File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9710, message 526


Date: Mon, 27 Oct 1997 16:47:48 +0000
From: James Heartfield <James-AT-heartfield.demon.co.uk>
Subject: M-I: Heartfield verses the trees


Are the trees in danger?

Louis Proyect wrote questioning LIVING MARXISM's claim:"Humanity has the
capacity to replenish and restock many resources as we go." 

Jeff St Clair, ecological journalist and forest authority, responds
below
"There are more acres in forest cover now than at any time since the
turn of the century due to the reversion of marginal agricultural lands
in the midwest and south."

Indeed the main period of deforestation in the United States was between
1850 and 1910, largely related to the expansion of railroads. However
the protests of Theodore Roosevelt that 'a timber famine is inevitable'
(to Congress, 1905) proved premature. This century forestatioon has
improved steadily. (In Europe, the main period of deforestation was
somewhat earlier, related to ship building: most European countries have
seen a steady growth in forestation since 1850.) The OECD Environmental
Data Compendium 1995 shows that the United States consistently harvests
less than the amount of annual new growth (56 per cent in 1980, 59 per
cent in 1985 and 60 per cent in the early 1990s).

Canada and the United States are the principle timber suppliers in the
world, providing fifty per cent of global wood pulp, 35 per cent of
paper and cardboard and around a third of other wood products. None the
less only a small proportion of total forest resources are harvested
each year: eg Canada harvested just 0.4 per cent of total forest land.

Economic function of the forests

It would of course be a mistake to see the growth of forested land in
the US as simply a question of natural resources, to be saved or
plundered. Land ownership in the US as elsewhere is more than a
business. As Marx explained clearing the people from the land is a
precondition of creating a proletariate. In Britain this problem was
resolved by clearances, as Landlords capitalised their land as pasture
and cleared the peasantry from it, prompting Thomas More to say that in
England the sheep have grown so large as to eat up the men. In America,
after the closing of the frontier, the ruling class set about
monopolising the land through national parks, forestry etc. The point
was to keep the propertyless working man from occupying the land and
scratching a living there, so that he would have no option but to offer
himself for hire.

In May 1932 the 'Bonus Expeditionary Force' ex-servicemen and their
families marched from Portland to Washington to demand an early payment
of wartime bonuses due them in 1945. By June there were twenty thousand
camped on the banks of the Anacostia river, who were evicted by troops
in July. Like the Hoovervilles that preceded it the Bonus Expeditionary
Force was a political rather than an economic movement, but the sight of
the masses occupying land struck fear into Congress. Managing forest
land for the US state is more than a matter of resources, but a question
of managing people, too. Similarly the growth of the vast game reserves
and national parks in Africa is less to do with saving the mountain
Gorilla, than it has with driving Africans from the land, to
proletarianise them.

The return of land to forestation from agriculture in the South and the
Mid West that Jeff St Clair refers to is a result of the economic
collapse of agriculture in the thirties - often misunderstood as a
simple case of resource depletion, rather than what it was, a massive
shake out in the farming industry. The Agricultural Adjustment Act
(1933) protected prices for larger farmers but took a lot of land out of
cultivation impoverishing many small farmers. This dislocation of share-
croppers was one of the principle reasons for the great black migration
from the South, as many were ruined by the AAA's provisions (see An
American Dilemma, Gunnar Myrdal, p 254). It wasn't the land that was
'marginal' it was the people on it.

According to the UNCED sponsored report State of the World's Forests,
the main 'danger' of deforestation is not to be found in The developed
world but in the developing. That seem simple enough, but waht do they
mean by 'deforestation':

'Deforestation and degradation are occuring in dryland and upland areas
which already have limited forest cover and are fragile environments
susceptible to soil erosion and other forms of degradation, and where
poor families are highly dependent on forests for food, fuel and
income.' (SOFO 1997, Executive Summary, p2)

But why is it considered a 'degradation' of the forest for people to eke
out a living from it? If anything it is a degradation of the people.
What should they do? Starve? Is the forest worth more than they are?

'yore sheep that were wont to be so meke and tame, and so smal eaters,
now, as I heare saye, become so great devourers and so wylde that they
eate up, and swallow downe, the very men themselfes'

Thomas More, Utopia

More on pre-Colombus agriculture to come


Fraternally
-- 
James Heartfield


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