The Unbearable Unawareness of our Ecological Existential Crisis

Over the past two years, the full report on Climate Change Mitigation by IPCC scientists, as well as research from other centres such as the Stockholm Resilience Centre, has consistently confirmed that we are on a doomsday trajectory. Unless we move rapidly in the opposite direction, the chances that we will face planetary catastrophes that seriously threaten the existence of life on our planet in the next twenty years are realistic and probable. Unsustainable capitalism keeps us deluded and largely unaware that we are on the brink of a serious existential risk. Therefore the great challenge is to provoke the awareness and critical thinking of ordinary citizens. Only a Citixens Revolution can stop our demise, but capitalism’s behemoth keeps people deceitful and mostly unaware of being on the verge of a catastrophic end. We must arouse Now! –– Álvaro J. de Regil

Transitioning to Geocratia — the People and Planet and Not the Market Paradigm — First Steps

Parting from the fact that saving Planet Earth, our home, changes everything, we need to build a new ethos where the majority of humankind commits to a system whose only purpose is the pursuit of the welfare of people and Planet Earth. This requires that all Earth resources necessary for the enjoyment of life of all living things be managed to achieve true long-term sustainability. — Álvaro J. de Regil

The Spectre of ‘Knowledge as Commons’

Universalising knowledge, producing ‘knowledge as a common good’ is necessary to bridge gaps, build bridges and return power to the ‘people’ in a universal sense. –– Sam Popowich

The Case for Socialist Veganism

Corporate veganism: a corporate greenwashed market expansion tactic that exacerbates animal suffering, human exploitation and ecological destruction inside and outside the food system. –– Benjamin Selwyn and Charis Davis

The Most Dangerous Climate Catastrophe Delusions

Every year we break emissions and temperature records and are hit by increasingly extreme events. Changing our trajectory of death requires refuting the myths that misinform the public. –– Ornela De Gasperin Quintero

Controversial Demographic Projections Under Climate Collapse in 2050 - South and Mesoamerica in a Global Context

The corporate sector is building another aggressive re-engineering of global agrifood systems in South America and Mesoamerica. The region represents a pillar for global food security, warns the UN in the New Mission. Capitalist euphoria assumes 10 billion inhabitants by 2050. This is forging higher agricultural productivity, innovation, digitalisation and the expansion of standardised agriculture. Thus, they produce and market food destined for populations with some or enough consumption capacity, overconsumption and waste of food with equivalent carbon footprints. –– Nubia Barrera Silva

The irrelevance of animals

So-called "laboratory meat" is simultaneously generating great expectations and concerns. The huge investment and research efforts of economically powerful private initiatives have uncovered an important economic niche waiting to be exploited. The promoters of the market for laboratory meat or meat derived from vegetable products have seen in their ethical and ecological foundations the great lever that will mobilise consumers on a massive scale towards their products. The growth in supply and speculation around these products responds, among other factors, to two very different pressures: on the one hand, the climatic behaviour of meat production. On the other hand, the growing pressure from animal and vegan groups on the living and dying conditions of the animals that are raised for their consumption. –– Pedro M. Herrera

Safe and Just Earth System Boundaries

Humanity is well into the Anthropocene, the proposed new geological epoch where human pressures have put the Earth system on a trajectory moving rapidly away from the stable Holocene state of the past 12,000 years, which is the only state of the Earth system we have evidence of being able to support the world as we know it. Seven of eight globally quantified safe and just Earth System Boundaries (ESB) and at least two regional safe and just ESBs in over half of global land area are already exceeded. We propose that our assessment provides a quantitative foundation for safeguarding the global commons for all people now and into the future. — Johan Rockström et al

Making Sense of the World: Why Education Is Key to Change

A precondition to creating a different world is the capacity to imagine it. But many education systems continue to bear the imprint of the industrial, nation-state societies they emerged from. What would be required to empower people to first envision and then build a more sustainable and just society? A conversation with economist Maja Göpel on how education could spark the shift. –– Maja Göpel

Marine plastic pollution as a planetary boundary threat – The drifting piece in the sustainability puzzle

The exponential increase in the use of plastic in modern society and the inadequate management of the resulting waste have led to its accumulation in the marine environment. There is increasing evidence of numerous mechanisms by which marine plastic pollution is causing effects across successive levels of biological organisation. This will unavoidably impact ecological communities and ecosystem functions. –– Patricia Villarrubia-Gómez, Sarah E. Cornell, Joan Fabres

The pressing priority of saving the Amazonia

The world's most biodiverse region is threatened by deforestation levels close to the point of no return. Despite this, the countries involved failed to reach agreements at the last summit in Brazil in August. –– David Roca Basadre

Capitalism and Extreme Poverty: A Global Analysis of Real Wages, Human Height, Mortality Since the Long 16th Century

This paper assesses claims that, prior to the 19th century, around 90% of the human population lived in extreme poverty (defined as the inability to access essential goods), and that global human welfare only began to improve with the rise of capitalism. The rise of capitalism caused a dramatic deterioration of human welfare. In all regions studied here, incorporation into the capitalist world-system was associated with a decline in wages to below subsistence, a deterioration in human stature, and an upturn in premature mortality. –– Dylan Sullivan and Jason Hickel

The U.S. Quest for Nuclear Primacy: The Counterforce Doctrine and the Ideology of Moral Asymmetry

When I come to study in detail some of the arguments of these new military writers about nuclear war, I will necessarily have to adopt many aspects of their own methods and terminology, that is, I will have to meet them on the methodological ground of their own choosing. I want therefore to apologise in advance for the nauseating inhumanity of much of what I have to say. (P. M. S. Blackett) — John Bellamy Foster

The New Cold War Washington

O n April 27, 2023, U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan gave a speech on “Renewing American Economic Leadership” at the Brookings Institution. Sullivan’s talk was unusual and attracted widespread attention for at least three reasons. First, what was being announced was a fundamental shift away from the previous “Washington Consensus” associated with neoliberal globalisation and its replacement by what Sullivan called a “New Washington Consensus” organised around the de facto U.S. New Cold War against China. The purported China threat was used to justify economic sanctions against rival states, and government supply-side subsidies to corporations in a militarised industrial policy. –– The Editors of Monthly Review

No sustainable paradigm is attainable without gradual population reduction

We must drastically reduce our consumption of energy and all other resources simply because we cannot have a system that requires infinite resource consumption on a planet with finite resources. However efficient and fair the new paradigm may be, the notion of unlimited billions of people frugally consuming the earth's resources is not sustainable. So people must become conscientious that having fewer or no children is a crucial element in achieving sustainability. –– Álvaro J. de Regil

On the United States Policy to destroy the WTO because it could no longer control it

The rapid decline of US power in the 21st century, associated both with the economic stagnation of the core capitalist countries and the rise of China and other emerging economies, is now calling into question the entire rules-based, US-dominated international order. At the heart of the New Cold War is the WTO, often considered the jewel in the crown of the liberal international –– The Editors of Monthly Review

The Dialectics of Ecology: An Introduction

As the ecologist and Marxist theorist Richard Levins observed, ‘perhaps the first investigation of a complex object as a system was Karl Marx's masterpiece, Das Kapital’, which explored both the economic and ecological bases of capitalism as a social-metabolic system. The premise of the dialectics of ecology, as addressed in this article, is that it is above all in classical historical materialist/dialectical naturalism that we find the method and analysis that allows us to connect ‘the history of labour and capitalism’ with that of ‘the Earth and the planet’, enabling us to investigate from a materialist point of view the Anthropocene crisis of our times. Today, the world faces two opposing trends: the acceleration of capital leading to total disaster, and the emerging struggle for planned degrowth and sustainable human development. –– John Bellamy Foster

Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future

Three questions call for urgent action 1) The planet of the future will be much more dangerous 2) What economic system can support it? 3) Scientists must speak frankly and accurately. We draw particular attention to the lack of appreciation of the enormous challenges of creating a sustainable future. The added stresses on human health, wealth and well-being will perversely diminish our political capacity to mitigate the erosion of the ecosystem services on which society depends. The science behind these problems is sound, but awareness is low. Without full appreciation and dissemination of the magnitude of the problems and the enormity of the solutions needed, society will fail to achieve even modest sustainability –– Corey J. A. Bradshaw et al

Two Scenarios for Sustainable Welfare: A Framework for an Eco-Social Contract

More nation states are now committing to zero net carbon by 2050 at the latest, which is encouraging, but none have faced up to the transformation of economies, societies and lives that this will entail. This article considers two scenarios for a fair transition to net zero, concentrating only on climate change, and discusses the implications for contemporary ‘welfare states’. The first is the Green New Deal framework coupled with a ‘social guarantee’. I argue that expanded public provision of essential goods and services would be a necessary component of this strategy. The second scenario goes further to counteract runaway private consumption by building a sufficiency economy with ceilings to income, wealth and consumption. This would require a further extension of state capacities and welfare state interventions. The article provides a framework for comparing and developing these two very different approaches. –– Ian Gough

The End of Seasons?

Extreme temperatures and events such as Hurricane Daniel tell us we are approaching a point of no return. There is a good chance that in 2023, we will exceed the 1.5°C limit [and we have exceeded it]. –– Juan Bordera and Antonio Turiel

Unequal Value Transfer from Mexico to the United States

Using a Marxist perspective and the concept of unequal exchange, the enormous drain of wealth that Mexico has experienced as a supplier of manufacturing to the US market is described here. The meagre wages of the working class in Mexico do not correspond to a productive backwardness, but to a vast creation of value that is systematically drained through the mechanisms of unequal exchange that occur in trade. ‘Underdeveloped countries are underdeveloped because they are overexploited, not because they are backward. Here is how they do it. –– Mateo Crossa Niell

Filoponìa, from Cuba to the world - without debt: equality and freedom

The earth needs a new Copernican revolution: it must stop revolving around accumulation and embark on a new orbit. The environmental and the social are under ferocious attack by anthropisation, led by financialisation, the current point of the relentless advance of accumulation. The environmental and the social thus show how close and exacerbated the collapse of our world is. In order to be defined as such and to be so in its essence, a new Copernican revolution necessarily entails the identification of a new gravitational centre; in Filoponia this is diffused capital. Thanks to this, Filoponía is an egalitarian society even without being a socialist economy, Filoponía is a society of entrepreneurship even without being a capitalist economy: Filoponía is the society of sustainable humanisation, environmentally and socially. –– Andrea Surbone - Filoponía

Ravaging Pan-Amazonia

Deforestation, socio-economic contradictions and eco-environmental conflicts of hegemonic capitalism with global impact. The Pan-Amazon region occupies 4.9% of the world's continental area. It has three shared characteristics: (a) Its boundaries extend to the borders of eight South-Central American countries.1 (b) It has been hijacked by hegemonic agri-food, mining and energy capitalism, transnational drug trafficking crime, chemical precursors, arms, munitions and explosives. (c) It triggers promiscuous relations with Colombian guerrillas, legal armies, paramilitaries, politicians, state agents and corrupt national elites. The corporate enclave subjects migrants, indigenous people and peasants previously expelled from rural territories and properties to the most humiliating slavery regime. Under the slogan ‘Anything goes’, we are ensuring our extermination. –– Nubia Barrera Silva

The United States of War

Between 1980 and 2020, two U.S. wars and sanctions in Iraq and the U.S. war in Afghanistan killed more than two million people. Washington’s proxy wars in Angola, Mozambique, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Syria resulted in roughly nine million deaths. U.S. military interventions, support for client states and rebels, and related famines in Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Nigeria cost the lives of another five million people. The U.S. Empire’s role in the collapse of most socialist regimes [including the imposition of economic shock therapy] made it partly responsible for well over seven million deaths. “Imperialism,” Magdoff wrote in 1969, “necessarily involves militarism. Indeed, they are twins that have fed on each other in the past, as they do now.” To combat the spread of militarism and war throughout the globe today, it is necessary to confront the imperialist world system centred in Washington. –– The Editors of Monthly Review

Heroes, villains and opportunists

For the small countries, these meetings are the only voice they have to confront the big global powers face to face and have their opinions taken into account. Saudi Arabia used the unanimity needed at the summits as a weapon to prevent progress in the climate fight. The timid climate breakthroughs make clear how much remains to be done at all levels. Continuing to resist and to weave links in an increasingly hostile world is the way to fight for the planet we want –– Javier Andaluz Prieto

Sustainable deaths

Maritime transport is responsible for 14% of polluting gases. There is already talk of miracle proposals to make this sector sustainable. –– Gustavo Duch

Totality: Decades of Debate and the Return of Nature

On how Marxism is the only intellectual tradition on the scene capable of embracing in an integrated and grounded way the whole of what needs to be comprehended to understand and cope with our world. — Helena Sheehan

From Imperialism to Green Imperialism: Tools of World-Systems Analysis in the Face of the Great Ecosocial Crisis

Humanity is at the most challenging crossroads in its history. Anthropogenic productive activity, framed within the capitalist mode of production, has caused most planetary boundaries to be exceeded and others to be strained. At the same time, civilisation itself does not lose sight of an increasingly threatening war horizon, in which a nuclear outbreak cannot be entirely ruled out. And against this backdrop, a galloping decline of materials and energy sources is unfolding, putting pressure on every vector of the ecosocial machinery, to the point of casting a shadow over the future accessibility of our societies' livelihoods and their very survival as we know it. –– Alejandro Pedregal and Nemanja Lukić

World scientists’ warning: The behavioural crisis driving ecological overshoot

Anthropogenic ecological overshoot has previously been identified as a root cause of the myriad symptoms we observe today across the planet, from biodiversity loss and ocean acidification to the disturbing rise of new entities and climate change. We aim to highlight the critical disconnect of the current social chasm in communication between those in the know, such as scientists working within the limits of growth, and members of the citizenry, influenced largely by social scientists and industry, who must act. –– Joseph J. Merz et al.

Frederick Engels: The First Marxist?

While activists reflect on how much we can glean from the first volume of Karl Marx's Capital, just over 150 years after its publication, we should also reflect on how much we owe to Marx's comrade of forty years, Frederick Engels (1820-95). From Engels' respectful attention to Marx's discoveries, no less than from his own extensions of them in tune with new realities, we learn how best to interpret both the evidence and the concepts to guide the shift towards communist ideals that Engels had absorbed before he met Marx in 1844. Moreover, the roles Engels played as an organiser, economist and polemicist in the development of Western workers' movements illuminate how we can best honour his memory and his contributions to Capital. In the words of one biographer, Engels ‘wanted no other monument than the coming socialist revolution’. –– Bruce McFarlane

The Case for Universal Basic Services

This paper shifts the focus from transfers to public services. It mounts a case for Universal Basic Services (UBS): a proposal to safeguard and develop existing public services and to extend this model of provision into new areas. The first part argues that public services require a distinct conceptual justification and sets this out in terms of shared human needs and a foundational economy. The second part develops the normative arguments for UBS, in terms of efficiency, equality, solidarity and sustainability. The third part considers some of the issues to be faced in delivering UBS and the role of state institutions, with brief service provisions. The final section summarises some developments, including experience of Covid-19, which might enhance the political impetus for UBS. –– Ian Gough

Planned Degrowth: Ecosocialism and Sustainable Human Development

The word degrowth designates a family of political-economic approaches which, in the face of the acceleration of the current planetary ecological crisis, reject exponential and unlimited economic growth as the definition of human progress. With continuous technological development and the improvement of human capabilities, mere replacement investment is capable of promoting constant qualitative advances in production in mature industrial societies, while eliminating exploitative labour conditions and reducing working hours. Degrowth, which is specifically targeted at the most affluent sectors of the world's population, is thus aimed at improving the living conditions of the vast majority, while maintaining environmental conditions of existence and promoting sustainable human development. –– John Bellamy Foster

There will be no ecological transition without a social and labour transition

At present, hardly anyone doubts the need for an ecological transition. Environmental denialism, although it exists, seems to be in retreat in the face of overwhelming evidence of the negative effects of our way of life on nature. The energy model must be changed. But even more urgent is a transformation that addresses the limitation of wealth, consumption and the necessary sharing of labour. –– Vicente López

Marx and Engels as Polyglots

Recollecting and interpreting the past for present purposes requires a language. Such a language is not naturally given but needs to be socially constructed. What is more, its vocabulary and grammar stem from linguistic legacies of past ideologies. Marx draws in this regard an analogy, comparing acquisition of a political language with mastering a natural language: “a beginner who has learnt a new language always translates it back into his mother tongue, but he has assimilated the spirit of the new language and can freely express himself in it only when he finds his way in it without recalling the old and forgets his native tongue in the use of the new.”

These lines were expressive of Marx’s theoretical investments in and intellectual sensibilities to the fabric of any ideological language. A master of political prose himself, Marx was well aware of the fact that any proper grasp of bourgeois societies requires a close attention to how social, economic, and political affairs are theoretically depicted, politically propagated, and linguistically articulated according to certain class interests.

Edward Aveling recollected that Engels’s home was frequently visited by a large number of socialists from many countries: “Engels could converse with all of them in their own language. Like [Karl] Marx, he spoke and wrote German, French, and English perfectly; nearly as perfectly in Italian, Spanish, Danish, and also read, and could get along with Russian, Polish, and Romanian, not to mention such trivialities as Latin and Greek.”

For Marx and Engels, fluency in reading, writing, listening, or speaking seems to have never been a goal for its own sake. Keen interest in various languages, yes, but always as part of a scientific purpose and political commitment. Socialist internationalism required, and, to some extent, still requires polyglottery.

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Research and analysis to provoke public awareness and critical thinking

We contribute to the liberalisation of the democratic instituions of society, for they have been captured by the owners of the market. They work in tandem with their market agents, who, posing as public servants, are entrenched in the halls of government. The political class has betrayed its public mandate and instead operates to impose a marketocratic state to maximise the shareholder value of the institutional investors of international financial markets. They own the global corporations and think they own the world on behalf of their very private interest.

Our spheres of action: true democracy – true sustainability – living wage – basic income – inequality – ecological footprint – degrowth – global warming –human development – corporate accountability – civil, political, economic, social, cultural and environmental rights, responsible consumption, sustainable autonomous citizen cells...

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Parting from an ethos of true democracy and true sustainability, We, the citizenry, work to advance the paradigm whose only purpose is to go in pursuit of the welfare of People and Planet and NOT the market.

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Collective Capabilities for Organisational Democracy: The Case of Mutual Social Enterprises

Democratic forms of enterprise and economic governance are needed to help address urgent societal challenges where hierarchical decision-making and governance approaches are clearly failing. There is insufficient understanding, however, of the capabilities needed by enterprises to implement and sustain organisational democracy in pressurised operational contexts. We focus on the role of collective capabilities, which arise from interactions between individuals to create collaboration and collective benefits. Interview evidence from 12 mutual social enterprises – organisations that trade with a social purpose – is used to explore the learning processes that underpin the generation of collective capabilities for organisational democracy. The analysis leads us to a theoretical model of collective capabilities development that responds to three fundamental areas of challenge: (i) Adaptive design of governance structures and processes, to balance ‘bottom-up’ democracy with ‘top-down’ stewardship control; (ii) Embedding, extending and revitalising democracy, by supporting the voice, capabilities and confidence of workers and users to participate in collaborative governance; and (iii) Fostering deliberative learning, to navigate tensions and conflict between plural perspectives and achieve collective aims. In concluding, we reflect on some institutional and cultural barriers to organisational democracy and the case for more concerted policy action to realise its potential as a crucial component of economic democracy.

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The Climate Movement’s Fight for Adaptation 

The climate movement has traditionally seen adaptation as the fig leaf of climate inaction. But local communities, civil society, and activist groups around the world are now pressuring governments to include adaptation alongside mitigation measures. Is this shift a positive step in the fight for climate justice?

Legal efforts to ensure states adopt environmental and climate adaptation measures are increasing globally. Neither mitigation nor adaptation alone will be sufficient to combat the challenges posed by climate chaos and the destruction of ecosystems. “There are going to be impacts from climate change that we can’t mitigate and we can’t adapt to, and there will be losses and damages. This really raises the questions of where is that money going to come from, and who should it come from, and how do we get it where it needs to go,” Kuhl says.

Climate advocates and experts are convinced climate action must include both adaptation and mitigation measures. This means recognising the challenges of both and promoting action to address them.

 

 

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Innovate or Die

Technological development is often regarded as a natural product of human ingenuity that should never be halted or steered. But innovation can also compound social and environmental impacts. Can degrowth redirect technology towards inclusive, environmentally conscious transformation? 

The idea that innovation is key to economic growth is deeply rooted in our society. The number of annual patents a country produces is often assumed to reflect its wealth. It is expected, meanwhile, that successful companies will promote a culture of constant innovation in order to survive in a highly competitive market. Innovation is also associated with a range of positive qualities: creativity, autonomy, flexibility, adaptability, and resilience. 

But this exclusively positive framing of technology ignores that innovation, besides improving quality of life, can reinforce existing structures of power and oppression, and compound environmental damage. New narratives are needed to broaden the scope of the concept of innovation. It should be understood not just as a matter of new technologies being developed, but as a process involving cultural and institutional change, as well as a transformation

Science and technical change have already existed in societies that did not pursue economic growth and will continue to exist in future non-growth societies.

 

 

 

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The Land Defender's Call


Protests against extractive projects, whether ridiculed or violently quashed, are critical defences of nature and wellbeing, both under attack from global corporations, oligarchs, and complicit governments. Indigenous peoples give voice to the change in vision necessary for a stronger position in challenging times.

Our foolish, short-sighted, arrogant beliefs that we have dominion over nature got us here. It is no less foolish, shortsighted, and arrogant to believe we can solve the climate crisis we are waging from the mindset of dominion. Survival means necessary, radical repair of our relationship with nature, which can and must take numerous pathways, including personal risk for the benefit of all.

These direct acts are neither cutesy nor extreme. Neither are they a silver bullet in this fight that is both intergenerational and existential.

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Transitioning to Geocratia — the
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Demographic Delusions: World Population Growth Is Exceeding Most Projections and Jeopardising Scenarios for Sustainable Futures


The size of the world’s population has profound implications for demand for food, energy and resources, land use change and greenhouse gas emissions. This study examines why most population projections have underestimated world population growth, and the implications for actions required to achieve sustainable societies. The main determinant of future population is family size choices. Population projections by different research groups embed different assumptions about drivers of fertility decline. The common assumptions that fertility decline is driven by economic betterment, urbanisation or education levels are not well supported in historical evidence. In contrast, voluntary family planning provision and promotion achieved rapid fertility decline, even in poor, rural and illiterate communities. Projections based on education and income as drivers of fertility decline ignore the reverse causation, that lowering fertility through family planning interventions enabled economic advancement and improved women’s education access. In recent decades, support for family planning has waned, and global fertility decline has decelerated as a result. Projections calibrated across the decades of strong family planning support have not acknowledged this change and are consequently underestimating global population growth. Scenarios used to model sustainable futures have used overly optimistic population projections while inferring these outcomes will happen without targeted measures to bring them about. Unless political will is rapidly restored for voluntary family planning programs, the global population will almost certainly exceed 10 billion, rendering sustainable food security and a safe climate unachievable.

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Provoking Awareness and Action for Geocratia

Activating revolutionary movements for new ecosocial contracts for Geocratia, a vision for building the People and Planet and not the market paradigm

Contrary to the dominant narrative, we do not live in democratic but in utterly unsustainable marketocratic societies. Governments are merely agents implementing and protecting societal structures, providing the best conditions for maximising capital accumulation demanded by financial markets. This requires the unrelenting production and consumption of resources, stark labour exploitation, and sheer wealth inequality, with growth deemed the overriding indicator of progress. Such narrative addresses the ecological crisis through “green capitalism”, which deliberately makes people believe we only need to transition from fossil to renewable energy without altering the structures of capitalism and our consumeristic lifestyles. This way, unrelenting economic growth and its inherent consumerism remain the indicators of progress. This has caused a planetary rift, taking us into an unsustainable trajectory where the odds we will face planetary catastrophes and putting the existence of life at monumental risk in the next twenty years are likely unless we veer fast against it. I argue we can only achieve enjoyable and sustainable lives by drastically decreasing our ecological footprint. This requires replacing capitalism with the new paradigm of Geocratia or “government by the Earth”, where we reorganise societies to build a new ecocentric edifice centred on caring for our planet. To accomplish this, we must build a revolutionary movement from the base to circumvent the traditional political structures of party systems and legislative bodies to strike on the system to force governments to pact new geocratic ecosocial contracts. Here, I describe how it can be done.

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It's all about money and anxiety

Workers who identify with millionaires and YouTubers who teach how to make easy money: capitalism shapes our desires. Mark Fisher tried to break with such common sense.

In one of her strips, Mafalda walks along the pavement behind two adults in suits and briefcases heading towards a high-end car. On the way, she hears one of them say to her: -Change the world! Ha, things of youth. I had those ideas when I was a teenager, too.

The men leave in the car, and Mafalda runs to her friends (Felipe, Manolito, Miguelito) to warn them: -Let's be boys! It turns out that if you don't hurry to change the world, it's the world that changes you!

Quino's creation exposes the generational clash between an idealistic youth, a defender of revolutionary ideas, and the capitalist man, who was able to insert himself into that system and accepts and defends it because it offers him comfort and security. Out of the picture are those expelled by that same system or those who, even inside, are at the bottom, the majority group of people exploited by those who managed to reach the top or were born there.

What for many still represents an injustice, a widening gap, is the default world of the last decades: capitalism not only proved its robustness as an economic and social system but also as a status culture measured in terms of aspiration and consumption. In addition to the failures of socialist experiments in the second half of the twentieth century, some of which are still in an agonising state, capitalism stands as a kind of common sense organiser of modern societies. It is very difficult to think outside it.

This last idea was the brainchild of Mark Fisher (1968-2017), the English philosopher who devoted much of his efforts to breaking this mental scheme and reflecting on other possible forms of social organisation in the 21st century, an era of accelerated change. He first established a diagnosis of the problem in his treatise Capitalist Realism (2009), which begins with a phrase attributed to Fredric Jameson and which has now become a post-Marxist slogan: it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. But he did not stop at analysis. He did his best to move forward, deepen his ideas, and offer possible alternatives, which are probably the most significant and moving part of his legacy.

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Fast fashion, killer fashion

Fast fashion is emblematic of the irrationality of the dogmas of the current economic system, of the extractivist economic model that rules the world, and of the exploitation of the Global South (or the economic periphery) by the Global North (or the economic centre)—all for the immediate but suicidal long-term benefit of capital.

Advised Fast fashion, as an emblem of the irrational, colonial, and unjust world economic order, undermines human rights, perpetuates poverty and inequality between regions of the world, and facilitates the continuation of a system where the dignity and well-being of workers and nature are sacrificed for corporate profits. The global economy is based on extracting and cheapening natural resources, exploiting labour through wage slavery, and exporting pollution to the Global South. In a democratic world, we would have a say in which economic sectors benefit humanity and deserve to continue growing and which do not. Fast fashion should be one of the first to disappear.

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