Coup

British Petroleum disaster, typical capitalism

(monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com)

A month after the initial explosion on a British Petroleum oil rig, millions of barrels of oil continue to spill into the Gulf of Mexico. Both the Obama Administration and British Petroleum have dropped the ball on finding a solution to the problem, which has spiraled out of control. The spill is now being described as the worst environmental disaster in United States? history. It is estimated that the disaster has cost the company $360 million so far. However, the real cost is to the human and environmental one. The scope of the disaster is tremendous. The oil spill, having already reached Louisiana, is now threatening Florida and Cuba. The environment of millions of peoples, especially in the Third World, is now poisoned. The livelihoods and lives of millions of people are threatened. It is likely that the spill and its effects will spread ever farther throughout the region. However, it is unlikely that the masses of the Third World whose lives are hurt or destroyed by this disaster will see any compensation.

This kind of disaster is to be expected from capitalism. Even though more rational alternative energy sources exist, capitalism continues to promote the use of oil. This is because capitalism places profit over people. Capitalism, in its quest for profits, had led us to a point where there are several global environmental catastrophes on the horizon: global warming, dead zones in the oceans, mass extinctions, etc. Capitalism is the problem, not the solution to environmental problems. Capitalism is pushing the planet?s ecosystem to the brink of destruction. Disasters like the Gulf spill will continue to be business-as-usual so long as capitalism exists.

Capitalism has created a situation where a few countries benefit by the massive exploitation of the vast majority of humanity. The continued existence of the First World is one of the main problems faced by the planet. The lifestyle maintained by the peoples of the First World is incompatible with planetary survival. The eco-footprint of First Worlders is many times that of Third Worlders. Because production is concentrated in the Third World, it is the peoples of the Third World who suffer the most from poisoned environments. The Third World pays the price for the consumption and waste of the First World. Capitalism, and the continued existence of the First World, is incompatible with the survival of the planet. This is yet another reason to wipe the First World off the map. Our survival necessitates revolution.

What kind of revolution?

A positive, radical re-organization of society is not going to happen under capitalism. Also, utopian schemes like anarchism and primitivism, while well meaning, are completely ineffectual and unrealistic. It is only by resolving the principal contradiction between imperialism and the exploited nations in our favor that we can move to resolve other contradictions. The struggle against imperialism by the exploited nations is the only struggle that can unleash the social energy to make social revolution and environmental revolution possible. The anti-imperialist struggle is the key that unlocks other struggles. This has been shown over and over again in the last half-century of revolution.

The only realistic way to achieve fundamental, lasting environmental change is to defeat imperialism and capture state power. Then, the dictatorship of the proletariat can push forward with social revolution and environmental revolution. Maoism-Third Worldism is the path to communism in the current epoch. Thus, Maoist-Third Worldists are the real environmentalists. No movement is objectively greener than Maoism-Third Worldism. Those whose concerns center on environmental issues should support the Maoist-Third Worldist global people?s war against the First World as the best vehicle for addressing their concerns.

In the past, revolutionaries did not fully understand the role that environmental revolution played in socialist construction. Socialist societies have a mixed record on the environment. Socialist societies had successes as well as failures. Like capitalism, past attempts at socialism were dominated by a productionist outlook that pitted humanity against nature. This outlook saw greater and greater production, greater domination of nature, as the key to human happiness. This outlook is connected to the revisionist Theory of Productive Forces that sees socialism as mainly a matter of development of productive forces, particularly, advances in technology. The Theory of Productive Forces is also the theory behind First Worldism, the various theories that claim that there is a First World proletariat. Maoism-Third Worldism rejects the Theory of Productive Forces, including the view that human happiness is connected to dominating an enemy, hostile natural world. Instead, Maoism-Third Worldism understands human society as a part of the natural world, not something that is separate, above and opposed to nature. Maoism-Third Worldism understands that protecting natural systems, sustaining the natural world, will be a part of any future socialist construction. The dictatorship of the proletariat involves sustainable development, and protecting and preserving nature. After all, the survival of the human species, including proletariat itself, is linked to sustaining our environment.