Eric Franz Leher wrote:
>
> Gordon Fitch wrote:
>
> > [clip]
> > If you think _I'm_ simple-minded wait 'til you run into the
> > rest of the folk, who are being told, even as we speak, that
> > the enviros are a bunch of creeping-socialist, nanny-state-
> > loving power-hungry con artists who just want to take their
> > SUVs away because they don't have the Soviet Union to worship
> > any more.
> >
> [clip]
>
> Though I can see what you are getting at, I don't think the public
> have been asked to make any significant sacrifices for the sake of the
> environment.
Gordon has a cute habit of pulling out of a rabbit hole all sorts of fantasies about what "real folk" will or won't do or how they will or won't respond to this or that. The probability is that large numbers of people would be quite willing, had they the opportunity to decide, to sacrifice a good deal for the environment. The mistake the environmentalists make is not in estimating such passive response but in judging how large a proportion of the public will enter into active struggle over environmental issues. I've argued with Mark Jones and Lou Proyect in the past (without convincing them) that the political pull of the environment (in this sense, of generating active struggle) has reached its limit, and to make further gains those in that movement will have to be persuaded to devote their energies to a broader movement, of which environment will be marginal (marginal but important).
The working class will (I think) fight for environmental goals, but such goals have limited agitational force.
This is related, incidentally, to the thread on Habermas. Ken's obsession with reason-giving parallels those environmentalists who think merely giving reasons should make a difference. Communication is not the problem. Generating a movement with agitational power is the problem.
Carrol