The destruction of lives and suffering of the people in the deadly wildfires in the town of Lahaina on the island of Maui in Hawai`i continues, even as the fires have largely stopped. As of August 19, officials announced more than 110 people were confirmed to have been killed in the fires, but as many as 1,300 were still missing—it is not clear how many of these missing may have been killed. Of those whose remains had been discovered in the ruins, only five had been identified, because the fires were so intense and hot that the bodies were difficult to identify. An estimated 2,200 buildings in Lahaina were burned or destroyed. Historic buildings have been reduced to ashes, and the Nā ‘Aikāne o Maui Cultural and Research Center is destroyed and most of its collection has been lost forever.

People across Maui, throughout Hawai`i, and across the world are grieving and full of anger, as revcom.us has noted in earlier coverage: a letter from a reader and the article posted last week, To the People Living in and Loving Hawai`i—WE NEED A WHOLE NEW WAY TO LIVE.

There has been a huge outpouring of support for the victims of the fire from the masses of people from Maui, from all over Hawai`i, and from beyond the islands. All kinds of aid have poured in from the people—contributions of food, clothing, diapers and much more. People from all islands have volunteered to help on Maui in the coming months, many taking off from jobs and anticipating working on this long-term. Restaurants have shut down their normal operations to make food for people in need. Convoys of trucks with supplies have been organized by the people. People in the area in and around Lahaina have set up “Kanaka Costcos” (Kanaka means Native Hawaiian) to distribute donated blankets, food, etc. free to the people in need.

But the government—at all levels—has largely failed to meet the urgent needs of the people who are displaced and in many cases in shock because of loss of family, friends, homes, livelihood. One woman from Lahaina who had more than 20 people from her extended family staying in her house in the aftermath of the fires was interviewed on CNN. She called the U.S. government’s offer of $700 to each person affected by the fire a “slap in the face”—it falls so far short of what is needed. And many who are in urgent need are unable to work through the bureaucratic process to get the funds anyway.

The news of all kinds is filled with articles about the fires and the suffering of the people. There is analysis of the causes, its links to climate change, the complete lack of warning from the government to the people there, the medical treatment of those badly burned, and on and on.

But one thing is missing in these many articles: that the system of capitalism-imperialism is the underlying cause of the conditions that led to these fires.

Far from the Citadels, Yet Completely Enmeshed in the Capitalist-Imperialist System

Hawaiʻi is a group of tropical islands that is extremely remote from the planet’s large land masses. Hawai`i includes extraordinary rainforests, volcanoes, oceans teeming with all kinds of life including coral reefs. Yet these islands are completely enmeshed in the global capitalist-imperialist system and all of the horrible consequences of that. This system set the stage for the fires.

As revcom.us has written here and here, and as gone into in this video from The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show, the demands of this system itself have driven and continue to drive the use of fossil fuels on a monstrous scale. The burning of these fuels has warmed the entire planet—including Hawai`i. Average air temperatures are almost 2 degrees hotter in Hawai`i today than in 1950. There has been a drought in the area around Lahaina (as well as other places in Hawai`i), which is also driven at least in part by climate change. The fires in Maui spread so quickly in part because of extremely high winds from a hurricane hundreds of miles away—climate change has intensified hurricanes and specifically had made the winds on the outer edges of the hurricanes (like the 70-mile-per-hour winds that fanned the Lahaina fire) more intense.

These fires were an example of a new kind of fire—fires that start in forests or the countryside and then, because of different conditions including winds and dryness, become extremely hot and sweep into urban areas, destroying lives and buildings. The Lahaina fire was so hot it melted water pipes, which made it even harder to contain.

Climate change is right at the heart of what caused the fires; and capitalism is right at the heart of climate change.

The Long and Bitter History of the Imperialist Conquest and Domination of the Islands

Climate change is not the only way that capitalism-imperialism set the stage for these extremely intense and destructive fires. Another big factor in these fires is the long and bitter history of capitalism-imperialism conquering, dominating, and exploiting the islands and destroying the way of life of the native people who lived there. The Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, authored by Bob Avakian, says:

Hawai`i, too, was seized from the indigenous people there by an expanding U.S. imperialism through force as well as deception. In over 100 years of domination, the USA incorporated Hawai`i into its imperialist state while maintaining it as a major military basing area, continually suppressed the native people and degraded aspects of their culture, and turned the natural beauty and wonder of Hawai`i, into capitalist commodities.

Here are some of the ways that this history relates to the recent Maui fires:

• On the island of Maui (and other islands), the forests that once supported a whole tropical ecosystem, with streams of water for the people who lived there, were cut down and the wood was shipped around the world to make profits for 19th century capitalists.
• In place of the forests, capitalist enterprises set up sugar and pineapple plantations that exploited labor brought in from Japan, China, the Philippines, etc. The capitalist plantation owners worked people in slave-labor conditions. The production itself required massive amounts of water—so the streams that the indigenous Hawaiians relied on were taken over and the water diverted for the plantations.
• When the plantations were no longer profitable by the global calculus of imperialist capital, they were abandoned and the land was left to the weeds. Highly inflammable invasive grasses took over—and these grasses, dried out by the heat and drought of climate change, spread the fire in the high winds.

Why were the plantations abandoned? Because it was more profitable to grow sugar elsewhere. And why was the agricultural land left fallow when Hawai`i has to import a great deal of its food? Because it was more profitable to build up the tourist economy and build expensive hotels and golf courses. And in the aftermath of the recent fire, capitalist vultures are circling, eyeing ways to buy or steal land from people under severe stress and difficulty.

• And right at the heart of the whole process of the system of capitalism-imperialism dominating Hawai`i was the domination of the islands by the U.S. military. Hawai`i was conquered by the emerging U.S. capitalist-imperialist empire. The American invaders suppressed and nearly wiped out its native population. The imperialists made Hawai`i into a giant military base, one that was seen as crucial to maintain for U.S. domination of the Pacific Ocean and much of the globe.
• Just one example of the environmental impact of the U.S. military: Hawaiian tradition says Maui used to be greener. The forests and vegetation on a smaller island off of Maui, Kahoʻolawe, would trap moisture and produce rains in the afternoon that kept the area from being so susceptible to drought. But after capitalist cattle ranches stripped Kahoʻolawe of much of its vegetation, it was used for 50 years for target practice by the massive guns of the U.S. Navy, which wiped out almost all of the rest of its plants, and destroyed its soil. The Navy cleaned up some of its shells but has made clear it is not going to finish the job, and to this day unexploded shells lie all over Kahoʻolawe.

U.S. imperialism, through its core economic operations, its global impact on climate, and its military, has done incredible damage to Hawai`i as well as the entire world. We have outlined just some of the key ways this system set the stage for these terrible fires, and created conditions which made the fires extraordinarily hot. In a fundamental sense, this is happening everywhere on earth, and we live in a new world of a transformed climate in which disasters like this will only get worse—until this system is no longer dominating the planet.

From WE NEED AND WE DEMAND: A WHOLE NEW WAY TO LIVE, A FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT SYSTEM, a declaration issued by the revcoms:

All this is why there is an urgent need, and we boldly dare to demand—and we call on all those who hate injustice and hunger for a society and a world where people can fully thrive and give the fullest expression to their humanity, to join in making this the demand of millions and tens of millions—a demand which can finally be made a reality through the fearless, determined struggle of those millions and tens of millions:

The Existing Capitalist-Imperialist System And Institutions Of Government In This Country Must Be Abolished And Dismantled—And Replaced By A New, Socialist System Based On The CONSTITUTION FOR THE NEW SOCIALIST REPUBLIC IN NORTH AMERICA