Thanks to Terry: Terrence Mc Donough wrote: > > Short response to Ken H. 's post: much omittede: > Of course, I wouldn't expect anyone who was starving to refrain from digging > up and eating burrowing owls. It is just incumbent on the rest of us > to provide alternative food sources. Perhaps we can revive the old > anarchist slogan: Eat the Rich. > I had been mulling over how to respond to Ken's message. Terry did it for me. One of the pernicious impacts of capitalism was that the rapacious "consumption" of the natural environment has made it appear possible to increase the rate of exploitation of labor AND increase the standard of living of labor for a significant enough percentage of the population to creat a politically powerful coalition in favor of capitalism --- even decidedly unequal capitalism without a human face! (such as in the US for the past 25 years!). I can't remember the passages in Vol I. of Capital but I _do_ remember clearly that Marx distinguished between exploitation that USED living human labor but granted it subsistence so it could be USED AGAIN (through the generations, let's remember) and exploitation that USED UP living human labor -- this was the basis of him arguing that limiting the working hours of labor was actually protecting the long term viability of capitalism (despite the fact that the capitalists themselves didn't realize it). In a sense, from the point of view of the capitalist class the "labor power" of the working class over a lifetime and into the generations had a sort of "infinite value" for the sustainability of capitalism. Capitalism in the 20th century has figured out how to avoid "using up" the working class by "using up" the natural environment. The latter, too, is a dead end. With less and less environment left to "use up" perhaps we can look forward (not too soon as some of us are getting pretty old!) to the day when the workers will decide that the only source of a rising standard of living is to take back from capitalists what they've stolen from us --- instead of trying to steal a bit more from mother nature. The solution for starving folks mentioned by Ken is more in the hoarded granaries of the local merchants than in the tiny bit of natural environment so far untouched. As Amartra Sen has shown, most famines have coexisted with sufficient food stocks to feed the starving --- it's almost always been a distributional issue. I think it's time to foment a little class warfare --- environmental constraints may actually force that to the top of the agenda. Here's hoping, Mike -- Mike Meeropol Economics Department Cultures Past and Present Program Western New England College Springfield, Massachusetts "Don't blame us, we voted for George McGovern!" Unrepentent Leftist!! [EMAIL PROTECTED] [if at bitnet node: in%"[EMAIL PROTECTED]" but that's fading fast!]
