"NCFS (Yves Bajard)" wrote:
>
> By the way, Marxism is as irrelevant to rep-sent circumstances than any
> form of liberalism or conservatist capitalism. Both are at the extremes of
> the same approach to the issue of human behaviour: they differ in the
> manner in which the spoils of the ecosystem and society's exploitation
> should be shared among participants in the economy. This is absolutely not
> the problem now. It is not just an issue of sharing: it is an issue of
> bringing the use of the system to a level that remains within what does not
> collapse the whole thing. Some difference indeed....
"Bringing the use of the system . . . [that] does not collapse the whole
thing." Exactly. And that is why the *immediate* issue is the achievement of
the social relations within which it will be possible for humanity to debate
and decide this issue. And there is no issue of how the products of human
activity should be shared. The issue is the social relations within which that
human activity shall take place. As long as non-marxists insist on seeing
marxism as a theory of distribution, there can be no fruitful discussion
between marxists and non-marxists.
I agree then that it is pointless for marxists on this list to argue the
relevance or truth of marxism. No one on the list wants even to allow us the
vocabulary in which our views can be expressed. The role of marxists on this
list, then, is strictly negative: we need to demonstrate over and over again
that this or the other proposal for action on environmental issues will not
achieve its purpose or will not in fact within present social relations be
implemented, whether or not it is a good proposal in the abstract.
Population growth can cease only on one of two conditions: (a) human life
becomes more or less impossible and we kill each other off or (b) the direct
producers seize control of the means of production and production is grounded
in human need rather than profit. As long as production is based on profit, the
forces of competition will preclude any rational handling of resources and the
environment.
What Yves is arguing is that marxists have no right to exist. That is, he
argues that all decisions re resources and environment be made under the
auspices of capitalism. I.E. he argues either for human extinction or for a
world-nazism which would make extinction a pleasant alternative.
Yves and others like need to decide whether they wish to enter into dialogue
with anyone who doesn't accept their word as an expression of divinity.
Marxists on this list have tried their best to discover a framework of
discussion. Non-Marxists have refused to participate in any shared discussion
with marxists.
When non-marxists can make a reasonable proposal for discussion between
marxists and non-marxists, that will be worth considering. Until such a
proposal is made and discussed and mutually accepted, all my posts henceforth
will assume a marxist reader. That shared basis for discussion cannot include
the principle that by definition any statement by a marxist is irrelevant to
human survival.
Carrol
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