>Jeezus Peezus, talk about a hangman's choice !!! Patrick Ellis argues on
>behalf
>of eco-rational freight rail transport in order to _reduce_ the turnover
>time of
>capital, thus ensuring (other things being equal) capital's expanded
>reproduction (and hence another round of resource exhaustion and pollution,
>not to mention another round of exploiting wage-laborers). From my POV,
>once you
>tread the path of defending green policies in terms of "efficiency," the
>game's
>up. Capital wins. Basically Ellis' proposition is a proposition straight out
>of turn-of-the-century progressive managerialism -- to save the anarchy of
>the capitalist market from itself.
First, apologies for reviving a dead thread just to defend myself from John Gulick's understandable misinterpretation of my posts, but I've been off-line for the last few days (and will soon be again for the rest of today) and yet I don't wish to let myself be so easily & incorrectly pigeon-holed on a list where I don't have enough history for there to be any perspective. I will acknowledge that by weighing in against a yahoo like Heartfield and being willing to debate an issue on his terms that I set myself up, nonetheless...
Simply put, I don't advocate saving capitalism from itself, but I also don't believe in burning down the house to save the people in it. In particular, to let a problem like global warming fester because the only proper anti-capitalist response is the pipe dream of remaking society completely--in very short order with no substantial movement even underway--is to my mind asinine and as selfish and short-sighted as anything any capitalist has ever done. It's not a matter of contending "that capitalism is okey-dokey as long as it shepherds its resources wisely," it's a matter of playing with the deck that's dealt on an issue that sadly can't wait for the next dealer. I don't like the choices we face today either, John, but I think they are what they are.
Patrick Ellis