Up AGAINST MASS unemployment, rampant employers with savage anti-union laws, and a war on hard-won public services, the working class in Britain faces a real crisis - an avoidable crisis created by the historic failure of its official leadership.
Socialist Outlook exists to build a new type of working class leadership, based on rule. class struggle and revolutionary socialism.
The capitalist class, driven by its own crisis, and politically united by its need to maximise profits at the expense of the workers, has had determined, vanguard leadership by a brutal Tory high command.
The Tory strategy has been to shackle the unions, and to fragment and weaken the resistance, allowing them to pick off isolated sections one at a time.
In response, most TUC and Labour leaders have embraced the defeatist politics of 'new realism', effectively total surrender, while ditching any pretence of being a socialist alternative. Every retreat encouraged the offensive against jobs, wages, conditions and union rights.
New realism is the latest form of reformism, seeking only improved conditions within capitalism.
We reject reformism, not because we are against reforms, but because we know that full employment, decent living standards, a clean environment, peace and democracy, can never be achieved under capitalism.
Nor, as we argued long before the collapse of Stalinism, could these demands ever be achieved under the bureaucratically deformed workers states and degenerated USSR, whose regimes survived only by repressing the working class.
We are a marxist current, based not on the brutish totalitarian parodies of state marxism, nor on the tame, toothless version of 'marxism' beloved by armchair academics, but the revolutionary tradition of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. differences.
Our socialist alternative is not based on parliamentary elections or illusions of peaceful legislative change.
We fight to mobilise readers' and unleash the power of the working class to topple the corrupt and reac-CONTACT US NOW! I O YES - I want to become a Socialist Outlook supporter. ¡ • Please tell me more about Socialist Outlook. | Name ¡ Address Post code Phone. Send to Socialist Outlook, PO Box 1109, London N4 establish its own class We struggle against fragmentation by building solidarity, to unite the various struggles of workers, the unemployed, of women, of pensioners, of the black communities, of lesbians on emissions. and gay men, of students, of youth - and of those fighting imperialism in Ireland and worldwide.
Socialist Outlook is above all an internationalist current, in solidarity with the Trotskyist Fourth International, which organises from it. in over 40 countries.
Unlike some other groups on the British left, we do not believe a mass revolutionary party can be monopoly markets. built simply by proclaiming ourselves to be one. This degenerates into sectarian posturing and abstention from struggles in the labour movement, playing into right wing hands.
Nor do we believe that Berlin. the demands of women, black people, lesbians and gays or the national demands of people in Scotland and Wales should be left to await revolution. The oppressed must organise themselves and fight now for their demands, which small island states. are a part of the struggle for But propaganda alone, however good, will not bring socialism. The fight for policies which can mobilise and politically educate workers in struggle, must be taken into the unions, the Labour Party and every campaign and struggle in which workers and the oppressed fight for their rights.
To strengthen this fight we press for united front campaigns on key issues such as racism and fascism tors. - in which various left currents can work together for common objectives while remaining free to debate If you agree with what you see in Socialist Outlook, and want to join with us in the struggle for socialism, groups meet in towns across the country.
Contact us now, get or- also culprits. ganised, and get active!
- -late for many. 25 PER CENT of the world's people living in the rich countries are responsible for 75% of global carbBut the advanced capitalist world will not act to halt global warming because to do so would pose the need for changes in the economic system and the relationships of power and wealth that flow Oil producing countries fear the loss of revenue - western transnationals foresee the end of their huge profits and Meanwhile global temperatures are rising signifi- duce their 1990 level of emiscantly as a result of climate sions by a minimum of 20 per change. That is the conclusion cent by 2005. of a scientific report presented They were disappointed. to the inter-governmental Cli- There was not even an undermate Change conference in taking about levels of carbon emission beyond the year 2000. This has been deferred Melting to the next Climate conference Each decade sees an aver- in Tokyo in 1997. age increase of 0.3 degrees Instead western countries celsius, melting polar ice caps led by Australia, Canada and and causing a rise in sea levels the USA stonewalled on dealwhich would inundate 36 ing with the fundamental causes of climate change, So far global warming has backed by oil producing counbeen blamed for everything tries like Saudi Arabia and from droughts in California to Kuwait. floods in Bangladesh and forest fires in Russia. Heat from the sun's rays are trapped on earth by the depletion of the ozone layer in the atmosphere which is responsible for channelling it back into space.
This greenhouse effect eats called chlorofluorocarbons , month you too (CFCs) which are found in can get a chance aerosol cans and in refrigera- to win S501 I You can have as Presently states are comGermany and the Scandinavians were far more sympathetic to the Maldives and Marshall Islands than India and China who are intent on following the Western growth model.
Reducing carbon emissions means reducing energy use in the West and switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy like sun, wind and water.
Countries like Germany and Japan see the market potential in renewable technologies and favour subsidising research in this area and encouraging demand.
Natural ways of absorbing carbon dioxide like halting deforestation are opposed by countries currently exploiting tropical rainforest at unsustainable rates.
Meanwhile China could soon be a leading source of CFC emissions because of its reliance on the chemical in consumer goods. Beijing claims that because the environmental standards being forced on China never applied to western countries when they industrialised, they therefore amount to a form of pro-Western countries barred from using CFCS have now switched to using hydro-chloroflurocarbons (HCFCs) which are just as harmful.
The environmental group Greenpeace has just developed a refrigerator which doesn't use CFCs - but has received no support for mass production.
Decisive action won't come from capitalist governments or big business: it does not fit the logic of capitalism.
Defence of the environment demands a complete break with unfair and unsustainable patterns of production and consumption.
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