From: SUBTILE-AT-aol.com
Date: Wed, 27 Jul 94 15:09:56 EDT
Subject: d jones and environmentalism


"Only the direct socialization of production and its conscious subordination
to the democratically determined needs of the masses, can lead to a new
development of technology and science promoting the self-development , and
not the self-destruction, of individuals and of mankind."
 -Ernest Mandel, from LATE CAPITALISM (p. 576)

Readers,
I had trouble with d jones's comments on "the environmentalist critique of
capitalism," especially where false dilemmas were presented.  For instance:

(d jones) "Is the environmentalist critique of capitalism similar to
Ricardo's fear of soil depletion and rent hikes?"

My question here would be -- is there only one "THE" environmentalist
critique of capitalism?  obviously NO there are many different
environmentalist critiques of capitalism, and the ones that are "similar to
Ricardo's fear of soil depletion and rent hikes" do not make an ecomarxism.

(d jones) "is the limit to capital the rebellion of nature or the revolution
of wage-slaves?"

My question here would be -- does it have to be one or the other?  Couldn't
the incipient death of planet earth precipitate the revolution of
wage-slaves?  (A situation along these lines might be brewing in Brazil,
where the victory of the Partido Obrero might be able to slow the destruction
of the Amazon rainforest, which is one of the earth's main oxygen supplies.)
 Do the limits of capital have nothing to do with the rebellion of nature?  I
would advise marxists who are really interested in the problem instead of
continuing the debate in nauseatingly libertarian fashion to read Donella
Meadows' BEYOND THE LIMITS to examine whether there there is any validity at
all to the argument that capitalism can exploit the environment indefinitely
without any basic (socialist) change in its social structure.

(d jones) "a side question: does environmentalism in the imperialist
countires share with big capital an interest in relocating to the
neo-colonial countries certain environmentally disastrous activity, which
requires a devalued dollar to remain profitable on the world market -- that
devaluation being at the expense of certain high-value activities in the
first world: specialty microchips, biotech, advanced machinery of all kinds."


First of all, I don't get how a weak dollar is bad for first-world production
of "high-value activities" -- technological progress for capitalist purposes
has already been shifted from production here in the US to the Third World by
the multinationals, hasn't it?  Secondly, environmentally disastrous
activities such as "timber, mining, textile industries" might not survive in
this country without illegal labor practices and hidden Federal subsidies.
 For instance, the timber market in this country could easily give way to
Canadian lumber (which is cheaper because Canada has bigger forests) were it
not for the Forest Service, which covers road-building costs and other
overhead for the lumber oligopolies.  Honestly I can't see how the
persistence of a lumber industry in the US can be attributed entirely to a
weak dollar and not also to neomercantilist intervention by the government
itself.
And seriously, how is environmentalist concern for the disappearence of the
ozone layer (for instance), soon to hit Australia, caused by capitalist laws
of intellectual property that keep the "Freon" producers in business,
anything close to a relocation of the creation of environmental problems to
the third world?

(d jones) "Has environmentalism been theorized at the level of the concrete
totality?"

This is the best question asked by I'm not sure the task has been
accomplished to the satisfaction of economic analysts of marxism, and I
myself as a PhD student in Communication may not be up to that task.  I can
recommend

William Leiss, THE DOMINATION OF NATURE, THE LIMITS OF CONSUMPTION, UNDER
TECHNOLOGY'S THUMB

Clive Ponting, A GREEN HISTORY OF THE WORLD

Ernest Mandel, LATE CAPITALISM

Marxists who wish to bring socialism to the earth ignore the environment at
their own peril, as the examples of Chernobyl, Bitterfeld, and the shrinkage
of the Aral Sea, all caused by "communists," show.

-Samuel Day Fassbinder




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