Jim heartfield wrote:
>
> In message <3661E582.4F6AF6FD at netcomuk.co.uk>, Mark Jones
> <Jones_M at netcomuk.co.uk> writes
> >
> >I have to say and declare that attempts to forge a red/green synthesis
> >have everywhere failed: from CNS to the new German government, to Earth
> >First! to Louis Proyect and my own humble efforts. I am curious why,
> >since I still see no alternative to effect the salvation of humankind
> >and life on earth generally.
>
> No mystery about that. Environmentalism is not interested in an
> alliance. It does not need or want the left.
"Environmentalism" is not a thing. Roughly 80% of the American public has repeatedly identified itself as "environmentalist", so it's obvious a very elastic, highly contestable label.
> The hostility to 'productivism' (which the greens rightly see in Marxism
> and social democracy alike), is a coded hostility to the productive, ie
> the working classes.
Marx was hostile to productivism, too, you know. All that production just to produce the means for further exploitation really rankled. "Let's put the CRITICAL back into critical thought."
The point is not what people stand for in a general way, but the specifics of what they stand for and why. Here there is clearly a left green position that's completely obscured by your broad-brush rhetoric.
> The concerns of the environmentalists are anti-humanist.
There are some misanthropes, to be sure. But the bulk of environmentalists might better be accused of being too humanist. All that commodity fetishism is severely dehumanizing, while environmental concerns break that spell and speak to our full humanity.
> They deplore population growth (nasty oiks moving into the
> neighbourhood),
All Hail The Catholic Church, the Revolutionary Vanguard! Is that what you're saying here?
How's come working class women just can't wait to stop being baby factories, especially once the underlying economic logic disappears, as it has worldwide over the past 200 years?
There's no doubt at all that population control is a highly contestible issue, especially open to rightwing, racist exploitation. All the more reason to think about it with the utmost care, in contrast to this thoughtless broadside.
> working class mobility (too many cars!),
Surely you jest! Here in LA, the red-green leading edge is the Busriders Union. The buses are far more eco-friendly AND worker-friendly than cars OR rail, the bourgoise environmental option.
> working class consumption (fast food is cutting down the rain forest),
Fast food is cutting down the working class. See the McLibel information on McDonald's nutritional house of horrors. Next you'll be telling us that I.F. Stone was a reactionary, because his pathbreaking work on the deadly nature of tobacco was intended to overburden the working class with tobacco taxes.
> foreigners (too many Chinese - with fridges!),
I've never heard any environmentalist complain about the Chinese getting fridges. The worry is that the Chinese government committed to a real dinosaur technology that will hurt the Chinese people as well as the environment by needlessly gobbling up resources.
> unless they are in a state of degradation
> that is called 'authentic culture';
God forbid that there should be any progress beyond the old genocidal values of our past! God forbid that folks in America should learn about and respect the Ogoni people, or any of the other scorse of tribal people around the world locked in life-and-death struggles with oil companies and their ilk.
> they embrace the kind of organic social order that
> could only mean death for the left;
Birth control & the empowering of women it necessaarily entails is DEATH to every actually existing organic social order I've ever heard of. So which one of your wholesale attacks on environmentalism are you going to give up?
> their theories of equilibrium between man and nature are
> only a reworking of equilibrium theories in economics,
The meaning of all these terms are highly contestable, except, of course, that "man and nature" bit. Where HAVE you been these past 30 years?
> with a wholly apologetic intent - 'sustainable
> development' instead of real development for the third world.
'Sustainable development' is the mother of all contested terms in environmental circles. But the red greens have a real advantage here, since the more you try to turn it into nuts-and-bolts, the more it skews red green. If you allow it to remain on the level of mere slogan, heck, EVERYTHING is 'sustainable development'.
> Like the
> bourgeois apologists of old, they seek to justify the limits that are
> artificially imposed upon working class consumption by capitalism, as if
> it were a natural limitation, that will necessarily lead to disaster.
This is certainly what much of bourgoise environmentalism is about. There's also this thing called anti-Communist unionism. I guess that puts the kibosh on the working class so far as pure Marxists like you are concerned.
And, of course, the existence of the pornography industry means you've sworn off sex as well.
-- Paul Rosenberg Reason and Democracy rad at gte.net
"Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"