Green capitalism (1990)

Book Review from the July 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Green Capitalists: How Industry Can Make Money—and Protect the Environment. By John Elkington and Tom Burke. (Victor Gollancz.)

John Elkington and Tom Burke, both involved in environmental pressure groups and public relations work for large corporations, have written a book which documents. industrial sector by industrial sector. the way in which capitalism, driven by the necessity to make profit and expand capital, has systematically despoiled and polluted the environment and harmed the health and lives of workers, either at their place of work or where they live.

The book, for example, contains a lengthy section on the accident at the Bhopal chemical plant in India in 1984 in which 2000 people were killed and tens of thousands severely gassed. We are told how the head of the company tried to place the blame on the Indian government for letting workers live in and around the plant. "It could never happen here," he told a Congressional Committee convened to look at the implications for the United States. But it did. when just a few days later a chemical cloud leaked from the company’s factory in Institute, West Virginia. injuring 135 workers. Then there is the honest and candid reply from a Corporate Executive at Fords, who, on being asked his views on environmental pollution replied that his only concern was “To make money, screw everything else. This is a profit-making system, boy, the rest is frills”. We are also given detailed reports from health organisations and other similar bodies like the US Economic Development Commission who showed that “some 2500 Californians will die from cancer each year over the next decade because of their exposure to toxic chemicals".

These facts and figures only add force to the socialist argument that the many social problems facing workers today, including pollution, stem from our subservient class position as propertyless wage-salary earners owning nothing but our ability to work, which they must sell to an employer in order to live. Capitalism is based on the exploitation of the working class in the production process and exists only to make profit and accumulate capital. Workers have no control over pollution, locally or globally, while the state exists only to further the interests of the capitalist class, taking action only when their general or particular interests warrant it. Yet nowhere in their book do Elkington and Burke discuss or come to terms with this social reality: they show little understanding of the economics of capitalism, are ignorant of how or why profit is produced, and are quiescent on the subject of class and minority property ownership, and the relationship of these factors to the problem of pollution.

Instead, the authors offer a Ten-Point Plan of environmental reforms which they believe capitalists can incorporate into their production processes in the interests of the whole of society without endangering rates of profit. It is this poverty of thought which is the most lamentable aspect of the book.

Capitalists only adopt new technologies, working methods or products when it is profitable to do so, not because the existing ones happen to be polluting the planet or killing workers. As socialists, we have always argued the need for workers to take conscious political action to create the framework of common ownership and democratic control of the means and methods of production and distribution, as the only way in which the social problems like pollution can be tackled. It is sheer folly to believe capitalists will adopt an environmental 'Ten-Point Plan' if their competitors elsewhere in the world market do not. What would shareholders say to a board of directors which introduced costly anti-pollution machinery or practices if it meant that the company lost its competitive edge and market as a result? Some American capitalists have already pointed this out, as the authors grudgingly admit:

Faced with a growing number of increasingly protracted environmental conflicts, hardline American industrialists have often called for the removal of environmental safeguards altogether, arguing that, in the final analysis, it is a question of America's Economy or America's Environment' (p.159).

And then, as if to drive this point home, the authors cite a recent survey of 4000 US chemical companies who estimated that if they adopted the latest practicable technology:

it would cost 139 million dollars, cutting profitability by about 9 per cent causing four plant closures and destroying 261 jobs. If, on the other hand, these companies were forced to go for the ultimate, in the form of the best available technology. the cost would be around 677 million dollars profits would be cut by a third, 20 plants would be forced to close and nearly 10.000 jobs would be lost (p.210).

A society which was not constrained by private property, commodity production and buying and selling would use as a matter of course the best possible technology at hand to ensure the safety of those working in the plants and the protection of the natural environment. Social cost would be the deciding factor, not commercial cost. Capitalism is unable to do this and Elkington and Burke, unlike the Corporate Executive from Fords, are themselves green to believe otherwise.

Richard Lloyd

Disasters: who's to blame? (1991)

From the September 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Events which leave one sickened seem to be everyday if not twice-a-day occurrences lately. Switch off the horror films, view reality instead.

The pace of life and the power behind that tempo are aspects of modern society to which we close our minds, except when a tragedy hits the headlines. The way we distance ourselves is by never imagining that the latest horrific accident will happen to ourselves or our loved ones. Nor do we think that we are in any way responsible. Usually the fault is laid at “their” door, “they” didn't do the job properly, “they” caused those people to drown, be burned or poisoned and “they” should do something about it. But if "we” think that a society operated by money and the wages system is the only way to be—if time is money and cutting corners a way to make more— if this is acceptable then so must be the Kings Cross fire, Hillsborough, Zeebrugge, Chernobyl, Bhopal, Seveso, Three Mile Island. Sellafield— the list could go on and on, and it is “we" who must share the responsibility.

What all these “accidents” have in common is that they are all related to the profit-making system of society that is capitalism—and its imperatives—and have all been attributed to human error. The Master of the ship the Herald of Free Enterprise (the name is a herald of foreboding) goes to sea with the bow doors open. The operators in the Three Mile Island disaster were said to have a "faulty mental model" of the system. The fire in the reactor at Sellafield/Windscale, in October 1957, was the result of certain control operations being performed too soon and too rapidly. In 1974 a DC10 plane crashed after taking off from Orly Airport near Paris killing 346 people: an overworked baggage handler had failed to secure the cargo doors, which subsequently blew out. The Torrey Canyon oil tanker ran aground when the captain who was trying to negotiate a difficult route through the Scilly Isles in order to meet an unrealistic schedule, failed to switch from auto pilot to manual control. At a critical moment, he turned the wheel hard and nothing happened.

The nature of the technology determines the scale of the disasters and human error is involved—but the error is the collective error of those who support present-day society rather than that of the individual workers. If the next terrible happening was to be in our own backyard, if our own child were to die of radiation-related leukaemia, surely we would say enough is enough, no more pain or grief over totally unnecessary events. There must be a better way of providing the necessities of our daily lives and, given collective responsibility, there is.

Janet Carter