File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9710, message 497


Date: Sat, 25 Oct 1997 11:49:02 -0500
From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-I: James Heartfield versus the trees and the flowers and


James Heartfield wrote:

>When I was last in the Adirondacks I
>must say I was struck by the beauty of forests there, and the impressive
>wooden buildings - truly a testament to man's ability to master nature.

"Man" mastering nature? How undialectical. There is nature within man, and
woman too; we are part of it, and it part of us. The urge to dominate it
produces strange and alienating effects. And speaking of humans
"dominating" external non-human nature is of a piece with capitalists
dominating labor - a repellent form of exploitation that Marxists should
fight to end, not perpetuate or apologize for. As Marx said of capitalist
agriculture, it "is a progress in the art, not only of robing the worker,
but of robbing the soil; all progres in increasing the fertility of the
soil for a given time is a progress towards ruining the more lasting
sources of that fertility." We need partnership with nature, not domination.

Doug





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