Date: Wed, 14 Jan 98 5:06:54 EST From: boddhisatva <kbevans-AT-panix.com> Subject: Re: M-I: Reply to boobysatva Proyect, If you think that you can recruit all the workers to be hippies, I say: "Good luck to you" and I mean it. I'll applaud you for every tie-dye, every bong hit, every native folk dance and every line of eco-beat poetry you do. I'll envy you for your focus, your dedication, and the company of bra-less unshaven women. I'll hoist a shovel at the ground-breaking of every new commune. Hippies are good people. The meek shall inherit the earth. I believe it right down to my socks. Industrial socialism is a cruel and necessary evil. I have thought many times that socialism will be led from ashram, monastery and commune. I don't know how socialists will be able to get a purchase - to find a life centered enough in the atomized industrial world. Unions are battle lines. We need headquarters or at least tents. Structurally I have no argument with you, other than to say that I think you are fighting on a different front. It seems completely clear to me that you will not stop capitalist degradation of the environment and you will not stop development. You can contain them and make sure that there are relatively peaceful, unspoiled places to retreat to, and that is important. You cannot, however, say anything to the proletariat but that environmentalists are fighting a doomed battle without worker control of the means of production. You can't say to them "This is bad, we can change this." because reform is not possible. You have to say "This is the kind of thing capitalism will keep doing no matter what we try short of taking control of our own economic lives." Ultimately, I believe that the battle is to make capitalism superfluous. That is what the capitalists did to the monarchists. Communal living in ecological balance is an important part of the message that capitalism is simply not necessary. It is very incomplete, however. That's because the struggle is not to dismantle the modern economy, but to give it to the people it belongs to and let them decide what to do with it. Along the way many people will have to decide that they simply don't care what the modern economy provides, the injustice and violence that the ruling class instills in it makes it too rich for their blood. They'll be an inspiration to the rest of us. peace --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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