By ANGELO D'ORSI*
Eco-warriors forget that economics is behind it all, or more explicitly, capitalism.
“The most peculiar, and also the most harmful, social arrangement that has ever arisen in the history of mankind, equating progress with the fiercest competition and rivalry; social status with the voracious and unlimited accumulation of wealth; the values of the person with meanness and selfishness”. Last week's demonstration in Strasbourg on the occasion of the European Union's Parliament vote on the defense of nature led me to leaf through a text by Murray Bookchin, For an eco societyógica.
I don't know if Greta Thunberg and the numerous fighters against climate change, global warming and environmental devastation know it, but I strongly recommend that you read it. I have the impression more and more that in these eco-warriors, the guerrillas of the environment, the participants in the already ritual demonstrations Fridays for future, they forget that the economy is behind everything, or more explicitly, there is capitalism, which for four to five decades assumed the fierce face of turbocapitalism, an implacable machine that generates profits for the few and produces suffering for the many.
In Strasbourg, the young Greta Thunberg was in the front row, and she repeated her insults, but to accuse humanity of a tendency towards self-destruction is to say everything without saying anything. After all, Greta Thunberg managed in recent days to bring and notify the world of her support for Volodymyr Zelensky, accusing Russia of environmental crimes, forgetting the fundamental responsibilities of the Ukrainian leadership, starting with the President-Commander-in-Chief who is favoring massacre (encouraged or tolerated by NATO and the US); massacre of people, structures and the environment, perhaps preparing a “nuclear accident”, which, like the semi-destruction of the dam, will be blamed on the Russians. As Greta Thunberg shamelessly repeated in her meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky.
In other words, separating the struggle for the environment from the struggle for a radical subversion of social arrangements, condemning “fossil sources” or climate change and refraining from seeing and denouncing the political responsibilities of turbocapitalism and its theoretical basis, neoliberalism , runs the risk of not producing the salvation of nature, much less that of humanity.
*Angelo D'Orsi He is full professor of History of Political Doctrines at the University of Turin. Author, among other books, of Gramsci. A new biography (popular expression).
Translation: Anselmo Pessoa Neto.
Originally published on the portal Il Fatto Quotidiano.
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