Alt solvency
Foster 22 [John Bellamy Foster is an American professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and editor of the Monthly Review. He writes about political economy of capitalism and economic crisis, ecology and ecological crisis, and Marxist theory.; “Capitalism in the Anthropocene: Ecological Ruin or Ecological Revolution”; Monthly Review Press; August 23, 2022]//eleanor
Fifth, the hoped-for revolutionary change can only occur through human agency. Although it is widely recognized that the world needs an ecological and social revolution, the question remains: From whence and by what agency will such a revolution arise? Ecological Marxists suggest that we may already be seeing signs of the rise of what could be called a nascent “environmental proletariat”—a broad mass of working-class humanity who recognize, as a result of the crisis of their own existence, the indissoluble bond between economic and ecological conditions. 56 Degraded material conditions associated with intermingled economic and ecological crises are now being encountered on a daily basis by the great majority of the world’s population and affecting all aspects of their lives. At the ground level, economic and ecological crises are becoming increasingly indistinguishable. Food crises, land grabs, electricity shutdowns, water privatization, heightened pollution, deteriorating cities, declining public health, increasing violence against oppressed populations—are all converging with growing inequality, economic stagnation, and rising unemployment and underemployment. In South Africa, for example, the class struggle is now as much an environmental as an economic struggle— already exhibiting signs of an emerging environmental working class. 57 The logical result is a coming together of material revolts against the system— what David Harvey has usefully referred to as a “co-revolutionary” struggle. 58 This is best exemplified by the global environmental/climate justice movement and through the radical direct action movement that Naomi Klein calls “Blockadia.” 59
Traditional working-class politics are thus co-evolving and combining with environmental struggles, and with the movements of people of color, of women, and all those fighting basic, reproductive battles throughout society. Such an ecological and social struggle will be revolutionary to the extent that it draws its force from those layers of society where people’s lives are most precarious: Third World workers, working-class women, oppressed people of color in the imperial core, indigenous populations, peasants/landless agricultural workers, and those fighting for fundamentally new relations of sexuality, gender, family, and community—as well as highly exploited and dispossessed workers everywhere.