Talking about Socialism has focused on the environmental crisis since launching in 2023. TAS supporters helped organise the first Ecosocialism Conference held in London in 2023. The conference brought together people who responded to a conference call stating clearly that the only realistic solution to the environmental crisis was to end capitalism, the source of the crisis, and replace it with a socialist society. It was agreed that reformist solutions to the crisis are not viable as capital will not allow itself to be reformed out of existence.
The next Ecosocialist conference will be held on dates to be determined in either December 2024 or January 2025. Its focus will be on the strategy, tactics and demands and, crucially, actions that revolutionary socialists should focus on over.
The question that can bedevil people who see the threat of the environmental crisis is what can I do, or more precisely for revolutionary socialists, what can we, revolutionary socialists, do? How do we take action on the crisis? This debate will be at the heart of the conference, which can be attended in person or online.
The first edition of the draft statement was written by Will McMahon, who is part of the TAS steering group, and is also on the organising group for the the next Ecosocialist conference. Other members of the Ecosocialist Conference organising group added amendments focused on a just transition and also the need to campaign for a post-scarity world. With these amendments the draft statement was broadly accepted by the Ecosocialist conference as a first iteration that would be open to discussion. You can read the draft statement below and find more details about the conference here.
Get involved in the conference
We would encourage comrades to get involved in this process and attend the conference when the date is announced. There is only one class that will be able meet the environmental crisis head-on and deliver a solution that benefits humanity as a whole, and that is the working class with its allies. This conference will be a step in ensuring that we take action on the environmental crisis and the system that is responsible for it. A socialist strategy should challenge the reformist solutions, as well as the arguments of those who who believe there is no crisis, or that a no-growth solution is the only way out, or others who are fatalistic and assume there is nothing to be done because it is now too late.
Draft statement for Ecosocialism Conference 2024
2024 has witnessed a further acceleration in the environmental crisis. The environment humanity shares continues to be under attack on land, sea, and air by a global capitalist economy that requires constant accumulation and growth, irrespective of the cost to the natural world.
This is signalled by:
- Earth’s 13 straight months with a new average heat record to June 2024. The permanent rise in pre-industrial temperatures above 1.5C is now extremely likely.
- Peer-reviewed science confirming it is inevitable, due to the Antarctic ice melt, the rapidly warming global seas will rise by one metre by the end of this century and an additional further one metre for each of the four centuries following.
- Six of the nine planetary environmental boundaries continue to be breached, resulting in the chemical poisoning of the planet through fertilisers and ‘forever chemicals’ and a rapid increase in loss of both insect pollination and forests.
Capitalism cannot deliver a solution
With polluting production and resource extraction as its bedrock, there is no evidence market economics, exploitation, and accumulation so essential to capitalism, can deliver a solution in the interests of all humanity.
As the climate crisis deepens, inefficient, ineffective, and profit-driven technological reforms will be promoted by governments and corporations. While offering some amelioration, these steps will only deepen global inequality and insecurity and fail to tackle the totality of the crisis.
Confronted by population movements and social struggles resulting from climate breakdown, governments across the globe will further strengthen borders and introduce repressive legislation to police the social turmoil.
A “just transition”
A market driven capitalist solution will harm workers and small farmers. Jobs in fossil fuel industries, agro-industries and large scale ranching will have to be drastically cut back in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Without massive state intervention, millions of workers will lose their jobs. Farming methods will have to change radically, imperilling the livelihoods of small farmers. Embittered workers and farmers will be used by the far right to undermine reforms.
Billions of people whose lives are being devastated by climate change will receive little help from capitalist governments and institutions. Most of the climate finance being offered to poor countries is in the form of loans. In the face of a global emergency, offers of loans to poor countries is little more than self serving cynicism.
We need an Ecosocialist movement and programme
There is an urgent need to build a movement with a programme to meet the climate emergency that offers an alternative to the chaos, inefficiency, inequality, and repression resulting from capitalist strategies.
At the heart of an ecosocialist programme is the democratic socialisation of industries and services and the equitable distribution of resources. This necessarily means replacing the domination of capital and its profiteering, which is directly contrary to the interest of humanity and the natural world it is part of, with eco-socialist democracies governed by the interests of the international working class and its allies. This means a post-scarcity world where our needs are met and we have an abundance of time, culture and human connection alongside housing, food and public amenities for all.
We urgently need emergency programmes to tackle the crisis we face, with investment in public programmes to: replace fossil fuels with renewable energy; create cheap and reliable public transport; retrofit and renovate existing housing stock; an end to the supply of ultra-processed foods poisoning our bodies; a radical reduction of deforestation; and radical measures to clean the oceans, seas, and rivers.
Ensuring a just transition and investing in clean energy will require many trillions of dollars. Governments of wealthy countries are politically unwilling to find this amount of money through conventional institutions. It is clear that we need a massive redistribution of wealth and power away from the large global corporations and the world’s very wealthy individuals to provide a start to the financing of a move away from climate catastrophe.
The Ecosocialist challenge is global
There is no national solution to this crisis. Fighting the ecocide that threatens humanity is a global task that will require the ending of the market economy and the social and economic inequalities it creates, the dismantling of imperialism and its five centuries-long exploitation of the planet, the abolition of borders, militarism, and policing, and the social transformation of the economy from the ground up.
Eco-socialism should aspire to be an international revolutionary movement that challenges the existing capitalist world order by offering a socialist, democratically planned, and egalitarian programme to meet the environmental crisis that humanity faces.
Revolutionary change means being active
Ecosocialists need to be active in the worker’s movement and environmental movement. Active in the trade unions, communities, and in social movements most impacted by the climate crisis. In particular, this means solidarity with refugees and immigrants and those forced to move as climate conditions make their lives impossible.
Ecosocialist need to fight for reforms in the here and now and always point to a future better world by offering a programme that intends to lead to it, while challenging the idea that capitalism and nature can peacefully coexist.
We welcome people who want to join us to help develop this campaign and expand its activities. We want to transform the ideas and theories of ecosocialism into practical action. We might not agree on every slogan or theory but we need to build a mass movement in a spirit of unity and hope.