What's Left

1. Capitalism is bound to a self-destructive cycle of value production where "oil is life."

We don’t plan to lose money.

The capitalist imperative. Private corporations are legally and structurally bound to maximize shareholder value above all else. This foundational obligation prevents fossil fuel giants from voluntarily capping their reserves, even when scientific consensus warns of catastrophic warming. To plan to lose money is to willfully violate one's duty to the firm, which is the capitalist equivalent of throwing the game.

Externalizing the costs. To maintain profitability, major oil companies routinely transfer high-emission, underregulated assets to obscure private operators. This strategic evasion allows public firms to meet superficial climate commitments while the actual environmental damage continues unabated. The market doesn't fail to see these emissions; rather, it actively chooses to look away to protect its bottom line.

The social metabolism. Under what theorists call "fossil capitalism," our entire social metabolism is organized around converting fossil fuels into monetary value.

• Fossil fuels are treated as the lifeblood of modern production.
• Value production replaces ecological survival as the primary social goal.
• Shareholders actively choose to look away from systemic risks.
• The connection between oil and value must be broken to survive.

2. The "mute compulsion" of economic survival forces individuals to participate in ecological destruction.

Economic power, he writes, is about control over the configuration of “all the processes and activities needed in order to secure the continuous existence of social life”—which is what we’re calling “social metabolism.”

The silent threat. Most people do not require physical coercion to participate in the capitalist system daily. Instead, they are driven by a silent, impersonal economic compulsion that threatens to revoke their access to basic survival needs if they refuse to work. This economic compulsion is impersonal, acting on us whether we believe in it or not.

Susceptibility to property. Because individuals cannot access the means of production independently, they must sell their labor power for a wage. This structural vulnerability forces workers to accept ecologically destructive jobs, such as operating high-pollution oil fields, simply to secure food and shelter. The fear of being spit out by the social body is truer than the fact that we need clean air to breathe.

Impersonal historical forces. This economic compulsion shapes our language, relationships, and daily choices, making alternative lifestyles seem functionally impossible.

• Access to primary mediations like food and shelter is conditional on employment.
• Individual survival is pitted against long-term planetary habitability.
• The system automatically replaces protesting workers with compliant ones.
• Force remains the ultimate backup when economic compulsion fails.

3. Marketcraft attempts to use state-designed incentives to trick private capital into a green transition.

The argument begins with the basic recognition that real-world markets are institutions: humanly devised constraints that shape human interaction.

Shaping the market. Marketcraft rejects the laissez-faire myth of natural, self-regulating markets, viewing them instead as products of state policy. By rewriting the rules of the game, democratic governments can theoretically devalue fossil fuels and incentivize green alternatives. The state has the power to shape the systematic compulsions capitalists face without undergoing a protracted guerrilla struggle.

Carrots and sticks. This strategy utilizes supply-side industrial policies, such as tax credits, subsidies, and public-private green banks, to guide private investment. It also employs regulatory sticks, like sumptuary taxes on private jets and antitrust enforcement, to suppress carbon-intensive industries. The goal is to make green energy so superabundant that fossil fuels are no longer worth the trouble of pumping.

Socializing investment. Thinkers like Saule Omarova propose a National Investment Authority to bypass short-termist private financial markets.

• The state can guarantee returns based on social utility rather than profit.
• Public equity funds can take direct stakes in green infrastructure.
• Technology-neutral subsidies encourage private-sector innovation.
• Regulatory agencies can actively strip productive capacity from bad actors.

4. Green industrial policy triggers international trade wars and perpetuates global inequality.

A transition based on national marketcraft strategies pits countries against one another in a subsidizing race to the bottom, courting mobile capital across borders and tilting the strategy’s benefits toward bosses and away from workers.

Nationalist green transitions. When green transition strategies are confined to national borders, they inevitably trigger protectionist trade wars. The United States and the European Union have adopted fortress mentalities, using subsidies to protect domestic industries while shutting out cheaper foreign clean tech. This approach pits countries against one another in a subsidizing race to the bottom.

The China conflict. China's aggressive, state-led marketcraft has allowed it to dominate the global supply chains for solar panels and electric vehicle batteries. Rather than cooperating to decarbonize the atmosphere, Western nations impose tariffs on Chinese imports, slowing down the global transition to protect domestic profits. If we are not careful, nationalist marketcraft will drag this warming world into another cold war.

Green colonialism. This nationalist approach ignores the historical carbon debt owed to the global South, leaving poor nations without the fiscal space to adapt.

• Clean tech supply chains rely on extractive mining in vulnerable regions.
• Western capital demands high risk premiums to invest in the global South.
• Subsidies for electric vehicles prioritize luxury consumption over public transit.
• Trade barriers prevent the rapid, global dissemination of green technologies.

5. Public power advocates for direct state ownership and democratic planning of the energy grid.

Only publicly owned electricity can invest and plan with long-term infrastructural—and planetary—goals in mind...

Direct public planning. Public power advocates argue that the climate crisis cannot be solved by indirectly modifying private sector behavior through market incentives. Instead, the state must directly own, operate, and plan the energy grid and other vital infrastructure to meet ecological goals. This strategy is based on the systematic failure of market mechanisms to deliver large-scale transformation.

The green TVA. By reviving and expanding New Deal-style institutions like the Tennessee Valley Authority, the public can bypass the profit motive entirely. This allows for massive, long-term investments in non-market technologies, such as pumped-storage hydropower, which private capital routinely rejects due to long lead times. Public power allows us to plan with long-term infrastructural and planetary goals in mind.

De-commodifying survival. Public power extends beyond the electrical grid to encompass public housing, healthcare, and transit systems.

• Publicly owned utilities can prioritize grid stability over quarterly profits.
• Holistic planning can reduce overall resource consumption, such as lithium mining.
• Free public transit (buses over cars) weakens the necessity of private vehicle ownership.
• Expropriation of fossil fuel assets allows for an orderly, planned phase-out.

6. The "affirmation trap" forces workers to defend ecologically destructive industries for their own survival.

Caught in the affirmation trap, labor ceases to be the antithesis of capital.

The survival dilemma. Under capitalism, workers are structurally locked into defending the very industries that exploit them and destroy the planet. Because their immediate survival depends on a wage, fossil fuel workers and their unions often lobby to expand pipelines and coal plants. This is the tragic reality of the "affirmation trap," where labor is locked into affirming its own exploitation under the guise of survival.

Defending the status quo. This trap prevents organized labor from acting as a revolutionary force for ecological transition. When unions prioritize short-term job preservation over long-term habitability, they align with corporate bosses against environmentalists, as seen in disputes over logging and crypto-mining. To overcome this, the left must guarantee a transition that decouples survival from ecologically destructive work.

Overcoming the trap. To break this cycle, the left must guarantee a "just transition" that decouples survival from ecologically destructive work.

• Workers require robust public safety nets, including guaranteed green jobs.
• Unions must bargain for the common good, linking workplace and environmental demands.
• Internal class divisions (race, gender, geography) must be actively dismantled.
• Labor must organize independently of capitalist political parties.

7. Communism seeks to abolish the value form entirely and reorganize society around the commune.

We cannot keep things the same and change everything.

Abolishing the value form. Communism goes beyond administering capitalism or nationalizing the state; it seeks to dismantle the value form entirely. By organizing society around "from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs" (FETE), it replaces production for profit with production for use. This requires a total break with capital and its killing compulsions.

The commune form. The basic unit of communist organization is the commune, which integrates production and reproduction into a shared, egalitarian life. This involves the abolition of the private nuclear family and the socialization of care, housing, and food, freeing individuals from economic dependency. Care under communism becomes a crucial dimension of human freedom and mutual support.

Ecosocialist self-defense. Because capital and the state will violently defend property relations, communes must develop their own capacity for self-defense.

• Communes prioritize direct, unmediated access to the land and resources.
• "Rose theory" asserts the natural right of living communities to sprout defensive thorns.
• Direct action and sabotage are used to halt the flow of fossil capital.
• Universal human equality is asserted against nationalist border regimes.

8. Agroecology heals the metabolic rifts between humanity and the land through localized food sovereignty.

Agroecology is the technological keystone.

Healing the metabolic rift. Capitalism has severed the natural cycles of the earth, creating metabolic rifts between urban waste and rural depletion. Agroecology heals these rifts by applying scientific experimentation to traditional, localized, and biodiverse farming practices. It is a plan to plan the world for the world, rather than for the market.

Food sovereignty. By rejecting fossil-fuel-heavy synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, agroecology allows communities to feed themselves independently of the global market. This strategy prioritizes soil health, water conservation, and genetic diversity over the monocrop efficiency demanded by agribusiness. It allows us to overcome the condition of being alienated consumers.

Communal knowledge networks. Agroecological techniques, like the Japanese fermentation method bokashi, are shared horizontally across global peasant networks.

• Traditional land management practices protect 80% of the world's remaining biodiversity.
• Urban-rural partnerships bypass capitalist middlemen to distribute food transparently.
• Native seed preservation protects crops from climate-induced weather shocks.
• Food is treated as a fundamental human right rather than a global commodity.

9. The planetary crisis is a total, interconnected web of climate, migration, and capital-driven exploitation.

The effects of climate change and environmental degradation are likely to exacerbate food and water insecurity for poor countries, increase migration, precipitate new health challenges, and contribute to biodiversity losses.

Interconnected crises. The planetary crisis is not a series of isolated environmental problems that can be solved with technological fixes. It is a total, cascading emergency where climate change, mass migration, resource depletion, and labor exploitation are deeply entangled. These challenges intersect and cascade in ways that are difficult to anticipate.

The degradation of life. To maintain profit margins in a warming world, capital systematically degrades both human workers and nonhuman animals. This is evident in the "systematic runting" of industrial livestock and the reliance on vulnerable, displaced migrant labor in hazardous meatpacking plants. Value reduces humans and other animals to the same universal, exploitable substance.

The armed lifeboat. As the crisis intensifies, wealthy nations resort to militarized borders and authoritarian alliances to protect their resources.

• Climate-induced droughts and crop failures force millions of people to migrate.
• Natural disasters are exploited by vulture capitalists to privatize public assets.
• The military-industrial complex remains a massive, protected source of emissions.
• The survival of the wealthy is prioritized over the lives of the global majority.

10. A "quantum walk" strategy of strategies is required to navigate the impending climate collapse.

The acceptance of our present condition is the only form of extremism which discredits us before our children.

A strategy of strategies. No single progressive strategy—marketcraft, public power, or communism—can succeed in isolation against the titanic weight of global capital. The left must adopt a "quantum walk" approach, advancing down all three paths simultaneously to maximize our chances of survival. We must concern ourselves with every single means of struggle.

Coherence over purity. Rather than demanding ideological conformity, different factions must recognize their complementary roles in the struggle. Marketcrafters write the laws, public power advocates build the infrastructure, and communists defend the communities and push the boundaries of what is politically possible. This coherence allows us to transform the jangling discords of our movement into a unified force.

Disaster councils. At the local level, the left must organize community disaster councils to plan for survival outside of the capitalist market.

• Councils coordinate mutual aid, emergency shelter, and food distribution during crises.
• They build working-class power and solidarity across diverse social groups.
• They prepare communities to resist the rise of local and global fossil fascism.
• They transform passive victims of climate change into active agents of transition.