Haiti, October 8—Hurricane Matthew has struck Haiti with a vengeance this week. The working class of Haiti has been attacked twice by the bosses—once by climate change that brought on the hurricane itself (see box, page 4), and again by the total disregard from local and imperialist bosses for human life. For both the hurricane and the destruction of lives and livelihood, capitalism is guilty as charged.
Over 1,000 are known dead, and more than 500,000 affected by the collapse of tens of thousands poorly built “little box” houses. Crops were totally uprooted and untold thousands of farm animals died in mainly three regions, South, Southeast and Grand’Anse.
With a wholly inadequate infrastructure to begin with, now smashed bridges, washed out roads and mudslides are making recovery of people from rural at-risk areas even more difficult. This disaster is not “natural” as the bosses want us to believe but rather the result of the systematic impoverishment of the working class in Haiti by the racist capitalist system. Why is the working class always the target?
Working-class families cannot build houses to adequate standards, earning less than $5 a day minimum wage, with which they must feed, dress, pay school fees for their children, and more. How could they not be vulnerable? In a communist society, everyone will live in a protected place in well-built houses, for the lives of all will matter.
Workers along the coast who could evacuate moved to higher ground; however, they weren’t safe from rains, winds and landslides. They didn’t have the safety of the concrete houses of the bourgeoisie. The masses were left to the mercy of the storm and were left largely unprotected. They certainly didn’t have an efficient disaster preparedness system, such as in the U.S. or Cuba, where there were well-organized responses and few fatalities.
Resurgence of Cholera
To add to the burdens of our class, there has already been a resurgence of cholera. In the last year alone, 26,000 people have become ill. As a result of Matthew, in one town alone, there have been over a dozen deaths and several dozen people sick. Cholera was imported to Haiti in 2010, 10 months after a devastating earthquake, by UN occupation forces (MINUSTAH) from Nepal, where there was an active cholera epidemic. The UN did nothing to test their soldiers as carriers of the disease, but did let them dump their waste into a river in the Artibonite Valley that Haitian workers use for bathing and drinking water. Over 800,000 were affected and at least 10,000 had died from cholera (NYT, 8/18).
A few months ago, the racist UN finally admitted what the working class already knew and scientists confirmed, that they were guilty of bringing cholera to Haiti. So far they haven’t come up with a plan to do anything to improve conditions for the future. In fact, almost all of the cholera treatment centers have been closed despite the ongoing epidemic. One year’s budget for the UN’s occupying army would pay for a modern and adequate sanitation and clean water infrastructure throughout Haiti. We say MINUSTAH out of Haiti now!
No Doctors, No Electricity
One hospital in the South that was visited during this hurricane was a horror; no doctors, water flooding all rooms, patients left alone without electricity, nothing. Instead of protecting the masses, capitalists promote their own wealth: NGOs (mainly charities), traditional leaders and politicians are now fighting among themselves for control of projects and funds in the post-storm period, just as they did after the earthquake. They are preparing to exploit and take advantage of the masses’ woes. In a communist society, no one will benefit from the misfortunes of others; workers will build homes, schools, roads, and bridges that serve their needs under all kinds of conditions. When there are no more classes, racial or gender inequality, humanity will be protected.
Workers everywhere, join us. Fake projects and illusions about the leaders in this system will not bring any solutions to the problems of our class. We must unite to build a communist world, under the red flag of the PLP!
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Climate Change, A Product of Capitalism
The devastation and deaths due to Matthew is also a product of climate change.
MIT professor of atmospheric science Kerry Emanuel says, “We expect to see more high intensity events, Category 4 and 5 events that are around 13% of total hurricanes but do a disproportionate amount of damage.”
Penn State professor Michael Mann: “Last year was the warmest our oceans have ever been on record... It’s their warmth that provides the energy that intensifies these storms. And it isn’t a coincidence that we’ve seen the strongest hurricane in both hemispheres within the last year.”
Who is to blame? The multinational corporate butchers who now rule the earth. Among the ten most profitable are: the Chinese Sinopec Group ($455 billion in revenue), China National ($428 b), Saudi Aramco ($338 b), Royal Dutch Shell ($273 b), Exxon/Mobil ($268 b), and Kuwait Petroleum Corporation ($252 b). Capitalist are weapons of mass destruction! (List of the Largest Companies by Revenue, Wikipedia). The bosses’ media and their academics openly admit this.
The Guardian published an opinion piece titled “We Can’t Beat Climate Change Under Capitalism” (9/3/15). Both academic specialist Naomi Klein and then-Australian Prime Minister Anthony Abbott agree that “perpetual economic growth” is in contradiction with prioritizing the health of the planet. An “intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report states with 95 percent confidence that humans are the main cause of the current global warming…The IPCC says that humans have most likely caused all of the global warming over the past 60 years” (The Guardian, 9/27/15).
For the health of the working class and our home planet earth, destroy capitalism.