Climate, Solidarity, and Resistance: Paradigm for a socialist foreign policy

by Meredith Tax for Democratic Left, a publication of DSA

"Smaller, less highly visible spaces are better for experimentation, and it is no accident that a new socialist paradigm is most advanced in fragile, war-torn but autonomous spaces such as Chiapas and Rojava (the majority Kurdish region of Northern Syria), as well as municipal enclaves such as Jackson, Mississippi, and Barcelona, Spain, where people are working out in practice what twenty-first-century socialism could look like. Their paradigm begins with bottom-up local democracy and an aversion to statism. It fully integrates women into governance structures and makes their liberation central to its idea of revolution. Pluralistic and secular, it emphasizes ecology, sustainability, and economic cooperation.

Because these communities are at the crossroads of socialist foreign policy and climate change, we must support and defend them. Rebuilding the U.S. Left should entail close communication with people in Rojava, Chiapas, Barcelona, and other places experimenting with new forms of direct democracy, so that we can see what works for them and what doesn’t, and how the new paradigm combines democratic renewal with work against climate change."