Date: Sun, 15 Feb 1998 23:11:10 +0000
From: James Heartfield <James-AT-heartfield.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Rev Thomas Malthus returns


In message <l03102802b10b8314842f-AT-[166.84.250.86]>, Doug Henwood
<dhenwood-AT-panix.com> writes
>James Heartfield wrote:
>
>>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.
>
>What then do you make of this passage from Capital, vol. 1 [p. 638 of the
>Penguin edition], James?
>
>"In modern agriculture, as in urban industry, the increase in the
>productivity and mobility of labour is purchased at the cost of laying
>waste and debilitating labour-power itself. Moreover, all progress in
>capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the
>worker, but of robbing the soil; all progress in increasing the fertility
>of the soil for a given time is a progress towards ruining the more
>long-lasting sources of that fertility. The more a country proceeds from
>large-scale industry as the background of its development, as in the case
>of the United States, the more rapid is this process of destruction."
>

Well, I hate to say it, but the record is that, while he was right about
the trend within capitalist agriculture at that time, indeed
anticipating the dust-bowl conditions of the twenties, insofar as this
purports to indicate a necessary law of capitalist development, Karl
Marx is mistaken.

Certainly there is a trend towards natural degradation in a society that
lacks a centralising rationale, as private interests ignore the wider
social good. That much was indicated by the collapse of agriculture in
the thirties. However, the record since is a spectacular progress in
soil management and yields, in part prompted through a government
enforced rationalisation, but under capitalism. There is much to object
to in that rationalisation, not least the disposession of nearly a
million black Americans, but I think you would find it hard to argue
that there had not been a considerable improvement in soil management.

>Marx's celebration of capitalist "progress" was highly ambivalent.

Did I ever say otherwise? What I favour is technological progress, as
the material basis of human liberation, not capital accumulation. As
your own book demonstrates, all too often increased capital values
depart altogther from industrial development. What I do say is that any
improvement, up to and including socialism, means more industry, not
less.

> Not so
>Julian Simon. I can understand refuting Malthus; I can understand reading
>Simon to do so. But this kind of cheerleading has nothing to do with
>Marxism and everything to do with capitalist propaganda.

What do you mean? That I declined to piss on Simon's grave is
cheerleading? Simon's arguments, insofar as they relate to the absence
of absolute barriers to population increase seem to me to have merit. To
refuse to acknowledge it just seems like doctrinaire churlishness to me.
I reject his support for the free market.
-- 
James Heartfield


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