'Population' or the Working Class? (was There Are Greens, and There Are Greens)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Mark Jones replies to Patrick Bond:
>Patrick Bond wrote:
>> 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.
>
>I don't think Louis has got the wrong target but I agree 100% with
>Patrick; the
>crisis is ongoing and HAPPENING. What we have to do is to show the connections
>betweem eco-crisis and capitalist crisis at the level of the
>accumulation-regime,
>and to do that we have to address Marx's OWN concerns about population,
>ie, the
>'production of relative surplus population'. This isn't mad Malthusianism,
>it's a key
>to not allowing huge immiserated masses in the south be mere hostages to
>capital's
>fate in the next century. That's one thing; and the other thing is to
>show, as I
>tried to do debating Heartfield now, that the Greens' appeals to reason
>are based on
>the completely illusory hope that capitalism can green itself; it cannot.
>Marxism is
>indeed a 'Grow or Die' theory and all the benefits of dematerialisation
>etc will only
>be used in further aggressive expansion, resulting in deeper biocrisis,
>further
>pressure of population on resources.
>
>Lester Brown is right about one thing: the US Census Bureau predicts a
>possible US
>population of 500m by 2050. Work that into your thoughts about Sierra Club
>'racism'
>and see how it feels. The answer is to educate Greens, Lester Brown, and brown
>marxists too, that we do live in one world, ready or not, and we have to
>destroy
>capitalism to survive.

First of all, any rhetoric that reinforces racism can only hinder a
political project of marxism to supersede capitalism. Racism divides the
working class, and the divided working class with anti-immigrant (and hence
anti-internationalist) sentiments are _not_ up to the task of getting rid
of capitalism. Whether you like it or not, thinking in terms of
'population,' instead of _the working class_ versus capital, tends to make
folks unclear about _where the fundamental contradiction lies_.

Secondly, marxists' primary tasks do _not_ include educating all Greens,
especially _not_ the likes of Lester Brown. 'Education' of whatever kind
would _never_ turn rich anti-immigrant Greens into friends of the working
class. Waste of time, I say. There are lots of working-class people who are
environmentally conscious, and to speak to _them_ on the questions of
environment and to discuss a _marxist_ understanding of and solution for
the environmental issues, in the context of _practical struggles_ for
concrete reforms, I believe, would be the best way to go.

Last but not the least, a fear of an 'imminent environmental catastrophe'
is not likely to turn the working class toward marxism. More likely than
not, such fear makes them look to RELIGION, since it only aggravates the
sense of helplessness and the prospect for a bleak future that beset many
working-class people today even without the help of such rhetoric. Good
marxist propaganda work should strive to make workers _fearless and
fierce_, not fearful and doomed.

Yoshie