Climate Socialism

I am writing this message to the millions of people who have been involved in the climate movement over the past several years. This movement has been an incredible force, thanks to your courage, passion and commitment. It has created a new public consciousness and a powerful sense of popular will. These are major achievements. And yet it is clear that we have now reached an impasse and a new path is needed.

The plain fact is that the climate crisis cannot be addressed within capitalism. This may be difficult for some to come to terms with, but is vital that we understand this fact and develop our strategies accordingly, otherwise we are headed for certain failure. And on this issue, failure is not an option.

First, what do I mean by capitalism? People often assume that capitalism is defined by businesses, markets and trade. But these things were around for thousands of years before capitalism and have taken many different forms. In reality, the main thing that distinguishes capitalism is that it is fundamentally undemocratic.

This may seem strange to say because obviously many of us live in democratic political systems, where we get to elect government leaders from time to time, even if we acknowledge that these systems are corrupt and inadequate. But when it comes to the economy, the system of production, not even a pretence of democracy is allowed to enter. Under capitalism, production is controlled overwhelmingly by capital: the big banks, the major corporations, and the 1% who own the majority of investible assets. They determine what to produce, how to use our labour and our planet’s resources, and who should benefit.

And for capital, the purpose of production is not to meet human needs or improve society, much less to achieve any ecological goals. The purpose is to maximize and accumulate profit. That is the overriding objective. This is known as the “capitalist law of value”: capital only invests in producing what is profitable to capital.

This poses very severe problems for the energy transition. We know we must reduce fossil fuels and ramp up renewable energy. For ages, economists told us that once renewables became cheaper than fossil fuels, the transition would occur automatically. But it’s not happening. Why? Because while renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels, fossil fuels are around 3 times more profitable. This is because renewables have a low barrier to entry and are highly competitive (which is great for low prices!), while fossil fuels are more conducive to market control and monopoly pricing.

So capital keeps producing fossil fuels, and invests far too little in renewables, even while the world burns around us. We are hostage to this deadly logic. And it’s not only energy where this problem arises. We also need to build public transit, insulate buildings, innovate green technologies, regenerate ecosystems, and develop agroecology. These things are simple to do, but capital does not invest in such activities because they are not sufficiently profitable. Under capitalism, we suffer critical shortages of existentially necessary things that could otherwise easily be delivered.

The writing is on the wall. Over the past two years, several major investment firms have abandoned their climate pledges, openly admitting that green transition is not profitable enough for them. This should be a clarifying moment for all of us: capital cannot be trusted to resolve the climate crisis. We are staring failure in the face and careening toward a very bleak future indeed.

It gets worse. We know that, in order to meet the Paris Agreement goals, high-income countries must reduce total energy use. Some of this can be achieved through efficiency improvements, yes. But it also requires scaling down damaging and unnecessary forms of production – not just fossil fuels, but also things like SUVs, private jets, mansions, fast fashion, industrial beef, advertising, and the practice of planned obsolescence. Scientists have made it clear that if we want to achieve sufficiently rapid decarbonization, this has to be on the table.

This approach can have powerful benefits. Not only does it reduce energy use and make decarbonization easier to achieve, it also liberates productive capacities – labour and factories – which can be remobilized to accelerate socially and ecologically necessary production. But here too, we face a wall: capital will not voluntarily degrow profitable forms of production. And all of these things – the SUVs, the industrial beef, etc – are highly profitable, so we are forced to keep producing them.

Think about it this way. The climate crisis is 100% driven by the system of production. It is about who controls production and what they produce. People say climate is a complex problem and difficult to solve, but this is false. It is in fact extremely easy. We have more than enough productive capacity; we can do virtually anything we can imagine. The problem is that we are subject to the capitalist law of value, and thus prevented from doing what we know must be done.

So what is the antidote to capitalism? Economic democracy. With democratic control over our productive capacities we can stop climate breakdown in short order. We can overcome the capitalist law of value, and organize production around social and ecological objectives.

It’s not rocket science. And indeed this can be achieved with straightforward policies. We need credit guidance to reduce investment in damaging industries. We need public finance and industrial policy to do necessary production regardless of profits. We need a public job guarantee and public works to remobilize our capacities around urgent objectives. We need universal services to ensure everyone has access to the resources needed for a good life. And we need to democratize private firms — workplace democracy! — so businesses can focus on meeting social and ecological needs rather than profit maximization.

The good news is that these policies are highly popular, and can form the basis of a winning political platform. Democratic socialism, where we extend the principle of democracy into the realm of production, is a viable path — indeed the only path — to a safe and just future.

Here is the reality. The climate movement has so far focused on building awareness and trying to push politicians to take action. But lack of awareness is no longer the problem. And our politicians refuse to take action because they are aligned with the capitalist class and ultimately committed to capitalism. We need a new way forward: build new mass-based political parties that can unite workers and environmentalists in a shared project of transformation, win elections, take power, and deliver on the objectives everyone wants to achieve.

Jason Hickel is an author and Professor at the Institute for Environmental Science & Technology (ICTA-UAB) at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He is also a Visiting Professor at the International Inequalities Institute at the London School of Economics, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He serves on the Climate and Macroeconomics Roundtable of the US National Academy of Sciences, the advisory board of the Green New Deal for Europe, the Rodney Commission on Reparations and Redistributive Justice, and the Lancet Commission on Sustainable Health. Jason’s research focuses on political economy, inequality, and ecological economics, which are the subjects of his two most recent books: The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions (Penguin, 2017), and Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World (Penguin, 2020), which was listed by the Financial Times and New Scientist as a book of the year.

Originally published in Jason Hickel Substack