ALB
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“We have no influence. We are insignificant. We have no contact. We are invisible. “
Now you have moved on, Alan, from Private Fraser to wearing sackcloth and ashes. Next step will be self-flagellation. Actually, though, that’s what you might have started with.
We may have no influence but we are not invisible. Only last May we contested the Euroelections in the South East region of England, an area with some 6 or 7 million electors (more than in many EU countries, including Ireland). Our name appeared on the ballot paper and legal election publicity. The fact that we didn’t make much impact was not due to being invisible but to most people either being interested only in the Punch and Judy show of conventional politics, or, if they were interested in radical politics, had other priorities than socialism.
In May next year there will regional elections in London, with only a slightly smaller number of electors. If we contest them on a London-wide basis we will not only be on the ballot paper but have a short statement in a brochure with these from all party lists that will be sent to all households. So we won’t be invisible.
Whatever our problem is, it is not Invisibility.
Alan, hasn’t it occurred to you that the people behind this are the same as those who did it before but are now doing it under the banner of XR? XR is becoming a catch-all for all sorts of “direct action” protests, so undermining its claim that climate change is the only issue that matters.
What’s this stunt got to do with climate change? Yes, the fashion industry is a waste of resources, but so is the arms industry and in fact the whole financial superstructure of capitalism. Compared with these two, the fashion industry’s contribution to wasting resources must be peanuts.
This sort of protest against the effects of capitalism is not going to make any difference as long as the cause, capitalism, remains. The only way to stop the waste of capitalism is to get rid of capitalism and that requires consciously socialist political action, not pin prick “direct action”. So that’s what we should be encouraging, not giving publicity to stunts like this.
Alan, you missed this alarmist story, In fact, as something like this is more likely to kill off 6/7ths of the world’s population, perhaps XR would be more advised to campaign for governments to do more to avert this worst-case scenario?
https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1177858/Asteroid-news-NASA-rocks-Earth-space-2010-COI-2000-QW7-human-extinction
That’s a coincidence as I was just about to post details on the party business section here about the arrangements for next Friday. The students will be gathering in Millbank at 11 am. The idea is for party members to meet at Head Office in Clapham at 10 to pick up leaflets and then go by tube from Clapham North four stops to Pimlico. I won’t be there myself as I will be on holiday so can’t say see you there. But perhaps you and Dave can. If you can’t make Clapham at that time email Head Office and we’ll send you some leaflets.
Details here:
https://act.350.org/event/globalclimatestrike/17902
Looks as if Hallam has gone too far this time. If found guilty of conspiracy to disrupt air traffic by flying drones he won’t just get a slap over the wrist and community service or a few weeks in prison. When in prison he’ll be able to reflect on the words of the song “I fought the law and the law won”. In any event, as far as the police are concerned the kid gloves are now off:
There’s a relevant parallel here with “Operation Yellowhammer” with regard to what is meant by “worst-case” scenario. The UK government’s document on what might happen in the event of a no-deal Brexit is officially described as “reasonable worst case planning assumptions”. This is not a “forecast” or “prediction” of what will happen , but what might risk happening in a “reasonable” worst case scenario.
Applied to the climate change debate, there are a range of scenarios with varying degrees of probability. The UN IPCC “worst case” scenario is a rise in global warming to 4.9 degrees by 2099. It is possible to envisage cases even worse than this, but the question is would these be “reasonable”.
In any case, none of the scenarios are predictions, but possible outcomes based on particular assumptions. It is here that the question of “reasonable” comes in: are the assumptions reasonable? Some, in fact, all of the climate change worst-case scenarios are based on the assumption that nothing will be done to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions — which I would suggest is not a reasonable assumption. Something is being done and as profits are threatened and/or the cost of doing nothing mounts more will be done, not enough of course, but enough to mean that the worst-case scenarios won’t be what happens.
In fact, many climate change activists are publicising “worst-case” scenarios precisely with a view to action being taken to avoid them happening. Some seem to think that the worse the worst-case the more chance there is of action being taken. I don’t know about that as it’s not a question in the context of capitalism of what governments should do, but of what they can do. No amount of popular pressure can force them to overcome the limits of having to minimise costs so as to stay in the competitive race for profits.
Yes of course, in the sense that Marx held that a socialist/communist society would be a state-less society, i.e., a society whose central administration would not have coercive power at its disposal (what makes such an administration a “state” as in class-divided societies). In that sense Morris too, like us, was an “an-archist”, but I think people today are deliberately calling him an anarchist to suggest that he wasn’t a Marxist.
Oh no he wasn’t. And he said so both publicly and privately on a number of occasions. Mind you he was up against individualist (even those who called themselves “communist anarchists” denounced democracy as the tyranny of the majority) and bomb-throwing anarchists who eventually took over and destroyed the Socialist League.
Morris was a Marxian socialist.
Maybe not, but one of them has now been elevated to the House of Lords as a Baron (from today’s Times):
“John Hendry, QC, an employment rights lawyer, stood for the No2EU party in the 2009 European elections, and Christine Blower, former general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, stood for the London Socialist Alliance at the London Assembly elections in 2000.”
It looks as if Trotskyists are now “entering” the House of Frauds.
Not a bad publicity stunt but why spoil it by talking about the “impending” collapse of the ecosystem. Impending suggests that it is actually about to happen. “Threatening” would have been not so bad. But maybe it’s to do with the translation of whatever the original German word was.
I agree. I wouldn’t want earthquakes in my backyard or juggernauts trundling past my front door. But I wouldn’t claim that if this happened humanity would be threatened with extinction.
Just received a personalised letter from “Jo Swinson MP Leader of the Liberal Democrats” (don’t know how I got on their mailing this, perhaps because I once complained to a LibDem councillor about a 20 mph speed limit and bumps on a main road). She makes the following promise:
“If we stop Brexit, then we can build an economy that works for everyone, so families aren’t forced to rely on foodbanks. We can make tackling the climate emergency a priority for our government. We can start investing in our schools so that every child has the best start in life.”
Oh yes. If not being in the EU would prevent this, why couldn’t “we” have done these things during the forty odd years when Britain remained a member?
“The same kind of logic applies in the case of tackling climate change. The trillions of dollars needed to tackle climate may well be less than the costs of inaction but as a long as each capitalist state is seeking to externalise the costs of tackling climate change – get others to bear to more of the burden of these costs so as not to impair its own economic prospects in its competition with others – inaction will result. States will only be dragged kicking and screaming into action as things get generally worse and the action they take will probably be too little too late..”
Likening the capitalist states to Hardin’s private herd owners is a good way of putting it. I am going to start using it myself.
That’s why I asked which part of the country you came from, so we could put you in touch with another member living locally to explain our procedures. Normally, the EC doesn’t deal directly with individual members but with them via branches. The Party’s email address is: spgb [at] worldsocialism.org if you want to reply there.
