I'm glad Mark returned to this discussion. I find it endlessly fascinating.
Generally I don't agree with Mark's solutions to the problem of overproduction/commodity production, etc...mostly because he doesn't offer an alternatives. I agree with a lot of the facts around pollution and climate change he raises, not just in this recent post, but in past ones as well. I find it strange to use the analogy of building highways to exemplify the problem of the expansion of the suburbs into "farmland". Suburbs expand into ALL land, mot may of been farmland at one time other another but isn't today, not east of the Mississippi River, anyway. So why strange? Because the state (there are almost no private highways built in the U.S. Some, by probably <1%. Someone else can look that up) doesn't really build that many highways. At least not in terms of what a "highway" is which is usually a 4 lane (2 lanes in each direction) not simply some gravel covered country road. I suspect what he means are those roads that allow for the commuting of workers from suburbs (he sort of impies 'rural' areas but I don't think that is what he is aiming at here). Highways are usually added with the population of a more remote location starts to approach 50,000 people. More or less. This is brought about "naturally" as smaller towns expand, regardless of the transportation available. But the biggest reason for such expansion (beyond the booming the commodification of land/real-estate market and so on) is when transportation becomes quicker, freer (as in no stop lights) and most importantly, mass transit. Regional rail transit is what really created the boom in "bedroom communities". Expand mass rail transit, such as the Bay Area Rapid Transit (an unusual - but increasingly common - combined urban intra-metropolitian mass transit (like subways/buses) and a regional rail transit infrastructure)and the 'burbs boom. This is exactly how the San Francisco/Bay Area suburbs have boomed outside of the Big 3 cities: San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose. Build a transit hub in the 'burbs and housing will take off via the capitalist housing market. So, as socialists do we oppose more rapid rail transit knowing it will lead to the kind of situation Mark describes? The fact that people drive "dozens of miles" is, to me, not quite that relevant. The highways do get more crowded and they become less crowded if we build mass transit (or at least traffic doesn't get as bad). I prefer the latter rather than the former. Mass transit is less polluting. Mass transit allows for people not to purchase and drive automobiles. Already, the most rapidly growing metro transit system is in LA (the biggest world wide is in Paris). Their growing transit system has taken 10s of thousands of polluting cars off the congested highways and the demand for more and more stations expanding outward from downtown LA into the 'burbs is growing louder and louder. So, Mark, what is to be done? What politically do you think is needed to stem the kind development you point out is so detrimental to our species? I will address Mark's point about developing/poor countries a bit more in detail than his one liner. Lastly, no, the expansion/freeing of the productive forces and the explanation for this is detailed on Engels 1880 Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. Almost all of Chapter 3 deals with this question. It is not relegate to one line in Marx's 1859 Preface to a Critique of Political Economy. David -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#40360): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/40360 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/117439078/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
