BLIAR BLAIR

Probably in anticipation to up-coming evidence at the Chilcot inquiry and his own appearance , Blair has switched his defence for going into Iraq .Blair has said he would have invaded Iraq even without evidence of the supposed weapons of mass destruction and would have found a way to justify the war to parliament and the public.Blair had always justified military action on the grounds that the Iraqi dictator was in breach of UN-backed demands that he abandon his alleged WMD programme.Now Blair appears to be openly admitting that evidence of WMD was not needed to invade Iraq, and he could have found other arguments to justify it.

Saddam Hussein , a threat to the region ? Iraq had already lost nearly two thirds of its forces and more than 80% of its infrastructure and civil society in the 1990-91 Gulf War and, if that was not enough, it was subjected to frequent American and British bombings, along with nearly 12 years of stringent sanctions.

Colin Powell, US Secretary of State, and Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's closest adviser, made clear was no threat - to America, Europe or the Middle East.

Powell said in a CBS interview "He's weaker, he's much weaker. That million-man army of ten years ago is gone. He is sitting on a very much smaller army of perhaps 350,000 that does not have the capacity to invade its neighbors any longer." Also in 2001, Powell said: "He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours.So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq...."Powell even boasted that it was the US policy of "containment" that had effectively disarmed the Iraqi dictator . "The Iraqi regime militarily remains fairly weak. It doesn't have the capacity it had 10 or 12 years ago. It has been contained."
In another speech, Powell went further and said that Saddam Hussein had not been able to "build his military back up or to develop weapons of mass destruction" for "the last 10 years". America, he said, had been successful in keeping him "in a box". . Another comment from Powell was "Saddam has nothing but rhetoric and shooting his mouth off" !!
Condoleezza Rice in a 2001 CNN interview also described a weak, divided and militarily defenceless Iraq. "Saddam does not control the northern part of the country," she said. "We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt."

So here were two of Bush's most important officials contradicting Blair's propaganda and exposing his lies so when Blair talks about constructing new justifications for the Iraq war , he means delivering more deceit .

Or was Saddam simply a potential threat to the regions oil supply security , a proven maverick , no longer trust-worthy enough to have any influence in the stategically important area ?

Iraq's oil reserves are vast and much of it is relatively cheap to extract.Iraq's known reserves of conventional oil rank behind only Saudi Arabia and Iran.The potential profits for foreign companies could be huge.
"This is an opportunity without precedent anywhere else in the world. The scale of reserves available for development and exploitation is without equal," Peter Kemp from Energy Intelligence told BBC News."That is something that no oil company... can ignore."
(Or governments SOYMB adds)

UK's Shell and Malaysia's Petronas oil companies has won the right to develop Iraq's giant Majnoon oil field with reserves of 13 billion barrels of oil although it currently produces just 46,000 barrels per day.

Is Russia Capitalist ?

With Russia now fully and openly integrated within the world capitalist system , this post of a past debate with a now defunct Trotskyist organisation appears to be a rather sterile exercise . But yet today there are those on the Left who claim that what once existed in Russia was a Workers State , and for all its various flaws , such a society should still be strived for as a progressive step towards socialism . Therefore , the arguments against such a view must continue and although our understanding of what developed in Russia has grown since the debate took place , SOYMB is happy to make it available to the worldwide web .

Debate with Trotskyists:

"Is Russia Capitalist?"

On July 1st [1948] at Conway Hall , D. Fenwick for the S.P.G.B. debated with R. Tearse for the Revolutionary Communist Party.

In his opening half-hour FENWICK carefully defined Capitalism and Socialism in the usual Marxian terms and argued that the existence in Russia of a propertyless working class living by selling its labour-power for wages, and producing commodities for sale on the market shows that it is not Socialism but a form of State Capitalism. Admittedly , it had not developed exactly on the lines of capitalism in the Western countries. Trotsky in "The Revolution Betrayed" had asserted that the term "State Capitalism" is meaningless, but certainly Lenin did not think so for in his "The Chief Task of Our Times" he had argued that State Capitalism would be a step forward for industrially backward Russia. The contrasts of riches and poverty in Russia and the growth of bondholding are features of Capitalism not Socialism. What is the interest paid to the bondholders if not surplus value resulting from the exploitation of the workers? Fenwick emphasised that the achievement of Socialism presupposes a socialist working class, it cannot be imposed by a dictatorship.

R. TEARSE in reply claimed that the S.P.G.B. is wrong in describing the 1917 revolution as a bourgeois revolution. It would be a peculiar capitalist revolution that expropriates the capitalists. The S.P.G.B. idea of all the workers moving together towards Socialism is wishful thinking, and the notion of Capitalism and Socialism being divided by a sort of Chinese Wall is erroneous. In the introduction to "Civil War in France" Engels had conceived of a whole new generation after the working class seizure of power before it would be possible to have fully-fledged Socialism. The R.C.P. never claimed that Socialism exists in Russia. Marx and Engels, in the Communist Manifesto, when they wrote of revolutionary measures such as steeply-graduated income tax, and the centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, obviously envisaged the continuance of the wages system and commodity production in the transition period after the workers had gained power. The first essential step for the workers is to secure the centralisation of large-scale industry in the hands of the State as had been done in Russia. Inequality exists but this does not prove the existence of Capitalism. The rich in Russia are the artists and writers but in the S.P.G.B. pamphlet "Socialism" it is claimed that these better-paid workers are still members of the working class. Bondholding is a very small feature in relation to the whole economy. The bondholder does not control undertakings. The bureaucracy may receive parasitic income from the exploitation of the working class but accumulation of capital through the individual capitalist and the resulting capitalist crises of boom and slump do not exist in Russia. What social group constitutes the capitalist class in Russia? He challenged Fenwick to answer. As regards the R.C.P.'s willingness to support Russia in war, this is justified because there you have a progressive economy based on the nationalisation of the whole economy.

In further contributions to the debate FENWICK referred to Marx's statement of the possibility of the workers overthrowing the bourgeoisie and of this merely serving the development of the bourgeois revolution itself as happened in France in 1794 (quoted in "State and Socialist Revolution" by Martov). He also quoted from "Socialism, Utopian, and Scientific" where Engels showed that the nationalisation of industries does not lessen their capitalist nature. Russia was in fact affected by the 1931 crisis like other countries. He referred to the change in the law which allows holders of State bonds in Russia to bequeath them to their heirs and quoted Trotsky's statement in "Revolution Betrayed" that if any such development occurred it would be a victory for the bureaucracy and would mean their conversion into a new ruling class. The measures at the end of Section II of the Communist Manifesto, showed that at that time the immediate establishment of Socialism after the capture of power was not entertained by Marx or Engels; but industry and knowledge had undergone great development since then. In 1872 Engels had said that the passage in question would have been very differently worded under the different conditions existing at the later date.

R. TEARSE repeated his argument that wholesale nationalisation is different in kind from the nationalisation of sectors of industry as in this country. In Russia nationalisation would form the basis of Socialism after the transition period. The 1931 crisis did not affect Russia in the fundamental way it affected other countries. It was not the result of the accumulation of capital in the hands of private capitalists. As regards the quotation from "Socialism, Utopian and Scientific" about the capitalist, nature of nationalised industries it should not be overlooked that in the very next sentence Engels argued that though the capitalist relation is not done away with, it is " brought to a head, it topples over." In Russia industry as a whole has been taken over by the State and the anarchy of private appropriation of surplus value does not exist. The defeat of Russia in war would be a defeat for the working class and a further lease of life for capitalism. There must be a transition period between capitalism and socialism and during this period capital and wages would exist but this alone does not make it capitalism. Though in 1872 Engels had said he and Marx would not in the changed conditions lay special stress on the measures proposed in the Communist Manifesto Engels never said the measures were wrong and he continued to call them revolutionary measures.

The debate was well-attended and the audience showed the closest attention to the by no means simple clash of argument. A collection of £10 15s. was taken up.
(Socialist Standard, August 1948).

Hat-tip to Inveresk St Ingrate for image and more background info at link

Just War

Barack Obama accepted his Nobel Peace Prize. Obama said there were times when "the use of force was not only necessary but morally justified," He went on to say "Instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace".

No matter what the real or alleged atrocities of the "bad" side however, wars are quarrels over control of territory and resources between different sections of the capitalist class—business rivalry by other means. The working class can have no interest in such matters. The result of a "just" war is the same as a "bad" war — we suffer the consequences. The only "worthwhile" war is the class war—the fight against war.

Although we are not pacifists (we would countenance fighting should a pro-capitalist minority take up arms to try to prevent the democratic establishment of socialism) we say there is no such thing as a "just war". Wars are fought over markets, investment outlets, raw material sources and trade routes and strategic points to control them.

"A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies," Obama added.
Many point to the Second War, and declaim loudly that it was a just war, where the actions of the Allies were intended to stop atrocities.The 1939-45 war for example was apparently a war against fascism (despite the existence of neutral Spanish and Portuguese fascisms), and for democracy (despite totalitarian Russia being on "our" side). Because they're the "bad guys" the Germans in the 1939-45 war deserved everything they got. So it's okay to roast folk alive in air raids if they're on the "wrong side".The ethics of "legitimate" or "just" war have no bottom line. If there ever was such a bottom line, the saturation bombing of Hamburg, Dresden and Tokyo, generating the new military tactic of fire-storms, certainly plummeted below it.

He said the US "must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war" to differentiate it from "a vicious adversary that abides by no rules".
Hoping that war can be carried out in a gentlemanly way, that it can be carried out without inflicting suffering on the working class is pie in the sky.

Faced with capitalist barbarity and cynicism SOYMB place on record our abhorrence of all war and call upon workers everywhere to unite to bring the war-prone capitalist system to a speedy end.

It is the inaction and complacency of the working class that enables such horrendous injustices to go on. For over a century the SPGB have warned of the dangers of political apathy, of trusting in leaders, of accepting all that governments say without question. Our inaction is an important element in our continuing exploitation, for the master class see in it our consent for their excesses.

The divorce of the decayed

The wedding of Diana Spensor and Charles Windsor twenty eight years years ago was watched by nearly one billion people worldwide. Needless to say, the announcement of their separation on this day in 1992 attracted much attention too - even the Socialist Standard used one of its valuable pages to pass comment...



With no small amusement we have watched as one of the most sacred symbols of British ruling-class power has imploded ignominously. The farcical proportions of the Royal Soap Opera has reduced the pomposity of Great British nationalism to its rightful place in the gutters of tabloid gossip. In recent months we have been invited to scrutinise the topless Duchess, listen to tapes of a suicidal Princess and her secret boyfriend Squidgy, and read daily accounts of matrimonial infidelity within the family of the woman who is the head of the Church of England. If capitalism is a circus the Royals are its hapless clowns.



The ruling class owes its subjects a big apology. In 1981 the y had wage slaves dancing in the streets to celebrate the wedlock of their two parasitical Royal dummies. Royal mugs were sold to Royalist mugs. The mass media offered workers non-stop news of a fairy tale marriage made in Heaven. When the Socialist Party ran a street meeting in Glasgow to expose the reality of the Royal facade it was attacked by patriotically wound-up loyalists.



Now the wedlock has become official deadlock. The dream marriage has concluded in bitter separation. The mighty have fallen. All that is left are the Charles and Di mugs. The whole of British Royalty is currently surrounded by scandal, disgrace and ridicule. By the reasoning of their own defenders, who claim that those who rule were "bom superior", we could be forgiven for concluding that there is some defective Windsor gene which makes these people "bom" to have failed relationships. But we do not accept the reasoning of those who say that some are "bom" to rule or to fail; indeed, as good materialists, our best recommendation to the, Windsors would be a long course of intensive family : therapy.



In fact, socialists could not care less what happens to the Royals. They are of no practical importance to our lives. They are pointless scroungers, but so is the entire class to which they belong. We seek to abolish more than the monarchy. The entire parasite class must go. The social system whereby privileged idlers are free to enrich themselves by robbing the wealth producers of the fruits of our labour must go. And it is we, the workers, who must consciously and democratically put an end to it.



Socialism, the next stage in human history, will be a stateless, leaderless society of free and equal men and women. There will be neither monarchs nor Presidents; there will not be cabinets or politburos. Socialist democracy will mean that people, globally and in local communities, control a society commonly owned by all of us. To those who say that we need men and women of superiority to look up to, we say - Look at them; Laugh at them; and Learn to live without them on our backs.



(Socialist Standard January 1993 )

Bank Bail-outs - So What's New ?

SOYMB takes the opportunity to re-print two Socialist Standard articles upon previous banking crises that demonstrates that for all the accusations of Obama's "socialism" , and the State help to support the banking industry nothing much changes from the past.

Banks and the crisis

If anything has underlined the capacity of the capitalist system for severe crisis bordering on disaster, it has been the recent report of the Bank of England admitting that in the last two years it had to launch a multi-million pound "lifeboat" fund to support financial institutions on the brink of bankruptcy. Although the Bank has refused to reveal exactly how much was spent on the operation, the Guardian (27 May) reported that "City bankers believe that more than £1 billion may have been used to bail out fewer than 10 institutions".

The Bank first realized the true extent of the banking crisis in October 1990 and soon went on red alert. It eventually came to believe that over one in six UK financial institutions were at risk from the crisis. This was primarily because the economic slump and the collapse of BCCI provoked what has been described as a "flight into quality", or towards the big five banks, at the expense of other institutions dependent on the so-called wholesale market where deposits come primarily from professional investors, many of whom were also involved in the slump-ravaged property sector.

The Bank's report claims that its actions to avert a major banking crisis followed what it calls:
substantial withdrawals of wholesale funding from smaller banking institutions arising out of a number of factors, including the pressure on banks in major overseas markets, notably America and Japan, the earlier closure of a number of other small British banks, followed by BCCI, and the reactions to those events by local authorities and other places of wholesale funds.

It is clear from the Bank's report that a full 1970s-type banking crisis was a real prospect—and the report states that the Bank of England still has £115 million in provisions representing outstanding debts at risk.

Some of those banks bailed out by the Bank of England have since ceased trading. Some have effectively worked themselves out of a precarious position while others still depend on the facilities extended to them by the Bank.

Given the anarchy of the market system it is quite easy for a major financial catastrophe to occur under capitalism and shake the system to its roots. This has been amply demonstrated by the recent activities of the Bank of England, just as it was during the secondary banking crisis of the 1970s and, of course, during the major slump of the 1930s, which was exacerbated by the major banking crisis of 1932-3.

One thing is for sure—there can be no sustained economic recovery so long as corporate, personal and national debts are compounding at a rate faster than wealth production. Before the "green shoots" of recovery really start to grow there will have to be yet more bankruptcies, cheap takeovers and massive debt liquidation to ease the pressure on finance, investment and consumption. In truth, with debts in major capitalist states like Britain and the US at such unprecedented levels and with no really convincing signs of sustained economic recovery, the pressures on capitalism's financial apparatus may be far from over.

DAP (Socialist Standard, July 1993)

Intervention USA

In these days of the enterprise culture, government involvement in industry, commerce, banking and other economic activities is not the flavour of the month. Market forces are in and intervention, or so we are told, is out.

Indeed it would appear that this is true, for all over the world, in Britain, France, Australia and elsewhere, governments have been getting rid of much of what is called "the public sector". In fact nationalisation, the main form of government involvement in a nation's economic activity and once seen as a device which would solve all of capitalism's economic and social problems, is more or less a dead duck.

So obvious is this even to politicians of "the left" that the Labour Party here doesn't intend to re-nationalise all the Tory sell-offs of the last decade, while in the so-called communist countries private enterprise is being encouraged to compete with ailing state enterprise.

From deregulation...
However, even in such times as these, governments still have to step in and intervene when they think that the interest of the national capitalist class is in danger. For example, in the United States, the very heartland of non-intervention, there has been the growing problem of the Savings and Loans banks. These S and Ls are the rough equivalent of Britain's building societies and hundreds of them have gone bust while hundreds more are insolvent. Their losses were $68 billion in 1987 and $3.8 billion in the first quarter of 1988, although depositors are covered by a government insurance agency.

How did this happen? Just as nationalisation was once seen as the great cure-all, nowadays it is "deregulation" which fills the bill. This means that enterprises in an industry no longer have to conform to laid-down government regulations but are freer to operate as they see fit. This, it is claimed, will produce a capitalism without its attendant problems, will provide greater all-round prosperity, and so on.

Thus the S and Ls were allowed by the Carter administration in 1980 to borrow, not only from small investors for re-lending as mortgages as previously, but from the money markets at ever higher rates of interest. This laid them wide open to trouble, which duly arrived when the Reagan administration further deregulated by allowing the now exposed S and Ls to move into high-risk lending for big property deals and other get-rich-quick schemes of which they had no experience. The result was the spate of bankruptcies and insolvencies already mentioned.

... to regulation
At present the insolvent S and Ls keep afloat by continuing to borrow at high interest rates and their debts are estimated to be increasing by $35 million a day. Sooner or later the government will have to foot the
ever-mounting bill. The implications of this are serious for American capitalism. How can it ever tackle its massive budget deficit of $150 billion while it throws away billions at this rate? More seriously, many American banks have collapsed in recent years (almost 200 in 1987 alone) and the additional collapse of hundreds more S and Ls could trigger a disastrous loss of public confidence in the entire American banking system. The Administration have therefore intervened to try to stop the rot.

Bush and his financial advisers have come up with a plan calling for a one hundred billion dollar issue of new bonds to bail out the S and Ls. The interest on the bonds is to be paid to the government by the S and Ls and the other banks though higher premiums for Federal insurance of all bank deposits. Critics of the plan say it breaks Bush's election promise of "no new taxes" as "the taxpayer", in the form of the banks' customers, will have the extra premium passed onto them through higher bank charges. But this will not necessarily happen because the customers may refuse to pay up, in which case the banks and S and Ls will have to bear the extra cost themselves.

This rescue package also calls for a leaner and fitter S and L industry to be taken over and run by another government agency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and amounts to back-door nationalisation. So whatever their ideological preferences any government will make use of intervention, even despised nationalisation, when it suits "the national interest".

All of this reinforces the Socialist Party's view that whether government use less intervention or more, they are helpless in avoiding capitalism's pitfalls.

VV (Socialist Standard, April 1989)

God , Paul , and Marx

This article in the Guardian makes interesting reading and appears to be a confirmation of Marx and his well-known quotation “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” - an illusory escape from real suffering.

Popular religion is a psychological mechanism for coping with high levels of stress and anxiety. It is a crutch to which people turn when they are under extreme stress, "a natural invention of human minds in response to a defective habitat". Americans, Gregory Paul says, suffer appalling stress and anxiety due to the lack of universal health care, the competitive economic environment, and huge income inequalities, and under these conditions belief in a supernatural creator and reliance on religious observance provides relief.
"...popular religion is in the main a superficial psychological response that seeks the daily aid and protection of supernatural entities to alleviate the stress and anxiety created by a sufficiently dysfunctional social and especially economic environment."

His earlier research showed strong positive correlations between nations' religious belief and levels of murder, teenage pregnancy, drug abuse and other indicators of dysfunction. It seemed to show, at the very least, that being religious does not necessarily make for a better society.his latest research Paul measures "popular religiosity" for developed nations, and then compares it against the "successful societies scale" (SSS)using 25 indicators which includes such things such as homicides, the proportion of people incarcerated, infant mortality, sexually transmitted diseases, teenage births and abortions, corruption, income inequality, and many others. In other words it is a way of summing up a society's health. The deviation from the mean again and again is the US with a stunning catalogue of failures. On almost every measure the US comes out worse than any other 1st world developed nation, and it is also the most religious.For this reason Paul carries out his analysis both with and without the US included, but either way the same correlations turn up. The 1st world nations with the highest levels of belief in God, and the greatest religious observance are also the ones with all the signs of societal dysfunction.

"America’s high-risk circumstances, the strong variation in economic circumstances, and chronic competitiveness help elevate rates of social pathology, and strongly contribute to high levels of personal stress and anxiety. The majority of Americans are left feeling sufficiently insecure that they perceive a need to seek the aid and protection of a supernatural creator, boosting levels of religious opinion and participation. The nation’s good ratings in life satisfaction and happiness is compatible with a large segment of the population using religion to psychologically compensate for high levels of apprehension; America’s apparently high level mental illness may be in accord with this suggestion. The ultimate expression of this social phenomenon is the large minority who adhere to the evangelical Prosperity Christianity and Rapture cultures whose Bible-based world-view favors belief in the Genesis creation story."

For socialists, the struggle against religion cannot be separated from the struggle for socialism. We fight religious superstition wherever it is an obstacle to socialism. Socialists oppose religion for its anachronistic premises, for the barrier it presents to scientifically examining and controlling our own lives and destinies.To the extent that the working class feel themselves powerless, they are willing to accept an explanation of the world that gave them some measure of understanding and control.People in politically marginalised and powerless communities – like much of the rural United States – are turning to religious fundamentalism in the face of their own lack of control over their own and their communities’ lives.

Marx explains that “The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusions about their condition is a demand to give up a condition that requires illusion. The criticism of religion is therefore the germ of the criticism of the valley of tears whose halo is religion”.

The system , it's mental , it is

Transcript of interview on the BBC radio Today Programme between John Humphrey's and Dr Lynne Friedl, author of the World Health Organisation's report "Mental Health, Resilience, and Inequalities"

LF: The big silence is about which of the communities who bear the brunt of depression, anxiety - and those are the poorest communities. So there is something that government can do, and that is to tackle poverty and to reduce inequality. If we ask what actually influences your mental health, it's the quality of human relationships; what influences the mental health of children, it's the quality of human relationships - in the home, in the schools

JH: But government can't do anything about that

LF: The government can do an enormous amount about that

JH: About our human relationships, how people relate to each other?

LF: Yes, because how we relate to each other is fundamentally influenced by things like poverty, and the gap between...

JH: Is it!?

LF: Yes it is. If you've struggled to make ends meet, if you are living in a society in which you are constantly of no account, you don't have a voice, you have low status - living in poverty is a huge struggle, but it's more of a struggle in a context where you have very little, and other people have a huge amount.

JH: But hasn't society always been - it's regrettable, nobody wants it to happen - but that is the way society is, there will always be people who are better off than other people - and people, therefore, who are worse off than other people.

LF: That's the case, but what we've seen over the past 30 years is a huge increase in the levels of inequality. ANd now what we're facing is not just an economic recession, which is one response to that, but a social recession. If we don't grasp the psychological impact of the big gap between rich and poor, we will not have any impact on depression and anxiety.

JH: So it is to do with relative wealth - so in other words, we might be, compared with our fathers, our grandfathers, our great grandfathers - we might be terribly well off. But if the person next door is much - or the person in the next street is much much richer than us, that'll make us depressed. Is that what you're saying

LF: Exactly so, that's what the statistics suggest.

JH: But isn't that called ... life?

LF: Umm - well it depends whether you think injustice is something you think we should just lie back and put up with...

JH: Why is it unjust that some people are better off than other people. Why is that necessarily inherently unjust?

LF: It's unjust when whole communitites don't have any chance of sharing the positive benefits of society, when people are excluded from good education, from decent housing, from well-paid jobs. The level of difference in people's life chances has reached extraordinary proportions. And the psychological consequences of that are very profound. Every parent knows - the first thing a child learns to say after 'no' is 'it's not fair'. And we then spend the rest of our time trying to persuade children to adapt to injustice. It can't be done. We have to tackle injustice if we're serious about mental health. The evidence is overwhelming.

Climate Change or Change the System

Capitalism is based on ownership and control by the minority capitalist class, ruthless exploitation of the majority for profit, and thus competition. In this system, the nation state is a mechanism used by capitalists to protect – and extend – their dominion as owners and rulers, and this has always led to international strife. As resources dwindle, due to pollution, over-exploitation and climate change - or easily accessible supplies (those that are profitable) are used up - competition and thus conflict can be expected to intensify. As long as capitalism continues the working class will continue to be exploited for profit, and the system will continue to give rise to waste, war, poverty and famine. The capitalist class will continue to claim that the aim of their actions is to relieve us of these dire conditions, whereas in actual fact their profit-making policies only perpetuate them.

It is by no means unknown for a society to collapse for ecological reasons, which is to say, because it did not treat its environment with care. By ‘collapse’ here is meant a drastic reduction in living standards and population, not that everybody who lives in a certain place dies. The collapse of present-day society, then, might involve far fewer people surviving and at a far lower standard of living, but it would not result in the end of humanity and certainly not of the planet on which we live. Yet how likely is it that there will be a societal collapse caused by climate change or other ecological factors?

Energy production and global warming being so integrated as closely as they could be in capitalist production combatting them would not be a mere matter of changes in , say , the manufacture of aerosols and CFCs , but of changing something which is part and parcel of the capitalist system and on which all companies depend. No company will take action which endangers their profits, just as no government will pass legislation that puts the capitalists whose interests they represent at a disadvantage. Capitalism is about competition and profit-making, and this is something which can never be done away with as long as it lasts. The threat of global warming is clearly a global problem that can only be dealt with by co-ordinated action at world level. But this is not going to happen under capitalism. As a system involving competition between profit-seeking corporations backed up by their protecting states, it is inherently incapable of world-wide cooperation.

With “unseasonal” droughts, “exceptional” heat-waves, “record breaking” cold snaps, “increasing” typhoons, “freakish” floods reinforcing a justifiably growing sense of alarm, the world’s captains of capitalism are being forced reluctantly to dine at well-stocked conference table after conference table in order to put aside their nationalist differences and ask how in blazes they are going to continue to stay in power when climate change is going to cause chaos and anarchy and they are all going to be murdered in their beds by starving rioting populations and climate refugees. But there is not going to be any coordinated world action to deal with global warming . Something will be done but it is bound to be too little, too late.

Is it good that politicians are listening to scientists at Copenhagen ? Yes, because scientists are the only people who cannot plausibly be accused of a political agenda, and who therefore have no incentive to lie or distort facts. But politicians are not really listening to everything scientists say, only that portion of it that they can conveniently do something about. The real obstacle to change is what it has always been, the same obstacle which blocks any real progress on the impending food or water crisis, on the bio-fuels controversy, on carbon capping, on the rampant waste of resources, and on global warming. It is class ownership, and the fact that the owning class are raping and destroying the world is increasingly being brought to the headlines by scientists with no axe to grind and no political cards up their sleeve. Workers should have learned by now never to trust a politician. Quite right. But let’s hope people start taking more notice of the back-room boffins, because they are asking questions which, until now, only socialists have ever asked. Scientists, like charities, have not been accustomed to addressing questions they considered outside their scope, such as global inequality. But as the weight of evidence mounts, that is changing. Increasingly, some scientists are putting the words ‘carbon’ and ‘capitalism’ together.

At present, 'stewardship' over the earth is in the hands of a small minority of the world population . Their interests have proven to be irreconcilable with the need to protect the environment from pollution and degradation . Surely it is obvious that there is no solution within capitalism. The capitalists will never stop polluting if it means reduced profits and reduced competitiveness. Nor is it logical to say that ‘Socialism may be the answer, but we’ll have to wait a long time for it and we need to do something now.’ It is just that attitude that delays socialism and the chance to make a real change in the way we produce and distribute wealth. There is nothing ‘now’ to be done that will solve the problem. Socialism can come as quickly as the majority wants it. Then decisions will be made with a view to satisfying the real human needs of everyone on the planet, and the removal of all that is harmful to the environment and the causes global warming can be addressed with sanity and science. Socialism is the only alternative to what we have. Socialism is the only option to solve this and other major problems. We, the producers , who do not own the means of producing and distributing wealth are in the vast majority. It is up to us, not the small minority of owners and their political minions , to change the system so that a clean and sustainable lifestyle IS possible.

Copping out at Copenhagen

56 newspapers around the world in 20 languages published the same editorial calling on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen to take decisive steps in tackling climate change yet it admits few believe that Copenhagen can any longer produce a full treaty , that may have to wait until June 2010 UN summit in Bonn . SOYMB remembers Rio and Framework Convention on Climate Change summit in 1992. The FCCC aimed to return greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000. It was signed by 166 nations. SOYMB remembers the the follow up Earth Summits in New York in 1997 and Johannesburg 2002. SOYMB remembers 1997 Kyoto Conference on Climatic Change with 10,000 attending from 160 countries and who agreed to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2 percent over the next 15 years. Like all true apologists for capitalism, those participating in all those meetings continue to fail to locate global problems in a wider social and economic context, in capitalism itself, as if the profit motive was incidental to environmental concerns. Profit is in fact the biggest stumbling block encountered by delegates at Earth summits and the World Socialist Movement has wasted no time in exposing similar summits in the past as the farces they are.

In spite of all the evidence that present production and transport methods and deforestation are primary responsible for climatic warming-the disappearing polar icecaps, global flooding, rising sea levels, vegetation dieback, the loss of thousands of species of life, and that the speed and scale of global warming has no precedent - the world's governments still insist these wasteful, though profit-generating methods must remain. And this in spite of recent evidence from the hundreds of scientists. Attempts to halt the massive output of greenhouse gases in the hope of preventing a possible global warming have resulted in negligible success, mainly due to capitalism's higher priority—profit.
The issue of climate change is just one of a vast range of problems which capitalism is hopelessly ill-equipped to deal with. Human and environmental needs come a poor second whenever the needs of capital dictate. The history of sincere but failed attempts to correct a system which cannot meet needs leads to the conclusion that a new social system should be tried. A system without money and the profit motive in which the interests and needs of all are paramount. In such a system the challenge of the human impact on the environment can be seriously addressed for the first time. People, and not money, will control their lives and the direction of social progress.

Regardless of the well-meaning words we can not expect obligations to be met so long as there are profits to be made. The perennial problem is that countries are reluctant to promote the investment in more environmentally friendly methods of production and transport because their respective governments, being the executive arm of the capitalist class, prefer to bow with suppliant knee to powerful oil, coal, iron and steel lobbies, rather than openly acknowledge that ecologically we risk approaching the point of no return. Instead of governments vying with each other to reduce carbon emissions, they have sought to win advantages for their own industries . We live in a homogenised, corporate world, run entirely on capitalist principles. Simply put, everything has to turn a profit at each stage of the line, otherwise it is worthless, expendable. Raw materials, service, investment, packaging, transportation, advertising, marketing, point of sale, with labour at every step, all need their profit in order for a transaction to be viable. Climate change deniers and sceptics are hired by industry, foundations and government think tanks in order to denounce or reduce the impact of scientific reports of global warming. Corporations have no interest in nil returns, only in repeat business. And loyalty is as long-lived as profit, corporate allegiance to which will trump allegiance to any flag.

In fact, what are the chances of any world agreement to reduce carbon emissions being achieved? Clearly, climate change is a world problem and as such can only be tackled at world level. But, as the experience of the Kyoto Treaty of 1997 shows, the chances of the world’s major capitalist states agreeing on an adequate and effectively enforced programme are practically nil.

The consequences of climate change – changing agricultural productivity in different parts of the world, population migrations, a rise in sea level – can only be dealt with by planned and coordinated global action within the framework of a united world. Only in a frontierless world in which the Earth’s natural and industrial resources have become the common heritage of all humanity can the necessary measures be taken to stabilise carbon emissions and to deal with the consequences of global warming. People, collectively, have the power to bring about that demise of capitalism . It will be the people, who, by sheer weight of numbers, will end the tyranny that is being waged now by international capitalism on our habitat and our planet . People everywhere are shouting “Enough!” and are beginning to realise that our loyalty is to each other and to the maintenance of a protected, sustainable world environment, not just for now, but for all future generations.

Otherwise , in the words of Dads Army Private Fraser, we are all doomed , doooomed – unless, that is, we establish world socialism.

Up and Up Goes Child Poverty

Child poverty is soaring despite Government promises to wipe it out.Four million children are now living in poverty, Barnardo's says, with their parents having £10 or less a day to pay for food, heating, clothes and electricity for each family member.
Child poverty rose in 17 of the 20 poorest constituencies in Britain last year.Ladywood area of Birmingham had the highest concentration of youngsters living in poverty, 83 per cent, which was up 2.5 per cent in a year. This was followed by central Manchester with 81 per cent, and Sparkbrook and Small Heath in Birmingham with 80.4 per cent.
Barnardo's chief executive Martin Narey warned things will get worse as the recession continues to bite. He said: "It is intolerable that in some places in the UK eight out of 10 children are growing up poor."