Japan catastrophe affects the world economy but the human/environmental damage is permanent

Small amounts of radiation from Japan have been detected in some western US states, namely, California, Colorado, Hawaii and Washington. Government officials tell us that by the time the radiation travels this far its harmless. It's good to know that here in the US we have a government we can trust to look after the interests of the ordinary citizen.

The economic hits to Japan and what it means to the rest of the world is something that the theoreticians of capital are a bit more concerned about, after all, this involves profits; the here and now.  Japan has about 9% of the world's economic output the Wall Street Journal reports.  Japan makes 60% of the world's silicon wafers that are an essential component of computer chips which has them worried a little as quake hit factories took out 25% of the world's supply.   Japan also makes 90% of a substance called BT resin that is used to make circuit boards.

Auto might not be so much of a problem as other plants around the world are operating well below capacity.  But the Japanese company, Hitachi, makes 60% of the world's supply of airflow sensors that are used to measure the amount of air coming in to engines and this has had an effect.  It's hard to tell what the final toll will be both economically and socially.  Like the BP catastrophe, it will be hundreds of years before the damage is understood and it never will disappear; it's permanent.

The individual culprits will never be forced to pay for their crimes of course.  And there are individual culprits who knowingly and wantonly place human lives and communites at risk in their rapacious thirst for profits.  The Japanese company Tepco, (Tokyo Electric Power Co) that manages the Fukushima nuclear reactors has a history of accidents and cover ups.  In Japan, just like here in the US, government and industry are closely connected.  the state, after all, is not devoid of class content, it is a capitalist state and defends the class and economic system on which it rests. Bechtel, the giant US corporation that gets contracts to rebuild a nation's infrastructure after the US has bombed it had a number of its officers enter the public service to facilitate the plunder.  Casper Weinberger and George Schultz, were both Bechtel bigwigs.

In Japan, many of the decision makers in private industry are former government officials like Tepco's Toru Ishida who was the former director general of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.  So what occurs is that government regulators for example will find themselves having to face private industry officials who were once their bosses; they don't like regulation that hinders profit taking.

While there are individuals who are responsible, it is capitalism that is the cause of the problem, an economic system is the issue.  Capitalism is a system of production, without production there would be no life.  And like all systems of production it has economic laws.  The drive for profit which has its source in the surplus value extracted from human Labor power and the competition that is integral to capitalism is what drives the actions of individuals and classes.  We will never eliminate economic or social and environmental crises, wars, disease and starvation without transforming the system of production that exists. 

Capitalism is based on the individual ownership of the productive forces of society which are set in  motion for private profit and personal gain. Surplus value has always existed in class society. A democratic socialist society and economic system would not eliminate surplus value; just collectively own it.  How production is organized and what we produce would be a collective decision made in harmony with the natural world.

BP's catastrophe in the gulf, the horrific developments in Japan, and even Katrina, are not natural disasters in the sense that they mean it. They are a product of capitalism. They are global problems that affect all of us.  Against capitalist globalization-------for socialist globalization.