Part one of a four-part series explaining why and how capitalism fouls things up

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aspect of American capitalist society.

As the war in Vietnam and the ugly face of racism tore away illusions in the democratic process, people began to question the right of Big Business to profit, no matter what the cost to the working class or the environment.

By 1969, there was widespread political ferment on every front, from the antiwar movement and the civil rights struggle to the first manifestations of a growing feminist consciousness. In 1969, a series of events were to jar the consciousness of Americans and forge the environmental revolution.

Permits were secured to construct the 789mile pipeline to Valdez, Alaska, under newly appointed Secretary of the Interior Walter J. Hickel. The oil sludge and industrial waste in the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland caught fire. Los Angeles residents were warned not to engage in any activity that would involve deep breathing. And Santa Barbara, Calif., witnessed a devastating oil spill.

These events plus countless other ecological insults in communities across the country galvanized a movement that culminated in the first Earth Day in 1970.

Pressure from environmentalists had an impact. In 1969, the National Environmental Policy Act was passed. The Clean Air Act was passed in 1970, the Clean Water Act in 1972, the Toxic Substances Control Act in 1976. A host of other federal, state, and local regulations and programs followed. Thus, in the first two decades of the burgeoning environmental movement, impressive legislative victories were rolled up and new governmental agencies and regulatory bodies were established, ostensibly to enforce the laws.

During the 1960s and '70s, public support for environmentally sound policies swelled. But when the cost of the new controls and measures to private industry became apparent, the ruling class took the offensive, arguing that the costs and problems of regulating pollution were too costly for industry and needed to be curbed. In the 1980s, as the ruling-class politicians gave more say to industry and the private sector, the gains of the previous two decades began to be eroded. DECEMBER 1989 Despite more than 30 years of concerted environmental organizing, almost all the toxic chemicals that Rachel Carson warned about in "Silent Spring" are still in widespread use. Some chemicals that have been banned in the United States are allowed to be shipped to the countries of the so-called Third World. A few that have been restricted, like DDT, have been replaced by equally or more hazardous compounds.

A thousand new and largely untested chemicals are introduced onto the market each year. Even as Exxon and Bush are refusing respon sibility for the Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, Big Oil and the Interior Department are moving ahead on leasing millions of additional acres for intensive offshore oil development. The areas slated for leasing include the remaining most precious marine environments on the Alaskan and U.S. coastline.

Most recently, President Bush pressed for the passage of a new Clean Air Bill in spite of the fact that the bill of 1970 has never been enforced. Environmental critics have pointed out that the new bill is actually a weakening of the earlier bill. It has been weakened to reflect the interests of the auto industry and other business sectors.

All indications are that the government has no intention of enforcing the new regulations, which are full of loopholes anyway. The most optimistic predict that the provisions will not be met by the year 2000.

Global threats

George Bush is truly fiddling while we may burn: Superceding any national considerations are three potentially disastrous threats to the earth's atmosphere. The first is the erosion of the thin ozone layer that protects the earth's atmosphere from the sun's radiation.

It is being caused by the use of, among other things, chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, compounds used in aerosol spray cans and insulation. This depletion will cause a serious increase in skin cancer and can have a negative impact on micro-organisms at the base of the food chain.

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THE HOMELESS 'It is the worldwide corporate giants and their agents in Washington, D.C., who have plunged us into the current environmental crisis.' SOCIALIST ACTION DECEMBER 1989 17 (continued from previous page)

and joint labor. This ability to labor and to share the fruits led to the social development of the species and set it apart from all others.

The impact of human labor on the natural environment at this point was negligible. The impact of nature on human consciousness, however, was overwhelming. In order to survive, it was necessary to expand all capacities to include intimate knowledge of place, ecosystems, seasons, and weather.

Little importance has been attached by scholars to these life-giving faculties (developed mainly by the female) yet they constituted the rudiments of observation, classification, categorization, and testing which formed the basis of early science and production.

During this early period, four very important factors were originated, according to George Novack, a noted Marxist philosopher, in "The Long View of History." The first was the social organization of food procurement and division. The second was the invention of tools for this purpose. The third was the origin of speech and reasoning promoted by banding together, and the fourth was the natural force of fire, put to social use.

The reverence and importance that these early bands placed on the interrelationships between the environment and all living things is reflected in their world view, art, and religion. They saw themselves as a part of nature, not separate from it.

Rise of agriculture

The principal epochs in the advance of humanity can be related to major improvements in the techniques of gaining a food supply.

Humanity next entered upon its second great advance around 8000 B.C. with the development of agriculture and the domestication of animals. Food could not only now be collected but could be produced. Fire, the first pre-technical tool (previously used for hunting and cooking), was now used to clear land for planting and grazing.

This food-producing revolution for the first time relieved women and men from their subjection to external nature. This enabled a reliable and massive increase in the food supply, which led to population expansion, the beginning of settlements, and the first division of labor. This represented the first largescale takeover of land from natural to productive use and vastly altered the relationship between women and men and the earth.

This era encompassed a period of time from the origins of settlements to the rise of hierarchical, agricultural civilizations. These cultures still depended to a large degree on weather, the seasons, and ecological knowledge to insure a steady food supply for an expanding population. Farming and stock raising led to the development of such skilled crafts as smelting and pottery production for the storing and transport of surplus food production.

At the height of these valley empires which existed on every continent, the origin of the arts and sciences, of writing, mathematics, engineering, construction, and administration began. Property was still communally owned and matrilineal tribal relations prevailed.

As in earlier times, there was still an intimacy with and an overwhelming respect and acknowledgment of the forces of nature that was reflected in their art and religion. However, these cultures began to bargain with nature for control of the earth, as exenplified in their religion.

They worshipped representations of a female deity, the Mother Goddess, and asked her to intercede for them to help control the forces of nature. The Goddess was surrounded by—but now dominated—the sun and stars, the moon, and life-sustaining crops.

It was probably at this time that humans first began to experience problems arising from an altered environment. There is scant knowledge of the direct impact of humans on the environment, although this may change as current scholars research ancient ecological questions.

But there are abandoned settlement sites worldwide in antiquity that suggest ecological destruction as a causative factor. It has been suggested that the demise of the Mayan civilization and other centers (Mesopotomia, for example) may be explained by overpopulation, deforestation, overgrazing, and soil erosion.

Origins of private property Approximately 3000 years ago, a series of population explosions occurred over large parts of Asia and Europe. This caused a period of large-scale migrations of population which upset the delicate balance with nature that the agricultural empires had struck.

Patriarchal cultures developed which had a growing advantage over the sedentary agricultural matriarchies. These advantages stemmed from (1) the population growth of these essentially nomadic people, (2) the growing importance of their herds of horses, cattle, and sheep, as well as of world trade to the economy, (3) the domestication of the camel and the mobility it afforded to the desert cultures, and (4) iron-based tools and weaponry.

It is probably a combination of some or most of these factors-in addition to the drive to increase personal wealth at the expense of the tribe flowing from the exchange of goods—that gave precedence to the patrilinear kinship and private property forms, which had NOT been developing the course centuries.

With the rise of the family, private property and the state, the old checks and balances that communal property ownership had placed on the exploitation of the earth were stripped away. A more aggressive and impatient stance was taken toward their surroundings.

With the rise of commerce and trade and the increased importance of herding, agricultural production became relatively less important.

The earlier ecological mistakes made by the Bronze Age cultures had been offset by the natural interest tribal society had in preserving water yields, crops, and pasturage for the future generations. With the rise of commerce and trade and with the increased importance of herding, agricultural production became relatively less important. Communal land tilled by tribal members was replaced by large private holdings tilled by slaves.

With migration and the domination of conquering empires over colonies, absentee landlords began to decree land-use programs and practices that indigenous people might have rejected if left on their own.

Slavery and feudalism

Slave labor increased the forces of production and made it possible to amass wealth on a scale necessary to further the productive Joseph Ryan/Socialist Action process. It multiplied wealth, comforts and culture, even if only for the few. At some point, however, slavery no longer furthered the development of agricultural techniques, craftsmanship, trade, or navigation and began to generate within itself the forces of its own demise.

Since it exploited large-scale land holdings with slave labor for profit, the systems of slavery and feudalism probably neglected soil conservation techniques—which might have led to the impoverishment of the land.

If this is true, then the return under feudalism to more conservative land use under small-scale peasant plots would make sense. This would make it more possible and advantageous to diversify crops and rotate fields, which over time would restore the fertility of the land.

Under feudalism, peasants got more of their produce than did slaves and they had more access to the land and other means of production. After numerous technological and social advances were made possible by scientific knowledge borrowed from the ancient cultures and the Arabs, feudalized Europe set the stage for the rise of capitalism with its spectacular technological innovations.

Industrial capitalism

Over 3000 years, through slavery, feudalism, and the rise of modern capitalism, class society established its dominion over most of the earth. With each successive system came new and higher forms of technological advance.

Capitalism unleashed the development of the productive forces of humanity like no other social system before it. Frederick Engels and Karl Marx explained that capitalism fulfilled a historically progressive role because, for the first time in human civilization, it made it possible to produce enough food, housing, clothing, consumer items, etc. to fulfill the needs of all social classes—not just the rich minority.

But soon after the turn of the 20th century, capitalism's historically progressive role ended. Capitalist monopolies took over and wars among capitalist nations for new markets in the semi-colonial countries broke out. Instead of developing the productive forces, new technologies were used to fuel the forces of destruction: the military-industrial complex, wars, the despoliation of the environment, and wanton consumerism.

Justice William O. Douglas noted that it was the ax and gunpowder that initially had the capacity to radically alter the environment. Douglas continued, "Axes and plows are for amateurs. With bulldozers, high explosives, deep drilling, air-compression machines and the like, we have been able to speed up the destructive cycle enormously. We can now do in a decade the damage it took the ancients centuries to accomplish."

Humans now possess the capacity to produce a range of new vehicles for mobility on land, on the water, underwater, in the air, and into outer space which can penetrate every corner of the planet and beyond. It is possible to probe deep into the earth, to shape or destroy land formations, to monitor electronically almost every aspect of the environment, and to interfere with its ecological relationships.

With the advent of capitalism and the Machine Age revolution, the impact on the earth was quantitatively altered. In the epoch of capitalist imperialism, particularly since World War II, this impact has been qualitatively changed.

Pre-war military technology was put to industrial use after 1945. With the expansion of the chemical industry, the nuclear industry, and the massive burning of fossil fuels, all previous technologies that have altered the environment have now been outstripped.

A shattered promise The tremendous technological power that humanity now controls places a far greater responsibility on our shoulders than has ever been held before. Science and technology are not the enemy. Science and modern life are simply indispensable to each other. The promise that they hold for satisfying human needs and eliminating disease, hunger, and poverty is real.

This promise is being shattered, however, by the misuse of this technology in the hands of private industry. It is the worldwide corporate giants and their agents in Washington, D.C., who have plunged us into the current environmental crisis.

We can never return to the earlier primitive societies, nor should we want to. The task is not to "return to nature," as some in the environmental movement incorrectly advise, but to seek to live in harmony with it, obeying its laws.

Science and technology can produce either ruthless destruction and alienation or the endless capacity to produce the necessities of life for all who live on this planet.

How this can be accomplished? Can capitalism reform itself and clean up the current ecological disaster? Are the warnings of the environmentalists merely the scare-mongering of pessimists? The next article will examine these questions and discuss the scope and ramifications of the damage that has already been done.

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