China's Shrinking Population

Demographers warn that China’s population will begin to shrink in the next decade, potentially derailing the world’s second-largest economy, with a far-reaching global impact. China’s birthrate last year was at its lowest since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, with 15.23 million births, dramatically lower than the 21-to-23 million officials had expected.

By 2050 as much as a third of the country’s population will be made up of people over the age of 60, putting severe strain on state services and the children who bear the brunt of caring for elderly relatives.

Faced with a population that is shrinking and ageing, Chinese policymakers are attempting to engineer a baby boom after more than three decades of a Malthusian family planning regime better-known as the one-child policy. Central policy planners have loosened restrictions on family sizes, and now all married couples can have two children. There is talk of the limits being dropped altogether, and amid aggressive propaganda drives, local officials are experimenting with subsidies and incentives for parents.

But these efforts appear to be too little too late. Birthrates have fallen and are likely to continue to drop as parents decide against having more children. More young women are pushing back against state propaganda and family pressure, while improving education standards and income levels have delayed marriage and childbirth. Moreover, decades of the one-child policy have made single-child households the norm, experts say.

For residents in Shenyang, the largest city in Dongbei, in central Liaoning province, it’s obvious why few families are willing to have more children – the economy.

Rich in resources such as iron ore and coal, Dongbei was at the heart of the country’s heavy industry between the 1950s and 1970s. During the reform era, industries moved southward to the coastal regions, and the state-run companies that employed most Dongbei workers have struggled, causing a mass exodus to other parts of China.

“Shanghai, Guangzhou, all these cities are moving forward, but Shenyang has stayed in place. All the high-rises don’t change anything,” says Zhang Yang, 36, who works in purchasing for a local state-owned company. “Few people are having babies because the economy is so bad.”

During Dongbei’s heyday, Shenyang was the region’s economic hub, with blocks of factories lining its main street. Now those buildings have been replaced by high-rise apartments, banks and hotels while the factories have been relocated to a suburb outside the city. The new economic zone, the new home for these factories, is quiet.

The birthrate here is especially low, at 8.79 per 1,000 women, compared with the national average of 12.43 in 2017. The city is ageing quickly – a quarter of residents were above the age of 60 in 2017, and local population experts believe the city will soon overtake Shanghai to have China’s oldest populace.

Local governments across China are struggling to reverse the declines with subsidies, propaganda initiatives and new regulations on wokplace leave. In Xiantao, Hubei province, hospitals have offered to cover the costs of childbirth as well as give a 500 yuan (£60) subsidy for the first child and another 700 for the second. In Changsha, in southern China, an advertising campaign last year listed “1,001 reasons to have a baby”. Between 2016 and 2017, almost all provinces extended maternity leave.  Several provinces have banned abortions after 14 weeks, and Jiangxi province in the south requires the signature of three medical professionals before the procedure can be performed. More provinces have put in place obstacles to getting divorces, including a test or mandated cooling-off period. The All China Women’s Federation, a government-affiliated organisation, has been running a “beautiful families” campaign, praising women who serve as primary caretakers of their parents and children.

“China should have stopped the policy 28 years ago. Now it’s too late,” says Yi Fuxian, a senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and a longtime critic of the family planning policies.

Birthrates in Dongbei, home to about 109 million people, have fallen steeply. The average number of children per woman was 0.9 in 2000 and 0.56 in 2015, according to Yi. That means the next generation will be a quarter of the size of the last one.

Researchers believe the national rate of births could fall further. Last year’s low rate surprised many. Liang Jianzhang, a professor of economics at Peking University, says he and his colleagues had expected births to peak in 2017 and begin falling after 2018.

“That peak apparently arrived in 2016, with births dropping ever since … What we can expect now is that the number of newborns will continue to shrink rapidly in 2019 and beyond,” he wrote in January. “It can be said with certainty that even though 2018 saw a low number of births, that number will not be surpassed for the next 100 years. China will never see more than 15 million newborns in the future,” he predicted.

Last year an article in the state-run People’s Daily said: “The birth of a baby is not only a matter of the family itself but also a state affair.”

“The party state sees the declining population as a real problem, and it’s women’s duty to respond to that,” says Jane Golley, an associate professor at Australian National University, who focuses on the Chinese economy and labour economics. “It’s a new era of control over women’s reproductive choices.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/02/china-population-control-two-child-policy

15th March - Climate Change Day of Action

Protecting our environment is a central issue for millions of people across the world today. Unless global warming is halted and reversed the consequences could be catastrophic, even threatening the future viability of civilisation on the planet. Action is needed to avoid disaster. The root of the threats to the future of the planet lie within the capitalist system itself. Despite the scientists describing the best and worse scenarios, no one knows for sure what the consequences of greenhouse gas emissions will be. The earth’s climate is a complex system – one in which small changes can have sudden, dramatic and unpredictable effects. This uncertainty over the possible climate effects and the social consequences of such changes makes the threat even more worrisome.

 It is argued that the solutions to the climate change crisis are relatively straightforward in principle. Even radicals can imagine a series of palliative legislative measures that are not incompatible with the capitalist system and that the capitalists can as easily live off the profits based on the production and sale of renewable energy as they have done from oil and coal. Being capitalists with an eye for a financial return, some may well decide there is money to be made from developing alternative energy. However, at the heart of the production for profit on which the whole system presently depends is the fossil fuel industries and we can expect the profit-seeking CEOs who head these giant corporations, and who must follow the logic to expand so to accumulate capital will resist with all their power anything which fundamentally threaten their business interests. Green reformers say popular pressure and government actions may change the way the fossil fuel corporations operate. But at best they will not do so at the scale and pace that the experts say is required. We should not rely upon the “invisible hand” of the market to reshape the world’s economy in time to head off a pending disaster. And we can also be assured that many politicians will act in line with the pro-business, pro-market, pro-profit corporations who oil the wheels of politics with generous party funding. Real-politik means making concessions to Big Business.

The struggle over climate change raises the question of wresting power and wealth out of the hands of those who have it now. There is a desperate need for society to be run in a fundamentally different and democratic way, one in which production is not for profit but to satisfy and serve the needs of ordinary people and the planet. Such a transformation is what we call socialism. A socialist revolution overturning capitalism is the best strategy to tackle the threat to the environment and remains the key which can solve the climate crisis. The real solution to the terrible threat of global climate disaster is simple – challenge the logic of profit.

Schools failing the poor

Children from the poorest backgrounds are more likely to attend a secondary school rated below “good” by Ofsted than in 2016, new analysis suggests.

More than a third (35 per cent) of children from the poorest postcodes currently attend a school rated “inadequate” or “requires improvement” – a rise from 28 per cent three years ago. Figures show only 8 per cent of young people from the wealthiest postcodes currently attend a school rated as less than “good”, which remains unchanged in recent years.  

The growing gap between children from the richest and poorest families is also seen at “outstanding” schools, where only 17 per cent of children from the poorest backgrounds attend, compared to 44 per cent of children from the richest backgrounds.

A shortage of high-quality teachers and “good”- and “outstanding”-rated schools in the most deprived areas of the country has widened the gap between rich and poor pupils, the charity says. 

Russell Hobby, CEO of Teach First, said: “It is deeply concerning that in recent years we’ve seen an increase in young people attending schools rated as less than good – and it’s those from the poorest background that have been hit the hardest.”

Meanwhile, a headteachers’ union suggests rising house prices near top-rated schools could be pricing out poorer families. 

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “We know that middle-class families tend to move into areas served by schools which are rated by Ofsted as ‘outstanding’ and ‘good’ and over time this pattern is likely to become more entrenched as house prices rise accordingly and become prohibitively expensive for disadvantaged families.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/national-offer-day-secondary-school-places-ofsted-teach-first-social-mobility-a8803181.html

A Message for Our American Visitors

Our comrades in the World Socialist Party of the United States (WSPUS) certainly have their work cut out in trying to explain what is meant by socialism. After decades of deliberate and purposeful distortion, American politicians continue to maliciously misinterpret what socialism is.

At a right-wing convention, a headline speaker warned that the socialists are intent upon taking not only peoples’ houses and pick-up trucks but even their hamburgers.

"This is what Stalin dreamt about but never achieved," Sebastian Gorka declared. "You are on the frontlines on the war against communism."

While an Anti-vaxxer politician from Arizona, Republican State Rep. Kelly Townsend, a five-term state representative, exclaimed,

“I read yesterday that the idea is being floated that if not enough people get vaccinated, then we are going to force them to. The idea that we force someone to give up their liberty for the sake of the collective is not based on American values but rather, Communist.”

Not to be outdone the American vice-president Pence added his two-bits on the matter and warned Trump supporters that:

“Under the guise of Medicare for All and a Green New Deal, Democrats are embracing the same tired economic theories that have impoverished nations and stifled the liberties of millions over the past century. That system is socialism,” he said. “Remarkably, a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination is an avowed socialist. But it’s not just him. Bernie [Sanders] has been joined by a chorus of candidates and newly elected officials who have papered over the failed policies of socialism with bumper-sticker slogans and slick social-media campaigns.” Those ideas, he said, more taxes, spending and government, and less freedom. “It was freedom, not socialism, that gave us the most prosperous economy in the history of the world,” he said. “It was freedom, not socialism, that ended slavery, won two world wars, and stands today as the beacon of hope for all the world. It was freedom, not socialism, that’s moving us beyond the prejudices of the past to create a more perfect union and extend the blessings of liberty to every American regardless of race or creed or color. It was freedom. t was freedom, not socialism, that’s moving us beyond the prejudices of the past to create a more perfect union and extend the blessings of liberty to every American regardless of race or creed or color. It was freedom. We want to make poverty more rare; they want to make poverty more comfortable. And that’s the choice we face today, men and women, between freedom and socialism, between personal responsibility and government dependence. Where freedom encourages investment, socialism stifles growth. Where freedom welcomes diversity, socialism demands conformity.” He said those who promote socialism should look at Venezuela. “Venezuela was once one of the richest and most vibrant democracies in the Western Hemisphere, but under  Maduro’s socialist rule, it’s become one of the poorest and most despotic,” he said. “Today, more than 9 out of 10 people live in poverty in that once-rich country. More than 3 million Venezuelans have abandoned their homes and fled the brutality of the Maduro regime.

Speaker after speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference railed against what they thought socialism was, starving people eating dog food and mothers committing infanticide after taking babies home from the hospital.

The only truth was stated by North Carolina Republican Mark Meadows when he said “They're trying to get rid of all the capitalists.” 

That, we are.

But for the record, members of the WSPUS do not intend to nationalize personal possessions and turn people into regimented clones of one another. Kentucky, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia formally designate themselves in their state constitutions as “commonwealths”, a traditional term for a community founded for the common good. This is the aim of the WSPUS, to create the cooperative commonwealth. Socialism comes not as a remedy for the evils of existing society, but as a program of principles for a new society, in which all the people will co-operate to produce and distribute all the goods and services which are needed by mankind, each person willingly and freely, taking part in the way he feels he or she can do best, all goods and services will be produced for use only , and having been produced, will be distributed, free, directly to the people so that each person’s needs are fully satisfied and where the land and fields, factories and machines, mines and mills, roads and railways, planes and ships, and all those things which mankind needs to carry on producing the means of life, will belong to the whole people.

We stand opposed to the wage system, under which labor has been reduced to a commodity to be bought and sold as the employment market wills. The socialist movement is founded for the abolition of wage slavery, the final emancipation, the real freedom, economic democracy.

"The law locks up the man or woman

Who steals the goose off the common

But leaves the greater villain loose

Who steals the common from the goose.

The law demands that we atone

When we take things we do not own

But leaves the lords and ladies fine

Who takes things that are yours and mine."

Pakistan Drought Worsens

One of the worst droughts in Pakistan's history has triggered "alarmingly high" levels of malnutrition and disease in the hardest hit areas where people have been forced to drink salty or contaminated water, the Red Cross said. Women, especially those pregnant or breastfeeding, and children are particularly vulnerable to diarrhoea, vomiting and fever brought on by a lack of safe drinking water in the worst affected areas of the southern Sindh and Balochistan provinces.

An estimated 5 million people are affected by the drought, which was caused by unseasonably high temperatures and below average monsoon rainfall, both of which are influenced by the El Niño weather phenomenon, the Red Cross said. Conditions have recently deteriorated in the drought affected areas with malnutrition rates increasing to 30 percent, the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

The water table has dropped in most valleys and low-lying areas, and food production in the affected areas has dropped by 34 per cent, according to the IFRC.

The Pakistan Meteorological Department forecasts that the situation will continue to deteriorate over the next four years, in part due to climate change.

http://news.trust.org/item/20190301131151-uodfc/

Socialist Standard No. 1375 March 2019

• Contents
  
• Editorial: Lethal Might Before Needs
  
• Pathfinders: Getting Twitchy about copyright
  
• Letter: A Writer Writes . . .
  
• Dear Theresa…
  
• Cooking the Books: Trump and anti-socialism
  
• Wood for the Trees: Nostalgia
  
• Material World: Ethnic cleansing the desert
  
• Sanctions: Waging war without bullets
  
• What is happening in Venezuela?
  
• Climate change: capitalism can’t cope
  
• The One Big Union
  
• Cooking the Books: What are normal profits?
  
• Don’t sweat the small stuff
  
• Proper Gander: The Hand-Made Tale
  
• Book Reviews: ‘Winners Take All’, ‘The Ideas Industry’ & ‘The Givers’
  
• Book Review: ‘World In Crisis: a global analysis of Marx’s law of profitability’
  
• Book Review: ‘National Populism: the Revolt Against Liberal Democracy’
  
• Book Review: ‘Everything Is Connected’
  
• 50 Years Ago: The Catholic Church and the Pill
  
• Rear View
  
• Cartoon: Free Lunch
  

Environmentalists’ Myopia

Many are undoubtedly sincere in their determination to combat climate change. But no matter how well-intentioned they are very few address the question of how their objectives can be achieved without radical social and economic change. Some environmentalist critics say socialism is just out of date on the issue of the environment and there those who suggest it is fundamentally anti-environmental. Yet the Socialist Party seeks to build a society that is not based on the exploitation of Earth at all — a society whose goal is to achieve a benign stable state with nature for the benefit of all species. It is the Socialist Party’s task to inspire people to demand real radical change.

Socialism, a self-managed society, will naturally implement most present-day ecological demands essential for the very survival of humanity. The point is that we can debate such issues open-mindedly only when we have eliminated the profit incentives and economic insecurity that now undermine even the most minimal efforts to defend the environment. When humanity as a species is blamed for environmental destruction, the specific social causes are forgotten. The few who make the decisions are lumped with the powerless majority. Famines are seen as nature's revenge against overpopulation, natural checks that must be allowed to run their course -- as if there was anything natural about the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which force developing and undeveloped countries to cultivate products for export rather than food for local consumption. People are made to feel guilty for using cars, ignoring the fact that there exists a situation in which most people have to have cars. Spectacular publicity gravely urges everyone to reduce energy consumption while an advertising industry is constantly inciting everyone to consume more of everything. Even though we could by now more than enough green renewable energy sources but the fossil-fuel companies have successfully lobbied for retention of their government subsidies against devoting funding alternative energy networks. The point is not to blame even the heads of those companies - they too are caught in a grow-or-die system that impels them to make such decisions - but to abolish the setup that continually produces such irresistible pressures.

We are faced with a problem, a profit motivated economic system, something that could literally lead to the deaths of billions of people, the extinction of nearly half of all species, and the destruction of the ecological systems which allowed for the development of civilisation – and the people who want to do something about it by replacing the capitalist system are labelled unrealistic, and those who advocate ineffective half-measures are considered “realists.” Those “realists” have a firm grip on our social, political and economic system, and they are doing a tremendous job at keeping us from seeing reality. Green goals cannot be reconciled with a capitalist economy. The goal of an ecological steady-state between society and nature cannot be reconciled with capitalism’s insatiable compulsion for expansion and accumulation. As long as the self-styled realists in Green parties do not confront capitalism’s barriers there will be cause for disillusionment. the system of capitalist production and the necessity of accumulation is fundamentally incompatible with a sustainable relationship between humanity and their ecosystems. Green capitalism represents a mystical and magical manner of thinking.

Socialism means a global movement to lift all the world out of poverty and this cannot be done by an environmentalist movement that focuses on personal sacrifices of people to save the planet. The personal lifestyle and consumer choice solutions that are increasingly pushed as the answer to climate change in the media are the wrong end of the stick. Action to deal with climate change must be directed towards the source of the problem, not aimed at mitigating its effects. Changing how society produces energy, organises transport, constructs buildings and develops cities is the key – not individual lifestyle choices. Businesses must compete to survive, while nations compete in trading and commerce. If abandoning investments undermines a company or country’s competitive position, the pressure to resist change is immense, strengthened by the lobbying and market power of corporations. Many measures taken by governments and corporations to mitigate climate change are cosmetic designed to placate public opinion. Others are assumed to be the purpose of reducing the effects of climate change but in reality serve other interests – monoculture for biofuels and fracking for gas, for instance. Carbon trading is seen as a business opportunity for capital accumulation. We are also assured that capitalism can save the environment the miracles of high-tech and futuristic bioengineering. For sure, capitalist innovation in new technology has certainly transformed economies but always with profit driving the whole process.

Once people have begun to recognise the seriousness of the climate crisis, the most important thing then is also to learn the role of capitalism has in its cause and to understand that only a revolutionary system-change can save us and our planet now. We, the people, must rise up and end this system rooted in greed and fear. The class struggle pits working people against powerful capitalist interests, opening the door to understanding that the system itself must be changed — along the lines of the slogan that has become popular if not fully comprehended in the environmental movement: 

System Change Not Climate Change.

One rule for MPs, another for their staff

Workers’ representatives have expressed anger over the decision to award MPs a pay rise above inflation and almost double that offered to parliamentary staff.

The 2.7% pay hike for MPs, taking their basic annual salary from £77,379 to £79,468, is well above the 1.5% received by those serving them in the Commons and the 1% offered to many civil servants.

Mark Serwotka, the general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services union, said: “It is an outrage that MPs are rewarding themselves with an above-inflation pay rise while civil servants, who do some of the most vital jobs in society, are still subject to a cruel 1% de facto pay cap. PCS are balloting 120,000 members for strike action over pay this summer and today’s news will only anger them further.”

The deputy general secretary of the Prospect union, Garry Graham, said: “Our members will see more than a whiff of hypocrisy and double standards in today’s announcement.”  Graham said that Prospect’s calls for an independent review of pay in the civil service and wider public sector had been repeatedly turned down by ministers. “There has not been a government in peacetime so reliant on the hard work and dedication of the civil service and its agencies,” he said. “For MPs to be awarded 2.7% when pay rises for those who serve them are held down at 1.5% or less demonstrates a remarkable level of contempt. As we prepare for pay discussions with the Cabinet Office and Treasury, this announcement will only add to the anger and frustration held by members.”

Unison’s assistant general secretary, Christina McAnea, said: “Politicians should now turn their attention to making sure public service workers on outsourced contracts get above-inflation pay rises, too. Many of them missed out on NHS and council pay rises last year but do the same jobs as colleagues. People delivering essential public services shouldn’t be forced to survive on poverty wages.”

Max Freedman, who chairs the Unite union’s parliamentary staff branch, said workers were only receiving a 1.5% pay rise.

He added: “This real-terms cut for staff of MPs is inadequate and unacceptable, and the fact MPs will be seeing a significantly higher rise is insulting. It seems it’s one rule for elected MPs and another for their hard-working and hard-pressed staff. The huge extra pressure on parliament has significant ramifications for the workload of staff, and this decision will feel to many like a slap in the face. Ipsa has failed to properly consult with Unite reps despite our repeated calls for staff to get a fair deal. We have written to Ipsa raising our concerns, and will continue to fight for the real-terms pay rise staff members deserve.”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/feb/28/mps-above-inflation-pay-rise-sparks-angry-response-from-trade-unions-parliamentary-staff

What’s the big deal with the Green New Deal?

“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.” - Henry David Thoreau

Many appear to believe that the Socialist Party takes some sort of perverse pleasure about raining on other people’s parades. We don’t. We are a political party that has been around for a very long time and we have seen many movements and campaigns come and go. We have acquired an insight into why so many failed to achieve their aims and for that reason we try to give our fellow-workers the benefit of our experience so that they do not repeat old mistakes or try to re-invent the wheel.

What we have growing these days are environmentalist protest groups such as Extinction Rebellion in the UK and Sunrise in the US. We can applaud their enthusiasm and activism to try to halt climate change. However, we cannot approve of the strategies they have chosen to solve the problem. Rather than system change we witness they opt for the Green New Deal as the resolution of the crisis, not revolution.

By not understanding capitalist dynamics, they have not made capitalism their enemy. In fact, many ecologists are in denial that capitalism is the root cause and prefer to cast the blame on people and overpopulation, that institutions like governments and corporations are the focus of their protests and palliative remedies are the cure.

We witness it in practically every scientific report no matter how damning it is. There is no indictment of the system that has created and still advances climate change. Just optimistic references to “it is not too late” for sustainable carbon reducing policies to be implemented by born-again green politicians.

It has been capitalism that has fueled global warming and the rise in carbon emissions. Yet people are looking to capitalism to solve a problem created by capitalism. Instead of the socialist alternative, working towards a sustainable steady-state production system for peoples’ needs and not for capitalists’ profits, we have the Green New Deal. It’s capitalism. Bernie Sander and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez are not for socialism, but a more regulated capitalism. Only socialism can tackle what is happening in the world now

The Green New Deal is based upon Roosevelts New Deal from the 1930s which is credited of lifting America out of the Great Depression by the enactment of series of government legislation. If only that were true. FDR’s reforms failed to fix America’s economy. It was the coming of war that revived production demand and restored profits to business. Unemployment fell because America economy started to prepare for war. The national income per capita in 1938 was only 76 per cent of that in 1929. There was another economic crisis in 1937. The industrial index plunged downward. And in October of that year, FDR said “Steer toward the coming war and make all preparations accordingly.” The 1937 depression was halted and reversed, not by any normal upswing of the economic cycle, but by the speeding up of war preparations not only in this country but throughout the world. It was not until the US entered the Second World War four years later that the slump finally came to an end. That is a simple lesson from the Roosevelt New Deal experience.

Reformers refuse to see the truth: that capitalist society does not function to achieve social goals the community as a whole, regards as desirable, but rather operates to achieve the goals considered desirable by a small part of society, the ruling capitalist class, which places its profits as the paramount concern of society. Society does not exist to satisfy the requirements of the community but the profit needs of the capitalist class. The government, no matter whether conservative or liberal, remains a social organization whose purpose is to insure the rule of the capitalist class, and by its policies to assure the receipt of profits, which is considered the first claim on society. When the needs of the great majority of society come into conflict with the capitalist system and the capitalist class, the government’s role is to ascertain that the latter triumphs. Capitalist class parties may differ and sometimes do differ deeply on how to achieve the purpose of the state, but despite these differences all capitalist parties represent poorly or well the capitalist class.

As Marx put it, “The real barrier of capitalist production is capital itself.” It functions for the accumulation of further capital; capitalist production is production for capital. What is necessary is the transformation of this system into one in which production becomes an ever-expanding system of creating goods for the benefit of the society of producers. This transformation requires one pre-condition: the expropriation of the capitalists who, not out of ill will but as a functioning class, bar the way to production for use. As capitalism spread across the globe, hunger and starvation spread with it. Growing food and selling it to those who have plenty has always been more profitable than sharing food with those who need it.

Many environmentalists declare the demise of class struggle as a viable force for social change. They have turned away from questions of class and especially class struggle. They reject the productivist premises of Marxists who are accused of viewing issues such as ecology as external to questions of production, distracting from the task of organizing workers at the point of production. 

It is said that Nero fiddled while Rome burned. The Trump administration, defending the commercial interests of big coal, oil and other segments of the capitalist class, is doing even worse while the crisis of global warming continues to gather intensity. Incredibly, though some scientists are reportedly wondering if our planet isn't approaching a global warming 'meltdown,' Trump is still trying to deny that the crisis even exists. Some scientists now worry that rising temperatures may cause a 'runaway greenhouse effect' that cannot be stopped. In this worst-case scenario the polar ice caps and even Arctic tundra melt, oxidizing organic matter previously frozen in the ice, and releasing vast amounts of carbon dioxide and another greenhouse gas, methane. Regardless of their best efforts, a willingness to create a sustainable environment, people are constantly assailed by the effects of consumerism in the global market. For most of the world's workers, sustainability is about how to survive the gap between spending your last dollar, and the arrival of the next pay packet.

Take away the profit motive in capitalist production and replace it with socialist production for human needs and wants and such controls become not only possible, but desirable. While capitalism reigns on Earth, the chance exists that the profit mongers will simply keep on fiddling until it is too late. The Earth can no longer be owned; it must be shared. Join the Socialist Party and the fight for a future under a democratic socialist economy capable of halting and eventually reversing the damage done to the planet and all its inhabitants by the voracious capitalist system. 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 stabilized. 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.