Knowledge is power

The Socialist Party believes that society as a whole ought to own and control  the means of production and distribution, that all things that are jointly needed and used ought to be jointly owned—that which is the basis of our social life, instead of being the private property of a few and operated for their enrichment, should be be the common property of all, democratically administered in the interest of all. The Socialist Party opposes a social order in which it is possible for one person who does not need to do anything useful can possess a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while hundreds of millions of men and women who toil all the days of their lives can barely secure enough for a wretched existence. We must reorganise society upon a mutual and cooperative basis and to this end the World Socialist Movement have organised politically, regardless of nationality, race, colour, or gender. They are all making common cause, spreading with tireless energy the propaganda for a new society. We are still in a minority. But we have learned how to be patient and to bide our time. We know that the time is coming, in spite of all opposition, all persecution, when the case for emancipation will spread among all the peoples, and our minority will become the majority. We shall have the socialist commonwealth—the harmonious cooperation of all peoples on Earth. It will be the dawn of better days for humanity. People are awakening. In due time must come. Let the people everywhere take hope. The night is passing, and morning is arriving. The struggle must be won, for peace and prosperity will only come when they come hand in hand with freedom. We are all one—all workers of all lands. Solidarity will vanquish slavery.

Capitalist rule is based upon working class fools. Ignorance gives the capitalist the title deed to his property and possessions and ownership of his wage-slaves. Treason to despotism is loyalty to freedom. The capitalist class buys the law. Every  politician and exploiter extols “law and order.” That is their chief stock in trade. Let no media lackey say that we favour violence and bloodshed. It is false and malicious. We are not opposed to law and order. We are opposed to the shams and hypocrisies; the frauds and crimes that resist exposure as an attack upon “law and order.” The capitalist power rules by corruption. Where that fails it employs persecution. “Law and order” based upon industrial robbery and social crime have an insecure foundation and all the armed forces of the world cannot prevent such a foul fabric from going down.

The working class is ceasing to blindly follow the political tools of its exploiting masters. Chattel slavery and serfdom has disappeared. Wage-slavery has yet to be conquered. The struggle has already begun. There can be no compromise and no retreat. Workers have submitted to this exploitation long and patiently, but the limit has about been reached. Why should they have to deliver up to others the wealth they produce? Why not themselves enjoy the fruit of their own labour? These are the questions being asked. The wage system has only slavery for the working class. It has served its time and purpose and must soon be abolished. The workers do not need masters; they can and must be their own. To abolish wage-slavery requires the organisation of the working class, both economic and political. The working class must have a political party of its own and that this party, to be true to its historic mission, must demand the overthrow of the capitalist system that the cooperative commonwealth may be established and industrial freedom proclaimed.

The Socialist Party has already taken its place as the party of the working class. It is based upon the class struggle and demands the unconditional abolition of the capitalist system. 

Time is not on our side, We are running out of time

If the Glasgow climate conference fails to deliver, it could mark the end of the global approach to tackling the problem. Former UK minister Claire O'Neill has been tasked with presiding over COP26 and delivering an agreement acceptable to all. According to O'Neill, the president of COP26, the UK has "one shot" at making it a success. She told a BBC documentary that if Glasgow fails, people will question the whole UN approach. 

In December, there was widespread dismay after countries failed to agree on more ambitious steps at the Madrid conference of the parties known as COP25.

The messy compromise in the Spanish capital has also left a raft of complex issues unresolved, including the use of carbon markets, plus the question of compensation for loss and damage suffered by poorer nations from storms and rising sea levels.

Underpinning the lack of progress in Madrid was the huge gap between big emitters such as Brazil, Australia, India, China and US and an alliance of countries wanting to go much faster including the European Union, small island states and vulnerable nations.

O'Neill says that Glasgow is the best, and perhaps last chance to make progress under the long drawn out UN process.

"I think we have one shot," she said, speaking to the BBC at the end of the Madrid conference in December. "I think if we don't have a successful outcome next year people will legitimately look at us and say 'what are you doing, is there a better way?'"

Scientists say that to keep the rise in global temperatures under 1.5C this century, a major upgrade is needed on the plans that countries are already applying to the problem. Delivering anything close to that type of deal in Glasgow will depend on a number of key meetings in the run up to COP26. One of the most important is the summit between the President of China, Xi Jinping and EU leaders in Leipzig in September.

If the EU can persuade China to put an ambitious new climate plan on the table, it will significantly improve the chances of success in Glasgow.

"For China to enhance it's climate targets or not will be primarily a political and diplomatic decision, and that is precisely why the European engagement at the diplomatic level will be critical for us to unlock further climate ambition from Beijing," said Li Shuo from Greenpeace China. 

Rachel Kyte is now Dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University, but was previously the World Bank's special envoy on climate change.

She believes that agreement in Glasgow will need the UK to help shift the narrative - that a new climate deal offers more opportunities for countries than challenges.

"This is completely within our means. Most of the technology we need, we have. Most of the finance we have, it's just sloshing around in the economy just really inefficiently purposed at the moment," she said. "Governments and leaders need to understand they will be rewarded for being on the right side of history and for taking the risk, and it is one worth taking." She went on to say, "It's an exciting future, it's cleaner, the air will be better - we'll have better jobs, it is not a sacrifice, it is something we owe ourselves."

Such optimism from a one-time employee of the World Bank, an institution which has a history of promising the developing and undeveloped countries economic miracles if only they exercised austerity and imposed stringent cuts on welfare and social services does not instil much confidence.

There is an old Scottish saying, "And wishes were horses, poor men wald ride." We have had decades of international conferences and global summits to implement known solutions to global warming and yet consensus escapes those politicians. Ever wonder why? The answer is we live under an economic system that is based upon commercial competition and national rivalries. The destructive anarchy of capitalism reinforces the divisions between nations.

 Minqi Li , an Assistant Professor at the University of Utah once explained, “I think the underlying problem is that despite all the talk, rhetoric about effort to contribute to climate stabilization, and all of these governments primarily concerned with economic growth — or, in other words, capitalist accumulation — and so they are afraid of these climate stabilization effort will increase costs for capitalist accumulation, reducing capitalists' profit, and therefore they are not really making serious effort…since we right now still live in a capitalist system, unfortunately, the climate stabilization effort has taken place within this general framework of capitalism, which is therefore interacting with all of these profit motives. But since we have this system of profit motive, this effort to achieve climate stabilization probably will not succeed

And in relation to the hopes of China, she pointed out, "…right now the Chinese political power is in hands of bureaucratic capitalist elites, who basically only care about their own power and the profits. And, of course, under the pressure of public opinion, they need to make some gesture and they need to have some nice rhetoric, but that has not translated into really serious action.” 

What is to be done about global warming and the greenhouse effect caused by our pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere? Capitalism is ransacking the environment, changing the climate, degrading land and ocean, extinguishing other species, producing and disseminating novel and toxic substances. Capitalism is polarising the planet, making some  fabulously wealthy while impoverishing so many others, seizing the best land and evicting small farmers and devastating rural communities, leaving destitution in the midst of plenty. The capitalists sacrifice the balance of nature for the sake of plunder.  

The main point of the Socialist Party’s case is that because capitalism is the reason why we have climate change, then any attempt to halt it must be anti-capitalist and on that account, socialist. Because it’s a high-stakes issue, human survival itself,  socialism is required whose theory and prescriptions aim at undoing rather than reforming capitalism. A socialist society, in Marx’s words, is “the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of nature”. This is the precondition for a sustainable planet. As he pointed out “a whole society, a nation, or even all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the globe. They are only its possessors, its usufructuaries, [beneficiaries] and, like boni patres familias [good heads of households], they must hand it down to succeeding generations in an improved condition.”
 
Blaming foreigners for capitalism’s evils is a sure way to divide the working class and lead it to defeat. The only guarantee is to replace capitalism with a world worthy of humanity and the rest of nature. The utter failure of world leaders to get action on climate change is rooted in an economic system that can only see the natural world as a source of materials for the production process, or land-fill for its waste.

 The climatic and environmental threats to human survival must come to occupy central place among the concerns that inspire people to work for socialism, overshadowing all else. If civilisation as we know it is to have a chance of survival, it is contingent on the establishment of world socialism. If capitalism continues indefinitely, then sooner or later we are doomed. The sooner we establish socialism the better. But better late than never.The climatic and environmental threat to human survival will come to occupy central place among the concerns that inspire people to work for socialism, overshadowing all else.  

A cooperative worldwide commonwealth would put an end to the unchecked power and authority exercised by both governments and corporate powers. New techniques of production, transportation and communication will facilitate a world in which the entire population could be participating in the creation of a benevolent, sharing society.

Blockading Mossmorran

Climate Camp Scotland is to set up camp at Mossmorran petrochemical site where Shell has its Fife NGL Plant and ExxonMobil has its Fife Ethylene Plant.

It is an independent group of climate activist volunteers with strong links to Climate Action Scotland and Extinction Rebellion Scotland. More than 80 people chose the site at a meeting in Glasgow on Sunday.

It will take place for five days over a long weekend in June or July.

Their website states their aim is to "shut down the fossil fuel industry, ensure a just transition for communities and workers and create a world which is defined by fairness, not inequality". 

Climate Camps are a growing international phenomenon where activists set up camps over a number of days, providing a space to join the climate justice movement, to organise workshops and training and create a focus for direct action against the fossil fuel industry.

James Glen, Mossmorran Action Group chairman, told BBC Scotland: "We're very excited that Mossmorran has been chosen as a focus for climate action, and very grateful for the support that this will bring from activists in Scotland and further afield.

"Mossmorran is Scotland's third worst polluter, an essential link in the manufacture of plastics and a major recipient of fracked gas from the US.

"Despite all the rhetoric about a climate emergency and just transition, the Scottish government has done nothing about Mossmorran apart from rubber-stamping a £140m investment by Exxon. Shell is planning a further 50 years of operation.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-51266794

Climate Change - Capitalism Can’t Solve It
Capitalism requires perpetual economic growth in order to avoid economic crises. Capitalism requires increasing commodity production, escalating resource extraction, increasing trash and toxic dumping, and ever increasing energy production. Capitalism, by its very nature, must expand unendingly. Capitalism is not only incapable of responding adequately to the environmental crisis, it is the very cause of the crisis and can only make matters worse.

It is not enough just to oppose capitalism. We also need to create something better - an alternative system of human relations - socialism. It is not only desirable, it is imperative. The only way to deal with global warming is to rationally reorganise the economy sustainably and to collectively and democratically plan most of the world’s industrial economies. What is needed is socialisation of the means of production and distribution. All kinds of useless, wasteful and polluting industries must be eliminated. Under pressure from the public, clearly many corporations feel the need to do something but a close inspection reveals how ineffectual their solutions are. It simply involves “greenwash.” Global warming, for business policies,  enters the equation only after the fact, and too late, in the form of rising costs and pressure on profitability. Firms must compete to survive, while capitalist states compete in military, economic and political arenas. If abandoning fossil fuels requires investments that undermine a company or state’s competitive position, the pressure to resist change is immense. Inertia is further strengthened by the lobbying and market power of fossil fuel dependent corporations, above all in the energy and vehicles sectors. Accordingly, many measures taken by states and corporations ostensibly to mitigate climate change are cosmetic – they are designed to placate the public. For corporations, much of the climate crisis is a public relations problem to be managed at the least possible relative financial and market loss to themselves. Other companies see it as an opening for further capital accumulation, even if climate change is accelerated in the process. This is not a hopeful scenario.

There is a simple solution to climate change – a drastic reduction in the emission of the greenhouse gases yet the solutions offered usually calls upon individuals to change their behaviour. The Socialist Party has a different approach. We can only begin to address the problem of climate change. We begin by understanding it is a problem rooted within capitalism and that it is the priorities of capitalism is the reason why we see politicians fail to seriously reduce climate change. Capitalism is a barrier to reducing carbon emissions. Capitalism is the greatest threat to the planet’s well-being and the greatest obstacle to attempts to save it.

Sadly but not surprisingly, there is so little discussion of capitalism within mainstream environment movement where most people possess only a vague understanding of what we’re talking about. For many campaigners, “capitalism” is seen as something unchangeable, almost part of human “nature” so the existence of capitalism is not questioned and it is why it always off the negotiating table at the climate change conferences.

Naomi Klein defines capitalism as follows:

“Capitalism is an economic and social system in which the means of production are privately owned. The owners, or capitalists, appropriate the surplus product created by the workers. This appropriation leads to the accumulation of more capital, the amassing of wealth, further investment, and thus the expansion of capitalism. Commodities are produced for the purpose of generating profit and promoting accumulation. Within the capitalist system, individuals pursue their self interests against competition and impersonal forces of the market.”

This explains its inevitable drive towards growth and why corporations will not allow their profits to be curtailed.

Those activists who focus on changing lifestyles to achieve sustainability based their advocacy on the flawed notion that consumers are actually in charge of the market, that an enlightened public can simply choose to buy green or consume less. This view fails to recognize the role of marketing and its power to affect consumers’ behaviour: it’s the corporations that are in charge, not the consumers. People often have no choice concerning how or whether to spend their money. This individualist “feel-good” undermines the collective solutions required.

The Socialist Party - The Revolutionary Optimists

Homo sapiens, as social animals, hold a claim upon the society. This claim is the right to live as long as he or she is willing to perform a share of the work necessary for the community’s and society’s maintenance. This claim involves, in the first place, the right of free access to the means of life; in the second place, the duty of contributing to the support of the weaker members of the human family, such as children, the sick and infirm, the frail and the aged. This conception of human rights and duties can only flow from the acceptance of the principles of socialism. The object of every protest must be the undermining and ultimate overthrow of wage slavery and if it lacks this vital element it is but a blind revolt and has to be fought over and over again until the eyes of the slaves are finally opened to what they are up against. It is imperative necessity to take possession and control away from our masters.

Human society has always consisted of masters and slaves, and the slaves have always been and are today, the foundation stones of the social fabric. Wage-slavery is the fact. This is the plain truth of what is known as the job market. They who buy and they who sell in the job market are alike dehumanised by the human trafficking in the brains and brawn of human beings. Without this commerce in human life capitalist civilisations of all lands and all climes would crumble. The very moment workers begin to do their own thinking and understands the paramount issue, they will part company with the capitalist politicians and join their own class on the political battlefield. The political solidarity of the working class means the death of despotism, the birth of freedom, a new dawn for  civilisation. The capitalist system is no longer adapted to the needs of modern society. It is outgrown and fetters the forces of progress. Industrial and commercial competition are largely of the past. The handwriting is on the wall.

The Socialist Party stands squarely upon its principles and relies wholly upon the the eduction of the working class.

The Socialist Party makes no promises.

The Socialist Party is the herald of the future.

When wage slavery is as dead then the Socialist Party will have accomplished its mission and fulfilled history.

The vote expresses the people’s will. The vote means that people are no longer dumb, that, at last, it has a voice, that it will be heard and shall be heeded. All working people owe it to themselves and their class to take an active and aware interest in political affairs. Centuries of struggle and sacrifice were required to wrest the vote from tyrants and place it in the hands of the people as the sword and shield of attack and defence. Capitalist progress has done little for the worker except to modify the forms of its exploitation. It will always be until the class struggle ends in class extinction and free society. Society has always been and is now built upon exploitation—the exploitation of a class—the working class, whether slaves, serfs or wage-labourers, and the exploited working class in subjection have always been, instinctively or consciously, in revolt against their oppressors. Through all the centuries the enslaved toilers have moved slowly but surely toward their final freedom. The people are as capable of achieving their industrial freedom as they were to secure their political liberty, and both are necessary to be free.

The call of the Socialist Party is to the exploited class, from the most menial to the most skilled, to muster under its banner and put an end to the last of the barbarous class struggles by conquering the capitalist state, taking possession of the means of production and making them the common property of all, abolishing wage-slavery and establishing the co-operative commonwealth.

The old order can survive but only a little longer. The days of crisis are drawing closer and socialists are exerting all their influence to prepare the people for it. Soon that minority will be the majority and then will come the co-operative commonwealth. Every friend of social justice, every lover of humanity should support the Socialist Party as the only party that is organised to abolish wage slavery and political despotism.

The overthrow of capitalism is the object of the Socialist Party. It will not ally itself with any other party and it would rather die than compromise. 

The Socialist Party comprehends the magnitude of the task and has the patience and confidence in ultimate victory.

The working class must be emancipated by the working class. Society must be reconstructed by the working class. The fruits of labour must be enjoyed by the working class. Bloody brutal war must be ended by the working class.

The Socialist Party fearlessly proclaim these principles and objects to our fellow-workers. We know our cause is just and that it must prevail. With hope and courage we march from capitalism to socialism, from slavery to freedom, from barbarism to civilisation.

Let them strengthen their position and prepare for the future by joining the Socialist Party, the only party which stands unequivocally for the working class. Let socialists everywhere follow its example and declare the class war, in every skirmish and every battle of the workers everywhere in the war of emancipation. All the wage-slaves of the earth, white and black and brown and  and yellow, will abolish the privileges of their masters and become citizens of the world. This is the mission of the world socialist movement. Between workers and capitalists there is war to extinction. The capitalist class must go and the sooner the better for all concerned, themselves included. We are emerging from the darkness of the night and moving toward the light of the dawn, from competition in individualism to individuality in cooperation, from war and despotism to peace and liberty.

Socialism is a growing idea. It is as futile to hinder it as it would be to stop the sunrise. It is coming. Can you not see it? If not, I advise you to consult an optician. There is certainly something the matter with your vision.