Date: Fri, 13 Feb 1998 20:28:50 +0000
From: James Heartfield <James-AT-heartfield.demon.co.uk>
Subject: M-TH: Rev Thomas Malthus returns


In message <3.0.1.32.19980213140312.0120d298-AT-pop.cc.columbia.edu>, Louis
Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu> writes
>What is "man"? 

To which, what can you say? If you do not know yet you never will.

Marx's favourite maxim was 'nothing human is alien to me', and, as he
wrote in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, that 'to be really
radical is to get to the root and the root is man'. Marxism is a
humanistic, or what you would call today 'anthropocentric' philosophy,
human liberation is its goal.

>I only understand that there are two classes.

Yes that is all you understand. What you do not understand is that
historical materialism is more than a simple philosophy of class against
class, but also a theory of the liberation of all mankind from natural
necessity, by the enlargement of the realm of freedom.

>Simon was for
>capitalist progress,

The dumbfounding discovery that Julian Simon was not a Marxist!
>
>As long as there is capitalism, the resources of the natural world will
>continue to be squandered and eventually exhausted. Fish are disappearing.
>Arable land is undergoing desertification. There is no more oil in Ecuador
>and the people have been left with nothing but a toxic mess that is killing
>livestock and making water undrinkable. Simon was dedicated to whitewashing
>capitalism's record on these sorts of assaults, as is Furedi's.

Fish are disappearing, tiny bunny rabbits are being tortured, the End of
the World is Nigh!

Here Proyect departs from any pretence of Marxism. Adoption of modern
farming techniques in the US have increased yields exponentially, to
become a net grain exporter. The Malthusian myth that natural resources
will run out if population is not restricted is precisely what Julian
Simon argued against. And that myth has been exposed in every one of the
two hundred years since Malthus wrote his Essay on Population.

Famines are not a consequence of the shortage of natural resources, but
of the socially manufactured poverty of capitalism. Famines are not
caused by over-farming, but by under-farming. The greatest cause of
respiratory diseases in the third world is the toxics from burning cow-
dung, which is to say underdevelopment, not overdevelopment.

Marx's sustained polemic, not just against Malthus, but also against
Ricardo, was this: that these economists continually blamed the
shortcomings of capitalism on a natural scarcity: food for Malthus, land
for Ricardo. Proyect sounds off with all the radical phrases, but
essentially he is just repeating this ancient piece of capitalist
apologetics - people are just too darned greedy for their own good!

As Marx explained at length, the barrier to capital accumulation is
capital itself, not any natural shortages of oil, or food, or anything
else. Anyone who seriously thinks that capitalism is too productive and
needs to be made less so, should come clean and argue just who it is
that they think should be exterminated to reduce the demands upon these
'limited' resources.

Fraternally
-- 
James Heartfield


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