A Political-Strategic Programme for Eco-Socialist Unity
Summary
- The climate crisis is an urgent and existential threat to the basic conditions of social life and therefore the long-term possibility of a socialist future.
- The climate crisis must now be a primary lens through which a new left-wing party makes political and strategic decisions.
- We propose a political-strategic platform for the party which combines the urgent need to avert climate catastrophe and the long-term need to resolve the contradiction between endless capitalist accumulation and planetary limits.
- The state is the only political actor capable of coordinating rapid decarbonisation including nationalising without compensation and winding down polluting industries (e.g. fossil fuel production).
- We must build popular power based in eco-socialist consciousness to confront reactionary and capitalist forces in the state as we seek to influence or capture it.
- The urgency of climate mitigation and adaptation, and current lack of a political agent capable of winning eco-socialism, means that electoral interventions in the state are necessary in the short-term.
- It is necessary to repeal all anti-trade union and protest laws to liberate the popular forces in the struggle for the minimum programme.
- Near-term strategy for rapid decarbonisation:
- Minimum political programme: the state is forced to discipline capitalist power and profits, and mobilises the socio-economic resources to arrest emissions and adapt to warming.
- Organising strategy: contest elections at all levels to shift debate, extract concessions and/or exercise power through the state, buttressed by building popular power.
- Long-term strategy for eco-socialism:
- Maximum political programme: transform socio-ecological relations to move beyond the capitalist mode of production.
- Organising strategy: build a mass socialist party, including raising eco-socialist consciousness and organising capacities, to effectively confront the state and capital.
- This eco-socialist political-strategic platform can be a point of unity for all across the Left, recognising our shared interest in prioritising the climate crisis while synthesising strategic orientations towards electoral campaigns, revolutionary party-building, and beyond.
Introduction
The climate crisis is the defining context in which all politics now occurs. The coming decades will be defined by an intensification of global heating with significant disruptions to the basic rhythms of social and economic life. It will drive food price rises, destruction of property, displacement of people, the spread of disease, heightened conflict and more besides. Crucially, these social ills are symptoms of the climate crisis’ imminent and existential threat to the basic conditions of social life and modern society. Left unresolved, the climate crisis is therefore catastrophic for the very possibility of liberation, peace and socialism.
Your Party has to prioritise ecology and the climate crisis. We cannot afford to treat the climate crisis as one policy issue to be listed among many, nor can we treat climate change as a discreet or abstract concern. We must understand the climate crisis as defining the terrain of all political struggle and informing the possibility of success on all issues. The climate crisis should therefore be a key starting point for our analysis of the present conjuncture and a primary lens through which all political and strategic decisions are made.
Your Party has been formed at a moment of weakness for climate politics in Britain. The popular climate insurgency from late-2018 was defined by Extinction Rebellion (XR), youth strikes and Green New Deal campaigns channelling a pro-climate shift in public opinion into a vibrant street movement and engagement in the political process. An eco-socialist politics did also briefly find expression amid this insurgency through Corbyn’s Labour Party as it adopted the Green New Deal policy programme for the 2019 general election. These two political movements both shifted public consciousness on climate change and showed that an eco-socialist politics could generate public support and make serious in-roads through trade unions and broad swathes of the political Left – as well as revealing how much more needs to be done to build support for an eco-socialist platform.
It is in this spirit that we argue that there is a mutual dependence between eco-socialism and a mass Left party. The former requires the latter as a far more viable organisational vehicle, and the latter requires the former to effectively orient it towards the climate crisis as the context in which all politics now occurs. Below we present a brief conjunctural analysis of the climate crisis in capitalism, and temporality and the method of transition in eco-socialist politics which we use to inform our proposal for a political-strategic platform for Your Party. This proposal synthesises the need for urgent climate action, long-term party building and electoral interventions through the capitalist state and eco-socialist transformation.
Climate Crisis
We understand the climate crisis, and ecological crises more broadly, as operating on two main levels of abstraction. On one level, climate change is a socio-ecological process; greenhouse gas emissions from human activity produce global heating which is rapidly altering and damaging climate and ecology. There is the potential for a technological response to reduce these emissions, an energy transition from fossil fuel dependence to clean energy. On another level, the climate crisis is symptomatic of a fundamental contradiction within capitalism between planetary limits and capital’s imperative for endless accumulation. The endless drive for accumulation presents a potentially catastrophic threat to both the capitalist system and life within it.
The imperative for accumulation has so far limited the extent of the technological transition even though the ideas, technologies and popular will broadly exists to make these changes. There is a simple reason why: the activities driving climate breakdown, particularly fossil fuel production and combustion, remain extraordinarily profitable and the capitalist state is unwilling to intervene to radically curtail these activities. The transition is not simply technological, it requires a new political-economic regime where the socio-ecological interests of the people supersede the interests of capital – most urgently the interests of the fossil fuel industry.
Eco-socialism: temporality and transition
Eco-socialism makes a fundamental claim that building socialism is impossible without addressing climate and ecological crises, and that addressing climate and ecological crises is impossible without socialist politics and organisation. The eco-socialist analysis of the climate crisis presents a set of considerable practical challenges for eco-socialists to navigate in the current conjuncture.
First, the climate crisis contains a fraught temporality. On the one hand, the ‘tipping point’ logic of climate change compels us to act with great urgency to adapt to a changing climate and do everything possible to stop emissions to prevent irreversible and devastating consequences. At some point, not too far in the future, it will physically be too late to reverse climate breakdown. On the other hand, we find ourselves in the difficult position of lacking a political agent capable of instigating the necessary socio-ecological transformations towards eco-socialism. The ruling class – governments, corporations and international institutions – have roundly failed in the task of reducing emissions in sufficient time, in part because there is not an organised, bottom-up social force capable of challenging the ruling class. Building such a popular political agent necessarily takes time that we do not have according to the ticking clock of the climate crisis.
Second, the climate crisis provokes a tension around the method of transition. Socio-ecological transformations can only be delivered on the necessary timescale through the state. The state is the only political actor with the appropriate scale, fiscal capacity, planning capabilities, and power to discipline capital to coordinate rapid climate transition. There is therefore some strategic imperative to strongly influence if not capture state power by engaging with Parliamentary democracy. The tension we face is that the capitalist state is disciplined (if not controlled) by the capitalist class, to the extent that socialist forces cannot simply capture state and legal institutions for the purpose of achieving our policy goals.
The experience of Corbynism shows that there will be considerable resistance to any such electoral campaigns, let alone to any resulting socialist government. There is a strategic imperative to build popular power (based in eco-socialist consciousness) – for example in workplaces, communities, and the streets – capable of confronting the reactionary forces of the state and capital in the struggle for eco-socialism. We need to combine contesting the capitalist state in its centres of power with building support for social change from below. Reactionary forces are already capitalising on the political-economic instability of the climate crisis, not just in the parties of the conservative right but also within social democratic parties like Labour and through organic bottom-up community focused strategies (e.g. ‘raise the colours’). Building popular power for eco-socialism is therefore a necessary compliment to winning state power, and a new left-wing party provides an opportunity to challenge the state without having to continually contend with internal, reactionary and regressive political tendencies.
Political-Strategic Programme for Eco-Socialism
We contend that party organisation – with its potential for mass membership, genuine democracy, and orientation towards the state – is necessary for enacting the technological and political responses to the climate crisis and translating them into a political programme and organising strategy which addresses near term urgency and long term need for transformation of the capitalist system. This should be an ongoing process, with the party’s political-strategic platform developed through democratic debate and deliberation in tandem with the development of wider socio-ecological conditions.
To begin with, as the party’s founding process nears, we propose an eco-socialist political-strategic platform to enable the party to respond to the urgent imperatives of climate politics, while also building a mass socialist party. As such, the political-strategic platform is composed of both near-term and long-term horizons, each containing the outlines of complementary political programmes and organising strategies.
Every Fraction of a Degree Counts: Near-term strategy
The party should adopt a minimum political programme for rapid decarbonisation composed of the most necessary measures for climate mitigation and adaptation in which every fraction of a degree counts in limiting global temperature rises. Mitigation and adaptation should be understood as mutually constitutive. Certain climate effects are now locked in such that intensifying extreme weather is inevitable. We should therefore invest in measures to adapt society to this new reality, both infrastructurally and by ensuring that the costs (e.g. rising food prices or energy bills) are shouldered by the capitalist class responsible for the crisis. At the same time, every fraction of a degree of warming that we can stop will make the task of adaptation easier.
Which is why, first and foremost, our minimum programme must include nationalisation without compensation of the most polluting industries (e.g. fossil fuels) for the purpose of managing their dissolution. The less fossil energy we produce, the less the world heats up. That is an undeniable law of physics and we need a political party that acts as if it grasps that simple and undeniable fact.
The positive demands of the minimum political programme should focus on what is absolutely necessary for effective mitigation and adaptation. The content and timescale of these measures will evolve over time along with climate change itself. These measures arise from a socialist analysis of capitalist climate crisis (including the failure of markets and profit-seeking corporations to transition) and, as such, can form the basis of broader socialist transformation. Expanding public ownership, in particular, is an important tool to rebalance class forces by removing strategic economic sectors (e.g. energy) from the realm of profit so they can be democratically and rationally planned.
We resist the urge to import any and all policy predilections – however agreeable, on their own terms – into this programme. On this near-term timescale, we also cannot expect to fully address the fundamental socio-ecological contradictions of capitalism. Instead, the minimum programme seeks to avoid the most catastrophic and debilitating effects of climate change through targeted socio-economic mobilisations and disciplining capitalist power and profits.
Nonetheless, we recognise that there are issues that may be beyond the scope of the minimum programme, but whose importance may grow with the development of the conjuncture, or may be particularly integral to eco-socialist struggle within particular localities. These include but are not limited to issues such as the land question, constraining the power of financial capital, and opposing global war. While these do not fall within the scope of our minimum programme for the reasons outlined above, they nonetheless remain integral to our analysis. Eco-Socialist Horizon will develop their place in our proposed political programme as the work of building eco-socialism advances.
The measures in our minimum plan should be underpinned by the repealing of all anti-trade union and protest laws to liberate the popular forces (i.e. trade unions, social movements) which will play a crucial role in disciplining capital and struggling for the minimum programme alongside the party.
These efforts thus seek to raise eco-socialist consciousness, mitigate the worst impacts of climate breakdown, and begin to foster the enabling conditions of the maximum programme outlined below.
The key elements of our minimum programme are as follows:
- Nationalisation of the entire energy system without compensation for rapid dismantling of the fossil fuel industry
- Massive state investment in clean-energy build-out, new green industries, electrification and comprehensive retrofit
- Jobs guarantee, systematic retraining/reskilling and social security for affected workers and communities
- Nationalisation of water companies without compensation for public investment in repairing infrastructure and preparing flood defenses
- Price controls on food, energy, water and other affected commodities
- Financial and technical support for transition internationally, including debt cancellation
To achieve this minimum political programme, the party should adopt a two-pronged organising strategy combining electoral interventions with building popular power.
The urgency of the climate crisis means that these measures for rapid decarbonisation and adaptation must be won as a priority. As such, the party should contest local, regional and national elections on the minimum programme aiming to win gains either by shifting the national political debate such that other parties adopt elements of the programme, directly extracting concessions i.e. as a junior coalition partner, and/or by occupying state power by forming a government. The party requires a worked-out strategy for local, regional and the national governments of Scotland and Wales based on what gains for the minimum programme can be made at which level, scenario planning for different coalition government scenarios, and a best-case scenario plan for a socialist government delivering an historic programme of rapid decarbonisation.
Crucially, this electoral approach must be buttressed with a parallel project of building popular power through mass mobilisations, public campaigns and civil disobedience and/or direct-action. This is an equally important element of the near-term organising strategy to a) complement electoral campaigns by building popular support for the political programme, b) to prepare for state power by building up popular forces capable of both holding a socialist government to account on this programme while also defending it from reactionary forces, and c) mobilise popular power to discipline capital.
Building a Party to Win Eco-socialism: Long-term strategy
The near-term focus on achieving the necessary measures of rapid decarbonisation through electoral interventions should not obscure the climate crisis’ basis in capitalism as a system. The near-term strategy can contribute to limiting temperature rises but cannot fundamentally resolve the contradiction between capitalist production and planetary limits. As such, the party should locate the near-term strategy in the context of a long-term strategy oriented towards an eco-socialist transformation of society.
The party should adopt an organising strategy oriented towards building a mass socialist party capable of challenging the state and capital. This entails developing the eco-socialist consciousness and organising capacities of members so that the party comes to embrace a trajectory towards building popular power. The party should aim to coordinate wider social forces, including trade unions, community organisations, and social movements in a shared pursuit of a maximum programme for eco-socialism.
A maximum political programme for eco-socialism should detail the more comprehensive socio-ecological transformations constitutive of building socialism in Britain and beyond. This should essentially recognise the basis of the climate crisis and broader social ills in capitalism and embrace the socio-ecological necessity of moving beyond it to a new stage of human history. We propose that the key pillars include:
- Nationalisation and democratisation of every area of the economy
- Marginalisation of the profit-motive in favour of economic planning based on socio-ecological need
- A complete transformation of social relations where production is subordinated to people’s needs, integrating production and social reproduction
- Transformation of land relations towards democratic ownership and planning
- Decommodification of every area of society, beginning with essentials like energy, housing, transport and food
- De-militarisation and disarmament
- Transformation of global relations to abolish unequal exchange
Towards a Unifying Eco-Socialist Tendency
The analysis and political-strategic platform presented here are necessarily partial and limited. It is obvious that both minimum and maximum political programmes are very top-line and lacking in detail, and there are many questions of emphasis and detail within the organising strategies that require resolving. We propose these platforms as an essential starting point, to be developed and expanded in response to changing circumstances through Eco-Socialist Horizon’s internal culture of eco-socialist consciousness raising and conjunctural analysis.
As the party is founded and develops in its earliest stages, we recognise that socialists will have a diverse range of interests and priorities. People are more or less motivated by the climate crisis and ecology, but we hope they recognise that the climate question will define their own areas of struggle in some way.
We also hope that this eco-socialist political-strategic platform can be a point of unity for everybody across the Left, regardless of previous organisational or factional affiliation, or positions on specific questions of party organisation or policy. If we can agree that the climate crisis is now the context of all politics, then eco-socialism can serve as an overarching rather than competing political-strategic framework through which all other ideas can be expressed and contested. We believe that this eco-socialist political-strategic platform can unify the multitude of forces energised by the founding of the the party as we embark on a renewal of our shared struggle for liberation, peace and socialism.