Contribution of Communist Revolutionary Party of France

Capitalism-imperialism is generating an unprecedented environmental crisis. This is caused by the law of maximum profit under imperialism, anarchy of production (absence of planning, overproduction, wastage), very strong pressure on natural resources in conditions of generalized competition, policies favoring the car to the detriment of public transport on the one hand and on the other hand heavy goods vehicles to the detriment of rail and river transport, the absence of serious environmental management, wars, destructions and imperialist interventions. If capitalists' main concern is to make profits, the environment is only a pretext for increasing them, and workers pay the price. The cartel of capitalist states that is the European Union uses people's legitimate concerns about environmental issues as a pretext to increase the profits of its monopolies, because no capitalist state can defend the interests of the working class. Competition between monopolies and their states (between imperialisms) is aggravated by the new race to green capitalism and to new technologies, which require adaptations of the means of production. French imperialism wants to find money for the monopolies' race to green capitalism and high technology, which is an immediate strategic objective of the French bourgeoisie, in addition to strengthening its military-industrial complex. Already, billions in bourgeois state aid have been earmarked for French hydrogen, solar or electric battery mega-factories, in addition to the 40% increase in the new Military Planning Law (413 billion), not to mention new investments in semiconductors and solar power. French imperialism is betting on green capitalism, new technologies and the arms industry. This is the government's roadmap and policy. On green capitalism, there are several new features. Firstly, it is a law on green industry "to position France as the future European leader in green industry and the breeding ground for tomorrow's green technologies". Five sectors are favored, but many more are actually aided: heat pumps, wind power, solar panels, batteries and green hydrogen... This autumn 2023, the law received votes from all benches of the bourgeois parliament. The means are deployed for so-called administrative simplifications, which are first and foremost cuts in public protections and democratic rights, a reduction in the time required to open factories, a tax credit of up to 40% of the capitalist investment made, a purely formal right of scrutiny for local elected representatives, the preparation of 50 turnkey industrial sites, the creation of a green label in public procurement, the creation of a new "future climate savings plan" for private individuals with numerous tax benefits. The number of funds to help capital is multiplying: wasteland fund, green fund, France 2030 fund, bank of territories fund.... Plans are therefore being deployed to boost industries in the so-called green capitalism sector. One of the latest results is the establishment of the world's first bio-based isobutene plant, with the Global Bioenergies company receiving 16.4 million euros in funding. German companies and press are calling for the same thing as in France, that is to say, more state aid ! And they are envious of the financial capabilities of the private sector, and the financial levers and products that have been put in place all over the place to attract and use French savings (numerous financial "call" products). This policy of French imperialism requires good control of raw materials, energy and communication routes. On the energy front, the EU's classification of nuclear power as a green energy is a victory for the French monopolies. France also strengthened its uranium supply by winning a new deposit operated by the Orano monopoly in Mongolia, in the wake of several presidential visits. The Mongolian president also signed a satellite contract with Thales to explore the Mongolian soil. French monopolies are also strengthening their presence in the Mediterranean Sea (deposits off Cyprus), in the Black Sea (and around the Danube), in South America (Argentina (copper mines), Brazil (electricity)) and in Africa, with offices and companies in new countries to diversify their trading zones on the continent. France still has the world's 2nd largest maritime area - the 1st, not counting the country's coastline - ahead of the USA, and it's a key element of its imperialist policy. As far as raw materials are concerned, France is making new efforts on its own soil. The French government has commissioned a radiogram of all French mines and subsoils. A natural hydrogen deposit in Lorraine (Northeastern France) the world's largest, has been discovered. We can see how green capitalism steers new strategies for monopolies and their states, but always within the laws of capitalism and the characteristics of the imperialist stage. Energy policies pursued under the banner of green struggle are also a great pretext for ensuring ever greater profits for the energy monopolies and taxes on the working people. But it's also in dealing with the environmental consequences and catastrophes created by imperialism that we can measure capitalism's inability to solve problems. Fires and floods in France illustrate the catastrophic consequences of the reactionary policies of dismantling public services and the intensive, anarchic exploitation of nature pursued under capitalism. The fires have highlighted the effects of private ownership of woods and forests, with some 10 million owners in France, a situation that prevents their maintenance, even though this lack is the primary cause of the spread of fires. Floods in the north and south of France, including in the Paris region and in the heart of Marseille, show that capitalism is holding back science and its application, even though we have long been aware of floor coverings that allow water to infiltrate, electronic detectors upstream of watercourses, watercourses that are no longer cleaned, dykes that are no longer maintained and that fail, public service budgets that have been cut, as with Météo-France and the fire departments, real estate speculation and construction in dangerous areas with no hydraulic or seismic standards... The same dialectical materialist method allows us to understand that there is no such thing as fatality, and that for every situation there are ways to act and solve a problem. The environmental crisis is a social and political problem, and we have the tools to act at its root, against the capitalist system that is destroying the environment, in other words, human societies and the "natural environment". In France, bourgeois ideology is developing a dominant ecology which is a political ecology that masks capitalist production relations and the division of society into social classes, with a particular vocabulary: "transcending the left-right divide", "everyone is concerned by ecology", "changing our mode of consumption", but also a left-wing version with "ecosocialism" or "ecocommunism". A reactionary ecology advocates a return to the past, based on a pastiest and static representation of "nature" with the "back to the land", "degrowth", "slowing down", the "right of nature", "overpopulation" narratives. The so-called "radical" ecology is a political ecology that in fact evacuates the question of the State. The question of a change of policy that takes account of the environmental and humanitarian emergency is becoming increasingly pressing, but it is inseparable from the question of the overthrow of capitalism and the construction of socialism-communism. To build a policy that responds effectively to today's ecological and humanitarian problems, we need to build large and powerful public services, democratically managed by the working people, exclusively serving the needs of the population. This is incompatible with the bourgeois state and the private ownership of the means of production and exchange specific to the capitalist regime. Only centralized, democratic planning with socialism-communism, based on science and engineering, which puts an end to the law of anarchy of production and to wastage, can avert such catastrophes and solve humanity's problems.