Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 11:15:21 +0000
From: James Heartfield <James-AT-heartfield.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: M-I: [Fwd: Is growth still making us better off?]


In message <34EB99C1.23F3CC8F-AT-netcomuk.co.uk>, "M.A.&N.G. Jones"
<Jones_M-AT-netcomuk.co.uk> writes
>Sustainable-economics is debating the latest Richard Douthwaite book,
>amid the usual talk about the 'irrelevance' of Marxism

Well, well, what a surprise. The proponents of 'sustainable economics'
don't like Marx. Might that be because the theory of sustainable
development is essentially hostile to Marxism?

No matter, you still feel it right to curse Living Marxism in a feeble
attempt to suck up to environmentalists, who, if you do not know it,
understand full well that Marxism and environmentalism are incompatible. 

Do you honestly think that slagging of LM will endear you to people who
just do not need or want Marxism in any shape or form?


>In the
>discussions on this seminar there is an easiness about writing off
>Marxism as a philsophical tradition and a politics which simply does
>not reflect the strenghths of that tradition not merely as a
>culture of activism with successes as well as failures, but
>as a radical analysis of industrial society and capitalist 
>economy which simply cannot be ignored.

The 'easiness about writing off Marxism' is not an accidental, but a
necessary component of an ideology that takes scarcity as its starting
point, and seeks to mould man to that scarcity. Nothing could be more
antagonistic to the premises of historical materialism: that men, in
tranforming nature, transform themselves.
>
>Ralph Chipman, of the UN's curiously (and I would argue, oxymoronly)
>named Sustainable Development Division, has given us the anti-radical
>argument in its most extreme form. There is much to argue about here.
>It would be nice to take issue with anyone who can be satisfied with a
>definition of a poverty income of $1 a day, for instance.

Much as Mark objects to Ralph Chipman's support for poverty wages, they
are the natural conclusion of the goal of restricting consumption to
'save nature'. To endorse a general approach and then object to its
consequences is simply dishonest. If one rejects Marx's assumption of
increasing productivity (despite the evidence), the only solution is to
restrict consumption: sharing those premises, why do you baulk at the
conclusions?

With unconscious irony Mark goes on to challenge Ralph Chipman for too
optimistic a reading of health and welfare. Is $1 a day too optimistic a
projection? Must incomes be retricted even more to meet the straitened
circumstances Mark purports to have found?

>It seems clear that while most of on this seminar agree on broad
>definitions of what is wrong, there is no consensus about policy
>prescription and there is also genuine anguish about what we may all
>have to give up in order to create a truly sustainable world.

Here Mark makes the mistake of trying to establish a consensus on 'the
problem'. But he is oblivious to the fact that the (false) consensus on
the problem leads inexorably to the conclusions he baulks at: if
resources are absolutely restricted, then it follows that austerity, or
forced population reduction is the solution. Except of course resources
are not absolutely restricted, but only relatively, by the restraints
placed by capitalism. That is why Mark departs from the Marxist approach
of demanding greater resources for the mass of people, and adopts the
Christian Brothers approach of asking 'what we have to give up'. But
abstinence will only help the capitalist class, whose profits depend on
restricting consumption of other classes.
-- 
James Heartfield


     --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---