At 07:52 AM 12/18/00, you wrote:
>
>
>
>>Of course, I am going to say the root problem is a mentality of controlling
>>other people, and you will say that the controlling of nature came first.
>>But some control of a small part of nature, that part on which people
>>depended, is hard to criticize.
>
>We're very close. I don't have to insist on which came first nor which is
>the more salient form of "control". As long as we recognize the root problem
>is some kind of controlling mentality, we're together. I insist only that we
>be cognizant of the damage that continues to be done by the mentality, and
>recognize the danger both to nature and to people.
Historical materialists are not being dismissive of ecological concerns
when we point out--at this juncture--that being cognizant of the damage is
not enough. A doctor that identifies the symptoms has taken an important
step, but the treatment can not be effectively assessed wihtout
understanding the etiology of the disease. If human activity is
responsible for the problem, and if human activity is socially and
historically conditioned, then we need to understand how to intervene in
that social and historical conditioning to "treat."
>>CB: There is a lot of objective evidence to base it on in archaeology. The
>>state and private property probably start 6-7,000 years ago in Mesopotamia
>>and Egypt.
>
>Yes, Quinn is not specific alot but usually is alluding to the fertile
>crescent. The DE guys usually vote for that too.
>
>>CB: We go : agriculture and domesticated animals �----> surpluses are
>>produced �-----------> predominantly mental laborers live off of the
>>surplus and become a division of labor , specialized class �---------> some
>>pred. mental laborers start to take advantage of that and form an
>>exploiting ruling class.
>
>Yes, I see no reason to argue against that, as far as it goes. In fact the
>idea of surpluses is critical to both scenarios.
>
>What disturbs me is that this seems to be the usual point in the discussion
>where the exclusion of the ecosphere takes place. Environmental concerns
>seem to disappear from the table. It's as if the exploiting ruling class
>were busy exploiting people only and not the environment as well. Avoiding
>the larger perception that BOTH people and nature were exploited seems to me
>to eventually lead to being blindsided to the consequences of the ... uh ...
>"natural" exploitation, while we are all pretty aware of the consequences of
>the exploitation of people. (Yeah, I realize that a lot of the time I fail
>to include "people" in MY statements, and should be more universal in my
>comments.)
AGAIN... Marxists have been guilty of dismissing in the past. Some
so-called marxists still are. But the philosophical foundations of marxism
are anti-dogmatic. It is not meant to be a formula, but a historiographic
methodology--an analytical tool for both criticism and action (praxis is
critical... intervention...). We are acknowledging that environmental
concerns are not only important, but that environmental realities will
probably constitute the next and most severe crisis of the system--which we
rightly identify as capitalism. We want to address those concerns, but we
can't get away from the necessity of gaining power before we have the
capacity to intervene. The power can only be gained through mass
movements, and the impetus for those mass movements will grow out of
existing perceptions of conflict and need among the masses. The reason we
continue to stress class struggle here is that our natural allies, and in
fact the only mass great enough and potentially powerful enough to "turn
the system off," are the classes that exist in an irreconcilably
antagonistic relationship to the ruling class. In the so-called 2nd and
3rd worlds, those are peasants and laborers, and in the "developed world",
they are laborers.
>
>Thanks,
>Tom
>
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"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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