Climate emergency for everyone, everywhere

 In Glasgow today, in cities across the UK and around the world, protests are taking place to demand action on the global warming crises that humanity is facing. Yesterday in Glasgow, the Friday for Future demonstration showed that the younger generation is fighting for their future. 

The Socialist Party is also concerned with the destruction of our environment and it is because we are so concerned that we ask questions about it. The only answer that makes sense is that it is because of the way society is ordered. Couldn’t the solution be the Earth as the common storehouse of all humanity; the production of wealth solely for use not sale or profit; a world without weaponry — is this an unrealistic Utopia? Not at all. It is the only logical and rational way to run the world given the present high stage of development of the forces of production. Because a solution is so simple and obvious does not mean that it won’t work. We don’t see why humanity has to wait till capitalism has nearly destroyed the planet to establish this. It could be instituted now, so avoiding not only the environmental degradation that will occur if capitalism continues  but also all the wars and the destruction and misery they bring that will occur during this period too

Already for millions the misery and suffering of climate change is a reality.  The human cost of climate change is here and now. It is increasing poverty, political instability and the displacement of people. It is fuelling tensions and competition over dwindling resources and those who least contribute to the high levels of carbon emissions are suffering the most. For politicians in the wealthier countries, it is a distant problem in distant lands. It suits politicians to make sympathetic noises about environmental issues, but after the COP summit is over the same politicians can usually find "pragmatic reasons" that make them have "re-appraise" earlier "policy pledges". There are numerous accountancy tricks that help countries reach their net-zero commitments, without them actually reducing their very own emissions.  CO2 is suddenly a commodity to be bought and sold on the world market, a market in which the underdeveloped countries are duped by the richer ones and their corporate elites. The overall aim is to make biodiversity a commodity just as carbon became one a few short years ago. To commodify biodiversity means to own the back garden of someone who lives half a world away, to control another’s fishing ground or grazing land. Carbon trading and off-setting should raise alarm bells for millions living in or near forests, mountains, coastline, estuaries, steppe, savannah, marginal land, meadow, farmland.

What we want is for the production of the useful things that people need to live and enjoy life to be taken out of the hands of profit-seeking enterprises altogether. We want the means of production to be owned in common by the whole community as the only basis on which production can be organised to take account of the overall interest of all the members of society. In socialism there won’t be any profit-seeking capitalist enterprises to regulate; just democratically-run productive units producing, in an ecologically and socially acceptable way, what people need. When you consider the future of the planet you are faced with two choices. You can continue to support the defenders of capitalism – they come in many disguises – and acquiesce in the destruction of the environment or stand in their way by joining the struggle for socialism and the destruction of a system that will nonchalantly prioritise profit over not only human well-being but the world we live in.

But don’t wait until you are waist-deep in floodwater to make up your mind. Think hard and now. Capitalism, and with it the worsening of every environmental problem or socialism, a world social system that places control of the Earth in the hands of a global majority who will tend to it with respect and without the barriers profit places in the path of production?

 We in the Socialist Party do not shout for minimum reforms or minor changes to current worldwide production methods in an attempt to mitigate or offset the damage already done. Instead, we believe that the only real solution is an end to the root cause of the problem, that is capitalism itself – nothing more, nothing less. 

Build Socialism Today

Despite the promises made by politicians in their speeches, COP26 will be nothing short of a disappointing failure.

Their realpolitik and Machiavellian statecraft can never be a successful strategy

Our future will be bleak unless we make changes but it is not because of the frailties of our “human nature.”

Socialists, however, are not so easily duped by shallow pledges from the capitalist class.

We are not unique in this scepticism.

It is not automatic that every environmentalist will end up demoralised or disillusioned by COP26.

Others hold doubts in capitalist solutions expressed by the banners and placards that read “System Change, not Climate Change”.

Some understand that a system geared towards accumulating capital can only lead to catastrophe.

It is the capitalist system itself that is the cause. The capitalists sacrifice the environment for the sake of plunder.

The Socialist Party understands the stark reality that the capitalist market cannot end the climate emergencies.

We say the capitalist system’s insatiable rapacious need to increase profits cannot be reformed away.

Sustainable development is unachievable under capitalism because it means obstructing the profit motive and halting the economic expansion which drives production.

Our task ahead is to build a vision that spreads across every sector of citizens and national borders. Love of country, in the form of "patriotism," is a relatively late creation. When we were all serfs we were bound to the baron’s estate but we had no "country". Wars were dynastic between rival kings, princes and dukes and an array of other aristocrats.

Today nor has capital any "country" even though capitalism is the precondition for building a "nation," and advocates "nationalism," and protects  "national market." But we describe business as being part of the “international finance.” Capita expands and pursues the global market, using its own "nationalism" as a springboard. Simply put, nationalism is anything but natural; it is an ideology of capitalism, which serves to produce the conditions for capitalist accumulation and gives it legitimacy. In other words, it is not some kind of natural human phenomenon. It is a social and political construct. Once the country has been created as a sovereign nation-state, patriotism provides the glue by which it maintains itself.  It is an ideology, which requires an identity with, and loyalty to, the nation, which, in turn, gives rise to the "national interest" and political duty and civic obligations it demands from its citizens.

No matter how utopian the quest for world solidarity may appear in today’s world of conflict, no other path is open to escape fratricidal struggles and to attain a rational world society. Socialism will rise again as a global movement or not at all and on the basis of past experience, those interested in the promotion of socialism must stress its internationalism most of all.

While it is impossible for socialists to become a nationalist, we are, nevertheless, anti-colonialist and anti-imperialists. However, being against colonialism does not imply adherence to the principle of national self-determination, but expresses our desire for a non-exploitative socialist society without borders. Socialists cannot identify themselves with national struggles, yet as socialists, we shall oppose both nationalism and imperialism. The World Socialist Movement is indifferent to the national interests of any particular country, including the one we were born in. The thing to which we are not indifferent to is the principles of socialism.

 We advocate a socialist transformation that will be absolutely necessary for the survival of some sort of recognisable civilisation.

Our aim is to overcome and overthrow capitalism, to cease growth for the sake of production for profit and instead create new bonds with the environment we all live in.

All aspects of society are involved in the relation to nature. All struggles have an ecological dimension. Sustainable society and a socialist society are inseparable.

The answer cannot be cutting and curtailing the living standards of the already poor in a sacrifice to save the planet.

We’re talking about universal access to quality food, decent housing and adequate healthcare.

Billions of people in the world to live fulfilling lives require secure food and water, better transportation and medical services. 

If people have no means to live by, they will survive as best they can by using what means are available to them, which tends to be ecologically destructive. 

Poverty is a major part of the reason why is so much deforestation. 

Many of the lifestyle changes environmentalists point towards as necessary will occur, but as part of a social process of liberation, not as a forced imposition. 

The question is this: will you stand by and protect the profit system rather than protect the planet?

The Socialist Party presents a pragmatic and practical vision of world socialism because it’s the only answer.

We are for a class-free society. But such emancipation presupposes the abolition of private property, of the elimination of commodity production and of the end of the exchange economy.

The Eve of Evolution and Revolution

 Unless there is a radical change to the ever-intensifying pursuit of profit that capitalism needs we shall hear ever louder the death-knell of civilisation. Empathy and cooperation, social solidarity and reciprocity have helped humanity to survive millennia but capitalism encourages competition and individualism because that is what makes capitalism survive and thrive.

The message of the Socialist Party is that humanity’s civilisation may not survive if it allows those pursuing profit to determine our future. While some reforms are undertaken to make conditions a more tolerable livable world they are not permanent solutions to help society to progress.

Can the climate crisis of capitalism be solved with legislation and regulation? To answer “yes” is to say that capitalism can be made to work and that there is no need to stage any revolutionary struggle against it. Some liberals will disguise this “capitalism” in socialist colours. This is not merely party polemics but the understanding of economic reality is fundamental to solving global warming and why socialists say it is futile to appeal to governments and corporations for the answers.

The global hunger problem isn’t that there isn’t enough food to go around, but that people are unable to afford to purchase it.

As with many commodities, capitalist markets are fairly good at producing food, but they are not so efficient at distributing it equitably. Long ago Thomas Malthus came up with a theory that people go hungry because there’s not enough food and that idea has taken hold of many, even those who should know better within the environmentalist movement.

It has never been a lack of availability of food, other than on rare occasions but under normal conditions, this has almost never been the case. The Irish potato famine, also known as the Great Hunger of 1845 (another well studied example is the Bengal Famine of 1943.) The potato blight alone would not have led to the famine. But because the people were too poor to buy food, food was actually being exported out of Ireland during the height of the famine. That’s why so many people starved. So, right there that food is shown as a commodity that follows the logic of the market.

The Malthusian over-populationists gained popularity in 1968 and through the 70s with the publication of Paul Ehrlich’s ‘The Population Bomb’, (and later Garret Hardin’s ‘Tragedy of the Commons’) which claimed that the world population was exploding and food production would fail to keep up with the numbers of people. It led to what is known as the Green Revolution, which is still being emulated in modern times by the Bill Gates Foundation. What it did was basically to take the fertilisers and pesticides, an integral part of America’s intensified industrial farming methods and transplant the practice elsewhere to increase production. Today Gates and the NGO Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa have joined various corporations such as Monsanto, manufacturers of Round-Up pesticide, to introduce genetically modified crops with the same end - to increase harvest yields.

However, such pessimistic predictions did not materialise because the rate of population growth dropped. The world population no longer is expected to reach the earlier projection of 12 billion. Now the estimate is 9 billion or even 8 and the world already is capable of supplying sufficient food if wastage is reduced.

Pretty words and initiatives from government ministries are frequently rendered meaningless by businesses bent on maintaining their expansion and growth. Capital accumulation is limitless. The dynamic of competitive capitalism for profits is an endless expansion of production and an ecological nightmare arising from irrational, unplanned, undemocratic production, rather than a rational, democratically planned economy. It will poison and pollute the planet beyond recovery if it is not replaced.

Socialism is the establishment of a free society based upon cooperative organisation of production. We can shape our own destiny by embracing a society of associated producers. Our future is not so much in the balance but more in the capitalists’ balance sheet.

The SPGB at COP26

 

Members and supporters will be pleased to know that the party has secured an official pitch for a street stall at Royal Exchange Square, right in the heart of Glasgow City Centre, during the COP26 Conference currently taking place.

The stall will be up and running from Monday until Wednesday next week, from 10am until 5pm each day. With Comrades travelling from across the UK in order to help spread the party case for Socialism, explaining the root cause of the environmental mess we find ourselves in.