The great ideological divide in the world between capital and labour has been overtaken by an even more urgent conflict. This is the dispute between the defenders of global industrial society and those who defend the rapidly depleting resource-base of the planet and all who depend on it. The spaces between an ever-expanding economy and the living, breathing earth have been choked by continuous economic growth.
This is not, of course, to underestimate the familiar gulf between rich and poor. That would be irresponsible, when the eight richest men in the world (and they are all men) possess wealth equal to the poorest 3.7 billion people on the planet. Such a gap could be closed, were the $80 trillion ‘global product’ (as estimated by the World Economic Forum for 2018) shared more fairly; but this would do nothing to halt the contamination of the biosphere by irreversible industrial processes.
