Patrick Bond wrote:
> recall David [Harvey]'s comments about the characteristics of
> ecological-modernisation argument (JNGD, p.381):
>
> "The severe recession of 1973-75, the
> subsequent slow-down in economic growth and rise of widespread
> structural unemployment, made an appeal to some notion of natural
> limits to growth more attractive. Scapegoating natural limits rather
> than the internal contradictions of capitalism is a well-tried
> tactic. When faced with a crisis, said Marx of Ricardo, he 'takes
> refuse in organic chemistry'... [section on 'population
> explosion']...
But what Harvey actually says is: 'This particular way of thinking puts
particular blame on population growth' (JNGD 318).
But Marx in these same pages of Grundrisse HIMSELF mentions population
growth as a cause of crisis; Harvey systematically twists
Marx's argument. Pointing to Ricardo or the Greens' collusiveness with capital
when they scapegoat 'natural limits' or working class fecklessness is
just a red herring. Both you and Harvey are evidently not prepared to address
what Marx HIMSELF says. Yes, sure, the Greens want to blame something else
and not the root cause of the problem, capitalism. But sadly, it
is absoluTEly clear that SO DO YOU AND HARVEY.
You/Harvey both put the issue in terms of the pursuit of justice.
This was not how Marx posed the problem.
Social justice under capitalism is a chimera. Advising people to pursue it is
simply a way of avoiding the truth, which is not just that the natural process of
capitalist development produces eco-crisis, including the crisis of
over-population. Most important, it is that the environmental and resource
attrition crises of capitalism are so severe that they necessitate the
revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, because any lesser program is
certain to be thwarted/co-opted. But this perspective, which was
clearly Marx's, is not yours or Harvey's.
There can be no social justice under capitalism, and a redistributional
politics, which is what yours seems to be, just lead people into
the wilderness. At least the Greens have a properly apocalytic view of
the scale of the crisis; what Harvey is doing is aneasthetising social
discontents and dumbing down debate.
> The rhetoric of 'sustainable development' could then
> be attached to the ideal of a growth economy that had to respect
> natural limits.
This is meaningless. Worse than meaningless, it is another red herring.
What kind of 'sustainable development' that is not oxymoronic can there
be? But it is the Greens who have subjected the pathetic delusions of
Brundtland to devastating criticism, whereas it is precisely Harvey who
wants to breathe more life into this political corpse. It is not
sustainable development we need to be talking about, but capitalism,
the state and forms of power, repression and exploitation which
are at the heart of the accumulation process.
> Demands for higher wages or more rapid economic
> growth in poorer parts of the world were countered by appeal to
> certain immutable laws of nature, thus diverting attention from the
> far more mutable laws of entrenched class and imperialist privilege..."
This is just as bad. Are you saying that the eco-problems which you
yourself so well defined in the townships, require strategies of
raising wages or, for God's sake, more 'rapid economic growth '? Don't
we have enough global GNP growth as it is? Do you seriously suppose that
continued world growth of 3-4% pa. is sustainable, given the colossal
pressure on ecosystems which the present attritive force of human activity
produces? More growth can ONLY result in WORSE living conditions, less
water, energy, more pollution, and raises the prospect of
calamitous collapses. None of this figures in your discourse or
Harvey's either. That is dreadful indictment of so-called 'brown-marxism'.
The best we can hope for is that Harvey's politics remain irrelevant
and marginal. Thw worst is that the kind of nexus of corrupted NGO's and
compromised social movements which forms the new elite in S Africa
will sideline and exhaust the real anger and energy of people, frustrate
the struggle to raise consciousness and generally be the most
baleful (and experienced on the poacher-gamekeeper model) enemy
of the only kind of revolutionary politics which might make a difference.
> The bourgeoisie is preoccupied with global warming in partial ways,
> consistent with the ecological modernisation (Bruntland Commission)
> discourse. David's approach is to critique the origins of this kind
> of thinking, and explore its implications, and as fast as possible
> help move us along to higher discursive ground.
On the contrary, Harvey's incredible dereliction of political responsibility
is simply to avoid the problem altogether. He simply does not understand it.
> Back to you Louis. Reading David's penultimate chapter, did you not
> concede the merit of transcending ecological modernisation think?
Of course. But that, unfortunately, is not what Harvey does: he simply
elides the problem ('solves it by ignoring it' as Marx said of Ricardo
in the passage you quoted.)
Mark
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