Karl S North wrote: >>If it is in the nature of capitalism to end in an ecological crash, the following suggests that the inevitability of crash is not limited to capitalist forms of human economic behaviour, and that simply finding an alternative to capitalism, though necessary, is not sufficient to prevent a crash:<< North + Bowes argue the Crash is the result not of capitalism but of certain evolutionary characteristics of humans in combination with accidental circumstances such as the discovery of new territory or a new technology which facilitates a "colonising" phase of anthropocentric rather than biocentric behaviour. Since such discoveries were and are inevitable, it seems clear for Bowes that our anthropocentric opportunism foredooms our species to extinction. Given enough time, ecological Crash and extinction is inevitable, on this reasoning. This is so, Bowes says, despite the fact that human society may have been biocentric for long periods. This argument is flawed, for various reasons. First, there is a great deal of evidence that it is the specific features of the capitalist mode of production which produces the threat of ecological crash. Capitalism is governed by a Grow-or-Die dynamic, resulting in the outcome of Grow *and* Die, if the system continues its natural course unchecked. It is capitalism which is the problem, not "human nature". Both capitalism and the threat of ecocide and extinction are historically unprecedented events. This in itself should tell us there is a link between them. At the same time capitalism is not a historical aberration but the end-product of a protracted historical, and evolutionary, process. During it, finding new territory to colonise and discovering new technologies were not accidents, but things which drove forward this history and evolution. There is much evidence for this in the geological record. Even early homo sapiens did not live in static "biocentric" harmony with the environment. Humankind has always colonised, always innovated, and always had large-scale ecological impacts on biodiversity. Like all species, homo sapiens has sought to maximise its niche. This is not unnatural or unexpected, on the contrary. And it is not "wrong" either. Ethical judgments are simply inappropriate. If anthropocentric opportunism is part of human nature, does this mean that Crash and dieoff, even extinction, is inevitable? No, it does not. There is no scientific evidence for such a conclusion. Neither evolutionary biology nor evolutionary psychology has produced any convincing evidence that extinction is inevitable. Speculation is not evidence. Another thing. *All* distinctions between Society and Nature are arbitrary, that is, they are matters of convention. In other words, conceptions of society and nature are *always* social, cultural and historical constructs. There is no distinction whatever between homo sapiens *as a species* and the rest of the natural world. Homo sapiens is a part of nature. Our species-life, culture, artefacts, knowledges, even our rise and possible decline, are part of the wider evolutionary process. Science itself is only a form of self-knowledge of nature. The argument that science is wrong or intrinsically damaging to 'Nature' ignores the fact that the very idea of an external Nature (i.e., a realm outside human society) is simply a human artefact, and in fact an illusion, albeit a necessary one. It is impossible apriori to make ethical judgments about the worth or danger of science. Science is a collective social process. Since human society is simply the form taken by the species-life of homo sapiens it makes no sense to think of abandoning science in the illusory hope that this would bring us 'closer to nature'. It would not. In fact *only* science can bring us closer to nature, for only science has the demonstrable capacity to produce genuinely falsifiable (i.e., not superstitious or mystical) knowledges of nature. Mysticism may also be a valid form of knowledge, but it is not a collective knowledge whose results are testable in and through material social processes. When speak of the need to 'resacralise' nature we should be careful to define what we mean by sacred. Respect for the natural world is one thing; worshipping it is quite another. We are not in the business of God-building, we are not founding a new religion. We need more science, not less, and for this we need a more advanced, evolved, complex, differentiated and productive society. We should not indulge a return to nature, a Robinson Crusoe fantasy. We are already in nature, and more than that, our species is by any test the most evolved part OF nature. We have no right to reject the scientific method or its results since we have no other method which can produce definite knowledge as a guide to action. Faith, angst, or simple goodwill, are important motivations but they are not a basis for action. We do not even have the right to attempt the social control of science except on a *scientific* basis, for ethics is not enough. This is clear even for example in the case of genetic engineering where the modification of DNA always produces intense and inherently insoluble ethical dilemmas and contradictions. But this means we have to have *social* sciences as well as natural sciences. Marxist political economy is only one of a number of important social sciences. Like social science in general, it is controversial in its methods and results and there are many inconsistencies in its applications, conventions, concepts and procedures. It is proper to debate these defects, as it is proper to debate the methodologies, philosophy and metaphysics of all science. The existence of such debate does not invalidate any science, and nor does the fact that sciences always are endowed with an agenda and are always seen as a guide to action. This includes Marxism. The CrashList is not a Marxist list but a place for integrating analyses coming from many different endeavours and different sciences. We are trying to examine processes of non-linear change and their possible social consequences. The moderators of the List share a belief that there is enough evidence of a step-change in human history to make this effort worthwhile. But there is not much agreement on what form this stepchange or Crash will take, or even on what are the best ways to analyse it and work out policies and programmes for dealing with it. If society is a subset of Nature (any other argument is merely religion) and our sciences are also a resource, and an expanding one, then we have to acknowledge that it is not inevitable that, as Boyes states: "all anthropocentric societies will fail to make intelligent decisions to a sufficient degree to ensure their survival." It is not even a meaningful distinction to make in the first place, for no society is completely anthropocentric and no society is complete biocentric either. These, too, are arbitrary distinctions, they are elements of ideological baggage which collapse as soon as you subject them to serious scrutiny. If this is the debate we are having, then it is based on false premises. All individual members of a species look out for themselves, and all species try to maximise their own niche. But all individuals also behave altruistically and may even sacrifice their own lives. And the fact that all species tend to maximise their own niche does not mean that evolution *itself* does not evolve and cannot change. It is self-evidently the case that evolutionary *processes* also evolve, and the fact of the existence of human society is one evidence of this. There is no precedence for consciousness in evolution. There is no known conscious life-form which has developed the capability to redirect the evolutionary process of its own and other species through such methods as genetic engineering. That is entirely without precedent and it is an example of an inflection within the evolutionary process itself. Another evidence will be if human society learns to maximise its long term survival chances by consciously controlling is biospheric impacts. It is clear that we are capable of understanding the problem (we are talking about it now). Since people are capable of rational behaviour it is axiomatic that if we understand the problem we are also capable of solving it (the question becomes whether we will or not). Statements of the kind 'Ships have sunk before, therefore all ships sink', are logical fallacies. Cycles of population explosions and dieoffs are normal evolutionary rhythms and affect many different species at different times. But it is not universal for all species in all times to experience dieoff. It is not written down anywhere that the human population explosion of the past 250 years *must* result in a dieoff. It is not known for certain that homo sapiens will become extinct, either; this is speculation, not science. It is easy to conceive of a managed, peaceful and harmonious transition from a high-impact, high-population 'full world' of 8 billion or more people, to a genuinely sustainable, low-impact world with a human population of 2 billion or less. There is no reason to assume that the Crash can only take the form of an uncontrollable social meltdown, war, thermonuclear or biochemical catastrophe, or that the Crash will inevitably be followed by the complete collapse of knowledge-based, networked civilisation and the re-emergence of a stone-age society based on slavery and warlordism: or that the most likely outcome will be the extinction of homo sapiens and collapse of the ecosphere. It does not have to be like this. It depends on us. It *depends on us*. It is still possible to prevent any such abysmal outcome. It is still possible to create a world of repaired ecosystems, of conserved biodiversity and strengthen ecosystem links and nets. But it is obvious that we cannot create such a world by unlearning what has been learnt, on the contrary. The return to the stone-age which some speculate about does entail the loss of much of scientific knowledge. But a managed transition to a sustainable world cannot be like that. This, however, does depend on two things: firstly, we have to recognise that the problem is not "human nature" booth uncontrolled capitalist growth, which is a "Grow-and-Die" scenario. Uncontrolled growth is written into capitalism's DNA. A rational society would never have used up the boon of irreplaceable fossil fuels by creating an unsustainable, overpopulated world in which we do indeed "eat our own grandchildren". Secondly, we have to recognise that the only way the Crash can be prevented or mitigated is by an open and articulate anti-capitalist politics. Mark _______________________________________________ Crashlist resources: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/crashlist
