Opponents of socialism will sometimes admit that it would be a mighty fine thing and would certainly solve the major social problems. But first, they say, we need various reforms of capitalism now to deal with immediate problems.
Reforms solve nothing and in some cases leave things worse off than before because they leave untouched the basic fundamentals of capitalism: ownership of the tools of production by a small minority, with the consequence that the majority must hire themselves out for wages or salaries, and production with a view to profit. Therefore, all decisions to try to solve problems will be made with due regard to the profit motive, without which capitalism can't function. This explains why reforms fail and why parties which said at the outset that they stood for socialism, but first attempted to deal with immediate demands, ended up total reformist parties with a pretty crummy track record of not delivering the goods.
In the greater sense, socialists are the greatest reformers of all because the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of socialism will solve mankind's social problems. Therefore, it will be one whacking big reform to end all reforms. It ought to be socialism that should be mankind's immediate demand, particularly in view of the fact that capitalism, through the operation of its profit motive, is fast destroying this planet.
Screwing up the earth
Let's look at some of the ways capitalism is doing such an excellent job of screwing up this earth. The people of Kiev and Bhopal know all too well that the environment can be ruinously affected by events beyond their control, such as a disaster at a nuclear plant or a chemical plant leak. Still, a recent opinion survey showed that 83 per cent of the public in Canada believe that protecting the environment is an individual responsibility. This argument is being foisted on the public by the Canadian government, with the assistance of the United Nations, which proclaimed June 5 last year "National Environment Day" to make people aware of the part they allegedly play as individuals in the dismal picture of pollution in Canada. In other words, the Canadian government is saying: don't blame us, the powers that be, blame your silly irresponsible selves.
In Canada various forests which are far from industrial areas are dying. Scientists say air pollution is the only plausible explanation for the deaths of a variety of forests which cover a wide area. Air pollution spews from hundreds of big coal-burning power plants and smelters and millions of industrial chimneys and motor vehicle exhaust pipes across North America. More than 50 million tonnes a year of sulphur and nitrogen oxides are released into the air over Canada and the United States each year, with the bulk in the eastern sector. Prevailing winds carry much of that to Quebec and the New England States and finally to the Atlantic Provinces before the residue blows out to sea. The fallout of sulphates from sulphur dioxide in the St Lawrence River area is twice the level set by federal and provincial governments (big joke) as the maximum acceptable for protecting most, though not all the lakes from acidification.
In much of Europe woodlands such as the Black Forest are withering, rotting and dying under the assault of air pollution, including acid rain. In West Germany they call the result waldsterben—forest death. Along the Appalachian Mountain range of the eastern United States the same type of forest destruction is underway. Trees, particularly Red Spruce on the high western slopes facing the US industrial heartland are dying. One forester said it looks as if someone had gone over the mountains with a blow torch.
Now green forests are turning grey in Canada. South of Quebec City the maple forests that make the area the world's maple syrup capital are dying in huge numbers. Trees that should last as long as two or three centuries are going bare in a few years. Their leaves perforated and necrotic and their branches shedding bark. Across a 25,000/square kilometer area south of Quebec City 82 per cent of the trees are affected.
A major international conference on forest decline was held in the Quebec City suburb of Ste Foy in 1983 at which Peter Schutt, Dean of Forestry at Munich University, said "in our country we are in a serious dilemma". Old forests are dying across nearly one-third of central Europe; it came so quickly that "the decline starts almost with the ringing of a bell".
It gives one an idea of how quickly these things develop to note that at the conference Canadian officials said that the wide-spread damage already in Europe was not seen in Canada. At most, there were scattered reports of maple trees dying unexpectedly, they said. Now the decline in the area only 50 kilometers south of Quebec City is a site for scientists and politicians from many countries to study and try to regulate air pollution, especially acid rain.
The pollution begins as colourless gases spewed from millions of chimneys, smoke stacks and exhaust pipes, which form invisible rivers of air pollution travelling hundreds, even thousands of kilometers. These corrosive gases, and the acids they form in the rain arid snow, can eat away the surface of leaves. They also percolate into the soil, destroying the food system of trees and attacking the roots.
Added to the acidic destruction of life in thousands of lakes in Canada and northern Europe, a major forest decline is like the second shoe dropping. Already 15,000 to 20,000 lakes in eastern Canada are considered to be acidic and 180,000 are considered to be at risk in the next decade or so. Most of the tree decline has been down wind of major pollution sources. In Quebec the most numerous deaths are in an area that is soaked with acid rain from US, Ontario and Quebec industries.
While Quebec is the worst area in Canada, it's not the only one. Ontario has small but sometimes severe areas of tree decline from the east shore of Lake Superior to the Quebec border. "Now you can go into any wood lot in Ontario and find tree decline", David McLaughlin of Ontario's Ministry of Environment said in an interview. He stated that a survey of three hundred maple syrup producers found reports of a decline in one-third of forests. Studies have found that tree growth in a number of areas declined about thirty years ago, "it just went into a tailspin" (Toronto Globe and Mail, September 26, 1986).
Paul Addison of the Canadian Forestry Service said the other area of forest decline is a band along the Fundy shoreline of New Brunswick. In addition there are scattered reports of abnormal tree deaths in other parts of the province. From Quebec the forest decline reaches south across the US border into the Sugar Bushes of Vermont and New Hampshire. Further south, in the Appalachians, tree decline is already so bad that it is being described as an ecological catastrophe in the making.
The Washington-based Conservation Foundation issued a report last spring saying high altitude Appalachian forests "are dead or dying on a massive scale and it is impossible to estimate how far this process may go" (Toronto Star, September 18,1986). Conrad Von Moltke of the Foundation said that the top of Mount Mitchell, the highest peak in the eastern United States, is now a wasteland. Forest decline has been reported as far south as Florida's eastern coastal plain and west into the heavily-polluted Ohio Valley. It is also found on the western and southern slopes of California mountains which are bathed in air pollution from the Los Angeles area. The trees in the mountains are commonly referred to as the "everbrowns".
In Canada the toll could be very high. The Maple Forests are not only a national symbol and part of a culture, but also part of a forest industry that directly or indirectly employs one Canadian in ten.
Ignorance about chemical toxicity
In a booklet called The Acid Rain Story Environment Canada says that "many forestry scientists in Canada and the United States are expecting serious, possibly irreversible soil and forest effects by the next twenty-five to one hundred years if acid levels being deposited remain constant or increase".
It was not until the fall of 1985 that the Canadian Forestry Service released a major study on forest decline, but even then it hedged its comments on the role of air pollution. But the study did say that "there is a danger involved in awaiting the completion of scientific studies before making policy decisions regarding pollution control. If long-range air pollution causes serious irreversible damage to forests, then the evidence comes too late".
Even if the governments of the various countries affected were capable of preventing this from happening, which given the profit-oriented nature of capitalism is highly unlikely, they would have to act and act fast The fact that none have shown any signs of acting fast is all the more reason why socialism should be mankind's most immediate demand. It must not be thought that politicians just don't care; many public officials are well-meaning. The plain fact is that they don't know how to deal with the problems, and there is in fact no way to deal with them within capitalism.
It is a complex problem because as yet we don't know everything about the effects of all the various chemicals in the atmosphere and water. First is the number of chemicals involved. Of the more than 7 million chemicals known some 50,000 are produced commercially and find their way into the environment Of these about 2,000 are sufficiently nasty to reach priority lists. The problem is thus vast and it is difficult to know where to start. Ironically, getting on the priority lists is as much a matter of news media attention as of the chemical's toxicity.
Second, to conduct a thorough assessment of the hazard requires extensive and expensive data on chemical properties and toxicity. Only a few hundred chemicals have been studied adequately and even for them there is doubt about their toxic effects at concentration levels which are, say, one-hundredth of that necessary to cause observable injury. We face an immense lack of knowledge.
Third, the chemicals come from many sources: industry, consumer products, leaky land-fills, incinerators, drifting in with air and water from abroad. In the early days of fighting pollution it was easy to point an accusing finger at the smoke stack or sewer. Now we have a multitude of sources.
The toxics migrate from soil to air to water to fish to gulls and cross-currents, and involve numerous government departments (which usually have difficulty co-operating). An excellent excuse for inaction is that any one specific move can affect only a few percent of the sources. The only hope for de-contamination is to stop the sources. The toxins that are unleashed in the environment are leaves in the wind tumbling out of control. Their recovery is impossible.
Improvements in analytical chemistry reveal new chemicals in new places as the frontiers of detection are pushed from parts per million to parts per billion, trillion and quadrillion. We now live not only in a chemical society but in a chemical ecosystem in which all toxic chemicals are present everywhere — in air, drinking water, food, and human tissues. Finding dioxins in drinking water should not make the headlines. If they are not found it is generally because the analysis was not sensitive (or expensive) enough. It is the absence that would be surprising, not the presence. The key quality is the magnitude of the concentration compared to toxic concentrations. Zero concentrations are simply not obtainable today.
Environmental science has realized only recently that water is the critical medium of contamination. Soil contamination is usually local, but water acts as a vehicle to transport toxins along the rivers that flow into the lakes to the cities beyond. It serves as a source for food chain transfer from water to fish to humans. Fish, and creatures like gulls who eat them, are the key signals of contamination — the modern coal-mine canaries. And the signals are disturbing. It has been suggested that one of the best sensors is the domestic "watch cat" fed continuously with local fish. When the cat goes crazy, the humans may be next. At Grassy Narrows cats were among the first to show symptoms of mercury poisoning.
Fundamental change necessary
As bleak as the above may seem, the technology exists to solve this problem. In some areas some measure of success has been attained. Various rivers and estuaries in Britain (including the Thames) and the United States are being restored by stopping sources of pollution. The St John River in New Brunswick was cleaned up by thoughtful, co-ordinated effort.
But will this technology be used on a wide scale within capitalism to solve these problems? No, because to do so the various governments concerned would have to work in harmony, which is impossible given the basic functioning of governments, which exist to run the affairs of capitalism in general and capitalism in their area in particular.
The US and Canadian governments, as well as the various state and provincial governments, are constantly at loggerheads over pollution of the Great Lakes and acid rain. For the US to stop pumping acid rain into Canada, it would have to shut down half the heavy industry in the north-east states. Some likelihood!
Politicians may argue all they wish on these matters, but on one thing they all agree: that these affairs are subsidiary ones to the all-important aspect of running businesses at a profit. Nor is there much long-term planning for these matters within capitalism — profits must be acquired and quickly for businesses to survive, regardless of what long-term disasters may do to these businesses in the future. From a down-to-earth common sense point of view, it all sounds nuts but nevertheless it is all logical within the context of capitalism, which is based on competition and profits. When proposals are made to tackle these problems the response of capitalists and their political joe-boys is: "What'll it cost, man, what'll it cost?" And if the cost is too high: "We'll never make a profit, forget it".
This is not because they are a bunch of creeps or morons. They are circumstanced and circumscribed by the general economic situation just as much (but in a different way) as the working class are. The capitalist class has to do whatever is deemed necessary to make a profit, regardless of whether they are or are not nasty people. It's a waste of time moralizing, bitching and indulging in political slander. The only thing which is not a waste of time in this connexion is to make socialism the immediate objective and organize for it now.
The establishment of a society democratically administered with production for use is the only cure for the world's ills, because once it is established the economic conditions which created these problems will have ceased to exist. We can then set about building a society where poverty will give way to plenty and all can live a full and happy life, each individual being free to develop their personality to the fullest possible extent.
Ray Rawlings (Canada)
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