“Capitalism can’t provide a solution to the climate crisis because capitalism is the crisis: capitalist production always and necessarily places profit over people and the planet.”
Socialism is the answer.
Wildfires are burning across California right now and it’s intriguing to watch people tip-toe around the truth about what’s happening and why; our current economic system, capitalism.
The deep failings of capitalism are bearing themselves public through the manifestation of not only the LA wildfires, but also the metaphorical fires burning in society of student loan debt, massive inequality, and the healthcare and housing crisis.
What is capitalism?
Because when I get into heated debates with ultra-capitalists about the deep flaws of capitalism, we’re often speaking past each other, and not coming from a shared understanding of the definition of what I mean by capitalism.
So, a few notes, including some quotes pulled from Socialist Reconstruction, that touch on the essence of capitalism:
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. (Thanks Wikipedia)
“So-called “free markets” are managed by central banks and elements of the state to protect corporations and maintain the position of the ruling class as a ruling class. In a way, this protectionism is already a kind of socialism, but it’s socialism for the rich.”
“Under capitalism, the majority of us spend most of our time doing work we hate so that someone else can get rich.”
“The capitalist system confronts the world with problems that capitalism is unable to solve: mass inequality, climate change, and war.”
While we all submit, rather obediently, at the feet of capitalism, we’re also being led down a suicidal path of death, of planetary destruction (as we say playing out right now in Los Angeles) and society will collapse if governments and people and leaders are not able to call a spade a spade; the root of the problem is capitalism, and if we do not imagine an economic system beyond it, society will collapse and humanity, likely, someday will die. As said in the book, “Decarbonization, eliminating our dependence on carbon-emitting energy sources, is necessary – an absolute imperative if there is to be a future in which the majority of the world’s people and species will thrive.”
And it’s so sad. As someone said, “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”
It’s time to imagine anew.
So what’s the alternative?
Revolutionary conditions are brewing. The inherent failings and contradictions of capitalism will force the birthing of something new. They must.
One of the best books I’ve read this past year, Socialist Reconstruction, paints an incredible picture of the possibilities. Of a socialist reconstruction of the United States.
Of a country where governments place moratoriums on fossil fuels to avert climate collapse. Where they invest in decommodified, clean, renewable energy systems and people aren’t paying exorbitant amounts of money to local utility companies who jack prices for profit. Of a country where we’ve invested in mass public transit systems that are efficient, invested in, and that can get people out of cities, safely, when climate disasters strike.
As said in Socialist Reconstruction, “Life under socialism will be better as everyone will be able to count on free health care, education, transportation, utilities, low-cost housing, more free time, and deeper engagement in determining our common futures.”
So. I feel a bit annoyed and frustrated and that’s why I wrote this.
We will not solve climate change under capitalism.
So towards a socialist reconstruction.
“The vision of socialist reconstruction presented here supplies a framework that demonstrates how socialism enables us to get beyond the contradictions of capitalism by decarbonizing and deprivatizing the economy and by reorienting production around universal basic services, meaningful work, and greater time to do with what we will.”
Other juicy quotes from Socialist Reconstruction:
“Sometimes the best way to measure the strength of an idea is by the ferocity of its opponents. By this measure, socialism is clearly resurgent: all the forces of the capitalist establishment are aligned against it.”
“Political shifts result from collective struggle.”
“It is important to grasp how what is considered legal or illegal changes from one society to another. Under capitalism, some of the most gratuitous forms of theft – daily exploitation at the job, usurious interest rates, bank bailouts (the theft of public resources) – are legal and perpetrators are in fact rewarded.”
“While corporations that ruin millions of lives go unpunished, a massive legal apparatus exists to catch even the tiniest of drug dealer.”
For further learning on the topic:
Socialist Reconstruction: A Better Future for the United States
Video by The People Forum on Socialist Reconstruction
Video on Why Capitalism Can't Handle Climate Change
This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein