Date: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 09:42:34 -0500 From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu> Subject: Re: M-I: Fertilizer runoff kills marine life D. Baker (aka "Boobysatva") > Nutrient wastes can safely be allowed to run into natural systems >as long as they are free from toxins and channeled to the kinds of >ecosystems that can handle them. Speaking of waste, Baker's post is about as fine an example of spin-doctoring as I've seen outside the ranks of LM. I post an article from the NY Times that implicitly makes the point that the needs of industrial farming and industrial fishing are in conflict. One or the other has to change. So Baker does not discuss the actual points of the article, but makes a bunch of blithe assertions about how the capitalist system can fine-tune itself. He says that fertilizers can be flushed into "ecosystems that can handle them." What a joke. There is not some kind of control panel that governs all this. When there is flooding, such as there was in 1993, runoff from waterlogged cities and agricultural lands pours into the gulf. That summer the algae-producing hypoxic zone doubled in size. By contrast, 1988 was the year of a great drought in the Midwest and the hypoxic zone was much less prevalent. There is no dial on the control panel of the capitalist system titled "turn off flooding." No, the problem is within the capitalist system itself. It has brought into existence a form of farming that is like all other production. It sacrifices the long-term needs of humanity for the short term need of profit. In the field of agriculture, Marx observed this process and was led to conclude: "The moral history...concerning agriculture...is that the capitalist system works against a rational agriculture, or that a rational agriculture is incompatible with the capitalist system (although the latter promotes technical improvements in agriculture), and needs either the hand of the small farmer living by his own labor or the control of associated producers." Louis Proyect --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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