International

Abortion Rights Slashed in Texas: Free, Safe, and Legal Abortion Now!

September 6, 2021

Socialist Alternative
As Afghanistan is gripped by catastrophe – fight for the socialist alternative to British imperialism’s bloody legacy

August 20, 2021

Claire Laker-Mansfield
Prepare for mass protest at COP26

August 5, 2021

Connor Rosoman
We need your support — bottom up finances to take on the system

July 13, 2021

Sarah Wrack
Priti Patel targets victims of capitalism’s ‘refugee crisis’

June 3, 2021

Rob Tetley Socialist Alternative member and support worker for child refugees
Which way forward for the revolution in Myanmar?

May 24, 2021

Anna Barnett

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UPCOMING EVENTS

Abortion Rights Slashed in Texas: Free, Safe, and Legal Abortion Now!

Article reposted from our US sister section – also called Socialist Alternative

By Grace Fors, Dallas – September 4

Virtually overnight, abortion is banned in Texas. Every one of the already-scarce clinics in the state has halted abortion services. Neighboring states like Louisiana and Arkansas are already seeing an increase in abortion patients from Texas. Millions of women are now terrified that if they want to terminate a pregnancy, they may be forced to turn to certain extremely dangerous “self-managed” abortion procedures.

This vicious attack comes after the Supreme Court denied an emergency stay on Texas’ archaic abortion law known as Senate Bill 8, allowing it to go into effect immediately.

Senate Bill 8 prohibits all abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected – typically between five and six weeks into a pregnancy. Between 85 and 95 percent of abortions take place after this time period – for most, this is before they would know they are pregnant. There are no exceptions for cases of incest or sexual assault.

If that wasn’t barbaric enough, what’s especially staggering about this bill is its mechanism of enforcement. While for years a dozen Republican states have passed similar “heartbeat” bills that have been halted by the courts, Texas’ law shifts enforcement from the state to private citizens. This law deputizes anti-abortion vigilantes who can now file civil lawsuits against abortion providers or anyone guilty of “aiding and abetting” an abortion, for a bounty of up to $10,000 per procedure. The burden of proof that someone “aided and abetted” an abortion is abysmal and even an Uber driver who took someone to an abortion appointment could be sued.

A Wake-Up Call

The threat of Roe v Wade being overturned has hung over our heads in recent years as an unhinged, religious zealot and an ultra-conservative sexual predator were appointed to the Supreme Court by Trump with no fightback from Democrats. Now that the highly undemocratic Supreme Court has shown its willingness to cave to right-wing, anti-abortion fanatics, the outlook for the upcoming Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization case, which will rule on whether states can ban abortion after 15 weeks, looks much more grim.

Numerous “trigger bills” have been passed by Republican legislatures that would take effect if the court weakens Roe, and the Texas ban is the loophole they’ve been praying for. Pro-life lobbyists are already reaching out to Texas groups for help drafting similar legislation and the blueprint from Texas could soon be exported to dozens of states.

While working people, and young women in particular, are enraged, there is a stunning lack of political leadership to channel 70% of Americans’ opposition to abortion restrictions into action. Major reproductive rights organizations have released TikToks, but issued no calls to action.

After a brief moment of shock and surprise at abortion being suddenly banned, it is clear to millions of people in Texas and across the country that mass protests and even a coordinated day of action is needed to fight back to defend reproductive and women’s rights.

Stand Up, Fight Back

We are staring down the most serious attacks on women’s reproductive rights in decades, however the situation is by no means futile. We can protect Roe and guarantee legal abortions nationwide, but it will require building a mass movement on the scale of the women’s movement in the 1960’s/70’s that won Roe in the first place. Roe v Wade was won in 1973 in spite of a conservative Supreme Court and President Richard Nixon. The country was rocked by mass mobilizations, strikes, and radical grassroots organizations engaged in direct action.

This is what we need today. Our movement will need to place enormous pressure on the Democrats who control the Presidency and Congress to act, as well as the Supreme Court who are gearing up to decide on Dobbs.

A month before winning the presidency, then candidate Joe Biden pledged to make Roe “the law of the land.” Two days after his inauguration, Biden doubled down on this promise to codify Roe v Wade, ensuring that the Democrats would pass legislation at a national level guaranteeing legal abortions. Now, as the rubber meets the road, and with control of the Presidency and Congress, Joe Biden and the Democrats have no excuse not to make good on this pledge.

We need to demand that the Democrats take action. Among many other unfulfilled promises, they’ve so far failed to enact a federal $15/hour minimum wage, enact sweeping climate legislation, protect union rights, raise the corporate tax rate, or restore federal funding to Planned Parenthood. Unless a mass movement is built and immense pressure is brought to bear on the Biden administration, we can add protecting abortion rights to this list.

The Democratic leadership should do whatever it takes to enact sweeping protections for abortion rights. They can act now to write Roe into law, but as we’ve seen they’ll use any excuse in the book not to act. We cannot give them an inch of room to get around this, we need mass protests and walkouts to demand that the Democrats immediately codify Roe. Progressives in Congress should use every bit of leverage they have to demand the establishment take action. On top of this, we need to be prepared for mass demonstrations and direct action directed at the Supreme Court as they prepare to make a decision in Dobbs. In determining the tactics for our movement we can look to the recent women’s movement in Poland for inspiration where women organized a mass strike to protect abortion rights.

Socialist Feminism Needed Now More Than Ever

Our struggle for women’s liberation needs to go beyond the question of access to free, safe, and legal abortion. This ban and others like it will impact poor and working-class women the most, imposing desperation on top of an already desperate housing crisis and childcare crisis. We need a socialist feminist struggle for free, high quality reproductive care including universal childcare, rent control and high quality, publicly owned housing. We need an end to health care profiteering and an immediate transition to Medicare for All. A socialist feminist struggle has to take up the struggle against racism, transphobia, and terror against immigrants as all forms of oppression serve only to divide the working class from one another.

Today’s generation of young women are not sold on “girlboss” glass-ceiling liberal feminism, and there is a deep hunger for fundamental change that puts a decisive end to the crises and exploitation we see all around us. Under capitalism, every gain painstakingly won by our movement, such as Roe v. Wade, can be rolled back by the ruling class. Winning genuine liberation from gender oppression will require channeling the anger at this rotten system into a mighty struggle for a socialist future.
As Afghanistan is gripped by catastrophe – fight for the socialist alternative to British imperialism’s bloody legacy

Two decades of imperialist occupation and brutality have ended in humiliating defeat for western forces in Afghanistan. For the country’s people, a fresh nightmare is now beginning. The Taliban takeover comes after two decades of bloodshed and trauma. The estimated death toll for the invasion stands at more than 240,000 – with Afghans suffering the great majority of the fatalities. 456 UK military personnel lost their lives – with many of the families, along with the thousands who suffered live changing injuries, both physical and mental, asking ‘what was it for?’ For the tens of thousands now attempting to flee violence and persecution, terror and desperation abound. The doors of Europe and America are firmly shut to all but a tiny few. A refugee crisis on a similar scale to that of 2014, which itself included huge numbers of fleeing Afghans, looks set to develop.

This horror is the real legacy of the Afghanistan war. It tragically vindicates the position of all those who stood firmly against the invasion from the start, socialists included. Of the capitalist politicians, headed up by the likes of Tony Blair, who cheered on this sanguinary imperialist adventure, it is utterly damning.

The declining power of Britain

Britain is a decidedly second-rate imperialist power and its role in this military intervention was, in line with this, secondary. But perhaps partially because of this, the ruling class here feels the humiliation of this defeat especially acutely. The hubristic and ignorant rhetoric that filled the airwaves on both sides of the Atlantic in the run up to the war – that which claimed ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ would be brought to the people of Afghanistan at the point of a Nato gun – now finds a sickening new echo in the performative soul-searching of Britain’s capitalist politicians in the wake of this disaster. The parliamentary debate on the subject brought to the fore the weakness of Johnson’s government and his precarious hold over the Tory party. He faced harsh and angry criticism (much of it breathtakingly hypocritical) from all corners of the house and especially his back benches.

Yet Britain’s entry into the war in the first place was an illustration of the total subordination of British foreign policy to the whims of the White House. Despite the nostalgic imperialist fantasies of some right-wing MPs, any notion that Britain could play a genuinely independent role in the Middle East, let alone remain in Afghanistan after US forces have left, as some now demand in parliament, is utter nonsense. It is even more laughable when you consider that most UK troops actually left Afghanistan years ago, back in 2014.

Corrupt Afghan government

The fact that the so-called intelligence upon which Boris Johnson based his claim to MPs that there would be “no path” to military victory for the Taliban was so disastrously wrong is itself evidence of the complete lack of support that existed in Afghanistan for the occupation and the corrupt Afghan government associated with it. This left both American and British forces utterly blind to the realities right in front of them. Just 20% of people participated in the elections which brought the now deposed Afghan president Ghani to power – far from a resounding democratic mandate. As he and a small elite enriched themselves, the immense firepower of the US helped his civilian government to defy gravity. As soon as it became clear that this military might would eventually be withdrawn, the writing was on the wall.

While the Taliban has a certain base, which will have grown rather than shrunk due to its status as the biggest and best organised force opposing the occupiers, it too is hated by the majority of Afghans. Its rule, just as it was prior to the invasion, will be murderous and reactionary. Desperate poverty, conflict, and misery will continue to be the bitter reality in a country in which the average monthly income is just $42.

Labour offer no alternative

Far from learning the lessons of this, just one of a long line of catastrophic imperialist military interventions in the Middle East and elsewhere, politicians on both sides of the House of Commons instead attempt to pin twenty years of failure and defeat on the flaws in Biden’s withdrawal plans. Meanwhile the official ‘opposition’ in the form of Stamer’s New Blairite Labour Party, fails to offer anything but hand wringing and imperialist apologism. With grim symbolism, Jeremy Corbyn, one of a tiny handful of principled MPs who opposed this war from the off, sits outcast from the Labour benches, the whip withdrawn. On the front benches, his right-wing successor dodges questions about accommodating refugees while at the same time hinting that, twenty years on from the initial invasion, the real mistake was that the withdrawal of US and British troops came too soon.

As the crisis continues to escalate, the shameful reality that was poorly masked by the Tories’ alleged commitment to leaving no man behind is being exposed. Dominic Raab’s ‘forgotten’ phone call to the Afghan government on behalf of interpreters in need of evacuation sums up a cruelly casual attitude to the lives of even those who worked for British forces directly. At the same time, Priti Patel pledges that a limit of 20,000 refugees, a tiny number, will be allowed to settle in Britain. What’s more, the vast majority will have to ‘find their own way’ here. On arrival, they can expect to be housed by local authorities which are already engaged in drastic cutbacks and which the government has no plans to fund adequately. The tragic death of a five-year-old Afghan boy, who this week fell from the window of a hotel in Sheffield, shows the squalid and potentially dangerous conditions asylum seekers can expect to ‘enjoy’ on arrival. Worse still, thousands will die en route, with many more finding themselves in hellish refugee camps or detention centres.

The victims need safety

Those who are victims of catastrophic imperialist policies should indeed be welcomed when they seek safety from the results. There really is a moral obligation for this that goes beyond the lofty words of right-wing politicians. But genuinely meeting this obligation means arbitrary limits on numbers should be immediately removed. Meanwhile a massive programme of investment is needed – funded by taking wealth from the super-rich capitalists who profit from war. This could be used to build hundreds of thousands of genuinely affordable houses, to create socially useful jobs, and to support and expand public services, providing both for refugees and for the already existing population.

Rightly, many people, including some former soldiers and families of those who died in Afghanistan, are demanding an inquiry into the war. Such a demand is pertinent, but to bring to light the real role played by politicians and senior military figures responsible for the bloodshed in Afghanistan it must not be led not by judges or other pillars of the capitalist establishment. Instead, an inquiry led by democratic organisations of the working class, such as trade unions, would have the potential to get to the truth. This is what our movement must call for.

Fight for an end to all imperialist wars

Indeed, in the wake of this catastrophe, the anti-war and workers’ movements must now be mobilised again, not only to demand an immediate end to all imperialist operations in the Middle East and fight for the rights of refugees, but to fight for justice for all the victims, Afghan and British, of these disastrous wars. Real justice means holding to account the individuals responsible for this particular imperialist misadventure – placing the likes of Tony Blair on trial for these crimes. But it also means putting in the dock the ruling class, which relies on war to win access to markets and resources, along with the blood-soaked capitalist system itself.

Only socialist ideas, which are based on the international solidarity of working-class people, consistently oppose imperialist war. And only socialist change – based on public ownership of the big monopolies and democratic planning of the economy – offers the possibility of genuine freedom and equality, won through mass struggle not military conquest, to people the world over. The struggle for peace and the struggle for socialism are therefore one and the same.

For more Socialist analysis of the crisis in Afghanistan see h ere and here.

Image licenced by CC 2.0.
Prepare for mass protest at COP26

We are living through a decisive period in the fight against climate change. A recently leaked report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned that at current rates, we are heading for 3C of warming — well above the 2C limit set by the Paris Agreement to avert a climate disaster.

But this disaster is already unfolding, with tragic consequences. In Zhengzhou, China, 12 people have died after being trapped in flooded subway carriages following extreme rains. In Germany and Belgium, dozens have died in unprecedented flooding. In the US and Canada, severe heatwaves have taken hundreds of lives. It is clearer than ever that we need to act now — not just in 10 or 20 years.

In light of this ongoing catastrophe, November’s COP26 conference in Glasgow, Scotland itself will pose important questions about how to seriously tackle climate change.

Since the last summit, notable only for delaying any action until this year’s conference, we have seen that capitalist leaders like Joe Biden are prepared to make big promises under the pressure of the crisis we are living through. Biden himself has failed to deliver on many such promises, including on the climate. On one hand, he has vowed to “advance environmental justice” whilst on the other, refusing to act against new oil pipelines such as Line 3 and the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL).

Meanwhile, a growing list of big business affiliates to the COP26 highlights that any kind of “system change” is off the table for these discussions. Clearly, this year’s conference will not provide any serious solutions for workers and young people facing the worst of this crisis. But it will be an important opportunity to get organised and build a fight for real action.

The climate movement in 2021

The Earth Strike of September 2019, which represented the peak of the climate movement, saw over 7 million mostly young people around the world take to the streets in 150 countries. Since then though, the movement has been through something of an ebb.

In this vacuum of organising, many young people have looked at other routes to continue the movement.

This includes the rise of Green Parties, especially in Europe. In other cases, people have looked to individual actions, “beyond politics”, through organisations such as Extinction Rebellion (XR). But this kind of action, without a clear idea of system change or the forces that can bring it out, will not be able to deliver the kind of decisive change we need.

What kind of forces do we need?

The initial waves of school strikes pointed toward an approach based on mass mobilisations of young people, linking up with the organised working class, particularly in the Trade Unions. When workers take strike action, they can grind society to a halt. Although smaller-scale actions can be effective, a movement with the backing of the workers’ movement will be essential in winning action on climate change.

This could include coordinated strike action between unions between different countries to bring the globalised capitalist system to its knees, as part of a genuinely international movement against climate change.

A mass climate movement would need to link up with other struggles of workers and young people, such as the struggles against attacks on our right to protest internationally, against sexist and racist oppression, and of workers fighting against mass job losses as a result of the pandemic — all of which have an interest in ending climate change. It would also highlight the systemic nature of climate change, and how it ties into the wider capitalist system responsible for the multi-faceted crisis facing ordinary people right now. This would be an important step not just in fighting for climate change, but for making the popular idea of “climate justice” a reality as well.

Socialism is survival

This would have to be linked to a clear programme for fundamental system change. That means challenging capitalism and fighting for a socialist society where decisions about what is produced and how are decided democratically. Under capitalism, where production is based on the endless drive for greater profits, environmental effects are treated as an “externality”. This focus on short term profit is an inbuilt feature of capitalism. As a result, we see that it is the big corporations themselves that contribute vastly toward the destruction of our planet, with over 70% of CO2 emissions coming from just the top 100 companies worldwide.

Additionally, the food industry accounts for up to 26% of total greenhouse gas emissions. Food is massively overproduced even as millions go hungry worldwide. It is totally unsustainable, but as long as it continues to make a profit, these companies will continue their destructive course.

The technology exists to rapidly replace fossil fuels with sustainable energy sources such as water, wind and solar power, and to produce food along more sustainable lines. But none of these companies will sacrifice their profits to make such a transition willingly.

A socialist programme on climate change would involve bringing the big polluters that contribute the overwhelming majority of emissions into democratic public ownership — we can’t control what we don’t own, after all. On that basis, we could plan production in a way that takes into account the environment and the lives of working people. We could immediately begin to address mass greenhouse gas emissions, and the general wastefulness of the current system — including plastic waste and deforestation. Crucially, at the same time, we could protect all jobs, repurposing them and opening up new ones for a mass programme of green jobs.

Start building for mass, international protests around COP26

The climate crisis has not waited for us to deal with COVID-19, but it has shown that under capitalism, the international cooperation needed to deal with a large-scale crisis is not possible. Instead, the coronavirus was allowed to become a worldwide catastrophe through problems such as vaccine nationalism, where capitalist states and big business put competition and profit ahead of doing what is needed to fight the virus. More broadly, the approach of the ruling class has been marked by a reactive approach to the virus, with none of the foresight or planning needed to tackle it effectively.

The last COP summit was met with mass protests of over half a million people. We need to start organising now to build for massive counter protests at COP26 itself in November, as well as local protests in countries around the world.

A COP26 coalition, involving dozens of different campaigning groups, has already begun preparing for protests. This should include mobilising workers and students on a mass scale — trade unions will need to organise their members to turn up in force and student unions at colleges and universities should arrange for transport to maximise turnout. This should be seen as the start of a new, stronger climate movement with a clear programme of action.

ISA will be building for protests at the conference over the coming months, and we will also be organising an international contingent to put forward the need for socialist change, not climate change. We are an international organisation because climate change, like all aspects of capitalism, is an international issue — we have to organise internationally to fight back, and there is no time to lose!

We Say

1: Fossil energy use is responsible for about 85% of the anthropogenic CO2 emissions produced annually. We need to end the burning of fossil fuel for energy and plastic production in the next few years and make a drastic turn to technologies that use renewable energy sources (wind, sun, waves etc) and hydrogen*. The technology to do that is available. What the system lacks is the political will to make the transition. (*Hydrogen, in order to be environmentally friendly, should be produced through water electrolysis, powered by renewable energy sources technologies and not from or with the use of natural gas and other fossil fuel)

2: The fossil fuel industry and its products account for 91% of global industrial greenhouse gas emissions and about 70% of the greenhouse gas emissions related to human activity. Just 100 companies globally account for roughly 71% of industrial greenhouse gas emissions and a half of emissions on the planet linked to human activity! (See: The Carbon Majors Database report, p. 7&8). None of them will give up willingly the foundation upon which their profits thrive. We need therefore to bring these companies under the ownership and control of society, use their wealth to convert them, without job losses, to companies that will produce energy and fuel using renewable energy sources and hydrogen technology and plan energy production based on social needs and not capitalist profits.

3: A very small number of corporations control the vast majority of the world’s food production and trade. They are responsible for 75% of deforestation worldwide, accounting for 15–20% of CO2 emissions, the destruction of other valuable ecosystems and the mass use of agrochemicals which affect both nature and our health. Food and agribusiness are also the second largest contributors to other greenhouse gas emissions, such as methane, (56%). They are responsible for 19–29% of the total greenhouse gas emissions related to human activity. We need to take these corporations from the hands of the capitalists, stop deforestation, organise a mass worldwide reforestation programme and plan food production in a sustainable and eco-friendly way, which includes growing more of our food locally, using traditional varieties of seeds and livestock and also (re)educate the population on the issue of excessive meat consumption and its negative effects both on the environment and on personal health.

4: We must implement a mass public investment plan in high quality and efficient, free, public transit, eco -friendly construction and house upgrading, recycling and repairing facilities, instead of incinerating waste and/or shipping it abroad. All of these measures are more than affordable if the wealth we all produce is not appropriated by a small elite who control the economy and the political establishment.

5: All these actions as well as those needed to repair the environmental damage of ecosystems could provide millions of decent new jobs. Workers in the industries and sectors hit by the necessary transition must be guaranteed jobs and retraining with no loss of pay. Investing in renewable energy provides far more jobs: for every one job provided by fossil fuel investment, the same money produces 5–7 “green” jobs.

6: We need a big increase in public funding for democratic and independent scientific research to better understand and combat climate change, to further develop technologies for the production and storage of green energy, to further develop environmental friendly materials (for ex. materials that will replace plastic, environmental friendly concrete and building materials) etc. Government money that now is spent on subsidies, tax breaks and incentives for fossil fuel corporations should be directed to research. There is no need to stress that the results of this research should belong to the whole of society and be used for common welfare. They should not be allowed to be bought, patented and used for profit by big business.

7: This is OUR planet, so we should democratically plan and run the economy on the basis of the right of everyone for a life free of poverty, oppression and destruction; on the basis of sustainability to ensure that we all have a future on this planet. Fight capitalism to replace it with a society based on meeting people’s needs, not corporate profits, on environmental respect not destruction, on true democracy not corporate control of the economy and political life: a democratic socialist society!

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International

Abortion Rights Slashed in Texas: Free, Safe, and Legal Abortion Now!

As Afghanistan is gripped by catastrophe – fight for the socialist alternative to British imperialism’s bloody legacy

Prepare for mass protest at COP26

We need your support — bottom up finances to take on the system

Priti Patel targets victims of capitalism’s ‘refugee crisis’

Which way forward for the revolution in Myanmar?

GET INVOLVED!

UPCOMING EVENTS

Abortion Rights Slashed in Texas: Free, Safe, and Legal Abortion Now!

A Wake-Up Call

Stand Up, Fight Back

Socialist Feminism Needed Now More Than Ever

As Afghanistan is gripped by catastrophe – fight for the socialist alternative to British imperialism’s bloody legacy

Prepare for mass protest at COP26

The climate movement in 2021

What kind of forces do we need?

Socialism is survival

Start building for mass, international protests around COP26