SARAH GLYNN
If human society is to survive, it will have to undergo many changes. The existential threat facing our planet demands a complete change in the way society is organised and run; but capitalism has been much too successful in normalising a capitalist mindset for that to happen easily. For very many people, capitalism is seen simply as the natural order of things, and they are ready to agree with the capitalist elite that any action that is seen as threatening capitalism should be opposed.
There is not yet popular support for all the changes that are needed. We can, though, enact and campaign for changes now that are both beneficial in themselves and that can help people see the necessity and possibility of more radical change – change that breaks the shackles of capitalism.
This ‘manifesto’ will not attempt to give a detailed programme – though it will suggest examples of changes that could provide the focus of campaigns and action. Its purpose is to set out an overriding framework, based on the arguments in the previous section. This framework should inform campaigning decisions and actions in such a way that many small changes trigger much larger ones, and that people come to realise how capitalism has blinded them to their real interests.
Public need not private greed
Inequality, and capitalism’s dependence on private businesses to meet basic needs, have enabled a relatively small number of people to exploit both the rest of the population and our shared natural resources. As the previous section argued, the survival of human society demands a new sort of economics. Competition and the drive for endless growth needs to be replaced by prioritisation of human need, including the needs of future generations. The exploitation of both people and nature needs to be replaced by an understanding of human society as part of a natural ecosystem that has to be nurtured.
Our limited resources need to be shared more equally and used more rationally. This can be achieved by using public funding to provide public goods and services and genuinely useful work; and by using taxes to reduce inequalities and allow everyone to benefit from efficiencies of production and from the wealth built up by past generations.
At the same time, local communities can put these principles into practice now through mutual aid organisations. These can help with daily life, and also provide a living model of a different way of approaching the economy, and of inclusive democratic structures.
From neighbourhood co-ops to campaigns to force change in government policy, actions guided by these principles can both move societies onto a more environmentally sustainable path and bring a better quality of life. They can expose the lies of those who argue that escaping capitalism is impossible and that green politics equates to deprivation. Every positive improvement won boosts demands for further change.
History shows that this scenario is not simply wishful thinking. Even devotees of minimal public intervention accept the need to move beyond a capitalist free-for-all in many areas of life. They accept the need for restrictions on what people can do – such as planning laws – and they take many public services for granted – such as schools and roads and sewage systems and street lighting and pensions and (in many places) healthcare. These services were won through historical struggles and through the political necessity of basic standards of health and literacy. Today, our very survival demands that public intervention is extended much further.
More services at both national and local levels can be run in the interests of local communities rather than for profit. Public healthcare is not only more equitable but also more cost effective. Subsidised, or even free, public transport can change the liveability of a city and make it accessible for everyone. Subsidised public housing can be integrated with wider planning and prevent housing being used for speculation and exploitation.
In the past, public ownership suffered from distant and insensitive centralised bureaucracies, but it needn’t be this way. With democratic control by workers and users, and with local management, public services can respond to real needs. Our lives and our planet require us to maximise democratic engagement, and that means organising things at the most local level possible. Politicians like to talk about devolution, meaning the state handing down power from above, but in a democracy, power should come from the people. Our campaigns should be aimed at a democratic model that builds up from the bottom, with each level of organisation working within its region and coming together with others to address bigger shared concerns.
Looking beyond the traditional realms of the public economy, public investment in AI and in new technologies can allow these to be put to use for the benefit of everyone, and not just to provide riches for a few while many others are put out of work. And any serious response to climate change must include public energy companies dedicated to building up green energy generation. These can site generating centres where they work best (not according to the profits of private landowners) and deliver energy where it is needed.
This list is far from comprehensive.
Increased public involvement in the economy would also allow everyone to be given a guarantee of a job doing socially useful work at a decent wage and with decent conditions. And decent conditions should include short working hours so people have more time to spend as they will, and more time to get involved in running their community.
Public services can be economically efficient and can increase public wealth, but if they are to be free or subsidised for users, then costs need to be recovered through taxation. Those with a lot of money to lose have been very effective in persuading others that taxes are detrimental for everyone and must be resisted. However, taxes can be targeted on those most able to pay. Besides higher rates of income tax for those with large incomes, top rates can be increased for taxes on inheritance and gifts, and much more use can be made of wealth taxes, including land value tax. Taxation can reduce the wealth gap while bringing in money that can be used efficiently for the benefit of all. A system that employs progressive taxation, in which the wealthy are taxed a greater proportion of their income and wealth, and that uses those taxes to fund public goods and services, is a system that benefits the great majority of people. Besides the immediate benefits, more equal societies have been shown to be better for everyone on a whole range of criteria. And if this economic shift can keep this planet habitable, it becomes vital for the whole of humanity.
Legal restrictions not costly bribes
Taxes and subsidies have also been used to try and encourage or disincentivise certain behaviours, such as subsidies to help energy-guzzling businesses to change their product or their production methods, or taxes that penalise waste and pollution. However, tax and subsidies used in this way can prove a clumsy tool with unintended consequences. Subsidies, if not carefully delineated, can largely end up boosting corporate profits. Taxes to change behaviour need to be precisely targeted, else they will only penalise those least able to pay, leaving the main offenders to continue with their former practices. Many big users of energy and other resources can easily swallow the extra cost – or, in the case of businesses, pass it on to their customers. These types of policy waste public funds and distract from pursuing more effective methods. Badly thought through ‘solutions’ also make people question climate change policies as a whole.
If activities are ecologically destructive, they need to be banned outright. Bans should close down polluting industries, stop the opening of new oil and gas fields, and increasingly restrict drilling of existing fields. Such bans need to be accompanied by public development of alternative energy generation, as well as by reductions in energy use. With public investment and a job guarantee, industries can be closed without leaving people out of work. Instead of working in industries that damage the planet, they can be guaranteed work that benefits their community.
Other laws can help temper capitalism’s demands. Inequality could be reduced with a legal cap on the difference between the highest and lowest wages within an organisation. Businesses could be required to make their products easier to repair, and to give longer guarantees so as to reduce planned obsolescence. The constant pressure for consumption could be eased by banning advertising from public space.
Focusing the power of organised labour
For these changes to happen will require committed and strategic mass campaigning. The working class has the power to force change because of its size and because of its vital role in keeping our economic and social structures afloat. Workers can also help ensure that actions target key points in those structures, and use their skills to devise greener ways of working.
Trade unions enable workers to use their power as workers to force change. Workers are not victims needing protection, as portrayed in some writing about the ‘green transition’. They are subjects who can and must play a proactive role in building a genuinely sustainable future. They can use their combined power to push industries towards green alternatives, and to demand public involvement at all levels – state, municipal, and neighbourhood. This is not just about preserving jobs when old polluting industries close down, or ensuring that businesses don’t use the transition to replace secure work with a gig-economy. It is about taking the initiative, so that changes made are not a greenwash conceived in the interest of shareholders, but are guided by the interests of wider society – indeed of humanity.
Building up our trade unions must be a vital part of any ecological strategy, including fighting for the secure jobs that give trade unions their strength. Unions will need to confront the legal restrictions constraining their actions. They can link environmental demands to employment issues where this is possible, but will have to be ready to challenge those restrictions when this is not enough.
A manifesto for trade unions needs to take the long view, looking at the future of work and workers, and beyond immediate difficulties. And it must encompass a wide geography, bringing together workers across the world to facilitate strategic and coordinated actions that can force change on our globally linked economy.
Community activism as a force for change
So far, I have talked about campaigns to force others to act – to put irresistible pressure on government or local authorities or on employers – but some changes can be instigated by local communities themselves.
When communities work together to pool and share resources and skills, this doesn’t need official involvement or endorsement. Mutual aid organisations can enable sharing of resources, with initiatives such as tool libraries, carpools, and all sorts of shared neighbourhood amenities. These can also serve to bring local people together, facilitating other forms of mutual aid and solidarity. In community gardens, for example, people work together, organise together, and learn from one another, and can chose how to distribute the produce. They can pass knowledge and tools and very literal seed funding to other similar groups.
For those who don’t enjoy getting their hands dirty, mutual aid communities involve many different aspects of life, including developers of open-source software.
Mutual aid principles can be extended to provide livelihoods and housing through workers’ co-ops and housing co-ops. They can also form the basis of responsive local management of public resources, as in Glasgow’s tenant management co-ops (which disappeared when the council transferred all its housing stock to the market-led Glasgow Housing Association). In a capitalist economy, this sort of organisation requires especial dedication and hard work. It also requires compromises to access initial funding or to work with the authorities, but each successful example makes it easier for others.
Community organisations of all kinds already provide the cement that holds our societies together, and local achievements can provide inspiration and support for more and bigger changes. But national and local authorities, which rarely acknowledge the vital role such organisations play, restrict the possibility for these to have a wider impact by promoting the idea that they should not be ‘political’. With formal politics having acquired such a bad name, this can seem superficially alluring. Official authorities can actively support community organisation, but they can also stifle its potential through institutionalisation and shutting down critical voices – as so many community activists have discovered.
If they can escape the pressure to keep out of ‘politics’, and avoid being treated as a sticking plaster for the wounds of capitalism, community activists and organisations can develop grass roots democratic engagement and provide a strong force for wider progressive change.
Granby Four Streets in Liverpool demonstrates the potential, and also the hard graft and conviviality, of community organising. As in many other examples of mutual aid, the Granby residents were responding to an external threat – in this case the planned demolition of their homes. Liverpool City Council was demolishing hundreds of terraced houses to make room for speculative development – and they were encouraging decline to force residents to sell. In Granby Four Streets, people not only refused to leave, they set about demonstrating that this was a place that should not be demolished. They turned the neighbourhood into a green oasis, painted the tinned up empty homes, and set up a regular street market. Granby was just one of the areas fighting demolition, and, aided by changed economic conditions and by the conservation lobby, campaigners got the demolitions stopped in time to save the Granby homes. The nearby Welsh Streets were saved too, but too late for the community that had lived in them. In Granby, residents stepped into the gap and established a community land trust to renovate empty homes for local people, including turning two of the houses into a winter garden and community arts centre. Whenever large sums of money are involved, compromises are inevitable. Some of the renovated homes are rented at below market rates, but others have had to be sold; and the need to raise funds will inevitably restrict potential for involvement in wider politics. However, land trust members try to involve neighbouring areas, and to spread knowledge of what is possible.
Real life doesn’t separate what happens in the workplace from what happens outside, and campaigns multiply their strength when they combine trade union and community organisation. A demonstration of this in action is provided by the former GKN auto-parts factory in Florence, where the union is organised under a factory collective. What began, in July 2021, as a factory occupation against threatened closure and the lay-off of over 400 workers, has developed into a mass movement that brings together different struggles for a better way of living in society. Together with academic researchers and political activists, factory workers have compiled a plan for a green reindustrialisation from below. This would see their factory operating as a not-for-profit workers’ cooperative making cargo bikes and solar panels and acting as a precedent for other workplaces. Even if they don’t ultimately succeed in saving their factory – which would require external financial help – the workers are manufacturing a new politics.
This little book has been written for activists in so-called ‘developed’ economies, but some of the most powerful grassroots activism has been undertaken by indigenous communities outside those economies. These communities are resisting capitalist colonialism and oppression, which rides roughshod over environmentally harmonious traditional practices and communal land rights, and regards indigenous peoples and their lands as opportunities for mineral extraction, cheap labour, and the export of polluting industries. The capitalist forces that are threatening indigenous land and lives are the same as those exploiting workers and the natural world in the heart of ‘developed’ economies. Solidarity and coordination between struggles in both places make both stronger.
From small changes to new understandings
Each change achieved – through forcing new legislation or by direct community action – may seem very small compared to the enormity of what is needed, but one change can also make the next change easier. Together they can be greater than the sum of their parts and open our eyes to new possibilities.
Take public transport, for example. Every route won feeds into other potential routes and makes these more useful, and their construction easier to justify. Together, different routes can build up an efficient and practical network that all can use. There will always be some journeys and circumstances where individual cars are required – though these cars need not necessarily be individually owned – but when a public transport system is comprehensive, well-planned, and affordable, the majority of urban journeys can be made comfortably without a car. This makes possible a qualitative change in the nature of the city. The motor industry has conditioned us to regard the individual car as the symbol of success and freedom, but, when there is a practical alternative that means that many people are no longer dependent on cars for most journeys, we can see how cars have been allowed to dictate the nature of our environment. A society’s reliance on cars actually deprives its citizens of choice. Even electric cars consume energy and resources, take up space, and contribute to hours spent stuck in traffic. With fewer cars, there is a lot more room for the things that make a city a pleasant place to live – including more trees and green spaces that can help to mitigate the impact of rising temperatures.
Every change that is carried out can help persuade more people of the viability of an approach that prioritises the inseparable wellbeing of humanity and of nature. So every change can make the next change easier. Developments on the ground can change people’s outlook more quickly than theoretical debate. Examples of inclusive democratic practice and mutual aid are more convincing than essays, and every well-planned public investment demonstrates the hollowness of capitalist scare-stories.
Resisting elite reaction and imperialist war
Understandings may change more quickly than we might once have thought possible. History is moving at an astonishing speed, and many people are being forced to reassess their assumptions about world politics and government priorities. This is not a linear process – it is not just climate change that has tipping points. However, there is no guarantee that people’s understandings will change in a positive direction.
The powerful react to crisis not by changing the actions that caused the crisis, but by clamping down on protest. Almost everywhere, political freedoms are being restricted and racisms are being encouraged so as to enable the old trick of divide and rule. When the already existing crises get overtaken by the even bigger crises resulting from climate change, governments will tend to reach for even more authoritarian solutions; and they will try and tame resistance through new versions of fascism.
Our defence against fascism is the struggle for real positive change, so that people are not lured by false promises. Such change must include a genuine inclusive democracy that responds to community needs. Campaigns for genuine democracy, with decisions taken as close to where they will be implemented as possible, have to be an integral part of any manifesto for change, with democratic practice beginning in campaigning organisations themselves.
Today, instead of focussing on the existential dangers of climate change and environmental exploitation, world politics is engulfed in growing conflict. Capitalist imperialism is generating a destructive competition between power blocks. Horrendous and terrifying in itself, this is making division when we most need cooperation, diverting attention from the failure to address environmental emergencies, and producing untold environmental damage. Peace is essential for a sustainable future, just as a sustainable future is essential for peace.
Climate and Class 