File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1998/marxism-international.9803, message 127


Subject: M-I: JUDI BARI AND KARL MARX: A Dialogue (fwd)
Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 11:09:02 -0500 (EST)
From: "hoov" <hoov-AT-freenet.tlh.fl.us>


Judi Bari, as many m-listers know, was also a labor and social justice
activist, a mother and fiddle player...this post is very long...
forwarded by Michael Hoover

Forwarded message:
> Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 14:24:29 -0600 (CST)
> From: wsheasby-AT-ix.netcom.com
> Subject: JUDI BARI AND KARL MARX: A Dialogue
> To: sldrty-l-AT-igc.org
> 
>  JUDI BARI AND KARL MARX: A DIALOGUE
>           ON REVOLUTIONARY ECOLOGY
> 
>           Moderated by Walt Sheasby
> 
> MODERATOR:
>      Welcome to our dialogue. Today our guests are the very
> respected Judi Bari, who lived from Nov. 7, 1949 to March
> 2, 1997, and Karl Marx, whose lifetime began May 5, 1818 
> and ended on March 13, 1883. Ms. Bari was an ecological
> activist in the Earth First! organization and because of that
> her life was almost ended by a bomb attack. She survived
> that, but later died at age 48 of breast cancer. 
> 
>      Dr. Marx is easily recognized as one of the most important 
> figures in the history of economics and socialism, although 
> many of  his ideas remain unknown, particularly in the area 
> of political ecology, as distinguished  from political economy.
> 
>      Our topic for this dialogue today is, in fact, Revolutionary 
> Ecology, and we will allow our guests to explain in their own
> words how they understand this approach, and where they
> might agree or disagree. My own role will be only to pose
> some questions and give each the opportunity to respond.
> 
>      To begin, Judi Bari, can you tell us about the terms you 
> use in describing your philosophy? There seem to be a num- 
> ber of concepts that are often counterposed, like Deep Ecol- 
> ogy versus Eco-socialism, or Naturalism/Humanism  versus
> Biocentrism. Can you clarify your own orientation?
> 
> BARI:    
>      Deep ecology, or biocentrism, is the belief that nature 
> does not exist to serve humans. Rather, humans are part of 
> nature,  one species among many. All species have a right
> to exist for their own sake, regardless of their usefulness to 
> humans. And biodiversity is a value in itself, essential for the
> flourishing of both human and non-human life. (1)
> 
> MODERATOR: 
>      Dr. Marx, you've also stressed that humans are part of 
> nature and that this totality is constantly being transformed 
> by interaction that you call 'Metabolism.' What do you mean 
> by that?
> 
> MARX:
>      The labour process...is the necessary condition for effective
> exchange of matter between man and Nature; it is the ever-
> lasting Nature-imposed condition of human existence. (2)
> 
>      The great majority of things regarded as products of nature,
> e.g. plants and animals, are the result in the form in which 
> they are now utilized by human beings and produced anew, 
> of a previous transformation effected by means of human 
> labour over many generations under human control, during 
> which their form and substance have changed. (3)
> 
> MODERATOR: 
>      Well, I take it  that would even apply to hunting and 
> gathering societies, with their tool-making, reworking of 
> stone knives, or weaving of straw baskets, all the way to 
> modern technology. 
> 
> MARX:
>       The development of  human labour capacity is displayed 
> in particular in the development of the 'means of  labour' or 
> 'instruments of production.' It displays, namely, the degree 
> to which man has heightened the impact of his direct labour 
> on the natural world through the interposition for his work- 
> ing purposes of a nature already ordered, regulated and 
> subjected to his will as a conductor. (4)
> 
>      Therefore, when alienated labour tears from man the object
> of his production,, it also tears from him his species-life, the
> real objectivity of his species and turns the advantage he has
> over animals into a disadvantage in that his inorganic body,
> nature, is torn from him....It alienates man from his own body, 
> nature exterior to him, and his intellectual being, his human
> essence. (5)
> 
> MODERATOR: 
>      I take it that this concept of nature as our inorganic body 
> and the idea of an alienation of labor and nature are starting 
> points for your very elaborate critique of political economy, 
> which extends to ten or more volumes covering thousands 
> of pages.  Such a life's work is quite an accomplishment.
> 
> MARX:
>       ''Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie,
>        Und gruen des Lebens goldner Baum.'' (6)
> 
> MODERATOR:
>      I recognize that verse from Goethe's Faust, one of your
> favorite lines, as it was Hegel's also: ''My friend, all theory 
> is gray, and only the golden tree of life is green. '' (7)
> 
>      But let me ask Judi Bari how she describes the theoretical 
> character of  biocentric ecology.  Despite Goethe, can theory 
> be called green?
> 
> BARI:
>      These principles, I believe, are not just another political
> theory. Biocentrism is a law of nature that exists independ-
> ently of whether humans recognize it or not. It doesn't matter 
> whether we view the world in a human-centered way. Nature 
> still operates in a biocentric way. And the failure of modern 
> society to acknowledge this -- as we attempt to subordinate all
> of nature to human use  -- has led us to the brink of collapse
> of the earth's life support systems.
> 
> MARX: 
>      No natural laws can be done away with. What can change 
> in historically different circumstances is only the form in 
> which these laws assert themselves. (8)
> 
> MODERATOR: 
>      Judi, the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess is credited 
> with making a distinction twenty-five years ago between what
> he called  the Shallow and the Deep views of Ecology. It's 
> been called one of the first major papers on environmental 
> ethics. What is your view? (9)
> 
> BARI:    
>      Biocentrism is not a new theory, and it wasn't invented by 
> Arne Naess. It is ancient wisdom, expressed in such sayings
> as 'the earth does not belong to us: we belong to the earth.'
> But in the context of today's industrial society, biocentrism 
> is profoundly revolutionary, challenging the system to its core.
> 
> MODERATOR: 
>       In 1854 when Si'al, who is known as Sealth, Chief Seattle, 
> suggested that reverence, he was, he said, expressing a tra-
> ditional belief, one that has often been paraphrased since it 
> was made known in 1887:
>      ''Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth.
>      If men spit upon the ground, they spit on themselves.
>      This we know -- the earth does not belong to man, man
>      belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the
>      blood which unites one family....Man did not weave the 
>      web of  life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does
>      to the web, he does to himself.'' (10)
> As we learn more about that communal, ecological wisdom,
> the implications seem profoundly revolutionary.
> 
>      Judi, in your view, how do you feel biocentrism contradicts 
> capitalism?
> 
> BARI:    
>      The capitalist system is in direct conflict with the natural
> laws of biocentrism. Capitalism, first of all, is based on the 
> principle of private property -- of certain humans 'owning' 
> the earth for the purpose of exploiting it for profit. At an ear- 
> lier stage, capitalists even believed they could own other hu- 
> mans. But just as slavery has been discredited in the mores of 
> today's  dominant worldview, so do the principles of biocen- 
> trism discredit the concept that humans can own the earth.
> 
> MODERATOR:
>      This moral principle, often called a ''Land Ethic,'' has been
> an axiom of the ecological vision for half a century, ever since
> Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac in 1949. (11) 
> 
> What is your view, Dr. Marx? Do you agree with that basic 
> ecological vison?
> 
> MARX:
>      From the standpoint of a higher socio-economic formation,
> the private property of particular individuals in the earth will
> appear just as absurd as the property of one man in other men.
> Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing
> societies taken together, are not the owner of the earth. They
> are simply its possessor, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath 
> it in an improved state to succeeding generations, as 'good 
> heads of the household.' (12)
> 
> MODERATOR: 
>      One of the ramifications of treating the bounty of Nature 
> as merely so many commodities is that there is no real social 
> control, whether it is a state bureaucracy or a giant corpora- 
> tion that has concentrated control. For instance, a huge 
> holding company based on Wall Street, Maxxam Corp., can 
> enforce its right to log off the last remaining giant trees that 
> have not been preserved.
> 
> BARI:
>      How can corporate raider Charles Hurwitz claim to 'own' 
> the 2000-year old redwoods of Headwaters Forest, just because 
> he shuffled a few papers and traded them for a junk bond debt? 
> This concept is absurd. Hurwitz is a mere blip in the lives of 
> these ancient trees. Although he may have the power to destroy 
> them, he does not have the right.
> 
> MARX:  
>      This power of the Egyptian and Asiatic kings and priests
> or the Etruscan theocrats in the ancient world has in bourgeois
> society passed to capital and therewith to the capitalists. (13)
> 
>      ''Apres moi le deluge!'' is the watchword of every capi- 
> talist and of every capitalist nation. (14)
> 
> MODERATOR:
>       I understand that two of the tall Sequoia Gigantea trees 
> were named after Karl Marx and Frederick Engels by the
> Kaweah utopian colony in 1885, although later they were 
> officially renamed for Generals Sherman and Grant. (15) 
> 
>      And John Muir had been so inspired by the  Sequoias in 
> Autumn 1875 he said, ''Talk of immortality!'' and wondered, 
> ''what man will do with the mountains...Will he cut down 
> all the trees to make ships and houses?'' (16) Environmental-
> ists, of course, were able to preserve some of the big trees 
> through nationalization and a park system. 
> 
>      But let me ask Judi Bari, what is the legal basis being used
> now for challenging the timber companies who are logging 
> the remaining privately-owned ancient forests?
> 
> BARI:    
>      One of the best weapons of U.S. environmentalists in our 
> battle to save places like Headwaters Forest is the (now itself
> endangered) Endangered Species Act. This law, and other laws
> that recognize public trust values such as clean air, clean water, 
> and protection of threatened species, are essentially an admis-
> sion that the laws of private property do not correspond to the 
> laws of nature. You cannot do whatever you want on your 
> own property without affecting surrounding areas, because 
> the earth is interconnected, and nature does not recognize 
> human boundaries. Seal off the borders? What borders?
> 
> MODERATOR:
>      Well, Dr. Marx, do you see nationalization of natural 
> resources as the answer?
> 
> MARX:
>      Where the state is itself a capitalist producer, as in the ex-
> ploitation of mines, forests, etc., its product is a 'commodity'
> and hence possesses the specific character of every other com- 
> modity. (17) 
> 
>      The development of civilization and industry in general 
> has always shown itself so active in the destruction of forests
> that everything that has been done for their conservation and
> production is completely insignificant in comparison. (18)
> 
> BARI:    
>      Even beyond private property, though, capitalism conflicts
> with biocentrism around the very concept of profit. Profit con- 
> sists of taking out more than you put in. This is certainly con- 
> trary to the fertility cycles of nature, which depend on a balance 
> of give and take. But more important is the question of where 
> this profit is actually taken from.
> 
> MARX: 
>      In fact the rule of the capitalist over the worker is nothing
> but the rule of the independent 'conditions of labour' over the
> worker, conditions that have made themselves independent of
> him. (19)
> 
> BARI:    
>      According to Marxist theory, profit is stolen from the wor-
> kers when the capitalists pay them less than the value of what
> they produce. The portion of the value of the product that the 
> capitalist keeps,  rather than pay to the workers, is called sur- 
> plus value. The amount of surplus value that the capitalist can
> keep varies with the organization of the workers, and with the 
> level of their privilege within the world laborpool. But the 
> working class can never be paid the full value of their labor
> under capitalism, because the capitalist class exists by extract- 
> ing surplus value from the products of their labor.
> 
> MARX: 
>      In fact, these bourgeois economists instinctively and rightly
> saw that it was very dangerous to penetrate too deeply into the
> burning question of the origin of surplus value. (20)
> 
> BARI:    
>      Although I basically agree with this analysis, I think there
> is one big thing missing. I believe that part of the value of a 
> product comes not just from the labor put into it, but also from
> the natural resources used to make the product. And I believe
> that surplus value (i.e., profit) is not just stolen from the 
> workers, but also from the earth itself. 
> 
> MARX:
>      Labour is NOT THE SOURCE of all wealth. Nature is just 
> as much the source of use-values (and it is surely of such that 
> material wealth consists!) as labour, which itself is only the 
> manifestation of a force of nature, human labour power. (21)
> 
>      When man engages in production, he can only proceed as
> nature does herself, i.e. he can only change the form of the
> materials. Furthermore, even in this work of modification he
> is constantly helped by natural forces. Labour is therefore not
> the only source of material wealth, i.e. of the use values it pro- 
> duces.  As William Petty says, labour is the father of material
> wealth, the earth is its mother. (22)
> 
> BARI:
>      A value has been extracted. If human production and con- 
> sumption is done within the natural limits of the earth's fer- 
> tility, then the supply is indeed endless. But that cannot hap- 
> pen under  capitalism, because the capitalist class exists by 
> extracting profit not only from the workers, but also from the 
> earth.
> 
> MARX:
>      Moreover, all progress of capitalist agriculture is a pro- 
> gress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but of rob- 
> bing the soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of the 
> soil for a given time is a progress toward ruining the more 
> long-lasting sources of that fertility. (23)
> 
>      The first effects of cultivation are useful, but in the end it
> lays the land waste owing to deforestation, etc.
> 
>      The conclusion is that cultivation when it progresses spon-
> taneously and is not 'consciously controlled' ...leaves deserts
> behind it - Persia, Mesopotamia, Greece. (22)
>  
> MODERATOR:
>      One could cite many other examples of climate change
> resulting from the destruction of rainforests even in 
> modern times. 
> 
>      Judi, in regard to environmental degradation, what
> do you view as the most important source today?
> 
> BARI:    
>      Modern day corporations are the very worst manifestation
> of this sickness. A small business may survive on profits, but
> at least its basic purpose is to provide sustenance for the own-
> ers, who are human beings with a sense of place in their com-
> munities. But a corporation has no purpose for its existence 
> nor any moral guide to its behavior, other than to make profits. 
> And to-day's global corporations are beyond the control of any 
> nation or government. In fact, the government is in the service 
> of the corporation, its armies poised to defend their profits 
> around the world, and its secret police ready to infiltrate and 
> disrupt any serious resistance at home.
> 
> MARX:
>      Thus, ''tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes
> possibles.'' (25)
> 
> MODERATOR: 
>     Voltaire's 'Candide,' a motto for the new global age: ''Every-
> thing for the best in the best of all possible worlds.'' (26) 
> 
>      Judi, let me ask your view of free enterprise defenders who
> sell a lot of books using the word ecology, like Paul Hawken,
> who has written a best-seller on 'The Ecology of Commerce.'
> And of course, you must run into many people who think all
> the answers are in books like Albert Gore's 'Earth in the Bal-
> ance.' You have said that you stand for a 'revolutionary eco- 
> logy,' not a piecemeal change within the system. Why?
> 
> BARI:    
>      In other words, this system cannot be reformed. It is based 
> on  the destruction of the earth and the exploitation of the 
> people. There is no such thing as green capitalism, and mar-
> keting cutesy rainforest products will not bring back the eco-
> systems that capitalism must destroy to make its profits. This
> is why I believe that ecologists must be revolutionaries.
> 
> MARX:
>      Just as plants live from the earth, and animals live from the
> plants or plant-eating animals, so does the part of society which
> possesses free time, DISPOSABLE time not absorbed in the
> direct production of subsistence, live from the surplus labour
> of the workers. Wealth is therefore DISPOSABLE time. (27)
> 
>      The political economists like to conceive this relation as a
> ''natural relation'' or a ''divine institution.'' (28)
> 
>      The essence of bourgeois society consists precisely in this,
> that a priori there is no conscious social regulation of produc-
> tion. (29)
> 
> 
> MODERATOR: 
>      Let me pose the question that seems to many as self-
> evident: Does biocentrism contradict communism? It
> seems, regardless of what Dr. Marx said or wrote on the 
> subject, there is a lengthy period in the 20th Century when 
> the idea of biocentrism was directly violated by so-called 
> 'Communism' in its drive to build an industrial-military 
> machine under totalitarian control. And these political 
> rulers did call themselves 'Marxists.'
> 
> MARX:
>      Devil take them! (30)
> 
> BARI:    
>      As you can probably tell, my background in revolutionary
> theory comes from Marxism, which I consider to be a brilliant 
> critique of  capitalism. But as to what should be implemented
> in capitalism's place, I don't think Marxism has shown us the 
> answer. One of the reasons for this, I believe, is that commun- 
> ism, socialism, and all other leftist ideologies that I know of 
> speak only about redistributing the spoils of the earth more 
> evenly among classes of humans. They do not even address
> the relationship of the society to the earth. Or rather, they as- 
> sume that it will stay the same as it is under capitalism -- that
> of a gluttonous consumer -- and that the purpose of the revo-
> lution is to find a more efficient and egalitarian way to pro- 
> duce and distribute consumer goods.
> 
> 
> MODERATOR:
>      To those of us approaching the turn of the century, it would
> seem that the so-called Marxist regimes paid scant attention
> to Marx's concern with nature.
> 
> BARI:    
>      This total disregard of nature as a life force, rather than
> just a source of raw materials, allowed Marxist states to rush
> to industrialize without even the most meager environmental 
> safeguards. 
> 
> MARX:
>      Tout ce que se sais, c'est que je ne pas Marxiste, moi!
> (31)
> 
> MODERATOR: 
>      I understand Dr. Marx. What is quite certain is that you 
> are not a Marxist.!
> 
>       But, Judi Bari, what do you think was the consequence of 
> the attitude that supposed followers of Marx took to nature in 
> places like Russia and Eastern Europe?
> 
> BARI:
>      This has resulted in such noted disasters as the meltdown 
> of  the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the oil spill in the Arc- 
> tic Ocean, and the ongoing liquidation of the fragile forests 
> of  Siberia. It has left parts of  Russia and Eastern Europe with 
> such a toxic legacy that even the rate of human fertility has 
> slowed. 
> 
> MODERATOR:
>      Let me ask both of you, since many ecological socialists
> today, following the work of  James O'Connor, distinguish, 
> in a dialectical  sense, a first contradiction between capital 
> and labor (even under the statist systems as well as private 
> capital), and a second contradiction between capital and 
> nature in today's world. (32)
> 
> What do you each think of this distinction?
> 
> BARI:
>      Marx stated that the primary contradiction in industrial 
> society is the contradiction between capital and labor. I 
> believe these disasters show the primary contradiction is 
> between industrial society and the earth.
> 
> MARX:
>      We have considered the act of estranging practical activity,
> labour, in two of its aspects. 
> 
>      (1)  The relation of the worker to the 'product of labour' as 
> an alien object exercising power over him.
> 
>      This relation is at the same time the relation to the 
> sensuous external world, to the objects of nature, as an alien 
> world inimically opposed to him.
> 
>      (2) The relation of labour to the 'act of production' within 
> the  labour process....Here we have 'self-estrangement' as pre-
> viously we had the estrangement of the 'thing.' (33)
> 
> MODERATOR:
>      It would appear, Dr. Marx, that this consideration has not
> been a prominent element in the socialism of the generations
> that followed you, with perhaps a few exceptions.
> 
> MARX:
>      ''J'ai seme' des dragons et j'ai recolte' des puces!'' (34)
> 
> MODERATOR: 
>      Ouch! Your verdict on your imitators echoes your poet 
> friend Heinrich Heine's exasperation: ''I have sown Dragon's 
> teeth and reaped only fleas!''
> 
> BARI:    
>      But even though socialism has so far failed to take ecology 
> into account, I do not think it is beyond reform, as is capital-
> ism. One of the principles of socialism is 'production for use, 
> not for profit.' Therefore, the imbalance is not as built in under
> socialism as it is under capitalism, and I could envision a form 
> of socialism that would not destroy the earth. But it would be 
> unlike Marx's industrial model. Ecological socialism, among 
> other things, would have to deal with the issue of centralism.
> 
> MODERATOR:
>      Dr. Marx, you have written extensively about the meta- 
> bolism of society and the earth, and the negative effects of 
> urban capitalism and industrial agriculture on both the hu- 
> man and physical environment. The antagonism of urban
> and rural development seems the most corrosive element.
> 
> MARX:
>       The foundation of every division of labour which has 
> attained a certain degree of development, and has been 
> brought about by the exchange of commodities, is the
> separation of town from country. 
> 
>      The capitalist mode of production completes the disinte-
> gration of the primitive familial union which bound agricul-
> ture and manufacture together when they were both at an un-
> developed and childlike stage. But at the same time it creates
> the material conditions for a new and higher synthesis....
> Capitalist production collects the population together in great
> centres...it disturbs the metabolic interaction between man
> and the earth....But by destroying the circumstances surround-
> ing that metabolism...it compels its systematic restoration as
> a regulative law of social production, and in a form adequate
> to the full development of the human race.
> 
>      It is very characteristic that the enthusiastic apologists of
> the factory system have nothing more damning to urge against
> a general organization of labour in society than that it would
> turn the whole of society into a factory. (35)
> 
> BARI:    
>  The Marxist idea of a huge body politic relating to some 
> central planning authority presupposes (1) authoritarianism 
> of some sort, and (2) the use of mass production technologies 
> that are inherently destructive to the earth and corrosive to t
> he human spirit. 
> 
> MODERATOR:
>      Dr. Marx, what was it you wrote about the Communard 
> government in France in 1871?
> 
> MARX:
>      Not only municipal administration, but the whole initia- 
> tive hitherto exercised by the state was laid into the hands 
> of the commune.
> 
>      Instead of deciding once in three or five years which
> members of the ruling class were to misrepresent the people
> in Parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people,
> constituted in Communes.... (36)
> 
> MODERATOR:
>      Dr. Marx, despite your opposition to the state, it does 
> seem that a repressive bureaucracy and top-down command 
> economy became quite extreme and widespread about fifty 
> years after your death. Is the statist machine a threat as it
> was in the past? In your time, you discussed Bonapartism,
> in which, well, how did you put it?
> 
> MARX: 
>      The struggle seems to be settled in such a way that
> all classes, equally impotent and equally mute, fall on their
> knees before the rifle butt....All revolutions perfected this 
> machine instead of smashing it. (37)
> 
> MODERATOR:
>      Is there an alternative, in your view, Judi Bari?
> 
> BARI:
>      Ecological socialism would mean organizing human so- 
> cieties in a manner that is compatible with the way nature is 
> organized. And I believe the natural order of the world is bio- 
> regionalism, not statism.
> 
> MARX:
>      It is by no means the aim of the workers, who have got 
> rid of the narrow mentality of humble subjects, to set the state
> free.
> 
>      Freedom consists in converting the state from an organ
> superimposed upon society into one completely subordinate
> to it, and today, too, the forms of state are more or less free
> to the extent that they restrict the ''freedom  of the state.'' (38)
> 
> MODERATOR: 
>      More and more people are beginning to see that a life
> driven by commodity consumption and advertising is not
> a prescription for a satisfying future or individual develop-
> ment. How do each of you assess this stimulation of wants
> beyond real needs?
> 
> BARI:    
>      Modern industrial society robs us of community with one
> another and community with the earth. This creates a great
> longing within us, which we are taught to fill with consumer
> goods. But consumer goods, beyond those needed for basic 
> comfort and  survival, are not really what we crave. So our 
> appetite is insatiable, and we turn to more and more efficient 
> and dehumanizing methods of production  to make more and 
> more  goods that do not satisfy us.
> 
> MARX:
>      Incidentally...although every capitalist demands that his 
> workers should save, he means only his own workers, because 
> they  relate to him as workers; and by no means does this ap- 
> ply to the remainder of workers, because these relate to him 
> as consumers. In spite of all the pious talk of frugality, he 
> therefore searches for all possible ways of stimulating them
> to consume, by making his commodities more attractive, 
> by filling their ears with babble about new needs. (39)
> 
> BARI:
>       If workers really had control of the factories (and I say 
> this as a former factory worker), they would start by smash-
> ing the machines and finding a more human way to decide 
> what we need and how to produce it. So to the credo 'pro-
> duction for use, not for profit,' ecological socialism would 
> add, 'production for need, not for greed.'
> 
> 
> MODERATOR:
>      Judi, what does this mean for the movement?
> 
> BARI:    
>      The fact that deep ecology is a revolutionary philosophy
> is one of the reasons Earth First! was targeted for disruption 
> and annihilation by the FBI. The fact that we did not recognize
> it as revolutionary is one of the reasons we were so unprepared
> for the magnitude of the attack. If we are to continue, not just
> Earth First!, but the entire ecology movement must adjust to 
> the profound changes that are needed to bring society into
> balance with nature.  
> 
> MARX:
>      Someday the worker must sieze political power...if he is
> not to lose heaven on earth, like the old Christians who 
> neglected and despised politics. But we have not asserted
> that the ways to achieve the goal are everywhere the same. 
> You know that the institutions, mores, and traditions of 
> various countries must be taken into consideration.... (40)
> 
> MODERATOR:
>      How can the struggle be made more effective, Judi?
> 
> BARI:    
>      One way we can do this is to broaden our focus. Of course,
> sacred places must be preserved, and it is entirely appropriate
> for an ecology movement to center on protecting irreplaceable
> wilderness areas. But to define our movement as being con- 
> cerned with 'wilderness only,' as Earth First did in the 1980's,
> is self defeating. You cannot seriously address the destruction 
> of wilderness without addressing the society that is destroying 
> it. It's about time for the ecology movement (and I'm not just 
> talking about Earth First! here) stop considering itself as
> separate from the social justice movement. The same power 
> that manifests itself as resource extraction in the countryside
> manifests itself as racism, classism, and human exploitation
> in the city. The ecology movement must recognize that we are
> just one front in a long, proud history of resistance.
> 
> MODERATOR:
>      Judi, there are some green groups that either deny they 
> are historically rooted in the Left or consider labor struggles
> as part of the ''old paradigm.'' What is your outlook?
> 
> BARI:    
>      A revolutionary ecology movement must also organize 
> among poor and working people. With the exception of the 
> toxics movement and the native land rights movement, most 
> U.S. environmentalists are white and privileged. This group 
> is too invested in the system to pose it much of a threat. A 
> revolutionary ideology in the hands of privileged people can 
> indeed bring about some destruction and change in the 
> system. 
> 
>      But a revolutionary ideology in the hands of working 
> people can bring that system to a halt. For it is the working 
> people who have their hands on the machinery. And only 
> by stopping the machinery of destruction can we ever hope 
> to stop this madness.
> 
> MODERATOR:
>      Judi, you clearly view the working class as potentially a
> revolutionary subject, unlike the theorists rooted in the New
> Left, like Murray Bookchin, who think this is mythology, a
> ''gross misjudgment of the proletariat's destiny.'' (41)
> 
> BARI:    
>      How can it be that we have neighborhood movements fo-
> used on the disposal of toxic wastes, for example, but we 
> don't have a workers' movement to stop the production of
> toxics? It is only when the factory workers refuse to make the
> stuff, it is only when the loggers refuse to cut the ancient trees,
> that we can ever hope for real and lasting change. This system
> cannot be stopped by force. It is violent and ruthless beyond 
> the capacity of any people's resistance movement. The only
> way I can even imagine stopping it is through massive non-
> cooperation.
> 
> MARX:
>      Citizens, let us think of the basic principle of the Inter- 
> national: Solidarity. Only when we have established this 
> life-giving principle on a sound basis among the numerous 
> workers of all countries will we attain the great final goal 
> which we have set ourselves. (42)
> 
> BARI:    
>      So let's keep blocking those bulldozers and hugging those
> trees. And let's focus our campaign on the global corporations
> that are really at fault. But we have to begin placing our act- 
> ions in a larger context. And we must continue this discussion 
> to develop a workable theory of revolutionary ecology.
> 
> MARX:
>      We do recognize our brave friend, Robin Goodfellow,
> the old mole that can work in the earth so fast, that worthy
> pioneer - the Revolution.  (43)
> 
> MODERATOR: 
>      Well, the good fellow I recognize  as that ''shrewd and 
> knavish sprite'' called  Puck in William Shakespeare's  'A 
> Midsummer Night's Dream,' and the old mole from 'Hamlet' 
> could well serve as symbol of the 'radicalism' you both ex- 
> press, since that word means 'going to the roots' of the prob- 
> lem. But let me remind you two about Hamlet's  next verse:
>      ''There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
>      Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'' (44)
> 
>      This has been a most enlightening talk between the two 
> of you. Do you want to leave one last word?
> 
> BARI:
>      Stand strong and keep up the fight. Don't let the bastards
> get you down! (45)
> 
> MARX: 
>      When the International was formed we expressly formula-
> ted the battle cry: 'The emancipation of the working classes
> must be achieved by the working classes themselves.' (46)
> They have a world to win. Workers, of the world, unite! (47)
> 
> =========================================> 
>                                           REFERENCES
> 
> 1. Judi Bari (1997) 'Revolutionary Ecology,' from Capitalism, 
> Nature, Socialism: A Journal of Socialist Ecology  (Vol 8, No. 
> 2, Issue Thirty, June 1997), pp. 145-149. All but the last
> quotation are taken in existing order from this article.
> 
> 2.  Karl Marx (1977) Selected Writings, edited and translated
> by David McLellan,  Oxford: Oxford University Press,  p. 460.
> Hereafter referred to as SW.
> 
> 3. Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: Collected Works, New York,
> International Publishers: Vol. 30 (1988) p. 57. Hererafter cited 
> as  CW followed by volume and page number.
> Compare also SW, p. 458.
> 
> 4. CW, Vol. 30 (1988) p. 56
> 
> 5. SW,  pp. 82-83.
> 
> 6. Johann Wolgang Von Goethe (n.d.) Faust: Eine Tragoedie 
> von Goethe, Erster Teil, Leipzig, Druck and Verlag von Phi-
> lipp Reclam jun., p. 57.
> 
> 7. Johann Wolgang Von Goethe (1957) Faust: Part I, New York:
> New Drections Paperbook, p. 64.
> 
> 8. Marx to Kugelman, July 11, 1868, in SW,  p. 524.
> 
> 9. Arne Naess (1973) ''The Shallow and the Deep, Long Range
> Ecology Movement,'' Inquiry (Oslo, Norway) 16: pp. 95-100, 
> in George Sessions, Editor, (1995) Deep Ecology for the 21st
>  Century, Boston and London: Shambhala, pp. 151-56. 
> 
> 10. Chief Seattle, paraphrased  in Dr. Norman Myers (1984) 
> Gaia: An Atlas of Planet Management, Anchor Press - Double-
> day & Co., Garden City, New York, p. 159,
> 
> 11. Aldo Leopold (1968) A Sand County Almanac, London, 
> Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 201-225.
> ''We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belong-
> ing to us. When we see land as a community to which we 
> belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. There 
> is no other way for land to survive the impact of mechanized
> man, nor for us to reap from it the esthetic harvest it is
> capable, under science, of contributing to culture.'' (p. viii)
> 
> 12. Karl Marx (1976 ) Capital: A Critique of Political Econo-
> my, Vol. 3, London, Penguin Books. Hereafter referred to as
> C, followed by volume and page number. Vol. 3 p. 910.
> 
> 13. CW, Vol. 30, p. 260.
> 
> 14. C, Vol. 1, p. 381.
> 
> 15. Robert V, Hine (1983 California's Utopian Colonies, 
> Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 84, 90.
> 
> 16. Frederick Turner (1985) Rediscovering America: John
> Muir in His Time and Ours, San Francisco: Sierra Club 
> Books, p. 232.
> 13. CW, Vol. 30, p. 260.
> 
> 17. Karl Marx (1972) ''Marginal Notes on Adolph Wagner's
> Lehrbuch der politischen Oekonomie,'' Theoretical Practice,
> No. 4 (Spring 1972), p. 51.
> 
> 18. C, Vol. 2, p. 322.
> 
> 19. Appendix: Results of the Immediate Process of Production
> in C, Vol 1, p. 989.
> 
> 20. C. Vol. 1, pp. 651-52
> 
> 21. Karl Marx And Friedrich Engels: Basic Writings on Poli- 
> tics & Philosophy (1959), Edited by Lewis S. Feuer, Garden 
> City, NY: Doubleday & Co. Anchor Books, p. 112.
> 
> 21. SW,  p. 427; C, Vol. 1, pp. 133-34.
> 
> 22. C, Vol. 1, p. 638
> 
> 23. Letter, Marx to Engels, March 25, 1868, CW, Vol. 42, 
> p. 358
> 
> 25. SW, p. 468.
> 
> 26. Ray Redman, Editor (1977) The Portable Voltaire, 
> New York: Penguin Books, p. 252.
> 
> 27. CW, Vol. 30, p. 192.
> 
> 28. Ibid., p. 205.
> 
> 29. Marx to Kugelman, July 11, 1868, in SW,  p. 525.
> 
> 30. Marx to Engels, in David McLellan, (1973) Karl Marx: 
> His Life and Thought, New York: Harper & Row, p. 443.
> 
> 31. Quoted in Frederick Engels to Paul and Laura Lafargue,  
> Aug. 27, 1890, Correspondance, II, Paris, Editions Sociales, 
> 1956, p. 407. Hereafter cited as Correspondance, II.
> 
> 32. James O'Connor (1998) Natural Causes: Essays in Eco- 
> logical Marxism, New York and London: The Guilford Press, 
> pp. 158-77. Also ''The Second Contradiction of Capitalism," 
> Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, Issue 1, October 1988.
> 
> 33. CW, Vol. 3, p. 275.
> 
> 34. Correspondance, II, p. 407.
> 
> 35. C, Vol. 1,  p. 472; pp. 637-38, p. 477.
> 
> 36. SW, p. 542-43.
> 
> 37. SW, pp. 315-16.
> 
> 38. SW, p. 564.
> 
> 
> 39. Karl Marx (1973) Grundrisse: Foundations of the Cri- 
> tique of Political Economy (Rough Draft), Middlesex, Eng.,
> Penguin Books, Ltd. (Hereafter referred to as G), p. 287. 
> 
> 40. 42. Karl Marx (1971) On Revolution, Edited by Saul K.
> Padover, New York: McGraw-Hill  Book Co., p 64.
> 
> 41. Murray Bookchin (1980) Toward an Ecological Society,
> Montreal: Black Rose Books, p. 124. See Alan Rudy and 
> Andrew Light (1996) ''Social Ecology and Social Labor:
> A Consideration and Critique of Murray Bookchin,'' in
> David Macauley, Ed., Minding Nature: The Philosophers of
> Ecology, New York and London: The Guilford Press, 1996,
> pp. 318-42
> 
> 42. Karl Marx (1971) On Revolution, op. cit., p 65.
> 
> 43. SW, p. 339.
> 
> 44. William Shakespeare (1977) A Midsummer's Night 
> Dream, New York, The Viking Press, p. 24;  Hamlet, New 
> York, W.W. Norton & Co, Inc., p. 24.
> 
> 45. Judi Bari to Dennis Bernstein at KPFA, March 1, 1997.
> 
> 46. CW, Vol. 45, p. 408. Marx and Engels to Bebel and
> others (circular letter) September 17-18, 1879. Marx - Engels,
> Selected Correspondence (1975) Moscow, Progress Publishers.
> 
> 47. SW, p. 246.
> 
> -end-
> 
> 



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