Beauty and the beast

' A modest little tale about Cuban snails offers a fine comment on how the capitalist money system values everything in terms of prices, often with disastrous results. Polymita tree snails have spectacular shells like painted artworks. This attracts collectors who then make money by selling the shells. The trade reduces the snail population, and as they become rarer, their price goes up, which makes them even more collectible. This accelerator effect is driving them to the edge of extinction, like so many other hunted animals.

The BBC describes them as ‘threatened by their own beauty’. What really threatens them is capitalism, a profit-hungry beast which won’t stop until it devours everything. Or until we abolish it.'

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/