Anti-Capitalism and Environmentalism as a Political Alternative

By Esther Vivas
Amandla!
October 6, 2011

The starting point for today’s debate is to note that humanity is in a global ecological crisis that is an intrinsic part of the systemic crisis of capitalism. And one of the differences from past economic crises, from that of the 1970s or the crash of 1929, is precisely its ecological aspect.

Indeed, we cannot analyse the global ecological crisis separately from the crisis in which we are immersed or the critique of the economic model that has led us into it. It is also necessary to reject outright the logic of profit maximization of the capitalist system and the productivist orientation which takes no account of the limits of planet Earth.

The reality is that we are witnessing a crisis of civilization that has multiple dimensions: a crisis of ecology, food, care, finance, and as José Saramago says, ethics and morality. A crisis which puts on the agenda the inability of the capitalist system to meet the basic needs of the majority of the population and threatens the very survival of humanity. Therefore, we are not in a passing crisis. The crisis is going to last. And there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Or worse yet, as argued by the philosopher Slavo Sizek, the light at the end of the tunnel has proved to be that of a train approaching us at full speed.

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