There Are Greens, and There Are Greens (was Were the Nazis

[Patrick Bond]

Invoking the "just social order" Yoshie talks about below -- even if it 
means, sadly, revisiting obscure epistemological problems, engaging 
post-modern fads, and splitting hairs with other Marxist ecologists 
-- is what I understand as David's primary project. It's here that 
"brown" means environmental rights of the world's impoverished and 
working-class urban dwellers:  for water, sanitation, clean energy, 
decent housing, rubbish removal, a good transport system, 
recreational facilities and the like. The lack of green advocacy on 
these profoundly ecological issues -- save in the global environmental 
justice movement (of which we have a particularly excellent branch in 
South Africa) -- is reflected by their not having come up in the 
discussion thus far.

How can we let this kind of sentiment get lampooned into a kind of alien 
"productivist Marxism" (collective grimace)? Why do we search for a 
future ecological "crisis" associated with capitalist destruction of Mother 
Earth to justify our green tendencies, when it's happening in 
literally billions of households, all around us, TODAY? Louis, your 
writing is stimulating and elegant, as ever, but you've got the wrong 
target, man.


>> LOUIS PROYECT:
> >Harvey's attempt to drive a wedge between the greens and Marxism is tied to
> >a workerish impulse that has marked the extreme left over the past 25
> >years.
>
> YOSHIE FURUHASHI:
> Is David Harvey a "brown Marxist"? I understand that he has been involved
> in and thinks highly of environmental justice movements. What Harvey is
> trying to do, I think, is first of all to point out the fact that there are
> Greens and there are Greens, and secondly to remind us that some--but not
> all--environmentalist rhetoric derives from and reinforces reactionary
> ideologies, which can lead some--but not all--Greens to embrace reactionary
> political positions. I think that the sort of ideological critique that
> Harvey brings to environmentalism is highly necessary.
> 
> Nathan Newman replies to Louis:
> >>Is Earth First anti-industrial? Their real politics, as
> >>opposed to the smears against them, are much more subtle. They are not
> >>opposed to logging, just logging of old-growth in federal lands, which they
> >>argue is a waste of precious resources.
> >
> >The "smears" against Earth First are based on some of its founders early "Deep
> >Ecology" pronouncements, such as praising AIDS and famine in Africa as ways to
> >balance out the carrying capacity of the Earth.  Now, a number of those
> >founders
> >lost out within the organization to leaders like Judi Bari who have a
> >progressive pro-labor, pro-humanist version of radical environmentalism, but
> >there was a real misanthropic strain within Earth First that (rightfully)
> >gained
> >it notoriety in its early years.
> >
> >>Lester Brown's Worldwatch Institute
> >>is concerned with how to recycle agricultural byproducts, most especially
> >>organic fertilizer.
> >
> >Lester Brown also recently endorsed the anti-immigrant resolution within the
> >Sierra Club - endorsing the "carrying capacity" rhetoric of the immigrant
> >bashers. I was saddened to see him line up with the racist right on this
> >initiative, but his actions actually reinforce the argument that, despite good
> >intentions by many Greens, they can find affinity with the racist right at
> >critical junctures.
> 
> Nathan Newman's post highlights the concerns that I have always had about
> many strains of environmentalism. Marxism without environmentalism is a
> problem, but for now, it seems to me that environmentalism without
> marxism--that is, without a political project to replace capitalism with a
> just social order--is a bigger problem.
> 
> Yoshie