ALB
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The second of those letters links to an article in the Guardian last Friday under the headline:
Policies of China, Russia and Canada threaten 5C climate change, study finds
Be honest, does that not suggest that there is a threat that the average global temperature will rise by 5 degrees (which would indeed be a disaster that could trigger a runaway global heating}?
If, however, you read the smaller print in the article, what the study says is that if all the countries in the wold pursued the same “emission reduction” policies as these three then the average global temperature would rise by 5 degrees by the end of the century compared with the pre-industrial level (they have already risen by 1 degree since then, so it is a question of a rise by a further 4 degrees):
The study, published on Friday in the journal Nature Communications, assesses the relationship between each nation’s ambition to cut emissions and the temperature rise that would result if the world followed their example.
But other states aren’t and won’t be pursuing the same policies as the three in question (some couldn’t anyway). This is why I think the headline in the Guardian is tendentious and misleading and is the sort of thing that will have led to the writer of the first letter to think that there is an imminent threat of a runaway global warming.
There is an imminent threat (I would say likelihood) — of capitalist states not preventing average global temperature rising by 1.5 degrees since pre-industrial times by 2030, i.e by a further 0.5 degrees between now and then. The article explains why:
Under the Paris agreement, there is no top-down consensus on what is a fair share of responsibility. Instead each nation sets its own bottom-up targets according to a number of different factors, including political will, level of industrialisation, ability to pay, population size, historical responsibility for emissions. Almost every government, the authors say, selects an interpretation of equity that serves their own interests and allows them to achieve a relative gain on other nations. (emphasis added)
Precisely. Because of the competition between capitalist states to sell their products on world markets and to obtain the raw materials to generate energy they are unable to adopt a rational policy to slow down global warming.
In the 60s and 70s the Party did talk of socialism being “A World of Abundance”. This was even the front cover of the August 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard:
https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1970/
The Socialist Party of Canada reprinted it as a pamphlet with the same title.
I suppose this reflected the optimism of the period (“hope” of a better future). Today, on the contrary, pessimism is the dominant view (“fear/ threat” of a worse future). Inevitably this is affecting us, but I don’t think we should condemn technology. Ok, we can talk of a world capable of producing enough for everybody (and more) instead of “a world of abundance” but this still requires advanced technology. After all, technology, properly used under democratic social control, is going to be the way-out. Not just nuclear fusion but all the renewable energy sources require developing and applying technology, as Murray Bookchin explained in his 1968 article and pamphlet Towards A Liberatory Technology:
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bookchin/tolibtechpart2.html
p.s. As the moderator is allowing us some leeway to discuss the pronunciation of dour I assumed all Scotch people pronounced it “doo-ur”. That’s how I do. No doubt because my father was an Ulster Scot. Next we’ll be discussing how to pronounce “scone” (which of course is “scon”) … Better than discussing how many birds can dance on a non-material pinhead.
So now there are two. Private Frasers, that is. And what’s the betting that the new one is from Scotland too ! No wonder they had to invent a new word up there that doesn’t exist in English English: dour (pronounced do-er, I think).
But seriously, last night’s discussion brings out the advisability of not projecting a doom scenario to get our case across. The reaction might not be a spur to action but, as was suggested, to party on. “Let’s eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die”. What would be more constructive would be to offer hope, the hope of a solution. I wonder if our Extinction friends have thought of what hope to offer (their main aim seems to be to pressure governments into doing something now within capitalism). Of course they show by their attempt to change things that they don’t really think we’re all doomed. That human action can intervene in the course of events.
It is true, though, that “we’re all going to die”.
Oh dear, Robbo, what have you done? By posting this comment here, presumably by mistake, you have risked polluting this information thread. Is there anyway of transferring this to the thread where it was meant?
Some articles on the Party’s history as well as two on the Party’s theory have been added to the Gilbert McClatchie Internet Archive:
Commodity Struggle or Class Struggle?, November 1920
The Founding of the Socialist Party, September/October 1931
The ‘Transition Period’, January 1946
Notes on Solo Trumpet by T. A. Jackson, August 1953
Notes on Party History: The Trade Union Question, July 1954
The Socialist Standard in War Time, September 1954
Members in the Great War, September 1964
More bad news. Or is it good?
Something to cheer you up, Alan. Maybe a volcanic eruption will save us:
Talk about a lesser evil.
Playing the immigration card again?
Rather disturbing comment by the London Evening Standard City editor Jim Armitage in yesterday’s issue on May’s statement that “software developers from Delhi” are to be given priority over workers from Europe:
… it’s a sales pitch that makes little sense politically: those who voted for Brexit on immigration grounds did not want to replace Poles with Nigerians.
No doubt true, and is why a second referendum is to be dreaded as it will unleash another wave of xenophobia, with verbal abuse and physical attacks, not just against East Europeans but against immigrants from Asia, Africa and the West Indies and their descendants as both sides scramble for votes. Another example of us being collateral damage to this dispute amongst the capitalist class about their trading arrangements. Why don’t they leave us out of it and settle it amongst themselves?
Just had time to read through the leaflets picked up at Saturday’s anti-racism march. The Morning Star, which was being given away free, had the rather-too-clever headline “Devils Back Faustian Brexit Deal. Bosses’ union throws weight behind May sell-out attempt”. In other words, May was watering down Brexit to please the CBI and the Stock Exchange while what was required, in the reported words of the Communist Party’s General Secretary, Robert Griffiths, was
Rather than an anti-people’s second vote, we need a left-led Labour government to negotiate a People’s Brexit.
No surprise there, then, with Communist Party and Morning Star still on auto-pilot from the 1975 referendum.
I didn’t get anything from the SWP or SPEW but did from “Socialist Resistance”, the group in Britain affiliated to the original (they say) “Fourth International”. They say they voted “Remain” and call for a campaign to “demand a new referendum” and “defeat a Tory hard Brexit” and, presumably, a “People’s Brexit” too.
And so the Hard Left is also lining up behind one side or other of the capitalist class in their dispute over that class’s trading arrangements.
That’s a different, and better, argument — which group of protestors are more likely to be receptive to our message?
I am sure the Extinction Rebellion people are sincere (except of course for the inevitable undercover police men and women among them) and they are drawing attention to a problem and a danger (though, in my opinion, not as dangerous as their name suggests, though still something that would bring disruption and added misery to millions of people). One problem with direct action groups that deliberately break the law is that some of them get sent to prison and then they have to devote time and energy to highlighting the plight of those of their number in prison. It’s happened time and again with such groups.
Our message, unfortunately or not, is unlikely to appeal to new activists who want “something now”. The evidence from people who have joined in recent years is that they are people who were once activists but have concluded, after ten or more years of activism that brings no or meagre results, that on reflection something more positive is required than running around just trying to do something about all the fires that capitalism has started.
Aren’t we in danger of arguing like reformists amongst themselves as to which problem has to be dealt with more urgently — in fact have we not put the first step on this slippery slope by suggesting that global overwarming is more important than racism? This is an important issue for “activists” as they only have limited time and must decide what activity — what immediate issue — to devote their time to. Our time and energies are limited too and what distinguishes us, isn’t it, is that we have come to conclusion that these are better devoted to directly propagating socialism as the only framework within which can be lastingly solved most if not all of the problems that the different, competing groups of reformists.
A contribution from Gilbert McClatchie:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/mcclatchie/1972/materialism_vindicated.htm
Just added to the Jack Fitzgerald Internet Archive:
Socialism and anti-parliamentarism, January 1928
Thanks but that’s nothing compared to the Jains who we happened to be discussing in the pub after the anti-racism demonstration yesterday:
The Jain cuisine is completely vegetarian and also excludes underground vegetables such as onion, garlic, etc, to prevent injuring small insects and microorganisms; and also to prevent the entire plant getting uprooted and killed .
There’s nowt so queer as folk.
