Why we need change

Current climate change movements need to increase is size, scale, and global coordination. Climate change movements are putting increasing pressure on governments to take action and to rethink economic and social priorities. Extinction Rebellion claims that when just 3.5 % of the population demands change, governments will cave to the pressure.

History tells us that social transformation requires a large social movement that is sustained over time. Erik Olin Wright, a renowned sociologist studied social transformation. Wright identified forces of “social reproduction” that present barriers to change and maintain the current system. One of these is ideology, or the ideas or narratives (often lies) that benefit those in power and protect the status quo. Two examples, fatalism and cynicism, represent significant impediments to a growing climate change movement. Wright states that “fatalism poses a serious problem for people committed to challenging the injustices and harms of the existing social world, since fatalism and cynicism about the prospects for emancipatory change reduce the prospects for such change.” In other words, believing that the way things are is inevitable and that social movements will not be successful directly reduces the chances that there will be positive social transformation.

One reason few people get involved or stay involved in social movements is the success of years of prevailing messages from those in power that, as Margaret Thatcher stated, “there is no alternative” to the current system. These messages are effective strategies to keep people from believing in and demanding change. It is now critical to see these lies for what they are, to know that there are alternatives and they are possible, and to demand the change we want. Now is the time to reject the voices of fatalism and cynicism and to get involved and stay involved.

To understand socialism, one must necessarily understand capitalism.

Capitalism is divided into an owning capitalist class and a working class, whose members possess nothing but their labour power, which is useless to the worker unless he can have access to the raw material and the machinery of production, which is owned by the capitalist class. This being so, the worker, in order to live, must sell his labor power to the capitalist or capitalist concern. This labor power that the worker sells to his or her employer is used for the production of wealth, for which the worker receives wages, the price of labour power.

We need to present a clear alternative to capitalism, an inspiring alternative that people really want to work for, a practical alternative that can really work. The alternative is socialism. But if that’s what we’re fighting for, why can’t we spell out even in broad brush-strokes, just what it means, and how we propose getting there? Why do we always avoid the issue and just talk about how bad things are now under capitalism? Are we afraid that socialism isn't attractive and we need to paint a pretty grim picture of the way things are now, so as to persuade people to put up with the alternative? When you look closely at the sort of “alternative” most left-wingers want, it’s not surprising they don’t like to talk about it and prefer just denouncing capitalism. Some left-wingers actually look favourably towards the former Soviet Union and its satellites in Eastern Europe. They want to impose a regime which actually has less economic freedom and less social equality than the present one, which would drive real socialist into an underground opposition. Many just want some of the most glaring injustices of capitalist society to be resolved. They want better jobs, housing, education and so forth, and they don’t believe they can get it without some major upheaval.

Socialists actually have a vision of a better world, with fundamentally different social relations. As a first step, we need to talk seriously to each other and examine and criticise each other’s ideas in a comradely way.