Ecology: the first decade (1971)

From the June 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ten years ago, anyone who spoke of the “balance of nature,” or claimed that our food was being poisoned on a mass scale, would have been classed along with nudists, vegetarians and socialists. Such talk identified the crank and the weirdo. As for ecology, few could even spell it.

Today fad has become orthodoxy. The language of the crank has become the language of the Pope, the Prince of Wales and President Nixon. Every school child knows the meaning of ecology.

Now we have Doomwatch, the biologist’s Dixon of Dock Green. We have advertisements based on ecological appeal, like the one for Natural Gas. Establishment magazines like Time and Reader’s Digest incessantly remind us of the threats to our natural environment.

In 1960 a book introducing ecology to sixth-formers stated that

  opportunities for full-time employment of ecologists in Britain are few and far between . . . There are neither many jobs nor many people competent to fill them. (John Hillaby, Nature and Man).

Today we take the population explosion of full-time ecologists for granted — and we are not surprised at the rise of environmental consultants, environmental lawyers — even environmental bankers. Within one decade a revolution in ideas has occurred. And this is only the beginning.

In 1962, just after the Thalidomide affair, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was published, to become an instant best-seller. This far-sighted work, studiously factual yet excitingly written, was an investigation of the ways in which weed — and pest-killers were poisoning wildlife, human beings and the system of nature in general. Rachel Carson showed that

  Every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death.

And she demanded:

  Why should we tolerate a diet of weak poisons, a home in insipid surroundings, a circle of acquaintances who are not quite our enemies, the noise of motors with just enough relief to prevent insanity? Who would want to live in a world which is just not quite fatal?

Apparently the answer to that question was: any capitalist who can make a quick profit out of this murderous system. The chemical firms spent a great deal of money spreading lies about the effects of their products, [1] and trying to discredit Rachel Carson as a mystical dreamer out of touch with reality. One such firm wrote to Silent Spring's publishers asking them to withdraw the book, and implying that those who thought like Rachel Carson were in the pay of the Russian government, who thereby hoped to strike at the West’s food supply.

Time magazine and Reader's Digest carried bitter attacks on Silent Spring. An outburst typical of “responsible people’ ’at that time was the following, from the Director of the New Jersey Department of Agriculture:

  In any large-scale pest-control programme we are immediately confronted with the objection of a vociferous, misinformed group of nature-balancing, organic-gardening, bird-loving, unreasonable citizenry that has not been convinced of the important place of agricultural chemicals in our economy.

But these chemicals also had an important, though less benign, place in the ecology as Silent Spring made clear to millions. Most pesticides, in sufficient amounts, kill anything that lives, and not just the pest aimed at. Many of these chemicals are persistent, that is, once added to the natural system they remain there in poisonous form. All the plants, animals, soil and water, in every part of the world, contain steadily increasing amounts of these poisonous substances. Penguins and seals in the Antarctic, thousands of miles from the nearest spraying, contain DDT and numerous other poisons.

Animals which consume these substances do not pass them out of their bodies as quickly as they take them in, but rather accumulate the poisons in increasing quantities. If these animals are eaten by predators, the predators are getting a highly concentrated dosage, which they concentrate further. They may be eaten in their turn, and thus the chemical intensifies as it moves up the food chain. In this way, very tiny concentrations of pesticide may wreak havoc with the neutral system. At Clear Lake, California, DDT was sprayed in concentrations of one part in 70 millions. It was absorbed by plankton, which were eaten by fish, which were eaten by bigger fish, which were eaten by grebes. By this time concentrations were up to 2,500 parts per million. The grebes died.

Those creatures at the tops of food chains are therefore most vulnerable. Man is at the top of many food chains. In more and more parts of the world, men’s flesh would be poisonous to eat, and mother’s milk is poisonous to their children.

Paradoxically, the use of chemical killers against a particular pest often destroys that pest’s natural enemies, whilst the intended victim may develop a resistant strain. This leads to a renewed plague of the pests —and the use of new and deadlier poisons. Two or more chemicals added to the environment at different times and in different places may meet in the soil or the waterways, and combine to produce a new substance more deadly than either of them. Nature is a delicate, intricate system, and apparently slight intervention in this system may have dramatic consequences. [2]

No Socialist, Rachel Carson nevertheless could clearly see that the system of production for profit was the major cause of pesticidal pollution, firstly, because chemicals were used to increase the productivity of agriculture regardless of their wider consequences, and secondly, because the companies producing agricultural chemicals constituted a great vested interest. In many cases, alternative, non-chemical means of pest-control were more effective and cheaper, yet precisely because these methods were so simple, there were no great profits to be had from marketing them, and therefore nobody with an interest in selling them to farmers.* [3]

Scientists working on pest control were directly or indirectly in the pay of the chemical companies. These companies have not hesitated to proclaim that the world's food supply depends upon their products, and that people who object to being poisoned by them are responsible for world hunger. As recently as 1967, an employee of the Velsicol Chemical Corporation wrote:

  the campaign of false fear against the use of modern pesticides has, is, and will cause deaths and sufferings greater than those of World War II. It has been over 12 years since a major new insecticide has been brought to market and this is due to unnecessary controversy . . . daily deaths due to starvation and malnutrition have risen from 6,000-7,000 per day to over 12,000 per day, not to mention the millions who have died from vector-borne diseases . . . Each person who has played a part in the campaign of fear must accept responsibility for his share of the unnecessary toll of human life.

Rachel Carson had scotched that one merely by pointing out that agriculture’s chief headache was the problem of burdensome surpluses, though she didn’t go further and explain how a surplus problem could co-exist with a starvation problem. In fact, the world can grow plenty of food for everyone, with or without pesticides. Where people starve, it is not because the food cannot be grown, but because they are too poor to pay for it.

As public opinion swung round on pesticides, other forms of pollution began to hit the headlines. Some, like smog and nuclear fallout, were already issues. Gradually, more and more people linked the variety of pollutions together, and began to see a single problem. Ecologists became sought after and listened to. The Environment was a hot political topic. Firms which had been arrogant and sarcastic looked to their public relations and began to talk about their “responsibilities”. An avalanche of anti-pollution legislation descended from government. As the western economy moved into recession, one branch of industry was expanding as never before: anti-pollution equipment.

The tone of this editorial from Fortune (February 1970), the American business magazine, would have been utterly unthinkable two or three years earlier:

  Looked at one by one, many of our present depredations seem relatively easy to correct. But when we put the horrors in a row — the drab and clumsy cities, the billboards, the scum-choked lakes, the noise, the poisoned air and water, the clogged highways, the mountainous and reeking dumps — their cumulative effect drives us toward the conclusion that some single deep-seated flaw in modern society is responsible for all of these.

  . . . Because our strength is derived from the fragmented mode of our knowledge and our action, we are relatively helpless when we try to deal intelligently with such unities as a city, an estuary’s ecology, or “the quality of life.”

The Environmental outcry, which has yet to reach its height, is fully justified by the horrible facts. It is not a volatile craze which will disappear next year — or next century.

In some American cities tap water is undrinkable; drinking water must be bought in bottles. [4] In Tokyo, the world’s largest city, air pollution has got so bad that oxygen-vending machines have been installed in the streets. [5] Annual property damage from air pollution in the United States is estimated at $12 billion (thousand million). Millions of tons of oil are released into the oceans every year, and the Sargasso Sea now contains a permanent oil slick covering several hundred square miles.

While scientists calculate precisely the increased number of monsters and idiots born because of radioactive fallout, nerve gas and nuclear wastes are dumped in the Atlantic. The lands and seas are cluttered with plastic containers which will not be broken down — no, literally not in a million years. And everywhere swarms capitalism’s iron rat, the petrol-combustion motor-car, always bringing with it death, injury, sickness and frustration on a colossal scale.

Latest pollutants to make the news are PCBS and metals. [6] PCBS (polychlorinated biphenyls), used in the making of paints, varnishes, adhesives and lubricants, can now be found throughout the world’s natural system, including human mother’s milk, already rich in such succulents as DDT and its relatives. Implicated in the destruction of wild birds, PCBS are helping the peregrine and golden eagle along the road to extinction. The effects on humans are not yet known, PCBS are persistent.

Among serious metal pollutants are lead, mercury, cadmium, beryllium, nickel and vanadium. Lead enters the ecology mainly from its use as an anti-knock additive in petrol. It is suspected of inhibiting enzyme action, thus damaging the brain, liver and red blood corpuscles. Beryllium is emitted by processing plants, and like nickel, which is used as a fuel additive and in metallurgy, it damages the lungs. Cadmium, picked up from galvanized water pipes, causes high blood pressure and kidney damage. Mercury, used in the production of paint and drugs, keeps turning up in fish. It is especially toxic to the brain.

Pollution is not just caused by “technology”, and a return to the “simple life” is no answer (though less passionate worship of "progress” might help). The high rate of technical innovation itself provides cures for its own disease, DDT, dieldrin, aldrin, heptachlor, and other dangerous substances can be totally discarded, and replaced with chemicals which are more specific, or which break down more quickly. Non-chemical methods of pest control can be developed also. Factory chimneys and drains can be fitted with filters. “Biodegradable” plastics can be developed. Sewage can be treated, and could be a useful source of fertilizer. [7] Industrial processes can all be modified if necessary. No technique of production is indispensable. There is a substitute for anything, or there soon can be if research resources are channelled in the appropriate direction. Something can be done about pollution, and of course something is to some extent being done, and the reasons for its slowness and indecisiveness are economic, not technical.

Although European Conservation Year was justly described by some sceptics as “European Conversation Year,” and similar jibes can easily be made at other environmental projects, it would be a gross error to suppose that capitalism is doing nothing about the problem. It is true that the picture has now become more confused with the growth of a general awareness of ecology, so that corporations which formerly flaunted their disdain for nature can now be relied upon to treat the environment as a sensitive public relations zone. Underneath the propaganda, however, progress really is being made, two obvious cases in Britain being the comparative success of the Clean Air Act, and the great improvement in the condition of the Thames. Norway’s biggest industrial combine recently closed, and wrote off as a total loss, a £6 million plant, because the firm could not bear the additional costs of anti-pollution measures (Guardian, 30 April). All over the world, pollution control costs are rising steeply as a proportion of capital investment. It would be equally mistaken to suppose that only the polluters are propelled by profit, those who wish to restrain them being disinterested guardians of the public welfare.

Sometimes the actions of governments are motivated by the crudest short-term financial considerations. The British Government responded to the Torrey Canyon menace by pouring millions of gallons of poisonous detergent into the sea. Ecologically, this was a disaster many times greater than the oil slick, but the holiday trade of seaside resorts was the determining factor. “The tourists were worth £40 million a year and the lobsters were worth £2 million a year,” said the man from Whitehall. “So we killed the lobsters.” (quoted in Richard Pefrow, The Black Tide)

But capitalism’s powers-that-be are capable of a broader approach than this. Cigarette smoking, for example, provides profits for the tobacco firms and tax revenues for the state, yet intelligent administrators of capitalism can readily see that they lose out, because of the illness and death caused by cigarettes, which lower the productivity of the working-class, and thereby cut the rate of return on investments in labour-power (the Health Service, schools and universities, etc).

It is the same with pollution. Short-sighted people often talk as though the choice for capitalism was concern for the environment or economic growth, but the truth is that in the long run a lack of concern for the environment will cut growth by lowering the quality of human labour-power, the source of growth. Poisoned workers are not so profitable to employ. Nations like Japan and Italy, which currently foul their environments more than most, will pay for it.

Furthermore, though government pollution-control laws raise the costs of production, firms do not necessarily mind their costs rising—so long as their competitors are in the same boat. Most leading American managers were found to be in favour of tougher pollution restrictions, and one of them explained:

  If I correct my plant problems but my competitor doesn’t, that company has a competitive advantage. I have committed huge sums; they haven't. In fairness to my stockholders, therefore, I can’t make that first move. (Fortune, February 1970).

This is a familiar pattern. Such laws will be particularly favoured (perhaps after initial howls of protest, as with the pesticide producers) by big firms in industries where competition from smaller firms persists. Anything which raises costs all round help to eliminate the small fry and redound to the benefit of the large concerns. Historically, much factory legislation was supported by large companies for this reason, and such a situation can even result in these firms favouring a general rise in wages.

The established firm may also regard its reputation as an asset, and in conditions of growing agitation over a particular evil, like pollution, such a firm may have to choose between soiling its reputation or handing a competitive advantage to a less reputable rival. Here again, the firm will welcome state direction.

A company with a near-monopoly position in regard to particular products will have a somewhat different outlook. With the competitive pressures off, the natural distaste for state interference will reassert itself. The firm will tend to anticipate possible government intervention, and act preemptively, in order to preserve as much room for manoeuvre as possible. Thus, Monsanto Chemicals, the sole North American and British manufacturers of PCBS, recently stopped selling these, voluntarily, except for uses which are unlikely to leak into the environment. By doing this, they hope to avoid a total ban, and incidentally a pollution scandal which might embarrass them now they are moving into the field of anti-pollution technology. Their spokesman said of pollution:

   I don’t think it’s a scare which will go away . . . We want to be masters of our own fate, rather than to be swept overboard on a wave of political emotion.

To say that most big capitalists welcome anti-pollution restrictions, does not prevent their still having an incentive to bend or break these laws. ‘‘Nader’s Raiders” in the United States uncovered case after case of government agencies becoming corrupted by the interests thety were supposed to regulate. And outright wilful contravention of the law is not uncommon—though, as in the case of offshore oil-drillers who omit to instal expensive safety valves, this may not come to light until disaster strikes

The pollution problem is just as bad in Russia, and this is often used to argue that the profit-incentive has nothing to do with it. But this misses the point. The manager of a western company is subject to pressures which ignore the general welfare of the population: he is therefore likely to be faced with a situation where to keep costs down he must pollute. His employers judge his performance by profits, not by charitable acts. The manager of a Russian state enterprise is in an identical position, only in addition to making a profit he must also fulfil a production target decided in an office in Moscow. This is just an extra pressure, and with its production-at-all-costs emphasis, is hardly likely to deter him from polluting. Commenting on the Russian pollution crisis, Izvestia complained that the manager’s attitude was: “We deliver the goods, and the rest is of no importance.” (Economist, September, 1970)

There are two general tendencies in capitalism’s response to pollution: increase in the power of central government, and further (administrative) unification of the world. Pollution is not bounded by frontiers. Biologically, there is only one world. The Germans ruined the Rhine for the Dutch as well as themselves. The Swedish government is cracking down hard on pollution—but a great deal of poison descends on Sweden after floating across from Britain or America. The insecticide BHC is widely used in Russia, but little in America or Britain: its presence in British rainfall is presumed to be due to its having floated round the world, across America and the Atlantic. Pollution is one more world problem, which, it is evident to everyone, can only be solved on a world scale.

Why does pollution occur? A small amount is due to ignorance or miscalculation. A small amount is unavoidable given present technology and population. But the immense majority is due to the economic network. People pollute because it is in their economic interests to do so.

It is sometimes claimed, though, that the problem arises from a wrong attitude to nature. This has some truth, though it will not do as a complete explanation. The attitude to nature, and the economic system, are interlinked. The present growth of ecological awareness is full of hope, for it encourages a mentality which considers total processes rather than isolated fragments. The vast majority of specialised scientists did nothing to warn us of the menace to our environment, and when people like Rachel Carson raised the alarm, many of the “experts” were more horrified at this usurping of their oracular role than at the gravity of the crisis. In the pesticide controversy, as in the earlier fallout controversy, the authorities were wrong and the “faddists” right. You cannot trust the powers that be.

Steele.

[1] Documented in Since Silent Spring by Frank Graham jr, from which is also taken some of the other information cited here.

[2] Robert L. Rudd’s Pesticides and the Living Landscape is now a standard work on the subject. It was actually written before Silent Spring, but turned down by publishers as a “polemic.” As a result of having written this book. Rudd lost a promotion, and almost his job, at an American University, and was sacked from a state agricultural experimental station.

[3] Biological methods of control, such as introducing specific organisms which attack the pest and keep its numbers down.

[4] Barry Commoner, Science & Survival, p. 16.

[5] Economist, 5 September, 1970.

[6] The Ecologist, January 1971; Fortune, January 1971; “Trace Elements” in The Ecologist, May 1971.

[7] “Excretions of consumption are of the greatest importance for agriculture. So far as their utilisation is concerned, there is an enormous waste of them in the capitalist economy. In London, for instance, they find no better use for the excretion of four and a half million human beings than to contaminate the Thames with it at heavy expense.” K. Marx, Capital, Vol. Ill, Ch 5.

Fit for consumption? (1986)

From the May 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Under capitalism food supplies are manipulated to increase profits regardless of the consequences to health. This is because food, like all other goods, is produced for its exchange-value and, therefore, supplied according to the dictates of the market instead of for social needs.

Profits from agriculture are maximised in the following ways: destroying or storing food when there is a surplus that cannot be sold at a profit, regardless of the number of deaths from starvation or malnutrition; cutting back on food production to prevent unsaleable surpluses in subsequent harvests; farming land more intensively by using artificial fertilisers and pesticides; extending the number of processes which food undergoes.

Although about a quarter of a million old people in Britain suffer from malnutrition and there are obscene inequalities of wealth in the rest of the population, generally speaking there is relative affluence compared with underdeveloped countries and the problem for food manufacturers is to try to persuade people to buy more in order that the market can be expanded and profits increased. Normally manufacturers can persuade the public to buy more by the skilful use of advertising, playing on the fears and insecurity of consumers in an aggressively competitive, acquisitive society. But food presents a greater problem because, beyond the level of satiety. people do not eat more as a result of increased wealth. Nevertheless, profits can be increased by extending the number of processes which food undergoes and adulterating it with cheaper additives.

In 1969 a Lancet editorial pointed out that, on average, three pounds of chemical additives a year were consumed in food by each person in this country and that the number of additives exceeded 20,000, but by 1985 this number had increased to 35.000 and the consumption of additives was a staggering 8-11 pounds a year! Indeed, a new term — 'junk-food' has been coined to describe the artificially flavoured, highly processed food that is increasingly consumed today. Additives are used to provide colouring, enhance flavour, inhibit mould, emulsify, sweeten and provide uniformity of ingredients in the products sold.

The extent of the profits that can be made from expanding the processes which food undergoes can be seen in the sale of potato crisps which cost forty or fifty times more than the same weight of potatoes. Fish fingers and chickens are treated with polyphosphates (E450) to absorb more water, while fish and prawns are dipped in water before being frozen to increase their weight. It has been estimated that the public pays nearly five million pounds a year for water! (Walker. C. and Cannon. G. 1985. The Food Scandal, Century Publishing). All of these practices are perfectly legal: the 1984 regulations only require water to be declared in uncooked cured meats if it exceeds ten per cent.

The addition of water alone in frozen fish and prawns has no detrimental effects on health but polyoxyethylene monostearate, an emulsifier used in bread to make flour absorb water, causes cancer in rats. Cancers can be caused by some synthetic food colours. The use of amaranth, a red food dye, is permitted in Britain although in 1970 a Russian study showed that in its pure form it possesses carcinogenic activity. Amaranth was banned in the USA in 1976. Its continued use in Britain is a feature of additives in that there is a complete lack of uniformity of products permitted or banned from one country to another. Commercial considerations determine which additives are permitted, however harmful, while public awareness of the dangers of certain substances and consumer pressure in refusing to purchase certain products restricts or modifies their continued use.

The production of meat involves a number of processes which are potentially injurious to health; milk and meat may become contaminated from the routine doses of antibiotics given to cattle to prevent infectious diseases. The modern methods of rearing cattle cause them to be considerably fatter than wild game; the fat is also higher in saturated fats, which contribute to heart disease. and lower in polyunsaturated fats. But meat products present the greatest threat to health. Profits are boosted by using hide, skin. bone, preservatives and large amounts of fat in sausages. Most processed meats not only contain preservatives and colouring but consist of two or three per cent salt by weight while salami consists of as much as five per cent salt. Processed meats and bacon contain nitrates which interfere with the body's ability to convert carotene into vitamin A and combine with amines, occurring naturally in food, to produce nitrosamines which can cause cancer.

It is estimated that about twenty times more salt (sodium chloride) is ingested in this country than is needed for the maintenance of health and that an excessive intake is, at least in part, a causative factor in the production of high blood pressure. But salt is added to a wide range of products besides processed meats, including cereals, tinned vegetables. soups and bread.

Sodium also occurs in the diet by the wide use of monosodium glutamate, a flavour enhancer which permits smaller amounts of more expensive foods to be used. It was also widely used in baby foods until a study at Washington University in 1969 showed that in large doses it damaged the brain cells of baby mice. As babies have a poorly developed sense of taste its use was clearly directed at the mothers who "tested" the food to ensure that it was suitable. The publicity that resulted from the study led to some manufacturers (but not all) withdrawing monosodium glutamate from their products. The extensive use of monosodium glutamate in Chinese cooking can lead to side-effects such as palpitations, general weakness, gall bladder discomfort and numbness of the arms and the back of the neck and has become known as the "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome".

Table salt, itself, is not free from additives but may contain sodium ferrocyanide and magnesium carbonate to prevent caking. In addition, sodium is consumed in the form of sodium citrate in soft drinks. It is, therefore, not surprising that a study in Scotland in the 45-64 age group found that one-fifth of them suffered from mild hypertension.

Sugar is an invaluable additive to the food manufacturer, it provides bulk cheaply, preserves, thickens and sweetens. Every man. woman and child in Britain consumes an average of two pounds of sugar a week. Tooth decay, obesity, constipation, diverticulitis, gall bladder disease, chronic digestive disorders and diabetes have all been implicated to some degree with the excessive consumption of refined foods in industrialised countries. By contrast. adult-onset diabetes is rare in rural Africa where a diet high in unrefined carbohydrates is eaten.

The food industry is also making more use of dextrose in food: more than 16lbs of glucose (dextrose) a year, on average, is consumed in processed foods. Fructose, a naturally occurring sugar which is twice as sweet as sucrose (white sugar) has been used in the food industry in the USA and could be an improvement in health terms because only half the amount needs to be used. But health needs under capitalism are always secondary to the requirement of profitability and the Common Market placed an import quota on high fructose com syrup to protect sugar beet production.

Highly refined foods provide more calories, but less nutrients (unless artificially added) and do not induce satiety as readily as unrefined food, tending to lead to higher consumption with greater profits for the manufacturers. White bread is made by the highly mechanised Chorleywood Bread Process which avoids the hours of fermentation that traditional bread requires. It also contains more air and water than the traditional loaf as a result of using additives that are potentially harmful. Polyoxyethylene monostearate, potassium bromate, propionic acid, ammonium sulphate, chlorine dioxide, nitrosyl chloride, benzoyle peroxide, sodium propionate. L-cysteine hydrochloride and azodicarbonamide are all used in refined bread. Agene was used for bleaching flour for nearly thirty years before it was linked with nervous disorders in humans and in 1968, 600 people in Johannesburg were poisoned by bread containing one per cent potassium bromate (Grant. D., Your Daily Food, Faber and Faber. 1973).

Even when additives are present in food at what are considered to be "safe" levels there is still a risk to health. The American Food and Drug Administration found that two chemicals taken at the same time can enhance the effect of each other; for example. silicone when used with an emulsifier makes the cells of the gut more absorbent and susceptible to poisoning.

There is also considerable contamination in food from the use of insecticides. In 1984 the Association of Public Analysts found that one third of fruit and vegetables were contaminated with DDT (despite being banned), aldrin (a carcinogen), dimethoate and mevinphos.

Although consumer pressure has resulted in a few dangerous substances being withdrawn from food the number of additives used has increased considerably in the last twenty years. Additives will continue to be used while it is profitable to do so. Only a socialist society which puts people first can stop the threat to health which capitalism imposes.

Carl Pinel

Proper Gander: All’s Whale That Ends Well? (2020)

The Proper Gander Column from the March 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Stacey Dooley has an open-minded, grounded approach to her documentaries, with an engagingly genuine interest in the contentious subjects she covers. Her latest programme, Stacey Dooley Investigates: The Whale Hunters (BBC3), follows on from her previous investigations into women suicide bombers and sex offenders, among other topics. Stepping out of her comfort zone, she goes out on a Norwegian boat hunting minke whales, and watches as one get harpooned and dragged aboard. Most of the programme, though, is taken up by her meeting families on the Faroe Islands, where eating long-finned pilot whale meat has been part of their culture for a thousand years. Hunting pilot whales is called the ‘grind’(grindadráp) in Faroese; when a podis sighted out at sea, fishing boats herd the whales towards the beach where they are killed by hand. The recommended method claims not to cause any suffering: a sleek-looking tool called a spinal lance, the use of which is monitored and regulated. 

The Faroese live a rural life, close to nature and therefore not as distanced from where their food comes from as most of us. When we load our supermarket trolleys with meat or fruit or any food, we scarcely think about how it was produced. The Faroese see pilot whale hunting as ‘taking food from nature’, which it is their ‘duty’ to do. They emphasise that they don’t catch any endangered species and it’s more environmentally friendly than rearing cattle, which carries a significant ‘carbon footprint’. The grind is small-scale subsistence farming, with the meat just distributed among the islanders rather than being for export. Pilot whale meat remains popular among the Faroese, despite the islands’ officials recommending years ago that eating it should be avoided. This is because it contains high levels of mercury, DDT derivatives and polychlorinated biphenyls (chemicals largely banned in the 1970s), leached into the oceans and ingested by the pilot whales.

The Faroese see the grind as part of their culture, which others don’t have the right to interfere with. Whaling around the Faroe Islands isn’t covered by the International Whaling Commission’s ban on commercial whaling. For starters, the long-finned pilot whales hunted there are a kind of dolphin, despite their name. Also, as the Faroe Islands are devolved territories of Denmark, as Greenland is, their autonomy means that they don’t go along with Denmark as one of the countries which agreed to the ban. ‘Aboriginal whaling’, defined as the hunting of whales by indigenous communities is exempted from the ruling anyway. Japan always got round the ban by hunting whales for ‘scientific’ reasons, while Norway, Canada and others object to the moratorium and have continued commercial hunting. The hunting of whales was banned because many species were declining rapidly towards unsustainable levels. Another factor is that whales and dolphins are more intelligent than most other mammals, raising questions about their capacity for suffering and awareness.

Objections to the grind mostly come from the Sea Shepherds, a direct-action group, whose mission ‘is to end the destruction of habitat and slaughter of wildlife in the world’s oceans’. They used to actively protest against the grind, but since being banned from this their work has shifted largely to raising awareness by posting grisly videos of the hunt online. The group of them which Stacey meets are made up of activists from the UK and America, while none are Faroese. The Sea Shepherds emphasise their non-aggressive methods, and argue that the grind is a tradition which should be left in the past, and that it’s not as humane as its proponents make out. They point out that the spinal lance often isn’t used correctly, causing suffering to the pilot whales. Stacey shows an adviser to the Faroese government gory footage of a dolphin being killed in a clumsy, drawn-out way. Official reports claim that the methods used are humane and quick, whereas a fifth of whales take up to six minutes to die. The adviser recognises that sometimes the grind can be brutal, but that’s because it takes place in an uncontrolled environment, not in a slaughterhouse.

Objections to the grind and the risk of contamination haven’t stemmed the Faroe Islanders’ love of pilot whale meat. The grind, and whaling in general, have been traditions for hundreds of years, and could continue for hundreds more. How would the issue of whaling be handled in a socialist society? Of course, we can’t say with any certainty, as it’ll depend on whatever the situation is at the time. But the practice is still likely to divide opinion and represent bigger questions about cultural differences, animal ‘rights’ and sustainability. A socialist society would make its decisions democratically, rather than through hierarchies, commercial interests or laws, as we have to in capitalism. All sides would be able to have their say, and all relevant facts – about contaminants, whale populations, the methods used – would be freely available so that people can make an informed decision. This could be made by voting directly on whether or how to hunt whales, or by electing people into roles to resolve the issue, or some other approach we can’t imagine now. Would it be only for the whaling communities to decide? Maybe, maybe not, if hunting had a wider impact. It’s likely that a socialist society would have some decision-making structures with a global reach, more accountable and accessible than their equivalents today and not run through states (as states would be obsolete). So, it’s possible that something like the International Whaling Commission could remain in a socialist society, albeit structured differently and more democratically. Whichever way any decisions about whaling would be made in socialism, they would aim to directly meet people’s needs and wants, in balance with nature. There are no easy answers with controversial issues like whaling, but a socialist society would enable us to make decisions in the most reasonable way.

Mike Foster

By The Way: Give the Dogs a Thousand Lashes, Damme ! (1944)

The By The Way column from the December 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

Give the Dogs a Thousand Lashes, Damme !

The mentality of some Tory M.P.s is weird and wonderful.

Thus we have Mr. D. Robertson (Conservative, Streatham) dilating on the idleness of the men employed on bomb damage repairs.

  He mentioned a case of men who were brought to Streatham in luxury coaches from a hostel at 8 o'clock and went off to breakfast at 10 o'clock.
  They should have had their breakfast before they left the hostel, but did not because they had lain too long in their beds. (Evening Standard, October 27th, 1944.)

Just fancy! Luxury coaches—the louts! Of course, M.P.s don't ride to the House in luxury coaches, not them— usually plain private (“unluxury”) cars, or just common old taxis.

  "If this idleness continues,” declared Mr. Robertson, "I say put the young men into the infantry and let the older men have a spell of unemployment.”

There for you! The young men can smash more houses up in the Army and the older ones do nothing! How Mr. Robertson can imagine this is going to put anyone's roof back, we can't think!

One or two members of the Socialist Party working on war damage repairs in South London have a suggestion; they propose that Mr. Robertson have a week off from the House of Commons and take a turn on the roofs down in Streatham. He won't do much work, of course, but it would give him a marvellous appetite for those wonderful dinners they serve in the Commons restaurant. Perhaps he might feel like lying in his bed Sunday morning as a result; he wouldn’t have to be at the House, anyway, for they don't sit Saturdays or Sundays.

Our comrades say they are quite willing to do a week in the House of Commons for every day Mr. Robertson gets his hands dirty down at Streatham.


Trouble Down on the Farm

As if in answer to Mr. Robertson, the Norfolk War Agricultural Committee has informed the London Star (November 4th) that the Italian prisoners are rather difficult.

  When they are slack, lazy or disobedient we can report them to their camp, but what happens? They may get a spell of detention, but while they are away doing their punishment the farms are deprived of their services, indifferent though they may be.
  We have also found that punishment does not seem to improve them. As a fact, a spell of detention does not have any salutary effect on them, neither does it seem to have any terrors for them.
  And when they return to the farm they are worse than ever. The result is that the farmers will not report them for minor breaches of discipline.

And these are the boys we went to Italy to “liberate”!

This War

More Trouble. Now Thorburn Wiant, Associated Press correspondent back in London after two years in China, wrote : —

   There is probably no more efficient dictatorship than General Chiang Kai-shek’s party.
   There are secret police, concentration camps and firing squads for those who dare to speak, write or act out of turn. (Daily Mirror, November 1st, l944.)

Come, come, Thorburn! Chiang may be more efficient than Hitler—but not more than .Marshal Stalin!.

He also says the Chinese are not fighting the Japs at all—but one another.

We give it up!

A General Tells About the Cause of War

Lieutenant-General Sir G. Le Q. Martel, K.C.B., is writing on Conscription after the War.

  There is a universal hope that after the war the great nations will get together and solve the international problems of trade and currency, and thus eliminate unemployment and poverty. This would remove the main causes of world wars and the need for large fighting forces. (Evening Standard, September 27th, 1944.) 

Unemployment and poverty are not solved by trade or currency reorganisation, but the worthy General is certainly getting rather warm on the causes of modern war.

Perhaps, as he has retired, now he can write this sort of thing. We can’t imagine General Montgomery telling his troops that the war is caused by unemployment and poverty, though.

Virtue is its Own Reward

The Press is already speculating on how much Parliament is going to give the heads of the fighting services when the war is won. After the last war a sum of £585,000 was voted by Parliament to be distributed to Admirals, Generals and Air Marshals.

Admiral Jellico got £50,000, as did French and Lord Allenby. Sir Hugh Trenchard got £10,000 (Air Force), Sir David Beatty £10,000, and Sir Douglas Haig £100,000 and a statue in Whitehall.

  “It seems clear that any sum voted by Parliament must considerably exceed the £585,000 of the last war,” says one London evening paper (Star, September 7th).

Oh! quite clear! And most essential to cut down on expenditure for the rank and file to do so. Those who lose limbs will lie supplied with mass-produced standardised “Woolworth” arms and legs—free of all charge. Better artificial legs—for the benefit of the workers.

Dreaming of Thee !

The following is from the Daily Mirror (October 25th, 1944):—

   Have Your Holidays by Hypnotism, says Doctor.
   Tired and jaded war workers can have all the invigorating benefits of a seaside holiday without ever going near a beach. It can all he done at home—by hypnotism.
  So, at least, says Dr. Alexander Cannon, of the Isle of Man, former psychiatrist to the L.C.C. mental hospital service.
  Dr. Cannon suggests the hypnotism may be based on a wavelength in some way common to the length of the so-called short wave.”
  “The tired and worn-out worker in this dreamland of hypnosis,” he says, “can be made to walk along the seashore on a warm, sunny day, with a cool, refreshing breeze, and to feel the magnetic power being drawn in through the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet as he leisurely walks until he feels wonderful.”
  “Having allowed this dream picture to be implanted in his mind for a period of from twenty to forty minutes,” the doctor adds, “the worker can then be awakened with no recollection of his dreamland tour but with a feeling of energy, power and revitalisation which may last anything from one to four weeks or longer.”

So this is where “psychology” has got us to. Starting out with telling us that the cause of the trouble is our repressions, going on, like Max Eastman, to inform us that the reason Karl Marx expounded scientific Socialism is because be wanted Hegel for his father, finishing up with fortune telling and psycho-analysis.

We are quite amenable to the idea of having this dream implanted on us if Dr. Cannon will undertake to implant one on our guv'nor on the same terms—viz., are will go away to the seaside for twenty minutes in our dreams, if he (the guv'nor) will agree to dream that we’ve done a week’s work and pay us for it (in real money --not dreams).

Great “Legal” Victory of the Working Class

We gather from the Socialist Appeal (September) that the quashing of the sentences of imprisonment passed on the members of the Revolutionary Communist Party is “one of the most important legal victories in the struggle against anti-labour legislation” which the working class has gained.

We must confess to some mild surprise. For ourselves, we have always held that the only real “legal victory” was when the working class captured the machinery of government (including the armed forces) by voting themselves IN and the boss OUT, which would enable them to enact and enforce laws.

Are we to understand that “revolutionary” Trotskyists have now forsaken armed insurrection and direct action for pleading at the bar of (capitalist) justice?

The New Statesmen !

Every week the New Statesman awards five shillings for the most idiotic statement published in the Press sent in by its readers.

We submit the following :— 

  Somebody should now get up, as they did in 1940-41, and point out that Southern England is part of the same battlefront as Normandy, and that the toughest part of the war is still to come. If the German threat to send rocket shells does mature, something of the sort will have to be done. I believe the response would be much as it was in 1940—production would increase and so would popular resolution. We should in our hearts all rejoice that in this war we are not “sending our sons” only, but sharing in some small way in their risks. (New Statesman, July 1st, 1944.)

Please send our five shillings award to Socialist Standard, Rugby Chambers.

New Insecticide

Reference has already been made in these colmuns to the new insecticide, D.D.T.

It is stated that this new compound has already stopped an incipient typhus epidemic in Naples, and been used with deadly effect on bugs, fleas, cockroaches, beetles, moths, lice and mosquitoes. 

It is a great preventative of malaria and dysentery. British troops now have a standard issue of D.D.T. impregnated shirts which effectively protect the wearer against lice for two months even after regular washing. (Times, August 2nd.)

It will be available to civilians after the war. So. perhaps, ends the career of some of the greatest pests of poverty-stricken workers—their poverty, however, will remain.

D.D.T. was discovered by an obscure German student chemist employed by the Basle firm of J. R. Geigy in 1874.

It lay dormant until 1942. when the British branch of the Geigy Company brought it to the notice of the British Government. What became of the inventor is not known.

Explosions for all

  “The reason given on Thursday for the dismissal recently of 1,000 war workers, 900 of them women, from a factory in the West Riding of Yorkshire was that the country is so overstocked with shells that to get rid of them, firing day and night, would take two years. “Two hundred workers are reported to have been dismissed by another Yorkshire firm, but all the 1,200 are said to have been absorbed by engineering concerns in Bradford and Leeds or given jobs as conductresses on buses in these two cities. About fifty have been permitted to return to their peace-time jobs in the textile trade.”—(Manchester Guardian, November 11th, 1944.)

Free Health (? !) Service for Workers

  “Frank statements about the methods of some medical men are made to-day by Dr. Andrew Kefalas, of Sheffield. After pointing out that one reason why many people go to the chemist instead of the doctor is that they cannot afford to pay both, he says this in the British Medical Journal:
  There is a more ugly side to this scandal and that is that so many of us neither prescribe nor dispense at all. We simply dope out stock mixtures. 

Cutting the Cards.

  For myself, I would, in case of illness, as soon lay out at half-dozen patent preparations, select one of them by cutting a pack of cards, and take my chance on the one which turned up, as swallow some of the  'mist this' and ‘mist that' which are foisted upon the people who chance the doctor instead of the chemist.” (Evening Standard, September 12th, 1944.)

“ Good God! said God. I've got MY Work Cut Out.”

  “Britain as a nation is not ready to have victory granted to her,” says Rev. A. M. Hay. of St Paul's, Braintree, Essex, “and that is why the weather—God's weather— has been almost persistently against us since D-Day.”
  Writing in the church magazine, he says: “If there is any doubt that we are not ready for victory, let us ask ourselves how are the majority of people in onr land preparing to celebrate? With revelling rather than with humble thanksgiving.”
Mr. Hay told the Daily Mirror last night: “It was God's good weather at Dunkirk and in the Battle of Britain that saved us.
  “I believe strongly that God uses the weather as an instrument in his moral government,” Mr. Hay added.

(Daily Mirror, November 9th, 1944.)

Horatio

Population and Pollution (1971)

Book Review from the April 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

If someone says that the world is now overpopulated, most people would take him to mean that the resources of the world were not sufficient to support the present population of the world. [In their recent book Population Resources Environment (W. H. Freeman. £4.20)] two American biologists, Paul and Anne Ehrlich, have convinced themselves that the Earth is, in their other words, “grossly overpopulated”; they compare the Earth to a spaceship which “is now filled to capacity and beyond and is running out of food”. They can only present some sort of case for this by using a definition of overpopulation that is slightly, but significantly, different from its normal meaning. They say:

 The question of how long the population is to be maintained is important. An area must be considered overpopulated if it is being supported by the rapid consumption of non-renewable resources. It must also be considered overpopulated if the activities of the population are leading to a steady deterioration of the environment  (our emphasis).

This would mean that any area which, for whatever reason, was rapidly using up its natural resources or polluting its environment would have to be considered overpopulated. For instance an area which was doing this through the misuse of technology rather than through pressure of population would still on the Ehrlich’s definition be “overpopulated”. So all the Ehrlich’s have to do to prove that there is “overpopulation” now is to point to the undeniable fact that there is pollution and that the world’s resources are being plundered. This of course is much easier than proving that the world really is overpopulated in the sense that the needs of its people can only be met by doing these things.

Apparently contradicting their main argument the Ehrlich’s believe that pollution can be abolished. “State and federal legislatures”, they say, “could, easily stop pollution if they wished to do so”. They use their knowledge as biologists to reject the view that food production can only be maintained by using pesticides like DDT.

 It is commonly claimed that only current patterns of chemical control stand between us and starvation or death from insect-borne disease. Nothing could be further from the truth; the alternatives are not death or the continued dosing of ourselves and our environment with chlorinated hydrocarbons.

The Ehrlich’s are unconcerned about the extra cost of their proposals to maintain the natural fertility of the soil. Speaking of the way sewage is at present wasted they say that “regardless of the cost, manure should be returned to the land to help build humus”. 

But when earlier they discussed suggestions for increasing world food production put forward by those they dismiss as “technological optimists”, they adopt a different standard: cost is the great objection.

After conceding that only a quarter of the land that could be used for farming is now actually under cultivation they say:

  But the term ‘potentially arable’ can be misleading. Actually, almost all the land that can be cultivated under today’s economic circumstances is now under cultivation” (our emphasis).

The costs of massive irrigation projects are “staggering” while desalting sea water “has serious economic limitations”. Discussing synthetic foods such as protein from petrol they concede that “theoretically, much if not all of the world’s protein deficit in the last two decades of this century could be made up with protein from such sources”, but go on to ask whether the purification costs might not make this “uneconomical”. Obtaining more food from the sea is dismissed on the grounds that most such schemes are “based on the premise that fish stocks will be harvested rationally” while “the history of fisheries so far gives little hope that rationality will prevail”.

These objections to the argument that mankind has the technical knowledge and ability to produce much more food are not technical at all (which is what they should be if the Ehrlich’s are to prove that the world is overpopulated in relation to technology) but economic. “Today’s economic circumstances”(that is, capitalism with its class ownership of the means and instruments for producing wealth and its profit motive) are a barrier to the production of abundance, but these circumstances can be changed by human action. Capitalism in fact gives rise to the illusion of overpopulation by creating an artificial scarcity of food. The Ehrlich’s have been taken in by this illusion.

They also argue that the supplies of certain key minerals like gold, silver, lead, zinc and tin are being rapidly exhausted. Again they dismiss proposals for overcoming this — the extraction of trace metals from ordinary rock and the sea as well as the mining of lower grade ores — on grounds of cost, but still do not deny that mankind could get metals from these sources if it had to. 

Later on in their book, again contradicting their main argument, the Ehrlich’s themselves advocate ways of conserving metals: the recovery of waste and scrap; making articles so that their materials can conveniently be used again; replacing planned obsolescence with articles made to last; disarmament (arms are surely not only a great waste of resources in the first place but could also be an important source of scrap metal for many years to come). One very important way of overcoming this problem which the Ehrlich’s do not discuss is the manufacture of plastics which as synthetic organic products do come from renewable sources.

As far as sources of energy are concerned the Ehrlich’s are forced to concede :

  It does not appear … that availability of energy itself will place a limit on population growth.

and have to fall back on the well-known fact that “all the energy used on the face of the earth … will ultimately be degraded to heat”. Ultimately, fortunately, is a long time and the Ehrlich’s make no attempt to show that it is near.

Although they claim that the world is now overpopulated and at one point predict “a drastic rise in the death rate”, they also believe that something can be done about it. They correctly point out that technology alone is not the answer since a changed attitude to its use is also required. They think that this is just a question of attitudes, but it is much more than this. What is required is a change in the basis of society so that the profit motive and vested interests no longer operate. Naturally birth control is their main plan for ending the overpopulation they mistakenly believe exists. Indeed they are driven by their mistake to seriously consider the propositions that the people of India should be left to starve and that it should be illegal to have more than two children. Socialists of course have no conscientious objections to birth control. It is absurd that knowledge about contraception and contraceptives, are banned in countries like Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland where the Catholic Church still has political influence. But no more than technology can birth control (which is only a part of technology anyway) be the answer, for as long as capitalism lasts it could only palliate the artificial scarcity and organised waste that are built-in to this system.

Apart from birth control the Ehrlich’s make a number of other suggestions for overcoming “overpopulation” some of which we have already mentioned. These other proposals amount to a call for an economic system that is not wasteful and that is not driven to go on plundering the world’s resources. They even wonder, as well they might, whether such a system would be compatible with capitalism:

  Marxists claim that capitalism is intrinsically expansionist and wasteful, and that it automatically produces a monied ruling class. Can our economists prove them wrong?

Capitalism, as a system geared to producing profits out of which those who own the means of production accumulate more and more capital, is quite incapable of serving human interests, mankind does have the technical knowledge to provide for much more than its present numbers. The problem is not overpopulation, but the underproduction and waste that are built-in to capitalism. The plundering and pollution of the world is not caused by modern technology but by its misuse in the service of profit. If the resources of the Earth, natural and man-made, belonged in common to all mankind they could be used in a conservationist and non-polluting way to provide for the needs of all. If overpopulation were ever to become a potential problem in a socialist world, then mankind also has the knowledge of how to control births.

The Ehrlich’s comments on political and economic matters are generally very simple, but oddly enough two of their ideas could only be realised in a socialist world; indeed they would be essential features of it. They call for some arrangement “which will permit all peoples to have access to the basic needs of adequate food, shelter, clothing, education and medical care, regardless of the economic value of their productivity.” Again in discussing how to preserve the world’s resources and environment they advocate the establishment of what they call “world commons” and a “comprehensive Planetary Regime” that could control “the development, administration, conservation and distribution of all natural resources, renewable and non-renewable.”

This book is one of a number that have been published recently claiming that pollution is due to overpopulation but, as we have seen, it fails to prove its case.

Adam Buick

Pollution: capitalism's exhaust system (1983)

From the November 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

As world population increases by about 2 per cent a year, and as industry expands to meet new market demands — not, be it noted, human needs, since two thirds of that increase belongs to the starving and impoverished Third World who do not constitute a market for capitalist production — so the rate of pollution climbs ever higher.

Most of us, however, are quite content to ignore this obnoxious subject and leave it to the “professionals”. Indians may starve, ice-caps may melt and sea-birds drop out of the sky with mercuric convulsions but after all, everyone's got their own problems, haven’t they? Besides, who wants to know about the DDT in food, the cadmium in your fags, the lead in the air and all the disgusting things in tapwater? Especially when there’s nothing you can do about it? This attitude is very common and to some extent explains why the world has the problems it does. When people begin to see a causal chain linking their own unemployment or poverty to vanishing forests and dead albatrosses, a chain leading to a common culprit, the insane and reckless profit-system, they may be less ready to bow out of all involvement.

But even if we act now to change the system it may be too late to stop serious ecological damage. Free-Enterprise, despite a few token fetters, has not only been able to waste and destroy the present in its mindless quest for the Fast Buck, it has also infected the future, perhaps for generations. Socialism will be stuck with the flesh-rotting legacies of capitalism and it will need every human resource and ingenuity to deal with them. Meanwhile, for what’s left of Nature, time is running out.

Every year, Britain dumps a total of 517,000 tons of mixed industrial/domestic waste in the surrounding seas, and the Irish Sea also enjoys 136,000 curies of radioactive caesium from Windscale alone. The Mediterranean annually swallows 430,000,000,000 tons of waste including raw sewage, detergents, oil. phenols, pesticides and heavy metals. This is quantifiable only because it is legally endorsed. There are no accurate figures for air pollutants like lead, carbon monoxide and sulphur dioxide, and even where legal restrictions do exist they are difficult to endorse. There are no figures for land dumps in Britain either because the Department of the Environment has never bothered to make an inventory of them. The chief government research establishment into hazardous waste, at Harwell, told the House of Lords Select Committee in 1981 that it did not know how much was produced in the UK. who produced it, what it was or what they did with it. Indeed British law relies heavily on the voluntary co-operation of industry, despite the fact that in the United States, where experience has taught them less faith in business integrity, over three quarters of all indictments brought against companies are for wilfully flouting safety and anti-pollution regulations. In Britain, by contrast, a Water Authority officer who releases details of pollution by a firm in excess of its agreed limit is liable to imprisonment, while the firm may earn a small fine for the original offence. The new Control of Pollution Act, due to take full effect in 1986, dispenses with much of this obsessional secrecy. It also cuts the list of hazardous waste products requiring special disposal licence, proving that legislation has never been able to prevent illegal fly-tipping by cheap, cowboy operators and now has simply stopped trying.

The painful grind of British law towards a more open system is no guarantee that public activists are in for an easier time of it. Despite the Freedom of Information Act in America, private citizens have their work cut out bringing guilty pollutors to book. Whatever the law says, big corporations can and will exert enormous influence over protagonists and referees alike, so that contests are rarely if ever fought on equal terms.

One has only to look at the thalidomide story to demonstrate the vicious self-interest of big business, but what is especially interesting about pollution cases is the frequency with which supposedly impartial government agencies (dealing with coal-oil, agro-chemical and nuclear industrial regulations control) are exposed in squalid little cover-ups and conspiracies with the industries they are meant to monitor. After the 1978 Love Canal disaster in Niagara City — the first federal disaster in history due to chemical pollution, but assuredly not the last — the Environmental Protection Agency were found to have been turning a blind eye to the antics of the Hooker Chemical Company and to have coerced certain of its more zealous local inspectors into doing the same. Despite its policy of not rocking anyone’s boat the EPA were publicly capsized by the Carter administration and told to compile a dossier immediately on toxic waste dumps in the USA. Their shamefaced report admitted 300 dumps as immediate hazards, with up to 34,000 others likely to become so. The cost of correcting the damage was put at $46 billion. A US Congress Committee has estimated that 90 per cent of all toxic wastes in America are disposed of "unsafely” — that means on derelict land, in sewers, quarries, mineshafts and local streams. The D of E in Britain remains blasé.

However, pollution isn't only caused by companies dumping waste, legally or otherwise. Pesticides are used extensively in agriculture, and not only do they kill flora or fauna outright, they also get into the food we eat, the soil and the water which drains from it. If farmers were at all interested in producing food for consumption. and not simply for the market, they would in most cases no more use a pesticide than they would dump or burn crops to keep prices high. Pesticides are very often more trouble than they’re worth. They may kill pest-predators, directly or by starvation, they actively immunise pests through small doses of spray drift, they kill fish, birds and mammals who accumulate concentrations of compounds through the food-chain, and they even create pests by wiping out the competition. Many compounds are persistent and non-selective, and are known to cause heart disease, nervous disorders, foetal deformities and cancer. DDT and the infamous herbicide 245-T are banned in America, though of course all their food imports remain contaminated. However, it is still lawful for US companies to manufacture banned compounds and sell them to the Third World, who naturally take whatever they can afford. In Sri Lanka alone there are 14,000 cases of pesticide poisoning every year.

All this, and we haven't mentioned asbestos, mercury, dioxin (remember Seveso?), cyanide, acid rain, smog, oil, the carbon dioxide build-up, the ozone breakdown, sewage, lead, detergents, noise, radar, Extreme Low Frequency, ultraviolet, microwave, radiowave and nuclear radiation. There isn’t space to go into everything, but for some unparalleled examples of capitalist double-dealing, fraud, lies, cover-ups, suppressions, half- truths, intimidation and even murder you can’t do better than look at the nuclear industry.

Accidents happening to star witnesses before public enquiries are well-documented, perhaps the most famous being the case of Karen Silkwood in Oklahoma. 1975. Cover-ups involving police and government officials are legion. Naturally — there’s a lot of money at stake here and bad publicity can damage a lot of people. So when Dr. Tamplin links radiation with leukaemia in the ’60s, his funds are cut off and his report suppressed. When angry ex-GIs involved in the Smoky A-Bomb Pacific tests all try to sue Uncle Sam for their cancer leukaemia and sterility, the Department of Defense withholds medical records and denies all responsibility. When a nuclear accident in the Ural Mountains causes thirty Russian communities to “disappear”. US spy satellites don’t notice. When evidence shows that the 5 rem safety standard, on which all plant designs are based, is far too high, it is consistently buried or ignored. When Professor Karl Morgan of Oak Ridge designs a thermal breeder reactor about 270 times safer than the liquid metal fast breeder system to which the US government is already committed, his research is stopped and his report “altered", and when Karen Silkwood compiles a dossier proving that Kerr-McGee Corporation technicians are being told to draw over the x-ray negatives of cracked fuel rods with black felt pen so they can be passed as safe, she is mysteriously killed in a convenient car-crash. While productive forces remain contingent on the demands of the money-market, and while fluctuating economies force producers to cut corners, pollution, along with all these other complaints, must be inevitable. Sometimes governments may try to tame free enterprise in order to get rid of the bad bits. But to suggest, as many still do, notably the Ecology Party, that one can prevent pollution by legislative and other reformist measures, is to fly in the face of the facts. The Ecology Party's proposals for reducing pollution and reorganising capitalism along healthy, ecological lines are all the more pathetic in their miserable recognition of their own inadequacy. They seek to “form solutions in the light of the problems’’ and go on to describe how chemical corporations must stop producing their best-selling pesticides and just accept up to a 50 per cent cut in profits, how Western governments in a fit of altruism should subsidise an eightfold increase in the cost of the Third World’s malaria control programme and how the Third World itself should stop using inorganic fertilisers, organochlorinc compounds like DDT, Dieldrin and 245-T, and high-yield grain hybrids and simply accept a possible tenfold cut in yield. Well-researched though they are, these solutions are unworkable because they do not face up to the real cause of the problem. No matter what cures are proposed, if they do not take into account the basic, cut-throat nature of capitalism, they are doomed to failure. Only by changing the social and economic system which generates the conditions which cause starvation, resource-squandering and pollution will we ever see an end of such despoliation and such ecological insanity.

P J Shannon

References
Cover Up: Nicholas Hildyard (New English Library. London 1981). Friends of the Earth Guide to Pollution: Brian Price (Friends of the Earth, London 1983). A Blueprint for Survival: E. Goldsmith et. al. (Tom Stacey, London 1972). Can Britain Survive?: E. Goldsmith (Tom Stacey. London 1971). This Dirty World: R. C. Denney (Thomas Nelson, London 1971). Man's Responsibility for Nature: John Passmore (Duckworth 1974) esp. Chs 3-6 inc.

European pollution year (1970)

From the March 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

During this last decade there has been a growing interest in the problem of pollution. In all industrial countries rivers arc being polluted to an alarming extent with waste from factories. Detergents are everywhere used and these substances cannot be easily removed from water, so our drinking water supply is being depleted. In America some scientists have proclaimed that in ten years time at the present rate of pollution, the U.S. will have to bottle drinking water to conserve its water supply.

Lakes are being polluted with factory waste and with chemical insecticides washed off the land by rain, or dropped into the lakes by spraying aeroplanes. Lake Erie in America has now become so polluted that fish cannot live in it, and today it is a gigantic sewer.

Pollution of air from petrol and diesel fumes is already a big problem, and Los Angeles (once a health resort) is now one of the worst affected towns in the world. Petrol and diesel fumes are a known cause of lung cancer and respiratory diseases.

The insecticide DDT has been banned in many countries, and is so widespread that it has been found in the bodies of penguins in the Antarctica and animals in the Arctic. Practically every human being stores this nerve poison in the fat tissues of the body.

Stocks of war gases are a potential menace as these terrible poisons could kill thousands of people in peace time, by their accidental release into drains and rivers.

Residues of radio active fall-out from nuclear tests, and the waste products of atomic factories, are a constant and insidious danger to mankind. Buried atomic material has escaped from its lead containers in the sea and poisoned fish; it remains active, with unpredictable possibilities.

Pollution of the sea with oil from ships discharging their waste, and the much bigger hazard of oil ships meeting disasters, such as the case of the Torrey Canyon, pouring tens of thousands of tons of oil into the sea, are a constant menace. Fish, sea birds, plankton, and other wild life upon which fish live must depend—and thus our food—are all adversely affected. Added to this is the contamination of the beaches with oil and the spoiling of holidays.

Chemicals used in food manufacture have increased enormously. The food trade employs more chemists than any other industry, and about 1,000 different chemicals are regularly used in food processing. Flavouring essences, colouring matter, preservatives, anti-staling agenus and anti-oxidants are used more now than ever before, and the nutritional value of all our foods is decreasing as a direct result.

Food is not produced because people need it. There are plenty of hungry people in Asia and Africa but nobody is going to produce food for them unless they can buy it. Food is produced for profit—“no profit, then no food” is the rule of the farmer, the miller, the baker, the grocer and every food vendor. So long as food is produced for profit then just so long will food be faked and adulterated and falsified by advertisements to increase profits.

So long as it is cheaper to dump factory waste into rivers then so long will it be done.

Politicians and other authorities cannot rid the world of pollution because it means getting rid of the profit motive in society, which they are committed to maintaining. Up to now they have only spread confusion in this field (as in every field). No amount of legislation and amendments to Acts on pollution, or food making, or banning certain drugs, would put this matter right. As soon as one drug is banned because of its side effects, there are a dozen more ready to take its place. And so it is with detergents, insecticides and all the rest.

The many conferences to deal with pollution that have been planned this year (which is officially Conservation Year) are bound to fail in the same way as the disarmament conferences failed, and because of the same reason. The prime cause of pollution is capitalism itself, for capitalism cannot function without polluting the world. No doubt efforts will be made to stem the tide, but capitalism is bound to fail to conquer this problem for it is capitalism itself that is creating it. 

Horace Jarvis

Why ecology is important (1989)

Editorial from the April 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

In recent years the environment has become a major political issue. And rightly so, because a serious environmental crisis really does exist. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat have all been contaminated and polluted to a greater or lesser extent.

Natural materials are being transformed into substances (including waste) which nature cannot decompose, or such substances are being created at too fast a pace for nature’s decomposing processes to be able to keep up with them. The result is the current environmental crisis — or, more accurately, the ecological crisis, since what is involved is much more than unsightly skylines in cities or ugly factories in rural areas. Substances which are poisonous or cannot be decomposed are being released into nature — for instance lead and the pesticide DDT and also the other heavy metals and a host of chemicals. These substances eventually find their way back to us through the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat. Ecology is not just about protecting nature — animal rights, saving the whale and other moral issues. It is about human beings too — the way we live and the quality of our life.

Nature and the environment are being damaged today because productive activity is oriented towards the accumulation of profits rather than towards the direct satisfaction of human needs. The economic mechanism of the profit system can function in no other way. Profits always take priority both over meeting needs and over protecting the environment.

This is why the Earth's easily-accessible resources have been plundered throughout the history of capitalism without a thought for the future, why chemical fertilisers and pesticides are used in agriculture, why power stations and factories release all sorts of dangerous and noxious substances into the air and water, why road transport has replaced rail transport, why human waste is not recycled back to the land, why animals are injected with hormones, why detergents have replaced soaps, why lead is put into petrol, why goods are made not to last . . .  the list of anti-ecological practices indulged in under capitalism because more profitable is endless.

Where we differ from the various Green parties and movements which share this ecological perspective is over what should be done. To find an effective solution, awareness and indignation about a problem must be accompanied by an understanding of its cause.

Explanations of the cause of the environmental crisis which circulate among Greens differ from ours. Some blame modern technology rather than the use — or, more accurately, the abuse — that is made of it under the present system. Others attribute pressure on resources and the environment to overpopulation. Others say that humans are too greedy and preach restraint on consumption for moral reasons. But respecting the laws of ecology does not mean abandoning modern technological knowledge and going back to the productive methods and personal consumption levels that existed before the coming of industrial capitalism. It means rather using materials and methods compatible with a balanced functioning of nature. With appropriate modification, modern industrial techniques of production are quite capable of providing enough good-quality food, clothing and shelter for every person on Earth and of doing this without damaging the environment.

The Green Party in Britain sees the solution to the environmental crisis as lying in the achievement of "a system of human activity which is in harmony with the Earth's life-sustaining systems", as they put it in their 1987 General Election manifesto. However, they see this as being achieved through the election of a Green Party government which would take measures gradually to transform the present growth-oriented and profit-motivated capitalist economy into a decentralised, democratically-run and ecologically-sustainable one. While awaiting the election of such a government the Green party concentrates, like environmentalists in the Labour and other parties, on advocating reform measures to try to protect nature and the environment.

We are up against a well-entrenched economic and social system based on class and property and governed by coercive economic laws. Reforms under capitalism, however well meaning or determined, can never solve the environmental crisis — the most they can do is to palliate some aspect of it on a precarious temporary basis. They can certainly never turn capitalism into a democratic, ecological society.

The conclusion is clear: if the present environmental crisis is to be solved and the threat to — indeed the actual degradation of — the environment removed, then capitalism must go. It must be replaced by a socialist society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production.

Capitalism, socialism and ecology (1985-6)

From the Winter 1985-6 issue of the World Socialist

In 1871 a German biologist, Ernst Haeckel, coined the word "ecology". It derives from the Greek word "Oikos" meaning "house" or "habitat" and can be defined as the study of relationships between organisms and their environment or natural habitat.

Ecology is closely related to the subject oL economics, the latter springing from the same root means literally ""the management of a household". However, the significance of this association is not simply a matter of etymological interest. Undoubtedly this is what Sunderlal Bahunga, a prominent figure in the Indian Chipko movement, had in mind when he replied to a reporter who had asked him how he could resolve the conflict between ecology and economic development. His answer was succinct and to the point: for him there was no such conflict since ecology was in fact just "long-term economics".

And yet if we look at the world around us today we cannot fail to notice the extent to which nature is being ravaged in the name of short-term economic gain. It is all too clear that the prevailing economic system of capitalist competition is quite incapable of seriously taking into account the long-term considerations with which ecology is vitally concerned. Only where the system's immediate objective of profit maximisation is threatened does it become expedient to act upon such considerations. Some might say that this does not really matter when all is said and done. The technological conquest of nature, they suggest, has somehow enabled man to become independent of it. In Small is Beautiful E.F. Schumacher quotes a representative voice from this school of thought, that of Eugene Rabinowitch, editor-in-chief of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists:

The only animals whose disappearance may threaten the biological viability of man on earth are the bacteria normally inhabiting our bodies. For the rest, there is no evidence that mankind could not survive even as the only species on earth! If economical ways could be developed for synthesising food from inorganic materials - which is likely to happen sooner or later - man will even be able to become independent of plants on which he now depends as sources of his food.

But whatever the technical merits (or otherwise) of such a claim, for the foreseeable future it is safe to assume that mankind will continue to rely heavily on agriculture - that is to say, on the natural processes harnessed by agriculture - for its food.

The charge of "technological triumphalism" is one that has sometimes been levelled at Marxism. Yet it was Engels who produced one of the most cogent rebuttals of precisely this point of view, when addressing himself to the question of man's relationship with nature:

Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human conquests over nature. For each such conquest takes its revenge on us. Each of them, it is true, has in the first place the consequences on which we counted, but in the second and third places it has quite different unforeseen effects which only too often cancel out the first. The people who in Mesopotamia, Greece, Asia Minor, and elsewhere, destroyed the forests to obtain cultivatable land, never dreamed that they were laying the basis for the present devastated condition of those countries, by removing along with the forests the collecting centres and reservoirs of moisture . . .

Thus at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature - but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to know and correctly apply its laws. ("The part played by labour in the transition from Ape to Man" Dialectics of Nature, 1940, pp.291-2).

As an apology for an ecological perspective this could hardly be bettered. But before examining what such a perspective entails for harnessing nature for the production of food, let us look briefly at the view that it is the pressure of population as such that has caused the environment to deteriorate.

MALTHUS AND NEO-MALTHUS: BOTH WRONG
In 1798 the Rev Thomas Malthus published the first edition of An Essay on the Principle of Population in which he outlined his "law of population":

Assuming then, my postulate as granted, I say that the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man. Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence only increases in arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will show the immensity of the first power in comparison with the second.

According to Malthus, since population cannot be sustained beyond a level that the means of subsistence can provide for, it is held in check, though the way in which it is held in check is rather more complicated than in the case of plants and animals. Here he suggested that social attitudes might play a role as a "preventive" check inasmuch as people might feel compelled by economic circumstances to exercise restraint in reproduction. Whether they would exercise restraint, Malthus doubted, though he placed greater importance on this in subsequent editions of his Essay. But in so doing, he contradicted the broad thrust of his argument, embodying as it did, a strong belief in biological determinism.

Beyond prevention, "positive checks" in the form of war, famine and disease work to ensure that the population is "kept to its necessary level". In other words, argued Malthus, the sheer pressure of population growth as it comes up against the limits of subsistence "constantly tends to subject the lower classes of society to distress and prevent any great melioration of their condition". He suggested that if this were more widely understood, the "lower classes" might come to accept their poverty with greater forbearance and "less irritation at the government and the higher classes of society".

Malthus' theory was effectively demolished by the developments that came after him. The population of Britain grew rapidly but the productive forces grew even more so as the Industrial Revolution unfolded. What made possible this rapid population growth was the decline in mortality as a result in the long-term rise in general living standards, particularly in the form of improved diet and sanitation. Moreover as the death rate declined so the birth rate began to fall, eventually causing population growth itself to slow down.

However, whilst population growth was "checked" this occurred well within the Malthusian limits of bare subsistence. Indeed far from it being a case of the stork relentlessly following the plough, the gap between the two has considerably widened in historical terms with the stork lagging well behind, thus exploding the Malthusian dogma that the "indefinitely greater" power of reproduction would reduce any such gap to the merest sliver. The fact that the population of Britain is several times larger today than it was when Malthus was alive only highlights all the more, the tremendous growth of the forces of production that has occurred since then - something which Malthus' grim fatalism could not anticipate.

But whilst such growth is undeniable, equally undeniable is the fact that it has been accompanied by an increasing disruption of the "balance of nature". Though mankind is not the only species to modify nature for its own purposes the sheer scale of its impact makes it unique and, according to some, poses the threat of irreversibly undermining nature's capacity to provide food for mankind in the future. Technological progress may well have pushed back the Malthusian limits to the point of irrelevance but, goes the argument, the environmental consequences of such progress are such that those limits threaten to close in again like a noose around mankind's neck.

In this rather more sophisticated form, Malthusian ideas have acquired a certain plausibility. Nevertheless, this neo-Malthusian model has in common with its famous forerunner a major weakness inasmuch as it consistently overlooks the social context in which it makes its gloomy prognoses. According to Colin Tudge in The Famine Business:

Many societies in the past - in sixteenth century England or fourth century Rome — have believed that their societies had outgrown their resources. In truth they had merely come against the limitations of their agricultural techniques - or, more accurately, against the limitations of the policies that those techniques subserved. To some extent the present world situation is similar. We have not exceeded physical capacity but have merely begun to expose the flaws in policies not designed to feed all the people.

FOOD CHAINS AND BIOTIC PYRAMIDS
In nature, the various plant and animal organisms are intricately interlinked by relationships of mutual dependence on one another and their physical environment. These living communities together with the environmental conditions in which they occur, constitute an ecosystem. This can be a single drop of water containing myriads of micro-organisms or, at the other extreme, the total envelope of life around the earth, the global ecosystem or biosphere. Necessarily, every ecosystem tends towards a "steady state" of dynamic balance which means that by altering any one part of it every other part is thereby affected, a new equilibrium being reached through a complex network of inter-locking cycles through which energy and nutrients flow.

In the process of evolution life on earth was built in a series of layers or "trophic levels" which together form the "biotic pyramid". At the base of this pyramid are organisms called "autotrophs". Autotrophs "fix" minerals from rock and nitrogen from the air to form a nutrient reservoir that is greatly enlarged by the decomposition of organic material returned to the soil. These nutrients are absorbed through the roots of plants with the aid of water. Green plants trap less than 1 per cent of the sun's energy falling on the earth and use it to build energy-rich compounds in a process called photosynthesis. Some of these compounds are combined with nutrients from the soil to form other, more complex compounds such as protein. The total amount of chemical energy stored in plants far exceeds human nutritional requirements and could theoretically support a population 280 times greater^ttan the present one. However, the great bulk of plant matter is unsuitable for human consumption. Autotrophs and plants are respectively known as primary and secondary food producers. Above them come the various levels of food consumers.

The primary consumers or herbivores eat plants and are in turn eaten by carnivores or secondary consumers. These may be eaten by other carnivores or tertiary consumers and so on. Thus food is passed from one trophic level to the next along a food chain.

It is worth noting however that as we move up a food chain, only a small fraction of the energy input at one level, as represented by the food consumed by an organism, is made available to the next level when that organism is itself consumed. The remainder of this energy is "lost" in maintaining the organism's existence. In other words, for a certain mass of organisms to survive at one level there must be a substantially larger mass of organisms at the level beneath it; hence the idea of a biotic pyramid. The total mass of organisms that an ecosystem can support is called the "biomass" which is determined by a combination of environmental factors such as climate and soil that impinge most crucially at the level of food producers.

The implications of this telescoping of the food supply along a food chain are potentially significant. One might suppose that mankind could increase its food supply by changing its dietary habits, by eating less meat and more grain, for example. Altogether some 650 million tonnes of grain representing a third of the world's output are currently fed to livestock each year. But on average, every 7 calories of grain fed to livestock produces only 1 calorie of animal product, beef production being the least efficient form of conversion. On the other hand, it could also be argued that the production of animal products for human consumption is justified insofar as animals are able to transform otherwise inedible or unutilised plants and grasses into valuable food for humans.

In reality, however, food chains such as that connecting cereals, cattle and man present only part of the picture of an ecosystem. To begin with, nutrient flows are not linear and ever-ascending as the concept of a biotic pyramid might suggest. Rather, such flows can be described as cyclical. The waste products of organisms and, on their death, their bodies are broken down by other organisms known as decomposers that are similarly arranged in layers that form, as it were, an inverted pyramid. This decaying organic material called humus is progressively broken down into simple elements that are once again taken up through the roots of plants as was earlier pointed out. In this way nutrients are continuously recycled within the ecosystem.

Furthermore, as we saw in the case of the food chain connecting cereals, cattle and man, some species - in this instance, man - may have a highly diverse or changeable diet that entails consuming food from several different levels within the biotic pyramid. Such species are, in other words, omnivorous. More realistically, nature can be said to support not so much a host of separate food chains as a complex web of relationships through which checks are applied on the population of a species whereby its outer limits are determined by the population size of other species that constitute its food supply.

THE RISKS OF AGRICULTURE
Agriculture is essentially a process by which the stored energy of photosynthesis is appropriated by man. This has meant in the first place, the selection and cultivation of certain crops at the expense of other species and secondly, the development of these cultivated varieties with a view to increasing their yield. According to Norman Myers:

Mankind has used around 3000 plants for food during the course of history. Yet Earth contains at least another 75,000 edible plants. Only about 150 have ever been cultivated on a large scale, and fewer than 20 now produce 90 per cent of our food. We are using the same limited number of plant species that have served mankind for millennia. (Guardian, 3 February 1983).

In nature, an ecosystem tends to develop successionally, that is, from a simple "pioneer" stage towards the maximum complexity that the physical conditions of a particular area can accommodate. The final stage in this process of "ecological succession" is called the "climax community". This contains a highly diverse range of species whose populations fluctuate little over time. A climax community is, in other words, a relatively stable and balanced ecosystem.

With the introduction of agriculture the tendency is for an ecosystem to shift backwards along the line of ecological succession as many natural forms of vegetation are replaced by a few cultivated varieties. Thus, generally speaking, agriculture has had a destabilising impact on the environment by reducing its complexity and hence its capacity to adapt to ecological disturbances. Up to a point this is unavoidable. There is bound to be a degree of tension between the needs of agriculture and the maintenance of environmental integrity. Inasmuch as food is an absolute necessity for mankind there can be no question as to which of these ought to take priority over the other. What can be questioned, however, is the foolish belief that the production of food can take place without regard to the environmental consequences of this for ultimately the harmonisation of agriculture with nature, the achievement of a workable compromise between them, is vital to the maintenance of a productive and lasting agriculture itself.

The reduction in the complexity of an ecosystem amounts to a severe rupture of the intricate food web that sustains a diverse community of plants and animals. As a result more and more species begin to disappear from the ecosystem. However, as this happens other species begin to expand to fill the ecological niche opened up for them, to emerge as pests able to exploit the simplified landscape around them. Weeds, for example, compete with crops for nutrients in the soil. But in some cases the too efficient removal of weeds can prove counter-productive in that herbivorous insects can be driven to feed on the crop itself as the only available food supply. Thus what began as a problem of too many weeds can end up as a problem of pest infestation. This interplay of ecological factors is apparent at the top end of a food chain as well. In Sierra Leone, for example, farmers discovered that their crops were being increasingly damaged by small vervet monkeys whose numbers had swelled considerably. On investigation it was found that the reason for this was the decline in the population of leopards whose habitat was being destroyed by the clearance of forests for agriculture. In short, the self-regulating function of the ecosystem was beginning to break down and to veer towards greater instability.

On a global basis this alteration in the natural balance is taking place on a massive and unprecedented scale:

According to the results of an investigation published by the University of Hamburg in December 1975, 50,000 species will be eradicated or seriously threatened in the coming twenty-five years. At the other end of the scale 240 species of insects, including mites and ticks, are increasing at an alarming rate. (W. Van Dieren and M.G.W. Hummelinck, Nature's Price, 1979, p.4).

The conventional response to the growth of pests has been to attack them with chemical pesticides. These can bring about rapid and dramatic improvements in the available food supply in the short-term by cutting losses both on land and in storage. In a single year - in 1973 - the value of crop loss due to pests amounted to a staggering $75 billion. Clearly the selective use of chemical pesticides on a world basis in a socialist society could help in the transformation of hunger into a thing of the past.

But pesticides have their drawbacks too. In particular, they tend to decimate the predators of pests more effectively than the pests themselves. The reason for this lies in the fact that the herbivorous insects that eat crops are more numerous than the carnivorous insects that prey upon them, being at a lower level in the biotic pyramid. This being the case there is a greater likelihood of genetic variation among such insects that would lead them to acquire resistance to a pesticide.

Furthermore, there is a tendency for pesticides like DDT which remain toxic over long periods to become more and more concentrated as it is passed up the food chain. Because of this, "DDT is banned in most industrialised countries but its overall use is still increasing and the effects are spread globally by wind and water" (S. Croall and W. Rankin, Ecology for Beginners, 1981, p.59). Thus, as is so often the case in capitalism, legislative attempts to overcome a particular problem are undermined by the competitive pressure that drives others to perpetrate that problem which cannot by its very nature be contained within boundaries of the nation state.

In the long run biological methods of pest control such as the introduction into an environment of the traditional - or novel -predators of pests, is very often the soundest approach. But once again the competitive thrust of capitalism, ever attentive to the opportunity for short-term gain, militates against the wisdom of an ecological perspective:

The results of biological control may take some years to show whereas an insecticide acts immediately. Control has to be applied over a whole region (preferably an island) rather than just one farm . . . And it may not be too cynical to suggest that there is less commercial interest in biological than in chemical control because it is, in ideal cases, done once and for all rather than every year. (N.W. Pirie, Food Resources, Conventional and Novel, 1967, p.71).

THE KEY ROLE OF NITROGEN
In the 19th century the agricultural chemist, Justus Von Liebig, formulated his famous "law of the minimum" which states that plant growth is limited by the availability of whatever nutrient is scarcest. There are 16 basic elements that are absolutely essential to the growth of plants and can be divided into 3 groups. The first consists of Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen which are derived from air and water. Nitrogen, Potassium and Calcium form another group called the major plant nutrients in that they are required in large quantities whilst the remaining ten elements make up the final group, the minor nutrients. These basic elements can be combined in different ways to form a vast number of compounds which in turn are used to build even more complex molecules such as protein as we earlier saw.

The most common limiting factor in agriculture is nitrogen, a crucial constituent of protein. Though most of the earth's atmosphere consists of nitrogen it is of no use to plants in this form; it has to be "fixed" - that is, combined with other elements - in the form of compounds such as nitrate, that can be absorbed through the roots of plants.

There are several sources from which plants obtain a supply of fixed nitrogen. A certain amount of it derives from atmospheric fixation as a result of lightning but the great bulk of it is produced by biological and, to an increasing extent, industrial fixation processes.

As far as the process of biological fixation is concerned, two broad sets of micro-organisms in the soil make nitrogen available to plants. The first set are the nitrogen-fixing micro-organisms that form part of the population of autotrophs. Some of these micro-organisms such as the blue-green algae are "free-living", whilst others live in symbiotic association with the roots of leguminous plants and certain tropical grasses. The significance of this latter group of nitrogen-fixing micro¬organisms is that by planting the sort of crops with which they are associated the fertility of the soil can be enhanced rather than depleted as is normally the case.

At the opposite end of the nutrient cycle are a second set of micro¬organisms that make nitrogen available to plants. These are called nitrifying bacteria in that they convert the amino acids that make up the protein in decomposing humus (which is, in fact, the major source of nitrogen in the soil) into nitrate. An important characteristic of nitrifying bacteria is that they are aerobic, that is, they must have oxygen in order to live. Moreover the concentration of nitrates they release into the soil water is very low so that the plants themselves have to expend energy to pull in these nitrates - a process that requires plant roots have access to oxygen as well. To ensure enough oxygen is available the soil must be sufficiently porous to let in air and in this respect, humus plays a vital role by maintaining soil structure. Furthermore, a good soil structure allows rainwater to penetrate deeper into the soil where it can be better retained.

A final and increasingly significant source of fixed nitrogen is artificial fertiliser, a by-product of oil-refining technology.

Nitrogen is, of course, also removed from the soil in a number of ways. The activities of nitrifying bacteria are offset by those of other bacteria called denitrifying bacteria which convert nitrate into nitrogen gas, some of which may be utilised by nitrogen fixing bacteria, some of which escapes into the atmosphere. Denitrifying bacteria are anaerobic, however, that is, they can only function in the absence of oxygen. In other words, the poorer the soil structure, the greater the loss of nitrogen from it. This once again underlines the importance of humus to the soil.

Furthermore nitrates being soluble in water can be lost by leaching, by being brought up to the surface and washed away by rain. This is particularly a problem in the humid Tropics where the luxuriant vegetation belies the poor fertility of the soil in which it grows. Because of the high temperatures, humus decomposes very rapidly whilst the heavy rainfall can cause serious leaching. Tropical plants have adapted to these conditions in that they are able to absorb nutrients rapidly whilst at the same time providing a canopy of leaves that protects the soil from the elements. The destruction of tropical forests soon leads to a loss of fertility which imposes severe constraints on the type of agriculture that can be practised in these areas.

The most obvious way in which nitrogen is removed from the soil is of course the harvesting of crops. To make good this loss of nitrogen, human and animal wastes can be returned to the soil but the tendency of capitalist agriculture has been to dispense with this practice. Marx, who had studied the work of Von Liebig, Schonbein and other agricultural chemists was strongly critical of this tendency which, he argued, sprang from the dynamic thrust of capitalist development:

Capitalist production, by collecting the population in great centres, and causing an ever-increasing preponderance of town population on the one hand, concentrates the historical motive power of society; on the other hand, it disturbs the circulation of matter between man and the soil, i.e., prevents the return to the soil of its elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; it therefore violates the conditions necessary to lasting fertility of the soil. By this action it destroys at the same time the health of the town labourer and the intellectual life of the rural labourer. (Capital, Vol 1, FLPH, p.505).

But Marx, of course, was writing at a time when artificial fertilisers were unknown. At that time most of the land in Europe was fertilised with sodium nitrate which was to be found in large natural deposits on the coast of Chile, though organic feritiliser such as guano was also used to . some extent. However, by the turn of the century, these deposits appeared to be reaching exhaustion and it became imperative that alternative sources of fertiliser should be found. This was the stimulus that led to the discovery of a technique for manufacturing fertiliser, known as the Haber Bosch process, by which most of the nitrogen-based fertilisers are produced today.

SOIL EROSION AND THE PROFIT MOTIVE
Nevertheless, the impact of artificial fertilisers has by no means been an entirely unmixed blessing. The steady increase in yields, fuelled in part by the soaring use of these fertilisers as a substitute for organic fertilisers, has served to obscure the long-term decline in soil structure and to blunt efforts to halt this. Lester Brown and Edward Wolf in a report on Soil Erosion: Quiet Crisis in the World Economy published by the Worldwatch Institute in 1984 pointed to:

the severity of soil erosion and its implications for future agricultural production worldwide. Between 1977 and 1982, 1.7 billion tonnes of soil were lost each year in the US; 44 per cent of American farmland is now losing soil faster than it is being replaced, mainly by it being washed and blown away. Crop monoculture is largely to blame, and productivity has been maintained only by massive doses of fertilisers which have so far succeeded in masking the enormity of the losses (from summary of report in Guardian, 9 May 1985).

According to a report to the American Congress, an estimated $1,200 million worth of fertilisers would have been needed in 1978 simply to replace the nutrients lost through soil erosion in that year (The Ecologist, July/Aug/Sept 1980). Moreover as soil structure deteriorates with the loss of humus so the application of chemical fertilisers becomes less efficient, more and more of it being lost through leaching and run-off leading to serious pollution of waterways. Indeed, there is overwhelming evidence to suggest that the application of such fertilisers is subject to the law of diminishing returns. US agriculture, for example, has to use 5 times as much fertiliser today as it did in 1947 to produce the same amount of crop. (S. Croall and W. Rankin, Ecology for Beginners, p.55). Such long-term costs of chemically-fertilised agriculture have recently prompted some interest in certain aspects of organic farming. Not that this is likely to bring about any significant shift in farming methods under present conditions of capitalism, however. For a study carried out by the US Department of Agriculture in 1981 found that, whilst organic farms were 2.5 times more productive per unit of energy consumed than conventional farms, they were also less profitable. This was "largely due to the rotation system under which as much as 60 per cent of the land must be planted with nitrogen-fixing legumes at any one time". (New Scientist, 19 March 1983). Furthermore, they are likely to incur higher labour costs in that more labour is involved in such tasks as the hauling and spreading of compost or manure or in handweeding in the case of certain crops. For the individual farmer under competitive pressure to maximise his return on the resources at his disposal - be it land or labour - it is difficult indeed to adopt more ecologically prudent methods of farming where this demands a degree of resistance to such pressure.

Marx writing in 1867, had already commented on the destructive impact of profit-motivated agriculture on the environment:

Moreover, all progress in capitalistic agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the labourer, but of robbing the soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time, is a progress towards ruining the lasting sources of that fertility. The more a country starts its development on the foundation of modern industry, like the United States, for example, the more rapid is this process of destruction. Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combination together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth - the soil and the labourer. (Capital, Vol I, pp.506-7).

In 1948 Marx's warning was echoed by William Vogt, Chief of the Conservation Section of the Pan-American Union:

One of the most ruinous limiting factors is the capitalistic system - and this is one of the gravest criticisms that can be leveled against it. The methods of free competition and the application of the profit motive have been disastrous to the land . . .
Throughout virtually the entire world, land is not used to produce the crop best adapted to it on a permanent basis but to produce as much cash as possible, as cheaply as possible, and as quickly as possible - the same system exalted by the manufacturer, (quoted in J.A. Barnett, The Human Species, 1971, p.208).

Since then the situation has deteriorated alarmingly. It is quite true that output has grown substantially in the meantime. In the period 1960-80, for example, whilst world population increased by 48 per cent, total cereal production rose by no less than 75 per cent (though a greater proportion of it was diverted into livestock feed than ever before). But, as Lester Brown and Edward Wolf put it in their Worldwatch Institute report on soil erosion, this impressive growth in production has been achieved by a process of more or less "mining" the soil, "converting a renewable resource into a non-renewable one". Almost everywhere, the land is being impoverished; its fertility flushed down the world's rivers, borne away by its winds or simply buried under an expanding carpet of concrete. In all some 25 billion tonnes of fertile topsoil are lost each year throughout the world because of excessive erosion associated mainly with agriculture.

SOCIALISM AND ECOLOGY
How might socialist society approach the problem of maintaining soil fertility? Firstly, with regard to chemical fertilisers, there are today enormous regional disparities in the use of such fertilisers. Built into this pattern is a tremendous waste of agricultural potential:

A ton of fertiliser applied in a previously unfertilized area (i.e. most of the underdeveloped world) can produce up to ten extra tons of grain, whereas an extra ton spread in the developed world will not produce more than a maximum of three extra tons because of the law of diminishing returns. While one ton more of fertiliser matters only marginally to those countries that already have the best yields, it matters vitally to those who are still far from self-sufficient in food production. (S. George, How the Other Half Dies, 1980, p.302).

In other words, even without any increase in the global use of chemical fertilisers, food production could be significantly expanded were such a resource to be more rationally distributed. In socialist society, free of the constraints of the marketplace, it would of course be entirely feasible to allocate resources in such a way as to ensure their most productive use. Underpinning this freedom would be the unity of common purpose, a unity forged in the basic structure of a society in which all had free and equal access to the wealth that society produced.

Secondly, socialist society would obviously want to halt and reverse the long-term decline in soil fertility by improving the humus content of the soil. Not only would this make for the more efficient absorption of chemical fertilisers but would help contain further topsoil loss as a result of erosion. Whilst this would involve more labour intensive work which would require a larger agricultural workforce it should be borne in mind that one of the greatest productive advantages of socialism over capitalism is that it would release a tremendous amount of labour for socially productive work. At least half of the workforce today are engaged in activities that, although vital to the operation of a modern capitalist economy would have no purpose in a society where production was directly and solely geared to the satisfaction of human needs.

Thirdly, and most importantly, as a society freed from the profit motive and competitive pressures "to produce as much cash as possible, as cheaply as possible, and as quickly as possible", socialism will be able to adopt agricultural methods which achieve a working compromise with nature (for, as explained, all agriculture unavoidably upsets the pre¬existing ecosystem to a greater or lesser extent) respecting the long-term considerations which ecological science teaches are vitally important.

Robin Cox (Britain)