>Just how does O'Connor think that the contradiction between capitalism and
the
>environment will lead to socialism of any kind?
He certainly doesn't think it will happen automatically. It will result from a unified political movement among those who are currently disenfranchised. This movement would involve "development of a common or public sphere, a political space, a kind of dual power, in which minority, labor, women, urban, and environmental organizations can work economically and politically. Here there could be developed not the temporary tactical alliances among movements and movement leaders that we have today, but strategic alliances, including electoral alliances. A strong civil society, defining itself in terms of its "commons," its solidarity, and its struggles with capital and the state, as well as of its democratic impulses and forms of organization within alliances and coalitions of movement organizations-- and within each organization itself-- is the first prerequisite of sustainable society and nature. The second is the self-conscious development of economic and ecological alternatives within this public sphere or "new commons"-- alternatives such as green cities, pollution-free production, biologically diversified forms of silviculture and agriculture, and so on, the technical aspects of which are increasingly well known today. The third is to organize struggles to democratize the workplace and the state administration so that substantive contents of an ecological, progressive type can be put into the shell of liberal democracy."
It looks to me like he's advocating the grass-roots creation of a public commons which would function economically as well as politically. It would pursue green economic activities within the commons, while agitating politically on the outside, for instance, in pre-existent workplaces and the state bureaucracy. Altogether this would transform the state into a vehicle for ecological socialism.
But this could easily be one of those situations where you see a pattern in a picture that's more in your own mind than the picture itself. I may have gotten it woefully wrong.
Perhaps O'Connor himself, if he's still following this list, could explain his position regarding the transition from capitalism to an ecological socialism.
> If biodiversity is so great why are many ecologists opposed to GM seeds
etc.
>Not only do these increase biodiversity they increase the range of crops
that
>can be grown in a given area through drought resistance, etc. and they
often
>decrease the use of pesticides rather than increasing their use.
The profit-motive has inspired premature marketing of GM seeds. The pollen of GM seeds can get absorbed by non-GM plants in fields adjacent to farmland. This can then harm other species that feed on those plants, most notably the monarch butterfly. If the monarch butterfly disappeared, this could then have other consequences, and so on. For another example, the incorporation of Bt into corn plants threatens integrated pest management, which depends on Bt but, unlike the GM plants, doesn't rely on the sort of overkill that produces mutant strains of pests. Once the GM plants trigger a mutant strain of pest, then Bt will no longer work for organic farmers.
There are
>problems with GM seeds but many of these problems have to do with the fact
that
>they being developed by capitalist corporations. In a socialist system,
plants
>would be developed that could compete effectively with weeds rather
developing
>plants that are resistant to herbicide so that one company can profit both
from
>a patented seed and a patented herbicide as with Roundup Ready
Canola--produced
>by Monsanto. So how many ecologists are calling for the nationalisation or
>taking into public ownership Monsanto etc.
>THe silence is deafening.
The least we could do is revoke their charter.
Ted Dace