>>> "Mark Jones" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 08/11/00 07:50AM >>>
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If the Ecological Imperative applied (no growth, and no unsustainable human
activities) then capitalism could not continue, it would cease to exist.
Capitalism entails and depends upon, growth, including above all growth in
the consumption of material resources and growth of relative surplus
population. This was what Marx called the general law of population:
creation of a 'reserve army' is an aspect of accumulation, and not a simply
by-product of capitalism, but something essential and intrinsic to it. Those
who argue that capitalism is not after predicated upon a Grow or Die
dilemma, are wrong. True sustainability is impossible under capitalism,
whose whole history has been evidence of two contradictory but interrelated
and interdependent processes: population growth on the one hand, and
genocides, famines, dieoffs and demographic catastrophes on the other.
Marx's critique of Malthus is one of the least satisfactory of his great
critiques of the philosophical thinkers, economists and socialists of the
Enlightenment (the period 1750-1830). This is not because Malthus was a
greater thinker than Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Ricardo, Smith etc, he was not;
on the contrary, Malthus was a trivialising, pedantic country parson whose
social theory is merely a thin veil over undisguised misanthropy. But
Malthus hit upon a problem which actually has never gone away, and which
strikes to the heart of the unsustainability of capitalism. For this is the
first mode of production which both depends upon and makes possible,
exponential growth rates in production, energy and raw material consumption,
and population. But the planet is not growing.
))))))))))
CB: Mark, I agree with you. It may be that what you are saying is not exactly
Malthusian, but , as I said to you elsewhere that technical difference is not what you
are concerned about. You are concerned that people are not profoundly disturbed enough
to do something about the catastrophe acoming. You are saying we need to stop worrying
about whether we are being Malthusian, and look at the new configuration of vital
facts after 150 years of capitalism since Marx.
It is not that the population is growing exponentially and the food supply is growing
arithmetically. As you say, in some sense "food" , i.e. production for physical needs
, is growing exponentially. But you put quite well, the non-Malthusian, yet
population/consumption and catastrophic exhaustion of resources problem of a
different type.
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