“Man lives from nature, i.e. nature is his body and he must maintain a continuing dialogue with it if he is not to die.”
It is many years now since scientists and environmentalists first began to warn us about the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change on our planet’s fragile balance of nature and here, in the early 21st century, few people can have any serious doubts that the earth is in climate and environmental crisis.
This crisis is the accumulated result of nearly 200 years of industrialisation – industrialisation which brought many advances for humankind, but did so reckless as to the cost to nature. Industrialisation brought inequality where those who created wealth for themselves and despoiled the earth, did so at the expense of others whose resources were plundered, who saw little of the rewards and who now experience the worst of the effects of climate change.
But, in spite of the warnings, capitalism and the ruling class have done little more than pay lip service to adapting to and mitigating the effects of the environmental crisis. The reason is clear: industrialisation brought with it capitalism and the pursuit of profit, and the accumulation of profit has given power to those whose interests lie in maintaining ‘business as usual’ – even at the risk of endangering humankind’s existence on Earth.
From Marx’s theory of ‘metabolic rift’ in 1867 to Kohei Saito’s 2022 ideas of degrowth communism, socialist and Marxist thinkers have explored ecological alternatives to capitalism’s destructive accumulation. At a time when the world is on the brink of catastrophe, Britain’s communists argue that we must choose: socialism or extinction.
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