SPGB Snippets: Water balls-up (2026)

From the Socialist Party of Great Britain website

May 27, 2026

Anyone looking to cool off this summer with a swim in England’s river bathing sites had better check it hasn’t rained recently, because the river could be full of E.coli from sewage overflows. Of the 14 inland river sites tested last year by the Environment Agency, 12 are still rated poor, with advice being not to swim.

People understandably get steamed up when water companies use profits to pay shareholders instead of repairing leaky infrastructure. Meanwhile we get filthy rivers and lakes, and hosepipe bans. Many would like to see water renationalised, but cash-strapped government doesn’t want the maintenance burden – they have jets and missiles to pay for.

Water falls out of the sky for free. Trust capitalism to ruin even that.

The Doughnut revisited (2025)

From the November 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

In last month’s Socialist Standard we discussed Kate Raworth’s book Doughnut Economics. As it happens, on 1 October Raworth and co-author Andrew Fanning published an online paper ‘Doughnut of social and planetary boundaries monitors a world out of balance’ in the journal Nature. This updates and widens the scope of previous work in this framework.

Things have not improved since the original work was done: ‘Billions of people are falling short of meeting their most essential needs, whereas humanity’s ecological imprint on the living planet is now overshooting at least six of the nine planetary boundaries’. Previously four of the boundaries had been crossed, ecological limits which it was essential to keep within.

The boundaries are measured in terms of indicators, with more than one indicator for some boundaries. Ozone-layer depletion has been stable since the early 2000s, but the other indicators for which information over time is available show a worsening of conditions. For instance, four indicators have more than doubled the extent to which they exceed acceptable limits: CO2 concentration and radiative forcing (both of which relate to the climate change boundary), and hazardous chemicals and phosphorus (relating to chemical and nutrient pollution).

The inner ring of the Doughnut deals with meeting people’s needs. Here two indicators have deteriorated significantly, food insecurity and the existence of autocratic regimes. Others have improved, but only slightly, with 10 percent of the world’s population being undernourished in 2021–2, compared to 13 percent in 2000-1. A rapid improvement would be needed to eliminate this problem by 2030. The proportion lacking access to safely managed drinking water only went down from 39 percent to 37 percent over the same period.

Has there been progress overall? Global GDP doubled between 2000 and 2022, but ‘only modest improvements were achieved in reducing social shortfalls worldwide, whereas ecological overshoot increased rapidly, disrupting the critical planetary processes on which all life depends’.

So the Doughnut’s method of examining whether society is coping with meeting everyone’s needs while keeping the planet in a sustainable condition shows very clearly that the present system, capitalism, is unable to meet either goal. A system based on profit cannot solve these problems, and only a change to a world based on production for use will be able to do so.

Paul Bennett

Editorial: Progress is socialism (1982)

Editorial from the October 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The Socialist Standard in June devoted a page to a sort of dictionary, a brief guide to an understanding of the way capitalism distorts and abuses the language we speak. A society in which the useful majority are deprived of the full fruits of their labour, as part of their relationship with a parasitic minority, has a political urgency to do this; it is part of a justification of the legalised robbery, repression and murder of millions of useful human beings.

Thus what is called peace is in fact a state of continuing but undeclared warfare and of industriously building up a more fearsome means of destruction. What is called prosperity is a condition in which tens of millions suffer varying degrees of deprivation, from simple poverty to outright destitution, homelessness and starvation. What is presented as truth is really a mixture of differing depths of deceit, from casuistry to outright lies. The list could be extended almost indefinitely.

One particularly striking example of this is the word progress, which is abused and misused with such persistence that any sensitive person would do well to take guard whenever they hear it uttered. Not so long ago, in the mouth of Tony Benn (then Minister of Technology), progress was represented by supersonic airliners which would boom their shattering way over our aching heads. It is motorways which carve their concreted, frantic route through countryside which once offered a green respite in the workaday life. It is nuclear power stations, which threaten to seep their radioactivity into the atmosphere for us to inhale and absorb. Or it is a human made potential volcano like Canvey Island. Progress is concentrated industry, urban stress, pollution, speed, a more pressured exploitation in employment.

Occasionally, some worried voice — or some ambitious investigative journalist — will compose a questioning piece on the effects of “progress”. Is asbestos production progress, remembering its devastating effects on the human lung? Is lead dosed petrol an unmixed benefit, considering what it does to our brains and other vital organs? Under pressure, industry might be compelled to admit that what they call progress is not wholly good for us. But the argument will not be allowed to rest there; progress, it will be claimed, is innately beneficial and has some rewards in store for us and must therefore be endured, much as clerical hacks preach to us on the benefits of enduring earthly burdens to prepare us for the mythical joys of heaven.

It would also be claimed that "progress'’ must not be obstructed because it enhances profitability. Concorde threatened to torture us because it was hoped to be a money spinner for the British and French aircraft industries. Motorways are supposed to provide faster and cheaper transport of commodities; nuclear power stations, we are assured, can turn out low cost energy to industrial users. And so on.

This justification is specious if for no other reason than that profitability will also put the brakes on progress. Capitalism has a history of more efficient, safer, happier methods of production which have been left to moulder simply because they did not fit in with the current scheme of profitable operation. It also has a history of the destruction of wealth already turned out — notably of food while millions of people are starving — and of means of production and distribution left idle when it is not profitable to put them to use. In the present recession, for example, factories, steel mills, coal mines are being shut down and ships and aircraft are being laid up because it does not pay to keep them going.

Thus this profit-motivated social system acts as a restraint on production. Capitalism does not encourage material progress; it hampers it. It is an obstructive, reactionary society and those who are concerned for human progress should pay first attention to this massive fundamental reality.

Capitalism does not operate in this way through an accidental obscurantism, which could easily be adjusted or eliminated. It is basic to a system of class ownership of the means of production and distribution, and to the production of wealth as commodities, that progress will be obstructed when it does not meet the system's profit priorities. If there is to be real, permanent progress, there must be a real, permanent change in society. Such a change can come about only through a basic social  realignment.

By this we mean a social revolution. The only effective way of dealing with capitalism's problems is to abolish it. This can be achieved in only one way — by the replacement of private ownership of the means of living with common ownership of them. This revolution will establish a new society in which wealth will be freely available to all human beings, to satisfy their every need and desire. Socialism will have no differing qualities of wealth; there will be no reason for anyone conceiving, designing, or producing anything which is less than the very height of their abilities. In socialist society, everything we make will be the best we are capable of.

Socialism will thus liberate all human talents and skills. There will be such an explosion of abundance, beauty and satisfaction as to be inconceivable to us now, in this cramped and crippled life under the social relationships of capitalism. Socialism will be a massive advance in human society and will lay down the path to further achievement. It will be progress — historical, social, material and moral. In that understanding, it is clear that progress is something we have yet to experience.

And we should not overlook another, heavily significant advance for which socialism will be responsible. Humans will no longer speak in language distorted by the political need to justify an unjustifiable social system. Socialism will liberate and purify the means in which we communicate with each other. As part of the human intercourse in a society of freedom and abundance, words will take on a new richness. Socialism will be progress.

Capitalism everywhere? (2025)

Book Review from the April 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Profit: an Environmental History. By Mark Stoll. Polity £17.99.

This volume contains a great deal of useful information, not just about the environment and how production has affected it, but also on the history of technology and industry, and there are many pages of references.

Various kinds of pollution are referred to, such as the massive oil spills from the Torrey Canyon supertanker in 1967 and the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform in 2010. But environmental impacts go back much earlier. In the Middle Ages, for instance, silver and gold were imported to Italy to be minted into coins, which led to toxic chemicals being washed into streams and rivers near the mines, in Bohemia and other places. Areas near the mines suffered from deforestation. By the seventeenth century sugar refineries and other industries in the Netherlands emitted vast amounts of stinking coal smoke. In the Americas, growing tobacco depleted the soil, but colonists just moved to extensive uncleared land. In the nineteenth century Britain was the largest producer of copper, which meant the emission of poisonous substances such as sulphur dioxide and arsenic. A lot more material along similar lines is surveyed here.

However, the book has some negative points too. For some reason, the author refers several times to the religious views of various individuals. Does it really matter that Rachel Carson, author of the conservationist classic Silent Spring, was a Reformed Protestant or that Bill Gates used to be a Congregationalist?

More significantly, Stoll has a very all-embracing approach to capitalism, which he sees as an economic system where owners of accumulated wealth invest it for profit in extracting raw materials or producing and distributing goods. There have been various forms of it over the centuries, from incipient capitalism to plantation capitalism in ancient Greece to industrial capitalism and present-day consumer capitalism. He writes: ‘we cannot live with capitalism and we cannot live without it. At best, we can work to ameliorate its worst effects.’ And it ‘is rooted in human nature and human history’. Wage labour gets an occasional mention but does not seem to be viewed as an essential part of capitalism. Nor is it recognised that the way most people made their living has varied enormously over the centuries. Furthermore, his idea of profit goes well beyond the notion of surplus value as an intrinsic part of the employment-and-wages system, since he states that forty thousand years ago people made a profit by exchanging tools they had made for other goods they did not have to make themselves.

From the late nineteenth century, industrial capitalism has come to be gradually replaced by consumer capitalism, with its emphasis on advertising and built-in obsolescence. In the US, it seems, a piece of clothing is worn on average seven times before being discarded. The biggest companies sell to consumers rather than manufacturing goods (Amazon and Walmart, for instance).

It is not clear, but Stoll appears to see capitalism as more than just islands of commodity production within a wider economy. The book contains much of interest but its approach to capitalism leaves a lot to be desired, not recognising that the drive for profit is an essential part of a system built on wage labour and production for sale.

Paul Bennett

Pathfinders: The next big thing (2025)

The Pathfinders Column from the January 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mainstream news stories are an endless diet of misery which activists seem to force-feed themselves, under the highly contestable assumption that bad news motivates people to action, rather than into depressed fatalism. If you feel the need for an injection of positivity this January, you ought to try the many free science news websites.

The reason science stories are often positive is because science is about solving problems instead of despairing over them. Now it is true that sometimes those problems are ones that science itself accidentally created. Nobody’s perfect. The law of unintended consequences is always at work, so we ended up with lead in petrol, CFCs in fridges and ‘forever chemicals’ in Teflon. Worse, because science is forced to obey the capitalist prime directive of profit, too often these unintended consequences become ‘unattended externalities’.

Even so, reading science news is a good way to maintain a ‘can-do’ perspective on the world. And socialists have another reason to be interested, because science can offer glimpses of emerging tools and techniques that global socialism might, just might, be able to use in the future, even if they are deemed uneconomical in the present.

Take the current anxiety about micro and nanoplastic particles now being found in almost every animal cell on Earth, together with those forever chemical compounds which don’t break down naturally and have been found in human blood, organs and breast milk. The long-term consequences of all this are unknown, and mainstream news treats it as an unmitigated disaster. But new research has shown how to remove up to 94 percent of nanoplastics from water by just using carbonised epoxy, while a team in China have developed a sponge filter that they say can remove 99.9 percent of microplastics. Forever chemicals can be broken down using expensive high-energy processes, but new light-powered catalysts are thought do the same job at a fraction of the energy cost.

As is well known, renewable energies are intermittent and require back-up storage, generally in the form of lithium-based batteries. But lithium mining or via brine extraction is energy intensive and environmentally destructive. A new study suggests that half of all lithium requirements could actually come out of wastewater instead while an alternative approach offers a low-energy and sustainable means to extract it directly from seawater.

Socialist society will most likely pivot away from the unsustainable capitalist-era obsession with private car ownership, towards comprehensive public transport, but there will still be a role for electric vehicles. At present the battery is the most expensive and least durable part of an EV, but a new type of single-crystal electrode lithium-ion battery could outlast the vehicle it’s in, and then see a ‘second-life’ usage as grid energy storage. Lithium is used because it’s light, so it has an optimal power to weight ratio, but the heavier sodium has similar properties and is 500 times more abundant, so sodium-ion batteries are under development for grid storage, which doesn’t need to move. Problems to date have been low power and slow charging times, but a high-power sodium-ion battery is in development that can charge in seconds.

Battery life and weight currently make long-distance aviation infeasible, but what about old tech in the form of airships? Sustainability concerns are changing attitudes to next-gen air transport, and multiple airship models are in development, including the carbon-fibre and all-electric Pathfinder 1 (no relation), the hydrogen H2 Clipper and the helium Flying Whales, with the UK Airlander 10 expected to be in commercial service by 2026. Helium is hard to get, but the manufacturers point out that airships don’t consume it, they store it, and only need occasional top-ups. If capitalism can do airships, why not socialism?

For short hops, some European companies are developing electric vertical take-off and landing (EVTOL) craft for use as low-cost, noiseless and emission-free air taxis. But they’ve run into funding problems recently as investors are sceptical of getting a good return on investment (ROI). That’s one problem the technology wouldn’t face if a democratic socialist society was, for some reason, smitten with the idea of roof-hopping public transport systems.

In other tech news, AI is an order of magnitude greater consumer of electricity than conventional computing, and an important question is where all the electricity is going to come from. One team believes they can cut AI power consumption by 95 percent simply by rejigging some algorithms. Global warming is creating a global water crisis, and desalination plants are power hungry, but a new method promises zero-electric solar desalination. There’s a plan to stop millions of tons of e-waste by printing circuits onto tree leaves. And self-heating concrete is a thing, if you mix it with paraffin, and could be used for de-icing roads.

In health news, a new biomaterial can regrow cartilage in old joints, meaning no more knee replacements. A twice-yearly injection reduces HIV risk by 96%, more effective than PrEP pills which have to be taken daily. Asthma research has seen the first breakthrough in 50 years with a monoclonal antibody treatment that isn’t a steroid so it doesn’t lead to osteoporosis. And a raft of new research confirms what we already suspected, that nature is good for us. Studies show that time spent in woods, fields or gardens – especially if you get mud on your skin – seems to realign your body’s microbiome with ‘good’ bacteria that are lost through urbanisation and are now believed to inhibit a colossal range of gut-implicated ‘urban’ illnesses (Good Nature, Kathy Kelly, Bloomsbury, 2024).

This only scratches the surface, and of course not all developments will pan out. But the key takeaway from science news is the awareness that the next huge breakthrough, the discovery or invention that changes everything, is just as likely to happen tomorrow as in a hundred years. If that’s not a reason for optimism, we don’t know what is.

Paddy Shannon

Voice From The Back: Californian Nightmare (2007)

The Voice From The Back Column from the December 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Californian Nightmare

The dreadful fires in California that led to death and destruction were well reported in the British press, but what was hardly covered was the plight of the immigrant workers. “Out of the burning brush, from behind canyon rocks, several immigrants bolted toward a group of firefighters, chased not by the border police but by the onrush of flames from one of the biggest wildfires this week. … Immigrants from south of the border, many illegal, provide the backbone of menial labor in San Diego, picking fruit, cleaning hotel rooms, sweeping walks and mowing lawns. The wildfires, one of the biggest disasters to strike the county, exposed their often-invisible existence in ways that were sometimes deadly. The four bodies were found in a burned area in southeastern San Diego County, a region known for intense illegal immigration. …Terri Trujillo, who helps the immigrants, checked on those in the canyons, urging them to leave, too, when she left her house in Rancho Peñasquitos ahead of the fires. Ms. Trujillo and others who help the immigrants said they saw several out in the fields as the fires approached and ash fell on them. She said many were afraid to lose their jobs. ‘There were Mercedeses and Jaguars pulling out, people evacuating, and the migrants were still working,’ said Enrique Morones, who takes food and blankets to the immigrants’ camps. ‘It’s outrageous.’ Some of the illegal workers who sought help from the authorities were arrested and deported.” (New York Times, 27 October) What a comment on capitalism, some workers live in such poverty and insecurity they give up their lives in an attempt to keep a menial weekly wage.

Wall Street Shuffle

We are always being told that capitalism is a competitive system that rewards success and punishes failure, but what are we to make of the following? “Merrill Lynch’s directors may be weighing E. Stanley O’Neal’s future, but one thing is already guaranteed: a payday of at least $159 million if he steps down. Mr. O’Neal, the company’s chairman and chief executive, is entitled to $30 million in retirement benefits as well as $129 million in stock and option holdings, according to an analysis by James F. Reda & Associates using yesterday’s share price of $66.09. That would be on top of the roughly $160 million he took home in his nearly five years on the job. Under Mr. O’Neal, Merrill moved aggressively into lucrative businesses like the packaging of subprime mortgages and other complex debt securities. …But those big bets appeared to go bust this week. Merrill announced an $8.4 billion write-down, raising questions about whether Mr. O’Neal will keep his job. One thing that he surely will hold onto, though, are the giant paychecks he has collected. ‘I lay the blame at the foot of the board,” Frederick E. Rowe Jr., a money manager and president of Investors for Director Accountability. “He was paid a tremendous amount of money to create a loss that is mind-boggling, and he obviously took risks that should never have been taken.’” (New York Times, 27 October) He managed to lose $8.4 billion for the company and can claim $159 million for his efforts. Who says capitalism isn’t crazy?

This Is Communism?

“The United States has more billionaires than any other country: 415 by the last count of Forbes magazine. No. 2, and closing fast? China. A year ago, there were 15 billionaires in China. Now, there are more than 100, according to the widely watched Hurun Report. Forbes has documented 66. ..As much as the bounty of billionaires is a source of pride, it is also a potential cause for concern in a nominally Communist country. Per capita income in China is less than $1,000 a year.” (New York Times, 7 November) China is a fast developing capitalist country and just like any other capitalist economy the gap between the rich and the poor is immense.

Chinese Statistics

One of the effects of the rapid expansion of Chinese capitalism is the pollution of the atmosphere and drinking water. This has led to these horrendous statistics. “40% – Percentage by which birth defects among Chinese infants have risen since 2001, according to a government report, which linked the rise to environmental pollution. 460,000 – Number of Chinese who die prematurely every year from exposure to pollution and dirty water.” (Time, 12 November) This expansion may be leading to the creation of more billionaires, but it is also producing more corpses.

The threat to the Great Lakes (1985-6)

From the Winter 1985-6 issue of the World Socialist

In recent months there has been antagonism between various Canadian and American politicians concerning access to, and the use of, water from the Great Lakes, with each going to bat for the respective needs of the big-business interests they represent. A conference held in Toronto in June, 1984, solved nothing, though some ideas were voiced that could, in a sane society, be workable.

As far as we know, Samuel de Champlain was the first white man to reach the shores of the Great Lakes in 1615. Though he could not have known it, he had stumbled on to the greatest lake system in the world. Though the lakes could not have known it either, it was the portent of dreadful things to come.

Now, less than 400 years later, its watershed is home to 50 million thirsty folk, with another 100 million even thirstier people casting envious eyes northward. The fact that some US political errand boys, such  as  Governor  Scott Matheson  of Utah,  seem sincere  in  their intentions to quench this rather large thirst, can be explained by the simple word — votes. There are, however, more than Scott's electors who need it and intend by foul means or fouler, to get it; such as farmers in the mid-west who want it for increasing their profits through irrigation. Then there are western coal producers who want to take it out to use for coal slurry pipelines.

These would be new uses for the lakes which for years have been very useful to large companies in other ways — such as a dumping ground for industrial pollution. This is the way Lake Erie was killed; not killed meaning dead of course. It was alive, but with plenty of the wrong things.

It's typical that the effects of capitalism create a problem for its everyday abnormal functioning, then you have its apologists running around panicking because they have a problem.

Wasting what's not renewable

The lakes are immense, covering an area the size of Michigan, Indiana and Ohio combined. In some places, they go to the depth of 1,000 feet. They are, however, fragile, chemical-wise, and must be treated carefully. They were created after the last ice age and are not renewable; only the annual fall of rain and snow is.

Many reports have been presented to the various interested parties, but most stress the qualitative aspect not the quantitative. There is, however, a mean level that must be maintained at all times. If it isn't, shipping, the tourist industry and power generation are affected. That critical level cannot be sustained if more water is taken out than put in.

In   many  areas  of North  America,   man's  withdrawal  from  the watershed and acquirers exceeds nature's deposits. Wells are drying up, river flows are declining, yet businesses waste water continuously. Seeking to solve the problem within capitalism, they are searching for ways to recapture the finite amounts flowing through the water cycle. If they tackle this problem with the same degree of success they've had curbing pollution, the day will come when one will be able to drive from one end of the system to the other on the bed of the lake.

America uses 250 billions of gallons of fresh water a day, over half of it for irrigation, and the US General Accounting Office says that half the water used for irrigation is wasted. Yet, the working Joe wastes very little, 25 percent he drinks, the other 75 percent is used in the bathroom (baths, showers, flushing the toilet).

Of all the world's water, less than 1 per cent is available in North America. It's in the rivers, streams and underground aquifiers. The rest is salty or frozen in polar ice caps. Twenty-five percent of this 1 percent is in the Great Lakes, providing water for 200 towns and cities on its shores and other parts of the continent, keeping large factories going, providing hydro power and supporting a tourism industry generating $50 billion a year.

It seems strange (and it is) to be as concerned, as some conservationists and other sundry do-gooders are, because farm land is being gobbled up for shopping centres and condos, while underneath the water slips beyond their grasp.

A quarter of a million square miles of land above the Ogallala Aquifier, which is the world's largest reservoir of ground water, produces 25 percent of American cotton, 38 percent of the grain sorghum, 16 percent of the wheat and 15 percent of the corn. Forty percent of America's grain-fed beef is fattened and watered here. At the present rate of usage, the Ogallala Aquifier will be dry in 2024. A ten million year old resource wiped out in a few decades.

Conflicts of capitalist interest

The Chicago diversion plan is typical of the anarchy of capitalism. The Great Lakes are used for water supplies, for sewage disposal, for power generation and for navigation. Since these waters are shared by the US and Canada, it is inevitable that given the profit-oriented nature of capitalism, clashes between the ruling class in both countries will occur.

As Lake Michigan is wholly within the US, Ontario and bordering states are dependant on US Supreme Court decrees to control its outflow and as the Chicago diversion would affect levels in the entire system, the future (if any) of the system could well be decided in American courts and not by the International Joint Commission set up under the International Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909, which is made up of officials from both countries and supposedly oversees the use of the Great Lakes system.

This plan would seriously affect water levels in the Great Lakes and the Ontario government is concerned about it, particularly because severe lowering of lake levels would kill a multi-billion dollar shipping industry, and has made it clear that it will not support diversion of waters direct or indirect.

To solve the problem of the Ogallala Aquifier being used for irrigation faster than rainfall can replenish it, it has been suggested by some mid-west Senators to pipe water from Lake Superior, 600 miles to the Missouri River Basin. This is not merely opposed by Canadians involved, but also some Americans. Ex-governor Milliken of Michigan said he would give anyone proposing such ideas a "good drenching." Milliken himself, when in office, was vociferous in his support of conservation. One wonders if the support of Milliken by the 500,000 strong Michigan Conservation Club, had any bearing on it.

Another dilemma is how to ship coal from the western minefields to the industrial areas in the mid-west where it's needed for power. It has been suggested that it be crushed, mixed with water piped from Lake Michigan and pumped through a slurry pipeline to mid-west states.

Recently, there was also talk of increasing the water flow to improve local water quality and to lower Great Lake levels, reducing erosion and flooding damage. A recent study shows that increasing the water flow to 10,000 cubic feet a second would yield "benefits" worth $3.25 million. It also found that the resulting power and navigation losses would total $40 million annually. So, the "experts" are considering an increase to 6,600 cubic feet per second instead.

In each case, the so-called solution is to use Great Lakes water with no care for the consequences. The benefits, meaning profits for businesses, would be short-term and who knows what later; but then, that is the way capitalism must function.

Whatever happens, one thing's for sure, soon big business in the US will need more water, particularly if they wish to continue wasting it at the present rate. Also, the ruling class realize the working class need it in order to continue to be in a fit state to be exploited. Some observers think that the US may start leaning on Canada to buy Canadian water by the turn of the century. It all boils down to whether or not the predicted shortage will reach beyond toilet flushing and showers to such a trickle that it threatens all human survival — capitalist as well as worker.

No concern for the future

If much of the above seems to the reader to be irresponsible to the point of folly, that's because capitalism, through the profit motive, its very death blood, can function in no other way. Profits must be acquired and quickly for a business to survive, regardless of what long-term disasters may do to those businesses in the future. Also, the need of competing sections of the capitalist class for materials for its specific requirements, which in this case means a source of power to run industry, as well as profits concerning the sale of drink, must inevitably bring them into clashes with each other, clashes the working class has no stake in.

In a socialist society, with the abolition of the profit motive, no such screwball situations could exist. Whereas water, and anything else people need, would be moved from one place to another, this would not mean lowering the levels of lakes if it's thought that would create problems. Mankind would use the technology and technical know-how available to find where water is and transport it wherever it's needed without plundering and wasting the resources on which continuing human life on this planet depends.

Ray Rawlings

(Canada)

Class-divided society breeds pollution (1985-6)

From the Winter 1985-6 issue of the World Socialist

In world capitalism, goods and services take the form of commodities, i.e., goods produced primarily for profit. They must be sold to realise dividends for private shareholders, interest for owners of government bonds and an income for members of the capitalist class generally. The unearned wealth that accrues to the owners and controllers of capital, whether private or state, comes in the form of unpaid or stolen labor. Wages only supply workers with the cost of maintenance and renewal of the abilities they sell. Wages are far less than the monetary value of the things workers produce. Investment only occurs when the workers can be fleeced in this manner. No profit, no production. To compete successfully for markets industries must minimize costs. They must produce cheaply to get buyers. One of the ways of doing this is to produce without concern for the environment and to avoid neutralizing the wastes even if they are dangerous to humanity.

Pollution and class-divided social systems co-exist, they form two sides of an equation. Exploitation by a dominant class of a subject class leads to despoiliation of the natural environment. No social interest exists, because of the absence of social cohesion in the interests of all individuals who make up the organised group.

On the other hand, in the classless phase of social evolution known as tribal or primitive society, humans were in harmony with the nature that they so urgently depended upon. With a sparse knowledge of the world, mankind was compelled to utilize every bit of vegetable and mineral substance he could apprehend. It was a food-gathering, not a money-gathering culture. Man lived in reverence of the material-elemental source of survival. And co-operation for the individual-common good was mandatory.

Environmental destruction began when this social unity for the good of all broke up into antagonistic classes of masters and slaves around 7 to 10 thousand years ago. With a ruling class, responsible only to itself in its quest for riches out of the surplus labor of its slaves, there was little concern for making resources sustainable or extensible.

The two pre-capitalist property systems, chattel slavery and feudalism, brought about deforestation, erosion, soil exhaustion, flooding, air pollution, wild-life extinction and disease. (Hughs, Ecology in Ancient Civilizations). With the coming of industrial production, in the form of capital and wage-labor, in the 18th and 19th centuries and the expansion of production this brought about, the defilement of nature increased proportionately. Vast areas of England and Europe were blackened by soot. Millions of wage slaves there and in the US suffered lung diseases, cancers, and died from industrial pollution and degraded tainted food.

Pollution control: legalizing levels of pollution

Since the wages-prices-profit system is perceived as being unchangeable, so despoilment of nature is viewed as being physically necessary or inevitable. The system's reaction is to deal with the symptoms. For instance, as birth defects double every 20 years (Toronto Star, 19/5/84), governments pay for special homes, and educational facilities for the growing number of mentally retarded, handicapped children. As the North American cancer rate rises to 18 per cent of deaths (Epstein, Politics of Cancer), which according to the World Health Organization (WHO) is 75 to 80 per cent environmentally caused, governments and industry finance medical research and care to fight the disease. Obviously, after divesting workers of the fruits of their labor and polluting their bodies, profits are healthy enough for the employing class to transfer a portion toward band-aids for social sores and propaganda about governments being oriented around the interests of all.

Pollution controls have been enacted by governments in various countries, but these are the minimum levels thought to be necessary to protect the profits of the owning class, not the health of the population. Pollution control has nothing more to do with health than war has to do with saving lives.

The Ecologist, (Nov/Dec 1979) points out that acceptable levels of potentially dangerous chemicals released ". . . are simply the minimum levels that can be achieved without compromising economic priorities". (Their emphasis, "economic" being a popular euphemism to downplay profits). It also showed that WHO's minimum standard of mercury poison in food of 0.2 to 0.5 ppm catered to the average cost of profitable production of most countries. Costs in Swedish fisheries during the 1960's for example, were higher than WHO's average. Sweden had to allow 1.00 ppm of mercury poison or else 45 per cent of its fisheries would have had to shut down. Another example from the Ecologist: "When WHO recently raised (the acceptable level of lead in drinking water) from 50 micrograms to 100 micrograms per litre, this was not the result of the sudden discovery that man was less sensitive to lead poisoning than previously thought, but to the fact that few water authorities could provide water to this standard" (their italics).

A legalized level of pollution, to make working class exploitation possible, while being biologically harmful to the useful class, is not a rigid boundary line which cannot be transgressed. The anarchy of market competition makes control merely a goal. Laws against gross desecration are about as effective as laws against bank robbery.

A small percentage of violators are caught, and fined lightly. Much of the contamination is unknown to regulatory authorities. Some businesses do not even know if their wastes are toxic. Others refuse to reveal the nature of their disposal matter for fear of imparting information to their competitors. In the US state of New Jersey, crime kings have moved into the disposal of hazardous waste business (Times/ Colonist, 17/12/80). It is very lucrative, surreptitiously dumping the stuff without neutralizing it. Up to 1979 there were thousands of dangerous dumps in the US, with no laws or funds to deal with them (New Scientist, 21/6/79).   Many   more   were   unknown,   with   businesses   sneaking truckloads of toxic effluvium, at high speed, nocturnally, to secret destinations. Oil spills are generally uncontrollable as they are incurred between national boundaries.

There are more unknown factors. Several million pollutants have been introduced into the global environment. How many break down or decay into new compounds, and what they are, is unknown. The synergic effects, where destructive chemicals, acting upon one another, combining to increase the sum of their individual potency hundreds of times more than when in isolation, is mostly unknown. The US Environmental Protection Agency studied that country's drinking water and discovered that "there may be a myriad of organic chemicals, not yet isolated and identified" (Ecologist, November/December 1979). There is the so-called safe level of poisoning for the average person* but most people are not average. And so on.

Pollution control means governments issuing permits to industries to sell "safe" pesticides, food additives and to dump toxic chemical wastes harmlessly, then, after 10 or so years of public exposure to them, banning them after discovering through further research, that they are harmful after all. Control also means governments issuing permits to pollute. Amax of Canada, Ltd, for example, sat down with the federal government and helped to write its own permit to dump toxic mine tailings into a northern British Columbia ocean inlet, which the local Nishga Indians depended on for their fish supplies (Times/Colonist, 1/3/ 83).

Control also means a Canadian government without enough money to conduct its own tests on new pesticides and additives coming on the market. Instead it accepts the reports on tests done by the manufacturers themselves. This is like sending the fox to guard the chicken coop. Consequently, one testing firm, Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories, Inc. of Northbrook, 111., falsified health tests on pesticides and drugs for 7 years, to save money (Times/Colonist, 23/6/81). Control means the Canadian government health department knowingly allowing Canada Housing, a mortgage corporation, to use carcinogenic urea formaldehyde foam insulation for government subsidized home insulation for workers (Times/Colonist, 5/9/81).

Under state capitalism too

The words "Communist," "Socialist" or "Marxist," are pseudonyms which conceal the state capitalism which exists in all "iron curtain" countries. It should come as no surprise therefore, that production for sale-profit social conditions under rigid, one-party police states degrade the environment as they do in the rest of the world.

Poland, for example, is likely the most polluted country in the world (New Scientist, 22/10/81). In Russia, the massive surface coal mining complexes ". . . are witness to the environmental devastation that has been caused. Vast tracts of forest and agricultural land have been torn up, and the pollution of local streams and rivers has been drastic." Deforestation has resulted in serious land erosion (Ecologist, June/78). The 5-year plan, rapid capital expansion (high profits) development of the USSR has left little regard for ecological conservation.

China has been desecrating its own land surface by deforesting 24 per cent of its treed area for pulp and paper profits during the 1940's (Toronto Star, 19/5/84). At this time, only 12 per cent of China has trees. The scenery along the Yellow River is a bald moonscape, and a brown smog chokes Peking, to the extent of eating the wood and stone ballustrades of the ancient imperial palace (Toronto Star, 24/5/84). That country's capitalist political dictators fear that "ultimate . . . ecological disaster" could threaten their "modernization (= more efficient exploitation of the workers) plans." China too, has begun to tinker with effects, by choking the political atmosphere with bureaucratic institutions, such as the Municipal Bureau for Preserving Cultural Relics, and laws, in a vain attempt to curb pollution.

Ecology movements trapped by the economic system

The average crusader against ecological degradation sees the private and state property system, with its money, wages and profits, as basically a static arrangement which can be improved for the masses through a gradual process of reform for the common good. Ecologists are generally unaware of the class-divided world social structure, and of their own existence as workers as part of the lower, exploited one of two antagonistic classes.

Environmentalists could be included as members of "his majesty's loyal opposition". Some of their groups receive grants from governments who are funded through taxes from some industries which are extreme polluters. The movements function, in part, as watchdogs to try to see that the system's masochistic excesses don't get out of hand and threaten, in some areas, the exploitive apple cart. Many of their victories undoubtedly meet with the approval of the polluting industries' shareholders, who may not quite make the connection between the earth's degradation and their dividends. These manipulated successes are enough to motivate the tinkerers onward. It is encouraging that they protest the debauchery of the planet, but not so happy that they are failing to stop it.

Ecologists are ill-equipped, have no answer for such defenses from the spokesmen of the owning class that more pollution should be allowed during a depression, to help to "create" jobs; or to cut costs so that "our" industries can compete on foreign markets.

If they ever came to power the ecologists would be trapped by the economics of the system. There are not as many ecological organizations as there are toxic elements and other threats to the natural surroundings, but it is likely that many reformers would favor such a state, to hopefully make their efforts effective. Advice on scrubbing unwashed vegetables and fruits to reduce pesticide residues, and ingest vitamin and mineral supplements to neutralize environmental poisons, are within the band-aid sphere of the ecology movements.

Being generally and unconsciously mired in capitalist ideology, ecology groups embrace the political "spectrum" parties, from extreme "left" to the "right" with most tending toward liberal left. Some, such as the Green Party of West Germany, Canada and the US and the Ecology Party of Britain, have organised separate parties. They too aim for a clean earth, in contradiction to the conventional thinking which they share with the rest of the working class.

A world free of pollution

Once the realities of the present sick society are perceived, putting a stop to environmental degradation and regenerating the planet becomes a matter of the conscious majority, the world's workers, taking political action to replace it with common ownership and democratic control of the means of life. Which means voluntarily co-operative production and distribution for the free consumption of all according to each individual's requirements.

There is no technological barrier to a pollution-free earth, but there is a political one, at present. Some scientists are aware that no such technological barrier exists, including chemistry Nobel prize winner Sir Derek Barton of London's Imperial College. In a lecture to the Vancouver Institute, University of B.C., he said: "The problem of pollution does not exist. We already have the knowledge to correct pollution when we find it. World problems of energy, pollution, hunger . . . and the economy are all artificial. . . crises" (Vancouver Sun, 31/10/77). He is supported by Dr Lee A. Dubridge of CalTech: "We now have enough technical knowledge to solve most of mankind's problems .. . The air of all cities would be free of all forms of man-made pollution'." (New York Herald Tribune, 25/10/ 61). (If the restrictions of the financial yardstick were out of the way). And from another source; during the observation of environment day, Environment Canada said: "We can have development without pollution. We have the technology — all we need is the will." (CFMS Radio, 5/6/80).

When mankind is in control of its social forces, the circumstances point to the human species identifying its interests with the earth on which it depends for its well-being. The ending of military competition between blocks of capital in nations, vying for markets and materials, will eliminate a large proportion of global contamination. Probably the first anti-pollution goal of the classless world democracy will be: (1) finding and neutralizing the deadly dumps of the past, and cleaning the poisonous air, water and soil; (2) modifying, as well as expanding productive and distributive processes, so that all can be provided for, with no pollution.

Free society will use scientific and technical potential that is possible today for these purposes, but which the present divided, competitive system has no call for. A few instances. Agriculture can be revolutionized to maintain fertile soil, health and strength of plants and their natural immunization against insects and disease. Insects have been used to control harmful insects; bacteria to control other bacteria and harmful insects; bacteria to break down sewage for natural fertilizer; some plants can protect other plants from insect pests; some useful plants can repel weeds, chemically, some pesticides have been developed which are harmful only to the insects which need to be controlled, and to no other biological species.

There are some small farmers in Canada's prairie provinces, who make a living with large yields of high quality grain, preserving fertile soil, using no artificial fertilizers or pesticides. Some small beef producers are raising cattle at low cost, with no feed supplements, no artificial vitamins, or drugs, even under the handicaps of present-day society. And this is only scratching the surface, in the area of agriculture alone.

The fractions of people, which is what wage-slaves are, will be transformed into enlightened somebodies. Socialist society will have something that capitalism forbids, the creative and productive potential that every human is born with. People will participate in a society of their choosing, free to express the natural urge to solve problems, express self-interest in co-operative harmony with all others, for maximum enjoyment of life.

Humanity in control of its affairs will never do what capitalism does—defecate on its doorstep.

George Jenkins

(Canada)

Pathfinders: A walk in the woods (2024)

The Pathfinders Column from the June 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the few free pleasures workers in more rural parts of the UK can get is a walk through ancient woodland. There are three springtime features which you can normally expect to see in ancient woodland: bluebells, Lords and Ladies (a type of arum), and wild garlic.

What you wouldn’t expect to see is 30,000 tonnes of illegally dumped and sulphurous waste, tens of feet deep, full of rubble, plastics and sanitary products. But such is the case at Hoads Wood in Kent, a protected Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and an area of outstanding natural beauty. Or at least it was until the dumpers started showing up in their wagons.

Much understandable local outrage, and politicians falling over themselves to look tough on illegal dumping and ‘bring the perpetrators to justice’. The local police declared that the pollution was ‘shocking and totally irresponsible’, which suggested that the dumpers somehow failed to understand what they were doing when they trucked up to the site, thirty times a day.

Of course they knew exactly what they were doing. They’d been paid – as many dodgy skip-hire firms are – to dispose of other people’s waste, and didn’t fancy paying commercial rates to dump it at municipal tips. It was simply cheaper to dump it where they thought nobody was looking.

TV naturalist Chris Packham took a stern line, calling it ‘a mafia operation’, perhaps something of an overstatement in the UK, though such mafia practices are notorious in the US. It’s not so much mafia as market forces, where profit is what counts, and externalities are somebody else’s problem. The UK Environment Agency provides a handy spreadsheet of all illegal dumping incidents between 2015 and 2023, ranging from private cars to tipper trucks, for construction waste, white goods, tyres, toxic chemicals, asbestos, animal carcasses and domestic black bag waste, dumped on agricultural land, footpaths and bridleways, highways, riverbanks and watercourses. There are well over 2,000 entries and for almost all of them, nothing is entered in the ‘Final Action Taken’ field. No doubt the Environment Agency is underfunded, understaffed and unable to pursue illegal tippers, despite concerns over the health implications of illegal dumping, as described for example in a 2015 paper on the so-called ‘Triangle of death’ region of Campania, near Naples in Italy.

But it’s not just cowboy contractors. UK water companies are currently under fire for massive and repeated polluting of rivers. In one example last month, according to the BBC, United Utilities pumped raw sewage into Windermere, in the UK’s Lake District, at the rate of 500 litres a second for 6 hours, and didn’t report it for thirteen hours. Water companies are only allowed to do this if excessive rainfall overwhelms their pumping stations. But on very many occasions this is not the case, and the dumps are illegal. The company in this case protested that it was ‘an unexpected fault in the telecommunications network in the area, which United Utilities was not notified about’, however an identical incident occurred in November 2022. Nor were local activists impressed, saying ‘Time and time again the same thing keeps happening here in Windermere: United Utilities pollutes the lake and the Environment Agency turns a blind eye to it’.

Then more outrage in Devon when locals were told they’d have to boil drinking water because the local water company had failed to prevent the cryptosporidium parasite getting into the water supply and causing vomiting and diarrhoea.

Even so, this is minor stuff compared to air pollution. Globally, this causes around 6 million premature deaths each year. According to the World Health Organization, just 0.001 percent of the world’s population are breathing safe, non-toxic air. And then there are ‘forever chemicals’, synthetic polyfluorinated substances (PFAS) which never break down, and are found in everything from tea bags to non-stick pans, bottled water to butter. These are now known to cause multiple types of cancer, and class-action lawsuits have already forced giant payouts by DuPont, 3M and other manufacturers, but international efforts to ban PFAS production are grindingly slow.

A PFAS ban might be achievable. Capitalism is not incapable of reacting to obvious environmental dangers, as long as legislation is across the board, meaning that individual manufacturers and states don’t suffer comparative disadvantage. It did this with ozone-destroying CFCs starting in the 1970s, though a global ban did not come into effect until 2010. Even then it couldn’t be globally enforced, with China being pinpointed as the source of a 50 percent increase in CFC output in 2019.

The capitalist system of production is today’s ideological sacred cow. It is supposed to be the best and only way to improve the standard of living for all humanity, yet because its prime imperative is only to make money by any means necessary, the reality never lives up to the hype. With the cow come the cowboys. If we abolish money and markets, along with the political and wealthy elites who protect them, we could then develop a transparent production and recycled waste system that actually worked in humanity’s interest, where no palms would be greased and no blind eyes turned. We need to dump capitalism instead of letting capitalism dump on us. Then people could enjoy an unspoilt walk in the woods and a wild swim in the local lake, without worrying what they might catch in the process.

Paddy Shannon

Socialist Sonnet No. 149: Water’s Utility (2024)

From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

Water’s Utility

‘Water, water, everywhere, nor any

Drop to drink.’ Rain falls freely to earth,

Yet water is not free; so what is it worth?

A fortune to a water company,

Feeling free to pollute rivers and lakes

With sewage in all its variety,

Product of our effluent society.

Consumers pay the bill, while capital takes

The dividends. So, what nature provides

Becomes a commodity by and by,

To profit those who’ll control the supply

As long as capitalism abides.

‘Nor any drop to drink’ safe to say

Unless the drinker can afford to pay.

 D. A.

Material World: Pollution pays (2024)

The Material World column from the April 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

In environmental legislation the ‘polluter pays’ principle is an attempt to force businesses to bear at least some of the costs resulting from their polluting activities. However, this runs up against the logic of market competition. That logic encourages businesses to seek ways of externalising their costs as far as possible and to resist any attempt to compel them to internalise them that would have the effect of reducing their profits.

Thus, the problem with calling on governments to take stronger measures to protect the environment (or the interests of workers for that matter) is that what governments can do, even with the best will in the world, is limited. When they do act out of sheer necessity, the response is often ‘too little too late’. Objectively speaking, the interests of governments and those of the business community (that ultimately finances governments) are inextricably intertwined and closely aligned. Penalising businesses too harshly will rebound against the government itself.

It is precisely these fundamental economic realities that make the posturing of governments in relation to such pressing issues as anthropogenic climate change, at best tokenistic and, at worst thoroughly deceitful. There can be no hope of resolving such an issue through international agreements or strident appeals to world leaders to ‘do the right thing’. That is a timewasting and pointless endeavour, doomed to disappointment and despair.

Concerted attempts to get countries to comply with international agreements concerning emissions of greenhouse gases to combat climate change have frankly descended into farce. Periodic COP summits to discuss the issue have become little more than photo opportunities for politicians to convey the impression that they are actually doing something worthwhile and to placate their critics. In the meanwhile, the problem just gets steadily worse.

A holier-than-thou attitude on the part of some richer countries that have historically contributed most to the emission of these gases and still do so to some extent, sits uneasily with poorer countries wanting to industrialise and develop themselves and feeling they are somehow being prevented from doing so by other countries that are already industrialised and developed. Accusations of hypocrisy and double standards fill the air, contributing more heat than light to the ongoing debate. As the backbiting continues so does the global temperature gauge continue to inch its way upwards. In a ruthlessly competitive market economy the chances of its rivalrous participants cooperating for the common good appear increasingly slim if not non-existent.

In the meanwhile, as the scale of the environmental costs mount so does the room for manoeuvre diminish. These costs will incrementally impact on profit margins yet, paradoxically, the more they do so, the more resistant do businesses and governments appear to become towards taking affirmative and effective action to mitigate them. In a competitive market economy the temptation is always to want to offload the costs of dealing with the problem onto someone else, rather than yourself.

This is the perverse logic that informs the system we live in. The potential, or actual, ‘resource wars’ it gives rise to over such things as mineral reserves, water supplies and fertile farmland not only exacerbate the unfolding environmental disasters but provide a further distraction from, or an excuse for not, doing anything about it. Who is going to be overly concerned with environmental quality when heavily militarised states become fixated with carpet bombing the cities of their sworn enemies?

The truth is that in a capitalist society there is nothing quite like economic distress to focus minds on the priority of profit making. Environmental standards will be surreptitiously eased by default, if not by design, for the sake of promoting economic growth.

Corporations may well fall back on that well-documented ruse called ‘greenwashing’, feigning concern while simultaneously promoting sales of their products amongst their more ‘environmentally enlightened’ consumers, even though the underlying imperative that drives them – getting consumers to consume more and more – is itself fundamentally antithetical to what a sustainable world stands for.

‘Consuming more’ is precisely what has been happening. Of course, in itself, this is not necessarily a bad thing at all if you are talking about individuals in desperate need. However, ‘consumption’ covers a multitude of things, many of which have nothing whatsoever to do with meeting human needs. What is ‘environmentally friendly’ about an M1 Abrams battle tank or a Boeing AH-64 Apache attack helicopter?

The point is that we need to disaggregate the very concept of ‘consumption’ itself instead of just vaguely talking about the ‘greening of consumption’. Consuming what and to what end? For all the growing concern about the environmental costs of consumption, consumption itself is growing.

The solution to our problems cannot lie in technology alone. It has to involve also changing our social priorities and that can only really come about by changing the kind of society we live in.

Robin Cox

Material World: The problem of plastics (2024)

The Material World column from the March 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Plastic is everywhere. It is difficult to imagine how we could live our modern lives without it. According to UNCTAD, the UN trade and development agency:

‘Global exports of plastics or goods made from plastic has more than doubled in value since 2005, passing the $1 trillion benchmark in 2018 and reaching nearly $1.2 trillion in 2021’ (tinyurl.com/an6945me).

The use of plastic encompasses products made from plastic, products with plastic components and products wrapped in plastic.

Invented in 1907, it is a very versatile and useful product, indeed, but the sheer scale of our dependence on it has created enormous and rapidly proliferating problems. According to the United Nations Environment Program:

‘Around the world, one million plastic bottles are purchased every minute, while up to five trillion plastic bags are used worldwide every year. In total, half of all plastic produced is designed for single-use purposes – used just once then thrown away’ (tinyurl.com/5asrbmnp).

As the article says, we are choking on plastics. It gets everywhere. Its effects are multiple. It can, for example, block up rivers, slow down the flow of water and so encourage mosquitoes to flourish in stagnant pools. It can be devastating for wildlife in many ways. A vast swirling island of floating plastic has been formed in the Pacific Ocean called the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’. It is currently 1.6 million square kilometres in size and growing (by comparison the United Kingdom is a mere 243,610 square kilometres and not growing).

The durability of plastic as a product means it can hang around in the environment for hundreds of years or break down into microplastics that enter the human body via the food chain when we consume fish. Petrochemical plants producing plastic release gases with side effects that range from asthma to cancer to various hormonal disorders. Burning plastic waste can likewise pose serious health risks.

Globally just 15 percent of plastic waste is collected for recycling and only half of that actually gets to be recycled – sorted, baled up and sent to a processing plant to be melted down. Part of the problem is that much of this plastic is not recyclable anyway.

Furthermore, there are many different kinds of plastic each with a different chemical composition – no doubt, much of this diversity being in part a function of market competition. You can´t just lump together these different kinds of plastic in the process of recycling if you want to get a usable product at the end of it. It is constraints such as these that prevent recycling being anything more than just a small part of the solution.

All this plastic comes from fossil fuels like crude oil or natural gas (which is combined with other ingredients to form a resin that is then turned into pellets), fuels that we are supposed to be running out of at some point in the future. Until that happens or until the price becomes excessive there is unlikely to be any really significant move towards embracing sustainable alternatives to plastic. Alternatives are available to some extent but there are powerful commercial interests vested in maintaining a profligately wasteful and polluting way of life heavily dependent on plastic.

These same petrochemical corporations, in order to maintain the market for their products and to deflect public criticism of the environmental effects of these products, have not infrequently resorted to greenwashing tactics – for instance by providing funding for recycling campaigns. What this does is to shift the perception of who is actually responsible for such problems as plastic litter from the producer to the consumer. You can´t blame the producer, goes the argument, when it is obviously doing its best to clean up the environment as evidenced by all that money it spends on recycling campaigns. (Actually, that money is a drop in the ocean compared to the corporation’s revenue and it is good publicity anyway).

This is a tactic not dissimilar to the way Big Pharma blamed the opioid crisis in America on the users. It also overlooks the fact that most of that plastic that does happen to be conscientiously disposed of by consumers into the container for plastic will not actually get to be recycled. The fact that consumers may not be aware of this simultaneously helps to take pressure off tackling the problem at its source while ensuring the demand for more plastic just keeps growing.

While most plastic waste generated within countries tended to remain within the country concerned – buried in landfill sites, burnt, or otherwise disposed of – some of this waste is simply shipped abroad in containers. This doesn’t really solve the problem but merely relocates it and, in so doing, also perpetuates it. It also involves additional transportation costs with all that that entails for the environment. For the exporting countries (mainly in Europe and the US) it relieves some of the pressure of having to deal with the waste problem themselves and for the importing countries – particularly in the case of developing countries, it can be economically (if not environmentally) beneficial.

It is not just the disposal of plastic waste that presents a growing problem. There is also a problem of our growing dependence on plastic itself. Behind this, there are powerful commercial interests intent upon expanding the market for plastic.

Alarmingly, there are projections suggesting a fourfold increase in the global use of plastic over the next three decades. Mostly, this is predicted to occur in the Middle East and Africa, followed by Asia and China but also to a lesser extent in other parts of the world like Europe and America where already, ‘investors from those regions are currently planning to support expanded capacity for plastics-related infrastructure and production, often with government support’ (LINK).

In short, plastic as an invention has been a mixed blessing. One cannot deny the very obvious benefits it has brought when so much of what we possibly take for granted about our material reality is made of plastic – from our toothbrush to the clothes we wear to the laptop we type on. But as we have seen this also has serious drawbacks.

Minimising the latter by significantly reducing our dependence on plastic and by increasing the effectiveness of recycling, requires changing the purpose behind production away from profit-making. Do we really need all those tacky plastic tourist souvenirs that the tourist industry is so intent upon plying us? What about all those plastic toys unceremoniously dumped at the municipal tip after the novelty has all too rapidly worn off? One can multiply these examples many times, but they all point to the need for a significant cultural shift – something that can only really come about by changing the nature of the society we live in – if we are to mitigate the negative aspects of plastics.

Robin Cox

The White Death (2002)

From the January 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Common salt is composed of sodium and chlorine of which, it seems, there was plenty locked up in compounds within the basalt rock that formed most of the Earth’s crust as our world cooled from a chemical soup over 3.5 billion years ago. Years of weathering, erosion and corrosion then produced the salt that readily dissolved into masses of water that flowed over and settled, as oceans, in the low-lying areas.

Tiny salt particles have, ever since, been blown from the sea directly onto coastal and adjacent regions of land or have been lifted into the upper atmosphere where they then fall everywhere with rain. Over aeons of time, in dry areas unflushed by regular rainfall, the soil has become sprinkled with minute salt particles extending to a considerable depth.

Unique vegetation has evolved in Western Australia which created a natural “equilibrium” or balance that maintains the ground-water level (water-table) at a depth beyond the salt zone. Native deep-rooted, perennial plants are highly efficient absorbers of moisture, allowing very little rainfall to seep down into the water-table. Native trees have two root systems which absorb both surface and deep groundwater. These are just part of an undisturbed eco-system that produced stability for millions of years.

The clearing of native vegetation and trees for farming and grazing has produced vast areas of shallow-rooted annual crops and pasture which use far less water. Most rainfall now percolates down into the groundwater which raises the level of the water-table. Similarly, in irrigation areas the applied water mostly filters down and lifts the level. As the water-table climbs it dissolves increasing amounts of salt within the soil profile until maximum salinity is concentrated at, or near, the soil surface. Capitalism’s profit-motivated “economic efficiencies” in the timber industry has introduced the disaster of “clearfelling”. Bulldozers uprooting trees, wrecking the understorey, wildlife habitat, soil structure and complete eco-system of vast areas of forest, simply magnifies the problem still further.

The impact of a rising water-table and dryland salinity has far-reaching effects long before the ultimate “White Death” of a lifeless, shining white desert studded with dead trees, is created. Saline water with four feet of the soil surface reduces plant growth. From this point there is a loss of agriculture production, destruction of bush vegetation and native habitat leading to loss of wildlife and biodiversity. Drainage from the soil causes salinity of waterways which affect streams, rivers and water resources in dams and reservoirs . . . eventually making the water unusable. Water plants, aquatic life (frogs, fish, water birds, turtles etc), algae, microbes and invertebrates are destroyed. Rising concentrations of salt damages the soil structure and will corrode the foundations of all infrastructure causing buildings, roads, footpaths, railways, bridges and sewage pipes etc to crumble. Rising water-table also makes land more prone to waterlogging and flooding. The social impact is enormous.

The worst-affected Australian state is Western Australia with 70 percent of total salinity problems. In 1902 the clearing of native vegetation was suspected of causing salinity. This was proved in 1909 and verified in 1924. Despite this knowledge land-clearing increased. The echoes of past capitalist politicians here are heard today when President Bush states, “I am more concerned with the economy than with ecology”, when referring to global warming . . . itself another major factor in the salinity equation.

Seventy-five percent of natural bush in the south-west has been cleared for agriculture of which 10 percent is now salt-affected, which has reduced crops by 50 percent. Over 80 percent of resource water there is salty to some degree and groundwater rises 20-150 cms annually. If allowed to continue 30 percent of farmland will be wiped out, 30,000 kms of road and railway and 27 towns will be ruined by shallow water-table by the year 2050. Many mammals, reptiles, insects, aquatic life and 450 endemic plant species will be lost from one of the most biodiverse areas of the world.

In 1985 a new State government department, CALM (Conservation And Land Management), was created. Syd Shea was appointed executive director. CALM pursued a simple policy of managing the forests for the benefit of the timber industry. Clearfelling was adopted on a grand scale and still continues today. In November 1999 Syd Shea accepted a new post created in the Premier’s office—”Head of Combating Salinity”. This is tantamount to putting a serial arsonist in charge of the Fire Service. Shea is now involved organising “carbon credits” and uses his “ecological expertise” in cracking deals for big corporations.

High technology is being used to acquire facts and statistics on salinity but the shocking details are not being publicised. The information written here was extracted from various official sources. The remedy to salinity is basically simple, groundwater levels need to be reduced (discharged) and rainfall needs to be used more efficiently to prevent recharge. Large areas of farmland need to be revegetated and forest should be allowed to regenerate. Additional proposed engineering and horticultural remedies should be applied immediately.

Capitalism, based upon cost/profit/jobs, which causes these problems, is not equipped to respond to simple need. Balance-sheet profit has always ignored the cost of environmental destruction, which never appeared on the debit pages of the ledger. Landowners are reluctant to lose portions of their land to non-income-producing native vegetation, despite their chance of losing the lot if their unsustainable farming methods do not change. So billions of dollars will be spent over many years on a strategy of compromise. The hunt is on for salt-tolerant fish and plants to farm, alternative deep-rooted crops and pasture and long-term cash-crops of plantation trees to supply the timber industry. It is hoped many areas can be contained and eventually some areas of salinity reversed, other regions are already doomed. But only a socialist society based upon unrestricted need has any chance of lasting success. Speed the day when such political awareness amongst the vast majority of the population will exist.

Ron Stone,

Australia

News from Canada: it’s the same the whole world over (2024)

From the January 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

To put it mildly youth violence in Toronto is on the increase. Violent incidents in schools have spiked beyond pre-pandemic levels, with shootings and stabbings occurring in broad daylight on school grounds. Nor is it just in schools; in the last year a 16-year-old was stabbed to death outside a subway station; a 15-year-old was injured in a drive-by shooting; another 15-year-old shot inside his home, with an 18-year-old charged with second degree murder. A 1,766 page report on youth violence was published by the provincial government in 2008, but little has been done to implement its recommendations. In 2014 Toronto city council voted to develop a ‘Youth Equity Strategy’, but didn’t follow up on it because it was underfunded. If these plans had been acted on it would still be a case of trying to solve the problem within capitalism. In other words, using a band-aid when a major operation is called for.

*****

The unemployment situation in Canada remains pretty much the same every month. In October 18,000 new jobs were added to the economy, but the unemployment rate went up from 5.5 percent to 5.7 percent. This was due to the population growth as more immigrants, many of them refugees, came here. Stats-Canada said one third of Canadians reported that they found it very difficult to make ends meet when it came to transportation, housing, food, clothing and other necessary expenses. So it never gets better and still most folk believe capitalism is the best of all economic systems.

*****

The auto-workers union Unifor has completed a deal for their members that secured wage gains for production workers which will be 28 percent at the end of the contract. Other improvements include better pensions, job security, bonus pay and more vacation days. Sounds good doesn’t it? But you know what, many of the beneficiaries of these gains are pissed-off the union didn’t do more for them. An example are the workers at Stellantis who voted 54 percent to accept the new contract. According to Larry Savage, Brock University Labour Study Professor, ‘Workers aren’t content to tread water in the context of a cost-of-living crisis; they expect their unions to do more for them at the bargaining table’. The auto-workers have been badly treated over the last 15 years and they know the gains the union made will soon be wiped out. As long as capitalism lasts the working class will struggle.

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It’s a surprising fact that 80 percent of the world’s wastewater is discharged into waterways untreated. Some folks may think it would be different in an industrialized country like Canada, but it’s only a matter of degree. The average Canadian household uses 630 litres a day, about a third of it goes down the drain. One doesn’t hear about it until something goes wrong, which happened in Hamilton, Ontario in January, when it was found it had been leaking sewage into Lake Ontario for 26 years. In Nova Scotia, 25 percent of the wastewater goes untreated and in Newfoundland and Labrador its 38 percent. The reason is the treatment systems are expensive to build and maintain. In Vancouver the new facility under construction may cost 5 times more than its initial $700 million budget. That’s so typical of capitalism, there has to be a price tag on everything.

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A recent news program informed us that the use of food banks in Toronto has increased 60 percent since Covid and 38 percent more than last year. With the cost of groceries going up, rent hikes and mortgage interest rates increasing some folks have no recourse but to use food banks. Though they’re probably grateful to the food bank they use, nevertheless isn’t it a case of life being so crummy under crapitalism that economic necessity has brought a part of socialism into being? People come in, take what they need and leave without paying. It’ll be better when all society is like that.

Food banks in Canada are seeing a surge of international students using them, in fact the manager of one of them in Brampton, Ontario had so many student users he banned them. The number of study permits in Canada has tripled in the past decade, from 300,000 in 2013 to 900,000 now. Through spending and tuition they contribute $22 billion to the economy. Many work 40 hours a week to pay tuition, live, and have to work 2 and sometimes 3 jobs to stay afloat. This fall, tuition fees are, on average, $22,061 for graduate studies and $88,081 for undergrads. With declining government funding, post-secondary educational institutions have turned to international students to bring in the bucks. Though nearly all of them work, it’s at low paid jobs like retail, warehousing, factories and fast-food joints. With rents the way they are it’s no wonder they go to food banks. So the lack-of-moral to the story is that the international students are learning what life under capitalism, especially in Canada, is really like.

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On November 3, federal Environment Minister, Steve Guillbeault, signed a deal with the B.C. government and Indigenous leaders to protect 30 percent of B.C’s land by 2030. The federal government will invest up to $500 million over the next seven years with B.C. contributing $563 million, which includes $150 million to protect old-growth forests. Though the federal funding has yet to be allocated specifically, nevertheless it will include $104 million to restore the habitats of species at risk. One the one hand it sounds great but on the other we do live under capitalism and therefore must ask what happens after 2030? And what about the rest of this planet? It’s just another band-aid reform and like all reforms they don’t go far enough rooting the problem.

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Canada’s rate of inflation fell to 3.1 percent in October down from 3.8 percent in September, but it didn’t feel like it if you’re paying for a place to live. The Consumer Price Index showed the cost of shelter rose by 6.1 percent, up from 6 percent in September. Mortgage interests costs rose 30.5 percent from last year, while rent rose 8.2 percent up from 7.3 percent in September. In the lowest earning 25 percent of Canadians, 91 percent of household income goes to shelter, food, transportation and utilities. In the highest earning quarter, 30 percent of their income goes to those 4 necessities. Any comment is unnecessary.

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Saskatchewan’s energy minister Dustin Duncan said, on November 21, that the federal government’s target to have zero-net emissions by 2035 is just not doable in Saskatchewan. He said it would cost the province $40 billion to meet those standards, which they could probably reach by 2050. Ottawa would require all electricity to be from renewable sources such as wind or hydro or to be equipped with carbon capture technology by 2035. The provincial Premier, Scott Moe, said earlier this year that Saskatchewan could not abide by those regulations and might continue to run some of its natural gas and coal facilities till the mid-2040s. What a laugh; capitalism creates a lousy, stinking problem and its main upholders can’t agree how to solve it.

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Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland revealed the federal budget on November 21. The Liberal government is promising $15 billion in low-interest loans to support the construction of low-rental homes, with new money starting to flow in 2 years. Freeland said the biggest challenge was to deal with people’s concerns while not running up the government’s bills. This money will be spent over the next 6 years, but $2.5 billion is money being reallocated from other programs, so someone will have to suffer. Almost $8.5 billion will be spent on a host of clean economy subsidies including cash for new electric vehicle battery factories from Stellantis and Northvolt. It will spend $1 billion on non-profit, co-op and public housing initiatives that will build more than 7,000 homes by 2028. The government said they will make changes to the Affordable Housing and Groceries Act, which would strengthen the power of Canada’s Competition Bureau to crack down on companies by combating regulatory pricing and anti-competition mergers. The media reaction is that the government are like the rest of Canada, cash-strapped but doing its best. We’ve all heard that about other governments, but they always find lots of money to finance war. As for the above — we shall see. Miracle making buffoonery!

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International students aren’t the only foreign folk having a hard time in Canada. In its issue of November 4 the Toronto Star published an article about foreign agricultural workers in farms across Canada. They work 14 hour days for weeks at a time without a day off or overtime pay. If they complain they are threatened with deportation. Thousands leave their homes every year to work on farms in an industry which contributes 7 percent of Canada’s GDP. Tomoya Obakata, the UN’s expert on present-day forms of slavery, said Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Programs: ‘are a breeding ground for modern forms of slavery’. He was deeply disturbed by the accounts of exploitation and abuse that workers told him about on a recent fact-finding mission to Canada. It’s The Grapes of Wrath all over again and goes to prove that for all capitalism’s amazing technology, for the world’s working (wage-slave) class, life doesn’t fundamentally change.

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There is a bit of a stink in Canada now that Michael Spavor has accused Michael Kovrig of being a spy for China. These two guys were both imprisoned in China in 2018, days after Canada’s arrest of a Chinese executive, Meng Wanzhou, who was wanted in the U.S. on criminal fraud charges. She reached a plea deal with the U.S., after which the two Michaels were released. Spavor now claims he was fooled by Kovrig into giving up information on North Korea, which was, he thinks, the reason he was arrested. Kovrig said his job was to get China to persuade North Korea to stop developing nuclear weapons technology and was never involved in espionage. Spavor was, at the same time, running a non-governmental organization whose function was to promote business and cultural exchanges with North Korea. It doesn’t matter to the working class of either, or in fact, any country whether these guys were spies or not. Commercial rivalries between different sections of the capitalist class are something the working class have no stake in.

From Socialist Party of Canada’s December Newsletter