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Louis Proyect wrote: > It has been well over 15 years since I paid much attention to John Bellamy > FosterTMs writings on Marx and the metabolic rift or his 1999 quarrel > with James OTMConnor, .... ..... > > Once again I plunge into controversies that will have very little impact > outside of the world of journals and academic conferences. Indeed, but the basic framework put forth by Foster and others does have its effect, so it's worth dealing with. I reviewed one of Foster's earlier books, "Marxism and Ecology: Materialism and Nature" (2000) in 2007: see /www.communistvoice.org/40cMarx.html Naturally I agree with Foster that Marxism is of importance to ecology, but I dealt with some of the flaws in Foster's approach. (Not that Jason Moore is any better.) Foster coined the fancy philosophical phrase "metabolic rift", but his book obscured crucial issues brought to the fore by the environmental crisis . It's not an accident that, as mentioned by others on the "Marxism" list in December last year, Foster prettified the sordid record of the present Chinese government. And similtarly, in June of last year, in an article "Late Soviet Ecology and the Planetary Crisis", he prettified the role that the Soviet Union played in the development of ecological thinking "from the late 1950s on". The subheads in the review: * The writings of Marx and Engels * Alongside and after Marx and Engels * Lenin and the early Soviet Union * Stalinist and state capitalist ecocide * Marxism and global warming * --Not market methods, but direct regulation of production * --Class basis of environmental destruction * --The nature of state regulation * --Bringing the masses into the environmental struggle * Foster's Marxism without teeth >From the last paragraph of the review: "...Foster's book is harmed by the lack of the very materialism he preaches about: it is an idealist, and even elitist, history of materialism, a doctrine which can only really thrive when it becomes a force among the masses. Nevertheless, his book does show that Marx and Engels were concerned with environmental issues. ... [and] he does end up giving a certain panorama of the views and polemics of a number of people of historical interest. ... But what he doesn't do, despite the title of his book, is give a picture of what Marxism really means for ecology. Foster would drown Marxism, a revolutionary doctrine with many sharp edges, in a sea of bland, philosophical generalities. So to actually see what Marxism says to do about the environment today, one has to go elsewhere." -- Joseph Green _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
