>This was what
>Marx had to say against the 'true socialist' doctrine of a harmony
>between man and nature proposed by Daumer:
>
>'We see here that the superficiality and ingnorance of the speculating
>founder of a new religion is transformed into very pronounced cowardice.
>Herr Daumer flees the historic tragedy that is threatening him too
>closely to alleged nature, ie to mere rustic idyll, and preaches the
>cult of the female to cloak his own effeminate resignation.
>
>Herr Daumer's cult of nature, by the way, is a peculiar one. He has
>managed to be reactionary even in comparison with Christianity. He tries
>to establish the old pre-Christian natural religion in a modernised
>form.
>
>...
>
>We see that this cult of nature is limited to Sunday walks of an
>inhabitant of a small provincial town who childishly wonders at the
>cukoo laying its eggs in another bird's nest, at tears being designed to
>keep the surface of the eyes moist, and so on. There is no question, of
>course of modern sciences, which, with modern industry, have
>revolutionised the whole of nature and put an end to man's childish
>attitude to nature as well as to other forms of childishness ... For the
>rest it would be desirable that Bavaria's sluggish peasant economy, the
>ground on which priests and Daumers likewise grow, should at last be
>ploughed up by modern cultivation and modern machines.'
>
>(Quoted in Alfred Schmidt, The Concept of nature in Marx, p 131-3)
You know, I agree with all this. My interest in the "cult of nature" is just assuring that we don't kill ourselves. Marx also said:
>Large-scale industry and
>industrially pursued large-scale agriculture have the same effect. If they
>are originally distinguished by the fact that the former lays waste and
>ruins labour-power and thus the natural power of man, whereas the latter
>does the same to the natural power of the soil, they link up in the later
>course of development, since the industrial system applied to agriculture
>also enervates the workers there, while industry and trade for their part
>provide agriculture with the means of exhausting the soil.