Dear Nestor, It is because I knew that you act in both areas, the pursuit of social and ecological justice, that I picked on your statements for examples. All those �you� words I used in my post were directed at the Royal You�s or the editorial you�s of �crashlist�, please do not take them personally. My caveat to all is: �If the shoe fits �� Nestor: I feel I have been too cryptic, in the end. That "the PHYSICAL is trumping and rendering moot all the cards the SOCIAL thinks it can play" is exactly the kind of argument I intended to avoid. What I mean is that if this is so (and I admit that this may most probably be so, though I will never be as apocalyptic as Mark and you), it is because the _social_ organization of production has made it possible, nay (as you would retort), unescapable. Tom: We agree in part. The problems with �production� have other components than the social organization of it. The other components are what I am attempting to bring into focus in our microscope. Social organization and economists don�t recognize them very often, if at all. Nestor: Look, Tom, when you are saying that the manifold manifestations of ecological disaster aren't any longer influenced by "social" workings of nature and you immediately add that Certainly not any longer by manipulation of economic systems, _except in negative ways_ [my emphasis, not Tom's] you are contradicting yourself. It is _precisely because the economic systems influence in what you call "negative" ways_ (BTW, against which possible "positive" way?) that I stress the SOCIAL and not the PHYSICAL. Tom: Yes. In this instance, Mark framed the discussion so that ecological justice was juxtaposed against other forms, and I responded by taking the issue to a polarity we do not find in reality. This medium is hard on communication and I find that qualifiers are read as hedges, and that anything less than polarity is read as waffling. I stretched things for illustration. Mea Culpa. In reality, �social� still has positive and negative influences upon the environment. My ratio at the moment would be positive influences 1% and declining, negative influences 99% and increasing. YMMV (Someone somewhere is bound to latch on to my allowance of that 1% and say �Tom thinks the social activity around economic myopia is good.�) [sigh] Nestor: Resource depletion, species annihilation, atmospheric disruption, are all PHYSICAL consequences of a SOCIAL order. Tom: Yes. (well, 99% �.) The conclusion that SOCIAL order economics can now back us out of the cul de sac is questionable, however. Nestor: Maybe it is too late to change our fate. Perhaps this is what you are trying to hammer through my stony skull (a Basque friend of mine has told me that I am the only case of a Jewish Basque he ever met, so stubborn I can be -- and Basque are known for their obstination all over the Iberian world). Tom: No, I still hold out a slim margin of hope (maybe because my grandma was Jewish?). 1% margin? What I hope to hammer though the skull of all crashlist denizens is that changing our fate involves more attention to ecologic justice immediately, and less focus on the glass bead game of economic quibbling. The solutions to changing our fate do not have much to do with theories of value (well � maybe 1%)they have to do with looking outside economics at consequences no longer influenced by "value". Nestor: OK, and so what? Shall I stop struggling against the ONLY side of the equation I can influence? One does not need to resort to Marxism to find the answer. Mine, at least, is "No, I shall not stop". Tom: Good for you! Have I ever asked you to stop? Will I? No, and No. I am asking you to rethink your position that you can only influence one side of the equation (the smaller side, at that.) In fact we are aware that you have on occasion influenced � er � the ecological �side� of the equation as well. Nestor: Perhaps you have understood me, however, because you immediately say: >> Indeed, there is as yet no discussion of the iceberg, or of lifeboats. �.. << I'll try to put it in simpler words. If it is too late already to stop the engine, at least we can make the results of its action less damaging. �. I simply take them for granted. But I concentrate myself in getting to a position where I can stop the machine or, at least, mitigate the results of its functioning until we call it to complete stop. Concrete action to be taken does not belong to my everyday realm of activity, which does not mean I do not care about it. Tom: Of course. I hope I have understood you. We agree that we should attempt to make the results less damaging. Nestor: Of course, there have been ecologic disasters in the past (the Maya, for instance) and nothing is telling us that we are not ALREADY into the worst of all them, a disaster encompassing the whole of our species. But, again, me stubborn "doer", what can I do in this respect, but to recognize that behind every ecological disaster in the past there was a society which did not know how to manage the resources at its disposal, and that the same is happening now? So that, prescription: struggle to change society, even though it may be too late. Tom: To what end? Imagine a society perfectly changed to suit you. Now imagine that society looking in all directions and saying: �where is the oil?�; �Where are the amphibians?�; �what are we going to eat?� and �how come we�re all freezing to death, thirsty, in the dark?� Nestor: Ah, but I have a very simple answer to this: because the aggregate power of humankind to intervene the environment has grown far ahead of its ability to manage it. This is a metaphor, of course. But capitalism has become much like a system where a greedy madman with a machete in the hand treads on the planet for a slice of profit. The problem with all this is that the machete, which was microscopic only a couple of centuries ago, has grown to the size of the Moon. � You see, Tom, I am absolutely convinced that "value" is simply a very particular form of "energy", that the labor theory of value is in fact the link between the social sciences and the natural sciences. Tom: The heart of our diverging paths, my friend. I seek to absolutely convince you otherwise. Humankind has never had the ability to manage the environment. It has only the illusion that it possesses such ability. For the first time in humankind�s history the consequences of that folly are intervening in our affairs in ways we can�t camouflage. Economic theory has been a chief camouflage paint, and has sold us the bill of goods that theories of value without immediate recognition of the biosphere will somehow assist us in killing the machete-wielding madman and that only then can we get on to the business of �ecological justice�. At best: Perhaps economics will kill the madman. And at best, absent parallel and immediate attention to the biosphere AS we are killing him, a state of social justice only will preside over a territory inhabited solely by Mark�s rats and roaches. Nestor: From my own point of view (and there is a ream of quotations of Marx and Engels, particularly of Engels, where "value" and "human energy" are used as synonims), there is no "energy addition". Value _is_ energy. If you don't grasp this, then you have not grasped the material basis of Marxism. Tom: Apparently I have not. As I alluded, I am still having difficulty reconciling this position with my own, since the energy we speak of was indeed an �energy addition�, not deposited into the account by human labor. (very soon to be subtracted, as Youngquist reminds us.). In a fantasy, imagine we were having this conversation with a very educated whale. Would he find a place in economic theory for his values? or for class justice? Would he be concerned with your changed society if it excluded and exploited him? Would it be okay with him if we heated up the seas a bit more in a quest *only* for �social justice�? If this question seems laughable or unimportant to the members of crashlist, it is only because their focus is on economics at the expense of �ecologics�. In this case what we don�t know about green issues will kill us � (and the capitalist madman, and his big brother who is the chief culprit) The whale has �natural� friends who are seeking justice for him without regard to economic consequences. You respond to my statement > You are witnessing the "physical" trumping a perceived social "law" which was mistakenly supposed to be inviolate by economics, by ANYbody's "theory of value." ... Deal with it.<< with the response: � Does not apply to humbly yours. And I honestly do not need.� Perhaps. Nestor: But keep in mind that the kind of "economics" I accept (in fact I accept no one's economics at all, I believe in the unity of all knowledge, but this is an entirely different story) has a strong natural kernel, is the attempt to understand that which is natural in society. So that my glasses may resultless tinted than you imagine, Tom. Tom: I know that of you Nestor, which is why I felt I could select your posts rather than, say, Julien�s this time. However, many who also accept that kind of economics have rarely on crashlist bothered about the unity. My argument with the �social� path that Mark invited comment upon is that indeed it avoids comprehension of that unity of all knowledge. I sought to expand crashlist�s knowledge so that the unity is more apparent and so that there is some recognition that as the iceberg slams into the Titanic, we require integrating more than economic behaviors and theories of value if we are to successfully launch the lifeboats. If we agree on unity, we are triumphant. Nestor: > Then go read Garett Hardin, E.O �.<< Sorry, will just go back to Lenin once again. Don't think I can find books by the authors you quote, or most probably I would not be able to afford to pay for them. I live in Buenos Aires, and I am not precisely well-to-do. Even these conversations are some kind of a luxury and a duty. Tom: Ah, well, this is something we can correct. I will speak to you offlist. Perhaps a trade � Tragedy of the Commons for a spare volume of WITBD? We would both have to promise to read them, of course. ;-) Those who do have access to the books must read them. Nestor: A good one. But there is a better one, A theologician and an economist debate over the profession of God �.. someone made Chaos. And who if not an economist?" do YOU begin to see? Tom: I have it on good authority that the Goddess birthed Chaos. Perhaps some prayer to her will assist us in avoiding the apocalypse? Thank you very much, Nestor, for your patience with me. Tom Warren _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com _______________________________________________ Crashlist website: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base
