Hans Ehrbar wrote: > >> Well, that class struggle -- the one waged by >> establishment environmentalism -- didn't last long, did >> it? > > Quite the contrary. The environmental struggles will last > *very* long, because the habitability of the planet for > humans will continue to be at risk. I think over time the > movement will also become more aware that it is a class > struggle. I.e., the socialist dimension will come to the > surface as the movement matures. Do not write off this > movement because it does not start with the condemnation of > capitalist exploitation.
I don't write off the environmental movement. Quite contrary. I take vigorous part in it. I and those who think like me take part in it and urge it on. What I do write off is redefining the establishment environmentalist groups as waging a class struggle, and redefining international agremeents as inherently anti-neo-liberal simply by virtue of being international agreements. By that way of reasoning, even the IMF, World Bank, and WTO wouldn't be neo-liberal. The point is that you re identifying the environmental struggle with the establishment environmentalists. You are prettifying the establishment environmentalists who are holding it back by claiming that the environmental movement itself is automatically a movement of class struggle. And you are calling on socialists, not to help create a working class trend within the environmental struggle, but to back this or that neo-liberal project of the establishment environmentalists. > If you define class struggle as struggle for control of > means of production, the environmental movement is a kind of > class struggle. Really? Is Al Gore engaging in a class struggle against the bourgeoisie? Al Gore is right in warning about the danger of global warming, but he advocates market measures for dealing with it, measures that will lead to disaster. Was the leadership of the Nature Conservancy engaged in a class struggle against the bourgeoisie when it made deals with BP and then, after the oil spill, sought to tamp down the mass outrage at BP? As the deals became known, the membership of the Nature Conservancy was upset at the deals of the leadership, but the neo-liberal nature of the leadership of the Nature Conservancy and the general trend of establishment environmentalism remains. Several years back the Corporate Responsibility Project made a chart of the reliance of variouis wings of the environmental movement on corporate and foundation funding. Is the bourgeoisie funding a class struggle against itself? The environmental crisis is going to continually deepen. But only if a working class wing of the environmental movement develops, will it be possible for the environmental struggle to be waged as part of the class struggle. In order to encourage this, I and others of like mind have written a series of articles over the years criticizing market measures and establishment environmentalism, and we have carried this criticism into the environmental movement which we have taken enthusiastic part in. You instead have issued a call for socialists to back one of the projects of the establishment environmentalists, a project that prettifies the failure of market measures by saying nothing about the current crisis of these measures, and you have described various market measures as not really market measures. -- Joseph Green _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
