Okay, Tom.
I say we have to act globally. Support the wave of street democracy we saw
at Seattle. Suggest accessible and coherent critiques to it (which it seems
to lack), and publicise this in order to counter the ridiculing of the
econosuits. Demand the rights the system-legitimising notion of bourgeois
democracy must assure us we have (for there is enough content in 'em for our
betters to try doing away with 'em). Come up with, say, Polanyi's idea
that we must hold back the ascending notion of a market-embedded society by
stressing the democratic necessity of a socially embedded market. It
doesn't matter whether you think you can get the latter without overthrowing
capitalism or not (after all, Marx thought capitalism a market-embedded
society by important definition). It's what we need, whether we're
Marxists, thinking liberals, or Hallyx. And demand global institutional
frameworks (committed to labour and environment, amongst other things - not
as financial categories, but as the things in and for themselves) of a
status commensurate with the integrated finance system. Don't just oppose a
thing called globalism (which'll get us nowhere - because, in my view, it is
strategically wrong to be wrong) but demand our right in the shaping of the
thing.
To clarify the need for such an institutional demand,, the environmentalists
were initially successful in establishing an environmental working group
within the WTO, only to watch it slowly transform into a body whose focus
was the allocated cost of environmental protection rather than that of a
stuffed environment. As Lori Wallach of the American 'Citizens Watch' says,
it has been much like "putting the Endangered Species Act in the middle of
the bankruptcy code." As the *London Observer* noted, "The WTO does not
recognise the 'precautionary principle', and overrules all other
international agreements. This, together with the perceived agenda-setting
of the talks by big business, is what mostly concerned the environmentalists
and labour groups protesting at Seattle." If we're successful, well and
good. If we're not, well, a popular movement will have learned of a system
which cannot proffer the very rights upon which it legitimises itself ...
I say all this within the context of the mtaeconomic stuff I keep saying
about directionless and ecologically unresponsive accumulation - the stuff
Tom is pleased to call 'background noise' and 'carping', but stuff some of
his listmates happen to believe is essential to a conversation that must
integrate the categories we classify as human and natural.
I wonder, indeed, whether Tom'd mightn't have a little more respect for the
notion, indeed might not choose to look for its significance, if only a
Malthus had said it instead of that unspeakable idealogue Karl Marx. Or an
Einstein, for that matter ...
You must excuse me for taking the bandwidth to express my indignation, but
to have contributions to the discussion ridiculed just because they're
associated with a particular thinker absolutely burns my buns. I don't
defend everything self-identified Marxists have contributed to this forum
(neither should I), but to have a whole tradition ridiculed ('typical
Marxist' and 'those Marxies') by people who show no sign of having had the
slightest peek at even the surfaces of the very promising holistic theory on
offer, well, I'd rather front a red card than have to put up with it -
whether it be out of spite or a paucity of self-reflection.
Cheers,
Rob.
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