Daily Times

The last few decades have seen the question of the environment pushed to the forefront on a world scale. The ‘green parties’ in Europe and donor-funded NGOs in the developing world have championed this ‘agenda’ predominantly. It is being recognised that capitalism has taken its toll on the earth’s environment, leading to unpredictable and cataclysmic climatic events. Recent examples include the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in the US in 2005, the ravaging droughts of 2006 in Australia and China, and the floods of 2010 in Pakistan, with over 20 million people affected. Global temperatures have increased about 0.8°C since 1980. Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer than any preceding decade since 1850. Research studies have concluded more intense and prolonged droughts and heat waves in the decades ahead. Meanwhile, tremendous precipitation events will become more frequent and future tropical cyclones will become more recurrent and devastating.
Toxic industrial pollution, intensive capitalist-industrial farming, unplanned and haphazard construction on fertile lands and massive deforestation in Pakistan have poisoned and disfigured this beautiful land. At the time of partition, 28 percent of the area comprising present-day Pakistan was covered with dense green forests; now the figure in below 2.3 percent. According to the World Bank, glacial retreats, floods, higher average temperatures and a higher frequency of droughts incurs losses of Rs 858 billion annually. Since so-called independence, the conditions of infrastructure and society have deteriorated drastically. Most of Pakistan’s irrigation and agricultural infrastructure — major barrages, head works, canal networks and irrigation channels –were built under the British Raj. The indigenous ruling elite has failed to expand this now crumbling infrastructure. Worse still, they have recklessly damaged a large section of it due to lack of maintenance and investment in this all-important sector. Their system in decay, they remained focused on obscene profits, come hell or high water.
The environment is not just a source of resources to be exploited; it is an interconnected system of which we are an integral part. The development of tools has played a critical role in the development of humanity and its control of nature. Advances in science and technology have led to very powerful means of production but these are in the control of a very few private hands with the sole objective of extracting more profits. This has fast-tracked the process of destroying the system on which everything in life depends. However, the human species has an invincible instinct for survival. We are able to recognise a need and adapt accordingly. The problem is that the capitalist economy is not subject to our intelligence or reason. It is enslaved to the anarchy of the market and insatiable lust for profit, and hence it is not consciously planned in harmony with the environment.
Imperialist corporations and local capitalists run things in a way that serves the interests of their own class. Without the elimination of the profit motive and private ownership of the means of production, humans cannot reconnect with the earth and their own labour. In the absence of such a relationship between the toilers and the environment they inhabit, the few that exploit the vast majority are not at all concerned about what happens to the planet or the vast majority of the population through this process of primitive accumulation.
The lunacy of capitalism can be seen in planned obsolescence, in which products are purposely designed to cease functioning after a short period of time so that new products must be bought. Even The Economist had to confess: “A classic case of planned obsolescence was the nylon stocking. The inevitable ‘laddering’ of stockings made consumers buy new ones and for years discouraged manufacturers from looking for a fibre that did not ladder. The garment industry in any case is not inclined to such innovation.” Toiletries, small appliances, clothing, computers, light bulbs, houses, automobiles and many other items have an artificially limited shelf life. Then there is the Malthusian idea that there are “too many” humans for the planet. This is patently, scientifically inaccurate, though under capitalism it is a serious concern. Improved techniques allow fewer people to produce more food and other necessities of life. According to The Washington Post, “Each year, about 40 percent of all food in the United States goes uneaten.” Meanwhile, 50 million US citizens have to struggle to regularly meet their basic food needs.
Today, even major energy companies like Exxon-Mobil and BP are self-avowed environmentalists because they can sense the profits to be made by playing on the fears of ordinary workers by charging them more for ‘green’ energy. Governments worldwide cynically use the environmental crisis as an excuse to impose austerity on the majority while the capitalists receive fat tax breaks for developing green alternatives. This is something the green activists in the west and the donor-dependent NGOs have failed to comprehend. Environmental devastation has increased with an unforeseen ferocity in recent years. A piecemeal approach and utopian appeals to the ‘good nature’ of the capitalists will not force environmental barbarism back. Campaigns that are shackled to the confines of a system that in itself is the cause for the planet’s degradation are doomed to go nowhere. This is a reformist strategy that things can improve so long as the capitalists promise to be a little nicer to the environment. It is like asking a lion to eat grass. Without the collective control and ownership of the means of production with democratic reorganisation of the economy, society is doomed.
What is required is an economic and political system that will not damage but rather improve human existence, while protecting and refining the environment. A system run collectively by all, starting from the villages, neighbourhoods, workplaces, industries, states, countries and, eventually, the whole world: a participatory democratic, political system embedded in the very structures of the planned economy. It will then be possible to launch a gigantic public works and infrastructural plan. With the introduction of comfortable, safe and efficient modes of public transport, current insecurity, atomisation, alienation and social isolation of humans will end. There would be little need for people to use ‘private’ cars and other vehicles for travel. On the basis of an economy that will produce, transport and provide services to fulfil human needs, rather than filling the coffers of the capitalists, enormous wealth will be created and enjoyed by everyone. This wealth can produce wonders, provide advanced, free and high-quality education, infrastructure, health and decent living standards for the human race. When workers achieve the ability to be creative in the workplace they will innovate to make things safer, more efficient and environmentally sustainable. All this and more will be possible in a planned socialist society. Like nature itself, all of these systems and struggles are interconnected but the precondition is that the workers organise, fight for and win political and economic power. As Marx and Engels explained in the Communist Manifesto, “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.”

The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and international secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at ptudc@hotmail.com