Nick Dearden spoke at the recent Chartist Annual General Meeting on the global crisis. Beginning with the genocide in Gaza he explained how a just green transition could help change the unequal relations between north and south.
Heinous war crimes are being perpetrated by a very rich country against a very poor country, with arms and political backing of rich country governments like our own.
We are watching the murder of often 100 people a day. The demolition of whole towns. The kidnapping and imprisoning of hundreds of people. Burning to death of parents, of children. The destruction of health systems and education systems. This is the first genocide to be live-streamed.
Our government – a Labour government – has given complete political cover for this. But as well as doing what we can to try to bring this horror to an end, it’s also important to think through the connections between this situation and broader crisis moment we find ourselves in. This is a deep crisis of capitalism and the attempts by elites to resolve this crisis.
There’s something in what we’re seeing in Gaza which clearly reflects the colonial structure of our global economy. Palestine is the faultline of the global economy. Even before the extremity of the current situation – here was global north and global south. Right next to each other. Let’s not forget so many western societies were also built on genocide. We did enough of it ourselves.
More broadly, so much of our economy is based on a mentality that others’ lives are without value. The imperial mode of living.
Today the neo-colonial economy, reinforced by a heavy dose of racism, shields us from the real, relatable lives of the majority of people on the planet. Telling the truth about the reality of this global economic system is a first step to undermining it.
It is possible. We can see it in the millions of people who’ve taken to the streets or occupied campuses over the horrific invasion of Gaza. They show that we have a generation for which change is possible.
There is a massive area we might want to begin redressing. That is how we manage the green transition. It lays the basis for how our economy develops over the next 20-30 years. It’s a once in a lifetime chance to change everything. If we do nothing, there are two possibilities for how this story plays out.
Either the far right, climate deniers win and climate breaks down and is accompanied by shocking levels of violence, dehumanisation and death. Or the slightly more enlightened green capitalists try to rewrite the global economy so that it reflects the current global economy in all respects except for the energy source.
That isn’t sustainable. It’s a recipe for higher levels of inequality, for the sacrifice of those living on top of critical minerals and working on their mining; a recipe for an almighty neo-colonial resource grab and the enclosure of new technologies in the hands of the richest corporations in the richest states on earth. We can’t allow that to happen.
Around the world, people are looking at countries like the UK and US that lecture them about the international rule of law, and they see very clearly the blatant hypocrisy. Indonesia, Bolivia, Mexico are just some of the countries refusing to allow access to their resources on the terms demanded by the great powers.
There is opportunity here. Trump might actually help. His threat of tariffs on anyone who refuses to bow to the power of the dollar is a sign of weakness not strength and it won’t work.
This also means challenging the growth myth. One of drivers behind Starmer’s relaunch this week, was that growth obsessions aren’t working.
The idea that ever more commodification, handing ever more of our society, our lives to the market mechanism is good for us – hasn’t worked. So we need to push the idea both that this system doesn’t work for them and that there is a better society.
A bunch of Etonians and billionaires have managed to portray themselves as anti-establishment. So if you want to preserve that inequality, those means of exploitation and dispossession – you need to dispense with democracy.
And the way to get a sufficient number of people on board with that is to make them believe the real problem is the other – the migrants, those who don’t look like them, and of course, people from other countries.
We cannot hope to win unless we dispel this myth. We have to convince people that their enemy is not over there – it is here at home. It is the power of our own elites. In fact our fate is genuinely tied up with the liberation of people around the world.
The Big Five oil and gas firms have raked in total profits of more than $281 billion since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. They have stuffed almost all of it in the pockets of super-rich shareholders. The same corporations that are destroying the planet.
When you realise the imperial mode of living you’re tied up in – you come to the conclusion we have to end the age of plunder. To stop the endless extraction. The worship of growth, which in turn is a worship of extraction. We can reclaim those things that make life worth living from the clutches of the profiteers.
We can build a world that all human beings deserve, given all the resources and knowledge at our disposal in the 21st century.
(This is an abridged version of his talk.)