‘None of the major problems we face today can be addressed without doing something about capitalism’.

 My chair pulled in tightly to the old wooden table around which we are sat, I furiously scribble this striking phrase in my notepad. On this unusually warm October day in Rome, nine of us are sat in a breezy room in the Euro-Gulf Information Centre on Via Gregoriana, happy to be three floors above the chaotic and tourist-laden city centre.

 Born in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and initially educated in Serbia, Dr Davor Džalto’s explorations in aesthetics, Eastern Orthodox thought and human creativity have led him to hold numerous prestigious academic positions around the globe. He is world-renowned in his many capacities, from art historian and theologian to artist, and has a plethora of publications and awards to his name.

 But today he was invited to step into the role of political philosopher and give his take on how we approach the great threat to humanity’s near future – climate change.

 Dr Džalto quickly adds a clarification to the pithy summary of his philosophy: it is not that the world would automatically be fixed if capitalism were removed (he wryly reminds us of how strangely talented humans are at destroying themselves), but that most issues that plague the modern world, namely climate change, can only be solved after capitalism is ‘dismantled’.

 Sat at one end of the table, he addresses a room of primarily EGIC employees and interns. The Euro-Gulf Information Centre is a self-described ‘initiative that aims to build social, political, strategic, cultural and economic bridges between the people of Europe and the Arabian Gulf’. Publishing regular current affairs analyses and updates, the EGIC works to monitor, solidify and develop the relationship between the GCC and Europe’s nations.

 Dr Džalto starts by declaring that his talk today is based on the contents of one of his newest books - Beyond Capitalist Dystopia: Reclaiming Freedom and Democracy in the Age of Global Crises (Routledge 2023). The conception and execution of this work, he argues, can be understood as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to him, dealing with Covid became a question of ideology. Much more than a medical crisis, the pandemic presented an economic, social and political rupture in the world’s systems, forcing us to question our core principles. What (or maybe even ‘who’) do we value, and how do these values hold up in times of crisis?

 For him it is clear that, in the Western World at least, profit is the goal to which all is oriented. Capitalism, which he bluntly names the ‘cancer of society’, has come to be the dominant paradigm for the way we live our lives. Despite how it may seem, all mainstream political parties, no matter how much they present themselves to be at odds with each other, are in fact largely similar insofar as they operate within the philosophy of capitalism – a system ill fit to cope with the pressing problems threatening human existence.

 Take, for example, America, where every four years the ‘conservative’ Republicans fight it out with the ‘liberal’ Democrats in a nail-biting race to the White House. The battle is intentionally emblematic of the right-left power struggle that characterises modern American history. Yet, as Dr Džalto would argue, even these seemingly polar philosophies are simply two sides of the same coin, made to look diverse through our narrow ideological spectrum. Both parties fundamentally operate on the capitalist principle of the free and competitive market and, according to Dr Džalto, as long as a system is capitalist it can never truly be liberal. No matter how it may name itself.

 So where does the real liberal spirit hide, then, if society’s current paradigm turns everything, even one’s own body, to marketable goods? For Dr Džalto it fled into the hands of anarchism or socialism at the turn of the 20^th century.  Ever since, a philosophy that truly advocates for ‘liberty’ has been outcast from the political mainstream, thus rendering the individual relatively powerless in comparison to the conglomerates that control modern life.

 And when the issue of climate change rears its ugly head, the detrimental actions of these profit-wallowing companies become even more important. Most people nowadays are all too familiar with the irresponsible actions of a handful of corporations, but perhaps the extent to which these businesses are responsible for greenhouse gas emissions can risk being overlooked. According to a report from the Smithsonian Institution, 80% of worldwide CO2 emissions from 2016-2022 were produced by a mere 57 companies. What’s more, many of these businesses have even increased their emissions since countries adopted the 2015 Paris Agreement – 58 out of the 100 top CO2-producing organisations, to be precise.

 Dr Džalto believes that this power imbalance is a direct product of capitalist philosophy, which permits an endless and merciless exploitation of natural resources for personal profit. The individual is rendered seemingly ineffectual within this social model, despite the fact that the results of climate change will likely affect the ordinary man the most. At the end of Dr Džalto’s short speech, one of the EGIC interns asks the question which naturally leads on from this depressing fact: ‘how can we, as individuals, make a difference? Is boycotting effective in making change?’

 For Dr Džalto, the answer is a mixed one. Individuals can certainly make a difference through small actions (changing the way we eat, travel and consume), but ultimately the climate crisis will not be stopped until the deep-rooted capitalist structure of Western societies is dismantled. This is because we are entirely stuck in a web of self-defeating consumerism, in which the supply for even the most basic human needs (food and water) is, more often than not, controlled by irresponsible profit-focused conglomerates.

 On a local and global scale, however, education is important and promising. Journalists can give space in media to alternative narratives that show a non-capitalist way forward. Dr Džalto hopes that his book, too, will show people that it is possible to think outside profit-focused paradigms; indeed, that it is necessary to do so in order to protect the security of humanity in the near future.

 One more question comes from the table: can extremism, an approach we see increasingly often amongst climate activists, be justified?

 ‘I am against revolutions in principle’, answers Dr Džalto. He sees the actions of groups like Just Stop Oil, who recently made the news for throwing tomato soup on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, as defeatist – ‘it screams “we don’t know what to do”’.

 Dr Džalto favours a process of ‘democratisation’ – of making alternative routes forward more accessible and known, as hard as that task might be. If the only way forward necessitates an upheaval of society’s values, the road ahead is certainly not easy, but it is even small-scale discussions like this one, tucked away in a third-floor room in Southern Europe, that kickstart the process of change.  

 Or at least that was the case with me. As I left the EGIC in the early afternoon, Rome appeared to me in an ever-so-slightly different light. I walked home with a little more curiosity than I had on my way there. Perhaps a little more frustration too. Yet somewhere within me was also felt a faint hint of hope -  an appreciation for the underestimated power of a simple mid-morning discussion.

 dabj