We eco-socialists cannot sit back and let the party happen to us. It is our responsibility to build it.
Elected
This is not even to mention Starmer’s almost gleeful immiseration of the poorest in society and neglect of the climate crisis as an issue, wasting the historic opportunity of a huge majority in Parliament to instigate just energy transition.
Ed Miliband, the secretary of state for energy and climate change, is one of the strongest environment communicators in British politics but even his limited policy ambition is hamstrung by the self-defeating fiscal conservatism of Starmer and his chancellor Rachel Reeves.
The foreclosure of internal party democracy and with it the possibility of challenging this failing leadership meant that it was only a matter of time before eco-socialists finally broke from the chains of labourism.
Our historic opportunity now is to learn the lessons of the long history of the Labour left as we form a new organisation through which we can genuinely express our eco-socialist climate politics unencumbered.
Some comrades may ask why the Green Party should not be such a vehicle. It is, after all, an existing organisation with a base of support and elected representatives around the country including in Parliament.
Class
Zak Polanski’s campaign to lead the Green Party of England and Wales in particular has been a source of hope and inspiration for some eco-socialists. My view has always been that the Green Party is not a viable vehicle for eco-socialists. It is a necessarily marginal force in which our most basic principles will always be up for debate.
During Corbynism, it would have been more worthwhile for eco-socialists in the Greens to have joined Labour and helped us organise for a Green New Deal.
Now, Polanski pleads with Corbyn and Sultana to join the Greens – but he gets it the wrong way round. Eco-socialists in the Greens should now join the new left-wing party and organise for ecological politics through the democratic structures of a party that has genuine potential for mass appeal.
I have devoted my political life to climate activism in a variety of forms from anti-fossil fuel direct-action to university campaigning to electoral work. I am obviously convinced that the climate crisis must be a primary consideration as we develop eco-socialist strategy and political programs.
However, ‘green’ politics is doomed to represent only minoritarian interests incapable of breaking through a low ceiling of support without a fundamental basis in class politics and expression through socialism.
Alliances
Polanski’s campaign offers abundant proof of these limitations. He describes himself as an ‘eco-populist’ (not a eco-socialist) but it is not apparent that he knows what that means. When asked, he defaults to discussing inequality with platitudes about the 99 per cent versus the one per cent.
His standard list of ‘enemies’ are not matched with a compelling articulation of his ‘people’ (i.e. which social constituencies would be cohered into a bloc) or how to mobilise them beyond electing Green representatives.
His campaign does not propose to radically restructure the Green Party to overcome its distinctly non-populist structures. Instead, it combines a much more limited left-technocratic policy intervention (seeking to import reheated Corbynism into an even less viable electoral vehicle) and a managerialist intervention to improve the party’s communication strategy.
Both valiant aims, but not the radical confrontation with the ruling class that our political moment demands – or populism implies.
Of course, it is undoubtedly true that a Green Party led by Polanski will be better for the left in general as it improves the likelihood of alliances in the short-term. It also fends off the possibility of anti-socialist wrecking of the kind Greens levelled against Corbynism on the issue of Brexit.
Democratic
As such, we should of course work with eco-socialists who disagree about the expediency of the Greens as an organisational vehicle.
At the same time, we should be clear that socialists now require our own organisation of a new kind through which to express a distinct and urgent politics that takes seriously the basis of the climate crisis in capitalism.
A couple of months ago I was hesitant about throwing everything into a new left-wing party. I planned to see how it played out and join if it felt like it developed in a positive direction. I no longer think this is the correct orientation.
The new party is happening and enjoys huge support, regardless of what we think about how it plays out.
Fortunately, contingent factors such as Sultana’s bold resignation from Labour and the publication of Max Shanly’s excellent proposal, seemingly breaking an impasse between those brokering its launch, mean that it is not being constructed in shadowy rooms but in open democratic forums.
Strategy
This represents an exciting opportunity for eco-socialists from across our movement to apply the lessons of the last decades to avoid repeating mistakes of the past. We cannot sit back and let the party happen to us. It is our responsibility to build it.
It is now an urgent imperative for all eco-socialists to participate in shaping the party to ensure it has a foundationally eco-socialist political program; robust democratic structures; and a strategic orientation which takes seriously the urgency of the climate crisis as the context in which the organisation develops.
I expect that a fascinating contradiction will drive this process of development. Of the 600,000 plus people who have signed up as supporters, I am sure that the vast majority do not currently crave much more than an electoral vehicle through which to vote for Corbyn and Sultana.
This is an eminently understandable impulse but reheating Corbynism through a new organisation is as inadequate through a new left-wing party as it would be through the Greens.
This is our opportunity to build something with a politics more appropriate for our moment and a strategy that combines the long-term of party building with the short-term of intervening in the climate crisis.
Refine
A much smaller number of people appear energised to build a new kind of party which builds serious class power and expresses it through a strategic combination of electoral interventions and extra-parliamentary action.
Those of us thinking along these lines may be in a minority but we are the only ones doing serious thinking about what the party should be. This has been evident in the pages of Prometheus, New Left Review, Novara Media et cetera.
How the new left-wing party develops, then, will be substantively down to political debate between a relatively small subset of supporters, likely the cadre of Corbynism and far-left sects.
Which propositions win out will be down to who successfully persuades the many thousands of other supporters who are simply desperate for a left-wing alternative to the abhorrent status quo.
For this reason, it is of crucial importance that we continue to dedicate time and energy to the intellectual work of iterating what the party should be and how it should be organised. I echo the calls of other eco-socialists for all who are doing such thinking to refine their ideas and publish them to contribute to this debate.
Hope
For example, comrades and I will publish such a contribution discussing the importance of the climate crisis to questions of political program and strategy.
Whether you see yourself as contributing to these strategic and organisational debates or not, I implore all eco-socialists motivated by the climate crisis to join the new left-wing party and start thinking about what they want from it.
The party will be stronger for each and every comrade with these priorities who engages the democratic founding process.
For my part, I hope that the new left-wing party becomes a vehicle to express a bold socialist politics against imperialism and genocide, capitalist immiseration, and the climate crisis.
I hope it builds the class power to win by organising a multitude of social forces and experimenting with a diversity of tactics including but not limited to electoral campaigns, mass mobilisations, direct-actions, and community organising.
History
I hope that it is genuinely democratic with political and strategic leadership vested in the mass membership and not established bureaucrats or celebrity MPs.
I hope that it cultivates a diversity of political and tactical tendencies but coheres those strands around a shared eco-socialist political programme oriented towards socio-ecological transformation.
It is likely that the founding conference will be a monumental event in the history of the British left. As the climate crisis only intensifies, building a eco-socialist organisation capable of resisting catastrophe and instigating transformation is our most urgent task.
For all who agree, it should be a total priority to engage in the conference and the process of debate around it. Comrades, it’s time for something new. Let’s make history.
This Author
Chris Saltmarsh is a socialist climate activist and writer. He is author of Burnt: Fighting for Climate Justice and was co-founder of Labour for a Green New Deal. You can sign up as a supporter to participate in the process of building the new left-wing party online.