Socialist Resistance is changing its political programme, perspectives and public profile towards being an anti-capitalist, ecosocialist organisation. This is to make explicit a change in our perspectives that has been underway for at least a year and now needs to be signaled publicly. At the core of this change is our contention that free-market, privatising neoliberalism has over 20 years arrived at a new and deadly phase – what we call ‘savage capitalism’.
This text below is printed in the September issue of the paper. It’s an edited version of a longer document and explains why now only a socialist response that centrally addresses the environmental crisis is adequate to the current period.
13. Our Demands
Ecosocialists have to start from a class analysis, an analysis that can unite the largest possible number of people to make the rich, not the poor, pay. We support the building of a mass movement, nationally and internationally to impose the types of demand below.
1. For a unilateral reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in Britain of 90% by 2030, with similar reductions in other developed countries;
2. For an international treaty to cap global carbon emissions, not because we think this is an easy option, or even likely to be achieved (this depends on the balance of forces), but because it is necessary and can unite the movements internationally against the failures of the capitalist system;
3. For international rationing of air travel, any market in rations to be made illegal;
4. Opposition to nuclear energy and the building of any new nuclear power stations;
5. For a massive expansion of renewable energy;
6. For subsidies from national and local government:
• to replace the use of cars by providing cheap, accessible and frequent public transport;
• to ensure all new buildings are zero-carbon;
• to provide insulation, energy conservation, etc. for all homes to make them energy efficient.
