April 2016
| Hassan Abbasi |
List
Title Page
Foreword 3
Chapter One 11
Critique of the Utopia of Capitalist Organic Farming 11
Chapter Two 34
The spread of harmful and heavy metals is a deadly gift of capital to humanity 34
Chapter Three
Turning groundwater reserves into a lever to increase capital returns 52
Chapter Four 70
Deadly climate change is the inevitable result of intensifying capital accumulation 70
Chapter Five 90
Capitalism and the Allergy Epidemic 90
Chapter Six 101
Capital, the consolidation of profit-making cycles and environmental destruction 101
Appendix 1 115
Appendix 2 116
Appendix 3 118
Appendix 4 121
Resources 122
Foreword
Only the anti-capitalist workers’ council movement is capable of solving the environmental problem
While most left-wing theorists, without any critical view of capitalist production relations, are busy bargaining with ruling parties and powers over this or that reform or participation in the state rule of capital. In conditions where these thinkers who claim to be the saviours of humanity consider environmental issues as a matter of work for the green bourgeois parties, anti-capitalist and proletarian criticism of environmental issues is also making its way into the space of life, protest and struggle, albeit slowly and slowly. The theoretical foundations of this critique are Marx’s understanding of capital and Marx’s critique of bourgeois political economy. As soon as we follow Marx’s materialist approach further and extend it to the environment, the true picture of the proletarian revolution, the greatest and most profound social revolution of mankind in history, will also become clearer to us. A very important point about this revolution or the dynamic of transformation of the capitalist production order has been ignored until today, and that is that in the current circumstances, no labour movement will be a comprehensive movement without emphasizing and clarifying the dimensions of the environmental disasters of capitalism and what capital does to the environment, nature, and humans. A closer look reveals that the capitalist mode of production in all spheres of production has added a new dimension to the inhuman dimensions of these relations. The exposure of this dimension is not only a severe blow to the public supporters of capitalism but also exposes the hands of green parties and leftist groups who intend to use the tools of state control and the magic words of “sustainable capitalist growth” to attack it. From a Marx perspective, all environmental destruction is a direct product of capitalism, and any challenge to it depends on a real struggle against the foundation of this system. The anti-capitalist investigation of the matter is a beacon of light that, on the one hand, brings before us another of the most inhuman and criminal areas of capital’s aggression and invasion of human existence, and on the other hand, emphasizes the ever-increasing urgency of the need to expand the struggle against capital in these areas. Here it should be noted that communist consciousness is not based on a handful of scientific discoveries, academic training, or the results of intellectual investigations. Rather, it is precisely the conscious protest cry of the working class against the crimes that capital has been inflicting on it moment by moment and is committing every day. This consciousness can only be observed in the proletariat’s movement against capital and for the abolition of wage slavery, it is not a science that can be learned in universities. This is exactly the opposite of the bourgeois work process and thinking of environmental parties and groups that are trying to act based on scientific proof of the correctness of their positions regarding environmental destruction. However, science is not outside the dominant production relations, it does not have a neutral nature, but rather serves capital and, in the form of research institutes and organizations, is in front of the workers, constantly making the lives of workers the target of aggression. It is very obvious that science, when workers take their destiny out of the hands of capital and abolish the buying and selling of labour power, will be the perfect weapon to improve their lives as much as possible. But now, unfortunately, it is in the hands of capital and plays its role in deepening the exploitation, disenfranchisement, and humiliation of workers, destroying their lives, the natural environment, and degrading them. If you form an organization of the most prominent thinkers in all fields of technology, ecology and biology, medicine, sociology and other sciences, and all of them are a great manifestation of determination and resolute will to, for example, challenge this or that problem of human life within the framework of existing relations! In conditions where the dominant relations of production are wage labour relations, everyone will definitely believe that the need for capital is profitability, and therefore they will simply add problems to the problems of humans. If the capitalist class and all its apparatuses, including the government, institutes, universities, production, distribution, advertising institutions, etc., are not currently rushing forward with the greatest speed with the aim of increasing the process of capital accumulation and preventing the fall of the rate of profit, how is it that despite the existence of a world of institutions called environmental improvement institutions, pollution, destruction, and environmental disasters are still increasing and becoming more terrible moment by moment? The answer is clear. As long as capitalism exists, these disasters will exist and will become more widespread. An important question is what necessity makes these points to be raised here. Some will surely say that for a worker who does not have at least bread, water, medicine, clothing, a doctor, and shelter, discussing the environment is meaningless! The real pains of the working class are too deadly to give them the opportunity to think about this. There is no need to say anything about the pains, sufferings, misfortunes and misery of the working class having no boundaries or limits. But capital does not only make the worker hungry, naked, homeless, displaced and without medicine. In all areas and from all channels of existence, including and very catastrophically in the field of the environment, it makes him the target of the most brutal attacks. We have discussed this issue sufficiently in previous writings. More importantly, workers, especially in recent years, have shown very well that they are not indifferent to what capital has done and is doing to their living environment. They do things, but this is not enough. Especially since what they do is not pursued out of anti-capitalism and as a stage of the battlefield against capital. We need to talk about both the above questions and what workers do and can do. Let’s start with what happened in Paris. At the Paris Environmental Conference, the leaders of more than 150 capitalist governments gathered on November 30, 2015, to deliver the ugliest lies to the workers of the world, with pompous speeches and the issuance of deceptive posters, wrapped in a decision to combat global warming! At the same time, in the first round of local elections held throughout France, the right-wing National Front party won a majority in 8 regions. Journalists wrote about these elections and their results as follows:
“But we would be wrong to attribute Ms. Le Pen’s victory solely to the fear of terrorism. Her party has been steadily improving over the past four years. It should not be forgotten that economic and social issues are as important to voters as security issues. The latest unemployment figures were lost in the chaos of the attacks and were not widely reported. The number of unemployed people is rising again after a short period of stagnation. “In the eyes of many voters, the solutions offered by the two major parties are no different from each other.” Two trends occurred simultaneously in France. The working masses of this country, tired and disobedient from the pressure of unemployment, poverty and misery, instead of searching for the real roots of this situation and the correct and fundamental way of fighting against the disasters of the day, very easily turned to the most fierce and fascist section of the bourgeoisie to solve them. At the same time, they allowed the representatives of the world bourgeoisie to talk about solving environmental problems with slogans that deafened the ears of the world and to applaud all the demagogues in this passage. It is as if these invisible spirits have filled the world with filth, poisons, smoke, fumes, stench, and the terror of capital. The French working class has not only forgotten its entire past history, but has also, with humiliation and abject humiliation, become its own most vile and brutal class enemy. In “Class Struggles in France” in 1850, more than 150 years ago, Marx said the following about the French working class: “By dictating the republic to the provisional government and through it to all of France, the proletariat suddenly placed itself in the forefront of the political scene as a self-governing party, but in doing so, it also challenged all of bourgeois France.”
What the proletariat achieved was only the ground for its own revolutionary emancipation, but this was by no means that emancipation itself.” And regarding unemployment, which was one of the fundamental problems of the workers, Marx wrote: “One of the workers… dictated a decree by which the provisional government, which had not yet been formed for hours, guaranteed the existence of the workers, on the basis of work, and undertook to provide work for all citizens, and so on.” This was the situation of the French working class at that time, and now, unfortunately, this same class, despite at least 150 years of experience in confronting the bourgeoisie and creating epics such as the Paris Commune, rises and falls with the call of the most right-wing evil forces of capital. Why is this so? How could there be such a stark difference in the behaviour of the working class on similar issues at two different points in time? The simple and straightforward answer might be that the working class is now, and has been for a long time, following the bourgeoisie. But this is only the form of the problem, not the answer. However, how the problem is posed is also how it is solved (quoting Marx’s writing “On the Jewish Question”) The correct critique of environmental problems in capitalist relations of production is also the proletariat’s method of solving these problems. For this reason, the new topic we are opening here is the approach to all circles, individuals and political and social groups, not only on the abstract issues of the environment, but also on their class positions in this regard. Environmental problems are an inseparable part of human life in capitalist society and, as a result, an inseparable issue of the working-class liberation movement. Our point is why and how the working class in the world has fallen into such a deplorable situation and what it should do about it.
We mentioned the Paris Conference, one of dozens of gatherings of heads of state of capital and its colourful experts on environmental issues in the last three decades. In order to address the main issue, namely the struggle of the working class, the political and class positions of the social forces in question, we must shorten the current discussion very much. Figures and information published by financial organizations show that the annual increase in carbon dioxide has been on an upward trend, and only the 2008 global financial crisis was accompanied by a decrease in this gas. Currently, more than half of the budget allocated for carbon dioxide has been spent to control the increase in global temperatures by more than two degrees. Even if there is a start now to reduce the use of fossil fuels, the use of these fuels must end by 2030. Otherwise, the scenario of a 4-degree temperature increase (RPC8.5 scenario) will be a realistic scenario by 2100. But are the capitalist governments really concerned about the fate of the working masses who are gathering together in such a hurry and after repeated promises and agreements, it is still the same soup and the same bowl?
Again, capital continues to destroy the environment with the greatest aggression. Are they concerned about the human consequences of this destruction? Consequences that are already clearly felt. Parts of the world, the banks of rivers and seas where hundreds of millions of poor workers live, will be submerged, and this will be the end of the life of this huge, cursed population of capitalist hell. Before this catastrophe, the working masses living in these areas will be exposed to floods, various types of devastating atmospheric and marine disasters and severe storms thousands of times. The slightest increase in global temperature will lead to floods and incidents that will lead to homelessness, hunger, poverty, misery, destruction and misery for hundreds of millions of workers. Poor workers in areas with few living resources are most vulnerable to the damage caused by global warming. Heat, drought, floods and the diseases they cause, combined with the acute shortage of drinking water, are seriously threatening the entire life of the working masses in these areas. On the eve of the Paris conference, UNICEF (i.e. the children’s agency of the United Nations) published a report. According to the document, about 690 million children are at risk of disease, poverty and even death due to climate change. About 530 million children live in countries that are constantly exposed to floods combined with man-made and natural disasters. Most of these countries are located in Asia. 160 million children live in areas of Africa that are constantly exposed to drought. Nicholas Reis, one of the authors of the study, says: Global warming will intensify phenomena such as cyclones, floods and droughts, and the consequences will be an increase in malaria, diarrheal, lung diseases and malnutrition. Children are more vulnerable to these injuries and diseases than others, and their mortality will be much higher. Meanwhile, according to a new study by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, more than 90% of natural disasters and accidents in the past 20 years, including floods, storms, heat and droughts and similar events, have been caused by climate change. The data suggests that climate-related disasters have killed at least 600,000 people worldwide in the past 20 years. Another 4 billion people have been injured or displaced. The study says that between 2005 and 2014, an average of 335 natural disasters occurred annually around the world, a 14 percent increase over the period 1995 to 2004. This figure is twice as many as the natural disasters in the years leading up to 1995. If so, they are thinking about the fate of humanity! Then how is it that no step forward has been made over the course of three decades, despite the holding of numerous conferences and all the information that their various research organizations provide to the capital authorities? The reality is that every step in the challenge of environmental problems is tied to a fundamental attack on the existence of capitalism, and capital governments are not supposed to challenge this system! It is enough to look at the NASA report published by the US Meteorological Organization in August of this year, before the Paris conference, and declaring the 2-degree scenario of global warming to be over, in which Michael Frailes, head of the Geological Research Division at NASA Space Agency, considers the continuation of this trend a threat to the submergence of low-lying areas such as the US state of Florida, island cities and large cities such as Tokyo and Singapore. Or, right after the end of the Paris conference, the same US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced on Wednesday evening (December 16, 2015) that climate change is rapidly warming the world’s lakes. According to the report, the world’s lakes have warmed by 0.34 degrees Celsius every ten years in the past 25 years, and this rate is faster than the rate of warming of the Earth’s atmosphere. But why is such a trend advancing at such a speed? One of the most important factors in climate change is the type of energy production. I have discussed this topic in detail in my book “Capitalism and the Catastrophe of Environmental Pollution” and I will now summarize it here. For more than 200 years, the capitalist system has relied on fossil fuels (oil, gas, and coal) to provide the energy needed for the cycle of profit and capital production and has created a system of communications and technologies (Energy Infrastructure) because of their cheapness and accessibility. Not only does changing this building and foundation require enormous costs, but the replacement system must also be as reliable and robust as possible. In other words, it must be reliable and robust. The biggest obstacle to renewable energy production is not technical obstacles (which are important in their own right), but the very high costs of replacing existing fossil fuels. The following obstacles stand in the way of such a system:
1. Creating a communication system and alternative energy technology requires the consumption of a large amount of energy, the environmental consequences of which will be greater than what we are currently witnessing because for a long time we will see two or more parallel systems.
2. Meeting such a need would certainly break all boundaries of energy consumption control and its consequences.
3. As long as the cost of producing fossil energy is low and will continue to decrease, given its evolution over the past hundred years, and access to new sources of this fossil energy is increasing, no alternative energy can compete with it.1. In addition, alternative energies such as solar and wind energy are ultimately complementary to the main fossil energy. To clarify this issue, I will focus on solar energy, which has received more attention in recent years. If humans could somehow absorb and store a small portion of the energy that the sun sends to the Earth, they would have no need for any other type of energy, but this is a solution that has no place in capitalist production relations (for the reasons mentioned above, capital will never sacrifice its vital need for accumulation for that which requires huge expenses to provide). In 30 minutes, the sun delivers a volume of energy to the earth that is equal to all the energy produced on earth. The sun is present in all parts of the earth at different and specific times, and it only needs a global and planned technical and social system to use it without hindrance. Today, only 1% of all energy produced on earth is solar. Germany has multiplied the amount of solar energy it produces in a few years (although this production was very small). Remember, this is done with huge government subsidies and aid. The production of energy from sunlight is done by solar cells, which are made of harmful metals such as copper, indium, gallium and selenium. The technique of producing solar energy has a history as old as the capitalist system. In 1873, the first product produced by this means was a newspaper in Europe, and about a hundred years ago, the first solar cells were produced industrially and commercially. If this work, i.e., the production of solar energy for the wage slavery system, was affordable and sustainable, it should have replaced energy from fossil fuels by now, because the lifespan of these two products in industrial production is the same. There have been enormous obstacles to the production of the second commodity. The uncertainty of the constant presence of sunlight in places where capitalism has all the industrial and technical facilities, as well as the capacity and possibility of storing the energy obtained, were among these obstacles. While energy produced with other raw and auxiliary materials (fossil fuels) did not face any particular obstacle other than the lack or scarcity of their mines, and this is also the case with the advancement of constantly advanced techniques in each period, new mines and resources were discovered and extracted. Regarding the use of solar energy in places such as African regions with a high number of hours of sunlight and its transmission to industrial production centers, there are always issues such as which government, which company and how much cost is required for the communication network. The high figures of these costs and other issues have been the subject of discussion and conflict.
Let’s go back to the Paris conference, where it was predicted that the 2-degree increase in global warming would be controlled by 2050, while the Yokohama and Copenhagen conferences in 2014, where researchers from capital dominated, had a quorum of only 5 years. At those conferences, it was said that if we wait until 2030, it would be very difficult to maintain the 2-degree increase in global warming by 2100. The participants in those conferences made it clear that the real solution in the area of controlling greenhouse gases and preventing global warming was to limit or even completely stop world economic growth and postpone this growth to the future. The Paris conference was held in conditions where the increase in global temperature had progressed by one degree compared to the late nineteenth century. In other words, half of the disaster had already happened. At the Paris Conference, as in other similar conferences, capitalist governments engaged in bargaining and blackmailing each other over the distribution of pollution. They divided capitalist societies into poor and rich blocs to provide a basis for blackmail and silence against each other. This division is also formal. Countries such as India, Nigeria and many Latin American capitalist powers are in the poor bloc, while, for example, India is the third-largest capitalist country in the world in terms of economic growth in the last decade, and Nigeria is the second-largest country in Africa, and in terms of economic growth This clearly shows that the conferences are bargaining circles for the bourgeoisie, their various blackmails to each other, and the race to silence the main issue, which is climate destruction. The trumpets and clarions of the capitalist states in these places are merely a veil over the tragedies that capital has brought and is bringing to human life. I will only list these cases here, each one explained in detail and in its own place:
1.Climate change. 2. Reduction and destruction of animals, plants and forests on earth. 3. Expansion of destructive cycles of nitrogen, phosphorus, new substances and elements. 4. Acidification of water, air and soil. 5. Depletion of agricultural soils of nutrients. 6. Increasing decrease in drinking water on earth. 7. Increasing consumption of pesticides. 8. Increasing consumption of chemicals. 9. Spread of heavy metals in the environment. 10. Spread of wars and their environmental destruction. 11. Increase in global temperature and its destructive environmental effects. 12. Genetic changes in plants in order to produce labour. 13. Increasing and increasing spread of epidemics, cancers, allergies and suspicious diseases. 14. Increase in air pollution and spread of fine dust.
The heads of capitalist governments gathered in Paris on November 30, 2015, to deliver the ugliest lies to the workers of the world, with pompous speeches and the issuance of deceptive posters, wrapped in a decision to confront global warming! They gathered this time especially at the level of presidents, kings and rulers of capital, because they were afraid of a repeat of what happened at the Copenhagen summit. The participants in the Copenhagen meeting were researchers. They were not capable of creating any danger to capital and were not in the business of doing so, but they raised issues that: 1. Even in a toneless language, they exposed the lies and deceptions of capitalists and governments about supposedly thinking about human environmental issues! 2. It put on the agenda of governments the goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius by 2100. The entire effort of the Paris Conference was, first, to exempt the criminal global bourgeoisie from taking on this task, and second, to wrap up the Copenhagen-type revelations. Let me explain a little more.
The Earth is already one degree warmer than it was a hundred years ago. The biggest increase in temperature occurred in 2015, and if this trend continues at this rate, it will reach 4 degrees by 2100. A few degrees of warming may not seem like a big deal, but we are already seeing the devastating and catastrophic effects of even a tiny one-degree increase. A two-degree increase in global temperatures will become a reality by 2035. First of all, it should be said that this increase will occur in different parts of the world to different degrees. The Arctic will see a 10-degree increase in temperature. Many parts of the Earth will become uninhabitable. The reason is clear. The amount of carbon dioxide from traffic, factories, deforestation (which could absorb a large amount of carbon dioxide), etc. is increasing every year.
In 2013, this amount was 36.3 billion tons, and in 2014 it exceeded 39 billion tons. (NASA, IPCC).
| 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 |
Data for Global Carbon Emissions
(Fossil fuels, cement, land-use change)
Now, if we do not limit ourselves to the annual increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but also consider its concentration, the dimensions of the catastrophes of capital become even clearer. Because the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the result of the action of two factors: one is the production of this gas by capital, and the other is the reduction in the absorption capacity of this gas by destroying trees and forests by capital. Between August 2019 and July 2020, the rate of destruction of the Amazon forests increased by 9.5 percent compared to the previous year. In this regard, the upward trend in the destruction of the Amazon forests continues. This is the highest level of destruction in the past 12 years. Satellite images indicate an increase in forest destruction around the world. To calculate the amount of forest destruction each year, experts consider the period between August of one year and July of the following year. The reason for choosing such a period of time is related to calculating both the dry and rainy periods of these forests in the year. The result is clearly shown in the monthly chart below by NASA, where the concentration of this gas was around 400 ppm (parts per million) at the 2015 COP and reached 415 ppm in November 2020. The United Nations Meteorological Organization also announced that despite the new coronavirus pandemic and the related quarantines, the level of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere has once again set a record. The organization announced that in 2019, the growth of greenhouse gas emissions was significant, and the rate of increase was higher than the average rate of increase of the past decade. The effects of global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions from capital production are becoming more apparent day by day. 2020 is one of the warmest years on record, with September the hottest September on record. Overall, temperatures from 2010 to 2019 were about 1.1 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average. The organization announced in January 2021 that 2020 was the warmest year on record, with the Earth’s average temperature 1.25 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
As can be seen from the above figures, the annual increase in carbon dioxide has been on an upward trend, and only the 2008 global capital crisis led to a decrease in this gas. Currently, more than half of the budget allocated for carbon dioxide has been spent to control the increase in global temperatures by more than two degrees. Even if there is a start now to reduce the use of fossil fuels, the use of these fuels should end by 2030. Otherwise, the 4-degree temperature increase scenario (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 impacts on nature, both on land and in the seas. The acidification of sea water, which is the result of more carbon dioxide dissolving and forming carbonic acid in it, is one of these fatal changes. Global warming and rainfall changes are not happening equally in different parts of the world. 2 or 4 degrees increase in average global temperature by 2100 means different temperature changes in different parts of the world. And this in practice means the destruction of polar ice caps. Similarly, a terrifying scenario is happening in terms of changes in precipitation on the Earth’s surface. There will be about 40 percent more rain in the Earth’s poles, and at the same time, large parts of the Earth’s surface will become uninhabitable deserts and deserts. On the other hand, parts of the world, the banks of rivers and seas where hundreds of millions of poor workers live, will be submerged, and this will be the end of the life of this huge, cursed population, the hell of capitalism. Before this catastrophe, the working masses living in these areas will be exposed to thousands of floods, devastating air and sea disasters, and increasingly violent storms. The slightest increase in global temperature will lead to floods and other disasters that will cause homelessness, hunger, poverty, misery, destruction and misery for hundreds of millions of workers. The poor workers in areas with few living conditions are most exposed to the damage caused by the increase in the degree of land degradation. Heat, drought, floods and the diseases caused by them, together with the acute shortage of drinking water, seriously threaten the lives of the working masses in these areas. On the eve of the Paris conference, UNICEF (i.e. the children’s agency of the United Nations) published a report. According to this document, about 690 million children are at risk of disease, poverty and even death due to climate change. About 530 million children live in countries that are constantly faced with floods combined with human and natural disasters. Most of these countries are located in Asia. 160 million children also live in areas of Africa that are constantly exposed to drought.
Nicholas Rees, one of the authors of the study, says: “Global warming will intensify phenomena such as hurricanes, floods and droughts, and the increase in malaria, diarrhoea, lung diseases and malnutrition is one of its consequences. Children are more exposed to these injuries and diseases than others, and their mortality will be much higher. Meanwhile, according to a new study by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, more than 90% of natural disasters and incidents in the past 20 years have included floods, storms, heat and droughts and similar events caused by climate change.” The data suggests that climate-related disasters have killed at least 600,000 people worldwide in the past 20 years. Another 4 billion people have been injured or displaced. The study says that between 2005 and 2014, an average of 335 natural disasters occurred annually around the world, a 14 percent increase from 1995 to 2004. This is twice the number of natural disasters in the years leading up to 1995. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO 2015 likely to be Warmest on Record 2011-2015 Warmest Five-Year Period WMO) says in its latest report that the global temperature this year is likely to be the highest since the temperature was recorded by this UN-affiliated organization. But even these three degrees of increase in global temperature is optimistic because, first, the global temperature will almost certainly increase by one degree Celsius in 2015 since 1900. In 2014, the temperature increase set a new record and reached 0.9 degrees. 2015 broke the previous year’s record in terms of warming. Secondly, these increases do not only include these two years. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) report considers the last five years (2011 to 2015) as the warmest period on Earth during the period of temperature records. Moreover, the main factor of global warming is also variable and constantly advancing. A look at the annual increase in carbon dioxide from 2006 to the end of 2014, which has increased more than in previous years, shows this fact. It should be noted that carbon dioxide is one of the greenhouse gases. There are 9 other gases emitted by factories that are no less destructive and warming than carbon dioxide. The fact that it is said here that a 4-degree temperature increase should be expected by 2100 comes from this conference and the like. The goals of the Paris Conference are to reduce 3 billion tons by 2025 and 4 billion tons from 2025 to 2030. Looking at the annual figures for carbon dioxide and its annual increase, it is easy to see the demagoguery of capitalist governments. Even if these governments meet the goals they have set, what they will reduce will still be far less than the annual increase in greenhouse gases that capital sends into the atmosphere.
Chapter One:
Critique of the Utopia of Capitalist Organic Farming
In the book “Capitalism and the Catastrophe of Environmental Pollution,” Volume 1, I discussed in detail the industrial agriculture of capitalism and its role in environmental destruction, especially the production of pesticides, the depletion of soil of necessary materials in order to increase profits and supply low-value agricultural goods to workers, the increase in food additives and supplements in an attempt to fill the gap in these materials, and finally, technical additives to ready-made foods in order to increase their shelf life and decorate goods to increase their sales as much as possible. In this article, I will address an area of capitalist agricultural production that has attracted significant capital over the past four decades under the titles of biological agriculture, natural cultivation, organic farming, or organic farming. The owners of these capitals, as is the nature and purpose of capitalist production, have all named their search for greater and more golden profits in “serving” humanity, and in this case, “serving human health”! And they talk about the challenge of the destructive effects of industrial agriculture and replacing them with healthy food products! Considering that 90% of the world’s food is produced by agricultural capitalism and the rest is from marine products, there are huge profits in this field of production that no capital can ignore. When the conversion of land, mines, seas, lakes, oil and gas resources 4000 meters deep into capital, by exploiting the quasi-free labour of sex billion workers in the world, is the daily business of capitalism and the need of the moment, the moment of survival of this system, the discussion of ignoring the added values of the agricultural sector of capitalism is pure demagogy, like all the words and claims of other capitalists. The production and supply of agricultural goods under the fancy titles of “natural” and “organic” cultivation and the challenge of conventional capitalist cultivation is an attempt by these producers and government agencies to pretend that the capitalists in this field of production care about the quality of the goods and the health of consumers! Is this really the case? Is there a goal outside the scope of advertising and deception other than making as much profit as possible? Commodity production and its most advanced form, capitalist production, is the origin, driver, and full-spectrum mirror of the fetishist role of the product of human labour. The very replacement of the relationship between humans with the relationship between objects and goods implies that the commodity or capital becomes everything and the human becomes nothing. The focus of our current discussion is that under the rule of capital, the worker, his nutrition, and the land, as far as the needs of human life are concerned, are undergoing a process of becoming nothing, and instead it is capital that accelerates its divine role to infinity. Commodity fetishism is the inevitable result of the separation of man from work and the product of work. Does production in capitalist organic farming have a purpose other than the production and sale of goods in order to obtain the added value inherent in organic goods? What tools does capitalist organic farming, which is engaged in food production alongside traditional capitalist farming, use to preserve goods and increase their lifespan against plant pests, and how is the depletion of essential soil nutrients compensated for? What processes and procedures do the products of this field go through when they are converted into ready-to-eat foods? These and more questions are the subject of discussion and criticism in this article. It is important to remember that since the very beginning of capitalist organic farming, comparisons of these two areas of capital advance have been made and are being made in various ways by institutes, universities and websites. Countless researchers around the world have conducted research with arguments in Favor of or against this method of production, and as their research sources have been used in this article, some have considered this method of food production as a way to save humanity from the pollution of plants, vegetables, fruits and other agricultural products, the natural environment and human life, while others have not seen much difference between the two in the aforementioned areas and, considering the advances in traditional capitalist farming, encourage governments to continue to help and assist traditional dominant farming. The latest achievement in this field is a book by four Swedish researchers entitled “Den ekologiska drömmen”. The authors’ entire effort is to show that what farm capitalists do outside of what is called “their” is out of a sense of responsibility to provide food and essential nutrients for the billions of people on Earth! Nowhere in these studies, subsequent discussions, and colourful websites is the main motive and driving force of capitalism mentioned, namely, to obtain as much profit as possible and increase the accumulation of capital at the cost of threatening the health and lives of the productive workers and the vast majority of consumers. When international capital with a high organic composition invades all the fields of cultivation in the world to achieve the desired and ideal rate of profit, the more massive and unbridled production of capital changes the normal conditions of its evolution and this time uses more harmful and dangerous substances with greater unbridled Ness and recklessness. If not so long ago we were browsing the pages of these websites, institutes, and researchers and among their lines we would encounter some criticism and complaints about the use of chemicals in food, the depletion of soil essential for plants, and the unbridled corruption of nature, today this is no longer the case, and what exists is a response to this or that capitalist method of agriculture. Many of these researchers recommend this or that crop, this or that natural or synthetic toxic substance to capitalists, unaware that the conditions for capital reproduction are becoming increasingly difficult, and that the recommendations are worthless if they do not have a place in the cycle of further accumulation and higher profits for capital.
During the 19th century, agricultural production made progress in increasing labour productivity per hectare of land (barley production rose from 1 ton to 1.3 tons per year by the end of the century, Figure 1). Despite this, agriculture was still associated with a lack of harvest (labour productivity). One reason was that, despite the addition of nitrogenous fertilizers, the lack of phosphate in the soil caused it to become acidic. The breakdown and separation of soil salts (due to climate change), because the source of plant nutrients is very slow, and the amount of material separated cannot prevent the depletion of the soil of minerals. For this reason, the cultivation of legumes (legumes such as beans, lentils, peas, etc.) and clover, which convert atmospheric nitrogen into a source of protein and thereby increase soil nitrogen, was one of the most important sources of soil nitrogen conservation until 1950 and was very similar to today’s organic agriculture. Of course, it should be noted that here (Figure 1) we have only dealt with a part of the labour productivity in relation to arable land, while the total labour productivity, which includes the reduction of labour and the simultaneous reduction of the cultivated area, will be a figure higher than these, as we will discuss later in this text.
If we were to divide the agricultural periods of Sweden and Europe into different periods in terms of land productivity techniques (in this entire text I deliberately avoid mentioning other factors such as the use of machinery and other parameters that have helped increase labour productivity in the field of agriculture and focus all my efforts on specific aspects that differentiate between traditional and organic farming), it would look like this:
1. The technique of burning forests and agricultural lands to increase soil fertility (agriculture along the great rivers of the Nile, Tigris, Euphrates, Ganges, and Yellow Rivers was based on another) from 1000 BC to 1800 AD.
2. Animal manure technique 1700-1800: A harvesting system that feeds animals with its surplus and forest additions and returns their waste to agricultural land.
3. Technique of periodic use of planting legumes, clover and alfalfa to produce protein and increase soil nitrogen 1800-1950.
4. Techniques for producing fertilizers containing mineral salts (chemical fertilizers) from 1900 to the present.
Through animal manure, some of the necessary and lost soil nutrients are returned to agricultural land, but without investment in adding nutrients to the soil in the capitalist mass production system, this deficiency is irreparable. The production of mineral fertilizers has increased significantly since 1950.
This fertilizer was discovered in 1840 by a German chemist (his theory was that plant growth could be achieved without soil, simply by adding a small amount of mineral matter to the water). Plants and good agricultural soil need two types of mineral matter:
Macronutrients include phosphorus (P), nitrogen (N), potassium (K), calcium (Ca), sodium (Na). Micronutrients include fluorine (Fluor), copper (Cu), selenium (Se), manganese (Mn), iodine (I), molybdenum (Mo), and chromium (Cr). Of course, chemical fertilizers do not necessarily always include all of these materials because most of them are very expensive to produce and add. Therefore, traditional capitalist agriculture only focuses on the needs and productivity of the plant and not the quality of the soil and the compensation of its lost materials. In this way, with the production of chemical fertilizers, the need for animal manure was reduced, so that keeping animals in the fields and gardens became unnecessary and the need for both disappeared. Land productivity increased simultaneously with fertilizer production and consumption (Figure 1)1,2 so that from 1950 to 2012, total agricultural productivity increased from 2,200 kg of barley per hectare in 1950 to 4,400 kg in 2012.
After the Second Imperialist War, agricultural production underwent major changes, and the increase in labour productivity led to the expansion of large-scale agriculture. Huge fields were ploughed, planted, and harvested by giant machines. The irrigation system was developed, and water supply obstacles were eliminated. With the expansion of agricultural land, the distance between cultivated lands and running waters and lakes became shorter, and conditions for environmental destruction became more favourable than ever. Mass production of agricultural products made it necessary to preserve, store, and extend the life of goods to preserve their inherent value-added, and thus agricultural pesticides entered the field of production, packaging, and distribution. At the same time, environmental problems in agriculture increased. The depletion of essential nutrients in the soil, the unilateral compensation of these nutrients by chemical fertilizers, which causes an imbalance in the soil content, the spread of toxic substances in the agricultural and biological environment, the toxic contamination of agricultural products, along with the reduction in the quality of their contents, led to the growth of protests by the masses of workers, producers and consumers. This fear fell on the capitalists that perhaps the economic circulation would be disrupted or even the speed of capital accumulation would be slightly reduced, a period of bankruptcy would occur, and the public credibility of capitalism would decrease. It was here that all capitalists became lovers of the environment, the health of workers and the production of healthy goods! Such reconciliation of conflicting class interests with each other can only happen when the ruling class understands its own disadvantage. In order to dispel any suspicion that capitalism produces toxins, pollutes society and nature, something must be done to gain confidence in capitalist production in the agricultural sector. The two weaknesses (strengths) of traditional capitalist agriculture, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, became the platform for organic agriculture, the seeds of which were planted early in the last century. Avoiding these two became the fundamental principle of this field of agro capitalism.
One of the important results of the transformation of traditional agriculture based on chemical fertilizers, which eliminated the need for animal fertilizers, was the expansion of the division of labour in agriculture. In this way, farmland became specialized for certain crops (specific chemical fertilizers for specific crops) and animal husbandry was separated from plant agriculture, or in fact, the capital invested in agriculture did not require the maintenance of animals and their fertilizers, and on the other hand, the production of chemical fertilizers itself opened up a new area for capital. So that this area began to mass produce this commodity without the direct intervention of industrial agriculture. These major developments led to an ever-increasing increase in labour productivity in the production of plant, livestock, and fruit products. However, the destructive effects of traditional agricultural production that led to the growth of organic agriculture created a foundation for the use of animal manure, limited and controlled use of antibiotics, the use of natural toxic substances (I will address this), limited and controlled use of chemical poisons, limited use of chemical fertilizers, and the creation of plant dams to prevent the fallout and spread of toxins and organic agricultural surpluses into watersheds and lakes. In this way, organic farming entered the field with the claim of preserving the natural environment, diversity in nature and reducing toxins in the environment, and for this reason, organizations were created in Europe and America to control and organize this area of agricultural production. Later, these ideas were supplemented with other goals such as controlling the use of land reserves, increasing the capacity of energy use, reducing the destructive effects of climate change, preserving the diversity of nature and regulating the rules for keeping and raising animals based on the ecosystem. At the global level, the organization (IFOAM: International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements) and in Sweden, the private organization (KRAV) were established, which is also the body that controls the rules and agreements of membership and the production of organic agricultural products. Now let’s see what these beautiful promises and dreams became in practice and what they did in the realm of capitalist organic farming. A look at the goals and functions of organic agriculture easily takes us back to the early nineteenth century, a period when agriculture and animal husbandry were still in an organic relationship, the dimensions of agricultural land were limited, and the use of machinery was still in its infancy. These are not negative factors in themselves, as they are accompanied by healthier crops, a better environment, and many other valuable positive outcomes. But capitalist production relations, as in traditional agricultural production, counteract the decline in the rate of profit by expanding the social division of labour, increasing labour productivity, increasing the area under cultivation, and reducing the need for labour. Such a trend is inevitable in organic agriculture because this field, like all capital-advancing fields, follows the laws of capitalist commodity production. For this reason, this field is also forced to follow a trend that works against these ideas, not based on beautiful, humanitarian, and nature-friendly ideas, but on the basis of hard reality.
Until 1989, Sweden was almost food-independent, but since then it has become increasingly dependent on imports of food such as red meat, pork and vegetables, a result of the division of labour in agriculture, in which no country is independent of other markets. The increase in global agricultural production is 1% per year (Sweden is slightly less, Table 1) 1, while the world’s annual demand is increasing by 2% per year. The increase in the area under organic farming has increased by nearly 2.5 times in ten years, covering about 15.1% of the total cultivated land in 2012 (Figure 2).1 However, this does not mean that the labour productivity of this sector of agro-capitalism has increased, as Figure 14 shows, this sector has experienced a decrease in labour productivity compared to conventional agriculture. Organic farming production at best (including all products) is only 50% of conventional farming per hectare per year. According to the figures from Statistics Sweden (SCB) shown in Figure 3 1, only 40% of this total is conventionally cultivated, and the high figures for clover and legumes (which show themselves to be close to conventionally cultivated figures) are only the result of planting these crops to produce nitrogen-rich soil in more consecutive periods than in conventional agriculture. Whereas the production of these same crops in conventional agriculture does not arise from the need to add nitrogen-rich soil to the soil and is simply produced for sale, like other commodities in this sector.
| 1982-1990 | 2000- 2010 | Growth per year % | |
| Winter wheat | 5500 | 6200 | 0.55 |
| Barley | 3600 | 4200 | 0.70 |
| Wheat | 3600 | 3900 | 0.35 |
Table 1 Increase in grain production in (kilograms per hectare) traditional agriculture between 1982 and 2010, 1
Figure 1 Growth in agricultural productivity in Sweden over two centuries 1,2
Figure 2 Organic farming area in 2013 was 15.1% of total Swedish agricultural land1
Figure 3. Production of some agricultural products in 2008 (kilograms of dry matter per hectare)1
Figure 4. Winter wheat production over ten years in kilograms per hectare1
After this introduction I will enter into the subject of the contents of agricultural products in these two areas of production and we will look at these products not as they should be but only in comparison with each other. But capitalist agricultural production has never been able and cannot provide a suitable formulation to prevent the reduction of the necessary soil materials for food products with the right content, the realization of this goal is not possible without giving up large investments in this area, which is the red line of the wage slavery system. Although it is the first option to avoid the destruction of human health. It is clear that the development of labour productivity in the agricultural unit with the aim of increasing profits as much as possible or preventing a decrease in the rate of profit does not lead to a solution to this problem and as a result the health of the workers will always and continuously be at the greatest risk. If mineral substances in the soil are reduced, their deficiency should also be evident in plants, but the owners of capital prevent this by sacrificing human health and resorting to the use of harmful substances. For capitalist agriculture is only compatible with the mass production of goods and greater profits, with a quantity of profit-making and not with a content of health-giving. In order to arrive at the reasons for this, which is an undeniable fact today, let us go back to the distant past, to the time when agriculture was carried out along the great rivers of the Nile, the Ganges, the Yellow River of China, and the Tigris and Euphrates. When mineral substances were washed from the mountains and, together with the flow of the great rivers, left new and compensatory substances on the delta bed and banks. At that time, agricultural products maintained their quality in terms of content, and from time to time, man enriched the land through natural fertilizers such as human and animal waste. Now, even if capitalist agriculture, assuming it is impossible, wants to return about 60 different minerals to agricultural land, the long process of these materials being incorporated into the soil chemicals and the process of plant absorption takes about 5 to 10 years, and in this case, no capital will 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.
Buying organically grown products is sometimes done with the idea that these materials have a better nutritional content, a higher percentage of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants, and that the production of products is done in a natural environment that is better for animals and more suitable for humans. The reality is that the only difference between traditional farming and organic farming is the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides in the former and animal manure and generally natural pesticides in the latter. The main question is whether these differences lead to differences in product quality and whether capitalist industrial agriculture, regardless of form, is anything other than a profit-driven pursuit of capital accumulation. What has been learned from research on these two commodity sectors is that more protein and nitrate are found in conventionally grown products than in organically grown products, and this is a result of the nitrogenous chemical fertilizers in conventionally grown products, while organic products contain more phosphate and less water. The higher phosphate is due to the lower plant density per unit area in this area, which in turn allows the plant to absorb more sunlight than in conventional farming, and this is one of the main reasons for the difference in agricultural productivity between the two areas, with the former only able to produce less than half the crop per unit area compared to the latter. The reason for the lower water requirement in organic farming is the smaller cells of the crops in this farming. The density of plants in conventional farming is a direct result of the use of chemical fertilizers. In addition, the greater absorption of sunlight in organic crops is the reason for the higher vitamin C content in these crops, while conventional crops, due to their high nitrate content, cause the formation of fats, vitamin A and carotenes. Carotenes, which number about 600 types, play an important role in the defence system of plants and humans. These substances, which are antioxidants, play an important defensive role in both plants and the human body. In addition, they are the main basis for the formation of vitamin A, and for this reason, traditionally cultivated products contain much higher amounts of these two substances per unit of product. Research also shows a direct relationship between high nitrate and higher percentage of vitamin B 3,4,5,6. I will not discuss secondary metabolites such as phenols, terpenes, alkaloids, and flavonoids here because, apart from the fact that these substances are increased or decreased in plants, their role in foods is very complex and unknown so far. As can be seen from the above study, there is not much difference between these two areas of agricultural commodity production in terms of nutrient content, and what was revealed in this study is within the scope of comparing the two areas of capital investment in agricultural product production. However, extensive research into the overall content of agricultural products after the Second Imperialist War clearly shows a gradual and prolonged decline in the nutritional content of these products (Figure 5)8.
Figure 5 percent decrease in contents (protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, vitamin A, vitamin B2, and vitamin C) in 43 crops harvested in the United States from 1950 to 1999. 8
Examining issues such as the content of agricultural soil and its impact on food, its relationship with the use of chemical fertilizers, spraying of agricultural products, the impact of acid rain, replacing destructive heavy metals with minerals needed by the body, and 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. The union of agriculture and industry has long been an obstacle to the natural function of the permanent fertility of the land, because until the development of the commodity economy, the main task of work was to meet the needs of life, and not to produce goods or accumulate capital. It is clear that increasing the productivity of labour in the agricultural unit with the aim of increasing profits and preventing a decrease in the rate of profit is also no way to solve the problem of the shortage of essential nutrients in agricultural products, and as a result, the health of workers will always and continuously be at the greatest risk. If the minerals in the soil are depleted, their deficiency should also be evident in the plants. Capitalist agriculture is only compatible with the mass production of goods and higher profits, the quantity of profit-making and not the content of health. Meanwhile, the emergence of capitalist organic farming has not only not helped to eliminate this disaster but has itself become a factor in the imbalance of soil and plant contents. Leaving aside factors such as the increase in weeds, the increase in animal feed production (because organic farming is in dire need of animal manure), the breeding and increase in plants with a higher defence system against insects, fungi and microorganisms, and finally the quantitative and qualitative expansion of agricultural pesticides in general (because not all conventional pesticides of traditional cultivation can be used in organic farming and new generations of pesticides must be created), which are inevitable prerequisites for obtaining maximum surplus value and increasing the rate of profit, overproduction in this agricultural sector, like in all other sectors, inevitably leads to capital accumulation. This is an inevitable consequence of the depletion of soil reserves of nutrients. The direct result of this practice is the reduction of minerals, vitamins and other essential substances in agricultural products (for more information on the role of various nutrients, including vitamins, minerals, proteins, hormones and other plant products and their reduction in plants and their products, see the book “Capitalism and Environmental Disasters, Volume 1, Chapter 2”). Traditional agricultural capitalists restore a small portion of the lost soil materials by annually adding chemical fertilizers, which mainly consist of nitrogen and phosphorus. The capitalist does not care about preserving all the soil resources because for him only the increased productivity of plants, which is evidence of increased labour productivity and the rise in the rate of surplus value, is important. In addition, compensating for all the lost soil contents requires huge costs, time and long waiting, which reduces the amount of profit and its rate falls. More importantly, the division of labour in the advanced field of traditional agriculture by regulating the amount, type and ratio of chemical fertilizers, which are determined based on the type of plant being cultivated, causes these fertilizers, which have high metabolic capabilities in the soil, to quickly enter the plant’s absorption system and provide the desired result for the capitalist. Meanwhile, organic farming, claiming to compensate for the essential soil materials, is limited to adding animal fertilizers, but these fertilizers are not capable of direct returns, and the long process of their incorporation into the chemical structure of the soil and their absorption by the plant requires time and huge capital that no capital can afford. This long process does not only include the absorption of essential soil materials but also includes returning them to the plant. So that it takes several decades for the process of absorption of materials into the soil chemical system and then decomposition and their absorption by the plant to be complete 9 and 10. For this reason, capitalism also becomes an impossible equation for organic farming, and therefore, in order to avoid the huge costs and long processes of adding animal manure and immediately planting and harvesting, this field is practically suffering the same fate as traditional farming, which results in a shortage of essential nutrients in agricultural products. In the meantime, there are limited periods when, after a long period of fertilization and harvesting, the absorption of the necessary substances into the soil and their subsequent decomposition and absorption into the plant are balanced, and some products accidentally contain a balanced combination of essential substances during a period. Leaving aside all the above points, the animal manure used in organic farming is generally purchased from traditional farming, and if the organic farmer does not simultaneously raise livestock on his farmland, soil depletion will occur more rapidly. 11, 12. Those capitalists in organic farming who use chemical fertilizers, traditional composts, and traditional animal feed (due to the shortage of these materials in organic farming), and their number is constantly increasing, are not in a better position in terms of soil content and plant products. 11, 13. The result of these processes is not only the depletion of the soil of the necessary nutrients for plants, but also the reduction of the productivity of organically cultivated land and, ultimately, the negative growth of the crop in this area. Even the cultivation of legumes (peas, beans, lentils and legumes in general) and clover (including 18,000 different species), which have a system of nitrogen-fixing bacteria in their roots and convert free nitrogen from the air (the Earth’s atmosphere contains more than 75% nitrogen) into valuable nitrogen-containing substances, does not help to solve the problem. Because part of the absorbed nitrogenous substances that are dispersed on the surface of agricultural soils through threshing, residues, and compost of these plants decompose quickly, are sometimes washed away by rainwater and irrigation, and sometimes evaporate. What remains is neither sufficient nor predictable in terms of quantity and therefore is not reliable in calculations for evaluating and increasing the fertility of land for capitalist cultivation 15,16,17. Thus, after 40 years in the field of agricultural production, organic capitalist agriculture has still not been able to create a production process that, like other areas of capitalist production, reliably converts the necessary materials into products. The traditional cultivation production process not only provides the necessary confidence to investors but has also succeeded in increasing labour productivity in its field step by step. For this reason, many organic producers turn to traditional fertilizers (chemical fertilizers) and use this fertilizer to create a more reliable production process for themselves. Because with the removal of organic livestock and agricultural products from the circulation, some of the essential soil materials are also removed from it forever, and animal manure is not enough for capitalist mass production to compensate for what has been removed from organic gardens and fields. Another issue that is said to separate these two areas of capital investment from each other and is one of the reasons for the establishment of organic farming is the use of chemical pesticides, which has been widely used in traditional farming since 1950. The residues of these substances in agricultural products are a direct result of this, and organic farming products are considered free from pesticides, especially chemical pesticides. But even organic products contain pesticides. In Europe, there are about 1800 registered natural pesticides. For example, pyrethrum, copper sulphate (Cu SO4) and mineral oils. The rules for using these substances vary from country to country. Pyrethrum is the sap of a flower and is used as an insecticide. This poison is as dangerous to fish and aquatic animals, birds and mammals as chemical pesticides. Copper sulphate, which is widely used against fungi in organic farming, causes a gradual increase in copper in the soil and disrupts its natural balance. Its increase in European vineyards has also caused soil poisoning and reduced the activity of living organisms and plants. Since these types of substances are less toxic than toxic chemical products, they are used in larger amounts (higher doses) to achieve the same result, and as a result, their destructive power is greater. The destructive effect of toxic substances, both natural and chemical, on living organisms depends entirely on the amount consumed and the toxicity of these substances. For this reason, if the toxicity of a substance is lower, a larger amount (higher dose) of it must be used to achieve the same level of effect. This is a natural law of pharmacology that is true for all drugs. One of the common methods of organic farming capitalism to avoid bearing the costs of reproducing a product attacked by pests is the use of pesticides, and this time the use of phytoncides, which are a natural phenomenon of the plants defines system against insects, fungi and other microorganisms. Man’s long acquaintance with these materials has opened the way for capitalists in this field of agricultural production to develop and select products that contain more of these materials. In the commodity economy and its highest phase of development, namely 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 for commodities to be exchanged, they must also have use value. In capitalist agriculture, both traditional and organic, maintaining the same consumer value of the product in the production, storage and transportation processes is subject to many risks. Plant pests constitute the most important and influential part of these risks. In order to avoid bearing the costs of reproducing a product attacked by pests, the capitalist farmer takes the path of using pesticides. By doing so, he not only avoids the costs of reproducing but also minimizes the amount of waste and damage. In short, the unbridled use of the aforementioned pesticides is an integral part of the process of capital appreciation in the agricultural sector and a necessary condition for achieving the highest desired surplus values or profits. The foundation of capital’s work is based on the production of maximum goods with the minimum labour force, the extreme reduction of the cost of the various components of the fixed capital sector, the highest possible quality of goods, and the maximum competitiveness in the capitalist market. Ensuring all of this in capitalist industrial agricultural accumulation is tied to the widespread use of pesticides, and this general rule is true in both traditional and organic agricultural production. Solanine in potatoes and in tomatoes are examples of phytotoxicants (Table 2)19.
| Naturaltoxins | Type of poison | Foodstuff |
| Dopamine | Biogen amine | Vicia faba 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 |
Table 2 Natural toxic substances in plants 19.
Consuming organically grown potatoes, which contain much higher levels of plant pests, causes headaches, diarrhoea, and vomiting. Celery, which contains the toxic substance Psoralen (also found in parsley) to fight insects, causes skin sensitivity to ultraviolet rays, and a person who consumes celery and parsley containing this substance in excess develops skin allergy. After millions of years, the human body still has no mechanism to combat these toxins, so plant pests, whether they are produced artificially and chemically from a natural recipe or those that are naturally selected and strengthened to combat pests, are harmful to the human body and nature. In general, it should be said that resorting to the use of natural pesticides to combat pests is an integral part of the process of adding value to capital in the field of organic farming for the same reason that chemical pesticides work in traditional farming. Otherwise, the products in this field will not be sustainable and will not be able to compete with similar products. The natural defence of the plant is limited to a small amount of natural toxic substance that is proportional to the insects and the weight of the product. Selecting the type of product, improving and increasing the level of their natural poison, which is one of the techniques of organic agriculture, just like traditional cultivation, aims to increase the life of the product in the process of production, transportation and storage while maintaining the consumption value and thus the exchange value of the product. Meanwhile, the fact that the products of this field of cultivation are free from toxins is part of the advertising device for more sales. In 1990, three American researchers, by selecting 52 natural plant toxins and comparing them with chemical toxins on 54 mice, concluded that when the amount of these toxins is proportional to the weight of the animal, there is practically no difference between the two groups of toxins. As a result of the experiment, 27 mice (50%) developed cancer.
The results of many studies in Europe and America show that organic farmers are not satisfied with natural pesticides and, where necessary, they also use chemical pesticides. A large study in America between 1993 and 2002, testing more than 100,000 agricultural and livestock products in the field of traditional and organic farming, yielded results of pesticides remaining in the products of such varieties (Pesticide Data Program PDP). These tests used products such as apples, peaches, tomatoes, green peppers, fruits, vegetables, vegetable oils, dairy products, meat and poultry (Tables 3, 4 and 5). The same tests in the UK also showed similar results (Table 6). The most toxic substances found were chlorine compounds 21. In addition, the interaction of a set of pesticides and biocides used simultaneously in a product (Cocktail effect) and the side effects caused by the combination of these substances for living organisms, including humans, is another story that should be given the most attention. This issue is always kept hidden from the public, and most reports only talk about the harmful effects of the substances separately. The fact is that these substances increase the harmful effects of each other exponentially, and sometimes the toxicity resulting from their combination is hundreds of times greater than the harmful effects of all these substances individually. The issue is not only the presence of residues of several pesticides simultaneously in a product, but also the effect of the (Cocktail effect) of daily and even long-term consumption of different foods containing different pesticides and their accumulation in the body. So far, no one has mentioned the cumulative destructive effects (cocktail effect) of combining chemical pesticides with natural plant toxins (which are intentionally enhanced in organic farming to increase plant resistance), while it is entirely possible that this factor, just as it works with chemicals, will also increase the destructiveness of the combination of chemical pesticides and natural pesticides. Another issue is the use of toxins, even small amounts of which can cause hormonal changes and fetal complications. Their proliferation in nature, especially those with relatively long lifespans (ecological stability), causes numerous disorders affecting all living organisms. Although their presence in the human body is insignificant and their frequent circulation is due to their relatively long survival (they have a stable molecular structure and are mostly soluble in fats), they accumulate in nature and the body and continue to have their destructive effects over a long period of time, and at the same time, they can be increased in the human body in various ways (Biomagnification).
| Percent of organically grown goods | Percent of traditional cultivated goods | |
| Fruits | 18 | 51 |
| Vegetables | 18 | 44 |
| Meat and dairy | 18 | 46 |
Table 3 Chemical pesticide residues in percentage of organic and conventionally grown crops 1993
The results of 2002 tests also show that 15% of organic products and 43% of conventionally grown products contained pesticide chemicals.
| Percent of organically grown goods | Percent of traditional cultivated goods | |
| Fruits | 25 | 53 |
| Vegetables | 15 | 51 |
| Meat and dairy | 15 | 43 |
Table 4: Chemical pesticide residues in organic and conventionally grown crops, 2002
Also, chemical pesticide residues in the relative comparison of these two areas of agricultural products in 2002 (in general, 23.6% of conventionally grown goods and 7.1% of organically grown goods contained multiple chemical pesticides).
| Product group | Type of poison | Ratio of toxin content in conventional to organic produce |
| Carrot | Iprodione | 1.22 |
| Carrot | Linuron | 0.33 |
| Carrot | Trifluralin | 0.84 |
| Celery | Chlorpyrifos | 1.84 |
| Celery | Chlorthalonil | 79.6 |
| Celery | Piperonyl butoxide | 0.63 |
| Peach | Dicofol | 0.35 |
| Peach | Fludioxonil | 1.08 |
| Peach | Phosmet | 7.45 |
| Pineapple | Carbaryl | 3.15 |
| Potato | Chlorpropham | 8.2 |
| Wheat | Chlormequat | 1.3 |
| Citrus fruits | Imazalil | 19.1 |
| Citrus fruits | 2-Phenylphenol | 2.7 |
| Dried fruit | Procymidone | 21.8 |
| Baby food | Hydrogenphosphide | 0.2 |
| Soybean | Chlomequat | 1.3 |
| Potato | Oxadixyl | 1.3 |
| Cucumber | Dithiocarbamate | 1.7 |
Table 5: Ratio of pesticide residues in conventional to organic produce (note that in some cases there are multiple pesticides in one crop)
| Percent of organically grown goods | Percent of traditional cultivated goods | |
| Fruits | 7 | 50 |
| Baby food | 1 | 7 |
| Meat and dairy | 2 | 10 |
| Restaurant food | 5 | 32 |
| Vegetable food | 5 | 28 |
Table 6: Percentage of food contaminated with chemical pesticides in the UK
Research by two Polish researchers on fruits, vegetables, and ready-to-eat foods in European countries (including 27 countries plus Norway and Iceland) yielded similar results to those of American researchers, and even more disastrous results in some countries that consider themselves the flagships of capitalist organic farming (Germany) (Figure 6) 22.
Figure 6: Percent of fruits and vegetables contaminated with chemical toxins between 2002 and 2006 in Germany 22
Also, the growth in the use of chemical pesticides in both areas of agricultural capitalism exposes the lies and deception of capitalism (Figure 7). 22 The high figures of chemical pesticide content in organic farming reveal the secret of the deceit of this field of farming, in that these capitalists are not satisfied with chemical pesticides but also expose nature and humans to natural toxins.
Figure 7 percent growth in contamination of fruits and vegetables, both conventionally and organically grown, with chemical pesticides from 2002 to 2006 in Germany
In 2000, the US government (National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences) conducted a study on the level of organophosphate insecticide metabolites (OPMs) in the urine of preschool children. 26 The study examined products from both farming sectors. The researchers welcomed the results of the experiment, noting the lower levels of these metabolites in organically grown products, and expressed their satisfaction with these products in their conclusions (Figure 8). But a little attention to the important function of this group of pesticides (organophosphate insecticides), which account for about 70% of the total pesticide sales and use in the United States, clearly shows the callousness and criminal ruthlessness of capitalism, which even the presence of these deadly pests in the bodies of children does not create any mercy in their hearts. These pesticides are responsible for blocking the hormone acetylcholinesterase in the nervous system and destroying the nervous system of insects and of course humans. Even the very small presence of these hormonal substances in the bodies of children and their frequent circulation in their small organs has long-term destructive effects in the form of the emergence of various genetic and unknown diseases in their future. The whole purpose of capitalism in opening up the market and the field of organic farming is not to lose the added value produced by workers in general and in the agricultural sector in particular. Since the working masses who produce and consume these goods are fed up with the daily and constant assaults of capitalism on the natural environment, agricultural products, air, water, sea, food and living beings, the octopus of capital has been armed on a large scale and has pulled organic farming out of its sleeve to very demagoguery suggest that it has all the solutions and the means to save itself.
Figure 8 shows the amount (micrograms per Liter g/Lµ) of organophosphate pesticide metabolites in the urine of children 26.
DMP = dimethylphosphate, DMTP = dimethylthiophosphate, DMDTP = dimethyldithiophosphate
DEP = diethylphosphate, DETP = diethylthiophophate
To learn about the destructive effects of these substances, refer to the explanations in Appendix 1.
I have not yet seen a report on the effect of chemical pesticides mixed with natural substances such as what is discussed in relation to the cumulative effects of chemical pesticides under the name of Cocktail effect, but there is no reason to deny such a phenomenon when chemical pesticides are combined with natural anti-pest substances present in plants and organic cultivation techniques increase their role in protecting plants by consciously selecting these plants. The results of research that focuses solely on the destructive effect of individual chemical pesticides and the mutual and cumulative effect of their mixtures (Cocktail effect makes chemicals more toxic) in the detailed report of the European Commission (State of the art report on mixture toxicity executive summary 22 December 2009) commissioned by the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of London and the practical and scientific cooperation of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, and other reports in this field clearly show that the increase in each of these substances does not mean the mathematical result of 1 + 1 = 2.
On the contrary, here we are faced with the coordinates of the exponential process of the Cocktail effect, meaning 1+1=4 (Figure 9 shows the destructive effects of individual substances on the left side of the table and the mutual and increased effects of their sum on the right side of the figure as long columns). When these substances enter the body and the natural environment through various means such as food, contaminated water, medicines, cosmetics, clothing, shoes and polluted air and increase the destruction of each other exponentially (Figure 9), we are dealing with a scientific fact. It is a completely scientific fact that the same effects can be expected when chemical pests are mixed with natural pests 27,28.
Figure 9
Despite the use of natural and chemical pesticides in organic farming, this field is increasingly struggling with the destructive effects of weed growth in fields and their margins. A landscape that is increasingly becoming intertwined with organic farms and itself is reducing the productivity of labour in this field of cultivation. The extent of weed growth in these fields sometimes reaches the size of the cultivated area itself, a problem that demonstrates the inadequacy of mechanical control (weeding by hand or machine). Weeds compete with the crop for a wide range of resources, such as water, sunlight, soil material and the cultivated area, thereby reducing productivity. Weed roots compete with crop roots underground, and the increase in weed growth above ground leads to increased moisture. These events lead to the growth of fungi that target agricultural products. Figure 10 shows the growth of weeds in organic Swedish fields over a period of 16 years17.
Figure 10 The amount of weeds per hectare per year has averaged 1 ton in organic farming over 16 years, while it has remained constant at a negligible amount in conventional farming17.
Since the 1980s, the capitalists in the field of organic farming, along with all the colourful environmental parties and organizations that defend them, have been engaged in this demagoguery, as if they are paving the way for the survival of capitalism along with saving the environment and healthy agriculture!! They are supposedly paying attention to all environmental issues, from air, water, and land to human living conditions, and for this reason, they are constantly celebrating their honours. They dream of capturing the capitalist parliament and encroaching on all the organizations and departments of the capitalist state. However, the more they strengthen their bases of influence in the bureaucratic apparatus of the capitalist state, the less influence they have among the masses and the more their demagogic “environmentalist” facade crumbles, and the reason for this is clear. The main theme of organic farming is to defend the interests of the capitalists, to defend the material conditions necessary to ensure class domination and the further exploitation of the workers by this class, and to prevent any stoppage in the process of intensifying the exploitation of labour in agriculture. They entered European parliaments throughout Europe without lifting a finger or raising their voices in protest or fiery speeches, completely within the framework of the constitutions of these countries and maintaining the iron order of capital and also enjoyed the influence of government power. However, the main feature of the dynamic period of organic farming is not the parliamentary victories of the European green movements and groups, but the practical and fully economic development of organic farming based on market principles as a new field of capitalist production of industrial agriculture. Moving away from the aid and subsidies of the European capitalist states to this new field, the investors in this field operate according to the conventional principles of capitalism, namely, earning as much profit as possible and turning the parliamentary gimmicks of the greens into a lever of capital power. While the green utopians are spreading their erudite theories in the European parliamentary trumpets that their efforts have led to the discovery of the field of organic farming! And while they have nothing to do but weave empty reactionary ideals, they present a completely false image of this field of production and try to install this image in people’s minds instead of the reality. The capitalists and farmers of this field of cultivation are doing their best to increase the efficiency of their work somewhat by using all possible tricks and tricks, such as the stealthy use of chemical fertilizers and the open and secret use of chemical pesticides. So it is right that capitalists in the field of organic farming attribute the preservation of their meagre 10 percent position in agricultural and livestock production, after nearly four decades, not to the lack of use of chemical pesticides, nor to the refusal to introduce new destructive substances called natural pesticides into the fields, the natural environment, and the food of workers, but to economic aid and government subsidies. Aids that have been received under the pretext of the impact of organic farming on improving living conditions and better water quality. Now we have to see if organic farming is as good for the environment as its advertising speakers claim? 29. As mentioned earlier, a plant needs at least 19 different types of minerals in order to grow and, in particular, to produce a product with enough minerals and nutrients. Capitalist agriculture, which operates only by producing mass goods and making more profits in order to accumulate more capital, has caused the depletion of these substances in agricultural soil, and no capital can compensate for all of them due to the high cost it requires. For this reason, traditional farmers restore some of the lost substances to agricultural soil by annually adding chemical fertilizers, which generally include nitrogen minerals (nitrates and ammonia) and a little phosphorus. This means that capitalists use agricultural soil as a place to transfer chemical fertilizers and not a reservoir for healthy plant growth. Since chemical fertilizers contain minerals, they are easily dissolved in water and absorbed by plants. In addition, the concentration of these substances is well known and determined, and for this reason, the owner of a traditional farm knows relatively accurately how much fertilizer is needed for the plant, depending on the type of plant. While he always chooses an amount in order to increase the productivity of the work, after the plant absorbs it, there is a residue left in the agricultural soil, and as a result, irrigation and rainwater, as well as acid rain (caused by fossil fuels), go to water bodies, deep waters and seas. This phenomenon (nitrogen leakage) is one of the most important factors in the destruction and destruction of seas and lakes and their depletion of living organisms. The reason for this is algal bloom and the reduction of oxygen in the water due to the increase in nitrogen and phosphate. Thus, the thirst of capital for more accumulation, which is only possible through mass production, is accompanied by the injection of more and more chemical fertilizers, which naturally increases the nitrogen in the soil. Capital’s environmental spokesmen have repeatedly stated with bourgeois arrogance that the organic farming method, in terms of the use of animal manure, manure from slaughterhouses and composts, has solved the problem of nitrogen leakage into the water. Many studies in Sweden and other countries prove the opposite. As can be seen from Table 7, nitrogen leaching from organic farms is 1.36 times higher than from conventional farms (34 versus 25 kg/ha per year, I will explain why later). In addition, as already mentioned, labour productivity in organic farms is much lower than in conventional farms (2.0 versus 6.1 tons per hectare per year, Table 7). As a result, nitrogen leaching from organic farms is four times higher per ton of crop than from conventional farms (17 versus 4.1 kg of nitrogen leached per ton of crop) and if we were to produce the same amount of crop per hectare as conventional farming, more than four times as much nitrogen would be leached into the environment from organic farming per hectare of organic farming (103.7 versus 25 kg of nitrogen). And this means that the natural environment and waters that have become dead and lifeless from traditional farming will be subjected to a more brutal attack, and organic farming will add pain to human suffering. The reason for this is that animal manure (stable manure), manure from slaughterhouses and composts used in organic farming act completely opposite to chemical fertilizers for two reasons. First, they contain organic matter, and their common property is that they are soluble in fats and therefore are slowly absorbed by the soil through water, and as a result, are absorbed by the plant in long processes, which is contrary to the solubility of chemical fertilizers in water. Secondly, unlike chemical fertilizers, which are factory-made products with a certain standard and concentration, animal manure and compost cannot have a standard, so the organic farmer injects them into the soil based on guesswork. In all cases, these fertilizers remain in the soil in large quantities after harvest and are washed away by rainwater and irrigation systems long after harvest, ending up in the seas and waterways.
In other words, these fertilizers do not have a chance to metabolize with the agricultural soil because before the metabolism is complete, the plant has grown and become a crop. Therefore, all the advertising of this field of cultivation and its parliamentary supporters is nothing more than a big lie because on the one hand, this field of cultivation also delivers a product similar to the same traditional crops to the mass of workers and consumers (this issue was explained at the beginning of this article) and on the other hand, the injection of animal manure and composts is just a demagoguery of the environmental community and in practice these have very little effect on increasing the crop per hectare and actually cause an increase in nitrogen in streams and seas. 33,31,32.
| Product and nitrogen leaked per year | Organic farming | Traditional cultivation |
| Tons of crop per hectare | 2.0 | 6.1 |
| Nitrogen leached per hectare (kg) | 34 | 25 |
| Leaked nitrogen (kg per ton of product) | 17 | 4.1 |
| Nitrogen leakage if crop production is at the traditional cultivation rate (kilograms) | 103.7 | 25 |
| Nitrogen leaked into waters (mg/Liter of water) | 12 | 7 |
Table 7 Nitrogen leakage from organic and conventional crops in Sweden (figures given as annual averages over the six years between 2000 and 2006) 33,31,32.
Now it is not out of place to discuss the destructive effects of climate change and global warming on these two areas of agriculture. I have explained capitalist agriculture in general and its destructive effects on the increase in greenhouse gases in the book “Capitalism and Environmental Catastrophe, Volume 1, Chapter 1”. There, the figure of between 10 and 14 percent of greenhouse gases originating from agriculture is discussed, and this is not a small figure in relation to the effects of global warming, so it will be more important to go into detail and compare the destructive role of the two areas of traditional and organic capitalist farming (especially if this farming can exceed its current quota of about 10% of agricultural and livestock production). (Figure 10 shows the details of each of the gases in agriculture). First, I find it necessary to explain some more important points. Carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide (abbreviated as nitrous oxide N2O), and methane account for 98% of greenhouse gases. In terms of their effect on global warming (greenhouse effect), these gases differ greatly, with one kilogram of methane equal to 23 kilograms of carbon dioxide and one kilogram of nitrous oxide equal to 310 kilograms of carbon dioxide (these numbers are calculated based on the warming potential of these gases over a hundred years)34.
Figure 11 Greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture35. Nitrous and methane gases from crop and livestock production account for 72%, carbon dioxide from agricultural land use for 11%, and gases from energy consumption of machinery, fertilizer production, animal feed, and heating of buildings for 17%.
As previously mentioned, the field of organic farming proudly took up as a banner of environmentalism all that traditional farming had abandoned as auxiliary materials in plant cultivation, especially after the Second World War, namely the use of animal manure, the cultivation of legumes to increase soil nitrogen, and the use of compost and harvest residues and their compensation with chemical fertilizers. Animal manures and composts, which are a source of energy for animals and soil microbes, and as a result of their activity, the nitrogen in them is converted into nitric acid and nitrates, producing nitrous gas as a by-product. This entire process requires oxygen, and therefore, due to the activity of these organisms, a decrease in oxygen in the soil is one of its side effects, and the creation of nitric acid and nitrates causes the soil and water to become acidic. When the soil suffers from a lack of oxygen, the nitrate production process decreases and the amount of nitrous gas increases. It should be noted that soil without agricultural intervention also carries processes of nitrous gas production, but agricultural and livestock production significantly increase its amount. This is relatively more the case in cultivation based on animal manure, composts and the like than in fertilizers based on nitrogenous mineral substances (chemical fertilizers). Furthermore, as mentioned in relation to the lower productivity of organic cultivation, plants absorb less nitrogen from these types of fertilizers (because these fertilizers do not have a chance to absorb the soil and then be absorbed by the roots in the short life of the plant), as a result, the remaining animal manure, compost and the like in the soil after harvesting, as a result of the continued activity of soil microorganisms, leads to an increase in nitrous gas and nitrates. Thus, a significant portion of the 72% of nitrous oxide and methane in Figure 11 is relatively organic farming. Methane is another greenhouse gas that is produced in connection with plant cultivation and livestock farming through the decay of organic matter, animal and plant waste in conditions of oxygen deficiency. Livestock produce large amounts of methane gas when feeding, ruminating and digesting food. In this case, the lower the animal’s productivity, the higher the methane gas production. In addition, a significant portion of animal manure and slaughterhouse waste comes from traditional farming and animal husbandry, which complicates the comparison of these two areas of investment in agriculture and how both areas contribute to environmental degradation. However, agricultural production also helps absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through plant growth, and this process ultimately enables the conversion of carbon into humus, which plays an important role in the fertility system, the activity of living organisms, and the absorption and excretion of soil nutrients. All of this process, which maintains agricultural soil, leads to a reduction in the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The role of nitrogen and its compounds in the human body is not hidden from anyone. In addition to participating in the construction of proteins, hormones and other vital molecules of the body, this element plays an important role in the growth of plants and the activity of soil microorganisms. However, this element, when it enters the atmosphere in the form of nitrous gas, is a destructive factor like other greenhouse gases. When producing chemical fertilizers (nitrates and ammonia), some carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides such as nitrous are formed as by-products. According to laboratory calculations, 1.7 kilograms of carbon dioxide are emitted for every kilogram of chemical fertilizer. It is said that organic farming, using cereals and clover to increase soil nitrogen, on the one hand increases leaf soil (humus) and on the other hand, by capturing nitrogen from the air and converting it into nitrogen-containing materials for the soil, it acts exactly the opposite of traditional farming, meaning that in contrast to the production of these plants, which must be harvested as fertilizer and compost and added to the agricultural soil for organic farming the following year, they absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. On the other hand, they provide nitrogen to the soil. (2.5 kilograms of atmospheric carbon dioxide are absorbed for every kilogram of nitrogenous fertilizer.) But this is just the surface of the problem. In fact, organic farming, in addition to being much less productive than traditional farming, also has to pay for a year of no cultivation and loss of crop out of pocket, and these two together reduce the productivity of this production area so much that it makes it necessary to bring more land under cultivation. While traditional capitalist farming has long been associated with increasing labour productivity per hectare of land, reducing the amount of land under cultivation, and reducing the need for labour, organic farming requires more labour by bringing more land under cultivation, which means reducing its labour productivity, as a comparison of Table 2 and Table 4 clearly shows. Government agencies report every year or every so often on the increase in the area under organic farming, and we know that in agriculture, the amount of land under cultivation cannot be increased without more seed and fertilizer, and this only means increasing the costs of producing the same amount of goods. The use of modern machinery in agriculture certainly expands the area of land under cultivation, while making workers redundant, in other words, machinery replaces the living labour of the working masses as the embodied labour of their labourer’s. New techniques of cultivation, management, and harvesting, such as the planning of chemical fertilizers, the increase in labour productivity in this way, and the greater unification of agriculture and industry, do the same. They increase the organic composition of capital, and as we see, much fewer workers are using the capital of the police in agriculture and animal husbandry. While traditional farming constantly reduces its need for land and labour while increasing production, capitalist organic farming implies an increase in the area under cultivation, more workers, and more capital in the form of auxiliary and primary materials. This contradicts the principles of capital’s work, leading to the bankruptcy of the capital in this field, and one must therefore seriously doubt the reality of what investors in this field say about their commitment to ensuring the production of healthy materials. The number of agricultural workers in Sweden fell significantly in the 1950s and 1960s compared to the pre-war period. This trend intensified later, so that by 1981 the number of agricultural workers had fallen to just over a quarter of the 1950 level. By 2010, a third of these workers had disappeared from agricultural production, meaning that the number of agricultural workers in 2010 was only 20% of the number in 1950. There have also been major changes in the area under cultivation. In 1919, the area under cultivation in Sweden was 3.8 million hectares, and this figure had fallen to 2.6 million hectares in 2010, which means that in this year the area under cultivation in Sweden was two-thirds of what it was at the beginning of the last century. At the end of the last century, agriculture saw a three-fold increase in productivity. Now, if we convert all the figures into mathematical factors to calculate this increase, it will be as follows: 5 for the reduction of labour, 3 for land productivity, and 1.5 for the reduction of cultivated land. To calculate the total labour productivity, these factors must be multiplied together because here the collective effect of the factors is more than their sum. The product will be equal to 22.5, which means that labour productivity in agriculture has been approximately 22 times higher than at the beginning of the last century. In this calculation, we have not taken into account factors such as the division of labour in agriculture, which has had a major impact, especially after 1950. The division of labour, for example, has separated livestock from plant cultivation and has also turned the production of animal feed into a separate branch, so that the great country of Argentina has become the largest producer of soybeans. All this, in the light of discoveries and inventions, large and small, and more or less large advances in chemical, plant and animal science, has brought capitalism to this point. The figures given here are from the 36th Yearbook of agricultural statistics 2013 including food statistics, Statistics of Sweden. I have given an example of this growth in Figure 1, which is the evolution of labour productivity in barley production in Sweden over two centuries. These real data lead us to the conclusion that looking at the traditional capitalist agricultural sector is nothing more than a normal capitalist event, except that these events have been occurring for years and even centuries. In this sphere, as in other cases, capitalism compensates for the decline in the rate of profit by increasing the volume of production, making workers unemployed, increasing the surplus value resulting from their exploitation in a shorter time unit, reducing wages, and ruining the millions of workers. Agricultural capitalism does not stop at this, and since, like other spheres of advance, its goal is not to satisfy the needs of the masses but to produce profit, the goal of capital is not the proportion between production and human needs, but rather the proportion of unpaid labour (surplus value) to total capital, that is, the rate of profit under certain conditions. In addition, organic farming is struggling with the problem of small production, and as agricultural land shrinks, its productivity decreases in proportion. The use of agricultural machinery on such land, division of labour, construction of water supply facilities, transportation of goods, etc. become increasingly impossible and costly. The marginal costs of cultivation increase in proportion to the shrinking of land, investment in land decreases, and ultimately reduces labour productivity. Low labour productivity in organic farming leads to reduced profits and annual losses for the owners of capital in this field, but they are not the ones who pay for the losses, but these losses are compensated in several ways. First, capitalist governments compensate for part of the losses through a system of cash grants and subsidies. But these economic grants in question are actually paid first of all from the pockets of the vast majority of the working masses of these countries. They return a significant part of their paid labour to the pockets of the capitalists through increased direct and indirect taxes. The Swedish government annually pays 500 million kronor in cash assistance from the workers’ pockets to this area and at the same time declares that there is no danger to capital. Meanwhile, the state apparatus of capital adds another medal to its honours as a protector of the environment, healthy agricultural products, and the saviour of humanity.30,29. On the other hand, there is no Chinese wall between these two areas of capital advance. For example, in the case of livestock farming and meat and milk production, both areas enjoy almost the same conditions throughout Europe. Here, traditional producers easily enter the competition as organic producers and enjoy state privileges and aid. The reason for this is very simple: some of these meat and milk producers provide their animals with food on their own farms and from the cultivation of clover and legumes, which do not require pesticides. They also use the weeds from their fields as animal feed. By growing these plants, they also compensate for the nitrogen in the soil and do not need fertilizer because the grazing of mammals brings natural fertilizer to the soil. By labelling their products as organic, these capitalists receive a portion of the investment costs from government aid and subsidies, and in this way, they make ever larger investments. The scale of the companies operating in this sector is as large as that of conventional livestock companies, and it is the only growing and profitable segment of organic production. However, despite this channel of interaction between the two fields, the market share of organic products in this sector has not exceeded 20% 36,37. The same is not true for pork and poultry, which require a different type of feed (grain is the most important food for these animals), and there is no growth in this segment of organic livestock production. Another type of transition is the opposite. An organic farmer whose fields are overrun with weeds will switch to conventional farming over time to get rid of the weeds with the help of pesticides. In this way, an organic farmer in Europe will live for a few years with high production without the benefits of government subsidies and then perhaps return to organic farming and generous government subsidies. 38 Another type of return of an organic farmer to conventional farming is to buy conventional seed. European laws prohibit the use of conventional seed in organic farms, and since organic seed is selected based on a specific characteristic (this seed must be able to be somewhat resistant to pests even after planting and harvesting), for this reason, the organic farmer, who faces many difficulties in obtaining organic seed, including the high cost and scarcity of this type of seed or the possibility of it spoiling due to being left in storage, chooses his preferred way. He bypasses the system and uses conventional seed in his field! Another compensation for the profit shortfalls in the organic farming sector is the high price of these products that consumers must pay, and this is also a negative factor in gaining market share in the sale of agricultural products. It hangs like the sword of Damocles over the heads of capitalists in this sector, and it does not seem that its risks will decrease in the near future. I would very much like to have statistics on the number of workers employed in organic farming, as they are in conventional farming, so that these two fields can be compared in a real way. Unfortunately, the figures that exist are very confusing and misleading. In addition, governments, municipalities, and research institutes provide capitalists with a huge army of completely free labour force of high school and university students, so that capitalists can maximize their profits and capital by exploiting this huge force at will in tasks such as levelling the land, weeding, and collecting rocks, or conducting expensive research.
Chapter Two
The spread of harmful and heavy metals is a deadly gift of capital to humanity
An important law of capitalist economy is that the more these relations of production evolve, the less able they are to survive by retaining the tools and methods of their past. “The bourgeoisie cannot continue to exist unless it successively revolutionizes the instruments of production and therefore the whole of social relations” (Marx). The continuous development of new means of communication such as railways, ocean liners, automobiles, airplanes, passenger buses, and freight trucks, all of which are the result of the progress of capitalist communications and are considered a major leap in the globalization of these relations of production, are only a glimpse of the internal compulsion of capital to relentlessly develop technique and industry and other necessities for increasing labour productivity. The introduction of industrial machinery into production, which led to an increase in production volume and the use of more raw materials and a wider range of raw and auxiliary materials, in addition to further developing the division of labour at the societal and factory levels and further improving labour productivity, also created new environmental conditions within the factory and in the areas of production, society, and nature. I am not concerned here with the history of industrial developments, but with one point, namely, the role of raw and auxiliary materials in the development of capitalism and the process by which this process affected the living conditions of the working class. The energy and fuel sources of some of these machines, which were undergoing their initial stages of development in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Europe, were generally coal, but with the discovery and extraction of oil and gas, a rapid evolution in the use of these resources occurred, which still continues to some extent. The production and consumption of fossil energy resources on a large scale, the decomposition of oil and gas into basic materials, and the production of new derivatives from them as raw and auxiliary materials in the production of various chemical products, chemical polymers, pharmaceuticals, etc., not only created new areas for capital investment, but also created new environments and conditions in factories, the environment, and nature that have no end. New areas of capital advance, along with the development of mining machines, created new areas of production and use of new mineral materials, which caused the decomposition of various elements and raw materials with varying degrees of destruction for humans and nature. This is still ongoing. In this regard, many elements dangerous to human and animal health were removed from their natural coverings and came into direct contact with humans and animals as pure elements and materials. To the same extent that big industry has advanced in the field of mining, the destructive dimensions of the human and animal environment have also expanded. This means that the causes of environmental destruction and the working conditions of the working class should not be sought in some superficial and secondary effects of capitalist production, but the roots of all this, including the deadly diseases and the daily killing of thousands of workers around the world, must be explored in the capitalist relations of production themselves. The forms of these disasters may have varied and changed throughout the history of capitalism, but they all stem from the same source. They are all the product of the existence of capital and the natural laws of profit-making in this mode of production. An important difference has certainly occurred. Today, especially given the global nature of capitalist production relations, the environmental destruction of this system also breaks all national borders and takes on catastrophic international dimensions. To the extent that capital is global and capitalism has become global, its pests are also global and do not recognize national borders, and to the extent that capital grows, the pressure of its pests and destructions also comes to an even greater degree on humans and nature. In this article, we attempt to open up some corners of these destructions and pollutions using the documents and evidence at hand to enlighten the minds of workers.
One of the cases is Mercury. This element is toxic, carcinogenic and destructive to the nervous system. Mercury has multiplied in the human environment over the past 150 years. This element, which causes various diseases in the blood, in the blood of pregnant mothers reduces brain development in the fetus and reduces the intelligence of future generations of humans. Minamata fishermen and surrounding communities in Japan in the 1950s suffered from diseases caused by eating fish contaminated with mercury. In Minamata, a chemical factory used mercury in its production process. Fishermen first noticed that their cats were going crazy. The cats were generally fed leftover fish caught in the surrounding waters. Apparently healthy women gave birth to children with spasticity, lameness, and various retardations (low IQ), even to very high levels that led to death. Soon, medical centres realized that the new diseases were caused by mercury, and its dangerous form was methylmercury. While this chemical company (Chisso Corporation) had been engaged in chemical production using mercury since 1932, polluting the surrounding waters, and in the 1950s its relationship with the occurrence of mental illnesses was evident, people did not succeed in stopping the company’s production until 1968 because its owners refused to accept their responsibility for bogus reasons and in long processes of war and judicial evasion. This increased the scale of the disaster, so that at the time of the cessation of production, 2,668 people were infected with this disease (Minamata Disease), 1,784 people died in those years, and today only 637 of the original number are alive. In total, 10,000 people were poisoned to varying degrees by mercury in the waters around this city and its surrounding towns (low IQ is one of its minor side effects). It is worth mentioning that by 2015, the mercury content of the waters of this region was higher than other waters. Let me explain a little about the way methylmercury works. When a fetus is growing rapidly, 200 brain cells are produced every second, and this speed is one of the factors and conditions of normal human growth. It is during this period that methylmercury enters the fetus through the placenta and maternal blood, but this does not mean that elemental mercury is not dangerous for adults. The same mechanism is true for others, with the difference that humans have different rates of development in their nervous system at different stages of life. Mercury accumulates in various body tissues, including fat, nervous system, hair, and even nails. That’s why researchers used polar bears, whose skins have been kept in museums for hundreds of years, in their experiments. The results of the experiments show that the Earth’s poles do not carry any mercury compounds, but mercury accumulates in its waters and ice through snow and rain, and animals such as whales and polar bears accumulate it in their bodies as a result of feeding on fish. For this reason, researcher Rune Dietz 39 in Greenland, studying polar bear fur, says that their experiments, which go back to 1300 AD, show that the mercury concentration in these animals suddenly increased significantly after 1850, and this trend of increase continues, although with a smaller upward slope. The mercury concentration is now 20 times higher than it was in 1850. The increase in methylmercury concentration, according to experiments conducted on seals, bears, sea lions, six species of polar birds in Canada, and ten species of polar birds from Norway to Canada, shows that not only did its amount increase between 1990 and around 2005, but this increase was especially significant from the year these animals were born until their puberty (after 6 years) (Tables 8 and 9) 40.
| Polar jaw type | Age (years) | Mercury content in the live g/gµ |
| Avanersuaq (north) | 2 to 6 | 12 |
| Avanersuaq (north | More than 6 | 40 |
| Avanersuaq (south), | 1 | 8 |
| Avanersuaq (south), | 2 to 6 | 40 |
| Avanersuaq (south), | More than 6 | 45 |
| Ittoqqortoormiit (north) | 1 | 5 |
| Ittoqqortoormiit (north) | 2 to 6 | 10 |
| Ittoqqortoormiit (north) | More than 6 | 10 |
| Ittoqqortoormiit (south) | 1 | 5 |
| Ittoqqortoormiit (south) | 2 to 6 | 10 |
| Ittoqqortoormiit (south) | More than 6 | 15 |
Table 8 Amount of mercury found in the liver of Greenland polar bears (micrograms per gram of liver) 40
| Polar jaw type | Age (years) | Mercury content in the live g/gµ |
| Barrow, Alaska | 0 to 5 | 1 |
| Barrow, Alaska | More than 5 | 8 |
| Sachs Harbour, Canada | 0 to 5 | 30 |
| Sachs Harbour, Canada | More than 5 | 30 |
| Grise Fiord, Canada | 0 to 5 | 30 |
| Grise Fiord, Canada | More than 5 | 40 |
| Arctic Bay, Canada | 0 to 5 | 9 |
| Arctic Bay, Canada | More than 5 | 20 |
| Pond Inlet, Canada | 0 to 5 | 9 |
| Pond Inlet, Canada | More than 5 | 22 |
| Avanersuaq, Greenland | 2 to 4 | 7 |
| Avanersuaq, Greenland | 5 to 10 | 10 |
| Uummannaq, Greenland | 2 to 4 | 2 |
| Uummannaq, Greenland | 5 to 10 | 5 |
| Uummannaq, Greenland | 11 to 15 | 8 |
Table 9 Mercury content found in the liver of Arctic seals from Alaska, Canada and Greenland (micrograms per gram of liver) 40
Metals in general and heavy metals in particular have stable molecular structures and are mostly soluble in fats, so they accumulate in nature and the body and continue to have their destructive effects over a long period of time (Biomagnification). Heavy metals, which have existed in nature in the form of stable compounds in shells and rock layers for millions of years, are removed from natural protection by mining. These substances circulate in free form, such as lead in oil and gasoline, mercury in coal and gold mining, pure copper in various paints, pure cadmium in batteries, arsenic in molten metals, and other elements. Since they are never wasted or destroyed, they are dispersed in nature and enter rivers, lakes, and groundwater through factory waste. Many heavy metals combine with chemicals dispersed in nature to form very dangerous compounds (such as methylmercury) and cause more diseases and environmental damage than pure metals do. The examples in the above tables, which are derived from animal studies, are fully applicable to humans living in similar environments, eating similar foods, and exposed to similar waste. The only difference is that no organization, whether governmental or non-governmental, or any official of the capitalist state, even conducts research and experiments on workers or the general public who deal with these substances in various ways on a daily basis, except when a major accident (anthropogenic contamination) leads to the death of a significant number of people, then the vast and long apparatuses of the capitalist states rush into action, and that too in the direction of demagoguery and in the role of saviours of humanity! It seems that relations other than capitalist relations have caused these accidents. The scale of accidents and daily losses, coupled with the ever-faster rotation of production and capital accumulation, is so high that even if, on the assumption of impossibility, some of the billions of dollars of surplus value resulting from the exploitation of the billions of workers in the world were allocated annually to compensate for human and natural losses and damages, it would still be small. Because the working process of capital is such that it continuously fills its produced goods (regardless of whether they are consumed in everyday life or re-entered into the production process) with an increasing volume of useless things, that is, it makes a larger part of it harmful to nature and man. With a simple examination, we come to the conclusion that daily, every hour and every second, capitalist production relations are destroying the living conditions of man, nature and animals, for this simple reason it is pure demagoguery that these relations can compensate for these anthropogenic contaminations. I have therefore chosen this term from the British Encyclopaedia, which is not as clear as other terms such as accident, catastrophe, and the like, and does not include the role of specific production relations that are the cause of these types of events. Although this term is also used in a deceptive manner and man is generally mentioned as the agent of destruction, we workers know very well that it is these capitalist production relations and their planners that are the cause of all these disasters.
Since money has been transformed into capital and has subjected free workers or the vast dispossessed masses to the pressure of exploitation, the capitalist has become the owner of raw materials, machinery and installations, the worker has nothing to sell but his labour power. He exchanges his labour power with capital in exchange 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 the manner in which it is produced, because all these conditions are determined by capital. The result of this situation is the worker’s exclusion from involvement in the work process and the planning of work and production, his alienation from his work. 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 nature of the product of labour and the fact that it belongs to others, the capitalist, constitute the root of the alienated world of the worker. We workers have no role in planning what is produced, how much is produced, how it is distributed. Capital exploits us only as wage labourer’s, not as producers involved in the work and determining the fate of our own work and lives. For this very reason, we are fighting to overthrow the capitalist system and replace it with a council system of all human beings, for a society governed by ourselves, not even by our representatives! By the direct power of our masses, not by any force above us. A society in which we determine what is to be produced, how much is to be produced, and under what conditions it is to be produced and distributed, based on the real needs of the physical and intellectual advancement of all human beings. The result is that in natural production, where man produces for his daily needs, a fundamental unity will arise between him and nature. In fact, man returns to nature. Now let us return to the subject. Mercury is a heavy metal element that, in addition to its carcinogenic and toxic properties, is liquid at normal temperatures (22-24 degrees Celsius) and quickly emits mercury vapor, which is why it is easily transported by air circulation. Mercury concentrations are still increasing in the Earth’s atmosphere, and the reason for this is not mercury-containing lamps and thermometers, but natural sources such as volcanoes (which always occur throughout the life of the Earth), other factors (Anthropogenic Contaminants), especially two other sources. The first is the burning of coal as an energy source (China, Germany and Eastern Europe and USA are the most important producers and consumers) and other fossil fuels such as oil. Another source of increased mercury in the atmosphere and nature is the process of gold production in gold mines in countries when miners separate and purify gold from other salts with mercury (Peter Appel Small-Scale mining). There are an estimated 20 to 40 million gold miners worldwide who use this technique (mostly in Southeast Asia, Africa, and South and Central Latin America). I am not talking about fatal mining accidents here but just look at the data from Tanzanian gold mines, which have been operating since 1932. Every year, many workers die in mine collapses (18 gold miners were killed in Ghana on November 12, 2009, and a year later, on June 9, 100 workers died in a gold mine in Ghana). All this is in addition to the terrible toll from mercury poisoning. This technique releases tons of mercury into the atmosphere, but more importantly, the workers who have been mining for money for hundreds of years! The last stage of production is when the gold amalgam (a mixture of gold and mercury) is heated and the mercury evaporates!! Pure gold is obtained, the workers at this stage bear the greatest risks and losses. The purpose of naming the current gold-producing countries is not to ignore the crimes of capital in the past in this regard because we know very well that all capital on a global level has committed poisons in one form or another throughout its dark history. Peter Appel reports that this technique currently produces the most mercury in the Earth’s atmosphere, a direct result of the increasing production of the precious metal (Figure 12 shows the production of this rare metal throughout the history of capitalism). Today, about seven techniques are used to extract gold. The mercury technique accounts for a quarter of the world’s gold production because it is the cheapest way to extract gold. Although it requires more labour, due to the extremely cheap labour cost, capitalists in the mentioned countries use this technique. With this method, the rate of gold produced per ounce is much cheaper. Other techniques are also not very environmentally friendly. In many of them, cyanide compounds are used, which are very toxic and deadly for both mining and production workers and the environment. In addition, and outside the type of gold extraction technique, since this metal is always accompanied by other heavy metals such as cadmium, zinc, arsenic and mercury, its mineral and factory wastewater pollutes the environment.
Figure 12: The increasing production of gold in the world since 1835 is a sign of the growing use of mercury as an auxiliary material in the production of this precious stone.
When mercury is released into the atmosphere from energy sources such as coal and oil and from gold mining, it returns to the earth in rainwater. When it mixes with seawater, it forms methylmercury, the most dangerous form of mercury. This compound is easily absorbed and accumulated in small aquatic organisms such as plankton, corals, and other small, bottom-dwelling organisms. When fish feed on these organisms, it enters the food chain higher and higher, eventually reaching humans and other animals that eat fish. This means that mercury has accumulated more and more, reaching its highest levels in larger fish. This means that mercury accumulation in areas that have never had gold mining techniques or fossil fuels such as oil and coal in large quantities (the Arctic) has also increased to such an extent that there is no limit to the amount of mercury that can be found. Meanwhile, the state institutions of capital, like other spheres of capital, engage in the demagoguery of determining the limits of acceptable and unacceptable levels of this substance! While the working masses of the world, who are exposed to these toxins every second, are forced to fight not only for their absence but also for the destruction of the system that produces them. The limit set by the capital government is 1000 µg/kg (1000 micrograms per kilo) of fish, and Max Hansen 41 proves in his report that this is completely wrong and misleading. Because when a woman weighing 60 kg eats 100 grams of fish per week, her body has absorbed about 1.7 micrograms of methylmercury per kilogram of body weight per week, and thus we reach the upper limit set by the European Food Safety Authority. (The European Food Safety Authority, EFSA, calculates that 1.3 micrograms of methylmercury per kilogram of body weight per week is safe.) Phillipe Grand Jean also shows that the woman mentioned above, by eating 100 grams of tuna per week, accumulates 6 micrograms per gram of hair, which is six times the limit set by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). (1 microgram of mercury per gram of hair) In the 1970s, the aforementioned researcher, in his study of the people of the Faroe Islands, whose diet is mainly whales, showed that an increasing percentage of the people of these islands have a lower IQ (intelligence quotient), and instead a smaller percentage have a normal IQ (100) and a high IQ (130). This shows that the accumulation of mercury in the human body has nothing to do with the boundaries and limits set by capitalist governments, but is a process resulting from the production of mercury and its release into the environment.
Lead (Lead, Pb) Lead is produced by the radioactive decay of uranium and is itself converted to mercury by radioactive decay. It exists in the earth’s layers in various forms, but its spread in the environment is solely due to its extraction in mines as a raw material for the manufacture of alloys, paints, anti-rust coatings, water pipes, batteries, and ammunition.
Lead, like mercury, accumulates in the body and, like it, causes complications in the nervous system and brain, especially in children and fetuses. In adults, it causes kidney disease and high blood pressure. Most of the lead in the body comes from food (46.6%), followed by fruits (17.6%), sugar and sweets (11.6%), vegetables (9.1%), and grains (8.4%). 41. Lead intake for children aged 4 to 14 years is estimated to be between 0.3 and 0.56 micrograms per kilogram of body weight per day (µ0.3-0.56 g/kg bw/day). For French children it is 0.27, but EFSA estimates a figure of less than 0.27 (µ0.27 g/kg bw/day) for the whole of Europe. In Denmark, a value of 1.07 g/kg bw/day µ has been reported (i.e. four times the amount typical throughout Europe). For adults (15 to 75 years) it is between 0.23 and 0.41 g/kg bw/day µ. For the same age group in Denmark, 0.58 g/kg bw/day µ has been reported. The absorption (metabolism) of lead through food for children is between 40 and 50 percent, while for adults this absorption is 3 to 10 percent, which means that children are most affected by this element. In addition, children who are deficient in iron and calcium absorb more lead than children who have normal iron and calcium. It goes without saying that the process of lead’s destructive effects on the body is just like mercury 41. Lead, like other heavy and toxic metals, has no relationship or mechanism in the human body or other organisms, yet it is always produced and enters the body in various ways, and it poisons all organs of the body from the molecular level to the cells and tissues. Lead has the property of being able to occupy the place of calcium in the body’s molecules and thus affect their properties and mechanisms, and combine with proteins, thereby removing them from their mechanism and even turning them against it. The most important and dangerous effect of this element is on children. In this regard, some researchers believe in a relationship between crime and lead accumulated in the body (Need 2002 Nevin 2000). When a child’s body absorbs and accumulates lead, its destructive effects remain throughout life, effects on the kidneys, blood pressure, reduced reproductive power and normal body growth, reduced brain growth which leads to a decrease in intelligence quotient (IQ) in children, reduced red blood cell formation, reduced hearing and reduced skeletal development in children. Lead accumulates in the environment because it readily combines with acids, bases, and other chemical molecules. It is very stable and readily dissolves in water. Lead is used in batteries, computers, paints (for bridges and ships), ceramics, jewellery, and decorative objects. Workers in smelting, metalworking, welding, and industrial manufacturing are most exposed to lead through inhalation of lead-contaminated air from factories, dust containing lead, and fumes (ATSDR 2005). Workers in these capital investment areas are directly exposed to lead-related effects:
Battery manufacturing, road construction, bridge construction, rubber manufacturing, plastic manufacturing, steel manufacturing, welding, waste collectors and incinerators, refrigeration systems, ceramic manufacturing, soldering, mining, and oil and gas 42 cause many injuries to workers. On April 25, 1998, the working masses of the city of Seville, Spain, witnessed the collapse of a lead and zinc mine sewage dam, which contaminated protected areas and surface and groundwater. Although they had warned the owners of capital many times about the overload of the dam capacity, since the thirst of the capitalists is always to obtain as much surplus value as possible from the exploitation of the workers, they do not listen to the environmental problems of the workers. This incident is nothing exceptional in the capitalist world because they go exactly this way, i.e. reducing the costs of capital, to higher accumulation and thus to fight the falling rate of profit. There are many such mine and factory sewage dams all over the world and they must be expected to break at any moment. In Hungary, two tailings’ dams from a lead mine and a factory have been waiting to burst since 2010. In Romania, a similar incident occurred in 2000. In the United States, similar conditions turned Picher, Oklahoma, into a ghost town. The mine, once the largest zinc and lead mine in the world, produced half of the lead used in World War II. Workplace pollution caused high levels of lead in the blood and body tissues of workers, which resulted in an increase in cancer. Workers did not leave the area because they did not want to lose their jobs and wages until 2006, when research showed that if the mine’s wastewater dams were to break, about 70 million tons of wastewater and 36 million tons of sand and sediment would destroy the entire area. At this time (18,000 workers worked in that factory) they evacuated and left the city and in September 2009 all activities in the city were stopped. In Australia, the mining company (Magellan Metals) in the city (Esperance) caused environmental pollution by transporting lead at the city’s port in 2006-2007, which led to the death of thousands of birds and the poisoning of hundreds of people and children in the city. Rainwater carried lead and nickel from the mine into the groundwater, polluting drinking water and groundwater. The problem did not end there, in 2008 it was discovered that 1,775 buildings in the city had traces of lead and nickel, and all buildings, from roofs to superstructures and water and sewage pipes, had to be cleaned and free of lead and nickel. Lead production, like other metals, has been constantly increasing throughout the history of capitalism. In 1970, this production was 3.4 million tons worldwide and reached 5 million tons in 2012.
Cadmium, Cd It is also a heavy metal that enters the environment, especially agriculture, through factory production (Figure 13 shows the growth of production of this harmful metal throughout the life of industrial capitalism). Agricultural products, especially cereals and potatoes, are the most important source of absorption of this element for the human body. Cadmium absorption is 3 to 4 times higher in people with iron deficiency than in people with normal iron levels. Cadmium accumulates in the kidneys and, since the half-life of this element in the body is between 10 and 30 years, it continues to damage the kidneys and liver over a long period of time. This element causes osteoporosis indirectly, i.e. through kidney damage, and directly. Other effects of cadmium include damage to the reproductive system, the immune system, and, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), it is carcinogenic. 43 Inhalation of cadmium in factories where it is produced and as an auxiliary substance causes lung cancer among workers. The intake of this element for the general Danish population (4 to 75 years) is 0.18 (μg/kg bw/day 0.18) and for Danish adults (15 to 75 years) is 0.15 (μg/kg bw/day 0.15). The largest sources of cadmium are cereals and starches (49%) and vegetables (34%). Research shows that 5% of the Danish population absorbs cadmium in their bodies. 41 It is important to emphasize that this large study was conducted on people of different ages in Denmark, but its results apply to all capitalist societies, in other words, the whole world. Cadmium is rarely found in its pure form because it combines easily with other chemical molecules to form much more toxic compounds. For this reason, it can be found in water, air, soil, sediments, and food. Mineral production, metal smelting, and oil extraction are sources that contribute to elevated concentrations of cadmium in the environment and at work. Workers in various fields of capital investment work with cadmium, including the production of alloys, chemicals used in chemical synthesis, metal smelting, casting, production of cadmium wire, production of cadmium powder for soldering, special cadmium powder for contact between metal sheets and as an auxiliary material in battery production, production of silver alloys, an auxiliary material in electronic goods, and (PVD) for contact between gas, liquid, and solid surfaces. Cadmium’s special properties make it unique in non-acidic environments such as seawater and its resistance to rust in alloys. It is a good conductor of heat and electricity and when used as an additive in electrical and thermal alloys, it increases the speed of processes. Its high properties in maintaining colour stability in plastics, glass, ceramics and enamelling increase the life of these goods. When used as a catalyst and accelerator of chemical reactions in the production of medicines, cosmetics and plant pesticides, it increases the speed of production. All of the above properties give speed, endurance and reliability to the capitalist production process and ultimately increase labour productivity.
Figure 13 Cadmium production has been increasing throughout the history of capitalism.
The working masses of Japan must have heard from their working fathers about the incident that led to the Itai Itai disease. The first incident and wound that capitalism inflicted on the world’s workers was in Japan in 1912, through the mining of cadmium. The sewage from the cadmium mines in Toyama City, which flowed into the surrounding rivers, polluted the groundwater and the running water used for rice cultivation. This was the fourth incident in the history of Japanese capitalist relations, causing the city’s workers to suffer from joint, back and bone pain, which is known in history as I I disease. Despite their best efforts to condemn the mine owners, the workers were unable to assert their rights until 1955. On March 21, 2013, the people of Guangzhou, Hunan Province, China, witnessed the revelation of a problem that Chinese capitalist government officials had long concealed from the public. They denied that the outbreak of diseases such as diarrhoea and vomiting, severe stomach pain, and a sudden increase in other diseases caused by the destruction of the body’s immune system were related to the gradual increase in cadmium in the body. During the revelation of the root of the people’s ill health, it was found that 44% of the rice produced in the province (the main rice producer in China) contains cadmium, which has recently exceeded the limit by 80 times. Cadmium compounds in water and the environment were caused by the discharge of factory wastewater into running water and groundwater. It should be noted that this state is one of the producers of mineral metals. It was further revealed that fertilizers with high cadmium content are used in industrial rice cultivation. In order to keep production costs low, capitalists producing chemical fertilizers refrain from purifying and separating cadmium from fertilizers. Furthermore, the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) says that between 40 and 70 percent of China’s farmland is contaminated. One-third of the rice produced in China is contaminated with lead and one-tenth with cadmium (quoted from The Wall Street Journal). These incidents, or rather the horrific crimes of capital against the working class and their environment (Anthropogenic Contaminations), are constantly either in the making or have already taken their toll. In May 2005, it was revealed that smelters in this same state were dumping industrial wastewater into nearby rivers. For this reason, the Peking River, which flows through this province and supplies water to this province and many surrounding provinces and cities, contains 10 times more cadmium than its normal level. The millions of working masses in these areas were deprived of drinking water for months. When the officials of the capitalist government say that the water of this river is now safe to use, this does not mean that it is not dangerous to people’s health. They only mean, like other capitalist governments, that some poison in food, environment, air and water is the seasoning of these production relations and the soup is sloppy.
Arsenic (As)
Apart from being released through volcanoes, it is mainly released into the environment and food through mining, iron smelting plants, fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal), pesticides, plant growth agents and wood preservatives. Arsenic compounds are very complex and persistent, and its release into the environment after the 18th century has led to the emergence and formation of a large number of persistent arsenic-containing substances. These substances are very toxic, but the type of arsenic compounds is considered the most dangerous toxic substance in food (International Agency for Research on Cancer, IARC) and the World Health Organization’s Expert Committee on Food and Drug Administration (JECFA). Foods with the highest levels of arsenic are classified as follows. Rice and seafood contain the most arsenic. They are followed by beverages (45%), cereals (26.2%), vegetables (5.8%), fruits (8.9%), and meat (9.7%). The average intake of mineral arsenic in Denmark is 0.12 micrograms per kilogram of body weight per day (µ0.12 g/kg bw/day) 41. It is said (Int J Environ Health Res. 2002 Sep and IWA Water Wiki 2010) that 80% of the 40 million working class of Bangladesh living in the delta region are exposed to arsenic poisoning and its resulting diseases such as (melanosis, leuco-melanosis, keratosis, hyperkeratosis, dorsum, non-petting edema, gangrene) because millions of wells around the Ganges River Delta as well as the running waters of Bangladesh are contaminated with arsenic.
Figure 14 is taken from http://sos-arsenic.net/english/contamin
Figure 14 shows diseases caused by the metabolism of lead and arsenic in the body’s organs, which are very similar to the destructive effects of mercury. In addition, cadmium, like lead and arsenic, combines with the body’s DNA to cause serious genetic complications. Nervous system changes, hardening of the skin layer (cloves), changes in skin colour, lung, bladder and kidney cancer, and poor circulation in the skin are among the complications of arsenic in this figure. The effects of high-dose lead include mental retardation, coma, seizures, and death. The effects of low-dose lead include reduced IQ, reduced attention span, decreased growth, difficulty reading and learning, deafness, other health problems, and behavioural problems. It is not just the working masses of Bangladesh who are afflicted with the diseases shown in Figure 14. The following list shows the populations of countries that have been recorded to suffer from similar diseases, totalling about 100 million workers.
Table 10. Taken from http://sos-arsenic.net/english/contamin, shows the nearly 100 million 
workers in 9 countries who are most affected by arsenic contamination.
Table 11. shows 25 factories in South America that emit arsenic-containing gases, among which energy production, copper production, refineries and glass factories pollute the air the most.
We have already discussed the arsenic (As) in the ground released by acid rain, as well as arsenic from coal-fired and wood-fired industries that poison groundwater (EFSA European Food Safety Authority 6 March 2015).
This phenomenon is the main cause of high arsenic levels in rice cultivated in large areas of Asia, including China, India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh. The reason is acid rain caused by the precipitation of nitrogen and sulphur oxides from the use of fossil fuels such as oil and coal. These oxides combine with moisture in the air to produce nitric and sulfuric acids. Acidification of soil, groundwater, lakes and wetlands is a result of these rains. Acid rain not only reduces soil mineral content due to unequal competition with harmful heavy metal elements such as lead, cadmium, mercury and arsenic, but also, especially by releasing heavy metals, facilitates their circulation in the air, soil and water. Table 11 shows, for example, the arsenic that American manufacturing companies release into the atmosphere, and Figures 15 and 16 show what other areas of capital investment, water and soil are contaminating with arsenic and other heavy metals. The result of all these destructions is more than the sum of their individual parts, because here a stream of heavy metals is circulating, constantly circulating from soil to water and space. Even if we do not consider the annual increase in each of these elements, this circulation itself is enough to have a huge destructive effect in increasing diseases such as cancer, genetic changes, increased allergies, various skin diseases, various mental disorders, and in summary what we see in Figure 14. Let us remember that all of this is in addition to the multitude of elements, heavy metals, and harmful substances that workers deal with daily, and they are constantly exposed to their direct pollution. The destruction of the environment, water, and food is a gift that capitalism offers to the entire world.
Figure 15. Imperila Metals Ltd.’s discharge of arsenic, lead, cobalt, and mercury into its mine tailings dams in Canada through 2013. The amount of arsenic was 84 tons, lead was 38 tons, cobalt was 138 tons, and mercury was 562 kilograms.
Figure 16. In the last hundred years, arsenic has played an important role in the progress and productivity of work in various fields of capital investment.
The fields of animal feed production for weight gain, plant pest control, production of high-efficiency batteries, alloys that improve the natural quality of raw materials and thereby improve the mechanization of production processes and increase production speed, production of metals that transmit electricity more smoothly, wood pest control and increase the resistance and life of wood, and glass production are among them. For example, in 1998, about 30 thousand tons of arsenic were used in various products in the United States.
Nickel (Ni) It is a raw material used in the production of various goods, including alloys (steel), shipbuilding, aircraft, battery production, automobile catalysts, and electronic goods (computers, mobile phones, and laptops). Workers who work with this element are exposed to cancer, sensitivities (allergies, and eczema) through breathing, food, water, and physical contact. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that each person absorbs about 1.5 micrograms per kilogram of body weight per day (µ1.5 g/kg bw/day). The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) estimates this amount at 2.5 (µ2.5 g/kg bw/day). This amount can even increase to 15 micrograms per kilogram of body weight per day. The use of cooking utensils such as knives, pots, tap water left in pipes, and electronic devices also increases this amount. (When tomato sauce is prepared in a nickel-coated steel container, 9 micrograms of nickel enters the food each time). Foods such as chocolate (5.4 mg/kg) and dried fruits, cosmetics and nuts (3.3 mg/kg) all contain nickel. 41 Items such as keys, coins, doorknobs, button labels, jewellery and mobile phones that are in constant contact should also be added to the list of important sources of nickel. The production of this metal has increased significantly, especially in recent decades. About 65% of nickel produced is used for steel production, 12% for the production of electrical conductors, and the remaining 23% is used between the production of alloys, batteries, automobile catalysts, and electronics (Figure 17 Nickel Production Growth).
Figure 17. World nickel production in million tons per year in the last century and its acceleration in the recent century
The Finnish nickel and uranium mining company (Talvivaara Mining Company plc) has a history of no more than a few decades, but that is enough to earn it the title of Nordic environmental destructor. If we consider the last few years, in November 2012 it caused environmental pollution through the leakage of nickel, uranium and other toxic metals. In April 2014, it dumped 250,000 cubic meters of its factory wastewater into the surrounding waters, and more recently, in January 2015, it dumped excess sulphate into the surrounding waters, causing a 65-fold increase in nickel concentration in the lakes and ending the existence of living organisms on the bottom of the lakes. In November 2006, it was revealed that Imperila Metals Ltd, which has numerous metal mining investments, had been dumping 10 million cubic meters of mine wastewater and 4.5 million cubic meters of metals and nickel-contaminated sand into lakes, rivers and wetlands around the beautiful and lush Cariboo region in British Columbia, Canada, over a long period of time. These are just a few examples of the thousands of anthropogenic contaminants that are dumped on people and their living and working environments every day, week, month and year after year in the capitalist world. Nickel, like other heavy and harmful metals, is released into the air (in pure form or as nickel compounds) and rainwater returns to the soil and accumulates there, gradually reaching lakes, running water and groundwater, thus following the same cycle as mercury, lead, cadmium and arsenic.
Aluminium (Al)
A common element that covers 8% of the Earth’s surface. It is used in the production of many products such as food, medicine, and water purification, and is therefore abundant in drinking water and foods. For example, in ready-to-eat baby foods, it is found in between 0.2 and 4.4 milligrams per kilogram of food. It is used in other products such as food preservatives and additives, food colouring, thickening, bulking, and preventing food from curdling. In addition, it is used in ready-to-eat cereals, beer, bread, and ice cream. In research on mice, its damaging neurological and sexual effects (testicular changes and the number of sex cells) have been reported 44. It is not necessary to repeat here the list of aluminium-containing additives to foods and medicines prescribed by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) for the information of workers (E173, E520-E523T E541T E554-E556, E558-E559, E1452). The vast areas of capital investment use this raw material in a large amount in various productions, which is why the growth of its production after the Second Imperialist War has been very high, so that its current production is 10 times the amount during the war (Figure 18). Aluminium can be absorbed and accumulated in all tissues of the body and its main channel of distribution is the blood. This element passes through the protective tissues of the brain and fetus and causes damage to these organs. Neurotoxicity and brain toxicity are among its side effects. This metal passes through the layers of the skin of the body and enters the inner skin and various channels such as the vascular glands. Although this element is not considered a heavy metal, it has harmful properties such as those mentioned above for the body. Aluminium competes with calcium in the body, so its excess in the body causes osteopenia. This is especially common in children. High levels of aluminium in the body cause changes in the blood-brain barrier, which plays an important role in preventing foreign and harmful substances from entering this important organ of the body. 46. Although aluminium is not as allergenic as nickel, it seems that due to its use in various products (it is used as a raw material or auxiliary raw material in more than 40 different production processes), it causes various diseases and discomforts in the body that are more harmful than nickel. The absorption of this metal through acidic foods (foods with vinegar and even mixed with sugar) causes its further accumulation in the body and leads to damage to the nervous system and bones. Increased aluminium in the body causes changes in female hormones and leads to breast cancer (this experiment was conducted on cultured human breast cells in the laboratory) 47. The EFSA report in 2008 indicated a level of 0.2 to 2.3 mg aluminium per kilogram of body weight per week (µg/kg bw/day 29 to 329) 41. In 1988, in the town of Camelford in England, 20 tonnes of aluminium sulphate were released into the town water system for an unknown period of time, causing water pollution in the town and surrounding countryside. The authorities covered up the incident, but people complained of various inconveniences. After some time, the issue was revealed when a 58-year-old woman died of Alzheimer’s in 2004, and research on her brain showed a large amount of aluminium, and this led to the relationship between people’s brain and mental disorders and aluminium poured into water. 48 Researchers continued their research and found diseases such as urinary tract disorders, skin diseases, stomach cramps, diarrhoea, fatigue, forgetfulness, and premature aging in relation to aluminium and its compounds. When aluminium enters the body, it accumulates in the nervous tissue, brain, bones, liver, heart, spleen and muscles. In addition, the release of aluminium from soils, through acid rain and its entry into lakes, causes respiratory problems in fish. This metal combines with phosphates in chemical fertilizers and creates a complex that ultimately reduces phosphorus in the earth. Cosmetics such as deodorants, shampoos, various creams, various skin medications and vaccines (80% of vaccines) contain aluminium. aluminium enters the bloodstream when it comes into contact with the skin (worms). Studies have linked diseases such as Parkinson’s, MS, and Alzheimer’s to the presence of this element in the body 44, 45. A study in Norway shows that using underarm deodorant increases the risk of breast cancer by 50 times 44.
Figure 18. World aluminium production in million tons per year in the last century and its acceleration in the recent century
In capitalist relations of production, the working man is considered merely as a means of producing capital’s profit. The capitalist uses his labour power like any other commodity in exchange for wages. But here we are not talking about buying labour power at the cheapest price. We are talking about the fact that large-scale industry and capitalist mass production, in order to accumulate as much capital as possible, increase its speed, and what the capitalist class wants, sacrifice the majority of society, that is, the millions of working masses, in the worst, most pitiful, and most criminal way. Their health is sacrificed for the sake of increasing profits. They do this so that the rich can get richer and richer. Workers are not only exploited, not only separated from their work, not only plunged into an abyss of absolute disenfranchisement, not only captured in bloodbaths. They also receive from the owners of capital what they receive as the means of reproducing their labour power in the form of deadly poisons that cause deadly diseases. This is the omnipresent decree of capital, which, dressed in the guise of the state, rights, laws, and even scientific licenses, constantly expands the boundaries of pollution, and under the cover of academic research, declares all elements, materials, and commodities that are contaminated and disease-causing, free from any danger. You see this in every line and every small and large study in the capitalist world, where science, figures, discussion and reasoning are used to try to consider the goods produced as free from any risk to human health and society. What are these efforts for? The answer is obvious, the capitalist class owns all the means of production, owns production and plans it. It is this class that decides what should be produced, the amount of production and the content of the commodities, and all of this is done in a way that ensures maximum profit. The working class is only supposed to produce capital and present it to the capitalists. In the logic of capital, workers not only have no right to protest against exploitation, the severity of exploitation, and their own injustices, but they must also remain silent in the face of all the crimes of capital in polluting the environment and making people’s food, clothing, breathing air, and drinking water pathogenic. One way to silence the working masses is to expose all the crimes that capital is committing in this transition, in the area of sacrificing the physical and mental health of people for greater profit. The bourgeoisie has a division of labour within itself. The task of misleading the minds and thoughts of the public about what capital is doing to people’s living environment, food, clothing, and health is also the responsibility of the elements, institutions, associations, and academic centres of the bourgeoisie. Thanks to all these weapons and mechanisms, capital ensures that the meagre wages of the worker or a very small part of the labour is spent on purchasing goods that contain various toxins, dirt, and impurities, goods that are a scourge to human life after and during consumption and that brutally destroy the environment. Yes, as long as these production relations based on the purchase and sale of labour exist, this has been and will continue to be the story of our lives. Capitalist governments, their research institutes, and the entire capitalist intellectual apparatus are not supposed to tell the truth, because in that case, the main ruler, who are the relations of production and their owners, have issued their own condemnation. Now, how do they hide the truth from us, mainly with these platitudes that, for example, such and such a quantity of poison, harmful metal, or pesticide is not that harmful to the body! Or in other words, some poison in the air, water, goods are part of daily life in this system. This is only if they announce the presence of poison in the environment, work and nature. In most cases and all over the world, all the planned and planned efforts of the bourgeoisie are to cover up every crime as much as possible.
Chapter Three
Turning groundwater reserves into a lever to increase capital returns
Nearly 30 years have passed since the idea of ”Sustainable Development” was proposed and then the UN bodies were formed for the “reasonable” capitalist development of the world!! What global capital experts have repeated and continue to repeat, by putting their minds together in the form of the Brundtland Commission report entitled “Our Common Future” (in 1987) and then as the basis of the work of the UN conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and thereafter from time to time, is supposed to be a petition to save the world from the environmental disasters caused by capitalist production relations!
The United Nations report on the state of water in the world in the next 15 years
(World Water Development Report 2015 WWDR 2015).
The leaders of the “sustainable growth of capitalism” claimed that by formulating laws based on balanced economic growth, including paragraphs and principles for environmental protection in the economic development plans of countries and such nonsense, they would subordinate the statutes of the United Nations bodies on capitalist models to the ecological model. But the trend that capital has and has continued in the last 40 years, as it has done for centuries, actually proves the opposite of these concepts and myths.
Now we want to see what this solidarity of capitalist societies in sustainable growth!! has brought to the world’s water resources during this period.
In this report, water shortage is estimated at 40% in the next 15 years and the amount of this shortage is calculated as a percentage based on the difference between the demand for water on one side and the speed of filling the reservoirs (compensation). According to calculations, China, India, parts of America and the Middle East are using underground water reservoirs uncontrollably. It is important to note that water does not suffer any shortage in its circulation on the ground, in the air, and underground because it does not disappear altogether. What happens is that its cycle is disrupted by capital, which, like all natural resources, converts it into a commodity and uses it as an auxiliary material in various processes of producing goods. This disruption manifests itself in the form of an imbalance in the distribution of water in various basins. In previous articles, we explained that in capitalist agriculture, maintaining the consumer value of the product in the production and management process is subject to many risks, plant pests being the most important and influential part of these risks. In order to avoid bearing the costs of reproducing a product infested with pests, the capitalist farmer takes the path of using 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. However, what happens to nature and humans in this process is not the capitalists’ problem. In relation to soil, we also know that as a means of production and a source of auxiliary materials, with the development of capitalist mechanized agriculture, methods are used that temporarily increase labour productivity, but what was once considered an important advance in increasing land fertility is today seen as the depletion of the soil of vital reserves. I also explained in the context of deforestation how huge investments with high organic content in this area of capital investment, production of wooden goods, types of paper, glue, as well as cutting down rainforests to plant oil plants, etc., have disrupted and suffocated the earth’s respiratory system. It was also explained that capital’s thirst for cheap raw and auxiliary materials such as oil and gas leads it to depths of 3 kilometres of the earth or the sands of the Canadian coast, the result of all their extraction and use is the degradation of the human and animal environment, air pollution and global warming. I have explained all this before, and everything we said about these resources is exactly true in relation to capital’s treatment of water resources. What capitalism does to the world’s waters is no different from the disasters it commits in other areas.
Figure 19 Growth in consumption of bottled water as a source of drinking water in some countries between 2000 and 2012 49.
Although the amount of water used for domestic and drinking purposes generally constitutes a small proportion compared to water consumption in agriculture and industry, negative climatic and environmental impacts on surface and groundwater have reduced the standard and quality of urban water. Meanwhile, climate change has increased the frequency of events such as floods and storms, which in turn have a negative impact on water quality (WHO, DFID 2009). The increasing use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides in agriculture, industrial wastewater and urban sewage, and their discharge into surface and groundwater have led to public distrust in the quality of urban water. This problem is reflected in the increase in the consumption of bottled water. Although the proportion of urban dwellers who use this type of drinking water is not large (6% according to the report), perhaps some consumers are pursuing a kind of class pride by buying bottled water, but this does not negate the fact that the working masses do not trust the urban water supply system, and this is increasing with the deterioration of water quality (Figure 19 Growth in bottled drinking water consumption in the last 12 years).
Figure 20 International water demand from 2000 to 2050: agricultural irrigation (light green), domestic consumption (green), livestock (dark green), industry (blue), electricity generation (yellow). OECD includes the 34 largest industrialized countries in the world, BRIICS includes Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, China and South Africa, ROW rest of the world 49. The growth of capitalism, which coincides with the mass production of goods and the growth of cities, will increase the need for water by 55% by 2050 (Figure 20). The main needs are not personal consumption (about 10%) but absolutely industrial, electricity generation, agriculture and livestock. And among them, the sector that suffers the most (and is currently under severe attack) is the working-class masses and their drinking water and sanitation. Capitalism’s increasing demand for water is putting overwhelming pressure on surface and groundwater, and the signs of nature’s imbalance are already clearly visible. Despite the use of new techniques to extract water from deeper underground, desalinize saltwater, or reuse used water in certain areas, capital has still not been able to meet the demand for clean water. Between 1990 and 2010, the number of workers without access to safe drinking water increased from 111 million to 145 million (WHO, UNICEF 2014). In 1990, about 1.9 billion (37% of the world’s working population) used water contaminated by untreated sewage. This figure has now (2015) increased to 2.08 billion (27% of the world’s working masses). It is true that in terms of proportion it shows a smaller percentage (which is why the officials of the capitalist governments prefer percentage figures!!). But in terms of numbers, the number of workers using polluted water has increased by about 180 million in the past 25 years 50. This clearly shows that when the agents of capitalist governments talk about new goals in their glittering conference halls, it is only because their previous false and misleading promises have failed. They weave new, pleasant visions to hide the platitudes, illusions, and demagoguery of previous plans from the eyes and minds of the workers. The growth of cities and mass production in the regions where this growth has been greatest has caused the greatest damage to the water resources of the working masses. The situation in African countries is much worse than in any other region in the world, so much so that the rapid growth of cities in this continent has reduced access to clean water from 43% to 34%. A continent that in its long history (as long as humanity has lived) had never experienced a shortage of water before the arrival of capitalism. The growth of cities and slums and the increasing number of working poor who cannot even afford a bottle of water to quench their thirst from their daily work, according to a United Nations report, will reach 889 million people in 2020 (UN-Habitat 2010). These workers suffer the most from contaminated water, lack of access to water supply and sanitation systems, and finally from natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods. For example, in Mombasa (Kenya’s second largest city with a population of over one million), only 15% of workers have access to piped water, and 80% use bottled water to quench their thirst. This coastal city, like all cities that have emerged from the development of slums that have been created by the accumulation of migrant workers in search of work, such as coastal cities in India, Bangladesh, South America, and Africa, is highly vulnerable to climate change, storms, floods, and the like. With the smallest incidents like this, all the sewage and factory water enters the lives of its residents and causes various diseases. These cities, which were created without any accounting, without any water supply and sewage systems, were created only by the gathering of workers. Even with a strong breeze, their entire structure collapses and the environment of their residents become a swamp of faces and factory sewage. Environmental pollution caused by the spread of urban and industrial wastewater into the surface and deep waters of these regions not only directly causes illness in their residents, but according to a United Nations report, 90% of wastewater in Latin American, African, and Asian countries enters rivers, lakes, seas, and wetlands without the slightest treatment system, which ultimately enters the irrigation, drinking, and washing systems, and in this way causes skin diseases and a wide variety of environmental disorders (Corcoran et al., 2010). According to World Bank calculations, it is estimated that between 70 and 100 billion dollars are needed annually to prevent damage and losses caused by climate change and related events such as storms and floods (World Bank, 2010). This calculation takes into account the changes and losses that have resulted from climate change in recent decades, such as the increase in greenhouse gases, global warming, etc. The most important part of this capital (80%) should be invested in the water supply system on the outskirts of cities, the creation of flood-protective dams, the construction of roads and highways suitable for these areas, the creation of conditions to protect coastal cities from storms, and similar investments. This part of the investment should be made entirely in areas that have arisen without any supervision or planning, only from the accumulation of seasonal and permanent poor and homeless workers (Haleb Abad, the outskirts of cities, coastal cities in places where no human has ever dared to live). All this remains just talk in the corridors of the World Bank and the United Nations, and it does not even come close to reality, but in one sense it is important for us workers, and that is that the calculations and the high amounts clearly show how capital saves its costs by not doing what it claims, and how it reaps huge profits in this regard. In this regard, the reason why capital turns to low-cost areas such as India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Vietnam, Cambodia, etc. with low-cost urban systems, water supply and electricity also becomes clearer than ever.
Energy, a commodity that is always thirsty for water
Energy plays a crucial role in capitalist production and is closely related to water. This means that almost all forms of energy require water to produce. Electricity generation through heat (steam turbines) and dams (hydro turbines) provide 80% and 15% of the world’s electricity, respectively, which generally require large amounts of water. Energy is also needed to collect, store, and transport water. It is estimated that between 5 and 30% of the global cost of water storage and purification is electricity (World Bank, 2012). However, in some countries such as India, Bangladesh and Iran, these costs can be as high as 40% (Van den Berg and Danileko 2011). This is despite the fact that according to the World Health Organization, 748 million workers worldwide are deprived of access to drinking and washing water (WHO and UNICEF, 2014), and if we take into account all those who are dissatisfied and concerned about the availability of water, this figure reaches 3 billion workers worldwide (Global monitoring of water safety, UNC, 2012). 2.5 billion workers lack adequate sanitation and toilets, and more than 1.3 billion workers lack electricity. 2.6 billion of these masses of capital and commodity producers, whose surplus value from exploitation amounts to billions of dollars per year, use firewood and wood, not electricity, for their daily cooking, in other words, they live in their humble huts like Stone Age people while they are engaged in the production of various goods. (IEA, 2012). About 400 million workers in the world use charcoal to prepare food, which in turn causes lung diseases, allergies, and poisoning from carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and mercury. The close relationship between diseases such as diarrhoea, vomiting, and other intestinal diseases and the unsanitary water consumed by these masses of workers is obvious. The visceral disorders resulting from unhealthy consumption and lack of access to electricity, toilets, baths and safe drinking water create conditions that have caused a huge reduction in the standard and quality of life of billions of working people, and the occurrence of various diseases and premature death are its direct consequences. On the other hand, the demand for energy will increase by one third of the current amount by 2035, and the demand for electricity will increase by 70% during the same period (IEA, 2013). Make no mistake, these increases and the insatiable thirst of capital are not to meet the needs of workers, but only so that the wheel can turn faster so that there is no slightest disruption to the work of capital and its insatiable thirst for profit and further accumulation of capital. Demand for all types of energy will increase. Oil will increase by 13%, coal by 17% (before 2020), gas by 48%, nuclear energy by 66%, and wind and solar energy by 77%. Electricity will continue to be mostly supplied by coal, gas, oil and nuclear power. In other words, the world will be run by capital and environmental degradation will permeate every pore. Electricity generated by wind and solar energy will remain insignificant, but hydroelectric turbines in dams will still provide 30% of it by 2035 (IEA, 2013). Solar and wind energy will be complementary because they cannot be considered the basis for calculating a stable and sustainable energy supply. In the future, this type of energy is still not fully developed and will be supported by government subsidies (WWAP, 2014). These two types of energy currently account for less than 1% of all energy production and, even if they grow rapidly, will not reach the 10% threshold by 2035. Since 90% of thermal power is generated through and in relation to water, the 70% increase in electricity production mentioned above by 2035 means that 20% of fresh water must be used for electricity production, and thus access to drinking and washing water will be even worse than it is now. Water consumption in industry, agriculture and animal husbandry will also increase by 85%. (IEA, 2012). The need for energy by industrial capital will increase the pressure on water reservoirs and fresh drinking water from energy-producing capitalists, so that the access of the working masses to fresh and safe water for drinking and washing will become even worse. Meanwhile, competition for water between other sectors of capital such as agriculture, animal husbandry and industry with the energy sector will increase. Agriculture worldwide uses 70% of the world’s water resources (Figure 20). The production of goods and their transportation also account for 30% of total global energy consumption (WWAP, 2014). All industries worldwide use about 37% of energy, while requiring less direct water (UNIDO, 2008). The capitalist mode of production is consuming the entire resources of the earth and the atmosphere. So that all the sap of the earth from the soil, water and air must be put to the service of the production of surplus value, in order to cure the irrigating of capital and to reduce the further fall of the rate of profit. The Organization of the Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 2012 (Environmental to 2050) predicted that the global demand for water will increase by 400% by 2050, and this increase will be directed more to agriculture than to any other area of capital investment. The largest part of this increase will occur in the rapidly developing capitalist countries (Figure 20). The billions of workers in Asia and the Pacific face a very dire fate in terms of enduring water-related disasters, especially those related to climate and weather changes. In this regard, the rapid migration of rural and unemployed people to cities will give new dimensions to the quality of surface and groundwater. These three phenomena, namely the mass of workers living in cities, the threat of climate change and the further increase in urbanization and marginalization, the growth of capital accumulation in this region of the world above the usual rate, and the astronomical need for energy for all commodity production, will put immense pressure on the water resources of this region, which are currently not meeting the basic needs of the working masses.
Figure 21 Groundwater use in agriculture in some countries between 1940 and 2010. 49
Nearly 1.7 billion of the region’s working poor lack access to the water they need for washing and cleaning (WHO and UNICEF, 2014). Asia and the Pacific region have been exposed to the world’s worst weather-related disasters for years. In 2013, more than 17,000 people died in storms and floods, accounting for 90% of all deaths worldwide that year. Climate change will bring much more severe events with more victims in the future. Monsoon winds and rainfall in Asia, the largest of their kind in the world and which have fuelled the growth of agriculture and rainforests in the region for thousands of years, have in recent decades brought storms, floods and incessant rains on the one hand, and droughts and water shortages on the other. In other words, this natural atmospheric phenomenon that once brought “mercy” to these areas has now become a great hardship for the poor masses of the region with the negative impact of weather and climate changes, because the expansion of cities in the path of these rains, which were built without protection against running water, without a proper urban water system and without a sewage system, has left them with no security. The melting of polar ice has had and continues to have very large negative effects on the quality and quantity of water. This means that the reduction of ice will have a negative impact on the amount of water from snow and ice in the future, for example, causing changes in the salt concentration of the world’s waters (World Bank, 2013). In the future, frequent droughts will be a serious problem in this densely populated region of the world (IPCC, 2013). The growth of the urban population of this region, at 2.4% per year, is the highest in the whole world. A growth rate that ensures an abundance of cheap labour for capitalism, but the result for the working masses is nothing but poverty, water scarcity, and the increase in slums on the outskirts of cities. In 2012, about 47.5% (two billion working people) of the total population of this region lived in the city centres (UNDESA, 2014) and 30% of the region’s urban residents lived in the outskirts of the cities (slums). (UN-Habitat, 2013). In 2015, this figure was estimated at 2.7 billion. All these figures are reported in conditions where the astronomical growth of capital and the surplus value resulting from the exploitation of the labour force of these masses is swallowing water, the most vital need of human life and the auxiliary and primary material of industries, energy and agriculture, more and more than the previous moment, and what it spits out is nothing but a concoction of chemical waste and contaminated industrial and household waste, all of which is destined for billions of workers on earth. The growth of energy production, industry, agriculture and livestock is putting enormous pressure on running waters, lakes and dams, and the region is heading towards unpredictable events. Events that will manifest themselves in the form of floods, droughts and cyclones. India, China, Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan, with their huge industries, extensive agriculture and energy and electricity production, consume half of the world’s groundwater. Figure 21: Groundwater use in India has increased from 1 million wells in 1960 to 19 million in 2000. In China, groundwater is extensively used for industrial agriculture. The pressure from industry and agriculture on groundwater is so great that the water table is 47 meters lower than it was in 1960 (Foster, Garduno, 2004). The Ministry of Water of the capitalist Chinese government announced in 2007 that 97% of groundwater in 118 Chinese cities was polluted and 64% of the country’s cities were drinking polluted water (World Bank, 2007). Seven years later (April 2014), the country’s Department of Environment announced that 43% of all lakes and reservoirs in China surveyed in 2011 were so polluted that even contact with their water was unsuitable. At the same time, the country’s rivers, such as the Yellow River, have become so polluted with heavy metals and other chemicals that their water is unfit for drinking by residents of the 186 major cities along the banks of this long river, home to 400 million people. Greenpeace, in its 2010 report Swimming in Chemicals, says that tests on fish in the Yellow River have shown high levels of heavy metals such as cadmium, lead, mercury, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFAS) and other fluorinated compounds used in the production of textiles and clothing. The report talks about workers who live in the riverbed and are unable to buy water and food in stores due to low wages, so they feed on the water and fish caught in the river. It also talks about workers in textile and clothing factories who move and use a lot of chemicals every day without any protection. Bangladesh, China, India, Nepal and Pakistan, with their large-scale industrial agriculture, together account for half of the world’s groundwater consumption. Coastal cities with populations of millions such as Kolkata, Dhaka, Jakarta and Shanghai are witnessing an increasing infiltration of ocean salt into their groundwater. The infiltration of sea salt into groundwater is occurring for two reasons. First, the water level of the world’s oceans and seas has risen with climate change and global warming, and this trend will intensify in the future (IPCC, 2014) and, on the other hand, the land surface is subsiding due to excessive extraction of groundwater. This is clearly visible in Bangkok. Groundwater quality is deteriorating due to salinization and acid rain (anthropogenic contaminants) and natural factors. Figure 22 shows how arsenic (As) released from the ground due to acid rain, as well as arsenic from coal-fired and wood-fired industries, is poisoning groundwater (EFSA European Food Safety Authority 6 March 2015). This phenomenon is the main cause of high arsenic in rice cultivated in these areas of China, India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh. It is important to point out that rice has been the main supplier of energy-rich food (carbohydrates) for the majority of the world’s population for nearly two decades and the mentioned countries are its main producers, and for this reason, arsenic, which is a toxic and carcinogenic substance, threatens the health of a large part of the consumer masses. Other substances that contaminate and poison groundwater, such as fluorine, iron, heavy metals, organic substances, originate from fertilizers, pesticides, factory wastewater and garbage.
Figure 22 Map of the toxic element arsenic (As) in groundwater in Asia 49. Arsenic contamination causes 9,100 deaths and 125,000 disabilities worldwide each year, and 20 million skeletal deformities in 17 countries between 1953 and 2000 51.
The capitalist sky is the same colour everywhere. Billions of tons of garbage are dumped into the waters of the world every year. Every year, 6.4 million tons of garbage are dumped into the waters of the world’s seas, of which 70% settles, 15% floats, and the remaining 15% reaches the coasts. 52 This was a corner of the “sustainable development of capitalism” case for nearly a decade. Every year, more than a million seabirds and 100,000 marine animals die due to the poisoning of the waters of these seas by factories and centres of capital profit production. The death rate of the working poor who live along rivers and seas is 20% higher than that of other residents elsewhere. The Mississippi River, one of the largest rivers in America, annually discharges 1.5 million tons of harmful substances into the Gulf of Mexico, resulting in the death of a part of this bay the size of New Jersey each year. About 40% of America’s lakes are so polluted that they are dangerous to fish, aquatic life, and swimming. 1.2 billion tons of industrial and municipal wastewater enters American waters every year. 52 About 80% of India’s garbage is dumped into the Ganges River.
In Iran
The Environmental Protection Organization of the Islamic Republic of Iran admits that 100 percent of the sewage from coastal homes enters the Caspian Sea without treatment. This has caused microbial contamination of the fish in the sea and has also had a severe negative impact on the food chain. According to the deputy head of the Environmental Protection Organization, the loss of ecosystems is one of the consequences of the entry of domestic sewage into the Caspian Sea, while sea urchins also grow significantly in polluted waters and feed on sewage. Excessive growth of algae prevents other aquatic animals and fish from getting the necessary oxygen and ultimately increases the mortality of aquatic animals and other organisms. This causes a change in the food chain in nature. On the other hand, and following the entry of sewage, coastal waters are not suitable for swimming due to pollution. In March 2013, the Director General of Veterinary Medicine of Mazandaran Province asked people to seriously refrain from consuming mullet due to its pollution. Although a significant percentage of Iranian families with low or even moderate incomes find it difficult to obtain fish due to its high price, it is affordable for at least some of these families in Iranian coastal cities during some times of the year. The Caspian Sea has been severely polluted in recent years by various factors, including domestic, agricultural, and industrial wastewater, as well as the entry of petroleum products from countries bordering the sea. The pollution of the Caspian Sea water on the shores of the northern provinces of Iran is neither a new nor an unknown issue. However, a report by the Research Centre of the Islamic Consultative Assembly of the Republic of Iran shows that the situation of this important sea is increasingly chaotic. According to this report, domestic, industrial and agricultural wastewater, and activities related to oil exploration, extraction and transportation, as well as the entry of various pesticides and toxins used in agricultural fields, play a major role in the pollution of the Caspian waters (it should be noted that the groundwater level of the Caspian coastal provinces is higher than the water level of this sea). In addition, since the sea slopes from the north and neighbouring countries towards Iran, most of the oil and agricultural pollution from coastal countries such as Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia and eastern countries of this sea ends up in its deep part. The Caspian Sea Ecology Research Institute, affiliated with the Fisheries Research Institute in Iran, announced the amount of oil imports into the Caspian Sea last year at 122,000 tons. For example, the Volga River, which is the most important supplier of water to the Caspian Sea and passes through industrial cities in Russia, is an important source of chemical, oil and agricultural pesticide pollution. Although the authorities of the Caspian Sea do not mention the type of toxins in the fish of the Caspian Sea, we can understand with a little care that: First, the mullet is a shellfish, worm and snail eater and also feeds on algae and decaying matter on the seabed. Second, the shellfish and other animals that this fish feeds on feed on sewage and toxic substances. Accordingly, this fish absorbs all the toxic substances in sewage, oil and factory materials, which all contain chemicals, especially heavy metals such as cadmium, lead and mercury, through these animals. Finally, because humans are at the highest level in the biological and nutritional chain and feed on other animals, including fish, they consume and absorb all these harmful substances. A collection of 40 large and small cities, along with industrial facilities, mining, oil and all their waste, flows into the Caspian Sea through 5 rivers, resulting in 30 tons of waste per day, which directly enters the sea through these rivers. According to the Gilan Governorate in December 2014, this province produces 2,000 tons of waste per day, with no plan for its burial, and the accumulated mass flows directly into the Anzali Port. In addition, since the Caspian Sea is the only recreation area for the working masses of Tehran and the surrounding cities, and since there has never been any system for the delivery and use of waste, during the holiday season, in addition to all this, 2,800 tons of waste are collected daily by the sea and around the rivers. It is not just the mullet that is at risk, but other Caspian Sea fish such as the fossil fish or beluga, the Russian sturgeon or Chalbashi, the Iranian sturgeon or Qaraburun, the sablefish, the osprey or Surga are the main species of sturgeon in the Caspian Sea, which are not only now a source of various types of pollution, but 90% of them are at risk of complete extinction. One of the causes of the extinction of Caspian fish, according to the environmental protection officer of Mazandaran province, is the activities of large companies in the northern forests. By destroying trees and stripping the soil, these companies cause sediments to easily enter the water of streams and, along with other harmful environmental substances, endanger the fish that spawn in these waters. Millions of fish die every year for this reason. Another environmental expert from the province told the Mehr news agency, “The most important pollutants in the Caspian Sea include organochlorine and organophosphorus toxins, which have increased significantly due to the concentration of agricultural activities on the shores of the Caspian Sea and the excessive use of these toxins.” The expert added that “the pollution in the Caspian Sea produced by Iran is mostly caused by wastewater and agricultural pesticides, while in other countries in the basin of this sea, carcinogenic pollutants enter the Caspian through oil pollution, and these organic pollutants may penetrate the tissues and sediments of the sea and remain there for a long time.” Referring to the high rate of cancer in Mazandaran province, the same expert says that although no relationship can be found between the high percentage of cancer and the level of pollution in the Caspian Sea, “70% of Iran’s agricultural pesticides are consumed in Mazandaran, and toxic wastewater from farms is dumped into the sea through the rivers of this region. However, since the Caspian Sea is actually a closed lake, it does not have access to other open waters and retains these toxins and carcinogenic elements. Many species in the Caspian Sea have been destroyed, or their populations have decreased significantly due to this pollution.”
Garbage centres have been established around Tehran and major cities. Of course, this does not mean that the garbage is separated there, and each one goes its own way, but rather that it is just a place where the garbage is piled up, resulting in the creation of lakes! Environmental pollution. The Kahrizak garbage centre in southern Tehran is an example of this, which has been a major centre of environmental pollution for about 40 years, receiving part of Tehran’s garbage. More than 1,500 cubic meters of waste sap enters Iran’s surface and deep waters every day. The deputy head of the National Municipalities Organization says that only 45% of the waste produced is buried. Mazandaran province produces 2,541 tons, Gilan 1,950 tons, and Golestan 900 tons of waste daily. This waste sap, which is higher than other regions of Iran due to the humidity and rainfall in these regions, flows into surface and deep waters. Considering that Iran is the only country where sanitary, industrial, urban, and household waste are not separated, the extent of waste on nature and humans from chemicals, heavy metals, pesticides, medicines, and other harmful waste materials cannot be evaluated or compared with any international standard. Wastewater from Tehran and other Iranian cities that is not collected, directed, and decomposed pollutes tap water and surface and groundwater. The occasional nitrification of water in Tehran and other major cities is just one of the side effects of the lack of a sewage system. A Tehran municipality consultant says that 55% of Tehran does not have a sewage system, which means that wastewater from these areas flows directly into groundwater aquifers through streams. On the other hand, due to the old and worn-out water supply network of Tehran, contaminated groundwater enters the water supply network. Nitrate, which is one of the basic ingredients of chemical fertilizers, is harmful in that it is converted into nitrite, which is carcinogenic as a result of bacterial activity. In addition to the danger of this substance itself, its presence indicates the activity of harmful bacteria in the water. According to international standards, cities with a population of over 50,000 must be equipped with a sewage and waste collection and treatment network. Thus, more than 1,500 cities in Iran lack such facilities. The Ministry of Energy said in January 2014 that only 18% of Iranian cities are covered by sewage collection and disposal, and in the rest, urban, domestic, industrial, and sanitary sewage flows into the groundwater system through absorption wells, and in many cases, it enters directly into the surface waters of rivers, canals, and lakes. The depth of the disaster is that many Iranian megacities such as Isfahan, Kerman, Yazd, Qom, and… obtain a significant portion of their drinking water from these deep aquifers. It is important to note here that the reduction of surface and groundwater leads to an increase in salt concentration, which in turn causes soil porosity and its easy transport by wind. An event that in turn has become a factor in the formation of smog with greater intensity and more frequent occurrence (in the next chapter we will examine this global phenomenon and show its relationship with the drying of large areas of the world). The decrease in water levels also leads to an increase in the concentration of all the harmful substances mentioned above. According to a study conducted in 2011 at the University of Ardabil, “In more than 76 percent of urban areas in Iran, between 80 and 100 percent of human wastewater is disposed of through septic tanks, and about 5.5 percent of it enters irrigation networks. On the other hand, in 40 percent of urban areas, the disposed wastewater enters public streets without watercourses, and in 31 percent of urban areas, this wastewater enters streets with watercourses. Also, about 35 percent of urban wastewater in different regions of Iran enters rivers. More than 335 cities in Iran have acute problems due to improper disposal of urban wastewater. Other cities are also facing such problems to a lesser extent. The drying up of lakes and wetlands in Fars, Khuzestan and other regions of Iran is not a new phenomenon. The most important factors are as follows. In recent decades, a large number of dams have been built on Iranian rivers, including those in Fars and Khuzestan provinces. These dams control the water that flows into lakes and wetlands. The destruction of the aqueduct system and the replacement of surface water with deep wells for agricultural purposes has led to a decrease in the groundwater level, which in turn limits the water resources of the wetlands. The main purpose of the dams (generally funded by the Revolutionary Guards) is to provide electricity and water for large-scale industrial agriculture. The creation of a dam for the purpose of providing energy disrupts the water balance in geographical areas. This means that first, the accumulation of water in one place causes intense evaporation and its wastage. Second, by preventing it from passing through its thousands of years old path, the water reservoirs of these paths gradually dry up (one of the factors causing the drying of the canals). Third, as the natural path of the rivers dries up, the possibility of vegetation and the ecosystem impact of the rivers on the surrounding environment is eliminated. Why do the IRGC and other capitalists do this? This energy supply system is one of the cheapest and most hassle-free energy production techniques for capital owners in this field. The Minister of Energy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in February 2014 said that 5.7 billion cubic meters of groundwater had been extracted in excess of the permitted limit. Without specifying the duration of the extraction or the amount of the permitted limit, the official continued that in some provinces 100% of the capacity of groundwater resources had been extracted (according to him, this extraction was on average 60% of the groundwater capacity). According to the ministry, 80% of Iran’s groundwater resources are at risk of depletion, even though these resources meet more than 50% of Iran’s water needs. The dire situation of groundwater resources is now (December 2014) worse than it was four years ago. The same minister said on April 20, 2015, that the water level in dams has decreased by 17% compared to the previous year. With the explanation given about the relationship between river water and groundwater levels and the statement that dam construction disrupts this balance, the following figures can be used to better understand this imbalance. According to the Ministry of Energy, the amount of groundwater reserves is currently 227 billion cubic meters, while the total water reserves in Iran’s dams are currently about 11 billion cubic meters. This means that about 5% of groundwater is available, but it is the withdrawal of groundwater that reduces the water reserves. As the 170 billion cubic meters of water that has been withdrawn so far (75%) without any possibility of compensating for it, a very dark picture of the water situation in Iran is presented before our eyes. The story of dam construction on Iranian rivers is not the end of this tragedy. The figures below illustrate the dimensions of the disaster. Water and electricity companies in the provinces surrounding Lake Urmia have a total of 235 dams under study, construction, or operation. So far, 106 dams have been built and are in operation in these three provinces on the rivers surrounding the declining Lake Urmia. 24 dams on the Karun River, once the only navigable river in Iran, have blocked the vital artery of this river. According to official statistics from the Iranian Ministry of Energy, there are currently 647 dams under operation and 683 dams under study or construction. Interestingly, according to the Minister of Energy in March 2013, the volume of the reservoirs of Iran’s dams is 1.5 times the amount of water available in the country’s rivers, and it seems that the capitalists of this area, led by the Revolutionary Guards, have sewn a loose garment for this area! In the midst of this, the whims and fancies of the capitalist government in Iran at the beginning of the hot season that “people should save water consumption” is just an ugly demagoguery to blame the working masses. While the capitalists of the Guard and possibly non-Guard are ruthlessly exploiting the waters as their capital and a mechanism for the ever-increasing growth of their capital, they are deceitfully shouting that the cursed masses of workers and their children must also endure as much thirst as possible in relation to their drinking water! The reality is that according to calculations by the Ministry of Energy itself, water consumption in the area of capital advance in agriculture is 92% of the total water consumption in Iran, and this is what the accomplices of the Islamic state of capital in Europe have also pointed out to Iranian officials. As Reuters reported, based on calculations by European sources, the problem of water in Iran is not the consumption of people, but rather agriculture in Iran consumes 90% of water, while its efficiency is not more than 36%. Even the data of the Ministry of Energy states that it is less than 6% of the total water consumption by the people. The daily water consumption per person in Northern Europe is about 250 Liters and 90 cubic meters per year. In Iran, the per capita water supply is 1,550 cubic meters, according to the Ministry of Energy, and the per capita water consumption is only 5.8% of this amount. Now, if the millions of workers in Iran force them to save and one or two percent of this amount is reduced, it will not reduce the pain of the improper distribution of water in Iran. The imbalance means that different areas of capital investment compete with each other for water, and in this, the urban water sector (drinking and cleaning water) has a smaller share, because although this water, like other waters, is a commodity, it is produced by exploiting workers and is sold as a commodity to the working masses, the productivity of labour in its production is lower compared to the energy production, agriculture, and animal husbandry sectors, and the owners of this commodity (water companies and organizations) are unwilling to invest more than the minimum necessary in its production, so quality water is sold less and less. On the other hand, if we consider the figure of 1550 cubic meters of water per capita (the amount of water available to each person during a year in cubic meters) in Figure 23, we will see that Iran is not considered a water-scarce country. The main reason for the drought is not the lack of water reserves in the country, but the imbalance between different sectors of capital in the use of water and the excessive waste of its resources such as rivers and groundwater by capitalists. (The historical system of canals in Iran was the most efficient system in the hot regions of Iran for supplying water to cities, of course, as long as production in the agricultural sector was for direct consumption and had a huge difference from capitalist production for profit and accumulation). The role of financial oligarchies such as the Revolutionary Guards in gaining ever-increasing profits from investing in dam construction is quite obvious (in July 2006, the Ministry of Energy handed over all water and electricity projects in the west of the country to the Revolutionary Guards. After winning the elections, Ahmadinejad handed over all electricity, water and dam construction projects in Azerbaijan, Khuzestan, Lorestan, Ilam, Kurdistan and Kermanshah to the IRGC contractors). Dams that no longer provide significant returns for capital have been abandoned and have become a place of sediment and mud. Dams that were built about 20 to 30 years ago and are no longer highly productive are mostly filled with mud and mud up to the cement openings. Of course, the IRGC has also built some dams that are not necessarily like that, in addition to building dams that are integral to massive investments in agriculture and industry. For example, the IRGC, as a capitalist contractor, may have built a dam here and there, and in the process, like all other capitalist contractors, it has appropriated a huge share of the surplus value. The point to be emphasized here and in relation to the IRGC is that such cases are exceptions, and the main goal of the IRGC capitalists, who, like any other capitalist in any corner of the world, produce surplus value from labour, has been and is mostly to build dams that are an integral part of a huge investment in agriculture or industry. It is also important to mention here that, contrary to all those who somehow distinguish between state and non-state capital and suggest that the former belongs to “society” and the latter does not, the problem of the working class is absolutely not the state or private identity of capital. This class is in irreconcilable conflict with the very existence of capital. All the capital of society is the product of the exploitation of the working masses, and what the workers want is the complete elimination of the very capital nature of these products or results of labour. This requires the emergence and expression of a powerful anti-capitalist council movement. A movement that will dismantle the wage system and enable the planning of work, production, and human social life by councils composed of all human beings. Workers must know that under existing conditions, state and private capital are all capital, all the supreme power dominating us and engaging in our ever more horrific exploitation. The state is a tool to impose the productive, political and social order of capital on the working class, and one of its tasks is to indebt the masses (budget deficit and subsequent borrowing from banks) and allocate loans to increase capital profits or challenge the decline in interest rates. In this way, simply listing the projects of the Revolutionary Guards of capital in Iran and discussing them will not solve any problem of the workers of Iran, and in principle, any problem of the working class of any country in the international dimension. This is a bourgeois illusion in the minds of the masses and is rooted in the ideas of social democracy, which sees state capitalism as synonymous with socialism.
Per capita water availability in the Middle East and its surrounding region fell from 921 cubic meters per person in 2002 to 727 cubic meters per person in the following decade, with groundwater levels falling below the minimum threshold (1,000 cubic meters per person per year, Figure 23). Approximately 75% of the population in these countries is below the thirst threshold and half of this population is below the extreme thirst threshold (less than 500 cubic meters per person per year). Future climate change will make the living conditions of the working masses in this region even worse. A comparison of the historical climate change coefficient for the region in question shows that its climate has been steadily warming since 1950 (NCDC National Climatic Data Centre, Donat et al. 2014). A two-degree rise in the region’s temperature by 2040 is quite certain (UNESCWA 2013).
In Europe
In the case of Europe, the issue of water can begin with the Mediterranean Sea, where one of the earliest civilizations once flourished on its shores. The European water body, the Mediterranea Action Plan, wrote in 2014 that the Mediterranean Sea is almost closed because the Strait of Jabal al-Tariq in its west is only 14 kilometre’s wide and the Suez Canal connects this important European sea to the ocean by only a few meters. This is despite the fact that 3 billion cubic meters of wastewater (80% of all wastewaters from surrounding countries) flows into this sea without treatment every year. 80% of all harmful and dangerous substances that are dumped into this sea come from factories and industrial agriculture. 50% of the coastal cities of this sea lack water treatment systems. This sea, once the cradle of the oldest and most famous civilizations, where stories, myths, gods and religions flourished, is now a graveyard of industrial, agricultural and tourist waste between Africa and Europe. This is what capitalism does to even the human past, turning everything into fuel for its own accumulation and profit-making. Sewage, harmful industrial chemicals, plastics, oil spills from giant tankers constantly enter this water. (28% of the world’s oil ships travel through this sea, and 200,000 oil ships spill about 650,000 tons of oil into this sea every year.) The increase in water temperature as a result of the effects of greenhouse gases, the shallow depth of this sea (its average depth is 1,500 meters) has caused the death of most of the seabed. Urban and industrial waste also enters its waters through the rivers that flow into this sea, and according to some researchers, 90% of the waste in this sea is plastic. When plastic gradually breaks down due to sunlight and sea salt, it is absorbed by aquatic organisms such as plankton and reaches fish and ultimately humans through the bio-chain. According to research by a Belgian French organization, about 250 billion plastic Fibers are floating in the Mediterranean waters (Inremer & University of Liego, 2011), which in turn originates from 500 tons of floating plastic. The worst beaches in the Mediterranean are the western coasts of Spain and France, which are the most littered waters in the world (2,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometre, Green Peace, 2014). Barcelona alone dumps 6.4 million tons of waste into the sea every year, 80% of which is plastic. This is why, according to calculations from industrial fishing, the fish population in this sea has decreased by nearly 60%. In addition, the fish of this sea are chemical and harmful waste dumps, so that the amount of mercury in their bodies is much higher than fish of any sea. Chlorinated substances from plastics and DDT and PCB are also among them (Green paper on a European Strategy on plastic Waste in the Environment). Global plastic production in 1950 was about 1.5 million tons per year and this figure reached 45 million tons in 2008. The Baltic Sea is not in a better situation than the Mediterranean Sea. The only difference is that the information and research conducted on this sea is not as comprehensive and long as that of the Mediterranean Sea because its coastal countries have not yet been able to establish a joint organization for research in this field. The reason for this is that coastal states such as Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Finland and France each consider themselves to be environmental leaders!! and pretend that others are the cause of the pollution and death of this sea. But scattered studies have yielded similar results. About 95% of Baltic Sea birds have plastic in their stomachs and about 54,000 cubic meters of waste is dumped into the sea every year. The Baltic Sea has the highest concentration of radioactive materials in the world (HELCOM MORS, 2014) 53. This research institute, which began its work in the mid-1970s and has been measuring radioactive materials, mostly from nuclear reactors in the countries along the coast of this sea, believes that most of this material comes from the nuclear activities of Finland, Sweden, England and Russia. Finland dumps 1,000 times more radioactive materials into the Baltic Sea than Russia, and Sweden 100,000 times more than Russia. These studies show that radioactive materials left over from the Chernobyl accident only make up 10-15% of the radioactivity in this water, while 50% of it comes from the UK’s nuclear reactors. In 1990, the amount of caesium (an element resulting from radioactive activity) found in fish in this sea was 20 atomic units (Bq/kg) per kilogram of fish flesh, while by the end of the decade this amount had reached 50 units. The latest measurements off the coast of Sweden show a figure of 220-230 (Bq/kg). An important factor that distinguishes this sea from other open seas of the world is the water displacement and its exchange with ocean water, as only 1% of its water is exchanged with the ocean, which causes all harmful substances to remain in this water throughout its life and even increase. The garbage scenario in this sea is also similar to the Mediterranean and the Caspian Sea. As 20 thousand tons of industrial and household waste are dumped into this sea annually. The amount of mercury in seawater, which is generally caused by fossil fuels and coal, is so high in fish in this sea that the Swedish Food Safety Authority has banned the consumption of some of them by pregnant women and children and has limited their general consumption to once a week. All the extensive research that has been done on the amount of oxygen in this sea and the activities of its living organisms shows that most of the seabed is dead. The main cause of this, like other dead waters in the world, is the addition of chemical fertilizers and agricultural activities, which absorb oxygen and ultimately suffocate the plants and organisms on the bottom.
In Africa
In Africa, it must be said that, along with very high economic growth, poverty is rampant in most countries, as is the nature of capitalism. Many African countries have experienced more economic growth in the last few years than in the entire previous 40 years. Six African countries are now among the ten fastest growing economies in the world. In these years, astronomical figures of surplus value resulting from the exploitation of workers in the fields of mining, agriculture and livestock have exploded more than ever. According to reports, what capitalists and their governments call “GDP” grew annually in Angola by 11% between 2000 and 2012, Nigeria by 8.9%, Ethiopia by 8.4%, Chad by 7.9%, Mozambique by 7.9%, and Rwanda by 7.6%. Many other countries on the continent have had annual economic growth rates above 7% in the 10 years since 2000. Sierra Leone grew by 17.2% in 2012 (ACET, 2014). The ardent lovers of “independent national industry” usually argue that this is not growth!! Because the export of agricultural raw materials, minerals and ores has made a significant contribution to “net production”!! Naturally, they are retelling the dreams of a certain stratum of the bourgeoisie, but what is real is that the vast mass of African workers has produced this huge volume of annual social product and this huge mass of surplus values has created. Another important point is that at the same time and in the context of this remarkable economic growth, access to drinking water and washing has become one of the acute problems of the continent’s workers. One of the problems that the capitalist industrial agriculture of this continent face is a special situation that, as usual, the capitalist system itself has imposed on the continent’s labour force. The labour force of most African countries succumbs to death very quickly due to the pressure of hunger and the lack of minimal health care. The percentage of these deaths is so high that the inhumane capitalists who exploit workers are also “grieved” by being deprived of the long-term, horrific exploitation of experienced labour for decades!! In other words, the labour force in these countries is at a lower level in terms of nutrition, education, and health than other regions of the world from the moment they are born (UN World Development Report, 2015). In this regard, the role of water, or in other words, polluted water, is very important for energy production and agriculture. Here, as in other capitalist societies, the share of the working masses in water is the last remaining after all the different areas of capital accumulation have been harvested, and as everywhere, the shortage of water in each area of capital is compensated by the excess of the share of the working masses. All these issues that have been said about the working masses of Africa indicate that the dimensions of the poverty of these workers of the world and the wages they receive from the production of billions of capital do not even compensate for their return to work the next day, and they even sacrifice their lives to produce surplus values much more than their counterparts in some other places. Their standard of living is lower than all their counterparts in the world. The wages they receive are not enough for the lowest level of reproduction of their labour power. What is clear in these ten years is that far less work and investment has been made in drinking water and sanitation on this continent than in any other region in the world. The lack of sanitation and clean drinking water is a major factor in the premature death of the workforce in this part of the world. No government or government agency on this continent is consistently addressing the water problem. As a result, only 5% of the continent’s usable water is accessible. Despite growing urbanization, only 57% of Africa’s working class has access to electricity (IEA, 2013). In 2012, only 36% of the continent’s poor had access to running water, and 70% of these people did not have access to a toilet (WHO and UNICEF, 2014). All this means that capital, in its expanding reproduction, is denying them even the most basic and vital need: drinking water. In addition, the extent of the pressure and invasion of capital on the livelihood of the working masses is so great that even the cost of water and electricity is terrifying. Now that capital has, in the course of this process, maximized the pressure of labour exploitation and increased the level of wear and tear and depreciation of African workers in order to reduce the price of labour to the most outrageous extent possible, the talk of capitalists investing in providing drinking water and sanitation for workers would be more than a joke if not pure demagoguery. Apart from the factors mentioned, climate change has had major destructive effects on this continent. Agriculture is the Achilles heel of this continent; the low productivity of millions of small farmers who live in poverty has turned them into simple workers and forced them to migrate to the cities. All these are processes of human extinction and the sacrifice of all life and the survival of billions of workers on the threshold of a more massive capital invasion. The time has come for capitalist relations to be overthrown and relations to be established in accordance with the real needs and desires of all human beings and based on the preservation and conservation of nature. Certainly, if such a change is not made soon and perhaps it is too late now, this system and relations of production will destroy the lives of billions of people under the pressure of the bottlenecks, contradictions and problems of their own reproduction and, most importantly, the narrowing of the possibilities of capital accumulation.
Figure 23 Share of usable water reservoirs (fresh water) in the Middle East and its periphery in cubic meters per year and per person in the country in 2011 49 (Iran’s share in these calculations is empty and if we trust the Ministry of Energy’s calculation, this share was 1550 cubic meters for each Iranian in November 2014).
Chapter 4
Deadly Climate Change, the Inevitable Result of Intensified Capital Accumulation
Capital, in the process of its development and domination, has turned and is turning everything, absolutely everything, into a commodity. The most general and natural phenomena of nature, such as water and soil, with the formation of capitalist relations of production and the transformation of labour into a commodity, lost their former status and became goods that could be bought and sold. This is true of all phenomena. Governments, hospitals, and clinics have become centres for the purchase and sale of 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 their own and their children’s basic needs. For about two decades, the capitalist governments of Sweden, Iceland and some other countries have been selling embryonic stem cells to large biogenetic and pharmaceutical companies. The commodification of each and every organ of the human body is a forced phenomenon of the existence and survival of capitalism. On the one hand, capital creates new diseases and crippled organs by polluting every aspect of the living environment, and on the other hand, it forces the working masses to sell their body parts under the pressure of poverty, deprivation and hunger. You must remember the days when the advanced universities and biochemistry institutes of the world were completely discovering and unlocking all the genetic codes of humans, that is, DNA. It has not been long since about 30,000 proteins of the human body were molecularly identified. The giant capitalist corporations started a huge and competitive war for the ownership of these discoveries. What was the result of this war, which trusts eliminated the competitors, which international industrial and military companies currently have the largest share in the production of biological goods, or similar matters, with all their importance, is not the subject of our discussion here. The point to emphasize is that the process of dissolving everything in the process of profit production is inherent, ongoing, and permanent in capitalism. This system decides what the vast mass of workers throughout the world will eat, not eat, starve to death, or, if they 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 are naked and bare in the cold and heat, whether they have a roof over their heads or whether they are left without a hut or a house, and in the first case, how and from what the materials, mortar, and fine construction and architecture of this nest are produced. The process of commodification of air has also begun a long time ago. The air that all humans and living beings, both plants and animals, have breathed for millions of years, and that humans have inhaled without paying a price or enduring any fear during their short lives, is now all under the pressure of the profit-seeking process of capital. For a century, capital has been converting the components and elements of the air into commodities that can be bought and sold, and this process is expanding faster with the progress of capital in more delicate areas of commodity production, such as the production of electronic devices, astronomical instruments, pharmaceuticals, oil products and their derivatives, and chemical and petrochemical products. Elements of the air (the earth’s atmosphere) such as oxygen, nitrogen (these two together make up 99% of the air), inert or rare gases (these gases do not combine with almost any element or substance) such as argon, neon, krypton, and xenon are obtained from the distillation of liquid air and are used in countless and expanding areas of capital reserves. In the process of its commodity production, capital not only converts the components of the air into commodities, but also sends all its waste, production residues, and toxins into space as air pollutants at no cost, thus spending huge sums of money, just as it does on water and land.
Monsoon rains: The world’s most powerful weather phenomenon, which plays a very important role in determining the seasons from Australia to the Himalayas, is known by this name. When the Asian monsoon rains do not occur, the resulting drought can determine the fate of large parts of Asia, almost half of the world’s population. For thousands of years, the inhabitants of countries such as India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Burma, parts of China, Cambodia, etc. have lived by celebrating this phenomenon, turning these praises into religions, rituals and traditions. Whether the monsoon season starts and ends on time is a matter that profoundly affects the lives of people and animals from Australia to India, at least for parts of the year. The entire air flow begins where the hot, dry Australian summer heats the vast land like a frying pan, and the waves of the sea, hitting its warm shores, cause the accumulation of water vapor that gradually turns into formidable clouds. The heat from Australia’s surface warms the air in the region and sends it high into the atmosphere, while simultaneously drawing in new, cold air from the sea. When the sea breezes hit the Australian coast, the vapours from this intersection rise into space. The vapours condense at high altitudes to form condensed water vapor, while the lower clouds near the ground reach kilometres high, and between the two, a huge amount of electricity is generated. The energy released by this collision is equivalent to that of an atomic bomb. The result of this accumulation of electrical energy is 1,000 lightning bolts per hour. As these lightning bolts occur, the air in the area reaches 25,000 degrees Celsius (four times the temperature of the surface of the sun). At this time, the monsoon rains begin. Gradually, these rains cover Sumatra and its rainforests, quenching the long-standing thirst of these vast forests. Every year, in the spring, a large amount of rain falls from Cambodia to India. In April, Cambodia’s Mekong River, known as the mother of Water, is low in water. The monsoon rains have not yet reached Cambodia, and during this period, the river and lakes in the country are almost empty of water. However, with the onset of the monsoon, the lakes and the river fill up with water. Fish is one of the main foods of the Cambodian people, who are the largest consumers of fish in the world. In Thailand, the monsoon rains reach the forests of Thailand in May. As spring turns to summer, warm air rises from the earth and in return water vapor is absorbed by the land from the Indian Ocean, marking the peak of the monsoon, which in India begins at the tip of the subcontinent. The average rainfall in Sweden, one of the wettest countries in the world, is 700 mm per year (about the same as Mazandaran Province in Iran), while in India during the monsoon it is 1000 mm per day and this process continues for four months. At this time, everything changes. While during the dry season, a large part of the subcontinent is dry, during the rainy season, the entire vast country of India and its neighbouring regions turn green. When the monsoon rains are at their most intense, 17 million tons of water fall every minute, the most intense of their kind in the world. The whole of East Asia is green everywhere, and vast forests are submerged up to the waist in water. When the monsoon rains come, lakes swell to about eight times their normal volume, providing food for animals and humans. In the dry lakes, where wooden shacks on stilts are turned into fishing huts as farmlands are submerged, the Bay of Bengal, bordered by the Himalayas on land, becomes the wettest region in the world, and the great Brahmaputra River floods. When the water turns to dry land, the remaining sediments become a source of food for agricultural land. In Bangladesh, about 70 percent of the country is subject to flooding. The gulf where the Brahmaputra meets the Ganges is the most fertile land in the world (the world’s largest delta). The sediments in this area are up to a kilometre deep. In October, when the monsoon rains end, the last fish in the rivers of this area are a source of food for humans during the autumn and winter, so that the rivers of Cambodia produce 13,000 tons of fish annually. (The most fish in a river.) Fish also means money in Cambodian. Let’s look at the capital’s role in these waters, rains, and lakes and their impact on human life. In recent decades, these life-giving rains have become environmental disasters. The Asian monsoons, which for thousands of years brought greenery, increased and enriched soil content for thriving agriculture, have now become a destructive factor. And this is due to acid rain, the death, disease, and misery that capitalism has brought to the workers of Asia. The most important cause of acid rain is the precipitation of nitrogen and sulphur oxides from the use of fossil fuels such as oil and coal. These oxides, combined with moisture in the air, produce nitric and sulfuric acids. Acidification of soil, groundwater, lakes and wetlands is a result of these rains. Fish in these lakes and wetlands are reduced, and acid rain causes a decrease in 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. Monsoon acidification has been recorded by the China Meteorological Administration (CMA-ARMN) 54 since 1992. Data from 1992 to 2006 show that when monsoons are more intense, their acidity increases by 0.33 pH units (lower pH) compared to the normal period. In other words, the acidity of monsoons during intense monsoons is 65% higher than that of moderate monsoons (Figure 3).
Figure 24 shows the increase in acidification (low pH ∆) with the intensity of monsoon rains (●) in Beijing between 2001 and 2004. 78% of the annual rainfall falls in the months of June to September 55.
At the same time, experiments and data obtained in this report 54 show that most of the changes in acid rain are caused by toxic gases from traffic, factories, agricultural chemical fertilizers and other factors resulting from the development of capitalism in these areas. Acid rain has been one of the most important environmental problems in China since 1970. The emergence of this phenomenon coincided with the astronomical growth of capitalism in this country, especially in the south and southwest, and later in central China. Among the ions that cause the acidification of monsoon rains, sulphates, nitrates, and carbonates, which themselves are caused by sulphur oxide, nitrogen oxide, and carbon dioxide, are all gifts of capitalism to the entire world. Similar studies conducted almost simultaneously in India confirm the damaging effects of acidification of monsoon rains. 56 These oxides combine with moisture in the air to produce nitric, sulfuric, and carbonic acids. Acidification of soils, groundwater, lakes, and wetlands is a result of these rains. Acid rain not only reduces soil mineral content due to unequal competition with harmful heavy metal elements such as lead, cadmium, mercury and arsenic, but also facilitates their circulation in the air, soil and water, especially by releasing heavy metals. We have discussed the issue of acid rain and its harmful consequences for the health of the working masses of the world in numerous articles, and here, considering the importance and enormous dimensions of monsoon rains, we draw the attention of workers to the role of acidification of these rains in the release of some heavy metal elements of the soil in the countries where these rains fall, which is a vast area where the most important plant material for the majority of the world’s workers, namely rice, is cultivated.
The phenomenon of acidification of monsoon rains adds a new dimension to the air flow, which is, for example, the main cause of high arsenic in rice cultivated in China, India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh. It is important to note that rice has been the main supplier of energy-rich food (carbohydrates) for the majority of the world’s population for nearly two decades, and the countries mentioned are its main producers. For this reason, arsenic, which is a toxic and carcinogenic substance, threatens the health of a large part of the consumer masses. Here, it seems necessary to mention another important point: arsenic in the soil of these areas enters the organism through the roots of the plant and through this way penetrates the grain, that is, rice, and for this reason it is not destroyed by washing and cooking rice. Although the long-term effects of arsenic on the body, such as the occurrence of various types of cancer, are not hidden from anyone, this is not something that will be evident the next day by eating rice today. But the destructive effects of monsoon rains and winds are as clear as day to us, given the location and living conditions of hundreds of millions of poor working masses in the regions that are under the pressure of this weather phenomenon every year. If millions of poor agricultural workers in China, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Thailand, Burma, Cambodia and Laos used to obtain edible plants and fish suitable for their diet thanks to the benefits of monsoon rains, and of course, in proportion to the price of their labour, today they no longer have the same. A large part of these workers, enduring the more severe pressures of capitalism, have joined the vast hordes of chained people who live in slums and slums on the outskirts of cities and on riverbanks, seashores, and in short, places where even animals avoid living. These places are the worst places due to their exposure to winds and monsoon storms and the subsequent rains, and we witness their huge victims every year. For hundreds of millions of poor workers in these regions, the monsoon rains are no longer life-giving rains, but under the attention of capitalist relations, they have now become the focus of human disasters that claim the lives of thousands of workers and displace hundreds of thousands every year. With the onset of winds and monsoon rains, all the sewage and factory water enters the lives of its inhabitants, causing various diseases. These cities, which were created without any accounting, without any water supply or sewage system, were created solely by the gathering of workers. Even with a strong breeze, their entire structure collapses, and the environment of their residents becomes a swamp of faces and factory sewage. Environmental pollution caused by the spread of urban and industrial sewage into the surface and deep waters of these regions not only directly causes illness to their residents, but also creates a plague, along with monsoon rains, that humanity has never seen before. Most importantly, it is the new dimensions of these disasters every year that give the history of capitalist relations a new colour in terms of criminality.
Yellow Dust weather phenomenon in China, Korea and Japan
What was said above about monsoons also applies to the wind and air currents we are going to describe here. Wind and air were also a natural meteorological phenomenon until centuries ago and before the onset of capitalist nightmares. The air current we are discussing started from the east of the Caspian Sea and ended in eastern China. The fate of this air flow gradually changed with the drying up of the Aral Sea (Khwarazm Sea) in Kazakhstan. This lake, which was the fourth largest lake in the world until 1960, was a major source of water for the region. With the agricultural policies of the Soviet camp, ordered by the Central Committee and implemented by managers who engineered the production of surplus value, all the plains of this region were transformed into cotton and rice fields, exploiting the almost free labour of millions of working masses. The immediate result of this process, which continues even after the collapse of the former Soviet Union, was the rapid decline of the lake’s water. In 2010, its water level fell to less than a tenth of its previous levels. The incalculable increase in salt, like other lakes, rivers, and wetlands on the planet, plus the consequences of years of military-nuclear testing in the region, the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and all the remnants of industrial projects from the Soviet state capitalist era and beyond, led to the emergence of a new phenomenon called Yellow Dust. This phenomenon, which generally begins in spring with winds from the eastern side of the Caspian Sea and travels to East Asia, carries light and low-weight particles of salt, sediments from the plains left by the lake, other pollutants such as those mentioned above, and finally pollutants from industrial cities on its way into the air flow under discussion. The indicator of this ominous environmental disaster is thick yellow fog and smoke (Smog), which obstructs human vision and causes pulmonary complications and other diseases. Meanwhile, the increase in sulphur particles, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, carbon particles, aluminium, heavy metals (cadmium, lead and zinc), other carcinogenic substances including polyaromatics and phthalates, radioactive substances, bacteria and fungi, give new dimensions to this disaster. The area of passage of this air flow is the vast distance of the plains of Kazakhstan, the cities of China, Russia, the plains of Mongolia, the cities of Russia, North and South Korea to Japan. These particles even reach the east coast of America and the phenomenon of air pollution caused by them acquires new dimensions every year. So much so that this year (February 2015) parts of the mentioned areas, especially the cities of Seoul and Pyongyang, had darkened for days 57,58.
Air pollution in Iran is part of the capital crime case in this part of the world.
In December 2013, the World Health Organization recognized Ahvaz as the most polluted city in the world for the second time, with Sanandaj and Kermanshah also among the top ten. The history of these honours can be traced back decades, but the current state of air quality in Iranian cities only reveals a small part of the brutality and decay of the Iranian capitalist regime. Light, air, and fresh air, which are the most vital human needs, are no longer natural phenomena available to humans. They all revolve around the valuation and profiteering of capital, and the extent to which workers have access to them, or whether they are healthy or not, is subject to the will of the tyrannical and all-powerful capital. To find them, like other goods, money must be paid. The filth, putrefaction, and stench of capitalism and what is called the cesspool of human civilization have invaded all channels of human existence to an extreme extent. The most brutal methods and means of production are used to make a mountain of profit from human labour, to sacrifice the most vital needs of human survival for the greater profit of capital. Hor al-Azim, or the Great Wetland of Hoveyzeh, is the largest wetland in Khuzestan Province and one of the largest wetlands in Iran. The area of this wetland, as far as it is located in Iran, is 2% of the total area of Khuzestan Province, which is of course one third of the total wetland, two thirds of which are located in Iraq (Figure 25). The Azadegan oil field, which is the third largest oil field in the world after the Ghawar oil field in Saudi Arabia and the Burgan oil field in Kuwait, is located below this wetland. Since the Shah’s regime, plans to drain this wetland to access the oil resources beneath it had been underway, but after the Iran-Iraq war, this gained momentum, and oil extraction began in 1997, and in 2000, the China National Petroleum Corporation became the main contractor for this large project. The draining of this wetland turned the water border between Iran and Iraq into dry land, and instead of aquatic ecosystems and vegetation, only oil rigs are visible in this area. The result of this work, in simple words from the people of the region, is as follows: “What we have seen during these eight years confirms that the oil company is preventing water from entering the Hur and, on the other hand, is removing water from the Hur from the Iraqi side to facilitate the work of drying the Hur and extracting oil. This dries the wetland and what remains is soil that is spread in the air of the region as the air warms and the wind blows. To the extent that in the summers you can barely see a meter ahead.” According to reports, the activities of the Iranian Oil Company and the National Oil Company are currently focused on the northern part of this dried-up wetland, and 59 oil wells are operating in this area, which means that oil production has just begun. An expert from the National Iranian Oil Company, who did not want to be named, said in an interview: “Since the oil field is located completely inside the lagoon and the depth of the lagoon water at its deepest points does not even reach four meters, it is not financially viable to install a rig to extract oil.” The most economical thing to do is to dry it, and of course, if the Environmental Protection Agency declares the need, we can mulch the surrounding land at our own expense after drying the wetland water.” Of course, this is completely contrary to the history of the National Iranian Oil Company’s activities in this area. A look at the satellite image below shows that not only the capitalist government of Iran but also the Iraqi government has acted to dry this large wetland with the aim of accessing oil resources at a low cost, and by 2000, only a very small part of this large wetland in Iran and Iraq remained. The main issue here is its catastrophic consequences. A disaster that the masses of the region have understood well. The winds combined with the soil particles of this region and the general pollution caused by smoke and particles from factories, traffic, heavy metals and oil pollution from oil extraction have caused the flow of life of the masses of workers to stop from time to time, not only in Khuzestan but in recent years even in Kurdistan and Azerbaijan.
Figure 25: The drying of the Hur Wetland (Hor al-Azim, from 1973 to 2000) began during the Shah’s reign, and now (2015) less than 10 percent of it remains. Instead, 59 oil extraction centres have been built, and on the other hand, it has become a vast desert of soft soil soaked in oil pollutants that, with the slightest breeze, turns dark and pollutes the air from Khuzestan Province to Azerbaijan. Meanwhile, the fact that the officials of the capitalist governments of the region, including Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and Turkey, blame each other does not diminish the dimensions of their disasters and only exposes the charlatanism of the rulers of capital. The Anatolian Project in Turkey, based on which more than 22 dams and 19 hydroelectric power projects will be built in the Tigris and Euphrates watersheds, is causing the drying up of the wetlands of Turkey and the course of these two great rivers and the spread of the air disaster further. Although accurate and precise statistics on the level of air pollution and its results and effects are not published in Iran, the scattered reports of the regime’s organs reveal at least some of the truth. In a report published in the fall of 2011, Fars News Agency wrote, among other things, about the causes of air pollution in Ahvaz: “According to the latest studies of air pollution in Ahvaz, the oil industry is responsible for the largest share of environmental pollutants and their release into the air around Ahvaz due to the burning of large amounts of sulphur-containing gases (2SO) and waste liquids in fire pits, the emission of carbon monoxide (CO) and particles. The next largest pollution load from sulphur dioxide (2SO) is in the electricity industry, especially the Ramin Power Plant, which is a result of heavy fossil fuel consumption (For more information on these substances and particles and the damage caused by them, see Appendix 2 at the end of this book). Regarding the emission of suspended particulate matter, the largest share of emissions belongs to steel factories, and the largest percentage of hydrocarbon emissions belongs to the production activities of non-metallic mineral industries. According to these studies, although the amount of dust decreases noticeably during the cold and humid seasons of the year (January and February), the amount of carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides increases significantly, which is dangerous given the stability of the air during these seasons. These studies show that the total of these emissions causes the air pollution level in Ahvaz to always be at least twice the standard limit.” According to reports from websites in January 2012, residents of the capital have only enjoyed clean air for 200 days each year over the past 10 years, spending the rest of the days in unhealthy air or under alert conditions. In January of last year, the Islamic Republic’s health minister’s advisor announced that 4,460 people had died in Tehran due to air pollution in one year. The Kermanshah Provincial Environmental Laboratory Affairs Department told the Islamic Republic of Iran News Agency (IRNA) on July 25, 2015: “The average dust concentration in Kermanshah reached 710 micrograms per cubic meter of air, which is four times the standard limit and indicates a crisis situation.” It should be noted that according to the standards of the Capital Environment Organization in Iran, the amount of fine dust in the air of each city is normal up to 100 micrograms per cubic meter. From 100 to 250 micrograms per cubic meter is “alert conditions”, from 250 to 350 micrograms per cubic meter is “emergency conditions”, and above this amount is subject to the designation of a critical situation. According to the report of the Environmental Department of the same city, last year the total number of unhealthy days in Kermanshah reached 24 days, of which 22 days were in alert conditions, one day in emergency conditions, and one day in crisis conditions. The Meteorological Organization of Khuzestan Province announced that in February of last year, the dust concentration in some cities of Khuzestan Province reached 66 times the permissible limit! Also, officials of the capitalist government of Iran announced in July 2015 that although a complete investigation of the amount of waste caused by the drying of Lake Urumia has not been conducted, the “Urumia Lake Restoration Headquarters” said that with the drying of the lake, fine dust is seriously threatening people’s health. According to this organization, problems such as eye irritation, lung cancer, skin and respiratory diseases, and high blood pressure are among the consequences of this environmental event for residents of the areas surrounding Iran’s largest inland lake.
In addition, the drying up of Lake Urumia has led to the migration of 7 million people as a result of salt storms, desertification, and the spread of sand. According to the organization, “currently, agriculture on the eastern and northwestern shores of Lake Urmia has disappeared, and salt dust has put people’s lives at risk in terms of health and well-being, and skin cancer in animals and humans has increased more than 30 times.” It is also important to note that the masses of the people of Sistan and Baluchestan, despite living hundreds of kilometres away from Khuzestan, complain greatly about air pollution and the increase in dust concentration in the region. Here, too, the air pollution level has reached 35 times the global standard and sandstorms are creating disasters. Capital government officials say that air pollution has become more severe for 18 years ago and the duration of the 120-day wind season has now reached more than 150 days. The reason is the same as we said about Khuzestan and Azerbaijan, namely the drying up of lakes and wetlands, which continues at a rapid pace. The occurrence of these disasters in the provinces of Fars, Khuzestan, Sistan and Baluchestan and other regions of Iran is not a new phenomenon. The most important factors are as follows. In recent decades, a large number of dams have been built on rivers in Iran, including the rivers of Fars and Khuzestan provinces, and in Afghanistan on the Helmand River. These dams control the water that would flow into lakes and wetlands. The destruction of the aqueduct system and the replacement of surface water extraction and the digging of deep wells to extract water from deep underground (for agriculture) have led to a decrease in the groundwater level, which in turn limits the water resources of the wetlands. The main purpose of building dams (generally funded by the Revolutionary Guards) is to provide electricity and water for large-scale industrial crops. Building dams for the purpose of providing energy disrupts the water balance over large geographical areas. This means that first, the accumulation of water in one place causes intense evaporation and wastage. Second, by preventing it from passing through its thousands of years old path, the water reservoirs of these paths gradually dry up (one of the reasons for the drying up of the canals). Third, as the natural path of the rivers dries up, the possibility of greenery and the ecosystem impact of the rivers on the surrounding environment is lost. In contrast, deserts and salt marshes are expanding and bringing with them a greater influx of fine dust. As we said about the Yellow Dust weather phenomenon, desertification, along with pollution from traffic, factory smoke, agricultural pesticides, heavy metals, and various chemicals, has created a complex phenomenon that only increases the suffering and misery of the millions of working people of Iran. Why do the IRGC and other capitalists in Afghanistan, Turkey, etc. do this? Because this energy supply system is one of the cheapest and most hassle-free energy production techniques for capitalists in this area. Because industrial capitalist agriculture is thirsty for water, this is a cheap raw material. A substance for which there is a deep competition and a relentless war between different sectors of capital for access to it. The capitalist beasts are not willing to give up the astronomical profits from the use of this low-cost commodity. The capitalists and their governments are not at all thinking about planning to combat air pollution, the destruction of surface and underground water reserves. This is the nature of capitalism that has turned the world into a series of various environmental holocausts. Air pollution and destruction, the transformation of natural atmospheric phenomena into destructive factors, are the inevitable result of the existence and survival of these production relations and the transformation of everything into commodities. Something we observe everywhere, in every pore of capitalist existence, in the field of food production, industrial agriculture, energy production, and other areas of capital advance. With the aim of achieving greater profits, capital is engaged in poisoning the working masses with pesticides, chemical additives to food, massive extraction of oil and minerals harmful to humans and living nature, destruction of water, air pollution, incalculable increase in greenhouse gases, etc. In all its fields of advance, capital is engaged in a fierce competition for raw materials and the lowest possible cost of these goods, and in the scope of this competition, it sacrifices humanity as far as the eye can see. Here, the role of various organizations and organs of capitalist governments in covering up and hiding the root cause of the suffering of the working masses is very important because they cannot deny the reality of these destructions, but all their efforts are to make them seem natural, formulate them in the form of figures and calculations, and ultimately feed this sloppy mess to the working masses.
In Europe, so-called environmental laws separate toxic gases from polluting particles in the air for outdoor air and set a certain limit and unit for each. This limit, in turn, changes based on the number of times the air becomes critical per year. This means that whenever the air becomes critical per hour, the amount of harmful gases should not exceed a certain limit. (micrograms per cubic meter of air, µg/m3) and this of course depends on the number of pollution events per year. The higher the number of events per year, the lower the threshold (red line of gases per cubic meter). This calculation is also applied to each separate toxic gas and has a separate red line. The same rules apply to airborne particulate matter, considering that the size of the particles (PM, particulate matter) is itself an influential unit in the degree of health threat. In this case, the concentration of particulate matter is 10 µm (10 micrometres or less than 10 microns in diameter).
The above-mentioned thresholds have a different fate, even in Europe they change from time to time, it goes without saying that in other parts of the world from America to China and Japan there are also various red lines for the acceptable limit (red line) of air pollution. A question arises here. That capitalist organizations and research institutes publish their achievements regarding air pollution in various and sometimes apparently contradictory ways. Doesn’t it mean that the reality of air pollution is something outside the relative relationships or types of measurements that they express? Apart from these statistics and measurements, are there no other undeniable facts that show that the air we breathe today is much more polluted with gases and particles harmful to human health and polluting nature than it was decades ago? If the relationship between these various red lines and the reality of air pollution is not arbitrary, contingent, and baseless, if this relationship is not deceptively designed but fundamental and real, then all these air research organizations and their governments should state just one issue. It is vital that any air pollution, in any amount, is harmful to human health. They must accept that in fact there is no conflict between these organizations over the air being polluted, what is pretended to be a conflict is just demagoguery and lies. Each meteorological organization expresses the existing reality of air pollution in its own style and manner, and over time, depending on the amount of these particles, their frequency of repetition also changes. This means that the relative quorums only reveal a corner of reality, and the purpose of putting them forward is to establish and make them acceptable to the masses of the people. Therefore, all these shows are just for playing on the stage, otherwise no capitalist government or its affiliated institutions would even think about purifying the air and eliminating the concerns of the working masses about diseases caused by air pollution. They themselves know that this is impossible in capitalist relations of production. The main message of these organs of capital to the working masses is that a little poison, dirt, and carcinogens in the air are not that dangerous. In fact, air pollution, regardless of the amount, the threshold, and the degree, is a red line, and this is true of all the poisons that capital gives us. In this regard, many are trying to show that since the level of air pollution in some capitalist countries is not as high as in Iran, they are presenting them as models of ideal societies and, by establishing green parties or similar programs, they can take action against the impurities of Iranian capitalism, and thus breathe new life into its dying body with reforms in this direction. These groups or individuals, however, are and think that they are just a bunch of incurably backward people. First, the governments, institutions, and representatives of the long-standing ruling capital, who, by understanding the historical situation of this system, have realized with their historically backward, reactionary intellect that they must change the meaning of reform, and they have done so. For the bourgeoisie, unlike in the distant past, reform is not a retreat from the workers anywhere in the world; on the contrary, it is only the organization of the most terrible nightmarish attacks against their remaining existence and non-existence in all areas, including the environment. The speed and enormous dimensions of capital accumulation, the rapidity of the fall in the rate of profit, the relentless competition of capital, the rapidity of the return of crises and the unprecedented crushing of each crisis demand that bourgeois governments and parties do so, and they do so with all ferocity. Secondly, and for this reason, the whole nonsense of the bourgeois romanticist reformists is rejected and unresponsive from the point of view of the governments and rulers of capital. The mission of this group has historically been to deceive and create illusions to eliminate the threat of the anti-capitalist movement of the working masses from capital, but look at capital, which has even boarded up the shop of these illusionists, its own guards. Responding to the illusions of the working masses requires a lot of money and capital is in a situation where it is not only unwilling to pay any costs, but every day it has to patch up a new part of the life of the worker that was slaughtered yesterday and calluses it with the challenge of reducing its profit rate. As far as the working masses of the world, including Iran, are concerned, there is no other way forward. We must fight against capital and pursue this war with the conscious Marxist orientation of the complete abolition of wage labour. As long as this has not happened and as long as the labour movement has not been transformed into a global war, naturally both the rulers of capital and the demagogue reformists of the opposition will have the opportunity to achieve a new form of deception and lies every day. But they, even the apparently non-systemic researchers! Should know that what they say is neither a scientific explanation for environmental disasters nor are they able to propose any solutions. Their entire propaganda revolves around the idea that it is possible to live a healthy life by maintaining capitalist production relations!! As if the workers should accept that all these socially destructive phenomena are natural and accidental matters and the force of nature and have no relation to the capitalist mode of production!
Brain and mental illnesses caused by air pollutants
In previous sections of these articles, we discussed the destructive effects of air pollution on human health and the role of these pollutants in causing diseases such as lung and respiratory tract infections, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), stroke, lung cancer, stroke, and heart disease. The scope of the destruction and pathogenicity of the aforementioned pollution, however, has been continuously expanding in recent years, in parallel with and in step with the increasingly widespread invasion of capitalism into all aspects of human life, and up to the present moment, diseases such as dementia, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s, i.e. diseases of the nervous system and brain, have also been added to it. Previously, attention was usually paid to gases emitted into the air from traffic smoke, gases resulting from industrial activities (radioactive substances, carbon monoxide and dioxide, sulphur gases, polyaromatics, and phthalates), but now the scope of exploration has broadened and includes particles emitted into the air such as heavy metals, carbon particles, rubber and asphalt wear particles, nanoparticles (see Appendix 2 at the end of this book), sand and dust particles, etc. If previously we were talking about 10,000 to 100,000 particles per cubic meter of air, now we are talking about millions of particles per cubic meter and their effect on producing diseases. Particles that not only cause the diseases mentioned above but are also important reasons for the emergence and spread of complex and hitherto unknown diseases, namely degenerative brain diseases. While coarse particles do not pass below the upper respiratory tract, fine and ultra-fine particles enter the brain through the nose and nervous system, gradually causing brain diseases.
Autopsies and research on the brains of people who have lived in high-traffic areas show the occurrence of these diseases along with the damage caused by these particles in certain parts of the brain, and this has been confirmed in research conducted on people who work and live in the workplace or in densely populated and high-traffic residential areas of cities subject to air pollution such as smoke and dust (smog). Of course, the results of the aforementioned research do not absolutely contradict the idea that these tiny and very tiny particles enter the respiratory tract, because the smaller the particles, the deeper they penetrate the cavities of the lungs, where they cause lung diseases, and when they enter the bloodstream through the vessels, they cause blood and heart diseases (Figure 28). Many European and American countries have passed laws to control traffic in terms of gas and particulate emissions for decades and have also created and enacted large institutions such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Clean Air Act in 1970. Institutions and measures that have had significant effects on the air quality of the cities of these countries, but first, in a sense, they have played the role of a posthumous panacea, because they have always emerged after repeated warning signals, after massacres and the outbreak of diseases, and especially after the factors and causes of these diseases have left their chronic effects for a long time, and have not played a preventive role. Second, these measures have sought to eliminate and alleviate the symptoms and have less addressed the underlying causes of the problem. Third, the authorities have always agreed to these manipulations and manipulations and have set a quorum table for these bureaucratic adjustments, but they have never wanted to eradicate the problem and are only bringing the issues to a head with parliamentary arguments between representatives of the bourgeoisie and the profit-seeking elites. Fourth, capitalist production continually adds bigger and more complex problems to the previous ones, for example, even though the air in European cities and most American cities is better than in other parts of the world, even though pollution from car engines has decreased and the amount of gasoline and diesel consumption has decreased, even though the mandatory catalytic converter system has made the smoke from engine fuel cleaner, or the pollution from heating homes with coal has decreased (of course, all this is due to the intensification of the more brutal exploitation of workers and the spread of costs over the low price of their labour). But the level of air pollution and the extent of the damage and disease caused by this pollution have not improved worldwide but have worsened. As a result, about 15% (46 million) of the American population now suffers from chronic lung disease and 44 million people suffer from respiratory ailments. This is the conclusion of a study published in Mother Jones magazine by researchers at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s) 59. But this is not all true, because the above research focuses only on a new area of diseases that, until now, have apparently not been discussed as being related to air pollution.
Figure 26 shows the size of particles (in micrometres or one millionth of a meter, µm) compared to the diameter of a human hair (50-70 µm) and sand particles (90 µm) along with the distance each group of particles can travel in space. While sand particles and ultrafine particles travel about 10 km with the wind, fine particles travel thousands of kilometres.
Around the world, 50 million people suffer from Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. The situation is even worse in cities in India and China, where the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that their air pollution levels are 3 to 6 times higher than their own standards. It goes without saying that if the air quality and pollution in Iranian cities is not worse than in Chinese and Indian cities, it will not be better. Many studies and researchers have tried to link diseases such as Parkinson’s, MS, and Alzheimer’s to the presence of compounds of this element in the body by pointing to factors such as genetics, viral diseases, high fat, and the spread of aluminium in the body (this element passes through the protective tissues of the brain and fetus, causing damage to these organs, and neurotoxicity and brain toxicity are among its complications 60). But this research, except for the case of aluminium or possibly some other factors, has not been able to answer many scientific questions in this field. While air pollutants have been shown in recent studies to play an important role in the occurrence of degenerative brain diseases. Although it is not yet known whether these are the initiators of the process of producing these diseases or their accelerators. Among the factors that always play a role in intensifying and weakening the effect of polluting particles on the organs of the body, in addition to the chemical content of the particles, is their size. So that large particles at the beginning of the respiratory tract cause coughing and lung reactions and are thrown out, while smaller particles penetrate the lower cavities of the lungs, and even smaller particles enter the brain through delicate nerve channels (Figure 28).
If large particles do not pass through the upper respiratory tract, fine and ultrafine particles can instead pass through narrow nerve channels into the brain, thus beginning a journey that ultimately leads to Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases 61. In experiments on mice exposed to gases and particles from traffic pollution, their brains showed traces of these particles and gases. Even dogs living on the smoky streets of Mexico City showed signs of dementia. In a study in Mexico City, a city with 20 million people, 3.5 million cars and many factories, a city that almost every year receives the prestigious award of the dirtiest city in the world in terms of air. Ground-level ozone, particulate matter, bacteria and metal particles are among the most important components of the city’s air. These components were the focus of a study that was conducted on dogs in this city and on their brain, structure using the MR camera technique. The result of this study opened a new window on the science of diagnosing brain diseases because here, for the first time, profound changes and signs of brain infection and Alzheimer’s were seen in dogs in connection with air pollution 61. Dogs live longer than mice and are more likely to develop brain disease later in life. Furthermore, dementia has been seen in dogs before. Dogs studied in Mexico City (in 2005) were less active and inattentive to what was happening around them, a sign of forgetfulness. Autopsies of their brains and noses revealed major tissue and cellular changes in the brain, as well as the destruction of their olfactory centre, which was indicative of important factors in their environment. Scars on their noses were indicative of lesions that had been seen in human autopsies in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Dogs have a high sense of smell, which includes 220 million olfactory neurons. Cells that number between 5 and 12 million in humans, and it is not without reason that this animal suffers from Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, but before that, it suffers from a reduced sense of smell. Such a sign, namely a decrease in the sense of smell and the appearance of scars in the area of the olfactory system, has been observed in diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s in humans before these diseases have progressed. Doctors pay attention to the decrease in the power of smell to identify the symptoms of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s without knowing the causes of this decrease. They have only discovered the relationship between the two without knowing why and how they are related. Studies on dogs and mice exposed to polluted air and showing such effects led some researchers to focus their attention on polluted air, and especially on particulate matter in the air, and the result of these efforts over a period of 5 to 10 years has been repeated scientific reports that confirm each other. The workers of the world must know what capital has brought or is bringing upon them and upon all of humanity in various aspects of its existence, in the entire process of profit-making or reproduction and development and the struggle for its survival, in addition to the daily intensification of exploitation and the spread of poverty, misery, unsanitary conditions, war, corruption, prostitution and addiction, even in the realm of disease-making and disease-causing.
It is precisely for this reason and in this context that we address these issues in these writings. Issues that the reformist and capitalist narrative of class struggle, under the pretext of their scientific nature, considers to be beyond the understanding of the working masses and outside the sphere of the workers’ lives, concerns, and struggles, and consciously and deliberately denies the necessity for the working masses to become familiar with them. It is as if a deep scientific understanding of what capital brings upon man is not the work of the workers at all, as if the working class is not supposed to deal with science, think scientifically, and be aware of and knowledgeable about the world, society, and classes, and struggle to radically change the existing world. As they themselves call it, they consider “anti-capitalist awareness” to be the intellectual discoveries of the wealthy classes and do not see it as within the capacity of the workers. They also consider any level of scientific and real understanding of the environmental disasters resulting from the profit-making cycle of capital and affecting humanity beyond the power and competence of every worker and see it as irrelevant to his life. The reformist narrative of class struggle thinks and does so, but the anti-wage labour consciousness and the real anti-capitalist approach of the working class see things the opposite way. Recognizing what capital brings upon us in every realm of social life, including the realm of the environment, is an integral part of our process of striving to raise our anti-capitalist awareness and consciousness. Our effort, of course, should be to make these issues as simple and easy as possible, with images, available to us and to communicate them to each other. To better understand how very small particles of pollutants reach the brain from the nose, we need to take a brief look at the anatomy of the human respiratory system. When we breathe, pollutants enter our nose and mouth along with the air, while large, dusty particles are stopped at the very beginning of the upper respiratory tract, the trachea, before the lungs, and are expelled by sneezing and coughing. Smaller particles pass through these barriers and penetrate into the lower lung tissues. They cause lung inflammation, infection, and even lung cancer. Depending on their size, these particles may pass through the walls of the lung vessels and enter the bloodstream, where they combine with tissues, cells, and chemical elements of the body and produce byproducts. Products that themselves cause various diseases in the body. But tiny particles that pass through the nose can be even more harmful. The inner membrane of the nose is made up of millions of specialized nerve cells that extend themselves by tens of millions of thin fibres embedded in the nasal mucosa. These thin fibbers, in their wave-like movements, detect tiny particles and chemical gases in the air that is passing by and, upon contact with them, convey the olfactory information obtained to the olfactory centre in the middle of the brain (Figure 27 Olfactory bulb). This is the process by which we can, for example, tell whether the milk in the package is sour or spoiled. The nerve fibres in the nasal mucosa that are exposed to the air from outside extend to the brain and are connected to it (Figure 27, Olfactory nerve receptors). This close and direct connection with the brain causes rapid transmission of information about the substances in the inhaled air to the brain, but this also causes fine particles in the air to reach and penetrate the brain directly along the olfactory nerve fibres. In other words, just as cocaine addicts inhale this powder directly into the brain and affect it, fine pollutant particles also enter this important organ of the body. These substances, which are composed of metals, heavy metals, asphalt and rubber crumb particles, soil particles that are formed with chemicals from fuel, enter a process that results in damage to brain tissues and nerve cells (Figure 28).
Figure 27 Parts of the brain related to the olfactory system
Human olfactory system
2: Mitral cells
3: Bone
4 Nasal epithelium
5: Glomerulus 6: Olfactory receptor neurons
Figure 28 shows the path of pollutants through the nose to the brain, as well as larger particles through the trachea to the lungs.
But the most important impact and impact that these substances cause is to disturb and mislead the brain’s special defence system, or microglia. One of the tasks of these defence cells is to search for and identify harmful and pathogenic organisms (Pathogens) and the remains of dead brain cells and render them harmless. When microglia encounter a contaminant particle, they treat it as a living organism such as bacteria and viruses, and this causes serious consequences for the brain. This means that microglia, upon contact with a pollutant, begin to secrete a large amount of various chemicals, the purpose of which is to kill the living organism, even though there is no living organism in this situation. The result of this process is that, firstly, the toxins secreted cause damage to the surrounding cells, and secondly, the pollutants cause the microglia cells to engage in a continuous and fruitless struggle, which prevents them from their main and dangerous tasks, which are to defend against harmful living organisms and collect waste resulting from the death of cells, bacteria, and viruses. In general, inherent inflammation and abnormal activity of the body’s immune system are harmful, even when this activity is at a low level. In this regard, numerous experiments and studies confirm that the body’s immune system attacks and damages the body’s own organs when it is overactive, and similarly, inherent inflammation of the brain leads to degenerative brain diseases. Scans and autopsies of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s patients show that the immune cells called microglia are overactive in the parts of the brain where the most nerve cells are lost. Research in mice has shown similar results, including that the overactive immune cells called microglia kill nerve cells in the brain.
Thus, the capitalist system, in the process of its development and evolution and achieving what is needed for its expansion and survival, has practically confronted human biological evolution with new and very serious problems. This means that until now, the brain’s defence cells against viruses and bacteria have had a reliable and advanced defence system, but the excessive development of capitalist production relations, which is the natural destiny of this mode of production, has in its process caused the creation of polluting particles in the air inhaled by humans and animals, which has shattered this entire ancient system. As if there is no other way left for humanity but to destroy these relationships. In this way, our researchers, who never give a clear and definitive explanation of the mechanism of the main factors of environmental destruction, despite all the environmental laws that are enacted and sometimes implemented, only describe the story. It is certain that we must roll up our sleeves and find a solution for our lives. Capitalists and their intellectual, political and academic representatives are doing their utmost to hide from view the full truth about what capital has done and is doing to us in various areas, including the environment. It is we, the workers, who must revolt against this situation. We must overthrow this inhuman system before the brain diseases born of capital destroy us and disable the last cells of our brains. We must establish a society in which all scientific and technical achievements to date, plus the world’s scientific achievements after the fall of capitalism, all serve to provide and guarantee the highest level of physical and intellectual well-being, health, growth, comfort, and advancement of all human beings.
Extensive research is currently being conducted around the world on the effects of air pollution on the occurrence of disorders, lesions, and various types of brain diseases, and detailed reports have been published. In some studies, large groups of people with and without a history of brain diseases are tested, and their genes, lifestyle, and environmental factors are taken into account in these studies. Of course, there are also limiting factors here. For example, in the United States and most European countries, fine air pollutants have been measured for about 15 years, and researchers have to resort to mathematical estimates for periods longer than this. However, environmental factors are considered in these studies, and in general, older people who live in environments with air polluted with pollutants and in poor areas lose their mental abilities more quickly. For example, mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a mental disorder. In 2008, German researchers looked at 399 elderly women who had lived in a certain area for more than 20 years. The study found that the closer the women lived to busy roads, the more likely they were to develop symptoms of MCI. 62. In 2010, researchers at Harvard University discovered a link between fine particulate matter from traffic and a decline in short-term memory. In a larger, nationwide study in the United States, they studied the mental state of more than 19,000 retired nurses over the years. The results of this study also showed a relationship between the decline in brain activity and memory in these women over the age of 70 and the fine particulate matter in their environmental air, such that the more polluted the air was with these particles, the faster the decline in mental activity and short-term memory loss. 63. In Taiwan, 95,690 elderly people were studied for 10 years, and the results showed that people living in environments with polluted air had a 138% (approximately 1.4 times) risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease compared to people living in a different environment 64. This raises the question of how much particulate matter the human brain can tolerate. A Taiwanese study published in 2015 concluded that an increase of every 4 micrograms of particulate matter per cubic meter of air (4 µg/m3) is enough to increase the risk of Alzheimer’s. But it is important to consider what initial level of air pollution this increase is compared to, as this level is already high, an increase (4 µg/m3) certainly has a lot of damage to the brain. The study begins its conclusion by saying that every 4 seconds, one person in the world suffers from dementia, and the number of people suffering from this disease doubles every twenty years. A study of retired American nurses found that an annual increase of 10 micrograms of pollutants per cubic meter of air (10 µg/m3) increased the rate of brain damage by a factor that aged the brain by two years. 63 It is important to note that there is ample evidence that not only older people experience brain deterioration, but also that young people and children exposed to air pollutants under similar conditions show the same symptoms and complications. Research on Mexican children in Mexico City shows that six- to seven-year-old street children carry signs of brain damage, such as high activity of brain defence cells (Microglia), and a decrease in white matter, the part below the Gray matter of the brain that plays a fundamental role in communication between different parts of the brain. Considering the computer, the Gray matter of the brain can be considered as a whole computer. While the white matter plays the role of a cable and a network connecting to computers) and damaged vessels that are only seen in old people, have been seen in these children. It should be noted that the brain growth of children is much more than that of adults in a unit of time and generally the growth of this important organ of the body is in childhood. This growth is very slow in later periods of life and in the meantime the role of blood flow and oxygenation of this organ is very important. Autopsies of street children in Mexico City have shown higher levels of amyloid beta, a protein that accumulates in the gaps between brain cells (synapse) and blocks their communication, compared to their peers from other areas that were less polluted. This is the beginning of Alzheimer’s and precedes cell death. Once brain cells die, it is no longer possible to treat the problems that have arisen. Amyloid proteins move easily in nerve cells and when they accumulate in the centre of intercellular communication, they create something called senile plaques that disrupt the communication of brain cells, that is, the transmission of information between its different parts. However, no traces of these proteins have been seen in children in Mexico City who live in balanced conditions. It is necessary to examine the extent of brain lesions, especially in street children. First, these children live in similar conditions all over the world. That is, they spend their days and nights in the most polluted and congested cities. They have no health care or medical coverage, so like their peers in Mexico City, their brain problems have nothing to do with drugs or their genetic problems. The only reason they are developing Alzheimer’s disease and brain degeneration despite their young age is simply the living conditions of being street children in Mexico City. Here we draw your attention to a brief discussion about street children. The United Nations definition of a street child is “a boy or girl whose home and place of residence is the street, as well as abandoned buildings and land, and who is not under adequate protection and supervision of adults and authorities.” The Iranian Welfare Organization also defines street children as follows: “Street children refer to people under the age of 18, both boys and girls, who are forced to work or live on the streets in large cities to survive.” Of course, there are exceptions here. In Africa, a large population of children live according to customs outside the home (in some parts of Africa, the definition of home is still different from other countries in Asia, Latin America, and other regions), but this does not mean that they have to deal with the industries, traffic, and pollution of big cities. This does not mean, of course, that poverty and poor children do not exist in Africa, but rather that the factors we are considering here, namely the polluted environment with high traffic and factories and all the factors that a metropolis like Mexico provides for childhood brain diseases, are very rare in Africa. In any case, street children are the poorest and most unprotected part of the global working class, and not only do their current living conditions suffer the worst, but because of these conditions and their catastrophic deprivation of any basic living facilities, they are exposed to all kinds of harm, including all kinds of diseases and, in our specific case, brain infections. A study conducted on these children in Mexico City shows that, despite their young age, they are at risk of serious brain complications caused by air pollution. It can be estimated that their peers in other parts of the world, under similar biological conditions, have the same lesions and infections. Any other conclusion is impossible. Now, let’s look at approximate statistics around the world published by organizations such as UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) and the World Health Organization (WHO). In 1988, 27 years ago, UNICEF estimated the number of street children worldwide at 100 million, and 14 years later, it gave the same figure, explaining that it was difficult to estimate their exact number. UNICEF says that no government agency or institute has recorded information about these children, but the organization estimates that the number of these children has increased due to the growth of the world’s population. We will not go into other important factors here, such as the increasing problems of the working masses of the world, especially after the 2008 crisis and its consequences, which are still far from over (Figure 29), factors that are enough to increase the number of street children in the world astronomically. India 11 million (1 million in New Delhi, 1 million in Kolkata and 1 million in Mumbai), Indonesia 170 thousand, Pakistan 1.2 to 1.7 million, Philippines 1.5 million (1998), Vietnam from 21 thousand in 2003 to 80 thousand in 2007, Bangladesh 670 thousand, are among these statistics. There are no accurate statistics on street children in Iran. Different sources put the numbers between 20,000 and 2 million! However, if we compare them to other countries with similar social and economic conditions, there are more than one million street children in Iran. In Latin America, according to estimates by UNICEF and the International Development Bank (1996), the number of street children is 40 million. Of this number, 2 million live in Mexico, and 7 million in Brazil. (Brazil has the largest number of street children in this region of the world.) In Europe, the Netherlands has 7,000, France 10,000, Ireland 1,000, Turkey 6,000, and Russia 1 to 4 million street children. In the United States, according to statistics from the organization related to these children, there are currently more than 1.5 million street children. This figure has tripled since 1983 (Figure 29).
The number of homeless children reached record highs in 2011, 2012, and 2013 at about three times their number in 1983.
Figure 29: The growth in the number of street children in the United States between 2005 and 2013. According to the report (The National Centre on Family Homelessness, America’s Youngest Outcasts), the number of these children has tripled since 1983. After this explanation of street children and the harm they suffer from living in crowded places in big cities and from polluted air, we continue to the main topic of this chapter.
Pollutant particles are not uniformly dispersed in the Earth’s atmosphere. Fine particles travel up to thousands of kilometres, so they can pollute long distances and cross large areas, while ultrafine particles travel a more limited distance (10 kilometres) with the wind (Figure 26). This means that if we live and work within a relatively short distance of a busy road, factory chimney, oil rig, or metalworking plant, the most pollution we breathe in with the air is ultrafine particles. A study by the EPA shows that the concentration of ultrafine particles in Los Angeles near busy freeways is 25 times higher than in places with little traffic in the city. It goes without saying that fine particles are also not good for human health (lungs, blood vessels and heart), but the smaller these particles are, the more likely they are to pass through the respiratory tract and into the brain. It is clear that high-traffic and polluted areas are generally the places where poor people, retirees and migrant, displaced and unemployed workers live and work. The aforementioned report also confirms this 65. In 2014, researchers at the University of Minnesota showed that the working poor minority in American cities were 38% more exposed to polluted air. In 2012, a group of researchers at Yale University, in their exploration of the damaging effects of particulate matter, concluded that across the United States, the people most at risk from air pollution were black workers, the less educated, the unemployed, and the poor.65. Another study of older adults conducted by the University of Southern California (USC) confirms the findings of the study of street children in Mexico City and retired nurses. This large study, conducted on 1,403 older women, examined the effects of air pollution with particulate matter. The results of a study published in the journal Annals of Neurology show that these particles reduce brain volume. Specifically, the white matter of the brain, which is responsible for connecting different parts of the brain, decreases, thereby accelerating brain aging and deterioration. This study shows that when particulate matter (PM) levels (particles 2 micrometres or smaller) increase by 3.5 micrograms per cubic meter of air (3.5 µg/m3), brain volume decreases by six cubic centimetres, meaning the brain ages one to two years faster. 66 Here, too, the reduction in brain white matter volume is directly proportional to the amount of ambient air pollutants. The report cites another study of 943 people (52% women) with an average age of 68 in New England and New York, which also showed a decrease in brain volume associated with air pollutants. This latter study noted a one-year premature aging of the brain. The difference between the New York-New England study and the Southern California study is the short duration of their studies. The latter lasted for seven years (seven times longer than the latter). The California researchers attribute the changes in the women’s brains to a decrease in white matter in the brain related to particulate matter. This decrease in white matter was seen in most different parts of the brain. Although the capitalist government in Iran and its colourful environmental institutions do not spend even a dime on researching air pollution and its destructive effects on the health of the masses, it is not necessary to explain, considering what has been said in this text, that similar conditions in the major cities of Iran, from Tehran with 165 days of unhealthy, smoky and dark air per year, Kermanshah with 710 micrograms per cubic meter of polluting particles in the air for a long time of 46 days per year, the cities of Khuzestan with 66 times the international permissible limit of pollutants in the air, the severe air pollution of the cities around the declining Lake Urmia, to the air of the cities of Sistan and Baluchestan province whose pollution is 35 times the international standard, from Isfahan, filled with traffic smoke, factories and dust, can yield very shocking and deplorable results. Capitalism has made more progress in the art of disguising the poverty and misery of the working class than in disguising its own environmental damage and disease. It may be funny, or indeed too much, that in all the reports and research mentioned in the above lines, from beginning to end, there is talk of philanthropy and what efforts are being made for the environment, what organizations, institutes, circles and assemblies are being created with astronomical budgets to save humanity, how the officials of capitalist governments are reducing the amount of damage caused by air pollution! How they create very prosperous and healthy living conditions for the working masses!! And such nonsense is being talked about! Covering up the dimensions of the misery of the working class and all that capital brings upon the working masses of the world is the routine work of the capitalist class and the governments of all countries and the common feature of the global bourgeoisie. In this passage, Iranian capitalism and its government do not even need to camouflage environmental destruction because what is obvious, what need be said, as a result, it has even made itself comfortable with research and has not given itself a single riyal of the huge volume of added values to this work. The workers of Iran know very well that in capitalist relations of production nothing can and should not prevent the production of profit, any obstacle to this must be ruthlessly removed. This is the melody of capital in all its forms and colours. The Islamic Republic of capital acts in its own way. The capitalists of Europe and America, with their governments and environmental organizations and their mushroom growth, are sending a message to the workers with demagoguery that everything is under control. What is vital is that capital increases more and more rapidly and profits become more and more galactic. If this is the history of capitalism and continues to be so, how sad it would be if millions of workers in the world and their wives and children were sacrificed in various ways, including through the invasion of all kinds of diseases born of capital’s profiteering. In their logic, politicians, bosses and managers guarantee the health of the climate and society by enacting the necessary laws! Just as they try to make the system of slavery seem like an eternal reality, they also make the presence of disease-causing pollutants in the air we breathe, and the presence of toxins and dirt in the food and commodity we consume seem very natural! The production and spread of deadly environmental pollution are an integral part of the process of capital appreciation. From the perspective of the owners of capital, what should remain is capital and profits, and what should be sacrificed is human beings. This is the logic of capital in any form of planning, order, and type of government. The debate is about a radical change in this situation. A great historical event that is the task of the workers of the world. History stands at a great crossroads. Either capitalism must be destroyed or humanity must be sacrificed.
Volume Two Chapter 5
Capitalism and the Epidemic of Allergies
The World Health Organization (WHO) announced in the summer of 2014 that 400 million people worldwide suffer from allergies and 300 million have asthma. Allergies are known as the fourth most common disease in the world and will soon rise to third place. In the United States, 17 million, Japan 3 million, India 15 million, France 4 million, and Sweden 700,000 people suffer from asthma. In Sweden, 9 out of 10 children and 7 out of 10 adults suffer from some form of allergy. Until a few decades ago, only a small percentage of urban residents suffered from allergies. For example, today half of children of childbearing age suffer from some form of allergy. While 30 years ago, this figure was only 3 percent for the same age group. The figure below shows the growth of this epidemic in the United States over the past ten years.
Figure 30 above shows the growth of allergies in the United States among different age groups over a decade. An allergy is an inflammation or irritation, a response that the body’s defence system mounts against a foreign substance on the skin or inside the body. This inflammation manifests itself in various forms, such as swelling, redness, warmth, itching, coughing, shortness of breath due to inflammation of the respiratory tract. Of course, the human body may react to various discomforts and discomforts, for example, the body’s defence system may produce antibodies against certain substances, but this is not yet an allergy. Allergy begins when this reaction appears as a symptom such as the one mentioned above. Allergy is one of the 40 types of inflammation in the body that science and researchers still do not have a good answer for the reasons for its occurrence and how it works. Various theories have been presented in this field. But all researchers agree on one thing, and that is the current urban lifestyle, especially after the Second Imperialist War, which has brought and spread the epidemic of this disease. In this article, I will discuss its real, social and class roots by mentioning various reasons and opinions. Until a few years ago, researchers believed that air pollution and the particles in it directly affect the body’s defence system and that this effect is reflected in inflammation and flare-ups. Urban air pollution affects the respiratory system. We are exposed to pollution from traffic, diesel smoke particles and ozone outdoors, and to pollution from light chemicals indoors, such as floor adhesives, chemicals in clothing, plastics, detergents, etc. Indoor air is 5 times more polluted than outdoor air, even though outdoor air also contains environmental pollutants and plant pollen. That environmental pollutants directly cause allergies was the dominant theory of the 1990s. But in the same decade, another hypothesis became popular, the hygiene hypothesis. This hypothesis, which now has many supporters among researchers, says that a cleaner and more hygienic life leads to less contact with bacteria and microorganisms, and this in turn prevents the body’s defence system from obtaining the necessary information about bacteria and other living organisms, and the lack of information causes the body’s defence system to be shocked and defenceless when confronted with allergens. This hypothesis was tested in mice that had no contact with bacteria in a laboratory in Lausanne by Dr Fergus Shanahan & Pr Ben Marshland. The mice were exposed to allergens and the results showed that these sterilized mice showed less sensitivity to allergens than normal mice. For this reason, researchers such as Graham Rook and his friends believe that living in glass bubbles and cities made of concrete separates humans from their natural environment, which is full of bacteria, parasites, and various microbes, and causes them to have no relationship with these tiny and often beneficial creatures. When exposed to allergens, the absence of these beneficial guests leaves the body defenceless. Because the scientific world has long believed that the presence of billions of microbes inside and on the skin completes the task of the body’s defence system. With that said, let’s get to the heart-wrenching story of the allergy epidemic. The human body is an environment and breeding ground for a variety of microorganisms. The bacterial colonies on your teeth, the billions of microbes on your skin, and the billions of bacteria that live in your intestines all have various and important functions on your skin and inside your body, some of which are known and many of which are still unknown. Therefore, the human body should be viewed as an ecosystem. Let’s start with the mouth. Today, caries is one of the greatest epidemics that has gripped humanity since the beginning of the development of capitalism. Our ancestors had healthy teeth that did not even need a toothbrush. This is shown by (Alan J. Cooper) and (Christina Warinner, Camilla Speller and Matthew J. Collins) in their research on human teeth in different eras, from hunter-gatherer humans to the present day. 67. These studies suggest that teeth were all healthy and well until changes and developments led to changes in the biology of the mouth. Normally, there are more than 100 million bacteria in each drop of saliva – a complete ecosystem with 700 different types of bacteria. So that all these bacteria draw a membrane or biofilm on the teeth that protects them from food. Of course, there are also harmful bacteria among them, and there is always a relentless battle between these two groups. The mouth produces acid when chewing food, and since the outer layer of the tooth is made of mineral materials, it dissolves and deteriorates due to the acid, and this is how various lesions and epidemics (the most important of which is caries) begin, which even lead to oral cancer. When the acid eats away these layers, harmful bacteria enter the holes and cavities created. But what happened that humans became afflicted with an epidemic of oral diseases, including caries. Comparing the effects of human dental bacteria throughout history reveals dramatic changes, especially since the 1850s, when sugar (such a product was known in its purest and most specific form before this date, but it was only after this date that its production became widespread and reached mass production) and flour were introduced. It is then that the bacteria in the mouth change, with the bad bacteria gaining more and more dominance, while the good bacteria decline. All of this is timed to coincide with the consumption of sugar, sweets, and processed foods. Bacteria thrive in an acidic environment while beneficial bacteria die in this environment, and thus the growth of capitalism reduces the beneficial microorganisms in the mouth and leads to epidemics of various diseases. The production of commodities for the purpose of selling and gaining additional value has never had any regard for human health, so when this method of production creates various diseases by its own expansion, it has no sensitivity to the real challenge of these complications. On the contrary, it continues its trend and even creates new areas of production of goods such as toothbrushes, toothpaste, various types of mouthwashes, medicines, etc. from the chaotic market it has created under the guise of fighting new diseases.
Another centre of beneficial bacteria in the body is the intestines. The number of bacteria present here is 10 times the number of cells in the human body. These bacteria are present in the intestines and are very important for human health. They are important for brain development, the body’s immune system and even our happiness and sadness. They also play a role in weight gain and loss, and they also control insulin resistance. In other words, they control complex mechanisms that humans have only just begun to study. When we take some antibiotics, the risk of contracting many diseases increases (Professors Thomas Borody, Phil Hugenholtz). Antibiotics kill off beneficial bacteria, allowing harmful bacteria to take over the gut. For example, when researchers change the gut bacteria of a patient with MS to normal, the patient recovers from this difficult disease, and even people with depression have improved by replacing beneficial gut bacteria. The types of gut bacteria in human groups are so diverse that researchers have not yet had the opportunity to name them. All of these studies point to one thing: modern life, along with the production and consumption of harmful products containing toxins and harmful substances, changes the body’s bacterial colony, and unfortunately, this also includes beneficial bacteria and microbes on the skin, in the hair, and in the mouth. This leads to a weakening of the body’s immune system and the occurrence of eczema, allergies, and various skin diseases. These things have been very rare so far, and some of them were unknown to humans until a few decades ago. Here, the balance between beneficial and harmful bacteria is the most important factor in a healthy human life. In an African village where life has not yet been contaminated by new products and a degraded environment, the intestinal bacteria of villagers are different from the intestinal bacteria of urban masses. Researchers are becoming more and more convinced of the conclusion that, in general, humans living in so-called “advanced” capitalist countries or even less developed ones have a different intestinal bacterial colony than humans of the past (meaning five or six decades ago). Everything screams that the occurrence and spread of diseases and the epidemic of allergies are very closely related to the degree of growth and expansion of capitalism. Some researchers believe that one of the reasons for the abundance of chronic diseases in countries where processed foods (ready-made foods, fast food, etc.) are consumed is these foods. When we eat, not only does our body digest food, but the microbes in our body also eat food, and in this way, we maintain and nurture that unbalanced system that we have in our body, and this is something called background inflammation that causes disease.
The entire life of the capitalist system is a very small period compared to the history of human life, but during this short period of time, we have become human beings who, in the limited and cramped environment of cities, in skyscrapers, among smoke and fumes, experience the lives of miserable sufferers of hundreds of types of chemical diseases produced by this method of production. But the problem is not only this. Billions of our fellow workers work in an environment that is full of chemicals that are harmful to the body and beneficial bacteria. They also live in niches where animals are not willing to live, and instead of coming into contact with beneficial bacteria for the body, they come into contact with the most harmful types of microbes, which means that our entire ecosystem has changed from the inside out. Until now, it was thought that the body’s immune system alone fights diseases, but this is not the case. The body’s defence system is supported in this campaign by the beneficial microbes in the organism, and as the number of these beneficial bacteria decreases, the capacity of the defence system also decreases. The Amish people of America, who migrated there from Switzerland, still practice agriculture in the style of 100 years ago and do not use antibiotics or vaccines. They are 10 times less likely to develop allergies than the average American. American Amish children in a study tested for allergies showed only 8% of them, while Swiss Amish children showed 25% and Swiss children as a whole showed 40%. The result is that the further back in capitalist history we go, the lower the rates of allergies and asthma, and the lower the rates at the beginning.
In the first half of 1900, all researchers thought that microbes only caused the spread of diseases, and in 1901, after Pasteur and his research showed that bacteria in the environment were the cause of diseases, pharmaceutical companies scrambled to make the human body resistant to microbes with toxic substances, and this began a war against all microbes, both beneficial and harmful. An event that today also includes other microscopic organisms in the world of plants and food. Remember that a human baby in its early years establishes a mutual relationship with billions of bacteria around it, and each of us has more than 100 trillion bacteria inside our bodies that are responsible for our health. Just one gift of capitalism and its inevitability in relation to humans is the massacre of these beneficial bacteria. Just consider penicillin and antibiotics, which are useful to us but have caused us to live in a world of bacteria. A very important point needs to be made here. Perhaps many people will fall into the wrong mindset by bringing up this discussion and think that the killing of these bacteria is a compulsion of modern industry and industrial progress in general, and that its occurrence has no special connection with the mode of production and whether or not societies are capitalist!! Such an idea is fundamentally wrong, and therefore the core of our discussion is that the root of all forms of environmental pollution and the consequences of this pollution, including the massacre of beneficial bacteria, is, like all other evils of modern humanity, in the existence of capital. What industry and the industrialization of countries do to humans is an issue that starts and ends with the prevailing mode of production. Industrial progress could and should happen on a scale ten of times greater and more stunning than the current situation, but without any of the catastrophic environmental events of today.
If people in their anti-capitalist councils, with the unanimous vote of all their members and using all knowledge, techniques, scientific and informational achievements, think about and plan their work, production and social life processes, if they view everything from the perspective of the real needs of life and the greatest degree of physical and intellectual excellence, health, comfort and social welfare and make it a subject of planning, then they will explore what should be produced and what should not be produced and how much should be produced and everything from this angle. In this exploration, they will use all the achievements of human knowledge as weapons and ultimately, freely, autonomously, consciously and creatively, they will also eliminate the risk of any environmental problem. The opposite is true in capitalist society. Here, the starting point, return point, and end point of everything is capital and the ever more astronomical profitability of capital. The worker is merely a means of producing surplus value, a victim of this process, and his existence or non-existence is a function of the needs of this process. Let us not forget that the production of all kinds of diseases, while being a consequence of the rule of the wage slavery system, is also the effective opening of numerous areas of accumulation, valorisation, and unbridled profitability of capital. Each disease brings about a process, sometimes very complex, of treatment, and within each of these processes, hundreds of avenues open up for new capital investments in medicine, treatment, testing, and the like. The issue is not at all that capitalism deliberately plans to make people sick or die. The main point is that capital seeks profit and, to achieve this goal, it engages in every form of holocaust and ruthless massacre of humanity, just as it has devoted the largest areas to the production of all kinds of chemical, nuclear, microbial, cluster bombs, and weapons of mass destruction. In the production of drugs and any other goods, humanity does not tolerate any other kind. In the 19th century, the prescription of pharmaceutical companies was to make profits by further expanding the threat to people’s health and producing new pharmaceutical products. This is what capitalism has always done and continues to do today. In this way, by injecting allergens (either chemically produced or obtained from plants) into the patient, he becomes somewhat resistant to the allergen and reduces the body’s reaction to the allergen. Capitalism does not repair any form of destruction of human health but rather transforms it into a new way of making profit. Capitalism, through the production of cleaning products, pesticides, various chemicals, chemical additives to foods, factory production of food, and in general the creation of this type of life, not only destroys the human environment, but also all animals and living beings. In this regard, it also destroys beneficial microorganisms and creates conditions for various new diseases. Those who generally bear the bad consequences of these misfortunes are the workers because the rich have always been able to pay high prices for goods, decent housing in a safe place, clean air and various welfare and sanitary facilities. They have grown up with a good life and in a hygienic environment and have had access to all the quality products. On the contrary, workers, especially the poorer section, have never obtained any healthy food or proper livelihood necessities because they are unable to pay the high prices. Under the pressure of hunger, poverty and misery, they do not even pay attention to the pollution of their environment. Many of them do not know that their living environment causes various diseases. In every city we see shops with goods of different qualities and different prices. We see palaces, villas, modern houses and beyond them we see slums, shanty towns. The quality of food and food products of different sections of the working class or their place of residence is a function of the price of their labour. A price so small that in a large part of the world, at best, it is enough to last people from today to tomorrow. Capitalism not only deprives workers of food, clothing, housing, or schooling and medicine, it also uses what it obtains in the form of food, shelter, medicine, and a place to live as a tool to kill them.
The theory of cleanliness also has major challenges in this system, including the fact that in cities, at the same time as the epidemic of various allergies grows, other diseases are also rampant, and this does not fit with the science of epidemics. The human body of the city dweller loses the opportunity to learn to communicate with microbes. On the other hand, the reduction of microorganisms in cities, which is the basis of the theory of cleanliness, is not the cause of the occurrence and increase of allergies but is itself a consequence of the production and spread of chemicals, pesticides, and chemical additives to foods. Substances whose production and distribution have increased significantly, especially after the war. In addition, this theory does not apply to substances that independently cause allergies. For example, contact dermatitis, which is caused by direct contact of the allergen with the body and includes many elements and substances. (Nickel, gold, chrome, epoxies, acrylics, isocyanates, etc.) are substances that have generally increased and expanded in the production processes of capitalist relations over the past decades. These substances add thousands of workers worldwide to the huge number of allergy sufferers every day, but the bosses and managers of the production of goods containing them do not suffer from allergies because they do not come into contact with the substances. Three-quarters of all dyes and hair colours contain allergenic substances that cause eczema on the face, skin, head and neck of hairdressers. Fragrances also contain allergens. There are about 2,500 fragrance blends, each containing at least 100 different allergens, and these fragrance blends are used in cosmetics, detergents, cleaners, and other products. Nickel is the most common allergen. Among people in industrialized countries, including the 34 largest industrialized countries in the world (OECD), 10 to 15 percent of women in the 20 to 30 age group are allergic to nickel, and the percentage of men affected in these countries is slightly lower. Gold is next, with 5 to 10 percent of women suffering from gold allergy. Chromium (Cr), which has been increasingly used in various products since the 1800s (alloys, smooth metal surfaces, anti-rust paints, paints in general, wood preservatives, stainless and galvanized steel, and cement), and workers who work with these materials develop chromium allergy 68.
The same applies to nutrition as we said about contact allergies. This means that capitalists add antioxidants, antifungals, and antibacterials to food products to extend their shelf life, colouring agents to decorate the product and increase its sales, food additives, cosmetics, and dyes, all of which contribute to the spread of allergens. These technical additives to foods that increase the shelf life of the product can cause asthma or other allergies, but they also have another role, which is to destroy bacteria, fungi and other microorganisms, which in turn indirectly affect the human body’s defence system. For more information about these substances, see Appendix 3 at the end of this book, but it should be noted that this is the official list of registered substances that the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) 69 has issued a license to register and use them in food production. Not only are new substances added to biocides every day, but their quantity is also increasing, thus adding to the mountain of allergens. A look at Figure 9 highlights this problem. In addition, capitalism, with the production and expansion of herbicides and pesticides produced after World War II, has learned Sudanese lessons for the production of these pesticides and chemical weapons.
Insects, rodents, weeds, fungi, bacteria, worms, parasites, and even spiders and birds are all creatures that are attacked by the toxins produced by agricultural and chemical companies. And this is one of the greatest attacks of capitalism on these tiny creatures of nature and the human body, which makes humans defenceless against allergy epidemics (for more information, see Appendix 4 at the end of this book). Apart from substances that are produced and distributed with the aim of killing and destroying microorganisms and microbes, there are about 10 million known chemicals in the world today. Of these, about 50 thousand are actively used in various products. And the majority of them have destructive effects on microorganisms and microbes. The Organization of the Largest Capitalist Countries (OECD) writes in its report on the production of chemicals in the world after 1950 that in 1950, about 7 million tons of chemicals were produced, and this figure reached 400 million tons in 2003. In its forecast, the OECD also announces an 85% growth figure by 2020. This capitalist institution shows in its studies that it has scientific information on only about 15% of these substances.
Figure 31: Allergens in consumer products between 1995 and 2010 in Sweden, according to statistics from the Swedish Product Registration Authority. Swedish Chemical Agency
Of the 14,000 chemical products in general use, about 3,800 (27% in 2010) contained one or more allergenic substances, compared to about 16% in 1995 (Figure 9). The amount of allergenic substances in consumer chemical products, according to figures from the Swedish Food Safety Authority, was 89 grams per person in 2010. In addition to the official substances, thousands of other substances are added to foods, both legally and illegally. It is important to note that these goods are not only used in the production of food, but also in the preparation of medicines, cosmetics, shampoos and soaps. All this must be considered in a situation where the purchasing power of the working class is only their daily wages, and therefore they acquire something that the owners of wealth are reluctant and perhaps even ashamed to consume. We all know that in all cities of Iran (and this is true in all societies) you can have the best of everything, but high-quality goods are inaccessible to the working class due to their high prices. One of the vital preoccupations of workers is their daily efforts to discover stores where shopping is possible at a lower price, but we know that the price of every item is determined in the market, and therefore, despite all their efforts, what is obtained is shoddy, second-hand, and near-perishable goods that are offered to workers. All of these make the workers’ bodies weak and susceptible to disease. So far, we have talked mostly about the general conditions and their destructive effects on human health, without considering class factors and without mentioning the very different degrees of vulnerability of different social classes to these conditions. It is clear that these vulnerabilities are multiplied a hundredfold in the case of the working class, given the low level of livelihood, poverty, and the unfavourable conditions in all aspects of health and treatment, housing, food, clothing, and the environment. This vulnerability increases tenfold when capital plunges into the abyss of crisis and sends the masses of workers into the wilderness of unemployment. Wages become lower and lower, the capitalist shifts the entire burden of the crisis onto the workers’ livelihoods, and a new phase of deepening poverty, misery, displacement, and hunger of the workers begins. Even in countries with low levels of social security, many workers are forced to apply for government benefits.
Capital Influx on the Health of Displaced and Migrant Workers
This topic seems a bit unrelated to the content of the article, but it is not completely irrelevant. It was stated above that the degree of vulnerability of people to the mountain of risks that capital throws at them is very closely related to their class position and living conditions. Workers are the most vulnerable people, and among workers there are layers whose level of vulnerability is indescribable. The question is, what can these classes do with this way of life that capital has imposed on them, in the face of the unruly wave of diseases that capital has once again inflicted on them? A look at begging across Europe in recent years presents us with a picture of what we really are. The number of beggars in Eastern European societies is increasing. They generally beg in the working-class neighbourhoods of southeastern European cities because only workers understand their living conditions and see their possible future fate in their eyes. However, the generosity of this section of the working class also includes a small number of beggars. Therefore, some of the hungry and necessarily the poorest workers, who, in addition to unemployment, are also subjected to racial and ethnic oppression, turn to Northern European countries and the outskirts of the cities of this region and join the very poorest strata of this society. In fact, these immigrants, like African immigrants to Europe, are fleeing from the pressure of poverty and lack of food, clothing, and housing, and not necessarily for work (because European countries are themselves full of unemployed people and, with double-digit unemployment rates, have no work for these immigrants). All of them are hoping that some of their comrades in these countries will extend a helping hand to them. But how strange that capitalism is profiting from the insistence of these cursed people, who have become humiliated, displaced, and captives of calamity. The system of wage slavery is an indescribable octopus, an octopus that has the worker for life and exploits him in the most horrific dimensions as long as the need for capital’s profitability demands it. When his labour power is not needed, he makes him unemployed and hungry and turns him into a beggar. But even here, he does not give up on him. He turns his begging into a field of capital accumulation and valorisation. He gathers a large number of them, puts hundreds and thousands of them under the yoke of his profit-seeking and inhumane rule and planning. He asks them to beg and give the largest share of this begging to the capitalist who owns his slaves! Here too, the beggar worker sells his labour to the capitalist who owns the beggar’s house in the begging sector. Out of every 10 rials he begs, he pays the largest share to the capital mafia!! The number of these workers is increasing day by day and in the near future they will probably constitute a large part of the entire global working class. The story began with the migration of millions of unemployed people from Latin America to North America, and today the unemployed and homeless people from Africa and Eastern Europe are migrating to Northern and Western Europe, and at the same time the unemployed and refugees from Bangladesh, Nepal, Burma and other parts of Asia have been added to them in Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia. These people have the most pitiful living conditions. The workers of the world were supposed to join hands against capital, but they have not done so to this day, and the punishment for not doing so is that they come to each other with begging bowls and join hands!! This is the situation of a part of the working class. A sector whose labour force is begging and whose labour price is the most miserable tattered clothes, a cartoon sleeping on the side of the streets, and a morsel of food to keep from dying and continuing to beg. A sector that has lost even the desire to find work and sell its labour force. It thinks of no struggle, poses no danger to the bourgeoisie, disturbs no government, and apparently does not disturb the long sleep of its fossilized chains in the sediments of the capitalist order. A large mass of this section are African immigrants. Humans who are treated much worse than animals that can be bought and sold, and who are crammed onto the decks of wrecked ships, and whose migration is in turn a field of human slaughter by capital. The war of capital displaces them from their homes and places of work, poverty, homelessness, misery, and the burdens imposed by capital force them to flee. All their possessions are ruthlessly plundered by the capitalist who owns the barge, and halfway there they become even more ruthlessly preyed upon by the fish of the sea. The worst neighbourhoods of European cities are their home, and if they are very lucky, the worst and hardest jobs that no one is willing to do in exchange for the meagre wages that result from this risky journey. These, the product of the recent invasion of capitalism into the lives of the masses of Africa, teach the workers of Europe how to live a hard life with the minimum possible. European capitalists are not worried about these migrations because it hangs like a sword of Damocles over the head of the European working class, especially its lowest strata, who have never raised a demand higher than the minimum wage. This is while the situation of other workers is getting worse every day. The International Labor Organization (ILO) says in its new report published on May 19, 2015, “Three-quarters of the world’s workers are employed in non-permanent contracts, in informal jobs without a contract or in unpaid family activities.” According to a new report by the International Labor Organization, nearly 60 percent of workers and employees are employed without any type of contract. These people are either daily wage earners or working in family activities. Among those employed with a contract, according to the report, only about half (42 percent) have permanent contracts, while the other half work on temporary contracts. The organization acknowledges that capitalist governments are now looking to change the standard forms and definitions of employment to non-standard forms in some European countries. Another unfortunate phenomenon that the ILO points out is the increase in the number of women working part-time. The inequality in the income of those with permanent contracts compared to those with temporary contracts is another point mentioned in this report. The International Labor Organization writes in its report that only 52 percent of all workers worldwide have access to pension services. This percentage rises to 16 percent among those working under a so-called (freelance) contract. The emergence of new layers of workers is a frightening phenomenon in every respect. The Chinese migrant worker’s job is to separate all kinds of plastic containers. His life depends on the containers that others have thrown away. There are more than 250 million migrant workers in China. A significant portion of them form a new working class, engaged in garbage collection, and are found all over the world in every country. The living quarters of many migrant workers are small and very inadequate. These workers are paid very low wages and are not only not respected but also have no protection, no health centre will let them in. They work seven days a week up to 14 hours a day and no contract is signed with them. Today, more than a million migrant workers are engaged in loading and unloading huge containers in various ports around the world. Another way of life for some migrant workers is to spend up to nine months of the year at sea, moving from port to port. The work on ships is repetitive and boring, with no variety or excitement. Many migrant workers in Thailand work in the construction sector. There is no mention of safety clothing. These workers wear hats for their own safety and wrap a cloth or undershirt around their face and mouth to protect themselves from dust and the sun as much as possible. However, in many cases, covering their faces is to conceal their identity. He is forced to live and work illegally in Thailand. By hiding their identity, they are able to quickly hide if problems arise. Hundreds of thousands of migrant workers live and work in Germany, and many young people from Eastern European countries dream of living in Germany. The situation of the Iranian working class is even worse. According to the Central Bank of Iran, about a quarter of Iranian households have no one working, although they may have an income. Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) November 15, 2014, according to surveys conducted by the Central Bank of Iran, 24 percent of Iranian households have no employed person, 57 percent have one employed person, more than 15 percent have two employed persons, and about 3 percent have three or more employed persons. This is while the cost of living is increasing at a rate many times faster than that of those who have a salary. A representative of the Islamic Capital Councils Centre says, “Based on official reports, while the minimum wage has been set at 398,000 Tomans since the beginning of this year, the average cost of a family is estimated to be more than 2.5 million Tomans.” The financial crisis in countries is forcing many young people to emigrate and work in difficult conditions. These workers are paid an average of three euros an hour. In return, they have to do strenuous construction work. This is despite the fact that the cost of living in Germany is very high. When parents leave for work in another country, many children are left alone in their own country. A quarter of Moldovan citizens work and live abroad. Parents communicate with their children only by phone and the Internet. Moldova is one of the poorest countries in Europe. Migrant workers have been living in Germany for decades. Workers from Turkey, Italy and other countries of the world came to Germany to work after the Second Imperialist War. The important industrial areas of West Germany were mostly built by these workers, and these immigrant workers have also become the place to live there. Yes, the life of the majority of the world’s working class is miserably deprived of the most essential necessities of life, and this unhealthy life, in an unhealthy environment, spreads to other sections of the working class that have hitherto enjoyed a better minimum (generally the working class of Europe and America). In general, capitalism is holding back the workers of the world and making their living conditions even more miserable. With this brief reference to the situation of the working class of the world and recounting the real conditions of their lives, it is time to add another result, and that is their living conditions, their physical condition and their health. The living conditions of the majority of the workers of the world are as we have explained, and these conditions only increase the number of diseases. The workers’ houses are built in places and from materials that no one else is willing to use except their own kind, and what is more, they are maintained in a worse manner. When capitalists are not satisfied with the appearance of their houses or are tired of them, they easily change them at the touch of a button, but the workers’ living quarters (if they have houses) are generally damp and unsanitary, without sufficient space, without ventilation, and made of harmful and disease-causing building materials. The workers’ family members always complain about the lack of space, and therefore, lack of oxygen and healthy air is their constant problem. The workers’ food not only does not satisfy the family’s stomach in terms of quantity, but especially in terms of quality, it is prepared from cheap and highly contaminated materials, so that the workers’ bodies are generally always vulnerable in terms of defence. All that we have said about harmful substances added to food is generally true of workers and their families because capitalists always use their power of choice to buy the best ingredients and controlled treats. Homelessness, lack of food, bad food, hunger, breathing polluted air, living in unsanitary neighbourhoods lead to the acceptance of all kinds of allergies. The figures mentioned at the beginning of this article about the increase and spread of allergies and asthma are only from capitalist societies that have organizations and research institutes for such cases, but it can be estimated that the working masses of the world who suffer from allergies are much more than the 800 million that the World Health Organization says, because the millions of workers of the world whose living conditions, work, helplessness and isolation were described in the previous lines are not in a condition to be counted, they have no clinics available, no government is responsible for them (and for this reason they abandon their country and place of residence and undertake risky migrations), and as a result, they are not registered anywhere, but this does not mean that they do not exist and their diseases and allergies do not exist. Meanwhile, the situation of the owners of capital, managers, private and state planners of capital never get worse. While the situation of the different layers of the working class is never stable, so that the fluctuations of life in each of the different layers of the working class may make their tomorrow like the unemployed and displaced workers, so that this entire class is always worried about its future. Worried that they might become unemployed tomorrow and how they would cope with the problems of food, clothing, health, and housing.
Volume Two Chapter 6
Capital, the Perpetuation of Profit-Generation Cycles and Environmental Destruction Hassan Abbasi
I have described in numerous articles biogeochemical cycles such as the water, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulphur cycles. These cycles, which are as old as the Earth and its organisms, are formed by closed circuits of these elements and are based on their limited amounts in absolute and total terms. But this does not mean that their relative amounts in the Earth, atmosphere, and water have always been the same. 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 greater warming intensifies this circulation and melts some of the hundred-thousand-year-old ice, increasing the amount of Earth’s water and water vapor, which in turn causes the atmosphere to heat up even more. The Earth’s carbon supply is limited, and like water, it has a closed cycle. Carbon, which exists in the Earth’s layers in various combinations, 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 enter the Earth’s atmosphere as carbon dioxide due to transformation. Similarly, various factories, including the oil and gas industries and intercity and intracity transportation, also emit and pump large amounts of this gas into the Earth’s atmosphere. The result of this process is the emergence of several billion tons of carbon dioxide per year in the atmosphere around the Earth. Nitrogen is a gas that is transferred to the atmosphere around the Earth through nature (seas, rainforests and bacteria on Earth) (it makes up 78% of the volume of the Earth’s atmosphere). This element has been continuously increasing since the growth of the capitalist mode of production and the development of industrial accumulation, through chemical fertilizers, fossil energy (oil, gas and coal) and chemical factories. Phosphorus, which is present in the layers of the earth in various forms, is necessary for the formation of bones and teeth in living organisms and plants and is involved in the proteins and genetic structure of plants and animals. Its increased use in chemical fertilizers disrupts its balance in nature and, together with excessive nitrogen, causes the death of lakes. Sulphur, which was only transported to space and water through volcanoes before industrial production, returns to space through coal, oil, gas, and factories and through rainwater as acid rain after the establishment of capitalist relations. Remember this introduction because we will return to the above issues after a few explanations about the processes of capital production.
Criticism of environmental destruction is as old as these destructions themselves, yet these criticisms have so far been made within the framework of capitalist production relations and with the aim of curing and thus ensuring their survival, while our analysis and criticism are at the same time a critique of these entire production relations in all their components of existence. A radical critique of the mode of production that is the source and founder of all forms of human misery, including the destruction of human living conditions and all living beings. Other “critiques” appear to hide the root of environmental pollution from the eyes of the working masses of the world, to say that this pollution is not inherent in capital and has no roots in the existence of capitalism! To say that it is possible to have capitalism and also have a healthy and pollution-free environment!! Our critique is definitely against these critiques, for the obvious reason that it goes to the root, directly digs into the existence of capital the roots of the very diverse environmental pollutions that are the origin and cause of various forms of human destruction. This critique is anti-capitalist in its essence. It sees the fight against environmental pollution as an indispensable part of the anti-capitalist struggle and a bastion of the interconnected bastions of the anti-capitalist class struggle of the masses of the working class all over the world.
Capitalists do everything they can to reduce production costs and increase profits. They replace old, more expensive raw materials with cheaper chemicals and materials, they replace old, less efficient processes with more efficient production processes, and with each of these actions they increase the intensity and extent of pollution. Meanwhile, the reformist critique of environmental destruction separates and abstracts all of this destruction from what the owners of capital do in the above areas. The present article, like our other studies to date, does not separate the critique of each component of the anti-human functioning of capitalism from the critique of this system as a whole. On the contrary, and in particular, this article will attempt to view environmental issues in a way that can systematically show their internal relationship and continuity in the totality of capitalist production relations. A critical examination of the social disasters of each of the areas of capital’s advance should be an integral part of a comprehensive critique of the totality of these relations. Reformist critics of environmental issues adopt two methods for their work. Two methods that both start from the eternality of these relations. The first method, represented by the most right-wing and conservative part of the bourgeoisie, starts from the indisputability and uncriticism of these relations of production, the laws of political economy and their functioning in production and society. This method starts from pure faith in these relations, to the extent that it is fundamentally unable to see the certain realities of the day. The fact that in reality all environmental destruction has arisen from these relations, that the connection between the aforementioned destructions and the capitalist mode of production is undeniable. That there is no area of capital accumulation that does not give rise to some type or types of this destruction, or many other similar issues, is not at all relevant to the founders of this method. The representatives of this view believe that capitalism itself, internally and automatically, eliminates all the problems and undesirable consequences of its production process, including the problem of environmental pollution, and repairs the resulting waste! Proponents of this method say that capitalism is the natural law of human life and the destiny of his existence!! What capital does, and for example its environmental consequences, are also normal phenomena of human life and are resolved, modified and adjusted by this system itself!! This is an attitude that considers the entire phenomenon of greenhouse gases and its consequences to be a fabrication and fabrication of the minds of researchers who are interested in predictions and speculative and imaginative theories! In reality, the opposite is true. But they insist on imposing the sacredness, immutability, and eternity of the laws of capitalist political economy on the minds, consciousness, and understanding of the workers of the world.
The second method tries to focus its work on demagoguery and trickery instead of pure absolutism and unquestioning denial of all realities. Instead of denying, it acknowledges some issues and refers the way to challenge them to this or that deceptive reform. The same method that the political parties and movements of capital have practiced and are practicing in the economic and social fields. The founders of this method, which include a wide range of social organizations, political parties, green and environmental groups, and even leftist movements, beat the drum of this deception: yes, it is true, capitalism has its flaws, it goes into crisis, it pollutes the environment, and it creates livelihood and welfare problems for some, but all of these can be adjusted and resolved within the framework of the governance of this system. For this, one must work, one must form a party and form a group, create an organization, enter parliament, become a partner in political power, set a model, propose a plan, they list these issues, and their next word is that everyone should support their party and organization in various ways so that they can improve the world and humanize all the undesirable effects of capitalism and turn them into good! Including making the environment clean and pure and full of health!! These movements, in the form of colourful social democratic and socialist parties, and even with the communist name, have 120 years of experience in trying to repair and, in fact, save capitalism, and are by no means inexperienced or naive parties. The entire parliamentary apparatus, the administrative bureaucratic apparatus, and research organizations, as well as the bodies that examine and approve goods, are all at their service to rush to the aid of capital in times of need and emergency.
In all cases, including when looking at environmental issues, we have an approach that is contradictory and irreconcilable with these trends. The basis of our work is to shed light on the true roots of all environmental pollution in the depths of the surplus value production relationship and to show them to the working masses. Just as we have done in the case of misogyny, the killing of political freedoms and human rights, poverty, hunger, unsanitary conditions, we do the same thing: water shortages, deprivation of people from education, treatment, and basic livelihood and welfare facilities. Needless to say, our work is not just about abstract discussions; on the contrary, we dissect the objectivity of what capital brings upon humanity in all cases, and here in particular in the realm of the environment, and we present the results to the working masses. Our emphasis in all our writings is that capitalism cannot fail to do so. The idea that capitalism can exist and these environmental disasters do not plague human existence is a pure lie and the ugliest of demagoguery. If humanity is to be free from these pollutions and the world of deadly diseases that result from them, there is only one way: for capitalism to be destroyed from the ground up and replaced by a free society, free from the relationship of buying and selling labour.
It is quite clear that raw materials and auxiliary goods in the world market enjoy a market price under the pressure of competition and supply and demand factors. The owner of any capital cannot set a special price for his produced goods according to his will and desire. The price of labour power as a commodity is naturally subject to the same rule. Every capitalist or every giant capitalist trust, in order to occupy a greater share of the market and to seize the largest possible portion of the surplus values produced by the global working class, must strive to bring its goods to the market more cheaply and, of course, with appropriate quality and excellence. This implies that capital must continuously produce the same old goods at lower costs, with changes (e.g., new and more investments), and at the same time reduce their circulation or organization costs. What the owners of capital do in this regard, what evil plans they have against the human environment, and what price the workers’ pay is a topic that we will follow in this article. One part of these discussions is the issue of preventing the spoilage of goods, and here we are not referring only to the agricultural sector, but this also includes many other areas of capital advance. This is by no means limited to consumer goods. On the contrary, in this chapter we are dealing especially with all manufactured goods, including machinery, buildings, raw and auxiliary materials. In all these matters, additional capital must be used to prevent the spoilage of goods and protect them against harmful factors. A special accumulation of capital that must drastically reduce costs and maximize profits. This investment, even when it takes place in the commodity storage loop, is firstly an inevitable need of the process of organizing capital, realizing the surplus values in it and transforming this surplus value into additional capital. Secondly, in some cases, it increases the volume of surplus values by exploiting productive labour. Thirdly, it can speed up the return of capital and in this way accelerate the process of producing surplus value and increase the volume of profits. Regarding the changes in production costs due to the impact of these investments, it should be said that these costs existed throughout the entire life cycle of commodity production, even before capitalism (of course, in that era, production was mainly aimed at the needs of the producers themselves, and only a small part of the products that were in excess of consumption were used for trading and sale, but this did not reduce the need for product protection, although this need was very limited and remained at the level of consumer reserves). But the production of commodities takes on a special form in capitalism. Here, the storage and protection of commodities from damage, like machinery, labour, raw materials, etc., is essentially an integral part of the overall process of surplus value production and the circulation of capital. If this is not done, the fate of all commodities produced and the values and surplus values inherent in them is seriously threatened. Capital has to store goods, increase their durability in warehouses, prevent them from spoiling before they reach the buyer, and do many other things. Below we will examine each of these issues, albeit briefly. First, let us see how and at what cost to the environment and labour, capital increases the intensity of labour as much as possible by using the latest production techniques, so that at every moment the deeper and more deadly erosion of the worker is the guarantee of increasing the rate of surplus value.
Production technique or production process
The labour process, as Marx explains in Volume 1 of Capital, Chapter 5, consists of purposeful activity, the object of labour, and its instruments. A purposeful activity that in the past produced use values that satisfied human needs, and in capitalist relations, commodities are no longer produced for their use value, but for exchange and exchange value. (It is clear that any commodity must have use value to have exchange value.) Commodities are produced and exchanged because they carry surplus value. Purposeful activity in capitalist production has led to such a complex division of labour that it has ultimately led to work processes that begin in the minds of specialized workers using complex, often electronic, tools to create models and prototypes that are quickly realized in the field of production. For a long time now, production processes have been offered and sold as independent commodities. How a commodity is produced, what materials it is made of, how fast it is produced have become ideas that lead to the formation of production processes and cycles, and these cycles and processes are sold as commodities. In recent decades, the race for competitive advantage in various fields of production has revolved around finding cheap labour, as mentioned above. But as wages rise in China and some other countries, capitalists around the world are finding new ways to increase labour productivity to offset the effects of this situation. It is not about diminishing the attraction of capital to exports in the form of machinery and new production techniques to countries with wage rates several dozen times lower than those in Europe and America, nor is it about capital ignoring the 12-hour or more workday in many countries of the world with populations of hundreds of millions and billions of workers. This means that advances in manufacturing techniques (processes) will certainly be needed to increase productivity. These advances, which some call Factory 4.0, specifically include the Virtual Physical System (CPS) and dynamic data processes, which use vast amounts of technical information to operate production machines. A collaboration and convergence of production power, a reduction in costs along with an increase in the dexterity of machines that allows for the integration of machines with computers, the digitalization of production processes, the increase in the linking of devices and assembly, all of these increase the intensity of work, make the working conditions of workers more complex and expand the need for their capabilities, so that the same worker must handle different operations and work processes. Ultimately, it makes production processes more open to change and the adoption of new generations of advanced production techniques. In the near future, this capital equipped with such tools will be able to change the economic situation of many manufacturing sectors around the world. Currently, large companies such as Ford and General Electric use these advanced processes and machines in their production. One of the advantages of the new production technique is that it increases the production capacity by using the same product in different forms and with variable contents, whether in the production of consumer goods or manufactured goods. The capitalist will sometimes be able to produce a new series with a smaller volume or change the production lines and increase the speed of production. This production method also provides conditions for capitalists to offer new goods more efficiently and at a lower cost than traditional processes. This production method reduces production waste and thus requires fewer raw materials in its processes than traditional production. The following five technical tools have the greatest potential to influence the production environment and increase labour productivity in new production processes:
1.Autonomous Robots., 2. Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME)., 3. Digital Manufacturing. Virtualization technology, 4. The Industrial Internet and Flexible Automation, 5. Additive Manufacturing. Commonly known as 3-D printing
The above techniques and tools have not yet spread throughout the world. Their impact is not great in a short period of time, which is why they give the owners of capital, for example, the American, a special position. With high labour productivity, this gives them the advantage of monopolizing the above processes for a long time, which will result in extraordinary profits that will last for a not-so-short period of time. All of these compensate for labour, which is the most important factor in production costs in many areas in the next 5 to 10 years.
3D manufacturing (such as building a building by simultaneously building all sides of it) is still in its infancy and has a long way to go to become affordable and scalable. When Chinese workers were paid about one-twentieth of what they were paid in the US ten years ago, many employers were moving production to China. Today, after gradual increases in labour productivity, better communications and transportation, and reductions in other production costs, the gap in production prices between the United States and China has narrowed. From prototyping in the virtual world to implementing, it in the factory, more intelligent technologies have advanced. New production techniques can change the speed of production and even change the production lines. Each machine will be able to handle a number of different goods that can be produced together, something that is unthinkable in traditional production with fixed lines and would be very expensive if possible. The result is that capitalists can produce different products using a process that is flexible and adaptable. A number of major manufacturing giants have demonstrated the capabilities of these advanced processes. Ford, for example, uses the ICME process, which reduces production time and costs for the production of cast aluminium for car engines. Traditional manufacturing has a method that first forms a model on the computer and then tests it physically in practice, repeating this process three times until the model is ready to work and produce. Using the (ICME) process, the computer model of the cast aluminium is tested virtually, and this model is selected as the best with the scientific information of the production technicians and enters production. In this regard, Ford has invested $15 million over 5 years with the participation of 15 technicians and 10 academic researchers. The result is more than $120 million, or 7 times the return on investment, and in this regard, it has reduced the production time of a model by between 15 and 25 percent. This is just the beginning of high efficiency, as this production process will actually reduce the production cycle by at least that much. Another example is General Electric, which is developing a new type of LEAP turbofan engine using additive-manufacturing processes. These fuel injectors use computers and lasers to shape aluminium powder into a desired product. The part is 25 percent lighter and lasts five times longer than a traditional product made from 20 different parts. That’s why GE is building a $32 million research centre and factory in Pennsylvania to perfect the process. All of this is to increase labour productivity and raise the technical composition of capital, thereby increasing the competitiveness of these industrial giants. It improves their position, at least for a while, in capturing a larger share of the surplus value produced by the world’s workers. But most of these new processes and techniques require the production of raw and auxiliary materials with specific physical forms and specific contents, which must have high flexibility. One of the new forms of raw and auxiliary materials that is offered with great flexibility is nanotechnology and nanoparticles. This new field, called Nanomaterials, is a technique that is capable of producing materials at the atomic and molecular level (sizes between 1 and 100 nm, a thousand times smaller than a micrometre). These materials are a thousand times smaller than ultrafine particles, and their entry into the visual tract and brain in polluted air causes brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s. Nanotechnology and nanoparticles with these characteristics open up a new area for investment. Nanotechnology has so far succeeded in producing materials such as: Titanium Dioxide, Nano silica, Zinc oxide, Carbone Black, Nanofood, Nano cosmetics Silver Nano. The size, physical and chemical mechanisms of these materials are different from conventional materials. Likewise, the bioavailability of these materials is different from conventional materials. In that they easily pass through and enter cell walls. They take on unconventional shapes that can leave new effects on the surface of other materials (skin and the like) (surface science). Their contact with other materials in the body takes place at the atomic and molecular level. Other raw materials and additives used in new techniques include harmful metals such as nickel, chromium, vanadium, molybdenum, etc., either individually or in mixtures used to produce various types of steel. (Different percentages of harmful metals in iron compounds produce different steels with different properties against heat, pressure, and chemicals, which have unique flexibility capabilities). The transformation of metals and chemicals into powder and their use in new techniques of production of essential goods is unprecedented in the history of mankind. All this imposes new conditions and pressures on the working environment of workers, the human environment and nature, the dimensions of which are certainly much greater than those that mankind has ever seen. It is enough to refer to the various articles written by us in similar fields and make a comparison in your mind. For example, when a car painter paints a car in the final stage of production, the paint contains, in addition to hazardous substances, heavy metals and chemicals that are harmful to his health and the environment. This work has now taken on a new physical dimension, which is nanotechnology. This means that capitalists are not satisfied with using previously known harmful substances to produce goods, but in order to infinitely reduce production costs and increase profits, they use nanotechnology, which greatly reduces the costs of production processes and reduces production waste. As described above, this will cause disturbances in the body that are beyond our comprehension, but what is certain is that these will bring about greater disasters than anything we have ever witnessed.
Production equipment
The problem does not end here, for these trusts are mostly producers of means of production. The production of means of production is generally the specialisation of certain capitalists. This means that capitalists producing semi-finished goods and producers of consumer goods buy their capital goods from branches of production which are quite independent of their own. When these tools, buildings, and machines are used in the process of production, they consume their constituent parts. The result of this consumption is the transfer of their value to the mass of new products throughout the life of these capital goods. Here we focus on this process and do not enter into the specific and completely clear argument that labour power, as an organ of capital, creates value in these goods, which is surplus value and profit of capital. Just as labour power has created surplus value in capital goods.
This review will consider the products produced and production trends in agriculture, the metal smelting industry, mining, woodworking, construction, pharmaceutical production, chemicals and oil, electronics and computers, food, machinery production, automobiles, energy, and many other areas of capital investment. It should be noted that many of the goods in the above areas are re-entered into the production process, used as raw materials or as auxiliary materials and semi-finished goods. This is the essence of the capitalist mode of production, which constantly increases the productivity of labour. It transforms living labour into dead labour, increases the constant part of capital in relation to its variable part, and accumulates a large proportion of this dead labour in the form of the fixed part of fixed capital. A part that, although present in the production process, does not enter the process of producing goods, except for a small part that is depreciated. This mode of production, having these same characteristics that all are homogeneous components of the production process for profit, is struggling with the upward trend of the organic composition of capital. A trend that, in its continuation, leads to a downward trend in the rate of profit. A trend that inevitably becomes a law under certain conditions. This means that the rate of accumulation exceeds the rate of production of surplus value and sets off a storm of crisis.
Our aim here is not to enter into the political economy of crises and their other consequences, but rather one point is important to us here, and that is the enormous increase in fixed capital, which leads to the accumulation of a mass of environmental hazards within these goods, which are like time bombs that could explode at any moment. The production of productive means is generally the domain of certain capitalists (apart from cases involving large companies that produce everything from productive goods to individual consumer goods). When fixed capital (machinery, tools, buildings and installations) that give their value little by little and gradually to manufactured goods, the materials from which they are made are not destroyed or lost due to depreciation. For example, for about 100 years now, steel has been used in the construction of most machines, that is, iron with chromium (between 10 and 30 percent is used in all types of steel), nickel and vanadium are used in steel, heavy metals that have also been used in buildings and installations. Glass wool used in buildings (glass wool is produced from used glass and even sand. Its raw material is silicon oxide, which poses no danger to humans or living organisms, but when it is produced in the form of fine fibres for insulation, it becomes a very dangerous and carcinogenic material. Although it is now sold in protected forms in various packages, its health-threatening properties have not changed, and it still causes lung cancer in many people every year). Radon (Rn), which is present in cement and causes lung cancer. Various chemicals used in sewage pipes and even drinking water pipes (plastics, PVC and phenolic resin, which is used to coat the inside of the pipes and is carcinogenic). Paints containing heavy metals such as cadmium, nickel and arsenic used in tools and machinery. All of these are released into the factory, office, community and nature environment due to the wear and tear of machines, buildings and installations (it is clear that this trend is also true for residential buildings). But the circulating part of fixed capital (raw and auxiliary materials and semi-finished parts) which are made up of various materials harmful to humans, animals and nature, in the production process, not only their value but also their material and physical existence is transferred to the commodity (many auxiliary materials such as fuel, etc. do not enter the commodity in the production process, but they do not disappear either). In this way, capital enters into a fight with humans, animals and nature in the process of producing capital goods, from the very foundation stone. It lays a foundation that continuously and continuously spreads all kinds of poisons and pests around itself, and this, as we have seen, is not due to chance, the mistake of some capitalists, or with the aim of destruction. Rather, it is the inevitable result of intense and fierce competition for profit and surplus value. As we know, these anti-environmental trends and actions of capital are not new. That the capitalist evolution of human societies has long been accompanied by the destruction of the environment and work. This is by no means an accident, a series of random events, or that capitalism makes mistakes and disorders in the process of its development in every country. The long-standing nature of destructive phenomena clearly demonstrates the structure and kinship of this phenomenon with capitalism. The aim of all socialist, anti-imperialist and social democratic movements is to pretend that does not profit and capital accumulation, but the livelihood of the workers is the primary concern of capital relations. That is why they guide the capitalists to the right path with prophetic sermons, while in practice they demagogue the working masses and cover up the inhuman nature of these relations. Capital creates mass goods based on the need for accumulation and the scale of production, not on the needs that need to be met, because these needs are created in the process of production and capitalist development. This means that capital also creates goods and with them its needs, and in this whole process the driving force is the accumulation of capital on a larger scale. The valorisation of capital is the determining goal and driving force of capitalist relations of production. When bourgeois research institutes talk about the harmful gases and particles emitted into the air that result from the production, circulation and consumption of goods in this system, they ignore the type of health and biological abnormalities and their severity in relation to each of these substances, which are sufficiently dangerous, regardless of their quantity. The fact is that these substances are fundamentally harmful, destructive and cause health deterioration regardless of their quantity. When these institutions enter into a specific, daily or periodic study, they suddenly fill their pages with a stubborn emphasis on the quantity of these substances and especially whether on this particular day or date and year this amount is below or above the established limit. Their reports suggest that these particles and gases begin to cause damage when they exceed a certain threshold, and below these thresholds they pose no danger to humans, nature, or other living things!! They pretend that these substances are not inherently harmful, regardless of their amount! But any worker with a little curiosity will notice that when capital and its representatives play with numbers, they are trying to mislead them. In fact, these particles, gases, chemicals, pesticides, food additives and metals in question are harmful in general and regardless of how much they enter the environment, and their blatant use in the form of numbers, quotas and red lines does not diminish their anti-health nature. Capital’s meteorological and research organizations, with their reporting style, drowning in figures and quorums, act like parties and groups that try to sell capitalist relations to the working masses in the form of a new commodity and with a new face through various reforms. In fact, capital’s research organizations and institutes offer their research in certain packages and forms like any other commodity in the market of ideas. The buyers of these commodities, depending on the daily rate of its use in various conditions, are parties and groups representing different sections of the ruling class, who deceive the working masses with the aim of gaining a foothold in the organs of power. But when we feel the destructive effects of toxic gases and airborne particles in our breath and on our skin, when we look at the staggering increase in allergies, cancers, and heart problems in our workplaces and lives, and in our friends and acquaintances, we only see the destructive nature of these gases and particles and the production relationships that originate them, and at this time it makes no difference to us whether their amount has exceeded the permissible limit or not. As I said in previous chapters and in my writings on the environment, in the commodity economy and its highest phase 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 to be exchanged, commodities must also have use value. In capitalist agriculture, maintaining the same use value of the product, whether in the production process or in its circulation and storage, is subject to great risks. The same is true of many goods and production processes, such that their use value has certain limitations that will disappear if they do not enter the process of productive or individual consumption within a certain time frame. Or they have certain and limited properties that limit the scope of their use. For example, comparing old-style steel with current steels or non-resistant production processes with current more resistant and reliable production processes that produce similar results with high results all over the world every second, minute and year after year. In this way, as the consumption value of goods decreases, their exchange value property is lost and they are not sold. At this time, what is more harmful and disastrous for capital than that the commodities it produces are not sold and the values and surplus values contained in them are not returned. Commodities are inherently perishable, but capital in all areas of production strives, and has succeeded to some extent, not only to extend their useful life but also to increase their flexibility by using techniques and materials. It is in this direction that it makes production processes flexible and increases the speed of production. The longer the goods spoil, the more resistant they are to heat, pressure and long distances of transport, the longer their life can be extended in circulation until they reach the consumer. This reduces the risk of the goods not being sold in the specific aspect we are discussing. The factor of distance from the place of production to the sales market depends entirely on the contents of the goods and the speed of transport. I will examine the latter for myself, and now we will only deal with the way goods are produced, the production processes, and the contents of the goods. In the chapters on industrial agriculture, which is the main aspect of capitalist production in this area, we discussed plant pests as the most important and influential part of the risks, both in the production process and during the circulation of these goods. 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 value 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. All of this is to reduce costs, but the use of pesticides and the production of genetically modified products also have another purpose, which is to increase the shelf life of the product, increase the size of its sales market from local to international. The use of new packaging materials increases the range of transportation and increases the physical resistance of the product to its circulation time. By doing these things, capital increases its absolute control over the production process and the content of goods and the circulation process more than ever before. To prevent goods from spoiling and to increase their resistance in different conditions, additional capital must be used. This is something that capitalists struggle to do. In a world where capital has penetrated all geographical corners, it has increased the intensity of work to the highest level and uses all its efforts and resources to prevent a decrease in the rate of profit. Discovering new areas of production, increasing the productivity of labour, producing goods with high saleability capacity, preventing goods from spoiling and not being sold, increasing their resistance during the circulation period are the only areas left for it in the war to seize the market and earn more profits. The openings for transferring capital to new places with reservoirs of cheap raw materials, cheap labour, etc. are decreasing day by day, and what remains and is reliable and continuous is the evolution of the processes of production and supply of the same goods with more resistant and durable content. When different goods are produced for different purposes as capital goods, their producers pretend that they have a very long life. Their depreciation is so insignificant that it will give them a long life. In fact, for the same purpose, materials are used to produce them that have increased their resistance to heat, pressure, depreciation and chemicals compared to similar older goods. For example, look at the equipment used in restaurant kitchens (of course, the same equipment is also used in smaller sizes in the home, so the following information includes them as well). These tools, which form part of productive capital and its durable part, are made of materials such as nickel-plated steel, or Teflon-coated aluminium and iron, and the like. In the not-so-distant past, kitchenware was generally made of copper, which was protected by a layer of zinc, although clay and ceramic were also available. Both metals were flexible, expensive, and, when used under normal conditions of moderate heat and pressure, were not harmful to human health. For this reason, humans knew the limits of their use, which was cooking food under normal conditions (of course, at that time, chemicals were not used to cause changes in these utensils) and consuming it, that is, cooking food for direct consumption. But when food, like other elements of life, began to be mass-produced and quickly for sale (of course, large kitchens and restaurants existed in the army, barracks, and court before the emergence of capitalism), then using expensive copper utensils was not cost-effective and gave way to the aforementioned metals. These devices must gradually and gradually give their value to the manufactured goods (in this case, food) during their lifetime. The goods that are created during the use of these production devices are food, various food products such as sauces, cakes, and the like. However, the depreciation of these devices, their chemical form changes due to heat and chemicals, and even food, leads to the transfer of toxic substances, carcinogenic chemicals, and other particles to the prepared food. Here, the progress in the production of kitchen utensils and dishes has led to the use of materials that, along with the production of food as a consumer product, deliver a certain amount of toxins of various types to consumers. Now, if we consider other factors such as the speed of food production, i.e., less time spent on producing each meal, we can easily achieve better results in terms of production per unit of time compared to other product production processes. Because it is enough to increase the temperature of the production process to achieve this goal. Increasing production per unit of time can be achieved in the simplest way in food production by increasing the heat of baking and frying. But this also causes an exponential increase in the wear and tear of containers because heat is the most important factor in accelerating chemical processes and leads to the decomposition of containers and the materials used in them and by-products during cooking. Heat and pressure multiply the rate of chemical decomposition of food and its ingredients, their combination with the materials of the dishes and the like. But none of these processes are visible, but what is seen is the production of more food per unit of time. Remember the case of acrylamide formation, the factors that cause it are constant, but what affects the rate of its increase is the frying temperature of hydrocarbon-containing materials such as potatoes. The rate of wear and tear and decomposition of kitchen utensils in restaurants is less related to the balanced process of cooking and preparing food than to the quality of these goods, the type of use they have, and the degree and speed of the food production process.
It is not inappropriate to address here the field of capitalist industrial agriculture, which is the dominant method in the world, because this field is a major supplier of capital goods, such as raw and auxiliary materials for many other fields of capital, including the production of capital and consumer goods. When the scale of production grows and the need for raw and auxiliary materials for production increases, and this increase must be such that it does not cause any interruption in the production process, the storage of agricultural materials becomes increasingly important. The sustainability of goods, whether consumed or produced, is becoming increasingly important in their storage. This is especially true for agricultural goods, as their production takes a long time, and for this reason, capital has advanced in recent years in both areas: both the sustainability and resistance of goods and the shortening of their production process. Soybeans, corn, rice, and many genetically modified commodities, when used as animal feed, are generally raw materials and byproducts of animal production. Fruits, plants, and seeds, which were once fixed in the production process for a year, are now harvested and stored in greenhouses without allowing them to develop vital nutrients (vitamins, carotenoids, proteins, and natural Flavors). In this way, by shortening the return on investment period, it is possible to plant and harvest two to four times a year. Or genetically modified fruits, plants and seeds have been given the possibility of planting several times a year while being resistant to plant pests. Since for the capitalist, the return on investment period is the time during which he must pay his capital in the form of land, seeds, fruit trees, fertilizers and other capital components for value addition, therefore, shortening the production period, increasing plant productivity, increasing plant resistance to pests due to the use of pesticides and genetic changes that are carried out for the same purpose, leads to higher productivity 1331
work. Similarly, in livestock farming, cattle, sheep, and poultry are given hormones to make them grow faster, treated with antibiotics, and their meat is sold as raw material. Animals are genetically modified to produce meat or milk, and other methods shorten the work cycle (the time and period in which a product is prepared for sale). Genetic modification methods, mixing feed (usually genetically modified soybeans and corn) with growth hormones, increase their protein content and increase labour productivity. Although this results in less skeletal growth of the animal, it provides the rancher with more meat, which is marketed in a shorter period of time.
Now, consider all that has been said about capitalist industrial agriculture and animal husbandry in relation to the mass production of food in restaurants that we have discussed before, to see the dimensions of the catastrophes of capital in its most advanced form. The transformation of surplus value into additional capital is the inherent and identity phenomenon of capital. This means that in its historical process, capital constantly expands the scope of its accumulation in all respects, increasing the volume of capital, making labour more productive, etc. This leads to an upward trend in the organic composition of capital, which in turn exacerbates the downward trend in the rate of profit of capital in general. We have already mentioned this. The point we emphasize is that in this regard we are witnessing two parallel environmental and labour degradations. One is the production of goods containing pollutants, the nature of which we have exposed in numerous articles, and the other is the fixed capital sector, which is depreciated during production but leaves its mark on the workplace, the environment, and nature. The production of more consumer goods, in turn, involves investment in both fixed capital (machinery, tools, and buildings) and circulating capital (raw and auxiliary materials). When the latter increases, it actually increases the volume of these types of goods produced by capital goods producers, which supplies the needs of both sectors. Therefore, we should not only focus on consumer goods and their environmental and labour-damaging content but also consider all production processes in order to understand not only the dimensions of these wastes, but especially to realize that these destructions are temporary, irreparable, and not the result of the work of individual capitalists. On the contrary, they have an organic place in the framework of capitalist production relations. Consider, for example, the production of steel throughout its history. In the mid-nineteenth century (1850), a new style of production by combining coal and air flow shortened the production time, which in turn increased fixed capital in this area. But this was only the beginning, because today steel is composed not only of iron and carbon, but also of materials such as chromium, molybdenum, nickel and vanadium, which give it properties such as rust resistance, high strength, hardness, flexibility, low wear and the ability to form thin sheets. Currently, different steels are produced for different purposes. For example, rust-resistant steel consists of 18-20% chromium and 8-10% nickel. Kitchen utensils are products obtained from this type of steel. Among the metals added to steel, vanadium (V) and chromium (Cr) have destructive properties. Vanadium is not only released into the environment and nature from these production centres, but also through the depreciation of goods containing it. This metal is also obtained from fossil fuels (oil, coal and gas). In nature, it combines with chemicals in soil and water sediments and can enter plant structures. It is released into the air, which is why the amount of vanadium is very high around metal smelting and steel production industries. It enters the respiratory tract of workers through fine dust inside metal production factories. This metal, like lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury (which we have discussed in separate chapters), has its own cycle in nature (air, water, and soil), in which the metal industry, steel production, and the burning of fossil fuels play an important role. Volcanic emissions have been the main source, but this source, like other heavy and dangerous metals, has not added anything to the cycle over millions of years. Figures from a 1998 study put the natural emission rate at 9,300 tonnes per year, and emissions from the metal and fossil fuel industries at 74,000 tonnes per year in 2000 (Nriagu and Pirrone). It should be noted that the amount of vanadium emitted naturally remains almost constant, while that emitted from fossil fuel and metal industries is directly proportional to the production of these commodities. For example, oil production has increased from 19 million barrels per day in 1960 to 90 million barrels per day in 2013, a nearly fivefold increase. Similarly, coal use increased by 107% between 1990 and 2012. (41% of the world’s electricity generation in 2012 came from this source.) World steel production doubled from 1998 to 2008, and it is worth noting that coal is needed to produce steel, and this auxiliary material has also doubled with the increase in steel production. It is not possible to find figures for other metals in which vanadium is used. Among the disadvantages of vanadium metal are the inhibition of the action of some body hormones, poisoning, runny nose, often with blood, pulmonary discomfort, fatigue, lethargy, eye discomfort, and diarrhoea. More serious symptoms include laryngeal discomfort, shortness of breath, bronchitis, vomiting, diarrhoea, lung infection, effects on the nervous system, tremors, shortness of breath, and kidney damage (Randahl, H., Dock, Loch Christiansson, J. 1997. Molybden, vanadin och Vismot förekommande halter och effekter på miljö och hälsa).
Another example of gold production, which, like other metal production, generally belongs to the capital goods production sector (production of means of production), had a production scale of 170 tons in 1870. However, despite the limited and limited amount of gold reserves in the world (according to the World Metals Organization, the estimated gold reserves of the world are 168 thousand tons and by 2010, about 64% of them had been extracted), this amount reached 1350 tons (8 times) a hundred years later (1970), 2416 tons (14 times) in 2008, and 2652 tons (15.6 times) in 2010. Gold, whether mined or not, is never lost. It is only gradually reduced to sand and low-concentration ores, which means that mining costs are high per unit. For example, South African gold mines have a concentration of between 4 and 10 grams of gold per ton of ore, while sand and topsoil, i.e. open-pit mines, have a concentration of between 1 and 4 grams per ton. For this reason, year by year, access to high-concentration gold ores and mines is decreasing, and the percentage of gold extracted from sands and surface rocks is increasing. Of the gold produced in the world in 2010, about 18% was in the reserves of the world’s banks. This percentage has been almost constant throughout history, but with the growth of capitalist production and the growth of produced values, its absolute amount, i.e. the weight of gold in the monetary reserve, has increased. If we assume that a small amount of gold is used to compensate for its depreciation, the majority of the world’s existing gold (80%) enters the consumer goods sector from the production of means of production sector. Of this amount, a significant portion is allocated to jewellery and ornamental devices and personal savings, and the rest (its increasing portion) is used in chemical, pharmaceutical, aerospace, electronics, and dental production. In this way, the part that is used in the form of raw materials, auxiliary materials and sometimes semi-finished products is transferred from the production of means of production to the production of consumer goods. For the extraction of gold, especially from sand and open pit mines, a technique based on mercury is used as an auxiliary material. We have discussed this metal and its polluting compounds in a separate article entitled “Traceable and Heavy Metals” and it is not necessary to repeat them here. Mercury is used in the gold production process in gold mines around the world when miners use mercury to separate and purify gold from other minerals. An estimated 20 to 40 million workers in gold mines around the world use this technique (mostly in Southeast Asia, Africa, and South and Central Latin America). This technique releases tons of mercury into the atmosphere, but even worse is the plight of the workers who have been mining for money in this technique for hundreds of years. The final stage of production is when the gold amalgam (a mixture of gold and mercury) is heated and the mercury evaporates, resulting in pure gold. Workers at this stage bear the most risks and losses. Today, about seven techniques are used to extract gold. The mercury technique covers a quarter of the world’s gold production because it is the cheapest type of gold extraction. Although it requires more labour, capitalists in the mentioned countries use this technique due to the extremely cheap labour cost. This method produces a much cheaper gold per ounce. Other techniques are also less environmentally friendly, as many use cyanide compounds that are highly toxic to both miners and producers, as well as the environment. When mercury is released into the atmosphere from coal and oil energy sources and gold mining, it returns to the earth in rainwater. When mixed with seawater, methylmercury is produced, which is the most dangerous form of mercury. This mercury compound is easily absorbed and accumulated in microscopic organisms such as plankton, corals, and other microscopic and basic marine organisms. When fish feed on these organisms, it enters the food chain higher and higher, eventually reaching humans and other animals that feed on fish. This has led to more and more mercury accumulating, with the largest amounts being found in larger fish. This means that mercury accumulation in areas that have never had widespread access to gold mining techniques and fossil fuels such as oil and coal (the Arctic) has also increased to such an extent that there is no limit to its existence and abundance. In this way, the mercury cycle is completed from gold mining, fossil fuels, etc. to suspension in the air and ground space and rainwater, and this is a process that includes many capital goods. For example: oil, which causes the release and circulation of many substances from carbon dioxide (the most important greenhouse gas) to heavy metals and pollutants (lead, mercury and cadmium). Polyaromatics that cause hormonal disruptions and cancer, the process of converting oil into bitumen, asphalt and rubber that gives rise to many harmful pollutants. Plastics and various types of polluting chemicals, the processes of which we have examined in other articles and shown their huge and increasing volume. All of these have their own cycle, and, like other materials produced by capital, their volume is constantly increasing in various forms, including consumer and manufactured goods. I explained about pesticides in the book “Capitalism and the Disaster of Environmental Pollution, Volume 1”. Many of these pesticides (including 1100 registered substances and hundreds of unregistered substances in each country) are stable in nature, and substances that have a hormonal role also have their own rotation. There are more than 500 registered food additives, some of which have special rotations. Genetically modified plants spread unchecked in nature, outcompeting natural plants, so that much of the world’s corn now consists of this genetic material. Soybeans and other genetically modified plants spread their modified fragments among plants, exposing living organisms and humans to changes of a magnitude unknown to mankind. The cycle of genetically modified plants in the world of living organisms is one of the most complex and destructive phenomena that humanity has ever witnessed. Radioactive materials resulting from nuclear activities, whether from power generation reactors or nuclear military activities, also have a certain cycle. These materials, which are in addition to volcanic activities resulting from capitalist production relations in the last 60 to 70 years, have given new dimensions to the spread of cancer and genetic diseases. Various chemicals with different lifetimes cover the seas, soil and air, so that a significant part of them each have their own cycles and their amount increases over time. This is very important because the existence of a cycle of a pollutant itself has enough destructive and permanent effects on the environment, humans and animals, but when its production, consumption and capital use are also added, the exponential intensity of its destruction also increases. We see this trend clearly in the case of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, deforestation, etc., because its emission and accumulation in the Earth’s atmosphere have reached such proportions during the life of capitalism that it threatens human life, while its accumulation is increasing every day. This causes an exponential increase in global warming and other effects of this gas. Thus, as mentioned at the beginning of this article, the cycles of water, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulphur are no longer the only biogeochemical cycles on Earth. Since its inception, capitalist production relations have added so many pollutants to the cycles that it is impossible even for researchers to count them. Their pollution and destructive dimensions, like the capitalist system itself, are not even comparable to natural diseases and pests. The various phenomena of the cycles of pollutants and environmental destruction that add a new dimension to the dimensions of these destructions indicate the structural connection of these phenomena with the relations of production of capital, therefore any effort to restore these relations of production serves its survival.
Appendix 1
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 goiter 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.
Chlorpyrifos: Blocks acetyl choline and causes death. It enters the body through the mouth and eyes and its toxic effects in humans are the same as in animals. It causes vomiting, facial and eye muscle spasms, unconsciousness, amnesia, severe convulsions and death by suffocation.
Chlormequat: The results of testing this biocide on pigs in Denmark at the end of 1980 at the Agricultural Research Institute of this country showed a decrease in fertility in female pigs. Testing on mice led to the same result. It is stored in the trunk of the tree and therefore spreads to the fruit even if spraying is stopped. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA The capital government body does not see any danger from this biocide to 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!
Chlorpropham and Trifluralin are herbicides. It includes 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 crops, they act through the roots or the product or the leaves and enter the biological system of the plant.
Chlorthalonil, 2-Phenylphenol are fungicides. They contain 83 registered substances. These biocides act on plants in two ways. First, by spraying a thin layer of these substances on the plant and fruit, and second, by water and chemical fertilizers that are fed to the plant. They are sprayed on the fruits after harvest to prevent them from spoiling.
Piperonyl butoxide: The role of this chemical is to enhance natural plant toxins. The natural toxin Pyretrum, which is present in some plants, is enhanced by spraying this toxin.
Dicofol is a miticide. It is chemically very similar to DDT and chlorine. It is very deadly to aquatic organisms. Symptoms of poisoning in humans include headache, dizziness, vomiting, imbalance, mental confusion, tachycardia, coma, and respiratory depression.
Phosmet, Carbaryl, Dithiocarbamate are insecticides. They contain 129 registered substances. The previous generation of these biocides includes two groups: Organophosphate insecticide (58 biocides) and Carbamate insecticides (19 biocides). Both of these groups affect the nervous system through the hormone acetylcholinesteras. 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.
Procymidone, a fungicide. Fruits are treated with this substance before and after harvest. It is toxic. It causes changes in the hormonal system and has caused gender reassignment in male mice.
(PH3) Hydrogenphosphide, known as rice tablets in Iran, is a highly toxic gas used to disinfect grains, flour in silos, and the packaging of some fruits (in Iran, these products are also used to package and preserve dates 24). The symptoms of poisoning with this gas, which most workers experience while working with it, include nausea, vomiting, pain, coughing, dizziness, muscle cramps, coma, and shock, which are signs of poisoning and death 23.
Oxadixyl, a fungicide. It is sprayed on vegetables. Europeans will never forget the explosion of a factory that produced this and many other toxic pesticides in 1986. At the time of the explosion, the tanks of the factory contained more than 900 tons of this substance, and within 4 minutes, its largest warehouses were set on fire. The explosion resulted in the widespread dispersion of these substances and the widespread poisoning of aquatic animals and humans. 25.
Appendix 2
Harmful gases and particles in the air
Gas:
Nitrogen oxide (NO2) in combination with air humidity creates a strong acid that not only destroys the environment and the facades of buildings but is also very toxic to humans and animals. The increase in nitrogen oxide is the reason for the increase in other toxic gases. This gas mainly comes from traffic, oil industries and factories. According to calculations by the Swedish Meteorological Agency, an increase of every 10 micrograms per cubic meter of air leads to a 12-14 percent increase in future deaths.
Sulphur oxide (SO2) is the most important source of this gas emission, like nitrogen oxide, from oil and fossil fuels. In the case of sulphur oxide, a very important source is added to them, namely maritime traffic. The spread of this gas in the production of energy from coal is also very important. This gas has an important property that causes it to mix with polluting particles in the air and produce a sticky substance that sticks to clothes, objects and buildings, and this also leads to various bronchitis complications on the skin and inside the lungs. Sulphur oxide combines with air humidity and produces strong sulfuric acid, which causes acidification of waters and major changes in the ecosystem, which we have discussed in various articles.
Carbon monoxide (CO) is a gas that is produced by the incomplete combustion of various fossil fuels and is a particular problem in cities. This dangerous gas combines with blood (haemoglobin) 200 times better and more stable than oxygen, making it very dangerous and fatal for the elderly and those with heart and respiratory problems.
Ground-level ozone (O3) is a gas that is formed when sunlight interacts with exhaust gases from automobiles. This gas not only interferes with photosynthesis in plants, but also, especially when combined with the membranes of the trachea and respiratory tract, reduces the efficiency of the lungs in absorbing oxygen and causes damage to the tissues of the trachea. The Swedish Meteorological Agency estimates that the number of deaths in Europe due to ground-level ozone was 21,000 in the year 2000.
Benzene (C6H6 Benzene) is present in gasoline fuels and is highly toxic and carcinogenic.
Polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are molecules made up of multiple benzene units that are formed during the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, and aluminium production is another source of these polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. They are also released from the burning of automobile tires and asphalt. These substances, which include more than a dozen different types, are all carcinogenic. Lung, skin, and bladder cancers are among them.
Phthalates, which are used in the production and softening of plastics, have been shown to cause cancer and hormonal imbalances that lead to infertility in animal experiments. Phthalates, which come in 25 varieties, are dispersed in the air as a result of the dispersion of plastics in life, the workplace, and cities, and are one of the factors that are detrimental to human health.
Airborne particles: Asphalt particles are dispersed in the air by the friction of asphalt particles. The higher the speed, the more it increases. Reducing the speed from 90 to 70 km/h reduces these particles by 26% (Swedish Roads Agency). In addition to containing polyaromatics, these particles also cause asthma, various lung diseases and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases when they enter the lungs.
Automobile Tire Particles: What was said about asphalt particles is also true about rubber particles, and in addition, rubber particles are smaller and therefore penetrate deep into the respiratory tract and remain there. The diseases and health effects of these particles are similar to asphalt particles.
Nanoparticles are a new and lesser-known field of Nanomaterials. This technique is capable of producing materials at the atomic and molecular level (sizes between 1 and 100 nm, i.e. one millionth of a millimetre). Nanotechnology, which has so far succeeded in producing materials such as: Titanium Dioxide, Nano silica, Zinc oxide, Carbone Black, Nanofood, Nano cosmetics Silver Nano, has revealed unknown and new dimensions of these materials such as their size, physical and chemical mechanisms that are different from conventional materials. The bioavailability of these materials is different from conventional materials in that they easily pass through and enter cell walls. They take on unconventional forms that can create new effects on the surface of other materials (surface science) and their contact with other materials occurs at the atomic and molecular level. These materials are present in the workplace of workers and are now spreading in the air of cities. Furthermore, while toxic gases in the air are measured based on their quantity, pollutant particles are measured based on their size, and this size is a micrometre, which is one millionth of a meter. Here the question arises: what particles lie in the distance between these gas particles, which is one billionth of a meter (1,000 times smaller than a micrometre), that no one is talking about. Does this mean that they do not exist? Of course, they do but measuring them requires the acquisition of expensive measuring devices, which is not cost-effective!
Salt: A study of workers in salt factories, reported in the Journal of Environmental Health in June 2015, confirms what has been observed in Iranian residents of cities near Lake Urmia. The study shows that most of these workers suffer from high blood pressure. The Lake Urmia Restoration Headquarters announced on July 29, 2015, “Citizens of villages around the lake and even Tabriz itself have developed high blood pressure due to inhaling salt-laden air.”
Sand and dust particles are the main factor in the intensification of this phenomenon, i.e. the increase in fine dust along with the desertification wind in Iran, Iraq and the surrounding areas of Iran. Regarding the destructive effects on human health, it is mainly the combination and mixing of fine dust particles with other particles and even bacteria. In addition, breathing these particles causes a runny nose, itching and burning of the throat and eyes.
Lead (Pb) is still present in gasoline, is released into the air by combustion, and is now a major source of lead in food. Lead is highly toxic, and even small amounts can stunt brain development in children.
Other heavy metals such as cadmium (Cd), mercury (Hg), arsenic (As) and nickel (Ni) which have various origins such as pest control, batteries, coal, mining, metal production and food, their release into the air leads to diseases such as anaemia, heart disease, nervous system damage, various types of cancer and allergies. The mixing of these particles with sulfuric compounds from fossil fuels and factory smoke creates a complex that settles in the membrane tissue of the trachea and respiratory tract and causes long-term effects.
Appendix 3
This table lists technical additives added to foods that increase the shelf life of the product and cause asthma or other allergies. However, it should be noted that this is the official list of registered substances that the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has issued a license to register and use them in food production. In addition to the official substances, thousands of other legal and illegal substances are added to foods. 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. 69, 70, 71, 72, 73.
| European code | Role in the production of goods | Effects on microorganisms in nature and the body |
| E200 to E228 | Preservatives and canning | To kill germs, it also kills beneficial intestinal bacteria |
| E230 to E232 | In nature, it destroys all types of fungi | |
| E239 | Antifungal and antibacterial | Destroys bacteria in the body and nature |
| E249 | Antifungal and antibacterial | Destroys bacteria in the body and nature |
| E250 to E252 | Antibacterial | Destroys bacteria in the body and nature, especially with antioxidants (E310-E325) becoming more dangerous |
| E310 | Antioxidant, increasing product shelf life | |
| E311 | Antioxidant, increasing product shelf life | |
| E312 | Antioxidant, increasing product shelf life | |
| E320 | Preservatives and canning | To kill germs, it also kills beneficial intestinal bacteria |
| E321 | Preservatives and canning | To kill germs, it also kills beneficial intestinal bacteria |
| E102 | Coloured materials | |
| E104 | Coloured materials | |
| E110 | Coloured materials | |
| E120 | Coloured materials | |
| E123 | Coloured materials | |
| E124 | Coloured materials | |
| E133 | Coloured materials | |
| E142 | Coloured materials | |
| E151 | Coloured materials | |
| E160 b | Coloured materials | |
| E171 | Coloured materials | |
| E173 | Coloured materials | |
| E175 | Coloured materials | |
| E420, E421 | Sweetener | |
| E400 to E407 | Mixing fat with water | Changes in beneficial gut bacteria |
| E413, E414 | Mixing fat with water | Changes in beneficial gut bacteria |
| E460 to E466 | Mixing fat with water | Changes in beneficial gut bacteria |
| E470 a, b | Mixing fat with water | Changes in beneficial gut bacteria |
| E476, E477 | Mixing fat with water | Changes in beneficial gut bacteria |
| E491 to E495 | Mixing fat with water | Changes in beneficial gut bacteria |
| E322-E337 | Mixing fat with water | Changes in beneficial gut bacteria |
| E553a | Preventing getting stuck | |
| E621-E624 | Flavouring |
Appendix 4
This table shows that a significant portion of pesticides produced after World War II were the result of capital’s profit-seeking lessons from the function 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 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).
| Pesticides and Biocides | number of registered substances is included | Effects on microorganisms in nature and the body |
| Against Fungus (Fungicides) | 83 | Antifungal agents work in two ways: multi-site, which denatures the protein and enzyme systems of the fungus through multi-dimensional biochemical action, or single site, which, through plant absorption, stops cell reproduction and causes the death of the fungus, and in the same way, causes the death of other microorganisms. |
| Herbicides | 475 | Many of these substances prevent weed growth by blocking the growth hormones of weeds, 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 biochemicals and therefore have similar modes of action. But this does not prevent them from destroying the beneficial bacteria of nature and the body. |
| Insecticides | 129 | It is very dangerous for fish, invertebrates, and bees. |
| Avicides | 6 | Destroyer of the nervous system of all creatures that have nerves. |
| Bactericides | 374 | All antibiotics are disinfectants, cleaning agents for tools, equipment, clothes, tiles, bathtubs, toilets and bathrooms. Disinfectants are used for tissues and living organisms, antiseptics are a group of substances that are used on the surface of the skin of the body and in living tissues and kill or prevent the growth of bacteria, viruses, fungi, bacterial spores and other organisms by acting on them. |
| Miticides | 5 | Kills aquatic life such as crabs, plankton, fish, aquatic insects, frogs, and snails. |
| Molluscicides | 4 | What is mentioned about spider killers and bird killers |
| Nematicides | 19 | They all also destroy beneficial soil bacteria. |
| Rodenticides | 46 | Against all blood-sucking creatures, as well as bird killers. |
| Impregnating agents | Used against all organisms on wood and wood products, as well as fabrics and organisms in water sediments in treatment plants, boats and large ships. |
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