(I just found a copy of Paul Mattick's Critique of
>Marcuse, which is a real pleasure. Anticipates all of the Marxist
>arguments against environmentalism.)
Please Jim (H), let's not distort the contents of this most important critique.
Mattick critiques Marcuse for attempting to rehabiliate Hilferding's stabilization thesis on on the grounds that technological developments and Keynesian techniques open up new possibilities for capital: capital saving innovation, countercyclical political tools, new outlets for investment provided by commodity innovation and govt projects. This is not in any way a pamphlet about environmentalism but about the centrality of labor time relations-- as fetishistically expressed in the categories of wages, profits and rent-in the theorisation of the developmental tendencies of the capitalist system
I take it that you read environmentalism as an apology for capital's own fettering of the forces of production. But it would be a mistake to read Mattick simply as an enthusiast for the development of the productive forces--in the style of the 1990s Living Marxism--regardless of whether this is accomplished under capitalism or socialism:
"For Marx, too , science and technology are specific to capitalism, but only in the sense that their direction and development find their determination and limitations in capitalist relations of production. Should thee relations be abolished, science and technology could take on an unhampered and different course, in accordance with the conscious and rational decisions of fully socialized man. For Marx, it is neither science nor technology which constitutes a system of domination, but it is the domination of labour by capital which--with everything else--turns science and technology into instrumentalities of exploitation and class rule." p. 26
This should provide a pointer or two for you to rethink your one sided case for biotech as presently developed--which is not to deny the great human uses to which it could be put under different relations of production.
Yours, Rakesh