Are there any ecologists that posters to this list like?
Why is it so hard to imagine that a lot of people might enjoy making a living by growing food? Doesn't food first have an economic vision dealing with family farming ( www.foodfirst.org ). Searching the net for informations on Permaculture will lead you to a lot of information on planned communities that try to be self-sufficient, They give up some yard space to get a commons going, grow a lot of their own food there. WOuldn't more self-sufficiency to on the local level (windmills and solar panels to ward of the nuclear mafia..) help yank a lot of power out from under the evil capitalists? There are a lot of visions of more sustainable agriculture and living. I'd be interested to hear what all the Marxists think of them.
Chomsky talks about the domino theory and the threat of a good example. What do you all think of the prospects of Gaviotas and all the natural agriculture people (Permaculture people, Masanobu Fukuoka aficionados) if they ever start cutting into labor supplies and agri-business markets? One theory about Monsanto's corn with the BT bacteria gene is that it will probably take away the BT option from organic growers as insects develop resistance. One of the Rachel's Weeklys delved into that. I imagine all the military aid to Columbia has great potential to deforest the resurging Gaviotas eco-system.
Carl wrote that GMO might be ok after the revolution. GMO seems to be about putting the control of plants and food into the hands of one small group of a-holes. If people see the "left" working towards a "revolution" that will just replace the pack of assholes we got screwing things up now for another pack, no wonder working class people aren't flocking to it.
Don't a lot of anthropologists talk about people's resistence to being industrialized? Doesn't it usually require a lot of violence to get people off land where they can grow their own food, and forced into some kind of labor army. How can growing food be all that more miserable thant he jobs we're all avoiding so we can lurk and write on LBO? (Anybody out there seen the 2-guy play A Peasant of El Salvador?) Sounds like all the "stoop labor" horror might be looking at agriculture from the "ethnographic present" James Loewen talks about in "Lies My Teacher Told Me." THere's a lot more information out there about companion plantinc and beneficial bugs that should go a long way to save topsoil and get away from a reliance on fossil fuels. Don't you kinda think all the machinery was just a way to de-skill and marginalize small-scale farmers. That's another thing Chomsky mentiones somewhere, all the investment into methods of production that deskill and marginalize labor. It seems! ! !
more productive now but it took Take it Easy,
Brian
P.S. I noticed some people tearing into CPUSA, Does anyone know much about the Commie party in Japan? Sometimes I hear representatives saying some bright things during the Diet meetings over here. I hear a guy talking about the United States invading Grenada, Panama... and how it's breaking international law, another guy criticising the Prime Minister for going into Employment Program Planning with 17 representatives from big companies. These companies ended up laying off 60,000 people, why didn't he have any labor representatives? I wonder, who is this guy with the finger on the pulse of reality, they always end up being from the Communist Party. I'm getting they're Sunday newspaper now, Japan's suicide rate rises and falls right there with the unemployment rate, 4.2% is a big deal here, highest it's been in ages.
Anyway the Red Flag Newspaper put out by the Communist party
isn't quite the revolutionary rag I was expecting. They do interviews
with famous sports people and actors. I guess I had too many expectations
>from people who would join a party I had always heard referred to as
"Rather be dead than red" (a red-headed joke at the time) and "Kill a
Commie for Mommie" type T-shirts. People that would take that kind of
risk might be more Ivan Illych or John Holt, more into participatory
athletic and theatre activities instead of performer and spectator
classes. I haven't gotten around to going and chatting with any members
yet but I was hoping some peopel could point me towards some background.
I can't remember where I saw a Noam Chomsky mention a "native Commmunist"
element or strain in Japan....
I'd appreciate any suggestions