Environmental concerns and Capitalism

The world economic crisis beginning at 2008 has brought to the fore the economic fallout of Capitalisms disastrous tendencies. The toiling masses, through their daily experience, feel it surely, though. Since this crisis is very much apparent, people are compelled to be aware of it. But only a few have noted the far greater crisis whole humanity is being led to by Capitalism. Scientists believe that the earth will become an uninhabitable place within the next 50 or 100 years if the current rate of destruction of the eco system persists. Though the exact time limit is debated, they are unanimous in admitting that human civilization can at best support another two or three generations under these circumstances.

Some alarming aspects of the impending catastrophe Scientists are yet to discover the whole picture of environmental casualty. Here we may site some of them. a) Ice at the polar caps are melting at a faster rate, replacing the sunlight-reflecting white surface with blue-black sea waters. As absorption of light and heat increases, the average temperature of the earth is increased. b) The Tundra area of the northern hemisphere is losing its ice cover which causes release of the greenhouse gas (gas causing global warming) Methane in the atmosphere. c) Water of the great oceans is tuning acidic as more carbon-di-oxide is being absorbed into it. In a decade or so, this acidity will be enough to dissolve away the hard shells of the mollusks like snail, oyster, etc., thereby affecting whole cycles of marine life. On the other hand, the solubility of carbon-di-oxide will decrease in increasingly acidic water, thus accumulating more of the gas in the atmosphere and pushing global temperature further upward. d) Luc Gnacadja, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, announces that 70% of the earths surface may turn into desert within 2035 (currently, this figure is 40%). e) The IPCC warns that all the glaciers of the Himalayas will melt away within 2035, causing at first uncontrollable floods, followed by acute crisis of water. (At present rivers fed by these glaciers cater to half of the total human population.) f) Islands and low-lying coastal areas face the threat of submersion as the sea level continues to rise at an alarming rate. g) The fertility of soil is depleting due to the activities of the multinational Agri-business. Produced crop suffer mounting losses. h) Hazardous waste materials accumulate worldwide. A large portion of these are radioactive materials and are so poisonous that plans are on to dump them in outer space. i) The excessive use of chemical fertilizers is contaminating the water-bodies, rivers etc. making their water dead, i.e., so much deficient in oxygen that it ceases to support life.

Dawn of capitalism and beginning of the ruin To look at this environmental devastation in a historical context, we must examine whether it was a general phenomenon during all human civilization or whether it all started at a particular society. To find an answer to the above, we take to Marxs analysis on capitalist society and the environment, written in the 1860s. Discussing the `annihilation of the peasant, he says, Capitalist production, by collecting the population in great centres, and causing an ever-increasing preponderance of town population, on the one hand concentrates the historical motive power of society; on the other hand, it disturbs the circulation of matter between man and the soil, i.e., prevents the return to the soil of its elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; it therefore violates the conditions necessary to lasting fertility of the soil. By this action it destroys at the same time the health of the town labourer and the intellectual life of the rural labourer. But while upsetting the naturally grown conditions for the maintenance of that circulation of matter, it imperiously calls for its restoration as a system, as a regulating law of social production, and under a form appropriate to the full development of the human race. In agriculture as in manufacture, the transformation of production under the sway of capital, means, at the same time, the martyrdom of the producer; the instrument of labour becomes the means of enslaving, exploiting, and impoverishing the labourer; the social combination and organization of labour-process is turned into an organized mode of crushing out the workmans individual vitality, freedom and independence. The dispersion of the rural labourers over larger areas breaks their power of resistance while concentration increases that of the town operatives. In modern agriculture, as in the urban industries, the increased productiveness and quantity of the labour set in motion are bought at the cost of laying waste and consuming by disease labour-power itself. Moreover, all progress in capitalistic agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the labourer, but of robbing the soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time, is a progress towards ruining the lasting sources of that fertility. (Source: Capital, progress publishers, p.-474). Though Marxs emphasis here is on the impoverishment of the soil, its analysis brings forward a general process responsible for the ruin of the environment under capitalism. To understand the process, let us take the pre-capitalist society first. The society was centred on agriculture. The way with such a production system was that, the use of the products was mostly limited within the village and its vicinity. So, the resources procured from nature were restored to the elements through garbage, human and cattle excreta, dead bodies, etc. Thus the fertility of the land, once used up in agriculture, was redeemed naturally. The carbon-di-oxide released in the atmosphere during respiration and combustion in small handicraft industries was taken up in photosynthesis of plants which abound then. In a word, Mans relation with Nature was harmonious, and it maintained a balance between the give-and-take processes with Nature. The absence of big industries limited the amount of industrial waste. What capitalism introduced The development of capitalism dealt blows to this harmony from the very first. a) Peasants were driven out from their villages in large numbers and turned into expropriated proletarian mass.

b) Capitalistic machine-industry centralized in particular places where the displaced and expropriated peasants collected for jobs. Towns came up consisting of industrial establishments and mens quarters only. There was no agricultural land and plants were systematically weeded. c) The motive force of capitalism, namely the urge to increase profit, also increased the total production in an unprecedented way. The enormous industry began to throw up a monstrous amount of waste, to which were added the garbage and excreta disposed of from the thickly populated towns. d) On the other hand, the capitalistic system of agriculture, i.e., machine-farming was subsequently introduced in the villages. The natural fertility of the land began to fall off. Since the number of land-labourers were considerably less than that of the peasants of the past (they had gone to the town to labour as industrial workers), the old way of natural restoration of the elements could not make up the loss. Thus the long term process of depletion of the fertility of the land was set on foot. In a word, humanity was divided between the town and the country and a new contradiction arrived. The industrial and human waste in the town could not go back to Nature (as was the case in the village), so it began to pollute the surroundings. And in the village, the urge to increase agricultural production resulted in robbing more extensive stretches of the land of its nutrients without their redemption. The destruction of forests, exploitation of the mines, etc. intensified in a reckless way. Materials procured in these processes mostly made their way to the towns and eventually added to the piling of industrial waste. Thus they too could not return to nature and ended up in causing pollution. Capitalism has spent more than 150 years since Marx made the above analysis. All its tendencies described above not only persist, but have accelerated to create an unprecedented crisis by almost toppling the equilibrium of reciprocation between man and nature. The most urgent problem which faces us today is that of global warming.

Global warming and its causes The event of global warming, i.e., the increase in the average temperature of the earth, is bothering the scientific community more than anything else over the last 10-15 years. The main reason behind such a phenomenon is the greenhouse effect. Some gases, like carbon-di-oxide, methane, chlorofluorocarbons, etc. capture the heat from the solar rays and prevent it to radiate back to the outer space, thus heating up the lower atmosphere and producing an effect similar to a hot greenhouse for specific plants. In the natural cycle, carbon-di-oxide is released through a number of processes involving breaking up of organic compounds. The gas is used up again in photosynthesis of plants. The fine balance between these two reverse processes has been seriously hampered during the march of human civilization over the last 200 years. The emission of carbon-di-oxide and other green-house gases in the atmosphere has increased manifold due to activities of man which has resulted in a 0.03-0.06 degree (centigrade) rise of average temperature of the earth in the last hundred years.

Though debate exists over the concrete results of this event, the scientists are unanimous in predicting terrible changes on earth which are inevitable in the coming 50 or 100 years if carbon-dioxide continues to accumulate in the atmosphere at the present rate. And that will make our earth an inhabitable place. Already, rising temperatures have lifted the sea-level by 10 to 25 centimeters; every year ice-sheet equal to an area of Holland is melting away at the North Pole; the thickness of the ice has also dropped to 1.8 meters from 3.1 meters recorded in 1970; it is feared that a big change is imminent in the direction of the oceanic currents across the globe which may simply result in a recurrence of the ice-age in Great Britain. Now, what is the main source of emission of such huge amount of carbon-di-oxide that is causing this havoc worldwide? Though respiration of all living things contribute a part, the everincreasing rate of combustion of organic fuels like coal and oil is mainly responsible for this. But how do imperialism relate here? We see that Capitalism spared little thought for Nature and proceeded with its one-sided industrialization programme, using organic fuel indiscriminately. Being fully aware of the fact that burning coal or oil for production of energy is pushing humanity towards the edge, capitalists remain adamant. The stronger an imperialist power is, the more atrocious is its behavior in this regard. For example, the USA alone is responsible for 25% or 1/4th of the total carbon-di-oxide emission. Apart from capitalist production, another great contributor to carbon pollution is the excessive use of motor vehicles. A motor car, carrying 3-4 persons at best, emits almost the same amount of carbon-di-oxide as a bus carrying 50-60 people. Obviously, the imperialist countries, where individualism is nurtured as a culture and so people prefer solo travel, play the greatest offender in this regard. Recently, an article in a Bengali newspaper discussed an interesting point. Talking about traffic congestion in Kolkata, the writer upholds the policy of replacing personalized vehicles with public conveyance as the only solution to the problem. But then the public transport system must be made more convenient, he says, and proposes a single ticket system for commuting between two points. Evidently, this aspiration underlay the need for a common or social proprietorship of the whole transport system. Let us look at the matter from a different side. The driving force of Capitalism is maximizing production for profit, irrespective of human need and without taking into consideration the harm it is causing to Nature in the pursuit. One of the biggest examples of wastage of natural resource and energy committed in Capitalist way of production is planned obsolescence of goods produced by the big companies. Millions of motor cars, mobiles, cameras and other electronic goods are produced each year. But the catch is that their durability is only 3-4 years so that people are compelled to buy newer ones by disposing of them and thus supply the impetus to capitalist production. What do they care if Natures abundance is depleted by some extent? Another factor that is affecting the environment seriously is the production and widespread use of goods made of non-biodegradable materials. The raw materials procured by man from Nature undergo a number of transformations in the process of production and use. In natural economy they used to go back to nature after completing this cycle and broke up through organic-chemical reactions. But modern civilization is producing lots of things, and that too in large quantities, which

are incapable of undergoing this natural decomposition. Various kinds of plastic serve the most evident example. Though this problem is well known, huge production of plastic continues just because plastic goods are cheap and they earn considerable profit. So, plastic and other similar waste heap up in every corner of the globe, unable to go back and be assimilated in Nature. But we must mention another most important aspect of how the imperialists threaten Nature. Every year billions and billions of money go into the production of war implements. This necessitates huge procurement of mineral substances from Nature which was completely avoidable otherwise. Many opine that aluminum has its major use in making war implements and the earth would be saved of both the robbing of its bauxite and the accompanying pollution if we could stop wars. The irreparable damage done to our eco-system in such processes serve no philanthropic purpose but go towards eliminating human lives, produced goods and means of production, and doing more harm to Nature. Not all the weapons, not even the majority, are used in actual battle, though. They act as deterrent, to enliven an atmosphere of war, to keep every country in ever readiness for war. Now, these weapons etc., costing in astronomical figures, become obsolete each 510 years, are therefore destructed, again polluting the environment thoroughly since much of it is not biodegradable. Then, when war commences - which is inevitable under imperialism - a new vicious circle unfurls. Apart from the horrors of war and its effect on humanity, we are concerned here of the large scale destruction of produced goods and means of production which create the compulsion to take from Nature all again for reconstruction. That pollution caused in a war is some hundred times greater than that caused by all industries in ordinary times, is beyond mention. Thus, war economy an organic part of imperialism is perhaps the greatest contributor to environmental disaster facing the earth.

Recapitulating Marx We may once again recollect Marxs analysis quoted earlier. Capitalism had started its journey by disturbing the organic interdependence between Man and Nature. The two pronged attack on the environment exhausting the fertility of the soil and dumping urban waste which it started three or four hundred years ago, has turned almost lethal today. If the process was then called hazardous for the health of the urban workers, it poses a veritable threat to the survival of the human race today. But Marxs analysis did not only focus on the detrimental role of Capitalism on the environment. The same passages bear a historical commentary by him. a) Though in pre-capitalist societies production as such did not harm the natural cycles, and saw a close interrelation between agriculture and handicrafts, surely this bonhomie was based on an underdeveloped stage of the both. The methods involved in all kind of production were archaic. Man was mostly obedient to nature and dependent on it. Maneuvering natural forces was beyond him. b) Capitalism ended this childhood days of agriculture and handicrafts. Cut of their connate bond, these two sectors of production separated and set on their path of individual development.

c) The starting point of this separation was when capitalism tore asunder the backward production relations which bound the ruler producer to the means of production and turn them into urban proletariat. Thus capitalism accomplished the task of establishing the preconditions of social production in a demonic way. The large scale industry began to develop through capitalism. Technological development of production process created the basis for Mans control over Nature and widened the scope for satisfaction of human needs which was impossible under pre-capitalist systems. d) On the other hand, capitalism replaced the peasant attached to the soil with agricultural laborer and archaic implements of cultivations with mechanized cultivation. The growth of agriculture helped Man to shed his dependence on Nature in this respect and put him in a position of control over production of food and other crops. e) In short, capitalist production tears asunder old bond of union which held together agriculture and manufacture in their infancy. ( Capital, vol. 1, page - 474). This divorcement paved the way for the dependent development of agriculture as well as manufacture which turn in industry. f) In this process capitalism also destroyed the normal relationship of exchange between man nature. But at the same time it creates the material conditions for higher synthesis in the future, viz., the union of agriculture and industry on the basis of the more perfected forms they have each acquired during their temporary separation while upsetting the naturally grown conditions for the maintenance of that circulation of matter, imperiously calls for its restoration as a system, as regulating law of social production and under a from appropriate to the full development of the human race. (ibid) g) Not only a basis, but an ever-increasing urge is also created for the union of the rural and urban systems all over the world, thereby restoring the natural ecological balance global warming has placed the demand for erasing the difference between village and the town in the forefront. As the threat of extinction of the human race looms large over the world, and as the truth of it is realized by man, the movement for reestablishing the natural balance becomes stronger. h) On the other hand, it is becoming more and more apparent that capitalism is unable to restore this balance. On the contrary, in this matured state, it still proceeds through wide scale destruction of nature. Take for example, the phenomenon of global warming. It is now scientifically proved that unless the use of organic fuel is stopped wholly and immediately, the environment is going to face a very early disaster but, being amply clear in this regard, no capitalist country is ready to take the necessary steps. Science has made that much progress under capitalism as to discover other inorganic sources of energy which are green, i.e. are eco-friendly. But the big companies producing organic fuel and energy, especially the oil companies, are so powerful that they managed to block research in this field -- no capitalist government is forthcoming with funds and facilities and they insist on keeping the amount of organic fuel used in their countries unchanged.

The increasing number of cars heating the roads everyday is definitely a great contributor to combustion of organic fuel. Ever-ending wars, which extend to new countries over the years, mark imperialism. With it, the supply of war machinery is to be accepted by every country, thereby guaranteeing the survival and growth of the war industry. Whereas war is obviously detrimental to the environment, war industry plunders raw materials and energy sources of nature - huge loot for a totally unproductive sector. Under Capitalism, new discoveries of technology serve to announce already produced goods as redundant and lay waste a large portion of extant productive forces. Heaps of consumer goods is produced only to be destroyed in a few years. How it makes apparent the fact that as long as Capitalism continues in its term, it ever becomes an enormous liability upon Mankind! Thus the demand for restoration of the ecological balance, which is rocking the world, cannot be fulfilled within the capitalist-imperialist framework. The socialized production process established by Capitalism runs on the coordinated activities of millions of producers worldwide, on inter-connected production and communication systems. But the contradiction between socialized production and private ownership, private appropriation, continually leads to ripening of ever-new crises. The economic crisis, the environmental crisis all stem from this very contradiction. Every such crisis shows us the necessity that the world proletariat should take control of the production system and reorganize it in a different way to meet these crises with permanent solutions. When production for profit is replaced with production for society, only then can the harmony be restored between Man and Nature. Obliterating the difference between the village and the town must compose an important part of this reorganization. The concrete steps necessary for achieving this will definitely be decided in the then situation, we can only sketch a probable outline. a) Instead of systematic destruction of nature, only the essentials to be procured from it. b) decentralization of industry and workers quarters from the city so that excretory and waste materials go back to Nature. C)to stop wars and close war industry thus saving huge and meaningless procurement from Nature. D) to employ eco-friendly and energy-saving process instead of combustion of organic fuel; promoting research for this E) to replace polluting industries (like plastic etc.) with eco-friendly industries. F) to stop plunder of mines, forests etc., now undertaken by the capitalists replenishment of natural resources and restoring bio-diversity on a world scale. But the precondition for all of the above is the seizure of power by the proletariat and proceeding towards Socialism by establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat. This necessitates full consciousness of the proletariat at this stage which includes awareness of the threat imposed by environmental disbalance. Knowing that the impending disaster is direct fall-out of Capitalisms limitations and its narrowness, the working class should realize that it is only on to him to save the world and prepare to shoulder this historical task.