Part 1:

Global warming is not simply “man-made” as the Nobel committee stated — it is in fact capitalist-made. Capitalism, and not humanity, is the cause of global warming.

Grow or die is the law of capitalism. The net effect of this planless competitive system is that as each corporation is driven to expand by the drive to stay alive, the total accumulation of capital grows.

The overall effect of this single-minded capitalist focus on profits is continual crisis, war and world war, followed by periods of renewed economic expansion. The vicious business cycle causes devastation in the lives of workers through layoffs, increasing deaths, recessions, depressions, homelessness, starvation, drugs, filling of prisons, and the use of working-class youth as cannon fodder in wars. Adding to the misery caused by capitalism are the pollution and methods of waste disposal that destroy the lives of workers, especially in black and Latino neighborhoods in the U.S., and globally in
Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Capitalism Systematically
Destroys Nature

Capitalism is a form of social organization that systematically destroys nature. It is a system driven not by need, and particularly not by the need to preserve the natural sources of its bounty. It is driven by profit. Profit-making requires efficiency not only within the individual business, but the competition inherent in profit--making requires that all businesses maximize profits continually, and particularly so over the short term — or go belly up.

Capitalism, for all practical purposes, prevents us from obtaining food, water, shelter, clothing, and other needs, unless we work for the capitalists and produce value worth more than we are paid — with the excess taking the form of surplus value, or profit.

Capitalists invade nature for their own class needs, in effect stealing it from the working class, enforcing their control over us and over the earth through their control of state power. They strip-mine and destroy entire mountains; they force over-fishing of the oceans in the competitive drive for profits; they clear-cut forests for wood products; they drain wetlands for city development without creating replacements elsewhere. Capitalism turns land into real estate, forests into lumber, and oceans into fisheries and turns the world’s working class into profit-producing commodities as appendages to capitalist machines.

Planet Becomes a Toxic
Dumping Ground

On the waste-product side: capitalists dump toxic or radioactive waste into soil, rivers, oceans, and the atmosphere. Numerous deaths result, without our class being able to do much to stop them, since the state protects only capitalist interests.

In a few local situations, through long major collective campaigns, workers have forced a few temporary concessions, but the overall destruction of lives and the environment accelerates everywhere else. The capitalists thus literally get away with this type of murder, just as they do through police brutality, poverty, racism, and oil wars.

In its single-minded drive for profit, world capitalism is fast exhausting the earth’s resources, and what is left is fast being ruined by waste products. The most important resources fast approaching exhaustion are oil (the lifeblood of capitalist economies) and fresh water (the lifeblood of all plants and animals). The primary waste products include toxic and radioactive substances and most important so-called greenhouse gases (GHGs).

GHGs are causing a rapid warming of the atmosphere — glaciers, soil, and oceans — that threaten to change the earth’s climate radically and to push the change into an irreversible phase with catastrophic results — the depletion of fresh water will become a catastrophe as well, both directly for personal use and indirectly through the effect on our food supply.

‘Greenwashing’

Particularly beginning with the Obama campaign, there has been a shift in the U.S. media and government from denial to “greenwashing.” Greenwashing involves the admission that the earth is warming and that human activity is indeed the cause, but it generally lays the blame on an over-consuming and overpopulated working class, without recognition that capitalism determines what people consume.

Overpopulation is a relative term concerning what portion of the working class capitalism can employ. Furthermore greenwashing proposes solutions that appear effective but are at best mere tokens, not radical plans that could actually stop global warming.

The U.S. rulers need to guarantee that they don’t have to change the infrastructure of capitalism or end their extremely profitable oil-based industries. The U.S. rulers also have an imperative need to try to slow the rapid economic advance of their imperialist rivals, especially China, whose capitalist ruling class promises to take the title of World’s Largest Economy away from the U.S. in the next decade or two. China’s industries, as well as India’s, thrive on coal more than on any other source of energy. Their pollution of the world’s atmosphere through the burning of coal is well known.

U.S. Rulers Adopt Tokenism

In order to lessen their own isolation and increase that of India and China, and even more importantly to find other ways to attempt to slow the economic growth of these two challengers, the U.S. rulers are now taking token steps that appear to address global warming. However, these steps are wholly inadequate to prevent catastrophic climate change.

Various international meetings among capitalist governments have produced schemes to reduce GHG emissions, such as “cap and trade” or “carbon tax,” but even the most ambitious target from the European Union, that calls for a reduction of emissions 80-95% below 2000 levels by 2050, allows continued increase in GHG concentrations.

Along with caps, alternative sources of energy have to be found. There are a number of such sources that have been touted, including solar, wind, hydroelectric, ocean wave, tide, agriculture, geothermal, and finally nuclear. There are problems with most of these alternative sources. These include the increasing amount of energy and materials that have to be put into them in order to get energy out of them (Heinberg). Aside from the profit considerations that dominate all capitalist decisions, some of these alternative forms of energy may not be practical even after capitalism becomes history. J

(concluded next issue)

MONTCOAL, WV, April 8 — There is probably no greater exposé of the failure of reforms than the murder of 29 miners in the Massey Energy-owned Upper Big Branch (UBB) mine here. The statements coming from Obama and his Secy. of Labor, from this state’s Senator John D. Rockefeller IV and this district’s Democratic Party Congressman, from the various Mine “Safety” officials and from the company’s CEO, Donald Blankenship, reek with hypocrisy. Their “cries” for these dead miners ring as hollow as anything the politician-servants of U.S. capitalism have ever come up with.

Since 1900, 104,000 miners have been killed in this country’s mines. (NY Times, 4/6) Laws have been passed, regulations have been instituted, “safety” bodies have been established, fines have been levied, and still the killing rages on. The death toll in the UBB mine was the deadliest in 40 years.

The ruling-class mouthpieces decry these “tragic accidents.” But they are NOT “accidents. If workers’ safety trumped mine-owner’s profits — an impossibility under capitalism — there would be no “accidents.”

Federal Mine Safety administrator Kevin Strickland admitted that, “All explosions are preventable. It’s just making sure you have things in place to keep one from happening.” (NYT, 4/7)

But according to an internal memo sent by boss Blankenship to his underground mine superintendents, those “things” occupy last place. His instructions were “to place coal production first. ‘This memo is necessary only because we seem not to understand that the coal pays the bills.’” (NYT, 4/6) Furthermore, “If any of you have been asked…to do anything other than run coal…ignore them and run coal.” (NYT, 4/7)

Under that dictate, the miners slaving away for Massey Energy — a company with $3.8 BILLION in assets — produced $200 million in net profits in the 18 months from July 2008 to December 2009. The fact that the bosses’ government cited Massey Energy with 1,342 safety violations since 2005, 458 of them just last year, 122 since this past January, 53 of them in March and two more on the very day of this explosion (!), doesn’t faze Blankenship one iota. “Violations are…a normal part of the mining process,” he boasts. “There are violations in every coal mine in America.” (NYT, 4/7)

It was one of those “normal violations” that killed two miners at a Massey subsidiary, the Aracoma Coal Co., in 2006. They were unable to escape a fire and suffocated to death because the company failed to replace some ventilation controls it had removed inside the mine. Massey later pleaded guilty to ten criminal charges, but still the killing goes on. Even a $2.5 million fine means little to a company with nearly $4 billion in assets.

The miners’ families recognize Massey’s priorities. When boss Blankenship, protected by a dozen state cops, was trying to address a crowd about the deaths, “people yelled at him for caring more about profits than miners’ lives….And…that he was to blame [for the death toll].” (NYT, 4/7)

The UBB mine was evacuated three times in the previous two months because of “dangerously high methane gas levels,” which — along with a build-up of deadly coal dust — appears to have caused this violent explosion that murdered these 29 miners. Three months ago Massey was cited for having fresh-air systems flowing the wrong way near two escape routes. (Associated Press, 4/6)

While the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration keeps citing Massey and the other mine-owners with thousands of violations, the bosses end up paying token fines (averaging $3,700 per worker death) as the “cost of doing business” and pass on the expense to consumers. And although Congress “overhauled” federal mining regulations in 2006, “Federal mining data indicates that only one in 10 underground mines nationwide have met the law’s requirements.” (NYT, 4/8)

Obama can send “condolences” for what he claims is a “tragic accident”; this district’s Democratic Congressman Rahall can whine that “something needs to be done”; Obama’s Secy. of Labor can even admit that these miners “died unnecessarily” and say that the “best way to honor them is to do our job.” But that “job” seems to be playing footsie year in and year out with outfits like Massey.

None of these bosses’ politicians, nor their “safety” agencies, nor their laws and regulations seems to stop CEO’s like Blankenship from steaming ahead accumulating hundreds of millions in profits, ignoring the regulations and paying token fines. (It also didn’t stop him from donating $1 million to the racist Tea Party’s 2009 Labor Day celebration.)

In the early days of the Russian Revolution, one of the first changeovers from capitalism instituted by the Soviets was to award miners a six-hour day, five-day week, with access to any needed hospital care, along with 5-6 weeks vacation in Crimean resorts. (UBB miners are ordered to work 12-hour days.)

The “reforms” governing the mining industry simply allow the mine-owners to literally get away with murder. Every day, three miners die of black lung from years in the hazardous mines. The only way this carnage can end is for the miners themselves to run the mines, placing safety as the top priority. And that can only happen when a communist-led workers’ revolution overthrows these bloodsuckers. That’s what PLP is fighting for. 

MONTCOAL, WV, April 58 — When 40 workers died last month in a flooded Chinese coal mine, U.S. media strongly suggested the racist idea that human life is cheap to Asians. They followed a familiar script, trying to demonize an economic rival and potential military enemy.  “China’s coal mining industry is the world’s deadliest, with thousands of miners perishing every year in the pursuit of fuel for the country’s rapidly expanding economy.” (Wall Street Journal, 4/7)

But when an explosion killed 29 West Virginia coal miners a week later, U.S. rulers’ mainstream mouthpieces, like the NY Times, did something startling. They hammered at the profit motive behind the atrocity, editorializing (4/6): “[A]nger is building against the mine’s owner, the Massey Energy Company, which has long been accused by its critics of putting profits before the welfare of its workers.”

But the Times is hardly calling for the abolition of capitalism. It has never had a shred of sympathy for our class. To the dominant, imperialist wing of U.S. capitalists that the Times speaks for, Massey’s crime lies not in killing miners but in trading with the enemy, China, seeking short-term profits while ignoring the ruling class’s long-term strategic needs.

“Massey Energy Co. is preparing its first metallurgical coal shipment to China as part of its efforts to capitalize on growing demand from Asian steelmakers.” (Associated Press, 3/10) Metallurgical (coking) coal (“dirty” coal) and iron ore make steel. Boosting China-bound coal-for-steel production at Massey’s Upper Big Branch mine increased methane gas levels there, leading to the deadly blast. (Washington Post, 4/11)

It was Massey’s China trade, not workers’ deaths, which prompted arch-imperialist West Virginia Senator John D. Rockefeller IV to call the firm a “rogue” and a “repeat offender” on safety. (CBS 4/9) Rockefeller worries that Massey coal, in addition to bolstering China’s economic growth, might help it build its expanding military.

Massey Mine Was Serving China, Against Main U.S. Rulers’
War Agenda

The rulers’ harsh response to Massey’s disaster starkly contrasts with their kid-glove handling of the 2006 Sago mine blast that killed 12. Then Rockefeller and fellow senator Barack Obama utterly absolved, and even praised, Sago’s owner, writing, “We know that miners, retirees, and their families throughout the country are well aware of the risks inherent in working in even the safest mines.”

Sago belongs to the International Coal Group, an outfit run by imperialist New York-based investor Wilbur Ross. In the last decade or so, Ross has bought up and consolidated firms in sectors that are now struggling but will be indispensible to U.S. rulers during a global war. Along with coal, Ross has created conglomerates in textiles and steel.

Ross buys up bankrupt companies, tears up labor contracts and re-opens non-union hellholes just as unsafe as Massey’s. The crucial difference between the two camps lies in strategic focus. In contrast to Massey’s China deals, International Coal boasts on its website of serving dominant U.S. capitalists: “We market our coal to a diverse customer base of largely investment grade electric utilities, as well as domestic [our emphasis, Ed.] industrial and steel customers.”

Ross & Co. are bent on ensuring the survival of essential future war producers on U.S. soil. On the other hand, Massey’s biggest shareholder, BlackRock Capital, is in turn controlled by Bank of America, which also seeks immediate short-term profits and does not share the main rulers’ war agenda.

Miners’ History Of Armed Struggle Points The Way To Revolution

The rulers’ absolute need to control coal supplies drives them to exploit miners ruthlessly. Mass killings like Upper Big Branch and Sago follow brutal anti-union campaigns. Tighter mine regulations, as Sen. Rockefeller and the Times propose, won’t change this deadly pattern (see page 1) but only strengthen the bigger, imperialist bosses’ grip on the industry.

Miners, however, have a history of militant fight-back that has often risen to the level of armed conflict — at times which has involved our Party (see box above). Someday such militancy, spread throughout the working class by PLP, will organize a communist revolution that destroys capitalism and its profit-driven disasters. 

PLP has long been active supporting and participating in miners’ struggles, both in the U.S. and abroad.

‘Communism Comes To The
Mountains!’

One of our first actions — six months after having launched the Progressive Labor Movement (PLM) — was to support a 1963 strike of 500 wildcatting rank-and-file miners in Hazard, Kentucky. The armed miners went from mine to mine, routing scabs and dynamiting scab mines. PLM members organized a Trade Union Solidarity Committee and shipped truck- and trailer-loads of food and clothing to the militant miners while collecting money from workers outside factory gates in NYC, Buffalo and San Francisco. Our effort transformed the strike into a national issue.

We brought the miners’ leader, Berman Gibson, to NYC to address 800 workers and students at the Community Church in zero degree weather. When we shipped hundreds of PL Magazines to the miners, the local Hazard rag ran an 8-column headline across its front page charging, “Communism Comes to the Mountains!” The miners scoffed at their attempted red-baiting and warmly received us as brother and sister workers.

Support West Virginia Strikers

In 1987, PLP was very active in the Pittston coal strike when several thousand miners struck against the coal bosses’ attempt to force major concessions. The coal bosses were killing miners the “slow” way, ignoring safety rules and falsifying air samples. Hundreds of miners died lingering deaths from black lung disease, denied benefits because the air in the mines was supposedly “clean.” CHALLENGE was distributed to many miners as well as a newsletter sent to hundreds of strikers, pointing out the need to destroy capitalism and build communism.

A group of PL’ers came from Detroit to the Logan, West Virginia union hall with a trunk full of food purchased with money collected from auto and hospital workers and in front of supermarkets. An angry flood of miners were streaming into the hall, having just walked out on their union leaders who were trying to sell them out — including UMW President Richard Trumka (now AFL-CIO President). One miner told us, “You go back to Detroit and tell everyone that Richard Trumka is trying to destroy this union!” We couldn’t have asked for a warmer welcome.

PLP organized strike support in many cities and sent groups of workers and youth to deliver food and spend time with the strikers, some living with the miners and participating in strike activity while distributing CHALLENGE and discussing world politics. Ties were built with some amazing people that lasted well after the strike ended.

One day a very militant, angry group of strikers’ wives had had their anti-communism stirred up. One was ready to defend the PLP when another said, “You’re a communist and you didn’t tell us! We can’t have communists down here.”

One PL’er replied that our “communism is a world without bosses, money or profits, where workers get what they need just because they need it, not because they can afford it.”

One woman declared, ”Hell! I’d be a lot better off than I am now,” and we all laughed. “And all of you that feed the strikers, you’re the most communist group down here! You collect and prepare the food collectively, and then you join the picket lines and feed the strikers. You don’t ask them who they voted for in the last election or how much money they have. You feed them because we’re in a war and they need to be fed.!”

Now the women were much friendlier except the one right-winger who originally got them stirred up. She said, “Maybe so. But I STILL ain’t no damn communist!” Everybody roared with laughter.

Back Striking British Miners

In 1984-85, when British coal miners struck for 15 months to save their jobs, PLP actively collected money, Christmas gifts for the miners’ children and letters of support from our own unions. Miners and their spouses came to the U.S. and marched with us on May Day, helped organize California farmworkers and spoke to large and small groups in the U.S. about their struggle against capital.

The strike, over the closing of the coal mines destroying 40,000 jobs, almost toppled the Thatcher government. There were pitched battles between the miners and the police. Mining communities throughout Britain pooled their food and opened communal kitchens for miners and their families.

In the late 1980s, when many U.S. coal mines were being closed or turned into open-pit strip mines (requiring less labor and destroying the land), PLP won British miners to send letters of support to striking U.S. miners in Southern West Virginia.