We Must Abolish Capitalism

The climate emergency is a pressing issue for many people. Some say civilisation may not survive the climate crisis. Many project coastal cities sinking into the oceans, widespread drought, desertification and deforestation, devastating storms and flooding, pollution on land air and sea, diseases spreading, decreasing soil fertility and failing crop harvests and the large scale migration of climate refugees. It is often described as a climate Armageddon, a global catastrophe.

Capitalism is the root cause of most of the environmental problems we face, and is also the biggest obstacle in implementing real solutions. But few recognise the culpability of capitalism, and if they do, their remedies are little more than passing legislation to regulate the capitalist system such as the proposed New Green Deal or encouraging ineffective life-style changes. What is required is transformational changes, a mass mobilization of peoples for an entirely new society based upon a fundamentally different economic system. The defenders of the environment have to organize worldwide politically for socialism which is the an antidote to much of the despair and despondency that prevails in many people’s response to the global warming threat.

Working people have the potential power to wrest control of production away from the capitalist class. In fact, working people is the only force capable of saving humanity from capitalism and building an economy which is sustainable and in harmony with the environment. The vast majority have the ability to make collective solutions for environmental problems and exercise common ownership and democratic control of resources. Socialists do not focus on individual behaviour but concentrate on universal actions. The politicians would like nothing better than to delay system change by claiming that we need behavioural change, instead. Socialism is a vital and necessary precondition for the survival of civilisation.

While the economic class struggle between labour and capital has previously been the norm for the acquisition of socialist consciousness, our fight for the environment may be a new path towards socialism, a new way of understanding our need to establish a cooperative commonwealth. Perhaps, climate change will be the tipping point for social change.

Adapted from here
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/11/14/to-confront-climate-change-humanity-needs-socialism/