Ian said:
>>The article never mentioned how or why those chemicals get into the
>>food-chain, only that they're "byproducts of the industrial age". Would a
>>class-analysis a la Marx help figure that out and what might be done? Or
>>would it just be completely erroneous and a waste of time?
>Well it's not necessarily the place of daily news journalism to get
>involved in articulating the causal dynamics of the
>capital/technology/science/environment nexus, so criticizing the piece for
>what it doesn't talk about does not seem to help.
Ok, I wasn't so much talking about the article itself as what I took to be the general point of your comment: dealing with a matter such as industrial chemical pollution in our bodies, not so much the specific article.
You're right, the daily news (or any other kind of information dissemination patterned after it) doesn't normally view these things through anything but a (loosely defined) bourgeois lens. But isn't seeing what it doesn't talk about something to keep in mind as well? I know that can drive one towards the borders of paranoia, but surely it's not a completely useless exercise?
>
>One of the reasons I posted the piece is that the problems it describes
>are going to be with us even if capitalism ended today.
Well, yes, strictly speaking, big messes created yesterday would still be around should capitalism go today. But how much of those sorts of problems are a "result" of capitalism? I'd imagine a fair amount even though there are other possible reasons for them. So once capitalism goes, I'd imagine so would the reasons for new problems dependant on it. That's a pretty simplistic summation, granted, but how can we tell that won't be the case?
>In that sense,
>what are the theories we need to know to solve those *types* of problems,
>irrespective of whether we've gotten rid of capitalism or not. Yeah, we
>can engage in all kinds of hand waiving about which is the one true
>analysis that will enable us to solve the problem[s] [or is it to mitigate
>and adapt to them?]. In that sense, while it would definitely help that
>lost of us had M, B & F on our shelves, not all the challenges, such as
>the ones the article mentioned, we face can be squeezed within their
>frames.
Granted not every challenge can be overcome, completely or partially, with a good dose of M, B & F. But doesn't this involve some sort of category error: the assumption that all problems can be solved only with M, B & F? Wouldn't a particular problem seem to ask for this, that, or another way (or ways) to examine and solve it? Yoshie doesn't strike me as being quite that dogmatic (Michael Pugliese and Dennis P.: be quiet!). I think (correct me if I'm wrong, Yoshie) that she was just pointing out what you said: it would definitely help that lots of us had those authors on our shelves. I doubt she was going into specifics.
True analysis? Well, say rather which one is clearer. And I'm sure there are lots of reasons, good and bad, rational and not, why a "clearer" analysis isn't always accepted.
As for the "types" of theories we need, I'd hazard a guess and say that a fair amount of problems could be solved technically ie by the application of science and technology if it weren't for political will and the opposition of those who'd be "hurt" by their solving.
>>I'm terribly sorry I can't match your erudition, Ian, with some quote or
>>paraphrase of a main idea from Marx about chemicals entering the food
>>chain.
>>I'm sure it's in there somewhere, but I'm just not a smart enough guy to
>>find it.
>Don't apologize, you're as smart as anyone else on the list [a fine
>collection of knuckleheads, actually; even if we're grumpy quite a bit of
>the time].
>
Well, thanks, but buttering me up with your sweet talking isn't going to hide the fact that I'm quite the duffer in a company of experienced and/or expert lefties. I'll take it as a kindness, though. <dimpling as expected>
>"The same holds good for every kind of refuse resulting from a
>labour-process, so far at least as such refuse cannot be further employed
>as a means in the production of new and independent use-values. Such an
>employment of refuse may be seen in the large machine works at Manchester,
>where mountains of iron turnings are carted away to the foundry in the
>evening, in order the next morning to re-appear in the workshops as solid
>masses of iron...
>
>"Every advance in Chemistry not only multiplies the number of useful
>materials and the useful applications of those already known, thus
>extending with the growth of capital its sphere of investment. It teaches
>at the same time how to throw the excrements of the processes of
>production and consumption back again into the circle of the process of
>reproduction, and thus, without any previous outlay of capital, creates
>new matter for capital."
Ok, but this only talks about a specific aspect of capitalism in a specific context. I don't go to the Grundrisse to find out how to cook my eggs. It's very handy as a concrete example of how "waste" is made valuable to the owner again.
>Let's say capitalism collapses tomorrow. How much of the above helps us
>deal with cleaning up the various toxicities we have produced? I can hear
>Carrol now, saying we don't use quantum mechanic to calculate how to build
>a bridge and that's precisely my point. In that sense critically studying
>the works of Robert Ayres:
>http://www.insead.edu/CMER/team/profiles/ayres.htm and the industrial
>ecology paradigm, say, is every bit as important for us as studying Smith,
>Ricardo and Carey were for Marx--in order to be more effective in dealing
>with just one category of problems.
Ok, now I see where you're coming from now that you've made it plain. Again, I think you were talking past what Yoshie was saying.
Yes, I agree (and I don't think you'll find anyone on the list who disagrees): there's more out there that activists and even activistists need to examine and talk up. This sort of reminds me how I've heard some of you "old timers" talk about the arguments that went on over bringing together such "disparate" threads as socialism, feminism, racism, etc. Making the world a better place for us all's a big tent; don't see why more can't be added, although I'd have to say we need to create a subcommittee to decide the priority of discussions, no? !{)>
>
>I have a friend who would be more than capable of understanding M, B &F if
>he had the time to read them, but he'd tell us all in no time flat "how
>would they help me deal with stopping the trade/production of toxic wastes
>associated with current technologies and motivating others to see the
>importance of that struggle while avoiding the use of terminologies and
>attitudes that turn people off?"
Immediately, it's useless. But as a background to keep in mind (the word "leaven" comes to mind), it's invaluable. Better than relying on moral arguments, say.
As for trying not to turn people off <shrug> well, I'd say that's up to the individual communicator. We don't have a school for lefties of the sort wealthier people have on how to project the right image. Although a book I got a little while ago, "Rules for Radicals" does come to mind . . . .
>That is to say, there's a division of
>labor amongst activists and theoreticians that is not working for lefties
>and anti-intellectualism is only one piece of that problem. Indeed, it may
>be the case that communicating with each other more effectively about our
>dol is a possible big step in overcoming the challenges posed by the
>latter.
>From what I gather this is a problem that existed even with the First
International. And didn't Lenin say something in WITBD about not letting
the party get swamped by intellectuals so there was the necessity of
bringing in more "practical" types ASAP? Yeah, it's important, but we
humans can only do so much.
>
>"Under conditions of scarcity, so traditional Marxism maintains, class
>society is inescapable, its property structures settle questions of
>distribution, and discussion of justice is therefore futile, for a
>political movement whose task must be to overturn class society, *rather
>than to decide which of the many criteria by which it comes out unjust is
>the right one to use to condemn it*....We can no longer believe the
>factual premisses of those conclusions about the practical [ir]relevance
>of the study of norms...We can no longer rely on technology to fix things
>for us: if they can be fixed, then we have to fix them, through hard
>theoretical and political labor." [G.A. Cohen]
>
>What Cohen just misses mentioning is that it is precisely theorizing the
>consequences of science/technology, as much as theorizing class, race,
>gender, law etc. that must be part and parcel of the division of labor by
>activists and if, in the process of dialogue with activists who speak
>in/from idioms/theories that aren't reducible to or translatable by the
>idioms of nineteenth century theorists we shouldn't be too quick to reach
>for the charge of anti-intellectualism.
True, but we shouldn't just be ready to deny it exists either. And why not try to translate those terms if it can be done?
Todd
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