“Let us not, however,
flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human conquests over nature. For
each such conquest takes its revenge on us. Each of them, it is true, has in
the first place the consequences on which we counted, but in the second and third
places it has quite different unforeseen effects which only too often cancel
out the first. The people who in Mesopotamia, Greece, Asia Minor, and
elsewhere, destroyed the forests to obtain cultivatable land, never dreamed
that they were laying the basis for the present devastated condition of those
countries, by removing along with the forests the collecting centres and
reservoirs of moisture . . .Thus at every step we are reminded that we by no
means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone
standing outside nature - but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to
nature and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the
fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to know
and correctly apply its laws.” ("The part played by labour in the
transition from Ape to Man" –
Engels)
Obama's plans to regulate emissions of carbon dioxide from
US power plants have been stalled by the US Supreme Court. The court ruled that
the president's Clean Power Plan could not go forward until all legal
challenges were heard. A group of 27 states, utilities and coal mining
companies are blocking the proposal in the courts. They argued that the plan
was an infringement on states' rights. Under the Clean Power Plan, individual
states were due to submit their proposals on how to meet the CO2 restrictions
by September this year. That date will be missed. It is also unlikely that all
the legal questions over the future of the Clean Power Plan will be resolved
before President Obama leaves office next January. If the Clean Power Plan suffer
further setbacks in the Supreme Court it may ultimately render it useless and if
that was to happen, the ability of the US to live up to its commitments under
the Paris Climate Agreement would be in serious doubt.
Capitalism is simply unable to run on green lines, as its
motive force is expansion and domination, with no thought for the consequences
for the people or the environment. Capitalism is unable to cope with the
ecological challenges that lie ahead, from global warming to depletion of
resources. If we look at the world around us today we cannot fail to notice the
extent to which nature is being ravaged in the name of short-term economic
gain. It is all too clear that the prevailing economic system of capitalist
competition is quite incapable of seriously taking into account the long-term
considerations with which ecology is vitally concerned. Only where the system's
immediate objective of profit maximisation is threatened does it become
expedient to act upon such considerations.
Will capitalism bring the world to the brink of ecological
disaster? It is certainly having a good try. Its pursuit of profits and its
competitive pressures to keep costs down have led to all sorts of inappropriate
technology being used in production. Why must the planet live under the threat
of ecological destruction. It is impossible to deny that the world is a mess
and is becoming a bigger and more horrible mess as the days, months and years
go by. Many shut their eyes to it, but quite how long they will be able to
carry on doing so is only a matter for speculation. Large tracts of the world are
a stinking hole and the stench is wafting in all our directions. The only way
to stop capitalism plunging the world even deeper into the mire is for the
working class to look beyond the confines of the profit system. Under
capitalism technology has not been used to secure a peaceful planet but to
increase the dangers and consequences of war. Technology has not been used to
create a safe energy supply but to develop one which could kill whole
populations. To allow world capitalism to continue is to gamble with our
future, with the very conditions of life itself. We need to abolish the state
of affairs in which the community as a whole exercises little democratic
control over society apart from voting for politicians to run the madhouse for
another four or five years.
Instead, we need to organise politically to place the means
of life — including energy production which is a basic requirement for any
society to function — under the democratic control of the whole community and
not just governments or groups of experts. We need to abolish the out-moded and
old-fashioned division of the world into nation states. Instead we need to
cooperate on a world basis to meet our material needs and energy requirements.
Only in a socialist society will the community be able to make decisions about
energy production which are based on what is safe and in the human interest
(including our shared environment) instead of decisions based on, and limited
by, economic considerations. Socialism needs mass understanding and support —
and then the world will be changed. We have but one policy. We want socialism,
and we say we want it now. Sooner or later; socialism, a system of common
ownership, democratic control and production solely for use will have to figure
on the agenda of the working class if humankind’s collective existence and very
survival is not to be put at stake.
The allocation of most resources to the market is
incompatible with the realisation of environmental goals. The market responds
only to those preferences that can be articulated through acts of buying and
selling. Hence the interests of the inarticulate, both those who are
contingently so - the poor - and those who are necessarily so - future
generations and non-humans - cannot be adequately represented. Moreover, a
competitive market economy is necessarily oriented towards growth of capital,
and such an orientation is incompatible with a sustainable economy. A
non-market system is the only framework within which humans can organize their
interaction with the rest of nature in ecologically acceptable ways. As long as
production is carried on for making profits and not for needs the same problems
of pollution, resource depletion and species extinction will remain.
Before anything constructive can be done, capitalism must go
and, with it, the artificial division of the world into separate, competing
states. More and more people are becoming aware and concerned about the way the
environment is abuse. But campaigning for new laws in regard to protecting the
environment is not the answer. The problems cannot be solved by either minor or
major policy reforms but only by drastic reconfiguration of the system itself.
We need to get rid of a society where a small minority can manipulate nature
for their own ends and replace it with one where we all have a real say in how
nature is used. The Earth, and all its natural and industrial resources, must
become the common heritage of all humanity. A democratic structure for making
decisions at world as well as at local levels must come into being. It is to
facilitate that process that the World Socialist Movement exist. Our message to
the working class is that capitalism’s time has gone. There are plenty of
reasons why the task of building a political movement for socialism is more
urgent than ever. The choice before us is now “socialism or barbarism”, a
progressive move to the next higher stage of social evolution, or a regression
from which we may never recover. The choice is yours.
0 comments:
Post a Comment