Red on the outside, Green in the inside

16th  October was World Food Day.

“It’s not just about production of enough food for everyone; it means that every individual must have access to food,” Adriana Opromolla, Caritas International campaign manager

Today, millions do not have enough to eat and billions lack the right nutrients to be healthy. The  Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO highlights that despite some evidence of progress 805 million people - or 1 in 9 people – still suffer from hunger. ”

Gary Gardner, a researcher with the Worldwatch Institute, in his research found that 13 counties were totally dependent on imported grains in 2013, 51 were dependent on imports for more than 50 percent, and 77 were dependent on imports for over 25 percent. More than 90 million people in the world are totally dependent on imported grains, 376 million are dependent on imports for more than 50 percent and 882 million are dependent on imports for more than 25 percent.

Poor diets stunt the growth of 162 million children every year, 97 percent of them in the developing world, trapping communities in a cycle of poverty and ill health. The consequences for those affected can be devastating. Malnourished children tend to start school later, have poorer levels of concentration and lower scores in cognitive ability tests.  Many carry these burdens through into later life.  According to the WHO, a staggering 2 billion people are affected by iron deficiency which contributes to anaemia. More than 250 million children suffer from Vitamin A deficiency which is a major public health challenge in more than half the countries on the planet, with half a million children going blind each year. Half of these children die within 12 months.

Meanwhile, 1.3 billion of us are classified as overweight or obese, fuelled by a food system that is damaging not just our bodies but the environment too. If trends towards Western diets continue, the impact of food production alone will reach, if not exceed, the global targets for total greenhouse gases.

 A study led by the Harvard School of Public Health found that rising levels of CO2 are stripping staple foods of vital nutrients, rendering crops such as wheat, rice and soya less nutritious for millions of people in developing countries. If these climate and socio-economic trends continue, the number of under-nourished children in Africa alone is expected to rise ten-fold by 2050.

Our current agricultural production system is inefficient. We continue to destroy tropical forests for agricultural expansion and this contributes 12 percent to the total warming of the planet today. And much of the food we produce, we waste.  Figures from the Institute of Mechanical Engineers show as much as 2 billion tonnes of food – 50 percent of all we produce – never makes it onto a plate.

Our basic food systems have to be re-imagined so that the world is producing nutritious food in a more sustainable way. One of the first tasks of socialism will be to rectify the worst effects of capitalism on populations, to ensure that local needs are satisfied in all locations. On the agricultural issue this may, at least initially, curtail the growing of (now-called) "cash" crops such as tea, coffee, tobacco or bananas whilst local populations stabilise their ability to feed all their own inhabitants. Emphasis would be placed on the quality, health and fertility of the soil, sustainability being paramount. Farmers in the developed world would be freed from the constraints of capital, quotas, restrictions and above all competition, enabling them to produce foods required by the local populace and, if need be, in other parts of the world. This means supporting the world’s small-holder farmers. One of the legacies of the colonisation of the South by the North has been the imposition of methods of farming along with the types of crops to be grown. Huge areas of previously diverse multi-crop forests were reduced to plantations growing single crops specifically for export – bananas, sugar cane, pineapples – decimating the land through soil erosion from this unsuitable method of farming and taking away the land and livelihood of local peasants. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reports that 11 percent of the world’s land is highly degraded and 25 percent is moderately degraded. The heavy-handed, arrogant approach of incomers showing no regard for centuries old successful sustainable methods of farming. It means converting degraded lands back into productive farms. A healthier, more sustainable future is possible. But, the sustainability, food and health nexus must be dealt with together if we are going to fix the global food system. Socialists have always contended that the world could produce enough to feed every human being on the planet. This has been confirmed time and again by bodies such as the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation and World Health Organisation as well as by agronomists and other specialists in the field.

Alison Power, a professor at the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology of Cornell University in New York state, said the concept is an umbrella that can encompass too many different factors. “There are two approaches to grow production, intensification of conventional agriculture and agroecology. In the last 20 years food production has doubled, but problems like poverty aren’t solved only with that,” Power told IPS. “ In the last 20 years food production has doubled, but problems like poverty aren't solved only with that. So what is needed then is adaptation by small farmers with innovations based on agroecology,” said the expert.  The initiative includes techniques such as conservation agriculture, agroforestry, intercropping, conservation agriculture, crop rotation, improved extreme weather forecasting, integrated crop-livestock management and improved water management. The aim is to increase the ecological production of food in order to reduce carbon emissions.

The capitalist system is the most productive mode of production in the history of humankind. Enough food could be produced to feed all of the world’s population, yet people go hungry. Why? People are starving simply because they lack the means to pay, not because the food cannot be produced – as this new output demonstrates, there is plenty of scope for increasing supply. What could the production of food be like in a society without the need for profit, without competition from big businesses, without promotional advertising, without any money changing hands? Processing plants, packing houses, transport vehicles from local to international, cold storage, warehousing facilities, stock keeping know-how, all the necessary components are already on hand with individuals well-versed in logistics adjusting supply to demand and ensuring sufficient supplies for each and every area, the main difference from now will be satisfying need not profit. To re-establish common ownership and co-operation would in fact revert to relationships which were normal for humanity for the very long period of pre-history. Now, of course, we would enjoy these relationships with all the advantages of modern technology and know-how.  To save the species and the planet, what we need is a return to the communal life of hunter-gatherer days but at a higher technological level. In future years, people will look back  agog as they hear of millions of preventable human deaths because capitalism can't, won't, daren't raise the lives of these people above the rights of private property.

 Daniel Maingi works with the organization Growth Partners for Africa. The Seattle Times reported him as saying that while the goal of helping African farmers is laudable, the ‘green revolution' approach is based on Western-style agriculture, with its reliance on fertilizer, weed killers and single crops, such as corn. As much of Africa is so dry, it's not suited for thirsty crops, and heavy use of fertilizer kills worms and microbes important for soil health. Maingi argued that the model of farming in the West is not appropriate for farming in most of Africa and that  the West should invest in indigenous knowledge and agro-ecology. Growth Partners Africa works with farmers to enrich the soil with manure and other organic material, to use less water and to grow a variety of crops, including some that would be considered weeds on an industrial farm. For Maingi,  food sovereignty in  Africa  means reverting back to a way of farming and eating that pre-dates major investment from the West.

Mariam Mayet of the African Centre for Biosafety in South Africa says that many countries are subsidizing farmers to buy fertilizer as part of the chemical-industrial model of  agriculture, but that takes money away from public crop-breeding programmes that provide improved seeds to farmers at low cost. “It's a system designed to benefit agribusinesses and not small-scale farmers.”

While small farms produce most of the world's food, recent reports show they face being displaced from their land and are experiencing unnecessary hardship. The evidence shows that small peasant/family farms are the bedrock of global food production. The bad news is that they are squeezed onto less than a quarter of the world's farmland and such land is under threat. The world is fast losing farms and farmers through the concentration of land into the hands of the rich and powerful. A global trend that is being driven by big agritech that seeks to eradicate the small farmer and undermine local economies and food sovereignty by subjecting countries to the vagaries of rigged global markets. Institutional investors, including hedge funds, private equity, pension funds and university endowments, are eager to capitalise on global farmland as a new and highly desirable asset class. Financial returns, not food security, are what matter. In the US, for instance, with rising interest from investors and surging land prices, giant pension funds are committing billions to buy agricultural land.

 Giant agritech corporations like Monsanto with their patented seeds and associated chemical inputs are working to ensure a shift away from diversified agriculture that guarantees balanced local food production, the protection of people's livelihoods and environmental sustainability. Agritech corporations are being allowed to shape government policy by being granted a strategic role in trade negotiations. They are increasingly setting the policy/knowledge framework by being allowed to fund and determine the nature of research carried out in public universities and institutes. They continue to propagate the myth that they have the answer to global hunger and poverty, despite evidence that they do not. The Gates Foundation and Western governments are placing African agriculture it in the hands of big agritech for private profit and strategic control under the pretext of helping the poor and end hunger.

We urgently need to build a worldwide movement to bring a speedy halt to the carnage. As the Kenyan activist, Dniel Maingi says “ …  take capitalism and business out of farming in  Africa . The West should invest in indigenous knowledge and agro-ecology, education and infrastructure and stand in solidarity with the food sovereignty movement.”

Anti-capitalism - what is it?

Hundreds of  different organisations are not a movement. They are not even anti-capitalist, in the sense that they haven't yet agreed on a definition of capitalism.  'Anti-capitalist' groups supposedly advocate the abolition of the capitalist system altogether but fail to specify what should replace it and how this change should come about.

Capitalism is an economic system where productive resources are used as "capital", i.e. they are used to produce more wealth with a view to profit; this sets in motion an impersonal and uncontrollable economic mechanism which leads to the accumulation, in fits and starts, of more and more capital, of more and more wealth used to produce further wealth with a view to profit. Capitalism is, then, a system of capital accumulation. Hence, of course, its name.  Many talk instead about a "market economy". Capitalism is indeed a market economy, but not a simple market economy. A key difference of course is that under capitalism production is not carried out by self-employed producers but wage and salary workers employed by business enterprises. In other words, under capitalism, the producers have become separated from the means of production. This makes all the difference. The producers are now not bringing to market what they have produced (that belongs to their employer, the owner of the means of production) but only their working skills, so they receive the value not of their product but only of their ability to work, which is less. The product is still under normal circumstances sold at its full labour-time value but the proceeds go not to the direct producers but are pocketed by the owners of the means of production. Profit is the difference between this and what they pay, as wages and salaries, for the working skills they purchase on the labour market.  Capitalism cannot be described as an economy geared to satisfying consumer demands. The products of capitalist production have to find a buyer of course but this is only incidental to the main aim of making a profit, of ending up with more money than was originally invested. Production is initiated not by what consumers are prepared to pay for to satisfy their needs but by what the owners of the means of production calculate can be sold at a profit. This is what makes the wheels of capitalism grind—or not grind, or not grind so quickly, as the case may be—depending on the level of the rate of profit. Capitalism is not a "steady state economy". On the contrary, it is an ever-expanding economy of capital accumulation. In other words, most of the profits are capitalised, i.e. reinvested in production, so that production, the stock of means of production, and the amount of capital, all tend to increase over time, not in a smooth straight line, but only in fits and starts.

Unless these anti-capitalist protesters take the time to study what exactly capitalism is and how it operates they risk not advocating a viable alternative. Some who consider themselves anti-capitalist campaign to try to put the clock back by returning to the simple market economy that may have existed in early colonial North America. The farmers, butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers would be producing their particular products which would sell at a price reflecting the average amount of time required to produce it. There would be no profit and no exploitation because everybody would be receiving the full value of what their labour had produced. They would just be exchanging so much labour in one form for the same amount in a different form.
Marx called such an economy "simple commodity production" (a commodity being, for him, an item of wealth produced for sale), but it is doubtful whether it has ever existed in a pure form. The nearest that may have come to it would have been in some of the early colonial America. This is an important strand in the Green movement’s thinking as exemplified by the slogan "small is beautiful". It is an  idyllic picture of an economy of self-employed small scale producers producing for a local market. This wouldn't be capitalism but it wouldn't be possible either, if only because enough to feed, clothe and house the world's population would not be able to be produced on this basis. If it were possible to go back to the sort of economy that the likes of the mutualist  Benjamin Tucker envisaged, the tendency with laissez-faire would be for capitalism to develop again. competition would result in those firms which employed the most productive machinery winning out against those employing out of date and so less productive machinery. So, there would be a tendency towards a yet greater concentration of industry into the hands of the big firms, which would get bigger even if still at this stage worker-controlled co-operatives.

But what about the displaced independent artisans and the members of bankrupt workers' co-operatives? How would they get a living? Would they not be obliged to sell their skills to the worker-controlled firms that had won out in the battle of competition? But if wage labour appeared then so would profits and exploitation even if these profits would accrue to the members of the worker-controlled firms. Some might be prepared to share these with their new employees, but the continuing competitive pressures would oblige them to give priority to investing them in new, more productive machinery so as to be able to stay in business and not go bankrupt themselves. In fact, this has been the long-run tendency with such firms under capitalism today, as with the kibbutzim in Israel and the various Mennonite enterprises in North and South America. They have begun to employ wage labour and orient their production towards making profits and accumulating these as new capital.

Other Green thinkers advocate a steady-state market economy, a variant of Marx's "simple reproduction". The idea is that the surplus would be used not to reinvest in expanding production, nor in maintaining a privileged class in luxury but in improving public services while maintaining a sustainable balance with the natural environment. It's the old reformist dream of a tamed capitalism, minus the controlled expansion of the means of production an earlier generation of reformists used to envisage. But it is still a dream because it assumes that a profit-motivated market economy can be tamed, and made to serve human and/or environmental needs. History has proved that it can't be; capitalism has shown itself to be an uncontrollable economic mechanism which operates to force economic actors to make profits and accumulate them as more and more capital irrespective of the consequences. Capitalism today can be described as the profit-motivated, capital-accumulating world market economy.

Other anti-capitalists recognise capitalism as a world system and as such is the problem. It cannot be denied that capitalism has entered a particularly pernicious phase in its development – euphemistically called 'globalisation' – in undeveloped countries as large corporations viciously compete globally to secure markets and relentlessly exploit labour in countries where they reputedly earn 75 percent of their profits. But exploitation is not just confined to undeveloped countries. Working people everywhere are on the defensive against the class whose imperative is to maximise its profits and perpetuate their mastery over all working people. There can be little doubt that the wages and salaries of the majority of people in industrialised countries have stagnated or declined, working hours and job insecurity have increased and conditions of life have deteriorated. The correlation between economic growth and improving social welfare has been cut as corporations seek to introduce 'Third World' standards into the established industrialised countries. We share a common interest. The solution as being to break it up into separate capitalisms operating within national frontiers behind protective tariffs walls. This hardly justifies the description "anti-capitalist" of course, and parallels a nasty strand of nationalist thinking which has always associated capitalism with a sinister "cosmopolitan" conspiracy. Indeed, the danger is that, in the absence of being presented with a credible alternative, it is here that the "anti-capitalist" protests will find the loudest popular echo.

Finally may social activists believe that the creation and expansion of co-operatives is anti-capitalism. Many socialists have sympathised with co-ops as a valid method of coping and surviving within capitalism. Co-operatives are popular with radical workers. An initial reaction to the view that co-ops really represent an alternative to capitalism might be that they involve wage labour and the production of commodities, just as any capitalist business does, so they can hardly constitute an alternative. They also necessarily involve profit-making but not, some would claim, profit maximisation.
 In Marx’s day some such as Proudhon saw them as a way of eventually out-competing and replacing private capitalist enterprises. Others such as Lassalle wanted them to be financed by loans from the state. The theorists of the original co-operative movement saw it as a movement that would eventually out-compete and replace ordinary capitalist businesses, leading to the coming of “the Co-operative Commonwealth” which was an alternative name for socialism. What happened, instead was that rather than  transforming capitalism, it was the other way round: capitalism transformed the co-ops. This was because they had to compete with ordinary capitalist businesses on the same terms as them and so were subject to the same competitive pressures, to keep costs down and to to maximise the difference between sales revenue and costs (called “profits” in ordinary businesses, but “surplus” by the co-op).
Cooperatives operate within the context of the capitalist economy and that if they are to survive they have to play by its rules, in particular to make a profit. And, again in response to market forces, most of this profit has to be reinvested in cost-saving machinery and methods of production. In other words, they cannot be used to improve the wages of those working for them or to benefit their customers by reducing prices. That would be the road to ruin. Workers in cooperatives have in effect to organise their own exploitation for profit to be accumulated as more capital. They are not the way-out. As Marx pointed out, co-operatives ‘must reproduce everywhere in their actual organisation all the shortcomings of the prevailing system.’ And they do.

 Many claim that it is only one particular model of capitalism that we should jettison. But, in the end, there is only one model of capitalism: the one we’ve got, where production is in the hands of competing enterprises which are forced to reduce costs so as to maximise profits in order to have the resources to invest in further cost-cutting. An economic system has locked us into this one particular road so we need to talk about that system. Making a profit, not satisfying needs, is the aim of production, and as measures to protect the planet add to costs they are not taken. The political and legal framework within which this economic system operates does vary, but in all of those, profits can never take third place to people and the planet. They must always come first, with the luxury consumption of the rich second, and the planet and the needs of the rest of the people third.  Re-investing money to make ever-more profit is the core feature of capitalism and this relentless pursuit of profit is one of the main reasons why capitalist economies are predicated on the need for continual expansion and economic growth – all of which is facilitated by access to cheap energy and natural resources, and inevitably results in the mass production of mostly unnecessary and highly wasteful consumer goods. To avoid the negative effects the whole profit system itself must go. It means moving beyond the idea that individual actions—like changing the type of our light bulbs and riding bikes—can save us and our planet. It also goes beyond just a change in government. That scale of change is neither suffice nor aimed at the right target which is an economic model based on resource extraction. It's going to take a grassroots movement that is already rising from the bottom up.

The Socialist Party proposes making the Earth “a common treasury for all", as Gerrard Winstanley of the Diggers put it right at the beginning of capitalism—so that they can be used, not to produce for sale on a market, not to make a profit, but purely and simply to satisfy human wants and needs in accordance with the principle of, to adapt a phrase, "from each region on the basis of its resources, to each region on the basis of its needs".

Pollution Problems In China.

On September 3, The Toronto Daily Star reported that 100,000 kilograms of dead fish have been scooped up from China's Fuhe River. The Hubei province's Environmental Department blamed the Hubei Shuanghuan Science & Technology Company. Officials said that a sampling of its drain outlet showed an ammonia density that far exceeded the national standard. Other incidents this year involving dead animals in rivers have added to public disgust and there are suspicions about the safety of drinking water. It is well known that, as China grows economically, inadequate controls on industry and lax enforcement of existing laws have worsened China's pollution problem. If this is the price we pay for capitalist development, then let's stop paying for it and opt for socialism. John Ayers.

Ecological Socialism

The Socialist Party argues that the sole driver of economic activity in  our society is the crude  imperative to capital accumulation. We recognise the inherent instability and brutality of capitalism and the limits to our ecosystem; that our planet’s resources are finite and that the ecological balance that makes all life possible on it is fragile and under threat. Today, humanity faces the unprecedented threat of an ever worsening series of catastrophes, caused by the interlocked economic and environmental crises brought about by our current economic system.

Capitalism has always been ecologically destructive, but in our lifetimes these assaults on the planet have accelerated. Ecological devastation, resulting from the insatiable need to increase profits, is not an accidental feature of capitalism: it is built into the system’s DNA and cannot be reformed away. Capitalism is increasingly demonstrating its total incompatibility with the maintenance of our ecosystem through its ruthless exploitation of ever scarcer natural resources, its pollution of the environment, the growing loss of biological and agricultural diversity and increasing climate change.

New but equally as damaging technologies such as underground coal gasification (fracking) now
threaten environments and communities around the world. The climate change crisis we
face is being driven by unsustainable energy  consumption and finding evermore damaging new ways to extract oil and gas will simply make it worse in the long run.

We do not believe that some form of ‘business as usual’ is an option.  It will be necessary to radically reorganise the industry. We will require dramatic changes in the ways in which we
generate the energy we use, the ways we build, heat and cool our homes, the ways in which we
travel and the ways in which we produce our food. It will require the restructuring of our energy
generation, transport and manufacturing industries, the rebuilding or refurbishment of millions of our homes and workplaces and the re-ordering of our land use.

Look through Green Party policy documents and it becomes obvious that a lot of faith is put into international and European organisations (e.g. the UN and the EU) in order to build a fairer world, something that is particularly naive considering how both organisations were created by capitalist countries to serve the interests of capitalist countries, and this still remains the case, with most summits and protocols aimed at controlling climate change hamstrung by the pressures of the governments involved to appease the needs of their capitalist economics – the inadequate demands of Kyoto being one example, and the shambles which was the 2009 Copenhagen summit being another. Yet these are the vehicles which the Green Party will think will save the world.

Just as damning is their willingness to work with people who promote the status quo to the detriment of ordinary people. The Greens are looking like any other party that capitalised on the disillusionment with Labour during the course of the last decade. The fact that the Green Party is becoming a more and more desirable option for people disillusioned with mainstream politics cannot be dismissed – and in spite of their actions not meeting their promises, many on the left still call for a vote for the Greens – if only tactically. The Green Party certainly propose a lot of “nice things”, and have become the go-to protest vote for many people on the left of the status quo. However when push comes to shove, the Greens become just as much of a disappointment as the mainstream parties. In Brighton, they did a U-turn and implemented a cuts budget, whilst stoking up a dispute with the refuse workers over pay which has boiled over into further industrial action in September 2014.

The Green Party tends to attack the symptoms rather than the cause – the cause being a capitalist system that ultimately puts profit above all else. This stems from a lifestyle-activist mentality which is prevalent amongst much of the environmentalist movement (including the political party that was set up to act in their interest) that states that all would be well if we all bought organic food, made sure all our tea, coffee etc is Fair Trade, never took a holiday anywhere which would involve flying, and put on half a dozen jumpers in winter rather than put on the heating (which ironically many of the poorest trapped in fuel poverty are actually forced to do). Of course, this is not true of all Green Party members and supporters, but there are many examples found within the party where the beliefs indeed match the stereotype. A standard charge is that the Green Party is by middle class people and effectively for middle class people, and no matter how many people in the party attempt to refute this over the years, this charge has not gone away. Red Pepper wrote a piece on the Green Party in 2008, it commented on their conference in February of that year “that delegates were indeed overwhelmingly white and well-spoken; many of them boasted a Dr before their name.

The environmentalist movement has its fair share of people who distrust anything to do with modern technology and put their faith in pseudo-scientific beliefs, mistakenly believing that every scientific development since the Industrial Revolution is intrinsically part of the problem whilst happily adopting double standards when scientists warn of the imminent danger of rising greenhouse gas emissions and the resultant climate change. This is reflected in the Green Party too. For starters, this is in their present health policy: “The safety and regulation of medicines will be controlled by a single agency… The agency will cover existing synthetic medicines as well as those considered as natural or alternative medicines.”So, in other words, they are “keeping an open mind” regarding treatments where scientific evidence supporting their efficacy is sketchy to non-existent. However this is a marked improvement to what their health policy stated in 2009:
“The Green Party will set up within legislation the practice of patient empowerment, with the right of individuals… to have full and detailed knowledge as to their condition and the range of treatments available, both conventional and complementary/alternative… [The Green Party] oppose attempts to regulate complementary medicine, except by licensing and review boards made up of representatives of their respective alternative health care fields… [The Green Party will] encourage the development of a wider and more relevant range of research techniques, including methods appropriate to the assessment of complementary therapies.”

Green Party leader Natalie Bennett had stated that homeopathy has a very small and limited place in the NHS, by virtue of its placebo effect. Caroline Lucas signed an Early Day Motion backing homeopathy in 2010, although to give her credit she later withdrew her signature. However she has stated that she welcomed the recommendations by NICE to allow more “complementary” treatments on the NHS.

As can be expected from a party which has its roots in the environmental movement, the Greens are anti-nuclear power (as are many on the left in general). However the Greens often go beyond making reasonable arguments against nuclear, resorting to unverified research and scare-mongering. Their former science adviser, Chris Busby, made claims – oft repeated by environmental campaigners, of “leukaemia clusters” in north Wales – which are not peer-reviewed and have been refuted by credible scientists. Even worse still, Busby implies that the Japanese have deliberately spread radioactive waste throughout Japan after the Fukushima accident. The reason? Busby assumes that “when” clusters of childhood cancer start appearing in Fukushima, the parents of the victims will want to sue the Japanese government. To prevent this, Busby stated that the government plan to raise background levels of cancer throughout the country in order to mask any elevated incidence of cancer in Fukushima. Busby provided no evidence for this – a typical problem with conspiracy theorists, and regardless of where you stand on the nuclear debate it can only be solved by calm and rational discussion, not emotive scare-mongering, resorting to gross distortion of facts and unsubstantiated claims. Such dishonest behaviour will quickly be discredited. Unfortunately Busby is far from the only conspiracy theorist in the Green Party.


There is no such thing as overpopulation, only economic incompetence. Wired magazine recently published an article titled, "Boom! Earth's Population Could Hit 12 Billion by 2100," that uickly became viral amongst many environmentalists The chose to ignore withing the article what  statistician and sociologist Adrian Raftery of the University of Washington stated:
“A rapidly growing population with bring challenges. But I think these challenges can be met.”

 Despite systematically being proven wrong, alarmists regarding population growth continue to insist on rationing, population control, and other constrictive, totalitarian political measures to deal with the challenges that are to come as more people populate the planet. The issue of climate change in relation to growing populations humanity's impact on the environment are definitely challenges that can be overcome.

For those who believe in the concept of "overpopulation," human beings have been "overpopulating" the planet for millennia.  Most catastrophes attributed to "overpopulation" are instead the result of resource scarcity - and while sometimes such scarcity is the result of variables outside the control of governments and individuals, most of the time it is the result of  avoidable pitfalls such as our exploitative and acquisitive social system.

John P. Holdren, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, in 1977 ludicrously concluded that the United States would collapse when its population reached "280 million in 2040." America's population is now well over 300 million with nearly 3 decades to spare. Holdren would add in his now entirely discredited co-authored book titled, "Ecoscience," that:
"...if the population control measures are not initiated immediately, and effectively, all the technology man can bring to bear will not fend off the misery to come."
Holdren's "population control measures" included a despotic "planetary regime" that would have made the architects of the 3rd Reich blush.

When governments and international organizations begin demanding the population pay for the burdens of "overpopulation," it is an indictment of their own incompetence and inability to solve the basic challenges facing the societies they presume dominion and responsibility over.

Hat-tip to LU

Another Fallacy Exposed

One of the illusions mouthed by many politicians is that "we are all in this together" and there is some sort of equality existing in the wages and prices system. Here are some startling figures that disprove that particular fallacy. 'The earnings of of FTSE 100 company directors have risen by more than a fifth over the past year. Their average total earnings were £2.4 million rising to £3.3 million for chief executives, according to research from Income Data Services. Wage growth for the overall workforce, meanwhile, trails well behind inflation, rising by 0.6 per cent in the three months to July compared with the same period a year earlier. That is less than half the present rate of 1.5 per cent.' (Times, 13 October) A 20 per cent increase compared to less than 1 per cent - a strange sort of equality! RD

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