As expressed in the document on the subject contributed to this II World Congress, we are possibly witnessing an unprecedented historical time, since the capitalist system, in a stage of ecocidal decomposition, places human civilization as we know it in an epic dilemma. The conditions that made the planet habitable are being questioned and threaten to change in a way that is difficult to reverse. At the same time, that dialectic that Marx calls “metabolism between humanity and nature” in Das Kapital is totally in crisis, fractured. For this reason, the enormous challenge that we face as socialists is to fight for the destruction of capitalism through a profound social revolution that may lay the foundations for a transition from this productive matrix to one that takes into account the limits of the planet’s ecosystems.
For the left, the task at hand is responding, in the spheres of theory and politics, of the program, of the orientation and of the tactics of militant construction, to an unprecedented phenomenon. Our premises are to intervene with firm principles and strategy, but with non-dogmatic flexibility in interpreting new problems. The ISL and its sections should give importance to this front for several reasons:
• Because the objective phenomenon of ecological destruction and its social impact is worldwide: there is no region of the planet exempt from the consequences of this dynamic.
• The issue still only mobilizes vanguard sectors, except in some countries where the so-called climate strikes were massive. However, due to humanitarian catastrophes such as the fires in Australia or South America, the floods in Pakistan and recently in Brazil, hurricanes in the Caribbean, infernal heat waves, and even pandemics as a recurring calamity, sensitivity to these issues has grown with increasing sympathy in massive segments of the population. It has already grown beyond being a concern limited to small niches of specialists and is positioned on the world political agenda.
• Because there is an escalation of assassinations of socio-environmental activists, at the hands of parastatal forces, private gangs of landowners and large corporations. In 2022 alone, 1,733 activists were murdered: Brazil, Colombia, the Philippines, Mexico, and Honduras top the list with the most cases.
• Because in the field of the ideological struggle, the imperialist bourgeoisie uses events of international scope to install an agenda, build common sense in the masses and cover up the responsibilities of the capitalist system in the ongoing ecocide. Thus, the staging of climate summits (the COP that takes place every year in different countries), have become a point of reference for holding counter-summits of the socio-environmental movement. In 2025, Brazil will possibly host the COP 30 in Belém do Pará.
• The world bourgeoisie has registered that the issue is urgent and of concern to their class, not so much for the future of the planet, but because it becomes a factor in the alteration of their businesses, adding contradictions to the polarized social and political situation, and it deepens mistrust in capitalist politics, its states, regimes, governments, parties and union bureaucracies. Thus, from their factories of false ideology aimed at building reformist mass common sense, they propagate all kinds of confusing stories. Even in the field of the left and among activists, political conceptions are multiplying that lead to a path of adaptation to the status quo or feed expectations in variants that do not question the capitalist property regime, its national borders, the anarchy of the production and the anti-human motive of private accumulation under the rules of the system. For this reason, the ideological struggle is crucial for a revolutionary transitional program against this issue.
In view of all the above, therefore, the II World Congress of the ISL resolves:
1) To participate in the struggles and actions that arise in relation to these problems, with our own slogans and profile in all the countries and regions where the ISL has a presence. This also includes intervening on an international scale with unified slogans in the global actions of unity of action that may be called.
2) To produce more theoretical-political publications, and respond to debates with articles and publications. To prepare texts for courses, workshops, seminars and internal training. To give special importance to developing our vision for the sector on the role of the working class in the struggle for transition, the mechanics of the social revolution and the construction of a party for the struggle for political power to reorganize society on new bases.
3) To incorporate the denunciation of crimes against socio-environmental activists and participate in the related actions that are carried out in countries where ISL organizations exist.
4) To support the initiative and sign the call for the Counter-Summit to be carried out by Revolución Socialista (Brazilian section of the ISL) together with unions, environmental associations and movements. Information on its organization, as well as dates, will be shared internationally.
5) Where we have the opportunity and the strength, to bet on building a revolutionary organic tendency or current within the socio-environmental movement. This implies a specific policy to try to influence the course of the movement wherever we have to intervene, and at the same time, making propagandistic agitation of our profound program in order to recruit.
6) In addition to participating in debate events and national and regional meetings that may be organized, to intervene with our program, convene a 2nd ISL World Socio-environmental Conference in the month of June, taking as a point of reference the first one that we held, the assessment of which was very positive.