The RCG’s new pamphlet on the environment will shortly be available – Capitalism is extinction, socialism is survival: the climate crisis – no solution under capitalism. It comes as scientists warn that the world is tipping towards a climate catastrophe and more and more people are recognising that the current model of production, with its drive for profits, its reliance on fossil fuels and its sheer indifference to the fate of the planet and humanity, is unsustainable. As its title makes clear, this pamphlet, which will be published in September, argues that the problem is capitalism itself.
Since its earliest issues, Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! has included articles on the environment and capitalism. We have consistently reported on the strategies of the multinational corporations, banking systems and hedge funds to retain and expand their control. We have shown that the governments of the most powerful countries consistently support big business. They have manoeuvred to control the agenda of the world stage at the United Nations since the first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988 up to the recent Conference of the Parties (COP26) held in Glasgow in 2021. Their expressed hopes for international co-operation and agreement between nations on emission targets, deforestation, and the land grabs of agribusiness exist only on paper.
The crises
In the harsh and increasingly threatening material reality, humanity is facing a new era of crisis. Inflamed by the Covid-19 pandemic, capital is desperately scouring the world for investment opportunities. It is intensifying the exploitation of labour power, while throwing the unemployed and indigenous lives that do not serve its purpose into refugee camps, favellas and onto the streets of cities. Supply chains are disrupted and even in the most developed capitalist nations there are sudden deficits of necessities such as baby milk formula. The price of fossil fuels for domestic and industrial consumption is rising fast. NATO’s expansionist war in Ukraine threatens the supply of basic foods across Africa and Asia; hunger stalks across continents. This is a crisis of capitalism and it is organically connected to the climate crisis because under the capitalist system the natural world is a source of profit and must be increasingly pillaged to sustain the flow of wealth to the elite. Given this acceleration of global crisis, the pamphlet goes beyond the description of global injustice to argue that capitalism is extinction, socialism is survival. It shows why this stark choice must be made now.
Imperialism destroys
Marx described how the increasing domination of the interests of the minority of capitalists over the majority of humanity is intrinsic to the capitalist mode of production itself. While the root cause of the crisis lies in capitalism and its relentless search for profits to fuel its limitless self-expansion, this is not a complete explanation for the accelerating crisis. It is capitalism in its monopoly or imperialist phase that is inexorably driving Earth to destruction.
‘Imperialism is fundamentally monopoly capitalism. It is the historical period of the decay of capitalism and is characterised by parasitism. Imperialism is the era of finance capital in which enormously concentrated banking capital has fused with industrial and commercial capital. The export of capital – that is global investment – as opposed to export of commodities becomes the distinguishing feature of imperialism. As a result, capitalism has grown into a global system of national oppression and of financial strangulation of the overwhelming majority of the population of the world by a handful of advanced countries.’*
Humans and nature
Some commentators conclude that humanity’s usage of the natural world is intrinsically destructive. They describe a ‘metabolic rift’ between humanity and nature as the foundation of the climate crisis. This approach is found in John Bellamy Foster and Paul Burkett’s 2016 work, Marx and the Earth. Others reject this existential view, arguing, with Marx, that humanity is part of nature and lives through it. We are not separate from nature but part of its totality. What exists under capitalism, however, is the subjugation of humanity’s relation to the natural world by an antagonistic ruling class. This looting and plundering of nature, the common inheritance of us all, is sustained by private ownership, debt, poverty, starvation and disease.
Capitalism’s tendency to destroy the foundations of life lies in the nature of private property relations. All modes of production, all applications of human labour to nature, consume and exhaust natural resources. But under capitalism, with its massive productive powers and pursuit of profits, this process assumes a qualitatively more intense and destructive character which is beyond social control and which outstrips the capacity of the natural world to renew itself. Production for profit requires cheap raw materials on a vast scale; it requires expansion unconstrained by social needs. To this end it has developed mass markets and ‘throwaway’ products, while its advertising agents specialise in cultivating new and wasteful needs. To stay competitive, capitalists seek to reduce to a minimum all costs not directly generating a profit and thus will evade environmental protections as they do the costs of ensuring health and safety for their workers.
This is why the Revolutionary Communist Group campaigns under the slogan ‘Climate change is a war of the rich against the poor’. We are not alone in holding this view. There are radical movements around the world, including in Britain, as people organise direct action and political agitation against the exploiters of the working class and oppressed peoples. This new pamphlet guides the reader through these developments and explains why and how the upsurge of popular support for climate change protest in Britain in 2017 failed to directly target the capitalist system.
Capitalism is extinction – socialism is survival
Our pamphlet covers all these issues in six chapters. It starts with a concise and accessible summary of the science. It then describes how 32 years of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have failed, while chapter three describes the continued growth and devastation of multinational corporations worldwide. Chapter four shows that there is no ‘green’ solution under capitalism and chapter five presents an account of resistance movements in Britain.
Chapter six argues that state socialism is the only way forward to an equitable future where the Earth’s natural resources are respected as part of the equation of development and nurtured for future generations. We can learn from important precedents in the USSR and today’s example of Cuba, which leads the world in sustainable development.
Capitalism is extinction – socialism is survival is an important contribution to the struggle to build a truly anti-imperialist, internationalist environmental movement. It will be available from Larkin Publications in September 2022, price £3.95.
Susan Davidson
* David Yaffe, The politics and economics of globalisation, FRFI 137, June/July 1997
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 289 August/September 2022
