Thursday, November 04, 2021

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.

Wednesday, November 03, 2021

End the Exploitation

To survive, capitalism must continue to expand. It must produce more and more stuff, whether actually needed or not, using up the earth's resources and killing off life forms in the process. The first prerequisite for making the world safe for all life, including our own, is getting rid of this deadly system. Capitalism by its very nature is exploitative. It exploits humans, and it exploits the planet.

The dominant narrative in the media is to promote the idea that environmental problems, as well as all the other problems facing us, are caused by "human nature." If the majority accepts this fatalistic view, all efforts for change are fruitless. People's beliefs and feelings toward one another, and toward the environment, are conditioned by the society in which they live. And those beliefs and feelings change as society changes.

For thousands of years before the coming of civilisation divided people into antagonistic classes, humans lived in basic harmony with each other and with their environment. Cooperation was the key to their survival and their advancement. Greed was unknown. The Earth and its animals were treated as sacred. Even the necessary killing of game for food had to be justified through rituals. t the environmental damage of pre-capitalist societies was done in ignorance and had no overall long-term global impact. The environmental damage of pre-capitalist societies was done in ignorance and had no overall long-term global impact. Today, despite millions of dedicated individuals who are deeply concerned to protect plant and animal life, the destruction of the environment continues. Why?

There are those who seek to lay the cause upon people themselves and say it is overpopulation that is the main reason behind the destruction of the environment. And without a doubt, there are too many people crowded into cities like Mexico City or Mumbai and others encroaching upon near wilderness areas. But overpopulation is a consequence of the workings out of capitalism and is not the main reason for environmental stress. For example, in vast areas of the third world, international agribusiness has thrown formerly self-reliant peasants off the best land in order to produce cash crops. Those who can't find work at poverty-level wages on the land they formerly owned have no choice but to migrate to cities where they hope to hire themselves out to industrial capitalists. Others are shoved out into the diminishing rain forests, which they try to make suitable for farming. These poor peasants are simply trying to survive and feed their families.

Profit, not the earth's survival, is what motivates international capitalist "investors." Directly or indirectly, the drive for profit affects everything around us and is the major reason for environmental destruction. This profit-driven system is so all-pervasive that it is destroying the environment in every area of the world. There is no land, no people, no species that has not been affected in one way or another.

In contrast to all previous social systems, the capitalist system is based on production for sale, and not for personal use or human welfare. Under capitalism, everything is a commodity to be bought and sold. Even labour is a commodity bought and sold on the labour market.

The capitalist system is governed by the laws of the market. There are essentially two "laws" of capitalism that dominate every business, large or small and affect every decision made by companies.

The first is that every cost factor in production must be carefully weighed. Wages must be kept to a minimum. Raw materials must be bought at the lowest price, or replaced by cheaper substitutes. Waste must be disposed of as cheaply as possible, which leads to the indiscriminate and criminal dumping of toxic chemicals and other waste by-products of industry.

The second aspect of the market system which has a devastating effect on the environment is that the costs of production must be constantly lowered. Every new labour-saving invention installed by one company requires industry-wide imitation by its competitors. The result is that the total amount of commodities increases in astronomical proportions as the number of needed workers diminishes.

The need to sell ever greater numbers of commodities creates, under capitalism, a throw-away culture. The system bombards us with commercials to buy, buy, buy while creating products with a deliberately limited life span and which cost more to fix than to replace. While it's good to have people recycle and consume fewer unneeded products, these personal choices alone can't redirect the underlying compulsions of the system that are the real reason for the environmental crisis.

Trying to solve environmental problems through government legislation has proved futile. Numerous laws that have been passed to protect the environment either are not enforced or are weakened in response to economic pressure from businesses. And the capitalists hold the ultimate weapon, the threat of moving their corporations to countries where there are no such laws.

The foundation for real democracy is the ownership and control of the economy by society as a whole - not by private corporations, not by the state, not by any other entity standing above us. To establish an economic democracy, we will need to organise to put ourselves in direct control of the economy by organising a political party to demand fundamental change. We must build a new workers’ and environment movement based on the explicit goal of replacing capitalism with economic democracy.

The change to an economic democracy will make it possible to solve the problems capitalism has created. With the absence of conflicting economic interests, the new society will be able to tackle problems in a spirit of cooperation. Our number-one priority will be conservation and protection of the environment, not only for ourselves, but to benefit future generations. This is a call for a revolutionary transformation of society where we declare that the means of life rightfully belong to all the people. We need to rediscover the common needs and hopes that bind us as a class, that override our differences. We need to understand that we, the world’s working people, are the only necessary class. We do all the useful work, and we are the only ones who can change it for the better.

COP 26 What Next?

What's next?

We are just as alarmed by the waste and destruction of the environment as you are, but the ‘cures’ on offer miss the target completely.

Catchy slogans and media stunts aren’t enough, because the voluntary society we need must have the active, informed consent of a majority of workers around the world.

We know this seems like a big challenge, but it’s the only way to guarantee a world that’s fit for us to live in, and it needs you to make it happen.

You can contact us at spgb@worldsocialism.org or get a free 3-month sub to our journal. Or apply to join right now.

You can also have your say in online meetings at https://meet.jit.si/COP26SPGB, 7.30pm on 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 November.

Scotland and the Oil

Scotland’s net zero secretary Michael Matheson said the country would continue to “require an access” to oil and gas if it became independent, justifying the continuation of new oilfields.

Asked whether an independent Scotland would stop new oil and gas drilling on the first day of independence from the rest of the United Kingdom, Matheson was clear.

"No it doesn’t,” he said, “because we’re still some way off from decarbonising our society and we will still require an access to a level of hydrocarbons.”

The Cabinet secretary denied the 2014 White Paper, which leaned heavily on Scotland’s oil and gas industry continuing to prosper post-independent, was wrong.

Asked whether it was the wrong economic case in retrospect, Mr Matheson responded: “No it wasn’t, because oil and gas has played a really important part in the Scottish and UK economy for many decades.” He added: “It will continue to play an important part in our economy going forward..."

He said: “Even if you decarbonise all of your transport system and are no longer using fossil fuels, you will still require access to fossil fuels for pharmaceutical purposes, so there are other areas where you will still require access to them. So we accept that, acknowledge that and understand that."

Scottish independence: Independent Scotland would not stop drilling for oil and gas, says net zero secretary | The Scotsman

Tuesday, November 02, 2021

It is Time to Build Tomorrow, Today

Our future will be a bleak one unless we successfully make changes. It is not the fault of the frailties of “human nature” and our consumerism or over-consumption. It is the capitalist system itself that is the cause. The capitalists sacrifice nature for the sake of plunder.

A constant stream of politicians and businessmen have attempted to divert us from the solution to climate change with talk about “green capitalism”. They tell us that capitalism can halt its march towards destruction. None of their answers involves replacing capitalist profit with production for real human need, or a transformation of how we live and the way we work, to make our world fundamentally more democratic and fully participatory society.

The answers from socialists have been so marginalised we have been unable to enter the mainstream debate. When we suggest to even those progressives who should know better than a convincing ecological future must offer a credible vision of abundance, we are rebuffed as Utopian.

Socialists cannot afford to give secondary concern to the poverty and misery of billions around the world in destitution and despair that as unfortunate as it is, they will have to pay the price for a sustainable society by not having their living standards raised to the level of the developed nations.

The aim of the World Socialist Movement is to replace capitalism with a society in which common ownership of the means of production has replaced capitalist ownership.

We say the capitalist system’s insatiable rapacious need to increase profits cannot be reformed away. If working people do not succeed in ending this system, capitalism will adapt to the new conditions climate change will bring about. But it will impose the burden on the poor people, as capitalism always does. Millions will suffer, many will die and migrants will multiply. The most barbaric forms of brutality will intensify to “manage” the problems stoked by global warming. The capitalist solution will be catastrophic for the great majority of the world’s population. In the struggle to halt ecological destruction, a war against capitalism itself must be waged and in the view of the World Socialist Parties, that should be our primary campaign.

The task ahead is to build a vision that spreads across every sector of citizens and national borders. Our overriding aim is to overcome and overthrow capitalism, to cease growth for the sake of production for profit and to end the degradation of human lives, and instead create new bonds with the environment we all live in. Only world socialism can save the planet from ecological disasters.

There is barely time left to avert imminent catastrophes

COP 26

Monday, November 01, 2021

The Poison of Profit

Much of the world is in crisis. It is the capitalist chicken coming home to roost. Millions of acres of forests are on fire. Massive rainfall and flooding menace millions of people. Hurricanes and tropical storms are more frequent and intensive than before thanks to global warming. Then there are the droughts, heating of the planet by carbon emissions. The profits system has fuelled and spread environmental destruction. Don’t expect the politicians to magically fix things. The ruling class has no solutions. The capitalist class is incapable of long term rational and decent management of society. As Marx and Engels noted in 1848, class rule societies “end either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large or in the common ruin of the contending classes.”

Consumerism is the foundation of the prevailing capitalist socio-economic system. Governments and businesses are completely invested in maintaining high levels of consumption; their profitability and continued existence depend on it. Indeed, far from prioritizing the environment and working to change societal behaviour and deter individuals from spending, huge resources are expended to persuade and encourage consumption; expand market share, develop new products and increase profits for shareholders. Governments talk a concerned environmental talk, but policies are determined by economic growth rather than any concern about CO2 emissions, pollution, or bio-diversity. And most companies, routinely demonstrate that they don’t give a damn about the environment, unless by doing so sales increase and their annual dividends rise. Inherent within capitalism is a set of values that encourage selfishness, greed and complacency. Sufficiency, cooperation and social responsibility, all essential if the environmental crisis is to be met, whilst routinely spouted by politicians and CEOs are often totally absent. Their insatiable thirst for power and profit while the majority suffer, it has served them very well, which allows their complacency to continue.

Environmentalists cannot wait until governments and businesses judge that going “green” is more profitable or popular than the destructive status quo before they act. Only governments and businesses can make the needed large scale changes (fossil fuels to renewables, electrification of transportation networks, green production methods etc) only governments and businesses can make the needed large scale changes (fossil fuels to renewables, electrification of transportation networks, green production methods etc)

A revolution in consciousness is needed, moving away from selfishness to group responsibility, from apathy to action. Business-as-usual is causing these problems. The corporations are jeopardizing the entire global ecosystem, endangering the future for all children and holding the world's people hostage. Why do we allow such anti-social - even sociopathic - behaviour? How long will it take until the majority finally begins waking up to the fact that it is the capitalist system itself that is the criminal and must be summarily dealt with? Because of the high priority, it places on short-term corporate profit maximisation, capitalism tends to exacerbate the tendency to environmental harm. Under the rules of the capitalist system corporations are compelled to maximise gains and minimise costs, or lose to the competition. They do this by privatising gains and externalising costs to the public domain. So the environment serves as a free sewer to dump corporate wastes. The profit motive pushes other considerations, such as the need to preserve a healthy environment, down the agenda. If we fail to take preventive and precautionary steps civilisation may not outlive capitalism. We have the technology to move to renewable energy sources. But the capitalist system is detrimental to human inventiveness and innovation. If something is profitable for corporations it happens - even if it is damaging to the vast majority of people, our communities and our natural life-support system. But if something is not seen as profitable - even if it would be beneficial to the majority - then, businesses aren't interested. The deciding factor, the highest priority of capitalism, is short-term profit maximisation for the companies and their shareholders.

Environmental education is important but our crucial question is how to shake our fellow citizens out of their stupor and a more effective campaign to dispel capitalist illusions. We can only be truly free when we, the working-class majority, join together and democratically decide what is produced, how it is produced and how the rewards are to be allocated. Only then can we disempower the parasites who are systematically stealing the wealth labour creates and wrecking the environment we all depend upon. As workers, we need to move beyond pay issues so that we are also concerned with wresting control over technology decisions in order to enhance, not damage, environmental health.

Sooner or later - and the sooner the better - we need to start building a cooperative economic democracy that will fundamentally change this world for the better.