Workers of the world, unite!
THE CULPRIT OF THE DESTRUCTION OF THE ENVIRONMENT IS CAPITALISM
Pollution, desertification, the thaw of the poles… these issues have been around for a while and continue to worsen, but we are in the middle of a media wave in this respect, and this is not precisely by chance. It is impossible to disregard what is behind it: the manifestation of the economic clashes among the distinct groups of the world bourgeoisie. However and regardless, THE DRAMATIC TRUTH IS THAT CAPITALISM IS DESTROYING THE LIFE ON THE PLANET.
In the capitalist society, the driving principle and ultimate objective is PROFIT, which may solely be obtained by EXPLOITING salaried work (and we will be in capitalism in full as long as private property, exchange and money exist).
What is the reason behind the production of goods which spoil after a determined period of time (planned obsolescence) and the existence of advertising with all the diseases it produces (anorexia, bulimia, bigorexia, consumerism, etc.)? The need of obtaining PROFIT. If the products do not spoil, one cannot sell more of them, or the next models.
What makes us agglomerate in urban concentrations which are true environmental pollution bombs? The need of companies to have at their disposal a big mass of workforce to obtain PROFIT from it, together with the urge of this workforce to find a job wherever it may be found.
What provoked the recent floods in the Spanish state? Climate, will be said. But it is not just the climate change. It is the lack of maintenance of streams and rivers, the construction on water passage sites, where especially the poorest part of the population lives, etc. which determines the destructive amplification of its consequences.
Why are they not kept clean? Because that does not yield profit. It is much more profitable to allow the tragedy and then give way to the big business of reconstruction. This reconstruction business yields a much greater PROFIT and is behind most of the current wars (besides the fight over the control of the world).
What is provoking the recent fires in the Spanish state? Again: lack of maintenance and cleaning of the forests. But let us go to the other side of the world: What is provoking the recent fires in the Amazonia? The thirst for PROFIT is what leads to burning the Amazonia to create crop areas and minerals.
But there is yet another, even bigger destruction: WAR. Capitalism has two World Wars on its back, with 15 million dead on the first, and 80 million on the second. The culminating work of the bourgeois civilization are the atomic bombs thrown over the population of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Ever since, the military power to destroy has only increased, but this is not the only thing which has changed. The capitalist system is immersed in a great relative crisis of OVERPRODUCTION which demands a DESTRUCTION of productive forces to relaunch another cycle of ACCUMULATION.
The distribution of the world which was made in Yalta and Potsdam after the Second World War has blown up and the USA are in continuous retreat, while they keep trying to trigger military conflicts around the globe, trying to trigger the Third World War while they can still think about winning it. The rest of imperialist countries (EU, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc.) are also taking positions and intervene with the military around the world.
Capitalism is destroying the planet, yes. Not only that, it also threatens to destroy it completely with the Third World War. Therefore, CAPITALISM MUST BE DESTROYED SO THAT IT DOES NOT DESTROY THE PLANET.
“Environmentalism”, as specific ideology, consists precisely in the assertion that all this destruction may be stopped while keeping capitalism, without abolishing salaried work and private property. This is not only false: it is also very useful for all the companies and states for deviating the fight against pollution and destruction produced by capitalism towards a movement which is harmless to them, and which, even, may be and is a profitable business.
Therefore, the fight against pollution and destruction cannot be separated from the fight against the capitalism which produces them, from the fight against capitalism itself, from the restart of the class struggle. Any omission of the denunciation of the indissoluble and close bond between capitalism and the destruction of the planet is nothing else than COMPLICITY with the toxic and destructive effects of the way of production of capitalism.
Television repeats, one and a thousand times: the climate issue affects “rich and poor” equally. Nothing more convenient for the bourgeoisie to convince the working class that we are all equal in front of God, the Law and, now… the Climate!
Do working class and bourgeois neighborhoods have the same conditions, perhaps? Or are we maybe subject to the same intoxication and dangers in our work places? Or do we, perhaps, have access to the same treatments and medicines? Perhaps the bourgeoisie lives in basements where one drowns when floods occur? Maybe, the quality of the food that the working class buys is the same as that which may be afforded by the bourgeoisie?
This bourgeois world is sinking and threatens to drag us with it, we do not have patches or mends to apply to it, but a new society to live and fight for. And not a caricature of this one with changed names (like in Russia, China or Venezuela) but a truly communist society: without salaried work, without State, without crises or wars… in which “the free development of each one will be the premise of the free development of all” (Manifesto of the Communist Party).