‘Planning for the Planet – how socialism could save the environment’ - a review

‘Planning for the Planet – how socialism could save the environment’ is essential reading for anyone serious about ensuring urgent global action is taken to prevent the growing threat of environmental catastrophe.

When its author, Socialist Party member Pete Dickenson, wrote the first edition of his book back in 2011, global temperatures had risen by around 1◦C above pre-industrial levels. But in 2025, when Pete’s updated second edition is being published, that rise is now already consistently being recorded at above 1.5◦C. 

Back in 2011, the link between rising Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions and the increase in extreme weather events was still just a theoretical debate. Now it has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt, based on measurements of ocean temperatures.

But, as Pete warns in his Introduction, the “gap between the green rhetoric of governments in the industrialised capitalist countries and their feeble policy response has become a chasm”. The prospect of even limited cooperation over climate change between those capitalist powers is receding rapidly as global antagonisms rise following the election of Trump, a man who has repeatedly described climate change as a ‘hoax’.

Pete stresses that the arguments of climate deniers like Trump have to be taken up and answered. Their attempts to describe global warming due to human activity as “fake news” have no basis in reality. However, these denials are being pushed by ‘Big Oil’ in pursuit of continuing profit. But they also feed into working-class scepticism about what they are told by big business in general and corporate sponsored science in particular. These fears are heightened by some economists proposing supposedly ‘green’ eco-tax policies that place the burden of paying for the crisis onto the shoulders of the world’s workers and poor, instead of pursuing a socialist solution.

Pete writes that the “warning lights are clearly flashing” that temperatures will continue to rise, based on present trends to at least 2.9◦C above pre-industrial levels. That would leave around 30% of the global population exposed to the risk of flooding, and well over a billion to drought. These kind of temperature rises are also likely to trigger disastrous ‘tipping points’ in global systems, which risk accelerating global warming uncontrollably. These include the disruption of ocean currents, melting of ice sheets, and release of methane presently trapped in permafrost.

But Pete is clear from the outset of the book that, while making clear that the threat to global climate is at a critical level, we must challenge any fatalistic idea that nothing can now be done. It’s true that some changes may already be irreversible, sadly such as the future of most, if not all, of the word’s coral reefs. That alone is an indictment of the profit system. But the latest scientific conclusions, summarised by the 2023 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), are that “it is still possible to avoid the worst effects of global warming if decisive action is taken in the near future”. However, if left to capitalism, then that’s a very big ‘if’ indeed!

Pete’s book provides a concise and compelling summary as to why “only the socialist organisation of society can create the conditions needed to urgently and seriously deal with the danger to the planet”.

Chapter One of the book summarises the evidence for climate change and its effects. Pete stresses that, given the complexity of global climate systems, there is inevitably uncertainty about predicting exactly how quickly future warming will accelerate. However, both the trends and the threats are undeniable. The question is not whether we risk an imminent global climate disaster, but whether – and how – mitigating actions can be urgently taken to prevent it.

Pete raises the possibility that, faced with a climate crisis, capitalist leaders might suddenly panic and rush to quick ‘geo-engineering’ fixes to try and reverse global warming. Billionaires like Bill Gates and Richard Branson have already been funding research into ways of injecting mineral particles into the atmosphere to reproduce the kind of ‘global cooling’ experienced after major volcanic eruptions block the sun’s rays. But major eruptions also have unpredictable effects on rainfall patterns too. These approaches could create more problems than they solve.

In Chapter Two, Pete summarises some of the different ways that capitalism has been responsible for pollution and environmental destruction in the pursuit of profit. He includes nuclear fission power as one of those threats. Some, such as prominent environmentalist George Monbiot, would disagree, backing nuclear power as being the ‘lesser evil’ compared to burning fossil fuels for electricity generation. Pete disagrees, stressing that nuclear power is always susceptible to the risk of the kind of serious accidents that took place at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. While the chances of an accident happening may be low, the consequences if one does occur can be very serious indeed. 

Moreover, the main unresolved issue with nuclear fission reactors remains how to safely store its toxic radioactive waste for tens of thousands of years to come. This, along with the expense of decommissioning nuclear power stations, presents a huge long-term cost which the supporters of nuclear power tend to ignore. Pete points out that, by 2023, there was already 88,000 tonnes of nuclear waste in storage in the USA alone and concludes that “no safe storage method has yet been found, an unresolved problem it is irresponsible to increase by generating yet more waste”.

In Chapters Three and Four, Pete analyses why capitalism will never be able to resolve the climate crisis that it has created. He points out that evidence of the looming climate threat caused by GHG had been emerging for decades but was never taken seriously, let alone acted upon. As long ago as 1938, a paper presented to the British Meteorological Society had already proposed a link between increased carbon dioxide (CO2) levels from the burning of fossil fuels and an increase in global temperatures. The computer modelling that became possible from the 1960s predicted – with some accuracy in retrospect - significant temperature increases due to CO2 emissions by 2000.

However, it was only in the late 1980s that capitalist leaders internationally began to acknowledge that global warming was a genuine threat. But Pete explains that, even then, the convening of a series of UN climate summits, the first held in Rio in 1992, generated plenty of publicity and backslapping but achieved very little in terms of concrete actions. This was inevitable given that the supposed ‘solutions’ on the negotiating table were always rooted in neo-liberal capitalist market approaches, rather than employing direct state intervention to ensure action was taken to invest in green jobs and sustainable energy production.

The 1997 Kyoto summit agreed to a ‘cap and trade’ system of carbon trading permits that allowed polluting companies to offset their ‘excess’ emissions in return for sponsoring ‘green’ projects in poorer nations. The model was always flawed, with caps set at too high a level, and with numerous loopholes that meant it effectively sanctioned a continuing rise in GHG emissions. But even if more rigorous emission caps had been stringently enforced, the refusal by both the US and China to participate always meant that these market mechanisms were doomed to fail. 

Even blocs like the EU that stated they would agree larger emission cuts were cynically making their commitment contingent on the USA doing the same – which they knew wouldn’t happen. The EU’s offer of a 20% cut was also, in reality, just half of that because the other 10% was to be met by phony ‘offsetting’. A particularly cynical type of ‘offset’, pushed in particular by the UK as part of the negotiations leading up to the 2009 Copenhagen summit, was for rich nations to be able to buy ‘forest credits’. This would supposedly discourage further clearances of globally essential CO2 absorbing rainforests. But plantations cleared for agriculture were to be included in the definition of ‘forest’, so encouraging the exact opposite result in practice!

But the 2009 Copenhagen summit collapsed without any agreement on the way forward. The 2015 Paris summit (COP21) attempted to patch together a global deal but only managed to do so through what Pete describes as a “completely voluntary, non-binding” agreement that marked “a major retreat, if not surrender, in attempts by the ‘international community’ to seriously address global warming”.

Before COP21, global nations had been asked to come to the summit with pledges that might at least restrict global temperature rises to a maximum of 2◦C above pre-industrial levels. But the pledges made, even in the unlikely event that they had been stuck to, would only have limited rises to a disastrous 2.7◦C to 3.0◦C! 

Since then, the backsliding on firm commitments has only got worse, while actual global CO2 emissions have increased. This when the IPCC states that a 45% cut in carbon output is needed by 2030 to have any chance of keeping global warming below the 1.5◦C target agreed at COP26 in Glasgow in 2021!

In short, even though the more far-sighted representatives of capitalism can see that global disaster is looming, the demands of their decaying profit-driven system of ‘monopoly capitalism’, or to be more precise, ‘imperialism’, prevents them from taking the required action.

Pete sets aside four pages of his book to summarise Lenin’s theory of Imperialism, and to explain how the features of this ‘highest stage of capitalism’ apply in today’s global economy. He explains that “despite globalisation, the nation state has grown in importance as the defender, by force ultimately, of monopolies under its jurisdiction … and [while it continues to exist] makes international agreement necessary to reverse global warming a remote possibility”.

Economists have shown that the costs of the dire consequences of climate change far outweigh the costs of acting now to mitigate them. But no individual corporation is going to take action that threatens its short-term profits and allows its international competitors to gain at their expense. 

Pete looks at the position of US corporations, rooted in a nation state that produces 11% of global emissions with only 4% of its population. They will fight tooth and nail against any attempt to strike a global deal that makes the “polluter pay proportionately”, just as the fossil fuel lobby have worked hard to subvert the threat of Biden’s ‘Green New Deal’ provisions cutting into their profits. 

In turn, US corporations fear that they have no way of enforcing any deal on its Chinese rivals. They know that, just like the USA, China - now the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases with 27% of global output – will evade taking any serious action if it threatens their economy. 

‘Planning for the Planet’ includes the latest figures from China showing that, since the Covid crisis, GHG emissions in China have started to rapidly increase again – by an average of 3.8% in 2021-23 – driven by the rapid expansion of carbon intensive industries like construction. Yes, the Chinese state has extensively invested in renewable energy sources like wind and solar energy, although driven by a strategic interest in cornering the market in green technologies, rather than any concern for the environment. At the same time, it has massively expanded coal fired power stations too.  As Pete concludes, “there is little reason to think that China will meet its self-declared target of emissions peaking in 2030”.

As Chapter Five states, “the culpability of imperialism … for the developing environmental catastrophe is also accepted by many if not most green activists”. However, the solutions argued for by too many of those activists fail to recognise the need for imperialism to therefore be challenged and overthrown. 

Instead, some greens look to more ‘humane’ market systems as a solution to the crisis, to a society where small local firms run the economy instead of the polluting exploitative monopoly corporations. But, just as Marx analysed, the laws of the capitalist market would inevitably lead to the development of monopolies at the expense of rival producers. 

Another commonly held approach, one that has often underpinned Green Party policies in the UK, asserts the need for a ‘steady state economy’ that fixes limits to both global population and production, to provide sustainability. But doesn’t that approach imply that further economic growth is therefore a problem, and that the world’s poor will just have to accept that it remains in poverty?

Pete explains that some greens recognise this flaw in the ‘steady state’ approach and instead argue for ‘green growth’ that would allow for growth in the ‘Global South’ as well as tackling climate change.  But their strategy usually depends on the imposition of ‘eco-taxes’ which would not only hit the poorest hardest, as they have to spend a greater proportion of their incomes on energy, but would also be fiercely resisted by big business and imperialism. 

‘New Technology’ – for example in the form of sustainable energy and transport systems - is also seen as enabling ‘green growth’. But sclerotic capitalism is unwilling to invest the sums required unless there is a clear short term profit to be made.

Others look to a form of ‘Green Keynesianism’, “a combination of borrowing, printing money and taxing the rich  … to pay for a switch to renewable energy and other measures to cut emissions”, as Pete puts it. These activists also look to trade union action as a way of pressurising both individual companies to switch to renewable production and on national governments to carry out such a radical program. 

Trade union action is undoubtedly always essential in forcing through gains at the expense of the bosses. However, what is gained in struggle is taken back again eventually as long as ownership and control remain in their hands. And a serious program of taxing the rich would provoke a storm of opposition from the ruling-class, along with demands from the money markets that other swingeing cuts were made to pay for the cost of investment in climate interventions. 

Faced with that level of opposition, Pete explains that trade unions would need to organise general strike action, where “environmental struggles were linked to a broader movement of the trade unions …. This would inevitably raise the issue of capitalism or socialism”.

And that’s the issue that’s going to prove decisive when it comes to preventing climate catastrophe. As Pete argues, “The evidence is now overwhelming that despite their fine words, the ruling classes in Britain and internationally, do not intend to take any meaningful action to tackle climate change in the foreseeable future …. Sustainable growth on a capitalist basis is not feasible, partly because the methods it can employ to achieve this are inadequate and flawed, but mainly because imperialist rivalry will prevent the international co-operation that is essential to make progress. Unless the capitalist system is replaced, the world will continue to hurtle headlong to disaster since the environment will still be treated as a 'free good' by the multinationals that dominate production and will be exploited at virtually no cost to themselves”. 

In Chapter Six, Pete sets out both the main elements of a socialist programme for the environment and also of the democratically planned nationalised economy required to implement it. He stresses that “no technological breakthrough is required, just the wider adoption and further development of existing technology, including wind and solar power”.

He points out that Britain has the potential to develop a surplus capacity in wind energy, while some other parts of the globe could do the same from solar energy. These renewable sources need to be linked together in a national - and international - power grid, alongside developing ways to store ‘excess’ energy that might be generated on, for example, particularly windy days. This could include the generation of ‘green hydrogen’ from the electrolysis of water, which could become an important fuel for energy-intensive applications such as cement manufacture.

One supposed ‘solution’ that Pete discounts is the use of bio-fuels produced from corn and palm oil. In practice, their production does “not lead to a net reduction of greenhouse gases”.

As cars and lorries account for a significant proportion of GHG emissions, Pete stresses the importance of expanding public transport and rail freight. He also sets out a ‘Green Programme for the Car Industry’ that includes retooling factories and retraining workers to develop alternative production. That could include electric vehicles but also an expanded green energy industry, such as parts for wind turbines, as well as for tram and rail transport.

Pete raises the question as to whether air travel would have a place in a future sustainable world. Aviation emissions are another major contributor to GHG output. However, the development of international links and travel can also contribute to the global co-operation vital to build the required globally planned socialist economy. Investment in a subsidised high-speed international rail network could certainly provide part of the solution.

It might become possible to develop viable hydrogen powered air travel, but this would require considerable further development. That’s also true for other potential ways to cut CO2 levels such as nuclear fusion power and the development of safe ‘carbon capture’ systems like carbon mineralisation, which would allow CO2 to be safely removed from the atmosphere. The energy efficiency of all manufacturing production and of housing also needs to be urgently improved. 

But the key message in Pete’s book is that none of these solutions will ever be implemented under the capitalist market and inter-imperialist rivalry that is currently destroying the planet. Instead, the key firms that dominate the world’s economy need to be nationalised to allow rational democratic global planning. 

Pete points out that just “the biggest 200 global firms had sales that were equivalent to 28.3% of world GDP … the wealth controlled by these corporations is significantly greater”. Bringing these firms alone into democratically planned public ownership would save energy by avoiding “the duplication of resources, planned obsolescence and wide-scale destruction and then rebuilding of factories, plant and machinery in capitalism’s slump/boom cycle … At a more fundamental level, the inevitable tendency of competitive markets is to degrade the environment. The remedy of a democratic, planned socialist society put forward to combat the danger of climate change, equally applies when addressing other environmental threats”.

The book also stresses that, while workers lose their jobs and livelihoods when capitalist firms decide to switch production, this would not be the case under a socialist plan of production. Instead, “if conversion took place in a planned manner over a period of one or two decades, where all decisions were democratically determined and profit was not the deciding factor, then jobs and living standards would actually benefit”.

The combined savings made by ending unemployment and freeing the creative power of the working-class, and from ending the waste of luxury expenditure for the super-rich, arms spending and advertising, would easily provide the resources to carry out a programme to rescue the planet from environmental disaster, and to raise living standards too. 

A carbon neutral society would also require more skilled work than will ever be available under decaying capitalism. Pete recommends a study by the Campaign Against Climate Change which calculated a net gain of 1.6 million jobs in the UK, in areas like renewable energy generation, home insulation and renovation, and public transport industries. Nuclear power workers also need not fear for their future as the work of decommissioning and safeguarding existing plant will be necessary for many decades to come.

Chapter Seven of the book is of a more specialist character, summarising how a planned economy would operate with reference to the writings of Marx. It also draws on Wassily Leontief’s ‘Input-Output Analysis’, initially developed when he was researching the Soviet economy in the 1920s. As well as providing a theoretical underpinning to the socialist programme for the environment outlined in the rest of the book, this chapter is also very useful for anyone who is interested in finding out more about the details of how a planned economy could operate in today’s world.

Techniques such as ‘Input-Output Analysis’ would help to ensure that different sectors working within an overall economic plan maintain a mutual balance. In the 1960s, Leontief himself also recognised how his techniques could be usefully applied to include environmental costs. This would help a socialist planned economy to identify sectors with the highest CO2 intensity.

However, Pete points out that “planning is not primarily a technical question. Rather, its success will depend on creating institutions the working class can use to democratically control production from the workplace upwards. The key element will be the conscious control of working people, on a day-to-day basis, of the decisions that shape their lives”. 

He describes how such planning would operate at three levels: setting overall priorities nationally and internationally, not least environmental ones; efficiently planning production to meet demand at an industry or sectoral level, while also taking into account its pollution overheads; then, in turn, planning with input from the ‘shopfloor’ at the level of an individual enterprise. A balance has to be struck between centralisation and decentralisation, made possible through the operation of democratic bodies that exercise real control at all levels.

Projections of demand would be “determined by obtaining information from powerful proactive consumer bodies and by using the very sophisticated market research tools developed under capitalism. To organise the movement of goods between industries, avoiding bottlenecks, it will be possible to use techniques such as operational research, developed by big capitalist monopolies to plan the complex movement of goods between their operations around the world”. Such democratically elected consumer bodies would also have a role in planning the range of consumer choice available and in ensuring high quality goods are produced, alongside some element of market mechanisms that might be necessary, certainly at the outset.

Pete stresses the importance of rearming the workers’ movement, thrown back ideologically since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, to advocate the viability and necessity of democratic socialist planning. 

Chapter Eight, “In Defence of Socialist Planning”, addresses the reasons behind that collapse, which stemmed from the undemocratic command system of economic management under Stalinism. Nevertheless, Pete explains with comparative production data how the potential of socialist planning, even in the distorted form that developed in the Soviet Union, was initially demonstrated by its unprecedented speed of industrialisation and its rapid recovery from the destruction of World War Two. 

However, top-down directives became increasingly unsuited to planning a more complex technologically based consumer economy. Its privileged bureaucrats also became increasingly indifferent to the environmental destruction that resulted from their misrule. “Missing was the essential element of democratic control in the allocation of resources, where the consumers’ needs are fed back to the planning bodies and acted upon … As a result, economic growth went into long term decline and came to a halt almost completely in the mid-1980s”.  

Pete answers the criticisms of capitalist economists that suggest a planned economy will always fail because prices need to be set by the workings of the ‘free market’. Instead, Pete explains the mechanisms that would be used to set prices within a socialist plan of production.

He also counters Green arguments that continued growth means inevitable ecological devastation and even, from some of them, that the world’s population needs to be forcibly controlled. Any such top-down impositions will understandably provoke a hostile response from the world’s poor, setting back the international solidarity needed to produce planned global solutions. Their application would require a totalitarian police state – more of a regime of “eco-Stalinism” than “eco-socialism”, as Pete correctly points out.

Pete argues that it will be the security of living without poverty that will “lessen perceived need for the protection of big families” as well as “access by women to education, good jobs and the provision of free contraception”. He adds that “there is a trend away from conspicuous consumption among the affluent middle classes, where leisure time for personal development is increasingly being put above further consumption. Under socialism, as living standards go up, free time increases dramatically and opportunities for individual development rise, a similar trend away from commodity consumption will appear. The acquisitive habits of individuals fostered by the market economy, the driving force of economic behaviour in a society based on scarcity, will gradually disappear as uncertainty and worry about the future recedes and high-pressure selling is removed. These factors indicate the possibility will exist for a gradual levelling-off of [global] consumption, albeit at a higher level that exists now, into a steady-state equilibrium”.

The final chapter of this excellent book summarises its key evidence and arguments. It points out that we face a world where inter-imperialist rivalry is on the rise, and where ‘green technology’ – and competition to secure the supplies of lithium and cobalt required for them - form a key part of the sharpening trade wars. Yet, at the same time, the imperialist powers – and corporations that once pretended to be ‘green’ like BP and Unilever - are retreating rapidly from taking the urgently required action needed to tackle global warming. The UN COP summits continue to be convened but are no longer able to reach any kind of unified global agreement.

It is against this background that Pete ends his book with a telling “Warning to the Workers’ Movement”. He is adamant that, while the situation is grave, it would be wrong to accept that it is too late to reverse climate change and that we just have to adapt to its destructive effects. 

However, that also requires “political lessons to be drawn from the 30 years wasted by the representatives of capitalism in the battle against climate change … A change in the social system is the only way to allow us to live in harmony with the natural environment … . This needs common ownership of the means of life”.

The book ends on a note of optimism, reflecting on how climate change induced drought was a factor behind the revolutionary uprisings of the ‘Arab Spring’ of 2011. Yes, if the workers’ movement fails to act to challenge the environmental and political crisis, then far-right forces could grow from the ensuing chaos. “On the other hand, if the organised working class intervenes with a socialist programme to draw around it the multi-millions affected by the crisis there would be a possibility to build a movement to transform society and as a result, for the first time, seriously tackle the environmental crisis”.

A living hell in Gaza – how can this slaughter be stopped?

 

Taken from: https://www.socialistworld.net/2025/04/14/palestinians-bombed-and-starved-netanyahu-plans-to-ethnically-cleanse-gaza/

The situation in Gaza as I write today (15 April 2025) is a living hell.

Netanyahu has unilaterally ended the always tenuous ceasefire agreement and pushed ahead with his plans to try and entirely drive out the Palestinian population from Gaza – with the support of the Trump, who has crassly stated that it could then be rebuilt as a Mediterranean beach resort! 

After all, the existence of Israel has always met a key strategic and military need for US Imperialism in the Middle East, particularly when faced with the growth of Arab nationalism under Nasser in Egypt - and their fear that the region could then come under greater Soviet influence – and now as part of its battle for global influence with China. But their real interests have always been disguised as coming to the defence of oppressed Jews after centuries of antisemitism – but carried out through a ‘divide-and-rule’ policy that relied on the oppression of the Palestinian masses instead.

Now, with the official death toll already over 50,000, Israel has again imposed a complete blockade of food, power and medical supplies. In the last few days, Gaza’s last working hospital has been bombed. The video evidence found on a murdered Palestinian paramedic has revealed the kind of shoot-to-kill tactics that the Israeli army is using – a small breach in their attempt to prevent any reporting of their atrocities by targeting local journalists and keeping foreign press out altogether.

In short this is a genocidal attempt to ethnically cleanse Gaza. After all, Netanyahu had already made clear that this was his aim well before the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023 – making clear in a speech to the UN of his plans for a “New Middle East” in which Israel annexes Gaza and the West Bank entirely – all in the name of “peace” of course!

Given cover by those Hamas’ attacks, Netanyahu seized the opportunity to try and bloodily enforce a new ‘Nakba’, invading Gaza to try and enforce Palestinians having to flee to refugee camps in Egypt, Jordan and elsewhere. But Trump and Netanyahu’s plans aren’t going to be so easily agreed to by the governments of those neighbouring states – not because they in any way retain any semblance of the anti-imperialist elements of Nasserism – but because they fear that an influx of radicalised and angry Palestinian refugees could threaten their repressive regimes from below.

Under pressure from mass opposition and the anti-war movement, other imperialist states – like Britain – have had to sometimes voice at least limited criticisms to Israel’s actions – but continue to sell weapons and export components for the fighter jets being used by Israel – including those of Croppers in Cumbria – making them complicit in the mass murder.

The question for all of us who defend the rights of Palestinians to self-determination and for a genuine independent state, and who oppose this ethnic cleansing, is ‘how can the Gaza slaughter be stopped?’.

Some on the left argue that socialists in Britain have no right to offer advice to Palestinians on the tactics they should employ. I disagree. Marxists who have learned from the history of past defeats, and who are in constant discussion with socialists and trade unionists internationally have a responsibility to suggest ways forward that we think can best succeed.

The Palestinians have tried the tactics of Fatah and the PLO who turned to a strategy of individual terrorism. However, realising it could not defeat the might of the Israeli state – especially after it was forced out of Jordan and then Lebanon – the PLO looked towards a negotiated settlement instead – which led to the 1993 ‘Oslo accord’.

However, the longed for genuine national rights for the Palestinians were never going to be genuinely conceded by imperialism. The Palestinian Authority was always based on impoverished parcels of lands, surrounded by Jewish settlements that have since expanded into Palestinian territory. Its ex-PLO leaders have been seen by many ordinary Palestinians as corrupt, working with the Israeli authorities to put down opposition to defend their privileges, while the masses live in poverty.

It was this disappointment that led to the growth of Hamas, a party based on right-wing political Islam rather than the secularism of Fatah. Understandably, desperate Palestinian youth joined the ranks of their militias who were seen as continuing the struggle for genuine Palestinian self-determination unlike what was seen as Fatah collaborationism.

Hamas’ development even had some backing from Netanyahu and the Israeli right – in part as a counterweight to the PLO, but also because they realised that Hamas’ outright hostility to Israel could actually help the Israeli right win backing for their hardline plans for a ‘greater Israel’. 

Hamas’ attacks, particularly given the way that Israeli national consciousness has been built on developing a ‘siege mentality’ against external threats, have been used by the Israeli right to win backing for their nationalist and racist propaganda against the Palestinian people. 

This was, of course, never greater than after the Hamas attacks of 2023. Yes, they may have struck a temporary blow to the prestige of the Israeli political and military leaders, but only provoked and enabled Israel’s military machine to move onto a greater offensive than it could risk before.

But, in turn, years of Israeli military attempts to crush Hamas – and the Palestinian struggle in general – have also failed. And so will the latest war. Because military attacks cannot destroy a determination to win an end to poverty and oppression – in fact, of course, they strengthen it.

I certainly don’t mean that Palestinians have no right to armed resistance against the brutality they are up against. But, to succeed, I believe that their resistance needs to take the form of democratically organised mass struggle, and to be directed against the occupation, not Israeli civilians. 

Targeting the forces and infrastructure of the occupation would be the most effective means of struggle, and one that is better able to appeal to Israeli workers to oppose the military slaughter and to gain the ear of those who are already questioning Netanyahu’s real agenda. 

After all, the main pressure on the US and Israeli leaders to reach a settlement in the first place came from the Palestinian masses themselves – through the mass uprising of the first “intifada” that erupted in 1987, with demonstrations, strikes and protests held right across the occupied territories. 

These are the kind of tactics that I believe can provide the strongest pressure today too. For example, some protest strikes have recently taken place across the Middle East, particularly in the West Bank, in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza. 

Of course, this is also a demand that should be taken up internationally as well. Global workers’ solidarity and industrial action can stop the production and transport of weapons to the Israeli state.  Trade unionists are also best placed to impose a successful boycott on Israeli big business and Israeli state bodies that are involved in the occupation and repression – as well as to use their organisation to build the strength of the ongoing demonstrations and protests.

The Palestinian working class and poor also need to take democratic control of their struggle, building a socialist intifada through the establishment of grassroots committees to organise defence and a mass struggle against the occupation – and to build their own independent party.

Hamas is based on right wing, clerical, repressive, anti-women’s equality, anti-working class, pro-capitalist politics. Under its leadership, Palestinians will not succeed in their struggle for national liberation, nor will the necessary socialist revolutions be waged by the masses across the Middle East to overthrow their despotic regimes. 

I don’t believe that the struggle for national liberation can be won separately to a struggle for a socialist Middle East. The region as a whole is run by pro-capitalist regimes who enrich themselves while millions live in poverty. The only way that a genuine Palestinian state could be built, with the resources to genuinely rebuild Gaza – not as Trump’s tourist complex but as a place that Palestinians, and all others in the region, can live in comfort, is through the sharing of the wealth of the region through a socialist confederation of planned and democratically managed economies.

Through such a socialist transformation on democratic lines, the Palestinian and Israeli populations could agree their future relations in a free and democratic manner – in two socialist states (for example, an independent socialist Palestinian state, alongside a socialist Israel with two capitals in Jerusalem) or in some other arrangement, should they wish, on a voluntary basis, with guaranteed rights for all minorities.

Some would say that the Israeli population will never agree to giving up their privileges and support such a socialist change. But that ignores the class divide and inequality that exists in Israel, as in any other capitalist state, even those that might be seen to be ‘well-off’ – as we know ourselves from campaigning here in Britain.

Already inside Israel, Netanyahu’s position is vulnerable. He is facing court charges and allegations of corruption. Protests have taken place against the renewed war on Gaza. Relatives of hostages have accused him of putting the lives of their loved ones at stake. 

Of course, at the same time, many Israelis are inevitably instilled with a right wing Zionist outlook which will only be overcome through experience – not least the realisation that genuine security and peace will never be secured on the basis of war and oppression. 

But, for the Palestinian struggle to succeed, tactics need to be adopted that widen that class divide and peel working-class Israelis away from their right-wing politicians, not drive them into their arms. Those are the tactics of mass struggle while, at the same time, seeking to build direct links between workers and poor on both sides of the national divide.  

"Where Is Britain Going?" - what relevance does an an analysis from 1925 have in 2025?

For many, 2025 is a year of worrying uncertainty, with inter-capitalist rivalry provoking trade wars - and actual wars – and oppression, poverty, and the threats of both climate catastrophe and right-wing populism all on the rise.

With former mass workers’ parties - like the Labour Party in Britain - having long since abandoned even any pretence of socialist ideology, workers and youth looking for answers to this capitalist chaos can find them hard to find. 

But one place to look - especially for those of us in Britan – and, as I’ll explain, for workers in the USA confronted with a Trump presidency too - is the short book that Leon Trotsky, one of the key leaders of the 1917 Russian Revolution, wrote 100 years ago, called: "Where Is Britain Going?"

Now that’s not to say, of course, that a now century-old book can provide instant answers. 1925 was not 2025 - then, the Russian Revolution still offered fresh hope to millions worldwide. The Stalinist counter-revolution in the Soviet Union was only just starting to take hold. Sadly, by the 1990s, that bureaucratic degeneration eventually led to capitalist restoration of these previously nationalised – although far from genuinely socialist – economies. 

With capitalism appearing to be unchallenged as the only way to run the world, the leaders of former workers’ parties – like Blair in Britain - rocketed to the right and socialist consciousness was thrown backwards – and that damage has still not been completely overcome. 

Contrast that to 1925 when even the right-wing Labour and Trade Union leaders had to refer, at least in words, to the need for socialism and Clause 4, printed on every Labour Party membership card, stated its aim as being “the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange”. (Sadly, however, workers had already by then had the experience of the first ever Labour Government of 1924, and those fine words not being matched by actions!)

Certainly, amongst important layers of British workers and the left-wing of its political and trade union leadership, socialist ideas were far more boldly expressed than now – although – as Trotsky warns – often in a confused and contradictory way that needed to be challenged and exposed – especially by the young workers joining the newly formed Communist Party in Britain. 

Sadly, Trotsky’s warnings against a policy of just ‘cuddling-up’ to the trade union left leaders, without also being firm in criticism of their weaknesses when necessary, were left unheeded. Instead, the British CP - under the influence of the Stalinists - adopted an increasingly opportunist and uncritical approach. That left the best trade union militants completely unprepared for the inevitable retreats that these lefts made during and after the General Strike that took place just a year later – in May 1926 – and was one of the factors that led to its defeat. 

That’s important advice that still holds true 100 years later – especially when some parties on the left are happy to give platforms to some of today’s left celebrities – without also being firm in their criticisms of these lefts often unclear and inconsistent ideas about what needs to be done. 

Yes, we need to engage in a friendly way with left trade union leaders and politicians – but not uncritically – it’s important to make clear demands on them about how they should use their positions to build both trade union and community struggles and the urgently needed new mass workers’ party.

While there are important differences, there are also some striking similarities between 1925 – when Trotsky was writing - and now, not least the inter-capitalist global rivalry that was accelerating after World War One. Back then, like today in 2025, a previously dominant capitalist power was being threatened by new competitors. Except while now it’s the USA coming under threat from other trading blocs, not least from the strength of Chinese manufacturing, in 1925 it was Britain, faced first with the threat of German industry – a threat which had led to WW1 in the first place – and then the post-first world war strength of the US economy.

In 2025, it’s the threat of China’s challenge to previous US domination that lies behind the protectionist moves by Trump and the jettisoning of Zelensky to cosy up to Putin instead. 

Then - as now – the vital development that could take place on the basis of a global plan in the common interests of the workers of the world – and its environment – is being blocked by the capitalism’s need to pursue private profit, and the barriers erected by competing capitalist nation states.

But we have to take confidence that there is another side of the coin to the fear, division and insecurity created by Trump, Musk and their ilk – and that is that it will also provoke a reaction – not just from those immediately under threat but also from US workers themselves once Trump’s promises of better living standards turn out to be empty.

In the Preface to the American Edition of “Where is Britain Going”, Trotsky writes a few words of encouragement for us 100 years later (!) “For all its might, American capitalism is not a self-sufficient whole but a part of the world economy. … While driving Europe more and more into a blind alley, American capital is preparing wars and revolutionary upheavals which will then strike back at the economy of the United States with a terrible rebound. … The magnates of the American trusts, … oil tycoons and exporters, the billionaires of New York, Chicago and San Francisco are irreversibly, if unconsciously, fulfilling their revolutionary function. And the American proletariat - [the US working-class] - will ultimately fulfil theirs” (p.5)

People of my generation, brought up in the post WW2 boom, are coming to realise that we weren’t living in a ‘normal’ phase of capitalist development. During that period, world trade expanded massively (at the expense of the colonial world of course) and the profits generated meant that major capitalist powers could afford to grant concessions to hold back the threat from their own labour movements. 

But this was also forced on the capitalist powers by the threat of their common enemy - the planned economies of the Stalinist bloc which had emerged strengthened from World War 2 – however distorted by the undemocratic bureaucratic rule which eventually led to their downfall.

Now, of course, all those gains – like the NHS, council services and homes, free education, decent pensions and so on - are all under threat. It’s not by accident that Starmer ‘joked’ with Trump that, while a chainsaw wasn’t quite his style, New Labour too were cutting “red tape and bureaucracy” and were “open for business”. Britain’s government is also planning a new wave of cuts to public services, on the grounds that there is ‘no money’ – except of course for weapons of war.

But the world known by the generation that grew up following the collapse of Stalinism in the 1990s can now also be seen to be only a brief period of capitalist triumphalism. For a decade or so, the US seemed to be the only dominant power in a unipolar world - but that period has now been decisively replaced by today’s unstable multipolar world of competing and fluctuating capitalist trading blocs. Instead of globalisation, each nation state is now fighting it out for itself.

But the US capitalists are going to face the same splits that took hold of the British ruling class at the end of the nineteenth century - splits that Trotsky discusses in the first chapter of his book. Dominant British capitalism had adopted "free trade” as its guiding principle – the watchword of the Liberal Party in its prime - in order to prevent any barriers to further exploitation and the ability of British manufacturing, trading & financial might to amass private profit. The wealth generated by a global Empire had allowed it to grant reforms to stave off opposition at home – like extended voting and trade union rights, and increased wages – reforms firmly denied to those living in its colonial conquests of course – whether in India or Ireland, South Africa or the Middle East.

But faced with competition from new rivals like Germany, who had invested in superior technique and industrial organisation, a protectionist trend emerged amongst the British ruling-class – just as it has in the US around Trump. The Liberals declined to be replaced by the Conservatives as the main party of British imperialism. In turn, that opened the door to the growth of the Labour Party as workers and their trade unions, instead of hanging on to the coat-tails of the Liberal Party, set about building their own working class representation instead. That of course is the history that we now need to repeat once more – to break the unions from what is now an entirely pro-capitalist Labour Party.

And here’s another Trotsky quote from 1925 that’s also relevant today. He explains how, before, “By rocking the parliamentary swing from right to left and from left to right, the bourgeoisie found a vent for the opposition feelings of the working masses”. (p.13) In 1925 the swing was between the Tories and Liberals – in 2025 between Tories and Labour - but, then as now, the lack of any firm social base for these capitalist parties opens a vacuum to be filled by new forces – yes, possibly from the populist right like Reform but, as long as the opportunity is taken, certainly from the left by the workers’ movement. Trotsky explains how (p.8), after a massive strike wave immediately following the First World War had been defeated “paralysed in the sphere of economic action, the energy of the masses was directed onto the political plane. The Labour Party grew as if out of the earth itself” – and, in the present situation, such a new mass party can grow quickly again!

The main parties’ lack of any firm social base stems from the fact that ailing capitalism – the system which those parties represent – is no longer able to deliver even mild reforms for working people - only cuts and attacks on living standards. And if British capitalism was being elbowed out by other capitalist powers in 1925, by 2025 its decline is even greater, its ability to withstand capitalist crisis even less. Rather than invest to compete with its new rivals, the British capitalists, perhaps more than any other, turned instead to the short-term gains of speculation on the money markets – leaving it even more vulnerable in a time of trade wars.

But we have to explain that the solution to that crisis is neither a return to “free trade” ‘globalising’ capitalism nor its "protectionist” trade war version – but only through collective ownership and a democratic socialist plan of the world economy. That’s a conclusion that the world’s working class and poor need to reach – and act upon – and its leading layers – those coming together, even for now in small numbers, in parties like the Socialist Party – need to assist them in doing so.

Of course, the Labour Party was always a living contradiction – it was a capitalist workers’ party - with leaders wedded to capitalism - as that first 1924 Government had shown - but with democratic structures that allowed the working class to press that party to act in its interests from below. But, 100 years on, those structures no longer exist – and the avenues that allowed Jeremy Corbyn to become its leader firmly shut off. Starmer’s Labour Party is an openly pro-capitalist party – even though memories of the role it once played are still clung on to by trade union leaders who, instead, should be building a new party to provide workers with their own representation and organisation.

While some of the specific Labour and trade union leaders Trotsky comments on might now be long forgotten, there’s lots to pick up from reading Trotsky’s 1925 book for yourself.

Trotsky warns how “throughout the whole history of the British Labour movement there has been pressure by the [capitalists] upon the [working-class] through the agency of intellectuals … and drawing-room socialists … who reject the class struggle and preach collaboration with the [bosses] … but that “those British labour organisations that are the most unalloyed [most solid] in class composition, namely the trade unions, have lifted the Labour Party directly upon their own shoulders. The [working-class] needs a class party, it is striving by every means to create it, it puts pressure on the trade unions, it pays political levies. But this mounting pressure from below, from the plants and the factories, from the docks and the mines, is opposed by a counter-pressure from above, from the sphere of official British politics”.  (p.48/9).

And that’s worth thinking about in our struggle to build a new workers’ party – those pressures – from below and above – will continue to apply. As Trotsky notes that “the working class will in all probability have to renew its leadership several times before it creates a party really answering the historical situation and the tasks of the British proletariat” (p.42) 

Trotsky has plenty to say in answer to those who claimed then – as we also hear from them now - that 'British workers won’t ever be ready for socialist change’ and that reforms can only ever be secured in Britain a little at a time, leaving fundamental socialist change - revolutionary change – as some distant aspiration. Trotsky points out that similar things were said about the supposedly submissive masses of Russia but how their outlook had been transformed by events to one of “criticism, initiative and collective creativity”. (p.31).

He acknowledges that the sudden development of a fresh Russian working-class from the village to the modern factories of Moscow and Petrograd, and the lack of any ‘parliamentary tradition’ had made it easier for them to overthrow capitalist rule in Russia in 1917 – but points out that the flip side of this economic backwardness was that it then made it harder to build a socialist economy after the revolution – and, indeed, as Trotsky later explained elsewhere, it was the isolation of economically weak Russia that led to the Stalinist counter-revolution. 

In contrast, he explains that “the richer and more cultured a country and the older its parliamentary-democratic tradition, the harder it is for the communist party to take power; but the faster and the more successfully will the work of socialist construction proceed after the conquest of power. Put more concretely, the overturn of the British bourgeoisie is no easy task; it does require a necessary “gradualness”, i.e. serious preparation; but once having taken control of state power, the land, the industrial, commercial and banking apparatus, the proletariat of Britain will be able to carry out the re-organization of the capitalist economy into a socialist one with far less sacrifices, far more success and at a much quicker pace”. (p.27)

‘Where is Britain Going’ also provides numerous reminders of the concealed revolutionary history of Britain – not least the English Revolution of the seventeenth century that, under Cromwell’s dictatorship, provided the political foundation for the development of British capitalism. Even though its ideals may have been expressed through the religious language of Puritanism, it had boldly cleared the remains of feudalism and the idle rule of the court aristocracy aside, enabling the new capitalist class to lead the Industrial Revolution and the expansion of a global empire. And, to carry through this capitalist bourgeois revolution fully, the old state machine had to be completely broken, including by making a public spectacle of the execution of the King. 

Trotsky discusses the revolutionary Chartist movement of the nineteenth century - described by Lenin (1919) as the world’s “first broad, truly mass and politically organised proletarian revolutionary movement”. 

He also points out how the avowed belief in only “gradual” change by Tory leaders like Baldwin was soon put aside once the “gradual” emergence of Germany onto the world arena became great enough for it to become a significant rival to Britan’s global dominance. “From 1914 to 1918 Mr. Baldwin … categorically rejected the applicability of gradualness to Anglo-German relations and endeavoured to settle the matter by means of vast quantities of high explosive (!)” (p.19). 

Trotsky points out that a Marxist view of history recognises that periods where the pace of change seem slow and drawn-out – perhaps like the one we’ve been through in recent years – can, as Trotsky puts it “go hand in hand with catastrophes, breaks and upward and downward leaps. The long process of competition between the two states gradually prepares the war, the discontent of exploited workers gradually prepares a strike.

Trotsky also astutely looks ahead to WW2, analysing how (p.10) “The development of military technique .. is reducing the tremendous historical advantages of [Britain’s] island position to zero. America, that gigantic “island” walled off on both sides by oceans, remains invulnerable. But Britain’s greatest centres of population, and London above all, can face a murderous air attack from the continent of Europe in the course of a few hours”.

It also discusses the role that a socialist majority in a British Parliament could play – pointing out that genuine Marxism has nothing in common with ultra-lefts who refuse to take the opportunities provided by putting forward a socialist program as election candidates and using the platform of Parliament or Local Council meetings to stand up for working people. 

However, Trotsky also explains why, without workers’ action outside Parliament to overcome the opposition of a capitalist class under threat, no parliamentary vote alone will ever be sufficient to bring about socialist change – and that the bosss will use every means at their disposal to try to “put a brake on the activity of a [genuinely] Labour government, paralyze its efforts, intimidate it, introduce a split in its parliamentary majority and finally to create a financial panic, dislocation of the food supply, lock-outs, to terrorize the top layers of the labour organisations and render the proletariat powerless. Only an utter fool can fail to understand that”. (p.76)  - and, sadly, those where exactly the lessons of the coup against Allende’s government in Chile in 1973.

He puts it like this: “If a truly workers’ government came to power in Britain even in an ultra-democratic way, the workers’ government would be forced to [defeat] the resistance of the privileged classes …. On the basis of a direct struggle, the trade unions would actively draw closer together not only in their top layers but at the bottom levels as well, and would arrive at the necessity of creating local delegate meetings, i.e. councils (Soviets) of workers’ deputies. A truly Labour government, would find itself in this way compelled to [replace] the old state apparatus … of the possessing classes and oppose it with workers’ councils” (p68/9). And, he adds, that it will be from the ranks of the trade unions that the new workers’ state will find its public servants, its administrators and managers of democratically nationalised industry.

But let me finish with the conclusion that Trotsky gives at the end of the First Chapter (p.16):

“The contradictions undermining British society will inevitably intensify. We do not intend to predict the exact tempo of this process, but it will be measurable in terms of years … not in decades. This general prospect requires us to ask above all the question: will a Party be built in Britain in time with the strength and the links with the masses to be able to thaw out at the right moment all the necessary practical conclusions from the sharpening crisis? It is in this question that Great Britain’s fate is today contained”.

And that’s the critical question for us too – can we build a Party that is up to the task?

***

Nationalisation and small businesses - what do socialists say?

In the aftermath of the July general election, Tunde, a supporter of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition – the electoral coalition that the Socialist Party is part of – wrote to us about our programme for nationalisation. They asked:

1. On areas concerning childcare, social and health services, would small private providers be nationalised or only the largest providers?

2. How would compensation on proven need be assessed and would that be monetary-based?

Socialist Party National Committee member Martin Powell-Davies responds.

https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/132092/30-10-2024/nationalisation-compensation-and-small-businesses-what-do-socialists-say/

With society organised as it is, a capitalist system based on competition for profits, the living standards of workers and small traders alike are constantly under attack. Workers’ wages fail to keep up with prices – leaving less in their pockets to spend in local businesses. Instead of taking wealth from the super-rich, pro-capitalist governments increase the tax burden on the rest of us, and banks rake in interest payments from loans and mortgages.

To end this systematic robbery, the Socialist Party says: nationalise the 150 or so major companies and banks that dominate the British economy and run them under working-class control and management, as part of a democratically agreed socialist plan.

With these key drivers of the economy taken into public ownership, a workers’ democracy could then plan not only what needs to be produced, but also the public services that need to be provided. That’s bound to include free, high-quality, childcare, social and health services – areas where urgent action is needed to address the state of complete crisis.

Some of these services still remain in the public sector, run through the NHS or local councils. A socialist government would make sure that the wealth secured through nationalisation of the economy was used to finally reverse decades of damaging cuts and expand these vital services to meet needs, managed under the democratic control of staff, their unions, and service users.

However, thanks to privatisation and ‘competitive tendering’, too many of these services have been privatised, often to sharks relying on low pay and poor employment practices. Other big businesses – not least the pharmaceutical giants – have never been made part of the NHS, as they always should have been. All the major providers in these sectors should be placed under public ownership, putting an end to their profiteering and exploitation of their workforce.

But where does that leave, say, a family-run pharmacy or a self-employed childminder? Socialists have always made clear that small private providers shouldn’t fear that they will be treated as if they were profiteering fat cats. They can play their role in a socialist plan to meet people’s needs, without fear that they are going to be forcibly nationalised. Instead, small providers would benefit from government control of prices and the provision of cheap credit. State subsidies, particularly to make sure that their workers receive trade union rates of pay, decent working conditions and training, could also be provided where genuinely needed. Grants could be paid, for example to improve premises, so they could offer a higher quality of service.

But, in return, small providers must be prepared to ‘open their books’ to local workers’ committees who could then fully discuss with them their financial situation and agree what cheap loan or subsidy might be appropriate – or not, depending on the circumstances.

Some providers may conclude that the best way forward would be to voluntarily transfer their services into the public sector. After all, wouldn’t it make more sense, to continue with these examples, for pharmacists and childcare workers to become state employees, with guaranteed pay and conditions, instead of having the insecurity of running their own small businesses?

That kind of democratic decision-making would also be how questions about compensation would be resolved. When it comes to the fat cats, like the major shareholders of the banks and monopolies, and privatised rail, water and energy firms, the answer would be clear. While workers struggle, the FTSE100 companies are paying out around £80 billion in shareholder dividends every year! These profiteers have already made a killing at our expense, why should we pay them even a penny more when we take their firms into public ownership?!

But what about smaller businesses and shareholders, or workers whose pension contributions might be invested in one of the 150 top firms? The Socialist Party agrees that compensation should be paid – but only where there is a proven need, assessed democratically by workers’ committees with full access to the relevant books and accounts. Any individual who felt they would be in hardship when a firm is nationalised – compulsorily or voluntarily – must also have the right to fully present their case for individual compensation too.

In some cases, compensation based on need might indeed be a monetary sum. Where the concern is about pension funds, then compensation could perhaps be the guarantee of a full state pension – not at the existing poverty levels but enough to enjoy a decent retirement. Where the concern is about the potential loss of a home, there could be a guarantee of a high-quality state-rented home, as part of the wider plan that a socialist government will need to launch to address the housing crisis.

Ultimately, the exact details of what programme a workers’ democracy carries out is determined in the course of struggle and is the product of democratic debate and discussion. To meet the needs of all in society while protecting the environment means developing a socialist planned economy. That can only be achieved by taking the commanding heights of the economy into democratic public ownership.

16 October 1918 – an anniversary for socialist educators to discuss for today

“School reform after the October Revolution serves as an act of struggle of the masses for knowledge, for education. It’s not just about making school universally accessible, since the way it was organised by the previous regime was not suitable for the working masses; the issue is about its radical reconstruction in the spirit of a truly popular school”

Anatoly Lunacharsky, ‘People's Commissar for Education’, Russia, 16 October 1918

Socialist change would at last allow wealth and resources to be democratically planned and managed - and such a democratic plan would allow a full debate on what our education system should look like – and for it to be put into practice!

This was exactly the debate that took place amongst socialists, educators and the wider working-class after the Russian Revolution of October 1917 had achieved socialist change. The results of a year’s discussions were finally summed up in the “Decree on the Unified Labour School” that was issued on 16 October 1918. 

All schools were brought into the same unified system, providing free, secular, co-educational education up to the age of 17. They were to be self-governed through a school council made up of all school staff, and, although in smaller proportions, representatives of the local community, older school students and the education department. “The division of teachers into categories” was abolished, so all were paid on the same salary scale.

The Decree stated that all schools “must be under the regular supervision of doctors” and provide “hot breakfasts free of charge”. They should operate as what we might now call ‘community hubs’ hosting clubs, performances, meetings and so on.

A broad curriculum was to be based on ‘polytechnical’ principles, centred on active learning and with regular work experience as an integral part. The agreed curriculum “should be very flexible in its application to local conditions” and school work should be “creative and cheerful” with homework and formal exams abolished. 

In practice, first under the pressures of civil war, and then the reversal of workers’ democracy under Stalinism, much of this program was never fully implemented. Discussions in a socialist Britain might not arrive at exactly the same conclusions, but these debates from revolutionary Russia give a glimpse of how a socialist education policy could be decided upon and applied.

Another England: How to Reclaim Our National Story - A Review

After a summer when the far-right have managed to mobilise alienated youth and workers across many towns and cities in England, a book that sets out with the intention to “reclaim ‘Englishness’ from the Right” could be worth a read.

That’s what Caroline Lucas, who recently stood down as the Green Party’s first MP, has tried to do in her book, Another England – How to Reclaim Our National Story.

Published by Hutchinson Heinemann, 2024, £22.

Sadly, however, her rambling discussion, largely based on English literature, doesn’t offer much to the urgent debate about how best to undercut the far-right by offering a working-class, socialist, alternative.

That’s not to say that the book isn’t without some interesting reflections. She acknowledges that Remain supporters like herself in the 2016 EU referendum underestimated the deep anger and alienation across working-class communities, particularly, but not solely, in England, and rightly blames successive governments for whipping up “fear and anger about immigration”.

Lucas correctly explains that “too often immigration is used as a lightning rod for the real causes of tensions over a lack of housing, transport or health care, the decline of public services… poorly paid and insecure jobs, all of which are the fault – even the deliberate policy – of coalition and Conservative governments”.

She also discusses how the idea of ‘Englishness’ has been “consciously shaped by the country’s elite into a narrative that shapes their ends”. For example, she traces how, in the earliest ballads about Robin Hood, the ‘Merry Men’ were simply outlaws, “outwitting priests and nobles”. That’s because, when first told, it was a tale of peasant resentment at the then feudal ruling-classes.

This was the age of King Richard – ‘the Lionheart’ – sometimes seen as a hero by far-right English nationalists. However, as the book explains, Richard I was a speaker of French and Occitan who mainly saw his English lands as a means to raise money to fight his wars and ‘crusades’: “Richard ruled over England but there was little sense that he shared an English identity with his subjects”.

Lucas explains how, in the nineteenth century, at a time when the new ruling-class wanted to foster the concept of a united ‘England’, Robin Hood was reinterpreted by Walter Scott as being of noble birth, as a loyal servant to the King against the evil Sheriff of Nottingham. However, the book fails to clearly spell out how this development of distinct nation states was the product of capitalism, of an economy that required a national market and the breaking down of localised customs duties and tariffs.

English capitalism of course developed into a wider British capitalism, and then an imperialist Empire that amassed even more wealth through its domination of global markets. The British capitalists’ global domination has long since been lost, but, as Lucas correctly points out, right populists like Boris Johnson still appeal to supposed past ‘glories’ and ‘British values’ to try and justify their greed and warmongering.

Lucas argues that ‘progressives’ need to put forward a different narrative of what it means to be English – like “the Diggers, the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the suffragettes, the Battle of Cable Street”. She adds that “we can take heart from Robin Hood”, in the way that the story still resonates because of its “idea of redistribution, of society making sure that everyone has what they need, that someone will step forward to protect the weak and face down the bullies”.

Lucas quotes from some of the English writers that have protested at the uneven distribution of both land and wealth imposed under capitalist rule, not least Gerrard Winstanley, the leader of the Diggers: “For what you call the Law is but a club of the rich over the lowest of men, sanctifying the conquest of the earth by a few and making their theft the way of things”.

But, while not clearly spelt out, Lucas’ model of ‘redistribution’ seems to be a utopian vision of winning some kind of fairer capitalism. She explores the anger at Victorian poverty expressed by writers like Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Dickens and links them to the later development of the welfare state implemented by the Labour government of 1945 and beyond.

However, neither the pressure that came from the trade union movement, nor the fear of the capitalists at losing their power unless they gave concessions to the working-class, are mentioned. And this lack of a class analysis goes to the heart of the weakness in Lucas’ book and her politics generally.

She sees Britain’s “low-wage, low-productivity” economy as arising from a loss of a “focus on the importance of dignity and a living wage to working people”. No, it arises from decaying British capitalism no longer being able to generate sufficient profit through reinvesting in industry and manufacturing, and instead seeking to drive down wages and dismantle all the gains made by the working-class during the post-war boom.

Similarly, she discusses the threat of climate catastrophe, but sees the lack of urgent global action more as a question of government complacency rather than from the inability of capitalism to plan and invest on a global scale.

Lucas proposes a number of constitutional reforms – introducing proportional representation, an elected senate rather than the House of Lords, a formal written constitution, and the creation of an English parliament to sit alongside the devolved powers given to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

But the only way that any of these reforms could help challenge class inequality would be if a genuine mass workers’ party was able to use them as a platform to cut across both the main capitalist parties and the populist far-right.

More fundamentally, the answers Caroline Lucas seeks can only be found by replacing decaying capitalism with a socialist society freed from the barriers of nation state and private profit.

***

This book review was published in the October edition of 'Socialism Today', the monthly magazine of the Socialist Party (England and Wales) under the title, "How not to combat right-wing populism"

TUSC - building a team ready for the struggles to come in Chorley and beyond

"Well Martin, what a strange election. We are all so proud of you standing up for us workers, and whilst [Lindsay Hoyle] got back in you showed there is a significant voice which is represented by you. I wish you all the best and if nothing else we stood side by side to do the right thing". 
Joe, Earlsway Residents Association.

This message - sent from just one of the many new points of support that we have made right across the constituency - sums up the roots that TUSC have put down in the last few weeks of campaigning. These are the roots that we will now build on in the struggles to come under the new Starmer-led Labour government.

After the last evening knocking on doors of voters in the streets of Chorley East, and a long night waiting for the vote to be counted at Chorley Town Hall, there were still smiles on our faces! Yes, we know that our 632 votes was a modest return for all of the hard work that we had put in. However, we are satisfied that we could not have done more to get our message across. No other party had been out at meetings, in the speaker-van, on the town centre stalls, on the doorsteps and on the council estates like we had. Our real reward was the TUSC team that we have built and grown over the campaign, a team that will be sticking together to campaign on all of the issues that we know the workers of Chorley feel so angry about - not least the cost-of-living crisis, the state of our crumbling NHS and public services, and the lack of genuinely affordable housing.

Finishing the last knocking up in Chorley East

Labour elected - but with under 10 million votes

In many ways it has been a 'strange' election. It's ended up with a supposed Labour 'landslide', yet one based on just a 34% share of the overall votes. In absolute numbers, Labour received just 9.6 million votes, lower than the 10.2 million Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour got in 2019, and far below the 12.8 million he got in 2017. Yes, the hated Tories were annihilated, but Keir Starmer is already regarded by many working-class people with suspicion, as just another career politician who has little to say for 'the likes of us'.

Because we've been out on the doorsteps and the streets of Chorley, we've had hundreds of conversations that have brought home to us that suspicion of Starmer. For some, particularly from the Muslim community, Starmer's support for the Israeli onslaught in Gaza has resulted in more than just suspicion, it's meant real anger. That anger helped mobilise the tremendous votes for Jeremy Corbyn and the four anti-war independent MPs elected on July 4th, but it was not such a significant factor across the whole of Chorley.

In Chorley, it was usually our wider programme - for action of homes and health, for a £15 an hour minimum wage, for a future for young people and a society run in the interests of the workers, not the wealthy - that was nearly always well received on the stalls and doorsteps. However, while we could convince a minority to show their anger against inequality by voting for TUSC, we could tell that most working-class voters were so disconnected or angry with establishment politics and politicians that they just weren't going to vote at all. And that was shown nationally - with an overall turnout of under 60% being one of the lowest ever recorded in any General Election.

The programme on our election leaflet delivered by Royal Mail

Many Chorley workers felt forgotten and disenfranchised

In Chorley, the turnout was even lower - at just 47%. The general disconnection with establishment politics was added to by real confusion as to whether you were allowed to vote against the Speaker at all! At the start of the campaign, we were having to constantly explain that, just because the main parties had done a deal not to stand against Lindsay Hoyle, that didn't mean that other parties couldn't - and that they still had a right to go out and vote. That message seemed to have got through after a few weeks in the town centre but, out on the estates, that confusion remained to the last. On the afternoon on Election Day, I was having to exchange messages with a voter, who had received our leaflet on the Collingwood Estate, to help him explain to his neighbours that, yes, they were allowed to vote in Chorley!

Many Chorley voters felt that they were effectively being disenfranchised. Being in the Speaker's constituency meant that they were left without the choice of parties available in other constituencies. Instead, they were being asked to endorse the return of a Speaker who could not speak up or vote for then in Parliament because of his supposedly 'impartial' position. In response, over 2,000 voters opted for the single-issue 'Democracy for Chorley' candidate and nearly 1,200 spoilt their votes, instead using a 'creative' (you'll have to use your imagination!) choice of drawings and slogans on their ballot papers to illustrate what a 'stitch-up' they thought it was for Chorley voters.

There's no denying that Sir Lindsay Hoyle, who has built up his base of support over many years, retained a substantial majority - with over 25,000 votes cast. In a strange way, in an election where voters wanted to show their anger at the main parties, Hoyle may have actually benefited from being seen as being more of an 'independent', not standing under any party label but just as the local candidate. However, for others, Hoyle was definitely seen as being just another establishment politician, making himself a nice career, happy to be seen glad-handing people around town, but delivering nothing for Chorley voters in reality.

As a warning for the future, it was also clear from the discussions we had, and from the spoilt papers, that there was a section of Chorley workers that would have voted for 'Reform' if they had been on the ballot paper. Some chose to vote for the right-wing 'English Constitution Party' instead. Unless a strong working-class trade union and socialist alternative is built, there is a real danger of right-populist, racist forces stepping into the vacuum as anger with the incoming Labour government grows - just like we are seeing in France and elsewhere.

Why Starmer's Labour will continue with Tory attacks - read more here

But our team of canvassers were ready to take on these arguments when they arose. More often than not they stemmed from a justified feeling that working-class people had been forgotten about by the 'politicians', and genuine anger about the state of housing and the NHS. However, they were then mistakenly falling for the simple arguments that it was refugees who were therefore to blame for that crisis, instead of the profiteers and privatisers who have been slashing public services for so long. And, of course, these arguments are being made by politicians like Farage who, in reality, serve the interests of that same wealthy establishment, certainly not the working-class.

For example, one group of lads on an estate in Clayton Brook were abusing our team and shouting 'Reform' at us. But we didn't back away, we went over to discuss. Explaining that we were a trade union-backed party got at least one of the lads to talk about how he was in a union at work and listen intently to what we were saying. Another angry truck driver in Chorley East was so abusive at me to start with that my fellow canvasser was worried that I was going to get punched. However, I held my ground, explained our position, and the fact that I was standing on a workers' wage, not the £171,000 that the Speaker gets paid. In the end, he was one of several voters who may have switched from wanting to vote 'Reform' to voting TUSC instead.

A mass workers' voice is urgently needed

If an election was decided by the amount of work put in by the parties on the ground, then TUSC would definitely have had a much stronger showing in Chorley than we achieved! However, of course, despite all our work, unless you have a team of mass canvassers like Jeremy Corbyn was able to assemble in Islington, you are still really just scratching the surface of a whole constituency. Our own stalls, door-knocking and leafletting could only touch a fraction of the overall electorate. One A5 leaflet delivered through the Royal Mail - and then not always received - will have only been read by a minority. 

Some did read our material, and were so pleased to read it, that they responded by getting in touch, putting up a poster in their window and becoming part of our new base in Chorley. Some already knew about TUSC through our stand in the local elections in May. But many looking for a vote to the left of Labour will have looked for parties with a bigger national profile - and so voted 'Green' instead. 

In Chorley, as in other towns and cities, many of the local Greens are 'Corbynites' who are looking, like us, to build an alternative to Labour. However, the Greens are not a workers’ party, with no democratic rights for trade unions within it. When actually elected to lead councils, they have failed to mobilise workers to demand the funding needed from central government but, instead, have implemented cuts.  They also stood, for example, against Jeremy Corbyn in Islington North. However, if the four new Green MPs would now be willing to act as part of a bloc of workers' MPs alongside Corbyn and the anti-war independents, then the Greens could help play a positive role in the fight for a mass party of the working class - or, at the very least to start with, help bring together a united workers' list with a strong national profile.

Read more here: https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/party-media/

I and my party, the Socialist Party, have been campaigning for a new mass workers' party ever since Tony Blair first started to decisively turn Labour into just another pro-capitalist party, shorn from its previous trade union and working-class mass base. That's why, alongside building the Socialist Party, I and others have devoted so much of our energy into also building TUSC, the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition. 

We have always only seen TUSC as one step towards building a new trade union based mass party, armed with a socialist programme. That is the party that is going to be even more urgently needed as mass opposition starts to develop against a Starmer government driven to attack the working-class by the 'logic' of capitalism, a logic that will be so slavishly followed by Starmer, Reeves and the rest of the new Labour Cabinet.

In Chorley we will continue to do both* - to build that wider TUSC team as part of a wider campaign to build a new mass workers' voice to challenge the main capitalist parties, while also building the Socialist Party, bringing together the most determined trade unionists, youth and community campaigners to learn the lessons of the past - in order to win the battles of the future.

Martin Powell-Davies, 6th July 2024.

* We're meeting up to review and discuss what we do next at the St. Joseph's Club, Harpers Lane, Chorley on Tuesday 9th July at 7pm - before the football for anyone who wants to watch it there afterwards - so you're welcome to come and join us there!