Fifty-four years ago this afternoon, classes being over, I trekked two blocks east from Xavier High School along 16th Street to Union Square Park where I’d take the No. 6 subway to the Bronx. To my astonishment, the park was jam-packed with people. Thousands of them, in the middle of the day. It had the vibe of an anti-war demo. It was replicated elsewhere in Manhattan and in many other cities around the country, all too familiar to us today in its size and planning.
“What’s this?,” I muttered. “Earth Day? You gotta be kidding me!”
A newly minted Stalinist (and Jesuit high school student), I knew that that day marked the centennial of the birth of Vladimir Illych Ulanov, known to history as Lenin.
The official line is that Wisconsin Senator and Governor Gaylord Nelson (1916-2005), the father of “Earth Day” and other expressions of environmental activism, chose April 22 simply because it conveniently fell between spring break and final exams, thus ensuring maximum turnout of students. And we all know what a boon they’ve been to Western Civilization. Just look at Yale and Columbia, which are now lousy with punks who celebrate pogroms.
I can’t prove it, but I suspect that those behind this movement against liberty and property rights might have taken note of Lenin’s centennial and discreetly aligned with it. Though subtle, this gesture marked a seismic shift in how the Left perceives its historical role.
Leftists may continue to tip their hats to Marx, but they can no longer (if they ever could) mobilize masses around his exploitation theory of value or his mythology about class struggle, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, or the increasing immiseration of the working class. The oppressor-oppressed narrative had to be updated, and corporations that pollute air and water and rape forests will do just fine. They oppress everybody, the green commies say. Environmental regulation has become the way to control, even confiscate, nominally private property. No need to storm a Winter Palace. Just pass laws and enforce them without mercy.
Just to keep things interesting, some commies opine that “Earth Day” was a capitalist plot to co-opt communism:
By 1970, Lenin’s writings had been translated into more languages than the New Testament worldwide [unsourced; which language did the Tyndale Bible Translator miss?]. April 22, 1970, was the centennial of Lenin’s birth. Meetings and events were planned around the world to commemorate Lenin’s life. The U.S. ruling class wanted to divert attention from this important anniversary. They sought to keep an environmental movement within the bounds of capitalist politics. Capitalists also wanted to put the socialist countries on trial as polluters.
Many of the socialist countries ― including China, Cuba, North Korea, and Vietnam ― had been open or disguised colonies of the big capitalist countries. These countries that liberated themselves from colonial underdevelopment were always trying to catch up. They often had to use coal as their main fuel supply. Money that could have gone to protect the environment had to be spent to defend themselves from the U.S. and NATO.
The capitalist answer was to establish Earth Day on April 22. Big business claimed it was against pollution, too. Capitalist media used the slogan “people cause pollution,” as if it didn’t have anything to do with making profits, the profits-before-people system. The TV networks almost never mention that the Pentagon is the world’s biggest polluter. Today the banks, utilities and other corporations claim to be “green” as the earth continues to heat up. We need to take Earth Day away from the billionaires. And we need to learn from V.I. Lenin and the Bolsheviks who first broke the capitalist chains enslaving humankind. Stephen Millies, “Why is Earth Day on Lenin’s birthday?,” The Struggle for Socialism, April 22, 2022
For leftists who applaud genocide against Jews while accusing them of it, it’s a small matter to celebrate as a shackle-shatterer a movement that has left 100,000,000 corpses in its wake.
Yesterday, a pro-Hamas Columbia University protestor’s sign read: “Palestine, Red and Free, from the River to the Sea.” So, yes, Green is the new Red . . . but so is “D.E.I.,” “anti-colonialism,” “transhumanism,” and all of the Left’s other termitic efforts to corrode the good of order on which our enjoyment of all other sublunary goods depends.
For further reading:
Michael Shellenberger,
