Jim heartfield:
> Marx also said that the romantic reaction against progress was generally
> born of a hostility to the growth of the working class that came with
> it. Perhaps this explains why your traditionalists and conservatives
> were so supportive.
But we're not talking about a romantic reaction against progress in general, but specific acts which had bad practical consequences for the people in question, including working-class people (the overwhelming majority, in the case I mention). The fact that things progress from one state to another, and do so rapidly under capitalism, does not mean that the direction in which they progress is necessarily a good thing. If it were, we should all be Whigs. I think that acts of progress should be evaluated on evidence, not faith.
> > Science, we know, marches on
> >its sanctified and inexorable way, but even so it is not
> >necessary to heedlessly shower every corner of the world with
> >novel genetic material, or scheme to use the genes of plants
> >to kill them or subject them to patent and copyright so as to
> >own the works of every farmer from Sasketchewan to Sri Lanka.
> No, but you are naive if you think that nature itself does not
> constantly shower the world with novel genetic material, or that all
> agriculture does not imply artificial breeding.
I believe that certain contemporary methods offer to speed up the showering of novelty by many orders of magnitude. If the showering is impelled by capitalist needs for profit, power, and aggrandizement, it will tend to be carried out in an ever-accelerating, reckless manner until some disaster occurs, because that is the logic of capitalism. Also, it will be carried out in such a way as to cause the continued concentration of power in the hands of a corporate elite. Neither of these tendencies are something which "nature" compels; they're artifices of our political system, and we have a right, nay, a duty, to question them and oppose them if they are evil -- which they are, given most people's professed values, including those of the Left.
> >It is somewhat short of opposing miscenegation (whatever
> >that is -- don't most people mate with someone other than
> >themselves?) to wonder about whether it is a good thing to
> >insert pig genes in tomatoes and tomato genes in insects,
> >and set them all at large to wander upon the face of the
> >earth.
> But wondering whether it is or is not a good thing is precisely what
> science is doing. Only the critics seek to have that question closed
> before it is asked. As far as I know only scientists are involved in the
> process of examining the effect of cross species gene transfer, whilst,
> in Britain I can report, the organisation Greenpeace has dedicated
> itself to disrupting such studies, tearing plants from the ground.
We're not talking about science. We're talking about commerce. 50% of all soy products are now from genetically modified plants. We're also talking about politics, such as the attempt by chemical companies through their kept legislators to _forbid_ milk producers and sellers from even saying that growth hormones were not used in the production of their milk.
> >There are forms of pollution, dynamic and progressive as
> >pollution is, which are actually bad for you! One may
> >deride "_Blut_und_Boden_" to one's heart's content, and yet
> >one actually has to live somewhere!
> Well, yes, but does one have to dress up chauvinistic campaigns against
> foreign imports in the 'high ideals' of saving the environment?
Or dress up Whiggish campaigns for "free" trade in the high ideals of liberty and progress to a better world?
Gordon