The bourgeois mode of production is the last antagonistic form of the social process of production - antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism but of an antagonism that emanates from the individuals' social conditions of existence - but the productive forces developing within bourgeois society create also the material conditions for a solution of this antagonism. The prehistory of human society accordingly closes with this social formation.

Karl Marx, A Contribution To The Critique of Political Economy, 1859

The political climate

"... at every step we are reminded, that in no way do we reign on nature as a conqueror over a foreign nation, as someone on the outside of nature - but that we, with our flesh, our blood and our brain, belong to nature..." (Engels, Dialectics of Nature (our translation

The Inuit population of the Canadian Far North has always been used to blizzards and northern lights, but thunder and lightning are quite a worrisome novelty for them. For the scientific community, the arrival of electrical storms in the arctic proves that global warming and enduring climactic changes are no longer a hypothesis, but a fact. According to a study published last November by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, of Winnipeg, Manitoba, important changes are happening in this part of the world. We can observe the thawing of the permafrost layer, the thinning of ice fields, mudslides and even the disappearance of a lake, after the collapse of its ice banks.

Unfortunately, all the serious climatological studies confirm that these considerable transformations of our environment are not confined to the Far North. The upheaval provoked by global warming will have a deep impact around the planet.

Thus, the conclusions of a UN sponsored study by the Intergovernmental Group on Climactic Change, published in Geneva under the title “Climactic change 2001: Impacts adaptation, and vulnerability”, paints a sombre portrait. The planet’s temperature in all likelihood will rise from 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius.

Consequently, the sea level will also rise from between 9 to 88 centimetres. This hike in the temperature level will also have a significant effect on atmospheric pressure. This will cause more and more flooding and drought, an increase in hurricane activity, tornadoes and tidal waves, permanently damaged natural habitats and a proliferation of infectious diseases. It also predicts that:

the impact distribution of climactic warming will accentuate the disparity between the rich and the poor.

Numerous “water wars” are equally expected, for due to the scarcity of the resource, many waterways will be transformed from sources of life to streams of conflict.

This dark future has already started to tragically affect our lives. For example, according to the world’s greatest insurer, the German group Munich Re, the number of “natural catastrophes” has set a new record in the year 2000, reaching 850 disasters, 100 more than the previous year and 200 more than the yearly average of the 1990s.

Finally, the head of the Secretariat of the Convention on Bio-diversity, Hamdallah Zedan, in a speech he delivered in Montreal at the end of November, declared that the earth is presently undergoing a period of mass extinction and that:

half the living species will disappear in the 21st Century if environmental change continues at the same rate.

However, answers to the threats posed by global warming do exist. They are simple but radical. They are not of a technical but of a political nature. In 1997, when the Kyoto conference promised to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 5% over the next twenty years (a promise that will clearly be broken), the scientific commissions were urgently demanding a 60% cut over the same period. That’s the bottom line for human survival. This is an unattainable goal for the capitalist mode of production, for it is based on productivism. This is what Marx illustrated in Capital when he wrote:

Accumulation for accumulation’s sake, production for production’s sake, these are the watchwords of the political economy announcing the historical mission of the bourgeois period. And it doesn’t delude itself for a minute on the pains of giving birth to its wealth... [our translation].

That’s why it does no good to propose a legislative strategy, as the Greens do, to save the planet.

The logic of the market and profit will inevitably derail it. All reforms, laws and regulations are in vain. We only need to study the politics and results of the Greens, in government or in opposition, to see that Capitalism, even draped in green, remains the worst threat to our survival.

Getting rid of it is an act of survival. Only a true communist revolution, eliminating the productivist logic of capitalism, organizing production for human needs, not profit, offers hope to humanity.

The political economy of blood

This autumn, in the space of a few months, scandals prompting massive re-calls of tires, dramatically illustrated the fundamental contradiction existing between public well-being and the market economy.

One after the other, Bridgestone/Firestone and Goodyear were forced to recall millions of tires, but the majority of the dangerous products still remain in circulation. In the first case, Bridgestone/Firestone is blamed for a series of accidents having caused over 250 deaths worldwide. The tires that would explode without apparent reason, would often equip sports utility vehicles (SUVs) most often Ford Explorers, an extremely popular model whose design was defective and dangerous because it was top-heavy. More recently, the “E” type of tire produced by Goodyear was the object of a “silent recall”. The company is thus trying to avoid a scandal at all costs, which would mean heavy financial consequences. In this case, the dangerous tires also equipped SUVs and mini school busses that were involved in accidents killing scores of people. In the two cases, public security agencies have been politely accused of “falling asleep at the wheel”. Clearly, it seems quite evident that they have attempted to cover the whole thing up.

Ruling class editorialists, though they unanimously deplore the foot-dragging of the control agencies, or even sometimes the callousness of the companies, always conclude by invoking some kind of fatalism linked to the inevitable flaws of technological progress. However, the whole history of capitalism leads us to suggest cold and calculated murder.

Let’s take an example linked to the automobile industry, the Grimshaw v. Ford trial of 1981. The gas-tank of the Ford Pintos had the unfortunate habit of exploding as the result of minor collisions, at speeds of which could be as low as 21 mph. The Pintos would then transform themselves into balls of fire and the passengers into human torches. The company was completely aware of the defect, and had estimated it would cost 137 million per year to correct.

However, in an exercise of demonic number crunching, of balancing the costs versus the profits, Ford decided to let its clients burn! Calculating that the “problem” would cause, on average, 180 deaths a year and as many grave injuries all totalling 49.5 million in liability annually, Ford simply decided to shut up and pocket the 87.5 million difference... That’s what Marx and Engels used to call the “icy waters of egotistical calculation”. Of course, the capitalists weren’t in the habit of driving Pintos...And evidently the killers were never condemned.

Is this an exceptional case caused by unscrupulous management? Not if we recall the Dalkon Shield intra-uterine device produced by A.H. Robbins, the Dow Corning Corporation breast implants, the vile asbestos that the nationalists in power in Quebec City still want to poison the whole planet with, or again the tobacco companies, etc. No, these are not simple defects; it’s the whole system that is threatening our very existence. A system we condemn and for which we are preparing an appropriate sentence for which there will be no appeal.

Private life and class

No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portion of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.

So wrote Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto. A study of the situation of the working classes since, has only confirmed a hundred times over the complicity of the bourgeoisie and its State in sucking the marrow from our bones and the blood from our veins.

Current events regularly confirm the totalitarian nature of capitalist exploitation. Take the case of Virginia, located just south of Washington, the United States capital. The Senate of Virginia has just passed a law permitting one of its counties to forbid people from sleeping in any rooms other than their bedrooms.

Astounding legislation, ostensibly aimed at insuring peace and quiet, in neighbourhoods where extreme poverty forces families to share small accommodations.

In reality, the odds are that the law was put into place rather to maintain the rental market for the benefit of the landlords.

Even the State’s estimation finds that approximately 80,000 households would be in the situation where they would be violating the law simply by forced cohabitation or by taking in one of their sick parents. Besides the services rendered to these slumlords by the state, the criminalisation of the workers having a hard time paying rent and the indecent intrusion that it permits in their private lives, the law will also increase the number of the homeless. Yet, even the American Association of Mayors admits to a rise of 17% of homeless families in the last year alone. As the black clouds of a new recession appear on the horizon, this new affront to human dignity demonstrates yet again that under capitalism, it’s the vile power of inhumanity that rules.

“The wolves, the swine, and thedirty dogs of the old society” ⁽¹⁾

Last autumn, we wrote a bit on the popular TV series, “Survivor”, a live portrayal of the moral decay into which capitalism has dragged humanity. Now let’s turn from that live portrayal to a “still-life” portrait every bit as gruesome. It’s about the doll “Marv, the condemned man.” The toy presents a man strapped to an electric chair, who obviously deserves the fatal jolt. To reassure any potential executioners, the condemned man doesn’t have a very sympathetic air about him. How in hell could he, as a good judge, who insists that everybody call him “your honour”, has already found him guilty? All that is needed, then, is to pull the switch that opens the show.

The body of the poor wretch convulses, his eyes glow red, and then, after having sufficiently atoned, the doll finally dies. One assumes that his soul then burns in eternal damnation... This “educational” toy, sold by the tens of thousands around the world is already a huge commercial success.

What success? Birth, human relations, love, death itself, all of it, absolutely everything has long ago been reduced by the ruling class to making a buck. The bourgeoisie has commercialized all these ‘useless’ matters of sentimentality... “Atrocious hunger for gold”, wrote Virgil.

Horresco referens! ⁽²⁾

(1) Marx, Letter to Kugelman, April 12, 1871.

(2) “I shudder as I speak of it!”.