04.09.2002

Bloodsuckers' jamboree

The so-called United Nations' World Summit on Sustainable Development, popularly known as the 'Earth Summit', is now in the process of winding up its deliberations in Johannesburg. It is a bizarre exercise in gross hypocrisy, doubletalk, imperial arrogance and at the same time impotent servility before the 'free market'. Marked right from the beginning by the conspicuous absence of a high-level delegation from the United States, the most powerful nation on the planet and the source of about 40% of world pollution, the summit was pretty well regarded as a waste of time even by many of the various NGOs and other environmental worthies that have graced and at times enthused over similar confabs in the past, from Rio to Kyoto. Indeed the boycott of the summit by the arrogant, who-cares-about-the-rest-of-the-world know-nothings of the Bush administration is in many ways only the icing on the cake. Bill Clinton, of course, had the US constitution barring a third term not unfortunately got in his way, would have been out there glad-handing all and sundry, while in practice expressing contempt for the whole proceedings from within. Either way, the contempt of the US bourgeoisie for these gatherings reflects the reality: in objective terms, these conferences do not decide anything of importance - the great powers will get their way, no matter what hot air is spouted on the conference floor. The various themes - from environmental despoliation, and the apparent rise in natural disasters attributed to carbon-dioxide emissions into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution, to the fallout resulting from capitalist growth and the disintegration of more traditional social forms by the aggressive neoliberal globalised world order we now live under - only underscore the impotence of the participants, despite their pretensions. Many of those who in the past would have had illusions that something could be achieved by such gatherings have now been radicalised, and are demonstrating their outrage outside at the whole fake shenanigan. Thus the tone of protests outside the summit, despite the threat of major repression from the apartheid-trained South African police, was much more radical than at past 'green' inter-governmental confabs of this type. Far from the pleading that used to be the dominant tone of the tame protests outside these kinds of events in years gone by, this time the slogans had a militant, if eclectic, anti-capitalist edge. They varied from 'Factory gases and waste are killing', 'Stop Thabo Mbeki's Aids genocide' and 'Bush, you belong in the bush' to 'Hands off Iraq', 'Globalise the intifada' and 'Osama bin Laden - bomb Sandton'. Probably the largest international conference ever held in the history of humanity, with 60,000 delegates, the bizarre extravagance of it all only underlines its real nature as window-dressing. No one can be absolutely sure that the anecdotal rise in freak weather events and natural disasters worldwide in the past few decades are really the result of the burning of fossil fuels, as many environmentalists believe. However, assuming that this is indeed the case, then humanity faces a threat to its overall well-being and potentially even its very existence over a period of several decades or possibly a century or two. Solving such problems is a matter for the mass of humanity, not a matter for the great capitalist powers and the various lesser cliques of exploiters and other worthies who feed off the 'new world order' while defending to the death the regime of capitalism. It is capital, the appropriation of the social wealth that belongs to the whole of working and suffering humanity, that renders extremely unlikely any socially rational solution to the manifold social and economic problems that find a pale reflection on the agenda of these kinds of gatherings. Only a world order in which the means of production on an international scale are under the democratic control of the mass of the world's population can effectively tackle the problems of the despoliation of the environment. Such a world order can only be the result of international socialist revolution. But that does not mean we must wait. The working class needs to develop its own ecological programme - urgently. Not one borrowed from the petty bourgeois green movement with its prejudice against technology, progress and the human potential to control (master) nature. Our point of departure must be anti-capitalism. The idea that the imperialist monopolies and profit-hungry governments can in any way muster the political will to undo and reverse the consequences of more than a century of one-sided capitalist economic development is utterly fantastic - why on earth should they, when the whole driving force of the system is the need to make the maximum profit in order to avoid being eaten alive by one's fellow capitalist sharks? Certainly the various elements of social democratic 'concern', about tackling 'world poverty' that also surround this World Summit event are also completely chimerical - 'world poverty' in the current context is the inevitable collateral damage that results from the growth and deepening of the capitalist mode of production and appropriation in the 'developing world' - fundamentally the consequence of the globalisation of capital that all the various governmental forces or NGOs at this conference support or are complicit in. The obscenity of this confab, dominated by the various advanced capitalist powers who are the main architects of all kinds of social and economic disaster internationally, is apparent to enormous numbers of people around the world. The same Blair government that worries and agonises about its 'green' profile and which minister to send to Jo'burg is the one that had no hesitation in sending in its airforce to help the United States launch its assault on one of the poorest countries on earth, Afghanistan, as part of the 'war against terrorism'. In regard to sub-Saharan Africa, so high on the agenda of the summit, this is particularly poignant, given the Blair government's close alliance with the United States and its close political affinity with the former Clinton administration. Part of Clinton's own 'war against terrorism' in 1998 included the bombing of the Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan in supposed retaliation for some of Osama bin Laden's earlier reactionary attacks on US imperialist embassies in Africa. Despite the Sudanese government's offer of extensive cooperation to the US in tracking down the suspects, the wanton destruction of the only facility for the manufacture of key pharmaceuticals in Sudan, in the words of Noam Chomsky, meant that "within a year tens of thousands ... 'suffered and died' as the result of the destruction of the only facilities for producing drugs and affordable medicines" in, again, one of the poorest countries on earth. (N Chomsky 9-11 New York 2001, p50). And of course, both Bush and Blair are once again plotting to bomb the hell out of the impoverished people of Iraq. Similarly in terms of obscenity, the speech of Thabo Mbeki, president of South Africa, denouncing "global apartheid" between rich and poor, comes from the head of a government that has itself acted as arch-privatisers, willingly dancing to the tune of the IMF and indulging in attacks on aspects of state provision and some limited barriers to the unrestrained operation of capital that even its predecessor, the racist apartheid regime, thought it politic to maintain. This bizarre speech only reflected, one supposes, a degree of desperation and foreboding by some elements of the neoliberal scum about the likely future direction of mass discontent with the consequences of neoliberalism. As well as the slogans of the anti-capitalist movement outside, no doubt Mbeki also had in mind the recent revolt in the South African Communist Party, where ranks and file discontent led to the ejection of several Mbeki/African National Congress cronies from the SACP's central committee, an event that posed the threat of a left break by the CP and/or its working class base from the reactionary coalition with Mbeki's ANC neoliberal regime. Any real movement that aims to deal with the various potential 'four horsemen of the apocalypse' thrown up by degenerate capitalism needs to rid itself once and for all of the notion that the bourgeoisie can be persuaded to change its spots. Communists can only welcome the further radicalisation of anti-capitalist protests - the need is, of course, to link these progressive sentiments against the imperialists and their servants like Mbeki to a real programme for social change, to a strategy for revolution that sees the international, collectively organised working class as the force that can overturn capitalism. Thus in South Africa, as well as on a world scale, we need the rebirth of genuine communist parties and an international communist movement. The fight for principled unity of the left, at the same time for real interaction and unity with the best elements generated by the anti-capitalist movement, offers a real chance of overcoming the current period of dominance of neoliberal reaction and oppression and the beginning of a new period of struggle against capitalism itself. Ian Donovan * March for another world