Climate science can tell us where we are heading. But what happens when scientific analysis stops at prediction and never asks how society can change? Aren’t you tired of not knowing how? I was. Hence I wrote this piece to you the climate audiences and writers.

Whether we like it or not, the Earth will still be here. It has survived mass extinctions, ice ages, volcanic catastrophes and geological upheavals that make human history look almost insignificant by comparison. The climate crisis is not fundamentally a question of whether the planet will continue to exist. It is a question of what kind of conditions will prevail on the planet in which human beings, and millions of other species, are able to live. The Earth does not need saving from humanity in the abstract. Human beings need saving from a social and economic system that is profoundly ill-equipped to deal with the ecological limits on which our survival depends.

This distinction matters.

I was reminded of it recently while watching an interview with climate scientist Bill McGuire on Novara Media. McGuire has spent decades studying climate and geophysical hazards, and much of his work is precisely the kind of scientific analysis that we urgently need. He has been consistently willing to confront the severity of the climate crisis rather than soften its implications. But what struck me was the emphasis on individual preparedness: the idea that, faced with deteriorating conditions and the possibility of disruptions to food and other essential supplies, stocking up on basic necessities and preparing for difficult times is simply common sense.

Perhaps it is. If the question is how an individual household should respond to a period of disruption, having some food and water available is hardly irrational. But that is precisely where I think the climate debate so often becomes politically impoverished. What is sensible as an individual response to a systemic crisis is not necessarily a sensible collective response to that crisis.

If harvests are increasingly vulnerable to drought, heat, flooding and other forms of extreme weather, then the important question cannot simply be whether I have enough flour in my cupboard. It must be why food systems are organised in such a way that a climatic shock in one region can rapidly become a question of affordability, availability and hunger somewhere else. It must be why millions of people can live alongside enormous productive capacity while still being unable to afford basic necessities. It must be why food security is so dependent on markets, trade routes, energy prices, financial speculation and the profitability of agricultural production.

The science tells us that climate change is already affecting the conditions under which food is produced. The social consequences, however, are not determined by atmospheric physics alone. They are mediated through institutions, infrastructure, ownership, political power and the organisation of production. That distinction is crucial because it means that the future is not simply something that happens to us.

And this is where I have become increasingly frustrated with climate discourse. Long before writing this article… as my readers probably have taken note off.

I regularly encounter scientists producing extraordinary analyses of what is happening to our climate. They document rising temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, intensifying extremes, ecosystem degradation, melting ice and the cascading risks associated with each additional fraction of warming. I can easily imagine Bill McGuire belonging among those scientists whose work forces us to confront uncomfortable realities rather than hide from them.

But then comes the conclusion.

Prepare yourself. Stock up. Adapt. Expect disruption. It is too late. It is not happening. Society will collapse. The best we can do is prepare for what comes next.

This clip by Kevin Anderson illustrates perfectly what I am getting at.

I understand why this language emerges. The evidence is frightening. There is a real danger of climate communication becoming falsely reassuring, of telling people that technological innovation or consumer choice will somehow solve a problem whose scale is vastly larger than individual behaviour. But there is another danger at the opposite end of the spectrum: doomerism can become a form of political paralysis.

There is a difference between recognising that the climate crisis is extraordinarily serious and concluding that meaningful collective action is impossible.

The first is scientific realism.

The second is fatalism.

And I think we need to be much more careful about the difference.

The COVID-19 pandemic provided an illuminating example. When much of the global economy shut down in 2020, energy-related CO₂ emissions fell by approximately 5.8%, or almost two billion tonnes — the largest annual decline since records began. Yet this was not a climate victory. The decline resulted from an extraordinary economic contraction, with enormous human costs. And as economic activity recovered, emissions rapidly recovered with it. In 2021, global energy-related CO₂ emissions increased by around 6%, reaching 36.3 gigatonnes and exceeding the previous record.

That episode does not demonstrate that reducing emissions is impossible. Quite the opposite. It demonstrates something more interesting: emissions respond to how the economy is organised and how economic activity is conducted.

The problem is that an emergency shutdown is obviously not a climate policy. Nobody seriously proposing a just ecological transition is arguing that billions of people should simply stop working and consume less until emissions disappear. The lesson is that voluntary individual restraint, disconnected from structural transformation, is not enough.

If we want dramatically lower emissions while simultaneously guaranteeing decent lives, we have to change what we produce, how we produce it, where energy comes from, how transport is organised, how cities are built, how food is distributed and, ultimately, who gets to decide these questions.

That is a political question.

It is also an economic question.

To no suprise to my followers a revolutionary question!

And consequently it is a question of power.

This is ultimately why I became dissatisfied with the climate movement as I encountered it and began looking for something else. I became tired of excellent analysis ending in conclusions that seemed to amount to: we know how bad things are, but what can we really do?

My frustration was not with the science. It was almost the opposite. I became frustrated because I took the science seriously enough to ask what its implications actually were. But the masses of people (the majority, the biggest class of all, the working class) that are suffering do not care about the science they care of what is in front of them, and if we do not walk alongside them in their struggle we will lose!

If climate change is produced through the way our societies organise energy, transport, agriculture, housing and industry, then why should the solution begin and end with individual consumption? If the problem is structural, why should the response be primarily behavioural?

And if the people making decisions about production are constrained by competition, profitability and accumulation, why are we so reluctant to discuss the structures that produce those incentives?

This is where the climate debate touches something much larger than climate policy.

A company can acknowledge climate change and still be compelled to prioritise profitability. A government can recognise the urgency of decarbonisation while simultaneously worrying about economic competitiveness, investment, employment and the interests of powerful industries. An investor can understand perfectly well that ecological collapse is dangerous while still being rewarded for maximising returns in the short term.

None of this requires evil individuals sitting in a room deciding to destroy the planet.

That is precisely the point.

A system can produce catastrophic outcomes without requiring everyone operating within it to consciously desire those outcomes.

The climate crisis therefore cannot be reduced to a collection of bad personal choices. It is embedded in the material organisation of society. Fossil fuels did not become dominant simply because individual consumers collectively decided that petrol was morally preferable to public transport. Industrial agriculture did not emerge because individuals spontaneously developed an irrational desire for globalised commodity chains. The enormous expansion of production, extraction and consumption has developed through a particular historical system of property, investment, competition and accumulation. What do we call that? Capitalism.

That does not mean that every climate problem has one single cause, nor that capitalism explains every ecological phenomenon. Science must remain science. Climate models, observations and physical mechanisms do not become Marxist simply because we interpret them through a political lens. But the moment we ask what humanity should do with scientific knowledge, we have crossed from describing the physical world into questions of political economy.

And here I think the climate movement has an enormous opportunity.

We should not abandon scientific rigour in favour of revolutionary rhetoric. We should demand more of ourselves than that.

What we need is a politics capable of matching the seriousness of the science.

There is a strange contradiction in contemporary climate politics. We are told that climate change represents an existential threat, yet the proposed response is often a series of incremental reforms that leave the fundamental organisation of production untouched. We are told that every fraction of a degree matters, while accepting an economic system in which investment decisions worth billions are still shaped primarily by expected financial returns.

Perhaps the real question is not whether humanity possesses the technological capacity to solve these problems. In many areas, we already possess remarkable technological capabilities. The question is whether we possess the social capacity to deploy them at the scale and speed required. I say we do but not without smashing capitalism through a revolutionary struggle.

Imagine an economy in which energy infrastructure was planned according to human and ecological needs rather than expected profitability. Imagine housing being treated primarily as a place for people to live rather than an asset class. Imagine agricultural production organised around food security, soil health, biodiversity and nutrition rather than the maximisation of returns. Imagine public transport being developed as essential infrastructure rather than as a commercial service. Imagine scientific research being treated as a common social resource rather than something whose accessibility can depend upon intellectual-property rights and purchasing power.

None of this is a fantasy in the sense of being technologically unimaginable.

The question is who owns the productive capacity of society, who controls investment, and who has the power to decide what gets produced and for what purpose.

That is why I increasingly find the language of planning more interesting than the language of sacrifice. The choice should not be between endless capitalist consumption on one side and individual austerity on the other. There is another possibility: democratically determining what society actually needs, allocating resources accordingly, and deliberately transforming production around those needs and the ecological boundaries of the planet. But that can’t happen, if we study history, without a revolutionary mass movement of the working class to expropriate the private means of production.

This would also mean confronting the international dimension of the crisis. Climate change does not respect borders, and neither do supply chains, capital flows or multinational corporations. A genuinely ecological transformation cannot mean retreating into isolated national economies. It requires international cooperation on an entirely different basis: sharing technology, coordinating production, guaranteeing access to food and energy, and ensuring that poorer regions are not asked to bear the costs of a crisis overwhelmingly driven by historical emissions and unequal patterns of consumption.

The alternative is a world in which scarcity is administered according to purchasing power.

And that is where the image of the stocked bunker becomes politically revealing.

I don’t particularly care whether someone has three months of rice in their basement. What concerns me is the worldview that can quietly accompany the bunker: I will save myself and my family, and everyone else will have to figure out their own survival.

But climate change is precisely the kind of problem for which this logic eventually collapses.

You cannot individually bunker your way out of a destabilised climate. You cannot privately purchase a functioning biosphere. You cannot put enough bottled water in your garage to compensate for failing public infrastructure. You cannot build a personal supply chain capable of replacing an agricultural system. And, most importantly, you cannot individualise a crisis whose causes and consequences are profoundly collective.

There is nothing wrong with preparing for emergencies. But preparedness should mean building resilient societies, not merely better-stocked households.

The difference is enormous.

A resilient society has public infrastructure, universal access to food and water, strong healthcare systems, secure housing, renewable energy, functioning transport networks, democratic institutions and the capacity to mobilise enormous resources rapidly when circumstances demand it. It does not leave people to compete for necessities while those with the greatest purchasing power buy their way to the front of the queue.

And perhaps this is where we need to recover something that has become almost unfashionable in climate politics: optimism.

Not the shallow optimism that tells us everything will be fine.

Not the technological optimism that assumes the market will invent its way out of every contradiction.

And certainly not the optimism of simply hoping that politicians will finally discover the courage to do what scientists have been telling them to do for decades.

I mean revolutionary optimism en mass: the confidence that human beings are capable of consciously transforming the social relations that we have created. But for that to happen we need to organise on a mass scale worldwide with the theory to make it happen and apply it concretely alongside the working class: join us in our worldwide struggle.

That confidence does not come from ignoring reality. It comes from taking reality seriously.

There is an old revolutionary argument that scientific objectivity and revolutionary commitment are not opposites. Leon Trotsky once compared the serious revolutionary to a surgeon: just as a surgeon must understand the structure of the organism before making an incision, the revolutionary must analyse society with precision rather than substituting slogans for understanding.

I think climate politics could use a similar attitude.

The climate scientist tells us what is happening to the planetary system. The economist can describe incentives and resource allocation. The ecologist can show us what is being lost. The engineer can tell us what technologies are possible. But somebody also has to ask: what social forces can actually bring the necessary transformation into being?

That is the question I eventually found myself asking.

And it is the question that led me towards revolutionary politics and, ultimately, towards organising with the Revolutionary Communist International.

Not because I believe revolution is a romantic shortcut around the complexity of climate science. Quite the opposite. I am interested in revolutionary politics precisely because I believe the climate crisis demands a material analysis of how society actually functions, how power is organised and how collective action can transform it.

The point is not to predict an inevitable apocalypse.

The point is to understand the forces producing the crisis well enough to intervene in them.

That means organising rather than retreating. It means building collective power rather than simply perfecting individual consumption. It means fighting for reforms that materially improve people’s lives while recognising that reforms alone cannot resolve the contradictions built into the system that produces them. And it means thinking seriously about what could replace an economy organised around accumulation with one organised around human need and ecological sustainability.

The planet will survive.

Whether our civilisation, our ecosystems and the conditions that make flourishing human life possible survive in anything resembling their present form is another question entirely.

So yes, perhaps keep some flour in the cupboard.

But don’t confuse a stocked cupboard with a political strategy.

The climate crisis does not need another generation taught to hide from the consequences. It needs a generation capable of changing the conditions producing them.

The science has told us what is coming.

Now we need to decide what we are going to do about it.

If you are not convinced, view this clip by Kevin Anderson calling for revolutionary change in society, and if you still are not convinced stay fatalistic I guess…

Till next time…

As I called this the European Condition it is ever important to release this article. This article is not primarily an analysis of the European situation. While the conditions facing workers in Europe are important, they can only be understood as part of the global development of capitalism. Marxism begins from the recognition that capitalism is an international system, and that its crises, contradictions, and class struggles transcend national borders. For that reason, revolutionary international communists reject the illusion that socialism can be built within a single country or that lasting solutions can be found through purely national politics. The struggle is international because capitalism itself is international, and it is from this material reality—not from abstract ideals—that revolutionary internationalism arises. Let’s start.

One of the most confusing aspects of modern politics is the sheer number of people who call themselves “Marxists” while advocating fundamentally different political conclusions. Today the label has become so diluted that it often obscures more than it clarifies. Economists, academics, reformists, YouTube commentators, parliamentarians, and activists may all invoke Marx, yet arrive at entirely different strategies for changing society.

For revolutionary international communists, this raises an essential question: what actually defines a Marxist?

Marxism is not simply an intellectual framework or a critique of capitalism. It is a revolutionary method rooted in dialectical materialism, class struggle, and the self-emancipation of the working class through collective organization. Marxism is not merely about interpreting capitalism – it is about overthrowing it.

This is why revolutionary organization matters.

Many contemporary thinkers use elements of Marxist analysis while remaining politically detached from the organized struggle of the working class. Academic figures may critique neoliberalism, financial capitalism, or inequality, and some of their observations can indeed be useful. Marxists should not reject analysis simply because it comes from outside their own tendency.

However, from a revolutionary standpoint, there is a fundamental distinction between using aspects of Marxist theory and consistently applying the Marxist method to its revolutionary conclusions.

Marxism is not simply a set of economic insights. It is a coherent worldview grounded in dialectics and historical materialism. When followed consistently, it leads toward the necessity of class struggle, internationalism, and the organized seizure of economic and political power by the working class.

This is where many self-described Marxists stop short.

Revolutionary International Communists argue that intellectual criticism alone is insufficient if it is disconnected from the world-wide organization and struggle. Without participation in the organized movement of the working class, radical theory risks becoming academic commentary rather than a material force capable of transforming society.

This contradiction becomes particularly visible in movements that attempt to reform capitalism without confronting the structures of class power directly.

Many left-wing reformist projects emerge during periods of crisis promising radical change, only to retreat once they encounter pressure from capital, the state, or international institutions. Marxists have observed this repeatedly throughout history.

For example, movements surrounding reformist left parties or coalitions often attract sincere activists who want social justice, environmental reform, or economic redistribution. Yet without a revolutionary strategy rooted in working-class power, these movements tend to adapt themselves to the existing system rather than overturn it.

This is one reason revolutionary international communists remain skeptical of projects centered primarily on parliamentary reform, including movements adjacent to green liberalism or European reformism. Their critique is not moralistic; it is structural. The capitalist state cannot simply be “managed differently” in the long term without confronting the interests of the ruling class itself.

Even where reforms are achieved, capitalism reproduces inequality through exploitation on a global scale. Temporary concessions can improve living standards for some layers of society, but they do not abolish the underlying contradictions of the system.

Why Revolutionary Theory Matters

This is why revolutionaries place such emphasis on theory.

When Vladimir Lenin wrote that “without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement,” he was not arguing for intellectual elitism. He meant that without a politically educated layer of workers capable of understanding capitalism scientifically, movements will repeatedly fall into reformism, nationalism, opportunism, or despair.

Dialectical materialism is not abstract philosophy for its own sake. It is a method for understanding how societies change through contradictions.

Capitalism constantly generates crises: economic instability, imperialist conflict, ecological destruction, alienation, and political polarization. These contradictions intensify over time. Revolutionary theory helps workers understand that these crises are not accidental failures of policy, but structural outcomes of capitalism itself.

Without this understanding, frustration can easily be redirected into reactionary politics.

Periods of instability often produce growing support for right-wing nationalism, racism, chauvinism, and authoritarian politics. This should not surprise Marxists.

In times of crisis, people search for explanations and solutions. The far right offers emotionally simple answers: blame immigrants, minorities, foreign powers, or cultural enemies. These narratives provide identity and certainty during periods of social disintegration.

Marxists recognize that sections of the working class can develop reactionary ideas under capitalism. But revolutionary socialists reject the liberal conclusion that such workers are permanently lost or inherently backward.

Instead, Marxists argue that consciousness changes through struggle and experience.

The task of revolutionaries is not to moralistically condemn workers who have adopted reactionary ideas, but to patiently explain the real source of exploitation and social crisis: capitalism and the ruling class. This requires organization, education, and political discipline.

At the same time, revolutionary organizations must defend themselves politically against chauvinism, opportunism, and destructive behavior. A revolutionary party cannot survive without internal debate, democratic accountability, and theoretical clarity. And need to fight any form of dogmatism or sectarianism, which many so called degenerate communists default to.

A genuine revolutionary organization is not merely an activist network or electoral machine. Ideally, it functions as a collective school of political development.

Through study, debate, criticism, and participation in workers’ struggles, members sharpen both their understanding of society and their ability to intervene within it. Marxist theory becomes something living rather than academic.

This process is deeply humbling. Serious Marxists do not believe they “know everything.” On the contrary, dialectical materialism requires continuous reassessment of reality, constant study of ever-changing material conditions, and willingness to criticize one’s own mistakes.

The purpose of theory is not to produce intellectual superiority. It is to prepare the working class to act consciously and collectively.

Historical Possibility and Revolutionary Optimism

Revolutionary Marxists remain convinced that capitalism creates the very conditions for its own overthrow, but these ever emergin conditions will not be overthrown by themselves.

History demonstrates that revolutionary consciousness can develop rapidly during periods of crisis. Between 1905 and 1917, revolutionary movements in the Russian Empire grew from relatively small organizations into mass forces capable of reshaping world history despite widespread poverty and illiteracy.

Today, the global working class is vastly larger, more interconnected, and more technologically linked than it was a century ago. At the same time, capitalism faces intensifying crises across economics, climate, war, and political legitimacy.

For Marxists, this does not guarantee victory. But it demonstrates that revolutionary transformation is materially possible.

As communist Antonio Gramsci famously observed:

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”

That contradiction defines the present era. Across the world, millions of people increasingly sense that existing institutions no longer function in their interests. Revolutionary organization seeks to transform that diffuse dissatisfaction into conscious political struggle.

Contrary to popular caricatures, revolutionary politics is not built on impatience or adventurism. Serious organizing is often slow, disciplined, and deeply patient.

People rarely arrive at revolutionary conclusions immediately. Many pass through liberalism, reformism, environmentalism, nationalism, or social democracy before becoming convinced of the limits of capitalism itself.

For this reason, joining a revolutionary organization should never be treated lightly. People should study, attend meetings, ask difficult questions, debate openly, and critically examine both the organization and its political tradition.

In many cases, the most thoughtful and critical individuals become the most committed organizers precisely because they did not join impulsively.

Revolutionary Marxism does not ask for blind faith. It asks people to study reality seriously, examine history and science honestly, and participate consciously in the struggle to transform society.

Organise!

It feels fitting to publish this article on the day I conclude my Schuman Traineeship at the European Parliament.

Over the past months, I have had the opportunity to observe the European Union from within: its institutions, its legislative processes, and the immense work carried out by those committed to making them function. That experience has only reinforced my conviction that understanding Europe’s present requires looking beyond individual policies or political personalities and towards the deeper historical and economic forces shaping the continent.

This article is an attempt to do exactly that. Rather than asking whether Europe merely faces a series of temporary crises, it asks whether these crises express the contradictions of the capitalist system itself, and what that means for Europe’s future.

…

Europe was the birthplace of capitalism. It was in Europe that the modern nation-state consolidated itself, industrial capitalism transformed production on an unprecedented scale, and colonial expansion violently integrated vast parts of the world into a single global system. European capitalism gave rise to the factory system, modern finance, and the world market itself. For centuries, Europe stood at the centre of global economic, military, and political power.

Today, however, Europe finds itself in visible historical decline. Economic stagnation, political fragmentation, demographic pressures, militarisation, industrial weakness, and geopolitical dependency increasingly define the continent. The European Union, once presented as the culmination of peace, prosperity, and liberal progress, now appears trapped in permanent crisis management. The confidence that surrounded the European project after the Cold War has steadily given way to anxiety, instability, and pessimism.

From a Marxist perspective, this development is neither accidental nor surprising. Historical materialism does not treat social systems as eternal arrangements but as historically specific forms of organisation shaped by internal contradictions. Every mode of production initially advances human development before eventually becoming an obstacle to it. Feudalism once represented progress over slavery before obstructing commerce and industrial growth. Capitalism emerged as a revolutionary force that shattered feudal Europe, expanded science and technology, and created the first truly global economic system in human history.

Yet capitalism increasingly undermines the conditions necessary for humanity’s further development. Production has become global and deeply socialised, while political and economic power remain fragmented between competing states and private interests. Humanity possesses extraordinary productive capacities, yet these remain subordinated to profit, competition, and geopolitical rivalry. The result is a world characterised by ecological crisis, militarism, financial instability, social inequality, and political fragmentation.

The European Union embodies these contradictions in concentrated form. In many respects, the EU represents the most advanced attempt by European capitalism to transcend the limitations of the nation-state without abolishing capitalism itself. After the devastation of two world wars, European integration emerged as a strategy through which Europe’s ruling classes sought to stabilise capitalism, prevent renewed inter-European conflict, and compete more effectively within an increasingly globalised world economy.

For several decades this strategy appeared successful. During the postwar boom, European integration coincided with rising living standards, industrial growth, welfare-state expansion, and relative political stability. The EU presented itself as the rational alternative to the destructive nationalism that had plunged Europe into catastrophe during the first half of the twentieth century.

Beneath this apparent stability, however, the underlying contradictions remained unresolved. The EU integrated markets far more effectively than it integrated political authority. It created a continental economy without creating a genuine continental state. National ruling classes pooled aspects of sovereignty while continuing to defend their own industries, financial systems, and geopolitical interests. The result was not a unified political subject but an unstable compromise between competing capitalist states.

As long as global growth continued and geopolitical conditions remained relatively stable, these tensions could be managed. But the crises of the twenty-first century steadily exposed the fragility of the arrangement. The 2008 financial crisis revealed the weaknesses of monetary union without fiscal union. The refugee crisis exposed the limits of European solidarity. Brexit shattered the illusion that integration was irreversible. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the continuing primacy of the nation-state during emergencies. Finally, the war in Ukraine intensified nearly every existing contradiction simultaneously: energy dependency, inflation, militarisation, industrial decline, and geopolitical subordination.

What Europe faces today is therefore not merely a temporary downturn or a failure of leadership. It is the expression of a deeper historical contradiction embedded within capitalism itself.

Europe’s Historical Contradiction

The central contradiction of the European project becomes clearer when examined through historical materialism. Capitalism naturally develops beyond national boundaries. Markets expand internationally, supply chains stretch across continents, finance circulates globally, and production becomes increasingly interconnected. Capitalism creates an international economy.

Political power, however, remains divided between competing nation-states. Each capitalist class remains tied to its own state apparatus, military structures, and geopolitical interests. The economy becomes global while political authority remains national. This contradiction has shaped modern European history from the beginning of capitalism itself.

The rise of European capitalism was inseparable from imperial competition between rival states seeking colonies, trade routes, markets, and strategic dominance. Colonial conquest and militarisation were not accidental features of European development but expressions of capitalism operating within fragmented national frameworks.

By the early twentieth century, this contradiction had reached explosive proportions. Europe’s productive forces had already outgrown the nation-state, yet no ruling class was willing to subordinate itself to a genuinely unified European order. The result was imperialist rivalry and, ultimately, two catastrophic world wars.

After 1945, European integration emerged as an attempt to manage these contradictions. Institutions such as the European Coal and Steel Community and later the European Economic Community sought to partially integrate Europe’s fragmented economies into a larger capitalist bloc capable of competing with powers such as the United States.

The logic behind integration was fundamentally economic. No individual European state, not even Germany or France, could independently compete on equal terms with continental-scale powers. European capitalism therefore sought to pool markets, labour, infrastructure, and industrial capacity into a larger structure.

For decades this strategy appeared relatively successful. The EU created open internal borders, harmonised regulations, integrated financial systems, and eventually introduced a common currency. Yet the contradictions persisted beneath the surface. The EU integrated markets without creating a unified political authority. It introduced a common currency without establishing a genuine fiscal union capable of redistributing wealth and managing uneven development between stronger and weaker economies.

As a result, enormous power accumulated in institutions such as the European Commission and the European Central Bank, while democratic accountability remained weak. National governments surrendered aspects of sovereignty while still remaining responsible for managing domestic crises and defending national economic interests. The EU therefore emerged as an unstable hybrid suspended between supranational integration and national fragmentation. Which is becoming clearer and clearer with time.

Marxists such as Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky recognised these contradictions long before the European Union existed. Both understood that capitalism simultaneously drives integration and fragmentation.

Trotsky argued that Europe’s productive forces had fundamentally outgrown the nation-state. The First World War demonstrated that capitalism could no longer develop peacefully within competing national frameworks. The war was not simply the result of diplomatic failure or irrational nationalism, but the expression of deeper contradictions within European capitalism.

In 1923 Trotsky wrote that “Europe cannot develop economically within the state and customs frontiers imposed at Versailles.” Europe therefore faced two possible paths: socialist transformation and democratic economic planning, or continued stagnation, militarism, and crisis.

Lenin reached a similar conclusion during the First World War. He argued that a “United States of Europe” under capitalism would either be impossible or reactionary. This was not a rejection of European unity itself, but an analysis of the limits imposed by capitalism. Under capitalism, European unity could only remain temporary because national ruling classes would inevitably defend their own interests during periods of crisis.

This contradiction remains visible today. During every major crisis, the illusion of a unified European political community collapses beneath the weight of national interests. The euro crisis exposed antagonisms between northern and southern Europe. The refugee crisis revived border controls and nationalism. Brexit demonstrated the fragility of integration. During the pandemic, governments prioritised domestic supply chains and national vaccination strategies. The war in Ukraine intensified divisions over energy policy, military strategy, and relations with both Russia and the United States.

Europe’s economies are now too interconnected for a simple return to isolated national capitalism, yet capitalist competition continues to prevent genuine democratic unity from emerging.

The End of Postwar Stability

After the Second World War, many intellectuals believed Europe had finally overcome its historical cycle of nationalism, war, and crisis. European integration, welfare-state capitalism, and liberal democracy appeared capable of delivering both prosperity and stability while avoiding fascism and revolutionary upheaval.

Thinkers such as Altiero Spinelli argued that Europe’s catastrophes stemmed primarily from the nation-state system itself. A supranational federation, they claimed, could transcend nationalism and secure lasting peace.

For several decades, this vision seemed plausible. Western Europe experienced rapid economic growth, rising living standards, welfare expansion, and political stability. Yet these achievements depended on highly specific conditions: US economic dominance, cheap energy, expanding global markets, and exceptionally high rates of capitalist growth. Welfare states were sustained not only by humanitarian ideals, but by strong labour movements and favourable postwar economic conditions. The Cold War further stabilised this arrangement, as ruling classes made concessions to organised labour in response to the perceived threat of socialist revolution.

For a time, this compromise appeared to reconcile capitalism with democracy and social stability. Rising productivity allowed wages and profits to grow simultaneously, while welfare expansion mitigated some of capitalism’s most destructive effects. European integration thus appeared not only economically successful, but historically progressive.

However, this stability was always conditional. By the 1970s, profitability across advanced capitalist economies began to decline, growth slowed, and the foundations of the social-democratic settlement started to erode. The postwar boom could not be sustained indefinitely.

The response was not the transcendence of these contradictions, but their reorganisation through neoliberal restructuring: privatisation, deregulation, attacks on organised labour, financial liberalisation, and austerity. European integration continued, but increasingly took a technocratic and market-oriented form aimed at competitiveness rather than democratic control.

The Maastricht Treaty and the creation of the euro deepened these tendencies. Monetary integration advanced without corresponding fiscal or political union, binding together economies with vastly different levels of productivity while removing national monetary tools for crisis management. This produced a structurally uneven system dependent on permanent discipline and internal adjustment.

It is important, however, not to reduce the euro to a simple historical failure. From the standpoint of European capital, monetary union represented a real and partially successful attempt to stabilise and consolidate European capitalism after the crisis of the 1970s and the end of the Cold War. The euro emerged because European economies had become too interconnected for purely national monetary systems to function efficiently within an increasingly globalised market. For decades, the common currency has endured despite repeated crises that many predicted would destroy it. This durability reflects the material reality that European capitalism requires a continental-scale framework in order to compete globally. Yet the survival of the euro has not resolved Europe’s contradictions; rather, it has displaced and intensified them. The underlying tensions between integrated markets and fragmented political authority continue to accumulate beneath the surface, producing recurring crises and growing instability.

At the same time, the euro has imposed enormous costs on Europe’s working classes. Monetary union institutionalised a regime of permanent budgetary discipline in which governments surrendered significant economic sovereignty while remaining responsible for managing social crises. Because states within the eurozone no longer control monetary policy or currency devaluation, crises are managed primarily through internal adjustment: wage suppression, labour-market restructuring, privatisation, and cuts to public spending. In practice, this has meant decades of austerity imposed in the name of fiscal stability and competitiveness. During the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the retreat of organised labour, no powerful political alternative existed capable of challenging neoliberal integration. The euro therefore emerged within a historical moment defined by capitalist triumphalism and the absence of a credible socialist counterweight. What followed was not convergence and shared prosperity, but a Europe increasingly characterised by stagnating living standards, weakened welfare systems, and the permanent subordination of social policy to the demands of finance and fiscal discipline.

These contradictions became fully visible after the 2008 financial crisis. The eurozone crisis exposed deep imbalances between core and periphery economies, as states such as Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Italy faced debt crises and severe austerity imposed in the interests of European finance capital. European solidarity gave way to creditor discipline and renewed national antagonisms.

At the same time, deindustrialisation, stagnating wages, and rising inequality fuelled political fragmentation. Trust in mainstream parties declined, while nationalism and right-wing populism gained ground. The refugee crisis further exposed the limits of European unity, as border controls returned despite decades of integration rhetoric.

Brexit marked a decisive rupture, demonstrating that integration was neither irreversible nor politically secure. The COVID-19 pandemic reinforced this dynamic: despite decades of supranational coordination, national states reasserted themselves as the primary actors during crisis conditions, closing borders and competing over critical resources.

The postwar order therefore appears less as the resolution of Europe’s contradictions than as a historically exceptional period of relative stability within a deeper and ongoing crisis of capitalism. What once seemed like the end of Europe’s instability now appears as a temporary equilibrium within it.

Ukraine, NATO, and European Dependency

The war in Ukraine has intensified and exposed Europe’s structural weaknesses: energy dependency, military reliance, economic fragmentation, and stagnation.

Germany’s postwar model – built on cheap Russian energy and export-led manufacturing – has been disrupted. Energy-intensive industries face rising costs and declining competitiveness, accelerating deindustrialisation pressures.

At the same time, Europe’s dependence on the United States has deepened. NATO remains the backbone of European security, while the shift to American liquefied natural gas has increased energy costs. Claims of “strategic autonomy” have largely stalled.

From a Marxist perspective, this reflects Europe’s position within global capitalism: not a unified imperial centre, but a set of competing capitalist states embedded in a US-led order.

The result is political instability: stagnation, inflation, industrial decline, and growing social discontent.

The EU cannot resolve the contradiction at its core. Integration is necessary for economic competitiveness, but it intensifies conflicts between national ruling classes and undermines political cohesion.

Contemporary responses remain confined within capitalism. The far right turns to nationalism and border militarisation. Liberal centrism defends deeper integration without structural change. The centre-left proposes a more humane capitalism without challenging private ownership or accumulation.

From a Marxist perspective, these strategies fail because the contradiction lies in capitalism itself. Modern productive capacity is already sufficient to eliminate poverty and enable ecological transition, yet it remains subordinated to profit and geopolitical rivalry.

The Socialist United States of Europe

Marxists do not reject European unity. The problem is not integration, but integration within capitalism.

Trotsky’s vision of a Socialist United States of Europe proposed a democratic federation based on social ownership and economic planning rather than private profit and interstate competition.

Key sectors – energy, finance, industry, infrastructure – (the means of production) would be publicly and democratically controlled, allowing production to be organised according to social need rather than market logic.

In this sense, the EU reveals both the necessity and impossibility of unity under capitalism: European economies are too interconnected for national solutions, yet capitalism prevents genuine solidarity at the continental level.

The European Union should be understood historically rather than morally. It was neither simply a peace project nor a top-down imposition, but a contradictory attempt by European capitalism to overcome the limits of the nation-state without overcoming capitalism itself.

For a time, it stabilised the postwar order and enabled growth. But the contradictions identified by Marxist thinkers were never resolved – only temporarily contained.

Today, Europe oscillates between integration and fragmentation, cooperation and rivalry, welfare and militarisation, while facing stagnation, dependency, and declining global influence.

These contradictions cannot be overcome through institutional reform alone. As long as the means of production remain privately owned and the state continues to defend capitalist property relations, every crisis will ultimately be managed in the interests of capital rather than society as a whole. Capitalism can only be superseded through a socialist revolution in which the working class, organised as an independent political force, overthrows the existing state apparatus, establishes its own democratic political power, expropriates the major means of production, and begins reorganising the economy according to social need rather than private profit. In the European context, this would not mean retreating into competing nation-states, but extending democratic control over an already integrated continental economy. For Lenin, genuine European unity could not be achieved through treaties between competing capitalist governments, but only through the international solidarity of the working class and the construction of a socialist federation capable of replacing competition, austerity, and imperial rivalry with democratic economic planning.

What needs to be done: Organise!

My aim is to analyse contemporary Europe through a dialectical materialist lens. I make no claim to neutrality. Every analysis begins from a particular standpoint, and mine is consciously rooted in the perspective of the working class and those who are most exploited within our economic system. From my perspective, seeking the truth means seeking to understand the conditions experienced by the majority rather than accepting the narratives produced by those who benefit most from the status quo.

My education and professional experience have given me the tools to critically examine European politics, law and institutions. Many people with similar backgrounds are capable of doing the same, yet few choose to. In a capitalist society, there is often little incentive to question the structures that provide one’s career or livelihood. Too often, critical thinking is softened or placed on the shelf to accommodate the interests of an employer, a prestigious institution, a corporation or the NGO sector. I have chosen to use those tools differently.

I also make no secret of my convictions. I believe that progressive ideas will ultimately prevail over conservative ones, not because history inevitably moves in one direction, but because the current world system has long outlived the conditions that once made it successful. Its contradictions are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore, and (as you will see, unfortunately) they will continue to shape Europe’s future until the fundament is changed.

If this publication helps you better understand those contradictions—or simply equips you with stronger arguments when discussing politics with your parents, friends, colleagues, professors, managers or elected representatives etc. —then it has achieved its purpose. My goal is not to tell you what to think, but to provide analysis that cuts beneath headlines, challenges comfortable assumptions and helps explain what is actually happening.

I won’t always be right, and I hope readers will challenge my arguments. We learn through debate, evidence and criticism. If I am wrong, I will have something to learn. But I also won’t abandon an argument simply because it is unpopular or inconvenient. Good ideas should withstand scrutiny, and bad ones should be exposed through honest discussion.

Thank you for reading and for subscribing.

I won’t reply to every comment, but I will always appreciate those that are analytical, respectful and contribute to moving our collective understanding—and, hopefully, our society—forward. Let’s begin.

The EU is not sovereign

One of the defining contradictions of the European Union is that it increasingly acts like a political union without actually being one. This is something that often gets lost in public debate. And unfortunately, it creates false hope among some younger (and older) progressive generations who do not fully understand how the European Union functions.

(Don’t worry if this is you. Keep reading my upcoming articles, because this is also one of the main reasons why I created this project.)

Part of the reason is that the European Union has been remarkably successful at presenting itself as a coherent political actor. From the outside, it often appears far more unified than it actually is. Like any successful political project, perception and institutional reality are not always the same thing. The EU has very good PR compared to what it actually is.

Because the European Union is neither a federal state nor a traditional international organisation. It sits somewhere in between.

It has extensive regulatory powers, a common market, a shared legal order and, for most member states, a common currency. Yet ultimate fiscal sovereignty still rests with national governments. And at the heart of the European project lies competition within a single market. The primary reason for its existence is to create and maintain a competitive European market. (If you are under other illusions, I would like to hear from you. Let’s have the debate.)

Another stone in the shoe is that the EU does not possess the same tax-raising powers as a national government. Although recent developments such as the pandemic recovery fund have expanded its borrowing capacity, these remain exceptional political agreements rather than ordinary fiscal powers. In other words, Europe has integrated many of the responsibilities associated with a political union without fully creating one.

Migration provides perhaps the clearest illustration of this institutional contradiction.

The Schengen Area allows passport-free travel across much of Europe, while EU citizens enjoy freedom of movement. At the same time, decisions about asylum, citizenship and many aspects of border policy largely remain the responsibility of individual member states.

The refugee crisis of 2015 exposed the limits of this model. A border-free internal area combined with largely national asylum systems proved politically combustible. Open internal borders require cooperation and trust between governments, but when migration pressures increased, national political incentives quickly diverged. Border controls returned in several places, disagreements intensified and migration became one of the defining issues in European politics.

The institutional tensions remain visible today in the implementation of the Pact on Migration and Asylum, which is described by the EU as a “common EU system to manage migration”.

Whether one agrees with the political conclusions drawn from this crisis or not, the contradiction itself is real. If you read people with expert knowledge in migration—and who do not approach the issue from a cynical view of human beings from different cultures—you will quickly see that the Pact contains many contradictions and may contribute to making some of these tensions even greater. It is a pain to work with and transpose; ask almost any lawyer or human rights advocate who has to work with it.

Nationalist and far-right parties have been particularly successful at mobilising around these tensions. Migration has become an issue around which they can rally support by presenting the contradictions of European integration as evidence that sovereignty should be returned entirely to the nation-state.

Whether one agrees with that conclusion or not, the underlying institutional contradiction is real, and it has reshaped European politics over the past decade.

This shift has not only occurred at the margins of European politics. It has also affected the centre.

The European People’s Party (EPP), the largest political group in the European Parliament, has historically presented itself as a centre-right defender of European integration, stability and democratic institutions. Yet in recent years, parts of the European political mainstream have increasingly moved towards cooperation with right-wing and far-right forces in order to secure political power.

This creates another contradiction within the European project. The centre can maintain its image as the defender of European values while simultaneously normalising political forces that challenge parts of the liberal democratic consensus on which the European project has traditionally been built.

By moving the political centre of gravity to the right, mainstream parties risk allowing increasingly nationalist alternatives to shape European politics while still benefiting from the legitimacy associated with the political centre.

This is not only a question of party politics. It reflects the deeper institutional problem discussed throughout this article: Europe increasingly faces continent-wide challenges, but political responses remain shaped by national electoral incentives and fragmented sovereignty. Without a stronger political framework at the European level, many of these contradictions are managed rather than resolved.

The European Union increasingly faces problems that require collective political solutions while remaining dependent on twenty-seven sovereign governments whose political interests frequently diverge.

This is why debates about the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) matter.

They are not simply debates about budgets, even though on the surface—and with a narrow view—they are of course only about budgets. But let’s unpack this.

The MFF reveals the deeper question that Europe has yet to answer: how far can political and economic integration go without a genuine political union?

That, more than any individual spending programme, is one of the defining questions shaping Europe’s current condition.

The contradiction between what Europe is expected to do and what its institutions are actually capable of doing is not only visible in migration. It is also visible in the question of money.

The MFF: A Budget That Reveals the Contradiction

The MFF is one of the hottest topics in Brussels right now.

If you have never heard of it, don’t worry. Outside the EU bubble - if you do not work directly with it - almost nobody has. That is one of the reasons why I created The European Condition: to help make sense of Europe’s institutions and, more importantly, the contradictions that shape them.

The Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) is the European Union’s seven-year budget. It determines how much money can be spent and on what. Agriculture, regional development, research, defence, migration, external action, industrial policy—almost every major EU priority ultimately passes through the MFF.

The current budget covers the period 2021–2027, and negotiations for the next framework, covering 2028–2034, are now well underway. The European Commission has proposed a budget approaching €2 trillion, arguing that Europe must invest more heavily in competitiveness, defence, digital technology and strategic autonomy in response to an increasingly unstable world.

Almost immediately, resistance emerged.

Sweden, together with several other net-contributing member states, has argued that the overall size of the budget should not increase substantially. Germany has signalled a similar position. At the time of writing, warnings of a possible no-deal scenario are already circulating in Brussels.

One thing we need to remember is that the MFF is simultaneously incredibly important and surprisingly small. Inside the Brussels institutions, every euro becomes the subject of intense negotiations between the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council. Every spending category reflects competing political priorities, and where Europe chooses to invest tells us what kind of future its political leaders are trying to build.

Yet when we zoom out, the picture changes. Even a budget approaching €2 trillion, spread over seven years, represents only a small fraction of Europe’s total economic output. From the perspective of the global economy, the MFF is remarkably modest. Its importance therefore does not lie primarily in its macroeconomic size, but in what it reveals politically. Every budget line is ultimately a political choice.

That brings us to another contradiction surrounding the negotiations.

The countries with the greatest fiscal capacity are also those most capable of limiting common European investment. The wealthier member states—often referred to as net contributors because they contribute more to the EU budget than they receive directly—generally have the strongest incentives to keep overall spending under control. In the event of a failed negotiation, they may contribute less financially, even if they also forgo some of the wider economic benefits generated by investment across the Single Market.

This tension has existed in almost every MFF negotiation, but today it feels more pronounced than ever. Even parties traditionally sceptical of expanding the EU budget increasingly acknowledge that Europe faces common challenges: geopolitical instability, industrial competition, climate change, demographic pressures and technological transformation. These are problems that no single member state can solve alone.

Where governments continue to disagree is over the scale of the common response. While there is growing recognition that Europe must act collectively, there is far less agreement on how much should be invested to make that happen.

That is why these negotiations deserve more attention than they receive. Outside Brussels, very few people follow the MFF, and I completely understand why. On the surface it appears to be little more than an exercise in budgetary bookkeeping. In reality, it offers one of the clearest windows into the political priorities, institutional constraints and internal contradictions that continue to shape the European Union.

Ultimately, this is why I believe discussions like these matter. The MFF is not just about numbers on a balance sheet, just as migration is not only about border policy. Both expose the same underlying reality: the European Union is increasingly expected to solve problems that extend far beyond the capacity of any individual member state, while remaining constrained by institutions designed for a union of sovereign governments rather than a sovereign union.

Whether the current model can continue to function under growing geopolitical, economic and social pressures remains one of the defining questions of our time. I do not claim to have the answer, and I suspect no one does. But if we are going to understand where Europe is heading, we first need to understand the contradictions that shape it and start from there to avoid the trap of false hope and naivety.

That is ultimately what The European Condition is about. Not simply reporting what happens in Brussels and beyond through a connected european thread, but examining why it happens, what it reveals about the political economy of Europe, and how today’s decisions fit into the broader historical forces shaping our continent.

Till next time…

When I graduated with my Master of Laws, I started working for a human rights law firm, full of energy and ready to give it my all. I thought it was going to be everything I had been striving for, but it wasn’t. When I started at the firm, the genocide in Palestine was reaching its peak, and Sweden's right-wing government showed its complicity, together with most Western governments, though certainly not limited to them. To me, this revealed the raw violence of global capitalism. It showed how rotten the system is and strengthened my belief that it ultimately needs to be overthrown.

To be honest. I was naive, and I was shocked that we as a firm didn’t do more, but mostly that I didn’t do more. I was only an intern at the time and, a month later, a part-time junior lawyer.

I knew, and still know, that my firm was doing a good job for their clients. The lawyers were really good at what they did. But what I stared right in the face when I worked with migration case after migration case was the contradiction of the entire system. A system that was inhumane to begin with and full of contradictions. Sure, we were upholding human rights. But these human rights were drafted and enacted after the Second World War by states that had to make them work for themselves. The system was not good to begin with, and now it is getting worse quickly.

I realised that years of studying both economics and law at some of the best universities in Sweden did not come close to equipping me with what I needed, and working within the system, I quickly saw that even my more experienced colleagues were not equipped to fight for a better world, not even close. I started feeling complicit, as I felt that by working within the system I was legitimising it. I think my more experienced colleagues sensed my hesitancy, and I think it is why I didn’t get hired as a full-time lawyer, even though they had the possibility to hire me.

So I did what I could control. I started educating myself. I started reading book after book about finance, economics, our material world, capitalism, trade deals, investments, philosophy, genocide scholars, history, anthropology, and much more. Slowly, I knew more and more. I reached a conclusion together with many of the scholars, professors and researchers whose work I was reading: if we don’t organise into a mass movement to break from this system, we will never overthrow it. Because one thing I knew for sure, and the scholars I read knew for sure, is that this system we are living in—an anarchy of a free market with competition fuelled by profit and capital accumulation—will never abandon itself voluntarily. It needs a force strong enough to overthrow it, and that is dependent on a movement en masse.

When I reached this threshold and didn’t know where to put my time and money, I again asked myself: what can I do apart from educating myself? I can start to show up, speak up and organise.

Slowly, I started testing different political parties and movements while at the same time doing political commentary about what was going on because I felt like I could not stay quiet when I was witnessing the most horrifying thing I have been alive and mature enough to truly understand the capacity of. I started doing activism on social media, attending my local Palestine protests, and joining any protest that was fighting against this system, whether for Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Sudan or Palestine. Palestine was dominant, as it was everywhere, so it naturally became the main focus.

I did not do activism for Ukraine even though I wanted to, and I think about those victims often. But, in comparison, Ukraine received overwhelming financial support and media attention across the established press. I could not bring myself to advocate for it publicly when Palestine had become such a clear example of the contradictions and complicity of the Western world.

I don’t like the word, but I was successful. I built a TikTok following of over 10,000 followers, with videos reaching millions of views, and grew my Instagram account from around 500 followers to more than 8,000. But at one point I felt the incredible ineffectiveness of being a political commentator and social media activist. Sure, I was told by my peers that I was an important voice for the younger generation, and many young people told me they looked up to me. I was even invited to give speeches at protests and for civil rights organisations. That is all good, don’t get me wrong, but I didn’t feel it was leading people to actually understand what needed to be done.

After doing it for more than a year, I shut down the TikTok account completely and deleted all the content I had ever created on Instagram. The Instagram account itself is still there.

I will be honest. Part of the reason I shut it down was because the pressure was becoming heavy. My inner circle didn’t like it. I had people close to me suffering because someone they loved was exposed to this kind of risk and scrutiny, although, of course, many others in my inner circle were cheering me on. But because my content challenged the status quo, sometimes it was simply too much for some people. I also grew up as a typical Swedish person and, naturally, I do not like creating friction. So to say the least I suprised a lot of people that knew me from before.

But when the contradictions became so impossible to ignore, and I had come to understand enough of both my own life’s contradictions and society’s contradictions, I had enough. Even though I was afraid and often hated doing it, I felt I had to at least try to raise awareness and encourage people to organise to break with this violent system.

At the same time, after trying to get a job for a long time, I finally got a position that I really wanted at the European Parliament. I was advised to shut everything down if I wanted to increase my chances of building a career in the Brussels bubble. It was sound advice at the time, and I took it to heart. That finally led me to shut everything down after months of hesitation.

With that being said, I never stopped my activism, organising or political education in my spare time. I simply did it without my face being shared across social media. Looking back, that period was necessary. It allowed me to educate myself even further and better understand how I could most effectively help people make sense of what needs to be done.

Anyhow. I am launching my umbrella platform: The European Condition. I wish I had the possibility to launch The World Condition but I fear that would not be effective at this time, I rely on other people who know the rest of the earth more than I do.

For now, you can do one or more of the following: follow my Instagram account, subscribe to my Substack, or follow me on Medium (although, unless you are already a Medium subscriber, I probably wouldn’t recommend subscribing just for me, as my readership there is already established and it is quite an annoying platform to get started with).

This is something many of my former followers have asked me to return to. Since I stopped creating content over a year ago, many have told me they felt something was missing. So I will see where this journey takes me. As with everything, nothing can be promised until it is done. This is simply my ambition to fill this vacuum.

There are not many established professionals trying to make sense of this world in a way that goes beyond describing it—people trying to understand how we actually change it, and what it would take to do so. If we are ever going to change society fundamentally, we need arguments that are convincing enough to organise people on a mass scale. Again, I am not going to give it to you on a silver platter, because that is not how it works. You need to actually put in the work, educate yourself, and get out there—test, fail, and go again. With that being said I am organised in a mass political party, and if you are interested in hearing more about that, you are always welcome to reach out to me.

Till next time…