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This past week, as a full-scale invasion of Rafah looms, the Palestine movement on campuses has continued to grow, with new encampments popping up in universities such as Cardiff, Lancaster, and Queen Mary in London.

Demands vary from place to place; but with one united voice, students and communities are placing a clear demand upon the university bosses: Disclose and divest! Cut your ties with Israel and the imperialist war machine!

Across the country, the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) has thrown itself into this struggle (see reports below).

RCP comrades have played an active role in organising the encampments, giving fiery speeches at rallies, and leading educational discussions on topics like imperialism and revolutionary history.

But above all, the Revolutionary Communists have been putting forward a fighting programme to escalate the movement by reaching out to workers on campus, and spreading the struggle to local workplaces, schools, colleges, and working-class neighbourhoods.

Our comrades are raising demands that link this struggle to the fight against profiteering university bosses, the Tory government, and the system they uphold.

We say: Open up the financial books, so we can see where our fees, rents, and taxes are going! Put universities under the democratic control of staff and students! Kick imperialism off campus! Down with the Tory warmongers!

At Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and elsewhere, RCP members have led chants of Intifada! Revolution! These have been taken up passionately by students and local residents, revealing the mood of burning anger that exists across society.

No doubt spooked by scenes of militant struggle and unrest at encampments across North America, the establishment in Britain is on high-alert.

Already, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has met with vice-chancellors to discuss the rise of so-called antisemitism on campuses a blatant smear against those who wish to stop the Gazan genocide and fight imperialism.

Yesterday, rabid right-wing Tory MP and former home secretary Suella Braverman paid a provocative visit to the Cambridge University encampment, with a GB News camera crew in tow, no doubt hoping for a bit of limelight to revive her faltering career.

The ensuing scenes could have been taken from The Thick of It. Every time Braverman tried to engage in conversation with protestors, she was met with a barrage of silence from students, who rightly had no interest in discussing with this racist reactionary.

Walking away empty-handed, without any red meat to feed their rabid viewers, GB News then invited leading members of the RCP onto their show to discuss the encampments.

The channels hosts were clearly hoping to lampoon the left. Instead, they and their right-wing guests were shocked and humiliated, as RCP comrades shone a light on the Tories lies, attacks, and hypocrisy.

Refusing to rise to any bait, Adam Booth editor of communist.red outlined the real aims that students are fighting for, and the role that campus staff can play in advancing the movement.

What is needed is precisely the university workers, the lecturers, and other staff to come in and support these protests as well, to shut down the campuses. Theyre the ones with the power to prevent these university bosses from bringing big business onto campus, and to actually kick imperialism off campus, and put students and staff in control of universities.

Later in the same programme, Fiona Lali national campaigns organiser of the RCP went head-to-head in a debate with Suella Braverman herself.

Straight off the bat, Fiona came out swinging, dealing blow after blow to the Tory MP.

I think its great that you went to the camp today to talk to those students. And you embarrassed yourself doing that.

Its a reminder that the Palestine movement brought you down and the Palestine movement has the potential to bring down lots of other Tory ministers and the whole Tory government. And not just the Tory government, but any government and any mainstream political party that is backing what Israel is doing right now, which is a genocide.

Mouth agape, a stunned Braverman tried to deflect this scathing criticism with predictable reactionary talking points: Do you denounce Hamas? Does Israel have a right to exist? What about antisemitism? And so on.

Undeterred, Fiona continued: You posing those questions is exactly what makes students in Cambridge think I dont want to talk to you, I dont want to talk to any war criminal.

When asked whether her main argument was that we need to smash the capitalist system, Fiona replied:

Capitalism produces war and produces imperialism, which fundamentally has been driving everything that has happened over the last 76 years [since the founding of Israel]I am entirely opposed to the capitalist system and the horrors that it produces across the worldbut also in this country too.

I believe there is a lot of violence taking place across that whole region, Fiona continued. And I think western imperialists are the people who set up that problem in the first place. And theyre continuing to back everything that Netanyahu is doing.

Refusing to condemn Hamas, Braverman arrogantly interjected.

And youre refusing to condemn the whole system which produces all of that violence in the first place, Fiona quickly and rightly responded.

At encampments across the country, our comrades reported that student protestors were gathered around laptop screens cheering along as Braverman cringed and squirmed, unable to defend herself and the rotten ruling class she represents against these proverbial punches.

Well leave it to our readers to decide who won this debate!

The student encampments on both sides of the Atlantic have been an inspiration, providing a reference point for fury and frustration that is otherwise failing to be channelled and directed effectively.

After months of marching without any results, and with the massacre in Gaza worsening day by day, workers and youth are aiming their fire at the warmongers in Westminster, and at the establishment institutions that are helping to prop up the Israel war machine.

The next step is to escalate the encampments; to link all these local struggles together nationally; and to deepen and broaden out the movement, bringing the weight of the organised working class into the equation.

To this end, next Thursday evening, the RCP will be hosting a national online meeting for encampment activists, in order to discuss how we can continue building and widening the student movement for Palestine, and take it forward in the weeks and months ahead.

We call on university students and staff across Britain to actively participate in this discussion, and to help us forge a powerful, united, nationwide movement to kick imperialism off campus.

Two weeks on from our founding congress, the Revolutionary Communist Party has firmly planted the flag of communism in the Palestine solidarity movement.

This is what the RCP is about: leading militant grassroots struggles, and publicly denouncing the Tories as war criminals, complicit in genocide.

If you also want to fight against imperialism and capitalism, the system that breeds war, misery, and oppression, then its time to get organised and join your party join the RCP.

Five days into the QMUL encampment, eight people have agreed to join the RCP, ten more are interested in joining.

With four comrades at the university backed by the East London branches we have established ourselves as the reference point for the most radical elements, and our demands for student and worker control of the university, and kicking imperialism off campus, have been taken up as de facto demands.

As a result of our work in the last upsurge of the movement, we were invited onto the planning committee. We have used every opportunity to inject revolutionary communist ideas into the encampment and to win the trust of the students and workers.

We have led teach-outs, spoken at rallies, and set up stalls on and off campus. Most of all, we are constantly discussing, because there is a palpable hunger for ideas which we can satisfy.

In the encampment discussions, we have consistently advocated for broadening the action, with concrete suggestions.

We hosted the first teach-out on escalating the movement, and led a confrontation with the vice-chancellor.

In response to managements attempt to partition the students from the hugely sympathetic locals, we advocated taking control of the space and letting them in. But fortunately, during a rally, the gates lock happened to break.

300 people flooded onto campus for a massive rally, with our comrades giving the main speeches, ending with calls for intifada a mass uprising against the entire imperialist system. This electrified the camp, hugely raised our political authority.

People are wide open to our ideas. Through patient work we are distinguishing ourselves as a determined and clear-sighted section of this movement.

Since Tuesday 14 May, Cardiff Communists have gotten stuck into the Palestine solidarity encampment at Cardiff University.

Comrades have played a leading political role in helping to organise the encampment, and putting forward the case for why worker and student control of the university is essential for carrying through our demands of divestment from arms companies, and opening up the unis financial books.

Theres still plenty of work to do! In the camp, we have been put in charge of education and outreach.

We are explaining that for the movement to succeed, we must reach out and draw in the whole of the student body, the students union, the UCU, and all workers involved in the actual running of the university.

And we are putting our money where our mouth is, by organising delegations to go out and do just that!

We have organised talks on the First Intifada, the French Revolution of May 1968, and another coming soon on why we need a revolutionary philosophy. As fresh layers of students are being drawn into struggle, there is a thirst for revolutionary theory and the lessons of the past.

On Wednesday night, a lone coward cycled into the camp, crashed into a tent of one of our student comrades, tore down some flags and peddled away.

However, this provocation has only strengthened our comrades resolve. We immediately took to social media and used the experience to demonstrate that the best form of protecting the encampment is for it to grow even bigger, drowning out the threat of a reactionary minority.

In the dead of night on 8 May, 17 activists armed with tents set up an encampment at the University of Birmingham. We renamed the Universitys Green Heart park to Gaza Heart, and called on hundreds of students to join us.

Within a week, the encampment has grown to 60 tents with over 1,000 students and local workers involved.

The encampment is being led by the RCP, Friends of Palestine, and the Amnesty Society. Demands include disclosure and divestment, freedom of protest on campus, and workers and students control of the university.

Over 200 members of staff have signed an open letter backing the encampments demands. Delegations have been sent to other universities in the city to organise solidarity action, whilst explaining our political programme.

The tents are centred around a Resistance Library which RCP comrades have established turning the camp into a centre of education with daily teach-outs on topics like the history of Palestine, the role of British imperialism, and the lessons of May 1968.

These teach-outs are not just of personal interest, but to arm the movement with the ideas needed to spread the encampment further afield.

We are raising the slogan from the campus to the streets! And with mass anger in Birmingham over the genocide, as well as the brutal austerity package imposed on the city, we believe that that the encampment can fan the flames of rebellion far and wide.

The Cambridge University encampment began on Monday 6 May. At the break of dawn, several dozen students, including RCP comrades, occupied a lawn outside Kings College in the centre of Cambridge.

The camp has quickly become a reference point for the anger in the entire town, with sympathisers stopping by on a regular basis donating money and material, and asking how they can help.

Our intervention has been based on the belief that this could quickly transform into a mass movement in the city.

Comrades have been taking on practical tasks such as stewarding and outreach, all while raising the need to escalate the encampment if we want our demands to be met.

Many are recognising the Communists as the spearhead of this movement. Already, several people within the encampment have expressed their interest in getting involved.

In one telling anecdote, a comrade overheard a group of workers expressing their surprise at Communists leading the encampment at a takeaway.

One person among them defended the ideas of communism. Our comrade sold him a copy of The Communist and arranged to meet up and discuss how to join the Party!

Lancaster Communists, alongside other groups, helped to launch an encampment at Lancaster University, which we promoted with posters, stalls, and lecture shout-outs.

Weve got stuck in with practical tasks, as well as organising a programme of teach-outs on topics like the state, the Nakba, the First Intifada, and the overthrow of Apartheid.

Weve also given a number of rousing speeches at rallies, calling for the university to open up its books, for student and worker control of the university, and for the encampment to reach out to workers on and off campus.

Despite the excitement of the events, weve kept our sights on the bigger picture: that the encampment needs to grow and take on a wider perspective if we are to succeed in winning our demands.

Our goal over the coming days is to connect with academic and non-academic staff, both unionised and otherwise. As part of this, weve invited the UCU to put on educational events.

One of our comrades is a junior doctor who studies at the medical school, where students are forced to pay an extra 1,500 to do voluntary full-time work in hospitals, without access to bursaries.

So were backing a campaign around the slogan Bursaries not Bombs! which we are using to connect the question of divestment with the universitys neglect of education and student welfare.

Already, we have a number of people interested in joining the RCP on the back of this campaign.

Yesterday, a group of activists were brutally dragged out of a meeting between the university management and the students union, simply for trying to deliver a two-minute speech in protest.

We strongly denounce this attack by the bosses, and call on students and workers to help us grow the encampment. Our strength lies in numbers and unity.

The Sheffield encampment was set up 1 May and has been drawing huge sympathy from across campus and the whole city, with donations of material, food, and camping gear flowing in.

The Sheffield Communists immediately got stuck in: washing up dishes, leafleting, and sparking discussions on the way forward for the movement.

Widening the movement is within reach, given the mass support and the mood of anger around Britains complicity in the massacre of Palestinians.

Only a mass force will be strong enough to impose our demands, starting with getting the university bosses to put an end to their lucrative dealings with arms companies.

We raised the idea of a general assembly to discuss our demands and how to escalate the movement. And on 10 May, 200 students and workers gathered for the first assembly.

Ten of our comrades took part in the discussion, and we managed to convince everyone to build towards a mass movement of students and workers.

Within a couple of weeks, we have been able to take on a leading role in the encampment. We are writing for the camps bulletin, planning discussions on imperialism, and working towards the next assembly the largest any of us will have seen in Sheffield!

The encampment at Kent University started on 10 May. Our comrades immediately got involved with the planning.

We gathered as many students around us as possible to join the occupation, and also organised multiple teach-outs.

Over 50 people attended our first discussion on imperialism. We also discussed the demands of the occupation and how to grow it further.

We have organised a meeting on revolutionary struggles in Africa, and have another planned on May 68.

We have sold over 70 worth of copies of The Communist, books, and pamphlets, showing the thirst for revolutionary ideas.

We have also been involved in banner making, and door-knocking to build support for the occupation.

There is a lot of potential to grow the movement further. We will keep up the fight until our demands are met!

On 13 May, students at Kings College London (KCL) launched an encampment.

As soon as it was launched, the local RCP branch worked diligently to build the camp and grow the movement.

Through our bold speeches and ideas, we have gained political support within the camp. We have worked on the outreach team, visiting the library and other parts of the university to hand out flyers, put forward our demands, and bring attention to the encampment.

Within a camp meeting, our proposals for a democratic assembly to decide on strategy, and to elect a democratically accountable leadership body, were unanimously accepted.

Putting forward our communist ideas boldly has been an amazing success!

Over a hundred students and staff met for a rally at Imperial College London campus on Wednesday 15 May to mark Nakba Day. Comrades of the RCP led the rally and gave the opening speech.

There was a mood of anger against this universitys complicity with the genocide in Gaza. Imperial has failed to disclose its ties with the Israeli war machine and has made no pledge to divest.

Read more:
Revolutionary Communists take on Tory warmongers - The Communist

Statement: 50th anniversary of British state terrorism attack upon the Irish people in 1974.

The Communist Party of Ireland/Pirt Cumannach na hireann once again expresses to solidarity with families of the victims of the Dublin-Monaghan bombings in 1974 on this the 50thanniversary of those bombing that murdered 33 and injured 300 of our fellow citizens, leaving many families and individuals scarred for life both emotional and physically.

The bombing carried under the direction and coordination of British State MilitaryIntelligenceusing its proxy forces loyalist para-militarieson this occasion the Ulster Volunteer Force(UVF).

Three bombs were exploded on two very busy Dublin streets at a time when thousands of working people were shopping or going home from work. The Third Dublin bomb explored near Kildare St. The Monaghan bomb was detonated in the heart of the town.

The then Irish government, a coalition of Fine Gael and the Labour Party was one of the most reactionary pro-imperialist governments produced by the Irish ruling class.At the time of the attack the Irish government was instituting a regime of repression against Republicans and all those who expressed solidarity with the people in the six counties. The Irish governments published the Barron Report into the bombings in 2003 exposed the shambolic nature of theGardaSochna'sinvestigationinto what was a terrorist attack on the Irish state, directed by the British State.

The British State attack was a message to the Irish government to the Irish people of the likely consequences of any support or solidarity with the nationalist in the 6 counties.

The British continue to block and prevaricate in regard to supplying all materials in relation to these events. It was in the British state interests to bomb Dublin and Monaghan 50 years ago and it still in its interests to block any further exposure of this state directed crime. The British state has protected and continues to protect all those who planned and carried out the bombings.

At a time when the Irish ruling class wants closer links with NATO, it should be remembered that Britain was then, and remains one of the most aggressive members of NATO. The attack shows that Britain doesnt care for Irish democracy, neutrality and sovereignty. The British state then as now continues to protect its interests and interfering in the affairs of the Irish people. The lesson of history must be learned by each generation that British imperialism does not have friends but only interests to serve and pursue.

solidnet.org

Read more here:
Communist Party of Ireland: On the 50th anniversary of the 1974 Dublin-Monaghan terrorist attack - In Defense of Communism

On April 24, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into state law a directive to teach young people throughout the states public schools about the evils of communism beginning in kindergarten and extending through high school.

The measure pledges age-appropriate curriculum changes across K-12. Currently, the state standards require anti-communist instruction in seventh grade and high school. Coursework on Victims of Communism Day, a designation DeSantis manufactured in 2022, is a graduation requirement.

Educators have noted that no similar instruction on fascism or its history exists within the state education standards. Is there also a bill mandating teaching the horrors of fascism in our schools? said one commentator on Facebook, adding, BTWour capitalism is not working so well. Another critic cited the long use of anti-communism across the American South to quell movements for freedom, justice and equality. An educator denounced the measure and cited the fact that Floridas teachers pay ranks 48th in the nation and per-pupil funding ranks F nationally.

The sponsors of the original bill, which received Republican and Democratic support, say they were motivated by the fact that that too many American youths today view communism in a positive light. Indeed, every poll for the last decade has shown growing numbers of young people identifying as socialist. Since 2021, when 54 percent of Gen Z said they viewed capitalism negatively, these numbers have only increased.

The governors goal, his office said, is to prepare students to withstand indoctrination on communism at colleges and universities.

DeSantiss reactionary mandate was accompanied two days later by a call for repression against the explosion of protests against Israels US-backed genocide in Gaza on campuses including those in Florida. Libeling protesters as violent without citing any evidence, the governor called for reprisals against pro-Palestinian students, including the expulsion of American students and the deportation of international students.

The state-run University of Florida (UF) followed up with threats to banish demonstrators from campus for three years should they violate a host of vague rules including disruption, littering; camping or use of tents, sleeping bags or pillows; [or] blocking anyones path. Employees in violation of these rules would be fired, said the UF authorities.

The announcement of the law requiring government-scripted anti-communist propaganda in classrooms was made on the 63rd anniversary of the failed invasion at Cubas Bay of Pigs, with DeSantis speaking before a flank of right-wing Cuban veterans of the assault. The event was staged at the Hialeah Gardens Museum, a recently erected and publicly funded paean to the heroes of the CIA plot to overthrow Fidel Castro.

The attempted US coup in 1961 sought to restore the dictatorial policies of Fulgencio Batista, a brutal and corrupt dictator who maintained Cuba as a watering hole for American businessmen and mafioso. But the invading CIA-trained 2506 Assault Brigade received negligible backingamong Cubans, who welcomed the overthrow of the hated Bastista. The US military fiasco at the Bay of Pigs, however, has become a fascistic dog-whistle, especially among right-wing Cuban exiles.

Rafael Montalvo, president of Brigade 2506, explained his endorsement of DeSantis indoctrination law: The most important fight against communism is the one thats done in the schoolrooms. Thats where the battle is happening right now. And this [law] is going to be a tool [giving] us the victory in that area.

In addition to the increasing threat of communism, the history of communism in the United States and tactics of communist movements, the curriculum is to address atrocities committed in foreign countries under the guidance of communism. This transparent ideological broadside against historical truth, overseen by the fascist DeSantis, will take effect for the 2026-27 school year.

Additionally, the law calls for the creation of an Institute for Freedom in the Americas at Miami Dade College to promote economic and individual freedoms across Latin America and the Caribbean. Finally, it recommends the departments of education and state collaborate to develop a Florida-based museum on the history of communism.

Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. endorsed the measure, saying, I know firsthand the evils that communism brings, and I am proud to stand by Governor DeSantis as he signs this legislation to ensure Florida remains the bastion of freedom.

Last year, Floridas Department of Education notoriously modified its state standards to include the proposition that some Black people benefited from slavery because it taught them useful skills. DeSantis also blocked a new high school Advanced Placement course on African American studies from being taught, calling it a Trojan horse for indoctrinating students with a left-wing ideology.

While the latest Florida education measure was pushed by DeSantis, state Democrats crossed the aisle to support it as well. Fear and suppression of increasing numbers of leftward-moving youth and workers is a bipartisan affair, as both parties know growing numbers recognize capitalism as the cause of genocide, war, poverty, lack of healthcare and climate change.

While DeSantis and Trump are making anti-communism and bigotry their rallying cry, the Democratic Party works in tandem with its Republican colleagues, as President Joe Biden puts it. The Democrats have overseen the brutal repression of students on campuses across the US in recent weeks. Bidens Department of Education is seeking to criminalize opposition to genocide by launching investigations against pro-Palestinian teachers and claims of civil rights violations at colleges.

On April 26, Representative Ritchie Torres, Democrat of New York, ratcheted up this line of attack, announcing a bipartisan-backed bill to enable the US Department of Education (ED) to establish an antisemitism monitor in all schools that receive federal funds. Clearly targeting the school which has become the epicenter of protests, the College Oversight and Legal Updates Mandating Bias Investigations and Accountability (COLUMBIA) Act is designed to place maximum pressure on universities to repress their own students.

Claiming a blatant violation of Title VI, Torres threatened that schools not complying with the antisemitism monitor would lose all public funding. The ED would have broad power to set the terms and conditions of the monitorship, and the colleges would be forced to pay the costs of their own antisemitism monitor.

Schools that do not comply with the monitoring would risk losing federal funding. This measure, considered the nuclear option, would mean students could not use federal financial aid to pay tuitiona measure which would put most colleges out of business.

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Read more from the original source:
Florida Governor DeSantis signs new law mandating teaching the evils of communism to children as young as five - WSWS

Trier, Germany's oldest city, is famous for its ancient art treasures and monuments but, most of all, is the birthplace of the greatest philosopher of modern history; Karl Marx.

More than 200 years since the birth of the father of scientific socialism, candidates from the German Communist Party (DKP) are going to participate in the local city council elections that are due to take place in June 9, 2024.

Last week, the city's electoral committee confirmed that the DKP Trier had met all the requirements for running for election.

Philippe Drastik, a 30 year-old social worker who leads the DKP list, points out: "We have already been able to use the collection of signatures for many discussions with the citizens of our city and have found that we have struck a chord with people with our election program".

Of course we are aware that at the local level we won't be able to overcome capitalism, as the cause of exploitation, war and crisis. Nevertheless, we believe that an unyielding voice against privatization and speculation and for the preservation of social freedom can make a real difference for the people of Trier", the 30 year-old communist candidate adds.

Other candidates of the DKP include 71-year-old Sigrid Sommer and 38 year-old Christian Lhr. In general, we are committed to a city that is livable and, above all, child-friendly. The unconditional creation of daycare places is just as important as the expansion of gyms, playgrounds and sports fields. We want to make the city safer for cyclists", says Sommer.

dkptrier.wordpress.com / zeitungderarbeit.at

The rest is here:
Communists to run in Karl Marx hometown's election - In Defense of Communism

Slow Down is the English translation of Kohei Saitos Japanese work Capital in the Anthropocene, which became an unlikely hit when it was published in 2020, selling half a million copies. Saito had thought his argument that the climate crisis cannot be addressed without transcending capitalism was too radical to find much of an audience (p.viii), but in the event, even capitalists were coming up to him to express their agreement with his ideas, and to ask his advice on what they should therefore do with their businesses.

As Saito himself says, the enthusiasm in Japan for the book probably relates to it resonating with wider social discontentments and anxieties (p.viii). In other words, the books success was more an expression of a desire for systemic change in general rather being a specific endorsement of Saitos anti-growth message. As one Japanese fan put it, he doesnt say there are good and bad things about capitalism, or that it is possible to reform it he just says we have to get rid of the entire system. It was also apparently an expression of interest in Marxism, or, as that Guardian story about the books surprise success in Japan expressed it, in strands of Marxism. This is a cautious allusion to the fact that Saitos interpretation of Marx is decidedly controversial.

Saitos argument about Marx here repeats his position set out in his previous English-language publication, Marx in the Anthropocene,i that while Marx was a productivist in his early years, towards the end of his life, he became a degrowth communist. In Saitos view, Marx realised that blindly accelerating productivity under capitalism would never pave the way for a transition to socialism Rather than calling for raising productivity under capitalism, Marx now sought to bring about a transition to a separate economic system that is, socialism, first, and then foster sustainable economic development within that system (p.104).

In contrast to the approach of his other books, Saito here is talking to a non-Marxist audience. Members of this audience, he posits, might think that Marxism has nothing to contribute to a conversation about the environment because of Soviet environmental destruction, (p.86) or that it necessarily involves the nationalization of modes of production accompanied by one-party rule in the style of the Communist Parties of the Soviet Union or the Peoples Republic of China [and is] both outdated and dangerous (p.88). As a result, its reasonable that his account of Marxs economics should be simplified. It is less reasonable that in places, that simplification should have garbled Saitos account into incoherence.

Some of these instances are just demonstrations of the value of a final edit, such as where a discussion of how coals transportability enabled mill owners to site production where labour was plentiful, rather than being restricted by geography, is marred by the somewhat startling statement that labour power was comparatively scarce in areas near rivers and streams (p.154). It is not hard to think of a long list of major cities on rivers with which to refute this.

Other instances are more serious. Saitos simplified, broad summary of the Communist Manifesto presents its central argument as:

Capitalists compete against each other, raising their productivity, which leads to the production of more and more commodities. But workers, exploited due to low wages, cant afford to buy those commodities. This eventually leads to a crisis of overproduction. The already-exploited workers thus suffer another blow, this time due to the unemployment stemming from this crisis, and rise up en masse, bringing about a socialist revolution (p.94).

This combines an under-consumption thesis, that the problem for capitalism is that demand from the exploited workers will be insufficient to the supply they generate, with an immiseration thesis, the idea that workers will automatically rise up if their lives are just made hard enough. Neither of these was Marxs position, although it is not entirely uncommon for Marx to be seen in Keynesian under-consumptionist terms. It is certainly the case that Marx was neither an under-consumptionist nor an adherent of the immiseration thesis in the Communist Manifesto. Similarly, despite Saitos claim to the contrary, Marx did not argue in his earlier writings (or indeed, at any point) that raising productivity under capitalism [would] necessarily lead to the liberation of humanity (p.117).

Saitos thesis that Marx converted to degrowth has been thoroughly criticised, for example by Matt Huber and Leigh Phillips in a long essay for Jacobin. As they point out, leaving aside quotations which Marx copied into his notebooks (copying not necessarily representing endorsement), the argument largely rests on one set of texts, the several drafts of Marxs 1881 letter to the Russian socialist Vera Zasulich. In this letter, Marx speculated that Russian peasant villages, the mir, which had communal property, could go straight to socialism without having first to be remade as capitalist. In other words, Huber and Phillips explain,

the Russian mir could leapfrog capitalist development because capitalist development had occurred elsewhere, in the same way that many poor countries have jumped directly to adoption of mobile phones without having to pass through the stages of telegraphy or landlines.

For Saito, this letter represents the culmination of Marxs transition from what Saito caricatures as a belief in the inevitable forces of history, production as liberation and capitalism as progress, to degrowth. This is a substantial claim to make about Marxs thought on the basis of one letter, and one which Saito is only able to reach, in any case, by stretching the reading of that letter further than it can reasonably go. As Huber and Phillips make clear, at no point in any of the drafts [of the letter] did Marx suggest humanity as a whole could have taken a noncapitalist path through to communism.

On first reading, it is not entirely clear what the discussion of Marx is doing in the book at all. Saito leads into this section with the short statement that: Yes, I am talking about communism. Hence the necessity of bringing degrowth together with the writings of Karl Marx (p.86). This does not entirely cover what feels like a jump from the initial chapters on the ills of capitalism in the present day to the discussion of the evolution of Marxs thought. While Marxs ideas are, of course, directly relevant to a consideration of ecological destruction under capitalism, you might be excused for feeling that the question of how Marxs views on degrowth might have changed throughout his life belongs in a different book entirely, rather than in this one. It does not, on the face of it, appear to explain or advance the questions of how to deal with the problems of capitalism raised in the first section of this book.

One explanation for this apparent disjunct is that Saito does however believe that his argument about Marxs later thought has a direct relevance for how we should approach the climate crisis in the present. As others have noticed, Saito has a tendency to present his arguments about Marxs beliefs as if Marx were a prophet, whose word we should believe unconditionally and without question. The implication seems to be that if Marx towards the end of his life embraced degrowth, that alone should be sufficient to convince us to convert to it too. For Saito, no further argument about the merits of degrowth is necessary if it can be shown to have been hallowed by Marx.

While Marxists are sometimes accused by the right of adopting Marxism or communism as a form of religion, this is not, of course, a style of argument in which any materialist worth their salt could engage. In the specific instance of the Russian mir, we would simply note that if Marx had adopted the view that the mir represented a route for humanity straight from feudalism to socialism, events would have proved him wrong. The small size of the proletariat compared to the peasantry proved to be a significant obstacle for a successful revolution in Russia. It is also worth noting though that the section on Marx here provides left cover to a set of ideas which might otherwise appear clearly anti-working class.

In his preface to the English-language edition, Saito makes clear that he sees himself as more radical than many other proponents of degrowth. They, he says, are often ambivalent about the need to transcend capitalism. I am not ambivalent (p.x). Once we get to the section of the book dealing with solutions, it is, however, striking how much of Saitos vision of our sustainable future is recognisable from the general degrowth playbook. Workers co-ops, mutual aid, localised production and so on all make their expected appearance.

That so much of this is familiar may be why Saito chose not to spell out the thinking behind many of the specific proposals. There is little discussion, for example, of why power generation should be organised on a small-scale, local basis, or acknowledgment of the way that this would magnify renewables problems with intermittency. Similarly, there is no explanation here for why co-ordination of some production at regional, but not national, level would be permissible, or why a regional government would be somehow qualitatively different from a national one.

What is also unfortunately familiar from other degrowth works is the call for restraint on modern, urban lifestyles deemed to be self-indulgent and excessive. Saito is careful to state that his is not a nostalgic call to return to the village! (p.124), but the general picture painted here of the degrowth communist society does end up sounding rather like those low-tech agricultural communes of the Zasulich letter. Saito has commented that people accuse me of wanting to go back to the [feudal] Edo period [1603-1868] and it is easy to see why. When, for example, he criticises urban populations for no longer knowing how to grow their own food: all we know how to do anymore is live our urban lifestyles supported by the exploitation of the periphery (p.141), it is difficult to interpret the argument in any way other than as a call to abandon modernity.

Early in the book, Saito responds to the criticism that his ideas sound like voluntary poverty with the comment that on the surface, this criticism is correct (p.73). He underlines this later by calling for us to voluntarily choose the path of self-limitation as an anti-capitalist, revolutionary action (p.178). Saitos point seems to be that while, on the surface, we would indeed be choosing material restrictions, we would be gaining all sorts of intangible benefits in exchange. As he explains:

This does not mean that peoples lives will become impoverished. Rather, as the space taken up by mutual aid, independent of money exchange, expands, people will be released more and more from the pressures of work. The amount of time regained by the average person just through this shift would be immense (p.171).

Presenting the call for degrowth as a discussion of Marxs ideas frames it as a discussion of economic systems and their effects on the environment. It quickly becomes clear, however, that this is as much about individual lifestyles and our individual responsibility for them. The lifestyles of everyone in the Global North are characterised early in the book as being typified by cars, aeroplanes, large houses, meat, wine, but by the end have become simply urban. They are without qualification rich and enriched, requiring a huge amount of resources and energy to be wasted for the benefit of a very small portion of humanity (p.6). They are supported by the exploitation of the periphery (p.141) and represent the Imperial Mode of Living. Simply by living in the Global North, each and every one of us becomes complicit in perpetuating injustice (p.14).

This is the labour aristocracy theory, that either all workers or a section of the working class in the Global North is paid off by the bourgeoisie with the spoils of imperialism. It is in no way a Marxist position, ignoring as it does the way in which workers in the Global North have had to fight for advances in wages, conditions, welfare and so on, and that workers in the Global South are exploited by national and imperialist bourgeoisies, not by other workers.

As expressed here, it represents the conclusion that the problems of capitalism are caused by the greed and irresponsibility of the working class in the Global North. Even capitalisms need for growth is not understood here as a matter of economics but as a result of short-term political choices. Saito follows the productivity trap explanation for growth under capitalism, that rises in productivity mean that the same amount of production can be delivered with fewer workers, but politicians hate high unemployment rates. For this reason, theres a huge amount of pressure for the economy to keep expanding indefinitely so as to maintain the rate of employment (p.40). Growth is therefore ultimately the fault of the selfish, short-sighted workers, insisting on wages to buy their meat and wine, despite the damage to workers in the Global South and to the planet.

While Saito does take care to outline what he sees as the compensations in degrowth communism for the dramatic drop in living standards it would entail for the Global North, youre left with the strong sense that this drop is in any case deserved. We are sinful for internalis[ing] to an extreme extent the sheer desirability of the Imperial Mode of Living (p.14) and must expiate our guilt with some much-needed austerity. Saito opens the introduction to the Japanese edition with the comment that individual actions like using a reusable shopping bag or carrying a thermos for your coffee function like Catholic indulgences (p.xiii) and the religious overtones persist throughout.

It will be apparent that at its heart, this is a Malthusian position. As in Malthus, the blame for environmental destruction ultimately lies with the industrial working-class. While Saito is clear in his rejection of capitalism, it is also clear that he sees modern, industrial production as inherently destructive of the environment. Strict limits on production to only the absolutely necessary (as always, who decides what is or is not necessary is not well-defined) will be required under any system to address the climate crisis. The transition from capitalism to communism is needed in order to manage this as fairly as possible and to give people the compensation in terms of free time, community and so on, for the drastic decline in their material standards of living.

Saito does say at one point that the technological advances made under capitalism should be retained (p.124), but the general tenor of the discussion is that they wouldnt be, and indeed Saito also says that in many instances, the new degrowth communist society would have to start from scratch. Given the criticism of urban lifestyles, it is difficult to interpret this as anything other than an argument against industrialisation, regardless of the mode of production. Whether it would be possible to maintain anything like the modern size of population in these straitened, post-urban conditions is not discussed, but is a valid question.

This bears very little resemblance to the Marxist position that in a system run democratically for the benefit of everyone, humanity should be able to come up with technological solutions to ecological problems. As Engels wrote in his Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy, freed from the irrationalities of capitalist profit-seeking, human labour could always extend what might appear to be the natural limits of production: the productivity of the land can be infinitely increased by the application of capital, labour and science.ii The radical abundance which Saito is right to seek should be able to be a genuine abundance, not simply austerity for all.

There is also, of course, the question of how to persuade people voluntarily to fight for their own immiseration, a particularly difficult argument in a cost-of-living crisis. The consideration here, such as it is, of how to overthrow capitalism in favour of degrowth communism is perhaps the weakest element of the book. It demonstrates that it is not only necessary to read Marxs writings, but to understand them.

There is very little here that rises to a theory of how to achieve revolutionary change. In some places, Saito implies that the system will be changed simply by individuals changing their behaviour, as for example when he posits that: these actions will combine to become a huge groundswell that will rein in the power of capital, reform democracy and decarbonize society (p.238). The impression is that this is as much about moral deserts as it is about achieving political change. The actions which will form this groundswell are as disparate as getting involved in a community farm or working for an environmental NGO, and Saito assures us that it doesnt matter the form it [action] takes (p.237).

This position is reminiscent of that of the nineteenth-century utopian socialists, whose approach of attempting to withdraw from capitalism rather than taking it on directly was criticised by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto: they reject all political, and especially all revolutionary, action; they wish to attain their ends by peaceful means, and endeavour, by small experiments, necessarily doomed to failure, and by the force of example, to pave the way for the new social Gospel.iii Saito does not show an awareness of this history, or of the histories of initiatives like the co-operative movement. He lauds modern co-ops in Barcelona as the first step towards the transition to a form of sustainably participatory socialism based on mutual aid and away from an economic model based on exploitation and plunder (p.218) without any explanation of why they are different from their nineteenth- and twentieth-century precursors.

In part, the problem seems to lie in the understanding here of what confronting the power of global capital really means. Saito, for example, lauds Barcelona for doing so by taking distinctly non-revolutionary and non-challenging measures such as implementing urban speed limits and cracking down on AirBnB. He also appears to have avoided learning what for Marx was a key lesson of the 1871 Paris Commune, that the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.iv He comments that the citizens assembly shows us is that social movements can renovate democratic processes and use the power of the state (p.139).

The larger issue though appears to be one which faces many green critics of capitalism: that Saito wishes to argue for overthrowing the system without endorsing proletarian revolutionary organisation. It is remarkable, given Saitos self-described credentials as a scholar of political thought in the Marxist tradition (p.viii), that the proletariat here is notable by its almost total absence, with no entries at all in the index.

There is no proletariat in Saitos account of Marxs theories, either in his versions of early or late Marx, and certainly no proletarian organisation. His caricature of early Marxs view of how revolution would come about has people rising up spontaneously in response to unemployment and omits Marxs understanding of the proletariat as the only class capable of overthrowing capitalism. It is indeed possible to read Saito as implying that a proletarian revolution would actually be ecologically disastrous. His comment that socialism ended up being an effort to bring about a society in which a nations proletarian class would be able to enjoy the material abundance realized by capitalism (p.229), without further qualification, could be taken as suggesting that proletarian consumption is, one way or another, always going to be an environmental problem.

This implication shifts the significance in this argument of Marxs letter to Vera Zasulich. The question which Zasulich asked Marx and to which Marx was responding was relevant to a world which was not yet entirely capitalist: did areas which had not yet been brought into the capitalist mode of production still have to go through it, or could they skip straight to socialism? Given that the capitalist mode of production is now entirely global, this is a historical question. There is nowhere on earth now which would still have any even theoretical option of moving straight from feudalism to socialism. It is possible however to read Saito as suggesting with the Zasulich letter that Marx meant not simply that the Russian mir could be part of a socialist revolution, given the existence of the proletariat elsewhere in Russia, but that it is possible to have a revolution without the proletariat at all.

This would be a conclusion of more than historical interest. Maybe we dont have to worry about converting working people to voluntary poverty, but can just go round them? I am sure that Saito would object to being portrayed as anti-working class, or anti-democratic, and indeed he does talk at various points about the benefits to workers of degrowth communism and the importance of engaging them. It is hard not to note, however, how these do not add up to a picture of proletarian involvement in the degrowth communist revolution.

Saito says, for example, that the first step towards revolution must take place at the site of production, but the explanation that follows turns out not to be about workers seizing control of the means of industrial production but about urban farming in Detroit (p.190). It is a geographical statement, not a strategic one. Similarly, while Saito makes various statements in favour of radical democracy, the prescription here is for citizens assemblies, which, although widely supported by parts of the green movement, would remove political participation entirely from people who did not happen to be selected by lot to be on the assembly.

Saito adopts Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephans argument that if a movement can mobilise 3.5% of the population, it is likely to succeed.v In Chenoweth and Stephans hands, this is actually an argument for mass movements; it represents the unsurprising conclusion that very large movements with significant popular support can win. The 3.5% has to be actively engaged, which in a UK context in 2024 means getting 2.3 million people on the streets. For Saito though, those who are active are an enlightened minority. Even most of the books readers, he says, wont act: even those who largely agree will likely still conduct their lives as usual, unable to conceive of what they might do in the face of a demand as enormous as changing an entire social system (p.236). The masses, it is clear, will still cling to their lifestyles under capitalism.

Saito is far from the only degrowth writer to argue or imply that working-class consumption is the problem and enlightened anti-consumerism the solution. In view of far-right climate denialism, and the extent to which the climate crisis is being used by right-wing governments as a vote-winner in the populist culture war, it is, however, a dangerous position to take, and one which pushes the chance of meaningful climate action further away.

Saito is correct that capitalism needs to be overthrown, but as a scholar in the Marxist tradition, he should at least be aware that it is necessary also to understand how that might be done. As every Marxist should know, the philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.vi

i Kohei Saito, Marx in the Anthropocene. Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism, (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2023).

ii Frederick Engels, The Myth of Overpopulation, Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy (1844), reprinted in Ronald L Meek, Marx and Engels on Malthus, (Lawrence and Wishart, London 1953), p.58.

iii Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, (Progress Publishers, Moscow 1986), p.67.

iv Communist Manifesto, preface to the German Edition of 1872, p.9.

v Erica Chenoweth and Maria J Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works. The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, (Columbia University Press, New York 2013).

vi Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, Early Writings, trans. Rodney Livingstone and Gregor Benton, (London 1981), p.423.

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