Contribution of the Communist Revolutionary Party of France

he experience of the communists in the struggle to protect the people’s lives and infrastructure from natural and technological disasters. Highlighting the responsibilities of the anti-people strategy of the EU – governments - capital and the organization of popular solidarity

Intervention of the Revolutionary Communist Party of France for the ECA conference, 6 april 2025.

Dear Comrades,

We would like to begin to thanks our comrades from the Communist Workers' Party of Spain for hosting this conference, and reiterate our solidarity with the workers of the Valencia region who are still paying the price for the environmental and social catastrophe caused by the policies of the Spanish and French monopolies alike, even months after the floods.

In addition to large-scale natural and technological disasters such as the one in Valencia, or the Turkish earthquake in 2023, the environmental question and its social and political implications have become an increasingly important issue for workers since the 1980s.

Awareness of the problem and its media coverage have played a significant role in environmental issues. However, the increasing and massive depoliticization of these issues by imperialist alliances and the various bourgeoisies has had a major impact on popular movements. These operations, aided by the revival of global imperialism by new bourgeoisies gaining positions, the growing weight of NGOs, but also the temporary defeat of workers' organizations due to global counter-revolution, have a role to play in the weight that the dominant ideology has on this issue. Thus, in the various natural and technological disasters affecting the European workers' movement, it is quite possible that the bourgeois class will reinforce itself after the loss of profits, even justifying them in plans for “reconstruction” or “humanitarian” aid. Green capitalism”, one of the central axis of the monopolies of the EU and France in particular, bears witness to the ability of our monopolies to find profit in the worst situations.

The French monopolies have indeed been able to make strategic headway on these issues, knowing how to hold their own in inter-imperialist contradictions, particularly in the face of their immediate competitor and partner, the German bourgeoisie. The French monopoly Engie, for example, owns the world's largest wind farm in the United Arab Emirates.

AirLiquide, a major electricity and gas monopoly, holds one of the best positions in the EU when it comes to green hydrogen extraction and refining projects. Finally, for more than a decade, French monopolies have been seeking to catch up with their European competitors, primarily Germany, through vast decarbonization operations. Alstom is the best-known French monopoly in this field.

If inter-imperialist contradictions have reoriented the priorities of our monopolies towards a war economy, green strategies are not exclusive to the military-industrial complex, even if the latter allows for faster profitability: the monopolies we mentioned above are interdependent with the major armaments monopolies, and green capitalism can become a support for military production. In this way, the anarchy of production to the detriment of real natural and technological capacities, as well as ideological campaigns for apolitical support, go hand in hand in the maneuvers of the monopolies, both being profit-making factors. Indeed, in both present and future natural and technological disasters, imperialism in war and in “peace” knows how to coordinate its various sectors to preserve its interests and domination, whatever the justifications or mystifications put forward by the various states.

When we speak of the “natural environment”, we make it clear that this is an inaccurate term. For our party, the question of natural and technological disasters is also an ideological issue, so that the working people understand the objective reality of the problems they face. Thus, the dialectical materialist analysis of the environmental question cannot give way for our party to a binary opposition between nature and society, or “nature and culture”. We distinguish the “natural environment” and human societies as two interrelated, interdependent components forming a whole. Without a natural environment, there can be no development of class societies, and without a class society, there can be no natural environment as we know it. The environment is therefore the whole formed by the natural environment and human societies, informing it through work. In this sense, to speak of environmental protection implies both human society and the natural environment. It is through the action of human societies in interdependence with the natural environment that we can understand these disasters and their consequences, overcoming the outdated relations of production hindering its full potential.

To develop its class conception of the environment, our party has a dedicated campaign aimed at the masses and our revolutionary reserves, the “environment campaign”. This is part of our “Accuse Capitalism” campaign, which brings together a number of campaigns on issues such as democratic freedoms, peace, the environment, employment and the high cost of living, each of which links the ills suffered by the people to their cause: the capitalist mode of production.

Each campaign, including the environment campaign, includes a website, leaflets, posters, brochures and dedicated articles, and is available to our federations for setting up public meetings and struggle collectives. A petition is also available in paper and digital format. But first and foremost, these are wide-ranging campaigns, the thrust of which is designed to be taken up by the masses, who can participate and lead the campaign without having to be a Party member.

Our Party defends concrete slogans in each of our federations, such as increasing the resources of “météo France” and redeploying this public service closer to the regions, or the fight against the commercialization of coasts and beaches. In order to link the concrete needs of workers with the question of socialism, the defense of an integrated plan for prevention and intervention in the event of a major industrial accident in a region is also a watchword defended in the event of disasters. During floods experienced in some of our federations, we also argued that the construction of houses or buildings in flood-prone areas, on the cheap, not elevated, without hydraulic or seismic standards, without evacuation and safety systems, should be stopped immediately. Systems for detecting rising water levels upstream are known, but are not implemented “because it's too expensive”. Capital's responsibility when, for maximum corporate profit, concrete and tarmac that allow water to infiltrate are not used in construction, when centuries-old dams or dikes (when they are not absent), rivers and riverbanks are not maintained. We are also fighting for the protection of the population, for a general plan to warn, evacuate and house people forced to leave their homes, coordinated by workers to awaken collectivism.

Class solidarity is also an important factor in promoting scientific analysis of the environment, and in the concrete struggle against the devastating effects of imperialist capitalism. Just think of our comrades in Spain, who organized a heroic solidarity movement at the time of the floods in Valencia. Comrades participated tirelessly in clean-up efforts in the affected towns, always putting forward a class perspective on the most basic problems encountered. All this without the bourgeois state offering any viable solution, as the situation dragged on for weeks. Comrades from our party in the South of France also organized accommodation solutions during the floods that hit the region, working with mass organizations in that case.

Dear comrades, only the social revolution towards socialism-communism can provide an answer to the ecological crisis, part of the generalized crisis of capitalism-imperialism that we are experiencing. For the strengthening of our parties, for proletarian internationalism, towards socialism-communism!

The PCRF, 6 april 2025