Climate Change and Environmental Destruction: The Ripe Fruits of Rotten Capitalism

Forests are burning, glaciers and permafrost are melting, people are fainting and dying on the streets and at work under the scorching sun. Tropical cyclones are expected in the Mediterranean, and millions of the working class around the world could be forced to migrate due to extreme weather conditions.

The climate issue is becoming more and more urgent every day, but, as with any social issue, there are no “universal” truths, only class truths. The bourgeoisie is in no hurry. It has all the means to protect itself from at least the less catastrophic conditions. Such means do not simply safeguard their capital, but they actually increase it by taking advantage of disasters. This is nothing new, they take advantage of every crisis, whether economic, military, or environmental.

Some petty bourgeois movements seem to be shocked by the horrors created by capitalism. These are reactionaries who simply dream of a “different” form of capitalism, but one that remains capitalism nonetheless.

And no less reactionary are those movements—also intrinsically petty bourgeois—that dream of returning to a supposedly idyllic past. This would be in a world based on small-scale agriculture, small towns, and small shops, without the ugliness of capitalist industrialization, where there would be no pollution or exploitation. On the other hand, the proletarian truth is that the first requirement for tackling the climate crisis is the destruction of class society. Then, the collective management of the planet’s resources can take place in the most appropriate way to guarantee a full life for all humanity, without the gradual (and not so gradual) destruction of the planet itself.

Those who feel the need to add prefixes to communism—talking about “eco-Marxism” or “eco-socialism”— are nothing more than the usual vulgarizers and revisionists with whom we are all too familiar. Marxist doctrine does not need to be “updated,” and it is only under communism that crises, including the climate crisis, can be resolved Those who speak of “eco-socialism” always end up comparing it to the false socialisms of the last century. Besides, these capitalist states act like all others and are not any more “respectful of the environment.” This is because they are driven by the economic laws of capitalism, which turns every good into a commodity, and makes the goal of every production process “the greatest possible self-valorization of capital, that is, the greatest possible production of surplus value.” The development of capitalism is by its very nature as anarchic as it is impetuous. It has led to a serious deterioration in environmental conditions since its inception, and the working class has always been the one to suffer the worst consequences. Marx’s Capital is full of stories of workers living in misery created by their bosses. Workers had been condemned to unhealthy living conditions, they had become immiserated both materially and morally. Workers often died at a young age. When they were alive, they lived and worked in spaces where there was little breathable air and many toxic chemicals.

Even today, billions of workers live in the same conditions. Workers who live in slightly better conditions owe this mainly to the achievements made in the class struggle against the bourgeoisie. Achievements that the bourgeoisie always call into question, by the way. In any case, even in the “richest” Western societies there are large pockets of widespread poverty that this mode of production necessarily entails and creates.

Among all the predictions regarding the increase in average temperature and carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere in recent decades, the most pessimistic predictions have proven to be the most accurate. In the meantime, summits and conferences are held regularly to discuss real (or imagined) concerns about this issue and possible solutions. These conferences are attended by representatives of states, so-called “civil society,” and the business world. We hear the usual rhetoric that characterizes bourgeois formulations and the climate agreements that some countries will nevertheless commit to supporting—at least on paper. But the underlying implication is that capital must be given time (and state support) to adapt and “clean up,” to transform industrial plants and energy sources

As time passes, it seems that public debate has increasingly shifted from attempts to reverse the “climate disaster” to the search for “mitigation measures” to deal with climatic conditions that are already well beyond the point of no return. And there are numerous cases in which the objectives under discussion are rather vague. We often hear talk of “significant” reductions (by how much?) in emissions of this or that polluting substance or compound, without any objective follow-up. More importantly, the targets are set so far in advance that capital can adjust to any “broken promises” and current leaders and executives are no longer in office, so they cannot be held accountable for their actions. A striking example of this is the commitment to “achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.”

This statement is almost as ridiculous as those of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party—that is, the claims that under its leadership China will be an “advanced socialist society by 2050.” In the first case, time will prove the unsustainability of such a goal. In the second, we let out a good laugh. Meanwhile, today, it is China that is accused of not signing the climate agreements that other countries are signing. In the West, of course, the infamous propaganda of the various national bourgeoisies immediately throws itself headlong into the debate. They do this so they can boast of being among the good and democratic states, rather than among the bad and authoritarian ones. For Marxists, however, the contradiction lies between China’s younger capitalism—an economy heavily based on coal and whose manufacturing growth no climate agreement can afford to stifle—and the more mature capitalisms of the West.

As long as capitalism exists, no “dialogue” between organizations, corporations, or bourgeois states can save the planet; nor will objectives and laws approved by parliaments. Millions of tons of waste will continue to be dumped into the ocean every year, polluting the waters, coasts, and lands where the proletariat works under the whip of capital. And while workers’ living conditions continue to deteriorate in the face of the capitalist crisis, petty bourgeois moralists still dare to reproach them for not doing their part to save the planet, for not reducing their personal “carbon footprint,” for buying plastic straws instead of biodegradable alternatives. Ultimately, the fact that the climate issue appears to be secondary (not to say tertiary, and so on) to the global bourgeoisie is demonstrated by the intensity with which wars continue to be fought around the world. If capitalist production pollutes, war does so even more. Yet, no one has ever been concerned about the environmental consequences of bombings and massacres that destroy and pollute in an uncontrolled manner.

Only the revolutionary uprising of the working class, led by its class party and fighting for nothing less than the destruction of bourgeois relations of production, can stop the devastating fury of capitalism. Only when this antagonistic form of the social production process is a thing of the past, and the contradiction between city and countryside is resolved, will a society rise from the ashes of capitalism, a society that is truly capable of addressing the climate issue and all the important commitments it requires.