Capitalism and the Disaster of Environmental Pollution

Volume One

October 2014

Hassan Abbasi

Foreword

It is safe to say that in the centuries-old history of capitalism and beyond, in the entire history of human life, no one has been able to analyze the entire economic and political issues of a social mode of production with Marx’s scrutiny. His deep and forward-looking critical vision saw the invisible and still undisclosed boundaries of capital’s destruction of the environment. With the same vision that explored the conditions of work and the exploitation and separation of the worker from his work, he also anatomized the destruction and destruction of the living environment and the threat to his health and life in this mode of production. (In this regard, one can refer to his in-depth and lengthy analyses of reports on public health and factory inspectors’ reports, the report on child exploitation in England, as well as the conditions of the working class in England by Friedrich Engels). 150 years ago, when agriculture was still in the middle stages of capitalist development in England, Marx spoke of the environmental and agricultural degradation resulting from the use of chemicals that were killing children. In the first volume of Capital, he devoted more than three chapters (Chapter 8, half of Chapter 13, and large parts of Chapter 23), as well as Chapter 13 of Volume 2 and Chapter 5 of Volume 3, to the issues of the environment and working-class labour.

The purpose of referring to the writings of Karl Marx here is one thing. That the capitalist development of human societies has long been accompanied by the destruction of the environment and labour. This is in no way an accident, a series of hit-and-run incidents, or that capitalism makes mistakes and disorders in the process of its development in every country. The long-standing nature of the issue clearly demonstrates the twin nature of this phenomenon with capitalism. The reference to the book Capital and Marx’s writings is also made with the aim of reminding us of another important point. In those days, in the context of his attempt to criticize the political economy of the bourgeoisie and radical dissection of the capitalist mode of production and society, he directly referred any environmental destruction by capitalist factory owners or farmers to the essence of this mode of production, namely the acquisition of as much surplus value as possible. A subject that later the international left would forget as much as it distanced itself from the Marxian critique of capitalism and the class struggle against the existence of capital.

But why is this so? How can the capitalist system of production so easily pollute the environment without a moment’s thought about its terrible and devastating consequences? The dimensions and forms of this destruction have changed greatly during the short history of capitalism, but this phenomenon not only repeats itself but also becomes more terrible as a cognate of this system. The more developed large-scale industry is, the more rapid and widespread its destructive process becomes. If in the 18th and 19th centuries, as an inseparable part of the historical process of the development of accumulation and the expansion of wage labour relations, European governments auctioned off common and public lands, sold these lands to capital owners at a negligible price, and in this regard, displaced thousands of poor peasants from the cities, forced this vast mass of peasants into wage slavery and the sale of labour in the cramped and dark slums on the outskirts of the cities, or inflicted a world of other calamities on them, today capital on an international scale is producing genetically modified corn, and the ever-increasing development of genetic modification is putting all of humanity at grave risk.

The energy consumption in the cycle of global capital reproduction has reached a point where a slight increase in the current temperature of the Earth, during the current century, will expose the largest regions of this planet to the terrible danger of drought, increased storms and flash floods. The scale of deforestation has reached such a level that what is done to preserve and regenerate it is considered a completely insignificant amount compared to the destruction. Once upon a time, playful man released a snowball down a mountain slope, today capital is like a huge avalanche that destroys everything in its path of accumulation.

The mass of technical advances in large-scale industry, which are the prerequisites and requirements of mass production, the improvement of labour productivity, and the unceasing upward trend of the rate of surplus value, are paving the way for the ever-widening destruction of the sustainable sources of all progress. To answer the above question, it is necessary to review the production relations of past human societies. Once upon a time, in the rural industry and the patriarchal peasant family, whatever man produced, he consumed himself. At that time, all these products were useful to the public and were divided among the members of the community (the method of this division, which is not our concern here, changed in each social organization depending on its evolution). Up to now, the purpose of production was basically to create useful and necessary products for life, and the limited dimensions of production also greatly limited the destructive impact of man and his work on nature. After all, there was no distance between man and nature because he formed a part of the nature around him and was diligent in maintaining and caring for it, and he saw disorder and destruction in it as a direct blow to himself. With the transformation of products into commodities and, consequently, the transformation of humans into commodity producers and the beginning of a time when the purpose of production was no longer to meet the needs of life but to exchange and sell, the destructive impact of the production and work process on nature also gradually expanded and went beyond the control of the producing humans. This process was slow at first, but as time passed, its speed, scope, and scope increased. In self-sufficient societies and production to meet needs, humans were always the goal of production, but since the production of commodities, that is, production for sale, began, the production of commodities itself and the accumulation of wealth and profit became the goal. The result was that in natural production, where man produced for his daily needs, there was a fundamental unity between him and nature. In fact, man was dependent on nature, and this even included those who owned the land or the tools. The producer, whether he worked the land or the one who owned the tools and equipment for his work, both worked and lived in close connection with nature and did not consider it separate from his existence, for this reason production and renewal of production required the care of the land and its resources and deposits. It is then that we enter the world of capitalism, when money becomes capital and employs free workers or the vast dispossessed masses. The capitalist owns the raw materials, machinery, and facilities. The worker has nothing to sell but his labour power. He exchanges his labour power with the capitalist for the means of subsistence. The worker is separated from the objective conditions of production and has no involvement in what is to be produced, the amount of production, or how it is to be produced. All these conditions are determined by capital. The result of this situation, or the worker’s exclusion from involvement in the labour process and the planning of work and production, is his alienation from his labour. Alienation means the loss of the conditions for influencing and intervening in what happens, and where the worker is separated from the product of his labour, his free involvement in the process of events is also cut off. The commodity character of the product of labour and the fact that this product belongs to others, to the capitalist, constitute the root of the alienated world of the worker. This alien and at the same time objective world, which is the creation of the workers, becomes the complete property of others, and he has no share in it. This is especially intensified and deepened by the ever-increasing development of the division of labour and the mechanization of production, which threatens the existence of the worker at every moment and makes him less and less necessary. The division of labour transforms the worker into an interchangeable part, a being from whom all initiative and innovation have been taken away. As the accumulation of capital grows, the more the worker produces things, the more he is influenced by the product of his labour, i.e. capital. The phenomenon of alienation from the labour process, its tools, and its products is not limited to this. Man, who with his tools, with the piece of land he worked on and provided himself with the necessities of life and thus was in harmony with and homogeneous with nature, is now alienated from this nature. The wage worker not only has no control over the product of his labour, but in relation to it, to his dead labour, i.e. capital, he plays the role of a being subjugated in every respect, without the power to intervene and without any ability to exercise will. It is also worth mentioning that capital also inflicts this calamity on its owner, the capitalist, in another way. The appearance of the matter is that the owner of capital makes the decision, but the reality is something else. He himself is, in all aspects of his existence, a being alienated from himself and a captive of the needs of capital’s valuation. In other words, the capitalist is also a slave to capital. Capital has become personified. He must be alienated from everything human in order to remain a capitalist. It must plan the order of capital reproduction, the process of capital appreciation, the process of removing the worker from involvement in his work, the massacre of every worker’s attempt to achieve any level of the result of his labour, and all the savagery, crimes, wars, and other inhuman catastrophes that are the needs of the cycle of accumulation and profiteering of capital. It must make these needs and their planning the dominant thought, culture, belief, and morality of society. The capitalist class, like all previous ruling classes, never pretends that its interests alone should be the top priority for the interests of society, but rather, the game of a ruling class presents its interests as the interests of the entire society, and in this way, it uses all means, from parliament to the means of mass communication, to impress upon the ears of the working class that everything it thinks and does is for the general interests of society. So far, we have spoken of man’s alienation from himself and his alienation from nature, and we have explained that active capital is complete. With the expansion of industrial capital, the accumulation of fixed capital such as machinery, auxiliary equipment, and infrastructure became a necessity, and this in turn made the need for more raw and auxiliary materials inevitable. This cycle was not and is not complete. In other words, as capitalism expands, whether it discovers new areas or develops accumulation in the same former productive territories, the need for capital for agricultural and livestock raw materials, minerals, chemicals, and the like increases. The productivity of labour through the development of machinery and the process of division of labour, both at the production and social levels, causes a relative reduction in the labour force. But the value contained in fixed capital does nothing of itself except to be transferred to the product by means of labour power. In this process the worker receives a part of his working time in the form of wages and the cost of reproducing labour power, but this is only a very small part of his daily work that is paid for, the other part, which is constantly increasing relatively with the increase in labour productivity, always becomes unpaid surplus labour and is transformed into surplus value and profit for the employers.

It is also worth noting that with the increase in labour productivity, the need for labour is constantly decreasing in relative terms. At the same time, technical progress leads to a relative decrease in the value of machinery, because 1. new machinery becomes cheaper to produce and 2. old machinery is replaced more quickly by new types. Thus, the decrease in the value of machinery causes a relatively smaller transfer of its value to commodities. It is noteworthy that in this process the value of raw materials continuously increases. That is why capital’s thirst for cheapening the price of raw materials is growing and hysterical. The advancement of production technology, the increase in labour productivity, and the continuous development of capitalism lead to an increase in the consumption of raw and auxiliary materials. It is in this context that finding a solution to make these materials and supplies as cheap as possible, as a necessary prerequisite for increasing surplus values, becomes the agenda of capital and capitalists. One of the mechanisms of capitalists to achieve this goal is to economize on the use of these materials. In this way, production costs can be reduced as much as possible and profits can be increased. Reusing waste materials in the production process is one form of this economy. In this regard, the reuse of used goods can also be mentioned. All this can only be understood in relation to reducing production costs and ultimately increasing the rate of profit. Otherwise, in any previous period of history, no ruling class can be found that has plundered the earth and its reserves so ruthlessly. They are so busy plundering natural resources that it seems that these resources are endless. It is enough to listen to the words of the economic director of the Energy Organization of the United States, OECD Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (IEA; International Energi Agency Doctor Fatih Birol pointed out. He writes that the world will need four oil reservoirs like Saudi Arabia by 2030. Then, in November 2013, at a conference in Stockholm, he formulates the issue of increasing the need for more oil in such a way that the world will need two oil reservoirs of all the oil reservoirs in the Middle East by 2030! It is true that this economist speaks of capital’s needs for energy under the influence of the strong influence of pragmatic capitalists, but we see how confused and contradictory he is. Let us not forget that he is not a general economist, nor is he a trivial exponent of capitalism. Like capitalists and all people of his class, he is very pragmatic in responding to the needs of capital’s valuation and profit-seeking and is not idealistic or romantic. All his worries and sorrows are planning to meet the needs of this system. This means that in the calculations of economists like him, there are relatively accurate estimates of the amount of oil and gas reserves in the world.

The estimated amount of gas in the underground shale layers (about 2.5 to 3 kilometers underground) in the United States is more than all the oil reserves in Saudi Arabia. The extraction technique already exists and its production is increasing. It does not matter to these planners that the groundwater and even in the future the surface water of the extraction area will be polluted. Water that the working masses of these areas now refuse to consume (it is quite clear that the capitalists of the extraction area have already either left the area or have provided sufficient means for the necessary care). It also does not matter to the capitalist community and their intellectual representatives that the methane gas present in the bubbles inside the polar ice caps, in the glaciers on the ground and on the ocean floor and is estimated to be more than 10 times the total oil reserves in the world is currently being released from the sea floor with the increase in the earth’s temperature and rises to the atmosphere, adding to the amount of greenhouse gases. They are not worried about the consequences, because this cheap energy must be extracted and for this reason the technique of its extraction is being perfected, especially in the United States, Canada, Japan and Russia. Now we are not talking about Oil Sands, which are found in many soils along rivers and lakes around the world. Most of them have been discovered in Canada and Venezuela. The technique for exploiting them already exists and production has already begun in Canada (since 2007). But this process produces four times the amount of Green House Gas (GHG) per barrel of conventional oil produced. And this is just the beginning, because the consumption of such oil brings with it between 10 and 45% more greenhouse gases than conventional oil. The amount of these reserves is estimated to be as large as all the remaining oil reserves in the world. Just one of these reserves in Canada has a capacity of about 2,000 trillion barrels of oil, which means that it alone can supply the world with oil for 50 years. These reservoirs, together with gas reservoirs in underground shale layers, could cover the world’s need for energy and raw materials for several centuries. Now, it does not matter to the producers and industrial capitalists who consume oil sands that most of these resources are located in rainforest areas, lakes and rivers. The Norwegian oil company, in its estimate of the environmental and natural destruction of this type of oil (tar sands), speaks of a figure of more than 8 times that of its conventional oil production and consumption. It is necessary to point out here that these estimates may be slightly exaggerated in order to attract investment. As is now the case in the Internet media, sites have been created to expose the exaggeration of these estimates, but they also do not provide any numbers or estimates in return and do not cite sources in their criticism. Today, in almost all capitalist societies, the issue of combating the destruction of the environment and nature has become a cunning market in which a wide range of bourgeois parties from right to left are engaged in selling their counterfeit goods to workers. There is no need for much explanation about the blatant lies of the right-wing and official capitalist parties. The left-wing groups of this spectrum, called green parties, are in no way real opponents of pollution or destruction of the environment. For the obvious reason that they defend the capitalist system, which is the originator and cause of all forms of destruction of the human environment. It is impossible to be both a bastion of capital’s survival and a flag of struggle against environmental pollution!! If these parties talk about manipulating and improving this or that corner of the process of polluting and destroying nature, they do so in the context of a complete defense of capitalism. They engage in the greatest demagoguery because they want to convince workers that the survival of this system is not in conflict with the continuous and increasing destruction of the human environment! They claim and show that they are very aware, radical, planned and coherent in their approach to the environmental issues of society and examine this vitally important issue with a humanistic perspective!! But in practice they do nothing other than paint and glaze the rotten carcass of capitalism and decorate this degenerate, anti-human system. The aforementioned reactionary parties and all their neoliberal partners talk about improving the environment in order to mislead any protest and struggle of the working masses against the real foundations of pollution and destruction of the human living space. To stifle the cry of anger of millions of workers who, while fighting against their criminal and limitless exploitation by industrial and financial trusts and capitalist governments, are also fighting against the pollution of the environment by these companies and governments. Workers in every corner of the world, from Bangladesh and India to Latin America, witness every day the invasion of capital in deforestation, the plunder of mines, the unbridled use of harmful chemicals in agricultural production, the provision of clothing, food and, in short, all aspects of their lives. In the process of reproduction and self-expansion, and making its sphere of profit-making more and more galactic, capital, without the slightest regard for natural limitations, constantly opens new frontiers for accumulation, destroys every obstacle on this path, does not hesitate to destroy anything in order to achieve the highest surplus values, and in this process, rushes forward with free will to the point of sacrificing what are the conditions, possibilities, and essential needs for the continuation of human life. The so-called environmental parties, whose representatives participate in the international climate change forums IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), like other neoliberal and social democratic capitalist parties, are a protective shield against the hatred and disgust of the working masses of the world against the destruction of nature and the environment, with the aim of perpetuating the system of wage slavery. The superficial approach mixed with confusion, ignorance and lack of horizons of these parties simply indicates their internal attachment to the necessities of capitalist survival. Their strategies and sermons to prevent the increasing destruction of the environment also scream out these same reactionary attachments. The bourgeoisie, in its most far-reaching intellectual flights, is still a prisoner of pure ignorance because it takes on the mission of protecting a reactionary, anti-human system, takes the basis of its thinking from here, and mines the path of its knowledge with the mechanism of capital’s immortality. For this reason, the so-called environmental parties, in their so-called root cause search, bring out such absurdities as excessive consumption, overpopulation, and the like. Sometimes, in a quixotic and very misleading way, they even embellish their word-weaving with phrases like capital control. For example, according to the latest report published in Berlin in April 2014, they recommend that in order to keep the global temperature increase to a maximum of 2 degrees by 2050, the world’s economic growth should be limited or stopped, and the continuation of this growth should be postponed to a suitable future!! They are unable to understand the naked fact that it is capital that controls all of humanity and that as long as capitalist relations of production exist, its growth is not going to be controlled by capital owners or governments. The authors of the report a few pages later talk about the growth of greenhouse gases between 1970 and 2010. Interestingly, during this period, capitalism has been experiencing more or less prolonged economic crises. The increase in consumption of the dirtiest energy-generating goods has occurred during this same period. An event that, firstly, has made the environmental problem much more critical and, secondly, has not been a random phenomenon. Why? The answer is clear. It is the nature of capitalist production that saving and reducing production costs in times of crisis becomes an urgent necessity to challenge the crisis, and capitalists will commit any crime to implement projects corresponding to the realization of this goal. This shows how demagogic and deceitful is the word game of environmental parties about the control of capital by capitalists and their governments. In this passage, it is not bad to remember a saying of Marx, who says in the Grundrisse: “Capital sets no limits for itself, it wants to break all barriers and go beyond them. Every border for capital is an obstacle that must be removed, and it must be so. Because if it is not, it is no longer capital” (quote in context). Other factors of environmental pollution from the perspective of the conference resolution are population growth and excessive consumption. Both of these are mechanisms that follow the capitalist production process and are regulated and determined by capital as long as this system exists.

Population growth is the necessary lever for the existence of a reserve army of labour, and capital needs this army in order to exert maximum pressure on the employed labour force and reduce the price of the labour force of the working class to the minimum possible. The consumption of produced goods is also the lifeblood of capital. What is produced contains a huge mountain of surplus labour of the working masses, and capital must sell its produced goods to obtain this surplus value. Talking about controlling capital under the conditions of the dominance of capitalist relations of production is as vulgar and meaningless as some people who argue that capital should exist but not exploit the worker! The nonsense that only a handful of deceitful Don Quixotes can utter in order to deceive the working masses of the world and, by deceiving as many workers as possible, complete their service to the province of capital and their efforts to perpetuate wage slavery. What we workers say in response to this nonsense and adhere to is a conscious and widespread activity to organize a conscious, council and powerful movement of the working masses against capital. A movement that will align the fighting power of our class against the capitalist system and exercise it against this system. Only such a movement can, at every step, force the capitalist class and its government to endure ever-increasing setbacks in all areas, including environmental pollution, and at the same time, walk a stronger, more conscious, and more steadfast path to the final destruction of capitalism and the establishment of a new society. A society in which humans decide what to produce, how much, and how this production is done. In such a society, everything, including how to use nature, will be under the conscious, collective, and consultative will of all humans and will serve to meet their real-life needs.

The above points are an introduction to a series of discussions that will come in the future regarding the work environment, life and nature. We do not believe in any way that the destruction of the environment by capital is a temporary and short-term matter. The existence of this phenomenon is not a coincidence. Capital, in addition to all the tragedies, crimes and disasters that it has historically imposed and continues to impose on humanity, will certainly destroy, pollute and make nature and its living space uninhabitable every day more than the day before. This is a requirement of the process of valorisation and reproduction of capital. With each passing day, the insoluble internal contradictions of capital will become more rebellious, the crises will become more devastating and stormier, and at the same time, the influx of capital for the wider destruction of the environment will be fiercer and more rapid. We workers all over the world have no choice but to fight against capital in all spheres of social life, including the environment. Exposing the demagoguery of left-wing parties claiming to defend the environment or capitalist-oriented researchers is also part of the process of this struggle. A conscious class struggle with a Marx perspective against capital in the environment must become one of our continuous anti-capitalist bulwarks.

Chapter One

Climate change, capital accumulation on the ground and garbage in the sky

First of all, I found it necessary to provide a brief but necessary explanation of the words and terms used in this text and their English equivalents. This is because clarifying these terms helps in understanding the material and, in addition to the fact that the research method requires understandable and common terms, it also provides the reader with the opportunity to conduct further searches (given access to mass communication facilities) and a deeper understanding of these issues.

Greenhouse Gases

The Earth absorbs some of the solar energy that reaches it and releases the rest into the atmosphere as invisible infrared light (energy). Some gases and particles in the Earth’s atmosphere have the ability to absorb this radiation, and as a result, the energy reflected back from the Earth increases the temperature around the gases and the Earth itself on a large scale. The effects of this process are called the greenhouse effect. It is important to note two points here. First, visible sunlight is not absorbed by gases in the Earth’s atmosphere but reaches the Earth directly. Second, the common gases in the Earth’s atmosphere, namely oxygen and nitrogen, are not considered greenhouse gases because they do not play a role in absorbing energy emitted by the Earth. Greenhouse gases include:

Water vapor: The major portion (75 percent) of these gases is water vapor, which has a closed cycle. Water rises from the seas and the Earth’s surface into space as vapor and then returns to the Earth as rain and snow. The Earth’s increased heat intensifies this cycle and at the same time causes the temperature of the atmosphere to increase even further. In addition, all fossil fuels (oil, gas, and coal) are converted into carbon dioxide, water, and some other waste products when burned. The amount of water vapor that contributes to global warming among greenhouse gases is about 36 to 70%.

Carbon dioxide: This gas appears to be a smaller part of the greenhouse gas composition, but it is actually the largest and most important part. Why? For the obvious reason that its growth rate is higher than all other compounds, carbon dioxide is responsible for more than 60% of the increase in these gases, and capitalist countries produce more than 80% of this gas. The amount of carbon on Earth is limited, and this substance, like water, has a closed cycle. The issue is somewhat complex and requires explanation, but I will suffice with a brief explanation in this regard. Carbon rises to the Earth’s atmosphere in various ways and then returns to the Earth through the “photosynthesis” of plants. When animals and plants die, part of their bodies, due to transformation, enter the Earth’s atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide. Similarly, various factories and intercity or intracity vehicles also emit and pump large amounts of this gas into the Earth’s atmosphere. The result of this process is the appearance of several billion tons of carbon dioxide per year in the atmosphere around the Earth. A huge mass that is constantly increasing. The changes in the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere during the 10,000 years before the 19th century, or the era of the widespread development of capitalist production, were less than 10%. After 1800, the concentration of this gas in the Earth’s atmosphere increased by about 30%. Currently, on average, more than 25 billion tons of carbon dioxide enter the Earth’s atmosphere annually. European researchers have recently measured the amount of this gas from about 1 million years ago to the present using a new technique and have concluded that its current amount is unprecedented in the past 650,000 years. It should be noted that carbon dioxide can remain in the Earth’s atmosphere for between 50 and 200 years. The amount of this gas’s effect on global warming varies and is between 9-26 percent.

Methane: It is a gas that, after carbon dioxide, is the most important factor in increasing the Earth’s temperature. The amount of this gas in the Earth’s atmosphere has doubled since the beginning of industrial capitalism (1800 AD), and its effect on increasing the Earth’s temperature among all greenhouse gases constitutes about 20 percent. Methane gas can absorb 23 times more heat than carbon dioxide, but its life span in the Earth’s atmosphere is about 10-15 years. The effect of this gas on increasing the Earth’s temperature is between 4-9 percent.

Nitrous oxide: This gas is transferred to the atmosphere around the Earth through nature (sea, rainforests and earth bacteria). After methane, it is the most important factor in the increase of greenhouse gases. Since the growth of the capitalist mode of production and the development of industrial accumulation, it has been continuously increasing (about 16%) through chemical fertilizers, fossil energy (oil, gas and coal) and chemical factories. Nitrous oxide absorbs heat 310 times more than carbon dioxide and is thus an important factor in the increase in global warming. Its effect on the increase in global warming is between 4-6%.

Ozone: A gas that naturally occurs in the Earth’s atmosphere and has two different and opposing properties. First, it is a positive and important factor in absorbing ultraviolet radiation from the sun. Ultraviolet radiation is harmful to humans and causes skin cancer. Second, its negative effect is through the absorption of ultraviolet light by the Earth, which in this passage increases the Earth’s temperature by 3 to 6 percent.

Other greenhouse gases that are released into the Earth’s atmosphere from factories, production processes, and storage are fluorine compounds. Their amount is small (1.5 percent) but they have a very destructive effect. Fluorinated gases do not exist naturally, and modern capitalist industry has produced them. These gases absorb the heat emitted by the Earth 22,000 times more effectively than carbon dioxide. In addition, they are very stable and can remain in the Earth’s atmosphere for thousands of years. Their sources and emission centers are: 

HFCs Refrigerators, air conditioning and cold storage

SF6 Electronics industries

PFCs Aluminium production and electronics industries

CFCs in refrigerators and air conditioners. This gas is not only a greenhouse gas but also plays an important role in reducing the ozone layer of the atmosphere. For this reason, according to the Montreal Protocol in 1987, it must be gradually replaced. But the replacement gases have the same destructive effect as greenhouse gases. In addition, many chlorine-containing substances are currently used in production, storage, disinfection, etc., which fill the destructive gap of refrigerator gases in destroying the ozone layer. According to a report by the European Commission in 2003, greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere have the following proportions in terms of their production source.

Table 1 from the European Commission (In percentage)

Energy without ransportation	Transportation	Agriculture	Factories	Garbage
61%	21%	10%	6%	2%

These figures (Table 1) highlight some differences with the figures reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Table 2) in 2007, mainly related to how the groups are grouped and how they are combined.

Table 2 from the IPCC (In percentage)

Energy production	Transportation	Agriculture	Deforestation	Factories	Residential places	Garbage
26	13	14	17	19		3

According to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007, deforestation has a greater impact on global warming than transport (17% versus 13%, Table 2). Deforestation also has other negative impacts, including:

Reduced carbon dioxide absorption by plants

Reduced natural water reserves in highlands

Reduced access to drinking water

Increased water pollution.

A cursory look at the figures and groups above (Tables 1 and 2) shows that the capital advance areas are responsible for more than 80 percent of the increase in the earth’s temperature, and what is called waste and part of transportation is also the result of the consumption of goods produced by this hellish system. The product of the round-the-clock work of the billion-strong masses of the world’s labour force sellers is transformed into capital and again into capital. The astronomical density of world capital has brought the world to the brink of explosion, and the mass of waste and filth has turned the earth’s space into a cauldron that is on the verge of collapsing due to the intense pressure of steam.

Instead of gaining a level of welfare and social facilities from their mass production, and enjoying livelihood, educational, health and welfare facilities, workers not only endure poverty, hunger, prostitution, addiction, food shortage, homelessness, lack of education, lack of hygiene and the dictatorship of this system, but also the mass of garbage and pollution resulting from the excessive production of capital falls on them from the sky and the earth. Their environment is turned into a mud pit and all kinds of environmental diseases such as cancer, allergies, asthma, heart, lung and intestinal diseases have turned their lives into hell. I will explain the hot and steamy sky, the result of garbage and the steamy earth from the mass of capital a little later, but for now I will focus more on the sources of the discussion, namely the reports of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) conference. The forum held conferences in 1990, 1996, 2001 and 2007. The most important action of the forum so far is the Kyoto Protocol (in Kyoto, Japan) in December 1997. Although the provisions of this treaty were amended and modified in subsequent conferences, the United States, Canada, Japan, Russia and New Zealand are still not ready to accept it and therefore refuse to join it. The Kyoto Protocol has also been criticized by another party. Many participants in subsequent conferences believe that the programs contained in it do not provide an adequate means to reduce the rate of global warming. The fifth conference of the forum consisted of three sessions as follows. The first session was dedicated to examining the physical aspects of the plan and was held in Stockholm in September 2013 (¹).

The second meeting examined the effects of global temperature change on the ecosystem (effects on living and non-living environment), and was held on March 31, 2014, in Yokohama, Japan. 309 researchers and representatives from 70 countries participated in it, and the results of the discussions have also been published. The third meeting or the last part of the fifth conference was held in Berlin in April 2014. Its agenda was to examine the amount of carbon dioxide and ways to reduce it. In a part of the report of this meeting related to the level of the world’s seas, it is stated.

The rise in sea levels is a direct result of global warming. This factor is becoming increasingly important, together with the increase in the world’s population and the subsequent increase in coastal cities. The latest scientific assessment (IPCC) shows that sea levels will rise by about one meter during this century, and this is entirely due to greenhouse gases. It is understandable that the average sea level has risen more rapidly since the second half of the 19th century than in the previous millennium. This increase was an average of 1.7 mm per year between 1901 and 2010, and an average of 3.2 mm per year between 1993 and 2010. The increase in global temperature affects sea level rise in various ways.

The most important factor in this rise is the increase in water volume due to rising temperatures and melting of polar glaciers and ice on the ground. The report emphasizes that the upper layers of sea water (0-700 meters) warmed between 1971 and 2010, and the amount of this increase in heat was greater than the amount between 1870 and 1971. The report states that this same issue, i.e. rising sea temperatures and melting ice, could have caused 75% of the rise in sea level since 1970. Measurements show that the Arctic ice is melting at an ever-increasing rate. Of course, this does not affect the rise in sea levels because these ice sheets float in the sea. However, the study also notes that the ice sheets on land (Greenland and Antarctica) are also rapidly decreasing. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in its detailed report, attributes 95% of global warming to greenhouse gases. It is worth noting that the report by two US aeronautical research institutes, NASA and the University of Washington Meteorological Institute on May 13, 2014, separately reached the same conclusion indicating the alarming increase in the rate of melting of Antarctic ice sheets. Both reports show that this growth is most visible in the western part of the region, and the rate and speed of melting are such that global sea levels will rise by 3 meters. Let’s not forget that all estimates so far have predicted something less than a meter during this century (a 3-meter rise in sea levels means that parts of Manhattan and almost all of Long Island, New York, would be underwater). It should be noted that the area of ​​Antarctica is 14 million square kilometres (the size of half the continent of Africa) and 98 percent of it is covered in ice. These two studies warn that this process has begun and cannot be stopped by any means. In other words, the earthly meaning of all this will be that as long as capitalism exists, we will only have to witness an increase in greenhouse gases and a rise in global temperatures and the terrible consequences that follow. The forum considers the following four scenarios or possibilities to keep climate conditions stable, and what is currently happening corresponds to the worst of these scenarios!

The first scenario is the scenario with the lowest increase in greenhouse gases. RCP 2.6

The second scenario is the scenario with the highest increase in greenhouse gases. RCP 4.5

The third scenario is the scenario with the highest increase in greenhouse gases. RCP 8.5

RCP (Representative Concentration Pathways)

The numbers (2.6, 4.5, 6.9 and 8.5) mentioned in these scenarios are the difference between the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth and the amount of ultraviolet energy that the Earth radiates into space. This energy is measured in watts per square meter (IPCC).

The first scenario considers the possibility of a temperature increase of less than 2 degrees during the last century. It should be noted that since 1880, the Earth’s temperature has increased by 0.85 degrees. One of the most important reasons for the increase in Earth’s temperature is the gradual increase in carbon dioxide. Apart from a slight decrease after the 2008 economic crisis, the speed of this increase between 2000-2010 has been greater than since 1970. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere is now 40 percent higher than in the period before the beginning of large-scale capitalist industry (the 1800s). The Stockholm report shows that the rate of increase in greenhouse gases is at a rate that corresponds to the worst-case scenario (scenario four). The scenario of the highest increase in greenhouse gases, which will increase the Earth’s temperature by 4 degrees by the end of this century. The Conference (IPCC) has predicted in its calculations with a probability of 66% that to control the increase in the Earth’s temperature by 2 degrees, the amount of carbon used should not exceed 1000 billion tons. This amount of carbon is in the form of carbon dioxide from various commodities such as carbon (coal and coal), oil, natural gas, deforestation, and other greenhouse gases. Calculations show that more than 500 billion tons of carbon have been used so far, which is more than half of its intended capacity. Given the remaining volume and the current rate of increase in these gases (about 25 billion tons of carbon dioxide are rising into the atmosphere annually), the Earth will reach the 2-degree mark in just the next 30 years. The Stockholm Conference concludes its report by emphasizing that in this case, not only must the increase in greenhouse gases be completely stopped, but it is even possible and inevitable that it will also take a negative direction, that is, reduce some of the gas in the atmosphere!

The slightest increase in global temperature leads to floods and disasters that lead to homelessness, hunger, poverty, misery, destruction and misery for hundreds of millions of workers. The destructive impact of increasing temperatures is a pervasive issue affecting all continents and oceans. From the melting of glaciers that have been standing for thousands of years to the extinction of trees and corals, to the threat to the lives of animals that find their environment altered, all are inevitable consequences of capitalist overproduction. In some parts of the world, the threat of climate change to the working population of the earth is so great that even the IPCC report cannot ignore it.

The report notes that poor workers in areas with few living resources are most vulnerable to the damage caused by increasing land degradation. Heat, drought, floods and the diseases they cause, combined with a severe shortage of drinking water, are threatening the lives of the working masses in these areas. With the increasing risk of reaching the fourth scenario (4 degrees Celsius by the end of this century), the IPCC conference in Yokohama (²) assesses the results of the work as follows:

1. Areas of the Earth will be uninhabitable, especially during certain seasons of the year.

2. Hundreds of millions of people living along rivers and seas with few facilities will be made homeless by floods and rising water levels in rivers and seas.

One of the authors of the Forum report believes that this scenario must be prevented at all costs. He, who is apparently a critic of the slaughter of the human environment by capital and capitalist policymakers, says that the world is moving in this direction as it has been seen so far. He says that there is only a maximum of 5 years left to prevent this scenario. It should be noted that due to the lack of active participation of politicians and representatives of major capitalist governments, the activity and enthusiasm of scientific researchers at the Yokohama Conference and subsequent conferences of the Forum was very impressive, and researchers and scientists had complete control over the course of a week in Yokohama. The Yokohama Report, which focuses on the effects of climate change on societies and ecosystems, is the most important and detailed research that humanity has ever conducted on climate change. The report clearly shows that workers, and especially their weaker layers, bear the most terrible consequences of these changes, and the losses they have paid to date have been very terrible. Regardless of which country these workers live in, heat waves, floods, and rising sea levels are a matter of life and death for them.

The capitalist system, of course, does not consider the working class in this region, as in all other regions, as a matter of absolute insignificance. One of the researchers participating in the conference says that if a poor worker loses his entire house and home in a storm, the coverage in official circles and the existing media of the world is much lower than if, for example, a rich person in the same country loses his summer cottage.

The latest report of the International Climate Forum and its recommendations in Berlin on April 14, 2014 (³)

Between 2000 and 2010, greenhouse gas emissions increased more than in previous decades. 80 percent of this increase was due to the production and use of oil, gas and coal in production and transport processes as energy storage. To keep global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, production and consumption must be reduced in general! The report explains that without urgent and fundamental solutions, we will see a temperature increase of 3.7 to 4.8 degrees Celsius. The report warns that if the population grows, production and consumption of goods increase in the current form, that is, within the framework of capitalist order and planning, if we wait until 2030, it will be very difficult to maintain the 2-degree limit of warming by 2100. The convincing solutions in this report are postponed to such a reduction in greenhouse gases that it is necessary to limit or even completely stop world economic growth and postpone it to the future.

Following the above explanation, let’s move on to a phenomenon that is growing rapidly and is taking on more complex dimensions every moment:

Smog

It is a type of air pollution that results from automobile exhaust fumes, factory smoke, and sometimes desert dust. Carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and sulfur dioxide molecules are involved in the formation of this phenomenon. This phenomenon first appeared on a large scale in the air of London in December 1952. Air pollution in London became so severe that it led to the deaths of 4,000 people in a week. A number that was significantly different from the usual weekly death statistics. There were about half a million tons of sulfur dioxide in the air, and the term “smog” was used for this phenomenon since then. The gases mentioned above generally come from traffic and smoke from factories. It should be noted that the formation of smog is not only caused by the increase of these gases, but other factors such as air inversion are involved in its formation. An inversion is when the temperature of the air increases with altitude and distance from the Earth’s surface, contrary to normal, and thus the temperature of the lower atmosphere becomes lower than its upper layers. An inversion is an extraordinary condition in which warm air cannot rise to the upper atmosphere as it normally would, and for this reason the aforementioned gases and other particles from fuel, tire wear and asphalt particles (these two materials are the source of polyaromatic hydrocarbons that are carcinogenic) and also desert dust are trapped at a low altitude above the Earth (between 0-11 km, the troposphere). One of the factors that causes this phenomenon in large cities is the concentration of air due to the increase in the particles and gases mentioned. For example, air inversion also occurs in small towns and villages with little traffic and no factories, but the important thing is that it does not lead to smog. Large and semi-large cities in the world, from Los Angeles, New York to Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai, are exposed to this severe air pollution for a large part of the year. Tehran and other large cities in Iran are also familiar enough with this pollution, a gift of capitalism. This blessing of capital, like all its blessings, causes the greatest harm and damage to the millions of workers who work and live in these areas. Many statistics have been published by various organizations and institutions, including the United Nations, on deaths due to air pollution in various cities, including Tehran, and I will refrain from citing them here because many of them are contradictory and unreliable. The main issue is that from all these reports, with all their contradictions, one result is obtained, and that is that the death rate of waste caused by air pollution, including smog, is very high, and this does not only include children, the elderly, and those who suffer from heart and lung diseases, but in cities such as Tehran, Mashhad, and other large cities of Iran, it includes a combination of different age groups of workers. Another factor that affects the formation of smog is desert soils, loose sands and freshly dried areas of wetlands, lakes and rivers. So that the mentioned gases mix with these dusts and make the phenomenon of smog more dangerous because this mixture is closer to the earth’s surface with its high concentration (high density). This phenomenon, which causes a lot of suffering in Iranian cities, has recently (from late March to April 5, 2014) reminded the people of London and southeast England of the disaster of 1952. The severity of the pollution reached such a level that government and city officials asked people to stay at home. In this regard, the charlatanism and foolishness of British Prime Minister David Cameron can be heard. He said this phenomenon is disturbing but normal! Yes, for him and other representatives of the bourgeoisie of his country, who have all kinds of protection and welfare facilities, it should be considered natural for millions of people of the working-class population to fall into the vortex of these deadly pollutions. The researchers of the London Environmental Organization considered one of the causes of this accident to be the mixing of desert dust (from northwest Africa) with gases suspended in the British air. In this regard, it is necessary to mention that sulfur and nitrogen oxides (sulfurs and nitrates) create acids with air humidity, which in turn causes acidity and eye irritation. These acids enter the blood and organs of the body through breathing and produce serious complications. In order to be able to guess the limits of the destruction of these acids on the body, one can observe their destructive and destructive effects on the facade of buildings and stones. Charlatanism is not unique to David Cameron and his ilk. The entire capitalist class always presents its class interests as public interests and injects this lie into the minds of the workers. In the field of environmental issues, capitalists also engage in the worst demagogues by using cross-class words and expressions such as “man’s role in destroying the environment” or “the destructive consequences of environmental pollution on human life” in general and regardless of which social class these people belong to or what social and livelihood conditions they are in. They talk very deceitfully and delusionally about the destruction of the environment by industry and not by capital, they talk about changing people’s policy against nature in environmental conferences The use of these demagogic formulations and expressions by theorists and intellectual representatives of the bourgeoisie pursues two specific goals. First, inducing this evil deception to the workers, who seem to have an important role in polluting the environment. And secondly, to shed light on the role of capital, which is the only real cause of all the disasters of the pollution of human life and work environment. In order to expose the demagogy of thinkers, ideologues and intellectual and cultural representatives of capital, it is necessary to examine their case in all the main areas of production and distribution. A point that should be taken into consideration in all discussions and reviews is that in the discussion about the use of harmful chemicals, the discovery and extraction of new energy sources, how to treat domestic animals in the field of food production and distribution, deforestation and many other similar issues, the destructive role of capitalist relations is always and everywhere assumed. In the process of capital accumulation and reproduction, this or that individual capitalist may use special and sometimes backward methods (for example, organic farming) that do not correspond to the large and mass production of modern capitalism (because capitalist production is always the mass production of goods). Our discussion is not on these exceptional cases, but on the overall performance of the capitalist system and on the methods and techniques used by this system to reduce the costs of accumulation and increase profits without any boundaries.

Deforestation or cutting off the earth’s respiratory system

The European Commission reports on 17/08/2008 that 27 million cubic meters of illegal timber enter Europe every year, as Europe is the largest importer of timber and forest products. 20% of all these imports are illegal, with the largest imports coming from Brazil and Indonesia. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that 13 million hectares of rainforest are destroyed every year, and about 80% of this is done illegally! This is an area the size of the entire country of Greece. About 20% of the world’s annual carbon dioxide emissions come from deforestation. On June 30, 2007, the World Bank ranked Indonesia and Brazil as the third and fourth largest emitters of carbon dioxide in the world, after China and the United States. The 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report by Nicholas Stern confirms the World Bank’s conclusion, showing that 20% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions come from deforestation, which is more than just carbon dioxide from transportation. Between 2000 and 2005, about 15,000 square kilometers (about 1% of the area of ​​Iran) of rainforest in Indonesia was destroyed. The amount of carbon dioxide released by Indonesia was 2.5 billion tons per year and Brazil 1.4 billion tons per year. This means that these two have produced about 16% of the world’s total carbon dioxide per year. Most of the distance thus cleared is used to produce soybeans, oil palm and corn to produce biological energy. In this way, attempts are made to convert fossil fuels into alcohol fuel (ethanol) with the justification that this fuel is less polluting!! But this show of love for the environment on the part of political and intellectual representatives of capital is just a pure modern demagoguery. A brief look at the issue reveals the shamelessness, unbridled Ness, nature abuse and anti-humanism of capital.

The most important factor in deforestation is the high organic composition of capital in the forestry sector, the production of wood products, paper, glue and similar products. Labour productivity here is very high and the labour force used to reproduce and valorize a given volume of capital is lower than in many other areas. For this reason, the rate of profit at the source in this sector is also lower than in some other areas. The rate of direct capital accumulation and advance at the international level in this sector has been one of the highest in history. In this regard, the increasing growth in the volume and value of fixed capital in this sector relative to the increase in the number of workers has been very dramatic and astonishing. Consider, for example, the Swedish wood, paper and pulp company Stora.

The company, one of the oldest in the world, dating back to 1288, became a pure wood and paper company in 1970. In 1904, its production reached around 20,000 tons of paper. This figure increased to 40,000 tons in 1913 with four production machines. After the Second World War, Stora became one of the largest trusts of its kind in the world, and in 1956 a new generation of paper machines was introduced, producing 130,000 tons of paper per year. These machines are 6 meters wide and 120 meters long and produce 600 meters of paper per minute. In 1972, the company’s latest generation of papermaking machines entered production, with an annual production volume exceeding 400,000 tons of paper and a new record of 1,926 meters of paper per minute. The machine, which is the largest and fastest in the world, costs $701 million and operates 24 hours a day, three shifts a day. In 1998, Stora merged with the Finnish company Enzo. The resulting trust is not only one of the largest paper, wood and related products manufacturers, but also has a global presence in the production, ownership of forests, land and distribution of its products. In 2013, Stora Enzo employed around 28,000 productive and non-productive workers and its production volumes and areas included 11.7 million tonnes of paper, 5.4 million tonnes of paper raw materials, 1.3 billion m2 of cardboard, 5.6 million m2 of wood and 2.9 million m2 of ready-to-use (semi-finished) wood. Stora-Enzo’s investment in 2013 was reported at 10.5 billion euros and its annual profit was 578 million euros. The company’s high capital overcapacity and productivity level are so high that it sometimes stops some of its production or machines permanently and lays off workers. A company with such astronomical production and accumulation growth is hungry for new areas of capital advance and will not stop at anything in this regard. The surplus value resulting from the brutal exploitation of Pakistani children in the field of collecting wastepaper from mountains of garbage in the slums of big cities forms part of its annual profit items. Let us return to the widespread clamour of bourgeois thinkers about replacing fossil fuels with ethanol. It was said earlier that the organic composition of capital in the huge trusts of the wood and paper industries is very high. A point that we have shown by referring to the specific example of Stora. The rate of profit at the origin of this territory is also, in principle, quite low because of this very high organic composition. (Because their mountain of fixed capital is not the producer and source of any surplus value, and the labour power they exploit, or the only source of surplus value is relatively very limited in comparison with the constant part of capital.) With this organic composition of capital, these trusts, first of all, in the normal process of forming the rate of profit, appropriate to themselves considerable amounts of the surplus value produced by the workers of other territories, but even this is not enough to achieve their desired and ideal rate of profit. The trusts in question have a fundamental and vital need for the unbridled advance of capital in the fields of exploitation of quasi-free labour. Fields where barbaric exploitation allows them to have the largest number of workers at the lowest wages. In addition, they must resort to all means to lower the cost of production. The transformation of the forests of Brazil, China, Latin America, Russia, Indonesia, and Eastern Europe into giants and wastelands occurs during this transition, and it is precisely here that the rooster’s tail of replacing fossil fuels with ethanol also emerges from under the cloak of bourgeois profiteering, making clear the purpose of the thick promises of the representatives of capital. Thinkers, ideologues, and direct representatives of capital have been trumpeting for some time that the use of bioenergy (alcohol, ethanol) in automobile fuel has supposedly found a solution for the environment and a replacement for fossil fuels. In Sweden, this issue began with the invitation of the then “socialist” president of Brazil, Luiz Lula Da Silva (2002-2010), in September 2007. The result of the meetings and discussions was the opening of a new area of ​​advance for Swedish paper and forest capital. Brazil, the sixth largest economy in the world and currently the largest market for Swedish consumer and capital goods in Latin America, became the center of advance capital in this area. But the main question is, what is the result of deforestation in Brazil and the production of alcohol for transportation? Isn’t it that alcohol also turns into carbon dioxide and water vapor as a result of fuel? So what other purpose do these noises have besides demagoguery? Except to brainwash the workers of the world and to write off the capital’s murder of nature and the campaign of capital to exploit quasi-free labour in all parts of the world as the fight against environmental pollution!! The reality is that in this transition, the only thing that is not being thought about is the health of the human and animal environment. Capital spills filth and blood from its pores into everything it touches and wherever it turns, including making the living environment of humans and other creatures more polluted and uninhabitable. On the one hand, deforestation causes the extinction of various animal and plant species, the blow that is inflicted on the ecological system in this way is irreparable because the return of lost generations of animals and plants is not possible, and cutting down trees also destroys the million-year-old respiratory system of the earth. On the other hand, by producing so-called biological energy, the same pollution is wreaking havoc on the environment and nature, with the difference that this time the earth’s respiratory system has suffered irreparable damage and its ability to keep the air healthy from the dirt and pollution caused by the anti-human capitalist system has been severely reduced.

In search of new energy sources, capital must also knock on the door of hell!  

I mentioned earlier that the latest conference of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in Berlin, entitled “Without urgent and fundamental solutions, we will see a temperature increase of 3.7 to 4.8 degrees,” emphasized that between 2000 and 2010, the rate of growth in greenhouse gases was higher than in previous decades. The conference adds that 80% of this increase was related to the production and use of oil, gas, and coal in production and transportation processes as energy storage. Now let’s take a look at the energy sector, the functioning and direction of global capital in an era when most research and estimates have warned and emphasized the urgency of the gradual decline of conventional and up-to-date oil and gas reservoirs. As I said, the development of capitalism has been associated with the use of more and more machinery and the relative use of less and less labour. This has led to a continuous increase in the organic composition of capital and a tendency to a falling rate of profit. The growth of the means of production relative to labour implies an increase in the productivity of social labour. That is, each worker works on a larger number of machines, simultaneously using more raw materials and, as a result, producing a larger volume of goods. In other words, the development of productive forces leads to an increase in the organic composition of capital and a simultaneous decrease in the rate of profit. For the simple reason that commodities now attract less living labour. Capital has mechanisms in place to counteract the downward trend in the rate of profit. Increasing the length of the working day, increasing the intensity of labour, lowering the costs of production, increasing the productivity of social labour, and all the levers of intensifying the exploitation of workers are among these mechanisms. Despite the use of all these mechanisms, capital still inevitably and inevitably falls into the abyss of crisis. Crises can provide and complete the necessary conditions for the destruction of capitalism if the working class is prepared and there is an organized, council, conscious, and powerful movement of this class, but otherwise and in the absence of such a movement, they play the opposite role. In such a situation, it is capital that takes control of the work and makes the crisis a mechanism for overcoming the crisis. New investment is temporarily stopped. Millions of workers are thrown into the wasteland of unemployment, hunger, and death from poverty, the daily work becomes longer and the pressure of work increases, the price of labour is mercilessly slaughtered, and the livelihood and welfare of workers are subjected to night owls. Bankrupt companies and institutions are removed from the market, and their assets are acquired at a low price by the larger capitalist giants, a process called capital refining because the social capital of each country or sector of global capital in crisis thus urgently and, of course, very temporarily refines some of its Achilles’ heels. In this regard, a large amount of capital disappears (due to the decline in the value of capital) and finally, following all these events, a situation arises in which the remaining capital meets the necessary conditions for re-production, obtaining massive profits and obtaining a favourable rate of profit that responds to the development of accumulation. Capitalism emerges from the abyss of crisis by unemployment and displacement of hundreds of millions of workers throughout the world and by spreading the burden of the crisis on the lives of the working masses, undertakes much more massive and gigantic accumulation, increases the productivity of social labour through the discovery, production and application of more complex techniques and industries, continues the upward course of its organic composition forcibly and finally falls a few steps further into the quagmire of a more crushing and widespread crisis. Crises are repeated, and in this process, the interval between their occurrences becomes shorter and their destructive power becomes greater. The further increase in the organic composition of capital, which is the origin of the economic crisis, after the crisis acts as a factor in the development of new areas of capital, the production of ever greater quantities of goods, and the use of the superiority of high efficiencies to absorb a larger share of the surplus values ​​produced by the world’s workers. To examine the impact of this process on the ever-worsening pollution of the environment, this time we turn to the energy sector. There are currently 183 major oil and gas companies worldwide, 25 of the largest of which are American. Not so long ago, between 1950 and 1970, seven major oil companies, known as the “Seven Sisters,” controlled almost all of the world’s oil, from production to distribution. Four of these companies were spun off from the large American company, the Standard Oil Company. The giant Standard Oil Trust was founded in 1863 by John D. Rockefeller with a capital of about $90,000. The company grew from a capital of $1 million in 1867 to $2.5 million in 1872 and then to $3.5 million in 1874. This trend continued with increasing intensity. Until the pressure of fierce profit-seeking competition within various sectors of the American bourgeoisie forced the president of this country to issue an order to dissolve the company. The company had a capital of $ 100 million, the number of workers it exploited reached 60,000, and it controlled 64% of the total oil production in the United States. The dissolution of the Standard Oil Company in 1911 led to the formation of 37 companies from it. Some of these companies merged with other large oil companies such as the British oil company British Petroleum and the Dutch oil company Shell Corporation, and today there are three large American oil and gas companies whose initial capital belongs to the parent company (Standard Oil Company). According to a 2013 report, the capital and profits of these three large oil trusts were as follows:

Table 3: Figures in billions of dollars

Company name	Capital	Number of workers	Profit	Asset
XXon mobil Corporation	438.3	75000	57.5	520
Chevron texaco	242	62000	46	369
Marathon Oil	16.3	3367	6.3	53.6

(The total assets of these three companies are $943 billion, which is about 6% of the US budget in 2013)

The combined capital of these three companies is $696.6 billion, and their number of employees is 140,367. Their capital growth compared to the capital of the parent company has been about 8 million times, while the increase in their employees has not exceeded about 1,400 times. Therefore, the organic compound growth of their capital during this period has been more than 5,700. I will not discuss the other companies derived from the parent company (34 other companies) here because it was almost impossible to find the rate of capital growth. But it is enough to consider the 5700-fold increase in the organic composition of the Rockefeller family’s capital to understand its historical impact on the total social capital of countries or world capital, and especially in terms of the role and direction of development of industry and labour productivity in the system of wage slavery. The main point becomes clear when we consider the matter in terms of the technical composition of capital (a certain volume of tools, machines, and raw materials that, regardless of their value relationship, are used by a certain number of workers in the production process, the ratio of which is determined by calculating the value of the fixed and variable parts of the basic capital). The development of the technique of production and the productivity of labour in various fields, and especially in the field of oil extraction and production, provides conditions that allow capital to achieve gigantic leaps in a limited period of time, relying on this technical composition. To clarify the matter, I will give an example:

Chesapeake Energy:

It is a gas company that was founded in 1989 with a capital of $50,000 and 10 employees. Now (2013) the company has a capital of $11.6 billion, 12,598 employees and an annual profit of $3.08 billion. The company’s capital has grown 232,000 times in 25 years, while the number of employees has grown 1,260 times and the organic composition of its capital has increased 184 times. Its assets show an astronomical figure of $16.6 billion. The company is currently the largest gas company in America and, interestingly, it owns a technology for producing gas that threatens the environment of many animals and humans now and much more in the future. I will return to this point later. Let us first see in what areas this uninterrupted continuation of the increase in capital accumulation, which is the result of the unpaid labour (surplus value) of billions of workers around the world and the poverty and depopulation of hundreds of millions of people living in the most oil-rich countries or their other chains in different regions of the world, takes place? In the meantime, let us consider the question of what the process of excessive and galactic production of capital does to the environment, apart from all the evils it brings in terms of exploitation, the increasing intensification of exploitation, the total lack of rights, oppression or the world of other crimes that normally and especially in the process of crises weigh on the working masses? How it turns our living environment into a swamp of chemicals, mountains of waste from consumer goods, the earth bloated by increasing temperatures, cities covered in smoke, the generation of animals suffocated, and depleted resources. A few decades ago, there was talk of the depletion of conventional oil and gas reservoirs. Later, its price per barrel rose to more than $70 on the world market, and the golden profits of this field, as usual, led capital to explore all ways to find more massive reserves and extract these reserves at the lowest prices. Capitalists trampled all the furnaces of the world to achieve this goal and conquer new peaks of profit. I mentioned some of these discoveries and fields in the introduction, but it is necessary to examine the details of the work of capital in each of these territories in a little more detail. I have already spoken about oil sands and mentioned the American company Chesapeake in this regard. In 2008, this company discovered the world’s fifth largest gas reserves (shale gas) 1 km underground in the state of Louisiana, and its extraction will begin in 2015. The extraction technique is similar to that used for gases buried in shale layers 3 km underground, using a vertical well to the same depth and then drilling for kilometers in the entire surrounding horizontal surface. This technique, called hydrofracking or fracking, works like this: water, along with 10% chemicals (I will discuss the contents of these materials later), crushes and dissolves hard rocks underground under extremely high pressure – rocks that have stored all the dissolved bodies of organisms, including plants and other animals, in the form of tiny gas bubbles in their layers for 350 million years under high pressure (these rocks are placed in horizontal layers on top of each other) and transports them to the surface of the earth using special pumps. The extraction and production of these natural gases in the United States and Canada in 2012 was 203 billion cubic meters. The total world reserves in this area are estimated at 183 trillion cubic meters, which is about 2.5 times the current reserves compared to the natural gas that has been extracted and will be extracted so far, which is 74 trillion cubic meters. The United States has 27% of these reserves and China has 17%. More important than the extracted gas and its consumption and the resulting increase in greenhouse gases, is the type of extraction technique and chemicals used. The chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing have so far been secret and no one knows about them. Dick Cheney, Vice President of George W. Bush (2001-2009), passed a law in the US Congress in 2005 that permanently sealed the secrecy of these formulas (each extraction area has its own chemical formula). It is worth mentioning that Dick Cheney, who was also George Bush’s father’s Secretary of War, was the CEO of Halliburton, which provides services, production equipment, transportation, extraction techniques, etc. to oil companies from 1995 to 2000. This company is the largest American company that signed an oil contract with the Iraqi government after the Iraq war and the fall of Saddam. At the same time, the same company signed a $7 billion contract with the Pentagon to transport military equipment and supplies to Iraq. Recently, a laboratory revealed some of the contents of one of these chemical compounds used in the fracking technique by analysing contaminated water around the wells. These compounds include Benzene, toluene, Xylene, and Ethylbenzene. At this point, we need to ask why such substances were chosen among all these chemical solvents. The answer is very simple from a chemical point of view. They dissolve similar substances, while, for example, salt is not able to dissolve methane. Benzene is a gas that easily dissolves methane in the layers of silt. However, this is a carcinogen that is very dangerous to humans precisely because it is a gas in its normal state, and toluene is also a carcinogen (although less so than benzene). The other two substances are also toxic and are especially deadly to aquatic organisms. I would like to add here that recently, on the websites of these extraction companies that use such anti-human and anti-environmental techniques, a list of solvent substances (such as soap and the like, which pose no danger to humans or nature) is given, and they pretend that these are the substances that are used in this technique!! A kind of charlatanism and blatant deception that is inherent in capital and capitalists. We should ask Dick Cheney if this is the case, if the materials used in this technique are truly safe, then what is the point of all this justification, all this science and propaganda, and the campaign of innocence, as if no mistake had been made at all and no harmful chemical compounds had been used by the above institutions, and so on!? Dick Cheney knows very well how deadly the drugs are, and his strong and vehement oaths to deny the incident also come from this knowledge. He has the right to cover up this crime of capital, because otherwise he would have to openly and openly shout that capital is willing to plan the most horrific killings in order to gain more profit, as in practice, they routinely do and capital has done historically.

When we look at the actual materials used in the process of using the above technique, we understand the concerns of the working masses living in the extractive areas and the workers involved in this production area, on the other hand, we see the deceit and villainy of those like Dick Cheney who try to hide their terrible anti-human face under the mask of the law of capital. I invite the readers of this text to watch the films and documentary reports that have recently been published in the media in this regard, which refer to the strange and sudden diseases that the inhabitants of the extractive areas suffer from. The methane gas measured in the surface waters near the fracking wells is 17 times the amount that is present in non-extractive areas. The same technique is used to extract crude oil and gas from rock deposits 1 kilometer deep in the earth, which contain 60% crude oil and 40% gas. The reserves of this type of oil, called tight, are estimated to be around 335 to 345 billion barrels worldwide. Although these estimates may be somewhat exaggerated, they still indicate that the capitalist world is completely dependent on this type of energy, and as oil production has been steadily increasing since 1960 (Figure 1), this trend will continue until the last drop of this energy is exhausted.

Figure 1 Oil production in million barrels per day: Numbers from the EIA Energy Information Administration

There are currently 70,000 oil fields in the world. Of course, 45% of the oil that is consumed today as a raw material and auxiliary in factories and manufacturing institutions is produced in only 100 oil fields, which shows how huge reservoirs have not yet found their place in the global market. The world’s energy consumption is currently about 140 million barrels of oil (if we want to express this need in terms of oil) per day, of which 40% of this energy is from oil. To compare oil production throughout its history, we can compare the figure of 91 million barrels today with 500 thousand barrels in the early 1900s.

The circles of intellectuals in cafes, all the green groups and many leftists also raise the question of whether environmental issues are the workers’ issue? While they sometimes do not have work and if they do, they are exploited in the most severe way, have unpaid wages, do not have shelter or if they do, it is a shack where they only spend the night for the next day’s work and in any case they have bigger problems and problems than the environment. I am not talking here only about workers who are busy producing all kinds of goods and increasing the profits of capitalists in workplaces contaminated with all kinds of poisons, chemicals harmful to humans and animals, although this huge part of the working class has the worst working conditions and is directly exposed to destruction both in the workplace and in life as a whole. However, this is not just about them, but about all workers, namely teachers, the unemployed, office workers, nurses, employees of administrative services, distribution services and students, etc. In addition, I am not just talking about the 70 million Iranian workers, but about the 5 billion workers living in the capitalist world, living in a hell polluted with all kinds of toxins in the air, land, water and food resulting from the accumulation of capital and the excessive production of capitalism. Perhaps for the greens and leftists of the academic party and those who are fond of Martian discussions, the environmental issue is not an important aspect of the lives of workers!! But from the perspective of a worker with at least some awareness of anti-capitalist relations, the fight against environmental pollution is an important and inevitable part of his daily class struggle. The circles above, with a thousand ifs and buts, pretend to the working masses that capitalism and all its mire and crimes can be humanized with a little solution!! and organized!! As if these crimes against the masses and their living environment are something temporary, transient, caused by the negligence, etc. of individual capitalists. Issues that are the twin of capitalist relations of production are long-standing and structural. Nowhere in human history has any ruling class committed such a crime against humanity, civilization, and the basis of life of the majority of the world’s population. You who are helplessly and hypocritically seeking a cure for the pain from within this hellish system are actually only seeking to prevent its inevitable collapse. Your job is simply to allow this system, with the help of some patches, to continue its miserable existence on the chests of the working masses for a longer period of time. Environmental discussions in their current form are simply a deception of the capitalist parties in relation to the workers and their bargaining over the length and breadth of position, ownership, and power with each other. From the perspective of an informed worker, the environment is a matter of life and death for the working class, and in this regard, one of the most vital areas of the anti-capitalist struggle of the masses of this class. These are the workers who are constantly exposed to mysterious and unknown or unknown diseases in their workplaces, lives, neighbourhoods and residential areas caused by a wave of waste, polluted air, polluted water, contaminated and suspicious food, clothing contaminated with toxins and dangerous metals, goods produced from harmful materials, etc. Capitalist production relations have never and historically never placed any value on the life of the worker. Profit in this mode of production is the beginning and end of all things. Accumulation of capital, production of goods, circulation and sale of products and achieving greater profits and capital are all that have filled the grooves of the brains of the capitalist and intellectual representatives of capitalism. In this valley, there is no room for any sense of human responsibility for the environment, waste of production, surpluses from production, even whether the goods produced, other than for consumption value (fulfilling a social need), contain harmful substances or what they do to humans, or other similar issues. The centuries-old history of this system has witnessed, moment by moment, that capitalists, as soon as they feel a decrease in profits in a territory, leave the area (whether a factory or a warehouse or anything else), leaving behind only giants, uninhabitable ruins that become nests for owls. A simple look at the economic growth of countries, what the capitalist economists call GDP growth, shows that countries such as Bangladesh and China with 6.6% growth, India and the Philippines with 10% growth each (countries that have had high economic growth in the world) are facing huge climate and environmental problems. The astronomical surplus values ​​and huge profits resulting from the exploitation of billions of workers in these societies fill the pockets of state and private capitalists and their international partners. Part of these profits, in the hands of the state, are spent on the basic facilities needed for the further value-added cycle of social capital, such as water and electricity networks, roads, railways, ports, urban development, etc., and at the same time, the lives of the same masses of workers who create profits and capital, their natural environment and homes are polluted and destroyed. These crimes are committed, and it is natural that no capitalist or capitalist state feels any responsibility for the lives of these people, because in the religion of capital, the only existential characteristic of the worker is to produce surplus value and capital, to do so in order to exist, and when he is destroyed under the pressure of the various evils of this system, including the criminal evils of the environment, he is replaced by another worker. Among the 20 cities in the world with the highest economic growth rates, 6 Asian cities are exposed to the most environmental pollution. These cities are Kolkata (India), Manila (Philippines), Jakarta (Indonesia), Dhaka (Bangladesh) and Chittagong (Bangladesh). The cities that have achieved the next highest pollution levels are Mumbai and New Delhi in India. What all these big cities have in common with Tehran is that they are increasingly filled with a large number of people who are constantly migrating to these areas in search of a place to sell their labour and provide for themselves and their families. Air pollution in the city, pollution of groundwater and running water around the cities due to the entry of urban and industrial sewage, effluent from urban waste, the increasing phenomenon of air inversion, the expansion of slums that lack the minimum standard urban facilities such as piped water, urban electricity and other services. The accumulation of urban waste in every corner, which in the hot and dry seasons, the dust it produces further pollutes the city’s air. The increase in diseases caused by poor and contaminated nutrition of poor and unemployed workers, brutal police actions by officials in these areas who occasionally destroy the humble shelters of workers with destructive attacks, the increase in theft, buying, selling and using drugs, all these afflictions afflicting the masses of large cities from Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, London, Paris to Karachi, Jakarta, Kolkata, Shanghai, Beijing, Los Angeles, Mexico City, New York, Tehran, and Ahwaz, etc. are crimes that are inflicted on them by the wage slavery system. It is not out of place to quote here from a report by the Chinese Environmental Protection Agency on April 23, 2014, on the worsening condition of groundwater in this country with a population of nearly one billion workers: “About 60% of all controlled groundwater in China contains such levels of pollution that it cannot be drunk. According to the official report, water analysis in 203 major cities shows that its quality has worsened by 57.5% since 2011.” According to this organization, 43% of China’s running waters and lakes are so polluted that even human contact with their water is not suitable. The root of all these environmental disasters affecting the living and working environment of workers in each of these countries lies in the existence and dominance of capitalism. For this reason, environmental problems are not only workers’ problems, but they alone are the solution to this disaster. Because these are current and daily problems of workers, international problems that are as global as the working class itself and, most importantly, are caused by the social-productive relations to which the working class is the only alternative, and the prospect of the liberation of the working class, that is, the liberation of humanity from oppression, exploitation, and hostility to man and nature, is only possible through the destruction of this wage labour system. When no human being is forced to sell his labour power, when the commodity and its concept are eliminated from the face of the earth and everything is brought under the conscious collective will of individual humans, then man will return to the embrace of nature and nature will find its eternal support. This new discovery!! That the capitalist mode of production is apparently devoid of a plan!! And that each individual capitalist operates from his own financial balance sheet and therefore none of them think about the end and consequences of the environment, leads its magician and disgraceful owners only to the conclusion that then the problem of the system and all its anti-humanism and Holocaust-making originates from its lack of a plan!! These fraudulent, baseless and deceitful discoverers complete their absurd theory by also stating that these same relations of production, given the scientific advances achieved, can and are able to protect and preserve the environment well!! This vulgar discovery is of course nothing new. All the old leftist parties, social democracy since its inception and all the green leftist parties today, up to the Russian and Chinese communists, have thought this way before and are still staunch supporters of this theory today. All of them believe that it is enough to hand over capitalist society to experienced and specialized people, it is enough to impose controls on capital, for the scientific and environmental elites with superhuman intelligence to take over the management of affairs, and it is enough for the capitalists to listen to their prophetic advice, then, given the scientific and technical advances achieved in this powerful system, all problems will be solved and the living environment of humans will become a paradise! All of this ultimately leads to the miracle of state control of capital or controlled capitalism. The bourgeois consciousness, even in its most sublime scientific maturity, is fundamentally reactionary. It is not the fault of the bourgeois. It is the crime of capital that does this, it is capital that derives its existence from the exploitation, depreciation, erosion and annihilation of the worker, and it must make this very process of worker destruction and anti-humanity the fabric of the thought, consciousness and understanding of its owners or their intellectual representatives. The discoverers of the above theory apparently do not understand that the problem of capitalism is not the lack of a plan. It has the most advanced planning. The problem of this system is that this planning must guarantee the production of profits as galactic as possible, and in this regard it must bring down the sword of violence on everything that is human, including the health of the human environment. The intellectual discoverers of the theory of capital control forget that schools, universities and institutes are all areas of capital’s advance, and their scientific and technical advances are regulated only with the aim of increasing labour productivity and increasing profits enormously.

Universities and scientific institutes not only train various techniques and methods of production, types of goods and methods of sales and marketing, but also a large mass of specialized workers for capital. This is itself part of the entire orchestra of capital, and the accumulation of capital is the main melody of this production process, whoever dances to this melody has a place there and gets something from its general benefit. You are so fascinated by capital with your class illusions that you think that only a class society and a production process based on exploitation and separation of the worker from his work are capable of solving problems and issues!! What a terrible and false dream, if it were so, that the elites and the wise men sitting on the throne of capital’s power would succeed in changing the functioning of capital through state-sponsored or greater state intervention in the economy and giving it a humanistic face. If it were so, the state capitalisms of China, the former Soviet Union, all of former Eastern Europe, Cuba, and Vietnam would be an environmental paradise!!

One of the examples that these parties and groups cite as examples and references is the Scandinavian countries and the so-called former welfare states. Sweden, which has been ruled by social democracy for nearly 65 years, has always and still complains about the dying bottom of the Baltic Sea, and Norway has also made artificial fish farming one of its major industries due to the toxicity of fish in the surrounding seas. The Swedish Food and Health Agency prohibit pregnant women and children from eating many fish from this sea and recommends that others only eat fish from this sea once a week at most. Many areas of the country have been assessed as not being suitable for residential construction because companies producing products, raw materials and auxiliary materials that are harmful and dangerous to humans have been operating in these areas. Now, let’s leave aside the neuropsychiatric paralysis disaster caused by the use of the drug thalidomide, the gradual disappearance of lakes due to the use of chemical fertilizers in modern agriculture, and the discussion of the Swedish state-owned electricity company Vattenfall, one of the largest electricity companies in Europe, in Germany and many other European countries that use the worst type of fuel, namely coal, in their energy production institutions. Because this is a long story. Many residential buildings built after the Second World War in Sweden contain the metal element Radon to such an extent that it is harmful to live in them (the alpha radiation of this element causes lung cancer), but nevertheless, especially workers with a worse economic situation live in them. It must be said that the role of the Swedish social democratic government in all these issues, which I have only touched on here, is very large because, as explained above, the capitalist’s goal is simply to produce goods with the aim of making a huge profit. It does not matter to him how this commodity is made and with what materials, as long as it gives the workers the largest possible surplus value or the largest possible unpaid labour. The social democratic state of capital, which has been riding the wave of illusion of the working masses for many years, has held the ownership of the mass of capital and the political power of capital, like any other state of capital, has approved all the crimes of capital in the field of environmental pollution. Just as it does with workers in all other spheres of social life. Meanwhile, if the Swedish capitalists pour their corruption and waste into the developing countries of Africa and their harmful products increasingly into countries with almost free labour and cheap raw materials, it not only does not reduce the brutality of this system but only reveals the global dimensions of this savagery and barbarity. Moreover, the efforts of capitalist economists such as John Keynes in the early twentieth century and the generations after him to so-called rationalize capital and organized capitalism resulted in the crises of the seventies, eighties and nineties and the long-lasting stagnation of capitalism. Following such periods, the most catastrophic decades of environmental destruction began in the 1980s.  The internal logic of capital, namely, accumulation, forces it to resort to all forms of aggression in the market to sell surplus production. The path that capital takes to escape from stagnation. Therefore, the development of marketing and the wider creation of a credit system and the indebtedness of the millions of workers to consume as much as possible became the melody of the second half of the last century. This economic policy of capitalist governments is to put workers and their future generations in debt (when a worker succeeds in buying a house or apartment with the help of loans from financial organizations and the guarantee of the capital state, this debt and its interest are so high that even his future generations, his children, cannot pay it). Capitalism has advanced in this transition as far as the eye can see. A strategy that in turn is part of the momentum of capital’s rush to reach the point where the rate of accumulation exceeds the rate of surplus value production, leading to explosive crises like the one in 2008. A crisis that has not ended after six years and has left hundreds of millions of workers and their families in misery. One of the common features of all the aforementioned parties, according to the discussion that has taken place, is their lack of trust in the working masses. Their argument is that the masses are backward and unfit to govern society. The extreme humiliation of the working masses is done only with the aim of (instead of emphasizing their leadership role) presenting these masses as always and everywhere in need of party leaders and always considering themselves as their promised Messiah and Mahdi. Among them are intellectuals who, by criticizing “machinist”, “modernism” and the slogan “fair production and fair consumption”, with an anti-capitalist stance but in practice capital-oriented, place part of the blame for environmental destruction on the shoulders of the global working class. This is just a purification of the relationship of buying and selling labour, exonerating the bourgeoisie and making the workers complicit in a crime they did not commit. The so-called “socialist” and “communist” parties argue that the working class is not capable of dismantling this system and the future society without their leadership!! And it cannot do anything to improve the environment. Workers do not turn to class struggle out of conviction or ideological beliefs. They do not enter the trenches of struggle based on choice and freedom, but it is life under the pressure of exploitation and brutality of capital that draws them to the field of class struggle. It leads to protest and organization. The polluted work environment, the polluted neighbourhood, the polluted city air, the close cooperation of the government officials of capital and the capitalists in destroying their lives are also an integral part of the same miserable life. Here too, as in all other areas of social life, the seeds of protest, resistance, struggle and organization grow, and the spontaneous movement of “nature activists”, “environmentalists”, “animal protection associations”, “support associations” gradually grows and begins to flourish here and there. This is where anti-capitalist class consciousness and awareness, along with the horizon of socialization based on the abolition of wage labour, becomes a necessary condition for a purposeful, organized, and council-based anti-capitalist struggle. Otherwise, all efforts will wear the garb of reformism and fall prey to misguidance. In the current practice of the anti-capitalist struggle in all spheres of social life, it is the working masses that learn the lessons of struggle, organization and socialization, and lay the seeds of their future organs of power. The awareness of the organizers and active masses of these spontaneous movements so as not to be abused by the governmental and non-governmental authorities of capital is the main condition for progressing towards self-management and socialization of the abolition of wage labour in the future. This means that we should not be sweepers of capitalism, the goal is not to undo or repair the devastation of this system. This system is inherently anti-human, and its reform and restoration is not our way out of misfortune. Nature destruction, anti-humanity, and the depletion of all natural resources in Favor of capital accumulation are the essence of this system. As long as capitalism exists, it is impossible to achieve a healthy environment. We must prepare for the way out of this hell and explore the way to establish a society free from exploitation, classes, and the state. A society in which man and a free and prosperous human life, the liberation of man from any bondage beyond himself, are the starting, returning, and ending points of all things. A society composed of workers’ power councils with the participation of all workers in all aspects of life without the intervention of any party or faction that decides for them and on their behalf. A society where the elite headquarters and political experts do not determine the fate of humans by writing programs and statutes over the heads of the workers in the style of parliamentary parties and the hierarchy and oligarchy of capitalist society. We should also point out that for a long time, some people called workers, communists, socialists, etc., with the aim of leading the future society, have called themselves the command headquarters of the working class and, in their platform, they call on the Islamic state of capital to be the guardian of the environment, “measures and programs that lead to environmental destruction for the sake of profit interests… should be declared illegal”, “budgets… should be allocated to preserve and make the environment healthier… and the government should respect environmental priority”, “In the field of automobile production… the latest achievements must be used to protect the environment,” and in this way they create a wave of illusion in the minds of the workers that it is possible to repair this system, that it is enough to make a change in the transportation system, car fuel, etc., and then everything will be as intended. Discussions about minor changes here and there are not enough to improve the environment a little, and such changes, if they are made, are accompanied by a world of new destruction. “The house is in ruins.” The abolition of wage labour movement does not see the struggle for environmental improvement in any way separate from the struggle against capitalism. A radical attack must be organized against the basis of the relationship of surplus value production, against the system of buying and selling labour power. The working class must organize its real fighting power to free itself from this system, including from the environmental pollution of this system. A conscious and powerful council movement must be created that will fight in all areas against all manifestations of the power and existence of capital, and in the continuation of this real class war, it must establish all the necessary conditions for the establishment of a new society and the council planning of work and social production by all human beings. It is on the basis of this daily campaign that a society will be created in which nature, and the human living environment will also be saved from the capture of capital and the danger of the terrible nightmares of capitalist production relations.

Chapter Two

Capital, transforming the earth’s vital resources into a lever for increasing profits and starving workers

Agricultural products, basic food products, primary organic compounds (oil and gas and petrochemical raw materials), metals and various minerals are among the raw materials. Among these materials, agricultural goods have a special status. The volume of production, the cost of production and, consequently, the value of these products are significantly under the pressure of natural determinants. Factors such as the type and quality of the land, the suitability or otherwise of the seasons, the prevalence of plant pests, and the type of seed each have a significant impact on this transition. This in turn affects the production process, competition and valuation of the goods that require the use of these products. The problems of accurately predicting the sufficient production of raw and auxiliary materials or the changes in the prices of these goods due to changes in natural factors mean that capitalists in this field cannot guarantee their desired dominance in controlling prices, even though monopolies or cartels, because the production volume is under the pressure of natural factors. The production of these materials cannot be increased suddenly, and even if this were to be done, there must always be some surplus production. Which in turn entails the cost of warehousing and maintenance and other stages of product organization. This issue has long been one of the pressing issues of the capitalist system, especially after the Second World War. With the astronomical expansion of industrial accumulation, the need for raw and auxiliary materials, as we see in the case of oil, increased sharply. A process that has not ended and will not end, meaning that as capital accumulation increases, the part that constitutes fixed capital, namely machinery and tools, increases, and subsequently the need for the production of livestock and agricultural raw materials increases by the same amount. In the introduction, we said that especially in the current period, given the continuous attack of the bourgeoisie on the price of labour, it is the value of raw materials that leads to the increase in the cost price of goods above all. On this basis, with the cancerous development of capital accumulation, the thirst of capitalists for access to cheap raw materials is increasing more than ever. The plundering of land, mines, seas and lakes, oil and gas resources at a depth of 4,000 meters, along with the exploitation of the quasi-free labour of 5 billion workers in the world, is what capitalism needs at the moment, the moment of its survival. The result of this process, apart from hunger, poverty, misery and the increasing displacement of billions of workers, is the accumulation of garbage and filth on the planet, polluted air, smoke and fumes and gases that kill people. In a more detailed examination, the problems of capital in the agricultural sector, compared to other sectors of the capitalist economy, can be listed as follows.

Increasing soil fertility

With the development of capitalist mechanized agriculture, methods were employed that temporarily increased the productivity of labour, but what was once considered an important advance in increasing the fertility of the land is now seen as the depletion of the soil of its vital reserves (quoted verbatim from Marx, Capital, Volume I). A reality of the kind we have seen in the case of energy resources that can only be called the plundering of the earth by capital. This issue is of the utmost importance in the life of contemporary man and future generations of mankind, and for this reason I will devote the present chapter of my discussion to examining the dimensions of capital’s influence on agriculture and the sphere of food production. The four factors mentioned above, namely the changes of the seasons, the quality and contents of the soil, the pests and the type of seed, are effective factors in determining the annual yield. Capitalism has been able to control them from the very beginning, the importance of the problem reached its peak in the years after the second imperialist war, and the remarkable technical advances of these times have also provided the owners of capital with the necessary tools to achieve this goal. The long cycle of planting, planting and harvesting, the difficulties of predicting the yield, the danger of pests and the loss of products both during fertilization and after harvesting and sometimes during storage, are all factors that distinguish this area of ​​capital accumulation from other areas and affect the level of productivity of labour. However, one thing is a vital and inherent condition for this system. The attainment of the maximum surplus value, and this requires the development of accumulation with the uncontrolled increase of the surplus labour of the working masses at the expense of necessary labour, that is, their wages. In this process, the mechanization of planting, harvesting, storage, and transport certainly play a very decisive role and bear a sufficient share in raising the rate of profit. In this transition, capital, like all other spheres of advance and by virtue of its institutional nature, takes the path of excessive production, seeing the acquisition of golden items of profit as everything and the destruction of humans or their endless misery in this regard as the simplest and most unsparing tasks. With the increasing development of plowing techniques, it created conditions in which the soil at a limited depth becomes very fine due to repeated plowing, is exposed to the air in a porous form, and in general, especially its upper surfaces are oxidized by the action of oxygen, and the absorption of elements and salts by plant roots becomes easier. A project that is implemented within the framework of the real needs of human life is not objectionable, but when it is carried out by capital, when it becomes an effective weapon for the excessive accumulation of capital and the acquisition of galactic profits, it produces a reverse deadlock. The repetition of this process reduces the productivity of the soil, depletes the earth of its vital reserves, in addition, because agricultural lands have been under cultivation for hundreds and sometimes thousands of years, as they are depleted of necessary substances, what is absorbed by the roots of plants also undergoes quantitative and qualitative changes. Instead of being useful, these substances become harmful and pathogenic. Before I enter the discussion of changing the contents of agricultural soil, I find it necessary to give a brief explanation about each nutrient and their role in the human body. The human body requires a relatively large number of different elements to be able to carry out its daily tasks normally and to ensure its normal growth. Of these, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen are used in almost all organic substances in the body, from hormones, proteins, hydrocarbons to fats and DNA. Elements such as sodium, calcium, chlorides and phosphates are also present in all body fluids. In addition to all these, metals are used in small amounts (less than 100 mg per day) but are very important (Micronutrients) in the structure of enzymes and various chemical mechanisms of the body. Minerals include fluorine, copper (Cu), selenium (Se), manganese (Mn), iodine (I), molybdenum (Mo), and chromium (Cr). Reducing dental caries, regulating bone tissue needs, body iron and glucose metabolism, healthy blood composition balance, normal brain function, protecting body cells from oxidation, healthy immune system, heart muscle balance, body hydrocarbon metabolism, proper functioning of important hormones, and controlling body metabolism all depend on the regular, balanced, and sufficient intake of these substances by the human organism. To examine the real role and function of these metals in human health, see Appendix (1) of this article.

Another group of metals such as iron (Fe), magnesium (Mg), zinc (Zn), and boron (B) also participate in the structure and working mechanisms of the body, and the amount of them that humans need is more than the above substances. These metals play a decisive role in providing haemoglobin in the blood and transporting oxygen to tissues, forming and activating a number of body enzymes, combating fatigue, ensuring brain concentration, regulating blood, forming necessary proteins, the body’s calcium metabolism, the natural growth process, controlling behaviour and preventing heart disorders, skin health, providing conditions for healing and improving wounds, preventing loss of appetite, calcium absorption by bones, balancing female and male hormones, preventing osteoporosis, and many other vital mechanisms of the body. (For more information on the dynamics of the effects of this group of metals on the health of the body, see Appendix 2.) In addition to the above minerals, vitamins are important organic substances that play a key role in the metabolism of other necessary substances in the body, and almost all of them enter the body through food (plant and animal). Of course, there are also vitamins that are produced by the body itself, but the method of this production, in turn, depends on the presence of necessary and available food in the body. One of the functions of vitamins is to control the amount of absorption of minerals, in this way we understand the importance of the mutual relationship between these substances and elements. (See Appendix 3 of this article and the results of research by two American researchers on the effect of vitamin deficiency on the human organism, including the occurrence of heart disease, osteoporosis and various types of cancer in the journal Jama⁴). The recent report was prepared based on a review of 150 other studies conducted between 1966 and 2002. Aside from the above minerals and vitamins, the human body also needs other elements in relatively large amounts (Macronutrients). These include Phosphorus (P), Nitrogen (N), Potassium (K), Calcium (Ca), Sodium (Na). These substances, in turn, play a decisive role in the formation of bones and teeth, prevention of osteoporosis, the genetic structure (DNA) of plants and animals, regulation of body acid, production of proteins and hormones needed by the body, body acidity and balance, nerve balance and muscle activity, blood clotting, and other vital human systems. (See Appendix 4).

To estimate the real consequences of a lack of nutrients, minerals and vitamins in the human body, we can consider how long the body can last without food, in addition to the need for water. Imagine a young and active person weighing 70 kg who works and walks 10 km every day for 2 hours. He can do this without eating and only needs to drink 3 litters of water a day. If this person remains hungry but does not do any physical activity, his physical strength will definitely be depleted, but the process of this depletion will be relatively slow. Now let’s assume that he continues his daily activity and, for example, runs 10 km every day. In such a situation, the body survives for about four weeks by storing fat and hydrocarbons, but quickly loses weight and suffers physical and mental losses (restricted nutrition, for example, 2000 kilojoules, 478 kilocalories of hydrocarbons, i.e. about 130 grams of sugar per day, which is the minimum amount of energy required, can increase the body’s activity). After four weeks, all body fat is lost, and the weight is reduced by between 16 and 20 kilos. In this situation, no physical or productive activity is possible and the person in question must lie down because he is very tired and sensitive. This example is true for a young person who has normal strength. Now for those who normally have less strength for physical and nervous activity due to long work and the resulting exhaustion, if they are trapped in such conditions, meaning that no food except water reaches them, the process of their physical and mental depreciation will proceed more quickly and the results will be very serious. (This scenario is adapted from a study conducted by the Swedish Food Safety Authority for the Ministry of Defence Research Institute ⁵).

The above example prepares us to pursue the main axis of our discussion, or the catastrophe of the depletion of the soil of the necessary substances for the beneficial fertility of plants and its impact on human life. A plant needs at least 19 different types of mineral substances in order to grow and produce a crop with sufficient nutrients. This plant receives carbon from the air, hydrogen and oxygen from water, and 16 other elements from the soil. Each of these substances has a separate importance for different plants. This means that the deficiency of each has a destructive effect on the content of the product. If in the distant past, the capitalist system accompanied the growth of production and the abundance of consumer values ​​​​to some extent by maintaining the content of consumer goods, today the implementation of an increasingly brutal policy of thrift and profit-seeking in the production of agricultural and livestock products is one of the important methods used by capitalists to reduce production costs and increase profits. A strategy that leads to the depletion of these goods of the necessary materials to compensate for the lost energy of the workers. The reduction in the nutritional content of agricultural and livestock goods leads to permanent hunger of the working masses. If a hundred years ago they were malnourished with the increase in work intensity (increased energy consumption per unit of time) and the decrease in wages and were constantly exposed to the threat and attack of diseases, today they not only endure the staggering increase in work intensity as a result of massive mechanization, not only witness the continuous and continuous decrease in real wages, not only are they forced to accept longer working days, not only do they endure the daily slaughter of their minimum livelihood, health and social security, and apart from all this, they are more at risk than ever of malnutrition and mortality from this disaster. A fact which I have tried to illustrate in the above example in the form of the effects of a month’s starvation. When the intake of any of the minerals and vitamins mentioned falls below its minimum, the diseases of starvation begin to set in. This state of nutrition, in the long run, no longer only results in weight loss, but also erodes the entire physical strength of the workers and reduces their power of thought. Inadequate nutrition is not only a problem of lower-wage workers. The reduction in food supplies of agricultural and livestock products affects all classes of workers, even those who enjoy relatively higher wages. You will ask what this has to do with the environment. The answer is that examining issues such as the content of agricultural soil and its impact on food, its relationship to the use of chemical fertilizers, spraying of agricultural products, the impact of acid rain, the replacement of harmful heavy metals with minerals needed by the body, and the genetic modification of seeds (under the name of high-quality seeds) is an important and appropriate basis for discussing the destructive role of the capitalist system in the field of agriculture and, consequently, the environment. The union of agriculture and industry has long become an obstacle to the natural function of the eternal fertility of the earth, because in pre-capitalist production, the main task was to meet the needs of subsistence, not to accumulate capital. Capitalist agricultural production has never been able to formulate a suitable formula to prevent the depletion of soil nutrients for food products with adequate content. This goal cannot be achieved without abandoning large investments in this area, which is the red line of the wage slavery system, and the first option to avoid it is the destruction of workers’ health. It is clear that the development of labour productivity in the agricultural unit with the aim of preventing a decrease in the rate of profit also does not lead to a solution to this problem, and as a result, the health of workers will always and continuously be at the greatest risk. If the minerals in the soil are reduced, their deficiency should also be evident in the plants, but the owners of capital prevent this by sacrificing human health and resorting to the use of harmful substances. Because capitalist agriculture is only compatible with the mass production of goods and higher profits, profit-increasing quantity, and not health content. In this transition, as in all other areas of social life, the owners of capital take maximum advantage of the ignorance of the working masses. The workers are forced to think about the price of goods and dwell less on their quality. Especially since no one knows the content of these goods. The appearance of these products has not changed over the centuries!! But their content has changed enormously in a short period of time. We workers, even if we have access to agricultural and livestock products, that is, if we are able to buy them and no matter how much we consume, the shortage of necessary food still threatens us like a disaster. Even dietary supplements and food fortification do not help reduce the problem because the absorption of minerals directly or even added to food is very small (approximately 2-3%). This clearly shows that less and less agricultural land can provide these essential nutrients (especially minerals) to plants.

Figure 2 is taken from an article in the Journal of Food ⁶.

Dietary supplements and food additives: the bankruptcy of capitalist agriculture

Percentage of the population with vitamin (A) and mineral (B) intakes below the EAR for individuals aged ≥2 y (data from NHANES 2003–2006; n = 16,110). Usual intakes from foods (naturally occurring and that from naturally occurring plus added via enrichment and/or fortification) and dietary supplements were estimated by using the National Cancer Institute method with 2 d of reported intake. EAR estimated average requirement. The EAR in Figure 2 is the estimated average daily requirement for minerals and vitamins, expressed as a percentage of the population (this study was conducted on 16,110 Americans). The columns for each ingredient are, respectively, Agricultural Foods (Naturally Occurring), Nutrients Added as Fortifications, and Food & Supplements. It is very clear from this diagram that, for example, a large proportion of people (74%) are deficient in vitamin A, which increases to 45% with fortified foods and then to 34% with vitamin supplements. Essential minerals (micronutrients) such as zinc (Zn), copper (Cu), iron (Fe), and selenium (Se) change little with supplements and fortification, and a portion of people still suffer from deficiencies of these important nutrients. Magnesium and calcium, despite supplements and additives, are still deficient in more than 50% of people. Vitamins needed by the body, such as vitamin C (25%), A (34%), E (60%), and vitamin D (70%), are also not available to a large population of working families in the world. These results even include food supplements. Let’s move on (I will discuss this issue later) because food supplements and additives themselves are basically a sign of a deficiency of these substances in agricultural and livestock products. Later in this report, it is shown that even adding substances to foods (enrichment) and as supplements has not been able to compensate for all deficiencies. Only a small amount of added minerals is absorbed by the body, because these substances, especially vitamins, must enter the body in their natural composition along with other foods in order to be able to absorb them sufficiently. If the nutritional deficiencies of the human body were to be eliminated by adding substances such as iron, etc. to food, then most likely the first and most immediate task of the capitalist system would be to confuse the nutrition of every worker and the needs for the reproduction of his labour power with a can of powder containing a certain amount of minerals, vitamins, etc. In this way, the additional burden of labour for the necessary work would be made as heavy as possible and perhaps even the payment of something called wages would be made as easy as possible. The shortage of essential nutrients, especially vitamins, is also mentioned in the detailed report ⁷ and shows how, in today’s world conditions, these vital substances (vitamins and minerals) are constantly decreasing in the body and how their artificial addition and food supplements are increasing. To understand the reasons for this, which is an undeniable fact today, let us go back to the distant past, to the time when agriculture was practiced along the great rivers of the Nile, Ganges, Yellow River, Tigris and Euphrates. When mineral materials were washed from the mountains and, together with the flow of the great rivers, new and compensatory materials were deposited on the delta beds and banks. At that time, agricultural products maintained their quality in terms of content and from time to time, man enriched the earth through natural fertilizers such as human and animal waste. Now, even if capitalist agriculture were to return about 60 different minerals to the agricultural land, the long process of their incorporation into the soil chemicals and the process of plant absorption would take about 5 to 10 years, and in that case no capital would tolerate such a long circulation process in a world where the speed of capital turnover is a vital condition for the survival of the system. The problem of the shortage of essential substances in agricultural soil was first raised in the form of a written report with specific conclusions in the US Senate in 1936, which is known as Senate Document No. 264. This document, which also included chemical analysis methods, was submitted to Congress by officials from the US Department of Agriculture. Dr. Charles Northen notes in this document the results of his years of research on diseases caused by mineral deficiencies in vegetables, fruits, and even milk and eggs, and in the continuation of his work shows the results of adding these substances to the soil in the products obtained from the cultivation of vegetables, fruits, and eggs. He has had the cooperation of a number of researchers from major American universities in carrying out this research ⁸. When members of Congress listen to this detailed report and at the same time see the cost of replenishing the lost nutrients in agricultural soils, they try to cover up this information, but in the meantime, another sector of capitalism, the pharmaceutical sector, seems to have found its lost treasure. From this date onwards, this sector has been exposing parts of this document in order to promote pharmaceutical products that are supposed to replenish minerals and vitamins. Food supplements became a new area for the advance of trust funds, and in this way capitalists and their governments complemented each other. After this date, extensive research in Europe and America showed a continuing decline in essential nutrients in agricultural soils on a large scale. According to research by a British institute,⁹ the decline in essential nutrients in potatoes, sugar beets, vegetables and berries (fruits such as berries, strawberries, grapes, etc.) was significant in the period 1940 to 1991, and magnesium (Mg) decreased by 24%, calcium by 46%, copper by 76% and zinc by 59% in these products. The research department of the Swedish Agricultural University also shows similar results. The European Commission has also addressed this issue in a detailed report in 2009, entitled Nutrient absorption from conventional foods, food additives and food supplements. ¹⁰ This report covers the countries of England, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Poland, Denmark, Italy and Belgium. The deceit and demagoguery of capitalist governments in this report is such that instead of acknowledging the lack of essential substances (minerals and vitamins) in food products, they talk about food supplements. But these figures also show the truth behind their lies. 24% of men and 30% of women in these European countries use food supplements to compensate for the deficiencies in capitalist agricultural and livestock products. The Swedish Food Safety Authority has taken the fraud to such an extent that the 1986 table of essential nutrients in agricultural and livestock products was changed in 2002, and their threshold values ​​were lowered, thus officially declaring that what is in these products is what it is, compensate for the excess yourself through pills and powders! Other similar institutions in other countries also unofficially announce that you should leave the capital in the agricultural and livestock sectors alone and make up for the shortages by purchasing pills, powders, and other potions produced by the pharmaceutical industry! I am not saying this, the owners of the gigantic capital in the pharmaceutical industry advertise on their websites. ¹¹. The following report, which contains a review of more than 500 different studies on the possibility of diseases caused by the lack of vitamin and mineral supplements, is on the one hand an indication of the lack of these substances in conventional foods and on the other hand an attempt to market these products. ¹². Let us examine the reasons for the decrease in mineral substances in the soil. An important factor in this decrease is the excessive production of capital and, as a result, the use of vital soil resources in this direction, i.e. production for the accumulation of capital. The capitalists of this sector return some of the substances to the soil by annually adding chemical fertilizers, which mainly consist only of nitrogen and phosphorus. But this itself causes the destruction of the chemical and acidic balance of the soil and water. After all, their entire goal is to produce a commodity that has apparently retained its usual shape and form. The capitalist does not care about the resources of the soil; it is enough for him that his plant is healthy to produce the desired product. In this regard, it is not a bad idea to mention the advice of the Swedish Agricultural Organization to capitalists in this sector, which says, “It is not important that all the contents of the soil are compensated, but what is important is how the plant is!” Yes, capital does to the land what it does to the worker, capitalist production is not to meet the needs of human life but to obtain greater profits and accumulate more capital. Thus, capitalist progress in agriculture not only leads to progress in the plunder of the land, but at the same time, progress in the misery of the workers’ existence, because these same goods devoid of nutritional value are exchanged for their meagre wages. Research clearly shows that since ancient times, capitalists in the agricultural sector have had a simple solution to continue working and earning the desired profit, which was to add small amounts of phosphorus and nitrogen compounds to agricultural soils. Now, what is the value of agricultural products in terms of consumption? This is the problem of the workers who consume these goods. ¹³.

Acid rain

In addition to the capitalist use of the soil and its depletion of vital resources, other important factors can also be considered in this process. One of them is acid rain. The most important reason for acid rain is the precipitation of nitrogen, carbon and sulphur oxides due to the use of fossil fuels such as oil and coal. These oxides produce nitric and sulfuric acids with air humidity. Acidification of soil, groundwater, lakes and wetlands is the result of these rains. Fish in these lakes and wetlands are declining, and acid rain is reducing soil minerals due to unequal competition with harmful heavy metal elements such as lead, cadmium, mercury, and arsenic. The release of aluminium from the soil and its entry into the lakes causes respiratory problems in fish. This metal combines with phosphate fertilizer to form a complex that ultimately reduces phosphorus in the soil. Cadmium, a heavy metal like lead, combines with the body’s DNA to cause serious genetic problems. Cadmium is also found in chemical fertilizers. When water becomes acidic, the mobility of this dangerous metal increases and it enters the organisms of terrestrial and marine organisms. Since humans are at the highest level in the food chain, it eventually enters the human body. In addition, the extraction and transportation of metals cause the air, soil, and water to be contaminated with these harmful metals. Domestic and urban wastewater also contains heavy metals, and when its sediments are used as chemical fertilizers, they are transmitted to the agricultural production process. Another factor that reduces mineral content in the soil is carbon dioxide, or carbon dioxide in the air. As the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases (as I discussed in detail in the first chapter of this article, currently, on average, more than 25 billion tons of carbon dioxide enter the atmosphere annually), the concentration of this gas in the atmosphere has increased by more than 30% since 1800. This reduces iron and zinc in agricultural fields, resulting in significant deficiencies of vital nutrients in plants such as wheat, barley and other cereals. In some cases, it even reduces the protein content of these products. I will not go into the discussion now that the cereals themselves are used as raw materials in many consumer food products and these deficiencies are also transferred to new food products. For more information on this subject, see the Harvard University study ¹⁴.

The fourth factor in the depletion of the earth’s mineral resources is nitrogen, which is found in chemical fertilizers. Nitrogen is an essential element in the plant and animal world and is transferred to all animals, including humans, through plants in the form of proteins, basic substances, hormones, and other vital substances. Before capitalism, nature and agriculture did not have a problem with a shortage or excess of this element, in other words, its amount was in perfect balance. The earth’s atmosphere, which contains 78% nitrogen gas, was the main source of this element being injected into the earth. The process of this injection is very slow but vital. Slow because nitrogen gas is a diatomic molecular gas and is very stable and cannot be transferred to plants in this form. In order to break the hard bond between two nitrogen atoms, nature uses two mechanisms. First, the enormous energy of lightning, which causes the nitrogen molecule to break and then combines with oxygen in the air to form nitrogen oxides that are ready to be absorbed by plants. Second, which is more important than the first and constitutes 90% of the natural process of nitrogen needed by plants, is the biological activity of microscopic organisms in the earth and air, including bacteria, fungi and other microscopic organisms. In the past, farmers occasionally used plants such as clover, various types of beans and peas, and generally all legumes (legumes, which include 18,000 different species), which have a system of nitrogen-fixing bacteria in their roots to increase soil nitrogen. With the expansion of capitalist agriculture and the depletion of soil, a terrible shortage of nitrogen in the earth arose, so that natural fertilizers such as animal and human waste were not enough to compensate for this deficiency. After the Second World War (Figure 3 shows the acidification of Swedish lakes after 1940, of course, this is due to acid rain in general), the injection of chemical fertilizers, which contain a lot of nitrogen in various forms (including nitrates and ammonia), led to such an increase in this element in the earth’s ecological system that the amount of nitrogen added in this way now exceeds the natural processes mentioned, and thus capitalism caused the loss of the balance of the ecosystem and its subsequent consequences (one of these consequences is the release of heavy metals such as cadmium, which find their way into lakes and groundwater. Figure 3 shows the increase in this dangerous element in Swedish lakes, which increases with the decrease in the acidity of rainwater pH). Chemical fertilizers now provide 85% of all the nitrogen needed by agricultural land, which means that, along with other nitrogen-fixing processes, more active nitrogen than is needed is being applied to the land, which in turn causes a series of environmental problems. Adding calcium carbonate to reduce water acidity does not solve the problem because it does not reduce heavy metals and aluminium chemicals but instead carries them to the sediments of the water, leading to the death of lakes and seas.

Figure 3

Figure 4

Figure 5

These diagrams are adapted from research by Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden¹² on acid rain and its destructive effects. http://publications.lib.chalmers.se¹⁵

Figure 5 also shows the increase in lead levels (parts per million, ppm) with decreasing distance from major, heavily trafficked roads in Sweden. This increase is due to a combination of two factors: gasoline fuel used in cars and acid rain, which washes away the released lead and transports it to ground and groundwater along the roads.

Technical additives to food are a ploy to cover up the stench and rot of capitalism.

At the beginning of this chapter, I said that agricultural capitalism, by destroying the fertility of the land and depleting it of the materials needed for an agricultural product, increases the volume of the product and brings greater profits to the capitalist. In order to achieve this goal, it shortens the life span of the land. These things were said, but there are also unspoken issues in this matter. We all know that capital increases the productivity of labour, reduces its need for this power relatively, makes the process of the dissolution and dissolution of the worker in the process of profit production and his separation from his work more rapid and devastating, and finally brings the nothingness and worthlessness of the worker and his life, even his being alive and not being, to the peak in the scope of its calculations. Commodity production and its most advanced form, capitalist production, are the origin, the stimulus and the full mirror of the fetishistic role of the product of human labour. The very replacement of the relationship between humans with the relationship between objects and commodities implies the becoming of everything to the commodity or capital and the becoming of man to nothing. In our present discussion, the worker, his food and the earth, as far as the needs of human life are concerned, also proceed in the process of becoming nothing, and instead it is capital that accelerates the dynamic of playing its divine role to the highest infinity. Agricultural products, while maintaining the appearance of nutritional content and the ability to satisfy real human needs, are emptied. The worker too, not only in the form of reduction to a tool, not only under the painful impetus of the process of separation from work, who becomes more and more inferior and worthless even in his nutrition for the reproduction of his only saleable commodity, that is, his labour power. Here, the discussion is not only that the worker is deprived of any involvement in his work and the fate of his work, but also not simply about his exhausting exploitation at a legendary and destructive rate of surplus value. It is not even about the shortening of his life under the pressure of longer time, more deadly conditions, more unbearable intensity and hardship of work in countries like India, Brazil, China, Thailand, Bangladesh, Iran, Africa and elsewhere. It is about the fact that, following all these calamities, even what he should spend on recreating this power with the price of his labour power becomes the target of a renewed attack by capital, becomes devoid of the production of labour power and, worst of all, becomes pathogenic and deadly.

Capital decides what kind of food the worker should eat, and it continues this chain of decisions even in the private sphere of his life as far as it wants and its profiteering demands. It turns to the fortifier, pesticide or preservative to make all this cheaper by auctioning off human lives and thereby increasing the amount of surplus labour inherent in them. The process of decay of food and the reduction of its use value for the body begins from the very beginning, when the fruit ripens, the animal is slaughtered, the vegetables are separated from the soil. Although the tissues and cells of these products are protected by their skin and resistant walls against bacteria, fungi and other microorganisms, they do not remain healthy forever and their lifespan is limited even in minus 20 degrees Celsius. We all witness the change in colour, taste, smell and shape of food and the foods we have prepared ourselves every day, even when they are stored in the refrigerator. When the cell walls and tissues of food are torn due to cooking or other processes and the contents of the cells spill out, the process of deterioration of these materials increases many times. Ready-made food is subject to unhindered attack by bacteria, worms, microorganisms, and fungi, and quickly deteriorates. Ready-made and semi-prepared food outlets, including restaurants, large manufacturing companies, supermarkets, and food preparation and preservation companies, add substances such as antioxidants, preservatives, and stabilizers to them to combat this situation, as well as to increase the shelf life of goods and reduce waste (in general, reduce the cost of production, transportation, and storage). However, no substance can prevent the deterioration of ready-made and semi-prepared foods, so capitalism takes initiatives in a profit-seeking and inhumane manner to cover up changes in the colour, taste, smell, and even the shape of these products. Two categories of substances are added to agricultural products: one is the so-called food fortification, the reasons for which I discussed in the previous chapter, and the other is processing aids, which are used to increase the shelf life, change the colour, smell and taste of ready-made and semi-ready foods. These substances, which include 22 different groups, include about 250 official substances. All of these are approved by JECFA (Food safety and quality) ¹⁶ or the United Nations Food Control Agency and EFSA or the European Food Safety Authority. It is important to note that these products are not only used in food production, but are also used in the preparation of medicines, cosmetics, shampoos and soaps. The classification of these substances based on their role is as follows. 41 colorants, 49 preservatives, 44 antioxidants, 12 sweeteners and more than 100 other substances, including polysorbate, are on this list. The latter group causes skin sensitization, people who are allergic to propylene glycol, which is found in cosmetics, are also allergic to polysorbates, which are added to foods to dissolve fats. These compounds have a European code (E number) or “E number” and for more information about them, see Appendix 5. Information collected in this regard is from sources ^{18, 19, 20, 21}. But it should be noted that this is the official list of registered substances that the European Food Safety Authority¹⁷.  (EFSA) has issued a license to register and use in food production. In addition to the official substances, thousands of other legal and illegal substances are added to foods. For example, to create the taste and aroma of strawberries in ice cream and creams, 8 different types of chemicals are used, which the manufacturer puts at ease and makes the customer’s life easier by simply mentioning the name of the flavor on the product package. Among the colouring agents used, azo compounds are the most famous because they cause allergies, asthma, eczema, and skin changes such as urticaria. For example, E120 or carmine, the attractive red colour that increases sales in milk, syrups, and candies, causes insomnia, hyperactivity (ADHD), fetal damage, and aggression. Sweeteners such as E420 Sorbitol, or E412 (Guar gum) cause intestinal problems, intestinal infections, brain diseases, muscle cramps, aggression and depression. The vast majority of these substances are produced chemically synthesized and therefore, upon entering the body, are attacked by enzymes that the liver produces to fight foreign substances. Basically, from the point of view of pharmacology and pharmacodynamics, all chemicals that enter the body are attacked as harmful substances by the organs and members of the body’s defence system and must be destroyed. Among them are liver enzymes (CYP enzymes), which number in the dozens, and have the same task. This process unconsciously reminds man of the capitalistic system, of a production method that is fundamentally anti-human. Profit-making is everything in it and man is nothing. Remember this important fact, how vulgar is the work of those who consider the struggle for this or that minor change in the composition of this or that food or this or that corner of the environment as the cure for the pain of man of the age!! Remember this great lesson of history that without the elimination of capitalism, without a conscious, radical and class-based assault on the very foundation of this system, without a workers’ movement, council and nationwide that has all the capacity, facilities and necessary preparations for this assault, talk of improving the environment or making food healthier and the like is nothing but self-deception and deception of others. Capitalism survives on the unpaid labour of workers, by producing profits and converting profits into capital, and by continuing its self-expansion. For this system, polluting the environment and making food pathogenic is a mechanism for increasing surplus values. To eliminate these scourges, one must get to the root. The roots are hidden deep in the very existence of capital. Simply trying to improve the condition of this or that commodity without fighting to dry up the roots of the damage, even assuming some achievements, will only prolong the life of this cancerous tumour and this infectious swamp. The enormous growth in labour productivity after World War II meant that workers’ labour produced many times more output than before. In this regard, less socially necessary labour for a given quantity of output led to lower commodity prices with much higher rates of surplus value. The desire to reduce commodity prices, increase competitiveness in the capitalist market, and secure a larger share of global surplus value turned the greedy eyes of capitalists toward the production of food products at a lower price than what workers could produce in their kitchens by working at home. The massive accumulation in this area also provided the opportunity for capitalists to bring more women into the labour market, increasing competition among workers for labour and putting upward pressure on wages. The greater employment of women in the labour market, in turn, paved the way for greater accumulation of capital in the food production sector. The amount of time a Swedish female worker spent preparing food at home in the 1950s was on average about 3 hours a day. This number fell to 10 minutes in 2010.²² This change meant that the massive accumulation of capital in the food industry, coupled with the forced sale of women’s labour, had significantly filled the kitchens. As workers became increasingly consumers of ready-made and semi-prepared foods, a new sphere of capital was accumulated, and the price of labour fell in two ways. First, because the mass of workers selling their labour increased greatly, a phenomenon that led to competition among workers and a decline in wages. Second, because mass production and the rapid increase in labour productivity led to a decline in the price of goods, which in turn provided a basis for keeping the price of labour down. Two points need to be explained here. First, the reduction of domestic work is not only not bad, but the elimination of this type of work is the agenda of the anti-capitalist movement of the working class. There is no point in this. The point is, however, about the role, purpose, effects, and consequences of the functioning of capitalist relations in this process. If the anti-capitalist socialist movement of the proletariat attacks domestic work as a factor of physical and intellectual degradation and degeneration of humans and demands its elimination, the wage slavery system, on the contrary, sees everything, including any degree of change in the volume of this type of work, as simply a function of the conditions of the cycle of mass profit production. For this very reason, with the increase in unemployment, the bourgeoisie immediately remembers the caressing warmth of kitchens and the warmth of mothers’ arms to care for their children. The second point is that capitalism, as has been stated, pursues this not only at the cost of increasing the pressure, speed, and intensity of work, but also at the same time exposes human lives to all kinds of threats. Let’s return to the main point of the discussion. Due to excessive or prolonged consumption of some of the above substances (E621-E625), the human body suffers from disorders. Hypersensitivity such as headache, excessive sweating, burning throat and increased pressure in the chest are among these disorders. These symptoms are known as (Chinese restaurant syndrome) 23, because these substances are widely used in the production of ready-made and semi-ready Chinese and Asian foods, and through this, they have entered the food sector of other world markets, including chain restaurants such as (McDonalds) and others, since the 1970s. New research shows that excessive consumption of these substances has a detrimental effect on the foetus, liver, nervous system and vision, and also causes asthma, depression, growth problems in young people and hormonal disorders. E621 is a poison for the nervous system and causes Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Let’s not forget that the main customers of fast foods such as hamburgers and restaurants that produce this food are the vast masses of workers. After these symptoms and signs (syndrome) were recognized, the capitalists in the food production sector made a huge effort to prevent their sales from falling. They increased research budgets in this period. The clarity of the problem was such that they could not hide the high human complications and losses, so they took another path. They resorted to the same old trick of pharmaceutical companies to prove the lack of relationship between symptoms and diseases and added substances. Among the techniques that manufacturers and capitalists in this field, with the full agreement of government officials, have used to standardize these additives and scientifically demonstrate their anti-human performance is the ADI (Acceptable daily intake) test. This test is carried out with the aim of falsely showing the safety of daily consumption of added technical substances. The way it works is that laboratory mice are fed a relatively large amount of the substance in question and when no reaction is apparently observed, the consumption of the tested substance is recognized by the authorities as a natural substance. This system, which arises from the fraud and demagoguery of capital, has no scientific value other than misleading the mass of workers who consume these products for the simple reason that, first of all, the biological and genetic structure of mice is very different from that of humans. In a way, these same government officials consider drug tests on mice to be completely inadequate, and this leads to a long process of various tests on humans (a drug undergoes various tests for 10 to 12 years, and sometimes more, until it is accepted by the authorities, such that testing on mice only takes 10% of the time and capital required). Secondly, no scientific results are obtained from the changes or lack of changes in the appearance of laboratory mice, because genetic changes, allergic reactions, and internal and even skin lesions are the result of a long process of consuming waste materials, and this cannot be clarified with a test lasting several hours. The capitalists’ strategy is that they first decide to add their desired ingredients to prolong the life of the product, to make the taste, colour, smell and shape of their product attractive, and then they start to fabricate any justifications they want to mislead the minds of the working masses of consumers. Third, the destructive effect of the additives is postponed until they are actually used. This means that when the use of the desired substance is recognized by the authorities after widespread human casualties and its destructive effects become apparent after a while, then the entire scientific, technical, advertising and judicial apparatus of capital is used to show that these effects are unnecessary with the desired substance!! Therefore, there is no other name for this than fraud and inhumane trickery. The best example of this fraud is the exposure of the Acrylamide phenomenon in Sweden in 2002. ²⁴ Acrylamide (AA) is formed when plant products (such as flour, potatoes, coffee and other hydrocarbon-containing products) are exposed to temperatures exceeding 120 degrees during the production process of ready-made and semi-prepared foods. This substance is a chemical combination of hydrocarbons (sugars, starches, etc.) and an amino acid called aspartic acid, which is found in all plants. The rate of acrylamide formation and its concentration in products such as chips, corn flakes, French fries, bread, biscuits, processed cereal-based foods for infants and young children, and many other foods, depends on the temperature and frying time. So that the more acrylamide is formed, the more the colour of these products turns from light (light yellow) to dark. For example, half-cooked unfried potatoes contain 45 micrograms of acrylamide, and the same product when fully cooked and fried contains 1512 micrograms of acrylamide per kilogram of potatoes. As can be seen from Figure 6, the attractiveness, appeal, and taste of these products are proportional to the amount of acrylamide formed in the production process. This phenomenon, which gives foods their attractive taste and colour, is called the Maillard reaction in chemistry. The dangerousness and harmfulness of this substance is certain due to its combination with body proteins such as haemoglobin and DNA, at least as far as has been shown in laboratory mice. So far, no trace of this substance has been seen in cooked foods. In other words, this problem has appeared and become widespread since the production of ready-made and semi-prepared foods became the agenda of capital (the majority of these foods are produced by large companies. Table 2 of Appendix 5 shows the percentage of market share of European companies in the sale of these products). The side effects of this substance are, to the extent that laboratory experiments on mice show damage to the nervous system such as tremors, pregnancy disorders and DNA changes, the latter of which causes cancers of the breast, goitre, brain and sexual organs. The leakage of this substance into surface and groundwater during the construction of a train tunnel in western Sweden in 1996 caused the death of cows and the illness of humans in the area. Part of the deception of the capitalist production system is the process of exposing this substance in ready-made and semi-prepared foods, which is working in two directions. While manufacturers, producers, and their government officials agree on short, inexpensive tests of technical substances to be added to ready-made foods on rats, and this process is approved as soon as possible and the substance in question is licensed, the opposite is true in the case of acrylamide. The capitalists and their government agree, scientifically! that the results of the tests on rats are not applicable to humans and that the diseases mentioned in humans cannot be attributed to acrylamide! Therefore, government officials and organizations are content with recommending a reduction in the amount of acrylamide produced!! However, these recommendations have not been implemented in the 12 years since the capital crime was exposed, and the amount of this toxic and carcinogenic substance in food served in restaurants and ready-to-eat and semi-ready foods in stores is still high. For more information, see the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) report in June 2014, which includes the results of tests on 43,419 ready-to-eat and semi-ready foods in the production area of ​​these products. ^{17 .}

Figure 6 Level of AA according to colour and cooking time of some pre-cooked French fries products ¹⁷

It should be noted that no trace of acrylamide has been found in cooked foods so far. In contrast, frying and roasting in devices called “ovens,” which is the process of preparing food in factory production, is the main cause of its formation and especially high levels of this substance. Acrylamide (AA), a plasticizer (polyacrylamide) has been closely associated with the crimes of capitalism since World War II. Originally produced as a war material, the chemical was first used in various products by the American company Monsanto Company in the 1950s. The company, which is now the world’s leading producer of genetically modified crops, pesticides, and chemicals, has a long history of producing chemical warfare agents. For example, in the criminal war of the US government against the people of Vietnam, it destroyed forests with bombs containing Agent Orange. The products of this company alone caused 4.8 million Vietnamese people to become ill and 500,000 children to be born with birth defects in that country. The amount of acrylamide produced in chips is on average 1000 micrograms, in Pommes frites and 500 micrograms per kilogram of product. According to the Swedish Food Safety Authority, the maximum permissible intake for a person per day is 30 to 40 micrograms. One third of this amount is consumed through chips, pommes frites and other fried potatoes. Biscuits, hard factory breads and other toasted breads provide another third, and the rest is consumed through coffee (see Appendix 5, Table 1 for more information). About half of the acrylamide that enters the body is excreted from the body within 4 to 5 hours through various routes, especially urine, due to its small molecule and easy solubility in water. Interestingly, the European Health Organization and the World Health Organization (WHO) have set a maximum level of this substance in water at 0.1 micrograms per Liter, but these same major international capital organizations have not yet set any limits for this substance in ready-made and semi-ready foods. Another important issue to mention is the addition of phosphorus compounds to ready-made and semi-prepared foods. Phosphorus is an important element in the body’s structure (for more information, see the beginning of Chapter 2). This substance is absorbed by the body in much greater quantities than is needed (this element, unlike other elements, is very easily absorbed by the body, so that even phosphorus salts have a high metabolism). Phosphates are even used for canning, sourening food or as a stabilizer. The harmful effects of increased consumption of phosphorus compounds are numerous, and shocking reports are published every day. For example, research by Johns Hopkins University and Alabama on 9,700 people over 15 years²⁵ shows how increased mortality is directly related to the amount of phosphorus absorbed. Heart disease, reduced kidney function, and cancer can be listed as side effects of its inappropriate consumption. American researchers ²⁶ concluded from a study of 200 food ingredients in 2,394 different products in the state of Ohio that the addition of phosphates to ready-made and semi-prepared foods is much higher than previously thought, and the increase is sometimes 50% more than what is stated on the labels! 44% of the best-selling food items have added phosphorus, and since foods with added phosphorus are cheaper than similar foods without phosphorus, it is not surprising that these types of products are more popular. Researchers conclude from this trend that consuming foods with added phosphorus is a health threat, especially for those who have weaker kidneys or are at risk from constant consumption of these substances. Other research shows that 72% of frozen ready meals contain high levels of phosphate. 70% of semi-prepared foods such as tacos, chili, chips also contain various phosphorus compounds. 57% of machine-made breads produced in the United States have added phosphate. For example, phosphate plays the role of leavening agent. By adding phosphate, the dough takes on its natural shape in a short time without having to go through the preparation process of several hours and sometimes several days due to the effect of sourdough. It is noteworthy that breads, which are the result of a long (several days) fermentation of a special dough, have undergone enormous changes in recent decades, such that by adding various chemicals, the long and healthy and valuable fermentation process that makes this nutritious bread special is prevented, and something like leather is delivered to the consumer. It is clear that the consumer value of the produced product is not the concern of the capitalist producer and seller, but is important for the consumer, but production determines the method, type and manner of consumption. When producers of ready-made and semi-prepared foods add ingredients to their foods with the aim of attracting customers, they also create and develop the method of consumption and the desire to consume this product. Here a reciprocal relationship arises. This means that production has given birth to a new type of consumption, and new consumption creates the need for production. The production of new food products is always rooted in previous consumption, which has left its effects on the human mind and body. Therefore, consumption becomes the motivation for production and even the expansion of the sphere of capital accumulation. In capitalist production relations, workers are the producers of all goods and capital but not only are they unable to interfere in any way with the process and fate of these products, but capital, in pursuit of galactic profits, does whatever it wants to their lives, bodies, and health. The materials mentioned in this chapter (and in Appendix 5) were not discovered and used overnight. Capital is inherently captive to the falling rate of profit and is subject to the onslaught of crises. With each crisis, the entire bourgeoisie, while feasting on the empty table of the working masses, sets out with all its intellectual wealth and resources to find and implement a way out of the crisis and resume a period of prosperity. The capitalists and their governments are always, at every moment, and most of all in these conditions, thinking about the greatest possible mass production, the advance of all free capital, the most drastic decline in wages, the reduction of prices as much as possible, the heating up of the competitive market, and in a word, the acquisition of greater profits. In the meantime, and in line with the reduction of prices, the expansion of the sales circle, and the acquisition of greater profits, they turn to the production of harmful, pathogenic, and deadly goods. If five decades ago we were flipping through the pages of the food safety organizations of capitalist governments and encountered a few criticisms and complaints about the use of chemicals in food, today it is only necessary, useful, and natural to show these substances adorning their pages and lines. This is precisely at the same time as the volume of additives, more harmful chemicals, and even the simultaneous use of several substances. Many researchers, out of goodwill, advise capitalists to use harmless but expensive natural materials, reduce the amount of chemicals, and avoid unnecessary materials, unaware that capital seeks profit, capital thinks about its own expansion, profitability, and greater growth, and ignores wise sermons and advice to preserve human health. Capitalism finds its inherent contradictions weighing more heavily on its chest every day, its reproduction becomes more difficult, its profit rates fall faster, and its crises knock on its door more violently and urgently. Capitalism is inherently anti-human, but especially in these circumstances, the killing of crores and crores of human beings for every rial of profit is the most common thing that it welcomes. The goal of capital is not to satisfy the real needs of humans, but to generate profit. The goal of capital is not to balance production with the needs of human life, but rather to impose an ever-greater burden on unpaid labour (surplus value) compared to paid labour (wages). When the rate of profit falls, capital grabs at every opportunity to stop this process. In this transition, various capitalists work hard to reduce production costs. They plan the production of goods that are cheaper to produce, have more customers, have more competitive power, and will give them a greater share of the surplus value. To achieve this goal, they resort to committing any crime. Fraud, new adventures in food products, making them attractive, changing the taste, smell and shape of food by using harmful and poisonous substances and making them popular at any cost, including at the cost of the inevitable threat to the health of the mass of workers and consumers, are among these acts and crimes. It is in this way that we witness the unbridled and continuous progress of capital in opening up the fields of production of poisons, especially after the Second World War, and in this process the fire-bringing capitalist states are omnipresent and powerful.

Chapter Three

Removing plant pests or eliminating human life

Capital, biocides, and biocidal production

In the commodity economy and its highest stage of development, capitalist production, the products of human labour are traded on the basis of the socially necessary labour inherent in them. Here, exchange value is everything, but in order for commodities to be exchanged, they must also have use value. In capitalist agriculture, maintaining this use value of the product, both in the production process and in the organization, is fraught with great risks. Plant pests constitute the most important and influential of these risks. To avoid the costs of reproducing a crop infested with pests, the capitalist farmer resorts to the use of pesticides. By doing so, he not only avoids the costs of reproducing but also minimizes the amount of waste and damage. In short, resorting to the uncontrolled use of the aforementioned pesticides is an integral part of the process of capital appreciation in the agricultural sector and a prerequisite for achieving the highest desired added values ​​or profits. The foundation of capital’s work is based on the production of maximum goods with minimum labour, the extreme reduction of the cost of the various components of the fixed part of capital, the highest possible quality of goods, and the maximum competitiveness in the capitalist market. The guarantee of all this in capitalist industrial agricultural accumulation is tied to the widespread use of pesticides.

Phytotoxicants are a natural phenomenon of the plant’s defense system against insects, fungi, and other tiny organisms that damage the plant. Humans have long been familiar with these toxins and have sought ways to combat them. We all know the side effects of eating raw fava beans. This plant, which has been cultivated in North Africa and West Asia for thousands of years, is a cheap source of some of the proteins, vitamins, and minerals needed by the masses. Consuming raw beans can be fatal, because the dopamine substance in them, which acts as a neurotransmitter, especially when consumed in large quantities, causes some diseases, especially mental illnesses. Humans have long experienced this danger and have resorted to cooking beans to neutralize the deadly effects of the substance. There are many examples of these substances, and almost all of them are part of the plant’s defence system, which humans can easily deal with with simple solutions. (Appendix 27⁶ mentions some of these poisons) But this work of man, like all his other experiences, knowledge and learnings, in the hands of capital turned into its opposite, that is, into a means of killing humans and sacrificing them for the sake of profit. Large agricultural companies referred to it and wrote the recipe for the production of pesticides, the world’s huge arms trusts used it as a basis for the production of chemical and microbial weapons, and governments used it as the basis for issuing licenses to attack nature, animals and humans. A significant portion of pesticides produced after World War II were the result of capital’s profit-seeking lessons from the functioning of natural plant toxins, as well as experiences gained from the war in the field of chemical weapons production. Insects, rodents, weeds, fungi, bacteria, worms, parasites, and even spiders and birds are all creatures that are attacked by pesticides produced by agricultural and chemical companies. These pesticides are divided into two groups in terms of their use. The first group is used in agriculture to protect and increase plant yield and product longevity. The second group consists of substances that are used to protect fabrics, wood, clothing, shoes, tents, water sediments in treatment ponds, boats, and large ships (Impregnating agents).

Before we get into the specific discussion of the risks and losses resulting from the use of each of these biocides, we need to remember a few things.

First: The natural defence of plants is limited to a small amount of toxic substance against a very small weight of insects, and this is negligible compared to the weight of humans (plants such as poisonous mushrooms are another matter). The indiscriminate spraying of fields, gardens and harvested crops is of such dimensions that it even pollutes the surrounding environment and creates uncontrolled risks for other organisms, waters and agricultural workers.

Second: Natural plant toxins are generally found inside plant organs, fruits, and plant products, and as mentioned, humans make them harmless with simple solutions, and the animals and insects in question also genetically avoid eating them. In this way, the natural environment of plants, animals, and humans has maintained a kind of balance for millions of years. This situation has undergone fundamental changes with the accumulation of capital in the field of agriculture. Capitalist production relations with the filth and filth that flows from its pores not only disrupted this natural balance, but also caused the destruction of nature, the poisoning of food and the destruction of humans. The pesticides of capital construction are so ruthlessly used against nature and plants, they have such a capacity to produce poisoning, and in particular, the life of this poisoning is so long and persistent that even the most resistant organisms and purifiers of nature (decomposers), namely fungi, bacteria, microbes and other beneficial microscopic organisms, are unable to cope with them and make them harmless. An example of this is DDT, which was used as an insecticide from the mid-1950s until its use was banned in 1970 (in some countries, such as Sweden, it was used until 1980). But only about 15 years were enough for its terrible destructive effects on aquatic animals, humans and nature to remain. DDT has destructive effects on the nervous system, reduces bone calcium and disrupts the reproductive system and remains very persistent in soil, water and animal bodies. D. D. T is transmitted in the same way and through the food chain to other organisms and ultimately to humans. This deadly gift of capitalism to nature and humans is just one example of many (other examples are Lindane, Chlordane) that today there is no calculation or book for the production of similar substances. The chemical properties of these substances must be such that firstly they are indestructible and resistant to antidotes and microorganisms (Ecological Stability) and secondly they dissolve in fat and not water. Those that are not washed with water and vice versa, enter the fatty layer of the skin of plants, fruits and vegetables and remain there. In a word, they have the properties of the capitalist system, namely long-lasting and destructive poisoning and death. D. D. T and similar substances determine such a fate for humans and nature. To make the issue clearer, let me give another example. In 2013, the Swedish Food Safety Authority tested 647 different fruits for the amount of pesticide and biocide residues. The result was that 86% (9 out of 10) of the fruits tested, including grapes, citrus fruits, apples, pears and bananas, contained residual toxic substances. Some of these toxins are even banned by the responsible bodies in Europe and Sweden and are considered very dangerous ²⁸.

Third: The interaction of a set of pesticides and biocides used simultaneously in a product (Cocktail effect) and the side effects of combining these substances for living organisms, including humans, is another story that should be given the utmost attention. This issue is always kept hidden from the public, and most reports only talk about the destructive effects of the substances separately. The story is that these substances increase each other’s destructive effects exponentially, and sometimes the poisoning resulting from their combination is hundreds of times greater than the destructive effects of all these substances separately. Moreover, the compounds in question, in turn, bring many unpredictable diseases and organ defects to human life!! The example of the Swedish Food Safety Authority’s experiments on various fruits is remarkable in this passage. The capitalist system in mechanized agriculture, with the aim of reducing crop waste and achieving the highest level of profit, uses 51 different poisons only on grapevines, one of these poisons is (Chlormequat), which is known for its very destructive effects on hormones and sexual organs. These poisons are stored in the body of the tree, last for years, from there they are transferred to the fruit and then to the human body. Similarly, capitalists who own farms use 41 poisons for citrus fruits. Among these poisons, for example, (Imazalil) is carcinogenic, has infertility effects and hormonal changes. This substance is stored in the skin of citrus fruits and is even present in the flesh of the fruit. The poisons used by capitalists to reduce apple losses are 41 substances. (Carbendazim) is one of these poisons, the consumption of which, even in small amounts, causes cancer, hormonal changes and fetal complications. It penetrates all parts of the tree, from the stem to the leaves to the fruit. The number of pesticides used for pears is 27. One of these substances is (Thiabendazole), which is also carcinogenic and causes hormonal changes in goitre. There are more than 10 common pesticides used to combat banana pests, including deadly compounds (thiabendazole, imazalil, chlorpyrifos). All of these toxins are dangerous and cause documented diseases in agricultural workers. The problem is even more catastrophic for banana plantation workers and their families, who often live near the plantations. The children of these workers and the embryos fertilized in their mothers’ wombs are exposed to a daily and brutal assault by all three of these substances. This danger is so serious and terrifying that even global organizations of capital order such as the WHO have been unable to hide it.

Fourth: The phenomenon of increasing resistance of pathogens to drugs (Drug resistance) is of great importance during the use of pesticides. The use of pesticides and biocides gradually increases the resistance of bacteria, fungi and weeds, even mice, to the furthest limits. The result of this process is a decrease in the effectiveness of the substance with each use and the necessity to increase its amount or to use newer substances with more destructive effects. In the field of medical care, the prolonged and indiscriminate use of antibiotics causes bacteria to become resistant and creates many problems in disease control. There is more or less discussion about this, but few people talk about the catastrophic dimensions of the side effects of the use of toxins and biocides. Here I have tried to show this phenomenon schematically in Figure 7. One of the reasons for the simultaneous use of several biocides in agricultural capitalism (the advice that manufacturers of these toxins give to their customers in the agricultural industry) is the cumulative effect of several of them on each other, which can neutralize the negative impact of drug resistance. It should be borne in mind that biocides with a similar mechanism of action can cause each other to become so-called cross-resistant, meaning that when one biocidal becomes drug-resistant, other biocides with a similar mechanism also suffer the same fate and lose their effects, for example, on fungi. One of the reasons they ended the use of mercury in the fight against grain fungi in 1989 was not that mercury was toxic, but that the vast majority of fungi had become resistant to this substance.

Figure 7 How resistance of bacteria, weeds, and fungi increases as the amount of biocides increases

Fifth: The existence of biocides that have hormonal effects on organisms. These biocides, like other hormonal drugs, not only cause organ disorders in food consumers or fatal diseases in agricultural workers, but their proliferation in nature, especially with their relatively long lifespan, causes numerous disorders in all living organisms. For more information on this subject, see Appendix 7, Weedicides. This phenomenon is completely new to nature, and its prevalence shows the excessive cruelty and slowness of capitalist production relations. A system that uses the most inhumane tactics to gain more profits. With this brief explanation of the difference between the natural defence system of plants and its comparison with the unbridled defence creation of capitalism, let’s get to the heart of the matter. Is there any limit to the barbarity against humanity in this system, or is the drive for profit-making trying to make the entire world a sanctuary for its hounds and remove all barriers?

Figure 8 Number of official biocides used in 27 European countries in August 2011 ²⁹

The point to be explained in the table above is that biocides are not the same in all European countries and it cannot be concluded from these figures that only a maximum of 291 registered substances are used in Europe (this figure belongs to France) for the simple reason that firstly each country has its own registered list and part of this list may be the same as in other countries and part may not be. Furthermore, agricultural products are traded throughout Europe, so a package of fruit, vegetables, flour, greens and meat can contain a much larger volume of biocides than the same package of products in another country (the report of the Swedish Food Agency, introduced in this chapter, clearly shows the combination of domestic and foreign substances²⁸). In this table, Denmark used 152, Sweden 162, the Netherlands 217, Germany 231 and France 291 chemicals this year. This means that other types were added the year before and the year after, but the substances that were abandoned have not been completely eliminated but are used to a more limited extent with new permits. The bottom line is that humans, nature, animals and the whole of existence are capital’s laboratory rats for finding ways to increase profits. Substances are registered and the plague attack of big agricultural capitalism is carried out through these substances on the foundations of the existence of nature and man, a few years later new compounds with newer and greater destructive power take their place and this chain continues. The report of the Swedish Food Agency shows only a small part of the spread and dispersion of biocides in agricultural goods. The more products are tested, the longer the list of biocides in the research program of government agencies becomes and the more time passes, the faster and more indescribably the capitalist attack on the environment, nature, living beings, plants and man outpaces these so-called research and experiments. The famous government institution of capital in the field of food products at http://www.efsa.europa.eu/ (European Food Safety Authority EFSA) falsely presents itself as responsible for protecting the food of the continent, but in fact it is the issuer of the license for the capitalist invasion of nature, humans and animals. In 1996, this organization announced with flags and trumpets that it received funding to control biocides in agricultural products and included in its list of 9 biocides for testing on plant products. Since then, this list has grown longer year by year, and it is suggested that the capitalists and their governments are really, really aware of the risks to human health! As if, as soon as they observe the pathogenic effects of the toxins used in capitalist farms, they immediately investigate the suspicious substance and, if they observe a risk, issue a decree banning its production! Nothing is more absurd than the fact that on the one hand, licenses are issued for the use of these substances, while on the other hand, various organizations are conducting experiments to show the extent of their spread and dispersion. The issue is definitely not about controlling these substances, because these organizations themselves are issuing the licenses. Here, as in all other areas of capitalist life, what is going on is simply demagoguery aimed at giving a rational and trustworthy face to this system, to the huge agricultural trusts, to the biocide producers and their government. Over the course of 15 years, the number of biocides tested on agricultural and livestock products has reached 193. Interestingly, in 2010, these tests also included animal products (see Figure 9), and this shows how biocides, by dispersing themselves in nature, also contaminate and pose a risk to livestock and their products (such as milk, meat, etc.).

Figure 9

EUCP – Number of pesticides (residue definitions) included

in the coordinated control programmes 1996-2010 (P = pesticides to be analysed in products of Plant origin, A = pesticides to analysed in products of Animal origin)³⁰

 The research involved more than 77,000 samples taken across Europe in 2010, covering 500 different food products. The report was prepared by the EFSA and published on 12 March 2013³⁰. The 2010 report focused on items such as apples, cabbage, leeks, lettuce, milk, peaches, pears, cereals (wheat, barley and maize), strawberries, pork and tomatoes. The report clearly shows that the spread of biocides does not only contaminate workers, their families and the natural environment around farms, but also all those who consume these food products. In half of the samples, residual biocides were reported in the products, but because EFSA samples a new group of products every year, and because the number and type of biocides also change, it is not possible to compare the results from different years. In general, the effects of the use of 328 biocides on vegetables and greens, 301 for nuts (hazelnuts, walnuts, almonds, etc.), 88 in relation to cereals (wheat, barley, maize and rice) have been observed in the research so far. In one third of the samples, more than one biocide was present per unit of product. In these studies, the exponential increase in the effect of biocides on each other (Cocktail effect) can be clearly seen. Another very important point is biocides that have destructive hormonal effects. These change from year to year in terms of number and molecular shape. This report names grapes as one of the worst crops in terms of the presence of carcinogenic, sterilizing and hormonal substances in the pesticides used. In this regard, it is not bad to look at Figure 8, where the agricultural capitalists of France, Italy and Spain are the largest consumers of biocides. The main players here are the wine and grape companies in these countries. The same 2010 report points out that wine companies in Vanguard are the largest consumers of illegal pesticides in Europe. In 2008, the so-called independent European non-governmental organization Pesticide Action Network (PAN) concluded in its tests on wines that all the wines tested contained pesticide residues. Some wines even contained up to 10 different biocides, and an average of four different biocides were detected in a glass of wine. Biocides were found in 47% of wines, which even the WHO considers carcinogenic, disrupts the hormonal system and causes reproductive disorders. The carcinogenic biocidal Pyrimethanil was found in 75% of wines. Procymidone, which has been classified by the EFSA as a carcinogen and a hormone disruptor, was detected in 33% of the wines. ³¹.

2010 is the first year that cereals are tested for residues of biocides. One reason is that Chlormequat, which has various functions such as killing weeds, insects or fungi, was used by the capital in large quantities and at an alarming rate to shorten the height of cereal stalks. This is a hormone that can act as a growth inhibitor and is used in grain crops so that combines or harvesters can harvest grains of the same height without having to spend time changing settings. Interestingly, the reason for the excessive growth of grains is the excessive use of chemical fertilizers! While the same substance and similar substances such as (Glypper, Moddus M Trinexapak, Barclay gallup) are used to prevent the longitudinal growth of oil plants such as rapeseed and at the same time help the lateral growth of the branches of these plants. The effect of the use of the aforementioned substance in increasing the yield of about 900 kilograms per hectare has been estimated. We see that capitalism molding the earth and the time of human life in order to increase the rate and volume of surplus value and everywhere makes these molds a guarantee for the surge of profits at the cost of human destruction. In 2003, 220,000 tons of these materials were consumed in Europe, with companies in Spain, Italy, France, Germany and England together accounting for 75% of their use. The rate of expansion of the use of these materials in Sweden is about 2% per year. Another report on citrus fruits in Europe was published by the same organization in 2010, which examined the levels of residues of biocides such as Imazalil, Thiabendazol, Chlorpyrifos, Malathion in these products. These biocides were present in 80% of the 4363 citrus samples tested. 63% of these samples contained multiple biocides in each case. Tests show that these biocides remain not only in the skin of citrus fruits but even in their flesh. Imazalil, which is a hormonal substance that causes hormonal changes, has caused cancer in laboratory mice and has led to the cessation of reproduction and impaired fetal health. This substance has very destructive effects on male sex hormones. Even the American organization called EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) has listed it as a carcinogen, but as usual in its conclusions, it has considered the risk of cancer from contaminated food to be insignificant! The shameful efforts of these capitalist organizations to show that the aforementioned substances are not dangerous only expose their disgusting demagoguery. The issue is certainly not the lack of scientific capacity of these institutions to recognize the staggering effects of the aforementioned compounds in terms of producing cancers, allergies, hormonal disorders and other biological disorders. They only want to expose the fact that in the capitalist system the goal of production is only profit and the unlimited sacrifice of human beings for the sake of profit is the essence of capital. What kind of deadly mixture of substances the product contains is of no importance to the owner of capital. Thiabendazole, which is sprayed on citrus fruits with wax to make them more attractive, marketable, and attractive, is a deadly biocide. It remains in the skin and flesh of the sprayed citrus fruits. Studies on mice have shown that it is carcinogenic in the goiter and liver of the animals. Chlorpyrifos and Malathion also persist in citrus fruits for a long time after consumption. These two have detrimental effects on the development of the nervous system, body weight, learning capacity and muscle movement of children and infants and are detectable in the skin and flesh of citrus fruits until consumption31. A new phenomenon that has recently occupied the minds of honey producers, farm and orchard owners (fruit producers, oilseeds, legumes, etc.) is the widespread death of honeybees. The role of this bee in pollination is 1.4 to 2.8 times greater than its role in honey production. Honeybees therefore have a very important place in the ecological system. Mass deaths of bees, especially in the years after 2000, have occurred much more frequently than their natural winter deaths. This widespread death in the years 2006-2007 in the United States, Canada and Europe led to the popularization of the term Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). The first case occurred in 2004, but in 2006, nearly 50% of American honeybees died. Researchers consider one of the important factors in the occurrence of CCD to be the use of various insecticides, especially Acaricide, Neonicotinoid, Imidachloprid, Cypermethrin, and the indiscriminate use of antibiotics³². In Appendix 8, you will find the names of substances that kill bees.

GMO Genetically modified organism

Hospitals, institutes and clinics have long been the centers of buying and selling human organs. It goes without saying who the sellers are. Unemployed workers or those employed but with very low wages, and those who, despite working long double-shift days, are unable to provide for the basic necessities of life for themselves and their children. For about two decades, the capitalist governments of Sweden, Iceland and some other countries have been selling stem cells to large biogenetic and pharmaceutical companies. All of this shows the commodification of every single part of the human body. You must remember the days when the world’s advanced universities and biochemistry institutes were fully discovering and unlocking the entire human genetic code, DNA, and it wasn’t long before about 30,000 proteins in the human body were molecularly identified. The giant capitalist corporations started a huge and competitive war to own these discoveries. What the outcome of this war was, which trusts drove out their competitors, which international industrial and military companies now have the largest share in the production of biological goods, or similar matters, with all their importance, are not my subject here. The point I am emphasizing is that the process of dissolving everything in the process of profit-making is inherent, ongoing, and constant in capitalism. This system decides what the great mass of workers throughout the world will eat, what they will not eat, what they will starve to death, or, if they do have food, in what composition and through what transformations it will reach them. What to drink, whether they have water to drink or not, whether this water carries a world of pathogenic bacteria or is prepared in a healthy and hygienic way, what clothes to wear or whether they will be naked in the cold and heat, whether they will have a roof over their heads or whether they will be left without a hut or a house, and in the first case, how to produce even the materials, mortar, and the fine construction and architecture of this nest. Whether they have a plan for minimal recreation or not, and if so, what form this recreation will take. The wage slavery system does this to billions of workers in the world, and in this regard, the food production sector has long been introducing genetically coded substances into our bodies. No matter how much we shout that the owners of capital in this sector have changed our genetic makeup, inflicted previously unknown diseases on us and are inflicting more and more every day, and are destroying and destroying all billions of years of living nature. Capital’s answer is just one word. That we know what is good for you! We are the ones who rule the land and sea, the providence of everything and all of humanity is in our hands, the more it increases profit, the more it is purely beneficial, and every dollar that reduces profits is harmful to the body and soul of humans!! This is the logic of capital, and as long as the anti-capitalist, anti-wage labour movement of the working class does not go against this logic and against the existence of this system, it is natural that the curve of the rise and fall of capitalist profits will be the criterion for determining all aspects of human existence, including the genetic skeleton, the usefulness or not or the health or unhealthy Ness of food and clothing, the place of residence, the breathing space, and everything human. Proteins are the life machines of living organisms, whether plants or animals. All vital activity is carried out through the function of proteins. Proteins build the body, transmit the effects of the surrounding environment to the body and cause its reaction. A protein can perform one or more functions, which is why organisms need different proteins. Proteins have a limited life and are destroyed. It is a very basic point that the protein that is made again must be exactly the same as the previous one, in order to perform the same functions. For this reason, there is a complex machine in the body that plays the role of the brain in the protein production system. This machine is DNA. Parts of DNA called genes code for all proteins. Organisms have different genes, but they are all made up of four molecules or building blocks. This is why genes can be transferred between organisms, but humans still know little about the side effects of this transfer. For example, we know that by transferring a gene from a bacterium that is resistant to insects to corn, this crop can be made resistant to insects. The purpose of GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) is to increase the nutritional value of raw agricultural and livestock products, to create resistance against bacteria, fungi and pests, and of course all this with the aim of reducing production costs, creating new markets (expanding the scope of capital investment), competing with similar products or other goods, reducing the need for labour per hectare through technical changes in cultivation and finally increasing profits. The first GMO product was the tomato, which came to the market in 1994. In the US, products from this area of ​​capital investment are expanding at an astronomical rate. For example, GMO sugar beets entered the market in 2012 and now account for half of the US sugar production market in 2014. Farm owners and dairy producers are consciously feeding GMO products to their animals in order to produce the product more cheaply and under the influence of advertising from gene companies that sell their products at a discount. There are now 22 baby foods, more than 75 cakes and pastries, 45 types of bread, over a hundred types of breakfast cereals (cornflakes), and more than 120 types of frozen foods containing GMOs (GM Food) on the food market. The list of these foods and their semi-prepared forms is so long that recently websites have been created to provide information about non-GM foods! 85% of American corn is GMO. This corn has been made resistant to the herbicide Glyphosate, while also becoming a pest to humans. Almost all soybeans are GMOs, produced with the aim of increasing the amount of unsaturated oils and competing with olive oil produced by Italian, Greek and Spanish companies. GMO pumpkins carry extra protein to resist viruses and make the disease of workers, consumers, a guarantee of the health of the goods and increase their profits. GMO alfalfa contains a gene that is resistant to the herbicide Roundup, which carries a health risk from the commodity to humans. 90% of canola (an oilseed) production is GMO. Cows are given growth hormones to increase milk production, which are still banned in some parts of the world. The production of GMO rice in the United States is the agenda of the capitalist industrial and financial trusts, and this will certainly bring about huge changes in the market for this essential commodity. Half of the world’s food hydrocarbon market is the sphere of influence of this capitalist profiteering project, this type of rice contains carotene, which is converted into vitamin A, and is likely to open up new territory for the increasingly inept invasion of capital in creating new threats to human health. More than 60% of the volume of American agricultural products is in the GMO field. In Europe, soybeans, corn, chloro and sugar beets are GMO products, but there is still no figure on the volume of production. All over the world, soybeans, corn, chloro and cotton are GMO products. In this case, the volume or proportion of production is also unknown. One of the reasons for the rapid growth of the market for these products is the extensive advertising of their owners, organizations have emerged in the world that are very active with huge budgets from giants in this field such as Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer Crop Science, who are responsible for advertising. ISAAA (International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications)³³ is one of these institutions. An organization that very deceptively presents itself as an independent and impartial scientific institution! The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) held three important meetings on different dates in Chicago, Washington and Oakland to convince researchers and the public of the usefulness of GMOs. Manufacturing companies and capital institutes, Plant Biotechnology and the National Center for Biotechnology they have created websites to explain the benefits of these products. The result of this advertising was the rapid growth of this method of cultivation and production in various countries around the world in a short period of time from 1996 to 2008. At the beginning of this period, only six countries with approximately 1% of the world’s agriculture belonged to the field of GMO production, this figure reached 25 countries and about 24% of the world’s total agriculture by the end of the period. Soybeans are a crop used as a fuel and source of protein for humans and animals. One of the largest producers of soybeans in the world is Argentina (the other producers are the United States, Brazil, China, India and Paraguay). China is the largest importer of soybeans in the world (more than 60% of Argentine soybeans are exported to China). In the mid-1990s, Monsanto was losing its market share due to fierce competition from Chinese manufacturers for the biocide Roundup (the Chinese were producing a similar but cheaper product). At the same time, the company introduced GMO soybeans to the market under the name Roundup Ready Corn. This product was not just a new product resistant to the company’s own biocide, but it was also grown in a completely cheaper way, and naturally, in the course of the competition, it gave the company’s owners a larger share of the added value. Canadian landowners, who together grow GMO chlorella on an area the size of the entire agricultural land of Sweden, express their satisfaction with the planting and harvesting of this product. The reason for their satisfaction is very clear. They are not supposed to think about human health. The criterion of capitalist agriculture, like any sphere of accumulation, is simply profit, and the cultivation of GMO chlorella brings increased profits by reducing production costs and increasing competitiveness. Shallow plowing, shorter cultivation time, up to two harvests instead of one at a time, less biocides, and especially less labour (28 to 37%) to the level of two workers per 1,000 hectares, are among the achievements of this method for capitalists. (All of this is also true for the cultivation of other GMO crops). It is worth noting that the capitalists’ turn to GMO has also deeply contributed to the acceleration of the concentration of capital, the intensity of competition, the exclusion of small farm owners, and the swallowing of their lands by large trusts. Some 200,000 small and medium-sized agricultural producers were soon forced to abandon their farms and join the ranks of unemployed Argentine workers. Between 1996 and 2004, 24 new shantytowns were added to the existing shantytowns around Buenos Aires. Statistics show that 8 out of every 10 inhabitants of these capital’s hellholes were former farmers. ³⁴. By 2007, only 16 million hectares of Argentine farmland (50%) was under soybean cultivation. Between 2003 and 2007, one million hectares of the country’s rainforest were cleared to make way for soybeans. By 2009, all of Argentina’s soybeans were GMO. Three large American companies (ADM, Cargill, and Bunge) and one French company (Louis Dreyfus) had gained complete control over the purchase of soybeans, the production of oil, the production of animal feed, detergents, soybean fuel, and the sale of these products. These four companies control 43% of Brazil’s soybean oil production and 80% of Europe’s soybean oil production. Three American companies control 75% of the market in the country. ³⁵ The growth and expansion of this investment sector is staggering. Monsanto, the largest producer of GMO products, plans to take over 100% of the entire market in the United States in the next five years by producing products such as biocide-resistant broccoli, smaller bell peppers with fewer frills, sweet onions with fewer tears, sweeter cantaloupe with a lemon flavor, and watermelon that doesn’t drip when you eat it. Let’s discuss some of the possible side effects of consuming these products, but before that, let’s take a look at the technique of producing these products in the laboratory. In general, there are two different methods or techniques for transferring genes from one organism to another. One is copying, which is relatively cheap and is mostly used for GMOs. In this technique, when the cell divides, each new gene fragment can produce a specific protein, and as a result, an uncontrollable system is created, apart from the desired fragment. The second technique, which is much more expensive but much more accurate, is based on the selection of a specific gene. The number of genes in the human body is between 20 and 25 thousand ³⁶ while the number of human proteins is about 100 thousand. This means that each gene can produce more than one protein (International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium). For this reason, all the advertising by GMO companies that they produce only one protein is a complete lie. I should add here that during the time of George Bush, father and son, laws were enacted that practically gave free rein to GMO companies to sacrifice human health as much as possible to increase their profits. According to these laws, the company applying for GMO products is not required to conduct the necessary research at the molecular level and report its results to the relevant institutions. No one except the managers, partners and responsible elements of these companies will know how they work. Furthermore, the transferred gene can have different results in the long term that were not previously predicted, because small-scale, controlled production in a laboratory with a gene without competitors (the completely sterile environment of the laboratory) is certainly very different from production in large centers full of different and sometimes similar genes. The first lesson of Process Chemistry says that it is not possible to understand with a simple experiment what the phenomenon will look like in the real world and on large scales, which is why researchers like Barry Commoner are sceptical of what these companies say. There is limited scientific information about the functioning of bacteria in nature, and even less so about GMO products in nature. The only reliable and specific information is the one that has been said. Lower production costs, intense competition for these goods, production with a higher organic composition and greater labour productivity, and finally, greater profits, determine the reality of the matter. In conditions where the world is full of huge amounts of accumulated free capital, every small opening for new investments and new accumulation is an opportunity for survival and continued profit hunting. Studies in Canada and Mexico show that GMO cholera, which is responsible for about 60% of the crops in both countries, has spread to non-GMO fields. One of the problems farmers are facing is the increasing resistance of weeds. These weeds have to be attacked with stronger and more dangerous biocides. This is said to have been one of the reasons for the suicides of about 182,000 small and medium farmers in India between 1997 and 2007. ³⁶. George Bush, the father and son, who both opposed stem cell research and cut funding for it on religious grounds, have been the biggest supporters of GMO companies. They have passed a congressional order for the FDA to allow unhindered registration of their products. This law does not differentiate between these products and other food ingredients. Michael Taylor, who drafted the new reform (formerly a lawyer for Monsanto), returned to Monsanto after resigning from the FDA and this time became a vice president of the board! While at the FDA, he destroyed a significant portion of government documents on the harmful effects of GMOs. ³⁷ A report by Jeffrey M. Smith on the same subject clearly shows that FDA GMO experts in their research on GMOs firmly believe that these substances are dangerous to humans, contrary to the claims of the companies. The companies in question have also provided no scientific evidence that they are safe. In 2001, a group of researchers published an article in the journal The Royal Society of Canada. They strongly refuted the FDA’s claim that GMOs are safe. Researchers at the Rowett Institute in Scotland tested GMO potatoes on mice and described the dire results for the mice. The effects of GMOs last much longer than the companies claim. They falsely claim that farmers can use natural seeds in the next planting! This was effectively disproved in a study conducted in Scotland. The experiment showed that the effects persisted for 15 years after the cultivation was stopped. ³⁸ Another study in Sweden and Denmark came to similar conclusions, with 39% of plants grown on land that had been planted with GMOs 10 years earlier still carrying the same gene.

Chapter Four

Nuclear energy, the latest gift of capitalism

The use of the latest achievements of science and technology to increase the productivity of labor is a phenomenon that is inherent to capitalism, so that without it accumulation will not occur and as a result the death of the system will be accelerated. This statement certainly has nothing to do with Karl Kautsky and his fundamentally incorrect theory about the deterministic and deterministic surrender of capitalism to socialism. The grave of capitalism will be dug not by its mere degeneration and historical decay, but only by the conscious working masses organized in national councils against wage slavery and ready for socialist planning of work, production and social life. Our discussion here is something else. Capitalism commits every crime for its survival. Every day we see that in every corner of the globe it is making millions of workers unemployed, closing factories and work centers, mobilizing Nazi and fascist armies, pitting millions of masses against each other, creating an imaginary enemy with the aim of launching imperialist and regional wars and mass killings, in order to somehow make it through today to tomorrow. Capital does all this to survive, and we should not think that resorting to these atrocities is only special in times of crisis. It is a mistake to imagine that this system, when it is in prosperity and away from crisis, does not engage in destruction, constantly increasing the intensity of exploitation, inciting wars, genocide, and in short, the destruction of humanity. The latest achievement of this system, which emerged from the second imperialist war, is nuclear weapons and nuclear energy reactors. We do not talk about nuclear weapons because we all know the purpose and result of their use without any doubt. But the short history of nuclear energy, which has lasted for several decades, shows what a gift this is. Every decade since the Second Imperialist War, between 5 and 6 nuclear accidents have occurred in the world. The main trend of these accidents has been the continuous intensification of the destructive power and the increase in the dimensions of the disasters (note that calling these accidents is fundamentally wrong because an accident is, by definition, an event that occurs due to natural forces and without human control, while the explosion of a nuclear reactor is not an accident but a phenomenon that lies within it, just as war is a twin of the class system). On September 29, 1957, the Mayak disaster occurred in the former Soviet Union. Radioactive waste stored in underground tankers gradually heated up due to a failure of the cooling system, which led to an explosion. The resulting radioactive material (plutonium) was released to a height of one kilometre and a radius of 30-50 kilometres on the ground. The incident was rated as a major nuclear event on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES) and was marked as a level 6 on a scale of 1 to 7 (see Figure 10). In October 1957, a fire broke out at one of the reactors at the British nuclear complex in Sellafield, causing the release and spread of radioactive materials. This accident was the largest of its kind before Chernobyl. The amount of radioactive material released, which contaminated milk, poultry, golf courses and lakes, was estimated to be 11 tons of uranium.

In March 1979, an explosion at the Harrisburg nuclear facility caused such contamination of the surrounding area that the usual cleanup of the released radioactive material took up to 5 years. The disaster was so severe that it led to the permanent shutdown of the reactors of the complex.

Figure 10

INES (the International Nuclear Event Scale)

Contents of the International Nuclear Disaster Scale along with its incidents so far:

      Level 7: Major accident; Chernobyl disaster, 26 April 1986, Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster    

 Level 6: Serious accident; Kyshtym disaster at Mayak Chemical Combine (MCC.) Soviet Union, 29 September 1957

 Level 5: Accident with wider consequences; Windscale fire (United Kingdom), 10 October 1957, Three Mile Island accident near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (United States), 28 March 1979, First Chalk River accident,^[10][11] Chalk River, Ontario (Canada), 12 December 1952Lucens partial core meltdown (Switzerland), 21 January 1969, Goiânia accident (Brazil), 13 September 1987

 Level 4: Accident with local consequences; Sellafield (United Kingdom) – five incidents 1955 to1979, SL-1 Experimental Power Station (United States) – 1961, Saint-Laurent Nuclear Power Plant(France) – 1969, Buenos Aires (Argentina) – 1983, Jaslovské Bohunice (Czechoslovakia) – 1977, Tokaimura nuclear accident (Japan) – 1999

 Level 3: Serious incident; THORP plant Sellafield (United Kingdom) – 2005, Paks Nuclear Power Plant(Hungary), 2003, Vandellos Nuclear Power Plant (Spain), 1989, Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station (United States), 2002

 Level 2: Incident; Blayais Nuclear Power Plant flood (France) December 1999, Ascó Nuclear Power Plant(Spain) April 2008, Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant (Sweden) July 2006, Gundremmingen Nuclear Power Plant (Germany) 1977, Shika Nuclear Power Plant (Japan) 1999

 Level 1: Anomaly; Penly (Seine-Maritime, France) 5 April 2012, Gravelines (Nord, France), 8 August 2009, TNPC (Drôme, France), July 2008

 Level 0: Deviation ; 4 June 2008: Krško, Slovenia, 17 December 2006, Atucha, Argentina, 13 February 2006: Fire in Nuclear Waste Volume Reduction Facilities of the Japanese Atomic Energy Agency(JAEA) in Tokaimura

 Out of scale ; 17 November 2002, Natural Uranium Oxide Fuel Plant at the Nuclear Fuel Complex in Hyderabad, India: A chemical explosion at a fuel fabrication facility

29 September 1999: H.B. Robinson, United States: A tornado sighting within the protected area of the nuclear power plant (NPP)

5 March 1999: San Onofre, United States: Discovery of suspicious item, originally thought to be a bomb, in nuclear power plant

In April 1986, the famous Chernobyl disaster occurred in Ukraine, then part of the former Soviet Union. One of the reactors at the plant exploded, sending radioactive material into the air over much of Europe and the Soviet Union. The scale of the accident was so great that radioactive materials measuring devices were unable to detect the amount of radiation. According to official Soviet statistics, 134 workers and technicians who were trying to shut down and cool down other reactors suffered fatal illnesses from the effects of radiation. 50 of them succumbed to their deaths shortly after. The death toll from this black event was estimated in international reports, forecasts and estimates between 1,000 and one million. In late 1986, the entire reactor was sealed in 250 tons of concrete to prevent further radioactive releases. The area has been declared dangerous for hundreds of years. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates the death toll from radioactive fallout in Kiev at between 4,000 and 5,000, and in other parts of Ukraine and Europe at around 93,000 (Greenpeace), but Russian researchers say the figure is as high as one million across Europe.

Following this incident, in Ukraine and Belarus, thyroid cancer increased dramatically, and by 2005, about 6,000 people with this disease were treated.

The last and most serious nuclear disaster was Fukushima in March 2011, caused by an earthquake in the waters off the east coast of Japan. In this incident, three of the six reactors immediately failed within a few days, starting to heat up and release radioactive materials into the air, water, and ground.

According to the report of the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (NISA), the amount of radioactive (Caesium) released into the atmosphere after the accident was 168 times that of the Hiroshima atomic bomb at the end of the Second Imperial War. The Fukushima incident was the largest accident of its kind in the world and to date. (Level 7 on the INES scale) It was mentioned above that the destructive dimensions of this type of disaster are constantly increasing, their occurrence is also part of the process of producing this type of energy. Extracting electricity through nuclear processes is one of the cheapest techniques. To illustrate this point, let’s compare it to electricity generation from oil. In the United States, 790 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity is generated annually by 100 nuclear reactors. This is equivalent to the electricity that would require 300 million barrels of oil to produce. The cost of producing electricity from nuclear fuel includes the purchase of radioactive materials, the cost of storing radioactive waste, the cost of the nuclear facility (which is broken into electrical energy production units), the cost of dismantling the reactors at the end of their life, the cost of wages for workers, technicians and guards, and finally the huge profits that the capitalists of this energy production sector make for themselves. Currently, the price of each unit of electricity produced by nuclear energy is between 3 and 11 cents per kilowatt-hour in the market. Now, if we multiply the annual production of nuclear electricity in the United States by 10 cents, it comes to about $66 billion, while 300 million barrels of oil on the market, at $100 per barrel, comes to $30 billion, and this is just the price of the raw materials needed to produce the desired volume of electricity. In order to achieve a correct comparison between the production costs of these two types of energy, we must add other very large items such as the cost of labour, the gigantic amount of unpaid labour of the exploited working mass or the desired profit of the owners of capital in this sector, the astronomical salaries of specialists, consultants, managers, researchers and holders of similar positions, the costs of the fixed and circulating part of the fixed capital that must be advanced (except for raw materials), and the like to the above figure of $30 billion. A calculation that inevitably confronts us with the staggeringly higher price of electricity from oil compared to its nuclear equivalent. The concentration of nuclear facilities in one place, easy access to raw materials such as plutonium or uranium, the simplicity of the technique used compared to other energy techniques, and finally, most importantly, its high productivity and efficiency compared to other energy sources, have caused its growth rate to be higher than other electrical energy production facilities. Its biggest and perhaps only weakness is its security-protection system. Among these, the reactor cooling and control system is highly sensitive and weak. But now, and for a long time, cooling and control systems with higher reliability have been developed. The problem is that these techniques have remained at the research level and in research institutions because their very high cost does not attract any capital. This means that the high efficiency of this technique, which is the most important indicator of its superiority over other energy sources, loses most of its attractiveness and credibility due to the high cost of this system. Apart from the above-mentioned incidents, two other hazardous processes always accompany the production of nuclear energy. One is the extraction of raw materials to produce radioactive ingots, which threatens the living environment of workers and technicians from the very beginning, i.e. the beginning of the work process in the mine. Unfortunately, due to the very complex secrecy that exists due to the possibility of producing nuclear weapons in this area, the available information on the dimensions of environmental and human destruction of the production of this energy is very small.

The second hazard of radioactive waste and waste is caused by the use of radioactive elements. Regarding this waste, it should be said that until now it has been stored in heavy water pools within nuclear power plants for up to a year after collection, and then in other pools for 40-50 years, and finally after this period, the waste is stored at a depth of at least 500 meters in the ground and in isolated tanks for at least a thousand years, during which time its radioactive rays end. It should be noted that even after this period, although the direct radiation of radioactive substances has ended, these substances are still harmful to the environment and animals. For this reason, they must be stored in closed underground tanks for 100,000 years. It has happened many times that these substances have leaked out of their barrels and tanks and contaminated groundwater. The process of determining the fate of nuclear waste by producers is not followed in the above manner. It has happened many times that radioactive waste is transported to other countries, including Africa, and stored there in inappropriate places and near residential areas of workers and labourers. It should be noted that in terms of international atomic energy laws, transporting this waste to other countries is completely legal, provided that the receiving country has the necessary laws, responsible institutions and technical level. It is precisely because of this level of technology and laws of the receiving countries that the companies and governments that produce nuclear waste are able to dump this waste wherever they want at a relatively free price. This is also true for the production of radioactive elements used in nuclear energy. This means that the capitalists who produce these materials produce these materials at a cheap price and relatively free labour without observing the minimum working environment and living conditions of the workers of these countries and sell them on the international market.

What do ecological thinkers and intellectuals say about environmental disasters?

In the introduction, we said that the goal of capitalist production is nothing other than profit, and that it is aimed at obtaining increasingly golden profits, which leads nature to destruction, makes the relationship between humans and nature contradictory and destructive, and links the nature of this contradiction to the requirements of maximizing capital’s profit. Finally, finding the mechanisms for this limitless profitability becomes the content of thought and logic of cognition, and the foundation of human consciousness. Individuals, organizations, and colourful parties of the bourgeoisie, with this same consciousness and thought, approach the relationship between humanity and nature with the approach of sacrificing everything for the sake of maximizing capital profits and bring forward a dialogue to resolve the conflict between the two. In their inverted and inverted thinking, which is the evaporation of the process of capital appreciation, they consider all the social changes and developments in history to be the product of the theory-making of a handful of philosophers and scholars, and they see themselves as among those “history-making” philosophers. It is their custom to engineer the public opinion of the working and oppressed masses by distorting the facts. To convince them that they have the prescription for the cure for all pains in the grooves of their brains and are capable of removing all the environmental disasters created by the capitalist Sudanese. This group does this to keep capitalist production relations out of the reach of the protest and struggle of the workers of the world. Meanwhile, conscious workers, workers who have freed their minds and consciousness from the pressure of these distortions, know very well that all the destruction, pollution, and destruction of nature is done by the hands of capital. They deeply understand that in order to free nature from these dangers, in order for nature to properly serve the real needs of human life, we must definitely fight capital, we must throw away the false solutions of capitalism, we must see the issue on a global level and think about internationalist strategies. When bourgeois theorists deal with historical issues in this field in past centuries, they present a scroll of ideas divorced from real data and underlying practical developments. They put forward issues that will inevitably shed light on the real roots of the events and disasters that have occurred and hide the relationship of these dark events with the capitalist mode of production. These arrogant saviours of capital who call themselves the conscience of humanity! Little do they think that this very repetition of environmental issues by themselves from time to time is evidence of their disgrace and conclusive proof of the invalidity of all their theorizing. This constant repetition of issues screams that their word games have not solved any of the environmental problems; on the contrary, the great human disasters in this field have become more terrible at each moment than the previous one. Their repeated and continuous clamoring also screams out the fact that the root of the problem is not in the deficit and lack of rhetoric and theorizing, but in the very foundation of capitalism. They do not even listen to the fatwas and opinions of their fellow citizens in the past to see that they too have expressed the same words in various forms, and because their consciousness has been the consciousness of capital, because they have not explored the roots and, worse, they have blocked the path of this exploration, not only have they not done anything but they have also blocked the path of finding the right path and following it. They are unable to understand the fact that what humanity needs is a fundamental change in the status quo, not an interpretation of events. They do not understand that it is not theoretical conclusions and ideas that shape human existence, but rather the social existence of people that shapes their thoughts and opinions. For all these reasons, this group only contributes to the increasing perpetuation of disasters.

The inevitable and ever-growing contradictions of capitalism inevitably bring the intellectual representatives of this system to the fore, but only to expose these contradictions and to seek justification for their normalization and solvability by this system. They raise the flag of rebellion against environmental pollution in a quixotic and deceptive manner, using wordplay to separate themselves from the statesmen and rulers of capital, dressing in a cloak of chastity and innocence, and after all this, they present to others a detailed record of the emergence, influence, and presence of radiating environmental ideas in history. As is the tradition of the bourgeoisie, they separate these ideas from the mode of production that generates them and from the expectations and interests of a certain social class that founded them. They give ideas an independent and autonomous existence, they call their strategies miracles and magical effects, and they consider the owners of these ideas and thoughts as the saviours of humanity. The group in question uses all these tricks to introduce capitalism as a rational and humane system capable of solving all existing problems. They bring up Rousseau, who said, “Nature should not be dominated, but protected, because human life lies in nature.” They quote this phrase, and at the same time they throw a veil over these very clear facts: First, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Locke, Hobbes, and the like were thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment, interpreters of the bourgeois expectations of those days, and interpreters of the philosophy, law, order, and ethics of the expanding system of wage slavery.

Secondly, although capitalism in those days, by its very nature, was “flowing with filth and blood from every pore,” it was still taking its first steps in terms of creating a world of misery and suffering for humanity, and it was worlds apart from what it has created for humanity at present. Thirdly, what problem does Rousseau and Depp have in saying this and that solve, other than millions of workers dying of cancer from the massive radioactive leaks in Chernobyl, Fukushima, Sellafield, and other places?! The above “philosophers” are naturally unable, due to their class blood, to understand the fact that if we are to seek a word about the enormous dimensions of environmental dangers and the way to get rid of them, we have no choice but to look to people whose work has been to put their finger on the roots. In “The Condition of the English Working Class,” Engels speaks about the relationship between diseases and deaths, and the disability and injury of workers, with the dynamics of capital appreciation as far as the eye can see. Marx’s detailed references in the volumes of Capital to the working-class environment and its inevitable relationship to the growth and accumulation of capital contain a world of education. If the intellectual representatives of capital consider it forbidden to refer to these works, as they necessarily do, they would do well to at least consider the writings of George Perkins Marsh in the nineteenth century on the destruction of the environment as a consequence of the expansion of capitalism. The fact is that until the years after the second imperialist war, bourgeois thinkers did not say anything at all about the environment and its dangers to humanity. It is only since the mid-1960s that some discussions have taken place among these groups. It is from this period that terms and categories without any class or social content, without an address, within the framework of generalizations and, in fact, nonsense and deceit about how to protect capitalist systems and practices, enter bourgeois literature. Bertrand de Jouvenel, the French economist who is the founder of the term “political ecology”, speaks of “ecological conscience and awareness” in the mid-1960s. One of the reasons for the emergence and growth of environmental ideas during this period was the rapid growth of capitalism at the international level and its environmental destruction, the destruction of imperialist war and especially the atomic bomb and the contamination of radioactive materials in contact with nature and humans, the huge growth of nuclear power plants and nuclear tests in connection with the competition of imperialist powers. The Paris student movement of 1968 is the starting point for the proposal of the necessity of some changes in order to prevent environmental destruction by students and intellectuals of the left in Europe. The result of this period was the emergence of intellectuals who initially appeared with radical orientations but quickly fell into the lap of capital and capitalist institutions, who eventually became technocrats of the control and redistribution of the surplus value of the world’s workers among the various sectors of capital. Dennis Meadows, a professor at the University of Massachusetts and one of the founders of the Club of Rome in 1972 (a gathering of these thinkers), in his report (The Limits to Growth), which served as the platform of this gathering, raised the collapse of economic growth and population and wrote: “The intensification of the industrial process, rapid population growth, the growth of malnutrition, the destruction of non-renewable resources, and the devastation of the environment. The consequences are a model that, given its crisis-generating nature, has structural limitations. Since the current unbridled pace is leading us to catastrophic results, we must move towards a more balanced society and find fundamental compromises and understandings for the earth that is ending… We must seek the ecologically sound management of the transition period and a sensible growth. The arrogant statements of these thinkers and their warnings have been repeated time and time again without the slightest change in the production process, the accumulation process and the destruction of the environment by capital. When global capitals generally invade all areas of the world with a high organic composition to achieve the desired and ideal rate of profit, when even the areas of exploitation of quasi-free labor do not find a solution to the decline in the rate of profit, and finally the high capacity of capital and the high degree of productivity of labor reach astronomical proportions, the occasional belching of bourgeois intellectuals does not alleviate the pain of the capitalists’ concerns and only makes the intellectuals’ blindness more obvious. The theme of reducing production and consumption is repeated in the Brundtland Report under the title of “Sustainable Development” in 1987, and as mentioned in the first chapter of this series, the latest report of the International Climate Forum and its recommendations in Berlin on April 14, 2014, talks about stopping production!! Nearly 50 years have passed since the first report by American environmental researchers to Congress and its President, in which the destructive effects of carbon dioxide were emphasized and its authors called for changes in economic policy to reduce environmental degradation. The repetition of this nonsense makes two points clear.

First: Since their thoughts and ideas are repeated without analysing the performance (or, in fact, non-performance) of similar ideas of their predecessors, the question arises whether this does not just show their ridiculous demagoguery.

Second: Demagoguery is certainly inherent in the bourgeoisie, but more importantly, the bourgeois intellect is essentially the intellect of capital, and, as Marx said, the intellect of capital that has dressed up as a human being and taken on the personification of a human being. Thinking and reasoning with this theme is not going to shout from the minarets that the root of all pollution and destruction of the environment lies in the existence of capital.   

French sociologist Andre Gorz, who considered himself closer to Marx than all the intellectuals of the 1970s, says in his work called Ecology, “Advertising and marketing experts stimulate the needs, desires, and temptations of consumers, direct them, and cultivate them in line with the interests of the market and the sale of ever-increasing quantities of goods, so that the way people consume becomes responsive to the ever-increasing profitability of capital” (quoted in the article). In Ecology, he moves from a critique of needs to social ethics. “Social and ecological ethics is that the earth is being destroyed and destroyed, and therefore action must be taken. One of these actions is to criticize the techniques that serve to dominate man and nature.” He who believes that the concept of need in consumer culture is far from the real concept of need forgets that capitalism both produces and creates need itself, and both of these are the realities of this system. The arrogant bourgeois philosopher who considers himself a materialist and apparently claims to criticize capitalism escapes from the hard and tangible reality of this system to “ecological ethics” and, like the theistic preachers of his class, takes the path of supernatural ethics. When he returns from heaven to earth, he says about current social issues: “Capitalism must be forced to accept environmental requirements, just as in the last century the working class fought for reduced working hours, weekly holidays, higher wages, free healthcare, and is still struggling in various areas of socio-economic welfare.” He is teetering on the edge of contradiction. It sees environmental disasters as the product of capitalism, but its thinking, strategies, and solutions are tied to the process of capital appreciation. In this vein and under the pressure of this contradiction, it spins versions of reform and, like all leftist and social democratic parties, divides the struggle of the masses into two spheres: an economic one (including current environmental issues), which is considered within the power and vision of the workers, and a political sphere that is exclusive to us, the better ones, and the parties! Andre Gorz uses these demagoguery and self-deceptions to convince everyone that everything will be fine. “Taking into account environmental requirements has many opponents among business owners. But at the same time, it also has enough capitalist supporters and its acceptance by the money powers is a serious possibility. Therefore, it is better to stop playing the rocket game right now: the fight for the environment is not the ultimate goal, but only a step. This struggle can create problems for capitalism and force changes on it; but after a long period of resistance by force or trickery, capitalism will finally retreat and factor in the necessities when the environmental impasse becomes insurmountable. As it has done in other cases. This is the words of a bourgeois materialist philosopher, who is also an environmentalist and a critic of the pollution of nature by capital. However, conscious workers know very well that with small changes and reforms here and there, neither capitalism will collapse nor will any improvement in the state of the environment occur, nor will the terrifying acceleration of the development of pollution be slowed down. We cannot fight just to reduce misery, for the obvious reason that as long as the system that created and caused misery remains, there will be no talk of even reducing the pressure of misery. We are fighting against a system that is the source of all misery, including the destruction of the environment and work. Therefore, although the fight over the individual issues of our lives will not lead to the destruction of this system, we will make the individual parts of this fight into continuous rings of a great and global war to destroy capitalism and establish a communist society. The difference between us and the fantasy parties and intellectuals who sometimes claim to be critics of capitalism with the left is that, firstly, we organize both the daily economic struggle and the overthrow of this system ourselves and do not need any party or vanguard. We do not fragment our struggle in any way, such as engaging in a reformist economic struggle for hundreds of years and delegating the political struggle to parties and groups. Secondly, our daily struggles are at the same time a platform for raising awareness, organizing councils, exercising power against capital, and a field for our preparation and preparation for the abolition of wage slavery. We know very well that capitalist economic-productive institutions never plan and invest on their own to make the working environment more bearable for workers, they never plan to produce goods that meet the greatest needs of people and guarantee their health. They do not think about education and health that will give the best results, and such things. Our difference with the reformists is that we fight with the aim and direction of abolishing wage labour and destroying capitalist relations of production, and we have no illusions about capitalism and its minor changes. Capitalist thinkers, and in this case the environmentalists of capital, always consider themselves to be ahead of history and the real movement of the masses, and they think that they are the ones who lead the masses with their words, writings, and messages. Of course, in their writings they never refer to the working class as a class but rather see it as a collection of separate individuals waiting for a message and a prophet. The class interests and concerns of the workers are of no importance to them, and they see themselves as miracle workers who, with the help of a magical formula called ecological ethics, will simultaneously repair and humanize all the destruction in the environment, all the mire and filth caused by capitalism! The latest and most recent thinker of this kind is John Bellamy Foster, who considers himself the successor of Marx and his ideas!! He calls Marx’s description of communist society synonymous with the theory of “sustainable development” of capitalist thinkers!! The concept of “sustainable development”, which was the message of the bourgeois environmental movements of the 1970s in Europe, was the content of the Brundtland report entitled “Our Common Future” (in 1987) and then became the basis of the work of the United Nations conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Some of its provisions are as follows:

1- In sustainable development, humans are the center of attention and humans deserve a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature.

2- Development is a right that must equally cover current and future generations.

3- Environmental protection is an inseparable part of development and cannot be considered in isolation.

These paragraphs continue with the same contents and finally end as follows.

27- All governments and individuals should cooperate in good faith and in a spirit of cooperation in bringing to fruition the principles reflected in this Declaration and in the development of international law in the field of sustainable development.

In this way, Mr. Bellamy Foster really succeeds in linking Marx’s ideas and criticism of capitalism with the ridiculous thesis of “sustainable development of capitalism”!

Nothing more disgusting and disgusting can be concocted. The bourgeois rationalist, however, by juxtaposing these two ideas shows us only one thing: how vulgar, ridiculous, and disgusting is the struggle of the reactionary bourgeois reformists to restore the dignity of capitalism and scenarios like the UN’s “sustainable development.” Today, bourgeois environmental theorists have become part of the rotten, reactionary parliamentary system of capitalism, and from within its frozen organs, they raise a voice of criticism that “the capitalist model must be subordinated to the model of political ecology in order to overcome the crisis.” As if the political organs of this same system must use their miraculous power to return the formidable giant of capitalism to the bottle. But we say that this system and the relations of production have reached the highest phase of their historical degeneration and that any attempt to manipulate it has only the role of stirring up the mire and the more deadly rebellion of infections. It is therefore necessary to forever break the scroll of reformist efforts of individuals and parties that only seek the perpetuation of this system. It is time for the working masses to take control of the fate of their work, production and social life. This is the only way to liberate humanity. The way to achieve this goal is also very clear. We must get to work. We must become organized and anti-capitalist, and we must make our consciousness as deep and Marxist as possible about the relations of capitalism. We must make this consciousness a weapon of war. With this weapon and the power of a conscious communist council, we must fight against capital in all areas of social life, including the environment. In this direction, we must become stronger, more aware, more organized, and more united. On this basis of struggle, he learned the ways of council society. He overthrew capitalism and established a communist society abolishing wage labour. These are not academic fantasies, but the real way of life and liberation of the working masses. The history of human societies is the history of class struggle. The history of capitalist society is also the history of the war of the working class against capital. This war must and can take the path of victory. We must learn from mistakes and failures. Let us not forget that our current experiences have been very expensive. The gap between the Paris Commune and the October Revolution was 46 years, all the evidence indicates that we did not learn from the Commune, fell into the trap of peaceful and militant social democracy and lost the October workers’ revolution. A hundred years have passed since the October Revolution, and during this period the capitalist class has used all its wealth, knowledge, experience and everything to crush and ground our class struggle. The huge cultural apparatuses of demagoguery, the state systems and spy institutes, parliamentarism, the bourgeois narratives of socialism, have thrown everything at us. It is enough to look at this last category alone to see how, during this period, the entire power of the war against wage labour has captured the working class. We are the class that constitutes the vast majority of society, and most importantly, we are the ones who, with every step of our class struggle, advance the struggle for human liberation, and with every step of our success, we take a step forward in the work of human liberation. The struggle against the destruction of the environment by capitalism is also an organic link in this war. What is felt to be most necessary in this process, especially in recent years, is the raising of the communist consciousness of the billion-strong masses. This raising of consciousness is not the work of the so-called communist parties that want to be the leaders of the proletariat and rule over the working masses, but only the work of the conscious workers who are against wage labour, who are omnipresent in the process of their own ongoing struggle. They are the ones who are trying to organize the chain of command in the councils, making the Marxian critique of the objectivity of capitalist production relations in all aspects of social life a current of workers’ consciousness and knowledge, and as the most conscious members of their class, they are working to find solutions to exert an increasingly anti-capitalist influence on the course of their daily struggles. The existing mode of production and its relations have not only exploited successive generations of workers, not only transformed the fruits of their labour into capital and more massive capital, not only separated them from their work and deprived them of existence, but have practically subjected their survival to the most brutal scourges by producing biocidal toxins, empty food, life-destroying energy, mountains of garbage, destroyed nature, rotten and dried-up lakes and reservoirs, smoke-filled air, and a growing wave of diseases caused by all this filth. The short history of capitalism’s inhuman existence has brought with it all the scourges of humanity. This history must be put to an end.

Chapter Five

Capitalism and the spread of toxins in nature

In preparing this chapter, I certainly do not intend to chronicle. Like all the other chapters, I pursue a radical critique of the capitalist system in the field of the environment and human labour. I intend a critical Marxist and labour analysis of the capitalist concept of development or progress. I do not limit the discussion to the distinctions between the social capital of different societies with respect to the place of each in the global division of labour of capital, because we no longer witness the historical variations of social systems and what exists, independent of this or that formal difference, is in any case only capitalism. The mode of production in which the relationship between society and nature is generally determined by capital. The fact that every society has specific laws to regulate the relationship between capital and nature does not diminish the dimensions of the international and widespread disaster of environmental destruction by capital. Another point is that in this chapter, Marx’s theories also determine the basis of my view of the relationship between capital and nature, man’s alienation from nature and his self-alienation. I do not mean that what Marx said should necessarily be considered comprehensive, infallible and eternal theories, nor do I believe that Marx has explained the entire course of capitalism from beginning to end and left nothing unsaid. The discussion is about the way of looking at society, the world, history and man. In the previous chapter, in examining the views and theories of bourgeois intellectuals, it was said that avoiding fatalism and “historical determinism,” which has been an important pillar of reformism since the time of the Second International, is an urgent condition and necessity for the critique of capitalism in relation to the environment and labour. No predestined change is going to happen. Everything depends on how the international working class plays its role in the ongoing class struggle. Only this class can, by destroying the wage labour system and establishing councils composed of individual workers, begin to create a society without exploitation, classes, and the state, and in this regard, truly eliminate the roots of environmental pollution. With the Council governance socialist, wage labour ends. The material foundations of class existence collapse, the division of society into worker and capitalist disappears. The era of separation of humans from labour and the product of their labour reaches its historical end. The state above the heads of humans disappears. There is no reason left for human self-alienation. Nature serves the real needs of humanity, freeing man from every constraint beyond himself. He plans everything in response to the need for growth and physical health and increasing intellectual excellence, and in this regard, he also purifies the environment and living beings from all pollution and contamination. In the previous chapter, it was also said that the rejection of theories, forms and products of environmental consciousness will be eliminated not through their theoretical criticism, but only through the practical overthrow of the existing social relations that give rise to these illusions and utopian thoughts. The attempt to create a so-called “environmental conscience” and write colourful laws with the hope of controlling capitalist production in the direction of a better environment does not in the least disturb the laws and relations governing this system but only fuels the illusion of the workers in the immutability of the material and fundamental elements of the existing system. Of course, there is no doubt that all the efforts of the government apparatus and the bourgeois green opposition are to trap the workers in these illusions. The representatives of this attitude try to present the political actions of parties, governments and institutions as the driving force of the era, and in this way, to make the illusion of the bourgeoisie itself regarding its actions real and decisive, active in solving environmental problems. Meanwhile, what governments and statesmen say and everything this group says is merely sowing and watering the seeds of illusion in the minds of the working masses. Workers who are under daily and increasing attack from forces that destroy the natural environment. Technocrats and bureaucrats of capitalist governments, especially in Europe, have attempted to control the production of chemical products by passing laws and formulas after the Second Imperialist War. The result of this work was the preparation of 60 Hazard Instructions and 73 Safety Instructions by the early 1990s. The collection of these instructions is called the Safety Data Sheet (SDS), which is led by the European Chemicals Agency. Following this work, there was a debate for years that these laws and regulations were not enough and that more should be written than this law, because the field of chemical production was much more advanced than the technocrats had imagined. The result was the addition of 103 new conventions to the former and 100 to the latter in 2005. Below we see the result of the work of the technocrats, who are very proud of their work and consider themselves leaders among OECD member countries.

Figure 11

Swedish Chemical Agency

Percentage of allergens in consumer products between 1995 and 2010 in Sweden, according to statistics from the Swedish Product Registration Authority.

Of the 14,000 chemical products in general use, about 3,800 (27% in 2010) contained one or more allergens, compared to about 16% in 1995 (Figure 11). The amount of allergens in chemical products used in Sweden was 89 grams per person in 2010, according to figures from the Swedish Product Registry.⁴⁷. A brief review of Table 5 and the subsequent explanations of some of these substances will give some idea of ​​the scale of the allergy catastrophe. According to a report published on May 25, 2014, more than 400 million people worldwide suffer from some form of allergy, and 300 million have asthma. Allergy is the fourth most common disease in the world and, according to the report, will become the third most common disease in the world within a few decades. This report attempts to examine various theories about the causes of the increase in allergies, but since the number of sufferers has increased sevenfold over the past 30 years, along with the increase in chemicals, and about 40% of people in industrialized countries suffer from various types of allergies, no factor has played a greater role in making them ubiquitous than polluted air, the staggering increase in the use of chemicals, and living in a way that is alien to nature. So, all the research really points to one thing. A kind of life that the conditions of capitalist production with its own narrative of modernization have imposed on humans. A life immersed in a multitude of chemicals that are foreign to the body. The report cites research on indigenous peoples of Africa and the Amish of America, who have 10 times fewer allergies than Europeans and other Americans.

Some common allergens in consumer goods in Sweden in 2010

Quantity (tons)	Number of products	Name	Cas-no
34	1 158	1,2-Benzisotiazol-3(2H)-on	2634-33-5
2	1 068	5-Klor-2-metyl-2H-isotiazol-3-on och 2-metyl-2H-isotiazol-3-on (3:1)	55965-84-9
34	560	Metyletylketoxim	96-29-7
6	431	Metylmetakrylat	80-62-6
3	384	Butylakrylat	141-32-2
18	378	Formaldehyd	50-00-0
9	260	2-Oktyl-3(2H)isotiazolon	26530-20-1
139	237	Subtilisin	9014-01-1
98	188	alfa-Amylas	9000-90-2
3	165	d-Limonen	5989-27-5
29	161	Tolylfluanid	731-27-1
195	146	Bisfenol A-epiklorhydrinpolymer	25068-38-6

Amount of chemicals (kg) used per unit of clothing	Amount of chemicals (kg) used per kg of clothing	Name of the dress
0.76	3.04	T-shirt
0.92	2.40	Jeans
1.49	1.80	Work pants
1.10	5.50	Viscose Sweater
0.83	2.76	Fleece Sweater

Chapter Six

Capitalism and the false claim of environmental pollution challenge The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently concluded its fifth round of meetings (AR5) by summarizing the results of the previous three conferences (Stockholm, Yokohama and Berlin) in Copenhagen on 2 November 2014. I say summarizing the previous three conferences because the Copenhagen meeting did not add any new topics or base its report on new research. First, I will explain some of the important environmental issues raised in the report. For more information on this subject, see Chapters 1 and 4 of “Capitalism and Environmental Catastrophe” or the same chapters in the publications.

Figure 12 ⁵⁷

Figure 12 (a) shows different scenarios of global warming associated with increased greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal, etc.). (The figure only shows the most important effect, namely CO2.)

The numbered colours indicate the concentration of carbon dioxide (parts per million, ppm) in the Earth’s atmosphere over time. In other words, 1 ppm = 0.0001% of the dry air in the Earth’s atmosphere.

The y-axis reports the annual increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide in billion tons (Gt). Note that ppm is the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air, and therefore its relative amount compared to dry air, and Gt is its absolute amount in the atmosphere.

The first scenario, the scenario with the lowest increase in greenhouse gases, RCP 2.6, causes a two-degree increase in global temperature by 2100.

The second scenario is RCP 4.5, when the increase in carbon dioxide continues until 2040 and then stops completely.

The third scenario is RCP 6.9, when the increase in carbon dioxide increases until 2060 (its value is 75% higher than its current level) and then reaches 25% of its current level by 2100. The increase in methane gas occurs in 2060.

The fourth scenario, the scenario with the highest increase in greenhouse gases, RCP 8.5, would cause a four-degree increase in global temperatures by 2100. RCP (Representative Concentration Pathways)

The numbers (2.6, 4.5, 6.9 and 8.5) mentioned in these scenarios are the difference between the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth and the amount of ultraviolet energy that the Earth radiates into space. This energy is measured in watts per square meter (IPCC).

Figure 12(b) also shows the scenarios in part (a) for global warming relative to the early period of great capitalist development (1861-1880).

The black circle shows a global warming of 0.85 degrees in 2005.

The x-axis is the increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in billion tons. It is noteworthy that the amount of this gas in the atmosphere has now exceeded 1835 billion tons.

On September 9, 2014, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)⁵⁸ reported (not yet included in the IPCC calculations) that the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration was 2.9 ppm in 2013, the largest increase since the beginning of capitalism. This brought the total concentration of the gas to 396 ppm, just 4 ppm below what the IPCC considers to be a turning point in the history of the increase in this gas (a 141 percent increase compared to the pre-capitalist period).

It is noteworthy that the concentration of this gas, which is considered to maintain the extent of its destruction, including a 2-degree increase in global warming, is 450 ppm in the atmosphere in 2100. A look at the annual amount of carbon dioxide from 2006 to 2013 shows a rising trend of this gas in the Earth’s atmosphere (see Appendix 9 at the end of the text). Other greenhouse gases have also seen an unprecedented increase during this year.

Methane levels have increased by 1.8 ppm, or 253 percent, since pre-capitalism (1750). Nitrous oxide has increased by 0.326 ppm, or 121 percent, during the capitalist era. ⁵⁷IPCC Fifth Assessment Synthesis Report. More than half of the budget allocated for carbon dioxide has already been spent to control the increase in global temperatures by more than two degrees. Even if we start now to reduce the use of fossil fuels, the use of these fuels must end by 2030. Otherwise, the scenario of a temperature increase of 4 degrees (RPC8.5 scenario) will be a realistic scenario by 2100. Although carbon dioxide only makes up 0.058 percent of the Earth’s atmosphere, changes in its concentration have enormous effects on nature, both on land and in the seas. The acidification of seawater, which is the result of more carbon dioxide dissolving and forming carbonic acid in it, is one of these fatal changes. In addition to the impact of acid rain caused by the dissolution of sulphur and nitrogen oxides in raindrops, this change has catastrophic effects on living organisms in seawater and, consequently, on the entire planet. Since the world’s oceans and waters contain far more living organisms per square meter than rainforests, the devastating effects of ocean acidification are far greater than its effects on rainforests and organisms on land. For example, over the past ten years, a huge portion of the ocean’s coral reefs have been destroyed, leaving vast stretches of seafloor like deserts devoid of life. Or, for example, when large sea turtles lay their eggs, the sex of the hatchlings depends on the temperature of the beach sand. In this regard, warmer sand has led to an increase in male turtles. Fish in acidified waters lose their ability to detect danger and their orientation is disrupted. The World Meteorological Organization states in its report that the world’s oceans have not been this acidic since 300 million years ago. It should be noted that the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere itself reduces the ability of the biosphere (life on Earth) to absorb this gas. The report also notes that the rate of increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations in 2012 and 2013 was faster than in any year since 1980. Only 1997 is comparable to these two years. The increase in this year can be explained by the El Niño weather phenomenon. These weather changes, which are associated with the warming of the surface waters of the Pacific Ocean, have a direct impact on the relationship between the Earth’s atmosphere and ocean water, and are accompanied by storms and heavy rains that sweep the world’s oceans, especially the Pacific Ocean, every four to seven years (the interval of their occurrence has decreased in the last 15 years). The increase in carbon dioxide increases the severity of the destruction caused by this event, which is why the World Meteorological Organization considers it a good omen that the El Niño phenomenon has only coincided with a sudden increase in carbon dioxide concentrations in 1997 so far. Global warming and rainfall changes are not happening equally in different parts of the world. A 2 or 4 degree increase in average global temperature by 2100 would mean different temperature changes in different parts of the world. The polar regions would warm more than other regions (about 3 degrees in the RPC2.6 scenario, left side of Figure 13a and about 8 degrees in the RPC8.5 scenario, right side of Figure 13a), and this would effectively mean the disappearance of polar ice caps (see Figure 13a). Similarly, a terrifying scenario is unfolding regarding changes in precipitation on Earth’s surface. At the poles, there will be about 40 percent more rain, while large parts of the Earth’s surface will become uninhabitable deserts and deserts (see Figure 13b). On the other hand, in parts of the world, the banks of rivers and seas where hundreds of millions of poor workers live will be submerged, ending their lives. Before this catastrophe, the masses of people living in these areas will be exposed to thousands of times more floods, devastating air and sea disasters, and increasingly severe storms.

Figure 13

Simultaneously with the gathering of capitalist statesmen at the United Nations headquarters in New York on September 23, 2014, in more than 160 cities around the world, the masses, disobedient and tired of capitalist relations of production and hating their governments, took to the streets to show their protest and anger. In New York, 310,000 people marched. If the head of the UN and a few other capitalist powerbrokers mixed themselves into this huge crowd in a very demagogic way, this does not diminish the importance of the anger and hatred of the masses against capitalist relations as the cause of all these sufferings. In London and Melbourne, about 40,000 people took to the streets, in Paris, Kabul, Sofia, New Delhi, in Berlin 10,000 people demonstrated. According to the Associated Press and the organization calling for the protest called (Avaaz), more than 600,000 people around the world protested against air pollution and the environment on this day, and this was the largest protest of its kind (against environmental destruction) in history. No representative or group at these meetings in the world has ever been able to fully accept the IPCC regulations without first consulting with their country’s authorities. In fact, the IPCC conference steering group sends a mission to all member countries to provide the conference with information collected in organizations and institutes, affiliated and non-affiliated with governments, but in any case, dissolved in the capitalist system, on climate change. Usually, this information is outdated for a topic such as making decisions to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide. Because the tables and results of the discussions are the result of experiments and information from several years ago. Moreover, as far as governments have involved themselves in this issue, it has remained at the level of words, and even non-governmental organizations have not gone beyond the level of scientific research. Thus, this issue, like other issues that are not very pleasing to the owners of capital and governments, remains only at the level of words. Can the government act in a different way and, for example, search for the cause of air pollution, increasing heat and its consequences? The answer is clear. All the bourgeois left and right parties with opposition positions see the source of air pollution and global warming in the policies of their ruling rivals and suggest that if they take over, everything will be fine!! They turn the issue of catastrophic air pollution and the environment, like other social issues, into a means of bargaining for power. Even the Green Parties and left-wing groups do not see the policies and programs that governments implement to help capital make as much profit as possible while polluting the environment more catastrophically as an integral part of the task, role, and existential significance of the capitalist state or of the state in general. (They have no desire to do so because they do not want to undermine the illusion of the sanctity of the state.) They are not going to search for the real roots of the problem in the existence of capitalism, because if they do so, they have denied their own social existence. It is their custom to find the cause of all the chaos and misery of humanity in the wrong plans and policies of rival parties and claim that they have the cure for all ills in their pockets. If they sit on the throne of power, everything will return to its rightful place. The smoke-filled clouds over the cities will disappear. The sea water will become cleaner and clearer than ever before. All chemical and pathogenic pollution will be purified from food, clothing, and the breathing space of humans, and capitalism will become tolerable! This is exactly what the bourgeois left parties, claiming to be communists in various guises, have been saying for nearly a hundred years in relation to all social issues. It is enough for them to sit in power in the name of the working class, and then the construction of a socialist society will begin! The purpose of these claims and words is very clear. The state and capitalist relations of production are not two different things. The state is the institution of planning and ordering capital, and the coming and going of this and that party with any pompous title does not bring about any change. Meanwhile, simply criticizing the government under the title of “mismanagement” or “lack of management” and the cause of air and environmental destruction is merely a demagogue attempt to exonerate capitalism and a commercial propaganda to pave the way for its party to steer the state machine of this system. The government believes that the need for capital to increase profits as much as possible and its management in any form and by any party is to manage the cycle of social capital appreciation with the highest possible profits. The disaster of environmental pollution is also rooted here, in the relationship of surplus value production, and replacing this form of management of the capital appreciation cycle with another form, just because the raging river of profits is not supposed to overflow, does not open any door to reducing environmental pollution. The state is based on the contradiction between the lives of the working masses and the capitalists, the exploitation of large groups of people is the main characteristic of such a society, and therefore presenting the power of bourgeois management as a way to improve the environment is an empty and deceitful word that comes out of the open mouths of politicians. How is it that this same government, in organizing the apparatus of class oppression, the police, the all-round control of citizens, the various apparatuses of repression and creating peace in the workplace to ensure the process of exploitation of workers, can handle all its tasks well, and is only incapable of management in the field of the environment! If it really wants to end its incompetence or mismanagement, it must end wage labour relations, and if these relations end, the government itself will also go into the archives of history. The inability in management that so many bourgeois critics, from the colourful left to the greens, rely on, only puts one thing very clearly before the public eye. That the problem of capitalism cannot be solved in any field by management. This system is imposed on the working masses from above based on planning and management, and in every corner of it, huge institutions with huge capitals are engaged in the training and nurturing of various managers of control and planning. When all this management and planning cannot cope with the problem under discussion, it only means that the problem of capitalism is not management but, as Marx said, capital and capitalism itself. Those who view the state as a phenomenon in itself, separate from capital, and separate it from the real relations existing in society, obscure the fact that the state is a form through which the ruling class expresses its interests. They, in the name of their class interests, foster the illusion that law and contract are, in fact, instruments of control for the capitalists and statesmen of capital, and a means of persuading them to protect the interests of the exploited. All kinds of socialists and communists, both domestic and international, who cling to the power potion of the state and whose writings and actions scream of thirst for power, have not learned the first lesson of materialism. This lesson that “people’s thoughts do not create their social existence, it is the second that creates the first.” If you form a government of the most prominent thinkers in all fields of technology, ecology, biology, medicine, sociology and other sciences, and all of them are the supreme embodiment of determination and resolute will, in conditions where the dominant relations of production and interaction of society are wage labour relations, they will all do what is necessary for the profitability of capital. The will of the state is the will of the capitalist class. In the best case, the state, under the pressure of protests and struggles of the workers, may encourage a certain environmental policy using some of the economic tools at its disposal, such as tax functions, preferential discounts, etc., but this is all within the framework of these relations. This means that the state, which invests part of the surplus values ​​produced in Favor of a sector of capital in environmental functions and allocates them to the greater benefit of the capital of this sector. But this (if possible, at all) is generally temporary and if this sector cannot make a profit through its own process and mechanism, no power or financial institution is able to do so. A clear example of these industries and the energy sector is dependent on oil and gas (fossil fuels). As long as the price of oil (the cost of oil production, including fixed capital and wages plus the surplus value produced by the working class, which goes to capitalists and capitalist governments in this sector as an average or exclusive profit) is at a certain level that makes the production of this commodity affordable compared to other similar goods, its production will continue and it will destroy the environment. We see this trend clearly before our eyes. For a long time, American industries needed to buy oil and gas from other markets such as the Middle East and Russia, and oil prices were rising. Now, for some time, we have been witnessing the lack of need in the American market due to the extraction of oil and gas through the technique of hydrofracking or fracking, and for this reason, according to many financial organizations and capitalist forecasts, oil prices have been falling for some time. This process will continue according to the mechanism of the capital market until its giant producers make sufficient profit from their goods. Now, the demagogues of capital in various colours should be asked which financial power in the world can fill the pockets of oil giants if, for example, part of the capital in this field is used to produce environmental energy (which itself has not yet been created!!). To understand this further, refer to the first and fourth chapters of my book “Capital and the Disaster of Environmental Pollution”. The Don Quixote of the IPCC conference and the enlighteners at their pulpits speak of “environmental conscience” and the ideals of justice. They start from the point where they see these relations of production as an unchanging and eternal reality, and when they are faced with the harsh reality of environmental destruction, they fall for a utopian reform of the relations of production. Something that capital, in its chains of existence, cries out as impossible. The demagogues of the utopians of environmental improvement see the existing conditions between people and between classes as the most beneficial relations. So, what is their motivation for all this shouting and screaming about the environment? To become a partner in power behind these controversies, to take control of environmental affairs, to throw dirt in the eyes of the workers. To instil in their minds that they have a healing prescription for curing environmental problems! That the environmental pollution disaster is not the fault of capital! The problem is mismanagement and they are good managers to solve the problem! But they should know that the history of all societies up to now has been the history of class struggle. In this field too, the main determinant of class struggle and the only class that has a say is the working class. The entire human society is increasingly divided into two camps, two classes that are directly facing each other – capitalists and workers. The capitalist class and all its apparatuses, including the government, institutes, universities, production, distribution, advertising, etc., are rushing forward with the aim of increasing the process of capital accumulation and preventing the fall in the rate of profit. In the midst of these conditions, the working class is not only responding to the insatiable thirst of capital for ever-increasing surplus value, but is also condemned to endure all socio-economic diseases, including crises, wars, environmental destruction, and the continuous attack on its daily wage. Here I find it necessary to make a brief but necessary reference to the group of “ecological socialism” or “eco-socialism.” However, this group of intellectuals (Michel Levy, James Econor, Richard Smith, etc.) cannot be compared with the leftist and communist organizations and parties that only aim to take over the state and participate in the planning of capitalist states, whether through the rotten parliamentary system and the corruption of part of the capital power structure or through militant actions. Because it seems that these “humanist” intellectuals, at least in part, are not after the power and state apparatus of capital, but rather the working masses, who are their focus and especially the target of their views. But despite this, there is a kind of naivety at the heart of their views on the environment and capitalist relations of production, which seems to suggest that a kind of environmental socialism can be achieved by preserving the basic foundations of capitalist relations such as the purchase and sale of labour power, the commodity economy and the market. In his writing “Eco-Socialism and Democratic Planning”, Michel Lévy claims to have created an economic alternative to capitalism!! This system, as he likes to state its foundations, relies on “non-monetary and supra-economic criteria aimed at meeting social needs and ecological balance”. It seems that a new Proudhon has entered the social debate scene this time in a comical way. Socialism comes down to the democratization of the capitalist production and circulation process (in his opinion, production for consumption!). The history of capitalism has seen various forms of ownership of the means of production and circulation of goods, and we all know clearly that these forms in themselves will not change the basis of these relations, namely the purchase and sale of labour power as a commodity, the production of goods for the purpose of profit and the accumulation of capital. Meanwhile, democratic planning of production, as long as production is centred on wage labour, production of goods for profit, and accumulation of capital, is no guarantee for directing production to comply with environmental standards. In such a society, production of goods based on reducing production costs and increasing labour productivity may lead to the choice of solar energy instead of fossil fuels for the simple reason that the former is cheaper, requires less labour, and is more profitable. Here, the fact that the producers are an assembly of workers engaged in production and that the technocrats and heads of the manufacturing companies consult with them does not bring about any change in the basis of capitalist relations. If the workers want to change their living conditions, to have control over the products of their labour, and to make the human use of nature the criterion for producing their necessities, they are forced to abolish wage labour and for this reason come into conflict with the state, which is the social form of capitalist society. That is why they have to overthrow it. The goal is not to replace the current capitalist government with another. The government in every form, every form, and every combination of forces must be completely abolished and replaced by a national council of all workers from all sectors of production, distribution, neighbourhoods, health care, services, men and women, retirees, etc. These councils are the vessel of free, informed and penetrating intervention of individual human beings which can abolish wage labour, put an end to production for profit, place the entire process of labour and production at the service of the physical and intellectual advancement of man, eliminate everything that is harmful to human life. Homogenize production with the real needs of man and distribution with the complete needlessness of the members of society. It is obvious that the nature of this distribution depends on the level of productive development of society. What is produced is partly consumed by the public and partly stored to increase the power of social production. In capitalist society, it seems that people have more freedom than ever before!! In reality, they are more subject to the power of things, goods and capital than ever before. In a society where the masses have abolished wage labour and decide for themselves what to produce and what not to produce, and the quantity and quality of work and products, the alienation of labour and the fetishism of goods have no meaning. The era of the sacrifice of workers for profit and the production of surplus goods, contaminated with harmful substances, a production system based on the destruction of nature, the era of millions of unemployment and the waste of labour and the ruin caused by the chaos of production is over. Every person in society will realize his human value through direct involvement and decision-making in the production process, its content and the direction of all social issues. Man will no longer act as a disintegrated being and a simple executor of the orders of the commodity and capital market. Preservation of nature and the environment will no longer be a concern for man, because the entire society will act on the basis of preserving the environment and nature and their health. Man will become self-sufficient; work will become voluntary. The educational system will not be based on the division of labour in factories and offices; society will enjoy all the necessary facilities for education outside of any type of trade for all individuals at all levels.

Appendix 1

Minerals

1. Fluoride. It reduces dental caries and affects bone tissue. Excessive consumption of it causes skeletal diseases such as osteoporosis.
2. Copper (Cu). Which is present in oxidizing enzymes. It is responsible for iron metabolism. Its deficiency causes anaemia, bone formation problems in children, and brain function disorders in adults.
3. Selenium (Se). It is used in the structure of enzymes that protect cells from oxidation. This metal, which is required in very small amounts, plays a very important role in the relationship between vitamin (E) and the body’s immune system. Its deficiency leads to changes in the heart muscles.
4. Manganese (Mn). Involved in the metabolism of hydrocarbons and fats. The role of this important metal has not yet been fully researched.
5. Iodine (I). It is a vital element for two important hormones in the body (thyroxine and thyroxine triiodothyronine). These two hormones control the body’s metabolism and are responsible for many of the processes of human development.
6. Molybdenum (Mo): It is involved in an enzyme that controls the body’s metabolism and also in how the body processes uric acid.
7. Chromium (Cr). Controls the metabolism of glucose (a type of hydrocarbon) and thus works

with the hormone insulin. The role of this element has not been fully researched.

 Appendix 2

Iron (Fe) It is an essential element, especially in haemoglobin in the blood, which plays a vital role in transporting oxygen to tissues. Iron is also involved in the formation of several enzymes in the body. Its deficiency leads to fatigue, lack of concentration, and anaemia.

Magnesium (Mg) activates some enzymes in the body and affects the formation of proteins. It also plays a role in calcium metabolism. Its deficiency leads to stunted growth, lack of control over behaviour, and impaired heart function.

Zinc (Zn) is present in many enzymes. Its deficiency in children causes stunted growth and in adults causes skin changes, poor wound healing, and poor appetite.

Boron (B) is an element that is needed in very small amounts in the body, but it is very important and plays a vital role. Boron plays an important role in the absorption of calcium in the bones, the balance of female hormones during menopause and male hormones during muscle formation. Its deficiency leads to osteoporosis, deficiency of male and female sex hormones, and problems in bone formation. When the soil pH is low due to acid rain, calcium carbonate (limestone) is added to the soil to combat this problem, and in this way the soil finds a balanced acidity (pH). Boron metal, together with carbonate, forms a hard compound that leads to a lack of its absorption by the plant, and even when the soil is too acidic (due to acid rains and the use of nitrogenous chemical fertilizers), this decrease in absorption continues. Therefore, both of these conditions interfere with the absorption of boron by the plant. Boron deficiency is most common in sugar beets and oil plants such as rapeseed, sunflower and flax.

Appendix 3

Vitamin A is necessary for vision, skin, and the mucous membranes of the mouth, intestines, and stomach. Its deficiency leads to reduced night vision and reduced resistance to infection. Vitamin D plays a key role in regulating calcium in the skeleton and teeth. Its deficiency causes rickets in children and soft bones in adults. This vitamin can also be produced in the skin by sunlight.

Vitamin E prevents the breakdown and destruction of unsaturated fatty acids that are beneficial to the body. This vitamin is important for the resistance of red blood cells.

Vitamin K plays an important role in blood clotting and bone density. A form of this vitamin is also produced in the body.

Vitamin C plays a role in connective tissue metabolism. Its deficiency leads to bleeding gums and poor wound healing.

Vitamin B1 or thiamine is necessary for the metabolism of hydrocarbons, some nerve and muscle functions, and the production of energy in the body. Its deficiency leads to beriberi.

Vitamin B2 or riboflavin is necessary for the breakdown of fats and the metabolism of hydrocarbons and proteins. Its deficiency causes changes in the skin and mucous membranes.

Vitamin B6 is necessary for protein metabolism and nervous system function. Its deficiency leads to skin changes, nerve problems, and anaemia.

Vitamin B7, or biotin, is necessary for cell metabolism. It is also produced in the human intestines.

Vitamin B12 is necessary for cell metabolism, red blood cell formation, and nervous system function. Its deficiency leads to anaemia and nerve problems.

Vitamin B9 or folic acid is necessary for cell metabolism and red blood cells. Its deficiency leads to anaemia.

Vitamin B3 or niacin is responsible for the metabolism of hydrocarbons and fats in cells and participates in the production of energy needed by the body. Its deficiency leads to a skin disease called Pellagra.

Appendix 4

Phosphorus (P) is necessary for the formation of bones and teeth. It participates in the proteins and genetic structure (DNA) of plants and animals. It is also responsible for regulating the body’s acid and energy. A deficiency of this element causes calcium deficiency and osteoporosis. Another important element that is used in the structure of all proteins, hormones and some other vital substances in the body.

Nitrogen (N) is involved in the synthesis of all proteins, hormones, and DNA of plants and animals. It is found in fossil fuels such as oil, gas, and coal, and, along with the wear and tear of tires and asphalt, is one of the most important factors in the formation of acid rain. These rains carry nitrogen oxides from fossil fuels and ammonia, which cause the acidity of the land and water. In lands where the acidity of the land decreases due to acid rain or excessive use of nitrogenous chemical fertilizers, the absorption of other minerals by plants is severely impaired. In addition, it causes the acidification of lake water, resulting in a decrease in the number of fish and other aquatic animals, and even has a destructive effect on the quality of drinking water.

Potassium or Kalium (K) It is necessary for the body’s balance and acidity. Nerves, muscle activity, and the human body in general need this substance. It even plays a role in controlling blood pressure. Its deficiency leads to decreased muscle activity and cramps.

Calcium (Ca) is necessary for the formation of bones, teeth, blood clotting, and nervous system function. Its deficiency leads to the cessation of bone growth and, in the long term, to osteoporosis.

Sodium or Natrium (Na) deficiency causes muscle cramps, it is necessary for the body’s water and acidity balance and nerve channels, and excessive consumption raises blood pressure.

Appendix 5

Technical additives added to ready-made and semi-prepared foods (E number and functions)

1.Food antioxidants, which are added to prevent oxygen from combining with food (oxidation).

2.Technical ingredients added to ready-made and semi-prepared foods (E number and functions)

They are used in these foods	Waste	Code
Potato powder, chewing gum, sweets, sauces, desserts, chips, fat, soups, dried meat	Cancer, asthma, eczema, allergies, liver disease	E310
Cancer, asthma, eczema, allergies, liver disease	Asthma, liver damage	E311
Similar E310	Similar E311	E312
Similar E310	Asthma, cancer, skin diseases, fetal, throat, headache, liver	E320
Fats used in restaurants, chewing gum, all prepared foods	Similar E320	E321
Similar E321	Liver lesions in children	E325
Similar E325-327	Causes damage to the nervous system	E380
Canned beans, peas and mushrooms, fish dishes, sauces	Causes liver damage and absorption of heavy metals	E385
Foods containing fish, sauces	Causes disruption in kidney function	EDTA

They are used in these foods	Waste	Code
All foods and prepared foods that can be colored, jams, marmalades, jellies	Cancer risk	E100
drinks	Asthma, ADHD, migraine, allergies	E102
Similar E100	Cancer, itchy skin, allergies	E104
Similar E102	Asthma, dilation of blood vessels, cancer, itchy skin, ADHD	E110
All foods, cheese, jam, marmalade, sausage	Fetal, hypersensitivity, ADHD, insomnia	E120
drinks	Respiratory, cancer, fetal harm, skin itching	E123
drinks	Cancer, itchy skin, allergies, urinary problems	E124
drinks	Respiratory problems, cancer, brain damage, iodine metabolism damage in the body, ADHD	E127
All foods that can be colored	Cancer	E131
Similar E131	Cancer, blood changes, liver damage, susceptibility to viral diseases, ADHD	E132
Similar E131	Cancer, skin diseases, allergies, ADHD	E133
Similar E131	Asthma, cancer, hypersensitivity, ADHD	E142
Similar E131	Fetal lesions, reduction in white blood cells, negative effect on the immune system, neurological damage, seizures	E150
Fish eggs	Cancer, severe allergies	E151
Similar E131	Cancer	E153
Some cheeses, margarine, desserts, chips, smoked fish, liqueurs	Severe allergies	E160b
French sausage	Visual discomfort, sensitivity to light	E161g
Similar E131	Severe allergies	E171
Sugary products	Severe sensitivity	E173
Chocolate products and liqueurs	Lung problems and kidney damage, stomach and intestinal problems, skin discoloration	E174
Similar E174	Cancer, allergies, sensitivities	E175

8.Thickening agents. They are used to thicken foods and food ingredients.

Emulsifiers. They are used to mix fatty substances and oils with water. Gasoline is used in the preparation of these substances (such as E322), and for this reason, some residual gasoline is present in foods such as margarines, ice cream, and other fatty products in which emulsifiers are used.

They are used in these foods	Waste	Code
All foods without quantity limits	Nervous disorders, allergies	E400
All foods without quantity limits	Nervous disorders, allergies	E401
All foods without quantity limits	Nervous disorders, allergies	E402
All foods without quantity limits	Nervous disorders, allergies	E403
All foods without quantity limits	Nervous disorders, allergies	E404
Margarine, mayonnaise, desserts, ice cream, prepared fruit, sugary products, chewing gum, sweets, beer, diet foods, chips, liqueurs	Nervous disorders, allergies	E405
All foods without quantity limits	Cancer, fetal, liver and stomach lesions, allergies, intestinal infections	E407
All foods without limit, breaking the habit	Growth retardation, intestinal infection	E412
All foods without limit, breaking the habit	Similar E407	E413
All foods without limit, breaking the habit,	Similar E407	E414
Wine	Cancer, eczema, kidney and intestinal disorders	E431
Ice cream, confectionery, chewing gum, soup, sauce, sausage, dessert, milk, milk products	Cancer, eczema, kidney and intestinal disorders	E432
Similar E407	Cancer, eczema, kidney and intestinal disorders	E433
Similar E407	Cancer, eczema, kidney and intestinal disorders	E434
Similar E407	Cancer, eczema, kidney and intestinal disorders	E435
Similar E407	Cancer, eczema, kidney and intestinal disorders	E436
Chocolate, cocoa	Kidney discomfort, nerve cell damage	E442
Some cheeses, ice cream, sweets, soups, sauces, cornflakes, cookies	Kidney damage, disruption of the stomach and intestines, increased metabolism of heavy metals	E450
Similar E450	Similar E450	E452
Similar E407	Fetal injuries, allergies, intestinal upset	E460
Similar E407	Fetal injuries, allergies, intestinal upset	E461
Similar E407	Fetal injuries, allergies, intestinal upset	E463
Similar E407	Fetal injuries, allergies, intestinal upset	E464
Similar E407	Fetal injuries, allergies, intestinal upset	E465
Similar E407	Fetal injuries, allergies, intestinal upset	E466
Similar E460	Intestinal lining damage, allergies	E470a
Similar E460	Intestinal lining damage, allergies	E470b
Such as E460, baby food, prepared meat dishes, ice cream, sugary products, chewing gum	Decreased sperm production, toxicity	E472a
Similar E472a	Decreased sperm production, toxicity	E473
Similar E472a	Decreased sperm production, toxicity	E474
Chocolate, fat emulsions and sauces	Enlarged liver and kidneys, delayed growth, eczema, allergies	E476
Desserts, fat emulsions, sweets, diet foods, ice cream, sugary products, sauces, chewing gum	Similar E476	E477
Desserts, fat emulsions, sweets, diet foods, ice cream, sugary products, sauces, chewing gum, Tea and liquid spices	Eczema, intestinal upset	E491
Similar E491	Similar E491	E492
Similar E491	Similar E491, Cancer	E493
Similar E491	Similar E491, Cancer	E494
Similar E491	Similar E491	E495

9.Anti-caking agent. Added to foods in powder form to prevent them from becoming misshapen over time.

They are used in these foods	Waste	Code
Cheese, margarine, mayonnaise, desserts, syrups, desserts, marmalade, dried leaves, vegetables, bread, salads, soups and chips	Cancer, liver damage, allergies	E200
Similar E200	liver damage, allergies	E202
Similar E200	liver damage, allergies, Stomach pain	E203
Prepared fruits and vegetables, desserts, sugary products, marinated fish, soups, mayonnaise, salads, syrups, marmalades, jellies	Asthma, skin disorders, growth disorders	E210
Similar E210	Brain, nervous disorder	E211
Similar E210	Allergy	E212
Similar E210	Similar E210	E213
Sugary products, dried meat surfaces, added liquids, chips	Asthma, eczema, skin disorders, migraines, allergies, sensitivities, ADHD	E214
Used in candy, coating of dried meat products, liquid dietary supplements and snacks	Asthma, runny nose	E215
The additive is used in candy, cosmetics and dried meat products, among other things	Asthma	E216
foods such as candy	Asthma	E217
candy, surface treatment of dried meat products, liquid dietary supplements and snacks	Asthma, runny nose	E218
Similar E218	Asthma	E219
Dried fruit, fruit and vegetable preparations, potato powder, fish preparations, beer, wine, liquor	Respiratory and behavioural problems, fetal lesions, intestinal changes, vomiting, unconsciousness, genetic damage, allergies, vision loss	E220
Similar E220	Similar E220	E221
Similar E220	Similar E220	E222
Similar E220	Similar E220	E223
Similar E220	Similar E220	E224
Similar E220	Similar E220	E226
Similar E220	Similar E220	E227
Similar E220	Similar E220	E228
Citrus peel	Cancer, vomiting, malaise, liver and genetic lesions, pain in the hands, arms, bones and heart, allergies, runny nose	E230
Citrus peel	Similar E230	E231
Citrus peel	Similar E230	E232
Citrus peel, Banana	Cancer, intestinal, nerve and blood disorders	E233
Can be used in all foods	It is a type of antibiotic that kills germs, so its use is harmful to beneficial intestinal bacteria	E235
Citrus and banana peels, Italian cheese	Cancer, genetic changes, kidney damage, allergies, toxic aldehyde (Formaldehyde) which causes allergies, eczema and cancer if inhaled	E239
Meat ingredients	Cancer, fetal damage, poisoning, sudden death, allergies, genetic damage, tumours, production of nitrosamines, which are carcinogenic substances	E249
Cheese, cured meats, marinated fish	Carcinogenic	E250
Similar250	Production of nitrosamines, which are carcinogenic, Similar249	E251
Similar250	Similar249	E252
Can be used in all foods	Kidney injuries	E261
Can be used in all foods	Fetal injuries, allergies	E262
Packaged bread	Eczema, migraines, allergies	E280
Packaged bread	Eczema, migraines, allergies	E281
Packaged bread	Eczema, migraines, allergies	E282
Caviar and fish eggs in general	Stomach, intestinal and skin discomfort	E284
Can be used in all foods	Eczema	E295
Sugar products, desserts, syrup powder, wine and confectionery powder	Eczema	E297

10. Flavorings (E621-E635) are substances added to ready-made and semi-prepared foods to change or enhance the taste.

They are used in these foods	Waste	Code
Can be used in all foods	Causes epilepsy and fetal lesions, dementia, Alzheimer’s, menopause, liver damage, asthma, allergies, and eye discomfort	E621
Similar621	Similar621	E622
Similar621	Similar621	E623
Similar621	Similar621	E624
Similar621	Joint pain and gout	E626
Similar621	Similar626	E627
Similar621	Similar626	E628
Similar621	Similar626	E629
Similar621	Similar626	E630
Similar621	Similar626	E631
Similar621	Similar626	E632
Similar621	Similar626	E633
Similar621	Similar626	E634
Similar621	Similar626	E635

11. Plasticizers (E331, E338-E352), which are generally phosphates, are used to soften margarines, cheeses, and semi-prepared foods (sauces, fish, and fish products), soups, ice cream, and desserts.

12. Sugar substitutes: These substances often sweeten food several times, or even thousands of times, as much as sugar. Their detrimental effects are generally to increase the body’s false desire and need for sweetness, which in turn increases insulin secretion.

They are used in these foods	Waste	Code
Desserts, ice cream, marmalade, sugary products	Cancer, allergies, intestinal and eye disorders	E420
Similar420	Cancer, kidney trouble, allergies	E421
Ice cream, desserts, sugary products, fruits and vegetables, cornflakes, marmalade, soups, sauces, syrups, beverages	Cancer	E950
Similar950	Headache, cancer, depression, fetal, brain and menstrual lesions, sudden anaesthesia	E951
Desserts, ice cream, sugary products, sweets	Cancer, fetal lesions	E952
Syrup, ice cream and sugary products	Cancer, fetal lesions, Genetic lesions	E954
Similar420	Cancer	E967

 13. Table 1 Indicative values ​​for AA (Acrylamide) in foodstuffs according to Commission Recommendation. 2013/647/EU16 937

Amount of acrylamide in various foods (micrograms per kilogram of food)

Foodstuff	Indicative value (μg/kg)
French fries ready-to-eat	600
Potato crisps from fresh potatoes and from potato dough Potato based crackers	1000
Soft bread Wheat based bread	80
Soft bread other than wheat based bread	150
Breakfast cereals (excl. porridge) – Bran bran products and whole grain cereals, gun puffed grain (gun puffed only relevant if labelled)	400
– wheat and rye-based products	300
– maize, oat, spelt, barley and rice-based products	200
Biscuits and wafers	500
– Crackers with the exception of potato-based crackers	500
– Crispbread	450
– Gingerbread	1000
– Products similar to the other products in this category	500
Roast coffee	450
Instant (soluble coffee)	900
Coffee substitutes (a) coffee substitutes mainly based on cereals	2000
(b) other coffee substitutes	4000
Baby food, other than processed cereal based foods (a) not containing prunes	50
(b) containing prunes	80
Biscuits and rusks for infants and young children	200
Processed cereal based foods for infants and young children, excl. biscuits and rusks	50

14. Table2 Overall representativeness of the food products within the European market Food category Estimation of the EU market/volume share a total of 20 countries are covered and, in each case, the market leader is represented.

Food category Estimation of the EU market	Volume share in percent (tons) of the market in 20 European countries
Baby food	80 % of the market in the EU by volume
Breakfast cereals	75 % of the market in the EU by volume
Coffee products	70-80 % of the market in the EU by volume
Potato crisps from potato dough	80 % of the market in the EU by volume
Potato crisps from fresh potatoes	40-50 % of the market in the EU by volume
Pre-cooked French fries	Around 50 % share of the marketed pre-cooked
Crisp bread	Less than 50 % share of marketed crisp breads

Appendix 6

Natural toxins in plants²⁷

Naturaltoxins	Type of poison	Foodstuff
Dopamine	Biogen amine	farmer beans
Tyramine	Biogen amine	Banana
Amygdalin	Cyanogen glukoside	Almond, stone fruit
Linamarin	Cyanogen glukoside	Beans, flax seeds
Solanine	Glykoalkaloids	Potato
Tomatine	Glykoalkaloids	Tomato
Safrole	Methylenedioxybenzene	Sassafras, black pepper
Myristicin	Methylenedioxybenzene	Jojoba, black pepper
Coffeine	methylated oxypurines	Coffee, tea
Theobromine	methylated oxypurines	Cocoa
Glycyrrhizin	Triterpenglykoside	Licorice

Appendix 7

1. Pesticides, Biocides ^{39, 40}

Here, some of these substances are briefly mentioned, but in the case of biocides of different groups, I will only mention their names. Note that when the number of biocides is mentioned, it means their number up to the present time, that is, up to the time of writing this chapter.

Against mushrooms (Fungicides) It contains 83 registered substances. These biocides act on plants in two ways. First, by spraying a thin layer of these substances on plants and fruits, and second, by water and chemical fertilizers that are fed to the plants. Antifungal substances also act in two ways: multi-site, which denatures the protein and enzyme system of the fungus through multi-dimensional biochemical action, or single site, which stops cell reproduction and causes the fungus to die through plant absorption.

Fludioxonil: This toxin has caused liver and lymph cancer in mice. It is a genotoxic genetic toxin that causes liver, kidney, and spleen cancer. It is very persistent in soil and continues to have destructive effects. It is fatal to fish, aquatic life, and aquatic plants.

Iprodione: This biocide works by stopping the formation of DNA and RNA as well as the enzyme NADH cytochrome c. It is dangerous to insects and aquatic life. It has been shown to have detrimental effects on biochemical stops in experiments on mice and rabbits.

Imazalil: Has damaging hormonal, pregnancy and fetal effects. Causes goitre cancer and serious disorders of male hormones. It dissolves very slowly in nature, so it accumulates in nature and the body and leaves long-term effects. Agricultural workers and their families are in direct contact with it. It is toxic to aquatic organisms and causes infertility. It accumulates in nature and causes long-term damage.

Thiabendazole: Thiabendazole is used with wax to decorate and brighten bananas and citrus fruits. Liver cancer and goitre are among its side effects, and it is highly toxic to aquatic animals.

Malathion: Malathion, like imazalil, also causes developmental defects in the nervous system, learning ability, and muscle movement in children and infants. It also has side effects like imazalil for aquatic animals.

Azoxystrobin: Azoxystrobin poison. It enters the body through breathing and causes weight loss (Atrophy). Over time, it causes the appearance and growth of glands in the liver and spleen that lead to infection. It causes cell cancer effects and DNA changes. For more information, see the following site ⁴¹. Like imazalil, it is very toxic to aquatic life and drinking water.

Benalaxyl: Benalaxyl, like imazalil, is very dangerous to aquatic life and drinking water. For more information, visit the following site.

EUROPEAN COMMISSION

HEALTH & CONSUMER PROTECTION DIRECTORATE-GENERAL

Directorate E – Food Safety: plant health, animal health and welfare, international questions

This European organization, which has tested 90 biocides since 2000, says the following about the biocide in question (benalaxyl): It is very soluble in fat and therefore remains in the skin of the fruit, tree trunk and soil for a long time and gradually penetrates the flesh of the fruit and the stem of the plant and is seen in subsequent plantings. This same solvent property and its persistence (after two years, 99% of it was found in the soil) cause its amount to gradually increase in the flesh of tomatoes, inside potatoes and wheat. In previously cultivated lands, it remains in the soil in large quantities and is transferred to the next planting even if it is not reused. As much as 80-90% of the amount given to animals such as goats and chickens has been observed in their urine.

Its destructive effects include liver and sexual organ lesions such as atrophy and hypertrophy. These effects have been seen in mice and dogs tested. Gradual toxicity of the mouse liver, which leads to cancer and death, and skeletal changes in mouse embryos. It is very persistent in soil and penetrates into surface and deep waters, causing damage to living organisms. Other biocides in this group include: boscalid، Carbendazim، cyprodinil، Dimethomorph، fenarimol، fenhexamid، Fludioxonil Flusilazole، iprodione، Iprovalicarb، metalaxyl، Penconazole، procymidone، Pyrimethanil، spiroxamine. ، Tebuconazole، PYRIMETANIL

• Herbicides

It contains 475 registered substances. Many of these substances prevent weed growth by stopping their growth hormones, so the dispersion of these substances in nature has the same destructive effect on plants, aquatic animals and humans. These biocides include different groups in terms of biochemistry and therefore have similar modes of action. Some of them act very selectively against weeds, but this does not prevent them from destroying the beneficial bacteria of nature and the body. By spraying on the surface of the fields, they act through the roots or the product or the leaves and enter the biological system of the plant. They include different groups, including Amide Herbicides which include 53 ingredients, have the highest sales (a product of Monsanto Company), namely Acetochlor, which recommends its customers to mix this biocide with other biocide to achieve the desired result!! In this list, for the sake of brevity, only a few of these ingredients are mentioned, but for more information about other groups of herbicides, refer to the relevant site ⁴².

Paraquat. It is very toxic, banana farm workers and their families living near the farms are exposed to it, it enters the body through the skin and breathing, it has destructive effects on the respiratory system, causes severe thirst, heart palpitations, kidney problems and even cancer. It is toxic to aquatic animals, it dissolves very slowly in nature, so it accumulates in nature and the body. It has destructive effects on animals, photosynthesis of plants and aquatic plants.

Chlormequat. The results of the test of this biocide on pigs in Denmark at the end of 1980 at the Agricultural Research Institute of this country showed a decrease in the fertility of female pigs. The test on mice led to the same result. It is stored in the trunk of the tree and therefore spreads to the fruit even if the spraying is stopped. The Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, the government agency of the capital, does not see any danger from this biocide for humans! But it considers this substance harmful only to birds, aquatic animals, reptiles, fish and mammals, which is why it is limited to recommendations on the technique of using this biocide!

Acetochlor. Works by inhibiting plant growth hormone. Carcinogenicity, thyroid disorders are among its side effects, and its metabolites are cytotoxic and destroy olfactory mucosa. It has contaminated many lakes and plains in Minnesota and is highly toxic to aquatic life.

Glyphosate. like other Aromatic acid herbicides (which include 20 substances), stops plant growth by blocking the amino acid synthesis system. Monsanto, the discoverer and manufacturer of this biocide, declares it safe! but this big lie is well exposed by various diseases affecting agricultural workers and residents around farms. This biocide causes the death of beneficial intestinal bacteria and causes nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach pain and burning eyes. It causes cell infections by disrupting the work of liver enzymes (Cytochrome P450 Enzymes). It causes damage to aquatic animals, bacteria and other small organisms by damaging their protein synthesis system.

Other herbicides: Alachlor, Butachlor, Metolachlor also have completely harmful properties like Acetochlor.

Insecticides. It contains 129 registered substances. The previous generation of these biocides includes two groups: Organophosphate insecticides (58 biocides) and Carbamate insecticides (19 biocides). Both of these groups affect the nervous system through the hormone acetylcholinesterase. Because they are released in the form of powder and spray, they easily enter the skin and lungs of agricultural workers and cause headaches, dizziness, excessive salivation, nausea, vomiting, and continued use leads to excessive sweating, flank pain, imbalance, shortness of breath and changes in heart rate. For more information, visit the sites mentioned below⁴²

Cypermethrin: The brain and nervous system of insects are its main target. It disrupts these organs and causes confusion in the insect. Imbalance, fatigue and paralysis of these creatures are also among its side effects. These symptoms have also been seen in experiments on mice and pigs. In addition, it causes nervousness and excessive salivation. Newborn mice suffer more lesions due to the lack of development of liver enzymes. In agricultural workers, it has caused skin itching, confusion, burning sensation in the skin, and also something like a bee sting. In female mice, cancerous tumours have been observed as side effects of using this poison. It is very dangerous for fish, invertebrates and honeybees. (Refer to the main text on this subject).

Tiachloprid It is from the group of Neonicotinoids, which includes substances such as Nitenpyran, Imidchloprid, Chlothianidin, Acetamiprid, Thiametoxam, and Dinotefuran, all of which act by attacking and disrupting the nervous system, namely the Acetylcholine Nicotinic receptors of insects.

They are very persistent, remaining unchanged in agricultural soil for 4 years. They have destructive effects on the human digestive system. They kill bees and birds. For bees, see the main text. Other insecticides include:

Chlorpyrifos (see imazalil), methoxyfenozide (see cypermethrin), bromopropylate, fenitrothion, methoxyfenozide, tebufenpyradyrad tetradifon.

• Avicides. Contains 6 toxic substances. All of these biocides work by blocking the nervous system. For more information, visit the website below ⁴³.

Strychnine: Enters the body through inhalation, is fatal to the nervous system. Blocks acetyl choline and causes death to the bird. Enters the body through the mouth and eyes and its toxic effects in humans are the same as in birds. Causes vomiting, facial and eye muscle spasms, unconsciousness, amnesia, severe convulsions and death by suffocation. It is also fatal to other birds and scavengers.

Aminopyridine: is toxic to all vertebrates. After 10 minutes of breathing it, the effects of poisoning appear and after 4 hours death occurs. The tremors of the poisoned animal are very intense and loud. So that other animals and birds run away in fear.

Parathion: High concentrations of this biocide dissolved in diesel are dispersed into the air by aircraft to kill birds. It is also toxic to other birds and scavengers.

Other bird killers include: Starlicide (like Strychnine), Chloralose (like Strychnine, which has less destructive effects), and endrine (like 4-Aminopyridine, which has a longer effect on fish, lasting several days).

• Bactericides: Contains 374 registered substances, which include the following groups: Disinfectant, Antiseptics Antibiotics.
• Miticides: Contains 5 biocides as follows: Acephate, Abamectin, Biphentrin, Hexylthiazox, Spiromesifen.
• Molluscicides: Contains 4 registered substances. Generally, act as anti-bird biocides.
• Nematicides: There are 19 of them. They are divided into the following groups: Avemectin, Botanic nematicides, Carbamat nematiccides,

Fumigant nematicides, Organophosphorus nematicides, Unclassified nematicides. Their mode of action is by paralyzing muscles. They all also destroy beneficial soil bacteria. For more information, visit the relevant site ⁴⁴.

Methyl bromide: Methyl bromide poison. It is very toxic. Like other halogens, it has carcinogenic effects and because it is a gas, it is quickly absorbed through the skin and enters the lungs. It also destroys atmospheric ozone.

 Di chloropropene: 1,3-Dichloropropene: Carcinogenic and sterilizing. One-third of the workers producing it in the United States were sterilized, so its production in the country was stopped in 1977, but it is still produced in other countries. It is toxic to soil bacteria. Ethylene dibromide: It is a carcinogen and a water pollutant. Its use was banned in the United States in 1983, but it is still produced and consumed.

              Chloropicrin is in liquid form and is highly toxic.

              Fenamiphos is highly toxic.

             Fensulfothion. It is highly toxic. Its use in the United States is only permitted at a    certain dosage.

             Aldicarb is highly toxic.

            Aldoxycarb: It is a deadly poison and is banned in the United States.

           Carbofuran: It is highly toxic. It was banned in the US in 1994, but its production has  not stopped.

• Rodenticides. There are 46 registered substances. They are divided into two large groups: anticoagulants and non-anticoagulants. Anticoagulants poison rodents and cause internal bleeding, causing death. Warfarin, pindone, diphacinone and clorophacinone are among these groups. Since the mid-1950s, a type of drug resistance has been observed in mice against these biocides. The next generation of this group includes Brodifacoum, Bromadiolone. Another group called “non-antibiotics” is also composed of the biocides Bromethalin, Zincphosphide, Cholecalciferol. It should be noted that all of these biocides are also aviculicides. For more information, please refer to the website address below ⁵⁴. Strychnine: See section 4, Biocides, Birdkillers.
• Impregnating agents are substances used to protect fabrics, wood, clothing, shoes, tents, water sediments in treatment ponds, boats, and large ships from pests. Most of them contain the element fluorine. They remain and accumulate in nature and in the bodies of humans and animals, and their destructive effects gradually increase. They are impermeable to water. Due to the presence of the element fluorine in them, they destroy the ozone layer of the earth’s atmosphere. The most important of them are: FTOH, PFOS, PFOA, PFAS, PFCA, PFBS. A report in 2000 indicated that some of these substances had been found in wild animals. Canadian researcher Scott Mabury found this substance in the Arctic, indicating that air currents carry it over long distances. For more information, see the following addresses. ⁴⁶.

 Appendix 8

Harmful Heavy Metals: These metals are toxic for various reasons. One of the reasons why most of them are toxic is the presence of empty electron orbits around the atomic nucleus, which gives them the property of attracting electrons and, as a result, the tendency to combine with proteins and even genetic molecules such as DNA, and as a result, cause genetic changes. These include: Aluminum (Al), antimony (Sb), arsenic (As), boron (B), barium (Ba), lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd), mercury (Hg), chromium (Cr), cobalt (Co), copper (Cu), manganese (Mn), nickel (Ni), strontium (Sr), tin (Sn), molybdenum (Mo).

Diseases caused by some heavy metals:

Elemen	Acute exposure	Chronic exposure
Cadmium	Pneumonitis (lung inflammation)	Lung cancer Osteomalacia (softening of bones) Proteinuria (excess protein in urine; possible kidney damage) Stomatitis (inflammation of gums and mouth) Nausea
Mercury	Diarrhea Fever Vomiting	Nephrotic syndrome (nonspecific kidney disorder) Neurasthenia (neurotic disorder) Parageusia (metallic taste) Pink Disease (pain and pink discoloration of hands and feet) Tremor
Lead	Encephalopathy (brain dysfunction) Nausea Vomiting	Anemia Encephalopathy Foot drop/wrist drop (palsy) Nephropathy (kidney disease)
Chromium	Gastrointestinal hemorrhage (bleeding)  Hemolysis (red blood cell destruction) Acute renal failure	Pulmonary fibrosis (lung scarring) Lung cancer
Arsenic	Vomiting Diarrhea Encephalopathy Multi-organ effects Arrhythmia Painful neuropathy	Diabetes  Hypopigmentation/Hyperkeratosis Cancer

Appendix 9

Data for Global Carbon Emissions 
(Fossil fuels, cement, land-use change)

Year	Carbon Emissions
2013	9.9 billion metric tonnes (GtC)
2012	9.7 billion metric tonnes (GtC)
2011	9.47 billion metric tonnes (GtC)
2010	9.19 billion metric tonnes (GtC)
2009	8.74 billion metric tonnes (GtC)
2008	8.77 billion of metric tonnes (GtC)
2007	8.57 billion metric tonnes (GtC)
2006	8.37 billion metric tonnes (GtC)

To convert carbon to carbon dioxide (CO2), multiply the numbers above by 3.67.

Year	Billion tons of carbon dioxide
2006	30,7
2007	31,5
2008	32,2
2009	32
2010	33,7
2011	34,8
2012	35,6
2013	36,3

As can be seen from the figures above, the annual increase in carbon dioxide is continuously increasing, and only the crisis of 2008 shows its manifestation in the decrease of this gas in 2009.

Resources:

1. Reference: IPCC (2013) Working group 1 Contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, Climate Change 2013: The physical Science Basis, Stockholm.

2. Reference: The 10th Session of Working Group II (WGII-10) was held from 25 to 29 March 2014 in Yokohama, Japan.

3. Reference: IPCC Working Group III Contribution to AR5

WG3 Summary for Policymakers på IPCCs webb 14 April 2014 in Berlin, Germany

4. Jama, October 9, 2002 vol-288, no. 14 Robert H. Fletcher; Kathleen M.

            Fairfield, Vitamins for Chronic Disease Prevention in Adults

5. Nationa Food Agency, Sweden

6. Journal of Nutrition 24 August 2011,

                          Food, fortificants, and Supplements: where do Americans get their nutrients

7. Second National Report on Biochemical Indicators of Diet and Nutrition in the U.S. population 2012

8. Universities of Johns Hopkins, Yale, Columbia, and Rutgers

9. English Medical Research Council

10. Intake of selected nutrients from foods, from fortification and from supplements in various European Countries

11. Desk Reference PDR

12. Proposals of the National Health Federation for

additional/revised Codex Nutrient Reference Values (NRVs) for labelling purposes          

13. California Agriculture, January 1950, Nutrient Deficiencies in Soil Volume 4, Number 1

14. Increasing CO₂ threatens human nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health, Nature

 15.    http://publications.lib.chalmers. se tenKemi- och Bioteknik, Chalmers, 2008                                  

            16. JECFA (Joint Expert Panel for Food Additives)    

17. EFSA Journal 20YY; volume(issue): NNNN

EFSA (European Food Safety Authority)

18. Ruth Winter, A Consumer of Food Additives

19. Beatrice Trum hunter, The Mirage of Safety

20. Roy Firus, Introduction-Dangerous food additives with E-number                                                   

21. Roy Firus, Min bok om mat och hälsa: www.bloglovin.com/blog/post/2784626/2448412071

22. Statistics Sweden

23. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article /001126.htm

24. national food agency of sweden

25. Universities of Johns Hopkins, University of Alabama, American journal of clinical nutrition NHANES III.

26. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/ PMC3674209/ The Prevalence of Phosphorus Containing Food Additives in Top Selling Foods in Grocery Stores, Janeen B. León and Catherine M. Sullivan

27.F D’Mello, C Duffus, J Duffus, Toxic Substances in Crop Plants. Thomas Graham House, Science Park, Camebridge 1991. M Rechcigl, CRC Handbook of Naturally Occuring Food Toxicants. CRC Press Inc, Boca Raton, Florida 1983. Toxicants Occuring Naturally in Foods. National Academy of Sciences, Whashington DC 1973. I Leiner, Toxic Constituents of Plant Foodstuffs. Academic Press 1980.

28. national food agency of sweden

29.  Pesticides Database

30. http://ec.europa.eu/sanco_pesticides/public/index.cfm http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/doc/3130.pdf

EFSA Journal 2013;11(3):3130

31.  European wines systematically contaminated with

pesticide residues, PAN Europe 2008, http://www.pan-europe.info/Media/PR/080326.html

32. Hendrikx, P; Chauzat, M.P; Debin, M. et al. 2009 Bee Mortality and Bee Surveillance

            in Europe. Scientific report submitted to EFSA. European Food Safety Authority. Girolami, V; Mazzon, L; Squartini, A; Mori, N; Marzaro, M; Di Bernardo, A; Greatti,M; Giorio, C. & Tapparo, T. 2009. Translocation of Neonicotinoid

Insecticides From Coated Seeds to Seedling Guttation Drops: A Novel Way of Intoxication for bees.

33. www.isaaa.org/inbrief/default.html (The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications)

34. United Soya Republics by Rulli

35.  Bravo, Elizabeth, genetically modified Soya in Food Aid Programmes, United Soya Republics

36.  The organic and non-gmo report, Vandana Shiva and the sacredness of seed, April 2009, http://www.non- gmoreport.com /articles/apr09/vandana_shiva_the_sacradness_of_seed.php

37. Smith, Jeffrey M., 2003, Seeds of Deception page 130-131, 70-71

38. Lean, Geoffrey, 2005, GM crop ‘ruins fields for 15 years’, The Independent, http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/gm-crop-ruins-fields-for-15-years-510228.html

39. Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences, forskningscentrum Foulum, Tjele, Danmark. martint.soresen@agrsci.dk

40. http://www.panna.org

41. A Pesticide Information Project of Cooperative Extension Offices of Cornell University, Michigan State University, Oregon State University, and University of California at Davis. Major support and funding was provided by the USDA/Extension Service/National Agricultural Pesticide Impact Assessment Program. http://www.alanwood.net/pesticides/class_herbicides.html

42.  National Pesticide Information Center Neonicotinoids   Swedish University of Agricultural

 Sciences. American Bird Conservancy, March 2013. The Impact of the Nation’s Most Widely Used Insecticides on Birds. Written by Dr. Pierre Mineau and Cynthia Palmer. http://www.alanwood.net/pesticides/class_herbicides.html

43. University of Nebraska – Lincoln

44.  http://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/43874/PDF

45. http://animalscience.ucdavis.edu/avian/pfs23.htm

46. Dangerous chemicals in food wrappers likely migrating to humans PFOS and PFOA precursors identified in German blood samples Discovery of food packaging surfactants.

47. Swedish Chemical Agency

48. SKAKKEBAEK N.E., RAJPERT-DE MEYTS E. & MAIN K.M. (2001) Testicular

dysgenesis syndrome: an increasingly common developmental disorder with enviromnetal

aspects. Hum.Reprod. 16, 972-978

49. Lund University Department of Clinical Sciences, Molecular Reproductive Research Group

Malmö, Sweden. The impact of genetic, environmental and life-style factors on male reproductive function Jonas Richthoff, M.D. MALMÖ 2007 Faculty opponent

50. Lamborg C et alA global ocean inventory of anthropogenic mercury based on water column measurements Nature, 7 Juli, DOI: 10.1038/nature13563

51. ENV/JM/MONO (2003)163 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD Environment, Health and Safety Publications Series on Chemical Accidents.

52.http://www.fewresources.org/uploads/1/0/5/2/10529860/worlds_worst_pollution_problems_2008.pdf. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 20112011. 47. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 20112011. 47.

http://water.epa.gov/polwaste/nps/outreach/point1.cfm.

http://haafii.org/uploads/April_2013.pdf

http://www.unep.org/regionalseas/marinelitter/publications/docs/trash_that_kills.pdf

http://www.coastal.ca.gov/publiced/marinedebris.html

53.  Swerea IVF AB, Uppdragsrapport 09/52

54. Environmental pollution by depleted uranium in Iraq with special reference to Mosul and possible effects on cancer and birth defect rates. Fathi RA¹, Matti LY, Al-Salih HS, Godbold D

55. Fallujah, The Hidden Massacre

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

White phosphorus uses in Iraq from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Memorandum to CCW Delegates

The Need to Re-Visit Protocol III on Incendiary Weapons

Human Rights Watch and Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic

November 2010

Report of the Independent Panel on the Safety and Security of the UN Personnel in Iraq 20 October 2003

56. IRAQ: War remnants, pollution behind rise in cancer deaths? humanitarian news and analysis a service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

57. 1. CLIMATE CHANGE 2014 SYNTHESIS REPORT

 IPCC Fifth Assessment Synthesis Report Approved Summary for Policymakers 1 November 2014

58.   World Meteorological Organization’s annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin Press Release No. 1002