From: "Rebecca Peoples" <wellsfargo-AT-tinet.ie>
Subject: M-I: Against Nature documentary
Date: Mon, 8 Dec 1997 09:44:11 -0800


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Dear James,

I found the documentary featuring Frank Furedi interesting.

Essentially is was an attack against the green movement from within a bourgeois framework. It failed to expose the real nature of the green movement. The programme simply used the same strategy used by the green movement. An array of purported evidence from this and that expert support its position against the greens. However this is just what the greens do too. One takes one pick depending on one's predilections.

What was not brought out is that in general the green movement is a petty bourgeois movement that falsely suggests that it is possible to create a capitalist green society or a pre-capitalist green society.

The point that either alternative is utopian and thereby impossible to achieve. It is this idealist politics of the greens that must be exposed. The greens seek to sow idealist illusions in the working class movement. However to present the green movement as in polar opposition to the radical left as Furedi, in the programme, does is misleading since much of the radical left is utopian too and shares much of green politics and philosophy. If as he seems to claim the greens are reactionary in subsistence well then to be consistent he must paint much of the radical left without the same brush.

Concerning the specific issue of population in relation to wealth there was as far as I recall little or nothing from Furedi on Marx's theory of population. Instead we are presented with the false view that under capitalism over-population is not a real problem. Clearly this is an apology for capitalism on the part of Furedi and the RCP. For FUredi and his disciples there can never be over-population under capitalism. It is these nasty greens, as such, and their allies that are preventing the development of capitalism in Africa not capitalism. Capitalism is liberatory, revolutionary and progressive?

This constitutes a hidden attack on the the basic features of Marx's Capital. Marx recognised the existence of  over-population as inevitable feature of the capitalist mode of production. He correctly recognised that the only way to create the conditions for the removal of over-population is through the establishment of socialism.

Watching Frank Furedi on the show one would never suspect that he was "a revolutionary Marxist". However he may succeed in carving out a name for himself that can give him status, fame and a few shillings. This is quite a contrast to the Furedi of some years ago. However as the saying goes: if you can't beat them join them.

It might be a useful exercise if someone could show if there is in fact a thread of continuity between the earlier, perhaps ultra-left Frank Furedi and the later more obviously pro-bourgeois Furedi. It is not completely unusual to get these wide swings in politics in the radical left.

Furedi also stated, if I recall correctly, the radical left has been annihilated and that this has created the conditions for the greens filling a vacuum. The point is that radical left was not annihilated, if one can make this claim at all, as if by some external force. It anything it has annihilated itself through its pathetic politics. If the greens filled the vacuum it is because the radical let them. However much of the radical left is green anyway. So what is he talking about.

Rebecca

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