“The 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.”
Contribution by Gerry Grainger, Workers Party International Secretary, to the European Communist Action Teleconference (5th April 2025)
The impact of catastrophic “natural” and technological disasters is immense. These disasters lead to death, injury, devastation of flora and fauna, environmental destruction, damage to homes and vital infrastructure, and the breakdown of health and social support networks.
Increasing trends of more natural and technological disasters are occurring in circumstances of growing urbanization and more concentrated populations. We are familiar with recent natural disasters, such as earthquakes, fires, floods, drought, famine, storms, etc., for example, in Thailand, Myanmar, Turkey, Greece, Spain, Britain, Syria, Japan, India, Ethiopia, Peru, China, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Sudan to mention but a few.
Many disasters described as “natural” are, in fact, not natural or inevitable but are the results of systemic failures in our social system. The capitalist ideology of competition, profit, deregulation and privatisation and its outworkings in exploitation, oppression, inequality, poverty, environmental devastation, deforestation, shoddy and inferior construction etc. attempts to lay the responsibility for disasters on natural phenomena alone to obscure the actions and failures of the social system.
Each year disasters impact the lives of millions of people, the majority of whom live in countries where poverty is endemic. While solidarity and humanitarian assistance after the event is important this can never amount to a long-term, sustainable solution. The problem is structural and systemic exacerbated by inequality and exploitation.
The global history of technological disasters is a litany of damage, widespread suffering and harm - the Aberfan disaster in Wales with the catastrophic collapse of a colliery spoil tip in 1966; The Whiddy Island disaster in 1979, when an oil tanker exploded in Bantry Bay, Ireland; the United States' Three Mile Island nuclear power plant incident in 1979;
India's Bhopal toxic chemical release in 1984; the United States' Alaska Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 are but someexamples of both the immediate and long term consequences of technological disaster. Many disasters continue to affect people and communities long after their initial impact and the unequal impact of disasters on working class and poor communities is clear.
The bourgeois governments have repeatedly demonstrated their incapacity to respond to disasters where there has been prolonged absence of rescue personnel, electricity, transportation, food, and medicine and the immediate response has been left to the people as witnessed by the early and tremendous response of our comrades in the TKP to the massive earthquake in the region.
Further, in many instances, the monopolies have seized the opportunity to profit from the reconstruction of infrastructure and to advance the narrative and process of privatisation.
Competition, privatisation and deregulation is a fundamental part of the European Union’s ideological project to place the interests of capital above labour and the needs of the people. At a time of ecological, political, social and economic crises the European Commission and Ursula Von der Leyen is leading the EU’s multi-pronged anti-people attack on workers and social rights and environmental protection, which will strengthen the predatory role of the monopolies and further expose people’s lives and infrastructure to the danger of natural and technological disasters.
Under the pretext of “simplification” the EU proposes a strategy of comprehensive deregulation permitting companies to bypass national collective bargaining agreements, union rights, and social protections. It is also proposing to change the “sustainable taxonomy” criteria which require companies to report and assess the use and presence of specific chemical substances. The proposals include an amendment to two directives on corporate sustainability: one on requirements for reporting a firm’s climate and environment impacts, another requiring “due diligence” to ensure there are no negative impacts up its supply chains.
The European Commission's new “Competitiveness Compass” defines corporate competitiveness as the Commission's overarching goal, with deregulation positioned as the key method to achieve it. Hand-in-hand with big business and the monopolies, the EU through its undemocratic processes and procedures is further advancing the corporate agenda in all phases of EU decision-making to the detriment of the workers, the people and the environment.
One of the greatest disasters facing humanity is the disaster of imperialist war, including famine and the mass displacement of peoples. Today, the European Union and its bourgeois member states are ramping up preparations for war. While budgets for social, health and welfare spending are cut, war spending increases and an ever-larger part of state budgets is allocated to militarism and war. Increasingly, the imperialist alliances, the monopolies and the military-industrial complex assume a decisive influence in the policy of the bourgeois states. This is an issue of life and death for the people; a disaster with immense adverse consequences being actively promoted, planned and prepared, and
accompanied by heightened tensions, the creation of a war psychosis and rising state authoritarianism. It remains the task of communists to expose and resist the road to armament and war.
As our comrades in Turkey, Greece and Spain have pointed out, the earthquake, fires, flooding and the appalling crime at Tempe (and the state responses) are not accidents. These are the result of a social system which fails to protect the people and which compels them to suffer under the conditions of capitalist barbarity.
At a time of disasters, whether caused by nature or human technology, the communist response prioritizes collective well-being over profits and private interests, proletarian solidarity and the demand for systemic change. Our perspective goes beyond simply reacting to disasters; we must address the root causes which demand a transformation of the social system.
While communists demand action by states through investment in public infrastructure designed to mitigate disaster risks; universal access to healthcare, food, shelter, and emergency assistance during crises; a rejection of profit-driven approaches to disaster relief, we recognise that there is no solution within the framework of capitalism.
The interests of the people can only be properly protected and their interests secured and guaranteed by the overthrow of capital, securing workers’ control over production, the establishment of workers’ power and the construction of a socialist-communist society.