BY DOUG JENNESS
In their letters to the editor published in this issue,
Gerald Field and Gary Cohen criticize the Militant for
allegedly not taking the struggle against environmental
destruction, including global warming, seriously enough and for
appearing to counterpose socialist revolution to the fight
against despoliation of the environment. They also object to an
editorial in the December 29 issue stating that the apocalyptic
approach of some middle-class environmental activists verges on
"hysteria."
Their comments offer an opportunity to step back and assess the stakes of the revolutionary workers movement in the fight against environmental ruination. To do this we need to answer two questions: who is responsible for destroying the environment and how can this curse be stopped?
We are the only animal species that is dependent on toolmaking for survival, and from our very origins the procurement of food and shelter has led to altering nature. The rise of industrial capitalism dramatically accelerated this process. As the young revolutionists, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote in The Communist Manifesto in 1848, "The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together." This not only brought many benefits to humanity but unleashed a myriad of hazards to our health and safety and the well-being of the environment. Modern capitalist society, Marx and Engels wrote, "has conjured up such gigantic means of production and exchange," that it "is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells." This apt description rings even truer in today's world of nuclear energy, widespread use of fossil fuels, application of chemicals to farmlands, genetic engineering, and the possible threat of global warming and holes in the ozone layer.
Industrial workers and working farmers, the producing classes in our society, are right at the center of where nature is altered through mining and logging, manufacturing and processing, and cultivation and breeding of plants and animals. Consequently, we are at the center of where contaminants and pollutants are produced and where necessary resources like soil and water are squandered. We face both the hazards of the production process on the job and those of the wastes in our communities. From this vantage point working people increasingly are recognizing the stakes we have in the fight to protect our safety and environment.
Even though it's our labor that is altering nature we are not to blame. The mines, mills, factories, storage depots, and transportation lines are not in our hands. Control over what is produced and how it's produced and transported is not in our hands. In large measure this is also true for working farmers, who are told by banks and manufacturing monopolies what, when, and where to plant and what seeds and chemicals to use or else face foreclosure.
Marx appropriately stated in Capital, "Capitalist production .. only develops .. by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth - the soil and the worker." The capitalists are driven by the very nature of their private property system to try to squeeze as much profits out of working people as possible. This includes cutting corners on safety and resisting and cheating on emission standards.
Many working people know that when we have fought collectively and asserted united strength against the employers we have been able to win some protection. Fights over safety and health have been a central aspect of union struggles in mining and other industries.
As the international crisis of capitalist worsens, working people are going to be increasingly ravaged by war, unemployment, inflation, police brutalization, cuts in social services, and an escalation of on-the job hazards and environmental blight. In response we will fight to organize to protect ourselves from being physically, socially, and morally destroyed as a class. But if these struggles don't help prepare us and point us toward overturning capitalist rule and replacing it with our government, one of working people, we will never be able to rid the world of the horrors of capitalism. Through a workers and farmers government we will be able to abolish capitalist ownership of industry and replace it with state ownership and a planned economy. This won't be sufficient to end environmental destruction, as we have seen with the devastating environmental destruction in Russia, Eastern Europe, and China. To accomplish this, working people must also be in full command of economic planning. Through this activity they will deepen their social understanding and collective action, advancing toward communist society.
If Cohen and Field agree with this we have no argument. But I detect in their comments a tendency to underestimate the importance of preparing today for the class explosions that will bring tens of millions into action. This preparation includes participating in all struggles, including those against abuses of the environment, from the framework I've outlined and in organizing a party of the advanced detachments of the working class - today.
The Militant's description of the hysteria of some middle- class defenders of the environment seems accurate to me. If you don't have either the understanding or the confidence that there is a social force - that is the working class - that can and will put us in a position where we can deal with problems such as global warming (whether or not you think it has begun yet), destruction of the ozone layer, and feeding a growing world population, there is a tendency to get desperate and frantically flail around for alternatives. One variant of this is to respond to socialists by exclaiming, "How can you be talking about socialist revolution when the whole world may be destroyed. We've got to save the world first, then we can talk about socialism!" But, of course, all their frenzy leads them to supporting some strain or another of capitalist politics, which can only perpetuate the system that is responsible for the social evils of today's world.