From: SUBTILE-AT-aol.com
Date: Thu, 28 Jul 94 02:42:22 EDT
Subject: Re: environmentalism


I found d jones' most recent post (94-07-28 00:37:37 EDT) quite interesting.
 Gee, now I'll have to read Paul Mattick.  I'm not really quite committed to
Mandel, being a newbie to the economic critique of Marx and to the various
attempts to explain the validity of Trotskyism to the current era of
international politics.  I mostly use Mandel to explain why, in my opinion,
the marxist critique of the mode of production must include a critique of the
technology used to produce, which itself must include a critique of the
being-toward-nature which capitalist technological production institutes.
 Capitalism creates, in my opinion, the TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS that Garrett
Hardin first discussed in 1968 in an article which has been anthologized in
practically every environmental ethics anthology I can think of ("Tragedy of
the Commons") and which libertarians have used as a justification for the
privatization of all land, water, air, etc.  The argument is that (under
capitalism) since nobody in particular owns "common" land (parks, forests,
other state lands, oceans, air etc.), all parties will try to exploit its
natural resource-value before others get to it.  The parenthetical (under
capitalism) is my addition to Hardin's argument.  A different social
structure, a relationship of human to human that was not dominated by the
cash nexus, would produce a different attitude toward the commons.
 I myself would tend to take the opinion that Jeremy Seabrook takes in
VICTIMS OF DEVELOPMENT: that any way communities can at least try to escape
from the stranglehold monopoly capitalism has upon the world is at least
worth encouraging.  If you all want to poke holes in Mandel and show me why I
shouldn't quote him for my own purposes, I'm open to suggestion.  Thanx to d
jones for keeping up the conversation.
-Samuel Day Fassbinder



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