A user on Reddit recently asked,

“In a nutshell, what strategic vision can you outline for us to bring the economy and environment into sync? Or do you think it too difficult? I know there are many creative people out there and I would love to share in your vision.”

In order to solve the apparent paradox between the economy and the environment, we need to first understand the problem: capitalism.

Capitalism is a mode of production, i.e., a predominate organizational relationship through which production is carried out and on which societal reproduction rests, whereby accumulation of capital is the primary regulative principle. Put another way, capital, the product of past labor, is applied with living current labor, toward the end of expanding capital.

Capitalism is inherently expansive. Absent the ability of capital to expand, primarily through the creation of new markets, the motivating logic of capitalism breaks down. In this sense, capitalism is fundamentally at odds with the natural environment. We can see the contradiction between capitalism and the environment in the increasing commodification of water or the recent opening up of the Antarctic to mineral extraction.

Because expansion of capital (and hence expansion of economic activity) is inherent to capitalism, sufficient solutions to environmental problems can not be achieved under its aegis. For a relative minority of the world’s population, affluence and influence afford a great degree of separation from environmental problems. While the ecological impacts of capitalism have detrimental effects on the lives of most, for some sections of humanity, those who live as part of indigenous, largely ecologically congruent societies, the inherent processes of capitalism mean immediate wholesale destruction – cultural or otherwise. Often times, ‘victories’ for environmental politics in the global north merely amount to the transferring of ecological burden to the global south. This ‘shifting of the ecological burden’ takes place within a larger paradigm of imperialism’s global exploitation of oppressed peoples.

Within the global north, a significant proportion of the population is nominally concerned about environmental and ecological issues. From the perspective of the proletariat, this is both good and bad. On one hand, it reveals that a section of those above the proletariat are concerned about the longer-term problems associated with capitalism. On the other hand, it allows capitalism to introduce false solutions which function to absolve classes and individuals from further action. One of the main false solutions offered by capitalism are those centered around commodities and markets, e.g. carbon credits and eco-tourism, which is analogous to curing cyanide poisoning by prescribing more cyanide. Another false solution is the idea that individual choices, e.g., riding a bike instead of driving, eating less meat, recycling, taking shorter showers, gardening, donating to a non-profit, etc, can sufficiently reduce the ecological destruction wrought under the capitalist economy. This second false solution fulfills a larger ideological function for capitalism: denying the importance and necessity of collective action in the broad political and economic sense.

The solution lies in recognizing the dynamic significance of collective organizing, both for the destruction of the capitalism and for the creation of a new, better mode of production in its place. For Communists, the ‘solution’ to the apparent contradiction between people and nature is the revolutionary overthrow of capitalist-imperialism, the root cause of ecological destruction, and the establishment of democratic productive relations for the end of rationally providing the material foundation for personal and collective fulfillment and happiness. Both are fundamentally collective projects united in historical trajectory.

To clarify what is meant by the revolutionary overthrown of capitalist imperialism: nothing short of the seizure of power out of the hands of the international bourgeoisie, the powerful countries, and the puppet capitalists in the global south, destroying the means through which their power is maintained (i.e., their state and other instruments of rule), and the establishment of new states and institutions for the purpose of suppressing the former ruling classes and managing a world-historic economic transition away from that regulated by profit. The process of revolution is uneven. Victories will occur in some times and places, and set backs in others. Yet it remains true that capitalism must be supplanted on a global level via a coercive process involving the exploited and oppressed masses. Elsewhere, I have described this as a process of ‘global people’s war and global new democratic revolution leading toward socialism and communism.’

This of course begs the question, what are the necessary tasks in order to react a strategic-historic impasse such as the overthrow of capitalism and institutionalization of transitional socialist productive relations? What are the practicable things we should be doing today, as Communists or simply as people radically concerned about the long-term consequences of the current system, to actualize this revolutionary hypothesis against the false solutions and destructiveness presented by capitalism?

Solving this practical problem is trickier because no single action is applicable in all times and places. Nevertheless, it is appropriate the survey the present terrain of given situations. What we begin to devise might be termed a pre-revolutionary praxis.

In imperialist countries, and especially settler-imperialist countries (such as the United States) dominated by historical benefactors of oppression, fighting for revolutionary change is an uphill battle. More so than other countries, the immediate potential for the development of revolutionary struggles is greatly conditioned by world-systemic events, i.e. shifts in the relations of production and power within the world-system, especially those favoring revolution generally. Stated plainly, the social relations partially founded and maintained by the ruling classes will not go away on their own accord. Nonetheless, we must, if we hope to escape the vicious path created by capitalism, begin the creatively enact an informed practice for an alternative.

In regards to practice for creating a new world, it is important to keep some basic principles in mind. First, we must focus on social-activity. All of our work at the current point has two primary components: building oppositional institutions and building public opinion in favor of revolutionary struggles. These tasks are intimately related and must be carried out in a comprehensive manner.

Oppositional institutions include those which enable the people to organize for their needs in the struggle against capitalism. This runs the gamut from the national political party to serve the people programs, local organizations of discipline cadre to coalitions for organizing single events, media institutions of the oppressed to student groups, athletic clubs to student associations, and more. The point of such institutions is to bring greater numbers of people together in the struggle against capitalism in a manner which strengthens their ability through collective action.

Creating public opinion in favor of revolution has two components: diminishing the cultural, emotional, and intellectual influence of the oppressor; and strengthening the cultural, emotional, and intellectual influence of the revolutionary forces. We must first seek to diminish the legitimacy of the current system as well as its apparent ability to conquer its own contradictions, specifically heightening this awareness among the most oppressed. In short, we must create disenchantment with the current system while creating a positive rejection of ruling-class ideologies. Secondly, we must strengthen the resolve of the masses of their ability to carry out on their own accord, through the collective action of revolution, the remolding of society in a manner which advances their collective interests over the long term. That is to say, we must awaken the belief in the efficacy of positive collective action, of the ability of the masses to organize directly for a better world. Like the work of collective action itself, building public opinion must be carried out on all levels with the aim of drawing in and advancing the struggle of ever-greater numbers of oppressed people and their allies.

Politically, we can not simply be vague ‘environmentalists’ or ‘leftists.’ Instead, we must embrace and articulate a program of support for the struggles of exploited and oppressed peoples globally. We must support these struggles in the tactical sense, i.e. immediate blows against ruling-class designs, and in the strategic sense, i.e. local qualitative advances which strengthen the revolutionary movement globally. We must not simply stand against the norm, but stand for the ascendancy of a new norm based on the revolutionary power of the oppressed. In settler-colonial countries like the United States and Canada, we must support not simply the ‘overthrow of the government.’ We must also support the establishment of new states based on the empowerment of Onkwehonwe, New Afrikans, Mexicanos/Chicanos, and other internally colonized nations. We must support the struggle of Third World peoples against all manifestations of imperialism and for a world without global structural divides.

Ultimately, the economy and the natural environment can be brought into harmony, but not the capitalist economy and the natural environment. It is up to the people themselves to engage in conscious organization for the destruction of the extant world-economic system and in its place create a better, more democratic, fundamentally egalitarian, and far-sighted one.

-Nikolai Brown