Socialism or Extinction

Socialism or Extinction: Climate, Automation and War in the Final Capitalist Breakdown is a systematic Marxist analysis of the unprecedented crises engulfing humanity, arguing that:

• capitalism per se – because its ever-growing dependence on exploiting labour makes the labour-intensity of extraction-based production increasingly necessary – is the cause of and can only continue to accelerate the climate crisis;

• the solution to the climate crisis requires value creation to become based on utility instead of exploitation and profit, thereby ending the absolute economic dependence on extraction and enabling a transition to production based predominantly on nuclear, mycelium, hemp and other fibrous plants – a green industrial revolution that is actually green;

• automation is eliminating the sole source of profit – capital's exploitation of commodity-producing human labour – meaning capitalism is heading unavoidably, in purely economic terms, towards a final, insurmountable economic breakdown;

• socialism (the lower stage of communism) – the social ownership of production; a (digital) voucher system pegged to labour time; and central planning of utility- (as opposed to commodity-) production, on a break-even basis – is therefore becoming an economic necessity for the first time;

• the accumulation crisis is forcing the world’s imperialist powers into direct confrontation, meaning humanity faces not one extinction threat, but two. Humanity stands at a world-historic crossroads.