Re: [Marxism] Marx was not a Greeny
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 4/21/17 9:55 PM, David McMullen via Marxism wrote: If Marx were around today he would be appalled by many things. Here are a few items on that long list. * the massive influence of the green movement and the total absence of a real left; * the fact that hundreds of millions of people still engage in backward peasant agriculture; * the way that intellectual property rights and the green movement have held back the development of biotechnology; and * the appallingly small number of people working in the hard sciences. David, have you read John Bellamy Foster's "Marx's Ecology" or Paul Burkett's "Marxism and ecological economics"? Or James O'Connor? Joel Kovel? Jason Moore? You do understand--I hope--that there is a world of difference between them and Al Gore. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Marx was not a Greeny
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * If Marx were around today he would be appalled by many things. Here are a few items on that long list. * the massive influence of the green movement and the total absence of a real left; * the fact that hundreds of millions of people still engage in backward peasant agriculture; * the way that intellectual property rights and the green movement have held back the development of biotechnology; and * the appallingly small number of people working in the hard sciences. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Marx was not a Greeny
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Can hardly wait. Already pre-ordered with Amazon. Karl Marx's Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy will be auto-delivered wirelessly to your Kindle on August 22, 2017. It will be interesting to see how he shows that Marx did not really mean that capitalism was a fetter on the development of the productive forces.. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Marx was not a Greeny
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * David McMullen wrote, > > The attempt by John Bellamy Foster of Monthly Review to show that Marx > was a greeny requires some rather weird interpretations of Marx's writings. > Not just Marx was concerned with the environment, but many socialist workers in the Germany of his time. But Marx wasn't a bourgeois environmentalist. His writing brought out the need for economic regulation and planning by the working people as a whole, while today's establishment environmentalists look towards market measures, or dream that restricting growth will solve matters without planning. Foster is right to point to the importance of Marxism for the environment. But Foster's faults include drowning concrete problems in philosophical generalities, prettifying state-capitalism, and evading the distinction between different class types of economic planning. "Monthly Review" is to Marxism what "green free-marketers" are to environmentalism. I wrote an article in 2007 which deals with Marx's standpoint, Foster's standpoint, and the needs of the present environmental struggle. "A review of John Bellamy Foster's 'Marx's Ecology': Marx and Engels on protecting the environment" (http://www.communistvoice.org/40cMarx.html) The table of contents is * The writings of Marx and Engels * Alongside and after Marx and Engels * Lenin and the early Soviet Union * Stalinist and state capitalist ecocide * Marxism and global warming * --Not market methods, but direct regulation of production * --Class basis of environmental destruction * --The nature of state regulation * --Bringing the masses into the environmental struggle * Foster's Marxism without teeth -- Joseph Green --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Marx was not a Greeny
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * These comments are amusing. Foster is a great scholar and compared to these carping comments here, his work speaks for itself. We have a new book coming out in August, by Kohei Saito, the leading expert on what Marx wrote, in his published works and in a few thousand pages of his notebooks (which these critics know nothing about). The book is titled Karl Marx's Ecosocialism. It will put the lie to those still claiming that Marx was a Promethean. Of course, nothing will satisfy the diehards. They stick to their beliefs, wearing their blinders. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Marx was not a Greeny
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 4/21/17 9:51 AM, DW via Marxism wrote: I doubt Marx would supported GMOs or, for that matter, "opposed" them either. I think he would of weighed the science as to their safety, efficacy (he was concerned with soil fertility!) and how they would of helped or hindered the expansion of the forces of production...which was, despite Foster's *denialism*, is at the heart of everything Marx stood for and runs counter to the "Green" narrative of "small is beautiful" and "we use too much". David, first of all, it is "would have", not "would of". You are a college-educated person and should be able to make such an elementary distinction. Second of all, the use of GMO's is directly related to industrialized agriculture. If there is anything clear about Marx's writings on agriculture, it is that he favored what is now called "organic" solutions. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Marx was not a Greeny
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * I very much appreciate David McMullen take down of John Bellamy Foster's *projection* of Foster's environmentalism onto Marx and Engels in his books on the subject. About time. I doubt Marx would supported GMOs or, for that matter, "opposed" them either. I think he would of weighed the science as to their safety, efficacy (he was concerned with soil fertility!) and how they would of helped or hindered the expansion of the forces of production...which was, despite Foster's *denialism*, is at the heart of everything Marx stood for and runs counter to the "Green" narrative of "small is beautiful" and "we use too much". But I wouldn't predict in any direction what Marx would of thought of any of this well over 100 years after his death. Largely because I do think the idea that capitalism would still exist would of come as a real shock after so many years. McMullen makes this clear in his use of quotes from Marx and Engels, bringing us back to the core belief of the contradictions, the main ones, of capitalism. Most 21st Century self-described Marxists are either ignorant of this or in denial. Oddly, and I'd like David's take on this, is that the *best* discussion of these issues doesn't come from Foster or...even here on this list where the only reply is the *immature* remark from our Moderator: "So what is your point? That Marx would have backed GMO?" ... from a minority by some of the "Eco-Socialist" blogs like climateandcapitalism.com where they really do take this seriously. The increasingly malevolent "de-development" crowd who try to tie Marx to their faux-ideology are only twisting Marx's views into a form indistinguishable from faith-based dogma. I have no doubt that (and here some credit most go to Foster on highlighting this) Marx and Engels were concerned about the effects of rapid industrialization on the health of our species and on the ecology itself. Clearly their view of a planned industrial society would be based on the very wise use of our resources and the use of science to mitigate the worst effects of developing the productive forces...but all...totally...inside the paradigm of *unleashing the development of those productive forces*. David Walters _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Marx was not a Greeny
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 4/20/17 10:53 PM, David McMullen via Marxism wrote: The greening of Marx of course requires Foster to explain away how Marx and Engels talked about communism unleashing the productive forces. So what is your point? That Marx would have backed GMO? _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
