Every
protest begins by being ignored, then sneered at, then hated. Until
finally, they get the message.
We
are faced with a future that is unsustainable environmentally and it
will take more than a bridge blockade to put that future on a
sustainable basis. Ultimately, it will take a transformation of human
civilisation. Anyone can be against capitalism. But some people are
just against BIG capitalism as if somehow "small” capitalism
is a completely different thing, and can be nice. It's not. They're
the same. Capitalism is commodity production for sale on a market. It
is wage slavery. Concentrating on "nasty" industrialists
and the speculators of the stock-market and defining "capitalism"
in those terms can only end up as a diversion from the goal of
abolishing the capitalist system.
Capitalism is not a place (City of
London, Wall St) or a thing ("corporations"), it is a
social relationship dependent upon wage labour and commodity exchange
where profit is derived from capital's theft of unpaid labour. There
are no nice capitalists. We have nothing to say to our rulers on how
to run capitalism, we should not be drawn into fighting their
battles, and we should certainly not be drawn into rolling history
back instead of forwards. Our fight should not be a campaign for
"real" capitalism i.e. manufacturing/industrial capitalism
against the finance and speculator interests. It should be calling
for the abolition of capitalism rather than its "fair"
administration and regulation. Even in times of “prosperity”
capitalism does not, and cannot serve the interests of the majority.
Profit-seeking dominates decisions about what, where and how to
produce. Priorities are distorted as profits always come before
meeting needs. The real power of capital is in our everyday live, we
re-create its power every day because capital is not a thing but a
social relation between people mediated by things. Until, of course,
we decide as a majority to take the political action necessary to
change our lives.
Extinction
Rebellion (XR) is a people-powered movement. The Socialist Party is
glad to see the emergence of people criticising capitalism as a system
which is causing the current climate change crisis. If there is a
radical shift from being a single issue campaign to attack capitalism
as a system XR is to be commended. The Socialist Party can only hope
that climate change activists develop further, by shedding particular
campaigns for the improvement of capitalism, into a general onslaught
on capitalism itself. Revolutionary action lies in effectively
communicating that message to each other. We welcome that some people
are identifying capitalism as the cause of environmental problems
they had previously sought to deal with on a single-issue basis, and
now we urge them to take the next step and join us in the struggle
for socialism as the only practicable alternative to capitalism. It's
a question of getting the message out there, and getting it right.
We're doing our bit. The socialist movement is the natural umbrella
movement for all humanity. All the single issues are effects, the
cause of which is capitalism. Effects can sometimes be ameliorated
but it is better to eliminate the cause and prevent the effects
returning. Go to the root of the problem and not the symptoms.
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