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Lewis Rees, Liverpool Socialist Party

In recent months, global temperatures have surged, marking the hottest period in recorded history with an alarming average increase of 1.22C from pre-industrial levels. Here, this years February was the hottest, the same for each of the previous nine months!

This concerning trend should surely resonate with those in positions of power, urging them to take the necessary action to stop it. However because of their continued inaction, it is the silent majority, that stands to bear the brunt of the impending climate catastrophe. The number of climate-induced refugees has surpassed those displaced by escalating conflicts and wars worldwide. A poignant example is the 2022 flood in Pakistan, displacing 8 million and affecting the lives of 33 million people.

Young people are calling out for change, angry at a system that will rob us of our future.

While climate change campaign groups often call for a radical societal transformation and immediate action, there remains a gap in providing the comprehensive socialist programme needed to combat these issues.

Ed Brower, US energy editor of the Financial Times, boldly asserts that Capitalism wont deliver the energy transition fast enough. Without a distinct and incisive critique of the roots of climate change seeing it as a product of capitalisms production for profit based on competing nations, parties and groups simply claiming to be green cant offer a clear path forward.

We will need a socialist solution to the climate catastrophe and a fight for a planned socialist transition, that prioritises the needs and concerns of the majority over a select few. This would have to be democratically planned by the working class and based on nationalisation of the polluting industries, the banks and big business to prevent climate catastrophe without workers and the poor having to pay for it.

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Global temperatures increasing fight for socialism - Socialist Party

On Sunday, Socialist Equality Party (US) presidential candidate Joseph Kishore and vice presidential candidate Jerry White spoke with Chris Richards, host of the Eclectic Radical Show, and co-host Bess Goden, about the fight for socialism in the United States and around the world.

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The interview dealt with pressing issues facing workers and youth around the world, including the ongoing US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine and the increasing threat of nuclear war, the genocide in Gaza, widening social inequality, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the class struggle.

Kishore began the interview outlining the purpose of the Socialist Equality Partys intervention in the 2024 elections. Our campaign is about fighting for socialism, he said. This involves developing an understanding in the working class that socialism is the way forward.

Stressing the international character of the campaign, Kishore added later on, We are not just running to develop a socialist movement in the working class here. All the problems that we confront, that workers confront, everywhere are global problems. World war, dictatorship, inequality, the pandemic these are global problems.

With the war and the genocide in Gaza, Kishore explained, you have, we refer to it in the New Years Statement on the World Socialist Web Site, the normalization of mass death. And you have the normalization of nuclear war, and the normalization now of genocide. It all speaks to a ruling elite that is careening society towards barbarism and which has absolute contempt for human life.

White explained that the bipartisan war policy pursed by the Democratic and Republican parties is deeply unpopular in the population.

The only way they can impose such a policy, said White, is increasingly through the suppression of democratic rights. Thats why a couple of weeks ago Biden was on the border, dueling with Trump over who could attack immigrants more. And Biden said to Trump, Join me in passing the most reactionary anti-immigrant legislation.

Explaining the relationship between war abroad and the attack on the working class at home, White said, Last year, you saw Macron, in France, increase the retirement age. There were mass, mass protests in the streets, and then, by executive fiat, he imposed it. Its not separate from the fact that the French government is proposing sending NATO troops into Ukraine; they are all talking about war-time economy.

The interview covered many other subjects. It is available in full at @TheEclecticRad or by viewing the embedded video above.

The rest is here:
SEP candidates Joseph Kishore and Jerry White discuss war, inequality and the COVID-19 pandemic on the - WSWS

Malcolm Bray was a miner at Woolley colliery in the Yorkshire coalfields during the year-long 1984-85 strike. The WSWS spoke to him about his experiences and the political lessons he drew from the heroic fight and its betrayal. Malcolm was convinced of the necessity to build a new party of the working class based on the principles of Trotskyism and international socialism.

I started mining life at Woolley colliery at the young age of 21 in 1979. I was married with two young children at the time. I now have three. Before that I was in the army for just over three years, serving in Ireland and Hong Kong. It was hard at the time to find a decent job until I was offered a job in the mines. I did my mining training at Grimethorpe colliery and later at Woolley colliery, where I worked until its closure in 1987. This came as a shock to us considering millions were spent on upgrading Woolley and produced a knock-on effect to other pits in the area it was linked to. It refuted the excuse of only closing the pits through exhaustion. The pit was demolished in the early 1990s and is now the home to a posh new housing estate called Woolley Grange.

I did not have much previous experience with industrial action other than a strike at Needham Brothers and Brown, an engineering firm in Barnsley I worked for between 1973 and 1979, which made the pulley wheels for the pit head gear. I was very young at the timeit was sit-down action and the police were called in. At the start of the 1984-85 Miners Strike I remember being very excited. In our view this was long overdue. We were ready for a fight, but we did not have a clue how long this would go on for and what we were going to face.

Some of the older miners had been involved in the 1972 Miners Strike when mass picketing closed down Saltley Gate coking depot in Birmingham, winning a pay increase against the Conservative government of Ted Heath. This was entirely different as it was a fight for our jobs, communities, and the future of the entire industry. The criminals who drew up the Ridley Report to privatise industries, stockpile coal, organise a scab herding operation and mobilise a national police force against flying pickets were far better prepared than we were.

I was involved every single day, mainly picketing my own pit with my brother and two other workmates. Then I got more involved with flying picketing and a go-slow cavalcade on the M1 motorway to stop traffic. I was arrested in Nottinghamshire for picketing and fined 200 for obstruction. We were often reliant on the soup kitchen to get at least one square meal a day. I was never injured myself by the police, but I know many who were, including my National Union of Mineworkers branch secretary Ralph Summerfield who was battered by the police so much that his clothing was soaked in blood.

Then came what became known as the Battle of Orgreave, the mass picket of a coking plant outside Rotherham three months into the strike, on June 18. This was a total set-up by the police and thousands of miners were led into a trap. Wed never seen as many police. We were faced with baton wielding police with shields and charges from police on horses. This went on for a number of days. It left us to ponder this was no ordinary dispute. We faced a lack of direction by NUM leader Arthur Scargill in the face of the full force of the state being brought down on us.

There was no victory in sight, but we still believed our action had stopped a lot of coal production and we had the upper hand. But faith in just miltancy was giving way to broader political considerations. I remember many miners were angry with the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and the Labour Party, who had no intention of mobilising the working class behind us against the Thatcher government. It was becoming apparent that financial donations and food parcels were not enough. Neil Kinnock, the leader of the Labour Party, was despised by the miners along with all the other union bureaucrats who were isolating our fight. I remember the hangmans noose being lowered symbolically from the ceiling in front of TUC General Secretary Norman Willis when he spoke at a rally of South Wales miners.

It was towards the end of the strike I met the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP) after getting a copy of the News Line on the picket line. Id never joined any political organisation up to this point. Until then I knew nothing about Trotskyism and the fight against Stalinism, the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the history of the real socialist movement.

I attended the Marxist School of Education and spoke at a national rally of the WRP at Alexander Palace in front of 3,000 workers and youth about the need for the education of the working class to develop its political consciousness. I travelled down with a coach load of striking miners and their wives in the Women Against Pit Closures. I was part of a group of miners who joined the WRP in Barnsley, Rotherham and Doncaster in south Yorkshire, one of the most militant areas in the country and the News Line was read up and down the coalfields nationally.

We saw this as offering an independent way forward. We were also very aware of international support from workers the world over in terms of food parcels from families across Europe. I had one from a family in Germany. But this was limited to the trade union version of solidarity based on organisations rooted in a national outlook rather than a common fight against the powerful globally organised corporations.

I would fully recommend the WSWS pamphlet, The Lessons of the 1984-85 Miners Strike. The WRP as the British section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) was the only political tendency which could have provided a lead, but unbeknownst to me it had undergone a political degeneration and a turn away from its Trotskyist principles.

I saw Scargill as a good solid left-wing leader who spoke well and I often got caught up with supporting him. As the pamphlet explains his authority rested on the fact that he was seen as a principled alternative to Kinnock and the TUC, but he avoided any struggle against their isolation of the strike and class treachery. The WRP supported him uncritically. In the course of a strike which lasted a year, his left credentials could have been exposed and workers brought forward to build a new leadership against the labour and trade union bureaucracy in the fight for socialism. The failure to do this meant a betrayal became a defeat.

I never understood this fully until 1986 and the expulsion of the WRP from the ICFI. It was then I became clearer on Scargill and Mick McGahey and the Stalinist influence over the most powerful union in the country and the meaning of their call to return to the Plan for Coal to save the coal industry. This was not based on workers control and socialism, but economic nationalism and a corporatist agreement with the government.

Despite my ill health I remain active on social media spreading the word and sharing articles from the WSWS. I have my own Facebook site, Miners Strike 1984-5, with a thousand followers and I am an admin on the Centenary of the Russian Revolution with four thousand followers. We must take every opportunity to reach an international audience. I was very pleased to be able to speak at an online meeting in New Zealand in June 2022 to launch the WSWS book exposing the cover-up of the Pike River mining disaster by a Labour government and the unions and the fight for the truth and justice taken up by the families.

For me the struggle continues and is no different for the working class in Britain as it is internationally, with workers having nothing to look forward to except more strife and the imminent danger of world war. All these questions from war, poverty, climate change affect us all, including the fight to free Julian Assange and end the terrible genocide that is taking place in Gaza.

While these questions remain, the class struggle continues. It will never end until the working class ends capitalism and establishes a socialist society.

Marking the 40th anniversary, the Socialist Equality Party has published a pamphlet, The Lessons of the 1984-85 miners strike. Order your copy from Mehring Books here.

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Veteran of 1984-5 UK Miners' Strike Malcolm Bray speaks on its lessons and the fight to build a socialist leadership in ... - WSWS

Yes, neoliberal capitalism helped create the homelessness crisis. What are we even arguing about that?

Heres the headline of the year, although the Chron keeps dishing up wonders: A socialist supports socialism.

Its hardly unusual to hear Sup. Dean Preston, a proud Democratic Socialist, saying that capitalism is a root cause of homelessness, drug addiction, and crime. Thats something that many economists, sociologists, criminologists, and even the Pope have said repeatedly.

But the way the Chron framed thisas some kind of weird idea, prompting critics to question the logic of the supervisor, whos the only Democratic Socialist on the board, raises an important question in politics and news media.

Have we not gotten beyond the point, especially in San Francisco, where socialism is some sort of radical, frightening concept and criticizing capitalism is some kind of taboo?

At this point, polls show that US Democrats, especially people under 30, have a more positive view of socialism than capitalism. As many as 70 percent of young voters think the very rich got their wealth by cheating the system, and taxes on wealth are increasingly popular.

Theres a reason Sen. Bernie Sanders came pretty close to winning the Democratic nomination for president, and is currently more popular among Democrats than President Joe Biden.

The Chron story is based on comments Preston made to a right-wing film crew from England that was making what the paper called an investigative documentary on San Franciscos problems.

Actually, its a piece of conservative propaganda, but never mind. Preston told me his comments were taken out of context, and this was never supposed to be a documentary about capitalism, but he stands by the statement that capitalism, at least our current neoliberal version, is one of the major causes of our social problems.

And why wouldnt he? Why would this be prompting critics (who are not cited in the story, except for a billionaire-funded Dump Dean website) to question his priorities, which are and have always been affordable housing and tenant protections, among other things?

Its as if the Chron is stuck in the 1950s, with a red scare mentality that fundamentally misses the point of what Democratic Socialism is about today.

First: Even most socialists agree that theres no clear or easy definition of what that term means in todays United States. Socialist political agendas run a pretty wide spectrum, from those who think that the public sector should take over most essential services, including housing and utilities, to those who are good with market systems that are properly regulated.

There are Marxists in the US who argue that the state should seize most of the means of production, but there are also a lot of folks who call themselves socialists who think a version of capitalism that features much higher taxes on the rich, strong trade unions, and a much more robust safety net would be a huge improvement.

All of us agree that modern neoliberalism is an utter failure.

I keep coming back to this: If the level of economic inequality in the US today was the same as in 1975, the bottom 90 percent would have an additional $50 trillion.

Thats a staggering number. Its enough to end homelessness in the country, provide free health care and education to all, make a huge dent in the desperation that leads to crime and opioid addiction and the top ten percent would still be doing just fine.

The US economy between 1946 and 1980 wasnt socialist, by the common meaning, but rich people paid as much as 80 percent of their marginal income in taxes. That meant, among other things, that as the late Tom Hayden once told me, nothing used to cost much. Hardly anyone could afford to spend $100,000 on a house, so houses cost $10,000. Thats not about the Yimbys and supply-side economics, its about what the housing market is always about, which is demand.

When I arrived in San Francisco in 1981, there were almost no homeless people. At the Haight Ashbury Switchboard, where I volunteered, you would also find some guy (always a guy, the women were smarter) who thought it was still the Summer of Love and some digger was going to offer a crash pad, but they quickly got the message.

An indigent adult could get $350 a month plus food stamps from the General Assistance Office. You could rent an SRO hotel room for $25 a week. Rooms in a shared flat went for $125 a month.

The federal government paid for cities to build public housing.

There wasnt anywhere near todays level of economic inequality. Stanford MBAs used to brag about making twice our age, which means like $50,000 a year. People who made a lot more than that paid high marginal taxes, and stock options, which hardly existed, were taxed at a reasonable level as capital gains.

Then came Reagan, and the tax cuts for the rich and the devastation of the safety net, followed by Bush, and Clinton, and Bush, and Obama, and Trump, and Bidenand none of them, Democrat or Republican, has undone the tax cuts that allowed the massive fortunes we see today.

There were drug addicts in 1981; the city was dealing with a heroin and crack epidemic (and by the way, the number of homicides was about ten times what it is today).

But we didnt see tent encampments on the streets, and the Tenderloin was a low-income neighborhood that looked nothing like it does today.

Anyone who seriously thinks that homelessness and despair are not in part a result of neoliberal capitalism is delusional.

We can argue about solutions to local problems, and we have to accept that some of our crises require changes at the state and federal level. But Prestons comments arent radical, or even newsworthy; theyre just reality.

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Why is the Chron so freaked out about Socialism? - 48 hills - 48 Hills

Its a tale of two countries. In the 1970s, Venezuela was the flashy, OPEC petrostate of the Americas. Bolstered by money flowing from the largest oil reserves in the world, Venezuela flooded Miami and New York with shoppers and college students. At home, gasoline was cheaper than water. New highways carried fleets of gas guzzlers.

Then, in 1976, the oil industry was nationalized and foreign oil companies were converted into subsidiaries of a new state oil company, Petrleos de Venezuela S.A. In 1998, a charismatic, socialist army officer, Hugo Chavez Frias, was elected president. After his death, in 2013, his protg, Cuban-trained Nicols Maduro, took over.

The scorecard for 25 years of socialism is abysmal. Oil production has dwindled to 20 percent of 1988 levels. Economic collapse and political dictatorship prompted the largest refugee crisis in the history of the Americas. Almost 8 million people one third of Venezuelas 1998 population walked out. Four years ago, American Airlines ended its flights to Miami from Caracas. Today, no flights link Venezuela and America.

Despite travel obstacles, Venezuelans have become the fastest growing Hispanic nationality in America, hitting 700,000 today. In September, Venezuelans displaced Mexicans as the top nationality crossing the Rio Grande on Americas southern border. Ironically, in the two decades after World War II, capitalist Venezuela drew millions of immigrants from war torn Europe.

Meanwhile, Guyana, separated from Venezuela by a few hundred miles of jungle, languished as a joke country. After independence from Britain in 1966, the country was crippled by decades of Caribbean socialism. Most high school graduates and almost all college graduates emigrated. Today, Guyanas population of 800,000 is matched by a diaspora of the same size Guyanese living in Britain, Canada and America.

Now, in a turnaround, Guyanese fill flights from London, Toronto and New York to check out job opportunities at home. Last year, the Guyanese economy grew by 62 percent the highest growth rate in the world.

Driven by its booming oil sector, the economy is set to expand by 27.2 percent in 2023 and 34.2 percent next year consolidating the country as the worlds fastest-growing economy in 2024, S&P Global Market Intelligence said in a report last month.

Once suffering a level of poverty on a par with Haiti, Guyana now enjoys the fourth highest per capita income in the Americas, after America itself, Canada, and the Bahamas. Here is a clue to the source: On April 1, United Airlines inaugurates direct jet service between Georgetown, Guyanas capital, and Houston.

On this southern shore of the Caribbean, steel and glass buildings rise between colonial-era, gingerbread wooden houses. Whats the difference between the two countries? It is only a 90-minute flight between Caracas and Georgetown. Yet there are no flights between the two countries.

Two decades ago, Guyana, a multi-party democracy, took a free market, foreign investment turn. In 2011, ExxonMobil discovered a series of finds totaling 11 billion barrels off the shore of the Essequibo, a Guyanese region bordering eastern Venezuela.

In 2019, production started by a consortium of ExxonMobil, Hess, and China National Offshore Oil Corporation. This blocks reserves of sweet, light crude are so valuable that they are the primary reason for Chevrons offer this fall to buy Hess for $53 billion. Most of the crude ends up on the West Coast of America.

While $2 billion a year will be diverted this year into a rainy day sovereign wealth fund, Guyanas democratically elected president, Irfaan Ali, is plunging his nation into five years of catch up to make up for decades of socialist stagnation.

Oil money is building seven hotels, 12 hospitals, dozens of new schools, a $1.9 billion gas to electricity project, 48 new bridges, two main highways, and Guyanas first deep water port. From this port, a highway will run 350 miles south, into the Amazon, giving Northern Brazils companies and ranches direct access to Miami and the Caribbean.

No one worries that Guyanas checks will bounce. By 2026, Guyanas oil production is to hit 1 million barrels a day. At that level, South Americas ugly duckling will surpass Venezuela. Measured by barrels produced per capita, thinly populated Guyana is on track to become the Kuwait of the Americas.

To critics who say that oil production fosters global warming, Guyanese retort that the world will need oil for the next 30 years, and that oil should come from poor countries. In a reversal of fortune, 30,000 Venezuelans have emigrated to Guyana to work.

Watching from Caracas, Mr. Maduro is envious. Preparing for elections next year, he has banned leading opposition candidate Mara Corina Machado. In a national primary election two months ago, she won 92% of 2.4 million votes cast.

Seeking a patriotic campaign banner, Maduro set his eyes on Guyanas Essequibo. Almost the size of Florida, the Essequibo represents two thirds of Guyanas territory. Drawing on a 200-year-old dispute between the Spanish and British empires, Venezuela claims the Essequibo.

In an 1899 international mediation, the area was almost entirely allocated to what then was called British Guiana. Two weeks ago, Maduro conducted a national referendum on grabbing the Essequibo.

Although turnout was low, he declared the 95% yes vote is a mandate. Maduro declared the Essequibo Venezuelas 24th state, redrew official maps, and said all 125,000 inhabitants of the region are now Venezuelans.

He gave ExxonMobil, Hess, and the Chinese state oil company 90 days to re-register under Venezuelan law or to pull out. To further pressure Guyana, he dusted off decade-old seismic studies and invited international majors to bid on blocks in Plataforma Deltana, Venezuelas offshore reservoir closest to Guyanese waters. Called Plataforma Deltana, the reserve holds 7.3 trillion cubic feet, about 3 percent of Venezuelas massive gas reserves.

On Thursday, Messrs. Maduro and Ali met in a tense parley in a neutral spot Saint Vincent, the island nation north of Venezuela. Both agreed that their neighborhood should remain a zone of peace.

By mid-March, the two parties are to meet again, probably in Brazil, which borders both nations. Facing a popular verdict on 25 years of rule by his United Socialist Party, its hard to see Venezuelas dictator backing away next year from his claims on Guyanas Essequibo.

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A Tale of Two Countries: In Free Market Guyana, the Best of Times, and in Socialist Venezuela, the Worst of Times - The New York Sun