Although recycling is an important activity that we all should participate in as much as possible, the most crucial problem is the cycle itself, both production and ecological. Analogously, if the core of the problem relates to the use of an internal combustion engine (here a metaphor for capitalism), getting better gas mileage or adding a catalytic converter (choose your application of this metaphor), while very useful, divert attention from the most important area of concern. Thus, while making sure our exhaust is okay, we cannot forget that we may be speeding toward a bridge that has been destroyed. In terms of the forest products industry, ad hoc addenda to post-production and post-market activities not only keep the citizenry from looking closely at the production process and rate of resource extraction, by allowing us to feel we are thinking "globally and acting locally," corporations can dress-up their image while obtaining access to publicly-financed oversupplies inputs that can be used to develop new markets. Of course, bags may have 20 percent or more "post-production" content, usually from the pulverized bark dust (unless you live in the Northwest where we spread the stuff on our flower beds). Although it must be profitable! I guess we can always maximize our economic benefit to profiteers by selling our raw logs overseas, and mix our recycled paper with glue to make siding for houses. Please excuse my drift into polemics. The point I wanted to make is that recycling, although economically and morally valuable, does not have anything to do with the production processes and market activities that initially created the "waste." In this way, genuine social concerns over resource over-utilization are recast as individual market responses. What we need to do, as part of a broad-based progressive movement, is establish some form of active (and local) social choice over production processes and goals. This is far and above current forms of external control. Giving members of society real voices in the design and periodic administration of production processes and workplace relations seems to me to be an essential part of controlling the cycle itself. It also expands a progressive community of interest beyond labor groups, and can include environmental groups, farmers, religious activists, gender groups, and etc. As long as production relations remain a series of black boxes to the members of society, creating a long-lasting and broad-based progressive movement is unlikely to occur. At the first sign of economic trouble, groups with otherwise competing interests are likely to turn on one another. Regards to all. Jeffrey L. Fellows [EMAIL PROTECTED]
