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[Introduction: The following two articles are reprinted from La Verit/The Truth,
the theoretical journal of the Fourth International. The first article, "Degrowth and
the United Secretariat," by Lucien Gauthier, is reprinted from Issue No. 68 (June
2010). The second piece contains major excerpts from an article published in
Issue No. 67 (April 2010) by Pierre Cise, Daniel Gluckstein and Jean-Pierre
Raffi. It was published under the title, "Marxists Faced with the Sham of 'Political
Ecology" (and its 'Ecosocialist' Manifestation)." Copies of both issues of our
theoretical journal can be obtained for $5 each --$8 if you order both issues
together -- from Socialist Organizer, P.O. Box 40009, San Francisco, CA 94140.
Please make checks payable to The Organizer. Thanks.-- Alan B.]

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Degrowth and the United Secretariat

By LUCIEN GAUTHIER

For several years now, under the guise of political ecology, all kinds of "theories"
on sustainable growth, acceptable growth and also "degrowth" have been
developing. Even if the ideas of the hardcore "degrowthers" have remained in
the minority, they have still greatly influenced the ecological ideology and have
equally permeated the leadership of the labour movement and of the parties of
the "left and the extreme left".

That "human activity" -- if we can speak as such of human activity in general --

influences nature, climate, and environment, is obvious. Since the dawn of
humanity, by falling trees and ploughing fields, mankind has modified its
environment. But human activity is not neutral. It incarnates the social
relationships of production. In 2010, we are living under the social system of
capitalism, the present-day form of the division of society into classes.
Capitalism, at its imperialist stage, far from developing society leads it rather to
catastrophe. It is destructive. For mankind to save itself from barbarism there
must be the advent of socialism.
At its last congress (February 2010), the United Secretariat adopted a resolution
that explicitly renounced any reference to socialism in order to adopt "eco-
socialism". The speaker went so far as to say: "Amongst the enemies of eco-
socialism, there are those for whom nothing has changed, who refuse to allow
the pure pattern of the October Revolution to be polluted by the question of
ecology. To my knowledge, none of those are present in our ranks."
Note the reference to the "pure pattern of the October Revolution" and the
unintentional irony of the speaker of a political movement that has been
combating the Trotskyist position which holds that capitalism is a social system
in its death throes, that productive forces have ceased to grow and that this
system is sweeping humanity into barbarism.

The United Secretariat has denounced this position as "catastrophist" and

considers that capitalism has not exhausted its historic possibilities, and is still
developing its productive forces. And yet today, in the name of "global warming",
the United Secretariat is alarmed by the ravages of capitalism.
In the N 67 issue of La Verit, the article "Marxists Facing the Imposture of
Political Ecology" examines this question. It quotes Gerard Bloch on ecology, in
articles dating back 40 years that analyse the character of capitalism: degrading
and destructive to humanity and to the environment.

As we see, in this area as in others, Marxism is not a dogma but rather a

method of analysis and of combat which allows us to grasp -- in order to fight --
the reactionary character of capital, sweeping humanity into barbarism.

DEGROWTH AGAINST PROGRESS

"We know that there is no such thing as growth and development without end,"
writes one of the theoreticians of degrowth, Paul Aries, in "New Millennium,
Libertarian Challenges".

Who is "we"? Who established that the world is "finite", that the infinite doesn't
exist? Not any scientists, in any case, but ideologues who have an objective.
What objective?

"We have to slash the productivist society, that is to say, to destroy the industrial
society." ("Degrowth or Barbarism").
The alternative is no longer, according to these "libertarians" (sic), socialism or
barbarism, but rather degrowth or barbarism. Paul Aries presents degrowth as
something "very difficult to appropriate. It is a frontal attack on capitalism and
the consumer society".
"Capitalism" and "consumer society" are not the same thing. In his "Petit trait
de la dcroissance sereine", ["A Small Treatise on Serene Degrowth"], Serge
Latouche, another "theoretician" of degrowth, notes that, "Degrowth is built on
the criticism of the development of growth, of progress, of techniques and finally,
of modernity."

Thus under the banner of a frontal collision with capitalism, what is in question is
"progress" and "development".

Serge Latouche hammers it in: "What is important is to signal the break with the
enterprise of destruction that is perpetuating itself under the banner of either
development or globalisation. ... In order to implement politics of degrowth, isn't
a real collective detoxification in both the North and the South necessary first?
Growth has indeed proved to be both a perverse virus and a drug." ("Et la
dcroissance sauvera le Sud" -- "And Degrowth will Save the South").
The "frontal" attack on capitalism is in fact an attack on "development". We
should therefore conclude that, if we follow this reasoning, far from being a
social system in its death throes and destructive, capitalism is a driving force for
growth and development in the society. In reality, the enemy isn't capitalism, but
rather "development" and "progress".

According to the degrowthers, the "productivist" ideology has only production as

its goal. And that unlimited production is what is responsible for the "planetary
crisis". Capitalism is then only one of the variations of the "productivist" ideology,
and socialism is another. Now, behind the appearance of things -- unlimited
production under capitalism -- there is the reality; "the immediate end and the
determinant motive for capitalist production", according to Marx, is the
production of surplus value based on the exploitation of work and its
transformation into profit; That is the basis of capitalist production and belittling
or ignoring this reality is -- whether we like it or not -- tantamount to preserving
capital.
Capitalism is thus not a "productivist" ideology but a social system defined by
the quest for profit. Production is determined by profit. And this brings about the
crushing of the worker and peasant masses and of peoples under the iron heel
and, far from contributing to development and to progress, leads humanity to the
greatest of catastrophes.

HUMANKIND CONSUMES TOO MUCH

It is precisely this division of the society into classes that the degrowthers deny
by attacking consumers in general: "We don't exonerate ordinary consumption
of ordinary people" (Paul Aries).

Under the banner of the fight against "productivism" and the consumer society,
we should all stop driving cars, buying TV sets and other goods, in short, stop
consuming. It's not attacking capital but attacking "consumers", thus re-grouping
workers and capitalists under one and the same heading.

In advance, Marx had already replied to our new theoreticians". According to

him, mass consumption "depends not on what the society can produce and
consume, but on the distribution of wealth, which has a tendency to reduce the
consumption of the great mass to a minimum that varies between more or less
narrow limits". (Capital, Volume III, Part III, chapter 15).

The more the capacity for production increases, the more it enters into conflict
with the limited capacity for consumption. The system tries to remedy the
contradiction by seeking new markets (but these too become saturated), by
attempting to monopolize the market, by playing the competition, by opening
artificial markets, and also by war. In short, it is the stage of the death throes of
capital: the capitalistic relations are an obstacle to the development of humanity.

But all of this does not exist for the degrowthers. For them, the only solution lies
in the reduction of mass consumption. Serge Latouche proposes thus to create
"heavy taxes, like the VAT, on the consumption of products whose prices are
going down". If we take the example of the flat TV screen, which seems to be
important for him and whose price has gone down, in order to avoid that the
consumption of flat screens increase, they have to be heavily taxed.

Therefore it is the great mass of workers who are punished, whilst the well-off
minority will feel no pain.

And Paul Aries, an academic like his colleague Latouche, writes: "As long as it is
based on exploitation and domination, work must be avoided".

The millions of workers who lost their jobs in 2009 thanks to the "crisis" weren't
avoiding work, they were fired. Certainly, their consumption was reduced! Is this
degrowth?

Evidently, degrowth is not only reactionary. It wouldn't even deserve our time if
the danger didn't lie in its insidious penetration in the labour organisations.
Under the guise of the fight against waste and for ecological balance, it is in fact
an offensive against the very foundations of class struggle and socialism.
Socialists have always denounced capitalist anarchy, the waste and destruction
that it brings with it; but it is another matter altogether for the degrowthers, who
call for fighting against the improvement of the living conditions of the people in
the name of fighting against "over-consumption".

Marx talks about production on a grand scale -- mass production -- under

capitalism in the following terms: "We must never forget that in capitalist
production it is not directly a question of use-value but of exchange-value and
particularly of increasing the surplus value. That is the real motive of capitalistic
production; and we can only laugh at those who -- in order to be rid of the
contradictions of production -- turn it into production based on the direct
consumption of the producers."

Claiming that "over-consumption" is responsible for production thus aims at

denying the division of society into classes and the exploitation of labour, and at
exonerating capitalism from all responsibility. Too much consumption by the
workers and too much production would then be the cause of the troubles of the
whole world. The responsibility would therefore be shared, in a way, between
workers and owners.

For Marx, on the other hand, "production is limited by capitalist profit and not by
the needs of the producers". The "needs of the producers" (the "consumers")
means the centuries-old fight of the workers to obtain higher wages, to forbid
child labour, to obtain the right to a retirement and holidays and social benefits.
And this is what they should give up? That is exactly the capitalist point of view.

"WE PRODUCE TOO MUCH"

For Marx, under the domination of capital:

"There are not too many necessities of life produced, in proportion to the
existing population. Quite the reverse. Too little is produced to decently and
humanely satisfy the wants of the great masses of people.

"There are not too many means of production produced to employ the able-
bodied portion of the population. Quite the reverse. ... [Furthermore] not enough
means of production are produced to permit the employment of the entire able-
bodied population under the most productive conditions, so that their absolute
working period could be shortened by the mass and effectiveness of the
constant capital employed during working-hours.

"On the other hand, too many means of labour and necessities of life are
produced at times to permit their serving as means for the exploitation of
labourers at a certain rate of profit. Too many commodities are produced to
permit the realisation and conversion into new capital of the value and surplus-
value contained in them under the conditions of distribution and consumption
peculiar to capitalist production, ("Capital", Volume III, Part III, chapter 15).

We "produce too little" for the immense majority of the population, but at times,
periodically, "we produce too much" to allow for the capitalists' profits to be as
high as they desire. It is thus not mass consumption which, according to
Marxists, is to be blamed for the crisis and the crises, but rather the frenzied
race for profit by the capitalist minority.

"The real barrier of capitalist production is capital itself. It is that capital and its
self-expansion appear as the starting and the closing point, the motive and the
purpose of production; that production is only production for capital and not vice
versa. ... [The productive forces] come continually into conflict with the methods
of production employed by capital for its purposes, which drive towards
unlimited extension of production, towards production as an end in itself,
towards unconditional development of the social productivity of labour. The
means -- unconditional development of the productive forces of society -- comes
continually into conflict with the limited purpose, the self-expansion of the
existing capital." ("Capital", Volume III, Part III, chapter 15).

Here we find the fundamental contradiction of the capitalist system: the

contradiction between the social character of production and the private
character of appropriation. From this all the other contradictions of capitalism
are born, and it is from this contradiction that the crises are born: from this
contradiction between the unlimited production for the extortion of surplus value
and private appropriation in the quest for profit.

It is this contradiction that gives an anarchical character to capitalist production,

its waste and its destruction. In order to overcome its crises, capital destroys a
mass of productive forces. War is its highest expression of this destruction.

Production and development, so scorned by the degrowthers, are not guided by

the quest to satisfy the social needs of the masses; their aim is to satisfy the
profit drive of the capitalist minority. To enable a new development of humanity,
the capitalist system has to be overturned.

But for the ideologues of degrowth, this is not the problem. For them, it is
development as such that is to blame.

THREE CHEERS FOR POVERTY!

Paul Aries writes:
"We have to explain to all who have been rejected and deceived by growth that
the real alternative is no longer between growth and degrowth but between
recession and degrowth."

Isn't that exactly what the spokespersons of capitalism constantly explain as

they restructure companies, lay off workers by the millions and crush the
people?

Serge Latouche, an academic enjoying his retirement (he is fortunate, of course,

to have one), writes without hesitation:

"Economic growth is the alpha and the omega of all of today's economic
policies. It represents an illusory profit for companies that are becoming sicker
and sicker from their wealth. In the developed countries eating and drinking
have become the main causes of mortality."

It doesn't even cross Serge Latouche's mind that in a "developed" country of

Europe, millions of persons need to go to soup kitchens because it is their only
means of survival, nor that in the United States, there are officially 40 million
people who live under the poverty line.

That is why, in Latouche's opinion, we have to go back to a level of material

production equivalent to what existed in the 1960s and 70s -- and it is out of the
question for him that the "under-developed" countries should attain that level.

A certain Vincent Cheynet, a Latouche supporter, says that, "Development is our

western model. ... Why would the under-developed masses want to reach our
levels of production? In order to think degrowth, we need to think of humanity as
one single entity. The pie cannot go on getting bigger forever. We need to share
it."

The "under-developed" masses? How dare someone use such language? The
term tells us all we need to know about the man.

Latouche insists, "A 'non-development' society is as necessary in the South as it

is in the North."
What then would be the "degrowth" solution for the "under-developed masses" --
meaning the countries of Africa, Asia and America dominated by imperialism?

"It will be necessary to renew with and reclaim a history that was interrupted by
colonialism, development and globalism -- by seeking, finding, and re-
appropriating a cultural identity of their own. This will require re-introducing the
particular products that were forgotten and abandoned, and the anti-economic
values linked to their history. Recovering the traditional techniques and know-
how". (Serge Latouche, "And Degrowth will save the South")

He adds, "In the proposition -- well-intentioned -- of wanting to 'build schools and

health-care centres, networks of potable water and establishing food autonomy',
there is a common ethnocentrism that is precisely that of development."

Latouche reveals himself for what he is: "As for schools and health-care centres,
are they the right institutions for introducing and defending culture and health?
No long ago, Ivan Illitch (1) expressed serious doubts on their relevance, even in
the North".

Out of 600 doctors trained in Zambia, only 50 have stayed in the country. Out of
498 graduates from the university of Ghana, 298 have gone abroad. There are
more Nigerian doctors in New York than in Nigeria. According to the same study
by the World Bank, this tendency will increase. This also includes nurses, due to
the recruitment needs in the United States. In the countries of the "North", the
cuts in the social budgets of health and education for the sake of the military
budget are causing huge shortages in the welfare and health services, which
imperialism fills very partially by looting qualified personnel from the so-called
"under-developed" countries. It is a lot less expensive to train them there than in
the United States.

As we see, "development" is contradictory. Poverty is spreading throughout

Europe and the United States. Life expectancy is tending to drop and diseases
that had been eradicated are re-appearing "in the North".

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the minimum number of

doctors required in any given area is 20 for 100,000, which isn't really a lot. In
Sub-Sahara Africa, the number is 3 to 5 for 100,000! Of the 529,000 women
who die each year from complications during pregnancy or giving birth, 270,000
are African.

And these degrowthers want to return to "ancestral practices"? Is it an

exaggeration to speak of "genocide"?
Of 40 million HIV-positive people in the world, 26 million live in Africa. While the
mortality rate in Europe and the United States has fallen by 80% thanks to the
treatment available, the epidemic continues to kill in Africa.
Two-thousand children die every day of malaria. This is a disease that kills
900,000 people a year, although a treatment for malaria exists! In 2004, the
director of the association "Africa Fighting Malaria", Richard Trent, declared:
"They die because they are too poor to get the medication. They die because
the governments of the wealthy countries don't want to finance the measures
that would save lives, such as spraying insecticides in the houses, on the
grounds that they are harmful to 'environmental sustainability'. Malaria is a
complex disease, but the best remedy for the inhabitants of the infected areas is
to escape poverty. The Treaty on Global Warming and the Kyoto Protocol will be
of no help to them."

But for the degrowthers this not a matter for concern. Latouche goes on:

"Shantytowns have their strong points and teach us a lot about urbanism:
community spirit, respect for the environment, inventiveness" ("Courrier
International" special issue, October 2009).
A billion human beings live in these shantytowns, jobless or over-exploited,
without hygiene, where the struggle for finding something to eat is a daily
nightmare; they are subject to gangs and/or they are at the mercy of drug-
dealers and circled by the police who, as in Brazil, routinely shoot children of
these favelas. Such is the model of a "'non-development' society" for the
degrowthers!

THE UNITED SECRETARIAT'S "ECO-SOCIALISM"

Although they collaborate with the degrowthers, the United Secretariat does not
call for degrowth but for "eco-socialism", as per the vote of their last world
congress in February 2010. Their rhetoric, naturally, is different; the blame for all
the troubles of the planet and for global warming is, of course, capitalism.

At the Copenhagen Summit on Global Warming, what the United Secretariat

held against the capitalists is the fact that "the 25 biggest polluters have
managed for the most part to evade the scientific pressure of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)".

For the United Secretariat, the proposals of the IPPC -- the body set up by the
States and the UN, and therefore not an independent scientific body -- constitute
a minimal platform to be implemented.

In the resolution adopted by the United Secretariat's congress, the following is

stated:

"The success of the transition over the 40 years to come will be conditioned by a
significant diminution in the consumption of energy (50% and more in the
industrialized countries). This in turn implies a significant reduction in material
production, which means that the key problem is the following: it is necessary to
produce less globally, while meeting the legitimate demands of 3 billion human
beings for whom many of the basic needs are unsatisfied."

Only 3 billion out of the 6.5 billion dwellers on the planet earth? In language that
is more bombastic than the degrowthers, the resolution of the United Secretariat
asserts no less that half of humanity (the "North") has its basic needs satisfied.
We no longer have, on one side, the capitalist minority and, on the other, the
workers of the "North" like those of the "South", subject to capitalist exploitation
and oppression. No; there are those who live well "in the North" and those who
live poorly "in the South". It is understandable, in these conditions, that it should
be necessary to produce less in order to lower the unnecessary consumption of
the fattened peoples of the North!

What is the main criticism made to capitalism?

"Capital is incapable of solving the key problem because it is structurally

incapable of reducing material production."
The "anti-capitalist" fight is thus not a fight against profit and the exploitation of
labour, but the reduction of production. The resolution makes this crystal clear:

"The diminution of production and of material consumption is immediately

necessary to the stabilising of the climate because capitalism has swept
humanity too far down a dead-end."

Humanity doesn't matter, what is urgent is the climate!

Behind the "anti-capitalist" language is the same demand shared by

degrowthers and political ecologists: we produce too much, we consume too
much.
And for the United Secretariat, a current that fraudulently claims to be part of the
forces of "revolution", "the emancipation of the workers is inconceivable without
taking into account the main natural restrictions: the limits of stocks of non-
renewable resources, no conversion of energy, the conditions of the functioning
of the ecosystems and biological cycles."

By assuming speculative and scientifically unfounded assertions, the United

Secretariat has revised the class struggle for the emancipation of workers. If we
understand correctly, the combat for emancipation must be limited by "natural
restrictions". Consequently, the United Secretariat pronounces itself for a
mobilisation whose goal "must be to restrict governments to target, at a
minimum, the most radical of the reductions of emissions proposed by the
IPCC." Remember that the IPCC is an official body set up by the UN and the
States, and that its proposals, even the most "radical" are in keeping with the
general system of capitalism.

AN "ANTI-CAPITALIST" PLAN FOR CLOSING FACTORIES

In "revolutionary" language, the United Secretariat calls for a "global anti-

capitalist plan for social and ecological reconstruction".

"This plan includes the defending and reinforcing of the public sector (especially
the transport and energy sectors), the right to employment, to social protection
and to revenue as basic rights and the collective reconversion of unnecessary or
noxious enterprises, under and by workers control."

In a word, the United Secretariat calls on the labour movement, the workers and
their organisations, in the name of defending the climate, to participate in the
restructurings. Furthermore, in the NPA newspaper Tout est nous (Everything
belongs to us) (December 10, 2009), one reads:

"Really responding to the climate crisis involves a transformation of the modes

of production and the industrial system. It must be clearly stated that, in the end,
industries will have to close."

So we understand that the United Secretariat has revised the fight for the
emancipation of the workers, since it is no longer a question of opposing
capitalism's plans, but of operating a "workers control" on the restructurings and
closings of factories.

In a situation marked, in the name of the "crisis", by a global plan of

restructurings and lay-offs by the millions, the United Secretariat -- which
declares itself "anti-capitalist" -- pronounces itself for "ecological" restructurings,
in the name of "global warming".

Thus the following is stated in the resolution of the United Secretariat's world
congress:

"Based on this framework, we join the fight, particularly in the industrial

restructurings of the ecologically non-sustainable sectors (automobile, for
example) in order to propose concrete ways out of the infernal choice between
the pursuit of production and the destruction of employment."
Therefore, at the same time as the automobile industry is undergoing an
unprecedented offensive (Ford and General Motors in the United States and the
global consequences with Volvo in Sweden and Renault in Europe, etc.), where
hundreds of thousands of jobs are disappearing, the United Secretariat does not
pronounce itself for the maintaining of sites and of all the jobs, but for
accompanying "ecological" lay-offs.

"We demand of governments that they create public employment to be

ecologically useful in sectors such as insulating homes, public transport and the
expansion of renewable energy."

At the basis of the workers' movement is the irreconcilable opposition between

capital and labour, the existence of labour organisations, of trade unions whose
sole purpose is to defend the interests of salaried workers, which are
contradictory with those of the owners.

The thesis of "general interest" (here, political ecology, but at other periods it
was national unity for war, or the defence of the western civilisation against
"barbarians" or democracy against fascism, etc.), transcending the contradictory
interests of workers and owners is only a new form of a very old idea:
corporatism. And this idea is only the expression of a very concrete
phenomenon: the quest of capitalists and governments, in the name of the
economic crisis and now of the "ecological crisis", to associate the trade unions
to the implementation of plans and counter-reforms (destroying jobs, retirement
systems, healthcare and welfare, etc.)

And that is exactly what has been demanded by Joel Decaillon, the deputy
secretary general to the misnamed European Trade Union Confederation (the
ETUC), which is in fact the transmission belt of the European Union. He
declares that it necessary to open this discussion, "because, just as a
restructuring of the stock market is difficult to imagine, the change toward a
sustainable economy can be envisaged. [It is necessary] to negotiate nationally
and regionally on the professional changes to be made, through accompanying
and training the concerned workers" (Liberation, April 6, 2010).

The leaders of the ETUC propose exactly the same thing as United Secretariat.
The difference is that the United Secretariat speaks of "workers' control" and the
ETUC speaks of "dialogue".

Annabella Rosenberg, head of environmental relations at the International Trade

Union Confederation, explains: "Dialogue amongst the social partners, social
protection for the sectors that won't be able to change, training, local adaptation
and investment are for us the five pillars of a fair transition."
What the heads of the United Secretariat and those of the ETUC propose is that
the trade union organisations, in the name of a "transition to sustainable
development", organise the restructurings and accompany the lay-offs with ...
"training"!

The ideology of degrowth and of political ecology, which inspires the United
Secretariat and penetrates the apparatus of the labour movement, is only the
ideological cover of capitalism in crisis, which needs to deal a deadly blow to the
working class and the peoples. And that implies association of capital and
labour, i.e., corporatism.

The only means for thwarting this march of destruction is the class war, pitting
the particular interests of the workers against those of capital. This demands
independent organisations. This is the class line that separates the Fourth
International from the petty-bourgeois current that is the United Secretariat.

DEGROWTH IN THE SOUTH AND THE UNITED SECRETARIAT

In the name of their "theory", degrowth advocates consider one single solution
for the crisis of the planet: to challenge modern agriculture, technology and
progress.
It is a well known fact that modern agriculture could easily provide food for all of
humanity. It is the reign of capital, the quest for profit that, through pillage and
exploitation, on the one hand impoverishes the entire continents and, on the
other, brings about the destruction of agriculture in developed countries such as
in Europe, for instance, where European Union policies entail the dismantling of
agriculture.

Degrowth advocates also say that agricultural "productivism" should be

eliminated. We produce too much! As if reducing production and consumption in
the "North" is going to enable the "South" to develop!

"In 2008, grain exchanges reached the 238 million ton benchmark, no more than
14% of the world production. The rate is exactly the same as it was 20 years
earlier. As for rice, the world market is narrower yet. In 2008, it represented a
mere 7% of the world production. ... Prices are highly volatile: speculation
amplifies the phenomenon. This volatility has tended to increase since 1974.
Before 1972, the world market was closely monitored. ... Since 1972,
deregulation has prevailed and volatility has been soaring. When grain prices on
the world market are high, famine is just round the bend. That is what happened
in 2008. ... The result was hunger riots in 37 countries. ... When grain prices are
low on the world market, local peasants are banned from selling their products
to cities if the grain is allowed on local markets without the barriers of tariffs or
limitations in quantities. Therefore, they are not encouraged to produce more
than to meet their own needs. As they cannot sell, the rate of production
decreases and dependence on foreign production increases" (Problmes
Economiques - Economic Issues, February 2010).

What is to blame is speculation, the domination of capitalsm -- and not the

responsibility of "productivist" farmers in the "North". In 1970, the debt of the
"Third World" amounted to US$67 billion, it then rose to $427 billion in 1980, to$
628 billion in 1982 and, despite the billions paid to reimburse the debt, it grew to
$180 trillion in 1995, to $226 trillion in 2004 and $336 trillion in 2007. During the
same period, US$715 trillion was paid for the interests on the debt!

The looting of those countries by capital has ruined public infrastructures,

existing hospitals, and schools, and has caused famines and wars.

The major powers have given up preventive pesticide spraying programmes to

destroy the larvae of locusts in the name of respecting the planet. That is why
during the recent years, clouds of locusts have devastated huge tracts of Africa,
destroying 50% of the grain production.

By the same token, should it be considered as positive that, for lack of money,
African peasants should use less than 9kg of fertilisers per hectare compared
with 200 in industrialised countries? The result is that in Africa, peasants harvest
1,700 kg wheat per hectare compared with 5,500 in China, for instance.

One can expound at length on ecological balance but, in Niger, famine is

rampant and it kills 160,000 people year in and year out, mostly children. In April
2010 an international warning has just been issued: 50% of the population in
Niger are threatened by famine! That is what imperialist policies, confining the
African continent to "non development", lead to.
But Serge Latouche states: "One can bet on rich social inventiveness to meet
the challenge, once smart and creative thinking has been liberated from the
economist and developmentalist straitjacket."

Everyday struggles for survival, creative indeed? Foraging the garbage in slums,
a model for recycling, really? The speeches on "smart, creative thinking" are just
a cover up for this dismal reality.

Up until 2005, Sub-Saharan Africa had received US$294 billion in loans and had
repaid $268 billion for the sole interest on the debt. It was still left with a $190
billion debt in 2008. That is the root-cause of "under development" -- and not the
"productivist" theories of "development". In the name of making the country pay
the debt, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have imposed
restructuring and privatising. Between 1990 and 2000, 3,000 firms were
privatised in Africa; the few remaining public services were wrecked while the
plundering of oil and minerals increased. The plunder can be traced on a map
as it has left a track of numerous wars sparked for that purpose. War, plunder,
famine, people dying of diseases that could be cured, are all rooted in the same
cause: imperialism -- and not "growth". It is worth noting that this issue is not
once approached in the resolution of the United Secretariat: it is however the
only issue that needs to be taken into account.

But for its own part, the United Secretariat puts forth the example of Indian
peoples, who they call "native" American peoples of Latin America and their
"age-long" techniques which should be defended. It advocates "defending the
tropical rain forest with due respect of the rights of native communities who live
on its resources".

Opposing the wanton destruction wreaked by the projects of the major

transnational corporations devastating tropical forests, and defending the
peoples of the Amazon against the ruthless gangs of thugs in the pay of large
landlords in Brazil, for instance, is not a discussion point. This is not a matter of
contention.

But when Rossetto (then a member of the United Secretariat) was a Minister of
the Agrarian reform in the Lula government in Brazil, he refused to enact any
agrarian reform and therefore to defend those same peoples and peasants.
When, in 2004, landless peasants were massively mobilising and seizing plots
of land, Rossetto was loudly calling for respect of "legality". "Legality"?
Meanwhile, the thugs in the pay of landlords were brutally attacking the landless
peasants and murdering them. And in the wake of a tide of such murders,
Minister Rossetto spoke on the occupation of land by the peasants and
declared:

"It is a not a problem of land ownership but of public security". (Folha de Sao
Paulo, November 25th 2004)

He thus cleared the big landlords' of any responsibility and, during the three
years of his tenure, the United Secretariat never ever spoke one word against
the policies of Rossetto. It even gave him support. In December 2005, the same
Rossetto jointly chaired the "World Forum on Agrarian Reform" together with Mr
Baron (former "socialist" president of the European Parliament).
This is what can be read in the document published by the forum:

"An agrarian reform which would merely distribute land, even if such distribution
was done on a large scale, would not in itself increase peasants' power."
Cynicism and hypocrisy on "peasants' power", by Rossetto who, in reality,
opposed the large-scale distribution of land to peasants. In order not to disrupt
"national unity" and compromise his seat in government, private ownership and
the power of big land barons and imperialist domination had to remain
unchallenged.

THREE CHEERS FOR THE "NATIVE PEOPLES"!

Here is what the United Secretariat writes:

"When the native peoples defend their lifestyle and the way they relate to the
environment, they play a major role in the fight to protect the forest and
therefore the climate."

Adding:

"They defend a concept linked to the civilisation they inherited from their
ancestors, radically opposed to the lifestyle promoted by bourgeois ideology.
They hold to the fact that they do not own the land but that they belong to the
land, a notion that summarises the central axis of their philosophy inspired by
the respect of the land, which is why they call their territory Mother Earth, Pacha
Mama. They tend, maintain and cultivate another lifestyle based on community
and solidarity, closely linked to nature."

What does the United Secretariat wish to prove there? That in the Amazon there
exists a mode of "development" that provides an alternative to capitalist
"productivism" and that communism prevails there?

Marx has shown that at a stage of its development, humankind lived a period of
primitive communism which was followed by slavery, feudalism and capitalism.
Ethnologists have exposed the myths of populations which the United
Secretariat coins as "natives" of Latin America. The United Secretariat shows
the reactionary distortion of Marxist scientific thinking, and even quite simply of
the evolution of humanity. The United Secretariat should read ethnologists'
books on the true lifestyle of these populations, which is a far cry from paradise!

Serge Latouche already proposed to "link up with the lost plenty of hunter-
gatherer societies". The myth of nature is once more the mask concealing a
reactionary agenda. All scientific research, as well as anthropology, have amply
proved that humans have made themselves. Humans severed themselves from
nature which they had to exploit. At a given stage of humankind's history, after
thousands of years of depending on nature (hunting and gathering, which did
not differentiate them much from animals) a change occurred.

Humankind did not only take what it needed from nature, it gradually undertook
to transform nature in order to produce what it needed. Agriculture and cattle
breeding emerged. The long evolution of humans, first analysed by Darwin,
introduced humans to a new phase of their history. Humans became "tool-
making animals" -- to quote Benjamin Franklin, the inventor of the lightning rod.

Anthropological studies show how the making of weapons, then of tools was
crucial in producing modern man. But producing humans is also producing
human society. "Man is a social animal" (Marx). Humans do not live alone but in
society. Humans produce only by cooperating in a specific way and by
exchanging their activities.

"And it is only within the limits of these relations and social rapport that their
action on nature is established". (Marx).
The development of agriculture, after coexisting with hunting and gathering,
became the prevailing factor and brought a complete change of human history:
society became divided along class lines. The whole history of humanity bears
the mark of this division into classes and of the class struggle that flows from it:
the slave mode of production, feudal mode of production, capitalist mode of
production.

The Fourth International analysed the present phase of capitalism as the stage
of its death throes.

Far from developing humankind, capitalism leads it towards barbarism. Under its
domination, "the productive forces of humanity" have ceased to grow, they are
being destroyed and destructive forces are created.

We insist: the United Secretariat always opposed this analysis, considering that
productive forces were continuing to develop. Marx, however, considered that
the only material basis of the proletarian revolution is the contradiction between
the social relationships of production and the development of the productive
forces.

"From the forms of development of productive forces they used to be, these
relations have become shackles. Then opens a period of social revolution."
("Contribution to the Criticism of Political Economy").

NATURE AND CULTURE

Productive forces are of course the means of production (tools, techniques,

sciences). They are also the human beings who use them, but it is not only this
addition of tools, techniques and human labour. "The productive forces of
humankind" have, from the very beginning of the Neolithic revolution, been a
concrete expression of humanity's capacity to dominate nature to satisfy their
needs. From the tree branch used as a lance, to the metal lance (made from
metal that has been extracted as ore, and smelted into an alloy), whatever
different techniques are used, they all are the product of man's work,
conditioned by the stage reached by the development of knowledge and of the
organisation of labour.

Nature does not build machines, railway engines, railway tracks, electric
telegraphs or automatic weaving machines and so on. They are the produced of
humankind's industry, of the new matter transformed into instruments through
the will of man and of man's action on nature. They are instruments of man's
brain, created by man's hand." (Karl Marx, "Grundrisse").

As Marx himself says, productive forces are the "mediator between man and
nature". They are the product of man's labour in relation to nature but also of the
relations of humans among them. They are therefore, the product of the
relations of production and of a specific mode of production.

That is why Marx specifies that it is "the social individual who represents the
essential foundation of wealth production". In other words, it is the putting into
motion of techniques, tools and machines -- which it is worth noting are already
the product of man's work - which confers the character of "mankind's
productive forces" to that ensemble.

Marx considers that "the labourer now integrates the natural process which he
transposes into an industrial process as a mediator between himself and
nature". Marxism does not reduce the productive forces to some "technical
breakthrough" but underlines that the major productive force, the one which
makes the whole coherent, is human labour.
Conversely, the speaker at the United Secretariat's congress considers that
machine is an alien element, a danger for humankind:

"Another new problem concerns the importance of living labour. Our programme
devotes a large place to the necessity of investing living labour into services
such as taking care of people, teaching and healthcare. But, for all the other
sectors, we come back on the idea that machines and robots will give producers
maximum freedom from the burden of physical labour. This idea should be
challenged."

Obviously this system in its death throes makes use of technical development
and machines to increase profits and destroy jobs. Should the blame be on
techniques and machines, or on capitalism?
Respecting "ecosystems" represents a threat to development and progress in
the service of humanity. It is not humankind that should be saved but the planet,
the "Pacha Mama" of the United Secretariat, i.e., "nature", as if thinking of the
planet was something radically different from thinking of humanity.

Everyday, planets disappear or appear in the universe. The stake of

revolutionary action is to save humanity from capitalist barbarism. But,
according to the speaker of the United Secretariat:

"The very idea of nature deserves being examined with a new vision. In the
context of the capitalist ecological crisis, indeed, Marxism can no longer just
view nature from the sole point of view of production. ... We must learn and view
nature also from the point of view of nature itself."

But what is nature "from the point of view of nature itself."? It is easy to
understand why the United Secretariat is so interested in the "native" myths of
"Mother Earth"! But for Marxists, nature cannot be comprehended outside the
lens of humankind.

Marx writes:
"As long as there are men, the history of nature and the history of men will be
inter-related. ... The precondition for the entire history of mankind is of course
the existence of living human beings (the first historical action of those beings is
the fact that they start producing the means of their livelihood). The first fact to
be observed is therefore the physical organisation of those beings and the
relationship it implies with the rest of nature. ... Any historical research should be
based on those natural foundations and on the transformations they undergo
through the historical action of men. Men can be distinguished from animals by
conscience, religion, or by whichever criterion one likes. They start
distinguishing themselves from animals as soon as they start producing their
means of livelihood; men indirectly produce their material lives". ("German
Ideology")
But for those who oppose humankind's progress, humans are to blame for all
the natural catastrophes.

AGAINST HUMANITY AND ITS EVOLUTION

Serge Latouche asserts:

"Our only hope lies in catastrophes, because I am deeply confident in the ability
of our growth society to create catastrophes."

Indeed, capitalist society constantly produces catastrophes which cause the

death of millions of human beings. And that is what Serge Latouche
congratulates us on!

Of course there are such natural disasters as the tsunami in Asia, the
earthquake in Haiti, but the consequences for humanity are anything but natural.
They are caused by imperialist domination. It is common knowledge that people
in Haiti were living crammed up in often ramshackle housing, that buildings were
erected haphazardly without any seismic building standards, that adequate
services were lacking because of the "under-development" in which imperialism
maintained the country, and due to all that, 300,000 people lost their lives. It is
also common knowledge that a tremor of that magnitude would not have had the
same consequences in Japan, for instance.

By the same token, the December 2004 tsunami which hit Indonesia, India, Sri
Lanka, Thailand and that caused the death of some 200,000 people was not a
natural catastrophe by far. It was predictable.
"During a meeting of the Intergovernmental Commission which is a United
Nations body, experts had warned that tsunamis were to be expected in the
Indian Ocean" (Baltimore Newspaper December 29, 2004).

Following that, it was envisaged to install two monitors in the Indian Ocean --
machines installed in Japan that can predict tsunamis minutes after tremors and
broadcast warning bulletins -- by the Pacific Marine Environmental laboratory.
But for lack of the required funds, the programme failed (each machine costs
about US$250,000). (Le Figaro, December 29, 2004)

$500,000 for two monitors. This is half the cost of a single tomahawk missile, the
kind that showered down on Iraq the previous year. Hundreds of thousand of
lives could have been saved in Southeast Asia.

Degrowth advocates denounce global over-population. The "deep ecologist"

Naess considers that "it is imperative that the world population diminish". As for
Latouche, he calculates that the desirable number of people on this planet
would be 3 billion, half the present number.

Of course, neither of them has the courage to come up with the "solution" for
reaching that result. But degrowth, halting development, refusing to install
healthcare centres, plus war, might be a big help!

This is nothing but a furthering of the theories of Malthus who, in the 19th
century, asserted population growth as the main danger and called for a
limitation of the population.

Pierre Rabhi, another ideologist of degrowth, write without hesitation:

"The very notion of development is the offspring of the productivist industrial

world. Its mission was to unearth minerals both fit or unfit for fuel such as coal
or steel, and to set up heavy industry to produce machines."

A slight detail should be added: Contrary to what this advocate of degrowth

thought claims, steel is not extracted from the soil, it is an alloy of iron and
carbon. It is iron ore that is extracted. Another precision too: The historical
period usually called the "Iron Age" during which iron metallurgy spread, dates
back to the 8th century B.C. That era is one of the phases of human
development going some 30 centuries back in time. It had been preceded
several centuries before by the Bronze Age around the Mediterranean Sea.
Once again, it is worth recalling that bronze itself is an alloy of copper and tin,
metals that, just like iron are minerals extracted from the soil.

What those "theoreticians" of degrowth challenge is therefore not only current

"productivism", but the long course of development that has led up to the
modern world. The culprit is man who, at the dawn of humanity, extracted
minerals, iron, from "Mother Earth" and therefore disrupted nature's magical
balance!

Under the influence of such theses, the United Secretariat explicitly revises
Marxism when, in its resolution, it writes:

"A mode of production is not defined only by its relations of production and
ownership, but also by its technological procedures. This is clearly demonstrated
by climate change: the energy sources used by a mode of production and the
methods used to convert energy to meet man's requirements (food, heat, motion
and light) are not socially neutral but are markedly determined by class."
The "theory of the United Secretariat could be summarised as an absurdity,
science- and technique-wise, plus the revision of Marxism. A mode of production
would no longer be defined by the social relations of production and productive
forces but also by the choice of its energy used! Capital does not matter, what
matters is the choice of energy! This would for instance mean that the October
Revolution, which developed the extraction of minerals -- of coal -- and which
undertook the industrialisation of the country, would just have been another form
of the "productivist" theory", capitalism being another.

For the speaker of the United Secretariat, "one can do without coal, oil, natural
gas" and, in the resolution, instead of the Marxist affirmation that the bourgeois
State apparatus is to be destroyed by the proletariat's taking political power, the
following objective is proposed:

"The destruction of the old capitalist productive apparatus and its replacement
by an alternative apparatus, putting other sources of energy to work."
This sheds light on the fact that the United Secretariat challenges what it calls
"the pure pattern of the October Revolution": class definition is out, so is the
notion of a capitalist minority exploiting the proletarian masses; there no longer
is a workers' State founded on the expropriation of capital.

Behind the "anti-capitalist" verbiage, aren't the theses against productivism,

science and progress embraced by degrowth advocates lurking in the adopted
texts of the United Secretariat? There is no question about it. Besides, Tout est
nous, the NPA's newspaper, denounces "technological illusion": "It is asserted
that science will find a solution for the climate change as well as for radio-active
waste" and we cannot leave people in the dark and believe that "technical
solutions" can be found (December 10, 2009). Of course, science or technique
cannot by themselves solve problems, but they can powerfully contribute.

For Marxism, which the United Secretariat fraudulently claims to defend, science
is not "by nature" bourgeois or proletarian. Scientific discoveries should be
assessed as a function of the overall process of development of humankind.
They are not the outcome of nature, but of human society divided into classes.

"Technique and science have their own rationale, the rationale of the knowledge
of nature and of the fact that it serves man's interests. But technique and
science do not evolve in the void; they do so within human society, divided into
classes. The ruling class, the owner class masters technique and, through it,
masters nature. Science, just like technique, cannot be called militarist or
pacifist. In a society where the ruling class is militarist, technique is in the
service of militarism." (Leon Trotsky)

In that area too, class struggle may thwart the hold of capital over science and
the movement of the emancipation of workers will free science from capitalist
reaction. Throughout the history of humanity, the development of science and
technique has been a factor of the development of humanity. The development
has not been smooth.

"Sometimes, culture advances, sometimes it declines. ... Scientific and technical

thinking advance through interruptions and failures". (Leon Trotsky)

That is what is known as progress -- a word hated by de-growth advocates. And

this progress is nothing new!

In "Anti-Dhring", Engels analyses the fundamental meaning of "development":

"The first men who emerged from the animal reign were essentially as little free
as animals themselves; but any advance of civilisation was a step towards
liberty. At the dawn of the history of mankind, there was the discovery that
mechanical motion produces heat: friction can produce fire; at the end of the
evolution which has led to present times, there is the discovery that heat can be
turned into mechanic motion: the steam engine.
"And despite the tremendous liberating revolution that the steam engine has
achieved in the social world (it has only reached half its potential) it cannot still
be doubted that producing fire by friction is still more efficient as a means of
universal liberation. As producing fire by friction gave man, for the first time, a
power over a force of nature and, in this way separated man from animal once
and for all. The steam engine will never make such a powerful leap in the
evolution of mankind." (our emphasis -- Ed Note)

We are still living in this society of "fire" which is being challenged by the
degrowth "theories". When they assert that "human activity" instead of the
capitalist system is responsible for the misfortunes of the planet, degrowth
advocates are carrying their reasoning to its logical end and thus challenge the
entire history of humanity and of its evolution for, ever since humans became
separated from nature, they have exploited and modified it.

A REACTIONARY AND OBSCURANTIST IDEOLOGY

By taking up the banner of "eco-socialism", the United Secretariat joins in with

the worst of the reactionary, environmentalist and degrowth theories, which turn
their backs on the fact that society is divided into classes, that the capitalist
class, in order to defend itself, is sweeping humanity to the worst of
catastrophes.

It also joins those who, in the name of the general interest (in this case, the
climate), stand up to challenge the irreconcilable opposition between capital and
labour, to the advantage of an association of the two, i.e., in the interest of a
new form of corporatism.

A study conducted by J.-M. Harribey, "The Theories of Degrowth", states the

following:

"The paradox is that the degrowth current takes a very critical stance on
capitalism. But the criticism of capitalism is made more and more often in the
name of the past. Traditional communities are highly praised but the examples
of domination, for example that of men over women, were common. Though
several theoreticians of degrowth are not at all linked to the current of 'deep
ecology', its theses neighbour those of degrowth. If the Earth is a living being
that belongs to an autonomous cosmic order which prevails over the human
species, it becomes holy, and social order becomes biological. Society is a
biological body that is decaying under the blows of Westernisation, eaten away
by the cancer of modernism. Therefore, there is a human essence of which we
have been dispossessed by science and modernity, whilst at the same time,
science and modernity have disunited us from a natural order that we need to
get back to. ...

"One of the sub-currents of ecology, going under the name of 'eco-feminism'

associates female fertility to biological fertility: thus women, maltreated by the
patriarchal system, are the most apt to respect nature and to tread the path of
degrowth. Such views enshrine the position of the woman as dominated and is
the reverse of the idea of a gender, which aims at analysing how the socio-
cultural interrelations between the sexes operate. ...

"What is ecology founded on? asks Goldsmith (2002). He answers: not on

science but on faith. What must be done is to re-enchant the world. Whereas
modernism had secularised society, relegating religion to the private sphere,
religion has been reintroduced into the political order to destroy that order as a
place for the construction of cohabitation between humans. ...

"For those theoreticians of degrowth and of the refusal of development, the

ultimate culprit is Reason, blended with the capitalist rationale which has de-
sacralised, 'disenchanted' the world. The necessary criticism of the
instrumentalisation of Reason then falls into a relativism which puts science and
faith on the same level. Now, if faith exists within science -- economy is a good
example of this -- there are safeguards for science -- Reason, for one, and
verification -- which prevent it from being lost in credulity. Behind the criticism of
Reason, there is the rejection of the Enlightenment and of the very idea that
universally respected rights for one and all human beings can come into being"
(Cahiers franais du dveloppement et dcroissance, March 2007)

A rejection of The Enlightenment, of progress and of human rights!

Daniel Gurin, a libertarian activist (a genuine one) wrote before the Second
World War:
"In modern times, as man got to dominate nature and succeeded in relieving his
daily burden, at the same time religion fell back. But the crisis of capitalism is
again spawning among the masses such dismay and despair as their ancestors
certainly experienced in the distant past when they were faced with unleashed
nature's inscrutable forces. And as men have often become estranged from
traditional religion which has been worn thin and compromised by its ties with
the owners of wealth, a surrogate, modernised and updated religion for man has
been conjured up. But, if the form is new, the substance has remained the
same: it is still the old opium. ... Like all the religions, it demands from its faithful
that they practise the deepest contempt for "materialism". ... Mussolini writes
that "fascism believes in the holiness of heroism, i.e. in actions for which there is
no economic motivation whatever. He spurns the idea of economic happiness
which ... will turn men into animals who have but a single thought in mind: being
fed and fattened". Hitler asserts the same" ("Fascism and Big Capital", Chap.3)

Nazism's exaltation of nature over culture is expressed by: "When I hear the
word 'civilisation', I reach in my pocket for my revolver"

Exaltation of nature, of the laws of nature, cosmogony myths, "Mother Nature",

Mother Earth, and her counterpart, the German woman as a child-bearer and
mother are the core of Nazi ideology.

"The land does not lie", said Marshal Ptain, the French pro-Nazi dictator, also
exalting "nature" by contrasting it to man, who does lie.

Defending "nature's laws" applies to all, workers and owners. That is why
peasants, fishermen and forest workers were organised in the Reich-
snahrstand, factory workers in the Arbeitsfront and youth in the Jungsvolk (later,
the Hitler Jugend). Fascism holds that nature tends to elevate life. The selection
of the species is achieved through the "natural" struggle for daily bread; the
strongest will survive. It is the superior race. The natural race.
"The history of races is at the same time the history of nature and the mysticism
of the soul". (Rosenberg, Nazi theoretician, "Myths of the 20th century")
Exalting "nature" independently of humanking leads to fighting against human
civilisation.

Alain de Benoist (member of the Club de l'Horloge, a French regrouping of the

far right) is a convert to degrowth. To justify his conversion, he explains:
"There are obvious common points between 'objectors to growth' and those who
defend the identity of peoples. It is not by chance that numerous degrowth
theoreticians such as E. Goldsmith, also defend the cause of peoples and
readily cite the example of traditional societies. Serge Latouche underlines that
'local' is a term that unequivocally evokes the land and even the soil. ... Even
though they denounce the perverse consequences of the theory of progress,
many alter-globalists still hesitate to break with the ideology of the
Enlightenment . ... Just as universal and universalism do not mean the same
thing, love for the Earth is not necessarily 'cosmopolitism'. Incontestably,
(degrowth) has a conservative dimension."

That much is perfectly exact: degrowth is conservative.

Conversely, the Fourth International firmly embraces the development of
mankind. It holds that the Enlightenment belongs to this progressive movement.
It was Goethe who, on his death bed, demanded "light". In the 18th century, it
was German romanticism which, along with Goethe, celebrated the myth of
Prometheus, a Titan who moulded the first men out of a lump of clay mixed with
water. He stole a spark of fire from the chariot of the sun and presented it to
men. As retribution, Zeus ordered him to be chained on mount Caucasus, where
an eagle flew every day to devour his liver -- which ceaselessly re-generated. It
was one of the tasks of Heracles to kill the bird of prey and to set Prometheus
free. A symbol of the revolt against God, of the quest for truth, the figure of
Prometheus represented, in the 18th century, the march of humanity towards
progress; the myth of Prometheus is the myth of fire, of knowledge and
mankind. It was the Enlightenment; in the 21st century it was the era of
socialism.

FIGHTING FOR SOCIALISM IS FIGHTING FOR PROGRESS

Unlike the "objectors to growth" and of the positions of the United Secretariat
which consider that nothing can exist beyond capitalism, Marx underlines "the
limited and purely historical, transient character of the capitalist system of
production."
That is why:

"Marx predicted that, to escape the economic catastrophe to which the

development of capitalism necessarily leads -- and the catastrophe looms right
over us -- there can be no other solution than the socialisation of the means of
production. The productive forces need a new organiser, a new master. And, as
existence determines science, Marx did not doubt that the working class, at the
price of errors and defeats, would finally become aware of the situation and
would sooner or later draw all the practical conclusions that are needed". (Leon
Trotsky, "Marxism in Our Time)

But this consciousness must not be obscured by opposing class struggle or

heading it into dead-ends.

It is neither through consensus, nor through national unity with the bourgeoisie
under the guise of "climatic urgency" and other environmental issues that the
fight can be won. Capitalism in its death throes, in order to survive itself, is a
factor of destruction. It will attempt to go farther and quicker, crashing all the
barriers that limit it.

The offensive of deregulation is worldwide and targets all sectors of society.

Defending everything that has been wrenched through workers' and people's
struggles is exactly the way to slow down the destructive offensive of capital.
Conversely, accepting new regulations in the name of the environmental crisis
means facilitating new deregulation for capital.

Thus the defence of public enterprises and of the public monopoly in sectors
such as energy and transport or of their (re-) nationalisation does not actually
solve all the problems but it prevents capital from getting its hands on them,
which would inevitably lead to catastrophe. In Europe, this demand collides with
the requirements of the European Union which, in the name of free and
unbiased competition, intends to render up all to speculation. Fighting for the
existence of public services opposes the diktats of the European Union.
The fight of the people of India after the catastrophe of the Bhopal chemical
facility is similar to the fight of the local elected representatives of the French
coast of Brittany, who sued the major American oil company which had allowed
its oil tankers to empty at sea, for the sake of saving a little money.

THE CATASTROPHE IS CAPITALISM IN ITS DEATH THROES

Isn't the struggle against wars, pillage, military occupation and debt,
militarisation and the rising curve of a weapon-based economy also the means
of combating the degrading and destructive tendencies of capitalism?

Should or shouldn't support be given to mobilise the peoples in "under-

developed" countries against the looting of their wealth, so that they can recover
their sovereignty and be able to develop their countries? Or, in the name of
"climatic urgency" should we oppose the demands of these peoples?

The Fourth International supports and participates in the fight of the peoples
oppressed by imperialism for their national emancipation, and it backs the
measures -- even the limited ones -- towards that end, such as the
nationalisation or the public control of natural gas, oil and mines.

The Fourth International considers that it is the peoples who should decide their
own destiny and future, and certainly not international institutions in the pay of
imperialism, such as the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations or the
IPCC. In the same way, the Fourth International sections take part in the fight of
the farmers and peasants in the "North" against the dismantlement of agriculture
demanded by the requirements of the European Union. In the "South", we join
the rural masses of Brazil, Zimbabwe, South Africa and elsewhere to demand
agrarian reform, expropriation of the land barons and of agribusiness.

Fighting for the ban on lay-offs in industry in Europe (including in the auto-
making industry) against off-shoring, converges with the fight of workers in
Korea for their rights, of China to defend the State industry and acquired rights
against the opening up to foreign capital that over-exploits the Chinese masses
in designated economic zones, zones where workers have no rights. That is the
arena of proletarian internationalism, in radical opposition to any reactionary
jingoism dyed in the green of political ecology.
Defending public healthcare, hospitals and social protection is part and parcel of
this defence of civilisation which, until not very long ago, witnessed the
lengthening of the average life span in a large part of the planet, which could
even spread all over the world, as the result of this struggle of classes and
peoples. The Fourth International supports and backs the fight of workers
together with their trade unions to protect labour legislation and all their rights,
as so many limits to capitalist exploitation.

The fight to defend universities and research against privatisation and to protect
scientists from the direct control of capital dictating its laws will raise the hope
that new discoveries be made to the advantage of all mankind, including in the
sphere of environment.
Only class struggle will enable the exploited and oppressed to obstruct
imperialist barbarism from leading mankind to its doom.
Conversely, the agenda of the degrowthers, of political ecology and of the
United Secretariat, looking to reconcile the contradictory interests of workers
and capitalists under the pretext of climatic urgency, will lead us to the worst of
catastrophes.

Therefore, to save society, it is not necessary either to check the development of

technology, to shut down factories, to award premiums to farmers for sabotaging
agriculture, to turn a third of the workers into paupers, or to call upon maniacs to
be dictators. Not one of these measures, which are a shocking mockery of the
interests of society, is necessary.

What is indispensable and urgent is to separate the means of production from

their present parasitic owners and to organize society in accordance with a
rational plan. Then it would at once be possible really to cure society of its ills.
All those able to work would find a job. The work-day would gradually decrease.
The wants of all members of society would secure increasing satisfaction. The
words "poverty," "crisis," "exploitation," would drop out of circulation. Mankind
would at last cross the threshold into true humanity. (Leon Trotsky, "Marxism in
Our Time")
-----

ENDNOTE

(1) Ivan Illitch : post '68 ideologue , advocate of "deschooling"

**********************

Marxists Faced with the Sham of "Political Ecology"

(and its "Ecosocialist" Manifestation)
EXCERPTS
By Pierre CISE, Daniel GLUCKSTEIN and Jean-Pierre RAFFI

Introduction
On the occasion of the Copenhagen World Summit on Global Warming, a
political and ideological offensive was mounted against Karl Marx. This is not the
first time that the author of Capital and the instigator of the First International
has been the target of a political campaign denouncing the so-called obsolete or
bankrupt character of the positions he espoused. What is new here is that the
attempt to put Marx into question came from a political current which, initially at
least, and still officially today, claims to be Marxist. It was indeed from the ranks
of the United Secretariat (USec), which for months had adopted an
"ecosocialist" position, that explicit questions were raised about the positions of
Marx in general, and particularly regarding the productive forces and the
relationship of man to nature (as we shall see, complete with quotes, later in this
article). This new development deserves to be analysed. In our opinion, ,it
places on the agenda the need to defend Marxism and its relevance today.

Scientific problem or political problem?

What distinguishes Marxists from supporters of political

ecology/environmentalism is not that the latter supposedly are preoccupied with
the threats weighing on man's natural environment while the former do not care
about them. No, what distinguishes Marxists from supporters of political
ecology/environmentalism is that, by isolating the destruction of the environment
from the destruction of the productive forces and the mechanisms for capitalist
exploitation, the latter are ruling themselves out from fighting against what they
themselves identify as a threat to the planet. What is more, they are providing
political and ideological weapons to the very people who bear responsibility for
the barbarism that is threatening the whole of humankind: the owners of the
means of production.
A full 40 years ago, our comrade Gerard Bloch defined the debate in these
terms:

"We should say a few words here (...) about the destruction of man's natural
environment into which the capitalist economy is plunging ever faster. The
campaigns in the mainstream press and the solemn declarations of the
bourgeois politicians (...) probably represent the biggest example of the
behaviour of the mainstream press and the mass media, which consists of lying,
deceiving and demoralising their readers or viewers by dealing out ... a series of
partial truths that are separated, isolated from each other, with a booming tone,
while at the same time barring the way to any possibility of gaining an overview.
The pollution of the air and water is becoming a threat? That is true. Does the
increase in the proportion of carbon gas and dust in the atmosphere, due to
human industry, risk changing the global climate? That is possible, it has not
been established, and we are not even sure whether there would be warming
(due to the "greenhouse effect") or freezing (due to the accumulation of dust
reflecting solar radiation in the upper atmosphere). In any case, it is far from
being a clear and present danger. Is the destruction of hundreds of living
species, of thousands of hectares of forest and irreparable act?
"Yes, without any doubt. Is the uncontrolled dumping of masses of insecticides
disrupting the environment, and through a compound effect leading to the
destruction of several living species, especially birds; moreover, are insecticides
like DDT becoming concentrated, via biological phenomena, in the tissue of
living species to the point of threatening to poison man as he consumes them?
Yes, without any doubt; but the solution cannot lie purely and simply in banning
the use of insecticides, as all kinds of "eco-nuts" are advocating - which would
bring about the mass destruction of cereals, transforming the chronic under-
nourishment that hundreds of millions of people are suffering into famine. The
example of insecticides is telling, in that it shows perfectly that it is not a
question of a scientific and technological problem, but a political problem, and
that there can only be a global solution in the strictest sense of the term: on a
global scale.

"The same applies to all problems relating to ecology, a discipline which studies
the balance between all living species, animal and vegetable, and which has
demonstrated with an over-abundance of proof that any intervention which
modifies the living conditions of just one of those species will often provoke a
chain reaction that will modify the lives of dozens or thousands of other species,
most of the time in a way that is catastrophic for man. The short-term quest by
every capitalist corporation for the maximum profit, and the resulting anarchy
that is its distinctive feature, have produced and continue to produce particularly
catastrophic results in this area. But the solution is political and only political."
(2)

Destructive forces and destruction of natural surroundings

These lines, written a full 40 years ago, are amazingly relevant today. Gerard
Bloch continued:

"When one speaks of the growing transformation of the productive forces into
destructive forces which we are currently witnessing, one is thinking especially -
something which we ourselves have emphasised - of arms, of the militarisation
of world capitalism, condemned originally by Rosa Luxemburg. But today, the
destruction of the natural environment is turning from an additional aspect into
an essential aspect of this phenomenon that is characteristic of decaying
capitalism, which is building up huge additional obstacles that we will have to
overcome in order to build socialism. The labouring and exploited masses must
rise against their exploiters and smash the barriers of ownership by the capitalist
monopolies and the imperialist states, they must take into their own hands their
destinies and those of their planet, and reorganise the economic activity of the
human species according to a single global plan. Of course, there will be
several scientific and technological problems to resolve, but "the vast unused
scientific and technological potential" [a quote from the 1967 OCI manifesto -
Editor] that has been accumulated will undoubtedly allow us to resolve them -
because those problems will finally be posed within the only framework in which
they can be resolved: turning the planet into a garden for the well-being of
humankind."

Already at that time, Bloch was denouncing "the campaign being waged amid a
blaze of publicity by the politicians and the mass media. Made up of dramatic
announcements of partial, isolated truths taken completely out of their context,
dealt out in shocking terms (in the etymological meaning of the word), ( ... ) [it]
aims to persuade the masses, in this area as in every other area, especially
relating to peace or war, that they can do nothing - that it is not a question of a
political problem, rather one of complex scientific problems that they are not
able to understand - thus aiming to divert them from the only solution: to take
their fate into their own hands, to seize power."

These lines are around 40 years old. Since they were written, the environmental
deception has taken on a form and dimension which our comrade Gerard Bloch
had foretold, but he could never have imagined then the sheer scale it would
assume. Let us note that Bloch referred to ecology as a scientific discipline. This
is true: up to the early 1970s, the word denoted the science that studies the
interactions between living species, animal or vegetable, and the physical
environment, all together forming what is referred to as the ecosystem. But,
beginning precisely in the early 1970s, the word "ecology" ceased to correspond
exclusively to that scientific discipline. Increasingly, and to a dominating degree
today, it denotes a political current "aiming at man's better adaptation to his
environment" (definition from Le Robert dictionary). (3)

We shall draw the reader's attention to this definition.

Should man adapt to his environment?

The political aim of "man's better adaptation to his environment" starts with a
presupposition: that "the environment" is a category which can be distinct from
humankind itself. Preserving the environment would then become an absolute
duty rising above the human community and dictating a certain number of
alleged imperatives that are supposedly scientific or natural. Such imperatives
would have nothing to do with the social relations of production and
consequently would have to be imposed on one and all, whichever class they
belonged to ... What is "new" in relation to the situation described by Gerard
Bloch 40 years ago is that today, imperialist governments and international
institutions are hammering the point that "we can do something about it".

But the particular characteristic of the "solutions" being dealt out is that they
insistently and increasingly demand the association-integration of the labour
organisations into the process of questioning the meagre gains of the working
and popular masses, giving free rein to capitalist pillage and profit.

Thus for example, "sustainable development" is the official social reason why
the trade unions are being asked to put into question their own social
guarantees and labour gains.

Carbon tax? This is first of all a means of taxing the meagre income of the
workers and their families. The so-called energy constraints are adding to the
burden of working families' accommodation costs, while opening up new
avenues of penetration for capitalist profit.

"Pollution rights" are becoming a means for unbridled financial speculation. On

the other hand, no limit whatsoever is being put on the exponential explosion in
arms trading and the development of wars.

It is therefore in the nature of things that the Copenhagen Summit, to mention

just one, should have been made up of heads of state and government (like
Obama, who has just decided to send an extra 30,000 troops to Afghanistan)
who are waging wars in the four corners of the world ... which of course makes
them the most highly-qualified moral authorities for gravely studying the future of
the planet. (4)

If the sham of political environmentalism is "catching on" today on an

unprecedented scale, it is because the apparatuses - both big and small - that
dominate the organisations which historically stand for the working class have
rallied around it once and for all, at the same time giving up posing the issues in
terms of social classes with diametrically opposed and antagonistic interests, of
private ownership of the means of production and the independent working-
class struggle needed for expropriating the power of the expropriators.

The very notion of "man's better adaptation to his environment" is profoundly

reactionary. Should our primitive ancestor have adapted to the hostile and
savage environment he faced? If he had adapted to that environment, the
human race would undoubtedly never have undergone the evolution it has
experienced up to now. Should the child in the favelas of Brazil adapt to his
environment and limit himself to trying to survive in the most hostile of
conditions?
The whole history of humankind, of its progress, and the whole evolution of the
human race have been marked by the fierce struggle by the men and women
throughout the ages, not to adapt to their environment, but to adapt and
transform their environment by subjecting it to their vital needs. The whole
history of humankind is the history of man mastering nature, thereby
transforming it and transforming himself. For in reality, man and nature are
inextricably linked. There is no "nature" that can be separated from the action
exercised upon it by human beings. Just as there is no human being that can be
separated from the consequences exercised upon him by his natural
environment and his own action on his natural environment. The debate is not a
new one.

Man and nature are inextricably linked

Polemicising against Feuerbach, Marx levelled the criticism that "he does not
see how the sensuous world around him is, not a thing given direct from all
eternity, remaining ever the same, but the product of industry and of the state of
society; and, indeed, in the sense that it is an historical product, the result of the
activity of a whole succession of generations, each standing on the shoulders of
the preceding one, developing its industry and its intercourse, modifying its
social system according to the changed needs." In short, there is not nature on
the one hand and history on the other "as though these were two separate
"things" and man did not always have before him an historical nature and a
natural history". Because as far as a "nature that preceded human history" is
concerned, "today [it] no longer exists anywhere, except perhaps on a few
Australian coral-islands of recent origin". (5)

Marx continued: "Communism differs from all previous movements in that it ()

consciously treats all natural premises as the creatures of hitherto existing men,
strips them of their natural character and subjugates them to the power of the
united individuals." (6)

And again: "The premises from which we begin ( ... ) are the real individuals,
their activity and the material conditions under which they live( ... ). The first
premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human
individuals. Thus the first fact to be established is the physical organisation of
these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature. ( ... ) The
writing of history must always set out from these natural bases and their
modification in the course of history through the action of men. Men can be
distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you
like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as
they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned
by their physical organisation. By producing their means of subsistence men are
indirectly producing their actual material life. The way in which men produce
their means of subsistence depends first of all on the nature of the actual means
of subsistence they find in existence and have to reproduce." (7)
Consequently, it is impossible to deal with "nature" without dealing with human
activity. The two are inextricably linked, both of them forming part of the social
relations of production, in which the social classes battle it out over antagonistic
interests. For his part, Engels wrote that "man himself is a product of nature,
which has developed in and along with its environment" (8). It is therefore
impossible to address the relationship of man to nature without addressing the
relationship of nature to man, and vice versa. However, in defiance of the
historic facts, the Copenhagen Summit was based on the negation of this reality.
Through this example, it is important to see the mechanism of the sham of
political ecology/environmentalism and the global sacred union of which it must
form the base. For if environmentalism can indeed be called "political ecology", it
is because above all - even exclusively - it has a political role without any
relation to ecology as a scientific discipline. It is even in contradiction with
ecology, just like with every other scientific approach. In particular, it aims to hide
the fact that the capitalist system, having reached its imperialist stage, is
increasingly disorganising the relationship between man and nature, is
destroying its numerous component parts, and is transforming that relationship
into a conflict.

Degrowth and sustainable development

The setting of the "fight against global warming" as the foundation stone of the
global sacred union in effect serves as "scientific" cover for the theories of
"degrowth", one of the pillars of bourgeois economic thinking and policy, distilled
over a period of almost 40 years by a capitalist system in full decay which has
no other perspective to offer humankind than war and destruction.

Let us remember that environmentalist arguments like the concept of

sustainable development rest on the theory of "zero growth" and degrowth
developed from the early 1970s onwards by the Club of Rome. This think-tank,
created by a few leading lights who were tied hand and foot to the sectors of
finance capital, issued a famous report entitled "The Limits to Growth", in which
they called for "sustainable" growth, in other words one compatible with the
planet's assumed limits. As far as this organisation was concerned, the source
of the problem was overpopulation, hence over-consumption in relation to the
Earth's physical possibilities, and therefore over-production resulting from the
necessity - absurd, of course! - to feed those excess mouths.
It was in 1987 that the phrase "sustainable development" first appeared, from
the pen of Gro Harlem Brundtland, who was Prime Minister of Norway at the
time. In 1983, the United Nations General Assembly decided to set up a World
Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), headed by Mrs
Brundtland, with a threefold mandate: to propose long-term environmental
strategies, make concrete and realistic proposals for international co-operation,
and raise awareness.

The report Our Common Future was published in 1987, and its main idea was:
"We all depend on one biosphere for sustaining our lives", so: 1) certain modes
of development degrade the environment; 2) a degraded environment is a
barrier to development. The main areas addressed were: population, food
security, the erosion of biodiversity, energy, and pollution. This led the
rapporteurs to define sustainable development:

"Yet in the end, sustainable development is not a fixed state of harmony, but
rather a process of change in which the exploitation of resources, the direction
of investments, the orientation of technological development, and institutional
change are made consistent with future as well as present needs." (13)

The three pillars of sustainable development are: 1) "to make development

sustainable to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs"; 2) intra-
and inter-generational social equity; 3) respect for the natural systems that
sustain us.

This gibberish was used to give ideological cover to capital's destructive policy
from the early 1970s, following the collapse of the international monetary system
put in place immediately following the Second World War. Restructuring of
economies, destruction of "overcapacities" in production, mass job-cuts, rising
unemployment, deregulation, privatisation, vineyards grubbed up, fields left
fallow, a drastic reduction in the number of small farmers to the benefit of a
concentration of arable land - the list of the acts of massive destruction of the
productive forces would be too long to make. And it has been horribly
lengthened with the unfurling of the crisis that is hitting the whole system.
But all this needed ideological support. And it was found in degrowth, a
manifestation of the old Malthusian theories with a brand new paint-job: why
maintain industries, those excess productive forces in relation to a finite nature?
Why carry on that "compulsive" consumption without taking account of those
limits?
The "modernist" from of degrowth goes by the name of "sustainable
development". Its theme is simple enough: since man-predator is destroying the
planet, he must therefore reduce his use of energy, reduce his consumption. In
order to force him to it, there is a need to: a) threaten him with hellfire,
rechristened environmental or climatic disaster; and b) achieve the holy
communion of all social and political forces around that sacred imperative. This
new religion is invading every area of life (education, political decision-making,
political and trade union programmes). Its prime target: the labour movement.
As one knows, the labour movement historically rests on the recognition of the
class struggle. Namely that, within the social relations of exploitation, the
working class and capitalist class occupy positions that are completely
antagonistic. The class struggle is in contradiction with the environmental
consensus, as the latter aims - for the benefit of the capitalist class - to bring into
the question the division of society into classes, and on the contrary calls for a
sacred union to save the planet, the ice-cap, the polar bears, the forests, etc.

Through this ideological camouflage, it is indeed a question of channelling,

stifling and denying the class struggle and its objective (the emancipation of
humankind from the shackles of capitalism) in order to help break up the
organisations of struggle set up for that emancipation. It is a fact that all the
apparatuses which lead organisations produced historically from the class
struggle have been lined up under the banner of sustainable development and
environmentalism, one after the other and to varying degrees. In terms of the
political parties, they started by making an alliance with the green and
environmental parties promoted to the ranks of "left-wing" parties, and finally
incorporated environmentalism into their programme, even to the point
sometimes of claiming to be the first environmental parties (and even in some
cases, as we shall see, incorporating their programme into environmentalism).
In so doing, the leaders of the Socialist Parties, Communist Parties and other
parties produced by the labour movement are contributing to their own
weakening, if not their disappearance as parties. And they are also contributing
towards dissolving the lines separating the organisations which stand for the
labour movement and the organisations of the capitalist class.

Crusade against Marx

This is where the crusade against Marx undertaken by the United Secretariat - a
revisionist current of Marxism which historically was formed within the Fourth
International more than 50 years ago (and which, continuing to fraudulently
claim its flag, is expressed by organisations like the NPA in France) - comes in.
That the USec should bring Marx's analysis into question, especially on the
question of the productive forces, is nothing new for readers of La Vrit-The
Truth. For decades now, the leaders of that organisation - especially its
theoretician at the time, the late Ernest Mandel - have thought that when Trotsky
spoke in 1938 of a decline of the productive forces, he was simply giving an
analysis of the economic climate at the time, and that in fact, everything that
Marx might have written on the tendency of the productive forces to be
transformed into destructive forces, as Trotsky had also concluded in the Fourth
International's founding programme, should finally be put away with other old-
fashioned stuff of no interest. However, because the USec needed to justify the
link it had to the continuity of the labour movement (and Marxism in particular), it
has never to date explicitly declared its revisionist character.

At the time, Mandel had written his famous "Third Age of Capitalism", the main
argument of which (not very original, as it was also shared by several others,
most notably the economists of the Communist Parties) was that the
development of science and technology was the indisputable expression of the
capacity of the capitalist system to cause ever-greater rapid expansion of the
productive forces.

Hence the USec's incessant polemic against whoever - including Marx -

maintained that in the imperialist epoch, capitalism was no longer able to use
science and technology except in the sense of a constant destruction of the
productive forces, and of the main productive force, the working class (its
destruction being expressed not only through unemployment and war, but also
through devaluing academic qualifications, and seeking a continuous reduction
in the value of labour-power - particularly through the destruction of its historic
and social component such as education, training, the social welfare system,
public services, etc.).

But let us repeat, at least at the time, the USec leaders had carefully avoided
directly attacking Marx. It was our political current which, due to its faithfulness
to Marx's positions, often formed the target for the USec, which questioned our
so-called "gloom-mongering". (14) Let us add that, not being followers of the
Holy Scripture, it is not the fact itself that someone could bring Marx into
question that bothers us. Everyone has the right - even the duty - to compare
the theoretical basis of the labour movement with the facts as they are. And if
the facts establish that Marx, Lenin or Trotsky were wrong, or at least that the
new developments in the situation require a re-thinking of what they wrote, for
our part we would have no difficulty whatsoever in so doing. Marxism is the
result of historical materialism which, in all circumstances, starts with the facts,
the evolution of events, their linkage, in order to compare them with theory, and
using those facts, to verify it. And not the opposite. But two conditions apply. The
first is not to misrepresent what Marx himself has written, and the second is not
to misrepresent the facts. Now, as we shall see, the United Secretariat respects
neither of these two conditions.
Integrate

In February 2009, within the framework of the preparations for its world
congress, the USec adopted a "Report on climate change" presented by Daniel
Tanuro (15), a member of its Belgian organisation. In it, we read:

"The crisis of the socialist project, including the very negative ecological balance
sheet of "really existing socialism" is an element that it is impossible to
circumvent, and which weighs heavily on the capacities of resistance and
counter-attack of the exploited and oppressed. By fully using the possibilities
that climate change offers to refound an anti-capitalist perspective, while rooting
it in a global problematic, both ecological and social, revolutionary Marxists can
contribute to the recomposition of the international workers' movement around a
global project of society, and even of civilization."

Let us not dwell on "the very negative ecological balance sheet of 'really existing
socialism'". As if the bureaucratic regimes set up in the former USSR and
Eastern Europe on the basis of the betrayal of the October Revolution by the
Stalinist bureaucracy could merit the name of "real socialism". As for its balance-
sheet, we will allow ourselves to say to the worthy Tanuro that it is not only in the
area of the environment that the balance-sheet is seriously wanting! The fact
that by opening up the USSR to capitalist penetration, the Stalinist bureaucracy
succeeded in destroying the basis for social ownership and the gains won
through struggle by the Russian working class on behalf of the world working
class in October 1917; that fact that, in so doing, it opened the way to an
offensive of reaction in every domain against the working classes and peoples of
the whole world - all this makes for a very, very serious balance-sheet, and not
only in the area of the environment, which seems to have caught Tanuro's
complete attention. But let us continue. So in this way, "climate change" is
supposed to offer to "refound an anti-capitalist perspective"?! If climate change
did not exist, it would have to be invented Tanuro goes on:

"The crucial point and the lever of the anti-capitalist alternative thus remain
basically those that the socialist project has defined: the mobilization of the
exploited and oppressed against a system based on the race for profit, private
ownership of the means of production, the production of commodities,
competition and the wages system. But this crucial point and this lever are no
longer sufficient to define the alternative."

Practical conclusion: "To do that, it is not enough to affirm that socialism must
integrate ecological questions, in other words that socialists must better include
the ecological dimension, develop ecological demands and take part in
mobilizations in defence of the environment. The real challenge lies rather in
integrating the socialist project into the global ecology of the terrestrial super-
ecosystem. "

The choice of the word "integrate" is far from accidental. "Integrate socialism"
into a "higher" imperative, "integrate" the class struggle, the working class, its
organisations, its age-old struggle to overthrow the system of exploitation into
a "higher" imperative.

We ask the reader to pay attention to this point. We are sometimes criticised for
being over-polemical regarding the United Secretariat. But we ask: throughout
its history, when the labour movement has been requested to integrate its
project, its organisations, its political objectives into an imperative higher than its
own, what did this amount to, other than, every single time, a process of
corporatist integration subordinating the labour organisations into the State, the
Nation, the Fatherland, the "race", the Sacred Union imposed by war - in short,
in whatever manifestation, into a form of totalitarianism that deprived the class
organisations of their independence? Letting himself be carried away, Tanuro
lays the blame on Marx:

"In his analysis of the Industrial Revolution, Marx did not understand that the
transition from wood to coal meant the abandonment of a renewable energy of
flux in favour of an exhaustible energy of stock, whose exploitation could only
contravene the "rational management" of the exchanges of carbon between
society and its environment. ( ... ) Climate change radically questions this faith in
progress, which is the most important reason why Marxists, since the 1970s,
had and continue to have considerable difficulties in positioning themselves in
relation to environmental challenges. That is why integrating the socialist project
into ecology is the fundamental condition of the revolutionary vitality of
Marxism."

Before coming back to this point, let us note the officialisation of the term
"ecosocialism" in this document, which Tanuro justifies thus: "This deepening
substantially justifies the use of the new concept of ecosocialism. As the
concentrated expression of the common struggle against the exploitation of
human labour and the destruction of natural resources by capitalism,
ecosocialism does not proceed from an idealistic and chimerical vision of "the
harmony" to be established between humanity and nature, but from the
materialist need to manage the interactions between society and nature,
according to ecological reason, in other words in the most compatible manner
possible with the good functioning of the ecosystems."

"Manage the interactions between society and nature, according to ecological

reason"? But what is "ecological reason"? ...

Ecosocialism against socialism

Strictly speaking, "ecosocialism" is an oxymoron. (18) For what is socialism? It

presupposes that for socialism to bloom, the productive forces should have
reached a certain stage which makes it possible for all to have equal access to
the wealth that has been produced.

Engels wrote: "The appropriation by society of all the means of production ( ... )
could become possible, could become a historical necessity, only when the
actual conditions for its realisation were there." (19).

What is involved? Engels replied: "Like every other social advance, it becomes
practicable ( ... ) by virtue of certain new economic conditions. The separation of
society into an exploiting and an exploited class, a ruling and an oppressed
class, was the necessary consequence of the deficient and restricted
development of production in former times."

But, Engels points out, this division into classes only has "a certain historical
justification ( ... ) for a given period, only under given social conditions."

And the reason is that: "It was based upon the insufficiency of production. It will
be swept away by the complete development of modern productive forces. And,
in fact, the abolition of classes in society ( ... ), presupposes the development of
production carried out to a degree at which appropriation of the means of
production and of the products ( ... ) has become not only superfluous but
economically, politically, intellectually a hindrance to development. This point is
now reached. ( ... ) In every crisis, society is suffocated beneath the weight of its
own productive forces and products, which it cannot use, and stands helpless
face to face with the absurd contradiction that the producers have nothing to
consume, because consumers are wanting. The expansive force of the means
of production bursts the bonds that the capitalist mode of production had
imposed upon them. Their deliverance from these bonds is the one precondition
for an unbroken, constantly accelerated development of the productive forces,
and therewith for a practically unlimited increase of production itself."

Let us draw the reader's attention to this point: socialism as defined by Engels,
as has always been defined by all socialists, passes through the freeing of the
productive forces from the shackles of private ownership, the condition for their
uninterrupted and constantly accelerated development, allowing an unlimited
growth of production itself. Engels explains:

"The socialised appropriation of the means of production does away, not only
with the present artificial restrictions upon production, but also with the positive
waste and devastation of productive forces and products ( ... ). Further, it sets
free for the community at large a mass of means of production and of products,
by doing away with the senseless extravagance of the ruling classes of today
and their political representatives. The possibility of securing for every member
of society, by means of socialised production, an existence not only fully
sufficient materially, and becoming day by day more full, but an existence
guaranteeing to all the free development and exercise of their physical and
mental faculties - this possibility is now for the first time here ( ... ).

With the seizing of the means of production by society, ( ... ) anarchy in social
production is replaced by systematic, definite organisation. The struggle for
individual existence disappears. Then for the first time man, in a certain sense,
is finally marked off from the rest of the animal kingdom, and emerges from
mere animal conditions of existence into really human ones. The whole sphere
of the conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man,
now comes under the dominion and control of man who for the first time
becomes the real, conscious lord of nature because he has now become master
of his own social organisation."

Let us insist on this point. Socialism, through the social appropriation of the
means of production, represents the opportunity finally given to people to
become the conscious and real masters of nature because they become the
masters of their own organisation and society. Engels explains:

"The laws of his own social action, hitherto standing face to face with man as
laws of nature foreign to, and dominating him, will then be used with full
understanding, and so mastered by him. Man's own social organisation, hitherto
confronting him as a necessity imposed by nature and history, now becomes the
result of his own free action. The extraneous objective forces that have hitherto
governed history pass under the control of man himself."

But does not trying to subordinate man and the whole of society to the laws of
nature, in other words to the "extraneous objective forces", amount to heading in
the wrong direction? Is there not an obvious contradiction? Once again, Engels
explains:
"Only from that time will man himself, with full consciousness, make his own
history - only from that time will the social causes set in movement by him have,
in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him. It
is the humanity's leap from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of
freedom."

This view of socialism is counterposed to so-called ecosocialism, which

subordinates itself to an "environmental balance in nature" the origins of which
no-one knows nor who defines it. It is clear that this ecosocialism keeps
humankind in the realm of necessity and subordination. Only socialism, because
it aims for the emancipation of humankind from the chains of exploitation and
oppression, is able to allow man's relation to nature to be re-established in a
relationship through which, for the needs of its own development, human
civilisation should be able to control the recourse it has to nature's resources.
For as long as humankind remains under the domination of a capitalist system
guided not by the satisfaction of human needs, but by the realisation of the
maximum possible profit, not only would such an objective be unrealistic, much
further: the survival of that system will necessarily occur by subjecting all of the
sources of capitalist production - the human productive force as well as natural
resources - to an anarchic and destructive use.

From this point of view, one could level against the "ecosocialists" of 2009 the
same accusation that our comrade Bloch made 30 years ago against the
"environmentalists" (in the draft resolution on "environmentalism" submitted to
the 22nd Congress of the Internationalist Communist Organisation (OCI) in
1979). (20) Referring to certain industries or forms of energy reputed to be
"polluting", the resolution's author pointed out:

"Regarding technological problems, these problems have their solution or one

can be found. Contrary to what the "environmentalists" assert, there is no
technology which is "by nature" destructive, or industries that are "by nature"
polluting (or non-polluting). Technological solutions exist, or can be found, for
mitigating the harmful secondary effects of whichever industry or technology.
But the working class must first of all control the whole economy, therefore
exercise political power, before being able to impose their implementation."

Between the controlled subordination of nature by man (socialism) and the

controlled subordination of man by nature, in other words by the private owners
of the means of production who are hiding behind this imaginary abstraction and
are opening the way to barbarism, there is a total contradiction, even if that
subordination is dressed up with the misleading name of "ecosocialism". And
even when one adds a reference to planning ...
Concerns about planning

Thus, Franois Sabado, another USec leader, wrote in a document dated

November 2008 submitted to the World Congress of the United Secretariat:

"Within that socialist struggle, there is an ecosocialist dimension in relation to

another economic model, based on the fight against global warming, another
organisation for transport policy and energy policy: the fight against pollution
and the degrading of the environment in the neighbourhoods and countryside.
We must start from the demand for sustainable development in environmental
terms in order to restore meaning to the idea of economic planning."

But once again, what is this "demand for sustainable development in

environmental terms"? What is this economic planning that Sabado is talking
about? The planning of production by the producers themselves, who having
expropriated the bourgeoisie are getting to grips with its social organisation?
This is called socialism. This kind of planning of production includes for the first
time the opportunity for humankind to establish relations with its environment
which guarantee the durability, continuity and domination of man over nature.
But if the demand for sustainable development in environmental terms
determines planning, this means that it would not involve the needs of the
working class. In this case, what kind of planning are we talking about? Which
political and social system will establish a planning framework that would
impose the order of "sustainable development" on all social classes, starting
with the labour movement?

The preparatory document adopted by the USec and presented by Tanuro

states that the "ecosocialist" struggle requires the consideration that "the
reduction of production and material consumption is immediately necessary for
saving the climate".

To be sure, the USec paints a glowing picture of tomorrows where "once the
climate system has been stabilised" (at the same time explaining elsewhere that
the "damage" caused to the climate is irreversible). But while we wait, what is on
the agenda is the reduction of production and material consumption! Therefore,
the USec's document recommends "raising the question of over-consumption
and the individual practices that flow from it". Introducing "an elementary ethical
demand (which) requires those whose basic needs have been satisfied to
demonstrate energy restraint and act consistently to avoid contributing to
climatic disruption", denouncing "the mass social malaise of compulsive
consumption" - these form the axes for the fight to "protect the climate". (21)
Is it an exaggeration to describe such a position as inherently reactionary? And
to be concerned about the "planning" it could impose?

In defence of Marx

As a member of the "scientific council" of the "globe-reshaping" NGO ATTAC,

and a sociologist by trade, representing the NPA at the Counter-Grenelle 2
organised by the newspaper La Dcroissance [De-growth] in Lyon (France) on 2
May 2009 (22), Philippe Corcuff called for "an anti-productivist cultural revolution
by anti-capitalists. Since the 19th century, different variants of anti-capitalist
socialisms have often been saturated with productivism, with an orientation
forming the core of a logic of production for production's sake, with a belief that
more is necessarily better, with a delusion that there are no natural limits to
industrial development, that therefore it would be enough to rid oneself of the
chains of capitalist exploitation in order to resolve all the problems. This
productivism has been especially evident in the dominant currents of the labour
movement, social-democracy (at the time when it was still anti-capitalist) and
Stalinism. But this productivism of the anti-capitalist currents already had its
roots in ambivalences in Marx himself, in terms of his critique of capitalism. For
on the one hand, Marx seemed to be marked by a productivist fascination with
the industrial development unfolding in front of his eyes in Britain. This is notably
his theme on the "development of the productive forces"."

Ignorance, deception or deliberate tampering - we cannot know what is driving

Corcuff. So Marx is supposed to have been a supporter of production for
production's sake, a "productivist" fascinated by the industrial development
unfolding in front of his eyes in Britain? Let us point out to the worthy sociologist
what Marx himself wrote on the subject:

"Finally, from the conception of history we have sketched we obtain these

further conclusions: 1. In the development of productive forces there comes a
stage when productive forces and means of intercourse are brought into being,
which, under the existing relationships, only cause mischief, and are no longer
productive but destructive forces (machinery and money); and connected with
this a class is called forth, which has to bear all the burdens of society without
enjoying its advantages, which, ousted from society, is forced into the most
decided antagonism to all other classes; a class which forms the majority of all
members of society, and from which emanates the consciousness of the
necessity of a fundamental revolution, the communist consciousness ( ... ). 2.
The conditions under which definite productive forces can be applied are the
conditions of the rule of a definite class of society ( ... ). 3. In all revolutions up
till now the mode of activity always remained unscathed and it was only a
question of a different distribution of this activity, a new distribution of labour to
other persons, whilst the communist revolution is directed against the preceding
mode of activity, does away with labour, and abolishes the rule of all classes
with the classes themselves ( ... ). 4. Both for the production on a mass scale of
this communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the
alteration of men on a mass scale is, necessary, an alteration which can only
take place in a practical movement, a revolution; this revolution is necessary,
therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other
way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed
in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew."
(23)

As we can see, contrary to Corcuff's assertions, Marx was not some kind of
crank locked into a logic of production for production's sake. Quite the opposite.
Marx considered that, constrained by private ownership of the means of
production, the development of the productive forces could result in their
transformation into destructive forces. Moreover, he did not hide the fact that
those destructive forces threatened both the proletariat and its environment.

This is why Marx insisted on the fact that "the conditions under which definite
productive forces can be applied are the conditions of the rule of a definite class
of society". In other words, the conditions under which bourgeois domination of
the productive forces results in their transformation into destructive forces can
only be brought into question by the overthrow of bourgeois domination and by
the working class taking control of the means of production. This is what led
Marx to consider the movement for the proletarian revolution as a united whole,
which by expropriating the expropriators would allow the development of the
productive forces to be given a new expansion, and through this, the creation of
the material and social conditions for man to master nature and apparently
"objective" conditions which escaped him in the very terms used by Engels in
the passage quoted above. For Marx, the notion of productive or non-productive
labour is inextricably linked with the relation of capitalist exploitation.

He wrote on this point: "Capital is therefore productive: (1) as a force compelling

surplus-labour, (2) as the absorber and appropriator (personification) of the
productive powers of social labour and of the general social productive forces,
such as science." (24)

Marx went on: "But labour-power is productive through the difference between
its value and the value which it creates."

He insisted: "Only labour which is directly transformed into capital is productive;

that is, only labour which makes variable capital a variable magnitude".

In other words: "Productive labour is therefore-in the system of capitalist

production-labour which produces surplus-value for its employer."

No doubt because he had come across some ancestor of Corcuff and other
Tanuro-Sabados, Marx warned in advance: "Only bourgeois narrow-
mindedness, which regards the capitalist forms of production as absolute forms
- hence as eternal, natural forms of production - can confuse the question of
what is productive labour from the standpoint of capital with the question of what
labour is productive in general, or what is productive labour in general; and
consequently fancy itself very wise in giving the answer that all labour which
produces anything at all, which has any kind of result, is by that very fact
productive labour." (25)

It is precisely after putting forward this myth that Corcuff and co. therefore line
up under the banner of anti-productivism. Now, "anti-productivism" means
nothing other than accompanying the destruction of the productive forces.

Which, moreover, is perfectly in keeping with the overall needs of the capitalist
class in the imperialist epoch, in which it can only survive on the basis of the
occasional mass destruction of "excess" productive forces.

Let us recall what Marx said on the subject: "There are not too many necessities
of life produced, in proportion to the existing population. Quite the reverse. Too
little is produced to decently and humanely satisfy the wants of the great mass.
There are not too many means of production produced to employ the able-
bodied portion of the population. Quite the reverse. ( ... ) On the other hand, too
many means of labour and necessities of life are produced at times to permit of
their serving as means for the exploitation of labourers at a certain rate of profit.
Too many commodities are produced to permit of a realisation and conversion
into new capital of the value and surplus-value contained in them under the
conditions of distribution and consumption peculiar to capitalist production, i.e.,
too many to permit of the consummation of this process without constantly
recurring explosions. Not too much wealth is produced. But at times too much
wealth is produced in its capitalistic, self-contradictory forms." (26)

Is this not precisely the situation familiar to us today? Does the mass destruction
of factories, sites and industrial zones result from the fact that supposedly there
are too many commodities in relation to humankind's needs? Or too many
commodities and means of production to make them function as a means of
exploiting the workers? But this is precisely this relation of exploitation itself that
ecosocialists like Corcuff, Tanuro and others claim to deny.

Corcuff goes on: "At its founding congress, the NPA rightly underlined this anti-
productivist cultural revolution by the anti-capitalists using the term
ecosocialism, which clearly points out that the most current and most preserved
of the socialist inheritance of the 19th and 20th centuries which drifted towards
authoritarianism are not in themselves sufficient for responding to the demands
of the 21st century."

Let us see, therefore, how ecosocialists like Corcuff, Tanuro and Sabado are
going to complete and correct the so-called gaps in the socialist inheritance of
the 19th and 20th centuries.

Among the "threads" proposed by Corcuff, we find: proposing "a broader view of
capitalism in relation to several classic socialist and Marxist views. This not only
calls for the capital-labour contradiction (and the capitalist exploitation of labour)
to be taken into account - it should be taken into account but not in an exclusive
way - but also what one could call the capital-nature contradiction (and the
capitalist exploitation of nature) as one of the fundamental dimensions of the
functioning of capitalism."

A "dualistic" relation of exploitation?

So according to Corcuff, there are supposedly two relations of exploitation: the

"relation of capitalist exploitation of labour" on the one hand, and the "relation of
capitalist exploitation of nature" on the other. To understand the true sleight of
hand being performed here by Corcuff, we must turn once more to Marx:

"Labour is not the only source of ( ... ) use values produced by labour. As
William Petty puts it, labour is its father and the earth its mother." (27)

And: "Labour is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of
use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labour".
(28)

Let us recall here the essential distinction that Marx makes between "use value"
and "exchange value". The use value of a commodity is its specific function for
whoever owns or acquires it. Its exchange value is what allows a comparison
(and exchange) of two commodities of different use value. Marx proved that
exchange value corresponds to the socially necessary labour time, crystallised
in that commodity. Marx's essential contribution to understanding the
mechanism of capitalism revolves around the fact that the commodity-labour
power possesses this miraculous characteristic in the eyes of the capitalist, that
he can make it work longer than the necessary time for producing the value that
will allow that commodity to subsist. It is this gap between the value produced
and the value consumed which makes the commodity-labour power into that
miraculous commodity at the origin of surplus-value. This distinction is important
for understanding that in the quote we have just made, Marx spoke of use
values as the result of human labour acting on the earth and the natural
harboured by the earth. The productive force of human labour on the one hand
and nature's resources on the other are therefore the two constituent elements
of the production of commodities. The social relations of production incorporate
and shape these two inextricably-linked component parts. The relation of
capitalist exploitation - the social relation which constrains the worker to sell his
labour-power to the owners of the means of production, who through that
relation of exploitation extract the surplus-value which forms the basis of the
growth of capital - presupposes the action of the worker's labour-power on the
natural resources.

But the social relation of exploitation is only a relation of exploitation for labour-
power. What characterises this social relation of exploitation is the fact that the
capitalist owner of the means of production forces the worker to sell his labour-
power in conditions that allow the capitalist to extract surplus-value. By
"exploiting nature", the capitalist does not extract any surplus-value from it. The
"exploitation" of nature, whether it is carried out directly through the extraction of
natural resources or indirectly through their transformation into commodities,
only produces new value through the medium of human labour.

The use of natural resources (both their pillage and their transformation) only
has value to the capitalist through this social relation of exploitation. To take one
example which touches on one of the great themes of global warming, if one
considers the question of deforestation: no capitalist, no multinational is going to
deforest the Amazon basin or any other large tropical forest just for the hell of it.
The stimulus for capitalist deforestation, just like the stimulus for all capitalist
activity, is the realisation of profit. Where does that realisation of profit come
from? If one considers the cutting down of trees, the realisation of profit will
come from the fact that the value created by the activity of workers who do the
cutting will be greater than the value of the capital invested by the multinational
in the activity of deforestation. And that greater value does not come from the
wood itself, it does not come from the essence of the tree or the machines used
for the purpose. It comes from the fact that the social relation of exploitation
allows the timber multinational to make the tree-cutting worker work beyond the
time necessary to reproduce the value that allows his labour-power to be
maintained for one day. Therefore it is not the tree that produces the surplus-
value, but the activity of the worker who cuts down the tree.

But let us continue: once the tree has been cut down and represents a certain
exchange value that is proportional to the labour time socially necessary for its
felling, it becomes - to quote Marx - dead labour. If the multinational invests
1,000 euros in wood for the fabrication of furniture or newsprint, that value of
1,000 euros will be present identically in the roll of newsprint or the dining-room
table. Now the capitalist does not invest just so that the value can be
reproduced identically; he does so in order to have available a new value. There
again, it is the social relation of exploitation which allows him to make the joiner
or cabinet-maker work beyond the time necessary for reproducing the value of
the commodity that he consumes on a daily basis. It is this relation of
exploitation which interests the capitalist, because it alone is the source of
surplus-value, the origin of profit.

So we can clearly see that the "exploitation of nature" - and we could add
endless examples - only interests the capitalist insofar as it supports the
exploitation of labour-power. The capitalist does not care if the activity of the
worker he is exploiting is being applied to wood from the Amazon forest, or
metal produced from steel-mills, or the assembly of cars or other social
activities. The only thing he cares about are the social and economic conditions
that allow him on the one hand to extract the surplus-value produced by the
sweat and blood of the exploited proletariat, and on the other hand to realise
that surplus-value in the sale of the commodities themselves. To try to dissociate
the exploitation of nature from the exploitation of labour-power is to indulge in
double trickery. First of all, it amounts to making the crux of the social relation of
exploitation in the production of surplus-value through the utilisation of waged
labour disappear. Secondly, it involves calling for the search for political, social
or economic solutions aimed at fighting "environmental exploitation" as distinct
from the fight against the exploitation of labour-power. Hence, we arrive at the
participation in the high mass of the sacred union as typified by Copenhagen,
etc.

One can better understand, incidentally, the possibly surprising remark by

another "big theoretician" of the USec, Daniel Bensaid, who wrote in an issue of
the French Weekly Le Nouvel Observateur dedicated to Marx:

"The crisis of capitalist globalisation reveals the strictly destructive tendency of

capital, of nature, of society, of humans. By reducing all wealth to crystallised
labour time, the law of value tries to quantify the unquantifiable and to give
everything a monetary value, as if the slow passing of time in the environment
were reducible to the snapshots of stock-market fluctuations."
Looking beyond the pompous language, if we understand correctly, the
problems of the so-called "environment" are supposed to fall outside the law of
value established by Marx, and therefore the social relation of exploitation which
characterises the capitalist system. From Bensaid, revising the law of value
established by Marx, to Corcuff, establishing the new "dualistic" relation of
exploitation of labour-power and nature, to Tanuro's command to the workers to
consume less, when all is said and done there is a very great deal of
consistency in the positions of the United Secretariat, a consistency based on a
complete revision of Marxism serving as theoretical cover for rallying to the
corporatist sacred union of the "struggle against global warming".

How low will they go?

There is nothing surprising, therefore, in the fact that to date, the United
Secretariat and the NPA should forge relations with the so-called "de-growth"
currents. On 16 October 2009, an official meeting took place between the NPA
leadership and representatives of the Association of Objectors to Growth. Who
are the objectors to growth? (29) On the website of French newspaper
Libration (4 May 2009), Paul Aris, one of the French leading lights of de-
growth, stated: "We will need to learn to live much better with much less. We
need to organise the slowing-down of society, its relocation. We need to
individually and collectively rediscover a sense of limits."

Aris calls for a "reconnection with a sense of limits, which presupposes having
done with the economy and the ideology of progress". In Aris's eyes, de-growth
is: "First of all a voluntary simplicity which consists of living in keeping with one's
values ( ... ). Every move in this direction is therefore positive, like not having a
car, working part-time, etc."

But this alliance between the USec and the de-growers is logical when all is said
and done. In the document quoted above, the USec considers the "energy and
climate challenge" to be "a central element of the struggle for a change of
course by the workers' organisations. This struggle is all the more difficult due to
the fact that, from the strategic point of view, it does not pass first of all through
the development of new production, of new commodities and new markets in
the green domain - therefore through "economic recovery" - but through the
priority struggle for a reduction in energy consumption, the elimination of
useless or harmful production, the retraining of men and women employed in
those sectors, etc."

What does the change of course to be imposed on "the workers' organisations"

mean? Abandoning the defence of wages, jobs, recognised job-grades and
collective agreements in favour of the "energy and climate challenge"? One can
understand why in France, the NPA is refusing to fight for a ban on job-cuts in
industry, that energy-consuming and polluting industry like tyre-manufacturer
Continental, earth-moving vehicle manufacturer Caterpillar, auto-manufacturers
PSA and Renault, chemicals sector manufacturers, etc.?

There remains "retraining" ...

Marvellous, isn't it? In these times of imposed technical unemployment, lock-

outs, offshoring, imposed flexible working and insecure employment, it is the ally
of the great revolutionaries of the United Secretariat which calls for that
"voluntary simplicity" consisting of working part-time, or not having a car. And
during these times, the multinationals are rebuilding their stock of financial
derivatives. And during these times, the imperialist governments are distributing
billions upon billions of dollars and euros to bail out the bankrupt speculators.
(30)

As you will have realised, the aim of this article was not to deal with the whole
question of the relations between man and nature, or even all of the questions
posed by the destruction of the environment as the result of the decay of the
capitalist system in its death-agony. The aim was to introduce elements of
method, to re-establish the Marxist point of view on these questions, and to
demonstrate that it is being fully confirmed by the present situation. The aim of
this article was also to shed light on the true content of the proposals put
forward by the environmentalist and ecosocialist currents.

And to demonstrate that these proposals, under the guise of responding to the
indisputable danger threatening the planet and the environment, serve to give
ideological cover for the destructive activity of the multinationals responsible for
the major threats which are weighing on the whole of humankind. For, let us
repeat, the Marxist point of view does not consist in any way in minimising the
seriousness of the threats facing humankind.

Thirty years ago, the draft resolution on "environmentalism" (preparing the 23rd
Congress of the OCI, drafted by comrade Gerard Bloch) read:

"No, the founders of Marxism have not ignored the problem of the deterioration
of the natural environment by capitalism, and the "environmental crisis" is not
exactly a new problem of the last 20 or 30 years. Of course, the delay in the
socialist revolution has given it a new breadth - this is just one of the aspects of
the "immense additional difficulties for building socialism" resulting from that
delay referred to in the OCI Manifesto, which also did not ignore the fact that
"capitalist society is poisoning its air and even its water a little bit more each
day". But it drew no other conclusion from this that the even greater urgency of
the socialist revolution, therefore of the solution of the problem of revolutionary
leadership. It proposed no bogus solution of any kind."

The future of humankind is summed up in the choice between socialism or

barbarism, the great revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg wrote not so long ago.
Socialism or barbarism; more than ever, this remains the choice before us. The
survival of the capitalist system founded on private ownership of the means of
production has already led humankind into barbarism. This is not a choice for
tomorrow, it is a choice to be made today. This capitalist system is collapsing
under the weight of mountains of capital that cannot be valorised within the
framework of private ownership of the means of production. In its crazy rush for
profit, it is prepared to disrupt all balances, to threaten the very existence of the
whole of humankind. It already proved this in the world wars that marked the last
century. It is proving it daily in the breaking up of states, of nations, which, under
pressure from the multinationals, is hitting whole continents. It is proving it in the
rampant spread of wars, of "ethnic" conflicts, of so-called "community" tension,
but also in hunger, in sickness, in malnutrition, in epidemics.

Yes, this system is facing a death-sentence, once and for all facing a death-
sentence. And yes, without any doubt, every day that the capitalist system
survives sees the threats get bigger to a degree that we cannot even imagine.
Threats that are weighing against the survival of humankind, which is
inextricably linked with the survival of humankind's environment. But, precisely
because the choice is between socialism or barbarism, the struggle for socialism
opens up a perspective, the only one that offers a response to the situation.
Nobody can underestimate the obstacles.

Forty years ago, in the article already quoted above, Gerard Bloch pointed out
what will follow:

"The Earth's great lakes - American or Swiss, or Russian like the Caspian Sea,
for in this regard like in every other, the bureaucratic caste of the USSR has
demonstrated that it had "all the flaws of a ruling class and none of its qualities",
as Trotsky put it - are currently almost all polluted beyond the point of no return,
in other words, even if human civilisation suddenly disappeared, they could not
return to their former balance through the interaction of the laws of nature. And it
has been calculated that in order to purify the American Great Lakes, they
would need to spend as much as on the Apollo space project - US$100 billion -
ten times more, a hundred times more than would have been necessary within
the framework of a socialist economy in order to prevent things getting that bad
in time. Is not the ocean itself "in the process of dying", in the colourful words of
Captain Cousteau?"

By way of a temporary conclusion

Undoubtedly, tomorrow the working class, seizing control of the means of

production, will be confronted with infinitely greater damage than that referred to
by Gerard Bloch in relation to the pollution of the great lakes. And undoubtedly,
considerable efforts will have to be made, undoubtedly an unprecedented
inventiveness will have to be brought to bear in order to resolve those huge
problems. What kind of society will have the ability and the will to find the means
of resolving those questions, if not precisely a society in which the motive is no
longer the search for capitalist profit through the exploitation of waged labour.
Contrary to what the ex-Marxist neo-ecosocialists are miserably claiming, the
crisis that is threatening the very existence of human civilisation (which includes
its environment) only serves to reinforce the urgent need of the struggle for the
proletarian revolution. No technical or technological problem can be deemed to
be unsolvable in advance. A thousand times, millions of times, humankind has
known how to resolve problems which up to that point had seemed
insurmountable. There are no limits to the development of the productive forces.
The only limits are those set today by a means of appropriation that is holding
them back, constraining them, stifling them and transforming them into forces
that are destroying human civilisation. Gerard Bloch again wrote:

"There are no technical problems, in this area, which cannot be resolved easily -
whether it is a question of building car engines to run on non-polluting fuel, while
waiting for the electric car, whose final development is today nothing more than
a question of the material means, whether it is a question of gathering and
destroying the plastic packaging that is piling up, whether it is a question of the
water, or the air! It is not the aim of this article to demonstrate this in detail, in
relation to the thousands of problems posed by agriculture and industry, and this
would go beyond our competence - but this demonstration has already been
given, scattered in countless technical magazines, scattered by the ultra-
specialisation which results from the capitalist division of labour, to the point that
nobody has an overall view while all of the component parts of the solutions
already exist, but cannot be implemented and will not be implemented by the
system whose motive is profit for the oligarchy of finance capital.

The problem is not technical; it is political. We need to smash the imperialist

states, bring in the power of the workers' councils - and then, the achievements
of the human genius will open up unlimited and absolutely unimaginable
possibilities for humankind."
Yes, the possibilities are unlimited and absolutely unimaginable: socialism will
open the path to them.
*************

Endnotes:

(1) The "union sacre", or "sacred union", was the expression in France of the
Second International's capitulation to imperialism during World War One. An
important part of the Socialist movement entered a truce with their bourgeoisie,
agreeing not to oppose the government or start any strike.

(2) Nouvelles tudes marxistes, Nos.2, 3 and 4, May and December 1970,
reproduced in Grard Bloch, Ecrits [Writings], Vol.1 (Selio, Paris, 1989).

(3) Translator's note: As the writers point out, in French the word "cologie" has
come to denote both the scientific discipline and the political phenomenon. In
English, the distinction between the two meanings would be signalled clearly by
referring to the political phenomenon as "environmentalism".

(4) To take just one example, on 21 May 2009 the US Senate approved a
US$91 billion increase in the military budget requested by the Pentagon for
funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2009. The total "war funding"
requested by the Pentagon for 2010 has gone up to US$130 billion, a 30 per
cent increase. Since 2001, the US defence budget has more than doubled in
this way. Since 2008, it has exceeded US$660 billion, the highest figure since
the end of the second imperialist world war. Just 6 per cent of this amount would
be enough to eradicate malaria in Africa, and tuberculosis (TB) and hunger
around the world. Over one million people die from malaria every year. This
disease represents a threat to 40 per cent of the world's population. Most cases
and deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, where a child under the age of five dies
from this disease every 30 seconds. The UN Secretary-General launched a plan
in April 2008 aimed at eradicating malaria in Africa in 1,000 days. According to
Professor Michel Kazatchkine, Executive Director of the Global Fund to Fight
AIDS, TB and Malaria, "what is needed comes to an estimated US$1 billion per
year". Or 0.15 per cent of the US military budget. TB kills 5,000 people every
day around the world, almost 2 million every year. In 2006, the World Health
Organisation launched a "Stop TB" plan with an estimated cost of US$56 billion
for its ten-year scope (2006-15). Or less than 1 per cent of the US military
budget, which would allow the mortality and prevalence of the disease to be
halved in relation to 1990 figures (source: Radio France Internationale, 27
January 2006). As for hunger, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
puts the number of human beings in a state of malnutrition at 925 million. 19
million people, especially children below the age of five, are suffering from
severe acute malnutrition, the final stage before death. The FAO is calling for
US$30 billion per year to put an end to this tragedy. As far as the FAO is
concerned, two-thirds of that money should be invested in improving productivity
in the agriculture sectors of the countries affected. The remaining third should be
given over to direct food aid. This represents less than 5 per cent of the US
military budget.

(5) Karl Marx, The German Ideology, Part I, Section B.

(6) op.cit., Section D.

(7) op.cit., Section A.

(8) Friedrich Engels, Herr Eugen Duhring's Revolution in Science (commonly

known as Anti-Dhring), Part I, Chapter 3.

(9) This is a translation from the French version of the text on the IPCC's
website. The English version of the same text reads "It reviews and assesses
the most recent scientific, technological and socio-economic information
produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of climate change." The two
versions can be found at http://www.ipcc.ch/organization/organization.htm and
http://www.ipcc.ch/home_languages_main_french.htm.

(10) Lysenkoism and Zhdanovism were Stalinist doctrines championing

"proletarian" science over "bourgeois" science. Trotsky wrote that this political
intrusion by the bureaucracy was due to the fact that the latter "has a
superstitious fear of everything that does not serve it and everything it does not
understand." When it gives a political orientation to science, "it threatens to dry
up the most precious springs of creation, including those of practical
discoveries, which most often are made along unexpected paths".

(11) Friedrich Engels, The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to
Man.

(12) Consensus does not mean final agreement. For US imperialism went to
Copenhagen in a dominant and conquering position, packing a lot of demands
towards all of the countries of the world, but without any predisposition to
sacrifice its own interests in any way whatsoever. Let us repeat, on the eve of
the summit, it ordered the sending of 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. And
while the summit was going on, the big US oil companies were grabbing control
over the exploitation of Iraq's reserves of oil and natural gas, at a cost of mere
thousands of dollars - all environmentally safe, naturally. The old saying is as
true today as ever: "We think we are dying for democracy, but we are dying for
big business". The number of US troops killed in Iraq since the beginning of the
US intervention in March 2003 has today risen to at least 4,250. And the number
of Iraqi civilians killed since the "mission end" to the war in Iraq declared by
Bush has reached more than one million.

(13) "From One Earth to One World", Section 30, in Brundtland Commission,
Our Common Future, WCED, 1987.

(14) The only known example of the United Secretariat openly calling into
question the traditional analyses of Marxism was in the roundabout way in which
Mandel dared to "correct" Rosa Luxemburg, who in his eyes had committed the
unpardonable crime of referring to the "constant tendency of capital to purchase
labour-power below its value". Mandel wrote then: "Rosa Luxemburg is
mistaken when she says that the "real wage has the constant tendency to fall to
the absolute minimum, towards the minimum for physical existence, in other
words there is a constant tendency of capital to purchase labour-power below its
value. Only the workers' organisation creates a counterweight to this tendency
of capital". One could discuss about knowing whether such a tendency exists
within the abstract hypothesis of a homogenous capitalist society at the world
level. But in the real world, dominated by enormous differences in productivity
and levels of industrialisation between various capitalist nations, the tendency
mentioned by Rosa does not exist. It would involve a global levelling of wages
before the appearance of powerful trade union organisations (or, which amounts
to the same thing, an international levelling out of the industrial reserve army,
with more or less equivalent difficulties for the organisation of the workers, faced
with an equivalent mass of unemployed). The reality, which was well explained
by Marx, is that clearly there are big wage gaps between different capitalist
countries, and that in general, if the level of productivity of a capitalist nation is
on average higher than that of its neighbours, the level of wages will also tend to
be higher." A marvellous anticipation of current times! Productivity feeding an
increase in wages, when that rise in productivity has been achieved - even
bourgeois economists agree on this point - essentially through a lowering of
"labour costs" ... !

(15) This document was published in issue 551-552 (July-August 2009) of the
USec's review, Inprecor. It can be consulted at
http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1642.
(16) Interview with D. Tanuro on the NPA website (1 April 2009), under the
revealing title "Economic recovery? A disaster for the climate"

(17) According to the most recent statistics, the number of families entering New
York reception centres increased by 40 per cent between 2007 and 2008. In the
state of Massachusetts, the increase for the same period was 32 per cent. In
Connecticut, it was 30 per cent. Basing their figures on the last three US
recessions, experts at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities are planning in
this context for a range of between 8 and 10 million additional poor people. Of
these, the number of people in severe poverty (with an income lower than half
the poverty threshold) has gone up from 5 to six million. According to the news
agency Reuters (9 December 2009), which quoted a report by a conference of
US mayors, "requests for food aid went up by 26 per cent last year, the biggest
average rise since 1991. These requests are coming from people without social
cover, from the elderly, from poor workers, the homeless, but also from middle
class families. This tendency is being kept going by unemployment, the rise in
housing costs and the weakness of salaries."

(18) Oxymoron: A figure of speech in which incongruous or contradictory terms

appear side by side.

(19) Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dhring, Part III, Chapter 2.

(20) The complete text of this resolution, in French, can be found in Volume 2 of
Ecrits [Writings] by Grard Bloch, published by Selio, Paris.

(21) And these people dare to use this language in a world where hunger,
poverty, wars, illiteracy, disease and a disastrous health situation are plunging
Africa into a bottomless abyss. Life expectancy in Africa today is 46 years; it has
dropped to below 40 years in nine of the continent's countries. While on the
other side of the world, in the United States, millions of children fell below the
extreme poverty threshold last year. To the extent that French newspaper Le
Figaro felt able to feature this headline on 3 November 2009: "American
children, the poorest in the so-called 'developed' world". The article said:
"Almost half of American children (49.2 per cent) only eat thanks to food aid at
least once during their childhood, a scientific study published in the American
Medical Association's Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine has
revealed. Among Afro-American children, the figure goes up to almost 90 per
cent." And the crisis has made this already dramatic situation even worse. "Two
and a half million Americans fell below the poverty threshold last year. In total,
according to a recent Census Bureau balance-sheet, 40 million Americans (or
13 per cent of the population) are considered to be poor, and can receive food
aid. Among the worst-affected areas: Texas (3.07 million), California (2.99
million), New York (2.57 million), Florida (1.77 million) and Illinois (1.71 million)."

(22) A Grenelle is a roundtable conference organised at the invitation of the

French government involving bosses, trade unions and NGOs. It is named after
the building where the first such meeting took place.

(23) Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, Vol.1, Part I,
Section D, "The Necessity of the Communist Revolution".

(24) Karl Marx, Theories of Surplus-Value (Volume IV of Capital), Addenda to

Part 1, "Productivity of Capital. Productive and Unproductive Labour".

(25) Ibid.

(26) Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. III, Part 3, Chapter 15.

(27) Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Part 1, Chapter 1, Section 2.

(28) Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, Part 1.

(29) This meeting between the NPA and the "objectors to growth" is far from
being fortuitous. The latter will be on several candidate-lists presented by the
NPA in the next regional elections in France.

(30) For while they were discussing in Copenhagen about "consuming and
producing less" in order to "save the planet", we learned that the "financial
derivatives" markets represent more than US$600,000 billion in annual
transactions, in other words nothing less than ten times the world's gross
domestic product (GDP)! According to some estimates, the ultimate risk
represented by these markets is between US$1 trillion and US$4 trillion (source:
www.slate.fr).

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