The devastation of mass flooding in South Asia, West Africa, and the U.S. has exposed the anarchy of capitalism, a failed system that magnifies destruction instead of preparing society to get through the storms.
Under capitalism, resources are invested where the greatest profits can be made. In general, capitalist bosses have little interest in keeping themselves in check—partly out of greed, but mainly out of fear that other capitalists will get to those profits first.
This profit-driven pathology leads to ever growing chaos as development, pollution, and overcrowding into unplanned cities outpaces the minimal resources the rulers allot to manage the problems.
This is a world crying out for the sanity of communism, a world built around the needs of the masses of people, the international working class. A system based on workers’ needs—not the bosses’ profits—would channel the massive resources now hoarded by the capitalists to be used instead for the good of society.
Under capitalism, mass destruction is barely addressed once the news cycle moves on. This is most apparent when the people suffering are Black, Latin, or Asian. Racism becomes a tool used both to hide what is happening and to justify the mass poverty that generates poor housing and subsistence living standards for hundreds of millions of people across the globe.
Under communism, problems of development would be dealt with in open and honest struggle. Once again, the needs of the working class would be primary.
South Asia: Stripping the Hills
Flooding across India, Bangladesh, and Nepal killed over 1400 people and left more than 40 million homeless or without the basic means to sustain themselves. “Across flood-affected parts of Bangladesh, India and Nepal, millions of people have lost their main source of income, whether it be from destroyed crops and dead livestock, damage suffered to local businesses or because they are displaced” (Independent, 9/7).
Hardest hit were families that “live in bare mud houses and rely on subsistence farming....Those farms are now underwater, and thousands of people are stuck living under plastic tarps in camps for displaced people where disease is beginning to spread (New York Times, 8/29).
South Asia is struck by monsoons every year, often with flooding, but capitalism has vastly worsened the problem through the race for profits that leads to unplanned farming and industry that wreaks havoc on people’s lives. The latest siege of floods in India was aggravated by barren hillsides, stripped to accommodate industrial farming. As the hillsides collapsed and riverbanks disintegrated, floods crashed into densely populated communities. According to N. Biren Singh, chief minister of the northeastern Indian state of Manipur, hills in the neighboring state of Assam “in particular have suffered from deforestation besides conditions influenced by climate change” (Hindustan Times, 9/10).
Sierra Leone: Routine Disasters
A similar situation has unfolded in Sierra Leone in West Africa, where unsafe housing is routinely swept away during the rainy season. Just outside Freetown, the country’s capital port city, flooding last month led to a mudslide that killed more than 400 people, with another 600 or more missing (Al Jazeera, 8/19). The disaster struck the outlying town of Regent, a settlement of over one million people. Because of massive poverty, they are forced to build homes on a steep hillside while seeking work in the capital.
“There is little to no urban planning going on in the city at all levels of society.… There is a chronic housing deficit in the city and the issues only get discussed on an annual basis when flooding happens and [it] comes into the spotlight. Although the government has relocated some communities from informal housing [squatter communities], these are often forced resettlements which leave residents on the outskirts of the city so many soon return to their original homes” (The Guardian, 8/14).
Texas: Bosses’ Incompetence
In Texas, Hurricane Harvey damaged or destroyed over 185,0000 homes, leaving more than 40,000 people in shelters (ABC News, 9/1). The bosses’ decision not to evacuate left thousands stranded in the rising waters. The capitalists proved once again that they have no ability to quickly and safely redirect resources to serve workers’ needs in emergencies.
In 2005, when Houston was evacuated during Hurricane Rita, hundreds of thousands of people who left to evacuate on their own were jammed and stalled on highways to nowhere. People were trapped without food or water. An illegal bus carrying nursing home residents exploded, killing 26 people.
Twelve years later, the continued haphazard growth of Houston has left the city no closer to an effective evacuation plan, even when there is ample warning of an impending disaster.
Racist Media Coverage
While there has been extensive reporting on the flooding in Texas and Florida, news coverage of the monsoons that have ravaged millions of Black, Latin, and South Asian workers around the world have barely been covered by the 24/7/365 /news networks, which compete for the most ridiculous celebrity gossip to fill their air time.
Additionally, the news barely referenced the fact that most people forced into shelters in Texas and now Florida are poor Black and Latin workers without resources to evacuate.
Resources Toward Profit
As the Washington Post (8/29) noted, Houston’s flooding was made exponentially worse by the area’s rampant overdevelopment, which has paved over wetlands and other areas that once served as a natural drainage system for floodwaters:
Growth that is virtually unchecked, including in flood-prone areas, has diminished the land’s already-limited natural ability to absorb water, according to environmentalists and experts in land use and natural disasters. And the city’s drainage system — a network of reservoirs, bayous and, as a last resort, roads that hold and drain water — was not designed to handle the massive storms that are increasingly common.
Capitalism is about profits above all else. In a world where the bosses spend trillions of dollars on war, build skyscrapers on manmade islands, and send tourists into space, billions of people live in mud homes or tin shacks or in cheaply built housing tracts in known flood paths. Capitalism is incapable of effectively guiding society. As long the bosses’ profit keep rolling in, they do not care if workers live or die.
But after workers seize power under communism, and abolish money and profit, resources will be shared according to the needs of our class. Floods, monsoons, and earthquakes will be prepared for. Development will be governed by safety and rational planning. The unnatural disasters of capitalism will become relics of the past.