Did Greta actually say “scrap capitalism”?
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That’s what GB News said that she said but although she powerfully denounced the present system the other day I don’t think she used the actual word “capitalism”.
All I have been able to find as what she said is this:
But this passage does not contain the word “capitalism” though it is a pretty damning condemnation of the present system.
This seems to have something the rightwing media like GB News and the Murdoch empire have attributed to her to try and discredit her.
To which the obvious riposte would be “if the cap fits …”
Whether she used the word or not, the fact that she has been perceived as calling to “scrap capitalism” this can only be good.
But does anyone know if she has actually called to “scrap capitalism”? Which of course is what is needed.
It is as you say, the right-wing media using her reference to colonialism, imperialism, oppression and genocide and equating it to capitalism. She talks of profits and greed but she never actually says the word capitalism
Her speech is at 21 minutes into the video and is about 14 minutes long
The Adam Smith Institute claims that she said this (two years ago):
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/greta-thunberg-is-of-course-entirely-correct?format=amp
I can’t find that she said that either. It seems to be what someone else said that she re-tweeted.
But according to this she did say, after being accused of saying “end capitalism”, that all the various isms had failed including socialism:
https://menafn.com/1105125007/Greta-Thunberg-demands-that-capitalism-end
I can see that she would not want to be associated with what “socialism” has come to mean (what we would call “state capitalism” and/or leftwing reformism). All the same, she is still rather vague as to what she thinks the present system should be replaced by.
“All the same, she is still rather vague as to what she thinks the present system should be replaced by.”
Should we be surprised that a young teenager doesn’t possess all the answers?
Who have been her peer and mentor influences?
From someone who protested one day a week to get her government and businesses to do something to halt climate change she has evolved to recognise that no government and no corporation are actually willing to do so and that it requires a mass movement of people to push them into action.
Will Thunberg reach the stage where she comes to realise that only a revolutionary transformation of the economic system offers the only viable solution? She has many years ahead of her to discover that.
I think we have to credit her for how far her thinking has already come.
Actually I agree with you that Greta is alright. I wasn’t meaning to criticise her for not using the words “capitalism” and “socialism”, just noting that she hadn’t.
I can see why she would avoid the word “socialism” (and probably always will) because of the baggage that unfortunately has come to go with it. That’s why Peter Joseph explicitly avoids the word, though he doesn’t hold back on using “capitalism”. I wouldn’t be surprised if she uses it in private because that’s obviously what she means and maybe will in public at some point.
I agree that she has come a long way in coming to the conclusion that what is needed is a mass movement for change if there is going to be any change. At the moment she seems to envisage this mass movement as being to pressurise governments into doing something. But, as we know, they can’t because of the nature of capitalism as involving a competitive struggle for profits between corporations and between states and the consequent pressure to be “competitive” in terms of reducing the cost of production per unit of what they are trying to sell.
Whether Thunberg was so condemning of capitalism may not be clear but the movement she initiated, Fridays For Future, has been more damning of the capitalist system.
“The capitalistic system continuously puts profit over people,” the youth-led Fridays for Future movement said in a statement. “Corporations’ greed for more profit is driving the destruction of ecosystems and the climate…”
https://fridaysforfuture.org/march-3/
Then they go and spoil it by saying only “fossil capitalism” is the culprit
After coal mines, now it’s wind farms. What will be next? hydro-electricity? Here she is protesting against these in Norway.
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