But who is ultimately responsible? Is it those who dug it up and sold it? Those who bought and traded it? Those who shipped it? Or those who used it? Do we include forest fires in the mix? Or burning wood to heat homes? Or those who started rearing cattle?
And from when are they to blame? Does that mean we should all just do nothing now?
Yes. That’ll be the imperialists, who drain the third world for their own decadence. Can hardly blame the slaves for doing what slavers forces them to do.
Those who bought and traded it?
Yes. That’ll be the imperialists, who drain the third world for their own decadence.
Those who shipped it?
Yes. That’ll be the imperialists, who drain the third world for their own decadence.
Or those who used it?
Yes. That’ll be the imperialists and labor aristocrats, who insist on their own decadence.
Do we include forest fires in the mix?
Yes. Caused by imperialists, who implemented a the most unsustainable system ever conceived by humankind.
Or burning wood to heat homes?
Yes and no. It’s 2024. Except for an insignificant minority and European victims of US imperialism, burning wood to heat homes in the global north is an entirely unnecessary luxury. It’s literally what petit bourgeois labor aristocrats do to make their living rooms cosy while the rest of the house is being warmed by perfectly adequate central heating system.
Or those who started rearing cattle?
Yes, well, the petit bourgeois labor aristocrats who insist on whatever method of agriculture and farming that puts meat on their plate three times a day, every day, no matter how unsustainable it is.
It doesn’t mean we do nothing, it means we must abolish capitalism.
That’s the wrong question but the answer is still yes. Significantly so. It’s not even close.
The right question is fourfold,
Who has destroyed the environment and killed half of all species and brought/is bringing the world towards ecological/climate collapse? (Capitalists.)
What compels capitalists towards unsustainability, environmental degradation, and pollution? (The profit motive.)
What has compelled communists towards some environmental harms? (The threat of capitalists and capitalist restoration.)
What compels communists to seek to fix this and every other problem created by capitalists? (Unlike capitalists, who are mindlessly driven by profit, communists begin with the premise, ‘I think, therefore I can do other things than mindlessly chase profits.’)
Literally everyone. All countries built and keep building with concrete and steel and industry and war.
Do you claim that there is no environmental degradation/pollution in communism?
“I was scared, so I started shooting… But not my fault, look what they’re doing!”. The same argument fits the other foot if you read their news.
Where does all the cheap stuff come from which capitalist countries buy, making their dollar have value? Is that fixing capitalist created problems? Do companies in those countries exist only for the common good?
All pure economic systems stink because human nature is not simple or controllable.
Under what political economy? Capitalism. Humans need infrastructure. Concrete is currently (and likely will be for a long time) needed to build infrastructure. A model of environmental protection that ignores human needs is going to be problematic.
As for war, see above: capitalism (or, rather, class society) is the cause of war. Capitalism is in constant crisis. Of overproduction or underproduction and of the surplus capital absorption problem. Capitalists need war not just to defend capital but as a fundamental building block of capitalist relations.
World War Zero (the wars over African and/or Asian colonies, depending on who you ask), World War I, and World War II were all fought because mainly European (and Japanese) colonial-capitalists ran out of room to expand (resources, labor, and consumers). And if capitalism needs anything, it is constant room to expand. Hence the capitalists salivating at dividing up Russia, China, Cuba, DPRK, and previously the USSR. (Hence, too, the US salivating at carving up and cannibalising Europe, currently.)
Depends what you mean. If you mean states governed by communist parties, obviously no. But again, that’s the wrong question. The correct question is, Why? Answer: the global political economy is capitalism. Pretending it doesn’t exist and doing your own sustainable thing is not an option. As above and below: the threat of capitalist restoration. Those who don’t play along have three options: horrific sanctions, horrific war, or both.
The same does not apply both ways. Imperialists are not invading the global south because they are scared. These are wars of aggression. I’m not talking in hypotheticals. I’m not writing a rioter’s charter. I’m referring to well-recorded and publicly available historical records.
Chile, China, Cuba, Ghana, Indonesia, Korea, Laos, USSR, Vietnam, and more. What do these states have in common? Every single one was either invaded and/or subject to coups supported by foreign powers and/or destroyed by those foreign colonial powers/imperialists. Why? Because they wanted independence and socialism/communism.
(I don’t have the character count to talk about all the states that were invaded, destroyed, or subject to coups simply because an imperialist or colonialist liked the look of the resources. It’s a long list.)
Which of those states survived? China, Cuba, Laos, DPRK, and Vietnam. Why? In part because they fought and did not forget the threat of capitalist restoration. They developed industrially/militarily to deter the imperialists from invading.
The shoe does not fit the other foot because the other similarity (except for some few USSR actions) is that none of the above states, once established, threatened war to overthrow capitalism (no, I don’t consider the USSR fighting the Nazis back to Berlin or supporting anti-colonial movements to be the same thing as the threat posed by capitalists).
You’re slightly missing the point, there. Capitalists don’t just ‘buy’ things from the global south as if there’s a magical market of producer states and purchaser states. Capitalists largely control the economies of the global south. That’s what imperialism means. It’s what the IMF, World Bank, WTO, and US military exist for. A good book on this is Zac Cope, The Wealth of (Some) Nations.
The exceptions are, again, the states governed by communists, which have either been sanctioned almost to death (e.g. Cuba, DPRK) or played along in order to avoid sanctions and invasions (e.g. China, Vietnam).
(Neoliberal) capitalists exported much of their industrial capacity to their neo-colonies and to independent communist states who played along in order to advance their own development. It’s not feasible to opt out of capitalism. The best one can hope for is to be sanctioned like Cuba and the DPRK.
This does create some impetus e.g. for China to allow for-profit corporations to operate along capitalist lines. And no, for-profit corporations do not operate for the common good. They, to reiterate, operate for profit. This follows the logic of the commodity form, which determines global political economic relations. The difference is that the CPC has power over Chinese companies. It’s the opposite practically everywhere else, where corporations (well, their owners) control the state/government/political parties by various means.
Importantly, China (which is the one that gets all the bad press for pollution) has a communist party in charge. Yes, they use(d) capital to advance. But only as one tool in the path towards a higher stage of socialism. Which is why, now that they have caught up and in many ways surpassed the industrial and technological capacity of the imperialists, China is rapidly shifting to a green economy, building solar, wind, nuclear infrastructure, etc, and phasing out dirty coal for super efficient coal plants.
To emphasise a point from above, it’s not an option, yet, to just turn off emissions; but emissions can be lowered and balanced out (through something more meaningful than western ‘carbon credits’). And China is doing that, because it is not in thrall to the profit-motive.
I don’t know what you mean by a ‘pure economic system’.
And while the US is one of the highest per capita, it doesn’t read like a list of capitalist countries to communist countries. Russia isn’t too far off the top either.
But who is ultimately responsible? Is it those who dug it up and sold it? Those who bought and traded it? Those who shipped it? Or those who used it? Do we include forest fires in the mix? Or burning wood to heat homes? Or those who started rearing cattle?
And from when are they to blame? Does that mean we should all just do nothing now?
What would be your solution?
Imperialists, i.e. mostly colonial powers.
Yes. That’ll be the imperialists, who drain the third world for their own decadence. Can hardly blame the slaves for doing what slavers forces them to do.
Yes. That’ll be the imperialists, who drain the third world for their own decadence.
Yes. That’ll be the imperialists, who drain the third world for their own decadence.
Yes. That’ll be the imperialists and labor aristocrats, who insist on their own decadence.
Yes. Caused by imperialists, who implemented a the most unsustainable system ever conceived by humankind.
Yes and no. It’s 2024. Except for an insignificant minority and European victims of US imperialism, burning wood to heat homes in the global north is an entirely unnecessary luxury. It’s literally what petit bourgeois labor aristocrats do to make their living rooms cosy while the rest of the house is being warmed by perfectly adequate central heating system.
Yes, well, the petit bourgeois labor aristocrats who insist on whatever method of agriculture and farming that puts meat on their plate three times a day, every day, no matter how unsustainable it is.
It doesn’t mean we do nothing, it means we must abolish capitalism.
The solution is communism.
Do communist countries pollute less?
That’s the wrong question but the answer is still yes. Significantly so. It’s not even close.
The right question is fourfold,
Who has destroyed the environment and killed half of all species and brought/is bringing the world towards ecological/climate collapse? (Capitalists.)
What compels capitalists towards unsustainability, environmental degradation, and pollution? (The profit motive.)
What has compelled communists towards some environmental harms? (The threat of capitalists and capitalist restoration.)
What compels communists to seek to fix this and every other problem created by capitalists? (Unlike capitalists, who are mindlessly driven by profit, communists begin with the premise, ‘I think, therefore I can do other things than mindlessly chase profits.’)
This just seems apologetic at best…
Literally everyone. All countries built and keep building with concrete and steel and industry and war.
Do you claim that there is no environmental degradation/pollution in communism?
“I was scared, so I started shooting… But not my fault, look what they’re doing!”. The same argument fits the other foot if you read their news.
Where does all the cheap stuff come from which capitalist countries buy, making their dollar have value? Is that fixing capitalist created problems? Do companies in those countries exist only for the common good?
All pure economic systems stink because human nature is not simple or controllable.
Under what political economy? Capitalism. Humans need infrastructure. Concrete is currently (and likely will be for a long time) needed to build infrastructure. A model of environmental protection that ignores human needs is going to be problematic.
As for war, see above: capitalism (or, rather, class society) is the cause of war. Capitalism is in constant crisis. Of overproduction or underproduction and of the surplus capital absorption problem. Capitalists need war not just to defend capital but as a fundamental building block of capitalist relations.
World War Zero (the wars over African and/or Asian colonies, depending on who you ask), World War I, and World War II were all fought because mainly European (and Japanese) colonial-capitalists ran out of room to expand (resources, labor, and consumers). And if capitalism needs anything, it is constant room to expand. Hence the capitalists salivating at dividing up Russia, China, Cuba, DPRK, and previously the USSR. (Hence, too, the US salivating at carving up and cannibalising Europe, currently.)
Depends what you mean. If you mean states governed by communist parties, obviously no. But again, that’s the wrong question. The correct question is, Why? Answer: the global political economy is capitalism. Pretending it doesn’t exist and doing your own sustainable thing is not an option. As above and below: the threat of capitalist restoration. Those who don’t play along have three options: horrific sanctions, horrific war, or both.
The same does not apply both ways. Imperialists are not invading the global south because they are scared. These are wars of aggression. I’m not talking in hypotheticals. I’m not writing a rioter’s charter. I’m referring to well-recorded and publicly available historical records.
Chile, China, Cuba, Ghana, Indonesia, Korea, Laos, USSR, Vietnam, and more. What do these states have in common? Every single one was either invaded and/or subject to coups supported by foreign powers and/or destroyed by those foreign colonial powers/imperialists. Why? Because they wanted independence and socialism/communism.
(I don’t have the character count to talk about all the states that were invaded, destroyed, or subject to coups simply because an imperialist or colonialist liked the look of the resources. It’s a long list.)
Which of those states survived? China, Cuba, Laos, DPRK, and Vietnam. Why? In part because they fought and did not forget the threat of capitalist restoration. They developed industrially/militarily to deter the imperialists from invading.
The shoe does not fit the other foot because the other similarity (except for some few USSR actions) is that none of the above states, once established, threatened war to overthrow capitalism (no, I don’t consider the USSR fighting the Nazis back to Berlin or supporting anti-colonial movements to be the same thing as the threat posed by capitalists).
You’re slightly missing the point, there. Capitalists don’t just ‘buy’ things from the global south as if there’s a magical market of producer states and purchaser states. Capitalists largely control the economies of the global south. That’s what imperialism means. It’s what the IMF, World Bank, WTO, and US military exist for. A good book on this is Zac Cope, The Wealth of (Some) Nations.
The exceptions are, again, the states governed by communists, which have either been sanctioned almost to death (e.g. Cuba, DPRK) or played along in order to avoid sanctions and invasions (e.g. China, Vietnam).
(Neoliberal) capitalists exported much of their industrial capacity to their neo-colonies and to independent communist states who played along in order to advance their own development. It’s not feasible to opt out of capitalism. The best one can hope for is to be sanctioned like Cuba and the DPRK.
This does create some impetus e.g. for China to allow for-profit corporations to operate along capitalist lines. And no, for-profit corporations do not operate for the common good. They, to reiterate, operate for profit. This follows the logic of the commodity form, which determines global political economic relations. The difference is that the CPC has power over Chinese companies. It’s the opposite practically everywhere else, where corporations (well, their owners) control the state/government/political parties by various means.
Importantly, China (which is the one that gets all the bad press for pollution) has a communist party in charge. Yes, they use(d) capital to advance. But only as one tool in the path towards a higher stage of socialism. Which is why, now that they have caught up and in many ways surpassed the industrial and technological capacity of the imperialists, China is rapidly shifting to a green economy, building solar, wind, nuclear infrastructure, etc, and phasing out dirty coal for super efficient coal plants.
To emphasise a point from above, it’s not an option, yet, to just turn off emissions; but emissions can be lowered and balanced out (through something more meaningful than western ‘carbon credits’). And China is doing that, because it is not in thrall to the profit-motive.
I don’t know what you mean by a ‘pure economic system’.
China, in 2023 alone, installed more solar capacity than the US has ever done in its entire history.
But they also burnt significantly more coal than any other country… That doesn’t answer the question:
IEA Coal Consumption
And while the US is one of the highest per capita, it doesn’t read like a list of capitalist countries to communist countries. Russia isn’t too far off the top either.
CO2 per capita
Who knows, maybe that will change in the coming years.
Centralized socialist control of resources under a planned economy