisie produces, above all, are
its own gravediggers.
In
2011, we have seen capitalism’s future gravediggers come into direct conflict
with authoritarian governments, with imperialism, and with capitalist austerity
programs, in countries as diverse as Chile, Spain, Greece, Tunisia, Egypt,
Britain and even the United States.
We
cannot tell in advance where mass struggles will break out, or what forms they
will take. That’s not under our control. The best slogans in the world won’t do
it. But capitalism will make it happen.
The
real question is, will the next radicalization peter out, or be
defeated – or will it move forward, and ultimately challenge capitalism itself?
The
movement we need
There
are no guarantees. Marxism is not deterministic. The ecosocialist revolution is
not inevitable. It will only happen if people consciously decide that is necessary,
and take the steps needed to bring it about.
As
long ago as 1848, Marx and Engels posed an alternative: the class struggle
would lead either
to “a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large,” … or to “the common ruin of the
contending classes.”
In
this century of environmental crisis, the common ruin of all, the destruction
of civilization, is a very real possibility.
One
factor that will determine the outcome – in my opinion the single most
important factor – is the role that will be played by the people in this room,
and by others like you around the world.
Spontaneous
uprisings such as those we’ve seen in Europe and North Africa this year are
inevitable, but they are not, by themselves, sufficient to bring into being “a
revolutionary administration whose definite and conscious aim will be to
prepare and further, in all available ways, human life for an ecological civilization.”
That
will not be achieved unless we are successful in creating, in advance, an
organized movement with a clear vision, an ecosocialist program, that can
bridge the gap between the spontaneous anger of millions of people and the
beginning of the ecosocialist revolution.
Meetings
such as this one can be part of the process of building that movement.
I don’t
have a blueprint for how to build the movement we need. Indeed, one of the
lessons we can learn from the failures of socialism in the 20th century is that
centrally-dictated, one-size-fits-all plans for movement building will always
fail.
Rather
than a blueprint, let me suggest four characteristics that movements committed
to ecosocialism must share if they are to have any chance of success.
1.
Ecosocialists will extend and apply ecosocialism’s analysis and program. This might seem obvious, but it’s
very important. In the past century, many Marxists tried to freeze Marxism.
After the death of Marx, or Engels, or Lenin, or Trotsky, or Mao – each group
had its own cut-off point – their Marxism stopped developing.
From
then on, no matter what the situation, all they had to do was consult the
sacred texts. All of the answers were there. Some organizations on the left
still do this today.
That
approach is completely alien to Marxism, which gives us a method, but not all
the answers. It doesn’t even give us all the questions.
In
their lifetimes, Marx and Engels studied the scientific, technological and
other discoveries of their time, and learned from the struggles of their day.
They used their new knowledge to extend, deepen or change their political
conclusions.
Ecosocialism
must follow their example.
There
is not, and there will not be a perfect and immutable ecosocialist program, no document we
can point to and say, “That’s it, no more changes, we know what to do in all
circumstances.”
A key
task for ecosocialists everywhere is to take the beginning points that
ecosocialism offers today, and to build on them using the method of Marxism,
the best scientific work of our time, and the lessons we learn in struggles for
change. Then we must apply our new understanding in a wide variety of places
and circumstances.
This
hard to do, because it requires us to think, to understand our situations and
respond appropriately and creatively, not just repeat the same old slogans.
Only
if we do that can ecosocialism contribute effectively to saving the earth.
2.
Ecosocialists will be pluralist and open. Another lesson we can learn from the
20th century is that monolithic socialist grouplets do not turn into mass
movements. They stagnate and decay, they argue and they split, but they don’t
change the world.
So I
want to emphasize that I am not urging you to rush out and found yet
another sect.
Ecosocialism
is not a separate organization, it is a movement to win existing red and green
groups and individuals to an ecosocialist perspective.
Our
ecosocialist programs define who we are, they are the glue that holds us
together. But within that broad framework, we need to understand that none of
us has a monopoly on truth and none of us has the magical keys to the ecosocialist
kingdom.
We
will undoubtedly disagree on many issues, and our debates will be vigorous.
But
if you agree that “there can be no true ecological revolution that is not
socialist; no true socialist revolution that is not ecological,” then what
unites us is more important than our differences.
We
need to build a democratic ecosocialist movement together.
3.
Ecosocialists will be internationalist and anti-imperialist. Within the broad environmental
movement, ecosocialists must be the strongest voices for global climate
justice.
All
serious environmentalists must be internationalists, if only because ecosystems
don’t respect national borders.
In
particular, there is no national solution to climate change. It must be fought
for country-by-country, but only international change can defeat it.
International communication, collaboration, and solidarity are absolutely
essential.
But
for those of us who live in the wealthy countries, the imperialist countries,
there must be much more to our internationalism.
It’s
been said many times that the people of the global South, and indigenous people
everywhere, are the primary victims of climate change and other forms of
environmental destruction.
What
isn’t said as often, but is even more important, is that the primary
environmental criminals are “our” capitalists in the North.
That
places a special responsibility on ecosocialists in the wealthy countries to
combat the policies of our governments and of the corporations that are based
in our countries.
Today,
the most powerful and important struggles for ecological justice are taking
place in the so-called Third World.
At
the barest minimum, we in the imperialist countries need to publicize those
movements and expose the role our home-grown capitalists play. We need to show
our solidarity as concretely as we can.
We
must give particular emphasis and support to the demands raised in the
Cochabamba Peoples Agreement.
▪
We must
demand that our governments give financial support for adaptation to climate
change, including the development of ecologically sound agriculture.
▪
We must
demand direct transfer of renewable energy and other technologies, so that the
poorest countries can have economic development without contributing to global
warming. (I want to stress that unless and until we win this, no one in the
North has any right to criticize the energy and development choices
made by progressive movements and governments in the Third World.)
▪
We must
oppose so-called market solutions, and the commodification of nature. This
includes rejecting carbon trading in all its forms.
▪
We must
welcome climate refugees to our countries, offering them decent lives with full
human rights.
4.
Ecosocialists will actively participate in and build movements for a better
world. Finally, and most important,
ecosocialists must be activists. We need to slow capitalism’s ecocidal
drive as much as possible and to reverse it where we can, to win every possible
victory over the forces of destruction. As I’ve said, our rulers will not
willingly change – but mass opposition can force them to act, even against
their will.
There
are many environmental issues facing the world today, and I’m sure that
ecosocialists will be active in a wide variety of campaigns.
But
the scope and potential destructiveness of the climate emergency make it the
most important issue, and we need to give it the highest priority.
Our
goal must be to bring together everyone – socialists, liberals, deep greens,
trade unionists, feminists, indigenous activists and more – everyone who is
willing to demand that governments act decisively to bring down greenhouse gas
emissions.
And
at the same time, we need to unite the forces that understand the need to go
beyond defensive battles, and lay the basis for a movement that can in fact
initiate the ecosocialist revolution.
Fortunately
those two tasks are not in conflict. Fighting for immediate gains against
capitalist destruction and fighting for the ecosocialist future aren’t separate
activities, they are aspects of one integrated process.
It is
through united struggles for immediate gains and environmental reforms that
working people and farmers and indigenous people can build the organizations
and the collective knowledge they need to defend themselves and advance their
interests.
The
victories they win in partial struggles will help to build the confidence
needed to take on bigger targets.
And
it is only by participating in and building such struggles that the
ecosocialist movement can grow, can win a hearing from wider numbers of people,
and can ultimately make an ecosocialist revolution possible.
The
challenge we face
The
Peoples Agreement adopted in Cochabamba eloquently expresses the challenge
before us.
“Humanity
confronts a great dilemma: to continue on the path of capitalism, depredation,
and death, or to choose the path of harmony with nature and respect for life.”
“It
is imperative that we forge a new system that restores harmony with nature and
among human beings.
“And
for there to be balance with nature, there must first be equity among human
beings.”
There,
in three sentences, is the case for building a movement to save the world, the
case for an ecosocialist revolution.
As I’ve
said, it will not be easy, but I cannot think of a more important and
worthwhile cause.
Working together, we can put an end to capitalism, before it
puts an end to us.
Ian Angus is editor of Climate and Capitalism, and co-author, with Simon Butler, of the new book Too Many People? Population, Immigration, and the Environmental Crisis.
————–
Photo by Alex Bainbridge
No comments:
Post a Comment