Not too Rough

The year 2014 has turned out to be pretty awful for most workers as the living standards of many of them has declined as their wages have not kept up with the rising cost of living. The year has however been a boom one for the capitalist class. The Boat International magazine has reported a wonderful year for the sale of super yachts. '... estimates that, in terms of length, 9,337m of superyachts were sold across the globe in the calendar year to July 2014, up from 6,716m last year, amounting to sales worth some 1.99 billion euros (£1.6 billion), up from 1.39 billion euros.' (Times, 13 October) The report goes on to mention that Roman Abramovich's 163m Eclipse, which caters for 36 guests, requires 92 crew, includes use of a submarine and costs more than $2 million a week to charter. 2014 hasn't been too rough for some! RD

Eco-Socialism or Barbarism

We are on a climate change path that, unless radically altered, will lead to an unsustainable global warming of seven degrees Fahrenheit or greater. We also face the most serious employment crisis since the Great Depression, with wages that have stagnated for four decades and economic inequality now at levels not seen since the 1920s. A few unions have supported strong climate protection policies and have actively participated in the climate protection movement; many have stood aloof; a minority have feared their members’ jobs are threatened by some climate protection measures.

Organized labor’s approach to climate change has been primarily employment-based. Unions like green jobs, but they fear the potential job losses from phasing out carbon-fueled industries. This should not be surprising because unions are organized primarily to look after the specific employment interests of workers. Even the most far-sighted trade union leaders have a very difficult job: They must represent the immediate interests of existing members, some of whom may face job losses in the transition to a low carbon economy, while keeping in mind the longer term social and ecological concerns. The AFL-CIO and most unions have failed to endorse the basic targets and timetables that climate scientists have defined as necessary to prevent devastating global warming. They have promoted an “all of the above” energy policy that supports growth rather than reduction in the fossil fuels that are responsible for global warming.

Those in organized labor who are skeptical about climate protection efforts identify genuine problems in the policies proposed by environmentalists. They point out that the closing of coal-fired power plants, for example, will lead miners, truck drivers, and utility workers to lose their jobs—in many cases, the only well-paid union jobs in their localities. They argue that projects like the Keystone XL pipeline will provide jobs for workers who suffer from historic rates of unemployment. They maintain that a prosperous economy depends on cheap and abundant energy—so restrictions on fossil fuel energy could well lead to economic catastrophe. And they point out that restrictions on fossil fuel energy are likely to lead to rising prices for the energy to heat our houses, run our appliances, and drive our cars—price increases that will most hurt workers and the poor and further increase our society’s unjust economic inequality. But criticizing the weaknesses in mainstream climate policy proposals is not a strategy for combating climate change. Many mainstream climate protection programs—whether proposed for congressional legislation or for international agreements—embody or at least take for granted  austerity policies that will gouge workers, increase insecurity, aggravate inequality, and enrich speculators, while leaving our climate-destroying fossil fuel economy largely intact.

Nearly 12 million Americans are officially unemployed today, more than 8 million want full-time work but are only employed part-time, 2.6 million want to work and have sought work within the past year but are not currently looking for work.9 So a labor reserve of more than 20 million workers is available to go to work protecting the climate. Many unions are painting a portrait of themselves as an obstacle to climate protection. By putting workers  back to socially constructive work labor organisations can lead the struggle for a more just and sustainable economy

The Socialist Party are not the only ones who understand that capitalism cannot deliver a sound self-sustainable society. other writers too have contributed their critiques. Although we cannot  agree 100% with everything in the article the following is an extract that expresses much of our own view.

Eco-Socialism or Barbarism

“What has posterity done for me that I should do something for it?” 

The environmental crisis is different from all previously experienced crises in world history. For the first time in the history of mankind it seems probable that the human species will nearly wife itself out within a few decades. That means that the ecological crisis is not limited to certain
regions, but has a global dimension. The continuous degradation of the natural basis of life impairs the material basis of livelihood of a large part of humanity. A growing number of climate related catastrophes are generating frequent emergency disaster situations. The main cause of the destruction of nature on the one hand and that of the world-wide process of impoverishment or economic-social exclusion on the other are the same: the capitalist economic system.

The most serious defect of capitalism that is the cause of its unresolvable contradiction to sustainability is its growth dynamics. It is not just that the greedy capitalists want to have more and more. Brutal competition also compels them to try to earn and accumulate/invest more and more. “Expand or perish“ is an inexorable law of capitalism. Since no entrepreneur wants to perish, it generates a growth compulsion. Because of the ever larger investments that they are compelled to make to remain competitive, they must search for and create ever larger markets. In capitalism, all firms can make a profit only if the economy as a whole grows. The satisfactory functioning of a capitalist economy is so strongly dependent on continuous growth that even a growth rate below 2% is perceived as a crisis. But sustainability, as we have argued above, requires economic shrinking. Capitalists are willing to contribute to environmental protection
by producing more and more filters, sewage treatment plants and so on, but they can never be interested in any kind of shrinking of the economy.

Capitalists as capitalists are not interested in such growth in benefits to society; they are only interested in increasing their sales so that they can make more profit. Increase in sales can result either from selling more goods and services or from charging higher prices for less goods and services sold. But competition generally makes it very difficult for any entrepreneur to make more profit by selling less at a higher price. Long-lived and easily repairable products are therefore, generally, of little interest to entrepreneurs. Built-in obsolescence is therefore rational policy in capitalism. Any policy of drastically reducing resource consumption, which is ecologically necessary and inevitable in the long run, would, firstly, entail a massive redundancy of plants and equipment and destruction of financial capital (share value) in the mining industry. That would then, secondly, lead through a chain reaction to a general crisis in the economy. What factories, machines and workers in all other branches of the economy actually do is to transform raw materials and energy into goods and services, which are sold at a profit. If they are now allowed to process only one-fourth or one-tenth of the hitherto processed quantities of raw materials and energy, as some protagonists of sustainable development demand (Weizsäcker et
al. 1995; Schmidt-Bleek 1993), then a proportional quantity of factory and machine capacity and a corresponding part of the labour force would become superfluous. The end result of all that would be a great depression.

Competition also results in the compulsion to increasingly automate and rationalize production. A firm that does not do this will perish. That is why it is not possible to solve the problem of unemployment within the framework of a capitalist economy – not even if it is growing, let alone if it is compelled to stop growing or shrink.

Also the on-going dismantling of the welfare state is the result of a particular kind of competition: In the context of globalization, industrial locations compete with those in other countries to woo transnational capital.

Without questioning this system, we cannot halt or even credibly protest against this “race to the bottom“. Also societal sustainability is impossible within the capitalist system

Eco-capitalism is, therefore, a misnomer, a self-contradictory term. We cannot have both ecological sustainability and the growth dynamics of capitalism. Whatever fiscal, financial or direct regulatory tools governments might choose to use – green taxes or tradable pollution certificates or depletion quotas –, a shrinking capitalist economy would mean a catastrophe for the whole society, a never-ending great depression. Moreover, no capitalist can willingly accept a low-level steady-state economy. Therefore, the state must take up the task of organizing the retreat. It must be a planned retreat, otherwise there will be terrible chaos and calamity. The
state must overrule the primacy of profit and growth compulsion. That means, an economic framework-plan must take the place of the chaos of a free market economy. Society must consciously reach an agreement on what, how much and how to produce, how much energy and
how many resources are to be allocated to what.

In order to ensure that an eco-socialist society does not become an authoritarian one, suitable forms of active popular participation at all levels must be created. Since the economic regions would be small – or of amanageable dimension – and largely self-provisioning, the political units
would also be small or of a manageable dimension. So it can be made possible that the concerned people are included in the decision-making process.

A socialist society is not only a necessity that arises from the growing scarcity of resources and the imperative of conservation of the natural basis of life, it is also desirable if we consider equality, justice, co-operation, solidarity and freedom to be highly important values. A solidary and peaceful coexistence of individuals and the peoples of the world requires an eco-socialist society, in all countries of the world

Sourced from here 

Sarkar, Saral & Bruno Kern (2008) Eco-Socialism or Barbarism – An Up-to-date Critique of Capitalism. Mainz, Cologne: Initiative Eco-Socialism. 
http://www.oekosozialismus.net/en_oekosoz_en_rz.pdf

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/10/12/if-not-now-when-labor-movement-plan-address-climate-change

All Right For Some

The British government are at present boasting that the UK is enjoying a recovery from its recent economic recession and are of course claiming it is all due to their brilliance. While it is true that many firms have made a limited recovery and a return to more profitable trading. This recovery has only benefitted the owning class. British workers are suffering the longest and severest decline in real earnings since the mid-Victorian era, according to new analysis. 'Research carried out by the TUC suggests that the UK would have to go back to the 1860s for a pay squeeze as deep and as long as the current one. This year is the seventh consecutive year of falling real earnings for UK workers, the TUC claims, a situation, it says, that has no historical precedent. The body, which represents 6 million workers, calculates that there has been an 8% fall in real earnings between 2007 and 2014. (Observer, 12 October) RD

Behind The Facade

Not far from the Hollywood studios that produce escapist films about luxury and exciting lives lurks the real world that Hollywood keeps a secret. Here is a recent description of downtown Los Angeles. 'Tents made from shopping trolleys and tarpaulin line the pavements, and dozens of disabled men and women sit around in wheelchairs. As evening approaches, the crowd outside the Christian missions that offer food and shelter evoke images of third-world refugee camps.' (Times, 6 October). Apologists for capitalism are fond of portraying it as a society of glamour and splendid opportunities but the reality is completely different. RD

For a sustainable socialist world

Driving the message home.

The environment is constantly in the news and has become a major political issue. And rightly so, because a serious crisis really does exist. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat have all become contaminated to a greater or lesser extent. Ecology - the branch of biology that studies the relationships of living organisms to their environment - is important, as it is concerned with explaining exactly what has been happening and what is likely to happen if present trends continue. If it's not global warming and climate change, there is concern over future energy resources and rain forest depletion. The list of problems seems never-ending with the increasing human impact making serious inroads on finite resources. Hardly a day goes by when politicians, economists, environmentalists and the scientific community are not voicing their opinions and offering various explanations for the continual global degradation. The planet is now under threat of a worsening, dangerous environment for human and other forms of life. Without exception none of the solutions query the root cause of global environmental destruction. Consequently, all of the solutions are pro-market and pro-profit and the degradation continues unresolved. What is needed is an alternative solution outside of the capitalist mind-set and one that takes into consideration the ownership and control of our productive processes; in short the social ownership of the means of life. Only then will we be able to address solutions which will not only benefit all of humanity but also the global environment.

We live in a social system predicated on endless expansion. The blind, unplanned drive to accumulate that is the hallmark of capitalist production – the profit motive – has created the problem of climate change, not individuals profligate natures or overpopulation. There can be no such thing as sustainable or environmentally friendly capitalism. If the argument has been that it is capitalism that has caused the ecological crisis then the solution must be single and particular: get rid of the cause. Things won't change without a system change. Competing capitalist states cannot plan and coordinate on the global level required and that such planning could only realistically come about through a completely different way of organising production – one based not on making a profit but meeting human need. Only a society not driven by the profit motive would benefit both people and nature positively. Nothing short of totally re-modelling the world on a social, political, technological, cultural and infrastructural level within a fully democratic process carried out by those who will be affected by those decisions, with no nation states or borders and therefore no resource wars.

 Research on increasing environmental degradation has painted an alarming picture of the likely future if the profit system continues to hold sway. Voices claiming that the proper use of market forces will solve the problem can still be heard, but as time goes on the emerging facts of what is happening serve only to contradict those voices. The motor of capitalism is profit for the minority capitalist class to add to their capital, or capital accumulation. Environmental concerns, if considered at all, always come a poor second. The waste of human and other resources used in the market system is prodigious, adding to the problems and standing in the way of their solution. Earth Summits, conferences and treaties over the past decades show a consistent record of failure, unjustifiably high hopes and pitifully poor results. The Green Party and other environmental bodies propose reforms of capitalism that haven’t worked or have made very little real difference in the past. Socialists can see no reason why it should be any different in the future. There exists a vital need for a revolution that is both based on socialist principles of common ownership and production solely for needs, and environmental principles of conserving - not destroying - the wealth and amenities of the planet.

Production under socialism needs to be both co-ordinated and de-centralised. If we remove the agents for profit (corporations and governments of the capitalist system) and engage in honest democracy of the people, by the people and for the people, decisions can be made to halt damaging practices and implement methods of farming, fishing, mining, extraction, energy production, manufacturing etc. that do no harm to either man or environment. Safe working practices will be the norm. Resources can be protected and used carefully when incentive for their rape and pillage is gone. Energy usage can be reduced drastically in 1001 ways using alternative energies, building using integral insulation and energy conservation techniques, vastly reducing transport as work and societal practices change, stopping air freight of “luxury” and unnecessary goods, producing and manufacturing locally wherever feasible, etc. Local communities could have the final say on resources in their area with the possibility that sometimes the resource will be deemed off-limits and so remain untouched, and if no one is prepared to work mining or drilling to extract a particular resource then an alternative will need to be found.

There is the need for a revolt from below in support of social and ecological transformation, pointing beyond the existing system. The transition to socialism and the transition to an ecological society are one. Anyone who has heard our socialist case will know, the ‘abundance’ referred to has never referred to the open-ended consumerism encouraged by the advertisers but has rather as its target a stable and more satisfying way of life in which the scramble to get things is no longer central. With material survival removed from the casino of the marketplace by the abolition of commodity production we can expect that individuals will calm down their acquisitive desires and pursue more satisfying activities. 

Quote Of The Month

Quote of the month – as reported in the Toronto Star, August 17 - when John Larson, the former chairman of the House of Congress Democratic Caucus, was asked why the Democrats did not make minimum wage and election issue, he replied, "They think they'll raise less money from the Walmarts, the fast food industry etc." John Ayers.

Money Rules.

Recently, singer Neil Young compared Fort McMurray, Alberta, the home base of Keystone XL Pipeline to an atom bomb strike, " The fact is it looks like Hiroshima. Fort McMurray is a wasteland. The Indians up there and the native people are dying. The fuel's all over, there's fumes everywhere. You can smell it when you get to town." Young's comments came the same day that Canada's Natural Resources Minister, Joe Oliver, was in Washington talking up Canada's environmental policy and the Keystone project designed to carry Alberta Oil Sands bitumen to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast. "This is truly a disaster and America is supporting this" Young said. In short, money rules and to hell with the environment and people's lives! John Ayers.

“Enough!”

Once again repeating the message that if those concerned about the environment do not seek to end capitalism, the problem will never be addressed sufficiently to save the planet from possible destruction.

As long as human life persists we will be faced with a simple, unalterable fact. We live in a material world. Our lives, our thoughts, our feelings and desires, everything we value and hope to accomplish, no matter how solid or intangible are all made possible only because we have a material relationship with the planet.

In our present world, though, the Earth’s resources, which should be the foundation of our material and social wellbeing, turn out to be the source of untold human misery. The cause lies not in the resources themselves, nor even in our relationship with them, but in the relationships we form among ourselves in human society. Private property divides us and forces us into competition with each other for the resources that nature gives freely. The demand for profits puts urgency into that competition and drives it to conflict, open or covert, local or global. It is seen everywhere: in the Brazilian rainforest where indigenous people and activists are killed, maimed and driven from their homes by loggers and mineral prospectors; in the Philippines where the killers are claimed to be the police, the military or the private security forces of the mineral companies themselves; in the Democratic Republic of Congo whose untold mineral wealth has been a source of local conflict for over seventy years, a conflict funded by multinational companies, happy to supply access to arms in return for the vast mineral wealth of the country. We’ve seen it in the huge global conflicts of two world wars, more recently in the oil wars of the Middle East, and now in mounting struggles over the world’s dwindling water supplies. Everywhere!

Despite our mutual dependence and our social labour, the world’s resources pass not into collective ownership but into the ownership of a few who have acquired a monopoly over them and over the means needed to work them into the things we need. Competition and the mechanics of private ownership direct those few along the path of private profit and not of social need. Now, as with everything else one can imagine, land is just another commodity to be bought and sold at the best possible price and to be acquired whatever the consequences for long-term incumbents. So too is everything it can offer – food, fuel, minerals and water – with the added bonus of investment and speculation. Even new technologies will not resolve the problems inherent in a social system where profit and cost provide and qualify the motivation for action, and fuel the rivalry over resources.So, now, most of us go insecure among great natural and created wealth; we spend our days at work but with no hope of controlling the work we do. We see a potential abundance all about us, but we have to make do with much, much less than we see. To all these things we give a single name: capitalism. None of this is any longer necessary. Isn’t it time we made a change?

The logical conclusion is for the whole world to be considered as a single unit. The best framework for dealing with the effects of climate change and the increasing pressures being put on natural resources by growing populations, and the demands made by agriculture, is to have all these resources owned in common and democratically controlled by the whole world community. So that agricultural production, and indeed all production, would be solely for the use of human beings and not for sale and profit. This would mean worldwide co-operation and co-ordination so that sustainable agricultural practices which have proper regard for bio-diversity would be the normal way of providing for the needs of people. This planet is our planet. Reclaiming the commons for the peoples of the world is a vital part of the socialist revolution.

Environmentalists often warn that unless adequate action to arrest global warming and climate change is taken within a clearly specified and relatively short period it will be “too late.” Socialists say the same thing, with the important proviso that “adequate action” must mean, above all, the establishment of world socialism. The urgency of the warning, it is hoped, will rouse people from lethargy to activism. The current state of scientific knowledge does not permit us to make categorical declarations of this sort. We cannot exclude the possibility that it will soon be, or already is, too late. Capitalism may have set in motion processes – perhaps processes that we do not yet even clearly perceive, let alone understand – on which no human ingenuity will have a significant effect. But nor can we exclude the possibility that it is not too late, that even 30, 40 or 50 years from now it will not be too late. If we do 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. The Planet Earth will continue to survive in one form or another. Humans are not actually destroying the planet, but merely hastening its change that will result in their own demise and other animal/plant species.  Without a doubt certain sections of world society deserve their own speedy demise such as the ruling capitalist class. People, collectively, have the power to bring about that demise. Governments and corporations are made up of plutocrats and oligarchs who are, in the main, diametrically opposed to and totally disinterested in the views and opinions of most of the world’s people. But it will be the people, who, by sheer weight of numbers, will end the tyranny that is being waged now by international capitalism on their habitat. People everywhere are shouting “Enough!” and are beginning to realise that their loyalty is to each other and to the maintenance of a protected, sustainable world environment, not just for now, but for all future generations.

Capitalism is a poisonous society.

Some may consider these environmental posts as unnecessarily repetitive but when we have to confront the continuous continual mainstream media's messages  we are required also to say the same thing over and over again, too. 

When we look at the world around us we cannot fail to notice the extent to which nature is being ravaged in the name of short-term economic gain. It is all too clear that the prevailing economic system of capitalist competition is quite incapable of seriously taking into account the long-term considerations of a healthy planet. On a global basis the alteration in the natural balance is taking place on a massive and unprecedented scale. One of the gravest criticisms that can be leveled against the capitalist system is that the application of the profit motive have been disastrous to the land. Throughout virtually the entire world, land is not used to produce the crop best adapted to it on a permanent basis but to produce as much cash as possible, as cheaply as possible, and as quickly as possible - the same system exalted by the industrial manufacturer. Almost everywhere, the land is being impoverished; its fertility flushed down the world's rivers or blown away by its winds or simply buried under an expanding carpet of concrete.

Every vote seeking politician in the world waxes eloquently about the urgent need for a curb to be placed on global emissions. They fly hither and thither across the world addressing congresses about their deep concern for the planet's future. Behind these vote catching antics however lies a more pressing problem - how to compete against international rivals in obtaining a larger share of the profits. For national governments to reduce industrial pollution would be economic suicide. Their costs would go up and they would not be able to compete with other nations that had not reduced their pollution. Inside capitalism in the battle between less pollution or more profits there is only one winner.  Businesses pollute because it is in their economic interests to do so. Oil companies. Supermarkets. Petro-chemical firms. Airlines. Globally they spend millions of pounds undermining environmental policy. Big businesses spend serious money on advertising and PR telling us that they are doing their bit for the environment. But away from the public eye they’re spending many millions holding back environmental progress. Airlines are spending millions to persuade governments to expand airports. Petro-chemical companies are blocking environmentally friendly measures because of the cost to them. Oil companies are funding ‘independent thinktanks’, designed to undermine serious climate change research. And they are all doing it for one thing. Profit. The big businesses concerned are only doing what they were set up to do – preserve and increase the wealth of their shareholders. This is an economic imperative as well as a legal obligation. The directors and executives of a business who did not seek to maximise profits and grow bigger could face legal action from its shareholders.

So what do many of the environmentalist propose to do about it? Campaign against the whole profit system and for a society in which there would be no profit-seeking businesses controlling production because productive resources would have become the common heritage of all and be used to directly provide for people’s needs? No, not at all. They accept the profit system and merely offer to restrain profit-seeking activities of big businesses by lobbying against their excesses. “We have nearly 40 year’s campaigning and political lobbying experience. So we know how to take on, and beat, the corporate bullies.” Friends of the Earth optimistically and unrealistically boast. They claim an “ability to influence change”

How might socialism approach the problem of maintaining the world’s eco-systems.

 Firstly, in socialist society, free of the constraints of the marketplace, it would of course be entirely feasible to allocate resources in such a way as to ensure their most productive use. Underpinning this freedom would be the unity of common purpose, a unity forged in the basic structure of a society in which all had free and equal access to the wealth that society produced.

Secondly, socialist society would obviously want to halt and reverse the long-term decline in soil fertility by improving the humus content of the soil. Not only would this make for the more efficient absorption of chemical fertilisers but would help contain further topsoil loss as a result of erosion. Whilst this would involve more labour intensive work which would require a larger agricultural workforce it should be borne in mind that one of the greatest productive advantages of socialism over capitalism is that it would release a tremendous amount of labour for socially productive work. At least half of the workforce today are engaged in activities that, although vital to the operation of a modern capitalist economy would have no purpose in a society where production was directly and solely geared to the satisfaction of human needs.

Thirdly, and most importantly, as a society freed from the profit motive and competitive pressures "to produce as much cash as possible, as cheaply as possible, and as quickly as possible", socialism will be able to adopt agricultural methods which achieve a working compromise with nature (for, as explained, all agriculture unavoidably upsets the pre¬existing ecosystem to a greater or lesser extent) respecting the long-term considerations which ecological science teaches are vitally important.

Fourthly, socialism would have no difficulty in developing and applying existing technology. Conservation production would mean employing methods that avoid using up and destroying natural resources. For example, standardised machinery could be designed with the minimum number of wearing parts which, with simple maintenance, could be easily replaced and the materials re-cycled and used again. For parts of machinery not subject to wear, durable materials which do not deteriorate could be used. If for some reason such machinery became redundant, the materials involved could be recycled and used again. The principle of conservation production could establish the practice that once materials became socially available after extraction and processing, they would be available for permanent use in one form or another. Thus socialism would bring into use means of production, permanent installations, structures and goods which would last for a long time, and even when redundant could be re-cycled for other uses. With its shoddy goods, built in obsolescence, and the pressure of the market to constantly renew its capacity for sales, capitalism is incapable of applying this production principle.

 If  environmental destruction are to be minimised then human behaviour — human productive activity, to be precise — must change, in such a way that what humans take from nature, the amount and the pace at which we do so, as well as the way we use these substances and dispose of them after use, should be done in such a way as to leave the rest of nature in a position to go on supplying and re-absorbing them. We call for a change of social system. We plead guilty to being human-centred for we do have a human-centred approach: we want a socialist society primarily because it will be good for human beings. It will also be good for the biosphere but, then, what is good for the biosphere is also good for humans.

We have indeed spoken of socialism in terms of abundance and our  green critics claim that human wants are "infinite" — interprets this as meaning that socialism will be a society of ever increasing personal consumption, of people coming to consume more and more food, to take more and more holidays, and to acquire more and more material goods. If humans wants were "infinite" then this would be the result of a society based on free access and geared to meeting human needs, but human wants are socially-determined and limited. Humans can only consume so much food, for instance, and only seek to accumulate more and more material goods in a society of economic insecurity like capitalism. In a society, such as socialism would be, where people could be sure that what they required to satisfy their needs would always be available  then we would soon settle down to only taking what we needed and no more. This is all we meant by talking of socialism as a "society of abundance": that enough food, clothing and other material goods can be produced to allow every man, woman and child in society to satisfy their likely material needs. It was not a reference to some orgy of consumption, but simply to the fact that it is technically possible to produce more than enough to satisfy everyone's material needs, thanks, we might add, to technology and mass production.

Meeting everybody's likely material needs will indeed involve in many cases an increase in what people consume. This will certainly be the case for the millions and millions of people in the so-called Developing World who are suffering from horrendous problems of starvation, disease and housing. So, yes, Socialism will involve increases in personal consumption for three-quarters or more of the world's population.  Impossible, say many Green environmentalists, this would exceed the Earth's carrying capacity and make environmental destruction even worse. Not necessarily so, we reply.  They confuse consumption per head with what individuals actually consume. To arrive at a figure for consumption per head, what the statisticians do is to take total electricity or whatever and then divide it by the total population. But this doesn't give a figure for what people consume as, in addition to personal it includes what industry, the government and the military consume. It a grossly misleading to equate consumption per head with personal consumption since it ignores the fact that consumption per head can be reduced without reducing personal consumption and that this is in fact compatible with an increase in personal consumption. This in effect is what Socialists propose: to eliminate the waste of capitalism, not just of arms and armies but of all the overhead costs involved in buying and selling. It has been estimated that, at the very least, half of the workforce are engaged in such socially-useless, non-productive activity. In a socialist society all this waste will be eliminated, so drastically reducing consumption per head. This will allow room for the personal consumption of those who need it to be increased to a decent level. Diverting resources to do this — and ensuring that every human on the planet does have a decent standard of living will be the primary, initial aim of socialism — will put up consumption per head again, but to nowhere near the level now obtaining under capitalism.

After clearing up the mess inherited from capitalism, then both consumption and production can be expected to level off and something approaching a "steady-state economy" reached. In a society geared to meeting human needs, once those needs are being met there is no need to go on producing more.  Population levels will stabilise too. This is a reasonable assumption, and is already beginning to happen, even under capitalism, in the developed parts of the world.  Population growth is a feature of the poorer parts of the world, suggesting a link between it and poverty and the insecurity that goes with it (the more children you have the more chance there is of someone to care for you in your old age). If you reject socialism all that is left is to envisage either compulsory sterilisation programmes, the revival of eugenics or letting starvation, disease take their course. Socialists emphatically reject such an anti-human approach. If that's what an "Earth-centred ethics" teaches then we want nothing to do with it. We'll stick to our human-centred approach, which embraces the view that the balanced functioning of the biosphere is something that humans should try to achieve since, as part of the biosphere, it is in our interest that it should function properly. There is in fact no antagonism between the interest of humanity and the interest of the biosphere.

In “Green Capitalism” James Heartfield reminds us that the profit system is essentially a system of rationing, which is now, in certain circles and in a variety of ways, being dressed up as “greenwashing” by Big Business and Governments – as the contemporary ruling elites reinvent scarcity in an age of abundance. His book has much to recommend it, not least for cocking a snook at both the modern-day misanthropes who see mankind as a plague upon the planet.

The Green Party imagines that, by firm government action, capitalism can be tamed and prevented from harming the environment. This is an illusion. You can't impose other priorities on the profit system than making profits. That's why a Green government would fail. The Green Party fails to realise that what those who want a clean and safe environment are up against is a well-entrenched economic and social system based on class privilege and property and governed by the overriding economic law of profits first.We say that no government can protect the environment. Governments exist to run the political side of the profit system. And the profit system can only work by giving priority to making profits over all other considerations. So to protect the environment we must end production for profit. Environmental degradation result from the inappropriate ways in which materials from nature are transformed into products for human use. But what causes inappropriate productive methods to be used? Is it ignorance or greed, as some Green activists claim? No, it is the way production is organised today and the forces to which it responds.  Business enterprises, all competing to sell their products at a profit and it doesn't matter whether they are privately owned or state-owned—aim to maximise their profits. This is an economic necessity imposed by the forces of the market. If a business does not make a profit it goes out of business. Under the competitive pressures of the market businesses only take into account their own narrow financial interest, ignoring wider social or ecological considerations. All they look to is their own balance sheet and in particular the bottom line which shows whether or not they are making a profit. The whole of production, from the materials used to the methods employed to transform them, is distorted by this drive to make and accumulate profits. The result is an economic system governed by uncontrollable market forces which compel decision-makers, however selected and whatever their personal views or sentiments, to plunder, pollute and waste. Governments do not have a free hand to do what is sensible or desirable. They can only act within the narrow limits imposed by the profit-driven market system.

Having said this, governments sometimes do intervene, in the overall capitalist interest, to restrain the activities of some business or industry where these activities are endangering the interests of all other businesses and industries. But they can work this out for themselves without the lobbying of no doubt well-meaning ecologists and charities.


If the climate change crisis is to be solved, this system must go. Capitalism has long been a world system and created the potential for abundance so there is no need for further globalisation and the concomitant wars and impoverishment of peoples and the planet.

Rude Awakenings

The BRIC countries are in something of a slump. The New York Times wrote, " India's once booming economy is sliding into a deep slump. The country grew just 4.4% this summer, a far cry from the 7.7% average for the past decade." Capital is flying away to better fields and, at least for now, the dream of plucking millions out of poverty is on hold. Just another day in (capitalist) paradise! John Ayers.

Lets Get A Real Perspective

In the continuing debate about chemical weapons used in Syria, horror is the usual reaction-' against the rules of war', say some. It is a truly diabolical event but does that make blowing people up or developing bullets that rip a body apart, legitimate? Let's get a real perspective on the whole business of war here! John Ayers.

The four-letter word: hope.

Another blog-post about socialism and the environment.

The Scottish Greens have said they expect their largest-ever conference when they gather in Edinburgh. They have reported a surge in party membership since the independence referendum.  Membership has more than trebled to 6,300.

Capitalism now threatens the continued existence of the world. The profit motive of capitalism is the driving factor and social mechanism of its malfunctioning. It is the social philosophy of class warfare. Given centuries of accumulated capacity to defend itself, the most likely outcome is that capitalism ends itself. With global wars and rapidly accumulating climate crisis, this end is not likely to be socially constructive.

The link of greenhouse gas emissions to industrial production, to capitalist production, is unequivocal. The motivation for capitalists to treat the world as their very own garbage dump is simple: it raises profits. This can be seen in the corporate profit equation: Revenue minus Costs = Profits, R – C = P. Here it is evident that reducing costs raises profits. Capitalists can either pay to prevent pollution, compensate those affected by it or they can ignore it. The first two ‘options’ are costs that reduce profits. The latter, simply ignoring pollution, doesn’t eliminate its costs, it shifts them from the capitalist to those affected by it. In the case of environmental destruction like global warming, dead and dying oceans and widespread toxic contamination, these costs are borne far and wide. Viewed in this light the profit motive makes it the political economy of catastrophe. Capitalist profits are directly linked to the capacity to force other people to bear the costs of production.

Governments and many of the mainstream environment lobby have sold out to big corporate interests who profit from dirty energy and false market-based climate change ‘solutions.’ Government and business have shown themselves incapable of responding to the climate crisis. Government and Big Business are taking actions that will result in damage from the corporate trade agreements that are designed to create massive profits for transnational corporations. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TAFTA) will drive an increase in fracking and off-shore oil drilling in the US for export to Europe. In addition, these agreements undermine the ability of communities to protect themselves because they give transnational corporations the legal power to sue governments if laws interfere with the profits corporations expect to make. (Adapted from here)

The New York Declaration on Forests was signed  by some 150 parties at a United Nations-organised climate summit. Outlining pledges and goals for both the public and private sectors, for the first time the declaration set a global “deadline” for deforestation: to “At least halve the rate of loss of natural forest globally by 2020 and strive to end natural forest loss by 2030.” The accord was formally backed by 40 multinational companies and financial firms, and seeks to “help meet” private-sector goals of halting deforestation linked to commodities by the end of the decade. Separately, the Consumer Goods Forum (CGF), consisting of 400 large companies with global sales of three trillion dollars, has pledged to remove deforestation from its supply chains by 2020.

 Since the agreement’s unveiling, some groups have voiced stark concerns, particularly around the declaration’s extended time-line and weak enforcement mechanisms. Indeed, the agreement is legally binding on neither states nor companies. “The 2030 time-line would allow deforestation to continue for a decade and a half. By then the declaration could be self-fulfilling, as there might not be much forest left to save,” said Susanne Breitkopf, a senior political advisor with Greenpeace, “Equally, private companies shouldn’t be allowed to continue deforesting and sourcing from deforestation until 2020 – they should stop destructive practices and human rights violations immediately.”

Greenpeace points out that the agreement is weaker than certain existing deforestation accords, and thus could even dampen forward momentum. “Most governments long ago signed up to the Convention on Biological Diversity,” she says, referring to the 1992 treaty. “That agreement obliges them to halt biodiversity loss and manage forests sustainably by 2020. Now, the New York Declaration threatens to undermine previous commitments.”

“The declaration seems to make those who have the capacities for massive destruction of community forests to think that they have up to 2020 to continue destruction unchecked, and unencumbered. This is dangerous. Some of these companies have the capabilities to wipe out forests the size of Cross River State of Nigeria in one year. Collectively, they have the capacity to wipe out valuable community forest areas up to the size of India in a few years.” the Rainforest Resource and Development Centre said in a statement. According to U.N. statistics, some 13 million hectares of forest are disappearing, on average, each year. Deforestation is fuelled by large-scale agricultural production to supply commodities to other countries. According to findings published last month by Forest Trends, a watchdog group here, at least half of global deforestation is taking place illegally and in support of commercial agriculture – particularly to supply overseas markets. Overall, some 40 percent of all globally traded palm oil and 14 percent of all beef likely comes from illegally cleared lands, Forest Trends estimates.

This is a cynical political ploy, a forest protection greenwash figleaf designed to placate the concerns of people. Any agreement labeled "voluntary" is doomed.  Governments are agreeing that it's perfectly OK for interested corporations to keep on destroying forests until they're basically all destroyed, and then they must STOP! As a corollary, it's okay to go on polluting the atmosphere and the oceans until the time they are open sewers and completely dead wastelands, and then such practices must definitely STOP! What's good for capitalism is total destruction of everything that lives.

Protest marches possess a feel good factor. We take pleasure in each others’ company. They invigourate, they excite and they give us a sense of hope. Sadly, more often than not, that hope ends when the streets empty and people return to their daily routines. We don’t need more marches.  We need the truly radical political awakening of opposition to the capitalist system and we need it now. They won’t fear us until we give them a reason to. The fate of the planet depends on us. Corporate trade is a huge global battle, but there are hundreds of battles we must fight at the local level as well. Understanding that all our issues are connected is essential. We are all stronger if we can all work on the issues about which we are passionate but when we plan specific activities, if we cast a wide net and join together, it moves all of our work forward. Instead of waiting for political leaders and international bodies, we must take action ourselves. This is already happening to a certain extent around many issues and in many places where new approaches are being tried. It’s important to understand that when we do this work we are connected to a world socialist movement and for us to share what we are learning with each other. We build community power as we take our future in our own hands, educate ourselves and connect with each other. Working together moves us quickly forward, not just as one community but as a global community acting locally. Coordinated action sends a clear message to corporations and to the government that we will not compromise our aim nor engage in collaboration with our class enemies.

Resistance alone will fail. People need to build a new system outside of the current capitalist system. If we act together we can do this.  We will build connections to each other, to our global community and to the Earth. We will create a society that is healthier for ourselves and for future generations. The power is in our hands when we link them in solidarity and refuse to leave anybody behind. This is our path forward and there are ways for everyone to travel on it.

We are all in this together. We are one human family and in a globalised world no region is an island unto itself. We need to learn the meaning of enough against an over-consuming society of capital accumulation  and we must learn how to share or it is the end of being. Money and stock-markets don’t sustain or feed you. Healthy ecosystems and fellow workers do. We must now all work to change our current economic system, which is the source of the problem. We must construct an economy based on human need rather than capitalist greed. The foundation of this new economy must be an understanding that our most basic human need is a safe and healthy environment. To ensure that our economy works for the benefit of all it must be fully democratic, rather than run by and for a wealthy minority.

Re-making the world by re-making society

Continuing our exploration of the environmentalist movement and eco-socialism.

Murray Bookchin points out in ‘Remaking Society’ that human beings are both a part and a product of nature; that humans do have a unique significance in nature since they are the only life-form capable of reflective thought and so of conscious intervention to change the environment. It is absurd to regard human intervention in nature as some outside disturbing force, since humans are precisely that part of nature which has evolved that consciously intervenes in the rest of nature; it is our nature to do so. It is quite true that at the present time the form human intervention in the rest of nature takes is upsetting natural balances and cycles, but the point is that humans, unlike other life-forms, are capable of changing their behaviour. If humans have a "place" in nature, says Bookchin, it can only be to consciously intervene not just to meet their needs but also to ensure nature's balanced functioning; in this sense the human species is the brain and voice of nature, nature become self-conscious. But to fulfil this role humans must change the social system which mediates their intervention in nature. Bookchin is explicit enough on what this change must be: a change from capitalism  to a "community where each contributes to the whole to the best of his or her ability and takes from the common fund of produce what he or she needs":
"The earth can no longer be owned; it must be shared. Its fruits, including those produced by technology and labour, can no longer be expropriated by the few; they must be rendered available to all on the basis of need. Power, no less than material things, must be freed from the control of the elites; it must be redistributed in a form that renders its use participatory."
 Bookchin goes on to say:
"To substitute words like industrial society for capitalism can thus be misleading . . . To speak of an 'industrial society' without clear reference to the new social relations introduced by capitalism, namely wage labour and a dispossessed proletariat, often wilfully endows technology with mystical powers and a degree of autonomy that it does not really have. It also creates the highly misleading notion that society can live with a market economy that is 'green', 'ecological', or 'moral', even under conditions of wage labour, exchange, competition and the like. This misuse of language imputes to technology - much of which may be very useful socially and ecologically - what should really be directed against a very distinct body of social relationships, namely, capitalistic ones."

The Green Party stands for the continuation of capitalism complete with its commodity production. Though they might think it is a new idea, in fact the notion that a controlled re-development of capitalism can be politically stage-managed through the taxation system is an old and failed idea. The central contradiction in the arguments of the Green Party is that they would be seeking massive government funds for what they consider to be desirable objectives.. Yet at the same time they seek to break up the structure of economic viability in energy supply, use of materials, and industrial and manufacturing production methods from which government funds in the form of taxes are derived. In these circumstances, where do they imagine a Green Party government would get the money? The structure of commodity production and the particular production methods taken up is not something determined by free choice about what is socially desirable. These production methods are determined by competition in the market.

It is totally unrealistic to imagine that commodity production, whereby goods are presented for sale in the market, can embrace a section of the world capitalist economy which has adopted production methods which are significantly less competitive than the rest. With lower productivity and higher costs the goods produced simply would not sell for a profit and therefore production would not take place. A Green Party government would depend for its funds on the prosperity of the national economy and the inevitable result of imposing higher costs on the capitalist economy, either through high taxes or uneconomic production methods, would be collapse and the rapid demise of such a government. If the Green Party government seriously attempted to implement its programme it would not last months.

Derek Wall, one-time a Green Party co-spokesperson in the days before they had a Party Leader, explained in ‘Getting There - Steps to a Green Society’
"A Green government will be controlled by the economy rather than being in control. On coming to office through coalition or more absolute electoral success, it would be met by an instant collapse of sterling as 'hot money' and entrepreneurial capital went elsewhere. The exchange rate would fall and industrialists would move their factories to countries with more relaxed environmental controls and workplace regulation. Sources of finance would dry up as unemployment rocketed, slashing the revenue from taxation and pushing up the social security bills. The money for ecological reconstruction – the building of railways, the closing of motorways and construction of a proper sewage system – would run out"

Wall calls for: "The use of what is useful and beautiful must be pursued, while exchange values must be rejected. . . . The rejection of exchange values is essential to reducing resource consumption and human alienation."

By accepting that capitalist production should continue the Green Party has destroyed the credibility of its best aspirations. Worse, they are now diverting concern over desperately serious problems into a political dead end which can only have the effect of delaying real solutions.

The underlying principle behind the changes which is demanded by the need to take proper account of the ecological dimension, is that the productive system as a whole should be sustainable for the rest of nature. In other words, what humans take from nature, the amount and the rhythm at which they do so, as well as the way they use these materials and dispose of them after use, should all be done in such a way as to leave nature in a position to go on supplying and reabsorbing the required materials for use. In the long run this implies stable or only slowly rising consumption and production levels, though it does not rule out carefully planned rapid growth over a period to reach a level at which consumption and production could then platform off. A society in which production, consumption and population levels are stable has been called a "steady-state economy" where production would be geared simply to meeting needs and to replacing and repairing the stock of means of production (raw materials and instruments of production) required for this.

It is obvious that today human needs are far from being met on a world scale and that fairly rapid growth in the production of food, housing and other basic amenities would still be needed for some years even if production ceased to be governed by the economic laws of capitalism. However it should not be forgotten that a "steady-state economy" would be a much more normal situation than an economy geared to blindly accumulating more and more means of production. After all, the only rational reason for accumulating means of production is to eventually be in a position to satisfy all reasonable consumption needs. Once the stock of means of production has reached this level, in a society with this goal, accumulation, or the further expansion of the stock of means of production, can stop and production levels be stabilised. Logically, this point would eventually be reached, since the consumption needs of a given population are finite. So if human society is to be able to organize its production in an ecologically acceptable way, then it must abolish the capitalist economic mechanism of capital accumulation and gear production instead to the direct satisfaction of needs. The function of the working class is to apply its labour power to natural resources for the object of profit and capital accumulation. Thus oil, coal, natural gas, metals, the land, seas, forests and atmosphere function economically for the object of capital accumulation. This is the system which many environmentalist activists want to perpetuate. The kind of world environmentalists aspire towards where society could make definite decisions about how best to provide for needs and then be free to implement those decisions outside the economic constraints imposed by capitalism can be only achieved through the success of the world socialist movement. It is inconceivable that the life of world society can achieve equilibrium with nature unless it first achieves unity and common purpose within its own organisation.

The fatal error of the Green Party is in thinking that the mere winning of an election, and the establishment of their own government to run capitalism, will enable their aspirations to be advanced. The problem does not resolve itself solely as a question of who runs capitalism. The continuation of capitalism on its blind and uncontrolled course is a gamble on the conditions of life itself and expectations of governments implementing policies that will end the destruction of the world eco-system is a losing bet. This is surely within the understanding of anyone seriously concerned about ensuring a stable balance of natural systems in which humanity can enjoy being part of nature.

Foodbank Reality

A PC site specialising on food issues has come up with some alarming statistics.  'Maidenhead town centre is a postcard-perfect vision of dreary British consumerism with its rows of coffee shops, Greggs bakeries, chain clothing stores and mobile phone shops. You'd be forgiven, then, for thinking a queue swelling at 9.20 AM on the high street was for of some sort of flash sale. In fact, it was the queue for the local food bank. There's been a staggering 163 per cent rise in foodbank use than in the previous financial year, and over 900,000 adults and children have received three days emergency food and support. Despite signs of economic recovery, the poor have seen their income becoming more and more squeezed. More people are relying on foodbanks than ever before. (MUNCHIES, 22 September) So while politicians boast of an economic recovery this is the reality for many workers. RD

An Awful System

Everyone is aware of the poverty of many children in countries in Africa and Asia but what is not as well known is the plight of many children in the USA. 'The persistent rise of child poverty in Massachusetts - confirmed by last week's census figures for 2013 - is the result of costly day care and housing, the proliferation of low-wage jobs, and a labour market that can be difficult for young parents to break into, according to specialists in the field. Nearly one in six children in Massachusetts was growing up in poverty as of last year, data from the US Census Bureau show; in households with single mothers, it was one in four.' (Boston Globe, 22 September) It speaks volumes for the awfulness of capitalism that such poverty exists in one of the most advanced countries in the world. RD

Glasgow Green?

Glasgow University has become the first academic institution in Europe to divest from the fossil fuel industry. Decisions are also imminent from the University of Edinburgh, which conducted a staff and student consultation that was overwhelmingly in support of divestment. More than 800 global investors – including foundations such as the Rockefeller Brothers, religious groups, healthcare organisations, universities and local governments – have pledged to withdraw a total of $50bn (£31bn) from fossil fuel investments over the next five years.   Writer and activist Naomi Klein said that Glasgow University had joined “a fast-growing global movement providing much-needed hope to the prospect of climate action.”

“Students around the world are making it clear that the institutions entrusted to prepare them for the future cannot simultaneously bet against their future by profiting from corporations that plan to burn many times more carbon than our atmosphere can safely absorb,” said Klein. “They are sending an unequivocal message that fossil fuel profits are illegitimate – on par with tobacco and arms profits – and that brings us a significant step closer to demanding that our politicians sever ties with this rogue industry and implement bold climate policies based on a clear, progressive ‘polluter pays’ principle.’” [Socialist Courier however notes that both the tobacco business and the armament industries still successfully function around the world and neither are burdened by the social costs of the effects of their products]

Andrew Taylor of the People and Planet Network said: “ It’s time to stop profiting from wrecking the climate, whether you’re an institution with lots of money like Oxford or Edinburgh, or a world leader in climate research such as the University of East Anglia. Glasgow has helped make the moral case crystal clear and we expect more universities to very soon put their money where their research is.”

The Market has failed, long live the Market!

There are plenty for socialists who agree upon the urgent need to localise and decentralise political power, the need for sustainability and balance in our relationship to the environment, and a consequent rejection of the values of rampant consumerism. Socialists have for years railed at capitalist market production for being on a relentless collision course with the environment, and have been more than once been guilty of tired clichés like 'profits of doom' and 'merchants of menace' yet the global crises are generated directly by the operation and structure of the world economic system with its untrammelled pursuit of accumulating capital. We never claim that socialism would have no problems. But by sharing the world democratically, without leaders and without buying and selling property, an entire class of ‘commodification’ problems would certainly vanish.

Many green economists propose as supposedly viable solutions is the creation of  international enforcement of a mixture of environmental taxes and regulations, so there is long-term protection and management of natural resources through market forces. The present off-sets of carbon emissions is just one example of putting these proposals into practice, and it has been taken up by those who are of the opinion that market forces hold all the solutions to the problem of environmental and health "external costs", i.e. the money that has to be paid for clearing up the environment or on health care that don't have to be paid for by capitalist firms whose activities cause them. Under the carbon trading scheme there is an international agreement fixing an overall level of carbon emissions for each country which would be less than what it currently emits; that country would then set enterprises within it an allowed level of emissions. If they exceed this level they would be fined. On the other hand, if they emit less carbon than allowed they can sell the unused part of their quota to some other enterprise even in another country. This other enterprise can then emit more carbon than allowed to it, without having to pay the fine. Carbon trading is the buying and selling of such "permits to pollute". It is supposed to help the environment by giving polluting firms a monetary incentive to reduce their emission even lower than the allowed level; the more they reduce their emissions below this level the more money they can make from selling their surplus permits. The buyers of these permits would be firms having difficulty reducing their emissions below the level allowed them; if they failed to reduce to this level they would still have to pay something, but the idea is that buying a permit would be cheaper than paying the fine. A market for "permits to emit carbon dioxide" would thus develop. Where there's a market there will also be middlemen, who in this case will specialise in the buying and selling of these permits. There would also be the possibility of speculating on future changes in their price. Instead of governments vying with each other to reduce carbon emissions, they have sought to win advantages for their own industries by asking for, and then allocating, over-generous quotas, with a view to allowing their industries to profit by selling permits they never needed in the first place. The trouble is that, if the quotas are too generous, the supply of permits far exceed the demand, so undermining the whole scheme.

There's a lot more of such similar proposed 'solutios’ in the pipeline, but when stripped of their jargon, in practice it means that for capitalism to go green it must factor in all the possible and the expected environmental and health "external costs" and in effect set limits on the accumulation of capital. If the green economists have their way - and it's a very big if - it would mean that a brand new set of market conditions will have to be enforced, ignoring the realities of how capitalism actually operates. The green economists include the false assumption that a so-called 'common interest to protect natural capital' can be created within capitalism and adopted by society as a whole and that by increasing our understanding of the interaction between the natural environment and the impact of human activity, society will be in a better position to minimise the damage on natural resources, and be able to arrive at rational judgements on whether or not any interference in the natural environment is justified and warranted.

However, capitalism is not at all a rational system because the capitalist class have their own agenda which is totally blind to the creation of a common interest. The only interest the capitalist class have is to obtain profits through the quickest and easiest way possible so that the accumulation of capital continues. A fundamental contradiction of capitalism is that although the capitalist have a common interest - as a class - to cooperate to keep the system going, by necessity they also have to compete within the market. If they don't compete they go under or are at best taken over by other capitalists. This built-in rivalry between the sections of the capitalist class always results in casualties in some form or another. At one end we have the everyday casualties of lay-offs and redundancies. Whilst at the other end from time to time inter-capitalist rivalry erupts into a full scale war - with extensive human casualties, refugees, communities being destroyed - and extensive damage to the environment and the destruction of wealth on a tremendous scale.

It is these conditions of competition which make it extremely difficult to reach any regulatory agreement which can have a global application. But not impossible. When it has been in the common capitalist interest to facilitate an expansion in the global market capitalist governments have drawn up international agreements, for example on postal services, maritime law, air traffic control, scientific research at the poles, etc. These agreements are generally abided by, specifically because they do not reduce the rate of profit. It's when any such proposals come into conflict with the rate of profit that the competitive self-interest of the various national sections of the capitalist class becomes focused on the problems of winners and losers appears. This is usually announced in the media as, "There was a failure to reach an agreement over who is to pay the bill".

 In order to achieve an accumulation of capital, market forces must not only create and produce commodities on a mass scale but also destroy them in a systematic fashion never known in human history. When confronted by barriers of environmental legislation which are designed to diminish the rate of expected profits and the accumulation of capital, the capitalists will do what they have always done in their search for short-term profits: finding or creating loopholes, moving the goal-posts, corrupting officials, trying to bribe the local population with empty promises, or shifting the whole concern to an area or region where a more favourable reception is expected and profits maintained.

If market forces essentially cause and create environmental damage by literally encouraging an irrational human impact, how can you realistically expect those self-same forces to solve it? A greening of capitalism is a fool's errand. If we were living in a rationally-organised world a co-ordinated global response to climate change would be organised as a matter of course, the problems encountered in doing so would only be technological, not political or economic, as there would be no vested interests lobbying to prevent or delay what needed to be done from being done. But of course we are not living in a rational world. We are living under capitalism where there are vested interests galore – of the states into which the world is artificially divided, of the capitalist corporations seeking to make a profit by supplying some market or other. Those concerned about the threat to the environment should be campaigning not for capitalist governments and corporations to change their spots but for the end of capitalism.

Government is the executive arm of the capitalist system and forms the basis of capitalism with the enactment of private property laws. It is its job to maintain and revise those laws to ensure the private ownership of the means creating and distributing wealth in the interests of the owning capitalist class. The government’s collaboration with the capitalist enterprises encompasses protection of the latter’s national and international rights to operate as freely as possible through diplomacy, bribes, and even war, if necessary, and create a not-so-level playing field of economic activity, tipped, naturally, in favour of their capitalists. Many environmentalist groups complain that this state of affairs came about with globalization and ascendancy of greedy multi-national corporations. To socialists, this state of affairs is simply the normal operation of the capitalist system. Socialist productive and extractive processes will be driven primarily by consideration of human need in harmony with the planet’s eco-system. Capitalism  follows the money, wherever it leads, even into the depths of hell, while human society and the environment inevitably get dragged down with it.

Spiritual Valuesl?

One of the myths that religious leaders often like to support is that religious people are not concerned about material things and only spiritual values are of any worth. Despite this some of them do not too badly when it comes to money. 'Topping the Forbes list is Bishop David Oyedepo with an estimated net worth of US150m (about R1,6bn). He founded the Living Faith World Outreach Ministry in Nigeria which is Africa's largest worship center with a seating capacity of 50,000. Oyedepo owns four private jets, a publishing company, a university, and a high school.' (Sowetan, 18 September) To prove that Oyedepo is not unique - according to the United States entertainment conduit "MonteOz",  Joshua is only the tenth richest pastor in the world. RD

Young at heart

Members of the Socialist Party have influenced a number of people and one member in particular , the late Harry Young, provided food for thought to many. This article from the Scottish Review by Paul Tritschler, a psychology lecturer, describes a meeting with Harry in Glasgow.

“...The voice on a box advocated with sincerity non-violent conversion through majority vote to a socialist paradise, and something in all that got my attention, as perhaps it would any peacenik teenager of the time. Time passed with the talker punctuated by palms and fists about ists – Leninists, vanguardists, reformists and pessimists.

The gist I got, and before leaving I accepted an invite by way of a flyer to the McLellan Galleries in Sauchiehall Street – a gig spot for local bands and dreary causes – to hear a keynote speaker called Harry Young talk about the prospect of paradise on planet earth. He was the longest serving member in one of the oldest parties....

...Harry spoke spiritedly and engagingly about life as lived within a rigged system punctuated by starvation, wars, and routinised death, and spoke unrelentingly about why we should be socialists, giving compelling cause for hope, optimism, and action. He captivated the small audience by way of an account of the progression of his life across continents and epochs, and the people he met at socialist world congresses, including Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin and Stalin – though Bukharin was by far the one he would have preferred to meet down the pub for a pint.
It was perhaps nonsense coming from my side of the conversation, but Harry had a way about him that led me to forget my self-doubts, and I put my questions. I knew then, just as he must have known as a young man sitting at a conference table in those heady revolutionary days, this was a moment.

Would the rich allow any threat to their interests? (I was thinking of a teacher I had at school just two years earlier when I asked this question; he promised fair treatment if I owned up to a misdemeanour, then thrashed me thoroughly.) True, socialist campaigners such as Rosa Luxemburg were murdered, Harry replied, and we might therefore consider force as the answer; but capitalism is armed to the teeth and insurrection would be flattened. Besides, the use of force must be maintained, or the threat of it, just as it is under the system of capitalism, and how could a truly representative socialist state be built on those sorts of foundations? Only a vote by a massive majority will demonstrate the desire for the overthrow of capitalism, and in so doing will negate the need for violence.

Quoting Gramsci, Harry insisted we should not allow the enemy to define the space within which we solve problems. I wrote down those words and have them still. Today as a teacher of psychology, and equally as a student of psychology, the words have even greater resonance; the enemy, after all, is in part our fixed mindset, and we cannot change that if we accept illusory boundaries.

We navigated our way through the crowds to the Lido café. Saturday night discos were feverishly popular at that time. They were magnets for party people with dress codes that included wide collars, clingy trousers, shiny materials, dangly things, and dangerous footwear – akin to walking in mini oil-rig platforms. They passed purposefully in pairs through city streets, gleeful and exultant, to boogie wonderland. As we walked we talked about Harry's hopes, and maybe we looked miserable amidst the Glasgow glitterati, but I remember being filled with dreams about the future and the certainty of lasting change. All power to the imagination, as they said in 68....”

Why Stop There?

A Toronto meat packer works fifty to sixty hours a week to make ends meet on minimum wage, $10.25/h. A Call Centre worker cannot afford new clothing or other personal things on $10.25. Last week, York University students staged a flash mob dance (?) in support of a $14/h minimum. This would undoubtedly help somewhat but why stop there? Surely if this situation has always existed and always will, why not get rid of the wages system altogether? Too much common sense? John Ayers.

The Left-wing Utopianism

Oscar Wilde said that the worst slave-owners were the kind ones: they tended to prevent the full horror of the chattel slave system from becoming generally realised. The problems of the working-class spring from its poverty. This is inseparable from the wages system, which functions by paying workers less that the value of what they produce. If workers were not poor they would not be restricted in access to the world's wealth, and if they were not so restricted they would have no motive to sweat and toil for wages to enrich a parasite class. The greatest problem awaiting solution in the world to-day is the existence in every commercial country of extreme poverty side by side with extreme wealth. It is the producer of wealth who is poor, the non-producer who is rich.

 How comes it that the men and women who till the soil, who dig the mine, who manipulate the machine, who build the factory and the home, and, in a word, who create the whole of the wealth, receive only sufficient to maintain themselves and their families on the border line of bare physical efficiency, while those who do not aid in production – the employing class – obtain more than is enough to supply their every necessity, comfort, and luxury?

 The life of the workers is one of penury and of misery. The only saleable commodity they possess  – their power of working – they are compelled to take to the labour market and sell for a bare subsistence wage. The food they eat, the clothing they wear, the houses in which they live are of the shoddiest kind, and these together with the mockery of an education which their children receive, primarily determine the purchasing price of their labour-power.

Every new hardship inflicted on the working class calls for strenuous denunciation by the Left, and a palliative for the workers to pin their faith to, and waste their energies on.  They have a separate remedy for each and in most cases it is necessary for the vast majority of the working class to act together in order to apply the remedy. The Left do talk a lot about "socialism". They do use Marxist terminology. They do draw attention to many of the abuses of capitalism. (but even avowedly pro capitalist parties do that sometimes) And they do insist, at least verbally, on making radical changes in the structure of society.

 People see misery everywhere. Righteous indignation, protest, rebellion, humanitarian zeal, burst from some of them unceasingly. Yet this very force, this fervour to better the lot of others is nearly always diverted into futile channels. It is as if every member of the working-class had inside his or her head a voice announcing: "Capitalism is eternal and all improvements must take place within it." Are we poor? Let us have fairer wages. Are we surrounded by trashy products? Let us protect the consumer.

 The Left argues that each reform will bring Socialism nearer, but merely stating such does not make it so. In many cases the Left’s effective steps towards socialism are worthless, either as palliatives or as object-lessons for the workers as to the practicability of socialism.

 Only a handful of socialists, seems to notice that this reformist activity has been going on relentlessly for decades and the world is still nonetheless as bad as ever. The Socialist Party is often derided as "idealist" but the compliment is misplaced for it belongs to those reformists themselves. Their utopia is capitalism without capitalism's inevitable consequences. And what an astonishing, vigorous, unbounded  shining devotion they have for it , untouched by such paltry considerations as the facts.

It may be true that the capitalists would sooner alleviate a bit of suffering than have their position of privilege endangered. But in fact many reforms alleviate suffering not at all. Some are merely a trick to rearrange working-class misery to make exploitation more thorough. Others simply replace one social problem  by another.

 Reforms fall into two categories: they are either necessary, or impossible. The first sort includes, for instance, all those measures aimed at making the working-class a healthier and better-trained beast of burden. Impossible reforms include all  measures to abolish war, unemployment, or whatever. Support for either kind is obviously a total waste of time from a working-class standpoint.

 The reformists presents the argument in one of three ways:
(1)They claim that reforms can solve the working-class's problems:
(2)They concede that only a social revolution can solve them, but then adds he qualification that socialism is a long way off so people need help now and we should struggle for both revolution and reforms and are  quick to point out that these are only "immediate demands." What they're ultimately after is "socialism." But words are cheap.
(3)They claim that revolution and reform can be one and the same thing, that socialism will be introduced gradually with one reform after another.

Socialism will remain a long way off so long as so many people waste their energies on reforms. By trying to "alleviate" this or that social problem the reformists help to put off the day when it will be abolished, since every bit of energy spent on reform is one bit not spent on propagating revolution.

 The argument that we should strive for both revolution and reform is actually an excuse to shelve revolution until some time in the far-off future but revolutionary propaganda will help to make society ripe for it now, since only one thing more is needed to bring socialism, a socialist working class.

 If our reformist critics actually meant that the working class should evenly spread its time between revolutionary propaganda and palliatives they ought really to give cease reformist activities altogether, for at the moment more than 99% of political action is entirely for reforms. Gradual transition from capitalism to socialism is an absurdity. How could we be only partly exploited?

The fact is that capitalism can find something new every day, some problem which can occupy your time until another comes along to take its place in your mind. That is the trap which capitalism sets and into which reformist parties are continually falling. They are saying "This problem can't wait until we have socialism, so we must deal with it first." And capitalism continues to produce problems of apparent immediate urgency; so that somehow they never get to socialism—and, in the meantime, capitalism remains.

 People can't be led into socialism; nor can it be imposed on them against their will. There can be no socialism without a socialist majority, and a majority must have come to want and understand socialism before the political party they form win control of political power. Socialism cannot be the product of a weekend revolution. Socialism will come about when there is first the will for it. When joining the Socialist Party, applicants must know what socialism stands for.

 Otherwise they would be a hinderance to the work of making socialists. And that, after all, is the only justification for the existence of a Socialist Party. This means that our membership is limited to socialists only and our opponents accuse us of being a sect. We are a small organisation because membership is recruited on the basis of a clear understanding of socialism and how to obtain it.

 Those who criticise us for being a "sect" produce no evidence except that we are small. The Socialist Party has to stand on its own feet, even if it means that, for the time being, we can't make a big noise. Big demonstrations are excellent things, we would like to indulge in them, but we want demonstrations of working-class understanding, not political opportunism. And the pity of it all is that the workers really feel that they are doing something useful when they march in protests and attend huge rallies. They really believe they are contributing towards the alleviation of the terrible distress that exists the world over.

 The whole world is a crying indictment against the system and the class responsible for it. The brutal truth us that these demonstrating masses can do nothing to end the real trouble. They are frequently merely the playthings of politicians. Posing as the Messiahs of the world, so-called leaders cannot even find a solution for the problems on their own doorstep.

 Our task is to show the workers that while their work-place organisation will prove an invaluable aid in the transformation of society by facilitating industrial reorganisation, yet at present they can best help to emancipate themselves from the thraldom of wage-slavery by recognising that in their class struggle with their exploiters they can be most certain of success in the political sphere of action.

 To-day we are a small party, strong only in the truth of our principles, the sincerity of our motives, and the determination and enthusiasm of our members. To-morrow we shall be strong in our numbers.  Help speed the day when we shall herald in for ourselves and for our children, a brighter, happier society than any the world has yet witnessed.

The Futililty Of Reform

A proposed bill in the Ontario legislature would nullify a fifty-five year-old agreement between the unions and EllisDon, a giant construction company. A company spokesperson commented, " If the bill does not resolve the outcome of a recent board decision…it would have a negative impact on EllisDon's ability to remain competitive." In other words, the company wants to hire a 'flexible' workforce that works for much less, has no benefits, and can be let go easily as capital dictates. That the government is pushing this bill is no surprise. John Ayers.