Class

Coll McCail,
Socialist activist and writer with Fridays for Future and Progressive International

Human history is the history of class struggle, of oppressed and oppressor, those who produce wealth and those who own it. The climate crisis is no different.

The flames that lick our burning planet are the consequence of gross exploitation by the capitalist class yet they will only ever threaten those least responsible for their existence. The emissions which poison our air to ensure the profits of the few will only ever choke those who cannot afford to escape them.

To avert the threat of extinction, we have to view the climate crisis as the inevitable consequence of aggressive capitalism, the result of an unfettered mode of production dependent on extraction and subjugation.

Only class-conscious mass movements of the working class can mount a challenge to finance capital of the scale the nature of the climate emergency necessitates. If those upon whose labour capitalism depends do not sit in the vanguard of the struggle against climate change, we cannot prevent planetary collapse.

Around the globe, movements are growing, people are coming together and coalitions are expanding. Trade unionists and workers are building relationships with climate activists. As organisers it is our responsibility to ensure each one of these movements is rooted in the politics of class, for this is the key to planetary liberation, and to ward against those reactionaries who favour either ‘green capitalism’, or who see the role of workers as superfluous to a new world.

(1) Max Ajl’s, A People’s Green New Deal

(2) Hugo Chavez, “If the climate were one of the biggest capitalist banks, the rich governments would have saved it”

(3) Vijay Prashad at COP26