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From: Asit asitreds <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 3:52 PM
Subject: [IHRO] FEMINISM, ECOLOGY AND SOCIALISM – NEED FOR CONVERGENCE
To: ihro <[email protected]>
*FEMINISM, ECOLOGY AND SOCIALISM –*
*NEED FOR CONVERGENCE*
*
**Asit*
( A brief Note for discussion, Please send your comments)
Feminism, which is known as gender studies in academia, is a very large area
of study. What I refer to feminism here, is women’s struggle against male
domination. There are various types of feminism - liberal, radical,
socialist, etc. The basic difference between radical feminism and socialist
feminism is that radical feminism says the fight is basically between woman
versus man, while socialist feminism says capitalism is the common enemy and
women’s liberation is intertwined with the struggles of working class
against capitalists. Likewise, socialism is a loaded term and it indicates
various streams. The concept of socialism predates Marx, people like
Fourier, Saint-Simon, etc., propagated socialism, which meant to provide a
humane social order. Engels rejected it as utopian and advocated scientific
socialism. Today we have numerous strands of socialists and communists.
With the whole discourse on ‘climate change’, ‘peak oil’, ‘food crisis’
etc., ecology has become the core issue facing mankind. The seriousness of
the matter can be seen in John Bellamy Foster’s “Ecology, Moment of Truth”
where he says – it is impossible to exaggerate the environmental problem
facing humanity. Nearly fifteen years ago one observed (John Bellamy
Foster’s “The Vulnerable Planet” in 1994) that we have only four decades
left in which to gain control over our major environmental problems if we
are to avoid irreversible ecological decline. Today, with a quarter century
still remaining in this projected timeline, it appears to have been too
optimistic. Available evidence now strongly suggests that under a regime of
business as usual we could be facing an irrevocable tipping point with
respect to climate change within a mere decade. Other crises such as
species extinction (percentage of bird, mammal, and fish species vulnerable
or in immediate danger of extinction), air pollution, water pollution and
shortages, rapid depletion of oceans’ bounties, desertification, soil
degradation, the imminent peaking of world oil production, creation of new
ecological and geopolitical tensions, and chronic world food crisis, all
point to the fact that the planet, as we know it, and its ecosystems are
stretched to the “breaking point”. The “moment of truth” for the earth and
civilization has arrived.
Rulers across the world have responded to this crisis by seeking mere
administrative and technological measures to the ecological crisis.
Mainstream environmentalists seek to solve the ecological problems almost
exclusively through three mechanical strategies: (1) technological
solutions, (2) extending the market to all aspects of nature, and (3)
creating what are intended as mere islands of preservation in a world of
almost universal exploitation and destruction of natural habitats.
The ecological crisis is a complex mix of dangerous trends. Capitalist
ideology characteristically views the components of the crisis piecemeal
thereby obscuring its systemic nature. In contrast to the official thinking
on ecology, a minority of critical human ecologists have come to understand
the need to change our fundamental social relations. Human beings depend on
functioning ecosystems to sustain themselves, and their actions affect those
same ecosystems. As a result, there is a necessary “metabolic” interaction
between humans and earth which influences both natural and social history.
Increasingly, the state of nature is being defined by the operations of the
capitalist system, as anthropogenic forces are altering the global
environment on a scale that is unprecedented. The global climate is rapidly
changing due to burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. None of the areas
of the world’s oceans are unaffected by human influence, as the accumulation
of carbon, fertilizer runoff and over-fishing undermine biodiversity and the
natural services it provides.
The dominant economic forces are attempting to seize the moment by assuring
us that capital, technology and the market can be employed so as to ward off
any threats without a major transformation of society. For example, numerous
technological solutions are proposed to remedy global climate crisis. The
market will ensure that new avenues of capital accumulation are created in
the very process of dealing with environmental challenges. Yet this line of
thought ignores the root causes of the ecological crisis. The social
metabolic order of capitalism is inherently antiecological, since it
systematically subordinates nature in its pursuit of endless accumulation
and production on an even larger scale.
It is here that a socialist response to global ecological crisis assumes
importance. A socialist social order, that is a society of associated
producers, can serve as a basis for potentially bringing social metabolism
in line with the natural metabolism, in order to sustain the inalienable
conditions for the existence and reproduction of the chain of human
generation. Given that human society must always interact with nature,
concerns regarding social metabolism are constant, regardless of the
society. But a mode of production in which associated producers can regulate
their exchange with nature in accordance with natural limits and know, while
retaining the regenerative properties of natural processes and cycles, is
fundamental to an environmentally sustainable social order.
The above clearly shows that to solve the world ecological crisis we should
struggle for the creation of a socialist social order. This line of thought
is known as ecosocialism.
Authors like Vandana Shiva and Maria Mies have come out with a powerful
concept called ecofeminism, which entails that the forces who oppress women
and degrade nature are the same; therefore there is a commonality in the
struggle against patriarchy and ecological degradation.
After sixty years of independence, our society has reached a crisis stage
where the entire country is sold to the corporate interests by our rulers;
therefore it is imperative that feminists, socialists, communists and
ecologists should unite together resisting the corporate interests and to
struggle for an egalitarian, sustainable and democratic India.
For other related write ups by the author see his blog :
www.revolutionarynucleus.blogspot.com
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You cannot build anything on the foundations of caste. You cannot build up a
nation, you cannot build up a morality. Anything that you will build on the
foundations of caste will crack and will never be a whole.
-AMBEDKAR
http://venukm.blogspot.com
http://www.shelfari.com/kmvenuannur
http://kmvenuannur.livejournal.com
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