Green Socialism

Our planet is faced with an unprecedented environmental crisis. If the crisis continues to develop at its current rate, the result will be the end of human civilisation. The environmental crisis affects everybody. The blame for the environmental crisis must be laid at the feet of capitalism. Capitalism is a wasteful system of production, which is geared towards competition in the market, and to making profits. Businesses engage in practices which destroy the environment as they need to make the maximum profit possible. Businesses must grow or die. The nature of capital makes companies powerless to stop climate change, even if they wanted to.

Under capitalism, the needs of working people are not met. We reject the idea that the environment can be saved by means electing the environmental activists and making them the government which will then seek to modify existing capitalism, not to overthrow it. It requires working in alliance with the pro-capitalist political parties using the current nation- state as the instrument of change. They see the state as a benign neutral institution, which will intervene in the economy to solve the global warming problem. The state serves to uphold the status quo and all its evils

A new society based on co-operation rather than profit are ultimately the only real way to stop the environmental crisis. A socialist society will aid the environment in three ways. First, the capitalist system that was the main cause of environmental problems, a system oriented to profit and power, will be replaced by a society based on need-satisfaction. Secondly, the excessive levels of consumerism will fade the idea that happiness can only be gained by buying more and more useless commodities. Finally, sustainable technologies that currently not used will be applied to production and distribution.

The capitalists’ wealth and power should expropriated by the self-organized working class. Capitalism should be replaced by a cooperative commonwealth producing for use rather than profit, democratically self-managed in the workplace and the community, and federated together from the local level to regional and worldwide levels. There needs to be overall economic coordination on up to global level, by federations of self-governing industries and communities. Our critics protest that socialist goal is a nonstarter for the brief time there is left to save the world. Socialism is far more feasible if there exists a movement telling the truth about capitalism even if it is, so far, unpopular to do so.