Karl said:
Stan et all,
Generally I find your scenario persuasive, and maybe partly because it
reflects a third world perspective (Haiti, Cuba...). I do find two
statements off the mark, and out of character with the rest of your piece,
which seems well-informed and thought out.
Stan: We have overshot our energy base with our aggregate population.
Karl: It was not the teeming hordes of Asia that used up all the planetary
oil within a century, it was your average Euro-American, with an ecological
footprint said to be some 30 times bigger than that of the average
individual on the Indian subcontinent. So far, then it is less aggregate
population than the accelerating consumption of the planet's more affluent
classes that has overshot the energy base and propelled us toward the crash.
Population is of course eventually a factor; even the average West African
subsistence farming community, with a per capita income of $100 to spend on
non-renewables, has, thanks in part to Western medicine and imperial
agricultural extraction, a population that is now beyond the capacity of
its resource base. But if we all had lived like West African farmers, the
crash would be much farther away.
Was the necessity for accelerating consumption that is inherent in
capitalism entirely responsible, or would the present state of the planet
have happened anyway, only slower? All I can say is that in rural West
Africa I experienced a rich culture that did not require constant material
gratification, so at least another ethos for the human species seems
possible.
Stan: Mechanized agriculture, without which there would now be mass
starvation,
Karl: Think of what Cuba has done in only a decade to build a de-mechanized
agriculture that avoids starvation. Here in the Northeast low input organic
farm families have grown enough food on 2 acres to feed 100 people.
Merchanization only seems necessary because of the way the capitalist food
economy has structured access to food and land, and structured food
production on land. For example, 70% of grain production in this country
usurps (and gradually destroys) the nation's best soils to feed animals,
but we could produce all the meat and milk we need from permanent pasture
on relatively poor upland soilswith virtually no machines at a fraction of
the energy cost. Modern low input agroecosystems not only work, they are
sustainable. And they can feed the world, at least at present population
levels. And if a solution to the first and most fundamental failure of
capitalism that Marx pointed out, the alienation of urban from rural
society, could be found, then feeding the world with a de-mechanized
agriculture would be a lot easier.
Karl North
Response:
The level of consumption in the metropoles was made possible at current
levels through exploitation of the periphery. Development, albeit
deliberate under-development, was part and parcel of that process. I agree
that Cuba is pioneering some of the solutions, and that profligacy in the
metropoles contributes to the problem overall. Separating the
macro-analysis from the details is important, partly to understand HOW the
macro-reality is functioning and partly to examine options for action. But
there remains no doubt that as an aggregate, the population base depends on
the levels of currently mechanized food production, for which there seems
to be no immediate social-political will to transform. And the abrupt
reduction of petroleum inputs into mechanized agriculture will be a horror
of war and famine. I guess I'm saying that I don't disagree with what
you're saying. It is definitely important to emphasize that the rich are
far harder on the bioshpere than the poor, but we can't escape from the
fact that desperation of the poor drives them to destructive practices as
well. Rightist ideologies in the mainstream environmental movmement have
often called for reduction of birthrates, by any means necessary, among all
those "dark" people, and ignored that a rich baby will consume vastly more
resources than a poor one. And we should challenge that. But this still
does not go to the inherent driving force of the system itself, and what
are the measures that must be taken to STOP THAT SYSTEM. Alternative
practices are essential, but simply imagining them and being "right" about
them doesn't put them into practice. It is NECESSARY to have political
power--legal monopolies on force to make coercive inroads against these
structures--to transform these alternatives into realities. If we accept
that, then the question becomes WHO can bring that struggle to fruition,
and that means a mass movement composed of a combination of sectors who
perceive they have more to gain by confronting the system, usually because
they have already lost everything under the current regime. So we're back
to class struggle, like it or not. Rather than couterposing class struggle
and the fight to save humanity (anthropocentric as that is) from
environmental disaster, then, it seems to make sense to integrate ourselves
with existing struggles that have real revolutionary potential, and to
bring our insights about biospheric destruction and alternative practices
INTO those movements with us.
Thanks for the post.
Take care.
"I am not a Marxist."
-Karl Marx
"Mask no difficulties."
-Amilcar Cabral
"Am I to be cursed forever with becoming
somebody else on the way to myself?
-Audre Lorde
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