The world is on fire, and many are looking to fight back against the capitalist mayhem consuming our planet. As is often the case, young people are at the forefront of this struggle. Greta Thunberg might be just 22 years old, but she has inspired hundreds of thousands to break decisively with the ‘blah, blah, blah’ of the status quo.
By Michael Barker
In 2018, Thunberg’s ‘School Strike For Climate’ protests kickstarted a wave of school students’ action. Thunberg was invited to speak at the World Economic Forum bosses’ summit in Davos, as well as at parliaments in Britain and elsewhere as capitalist leaders looked to take advantage of her anger to greenwash their own image. But they have been unable to co-opt her.
For many young people, the climate crisis has exposed massive global inequality, and the inability – even unwillingness – of the corporate establishment to take any meaningful action. Greta, like many others, has been pushed in an even more radical direction, taking up issues like war and imperialism as well as the climate. These days, rather than invitations to parliaments, capitalist states have more often met her with arrests and deportations for ‘disruptive’ protests.
From Davos to Gaza
What hasn’t changed is her commitment to direct action, which she first embraced some seven years ago. Thunberg recently put her life on the line when she sought to break the blockade on Gaza by undertaking a humanitarian mission onboard Madleen – the Freedom Flotilla Coalition’s ship. With Thunberg and others bravely insisting on setting out on this journey in the wake of the illegal bombing of the previous flotilla ship that they had meant to set sail on (the Conscience).
Greta Thunberg understands why this change was needed, in a recent video on Facebook she said: “There can be no climate justice without social justice. The fight for climate justice is just as much a fight against the fossil fuel industry as much as it is a fight against the military industrial complex.” This is all true.
For all who are committed to fighting for justice there can be no separating out different issues. The struggle for the socialist transformation of the planet demands that we fight every injustice. This means fighting the capitalist system.
But while Thunberg has always understood the need for systemic change, she hasn’t always been clear when it comes to saying exactly what people should be fighting for, not just against. For instance in 2018 she stated, that if “solutions within this system are so impossible to find then maybe we should change the system itself?” As she affirmed: “The real power belongs to the people.” That however represented a good, if basic, start.
Likewise, in calling out the destructive practices of global elites, in 2019 Thunberg made a partial case for an alternative to capitalism. She explained: “we must stop competing with each other, we need to cooperate and work together and to share the resources of the planet in a fair way.”
A few years down the line, in The Climate Book (2022), Thunberg emphasised the need for building democratic grassroots movements that can educate others, “to wake people up”. She stated that the global environmental crisis “will continue to get worse until we prioritise people and the planet over profit and greed.” Thunberg however remained so frustrated with politics that she thought all ideologies were bad, whether “socialism, liberalism, communism, conservatism, centrism, you name it.”
How can we change the system?
So rather than argue for the need for establishing the type of political parties that could fight tooth and nail to represent the needs of the people and the planet, Thunberg only counselled for people to “become active citizens and hold the people in power accountable”. Her strategy being that, if anything, people would eventually be able to reclaim existing political parties when they had accumulated enough people power.
But while her aim of promoting systemic change is needed, more so than ever before, it is crucial that we understand the types of necessary organising tactics that could bring her ambitions to fruition. While the sort of direct action she has championed is often brave and inspiring, it is not itself capable of changing this system. To do that, we must look toward the collective power of the working class, armed with a clear socialist programme.
Nevertheless, if she continues on her current trajectory, it’s likely that Thunberg will radicalise new layers of climate campaigners around the need to fight all forms of exploitation and oppression. This is extremely important, and through experience it will be possible for many people to draw socialist conclusions about how to build a future that puts “people and the planet over profit and greed”.
