> In message <3662E055.7BF3 at gte.net>, Paul Henry Rosenberg <rad at gte.net>
> writes
> >So many canards, so little time!
>
> Indeed
>
> >"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.
>
> As someone once said, the dominant ideas of the age are those of the
> dominant class.
Well, Duh!
But, then, why single out "environmentalism"?
This is a bad faith argument.
Jim absolutely MUST avoid a serious response here, since all his subsequent rantings depend on this false construction of "environmentalism" as a unified thing.
> But I took cheer from this Christmas tale: Saturday was international
> no-shopping day, according to the 'Friends of the Earth'. They launched
> a campaign against Toys, deciding that those happy smiling faces were
> the real danger to the environment. 'Christmas? Humbug!' Cried FoE and
> urged parents to refuse to buy christmas presents for their little
> charges. Thankfully, everybody ignored uncle Scrooge, and went out
> shopping instead.
Covered by Doug.
> >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."
>
> I know what Marx said. He identified the progressive tendency of
> capitalism that it developed the forces of production, and further that
> it generated new, social needs amongst the population (see the
> Grundrisse).
Marx accepted the bad with the good as a matter of fact, not a moral judgement. As much as any environmentalist, he believed that production should be for certain purposes, and not others.
> >There are some misanthropes, to be sure. But the bulk of
> >environmentalists might better be accused of being too humanist.
>
> It might seem too humanistic to you to want to subordinate mankind to a
> fetishised concept of Gaia, natural balance or somesuch. But I prefer my
> humanism anthropocentric.
I think it enormously degrading of humanity to be alienated from nature, devoid of feelings for the real world, as well as a sense of moral belonging in the universe.
Once again, by falsely construing "environmentalism" as one unitary thing, Jim can choose whatever aspect of SOME environmental thought (real or imagined) and use it to tar me or anyone else who dares oppose him.
> > All
> >that commodity fetishism is severely dehumanizing, while environmental
> >concerns break that spell and speak to our full humanity.
>
> On the contrary, environmentalism is the acme of commodity fetishism, as
> it tends toward the naturalisation of human relations,
What "it" tends towards depends on who's doing the pushing.
But, since "it" is not an "it", but a vast array of ideas, impulses, values, projects, intuitions, longings, etc., "it" also does a lot of resisting where it's being pushed.
> rendering the
> contingent limits of capitalist society as absolute, natural limits.
So you claim. Plenty of environmental writers and activists disagree. But then, dismissing them apriori is your whole point, so why should we listen to them?
> >All Hail The Catholic Church, the Revolutionary Vanguard! Is that what
> >you're saying here?
>
> No, that's what you're saying. If I'd said it you could quote me
> directly.
You are the one who's invoking the black & white method of political analysis. Clearly, by such standards, if population control is inherently evil, the Catholic Church is inherently good.
This is called "reductio ad absurdum" where I come from.
> >
> >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?
>
> You choose to misconstrue me. I'm entirely in favour of abortion and
> reproduction rights. What I resist is the promotion of population
> control as public policy.
But its the very people you claim to speak for (or, maybe more accurately their womenfolk?) who WANT a population control policy -- one that's in THEIR control.
Oh, I forgot! Democracy & self-determination are also reactionary tendencies.
> This has been a key component of America's
> writ in the third world since National State Security Memo 200.
>
> >> 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.
>
> In Britain the bourgeois option was to welcome green demands for a
> moratorium on road-building, a budget saving of several billion pounds a
> year. Needless to say, the subsequent congestion is a spectacular waste
> of their lives for most working people.
Don't blame me if California is more advanced than Britain for once in a blue moon.
> >> 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.
>
> You miss the point.
Not at all. My point is that these matters have some complexity to them. Your point was to deny that complexity apriori. Your point is lost.
> If the working masses rose up as one to demand
> health food, the green snobs would quickly find a reason to denounce
> that, too. It's not the burger they hate, its the burger eater.
True of some, no doubt. But this is just a transparent example of the fallacy of composition. You'd fail elementary logic with arguments like this.
> >I've never heard any environmentalist complain about the Chinese getting
> >fridges.
>
> I'm surprised. The hysteria about how much freon gas it would take to
> fill the potential fridges of China was a standard routine in FoE talks
> here. See Lester Young Who Will Feed China? Earthscan, for a more
> general, environmentally inspired Sinophobia.
Freon is part of the dinosaur technology I mention below. The motors were highly inefficient, too.
> > 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.
>
> Dionsaur technology is what they have now, but are getting rid of. Too
> slowly.
So, nothing to say to my argument as a whole, I see.
> >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 .
>
> You make a virtue out of the very conditions that most people are trying
> to get away from.
Making a virtue of necessity is often key to gathering the strength to overthrow necessity. I say let the Ogoni decide. You say Shell Oil, it would seem. Or are you the only one who's allowed to impute the bad side of either/or choices to those you argue with?
> But all you are really doing is ogling pictures in
> National Geographic, or day-dreaming about how great it would be to shed
> the cares of the workaday world for some Gauginesque paradise.
In tru PoMo fashion, you are daydreaming at one remove. Daydreaming about my daydreaming. Well, you've got to appropriate something, I guess.
> Romanticism is a luxury of industrial societies,
Luxury, isn't that what you say environmentalists are opposed to? So why are *YOU* opposed to luxury, then? Or is it only CERTAIN luxuries? Or certain PEOPLE's luxuries? Take your luxuries in for a 1-hour problematizing, shall we?
> as is 'learning about other peoples'.
Just killing them is so much better!
> Tradition isn't "authentic" when you are a part of it -
> just oppressive.
Gad! Who's got the most truly degrading, patronizing view of los people here? No traditions of resistence for you!
> If you meant it, there is no barrier holding you back
> from shedding the burdens of civilisation. Don't tell me about it. Do
> it.
Pure projection on your part, old chap. You'd LOVE me to be taking that line, and you're just so po'd that I don't. Maybe a walk in the woods would do you some good.
-- Paul Rosenberg Reason and Democracy rad at gte.net
"Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"