The choice is ecosocialism or barbarism

First published at The Call.

The last thing people want is yet another American weighing in on world politics, especially when there are so many inspiring and urgent stories to share from all over the world –– including the mass protests happening right now in Indonesia or the 300,000 strong pro-Palestine demonstration that took place here a few weeks ago.

But, it’s important to say that the United States, the determining factor behind the international situation, is not all doom and gloom. Even in the belly of the beast, there are social movements, there are political organizations, there are masses of ordinary people who feel compelled to answer the call that gathered all of us here today.

Ecosocialism or barbarism

The call that’s being made, or rather the question that’s being posed to us –– not just to this conference hall of activists, but to all of humanity –– is, simply put, ecosocialism or barbarism?

In some ways, it is quite hard for my generation to conceptualize, given that the world that we inherited has always been characterized by war, financial crisis, and social injustices of all sorts. The generation that is coming of age today began their conscious political lives with Donald Trump in office. So it is a bit harder for us to appreciate the depth and singularity of the crisis we are living through, a crisis with economic, political, social, and now undeniable ecological dimensions.

I’m going to speak about the United States, but the dynamics have played out again and again all over the world –– not coincidentally.

The 2008 financial crisis ushered in the most recent crisis of capitalism. The entire global credit system came to a standstill and the first response by capital was to bail out Wall Street and to have working people pay for the crisis by giving up their incomes, public services, jobs, and homes.

The economic crisis remains unresolved today as the global economy and people’s living conditions continue to stagnate, and it is reinforced by a crisis of political leadership, which sees establishment parties –– some center or center-left, others from militant, social democratic origins –– take turns at implementing austerity, either because they are pessimistic about our chances of overcoming the crisis or because they are instruments of capital themselves. This ultimately paves the way for the growth of the far-right, which preys viciously on people’s insecurities.

In the United States, what this looks like is the duopoly of the Democratic and Republican parties –– both parties of capital, one the historic preference of financiers and tech CEOs, the other the typical home of the fossil fuel industry.

In the wake of Trump’s re-election, people spent a lot of time reflecting on how he could be elected again. Mainstream media and well-meaning liberals of course spilled much ink over the idea that Kamala Harris could have run a more savvy campaign or taken more campaign inspiration from popular figures like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The technical deficiencies of the Democrats are real, but as socialists, we know that the overwhelming reason behind Trump’s victory, the overwhelming reason behind the defection of young, working-class, and immigrant communities from the so-called opposition party, the Democrats, is because ordinary people’s lives have been miserable under Democratic governance.

In the months leading up to the election, under the Biden administration, families dealt with skyrocketing food and housing prices. Under Democrats and Republicans alike, it’s a normal fact of life that you have to run a cost benefit analysis over whether or not to go to the doctor. Joe Biden green lighted the genocide in Palestine and helped construct the modern carceral state as we know it.

Even if Harris adopted Sanders-style social democratic demands in the 11th hour, that’s not enough to undo the Democratic Party’s track record of collaborating with Republicans for decades to implement neoliberalism and degrade people’s rights and livelihoods

Neoliberal parties –– including those that wrap themselves in a rainbow flag –– have created tremendous space for the far right to step in.

In fact, it has been the far-right that has spoken the loudest and most directly to people’s insecurities around the world, whether it be Trump in the United States, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, Narendra Modi in India, or AfD in Germany. It’s not just institutional figures but also grassroots movements like the pentecostal churches in Brazil or March for Australia, the racist, nationalist, anti-immigrant movement that resurfaced here last week.

So long as there is no mass, left-wing alternative to establishment forces, the far-right will be a persistent and strengthening force in society. A force that will turbocharge the longstanding social crises of capitalism.

Trump in his re-election campaign, for instance, correctly perceived an American electorate that was sick of wars, stagnant wages, and politicians who represent the status quo. He built his campaign on the most tempting deceptions, promising to stop the war on Ukraine, to get Israel to commit to a ceasefire, and to put money back in the pockets of American workers.

But what do we see today?

We see the Israeli military’s bombardment and takeover of Gaza City; Trump’s naked extortion of Ukraine; the biggest wealth transfer from the American working class to the rich through Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill”; a trade war that has plunged the international working class into economic misery; and the demonization of immigrants and Muslims for all the problems the ruling class has created.

Last but not least we also have the ecological crisis. In contrast to those who speak of the ecological crisis as a threat, we ecosocialists say it is already here, devastating our communities and putting an expiration date on humanity through more frequent and destructive natural disasters, unprecedented heat waves, and the exhaustion and commodification of our limited natural resources, which are all deeply intertwined with disputes over indigenous rights, land sovereignty, public utilities, war, and immigration.

The crisis of capitalism we are living through is deep, complex, and increasingly difficult to resolve within the norms of bourgeois democracy. The international rules based order the United States constructed in the post-war period is collapsing because it no longer guarantees the US ruling class’s dominance over the world, especially against the rise of China.

Figures like Trump are making an authoritarian neo-fascist turn, using the power of the US state to reorganize the global economy, geopolitical alliances, and break the backbone of any social movement that can stand in his way.

This is where “ecosocialism or barbarism” comes back in.

The choice we have is not between a better or worse capitalism, the bourgeois democratic status quo that we were used to, or the more illiberal authoritarian version being constructed by figures like Trump.

The former system, bourgeois democracy and neoliberalism, gave birth to the latter, and the latter, neo-fascism, is sending us into a death spiral.

The choice before us is between a different mode of production, a new solidaristic and radically democratic way of living, of relating to each other and to nature, or death and destruction.

State of the resistance

Given the current balance of power in society, it is very easy to let the state of the world paralyze us. That’s why we as revolutionaries have to think very intentionally about how to help ourselves be moved by the possibilities.

Fortunately there are countless examples of people who feel the urgency of the moment and are stepping up to answer the call.

In particular I’m thinking about the Freedom Flotilla, which at the beginning of this month set sail with activists from 44 different countries to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. The mission has helped polarize the world against Israel and helped cohere the international movement in solidarity with Palestine.

Another bright spot has been the dozens of youth-led rebellions or resistance movements, such as the anti-austerity, anti-genocide, and anti-establishment movements in Serbia, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and the United States. These mobilizations continue in the tradition of the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, or the Indignados movement of the last decade, but have organized through new political forms.

For instance, the youth in the United States today, as compared the last decade, are more organized, more connected with other social movements — the labor movement in particular — and are aided by the existence of groups like the DSA, which plants the flag for socialism in US society, whereas no group had really done so at this scale for decades.

There are a lot of other promising developments: Greta Thunberg represents a broader sector of radical youth who stand in stark contrast to liberal environmentalists by linking the fight for climate justice to Palestinian rights; the seemingly inexhaustible demonstrations for Palestine nearly every weekend in Australia and London since October 7th; the new party forming in the United Kingdom; Black Lives Matter and a growing union reform movement in the United States calling for more democratic, militant, and solidaristic labor unions; Zohran Mamdani, who has become the frontrunner for the New York City mayoral race, running on a real working-class program of free childcare, buses, and freezing the rent. Powering him is an incredibly diverse movement of labor unions, pro-Palestine activists, different NYC ethnic communities, and DSA.

These movements share many points in common: they are racially and ethnically diverse; allied with the defense of the Palestinian people; politically open, disconnected from historical political traditions, but simultaneously ecumenical and non-dogmatic, open to new ideas and sources of inspiration; and they are led by the youth, the generation of people who are not just betting on a better future, but betting on having a future at all.

A big question for these people is where will they be in five to ten years. Are they still going to be organized? Are their struggles going to be more connected or will they work parallel to each other like passing ships in the night? Is ecosocialism going to be their horizon or merely opposition to the status quo?

The answers to those questions are up to us.

When I say “up to us,” I really mean it. It’s not just a nice, warm sentiment to share when you’re talking in front of a room of people. I mean it in the purposeful sense of having the ability to shape the answers to these questions.

The Zohran Mamdani movement in NYC is a good case study in miniature. Small parts of the Left have already written the movement off. They say “It’s inevitable Zohran will sell out. He is not ideological enough. His campaign is too focused on him as an individual personality. The base is underorganized. And there are a million other problems so let’s not get involved. The process can only backfire.”

I think this is an incredibly cynical and irresponsible view to have. To be clear, all the challenges and risks people cite are real: Zohran’s base is underorganized. He already faces capitalist retaliation of both co-optation and direct attacks. It will only amplify when he gets in office. Nevertheless there are hundreds of thousands of people inspired by his campaign. If you go talk to them, it’s clear that they’re not just waiting for a savior. These are ordinary people seeking news ideas and looking for ways to fight and transform their lives as they know it. We on the Left can go out and meet this demand by helping deepen and politicize Zohran’s campaign.

We can win people to class politics, a class approach to changing the world, not just class demands like having free public services. We can do this by not only building an army of doorknocking foot-soliders, but holding meetings about how NYC became unaffordable, building independent mobilizations for different planks of Zohran’s platform, connecting new Zohran activists with tenants unions, labor organizers, and DSA.

We can help people understand and exercise their own power not just in the context of the Zohran campaign, but alongside the mass opposition that’s been developing to Trump like the protests at Republican and Democratic town halls, the Fight the Oligarchy tour, the mass street mobilizations like Hands Off, anti-ICE protests, the No Kings rally, and union initiatives like May Day rallies and sanctuary union campaigns.

The odds are certainly against us, but the same has been true of all other movements for transformative change. If we’re going to speak the language of guarantees, I’ll put it this way: I don’t know of a single example where betting on solidarity, grassroots mobilization, and the ability of working people to come together to solve our own problems hasn’t put us in a better position to bring about a better world.

This is a transcript of a speech given during the opening panel of Ecosocialism 2025: “Ecosocialism not Barbarism”. Ecosocialism 2025 was a political education conference organized by Socialist Alliance (Australia) and Green Left. The conference gathered 200 socialist activists and supporters across Australia, plus international activists from a dozen countries, most of them in the Asia-Pacific region. Cyn H. is a student, socialist, and labor organizer based in Berkeley, California.