US Climate Legislation here ♦ Jackson Water Crisis here ♦ South Africa protest here ♦
US Climate Legislation Serves US Imperialism
USA, September 11— Liberal activists and Democratic politicians are trumpeting the recent Inflation Reduction Act as “a new day in the fight against climate change.” It shows clearly how the rulers are trying to persuade us that their capitalist profit system can solve the climate crisis it created.
The Democrats, who passed this law with no Republican support, think it will win them votes in the November elections. They are counting particularly on increasing numbers of young voters.
But young people are more interested in “mass protests, occupy movements and increased use of social media as a new platform of political engagement,” reported an international study.
The capitalists are desperate to win young workers to vote for reform, not organize for revolution. We must see the urgency of using every opportunity to win them to mobilize for communist revolution, not reform.
What will the Inflation Reduction Act do – and not do – about the climate disaster?
- It doesn’t even try to slow the fossil fuel industry.
- It gives money away to companies to “promote decarbonization.”
- Its underfunded “environmental justice” provisions promote capitalist investment in communities devastated by the poverty and racism capitalism itself created,
- It “restores U.S. leadership in international climate negotiations” as part of US imperialism’s attempt to reverse its declining global influence,
- It positions US capitalists to “compete successfully in a $23 trillion global clean-energy market.”
- It will “bolster [US] energy security” — crucial in wartime.
Even achieving its goals would leave the US as one of the world’s largest contributors to global warming – with per-person greenhouse gas emissions several times higher than other large countries.
The limits of US climate change policy are baked into US imperialism’s drive to compete successfully against the world’s other capitalists for maximum profits. Confining our efforts within those limits would be a disaster and arguably a crime against humanity and other species.
We must mobilize to break through those limits by destroying capitalism-imperialism with communist revolution.
Why communism?
Because in communism nothing will be produced for profit. We won’t calculate costs and benefits in dollars, rupees, renminbi, or any currency. Workers will collectively decide what to produce with our labor, and how, based on our long-term needs – including sustainability.
How could communism immediately address the climate crisis and start to mitigate it?
“There would be no commodities. Water would not be a commodity; therefore we would eliminate individual bottled water,” said one young comrade. “Packaging in general would be greatly reduced, which would eliminate huge amounts of waste.”
“Products will be made to last for as long as possible,” suggested another. “We will build cities that enable communities to produce food locally to reduce emissions from food transportation.”
“We will organize and allocate housing so that workers can live close to where they work,” added a third. “No long car commutes due to housing costs.
“And workers living on islands or in coastal areas threatened by rising sea levels will be able to relocate to higher, safer ground,” she continued. “A friend told me that in Jamaica right now, more houses are going up in the mountains, but most people can’t afford them.”
Let’s bring this discussion about the potential of communism to the mass protests, occupy movements, and social media where young workers and students are seeking alternatives. And to the workplaces, classrooms, and barracks where we have, or can build, concentrations.
They will have many more ideas about communism and how to mobilize for it. They, and we, will start to see the possibility and the urgency of building a mass International Communist Workers’ Party.
Don’t vote – organize for communist revolution! That will truly start a new day in the fight against climate catastrophe.
No Safe Drinking Water in “The Most Radical City on the Planet
In Mississippi (USA) a devastating combination of capitalist climate crisis and racism has left the state capital without safe drinking water. Jackson is a majority-Black city of 163,000 people, a quarter of whom live in poverty. Today, Jackson doesn’t have enough water to fight fires or flush toilets.
As the climate crisis accelerates, the most oppressed workers face the worst effects. That’s certainly true in Jackson.
In the mid-20th century, Jackson was majority white. But as the civil rights movement challenged legal segregation, middle-class white and Black families began to move out of the city to the suburbs. They abandoned Jackson, like many other cities, to urban decay. The funding went with them. The infrastructure was abandoned, and workers in Jackson have suffered from years of service disruptions and boil-water advisories.
Black-led community-based cooperatives have organized in the area since the late 1960s. Cooperation Jackson, for example, organizes “under- and unemployed sectors of the working class, particularly from Black and Latino communities…in a radical form of social organization built on equality, cooperation, worker democracy, and environmental sustainability.” This movement, like the Mondragon collective in France, sees itself as a nucleus of ecosocialism.
On one hand, their experiences, involving masses of people, are a rich source of practice for how we can live in a communist society.
But on the other hand, these cooperatives, like the 19th-century utopian socialists criticized by Engels, run into capitalist reality. At their worst, they fall into supporting Black politicians like Jackson mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, who campaigned on a program of making Jackson “the most radical city on the planet.”
The fact is that the infrastructure of the US empire is crumbling, most dramatically in the communities where the poorest workers live. Local cooperatives or municipal-power campaigns don’t change the decisions of capitalist-run state and national funding bodies.
This summer, torrential rains brought by climate change caused the Pearl River to crest and flood the city’s water treatment plant. But the city had already been under a boil-water notice.
In the winter of 2021, freezing storms resulted in burst pipes and water mains. Tens of thousands were without water for three weeks. In 2020, the Environmental Protection agency warned that dangerous contaminants such as E. coli in the water system endangered residents. In 2016, state officials warned the city of high lead levels.
Mayor Lumumba says that modernizing the city’s infrastructure could cost as much as $2 billion. Mississippi received only $75 million for water and sewage from last year’s federal infrastructure bill, but that money is for the entire state, not Jackson alone. Racism means that Jackson’s water system won’t be fixed any time soon.
One more reason to fight for a communist system where workers’ needs come first.
South Africa: Students Protest Government Inaction on Climate Change, 2019
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