BEYOND BARBARISM : TOWARDS ECOSOCIALISM

In the age of climate change and a deepening environmental crisis, the political status quo has no answer to the devastating consequences of the crisis. In their new book Planet on Fire: A Manifesto for the Age of Environmental Breakdown, authors Mathew Lawrence and Laurie Laybourn-Langton propose a fundamental reimagining of the world economy to create a future that is both democratic and sustainable. In this short extract from the book they observe that we are at a crossroads : either ecosocialism or barbarism. The world is at a terminal juncture. 

IN 1916, amid the wreckage of war and empire, Rosa Luxemburg saw that 'bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to Socialism or regression into Barbarism'. Today, we once more stand at just such a crossroads: ecosocialism or barbarism. Yet this time really is different. Extractive capitalism tears apart the natural systems  upon which all life depends and drives the disruption and violence of breakdown hurtling towards us. We are at a terminal juncture.

But we can still rescue our futures. Climate crisis and ecological breakdown are primarily a political crisis. We have the resources, technologies and ideas to decarbonise our economies and bring them within sustainable environmental limits; the challenge is mobilising the power and energy to match the scale of the emergency, overcoming entrenched interests and inertia to drive transformation within a narrow time frame.

To do this, we need to replace the economics of extractivism with a twenty first century ecosocialism : the collective effort to democratise our economic and political institutions, repurposing them towards wellbeing and individual flourishing, rooted in an abundant and thriving natural world. It is a goal that demands a different type of economy, one orientated towards meeting social and environmental needs, overturning the injustices of contemporary societies and an extractive, neo-imperial political economy; promoting communal luxury in societies of everyday beauty and comfort; expanding social ownership and control; and deepening and extending democracy and freedom. If you do not like the word 'ecosocialism', then use something else. But this is the systemic change we need to help us thrive as well as survive.

This is not a project of traditional statism, with success measured simply by the size of the state. It is about reimagining the foundational institutions of production, consumption and exchange, of work and leisure, based on principles of equality, deep freedom and collective empowerment, solidarity, sustainability and democracy. In place of the economics of enclosure and extraction, a twenty first century commons founded on collective stewardship; in place of concentrated economic power, a democratised marketplace where capital's monopoly over decision-making is replaced by social control and generative enterprise; against austerity; an ambitious mission-oriented state that lays the foundations of an expanded, decommodified public realm; and a reimagined household economy that dismantles unjust inequalities and increases leisure time.

Extending social control over finance to direct its power to serve real needs, valuing work that nurtures and sustains life, and democratising technological development and use to extend our capacity  for creativity and mutual endeavour, ecosocialism builds the conditions for thriving. It works through  a new internationalism, recognising that the failed age of the 'Washington Consensus' is over, and that, in its place, international cooperation  must be built on a full understanding of how we got here and a shared view of where we go next. And it seeks to dismantle the structural racism and class inequalities that blight our societies.

This will require more than marginal adjustments. As signs at Black Lives Matter demonstrations across the world have spelled out, 'The system isn't broken, it was built this way'. To that end, we need one, two, many Green New Deals - adapted to meet local needs and cultures - confidently deploying the tools of public investment, democratic ownership, and green industrial strategy to rapidly remake our economies for sustainability and justice. The entwined environmental and inequality emergencies demand unparalleled ambition. Corporate greenwashing, 'Green Deals' and limited 'green Keynesianism' won't suffice; the scale, complexity and compounding nature of the crisis demand deeper, planned transition. An ambitious reordering of our economy is needed to secure more sustainable forms of abundance than the partial freedoms, inequalities and environmental crisis of extractive capitalism.

What we propose is a politics for common care, mutual solidarity and joy, one that can renew hope against the deadening grip of the past: against the multiplying financial claims of our economic futures and the accumulated harms of environmental destruction that are now an existential threat to life. The environmental crisis changes everything: we can respond by delivering collective transformation.

Planet on Fire is published by Verso Books.