By Nathalie Clarke
Through the development of science, humans have become capable of producing more than enough food every year for every single human being—without risk of ecological disaster. Yet the World Health Organization estimates that one in six children worldwide is underweight due to undernourishment and disease. The scarcity we experience under capitalism is artificial and stems from super-rich billionaires deciding how we practice agriculture, science, and pretty much everything else. Science has become a tool that elites use to get richer and hoard more resources and wealth.
As we are faced with impending environmental catastrophes, federal and private grants continue to disproportionately favor research in fields that benefit the ruling class. According to the National Science Foundation, in 2017, universities in the United States spent only $686,729 on natural resources and conservation. Meanwhile, geological and earth sciences, which largely research ways of drilling and mining for oil and minerals, was allocated over $1,086,382. Electrical engineering, a field where research is often directed towards the production of weapons for the United States military, received a whopping $2,727,498—over half of which came from the federal government.
As they send us into their wars and into their oilfields and their mines, the billionaires who profit off the pillage and plunder of the planet make clear that they do not care about the lives of working people. This is no news—time and time again the ruling class has shown that they view us as worthless (except for the wealth that we produce for them). Science will not be the solution to any of our problems until we have successfully overthrown capitalism, the current system that rewards bosses who maximize profits regardless of the cost to workers. Only with socialism can we finally direct scientific research to solve the urgent problems of hunger, disease, and climate change.