Marx and capitalist destruction of the earth

I was born on a small farm in Ireland. We had horses to pull the plows and machinery with which we tilled the land. We had a four year crop rotation which allowed the animals waste to be returned to the soil as natural fertilizer. We used no artificial fertilizers or pesticides or insecticides. We were organic but we did not know it.

Then capitalism penetrated our rural area. The horses were replaced with tractors and the land was pounded down to where the worms and other sub soil creatures could not open it up. The artificial fertilizers and insecticides and pesticides followed and the earth and food was poisoned. The rivers too as the waste was washed off. And the oceans too as this is where this all ended. The old folks knew and complained but corporate power rolled over them.

When tractors were introduced first they were little small ones. Today go back to Ireland and they have tractors that are three times the size of the ones they had then. It is madness. The earth is being destroyed not only by the large scale world wide and atmospheric pollution and climate change but by the intensification of agriculture. It produces more where it is used and the big farmers and agribusiness get richer, but the earth is being destroyed and we are being poisoned. The choices are socialism or the destruction of the human species and of the earth as know it.

Thank you for your quote below from Marx. He saw it coming over a century ago.

Happy birthday to wee Karl. Were he still amongst us.

Sean