File spoon-archives/marxism-general.archive/marxism-general_1996/96-10-23.072, message 3


Date: Sat, 19 Oct 1996 16:10:36 +0200 (MET DST)
From: rolf.martens-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se (Rolf Martens)
Subject: On "green warfare" against workers, 3rd world


One more post by Bob Malecki I'd like to comment on,
this time on a question on which we at least are in
some small part in agreement. To be more exact, it's
a whole complex of questions. What's necessary to see
is the fact that behind the so-called "environmetalism"
(the phony one) of today there lurk arch-reactionary
interests; in fact this whole trend is part of a massive
counter-revolutionary attack on the part of the main forces
of the bourgeoisie in the world.

I've written several posts on the subject. More will follow.
Here some comments on what Bob wrote under "Re: Unemployment
Demo, Sweden!". That particular posting of his IMO in the main
was quite good. I quote only some small parts from it.

>In reply to this stuff about freons i send Rolf and the list 
>a letter i wrote to and American who had wrote and article 
>called "Piss on the work ethic"..

>But before we go into that, let us go back to the black man from 
>Nigeria that I mentioned earlier. He was a very angry man. He was a 
>very angry man because the environmentalists were pushing for the 
>idea of forbidding the production of refrigerators with freon 
>systems. He was saying to me that for the first time in history, 
>this was the nineties, Nigeria has a factory which produces 
>refrigerators with the freon system. There very own factory.

Yes! And it should be pointed out that it wasn't "the environ-
mentalists", who are only a little watchdog held on a leash,
but the *main forces of US imperialism*, together with some
*European and other imperialist forces* too, who enacted the
ban on freons in 1987, the "Montreal protocol", which that
Nigerian very rightly was angry about since it's a *genocidal*
"protocol".

The "scientific" hoax in this connection says that ozone is
being depleted by humans, by the use of freons and similar
stuff. Freons are hydrocarbons in which some of the hydrogen
atoms are replaced by clorine atoms: Formulas such as CCl4 etc.
These substances are extremely useful and extremely hard to
replace. Now the "theory" behind the ban is that that clorine
gets dissociated from the carbon high up in the atmoshpere and,
when "free", destroys the ozone.

But there is, and has always been, thousands of times more
clorine high up in the atmosphere than has ever been sent there
by man. It comes above all from volcanoes, and also (or even more,
perhaps) from disassociated salt (NaCl) in the water vapour from 
the oceans. This simple fact is being withheld from most people by the 
newspapers etc. In fact there is *no* ozone depletion either.

So the ban is nothing but a massive vile attack on the
peoples of the third world, above all, whose refrigeration
industries get killed off by it - the freons (or CFC:s, more
generally, since in some of them there is also fluorine, F)
are very difficult to replace.

(Bob in reply to Tom:)
>However, I do not want to be accused of moralising now. But I do 
>believe that before we can talk about your goal of individual 
>freedom I think that we should at least demand three square 
>meals a day and a house and toilet with clean water for humanity.

Of course, precisely.

(Bob:)
> So for months I lived with my donkeys and talked to 
>them. In fact my thinking went along the lines of your thinking, 
>"Fuck the post industrial world". However, that does not mean that 
>we do not have to take responsibility and work for a better world, 
>especially for the two thirds that have not had the chance to 
>experience that sort of life.

>Nor does it mean condemning rational production of the necessities 
>of life.

That last sentence I'd like to underline. The "environmentalist"
ideology does just that, attack rational production. And Bob in 
his ignorance in important respect does it too. He doesn't even 
oppose the present plans of the bourgeoisie here to tear down one 
of the well-functioning nuclear power reactors in Sweden!

(Bob:)
>Now to Jerry Rubin and the Yippies, (turned yuppie). Jerry was 
>also into this shit, that you are thinking, for a while. He made 
>a lot of money on it and later on died a rich stockbroker. He 
>appealed to the youth of America. The youth at that time being 
>the post Second World War baby boom of spoiled brats. Even here 
>in Sweden this generation has done nothing except make talk 
>bubbles and inherit their relatives money. They built nothing!

Some of them certainly did! It's OK of course to criticize certain 
people who in fact did nothing but talk, being sustained by
the workers and not least by the superprofits extracted from
the 3rd world.

*Now* the bourgeoisie is for *tearing down* important things
built earlier. What has Bob to say against this? He's "neutral"!

Another paragraph of his does contain some sensibe things:

>I saved the Bluebird Movement from post First World War Germany for 
>last. They thought that all of Germany's problem's were because of 
>industrialism. They, as you, said basically fuck factories and all 
>the rest would mean freedom. Reality opened the way for the Nazi's!,
>who put Germany back to work. Well the historical process has not 
>changed much since then. In fact fascism is once again rising 
>its head here in Europe. Capitalist production forces are decaying 
>as inter-imperialist rivalries grow.

This contains certain elements of important truths.

But there are errors too. Hitler did not gain power in Germany
basically "because he put people back to work". *His* industrial
development was all geared towards war, as was to a very large
extent that of his later copy cats, the Soviet social-imperialists
in the 1970:s. In neither case did it end "well".

But Hitler was also a "greenie". The Nazis had as a principle:
"Only in those places/fields where human labour cannot do the
job should machines be used". His armies were not motorized,
as were those of the USA, above all, and the techically
otherwise inferior Soviet Union had the better tanks (T-34
etc, which were even better than the US Shermans - one detail
of the positive achievements of the former socialist SU). 

And: "Capitalist production forces are decaying" - precisely!

But the thing is, the main bourgeois forces are *wilfully
making* them decay, so scared are they of a sound industrial
development (the danger of revolution resulting from this)!
And the Trotskyites, Bob's line in politics, are *helping*
them doing it! Not only the Trotskyites but other phoney-
"Marxists" too. This is really a kind of *warfare* against the
workers, and against the 3rd world too.

One clear example of it is the attacks from certain imperialist
quarters, once more posing as "environmentalists" against
several hydropower projects in third-world countries.

It's necessary to see this!

Rolf M.




   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005