by Olivia Nightingale
As two fellow Liverpudlian Red Flag comrades and myself arrived at the demonstration to set up our stand, the cobbled square was rapidly filling up with people. Those around us were sharing their outrage at corporate stabs to the wellbeing of the collective planet through destructive deforestation, fossil fuel combustion and proletarian exploitation. What began from the two hundred or so protesters present during our arrival expanded to an estimated fifteen hundred as we spoke to other protesters; all of whom were eager to learn more about Red Flag and our ideas about stopping climate change through revolutionary means.
Surrounded by lollipop placards brandishing “system change not climate change!” slogans, we joined the forefront of the march lapping the city centre retail quarters, passing out leaflets along the way. Quotes such as “it’s my future” stood out to me in the fervor of the marching protesters, taking action simultaneously with other cities across the world in a stand against climate change, capitalism and corporate ecocide.
With carbon dioxide levels at their highest since before records began (412ppm, 2019), it is paramount that we, as a collective, do our utmost to prevent climate change before it wrecks more devastation to our siblings in the third world, who face the greatest repercussions of such implications. As imperialist states reap the benefits of worsening financial disparity and exploit the resources of impoverished nations at the expense of the environment, pollution and resource depletion by transnational corporations is encouraged and whitewashed by neoliberal politicians. Limitless, catastrophic overproduction is defended by the ideology of consumer society as necessary; even inevitable.
However, an alternative exists to the resigned acceptance of a capitalist regime that unapologetically, systematically and irreversibly causes widespread environmental pandemonium. This subsists in the form of a socialist revolution with the requisites for environmental sustainability at its heart, with the mass mobilisation of the working class allowing for the radical restructuring of the economy along democratic and sustainably planned lines. Hence, the elimination of both cyclical crises and the environmentally devastating, insatiable lust for profit can be achieved. Thus, it is not surprising that the anti-capitalist contingent led today’s march, many of whom being young people. These individuals, widely opposing the current political and corporate climates that inflict devastation to their planet, demonstrated their steadfast determination to trigger radical social change for the benefit of future generations, offering us hope in treacherous times.
As the revolutionary German socialist and martyr Rosa Luxemburg prophetically proclaimed at the turn of the previous century, “bourgeois society stands at a crossroads; either transition towards socialism or regression into barbarism”. This pithy observation, in the present epoch, is more true than ever.
