Cheung Mo
15th April 2007, 12:23
Apparently, an anti-smoking student group and a few petty-bourgeois liberals with ties to the University of Toronto were able to get the school to divest its investments in the tobacco industry. Meanwhile, investments in the oil industry (Exxon Moblie) and in the millitary-industrial complex (Haliburton) remain untouched. Nobody -- especially among those who centre their political, historical, and socieconomic analysis around scientific evidence and a class-centred perspective -- can deny that the tobacco industry had for years prior to the revelations to the public about the grave risks associated with heavy tobacco use and nicotine consumption known and hid the truth and in doing so played a clandestine and unethical role in the addiction of millions and that it is part of the ruling class cartel that was responsible for the prohibition of considerably less dangerous drugs via the funding of bigoted and classist propaganda campaigns that succeeded (to this day) in rendering these drugs politically incorrect and creating a climate of fear around them rather than a climate of rationality. Nonetheless, these issues are trivial compared to those we face with the ruling class' most dangerous, powerful, and reactionary components: The oil industry and the millitary-industrial complex. While their long-term goals (which boil down to maxiumum profit at a minimum cost) are no different from those held by the bourgeoisie as a whole (Hence, the reason they are ultimately tolerated, to the point of complicity and active involvement even, by the rest of the bourgeoisie and much of the petty bourgeoisie.), the consequences of their short-term and intermediate goals -- that is to say environmental degradation, endless bloody wars, exponential growth to the ranks of those victimised by superexploitation, and the constant suppression of human rights and of both personal and collective freedoms -- combined with the vast reserves of capital they can both access and create make them our most powerful and devastating adversaries within the current socioeconomic framework,