Transcript of the speech at European Left Summer University, 10-14 July 2019, Fiuggi, Italy Plenary: Capitalism is a predatory system – for the planet and on our lives, 12 July 2019, Friday 17.00 1 Attila Antal 1 Neoliberal and Populist Autocracy in the Era of Climate Emergency It is a great honour being here, in a moment when the new rise of neo-fascism and authoritarian neoliberalism places a huge responsibility on us. This short lecture is about the authoritarian nature of capitalism and its cooperation with state autocracy. I am arguing here that the new militarist and imperialist nature of capitalism is the permanent state of exception. I am trying to put a specific emphasize on the unprecedent dangers raised by authoritarian regimes in the era of climate and ecological emergency. 1 Green Marxism and Capitalist Exploitation According to Kohei Saito “[n]ot just critics of Marx but even many self-proclaimed Marxists believed that Marx presupposed unlimited economic and technological developments as a natural law of history and propagated the absolute mastery of nature” (2017: 9.). But there is a deep and never-ending ecological reading of Marx’s theory, which has been explored and re-discovered in Paul Burkett’s Marx and Nature, John Bellamy Foster’s Marx’s Ecology and Kohei Saito’s Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism. So, we can say that “green Marx” not just exists, but “it not possible to comprehend the full scope of his critique of political economy if one ignores its ecological dimension” (Saito, 2017: 13.). Marx’s hyper-industrialism, according to which humans are entitled to arbitrarily manipulate external nature, has become stereotype. Marx argues that the capitalist production and exploitation are undermining the original sources of all wealth, the soil and the workers. Capitalism is a system which is about the general exploitation of the natural and human qualities. 2 Against Capitalist Militarism and Imperialism: The Heritage of Rosa Luxemburg This exploitation of the nature and the people emerged in the framework of capitalist militarism and imperialism. Left radical politics should oppose the imperialism and the war caused by imperialism. Unfortunately, this concept has not been as obviously as it sounds. Before the First World War, the anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist attitude was very weak among the Socialist parties. The Socialist International Congress of 1907 in 1 Attila Antal (1985) is holding a PhD in political science. He is a senior lecturer at Eötvös Loránd University Faculty of Law Institute of Political Science. He is a coordinator at the Social Theory Research Group at Institute of Political History. He is doing his contemporary research in political theory of populism, social and critical theory, theory of democracy, green political thought, ecological Marxism, constitutionalism, political history. Email: antal.attila@ajk.elte.hu