Our General Line on the Environment

(leadinglightcommunist.org)

Capitalism, in its quest for profits, has led us to a point where there are several global environmental catastrophes on the horizon: global warming, dead zones in the oceans, mass extinctions, etc. Capitalism is the problem, not the solution to environmental problems. Capitalism is pushing the planet’s ecosystem to the brink of destruction.

Capitalism has created a situation where the minority benefits by the massive exploitation of the vast majority of humanity. The continued existence of the First World is one of the main problems facing the planet. The lifestyles maintained by the vast majority of First World people are incompatible with humanity’s continued ability to inhabit this planet. The eco-footprint of First World populations is many times that of Third World populations. Because production is concentrated in the Third World, it is the people there who suffer most from poisoned environments. The Third World pays the price for the consumption and waste of the First World. Capitalism, and the continued existence of the First World, is incompatible with the survival of the planet. This is yet another reason to wipe the First World off the map. Our survival necessitates revolution.

What kind of revolution?

A positive, radical reorganization of society is not going to happen under capitalism. Also, utopian schemes like anarchism and primitivism, while well-meaning, are completely ineffectual and unrealistic. It is only by resolving the principal contradiction between the First World and the Third World in our favor that we can move to resolve other contradictions. The struggle against the First World by the Third World masses is the only struggle that can unleash the social energy to make social revolution and environmental revolution possible. The anti-imperialist struggle is the key that unlocks other struggles. This has been shown over and over again in the last half-century of revolution.

The only realistic way to achieve fundamental, lasting environmental change is to defeat imperialism and capture state power. Then, the dictatorship of the proletariat can push forward with social and environmental revolution. Leading Light Communism is the path to communism in the current epoch. Thus, Leading Light Communists are the real environmentalists. No movement is objectively greener than Leading Light Communism. Those whose concerns center on environmental issues should support the Leading Light Communist global people’s war against the First World as the best vehicle for addressing their concerns.

In the past, revolutionaries did not fully understand the role that environmental revolution played in socialist construction. Socialist societies have a mixed record on the environment. Socialist societies had successes as well as failures. Like capitalism, past attempts at socialism were dominated by a productionist outlook that pitted humanity against nature. This outlook saw greater and greater production, greater domination of nature, as the key to human happiness. This outlook is connected to the revisionist Theory of Productive Forces that sees socialism as mainly a matter of development of productive forces, particularly, advances in technology. The Theory of Productive Forces is also the theory behind First Worldism, the various theories that claim that there is a First World proletariat. Leading Light Communism rejects the Theory of Productive Forces, including the view that human happiness is connected to dominating an enemy, hostile natural world. Instead, Leading Light Communism understands human society as a part of the natural world, not something that is separate, above and opposed to nature. Leading Light Communism understands that protecting natural systems, sustaining the natural world, will be a part of any future socialist construction. The dictatorship of the proletariat involves sustainable development, and protecting and preserving nature. After all, the survival of the human species, including proletariat itself, is linked to sustaining our environment.