>
>This is wrong. Marx and Engels wrote about scientific and ecological
>problems their entire lives.
Marx and Engels, last I heard, are both dead. I like their stuff, but we
need lots and lots of real, living people to even hope for a change.
The question of soil fertility preoccupied
>them in particular. That was the central ecological crisis of the 19th
>century.
How many people outside of a very narrow academic circle even know this?
Nobody expected the socialist movement to agitate around the
>question of restoring soil fertility. Instead, the notion of integrating
>town and countryside became a central component of the long-range communist
>program. The same exact thing is true today with respect to matters like
>global warming, etc.
I want to see someone go into a meeting of Local 204, United Food and
Commercial Workers Union, in Raleigh, North Carolina, and explain to them
how the notion of integrating town and countryside became a central
component of the communist program.
I agree that things are very bad. In many ways we have passed points of no
return. But no one has shown me, even with erudition that puts my pitiful
self-education firmly in its place, how we skip the steps required for
building militant mass movmements to challenge the existing power
structure, and eventually TAKE political power. If there's a magic button,
show me where it is, and I'll mash it (as we say down here). And in every
conversation I now have with my comrades on the left, I beat this drum
ceaselessly. But if the implication of all this is that it's too late, so
we should just... what? Rant?... I don't get it.
If we want some kind of cosmic justice, we can watch Star Wars reruns.
Meanwhile, there are no guarantees. It's the human condition. Get over it.
Or are we saying abandon the left? For what? The armed legions of the
Sierra Club? I'd rather engage and educate the left than bash them. And
just because some of you understand these often very technical issues does
not imply that others do as well. This is an outrageous assumption, deeply
arrogant, a reification of "the left" that ignores the fact that it is
composed of real, often hard-working, beleagured folks who may not have had
time to study, research, read, what all of you have. I repeat, I was a
very active, very committed person on "the left," and until I made contact
with this list, I never factored niche construction, et al, into my
thinking. Now I have, and I'm still "left," still committed,
re-prioritized, and I wonder why it's so difficult to believe that others
won't reach the same conclusions, unless we believe that we on this list
have superior intellects to which those "others" can not aspire.
Amazed and confused,
Stan
The reason Carroll rails on these questions has to do
>with his ambivalence toward the green movement. He has demonstrated a
>certain affinity with anti-ecological moods on various email lists, most
>recently expressed in a rather dotty salute of McDonalds fast food on
>Henwood's list where genuflection to capitalist modernization is
>practically a sine qua non for subscription.
>
>Louis Proyect
>Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>CrashList website: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base
>
"...all truly great scientific abstractions are both universal and simple.
They are simple not because they explain so little but because they explain
so much. Generality does not arise because an abstraction represents
everything that could possible happen, but because it remains valid no
matter what happens."
Alan Freeman
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