Anti-Capitalism in the Climate Movement?: How Organizations Frame the Problem of Climate Change

The climate movement, like other movements, shapes and is shaped by its context. With decades of attempts to accelerate a transition to green growth and failing to see positive results in terms of greenhouse gas emission reductions, organizations within the climate movement must consider how to address the problem. At the same time, there has been a growing use of anti-capitalist discourse in the wider cultural sphere regarding climate change. This paper seeks to understand the role the climate movement has played in that growth or if it has been affected by it. In particular, the research focuses on the growth of the use of anti-capitalist framing. Drawing on a mixed-methods frame analysis of documents published by four major climate movement organizations (CMOs) - Extinction Rebellion, Fridays for Future, Friends of the Earth, and Greenpeace - this study traces changes in the diagnostic and prognostic framing of capitalism in publicly available website content between 2012 and the first half of 2023. Quantitative analysis reveals that explicitly anti-capitalist frames remain marginal overall, but have grown in use since 2018, particularly through voices in the Global South. This suggests that these CMOs did not play a role in contributing to the development of this broader anti-capitalist discourse in the public sphere. However, the findings provide some evidence that the climate movement was affected by this discourse. Qualitative analysis further shows a shift from conditional critiques of capitalism to explicit calls for systemic transformation and post-capitalist alternatives, particularly degrowth. Furthermore, anti-capitalism was often coupled with other systemic issues of injustice, such as patriarchy and neocolonialism. While none of the CMOs examined adopted the anti-capitalist frame as its central diagnosis, this paper suggests that between 2018 and 2023 the frame generally grew in use and become more direct and stronger in tone. Movement organizations operate in movement ecosystems in which they may carve out niches when it comes to forms of actions, targets, or frames used. While theoretically movement ecosystems could explain why some CMOs may adopt certain frames while others do not, this study did not find strong evidence of movement ecosystems having an effect on framing practices.