Why We Need Socialism

eight Hawaiian Honey creeper species

wiped from the face of the Earth record heat waves Drive thousands

of death hurricane otus

killing hundreds and soil degradation

is at an all-time

high a crisis at the scale

this world has never seen

is no longer at our doorstep

it's now crashing through the threshold

and threatening to pull us down into climate chaos

and our current political

and economic Solutions just aren't measuring up to the scale of this crisis

we need to chart A New Path forward

one that heals the vast Gulf that is opened up between humanity

and nature we need

ecosocialism but what exactly does that mean

why is ecosocialism the answer

today we dive into the inner workings of ecosocialism

in order to uncover

why socialism is necessary

to avoid planetary disaster

what linear programming has to do with rewilding

why Cuba could unlock

answers to cutting emissions

and why this diagram

is crucial to Healing our connection with the planet

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on the ecological impact of Soviet planning

as well as an hour and 20 minute interview

with the authors of half- Earth

socialism soil is the foundation

of life a vibrant

ecosystem teaming with organisms

upon which Humanity has built their success

agronomists know this farmers

know this and yet this knowledge seems to be forgotten

here in the barren fields

of Minnesota's corn Farms

monocultures of corn and soybean

rip the soil clean of organic

matter and nutrients demanding

increasing amounts of fertilizer

and pesticides to maintain

yields but Farms like this aren't outliers

they're Common Place worldwide

declining soil health is one of the many alarm Bells signaling

that our planet is on the brink of ecological

collapse and behind it all lies

capitalism under capitalism human labor transforms

nature extensively in the pursuit

of profit and capital accumulation

this Relentless quest of transforming

nature into marketable Goods disrupts

the cycle of production

and reproduction in nature

or in other words

Nature's metabolism as Marx writes in the first volume of capital

all progress in capitalist

agriculture is a progress in the art not only of robbing the worker but

of robbing the soil

so the deg ation of soil Health across the world

isn't a symptom of human nature it's instead

driven by the rampant hunger of capitalism

throughout history there has always been a metabolic

interaction between humans and their natural environments

whether through Gathering or cultivation

we have worked the land to sustain

ourselves up until the capitalist mode of production

however that which we extracted

has been replenished whether through manure

food scraps or clothing made from natural materials

consequent quently ecosystems while certainly

Disturbed were never shattered

however capitalist production smashed

this metabolic cycle it privatized

common land forcing peasants from farms into the city

survival was no longer based on how well you tended to the land and

grow food but instead

how big your wages

were food was thus grown in the countryside

and sold and shipped

via markets to sustain growing urban populations

now working under a capitalist

wage labor system in this process capitalist

production prevents the return of the soil of its constituent

elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing

hence it hinders the operation

of the Eternal natural

condition for the lasting fertility

of the soil in essence the fundamental

workings of capitalism directly

contradict the regenerative processes

of nature this is what ecosocialist

scholar John Bellamy Foster

calls the metabolic Rift

capitalist production continuously extracts

minerals nutrients and organic matter from the earth trans transforming them into commodities

for profit and never completes the cycle by returning those extracted

materials to the soil

this Perpetual extraction without replenishment

represents one of the fundamental

contradictions of capitalism and is part of the reason why we're experiencing

climate chaos right now so we need a new economic

system one that prioritizes

the well-being of humanity

and nature over the accumulation

of profits and capital

and that system is

in 2020 the world needed to cut emissions

by 7.6% every year in order to stay below

1.5° cius of warming

that same year the covid-19

pandemic hit State actors mobilized

massive plans to Halt the spread of disease

which also happened to grind the economy to a halt

and yet Global emissions

only fell by 5.4%

only to then quickly rebound

as production kicked into high gear a year later the pandemic lays bare the

destruction and incomp idence of our Global capitalist

economy it reveals that even extreme

austerity and forced consumption cuts under capitalism

will never be enough to Stave off the worst of climate chaos

capitalism cannot stop the climate crisis

it cannot dismantle the fossil fuel industry

nor can it halt the sixth mass extinction

it can't do these things because it is the core driver

of all of these crises

but as much as we can recognize the growing Rift between human and nature

born out of capitalism

critiquing the present is not enough we must Envision

a beautiful and realistic

future one that excites us and helps fuel the fire of transition

as environmental historian and author of half Earth socialism

Troy vesse argues that having this Utopia

this end goal is very useful because that actually glues

together your Coalition that actually binds you together ecosocialism

might just offer that powerful

Vision that glues us all together it calls for a worker and peasant L

Revolution that rips the ownership

of production away from the Elite and puts decision-making

power into the hands of the masses

unlike capitalism which prioritizes

decisions based on the endless creation of products to sell for more profit ecosocialism

advocates for an economy that makes decisions based on the well-being

of all people and the plan

but what makes ecosocialism

ecological most of these ideas of worker-led

planning is well within the bounds of many socialist

goals and visions and minely as Victor Wallace notes

it's even redundant to put the Eco prefix on because socialism

implies that you make decisions

on the basis of what's in the interest of people

and you can't legislate in the interest of people without taking into account the

environment so while socialist goals often align

with ecological concerns ecosocialism

specifically emphasizes a democratically

planned Economy based on social

and ecological constraints planning is crucial not only for the ethical redistribution

of wealth and knowledge sharing

but also for living harmoniously

with in our natural

environments history though teaches us that there are many pitfalls

in the planning process

especially when it comes to environmental

concerns just because you are striving for socialism

like in the case of the Soviet Union doesn't necessarily

mean that you will achieve ecological

sustainability and if you're interested in learning more about Soviet planning

I've uploaded a whole companion video to this one on nebula

examining the environmental faults and successes

of Soviet planning these past and present examples

of the various forms of socialism

show us that ecology

whether species Extinction or climate change or ocean

acidification all need to be foregrounded

in the planning process if we were to avoid

ecological destruction if left out of the picture

socialist planning could very well drive us down the path of heavy industrial

fossil fuel use so ecological

planning is essential because capitalism

with its market-driven Anarchy

fails to account for ecological

sustainability in any meaningful

way capitalism has already failed

as in capitalism is not going to get us out this mess

we've been talking about climate change

and let other environmental

crises for more than uh three decades

and things have gotten much worse

so we know that capitalism

has ripped the natural world apart and has failed to mend it back together

an ecosocialist planned economy

then is a necessary

intervention if we were to truly heal the rift between

human economies and the natural world

but what exactly do those ecosocialist

Futures look like imagine a world where you don't feel forced to go to

your job just to put food on the table

where climate collapse isn't driving every Global disaster

a world where decisions

about what products get made what public goods are free and accessible

are carried out by everyday

people not by CEOs

and board members a world where community

and chosen family are just a bike ride a high-speed train or a quick

walk away living under capitalism

it's easy to feel like these Visions are unrealistic

or even utopian we know that capitalism

isn't working for us and for the planet but it's hard to imagine

an alternative we're caught between

understanding the destructive logic of capitalism

and struggling to engage

with viable Alternatives perhaps

that's part of capitalism's

plan as author and educator Ashley C ford writes the goal of oppressors

is to limit your imagination

about what is possible

without them so you might never imagine more for yourself and the world you

live in this is why we need vibrant visions and debates not just about

the destruction of capitalism

not just about how we get to an ecological

zeroc carbon world but also about what that world looks like when we get

there Drew Pendergrass and Troy vess's

book halfe socialism is an excellent example

of envisioning a socialist

ecological future addressing the sixth mass extinction

the threat of global pandemics

and the climate crisis

halfe socialism calls for a socialist

planned economy that hinges

on the key parameters

of land preservation minimizing

emissions and a good life for all

rather than What markets normally plan around

monetary costs and profits

more concretely the Tessa and Pendergrass

call for half- Earth socialism

that uses linear programming

methods to set broadscale

goals like veganism energy quotas enforc Rew Wilding and stewardship

under indigenous control Pendergrass

notes we could imagine

feasible ways uh to use Simple algorithms

to plan plausible ways of organizing

society and then debate about what those

plans look like at on various

levels so we kind of Imagine a little federalism

where we set broad

coarse goals at a large level

and then figure out in detail

what that looks like as you go

towards the more local level in the context of climate change

socialist planning is crucial

because it lets us understand exactly

what we need to do at all levels

as vesse argues okay soan

or someone has a Tesla

you know someone doesn't fly they great you know but

what what is actually necessary

and I think when you're in a market this is super opaque

one really has no idea he goes on to add that with a planning

model then you begin to think

okay like how many

how much energy can we use as a society

or where are we getting our energy from how much land are we using

with animal agriculture I wish that land could be remed

you being to see these things in their totality

which is difficult to do or impossible to do Under capitalis the reality is

that any ecological socialist

society will have tradeoffs

to dramatically downscale the economy

to preserve half of the world's ecosystems

in a decolonial way while also redistributing

wealth and energy to everyone in the world

countries and especially the rich in the Imperial core

will certainly have to cut down on production

and consumption in the last chapter of their book vesse and Pendergrass

reveal what this might look like through the idea of the gos plant

an algorithmic planning tool

that reveals the trade-offs

that must be made in order to reach an ecological

sound Society drawing on the work of Prior planning theorists

and the power and capacity of new planning and modeling systems like climate models

the authors Envision a central planning tool called gos plan using linear programming

algorithms which are already used throughout a lot of the business World

gos plant would spit out broad plans depending on which parameters

are emphasized for example if we very simplistically

input that we want to cut emissions

by 7.6% every year rewi

25% more land while maintaining

a global good life all by 2030

the gos plant might spit out a variety of plans ranging

from more lenient energy quotas

but faster uptake of vegetarian

or vegan production and consumption

or perhaps it might spit out a plan

with more aggressive reing

and aforestation instead or a more rapid increase

in renewable production essentially

it would mean thousands of planners and scientists

would plug a massive amount of data into gos plant and model coar blueprints

5 10 or even 25

years into the future projecting

what it would look like like to cut emissions

rewi half the planet

and redistribute wealth at different speeds

and crucially those broad plans would be disseminated

debated and transformed as they pass through global

national and local levels

in the last chapter of the book we get a brief glimpse of that

future as fictional local Massachusetts

planner Edith explains the folks down in Havana have made a few different plans

for the next year assuming different energy quotas ensuring in each plan that nature

is always respected and no one is Left Behind

plan 5f is the most austere

keeping consumption at about 750

watts per person which includes all of the industrial

production and Social Services required to keep Society Running

for us she continued

plan 5f means we can let a lot of pasture return to Wilderness

rather than planting more of those terrible

biofuel plantations Throughout the chapter the characters debate the various plans

constantly because for ecosocialist

planning to succeed it must be in constant motion

it must be intensely

transparent understandable accessible and subject to debate plans

must come from everyone

be formulated and run through modeling tools like the fictional Goss plant

and then sent back to the masses in an endless cycle of construction

and exploration but Pendergrass

and vesse are just two thinkers in a vast world of ecosocialist

ideas there are other Visions

like those of Max Isle

wherein green belts surround

all cities as popular planning converts sprawling

suburbs into Farm swarts

high-speed trains link bigger C

to smaller ones smaller ones to capillary

lines leading to outlining

hamlets Isles world prioritizes

anti-imperialism and state sovereignty

in the periphery ultimately

as Max Isle writes ecosocialism

aspires to egalitarian redistribution

public ownership of the means of production

respectful modest and Humane

management of the human interaction

with non-human nature and decommodification

of social life globally

not merely locally and it aspires to eliminate

capitalism not merely locally

but globally and it is explicitly

Anti-Imperialist and pro- third world State sovereignty

we need a solution that attacks the problem at the roote first of all

and that also does not restrict itself

to looking at a reconstruction

of the United States and Europe but also looks

towards uh the global South towards Latin America towards Africa towards Asia is's Vision

seeks to mend the metabolic

Rift of capitalism by shrinking

the distance between urban production

and rural land ending a system

of extraction and embracing

one of replenishment ideas that even Carl Marx was writing about a century and

a half before Marx writes that it's not enough to just Liberate the worker

for a truly just and liberated

Society we must also heal our broken relationship

with the land arguing that communal land ownership

communism is the only way to heal the metabolic

Rift as ecosocialist Scholars John Bellamy

Foster and Brett Clark WR for marks the only lasting

path to sustainability is the conscious

and rational treatment of the land

as permanent communal property

or in other words the abolition

of private landed property

ecological sustainability is only a possibility

in a future Society of associated

producers a socialist society

which could bring about a new and higher synthesis

a union of Agriculture

and Industry meanwhile authors at the Red Nation

argue for an indigenous Le Global ecosocialism

restoring land to indigenous caretakers

is a necessary step towards ensuring any kind of future

on this planet that future must be in my opinion

a socialist one that foregrounds

stewardship an end to Colonial occupation

everywhere and an emphasis

on mass action and non- reformist

reforms From Below right now

but we're very serious

about you know a revolutionary

struggle and what it means to build a political program for that type of

Revolution and as indigenous

people we think that our environmental

justice struggles and our struggles for climate Justice must also be respons Ive to

the demands for abolition

and divesting from those

institutions we must reinvest

in the common Dignity of all

which means healing our bodies and healing our Earth they call for radical acts

that weaken capitalist structures

today while also building

power to topple settler

Colonial capitalism in the future

this looks like immediate

defunding of police immigration

and military forces free sustainable

housing Education Health Care and Mental Health Services

enforcement of treaty rights reinvesting

care work alongside land air and water restoration

the red deal is a crucial

intervention into ecosocialist Visions

it shows that while it's important to have future Visions

to hold on to the climate crisis

capitalism and colonialism are destroying

life and land right now

especially within oppressed communities

so we need serious harm prevention

immediately in the words of the Red Nation

we cannot simply build isolated

Utopias while the rest of the world Burns

nor can we wait for the slow process of reformist

reform to kick in we cannot simply heal our individual

trauma nor can we consume better to save the environment

we cannot vote harder

and place all of our hope in a few individuals

in Congress climate change will kill us before any of these strategies

Liberate the planet from capitalism

despite their differences communal stewardship

rational and ecological production

and anti-imperialism are all through lines throughout these ecosocialist

manifestos however these visions of ecosocialism

are just that visions

and blueprints imagined realities

to hold on to as we chart the path towards ecological

and political transition but there are realworld

instances however flawed of ecosocialism

in action and The Shining Star among them lies in the heart of the

Caribbean battered on all sides by

pressure nestled within Havana's

concrete Skyline Li green rows

of luscious vegetables an organic

Urban Farm here in organon

Lason Cooperative workers tend to the many rows of raised beds that feed their

neighbors and surrounding City lasas

a full-scale organic farm

with minimal chemical and fossil fuel inputs

is not an outlier

in Havana it's the north but Cuban agriculture

wasn't always like this Cuba's unique history forged

this organic system through hardship

and struggle for most of the first half of the 20th century Cuban agriculture

was heavily industrialized monocrops

of sugar cane Co

the countryside as Cuba was forced to produce sugar for its Imperial

colonizer the United States

but after thrusting off the weight of imperialist

forces in 1959 with a triumphant

socialist Revolution Cuba was ready for change

however much of Cuban agriculture

was still tooled towards High fossil fuel import

and high monoculture output

up until the collapse of the Soviet Union

Cuba still mainly grew sugar

and traded exclusively with the Soviets for Staples

such as rice wheat tractors and gas

but this system was dramatically

upended in 1991 when the Soviet Union unraveled

and the Imperial core maintained

its trade embargo on Cuba

the country was left isolated

from oil staple foods and mechanized

farming systems like tractors

that had long been the Cornerstone

of their Farms as a result Cuba entered

what was deemed the special period

journalist and author Bill McKibben

writes that in 1989

the average Cuban was eating about 3,000

calories per day by 1992

that plummeted to 1,900

calories per day in short Cuba was starving

because their semi-industrialized agricultural

system was ripped out from under them and imperialist

sanctions left them no other option but to look inward

for a solution and the forces and organization

of socialist production bore them out of the crisis

now on the other end of such a brutal crisis born out of imperialist

aggression Cuba has transformed

in Havana alone its residents converted

35,000 hectares or 135

Square mil of land into agriculturally

productive space which is about the same as converting the area of six Manhattans

into farming space but Havana

is just a small part of Cuba's socialist

Agricultural Revolution isolated from almost all trading partners

Cubans either had to adapt

or start through plans like comp pasino

aino or farmer-to-farmer knowledge

sharing as well as Urban farming

initiatives Cuba pulled itself out of the depths of industrial

fossil fuel intensive Agriculture

and built a socialist

agriculture that dramatically decreased

emissions output while prioritizing

food access they moved from monocultures

growing Commodities to Farms

growing food in the 1980s

Cuba had more tractors

per hectare than California

but by the 2000s

tractors were quickly replaced

by over 400,000 oxen teams

monocultures were replanted with polycultures

crop diversity was valued

for its ability to decrease pest pressure and encourage healthy soil fossil fuel Reliant

techniques were replaced with sustainable

and permaculture oriented systems

Organo panicos or the Cuban term for Urban Garden

proliferated widely using raised beds to grow healthy plants

on poisoned Urban soil

crucial to this regenerative

farming explosion was the comp pasino aino

or farmer to Farmer movement

the goal of this movement was for small farmers to share knowledge with each

other and integrate new sustainable

systems of Agriculture through social participation

mobilizing local resources and reverting to traditional

peasant knoow this Grassroots

knowledge building meant that as Aiden Ratchford

writes many small farmers were producing

80 to 100% of food necessary for family consumption

by 2011 and a Cooperative

jaguay Grande for example

produces 80% of food needs for the 60,000

residents of its municipality

by purposefully placing the needs of the people

like good healthy soil accessible food and control over what to grow

instead of emphasizing growing for commodity sale

like selling sugar cane to multinational

corporations Cuba has successfully

built an ecosocialist agriculture

Ratchford goes on to write a country

previously rying on Imports for 90%

of its food was able to feed itself through Urban

organic agriculture this movement

represents the largest conversion

from conventional to Alternative

organic agriculture in the world's

history Cuba reveals the possibilities

of an ecosocialist degrowth

future right now especially

when it comes to agriculture

it not only is deepening

the connection between its people and land through agroecological

and urban farming cooperatives

but it's done so while increasing

literacy food access and minimizing

fossil fuel use while by no means

the end goal Cuba's form of socialist

organization represents an ecosocialist

degrowth in action they're shortening

the distance between Factory

and field between humans

and the natural world but Cuba is constantly battered on all sides by the

forces of capitalism in order for ecosocialism

to take root it must spread out in all directions

and across the globe

and to achieve that

we need a plan

whether it was the US in 1776

Haiti in 1791 Russia in 1917

or Cuba in 1959

revolutions have always been the engines

of change the destruction of capitalism

will continue ever onward

until we actively disrupt it unfortunately

there is no Silver Bullet solution to achieving an ecosocialist

economy it will only come about from the long Collective struggle

of the workingclass and peasants taking control

of production this may happen peacefully

or involve violence especially if the capitalist elite are heavily entrenched

in the cycle of capital accumulation

like those in the United States

but most likely this Revolution

Will begin in the peripher free in countries like India and the Philippines

where there are already

thriving communist revolutions attempting

to build power for most of the rest of the world unfortunately

the conditions of capitalist State backlash

against the left make Global ecosocialism

seem too far away

especially if we want to address urgent environmental

needs we need rapid ecological

action within the next 10 years

and unfortunately a global ecosocialist

Revolution doesn't seem likely

within that time frame so we cannot rely solely

on the prospect of global ecosocialism

to address climate action instead we will need to work within our current system

right now while simultaneously

striving for a more rationally

planned ecological economy as Brazilian ecosocialist

activist Sabrina Fernandez writes

to escape the looming

ecological disaster before we have the chance to establish a socialist

society we will have to implement

ideas policies micr systems

reforms and other sociopolitical

arrangements that will slow the pace of the crisis

while establishing the foundations

for popular power that can overcome it and support a new system

these interventions can range from building Union power and pushing for more worker agency

in the workplace or seeking support for more urban and agroecological

farming methods it can involve organizing

communities to advocate for safe accessible and electrified

public transit as well as developing

extensive bike infrastructure it can mean blocking or sabotaging

pipelines across indigenous land or it can mean defunding

the military and police

tendergrass points towards the recent United Auto Workers strike

as another example of immediate

social and environmental harm reduction

one of the things they're demanding is a 4-day work week because they recognize

that the transition to electric

vehicles is requires less labor

but in the process of fighting for those stop Gap interventions

it is crucial not to lose sight of the larger goal

these are harm reduction

strategies and will forever

be beholden to the whim of capitalist

production if we don't continue to escalate

towards ecosocialist Democratic planning

the goal is to build an ecological

transition that will make the Socialist

transition Possible only through the complete dismantling

of capitalist forces a feat historically

achieved through Revolution will we finally be able to embark on the Journey

of constructing and planning an ecological

and ethical world for all luckily we won't be starting from scratch on that

Journey socialism and more specifically

socialist planning has been tried and tested

in China Cuba and especially the Soviet Union it's crucial to learn from the

successes and importantly the failures

of those planning methods which is why I've made a whole another video about

the ecological implications of Soviet planning

the Bolshevik successfully protected

over 4 million hectares of land

by 1929 which is available right now exclusively

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