Eco-Optimisim

Gar Lipow lipowg at sprintmail.com
Wed Aug 8 19:28:55 PDT 2001


Doug, I think you have let James influence you a bit too much on this one.

Yes undoubtedly a lot (maybe a majority) of green activists have contempt for working people. (But there are still a hell of a lot who don't.) But this does not change the fundamental fact that capitalism (and at least some forms of Leninist rule as well) are extremely wasteful of sinks and sources --both in terms of making them last in the long run rather than exhausting them, and in terms their effects on human health as well. After all under both types of system there are elites who can put most of these costs onto ordinary works. Given the lack of a strong, or even coherent anti-captialist movmement is it suprising that much of the green movement is blind to the central role of capitalism in this particular evil? And does this make the enviromental movement rather than particular environmentalists wrong?

For comparison I can think of a lot of occasions when feminists have gotten their facts wrong. (For example male violence against women does not peak during the Superbowl.) And it is not that uncommon for individual feminists to be contemptuous of working class men. In spite of this would anyone fail to recognize that the an attack on the feminist movement as either counterfactual or anti-worker is fundamentally wrong.

I could go on to make similar points -- queer bashing and racism, misogny within Unions (much much less than ten years ago, but still present). Anti-feminism with some of the anti-racist movement, ablelism within just about every popular movement around. But none of this changes the fact that feminism and anti-racism are important to the interests of working people or that working class movements are important to woman and people of color.

Similarly, environmentalism is essential to working class people, even if some enviromentalist have been misled to into eliteism and pro-capitalism...

I am going to make s second post on the "facts" that have been posted.



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