Will an environmental earthquake shake the system?

 

There are many varieties of political parties that describe themselves as progressive and left-wing. Generally speaking, they all present policies for the abolition of unjust social conditions but diverge very much as to what would be 'just' conditions and, still more, how to bring them about. These days even mere attempts to improve capitalism are often called 'socialism,' while in reality, they are only reforms. But such reforms cannot be considered socialist because socialism does not mean to 'improve' capitalism but to abolish it altogether. The Socialist Party teaches that the conditions for working people cannot be permanently bettered under capitalism. 

The environmentalist movement has produced a new kind of politics full of audacity,  militancy and rebellion. The workers’ movements must follow suit to create many, many thousands of revolutionaries. Forms of coordination and organisation will evolve to bring a sense of unity. It is from our struggle and experience that new theories must be developed. It isn’t enough to go to rallies, to take to the streets, to trash bank buildings. We must begin now, step by step, through new and existing organisations, to build. Romanticism must be replaced by realism. The challenge for the environmental movement is to go beyond mass campaigning, demonstrating and fighting the propaganda battle, which always will be necessary but it also must recognise the need to try to stop capitalism. The enormity of the problem means any attempt to deal with world poverty within the framework of capitalist society is bound to fail since it accepts the priorities of capitalist society, privileged properly rights and the pursuit of profits.

The Socialist Party says that the workers can never become free and secure well being unless they abolish capitalism. The sources of production and the means of distribution must be taken out of private hands. Private or state possession of the things without which humanity cannot exist must therefore cease. The means of production and distribution should become common property. Opportunity for free access would do away with monopoly, with interest and profit, with exploitation and wage slavery. Social inequality and injustice would be eliminated, the classes would be abolished, and all people would become free and socially equal. Socialism is radical because it goes to the very root of the social trouble (radix meaning root in Latin); it does not believe in reforms and makeshift half-measures, it wants to change things from the very bottom.

Socialists propose that society collectively shall produce, not for profit, but in abundance to satisfy human wants. Every man and every woman can be economically free. They can, without let or hindrance, apply their labour, with the best technology that can be devised, and free access to the natural resources, do the work of society and produce for all.