The Socialist Party stands with the oppressed, with all those who struggle for a better world. Around the world humanity is saying “Enough.“ Those who doubt that socialism would ever come about, are challenged today by its continued prevalence. The world’s peoples are still on the road to the most thoroughgoing social change in history.
Capitalism involves a restless search for profit by a class prepared to mobilise all means to pursue its ends and willing to elaborate all manner of rationales for its activities. This capitalist system offers unemployment, hunger, homelessness, welfare cuts, epidemics and the plague of drugs. We face two choices – either accept destruction and murder or set out to overturn this system. Technology is powerful enough to end hunger, homelessness and all want – but only if it is seized from the exploiters and organized in the interests of those this system has discarded. Though our lives and conditions be different; though we live in different parts of the world; though our struggles take different forms; ours is a common goal—an end to the exploitation of man by man. Only when we have economic democracy, when production is planned for use and not for profit, when the right of all to share in the abundance of our country is established – only then will democracy be truly established. A new world to be created—a world which will create a participatory democracy every level. The potential of mankind virtually limitless, if it is freed from economic and social oppression.
The Socialist Party was formed to serve these aims. As a democratic and organisationally independent movement, we are part of the world community of socialists. We have no illusions that the way will be easy, no visions of quick success. But the future belongs to humanity and socialism. Only socialism will create a world without national barriers, without international rivalries, a world without war, without master and slave. Humanity’s primary duty will be to conduct the affairs of the world with the aim of eliminating poverty, joblessness, hunger and general insecurity. Its sole criterion would be the needs of the people. Socialism will end the root evil of modern society, i.e., the private ownership of the means of production, the factories, mines, mills, machinery and land, which produce the necessities of life.
In socialism, these instruments of production will become the property of society, owned in common, producing for use, for the general welfare of the people as a whole. With the abolition of the private ownership of the means of life and with it the factor of profit as the prime mover of production, the sharp divisions of society between nations and classes will disappear. Then, and only then, will society be in a position to become a social order of abundance and plenty for all, for socialism will create a new world of genuine cooperation and collaboration between the peoples of the earth. In abolishing classes in society, socialism will change the form and type of governments which exist today. Governments will become administrative bodies regulating production and consumption. They will not be the instruments of the capitalist class, i.e., capitalist governments whose main reason for existence is to guarantee the political as well as the economic rule of big business, their profits, their private ownership of the instruments of production, and the conduct of war in the economic and political interests of this class. The preoccupation of socialism will be to assist in the elevation of society, to improve continually the living standards of the people, to extend their leisure time and thus make it possible to heighten the cultural level of the whole world. In abolishing classes, class government and war, socialism will at the same time destroy all forms of dictatorship, political as well as economic. World socialism will be the freest, most democratic society the world has ever known, truly representing the majority of the population. A citizen of a socialist society will look back upon the capitalist era with its wars, destruction and bloody and cruel dictatorships as we now look back upon the dawn of written history. A socialist world will assess the industrial potential of the world, determine its resources, the needs of the people and plan production with the aim of increasing the standards of living of a free people, creating abundance, increasing leisure and opportunity for cultural enjoyment. Socialism will not concern itself with profits and war, but with providing decent housing for all the people. Socialism will provide for a multitude of schools for all the people. Socialism will eliminate illiteracy, which is one of the hallmarks of capitalism, and cease to regard schools primarily as institutions to produce skilled labour to help operate the profit economy. Socialism will create a system of health CARE in which the needs of the people and the improvement of the human race would be the paramount consideration,
Above all, socialism will provide jobs for all. But this will be work without exploitation. For the aim of socialism is not the increased exploitation and intensification of labour, but the utilisation of machinery, technology, science and invention to diminish toil, to create time in which to permit all the people to enjoy the benefits of social progress. The modern world already contains all the pre-conditions necessary for socialism. All about us we observe gigantic industrial establishments containing machinery which could produce the goods of life in abundance. Man has developed a marvellous technology. The discovery and control of atomic energy has not only made it more possible for man to control his natural and social environment to create a fruitful life of abundance, but has made it imperative. Socialism will place at the disposal of science and the scientists all the material means to help create an ever-improving social life for mankind. Under capitalism, scientists are mere wage workers hiring out their skills to private industry. The fruits of their intelligence, learning arid research become the exclusive property of the capitalists who profit from the labours of these scientists. Thus, science has become subordinated to profits rather than to the common good of all mankind. Yet the future society depends in large measure on changing this relation of science to society. Only socialism can place science where it properly belongs: in the service of the people.
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Spanish Poverty
Internas (live-in maids) or carers in Spain are underpaid, overworked, unappreciated, often from different countries – Paraguay, the Dominican Republic, to name a couple, trapped, sometimes scared, frequently disdained and often abused. They should be receiving at least the minimum wage of €950 a month, but many make closer to €800 despite working 18-hour days, six days a week.
“We look after old people, we look after children – we’re responsible for all that’s most precious in people’s families,” said Janina Flores, from Peru. “We act as psychologists and confidants, we double up as seamstresses. But we’re not valued.”
Another Peruvian, Adriana Araujo, added cook, butler and pet-sitter to the list. “We do everything you can imagine and more because we’re seen as the right kind of domestic tool,” she said. “But very often we’re valued less than a kitchen blender.”
Philip Alston, the UN’s special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, explained the irony they had outlined – “that people can rely so heavily and so intimately on another person but, at the same time, not really relate to them as a fellow human being.”
Blanca Coronel, a 71-year-old Paraguayan woman who had been in Spain since 2006, said that despite her age and a knee injury she would need to work for another 10 years before she would have accrued enough pension contributions to retire.
Sandra Delgadillo, from Bolivia, recalled being interviewed for a job looking after an old man with a broken hip and being told there would be a bonus if she were prepared to be sexually available.
According to figures from Spain’s National Statistics Institute, 26.1% of the population lives at risk of poverty or social exclusion, up from 24.7% in 2008, while the unemployment rate of 14.1% is more than double the EU average. About half the population have some difficulty making ends meet, and poverty is persistently higher among children, migrants, and Roma populations.
“We look after old people, we look after children – we’re responsible for all that’s most precious in people’s families,” said Janina Flores, from Peru. “We act as psychologists and confidants, we double up as seamstresses. But we’re not valued.”
Another Peruvian, Adriana Araujo, added cook, butler and pet-sitter to the list. “We do everything you can imagine and more because we’re seen as the right kind of domestic tool,” she said. “But very often we’re valued less than a kitchen blender.”
Philip Alston, the UN’s special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, explained the irony they had outlined – “that people can rely so heavily and so intimately on another person but, at the same time, not really relate to them as a fellow human being.”
Blanca Coronel, a 71-year-old Paraguayan woman who had been in Spain since 2006, said that despite her age and a knee injury she would need to work for another 10 years before she would have accrued enough pension contributions to retire.
Sandra Delgadillo, from Bolivia, recalled being interviewed for a job looking after an old man with a broken hip and being told there would be a bonus if she were prepared to be sexually available.
According to figures from Spain’s National Statistics Institute, 26.1% of the population lives at risk of poverty or social exclusion, up from 24.7% in 2008, while the unemployment rate of 14.1% is more than double the EU average. About half the population have some difficulty making ends meet, and poverty is persistently higher among children, migrants, and Roma populations.
At a housing estate in Torrejón de Ardoz, a town a little north-east of Madrid homemade banners decried soaring and abusive rents and where dozens of locals people turned out to tell the UN expert how they had been affected by the arrival of investment funds that bought up billions of euros’ worth of housing stock during the crisis. Rents have risen 50% since 2014, and some residents say they are now being asked to pay big increases by their multinational landlords. The situation has led to the formation of tenants’ groups and the eruption of bloques en lucha – entire blocks where residents are protesting by staying put, paying the previous rental rates and refusing to sign new contracts that they consider to be grotesquely unfair.
Alston told the crowd that “something drastic needs to be done”, adding: “Successive Spanish governments have done very little when it comes to housing rights.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/06/un-poverty-experts-visit-shines-light-on-struggles-of-spains-poor
Population Matters (Not so Much)
The world’s population is on the decline. For decades we’ve read frightening headlines about the consequences of overpopulation, from food shortages to resource wars. But it turns out that the world’s population growth rate is now half of what it used to be.
The fertility of half of the world’s population is already below the replacement ratio. There has been a global decline in the number of children women are having. The fertility rate drop meant nearly half of countries were now facing a “baby bust” – meaning there are insufficient children to maintain their population size. There would be profound consequences for societies with more grandparents than grandchildren. As fertility falls, countries initially benefit from having a bulk of working-aged adults and relatively fewer dependent children and old people — known as a “demographic dividend.” Eventually that benefit reverses: By 2050 developed countries will have twice as many old people as young ones.
All this does not mean the number of people living in these countries is falling, at least not yet as the size of a population is a mix of the fertility rate, death rate and migration. It can also take a generation for changes in fertility rate to take hold. Fertility rates continue to fall, yet the predictions are that the world population will continue to rise 10 billion inhabitants by the end of the century. That’s because the fall in fertility rates takes a long time to show up as a subsequent fall in birth rates. “Demographic momentum” wears on because there’s still a generation of people born in the previous echo baby boom (The first Echo Boomers were born between 1977 and 1982. The last Echo Boomers were born 1994 to 2004) who are just entering their reproductive years. This also means it is imperative that to cope, we must change the nature of society which already is incapable of providing for almost a billion of its citizens.
Prof Christopher Murray, the director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, told the BBC: “We’ve reached this watershed where half of countries have fertility rates below the replacement level, so if nothing happens the populations will decline in those countries…We will soon be transitioning to a point where societies are grappling with a declining population.”
OurWorldInData.org researcher Max Roser reports “The richer the people, the lower the fertility.”
When more infants survive fertility goes down and the temporary population growth comes to an end. If we want to ensure that the world’s population increase comes to an end soon we must work to increase child survival. It’s not numbers. It’s how we treat the quality of life for individuals.
According to Wolfgang Lutz, of the Vienna University of Economics and Business, the reason for the fertility decline, in a word, is education. “The brain is the most important reproductive organ,” he asserts. Once a woman receives enough information and autonomy to make an informed and self-directed choice about when to have children and how many to have, she immediately has fewer of them and has them later. “Once a woman is socialized to have an education and a career, she is socialized to have a smaller family,” he explains. “There’s no going back.” Lutz and his fellow demographers at Vienna’s International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) believe that advancing education in developing countries, brought about by increasing urbanization, should be factored into future population projections. Lutz believes the human population will be shrinking as early as 2060.
His is hardly a lone voice. Jørgen Randers is a Norwegian academic who co-authored The Limits to Growth, which predicted that global population would reach unsustainable levels by 2100. But since publishing the book, he has changed his mind.
“The world population will never reach 9 billion people,” he now believes. “It will peak at 8 billion in 2040 and then decline.” He attributes the unexpected drop to women in developing countries moving into urban slums. “And in an urban slum, it does not make sense to have a large family.”
Canadian journalist John Ibbitson and political scientist Darrell Bricker re-examined the UN forecasting models ‘In Empty Planet,’ to conclude that global population will start dropping in about 30 years, and warn ‘once that decline begins, it will never end.’
Poor in Poor Exam Results
A breakdown of GCSE results issued by the Department for Education (DfE) showed the gap between disadvantaged pupils and others increased for the second year in a row.
Just 456 of the 143,000 pupils classed as disadvantaged by the DfE achieved top grade 9s in English and maths last summer, compared with 6,132 out of 398,000 other pupils.
While more than two-thirds of non-disadvantaged children achieved grade 4 or higher in maths and English, just 36% of those eligible for free school meals did so.
Of boys eligible for free school meals, those from mixed white and black Caribbean backgrounds had the weakest results, along with children from Gypsy or Roma families. Of girls eligible, those from a white British background also ranked lowest for attainment in English and maths among the main ethnic groups.
“Some groups of disadvantaged pupils make less progress than others because of challenges in their lives, and this can penalise schools with more disadvantaged pupils,” said Duncan Baldwin, deputy director of policy at the ASCL.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/feb/06/attainment-gap-widens-disadvantaged-pupils-gcse-results-england
Just 456 of the 143,000 pupils classed as disadvantaged by the DfE achieved top grade 9s in English and maths last summer, compared with 6,132 out of 398,000 other pupils.
While more than two-thirds of non-disadvantaged children achieved grade 4 or higher in maths and English, just 36% of those eligible for free school meals did so.
Of boys eligible for free school meals, those from mixed white and black Caribbean backgrounds had the weakest results, along with children from Gypsy or Roma families. Of girls eligible, those from a white British background also ranked lowest for attainment in English and maths among the main ethnic groups.
“Some groups of disadvantaged pupils make less progress than others because of challenges in their lives, and this can penalise schools with more disadvantaged pupils,” said Duncan Baldwin, deputy director of policy at the ASCL.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/feb/06/attainment-gap-widens-disadvantaged-pupils-gcse-results-england
I am Spartacus
Actor Kirk Douglas dies at age 103
Hurting the Vulnerable
Nearly half the 14 million people living in poverty in the UK are disabled or live with someone who is, research for a charity suggests.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation blames the high cost of coping with disability and the struggles disabled people face in finding jobs that pay enough.
Executive director Claire Ainsley said their plight was “fundamentally wrong.
The charity says “shamefully high numbers” of disabled people are being pulled into poverty and the social security system is failing to protect them.
“The fact that disability continues to be an indicator of poverty shows the economy is not working for everyone,” Ms Ainsley said.
The researchers found that, compared with the rest of the population, people with disabilities:
were less likely to be working worked an average 13 fewer hours a week lived in households that were worse off by £200 a week
And of almost 4.5 million informal adult carers in the UK, almost a quarter were living in poverty, with working-age female carers particularly at risk.
Disability benefits are supposed to help people cope with the extra costs related to their conditions but research by disability equality charity Scope has shown they fall short.
Households with disabled members are also much more likely to claim other income-related benefits, which have been frozen for the past four years while prices have risen, says Scope.
James Taylor, its head of policy and campaigns, said the findings were shocking, but not surprising.
“Life costs much more for disabled people – on average £583 a month.
“At the same time, huge numbers of disabled people are denied the opportunity to get into and stay in work.”
Enough is enough! Joe the Dolphin speaks out
I was born in a crossfire hurricane,
In a river for a house in the pouring-driving rain
That’s how the Rolling Stones – I bet there’s not a human alive over a certain age who hasn’t heard of THEM! – start their song Jumping Jack Flash. But rain never bothered me because I really was born in a river! Pouring and driving rain is just what I like. Yes, that’s right, I was born in a river – the lower Mekong River in southern Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam – you humans called it southern French Indochina for a while before I was born, before you mucked up my home with your endless wars against one another and against my environment. Especially devastating was the American bombing, which sharply reduced our population. Those bombers probably killed more dolphins than ‘Vietcong.’
Well, my name is Joe and I’m an Irrawaddy dolphin. I bet you didn’t see that coming! You humans probably named me after the Ayeyarwady River, presumably the river you first found us in.
Well, my name is Joe and I’m an Irrawaddy dolphin. I bet you didn’t see that coming! You humans probably named me after the Ayeyarwady River, presumably the river you first found us in.
Look, I’m appealing to you humans simply because it’s YOU, collectively, who are ruining my life and the lives of my family and my dearest friends! You humans and your shenanigans are the cause of most of our troubles.
Some of you know that we dolphins have really big brains despite being what you human animals call animals. You humans are members of the same biological Phylum, Class, Order, Family, and Genus as us. We are social animals too! I know that you have nothing personal against us, but sometimes it sure is difficult for us to understand why it is that whenever you humans are around things go wrong for us.
You humans seem to like to ‘poop in our pond,’ so to speak! You certainly do not seem very concerned, at least not many of you. Before you humans showed up recently, we were hanging out at our favorite spots throughout the lower Mekong River south of the Khone Falls, including Tonie Sap Great Lake and major tributaries such as the Sekong.
You humans seem to like to ‘poop in our pond,’ so to speak! You certainly do not seem very concerned, at least not many of you. Before you humans showed up recently, we were hanging out at our favorite spots throughout the lower Mekong River south of the Khone Falls, including Tonie Sap Great Lake and major tributaries such as the Sekong.
We Irrawaddy dolphins used to like to visit others of our species and sub-species up and down the length of our river. You call it the Mekong — we just called it Home Sweet Home. But now, ALL because of YOU and the dirty things you do to us, we are confined to only 190 kilometers of the river – and it ain’t the best part neither!
We too are social animals. We like to hang out in groups of 2 or 3, sometimes as many as 25, but our real preference is for a group of half a dozen – enough to help one another without a lot of bickering. We ain’t perfect either, but WE try!
It’s kinda cool that many Laotians and Cambodians believe that we are reincarnations of their ancestors. It could be because some of us have saved some of them from drowning or from crocodile attacks. Crocks are brutes, all of them, and although some of you humans are too it is not apparent to us which of you are and which are not. So we make no distinction and help you if we can.
Some of you humans seem to want to ignore the fact that we even help you out from time to time with your fishing enterprises – true, only when there is benefit for all concerned. When you bang on the hulls of your boats with sticks we often pay heed and try to drive fish into the area where you throw your cast-nets, though we do expect you to toss a few stunned ‘trash fish’ – of no commercial value to you – back into the water as a tasty little snack for us and a well-deserved reward for our labors.
But it seems to us that you humans are consumed with squabbling to get more, more, more all of the time. A report from 1879 has come to our attention (don’t ask how – that is something I can’t talk about) that ‘legal claims were frequently brought into native courts by fishers to recover a share of the fish from the nets of a rival fisher which the plaintiff’s dolphin was claimed to have helped fill’ (P. Stacy and P.W. Arnold, ‘Orcaella brevirostris’ (PDF), Mammalian Species, 1999—2005). One fisher human refers to a fellow fisher human as a ‘rival’ and claims one of my relatives as his private property! Astonishing impudence! Disgusting! This property system of yours stinks. Whew!
When you humans realized that many of my relatives were being drowned in fisher humans’ gill-nets and drag-nets with large mesh size, you made their use illegal. Almost three quarters (74%) of dolphin deaths were attributed to this netting practice. So some of you humans then decided to use high-voltage cables, strung through the water in our neighborhood, to stun or kill as many fish as possible. Never mind that they also killed some of us!
Being drowned in your nets was bad enough, but at least it happened only to those who accidentally swam into the nets. The high-voltage electrical charge was indiscriminate. We had only to be in the vicinity to get electrocuted. True, its range was limited – but still wider than a net. And many of the corpses drifted away in the river current, undetected and uncollected.
And then some of you humans started to use a simpler, more direct, and much cheaper method (cost appears to be very important to many of you, perhaps because it is related to gain or profit). Some of you just lit the fuse on a stick of dynamite and tossed it right into our front yard. BANG! – and plenty of dead fish floated to the surface, along with many of my friends and relatives! This was even more indiscriminate than the electrical charge, because it covered a wider area of the river. The shock waves from the explosions killed mainly by damaging our internal organs and traumatizing our brains. You must surely know that we have really LARGE, sophisticated, and sensitive brains.
Although if you kill too many of us what will happen to your tourist trade? Dolphin-watching tourism began in 1994 and has brought direct financial benefit to all local human communities in our areas of Laos and Cambodia. The number of paying tourists in 2008 was 3,480. That number more than doubled to 7,200 tourists in 2011.
And now – the damned dam!
And now – the damned dam!
The Laotian government wants to build a dam across our river to generate electricity so that more of you humans can move nearer to our ancestral home and still get a monthly electricity bill. It ain’t working out too well for us just with those of you who are here right now. It surely ain’t gonna get any better for us with even more of you living nearby!
You must surely know that there is a terrible ecological price to be paid for disrupting and excavating primordial land! Or do you?
The official name of the dam is the Don Sahong Hydropower Project. The Laotian government knows full well that we are a sacred species in both Laos and Cambodia. The old tales in both countries tell of the part we played in human ancestry. I know that it is not all of you humans who want to hurt us, so the government should be removed for ignoring you and your traditions! The government always seems to ignore the will of the people. Why do you put up with it? According to your own traditions, some of us may be your great great-great-grandparents! So stop screwing us over and letting us get screwed over by the impersonal ‘others’ of the government!
Consider the environmental side of this question. Hey, fellow dolphins, look at me – a dolphin taking humans to ‘school’! I’m not erudite, you know. We dolphins aren’t fish: we don’t swim in ‘schools’! We swim in herds. But on with the lesson!
When you humans disturb the ecosystem by building your dam a myriad of consequences will ensue. The run-off of water will be altered. Oxygen-producing, carbon-dioxide-absorbing trees, plants, and grasses will be affected for the worse. The dam itself will divert the flow of the river and change the natural patterns of river bank erosion. It will also change the depth of the river at many locations. There will be plenty of other unexpected changes to the ecosystem and biosphere.
It doesn’t matter whether or not you believe in global heating. You do not have to believe in something for it to end up killing you. This planet that is home to both dolphins and humans could become uninhabitable for humans, for dolphins, for all sentient tellurians! Are you going to allow your governments to orchestrate our common funeral?
There are many safer and cleaner ways to generate electrical power: photoelectric solar panels, solar mirrors, ocean tidal energy capture systems, windmills, hydrogen-burning systems that produce only water as a by-product. And many more are under development in your laboratories.
The cement used in building this one hydropower project will release tons and tons of greenhouse gases into the already damaged atmosphere. Westerners consider Laos and Cambodia underdeveloped countries, so they discount your ability to come up with your own solutions to problems created not by you but by the supposedly enlightened Westerners. So why listen to them now? Are THEY not the culprits?
The cement used in building this one hydropower project will release tons and tons of greenhouse gases into the already damaged atmosphere. Westerners consider Laos and Cambodia underdeveloped countries, so they discount your ability to come up with your own solutions to problems created not by you but by the supposedly enlightened Westerners. So why listen to them now? Are THEY not the culprits?
It must be our object to get the money out of this damned dam. The way to do that is to show that the rising cost of mitigating the damage it does will eventually render the dam unprofitable and unsustainable. Over the course of its operational life it will cost more than it is worth. And we Irrawaddy dolphins forewarn you of what lies ahead for you too.
Show us Irrawaddy dolphins that you humans are not carrying around those large brains you have in your skulls as mere ornaments. Show us how good they are for making wise decisions about vital issues. ‘Impossible,’ you say? ‘Impossible’ is NOT a fact — it is an opinion!
Show us Irrawaddy dolphins that you humans are not carrying around those large brains you have in your skulls as mere ornaments. Show us how good they are for making wise decisions about vital issues. ‘Impossible,’ you say? ‘Impossible’ is NOT a fact — it is an opinion!
There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part. You can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop (Mario Radio).
Enough is enough!
Joe Hopkins
https://www.wspus.org/2020/01/enough-is-enough-joe-the-dolphin-speaks-out/
Eco-Marxism
“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas.” ― Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach
Capitalist ideas are present in all parts of the society, including education, politics, the media and culture. Thus socialist ideas are rarely feature in political debates. The environmental movement and its books and journals seldom incorporate it within their analysis and the scientific community certainly does not include it in their solutions. While the climate crises requires a political response it is conducted within the parameters of what reformers consider immediately possible. The socialist claims of insolubility of the climate crisis through capitalism is dismissed. The Socialist Party’s contribution to the environment movement’s development is to emphasise that its goals can only be accomplished by the elimination of the capitalist economic system and the transformation to a socialist society. Only in a socialist society can the ecological problems capitalism creates be solved. The Socialist Party continually emphasises the necessity of transcending capitalism and creating a new society based on democratic ownership and control of resources and production. The features of capitalism – its drive for expansion, production for profit rather than social good, the inability to plan, and, ultimately, alienation of humanity from nature – make it inherently ecologically destructive. Our aim is to show the inability of capitalism to manage the economy sustainably or in the general interest and necessity of socialism.
Socialism presents a quandary for many radical greens. While engaging themselves in local grassroots activism and nongovernmental organisations forming transnational networks, this new global citizenship, the challenges to consumer capitalism obscure the continuation of the same old harsh realities that are fundamental to capitalist mode of production. No matter how much the patterns of lifestyles and consumption may change—no matter how decentralised or re-distributed they become—the basic structural reality of capitalism remains the same: EXPROPRIATION AND EXPLOITATION IN THE PRODUCTION FOR PROFIT. Capitalism is still a continuation of the centuries-old process of growth and incessant accumulation of capital through the expansion of world markets and attempt to control material resources and labour beyond national borders. Eco-activists neglect the exploitative process of capitalism—the expropriation of people’s surplus value for profit and thus diverts attention from what is at stake, which is the use of science not for emancipation of humankind from the realm of necessity but for profit. The question is that the resources of the planet can be can be used for meeting the needs of human kind, or it can be used to produce profit. It is not technology that is the problem, rather than capitalism. Equating environmental degradation with industrialisation, or new technology per se lets capitalism off the hook. The solution is not simplistically ending growth, but ending capitalism: ending production for profit and eliminating the exploitation of labour. Much of contemporary environmentalism cannot think the future of humanity outside of capitalism and instead embrace and accept capitalism working within the system rather than transforming it.
Ban the Boat
The Saudi Arabian ship, Bahri Yanbu, is heading toward Sheerness docks, after abandoning plans to dock at Antwerp where protesters, calling themselves “citizen weapons inspectors”, set up a checkpoint to halt any flow of arms. Bahri, the state-owned shipping company that owns the Yanbu, confirmed to Belgian media that military equipment was onboard.
Campaigners have now called on the British authorities to refuse permission for a vast Saudi ship carrying military equipment to dock in the UK because the Gulf kingdom is still embroiled in the war in Yemen.
Andrew Smith of Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) said: “This ship must be turned away. If it is carrying weapons for use in Yemen then they could be used in war crimes and abuses for years to come.” He added: “Arms-dealing governments like the one in the UK have played a central role in strengthening the Saudi dictatorship and fuelling the devastating war in Yemen.”
The ship has travelled from North America, where it has docked in the US and Canada, and is travelling around Europe before heading to Saudi Arabia and other nearby countries.
On a previous visit to several European ports in May 2019, the vessel was carrying US-manufactured military components and equipment worth $47m (£36m), much of it linked to military aircraft, according to Amnesty International. Containers of arms were loaded onboard in Belgium and Spain, and howitzer cannon were due to be loaded in France although pressure groups in the country successfully took legal action to halt the arms transfer at the time.
The Real Revolution
Virtually no one in the world doubts that today’s times have become desperate. Extreme weather events don’t just cost money; climate change costs lives across the globe and causes species extinction. The climate crisis is radicalising a whole section of the population but mostly many young people who are coming to conclusions that the system can’t stop global warming. Yet they look to governments and the free market for a solution which our rulers might accept, and hope the mighty and the powerful will listen to reason despite all the evidence of their indifference. Capitalism has simply proven incapable of stopping or limiting climate change. Capitalism craves profits is driven by ’short termism’ in its hunger for profits. Stock-market investment decisions are made on the basis on what will bring a return in the quickest time. Capitalist corporations, in order to survive competition, resist having a long-range outlook for their return on investment. So do the stockholders, or they will put their money into other corporations that do bring in quick returns. The corporations must make back their initial investment in plant and equipment quickly, so that their future profits become pure gravy. Concern for the environment, on the other hand, is a long term process that requires giving up the concept of profit in favour of satisfying human needs. Capitalism does not operate to satisfy human needs. Capitalism creates wants instead of satisfying needs.
Competition to create new markets calls for a continual new products that have little to no use-value to the consumer. Just how many different products do we actually desire? Up to the time of any new product’s introduction we have always gotten along fine without it. But through massive and inescapable advertising, we are addicted to cosmetics, new fashions in clothes, or giant SUVs. Profit maximisation is the goal. This constant introduction of useless or harmful consumer goods produces increased useless consumption of resources and increased harmful dumping of waste, with accelerating destruction of the environment at both ends of the process – natural resource inputs and waste product outputs.
Such a system cannot plan rational decisions about what to produce that is separate from the bottom line of profits. The capitalist class are incapable of seriously addressing the problem with their pitifully ineffective gestures at addressing global warming.
“What cared the Spanish planters in Cuba, who burned down forests on the slopes of the mountains and obtained from the ashes sufficient fertiliser for one generation of very highly profitable coffee trees – what cared they that the heavy tropical rainfall afterwards washed away the unprotected upper stratum of the soil, leaving behind only bare rock” (Engels, The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man)
Often accepting the argument that capitalism is the cause of climate change many climate activists, nevertheless, reject common ownership and the democratic running of production and distribution as the way forward. The Socialist Party is told that the situation is critical and there is no time to wait for the far-off revolution to come. Now is the time for ‘effective’ campaigning for “effective” reforms would will force governments to act with legislation and regulation and produce speedier results than any struggle to overthrow capitalism would.
Members of the Socialist Party answer is that whether capitalism has the solutions to the climate crisis is not the question. Instead it is very obviously failing so do so. Of course advocating socialism will not be all that is required but it is the primary demand. Seeking to change the lifestyle of consumerism and high energy use misses the point. It is not about consuming less for most of the planets inhabitants or even for most of the population in the west. It is about stopping capitalism from consuming the planet and ending the inequalities at its heart. The Socialist Party strategy is about building a movement that identifies capitalism as the cause of both climate change and all the misery and inequalities around the world. Our challenge in the Socialist Party is to win over environment activists to the struggle for revolutionary change to ensure the survival of civilisation in what may be greatest threat humanity has ever faced.
Only socialism can create a sustainable world. Only a system in which use-value, rather than exchange-value, is the basis of society can even contemplate reversing climate change. Only system people collectively control their shared needs, rather than a system that serves small privileged class for its own individual profit can, in fact, act in this way.
One idea subscribed to by many sincere campaigners, but also pushed deliberately by certain institutions, is that overpopulation in the world is the main cause of both global warming and resource depletion. Many claim that the Earth’s carrying capacity has been exceeded by too many people. In today’s world the problem is not too many people, but rather capitalism’s enforced poverty. The World’s population could be reduced by half or more and there would still be unemployment, poverty, disease, and all the other horrors of capitalism. Indeed when the world’s population was half its present size these scourges were just as prevalent. There is no solution to resource depletion and global warming – nor to poverty, racism, exploitation, and war – outside of world socialism.
Socialism is the only form of organisation in which the world’s people will be capable of solving all these problems and restoring a sustainable relationship between humanity and the rest of nature. Competitive forms of social organisation, such as capitalism, are not capable of taking any actions along these lines, other than token ones because of its inherent necessity of expansion. As long as capitalism exists, with its expansionist tendencies, we will be incapable of solving the problems of humanity’s interaction with nature, in which nature is used up in the drive for profits and the waste products choke and starve us. Only socialism will permit us to halt our accelerating advance toward the cliff-edge. The hazards of continuing capitalist exploitation of the working class are now clear. In order to save ourselves, working people must remove this obstacle to cooperative action. When we are able to rationally plan the production only of things we really need –coordinated and cooperative planning by a socialist society, without the interference of the profit motive, will permit us to act according to our needs.
