Doug Henwood asked me to comment on Harvey's extract:
> As Grundmann complains, Marx, at times, seems to assume that growth of
> productive forces implies an increasing power to dominate nature, when
> "there may be productive forces which do not lead" in that direction "but,
> rather, to an increasing uncertainty, risk, and uncontrollability as well
> as to unnecessary oppression in the production process."
In the piece of mine that Harvey is critiquing, I argued that Marx began with a Promethian view of controlling nature, but when he saw the results of the Cotton famine he reconsidered and immersed himself with rent theory.
> It is in this context that some Marxists have returned to the ecoscarcity
> and natural limits argument as being in some sense far more fundamental
> than Marx (or more importantly Marxists) have been prepared to concede.
> Unfortunately, the manner of that return by Benton (1989, 1992), Perelman
> (1993), and O'Connor (1988) often appears as a sad capitulation to
> capitalistic arguments.
I was not aware that I was either sad or capitulating. Instead, I read Marx himself as saying that he was accepting a quasi-Malthusian reading of the world, but that he despaired of the political conclusions that others would draw from a Malthusian analysis. As a result, I took it that he deliberately garbled his Malthusianism.
> Consider, to begin with, a key term like "natural resources."
> In what sense can we talk about them as being "limited"
Marx argued that natural resources are limited in a multilayered sense. First there are physical limits. Then much scarcity merely reflects capitalism's limited ability to deal with something as complex as nature. Harvey seems to be pushing this point. In addition, capitalism creates scarcity be destroying the natural environment. Marx himself called this a "hidden socialist tendency." Finally, Marx saw that socialism has a shot at solving environmental problems.
> reasonably say they are "scarce?" The definition of these key terms is
> evidently crucial, if only for the whole science of economics which usually
> defines itself as "the science of the allocation of scarce resources."
We cannot really measure scarcity. The Pacific Yew was considered to be a weed until it was discovered as taxol. Then suddenly people discussed its scarcity until people learnt to synthesize it.
I have a great respect for David Harvey. Still, I feel that he misread my work in this case. He took one part of what I said that Marx wrote, took it for the whole and left it out of context, then labelled it a sad capitulation. I do not think that it was a wilfull misreading. I suspect that he was looking for something and satisfied himself that he found it.
Then again, remember what they say about bad publicity. --
Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901