MIM Notes 208                   April 15, 2000

On Earth Day, we say "Socialist revolution can best protect 
people, environment!"

"Earth Day" -- April 22nd -- was started in 1970 by pacifists with 
some sentiments that the Earth and its products belong to all 
humyns. The Amerikan government quickly co-opted the celebration, 
and today monopoly-capitalist global polluters sponsor many Earth 
Day rallies. Shell (for example) would rather people thought of 
their charitable contributions to the "Shell Marine Habitat 
Program" in the Gulf of Mexico than their destruction of Nigerian 
lands and communities through gas flaring, oil spills, and land 
theft. (Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was murdered by the Nigerian government 
because of his support for the people most harmed by Shell, said, 
"[Gas flaming] has destroyed wildlife, and plant life, poisoned 
the atmosphere and therefore the inhabitants in the surrounding 
areas and made the residents half-deaf and prone to respiratory 
diseases. Whenever it rains in Ogoni, all we have is acid rain 
which further poisons water courses, streams, creeks and 
agricultural land.") These big capitalists also promote 
"solutions" to environmental problems which focus on individuals, 
such as recycling. These individualistic "solutions" ignore the 
fact that the monopoly capitalists are by far the largest 
polluters.

Still, many people share the sentiments that the Earth and its 
products should be protected and used for the benefit of the 
entire humyn species. 

MIM approaches the issue of the environment from the standpoint of 
the group of people in the world with no property ("nothing to 
lose but their chains"), a.k.a. the proletariat. We argue that the 
root cause of environmental problems is capitalism, the private 
ownership of the means of production by a relative handful of 
people. While the majority of the world's people have a material 
interest in maintaining a healthy planet, the small capitalist 
ruling class and its hangers-on place profit ahead of humyn needs. 
Because the proletariat has no profits to protect, it can 
uncompromisingly defend people's right to a non-toxic and life-
promoting environment. It can do so by overthrowing capitalism and 
erecting a socialist dictatorship of the proletariat, which will 
suppress the right to profit where it conflicts with basic humyn 
needs.

The imperialists sometimes wrap themselves in the green flag in 
order to slander socialism. They claim that environmental 
destruction in former socialist countries surpasses anything in 
the West. Aside from basic methodological errors (not being able 
to distinguish between state-capitalism and socialism; comparing 
industry in poor, backwards, agrarian countries to industry in 
rich, highly-developed countries), these criticisms are just plain 
factually wrong. In this issue, we reprint parts of an article 
from China's People's Daily which shows that revolutionary China 
energetically protected the environment -- 20 years before the 
first Earth Day. This is just one example of what the proletariat 
can do when liberated from imperialism and capitalism.

Notes: Greenpeace International, "Shell-Shocked," 
http://www.greenpeace.org/~comms/ken/hell.html

MIM, "On capitalism and the environment,"

http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/mt/mt12capenv.html, from MIM 
Theory 12: "Environment, Society, and Revolution."