Nobody can change a world they don’t understand

For the Socialist Party, abundance is not the complete satisfaction of all conceivable material needs (it is hard to see how that would be possible) but providing for all our basic and secondary needs. There is no reason to hold that our vision of socialism and a sustainable environment are in conflict. Our focus is with the free development of human capacities, not with the growth of material production and consumption for its own sake. It is not just a question of taking over and reproducing the existing form of economic organisation as it exists under capitalism. Tackling climate change means demonstrating that the solution requires the reorganisation of society, that we face not technical but economic barriers. Partial demands under capitalism run the risk of being subverted by capitalism. It points to the limits of reforms under capitalism and the necessity of a revolutionary transformation of society. Concentrating upon lifestyle changes is in danger of taking us away from a real onslaught on the political structures of capitalism and towards the cul-de-sac of changing individual behaviour. Capitalism which operates for maximum corporate profit cannot halt its march to destruction even if some of the 1% do recognise the need for reforms. It requires replacing capitalist profit with production for real human need, and a substantial transformation of how we live and work, in ways that only a fundamentally democratic and fully participatory society can hope to achieve. There isn’t time to waste.

The most critical issues facing mankind's future on the planet have generally not been treated as a priority and the “solutions” proposed are the wrong ones. An ecologically rational society is incompatible with capitalism. We cannot slide into suggesting that capitalism reforms could avoid ecological catastrophe. Capitalist production and “the market” cannot and will not halt climate catastrophe. The struggle to halt environmental destruction and capitalism itself must be waged simultaneously. Decarbonisation is simply incompatible with the most basic imperative of capitalist production. That imperative is growth — meaning the growth of production for profit, whether or not such growth enhances or degrades human lives, the viability of life on Earth, or anything else. The absolute urgency of cutting way back on fossil-fuel consumption is going to require, inevitably, a reduction in growth in that sense — although if properly organised, not necessarily a reduction in production for human needs. The production of war materiel and plastic wrapping is profitable, in a way that clean water for two billion folks who can't pay “market price” may never be. In a capitalist market economy, each unit — each enterprise — must profit at whatever expense, or die. Honorable intentions make little to no difference. And each capitalist nation-state can be expected, under DDP or any similar project, to advance the interests of its own leading businesses' and industrial corporations' interests.

Our society is based on private property, which means that a few people own the means of life. This leaves a lot of people who are virtually propertyless. and who therefore have to work for the few owners. In this work, they create a surplus which must be sold so that the capitalists can realise their profits. These profits are used by and at the discretion of the international, wealthy ruling class. Capitalism can be attacked coldly, with fact and arguments on economics, history and the rest. This does not mean that we do not see through the cloying mess of moral standards and human values which capitalism foists on us. It is useless merely to try to be humane; for many, an uphill struggle to implement a reform has been followed by capitalism's unhappy knack of encroaching upon the reform, when it clashed with some sectional economic interest. No, we need a bigger change than that. Something to make human beings free and secure. 

 Anger and outrage seem to have lost its usefulness as a call to action in these times of mounting despotism.   Ignorance is growing as the corporate-controlled media is use as a tool of domination and when political education is not viewed as central to politics itself but substituted by banal sound-bites and vacuous sloganisation. Unapologetic for the widespread horrors, gaping inequality capitalists have joined in the discourse of hate and culture of cruelty and our fellow-workers offer unquestioning obedience to the powerful "strongman" who advocate patriotism, racial and ethnic cleansing as the "protection" of the superiority of a select national group.

The Socialist Party wants a new social system based upon the common ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution. We are not in favour of capitalism of any sort because we know that, whatever efforts are made to reform the system, it will continue to produce problems like poverty and war. Our critics offer only the old plea that we should drop our work for socialism until we have sorted out one more of capitalism’s problems. We have heard this plea many times before, from organisations which were worried about unemployment, or fascism or some other side-effect of capitalism. Indeed, some of these organisations have had the chance to apply their reformist ideas. How have they turned out? The Socialist Party has always stood for the social revolution which will sweep away capitalism and all its false social values. This will be the complete, only and once-for-all cure for the problems of capitalism. To stand for anything less could mean that we would end up by supporting the very thing which we originally professed to oppose. 

We need a world socialist movement which brings together all the various single-issue campaigns drawing together all the threads that connect them.  In addition, we need clarity that crosses borders. Our choice is to continue to accept capitalism as a given and try to squeeze whatever crumbs it might be willing to let fall from its table. Or Radically change direction and begin to build a global movement that can transcend capitalism once for all.