People from around the world plan to march in the thousands
today in Paris to register their anger at politicians' failure to strike an
ambitious draft climate deal. With COP21 we are seeing that the few control the
many. The draft Paris climate agreement released on Thursday night could allow
for carbon emissions to continue until 2099. It also leaves the door open to
false solutions such as unproven Carbon Capture and Storage techno-fixes and
carbon markets. The sad truth is whatever deal comes out of this conference
it's not very likely it will ever be implemented anyway. If anything is to be
done we're going to have to do it ourselves instead of hoping that the World's
leaders and elites are ever going to. The simple truth is they have no
intention of ever doing anything more than talking. The capitalist elites left us
with no voice. Those with visions of the future have been excluded. Socialist visionaries
threaten the wealthy with change. We are a clear and present danger.
"Once again, world leaders have shown they lack the
political courage, decency, and integrity to stand up for the needs of the most
impacted communities around the world in the biggest ecological crisis of our
time," Ananda Lee Tan, a Vancouver-based organizer with Climate Justice
Alliance, told Common Dreams. "Our assessment is
that, again, it is left up to us," Lee Tan added. "We know it is
people and communities that have to lead us out of this ecological crisis…"Tomorrow
we will step it up on the streets of Paris, but we need to continue to get more
people on the streets—block by block, community by community—to fight this
global confluence of governments and corporations."
"Rich countries have moved the goal posts so far that a
just deal in Paris is inconceivable," said Lucy Cadena, Friends of the
Earth International climate justice and energy coordinator, in a statement
responding to the latest draft. "If this text indicates what will be
agreed here, we will be left with a deal that fails humanity."
“We must also say "yes" -- yes to the world we
want…We must imagine a world that is both radically different and radically
better than the one we have right now…Now is not the time for small steps. Now
is the time for boldness. Now is the time to leap.” Naomi Klein explains.
The World Socialist Movement offers just that promise. Socialism
has unfortunately been presented as a system not of abundance but of scarcity,
as a system not of increased leisure and comfort, but of unusual sacrifice and
back-breaking toil. The transformation of capitalist property into common
property, however, will create social well-being. This is the goal of the
Socialist Party. The anarchic production of capitalism which only knows how to
engender the poverty will be replaced by planned production, calculated
according to the needs that are to be satisfied. New and improved technology,
no longer serving to enrich a few individuals, will increase the means of
leisure and enjoyment of all members of society. Capitalism has only known how
to cause humanity misery.
In capitalism,
exploitation is hidden behind a veil. In, say, feudalism, exploitation was
transparently a matter of give-and-take (the peasants gave, the lords took.).
But in capitalism it appears that everyone is equal and free. Each worker is
free to work for a particular employer or not, free to live his or her own
private life. But the world of the ‘free’ labour market is not the place where
exploitation happens: exploitation occurs in the ‘private property’ of the
capitalist, in: the – workplace, where it is hidden behind: the illusion of ‘a
fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay’. Employers enter ‘fair and free’
contracts with workers, and end up with their wealth expanded; while workers
end up no better off at the end of the process than at the beginning. The
everyday procedures of capitalism disguise and mystify the realities of
exploitation.
Similarly with the state. The prevailing misconception is it
is not constructed around the fundamental antagonisms of capitalist
exploitation, as an agency of open class oppression but appears as the state of
the ‘citizens’, of the individual free agents of the labour market, who appear
to be equal. The state relates to these ‘free and equal’ individuals, and reinforces
these relations of freedom’ and ‘equality’. The state does not relate to us as
members of classes, indeed it does not recognise classes. Rather, it treats us
as fragmented, individual roles: as ‘voters’, ‘taxpayers’, ‘consumers’, etc.
All the procedures the state lays down for dealing with us, and for meeting
some of our needs and problems, atomise us and conceal the class character of
our needs and problems. The welfare state appears as ‘our’ welfare state. All
too often, the experience workers have with welfare agencies is of a set of
authoritarian, alien institutions, where they are bossed around, spied and
checked on, insulted and demeaned, in return for needed but meagre benefits. A
high price is demanded for the state’s miserable provision of needs.
We are gambling with the future so that profits can continue
to be made in a system incapable of meeting its minimum responsibilities to
humans and to nature. A grim future will give the world drowned coastal cities,
parched crops, millions of refugees and failing ecosystems. These very real and
very large long-term disasters are looming on our horizon. Nobody really knows
what would remain of civilization, as we know it. The suffering we’re
witnessing because of loss of land, culture, ways of life, and identity in many
regions of the world may portend what is to come for all of us. Now is the time
to come together and decide how we will respond. Let’s make sure it’s the best
humanity has to offer. With time short and the clock ticking down, the pressure
is growing to declare a visionary change in the process.
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