Paul Street: Ecocide, pandemicide, potentially terminal nuclear war and fascism
Followers of my writings will have noticed, I hope, that I repeatedly argue that capitalism produces four mutually reinforcing and multiplying apocalyptic horsemen: ecocide, pandemicide, potentially terminal nuclear war, and fascism.
Capitalism at its dark roots
I want to delve into this formulation here, explaining how capitalism generates each of these apocalyptic threats and how the "four horsemen" reinforce and, in fact, multiply each other.
Let's start with the first dark horseman, ecocide. Here I am referring only to climate change, being fully aware that capitalism produces numerous "ecological cracks" in addition to global warming (and closely related to it).
The underlying economic basis of capitalism requires constant and carcinogenic growth, thus putting the habitable ecology at serious risk. In the age of fossil fuels, in which capitalism is deeply and indeed terminally inverted, this requirement is turning the planet into a gigantic Greenhouse Gas Chamber. The combination of constant growth and fossil fuels has created an epic climate catastrophe that is putting humanity and countless other species under thermal siege.
Capitalism is a global, disordered and amoral economic and state system, lacking any real capacity to reorient and sustainably detoxify human relationships with the natural environment. An increasingly poisoned world, dominated by capitalist imperialists and fragmented into dozens and dozens of competing nation states, is not rational. It is anarchic, competitive and exterminating, so fundamentally sociopathological that it sees the ecological destruction it generates as a source of new opportunities for profit: new shipping routes available in regions previously covered by ice, for example. The long-term common good is perpetually outweighed by the short-term profits of the dominant investor class under the reign of capital. And that class has invested too much in fossil fuels (both directly and indirectly) to allow governments under bourgeois control (whatever their democratic pretensions) to keep those resources in the ground before the extraction and burning of coal, oil and gas push the planet beyond the irreversible tipping points of uncontrolled warming.
What does capitalism have to do with pandemicide? Quite. The relentless expansion of the system, without which the profit system cannot survive, destroys vast swaths of natural habitat, bringing humans into ever closer contact with species carrying deadly zoonotic viruses from which humanity was previously isolated. . The capitalogenic climate catastrophe is causing species migrations that further break down previous epidemiological barriers. And contemporary globalized capitalism causes six million people to fly around the world on airplanes daily, ensuring the rapid and widespread transmission of new diseases to which many lack immunity.
A potentially terminal war? Of course. Mao Zedong was right to call capitalism “capitalism-imperialism.” The world teeters ever closer to a terminal nuclear war, contributing (along with global warming) to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists' Doomsday Clock being closer to midnight than it has ever been, in a way which should not be surprising at all. Capitalism is a system of competition, rivalry and conflict not only between individual capitals, but also between capitalist-imperialist states, for control and access to markets, raw materials, labor supplies, technologies, etc. ., and with it by the exploitation and oppression of the vast global periphery, the so-called developing world, formerly known (during the Cold War) as the "Third World." Under capitalism, there is no way for a nation state to remain forever the only great power, the role to which the US aspired (and achieved to some extent temporarily and partially) after World War II. The main capitalist-imperialist states facing each other in today's increasingly "multipolar" world system - the US, Russia and China - are armed to the teeth with (increasingly lethal) nuclear weapons, first developed during the second of the two massive inter-imperialist world wars of the last century (and used twice by the US in 1945, largely as a warning to the first State that tried to break out of the world capitalist system and challenge it: the Soviet Union). With the capitalist-imperialist US threatening the other two great nuclear powers in their immediate regional spheres of influence (Eastern Europe and the far eastern Pacific), the chances of a catastrophic war are greater now than during the Cold War. Trigger zones include Ukraine, Taiwan and, of course, the Middle East, where Israel's escalating Gaza crucifixion (following the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack) and the current US campaign against Iran have the potential to trigger a much broader conflict.
And then there is fascism, usefully defined by the US group Refuse Fascism (RF) as “a qualitative change in the way society is governed”. Once in power,” RF states, “the defining feature of fascism is the essential elimination of the rule of law and democratic and civil rights.” Fascism fosters and is based on xenophobic nationalism, racism, misogyny, and the aggressive reinstitution of oppressive “traditional values.” The truth is overturned and fascist mobs and threats of violence are unleashed to build their movement and consolidate power.
What does it have to do with capitalism-imperialism? All. By virtue of its inherent tendency toward the upward concentration of wealth and power, capitalism regularly makes its “democratic” and “equality before the law” claims transparent, while the underlying anarchy of capital regularly generates crises and catastrophes that require the intervention of big governments. It is a lethal combination that encourages authoritarian "solutions" promoted by charismatic strongmen who find significant mass support for their claim that only they can fix things with the backing of a party and mass base willing to discard the parliamentary, civil and legal niceties and the previously normative moral qualms.
Capitalism simultaneously creates mass politics, delegitimizes (exposing as inauthentic) democracy and the rule of law, demonizes socialist and communist movements, and sustains and exploits the long-standing oppressive and divisive forces of racism, sexism, nativism. , fundamentalism, imperialism and nationalism. It heartlessly diminishes human life, making billions of people disposable in a way that contributes to feeding a sadistic dehumanization.
At the same time, the democratic, humanist, "tolerant" and "rule of law" pretensions of capitalism are always considered expendable by a considerable part of the ruling capitalist class. Many powerful capitalists are willing to work with and through a political superstructure that dispenses with bourgeois democracy and opts instead for the Iron Heel: capitalism-imperialism with the boot on the necks of the masses.
It is a toxic hodgepodge that generates fascist potential and a reality like white on rice.
Multiplication, not addition
Now let's see how these four horsemen - I will keep the gender intact to reflect the deep connection of capitalism with patriarchy - do more than just stand side by side and add to each other, as in addition, but reinforce and expand each other, as in multiplication. It is not ecocide plus potentially nuclear war plus pandemicide plus fascism. It is ecocide multiplied by potentially nuclear war multiplied by pandemicide multiplied by fascism.
Ecocide and pandemicide. Climate change is contributing to increased risk of pandemics by forcing human and animal migrations out of overheated and thermally insecure regions, thereby increasing the chances of transmission of zoonotic viruses between species. At the same time, the negative impact of climate change on agricultural productivity incentivizes the expansion of land fencing and cultivation, further eroding the barriers between humans and pathogens carried by other species (Here I suppose a smart critic could argue that the potential mass death and economic depression resulting from pandemics could help reduce carbon emissions!)
Echocide and war (potentially nuclear): The capitalist climatic crisis harms global capitalist profitability (reducing agricultural productivity and thus raising the cost of food, other materials and labor, for example) so that interimperial competence intensifies by markets and materials, sharpening conflicts between capitalist states so that they encourage drifts and bands towards global war. The armies and their wars are huge consumers of fossil fuels and carbon emitters. (Of course, a global thermonuclear war could resolve the climatic crisis with the nuclear winter. World War I would also end the threats of fascism and pandemicide).
Ecocide and fascism: in their important book White Skin, Black Fuel: On The Danger of Fossil Fascism, Andreas Malm and the Zetkin Group have established numerous connections between them. Synergies that reinforce each other include:
- The strong attachment of the extreme right to fossil fuels as great heritage and national/racial "source", source of national greatness.
- The revival of racist anti -immigration Nativism within the white nations rich by the massive migrations of non -white of poor nations where climate change is making life more miserable than ever.
- The anti-intellectual opposition of fascism to truth and science, which encourages climate denialism on the extreme right.
- right -wing antisocialism, which undermines positive government action in favor of environmental sanity.
- The right -wing narrative that climatic concerns are a cover of the effort of non -white poor nations for "stealing" the richness and power of rich white nations.
- The "eco -fascist" statement that immigration is the real basis of environmental deterioration in rich nations
- The indifference of the right in the face of climate change, cruelly based on the idea that it only harms poor nations and the non -white periphery of the world system.
- The negative impact of mitigation efforts of climate change in the economic situation of important sectors and regions, which gives rise to right -wing parties to sell echocid policies against climate change as economic "populism."
- The role of climate change in the production of mass social dislocations and crises that provide fertile land for right recruitment.
Pandemicide and fascism. The fear of the other carriers of germs and the strangers feeds the xenophobic nativism and nationalism, key pieces of the fascist mixture. Government measures to control the transmission of the virus feed the paranoid feelings of the "anti -government" right. The economic decline and social dislocation resulting from pandemics create massive discontent and traumas that the extreme right exploits, describing (for example) pandemics and efforts related to public health to curb their propagation as parts of a "global" conspiracy. Pandemics isolate masses from people from normal social contact, making them less prone to mutual concern and solidarity and more vulnerable to online hatred. The extreme right invents stories about the origin of pandemics to feed massive paranoia and racism (for example, "the Chinese virus", "Chinese deception"). Fascism promotes potentially genocidal dehumanization and racial, political, cultural, sexual and additional demonization of others, encouraging their followers to celebrate the real or imaginary role of pandemics in the elimination of parts of humanity they hate. At the same time, fascism is encouraged by a Virulent Darwinian social faith in the "survival of the strongest", a mentality that welcomes the death of "the weak" and opposes a positive public public health policy for the common benefit.
Pandemcidio and War. The negative impact of a pandemic on profitability can produce a strangulation of world benefits that foster a greater probability of war between capitalist-imperialist states. The wars themselves create a massive devastation that increases the susceptibility of human beings to diseases of all kinds, including new zoonotic pests.
Fascism and war: The militarized and violent nationalism that capitalist-imperial interstate rivalry and war generates and intensifies fuels the fascist-authoritarian threat within nations. The fascist ethos and fascist movements of the past and present are largely based on nationalist militarism and current and former military personnel. Like war and militarism, fascism defends the rule of force and men above the rule of law and electoral and parliamentary politics. Like fascism, war and militarism are based on the dehumanization and demonization of Others designated as enemies, necessary to justify the elimination of rivals and enemies. Both fascism and militarism promote the notion of survival of the fittest, identifying strength with the ability and willingness to employ mass violence. (Clausewitz said that "war is politics by other means." Fascism is, among other things, the penetration of politics by the mentality and violent practices of war/militarism.) In turn, war often produces massive social dislocations, hardships and defeats (and triumphs) that fascist politicians and propagandists exploit.
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And, of course, the political pathology that is fascism is a brutal enforcer of apocalyptic capitalism-imperialism - an enforcer that works, among other things, to crush open public support and movements for climate sanity, public health (including prevention and responsible response to pandemics), peace, social justice and intellectual freedom.... for reform, not to mention the real requirement: revolutionary socialism. (American fascist leader Donald Trump has made it abundantly clear that he intends, as the 47th president of the United States, to deploy the military to repress "the radical left," a label under which he absurdly includes capitalist Democrats.) militant imperialists. Any opposition to their “drill, baby drill agenda,” to their promised military invasion of Mexico, to their escalating militarization of the border, to their war on women’s reproductive freedoms, to their promised mass roundup of immigrants. , etc., will most likely face considerable state and extra-state violence and repression).
Of course, it is true that capitalism-imperialism is clearly showing itself ready, willing and able to poison and generally ruin life on Earth by generating the first three apocalyptic horsemen (ecocide, pandemicide and potentially nuclear world war) without the full consolidation of the latter (fascism). But once in power, fascism threatens to crush all social-civil-political-ideological space of popular opposition to ecocidal and imperialist pandemo-capitalism and its allied systems of oppression and exploitation, including, of course, racism and sexism. Fascism must be resisted, rejected and defeated in itself, albeit as part of a deeper movement to get rid of the toxic root system - the capitalist mode of production and its political and ideological superstructure - that gives rise to fascism in the first place. .
counterpunch.org. Translation: Antoni Soy Casals for Sinpermiso
