To Tackle Climate Heating International Socialism is Needed

We have recently lived through a period in France (where I live) of repeated heatwaves with daytime temperatures sometimes exceeding 40C and nighttime temperatures offering little respite, and with associated droughts. In the Gironde region and the Var massive wildfires occurred, with thousands evacuated and many people losing their homes to the flames. The ‘megafire’ in Gironde threatened the city of Bordeaux. Today as I write there are or have recently been wildfires in Greece, France, Croatia and the UK, as well as in the USA, Spokane, and Canada, British Columbia, and workers are having to labour in unbearable heat extremes because most nations do not have upper temperature limits for work. It is probably the case that these so called heatwaves are the new normal, and if they join up, summer will become hell unless something is done urgently, but it has to be said, now, no matter how urgently we act, stopping fossil fuel burning abruptly, while it is absolutely sensible and needed, will not be able to immediately prevent or reverse the impact that past energy use will have, unfortunately.

40C is hard to deal with. In our home we used a fan constantly. Some of our upstairs rooms were too hot to stay in, and going outside was not advisable. And we have modern insulation and double glazing. It was quite a scary experience going to get our shopping in the car because of what might happen if you broke down in that heat. Supermarkets with car parks without shelter we tried to avoid because they made your car ridiculously, dangerously, hot. We live in the Morvan, and the direct sunshine was impossible to survive in during these periods. At one point we thought we might have to escape down to the cave, which being part buried in the solid rock stayed cool. Only the old stone part of our house remained OK with the shutters permanently closed. Many of our plants in the garden died, as if burnt to a crisp by the rays of the sun even though I had tried to put them in at least partial shade for most of the day. At one point, rather late on, President Macron came on the news to give us an address about the crisis, specifically in the Gironde. For most of his speech you could not hear him because of some humming machine, the TV station eventually switched to another report that had already been aired, then later came back to his speech, the audio was a bit better now but that was the end of it anyway. 

I caught that he mentioned a few times that the crisis was ‘unprecedented’. This phrase is used a lot these days by politicians concerning the climate disaster. Yes, it was perhaps surprising that it has arrived so soon, but the crisis has been foretold by scientists repeatedly, and we have had many previous forest fires in France, even one in 1949 in the Gironde that was bigger.

The current ruling classes and their politicians are obviously incapable of facing up to the climate catastrophe facing all of us, called human induced global warming caused by fossil fuel burning for energy and industry, and which has led recently to such deadly heatwaves and fires. This demonstrates to us very clearly that what is needed is an international plan for energy, implemented concretely over the years ahead. 

But what does this mean? It means what is needed is socialism, - in other words, it means we need (at least) nationalized, socially owned energy and transport industries in the biggest capitalist nations, so that these industries can be made to work in cooperation and coordination with each other instead of competing, so as to end the use of fossil fuels, so that we can all move to renewable energy infrastructure. 

But unfortunately, this is what the scientists that constantly warn us about global warming avoid saying or are not allowed to say, for reasons that are perhaps understandable but are unsettling; socialism is a political economic system that capitalism and its champions of the free market and its politicians are vehemently opposed to, and these capitalists generally hold to the idea that the free market will provide the solutions to this crisis, in the end. 

This has not happened so far of course, and does not look like it will ever occur, and we are already out of time.

Certainly, the technology for renewable energy has been invented and already implemented in instances, but this has been in a piecemeal, slow, and reluctant manner, as well as also in a fake way, such as to signal virtue and sell more products to expand and increase capitalist growth, for example electric cars stop emissions at the car, but still rely on the production of electricity usually by fossil fuel burning, and they produce more emissions in their manufacture process. So, while the proof of concept has shown us that renewable energy, such as solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, etc, does work, the political will to make the transition has not been sufficient and has failed. 

Why? This is because the politicians are not really in full charge of our destiny, even while elected, their class determines what can be done, and their class leadezrs are the big capitalists who make their wealth out of fossil fuels. Clearly there are too many vested interests in continuing the use of fossil fuels, too many jobs involved in these industries as well as too many secondary jobs that rely on these jobs. Capitalists, big businesses, corporations, cannot, even if they wanted to, just discard their profitable industries because of this.

What must we do therefore? Only economies that can command their most essential industries and resources can cope with the necessary task of planning and implementing this future. Only these, socialist, economies will be capable of cooperating internationally rather than competing and, as is often the case, going to war with each other over energy. This is why it is the most urgent task in each advanced capitalist nation that the political parties of the progressive sides understand this and begin to hurriedly work towards socialism.

I say this knowing of course how this will sound to many like a throwback to an earlier stage of history that the media led us to believe was over, and that capitalist democracy is victorious and the ‘only game in town’. But we now know imperialist competition is not over, and thus war is not over. However, the will to resist imperialism seems to have been sapped, I suggest by the media. But previously, during periods of war we, such as in the UK, have successfully implemented socialist policies when needed, even in our capitalist economy, and we should indeed think of ourselves as on a war footing regarding the climate emergency.

For us, the climate must now be understood as an essential part of carrying forward the class struggle, because the bourgeois class will, as has become obvious, fight against this movement tooth and nail and with all of their ruses and clever media. They will make this task seem unpopular, unfashionable, and seem to be untenable, or will divert this movement onto fake paths that seem superficially to be progress but which are not and which will still support the use of fossil fuel. If we do not enter this struggle, we will be shirking our responsibility and shrugging our shoulders at the terrible catastrophes that will inevitably, and sooner than later, befall our species.

I write this with quite a lot of pessimism, given the current state of things, not really expecting this to happen anytime soon, but I have at least spoken and thus saved my soul.

See also:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/aug/14/why-is-andy-burnham-so-reluctant-to-talk-about-climate-crisis

THEORY: Humanism and Humanitarianism (regarding Gaza)

Humanism is a philosophy that, to put it simply, replaces classic religions with ‘Man’ or the 'Human Spirit'. There are many kinds of humanism, there is even a version of socialist humanism, sometimes called utopian socialism (Engels wrote against this tendency). Often Marx is described wrongly as a humanist, or in humanist terms.

The link between humanism as a philosophy and humanitarianism might seem obvious at first glance, the ethics of humanism appears to call for an understanding of the human spirit that is essentially humanitarian, in that it apparently cares for people.

Is it possible to be humanitarian without also being humanist?

You might assume that all ideologies, politics, religions, and philosophies, can advocate humanitarianism if they want, but is this true?

Marxism is not a version of humanism (the Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser wrote about this), but this does not stop it from being a supporter of humanitarian measures. However, it should be circumspect of humanitarianism at least, for its close connection with humanism. This is because the humanist face is bound to be two sided. The kindly caring one and the cold hearted one, this is its Janus face. Its caring attitude can easily flip over into anger and hatred, in fact it can encourage this, because some versions of this philosophy are based on understanding things sentimentally, and as essence or innate spirit: for instance, ethnic essences and nationalities. Nationalism therefore has these two sides and is a form of humanism.

You can consider most media to be fundamentally humanist in orientation. For instance, because they always refer to nations as ‘thinking’ and ‘deciding’ certain things, Britain thinks this, the US thinks that; Israel wants this, etc. This is true especially for the capitalist democracies, where the leviathan (Hobbes) that is understood as generated by the electorate, becomes identified with the popular will via the elected government, and this is then assumed to be ‘Israel’, or ‘France’ etc.

This is also anthropomorphic, unless we really believe in the myth of the leviathan, the giant human figure as a manifestation of a democratic will.

The question as to whether voting can generate such a thing, in spirit, whether democratic representation of this kind is real or not, in detail unfortunately must be left aside here, it is a long argument. But suffice it to say, fundamentally such humanist framing of the debate automatically excludes any discussion of class conflict in the media, except on rare occasions. It is not just a question of laziness on the part of the media worker (although considering class certainly makes the positions of nations more complex, so it probably plays a part), but a reflection of the inertia of the media as an industry, which I suggest we call a state apparatus of the ruling class.

The media of course presents itself as free, as the ‘free press’ etc, which adds to this notion of the universal ‘spirit’ or ‘will’ of the people thought to be expressed in this media.

You can see that a great deal hinges on this concept of democratic representation, the freedom achieved by this, and the free media, which is a part of the same humanist framework. Whilst Eisenhower warned us to watch out for the military-industrial complex regarding the far right, he left out any questioning of a media-industrial complex, presumably because this was what he was using to make his warning; it is in fact a more hidden secret of bourgeois rule, the close relation between capitalist industry and the industry that is the media.

Sometimes communists are drawn to the idea of being a family and a ‘broad church’, perhaps being influenced by the sheer ubiquitousness of this humanist media (almost every film, TV series, news source, has this ideology and aesthetic underlying it), but the communist concept of being a comrade really comes from being soldierly, being comrades at arms, in a class struggle, and of course the family can be understood as an apparatus of the state, so not always a good thing, there are of course also abusive families, and patriarchal families, and exploitative families.

On the other hand, sometimes we communists go to the other extreme to get away from this quagmire, and end up seeming unemotional, almost sociopathic, for whom everything comes down to economics and science, so this is not the entire answer, we should not fall into this false dialectical opposition in the first place.   

Is humanitarianism really something exclusive to humanism, does it force a humanist philosophy on whoever adopts a humanitarian approach?

In the same way that the love of God was often practised as the missionary arm of conquerors, enslavers, and colonisers, I suggest the humanitarianism of modern times are a way to enforce modern, basically western, ethics onto the people who are to be exploited, and to excuse their massacres when they become necessary to them.

Today there are many institutions, like the UN and the non-governmental aid agencies, plus those that watch over the conventions of war and international criminality such as the ICJ (International Court of Justice, a part of the UN) or the ICC (International Criminal Court), that hold to the humanist philosophical ethos. They are all very western in orientation. This is presumably why they seem reluctant and slow to take to task any central western power if they breach these rules, this is not who the rules are intended to apply to, - themselves in other words.

A relevant current example: recently some western powers led by the USA and the UK bombed the rebel Houthis in Yemen for trying to defend the Palestinian civilians in Gaza by attacking shipping trade routes through the Red Sea, which is very important to global capitalism, led by the USA, and one of the few avenues for resistance available. This bombing by these western powers was authorized by the UN. Yet, the highest UN court, the ICJ, if it finds Israel guilty of genocide in the case currently being brought by South Africa against Israel, would automatically justify the actions of the Houthis (I suggest) and make the attacks of these western countries and the UN complicit in defending genocidal acts. In short, the UN would be contravening itself. I am certain that it is doing so in any case.

These institutions generally support the rules of the capitalist mode of production and exchange. To exploit a fresh market, the exploited must feel the superiority of the conquering force, which says that it is not just by force alone that it rules, but by spirit too, it must also have the moral high ground, it must not just win by its superior force, it must win in all other ways, morally, aesthetically, it must seem to be at the forefront of ethics, and have the complete right to rule.

We might ask, why can the ruling class not simply look itself in the mirror and say that it wants to further its imperial strategy to secure future economic profits and is willing to kill innocent civilians to achieve this? Well, presumably it perceives as a class that a significant tactical advantage is to be gained by supporting certain myths about itself in its media, it must be important for its self-image and so for its morale in the class struggle, as well as to spoil and confuse the understanding of their opponents in this struggle and so to reduce their class morale.

So therefore, the question of Marxist science versus humanism is a crucial one exactly on this point. Does a Marxist humanist conception improve the confidence of the working class and communists in the class struggle? Not really, since it is, ultimately, approving all these myths of freedom within bourgeois class rule and about its essential righteousness and fairness, all the while it is carrying out the ruthless expansion of capital interests. It is not just conjuring away the class consciousness of its struggle and its interests in this struggle; but preventing the feelings that correspond to this from flourishing, of comradeship and solidarity, leading to feelings of isolation which it might seem only the media can solve.