En Passant

The title of the book The Poverty of Philosophy may have been undiplomatic writes Todd Chretien in Socialist Worker US, but Marx was able to offer a clear contrast of his political strategy with that of Joseph Pierre Proudhon.

I don’t think there are too many people on the planet, but I do agree there are too many of “some” people. I think there are too many coal barons. There are too many oil tycoons. I think there are too many Clive Palmers – there’s just one of him, but one is still more than we need in my opinion. In truth, the biggest factor in ecological decay is how a society uses its resources, not how many people live in that society. “Pollution begins not in the family bedroom, but in the corporate boardroom.”

If we are to find solutions to the climate emergency, the food crisis and other environmental ills, we have to explore and act upon the causes, not the symptoms. These causes lie in the unequal power held by between different groups in society and an economic system geared for infinite growth on a finite planet.

If Marxism is to live up to its own maxim as a theory to not merely interpret the world but to change it, then it must include strong ecological theory and practice. The stakes are high. We still have a world to win — but we also have a world to lose.

On the 60th anniversary of the death of Russian dictator Joseph Stalin, Ian Birchall in Socialist Worker UK looks at his life and how his politics damaged the idea of socialism for decades. Stalinism offers a bleak image of what socialism is not. But the early years of workers’ power in Russia, and the traditions of those who resisted Stalin’s rise, often at the cost of their lives, offer a vision that can inspire and teach us.

Of course, whether we leave behind a world to our descendants as beautiful as the one we were born into, will depend on our own independent, organized self-activity to wrench control away from a ruling elite that is quite happy to continue making money from a system that must be overturned.

Revolution won’t come about by us wishing and waiting writes Nick Everett in Socialist Alternative in Australia. We need to fight for change. Socialism – a society that organises production to meet human need, not corporate greed – is not only possible, but urgently necessary.

In the reality of community that the bushfires have bought out in us lies our hope for the future; in the working class and its power to turn society on its head lies the reality of the realisation of a future with hope.

Contrary to the popular stereotype, revolution is a result, not of the mass of the population spontaneously becoming Marxist revolutionaries, but of the failure of the allegedly “more realistic” project of reforming the system write Tom Bramble and Ben Hillier in Socialist Alternative.

Marx never went to a Boxing Day Sale. He didn’t have the money. More importantly Boxing Day sales are a recent invention of neoliberalism to make more money out of workers.

The urgency is great. Capitalism cannot cure itself. It is driven by its internal logic to destroy the planet in the search for profit and the reinvestment of any surplus value we create. The choice is becoming starker and starker. It is either socialism with democracy, planning and satisfying human need leading to a secure and safe environment or the continuation of capitalism and the descent into global warming barbarism.