Religion and Eco-Politics | Pope Francis, Marxism, and the End of Capitalism?

Moderator’s Note: Pope Francis has made a lot of news
lately by enunciating against capitalism as a threat to the planet and
humanity.  His encyclical on climate
change, which you can down load from this link, Laudato
Si, condemns capitalism as a threat to biodiversity, ecosystems, and
indigenous peoples. He also charges capitalism with being the principal cause
of climate change, which places him well ahead of the majority of climate
scientists, most of whom are too weak-kneed to declare that the other “C” word
is an abomination.

In today’s
guest blog, Steven Argue praises the Pope’s encyclicals but rightly criticizes
him for: going ahead with the canonization of the genocidal missionary,
Junipero Serra; failing to resolve the role of the Church in supporting Nazi
expansionism; failing to reverse the Church’s longstanding misogynist policies
that threaten the health and well being of women; for failing to challenge the Church’s
“Band-Aids for poverty”, which Argue suggests “are at best the extreme minimal
program in a world full of gaping wounds and gushing blood”; for providing
“pious cover” for Obama’s failure to meaningfully address climate change; and
for providing enough fodder for both Wall Street-dominated political parties to
claim the Pope as their political icon.

Art Heals 2008 mural of Toypurina by
Raul Gonzalez, Joseph Montalvo,

& Ricardo Estrada in the Ramona
Gardens Housing Projects | Photo: Daniel Medina

Marxism versus Pope Francis and the
Catholic Church  

Steven
Argue | Revolutionary Tendency | September 27, 2015

Toypurina
was a revolutionary Native American woman of the Kizh nation who was a victim
of California’s mission system, a system established by now canonized Saint
Junipero Serra. Yet, Toypurina was not just a victim of that system of slavery,
land theft, malnutrition, disease, and forced conversion to Catholicism. She
also fought.

On October
25th, 1785 Toypurina rose up against California’s Catholic mission system and
Spanish colonization in a revolt where she persuaded six other villages to join
her rebellion against Mission San Gabriel Arcángel in the southern Californian
area of contemporary Los Angeles. The revolt was defeated by Spanish soldiers.
During her trial, Toypurina was given the choice between a death sentence or
forced conversion to Christianity and banishment. She chose Christianity over
being murdered and was sent into exile in Carmel where she died at age 39.

During her
life, Toypurina’s enslaved Kizh nation declined from 5,000 to 1,500 people due
mostly to malnutrition and disease. Totpurina, a true hero, was buried in San
Juan Batista in an unmarked grave where she remains to this day. On September
23rd, 2015, Pope Francis canonized Junipero Cerra, the father of California’s
mission system, as a saint. Working class and oppressed peoples reject the
Pope’s canonization of Junipero Cerra and instead raise Toypurina as the true
hero of California’s mission system.

Marxism versus Pope Francis and the
Catholic Church

IS THE
CATHOLIC CHURCH NOW A SOLUTION TO CAPITALISM?

By Steven
Argue

With Pope
Francis’s visit to the United States, many people are attracted to what seems
to many like a voice for reform both within society as a whole and within the
crisis ridden conservative institution of the Catholic Church. Pope Francis
widely speaks out on issues of poverty and global warming and is apologetic for
the Catholic Church’s long international history of secretly condoning and
covering up sexual abuse by its priests against children.

The
Catholic Church has even lost much of its firm grip on Ireland. This is partly
due to child sex-abuse scandals, where the Catholic Church all the way up to
the highest posts in the Vatican knowingly subverted the law and even allowed
known pedophile priests to continue their abuse. Ireland was once a profoundly
Catholic nation, in part as a reaction to the anti-Catholic discrimination and
oppression carried out by the British occupation. The Vatican has, however,
lost all the good will they once gained as supposed defenders of the oppressed
Catholic people of Ireland. As my friends in Belfast say, “Home rule, not Rome
rule.”

Artwork by Paolo Lombardi.

Courtesy of Cartoon Movement.

For the
Catholic Church hierarchy, Pope Francis is the necessary new face that the
Catholic Church sought out in the face of its growing irrelevancy and the
ugliness of its scandals. Yet, has real change come to one of the world’s
largest religions? In this article I will explore this question alongside the
question of whether or not Pope Francis is actually offering any real
solutions.

At the
United Nations, Pope Francis declared, “The ecological crisis, and the
large-scale destruction of biodiversity, can threaten the very existence of the
human species.” This is a welcome message against climate change that I myself
have been delivering since the 1980s along with other revolutionary Marxists
such as Fidel Castro and other scientists such as Carl Sagan. Despite the
Catholic Church’s recognition of this fundamental issue, perhaps too late in
the game, it is good that the Catholic Church has finally, at least partially,
caught up with us atheists, scientists, and Marxists on the science of global
warming. In a society like the United States where massive amounts of money
from oil, coal, gas, and auto capitalists is infused into the mainstream media
and mainstream politics, causing far too many people to question even the very
science of climate change, Pope Francis’s messages and encyclical on climate
change to Catholics does have progressive features. This is especially true in
light of the fact that in the United States the Catholic Church claims 69.4
million believers (22% of the population).

Yet, in
science and in the vanguard for revolutionary change, the question of the
realities of global warming were resolved long ago. Quite frankly, that ship
has sailed and those too dumb to see it are not worth the time of those of us
who are working to build a revolutionary vanguard. More people will wake up to
the realities of global warming as the disaster intensifies, but far more
pressing is the question of “what is to be done”. This is especially true as
humanity itself is now dangling on the edge of a precipice by two fingers
staring into an abyss of an irreversible future of climate change that is more
and more likely to end human civilization and, as opposed to real action, this
world ruled by capitalists continues to talk and do almost nothing positive to
even slow this impending catastrophe. In this article I will explore the
fundamental differences between revolutionary Marxists and Pope Francis on this
and other important questions.

Today, in a
world of growing poverty, Pope Francis’s message of solidarity with poor people
strikes a chord with many disgusted with the status quo. His concern for poor
people resonates in a capitalist world dominated by exploitation, imperialism,
war, and climate change where poverty, homelessness, hunger, and starvation is
a growing reality for much of the world’s working class. Pope Francis’s concern
for global warming resonates in a world where real action to slow this
catastrophe has been wanting throughout the entire 20th and the 21st centuries.
Likewise, Pope Francis’s forgiveness of women who have had abortions, if they
show proper “contrition”, is seen by some as a step in the right direction,
despite the Vatican’s continuing misogynistic and homophobic opposition to
birth control, contraception, ordination of women, and same sex marriage.

With the
Pope’s visit to the United States, the corporate and state run media have knelt
down before the Pope presenting an embarrassingly biased dog and pony show in
favor of all “wisdom” coming from the mouth of Pope Francis. From that
coverage, it does appear that the facelift the Vatican hierarchy has presented
with Pope Francis is working to build a far better public perception than the scandal
ridden papacy of Pope Benedict XVI. For many, the Catholic Church appears to be
breaking from its past crimes. Yet, what are the realities?

Image courtesy of Southern
California AIM   

The Canonization of California’s
Junipero Serra

One of the
Catholic Church’s many crimes against humanity was their participation in the
genocide against Native American people. Native Americans remain deeply
oppressed and impoverished due to continuing racism, land theft, and
exploitation throughout the Americas. Recognition by Pope Francis of the crimes
of the Catholic Church against the Native peoples of the Americas would be a
useful step towards recognizing the humanity of Native peoples and recognizing
the holocaust committed against them. Yet, Pope Francis has done the opposite
by canonizing the genocidal Franciscan priest and father of California’s
mission system, Junipero Serra, as a saint. The American Indian Movement (AIM)
Grand Governing Council asked Pope Francis not to take this step, stating:

“The
Mission system set up by Serra was both a Catholic Mission and a military
garrison, by the Catholic Church’s own admission. To be clear, Serra’s goals in
life were to spread Catholicism to the Native population and enslave them to
work the land on the behalf of the Spanish Crown. According to California History,
“Men were taken away from their families and hopelessly forced to work for the
Franciscans while their wives were raped and abused, and their children were
imprisoned.” …Junipero Serra did the indigenous people no favors. The Mission
system was the structure that made the genocide possible.

“The
American Indian Movement calls for Pope Francis to abandon his efforts to
canonize this man who ushered in the demise of indigenous people of California.

“The
American Indian Movement stands alongside AIM Southern California, and all the
tribes and nations, and indigenous organizations who have called for the Pope
to abandon his plan to grant Sainthood to this man who enslaved, starved, and
facilitated the rape and murder of so many indigenous people. If we are to
reconcile our differences there has to be admission of the abuse of colonial
history. To grant Junipero Serra sainthood would be to not only condone those
atrocities listed, but to glorify them and enshrine genocide.”

Yet, on
September 23rd, 2015, Pope Francis did exactly what the American Indian
Movement asked him not to, canonizing the genocidal Junipero Cerra as a saint.

Hitler and Papel Nuncio Archbishop
Orsenigo.

Photo courtesy of Forums Catholic    

The Vatican’s Support for Hitler and
the Ustashe

Born Jorge
Mario Bergoglio, Pope Francis adopted his new name after being selected Pope.
This name is in honor of St. Francis of Assisi. Pope Francis explained this
choice saying St. Francis was “the man of poverty, the man of peace, the man
who loves and protects creation with which we don’t have such a good
relationship. How I would like a church that is poor and that is for the poor.”

Among the
things St. Francis is credited for is trying to negotiate an end to the
crusades that Catholic run Christian Europe was carrying out against the
traditionally Muslim world. The publication “Courage Apostolate” in their
article “Atheists are Idiots, What You Never Knew about St. Francis of Assisi”
argues this fact as their one two punch against atheists, boasting, “Yeah…a
Christian tried to bring an end to the Crusades…try wrapping your mind around
that one, atheists.” Never mind the fact that it was the Catholic Church itself
that was carrying out those wars against the Muslim world. In addition, the
attempts to bring a program for reform and peace to the Catholic Church by St.
Francis of Assisi failed.

Similar
Catholic arguments to the crusades and St. Francis can be found in apologists
for the Catholic Church attempting to cover up the Church hierarchy’s support
for Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. These Vatican apologists include David
McReynolds, a former leader of the Socialist Party USA, who militantly opposes
my Marxist advocacy of atheism. McReynolds argues that specific nuns and
priests stood up to Hitler. While it is true that some nuns and priests opposed
Hitler, the Vatican hierarchy itself backed Adolf Hitler.

The
Vatican’s support for Hitler was especially direct and cruel in Croatia where
the Nazis imposed a Catholic Croat government that carried out the mass murder
of nearly a million people. Among the victims were 750,000 Serbs, 60,000 Jews,
and 26,000 Roma. Communists and others opposed to fascism and genocide were
also, of course, killed. Of this genocide, John Cornwell states in his book
“Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII” (Viking, London, UK, 1999):

“[It was]
an act of ‘ethnic cleansing’ before that hideous term came into vogue, it was
an attempt to create a ‘pure’ Catholic Croatia by enforced conversions,
deportations, and mass exterminations. So dreadful were the acts of torture and
murder that even hardened German troops registered their horror. Even by
comparison with the recent bloodshed in Yugoslavia at the time of writing, Pavelic’s
onslaught against the Orthodox Serbs remains one of the most appalling civilian
massacres known to history.” (p 249)

Leading the
extermination of non-Catholics was the Nazi imposed Ustashe government of Ante
Pavelic. Working for Rome in Croatia, Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac directed the
Croatian Catholic Church to back Hitler and Pavelic. He also arranged a meeting
between Pope Pius XII and Pavelic, which was part of the Vatican's overall
support for Hitler. Of these matters, Archbishop Stepinac was very clear, for
instance stating:

“God, who
directs the destiny of nations and controls the hearts of Kings, has given us
Ante Pavelic and moved the leader of a friendly and allied people, Adolf
Hitler, to use his victorious troops to disperse our oppressors... Glory be to
God, our gratitude to Adolf Hitler and loyalty to our Poglavnik, Ante Pavelic.”
–From “Catholicism and Fascism in Europe, 1918-1945” (Published August, 2015),
by Jan Nelis, Anne Morelli, and Danny Praet (Pgs. 62-63).

Under this
“blessed” Catholic government, Serbs, Jews, and Roma were hung up on meat hooks
in factory assembly lines and butchered. Many children were starved to death in
concentration camps and executed in other ways. Eyes and other body parts were
strung up in necklaces and worn around executioner’s necks. One Serb family,
including husband, wife, and children, was arrested. The wife and children were
starved for several days. Then the Ustashe jailors brought them a roast, which
was ravenously consumed. After eating, the Ustashe informed the Serbian family
that they had just eaten their beloved father and husband.

Not only
did Archbishop Stepinac back Hitler and the Ustashe regime under the employ of
the Vatican, he directly headed the committee responsible for the conversion of
Serbs to Catholicism under the threat of pain of death. With the victory of the
communist revolution in Yugoslavia which defeated the Nazi occupation,
collaborators with the Nazi imperial death cult were executed or sent to
prison. This included Archbishop Stepinac who was put on trial in 1946 for his
crimes. Eyewitnesses who testified included numerous Serb victims of conversions
to Catholicism at gunpoint. In 1946, Archbishop Stepinac was convicted of high
treason and war crimes. For these crimes he spent 5 years in prison and was
released under conditions of house arrest or leaving the country. The Nazi
Stepinac chose house arrest, a condition under which he died in 1960.

In their
typical fashion of meddling against anti-fascist justice in the internal
affairs of foreign countries, the western imperialists and the Vatican backed
Nazi Archbishop Stepinac. The U.S. corporate media denounced his treatment,
pointing to it as an example of the supposed typical religious persecution
found under communist systems. Pope Pius XII elevated the Nazi’s position
within the Church to cardinal and excommunicated all Yugoslav Catholic jury
members who found him guilty of war crimes. In 1998 Pope John Paul II declared
Cardinal Stepinac a martyr and beatified him, putting the Nazi cardinal one
step away from being a Catholic saint. Today, the U.S. backed
counterrevolutionary president of Croatia, Grabar-Kitarovic, is also pressuring
Pope Francis to canonize Cardinal Stepinac as a saint. The Vatican under Pope
Francis has appointed a commission to potentially recommend carry out the deed.
This has sparked strong protests from Serbian President Tomislav Nikolić and
Jewish groups. Yet, so far, St. Francis has done nothing to distance himself
from the Nazi war criminal Stepinac or his potential canonization.

While the
slogan of all progressive forces in the world in regards to the Nazi and Ustashe
holocaust has always been “Never Again!”; the slogan of Catholic Church and
western imperialists in their backing of the likes of Cardinal Stepinac has
been “Ever Again!!’. In the 1980s they got their wish. The United States in
their fight to destroy the successful socialist economy of Yugoslavia
successfully pressured Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo to declare independence from
Yugoslavia. The pro-capitalist government of Tudjman that came to power in
Croatia then immediately raised the Ustashe flag of Nazi occupation as the
official Croatian flag and immediately began a western backed campaign of
ethnic cleansing targeting Serbs. This campaign included mass murder and a mass
exodus of Serbs from Croatia. Deafening silence covered these crimes in the
western corporate media until the Serbian government responded with its own war
crimes. NATO then became involved backing all genocidal forces from Croatia to
Bosnia and Kosovo that fought against the Serbs because these forces suited
western purposes of breaking Yugoslavia to pieces and destroying Yugoslavia’s
socialist economy.

During Nazi
occupation, the Catholic Church backed Hitler and participated in the ethnic
cleansing in what would become Yugoslavia. It took the popular communist
revolution led by Tito’s Partisan forces to unite the nationalities of
Yugoslavia and defeat the Nazis and their puppet Croatian government. This in
turn established a planned socialist economy where everyone was guaranteed a
job, education, and healthcare. It was a society where, despite deformations of
socialism under Stalinist rule, Ustashe death camps were abolished, genocidal
criminals of the Catholic Church were punished, and the soup kitchens and
hospitals of the Catholic Church were no longer necessary because these needs of
the people were met by a secular state and socialist economy.

Slings and Arrows | Penny Siopis

Is Pope Francis Any Less of a
Misogynist Counterrevolutionary?

Today, due
to the failures of capitalism, many poor people in the world depend on the
Catholic Church for food and healthcare. This is extremely unfortunate on many
levels. The worst abuses occur in the field of healthcare. By being the only
provider of healthcare for many people in the Philippines, Latin America, and
elsewhere, the Catholic Church is able to intervene against women’s
reproductive freedom opposing contraception and abortion. It is also through
their opposition to the distribution of condoms that the Catholic Church helps
spread painful death and disease caused by HIV / AIDS. Pope Francis’s directive
to allow women back into the church who have had abortions, but only if they
show proper “contrition”, is no real change. Instead, the Catholic Church’s
policies, carried out by their hospitals around the world that deny women
access to abortion, birth control, and condoms are the true face of the
Church’s continued hatred of women. In fact, Pope Francis explicitly opposed
family planning in his encyclical on global warming.

While the
Catholic Church helps make birth control and abortion difficult to obtain,
socialist Cuba, on the other hand, established with its 1959 revolution free
healthcare that has included access to contraception and free abortion on
demand. Despite Cuba being a traditionally poor country with a long history of
exploitation by Spanish and American imperialism, Cuba has a slightly longer
life expectancy than the United States, a country that built up its great
wealth through slavery, genocide of Native Americans, land theft from Mexico,
and imperialist exploitation of the world. In fact, tiny Cuba also puts the
United States to shame with its medical aid to other countries, including
medical teams sent in during disasters. For instance, Cuban doctors outnumbered
all others from foreign teams battling Ebola in Africa. Likewise, Cuba had 300
doctors on standby to send into the United States after Hurricane Katrina, but
the Dimwit W. Bush refused the offer. Through Bush’s lack of action in New
Orleans and his denial of the entry of Cuban doctors into the United States, he
sentenced innocent U.S. citizens to death.

Pope
Francis, who opened up his speech to the U.S. Congress by calling the United
States “the home of the free and land of the brave”, has, along with the
Catholic Church in general, long promoted capitalist counterrevolution in Cuba
while backing murderous U.S. imposed capitalist dictators throughout Latin
America. Cuba, a tiny country that has stood up to the brutality of CIA
terrorism since 1959, including the CIA bombing of Cubana Flight 455 killing
all 73 people on board, is the true “home of the brave”. President Obama,
despite opening up diplomatic relations with Cuba, has not ended the U.S.
imperialist war against revolutionary Cuba, which includes an economic blockade
and the U.S. occupation of Guantanamo. To the U.S. imperialists we say: “End
torture in Cuba by giving Guantanamo back to the Cubans!”

What would
Pope Francis know about bravery anyway? During the U.S. imposed military
dictatorship in Argentina in the 1970s and 80s he sided with that capitalist
dictatorship that tortured and murdered 60,000 leftists and suspected leftists.
This included the present day Pope at that time expelling two liberation
theologists from his own order for their desire to live and work among the
poor. The Argentine military dictatorship saw these expulsions as a clear
indication by his ultra-conservative leadership that the two were fair game for
repression. The two religious leaders were kidnapped, held captive, and
tortured by the dictatorship without a peep of protest from the future Pope
Francis or the western imperialists who showed so much concern for Nazi
Cardinal Stepinac in Yugoslavia.

The
Catholic Church’s overall role in backing the dirty war of the Argentinian
government against the Argentinian people is well known. Yet, in his trip to
Cuba, Pope Francis symbolically handed Fidel Castro a book of writings by the
Cuban capitalist counterrevolutionary Armando Llorente. Armando Llorente was
part of the far right Catholic movement in Cuba in 1960 that was aligned with
CIA terrorism and the former Batista dictatorship. Batista led a U.S. backed
capitalist government that murdered at least 20,000 people over a 7 year
period. While Pope Francis aligns himself with terrorist “dissidents” like
Llorente whose crimes forced him to flee Cuba, upon the Pope’s meeting with Mr.
Obama, there was complete silence by Pope Francis of legitimate political
exiles forced to flee the United States and living in exile elsewhere. These
include Assata Shakur in Cuba and Edward Snowden living in Russia.

The fact
that the Cuban leadership of both Fidel and Raul Castro have, despite their own
personal atheism, done so much to promote Pope Francis as well as the two Popes
before him, helps give lie to far right claims of a lack of religious freedom
in Cuba. Yet, by promoting these extremely reactionary figureheads, the Castros
are also doing a huge disservice to the good name of socialism by showering
counterrevolutionary popes with dignitary welcomes, praise, and embarrassing
platitudes like Raul Castro’s statement to Pope Francis that he may start
praying again.

Marxism, in
all its roots, is profoundly atheist. As Karl Marx wrote in “A Contribution to
the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right” (1843):

“Religious
suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a
protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature,
the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the
opium of the people. …. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the
criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

“Criticism
has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall
continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he
shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of
religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality
like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he
will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun
which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.

“It is,
therefore, the task of history, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to
establish the truth of this world. It is the immediate task of philosophy,
which is in the service of history, to unmask self-estrangement in its unholy
forms once the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked. Thus,
the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of
religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the
criticism of politics.”

The
rapprochement between the leadership of Cuba’s deformed workers state with the
Vatican coincides with their recent adoption of more market inroads into Cuba’s
planned socialist economy similar to those adopted by the Stalinist leaderships
of China and Vietnam several decades earlier. Meanwhile, the fact that the
Vietnamese, Chinese, and Cuban socialist revolutions were deformed from birth
under Stalinist models of socialism means that the Vietnamese, Chinese, and
Cuban working classes and farmers have no direct legal means of opposing the
capitalist inroads being imposed from above. This is one of several reasons why
Leninist-Trotskyists advocate political revolution in these countries that
establishes legitimate workers democracy, an end to capitalist inroads, a
Leninist-Trotskyist understanding of promoting world revolution as a the means
of breaking out of economic isolation, a defense of the socialist system from
foreign and domestic counterrevolution, and an end to the glad handling of
reactionary imperialist representatives of capitalist counterrevolution like
the Pope and President Obama.

Thin Hand | Dana Papachristou

Is Pope Francis Really Standing Up
For Poor people?

I have
compared the dignified pro-woman socialist healthcare system of revolutionary
Cuba with the anti-woman healthcare provided by the Catholic Church. Food
distribution by the Catholic Church is less problematic, but it brings with it
anti-socialist poison pills in favor of the capitalist status quo and in
opposition to class polarization and class struggle. Here in Santa Cruz
California, like many places in the world, the best regular meal offered to
poor hungry people is given every weekday noon by the St. Francis Soup Kitchen.
This is a program that does have several problems including openly working with
the police, occasionally forcing the hungry to participate in short prayers,
and having a history in the past (now corrected) of turning away people who
looked like “Dead-Heads”. Yet, this program in and of itself is largely good in
the fact that it feeds hundreds of people a day who would mostly otherwise
would go hungry. That plus is partially negated by the fact that the Catholic
Church has worked for a status quo for nearly 2,000 years that keeps people
poor and hungry.

The
Catholic Church’s Band-Aids for poverty are at best the extreme minimal program
in a world full of gaping wounds and gushing blood. Marxists have always
instead promoted a program of systemic change based on the polarization of
capitalist society between the struggles of the working class majority versus
the wealthy capitalists who own industry and own the ruling capitalist
government. While we see solutions to most of our problems as coming from proletarian
socialist revolution, we see all progress as coming about through different
types of polarization and class struggle. For instance, in the United States in
1934, three different major strikes, all led by reds, greatly changed the
United States. These three strikes, two of them general strikes, were led by
the Communist Party in San Francisco, the Trotskyist Communist League of
America in Minneapolis, and the left socialist Workers Party in Toledo. These
three strikes were the beginning of a labor upsurge that greatly improved the
lives of the working class of the United States through collective bargaining.
It also forced the ruling class to begin giving us the New Deal which was
largely enacted between 1935 and 1938. The New Deal included a minimum wage, an
end to most child labor, the eight hour day, Social Security, and jobs
programs. While this was only a beginning to what we deserve, they were still
victories. Those victories in turn, were won through militant industrial
actions, class polarization, and the essential leadership of communists.

Pope
Francis opposes this kind of action so desperately needed again. As Pope
Francis told the U.S. Congress, “The contemporary world, with its open wounds
which affect so many of our brothers and sisters, demands that we confront
every form of polarization.” While Marxists see class polarizations as an
essential ingredient to breaking the brutal dictatorship and exploitation that
is imposed on us by the wealthy, Pope Francis sees all polarization (except that
of the Nazis) as an evil to be fought. Ultimately, the reason for this can be
seen in the fact that Popes Francis is a firm defender of capitalism itself,
the system that is the root cause of poverty in today’s world.

The Scream | Edward Munch

Pious Cover for Obama’s Failure to Act
on Global Warming

During Pope
Francis’s joint speech to the United States with Mr. Obama, Pope Francis
declared:

“Mr.
President, I find it encouraging that you are proposing an initiative for
reducing air pollution. (Applause.) Accepting the urgency, it seems clear to me
also that climate change is a problem which can no longer be left to our future
generation. (Applause.)”

Pope
Francis is encouraged by Obama’s proposals. Yet, for those of us who have
watched President Obama’s failures to act in a constructive manner on global
warming over his two terms in office are not in the least bit encouraged. Quite
simply, Obama has sabotaged international agreements and is now proposing far
too little too late.

It took
until the summer of 2015, the middle of the sixth year of Obama’s presidency,
for Obama to attempt to take any real action to cut global warming emissions by
the United States. That is, his presidency presided over 6 and a 1/2 years of
massive and irreversible environmental destruction when he could have taken
action in his first year in office. During that time, this author continuously
kept up the pressure on Obama to fulfill his 2008 campaign promise to use the
2007 court recognized right of the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. In
the summer of 2014 Obama, through the EPA, finally promised to study the
question and potentially take action in a year. Most of the corporate media
reported this as if Obama had taken action. I instead denounced it as a promise
to consider potentially taking action when real action needed to be started
yesterday. Likewise, Al Gore, the supposed mouthpiece on global warming, was
voluntarily the vice president in the Clinton Administration, a presidency that
took no real action on global warming in its eight miserable years of
existence.

Before
2015, despite Obama being portrayed as concerned about global warming in the
corporate media, he has in reality done much to increase carbon emissions.
Obama's only real action in the opposite direction so far has been a 2012
agreement with major car manufacturers that will require cars sold in the
United States to get an average of 54.5 miles per gallon of gasoline by 2025.
In reality, this is less than 49 miles per gallon when one includes air
conditioning credits, and even less when actual driving conditions are
accounted for. The U.S. finally reached an average of 24.6 miles per gallon in
2013 while the Chinese average was 35.8, the European Union's was 43.3, and the
Japanese was 42.6. Those other countries, especially China, are also far more
serious about public investment in public transportation.

Regarding
airplane emissions, the EPA has recently announced they plan to regulate them,
but they only announced this after being pushed on the question through legal
action by environmental groups. Still, no actual action has yet been taken and
the EPA says they are waiting to study a report by the International Civil
Aviation Organization (ICAO), a body in which environmental groups rightly have
no confidence due to their past insufficient recommendations.

In the
summer of 2015, Obama, through the EPA, started to attempt to take some action
in regulating the carbon emissions of the coal industry. The EPA attempted to
cut carbon pollution from the United States’ 600 coal heated power plants by
30% of 2005 levels by 2030. This may sound significant, but due to fracking and
increased use of natural gas, official U.S. carbon emissions in the generation
of electricity already dropped by 15% between 2005 and 2012. This is according
to Vicki Arroyo, executive director of the Georgetown Climate Center. In
addition, since these emission standards would be applied on a state by state
basis, a number of states, including New York, Georgia, Washington, and
Virginia have already met the so-called “30%” reduction standard. Those states
would not need to take any action to be in compliance. The use of this 2005
base line rather than current emissions is a transparent attempt to make the
regulations appear far larger than they really are. What was actually attempted
then was a 15% reduction nationally in one sector of the economy that produces
only 40% of U.S. carbon emissions, a sector where emissions are already on the
decline.

Even that
limited and pathetic action was too much for the powerful coal industry which
intervened through the U.S. Supreme Court. The EPA’s move was, unfortunately,
overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court that ruled at the end of June, 2015 that
the EPA did not properly consider the cost to the industry when it decided to
limit coal emissions and that the monetary cost saved in improving human health
was not high enough to warrant the action. Obama, whose squandering of time
included the first two years of his presidency when there was a Democrat
majority in congress, is now unable to pass legislation that could bypass this
undemocratic decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. If, as the U.S. Commander and
Chief, Obama had so greatly failed in his world defense of U.S. imperialism
through wars, coups, economic blockades, and backing friendly dictators, Obama
would have been impeached long ago. But when it comes to the protection of the
environment, Obama talks one political line and delivers a completely different
one in reality.

A good
indication of Obama’s real positions can be seen in his conduct in Copenhagen
in 2009. Obama, while he was betraying campaign promises and taking no action
on global warming in the United States, sabotaged the Copenhagen negotiations
on climate change. He did this largely using the developing economies of China
and India as his excuse. The extent to how far the U.S. went to sabotage that
conference was revealed by whistle blower Edward Snowden. Snowden, now a
political refugee living in Russia where he escaped from Obama’s political
repression, released information on how the U.S. had spied on the international
negotiators at that conference. As a result of spying, the U.S. was aware in
advance of Denmark's contingency plans to try to save the conference. The Obama
administration used this information to torpedo any agreement ever coming from
the conference.

Image courtesy of Webstation

Both Ruling
Parties Bought and Paid For

With the
Pope’s visit to the United States, listening to the biased coverage on National
Public Radio (NPR), one would think that the United States has adopted an
official state religion despite the democratic gains of the first American
Revolution of 1776. Coverage from all angles of the Pope’s visit is glowing.
Supposedly, the Pope is making everyone happy. Everyone from believers to
non-believers, conservatives to leftists, and misogynists to supporters of
women’s reproductive rights. NPR managed to even find a Native American who was
happy about the Pope’s visit despite the Pope Francis’s canonization of Indian
killer Junipero Cera to sainthood. As NPR participated in the Pope’s dog and
pony show, they of course also pretended that Pope Francis and Obama are in
fact addressing the issue of global warming in reality.

The Pope,
lacking any frank evaluations of how to bring change, except when it comes to
his support for anti-communist repression and capitalist counterrevolution,
leaves a lot of leeway for both U.S. ruling capitalist parties to claim Pope
Francis as their own. As with the Bible itself, representatives can cherry pick
the portion of the message they like to fit their agenda. This is equally true
with the Pope’s platitudes to the far right with his opposition to family
planning and same-sex marriage as with his platitudes to the left by
recognizing the realities of global warming and advocating compassion for poor
people. Meanwhile, those of us advocating a better world really have nothing to
gain by backing Pope Francis.

An
underlying problem with both the Democrat and Republican parties is the fact
that these parties are bought and paid for by the American ruling capitalist
class. To win in the elections held under the farce of American “democracy”,
candidates must have the support of America’s major capitalists who own
America’s corporate media, banks, and major industries. Among those industries
are of course oil, gas, auto, and coal.

In the 2008
election cycle Obama’s campaign got a whopping $884,000 from the oil and gas
industry. This despite Obama’s campaign ads where Obama claimed, “I don’t take
money from oil companies or Washington lobbyists, and I won’t let them block
change anymore.”

Technically
it is true that Obama didn’t take money directly from oil companies. Yet, the
underlying reality was that this statement was a deliberate deception. By law,
direct corporate contributions were not allowed for any candidate in that
election, so Obama’s claim that he was different was an outright lie. Obama,
like all of the other mainstream corporate candidates, got contributions from
corporations that bypassed this law through funneling major contributions from
the oil and gas companies through employees of the industry.

While the
oil and gas industries do give the climate change deniers of the Republican
Party more money than the Democrats, the Democrat Party does get sizable
contributions from these industries. The Republican Party gets roughly 75% of
the contributions of the oil and gas industry while the Democrats continue to
receive 25%. This is because the Democrat Party’s program, while admitting to
the reality of climate change, is one of generally still siding with the big
polluters against the future of humanity and the planet. For the oil and gas
industries, giving the Democrats some support makes big sense. For them it is
good to offer the American public two meaningless political alternatives, one
party of climate change deniers and another party that admits to the reality of
climate change but generally works against real action on the issue. In the
most immediate sense, this money buys influence with both parties. In addition,
in their cold profit driven calculations, it is surely far better to back a
party that falsely claims to be on the side of doing something about global
warming than to allow a vacuum to develop where a meaningful grassroots
political alternative may more easily emerge.

As a
political alternative, the Revolutionary Tendency, to which this author
belongs, stands in total opposition to both the Democrat and Republican
parties. We are part of the struggle in demanding immediate change on global
warming, including EPA regulation of carbon emissions, more subsidies to public
transportation, and building publicly owned sources of renewable energy. We
support and build these types of movements, but as we see it, meaningful change
on global warming in the United States is unlikely to happen until capitalism
itself is overthrown. We argue this for two reasons. The first is that the
corrupting influence of capitalist money in bourgeois elections is preventing
any meaningful democratic control of the United States from below. The second
is the fact that private ownership of the economy for private profit prevents a
centralized socialist planning that could easily move production in directions
away from fossil fuels towards higher energy efficiency, renewable energy, electric
automobiles, and free public transportation.

In addition
to slowing carbon contributions to global warming, the planned socialist
economy will also easily provide everyone with a job, free healthcare, housing,
and a free education. The establishment of a planned socialist economy in the
United States will also immediately eliminate the corrupting influence of the
capitalist class because we will expropriate all of the holdings of the
capitalists and put industry and the banks under public control. They will no
longer have the wealth they use to corrupt and own the politicians who pretend
to regulate private industries. As we plunge into a disaster of human making,
the entire future of Earth, its people, and the plants and animals that make
our planet so special are at stake. It is in socialism, materialist
philosophies, and science where our potential for successes lie, not in the
enlightened spiritual institution that punished Galileo for discovering the
Earth revolves around the Sun and took 350 years to admit their mistake.

This article first appeared in Boston Indymedia Sept. 27, 2015.



Steven Argue is a biologist, a
long-time member of the California Native Plant Society, and atheist and writes
as a representative of the Revolutionary Tendency.