The Socialist Party - The Green Party of the World

Among the most serious problems facing society today is that of CO2 pollution and its environmental destruction. Air pollution, toxic landfills, tainted and toxic drinking water, industrial pollutants and plastics in our rivers and oceans, toxic or cancer-producing pesticides, unhealthy hormones and antibiotics in food —the list of bad news on the environment is seemingly unending. Each of these environmental problems represents a serious menace in its own right. Firm and decisive action against all forms of those environment problems is long overdue. The laws that have been enacted and regulatory agencies that have been established have at every turn been subverted by the very corporations and firms responsible for the pollution, and by the class of capitalists that owns them. The regulations themselves have been watered down; agencies aren't funded adequately to act on them and are frequently corrupted by corporate interests; enforcement of even inadequate regulations has been poor, raising the question of whether the laws and regulations were ever in-tended to be anything more than window dressing. Capitalist-class rule over the economy explains why government regulation is so ineffective: under capitalism, government itself is essentially a tool of the capitalist class. Politicians may be elected “democratically,” but because they are financed, supported and decisively influenced by the economic power of the capitalist class,

To understand why regulation hasn't worked and what kind of action will work to end this worsening ecological nightmare, it must be understood that the environmental crisis is fundamentally an economic and class issue. Its cause lies in the nature of the capitalist economic system. Methods exist or can readily be developed to safely neutralise, recycle or contain carbon emissions. Less polluting forms of transportation and energy can be built. Adequate supplies of food can be grown without deadly pesticides. The problem is that, under capitalism, the majority of people have no power to make these kinds of decisions about production. Under the capitalist system, production decisions are made by the small, wealthy minority that owns and controls the industries and services—the capitalist class. And the capitalists who make up that class make their decisions to serve, first and foremost, one goal—that of maximising profit for themselves. That is where the environmental crisis begins.

The Socialist Party declares that the continued calls for sacrifice on the part of the working class stem not from the empirical need to conserve natural resources, but rather from the fact that profit motivation precludes the possibility of conservation through restructuring industrial practices, and limits our ability to produce such resources. The Socialist Party is opposed to production as currently practiced under capitalism, where profit considerations are ranked above considerations of safety and sustainability. Whenever and wherever possible, we shall encourage environmentalists to go beyond the narrow scope of their current activity, and work towards the socialist reconstruction of society.

Climate activists expect the outmoded, profit-motivated, competitive and class-divided capitalist system that has created the mess we are in to get us out of it. Change is to be made within the framework of the existing capitalist system. Ignored is the waste and destruction of raw materials and natural resources by the anarchy of capitalist production—its unplanned, senseless duplication of effort in a mad, competitive drive by each capitalist to “capture” the market. Never mentioned is the manner in which every corporation is trying to exploit the existing circumstances to destroy its competition and entrench itself more solidly as one of the few that control the overwhelming proportion of the nation’s resources and wealth. Rarely a word said about the incredible waste and destruction, not only of finite resources, but of human life itself, through capitalist wars and continuous preparations for ever more destructive wars. The issue confronting the workers is not the climate crisis. The real issue is, shall we continue to tinker with those effects of global warming or shall we get rid of their cause—the capitalist system and replace it with socialism—a system of common ownership, democratic management and planned production for use.

The issue, literally, is survival. The harm and damage already done to all of us and to our environment by capitalism’s existence is now beyond exact calculation. If it is not abolished and replaced with a viable socialist cooperative commonwealth by the politically and industrially organised working class, it will destroy itself. And there is the distinct possibility that it may destroy humanity and the world in the process. That can happen, but it need not happen. And it won’t happen if all who realise the need for a socialist reconstruction of society join with us to appeal to our proletarian brothers and sisters of every race, of every colour, of every creed, to organise their latent political and industrial might as a class to accomplish the revolutionary change to socialism and thus guarantee the future safety and well-being of humanity. The Socialist Party thus seeks to transform society into one based on new social relationships that will allow the worker-majority to become the master of technology, rather than vice versa. Workers today continue to live under the shadow of ecological disaster, but in a socialist society workers could enjoy a material abundance without in any way compromising their health or the planet's. As the manifold social problems of capitalism increasingly threaten the lives and well-being of workers, it becomes more and more imperative that they recognise the need to organise politically and economically to take control of the economy, abolish class-divided capitalism and administer production through their own democratic bodies. The capitalist system carries in its wake environmental degradation and destruction.

Despite clear evidence of devastating climate change will have in the future our rulers refuses to take timely action to deal with the problem because such action will adversely affect capitalist profits and economic growth. There is no time to delay. Capitalism requires profit and economic growth to survive. Capitalists want their profits now. The future has little meaning in a profit-driven society. Environmental reforms and regulation are not the answer. Capitalists evade even those feeble efforts. If the future is not to be plagued with catastrophes predicted related to global warming, the political and economic system of capitalism must end.

The Socialist Party urges fellow-workers to organise to abolish capitalism and institute production for use. Workers must realise their latent economic and political power as operators of the industries and services and begin to integrate into one movement with the goal of building a new society with completely different motives for production—satisfing human needs and wants instead of profit—and to organise their own political party to challenge the political power of the capitalists, express their mandate for change at the ballot box and dismantle the state altogether.

The new society they must aim for must be one in which society itself, not a wealthy few, would own the industries and services, and the workers themselves would control them democratically through their own organisations based in their communities and workplaces. In such a society, the people themselves would make decisions and will administer the economy. Such a society—a social democracy—is what is needed to solve the environmental crisis. By placing the economic decision-making power in the hands of the workers, by eliminating capitalist control and the profit motive in favour of a system in which workers produce to meet their own needs and wants, the necessary resources and labour could be devoted to reducing carbon emissions, employing the renewable resources we now have available and develop new ones, and clean up the damage already done.

It is up to the majority of people who actually produce society’s goods and services and daily operate its industries, to end this crisis. The action workers must take is to realise their latent economic and political power is by creating one movement with the goal of building a new society with completely different motives for production — human needs and wants instead of profit—and to organise their own political party to challenge the political power of the capitalists, express their mandate for change at the ballot box and dismantle the state altogether. The new society they must aim for must be one in which society itself, not a wealthy few, would own the industries and services, and society itself would control them democratically through the people's own organisations. Such a society—a socialist industrial democracy—is what is needed to solve the environmental crisis.