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... --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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