On Friday, July 26, 2002, at 02:10 PM, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
> At 02:15 PM 7/26/2002 +0100, james wrote:
>> This was what
>> Marx had to say against the 'true socialist' doctrine of a harmony
>> between man and nature proposed by Daumer:
>
>
> James, what Marx had to say about environment (and "ism") was based on
> the 19th century science that, inter alia, did have the tools to study
> the subject area (e.g. the estimation of non-linear equations are
> possible only with computers) and was biased toward the expansionist
> "white-man-burden" philosophy. Suffice it to say that the same science
> produced eugenics and IQ testing.
>
> It is possible to approach environment without petit bourgeois
> sentimentalism - e.g. as land use - which is the main tool to screw the
> working class, at least in this country. Studying patterns of land use
> can give you better insights to social inequality in the US than all
> culture and identity based approaches combined.
>
> It is interesting that much of today's anti-capitalist rhetoric is
> expressed in the language of environmentalism. This seems to be a very
> intelligent way to go. Maintaining that capitalism impoverishes the
> working class seems untenable nowadays, especially in Western Europe.
> However, demanding that the environment (or the so-called
> externalities) are included in the cost-benefit calculus of the
> capitalist enterprise strikes at the center of the capitalist
> legitimating myth of efficiency. If we start accounting for the
> hitherto externalised (i.e. not included in the economic calculus)
> social and environmental cost of capitalist production - its alleged
> efficiency will likely burst like the stock market bubble.
>
i can't believe i'm about to agree with wojtek about something, so maybe i'm misunderstanding. that said, marx's deployment of the notion of "species-beings," i'm thinking of the 1848 mss, strikes me as compatible at the very least with a certain kind of environmentalism . . .
i'm sure there are plenty of others on the list who understand the concept better than i, but fwiw . . .
j