The Moral Core of Socialism Is Our Responsibility to Each Other
To avoid runaway climate change, we need to transform our societies' economic priorities. But the Green New Deal can't succeed unless it enjoys working people's active support — and starts out from their existing moral assumptions.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks on the Green New Deal with Senator Ed Markey in front of the Capitol Building, 2019. (Wikimedia Commons)
In a presidential campaign short on concrete proposals, the mounting environmental disaster was again the dog that didn’t bark. In one dismal moment, Donald Trump sought to smear Joe Biden as a Green New Deal (GND) supporter — only for Biden to play down his commitment to such a program.
But climate change demands serious action, which can’t be entrusted to market principles. This is the case Jedediah Britton-Purdy makes in his This Land is Our Land: The Struggle for a New Commonwealth. He explains how the “moral core of socialism” helps us understand the need to change humans’ relationship with the natural world — and each other.
Britton-Purdy spoke to Linus Westheuser about the failure of market-based solutions to climate change, the ethical dimension of socialism, and the challenges of promoting the GND in communities long reliant on carbon-based industries.
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