By: dr Štefan Šumah
Mainstream media have recently emphasised the Levica’s orientation towards eco and democratic socialism. What democratic socialism actually is, is quite difficult to answer; the words somehow do not go together. Until now, no socialism as an institutional system has been democratic. Democratic socialism is, therefore, an oxymoron, but it sounds nice. Or to put it more plainly, if we compare socialism to dog excrement and sprinkle that excrement with sugar crumbs, it is still just dog excrement, entirely inedible.
And what about eco-socialism? This answer is much simpler. Nature showed us an example in Mežice. Suddenly, boxes of batteries appeared when the Meža River washed away the land. And no one knew anything about it. Investigative journalists are surprised. People are surprised. And when I read comments on social media, even people older than me who received their pensions from one of the companies in the Mežica Mines are now surprised at how the mine polluted the valley, it makes me laugh. We all knew!
As children, we played with Bakelite and smashed battery boxes with rocks that we collected when they were not completely buried in the ground, just as we rode in inflated old truck or tractor inner tubes on the dark grey Meža River. Workers in the lead smelting plant got gout from lead poisoning. Anyone of my age (minus five, plus thirty years) from the Mežica or Črna regions (unless they are newcomers) who claims otherwise is lying. We all saw it, and we all knew! Children simply were not aware of it, older people were, but the Mežica Mines provided bread for half of the valley. And they had to keep quiet, one way or another. There was omertà, silence, regarding pollution.
They buried batteries or battery casings, after removing the lead from them and processing it in the smelting plant, mainly in the seventies and eighties of the last century, maybe a little bit in the early nineties. They buried them where they needed the material for filling, and since Bakelite is practically non-degradable, it is not inherently dangerous. The question is how well the battery casings were cleaned at that time.
However, the company itself would not have been able to pollute the environment if it did not have the strong support of the Party. Yes, just like everywhere in socialism, the company was inseparably connected to the Party, and the Party provided the final approval. Even with the batteries buried in various places around Mežice, the final blessing for where and how to dispose of them was always a Party, not a professional decision. There was no professional answer; Bakelite from discarded batteries (once the lead was removed) is practically non-degradable. Well, there are some technologies for Bakelite degradation (pyrolysis), it already existed back then, and they even tried it in the lead smelting plant at that time, but the process was too slow and, above all, too expensive. It was much cheaper and faster to bury Bakelite. And this was not just happening at the Mežica Mines. I remember highly publicised cases like barrels of PCB (a highly toxic carcinogen) buried near the Krupa River. Who knows what lies beneath the surface of Slovenia? What surprises nature has in store for us?
So, we got an answer to what eco-socialism is! Eco-socialism is a form of socialism where pollution is done in a way that it is not visible. Socialism is a much greater environmental polluter than capitalism, but Slovenian socialists will never admit this and will continue to nurture the ideals that the SFRY was an almost ecological state.
And if I go back to the beginning – we all knew. We saw and knew. We just forgot. Nature reminded us. Nature does not forgive. It reminded us of what eco-socialism brings!