1) I don't get a clear picture of the "commons". I can imagine some alternative types of production such as organic farming that are environmentally friendly but even organic farming is subject to market forces. In some areas it may be able to compete effectively with conventional capitalist forms. Are organic farms to be individually or collectively owned? Do they hire labor? How exactly does the public commons function economically?
2) I am very old fashioned. Talk of green cities, pollution free production, etc. is all very fine but who owns and controls the productive facilities?I really want to know who owns and controls the means of production. Are the productive facilities operating within a capitalist market system? Or is the dualism you speak of parallell economic system to the mainstream capitalist market system?
3)Is this alliance between diverse groups women, minorities, labor, etc understood to somehow jointly own and control in some democratic fashion productive units? Does O'Connor imagine there being some propaganda of the deed that attracts people to adopt the new forms of production and living? What are they?
4) Different environmental groups have different agendas. How can one expect Solidarity between a group that things that market solutions such as trading in pollution rights are a good solution to pollution with others who think that this just turns pollution into a commodity and that everything is a commodity is part of the problem? The same is true of women's groups. Bell Hooks is not too likely to make common cause with feminists who have a white female upper class agenda.
5) Some of the descendants of the counter-cultural movement of the sixties have created small experiments in various types of environmentally friendly technology, organic farms etc. but these seem a minor current that does not really challenge the capitalist system as a whole. Even now corporations are beginning to look at organic farming.
6) Certainly democratising the workplace is a good idea whether the workplace is private or public but if the workplace is a private corporation still functioning in a capitalist market system doesn't that put definite structural limitations upon what any democracy however advanced could achieve? How is private ownership overcome or is it? Is this a market-oriented commons?
CHeers, Ken Hanly Dace wrote:
> Ken Hanley wrote:
>
> >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