[Marxism-Thaxis] A. Mani : Re: Marxism-Thaxis Digest, Vol 18, Issue 5

[A. Mani]

Re: 4. Re: Re: Marxism-Thaxis Digest, Vol 18, Issue 4 (Oudeyis)
 

----- Original Message -----
From: "A. Mani" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu>
Sent: Monday, April 04, 2005 11:27 PM
Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re: Marxism-Thaxis Digest, Vol 18, Issue 4
 

Re : 1. Re: A. Mani : Re : 2/3rd ... (Oudeyis)
   

Greetings,
I have considerable doubts about nature's political economic bias.

     

My point was that nature tends to change things with a leftist bias. The
changes may be a gradual.
   

Leftist bias and socialism refer respectively to political partizanship and
to relations of production, not to nature. While the relations of production
have a considerably mediated relation to production and to labour (the
actual interaction between men and nature) the relationship concerns men's
appropriation of nature's goods for human needs and not conservation as
such.  In this context the problems of extension of the "life-time" of
necessary natural resources such as clean water and air, arable land and
sufficient food, and so on are a matter of expansion and conservation of
natural resources through management of nature (just the opposite of
"nature's intent" if she has any).
 

Now first of all how will you define 'nature', in the context of 
relatively pronounced human  activity ?  The best way would be to define 
it as an equillibrium state which is self-sustaining and sustains all 
it's components (at some level of coarseness).  When people speak of 
'nature's intent' sans human actions, there is some implicit 
dialecticality at the point.
The left is a progressive force and must necessarily embrace all that is 
scientifically sensible and desirable. If  'X' is defined, then it is 
defined by all it's consequences. The left interpretation of ecological 
conservation may not be uniformly developed. But it is fairly developed 
and distinct from the more rightist versions of deceit, ignorance or 
imbecility. In fact this aspect has been prominent in some of the local 
movements on environment and conservation in my state (West Bengal).

Baran and Sweezy once made the same observation (I forget where and
     

haven't
 

time to check it out) but that was before Chernobyl. On the other hand B
     

& S
 

apparently forgot some of the more destructive features of Stalin's
Industrial programs, the effects of the Lysenko fiasco, and atmospheric
testing of Nuclear weaponry.  Undoubtedly capitalist "ecology" is mostly
governed by a complex of needs including profitability, the necessity for
testing the means for defence of free enterprise and even the
     

preservation
 

of playgrounds and pleasant parks for those who can afford them.  On the
other hand hard evidence shows that power politics, bureaucratic
     

stodginess,
 

testing means for defence of socialism, and the preservation of
     

playgrounds
 

and pleasant parks for the politically privileged more or less governed (
     

and
 

in some places still governs)the ecology policies of the people's
     

democratic
 

republics, soviets, and what have you.
     

Chernobyl was an accident... nothing special. In general socialists
governments implement conservation programs in a far better and
effective way than capitalist governments.  Much of your hard evidence
may be the usual right-wing propaganda of the dominant news channels.
Even during the cold war, the soviets maintained high ecological
standards. Though militarisation did involve drastic methods... of
cutting costs.
   

I suspect that here we're both right and both wrong (or at least profoundly
uninformed).  True Chernobyl was an accident and accidents don't only occur
in People's Democratic Republics. On the other hand, I've yet to see any
serious work comparing conservation practices in socialist states with those
of capitalist ones.
Then too, even such comparisons are likely to contrast conservation practice
in states that are laying the foundations of industrial production
(socialist states) with those that already have built the technical
infrastructure for industrial development.  Any industrialising society,
capitalist and socialist alike, generally goes through a period of massive
and frenetic development when both the scale and rate of industrialisation
as well as the high costs of means for protecting even the most critical
natural resources tend to cause considerable damage to environmental
conditions important to human survival. As I see it, this destructive
development of productive forces necessary for industrial civilization in
general is the analogue of that stage of primitive accumulation essential
for the development of industrial capitalism (or for that matter industrial
socialism), it is a difficult and even dangerous prerequisite for
development.
The irresponsibility of military practice regarding any but the primary
mission of protecting collective interests by force is inherent in the
institution, whatever its social context.
My real intention here was to contest the idea that socialism somehow
represents an improved relation between man and nature over capitalism.  In
principle, socialism represents an improved relation of men to their own
natures, the problem of the relation of men to world conditions in the
context of industrial development is quite a different issue.
 

We have scientific information on admissible models to some extent. 
Previously (20 years +) these were much more difficult (in computing). 
Still there is a lot to be done. The point is socialism allows better 
implementation of these models. Capitalist governments, being 
necessarily the same as the monopolists and mncs.

Earlier the conservation models were too imprecise.
Actually mankind has been interfering with nature ever since mankind
     

became
 

mankind. As often as not with disastrous effects on human survivability.
For example, the so-called ecologically aware Native Americans wiped out
     

the
 

American Elephants, horse, long-horned buffalo; deforested extensive
     

areas
 

of the American Southwest (Chaco Canyon, the Mogollon region of Southern
     

New
 

Mexico, and possibly large areas of the Gila River Basin); and made
considerable contributions to the degradation of Riverine ecosystems in
     

the
 

Mississippi, the Rio Grande, and the Ohio River basins.  Perhaps the most
tragic and dramatic parable of man's destruction of the natural
     

conditions
 

for his existence is that of Easter Island. Uncontrolled population
     

growth,
 

the expression of tribal pride in inedible monumental sculpture etc., and
warfare eventually killed off most of the Easter Islanders and left the
     

rest
 

scrabbling for a miserable existence in an environment destitute of all
     

but
 

the most basic resources for survival.  By the way, until the final
     

crash,
 

the Easter Islanders were governed by autocratic chieftains and their
chiefly courts, typical of most Polynesian societies.
     

Feudalism and ecology. They did not know, honestly.
   

First, Polynesian societies were not feudal.  They had more the character of
Irish football teams than of European medieval society.
Second, one does not need to be an agronome or an ecologist to know when
social practices, i.e. wars, intercommunal competition, and so on, are
damaging important resources.  The problem is not one of knowledge but of
social priorities relative to questions of basic survival.  Social practice
though founded on the conditions established by the forces of production is
a system unto itself, with its own dynamics and its own priorities.  As such
social practice is usually slow or even completely non-responsive to changes
in natural conditons of production, until those conditions change to the
point that the forces of production themselves are compromised (critical
resources are used up, the labour force dies off, flees, or carries off a
successful rebellion, or the general standard of living declines).   This
can and did happen to state societies such as some of the city states of
ancient Mesopotamia and Classic Maya civilization as well as to primitive
communitarian societies such as the simple agricultural villages of the
Jordan valley (about 8000 BP) and the early Native American hunting
communities of the Intermontane regions of the North American Cordillieras
(Rocky Mts.).  To paraphrase Marx, human communities do not respond to
changing natural conditions until these changes can no longer be avoided
(and then it may be too late to adapt in any fashion.)
The problem is much more critical today with almost complete human
dominance over natural conditions, the tremendous scale and momentum of
human social organization and the fact that "there is no place to flee to
when the system crashes".  A no less important contributor to the crisis is
the consequences of the rates and scale of modern technological
developments, development on the basic conditions for human existence.
Generally, throughout human prehistory and history the rates and scale of
the development of the forces of production increases exponentially and the
impact of productive process on world conditions increases accordingly.
It's a bad combination and likely to bring us to a bad end.   While "the
bottom line", actual and projected, does serve as an indicator to the
capitalist ruling class that things may be going to hell, the essential
intractability of industrial organization and of the organization of trade
does indeed make any timely response to environmental degradation unlikely.
The apparent incapacity for adaptive change to changing world conditions
provides fertile soil for "magical" solutions: witness the resurgence of
mystical traditional "solutions" to crisis such as "back to god" movements
in the States, Israel, the Islamic states and so on.  These solutions,
conservative and even reactionary, oblivious and often contemptuous of
creative practice, and authoritarian by nature, add populist restrictions to
the near helplessness of ruling classes to adapt to changed conditions.
 

The root of the problem is that men survive because they modify nature
     

and
 

make it serve their own needs.  As we develop ever greater control over
     

the
 

material conditions of our existence the dangers of ignorance (often
supported by magical or mystical ideologies, "pro-life" anyone?), of
understandable but self-destructive collective reluctance to respond to
potential threats to survival before they are actualised, and destructive
priorities both of ruling classes as well as of the masses.  You can
     

witness
 

all this "on-line" and "in-time", i.e. the issue of global warming and
     

the
 

related issues of American domination of world resources; the developing
struggle for access and use of limited resources for development between
     

the
 

more actively developing states of Asia and the fully industrialised
     

nations
 

of America, Europe and Asia; and the increasing attractively of magical,
militant, messianic with all its destructive capacities as a means of
mobilizing the support of the materially and morally (morale)miserable
     

for
 

ruling classes under threat.
     

We know about 'sustainable growth and development', much more remains to
be studied.  The sustainment of human existence is simply not possible
in a capitalist scheme of things.  Among, the latter will  or maybe or
must be destroyed by the former, I will prefer  'will be'.
   

As I've pointed out above, damage to the natural conditions of human
existence is:
1. an inevitable feature of primary industrialization, be it capitalist,
socialist or whatever else.
2. more generally, a function of the discordance between the impact of the
development of the forces of production on the conditions for human
existence and the dynamics and priorities of the relations of production
etc.
Will the capitalist scheme of things be destroyed by the sustainment of
human existence?  Possibly.
But will this bring socialism and will socialism resolve the problems of
human survival?
I doubt if the result would be socialism. Considering the conditions that
have brought us to the current crisis, the only way capitalism is likely to
fall is through a series of catastrophic changes in the natural conditions
for industrial production that will seriously impair the capacity of the
capitalist mode of production to support the technical and social
organization that characterize modern civilization.  (Note that this
proposition is virtually the opposite of Marx's optimistic view that
industrial development will provide the means for a new, freer society). The
destruction , even the partial destruction, of the industrial infrastructure
is likely to make the Tsunami off Sumatra look like a picnic.  Most of the
members of industrial society haven't the least idea as to how to survive in
the wild.  Worse yet, the huge population made possible by industrial
civilization would in the case of a general collapse of that society would
probably fatally compromise the possibility for any human survival at all.
Just imagine the impact of the disestablishment of the physical and social
organization of sanitation systems in a city the size of Omaha, Nebraska or
Madison, Wisconsin.
Now, if we survive the next 10, 20, or 50 years, will socialism be a
solution to the problems of human survival in Industrial civilization?  One
thing is clear at least to me.  The orthodox model of socialist society;
authoritarian, centralized, and forcibly egalitarian is at very least no
more effective a solution than the capitalist system is and we've already
shown just how unlikely it is that capitalism will find a way to cope with
the effects of it successes on the possibility of sustained human existence.
In conclusion, I propose that the projection of possible industrial futures
and the related design of more flexible social organization (necessarily
less authoritarian and centralized yet more socially attuned to the
conditions of human existence than either capitalism or orthodox
communitarianism) is the critical intellectual challenge of this centrury,
and its implementation in practice, an absolute prerequisite for continued
human survival.
 

Regards, again,
     

Victor
--- Original Message -----
 

From: "A. Mani" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu>
Sent: Friday, April 01, 2005 10:23 PM
Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] A. Mani : Re : 2/3rd ...

     

Hello,
        I think the very subject of ecology is anti-capitalistic to
substantial extents. The typical atitude of most capitalists and their
species on ecological problems is one of deceit. They may be forced to
see problems presented in no uncertain terms, but are most unlikely to
do anything about it (unless their is a sufficient profit for them ). It
is perfectly o.k for them to destroy future generations as it is also a
matter of survival of the fittest in their terms.
        For example, has anything positive really happened on the
state of automobiles in the U. S. Their Govt. will not try anything...
there are corporate interests and oil from OPEC is free (minus the
printing cost of the dollar).
        There are big projects like the ones sponsored by the MIT  and
others on 'sustainable development', but when it comes to doing ... one
might say 'terrorism', nothing is allowed to be done.
                But nature is one great commie.

       


     

<>



A. Mani
Member, Cal. Math. Soc
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