File spoon-archives/marxism-general.archive/marxism-general_1997/marxism-general.9711, message 80


Date: Sun, 9 Nov 1997 05:02:48 -0500
From: malecki-AT-algonet.se (Robert Malecki)
Subject: Re: M-G: Malecki-post.


>>No!  Nor was it the point. The point was the "envionmental" 
>>debate..Connected to new left ideology..
>>
>>Bob Malecki
>Hi Bob I must have missed your first  post/posts on this subject new left
>ideology, what are you arguing?
>
>Cheers
>
>Andrew.

Well. partially it is linked to Mark Jones sounding his trumpet over on M-I 
about the end of the planet in regards to this stuff and Liam writting on 
the Ozone levels..

What i find interesting about this stuff is not so much the doomsday profits 
like Mark who sees millions or billions of people dying as the population 
explosion explodes and the oil resources start taking a deep dive.. All of 
this by thr year 2050..

The real point is that poor and working class people have always dided in 
the millions under this system..So why all of a sudden all this doomsday shit?

I think that the conditions for saving the planet lie only along the road of 
Proletarian revolution and a planned economy..

I take no responsibility for cleaning up this planet or that capitalism and 
its chase after profits is responsible for how things see out. Nor will I 
work like the liberals to reform or save the envionment under capitalism..

I am for the workers bomb in defense of states like Cuba and China, Vietnam 
or Korea..

Just as the present hypocrital game being played out about Iraq is how 
imperialism will clean up the planet. Whether its chemical weapons not 
controled by them or the population explosion or the end of oil.. These 
people deal in death and destruction all the time..There are more deadly 
weapons on the Nimitz then in the whole middle east with the exception of 
Israel..

I don't give a shit about all these nice professors that Mark is using in 
his campaign to make leftists tale responsibility for a more rational system 
of exploitation under capitalism..What has the wonders of capitalist 
counter-revolution brought to the now ex Soviet Union. A drop in the 
birth-rate and dramatic rise in the death rate. Right in line with Mark's 
preeching these days..

Or how about conservation programs in Africa to save the rain forest? Well, 
it ain't for poor and working class people this stuff is being done..How 
about the wonders of "liberated" Africa.. Millions still die as imperialism 
fights over and arms their various different black colonialist frontmen..

Or how about the struggle against aids? Capitalism does not give a shit that 
it is the third world who are the real victims of the present plague of this 
planet. They are fucking expendable, just like homosexuals...

Besides before any envionmental bomb drops on the world wiping out millions 
of people. War, starvation, conditions in 80% of the other world will 
explode and millions will die anyway..

The point is not so much that we are heading for disaster, possibly the end 
of the planet. But the only possibility of a way out. That is new Octobers 
everywhere. Until then the Mr Clean world of the Greenies is ridiculous and 
only refects how they themselves are prepared to make a deal with those 
responsible for the long historical record of pyramids of skulls of poor and 
working class people..

However if the doomsday profit Mark and his professors line does become a 
reality. It should be the revolutionary duty of every leftist who gets a 
plague or whatever that they make sure they go to the best restaurants and 
living areas where the ruling classes hang out and make sure that they get 
the plague along with their familes..

Until then it is the program and politics of the Bolshevik/Leninists and 
world revolution which interest me. The envionment at present is in the 
hands of the class enemy everywhere. So there is no way I am interested in 
reforming it so that their kiddies can survive.. Why should I?

They have never been interested in the envionment that poor and working 
class people have been forced to accept so that they can turn a buck..

Remember Black lung. The farsot of the generations of miners and their 
familes. And today in Sweden these envionmental fighters have poisoned the 
ground water in a large area in the south of Sweden in order to build a 
tunnel which would shorten a inter-city train ride by ten minutes for the 
fucking business class..

In the final analisis the only envionmental activity I am really interested 
in is giving and early organic death to the ruling classes of the world! 
Then we can talk about a planned economy..and the envionment..That is when 
we can really talk about a decent place to shit, good food and clean water 
and a roof over the heads of people..

Until then it is then principle of class war even if it means the 
destruction of the planet. Because history has proven we poor and working 
class people have nothing to lose and everything to gain..

This is the short version. Which should give enough ammunition to all who 
want to discuss this question.. Below is the original letter I wrote a 
couple of years ago to a friend of mine who wanted to drop out...

Warm regards
Bob Malecki

I recently read your piece on "Pissing on the work ethic". It reminded me of 
a discussion I had with a black man from Nigeria a couple of years ago. It also 
reminded me of a discussion going on a few years ago with what I call the 
"Back to Lifers". Or even going even further back in time Jerry Rubin,s call 
for "Dropping out, tuning in, and turning on". Your piece appears to me to be 
a 90ties version of unplugging from the system, in order to spend more time 
living. I think you use the words "life enrichment" in your piece.
	
Well, coming from an old fart like me, besides I still have the furniture I 
bought second hand 25 years ago, this is a discussion that has been going 
on, at 
least in the advanced industrial world, quite a long time. Why even after the 
First World War their was a movement in Germany, (The Bluebird Movement), 
predecessor to the environmental movement of today. This movement went so far 
as to say that all of Germany's problems, including their defeat in the war, 
was 
because of corporate industries.
	
However, I think that the back to lifers, (including all of the above), is 
nothing other then a very selfish expression, also very provincial 
expression, of 
a trend of thinking, basically found in most advanced industrial nations on 
this 
planet. I mean who else could possibly come up with such profound ideas at the 
same time we know that two thirds of the world,s population live under the 
existence minimum.
	
But before we go into that, let us go back to the black man from Nigeria that 
I mentioned earlier. He was a very angry man. He was a very angry man because 
the environmentalists were pushing for the idea of forbidding the production of 
refrigerators with freon systems. He was saying to me that for the first time 
in history, this was the nineties, Nigeria has a factory which produces 
refrigerators with the freon system. There very own factory. He was so angry 
and he was laughing at me. I have in my two room apartment a refrigerator and 
a freezer, (this is standard here in Sweden and many other advanced industrial 
countries). He said that "here in Sweden the climate six months a year is so 
cold you don't even need a refrigerator" and in the equatorial countries, where 
the temperature is really warm year round, we have been to poor to have 
refrigerators. And in Africa it is really hot, refrigerators are a necessity 
because food rots! He was saying that now that the Nigerians finally have the 
means of production, to produce our own refrigerators for the people, you in 
the advanced countries want to forbid us from producing them! Now are you 
willing to give the industrial capacity to produce non neon based systems? 
Obviously the answer is no, the advanced industrial countries have never given 
third world countries anything except colonialism, oppression, and slavery.
	
So when reading your piece, I thought, how utterly self-centred and lazy we 
have become in the so called "advanced  post industrial society". Not only 
lazy, but we have found or are trying to find an ideology which justifies our 
own "individual" freedom, in fact a cop-out which justifies leaving the 
starving two thirds of humanity, including the millions of unemployed in 
the advanced countries to do their thing STARVE...I wonder what individual 
freedom means for the two thirds of humanity who have not tasted the 
materialism and bankruptcy of decaying advanced post industrial society? 
However, I do not want to be accused of moralising now. But I do believe 
that before we can talk about your goal of individual freedom I think that 
we should at least demand three square meals a day and a house and toilet 
with clean water for humanity.
	
Now let's get back to the back to lifers. There ideology does not differ 
so much from yours Tom. Even I once lived a few years in my life with two 
donkeys. I thought that talking to donkeys made just as much sense as 
talking to people. So for months I lived with my donkeys and talked to 
them. In fact my thinking went along the lines of your thinking, 
"Fuck the post industrial world". However, that does not mean that we do 
not have to take responsibility and work for a better world, especially for 
the two thirds that have not had the chance to experience that sort of 
life. Nor does it mean condemning rational production of the necessities 
of life.
						
I can honestly say that I think it would be great to work in a factory 
producing toilets so that everyone on this planet could take a decent shit 
and have clean water to wash their hands with afterwards. That does not 
mean working in a factory to produce, space designed, futuristic, gold 
plated toilets, for the rich and powerful. However, the gist of your piece 
is that you won't work in a factory at all! Work for you is a burden, a 
matter of priorities, the opposite of freedom, etc. I have a question for 
you Tom. Would you be willing to work in a factory who's goal was to 
produce a decent toilet for humanity to take a shit in? Naturally, a 
factory owned and run by the same humanity in their interest and not 
profit...? I would! In fact I think that production of the necessities 
of life should be produced in a very organised and rational way. A factory 
producing hundreds of thousands of toilets in a rational way for people 
to take a shit in would be just great.
	
Now to Jerry Rubin and the Yippies, (turned yuppie). Jerry was also into 
this shit, that you are thinking, for a while. He made a lot of money on 
it and later on died a rich stockbroker. He appealed to the youth of 
America. The youth at that time being the post Second World War baby 
boom of spoiled brats. Even here in Sweden this generation has done nothing 
except make talk bubbles and inherit their relatives money. They built 
nothing! And today they are having their 40 and 50 year old crisises. The 
big question being now, what am I going to do now that I have experienced 
everything? Or sending their kids to private schools, or worrying about 
getting the latest in computer technology. From your piece I get the feeling 
that you are some sort of advice giver to just these types of people. That 
is the bottom line of your piece.
	
However, reality usually has a way of coming down on our heads sooner or 
later. I live just a couple of hundred miles away from Russia. In Russia there 
are 8 or 9 hundred million (!) people who literally have not got a pot to piss 
in literally speaking after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. They also 
atomic bombs and ballistic missiles, which you can't eat. This fact, along 
with the other two thirds of humanity, including the 30 million or so in the 
United States living under horrible conditions, certainly make it hard for 
me to believe that dropping out and living can solve any of the problems for 
this overwhelming majority of people living on this planet. 
	
I saved the Bluebird Movement from post First World War Germany for last. They 
thought that all of Germany's problem's were because of industrialism. They, as 
you, said basically fuck factories and all the rest would mean freedom. Reality 
opened the way for the Nazi's!, who put Germany back to work. Well the 
historical 
process has not changed much since then. In fact fascism is once again rising 
its head here in Europe. Capitalist production forces are decaying as 
inter-imperialist rivalries grow. The founders of Communism, the poeble who 
stormed the gates of heaven in Paris during the great French Revolution have 
been betrayed by the Stalinists and the only answer you have Tom is, Fuck job 
enrichment?.
	
Well, I really think that at least two thirds of humanity have the right to 
demand more then your "Pissing on the Work Ethic". In fact the Paris Commune 
and the people that died on the barricades defending our interests, 
(our interests meaning the two thirds of humanity that don't have anything), 
deserve better then that. 
	
In closing I think I have to say that your piece is only a selfish, 
capitulation to the spoiled brat generation of the 40ties, In fact Jerry 
Rubin was smarter then you, he made a lot of money preeching this shit of 
dropping out. You, the Fascists won't even have to build a gas chamber for 
because your honest and will probably starve to death before that. Or are 
you just appealing to children of the post Second World War brat 
generation? I will give you some advice from and old fart, Don't...
	
Because those post war spoiled brats of the forties have already ripped 
off all the profits of the last World War. It will take a new World War to 
create the conditions, in this system, to create enough new wealth for your 
children and your grandchildren to preach this drop out shit. The price will 
be the millions and millions of dead. That probably can not be avoided, however 
I believe that one must take sides. Elementary solidarity means not coping 
out and taking responsibility for the two thirds of humanity on the planet 
who never dropped in order to drop out...
	
Finally I hope you do not take this personally. This discussion is far too 
important for that. Especially the discussion around the post war 40ties 
generation who talked alot and grabbed everything they could. The only thing 
left are the pension funds and they are going to grab that too...
	
	  
	
		 




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