Climate Change Is Class War
1 May 1889 was the first ever International Workers’ Day. For 134 years since, the labour movement across the globe has marked May Day through marches, parades and festivals, celebrating the power and solidarity of the working class of the world.
In the past 40 years however, May Day has waned in popularity. The era of the free market was unleashed in the 1980s, and the labour movement suffered historic defeats in many countries.
Yet when capitalism entered a period of crisis and austerity after 2008, class politics began to return. In 2023, the cost of living crisis is biting hard, and another recession and another round of austerity looms just beyond the horizon. On top of that economic crisis sits an ecological crisis, with the spectre of catastrophic climate change threatening the very future of humanity. The return of working class struggle comes not a moment too soon.
Ever since the inception of capitalism a few hundred years ago, the capitalists have always waged class war on the workers. The profit of the capitalists comes from the unpaid wages of the working class, and whenever their system enters into economic crisis, they are forced by the competitive nature of the system to lay off workers and cut wages to restore profitability. Any progressive social programmes won during the period of economic boom face the threat of austerity measures once the money runs dry.
Now the capitalist class are driving our society to the brink of collapse. Their unceasing pursuit of profit has always and will always come at the expense of people and the planet. Make no mistake — it’s not ordinary people who are to blame for the climate crisis. 71% of global emissions between 1988 and 2015 were caused by just 100 corporations. The only individuals who are to blame are the shareholders and CEOs of the major corporations whose greed and recklessness knows no bounds, the politicians who bow meekly to the interests of the wealthiest 1%, and the media barons who tell ordinary working people that we are to blame for eating meat or driving to work.
By continuing to burn fossil fuels to power the capitalist machine, the ruling class are waging class war on the very future of our species. They cannot and will not stop. In order to survive, the system needs to keep growing the economy, delivering more and more profit to the major corporations. A capitalist system without economic growth would mean that all profit would come from rapidly increasing the rate of exploitation — permanent austerity. It would create a permanent social and political crisis. The effects of the 2008 Financial Crisis and the low rates of growth since then have been bad enough. Under the capitalist system, there is no alternative — grow or die.
Yet there is an alternative. When all the current system has to offer us is economic meltdown, ecological breakdown and austerity, the solution is clear — we need system change.
We can build a society where human life and the natural world come before profit and growth. The workers are the ones who create the vast sums of wealth that are hoarded by the bosses — if we stand together, stop working to produce their profits, and start working for ourselves and our communities, we can change the world.
The only solution to the climate crisis is for the working class to take democratic control of production. We need ecosocialism. Instead of allowing CEOs and shareholders to dictate how the economy is run — allowing them to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere until vast swathes of our planet are uninhabitable — we must democratically decide in our workplaces and communities what we are going to produce and how. Only when workers' democracy replaces the dictatorship of profit can we take the radical action needed to avert climate collapse.
Under capitalism, economic transitions involve painful upheaval for ordinary people. Aotearoa saw the devastating consequences of this between 1984 and 1993, when the transition from the postwar social democratic consensus towards free market globalisation created an explosion of inequality, with unemployment soaring, wages stagnating, and austerity and privatisation tearing apart the public sector.
These unjust transitions occur because working people and their families, the ones who will be affected by such upheaval, do not have power over economic decision making. The capitalists and their political representatives make the decisions, and do not suffer the repercussions. This would not be the case in an ecosocialist society. A truly just transition would be possible — there would be free retraining and no loss of income for the workers in polluting industries whose jobs will no longer be viable if we want to save the planet. Communities would still be affected, but no one would lose their livelihoods.
To end the capitalist system and the war it is waging upon people and the planet, and to bring about system change, we will require a mass movement. It is time for the trade unions to grow again — to fight for better wages and conditions in the immediate term, and to fight for a just transition to ecosocialism across the whole of society.
Political organisation will also be necessary. Workers need to unify around common demands in the immediate term: for an end to the fossil fuel industry; for decent, affordable housing; for a shorter working week; for vastly improved public transport, healthcare and education; and for taxes on wealth rather than on the incomes and consumption of workers. But such a programme of radical reforms must culminate in the ultimate demand for workers’ control. As long as the capitalists control the economy, they will hold the power to stop any just transition to a better world. We cannot and must not let them.
Let May Day 2023 mark the beginning of this movement. We must always remember — we, the working class, vastly outnumber the capitalists. When we stand together, there is nothing we cannot accomplish. We are many — they are few.
Elliot Crossan, System Change Aotearoa. Elliot is a socialist writer and activist, you can read his writing at Watermelon Media .