On Apr 27, 2008, at 9:30 AM, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> On Apr 26, 2008, at 10:27 PM, Shane Mage wrote:
>
>> Now, with the cancer-
>> like progress of world capitalism, we face the ongoing reality of
>> destructive, industry-generated, climate change whose possible
>> effects
>> range from grave (the best case) to (non-cosmic) catastrophe caused
>> by
>> uncontrollable feedbacks (melting polar ice--decreased* planetary
>> albedo--melting of permafrost and upset of deep-ocean methane
>> clydrate
>> deposits--release of massive quantities of methane--intensified
>> Arrhenius effect--melting of Antarctic icecap, and thence to utter
>> ruin). If people today cannot become politically mobilized to
>> carry out the (admittedly drastic) reforms probably necessary for
>> the survival of their own great-grandchildren, let alone the
>> survival of mankind as a civilized species, then what possibility
>> can there be of their mobilization for the revolutionary overthrow
>> of the capitalist system in order to achieve real communism a few
>> centuries hence? I prefer the optimistic view.
>
> If you phrase it that way, people will just pull their heads in like
> turtles. If you can't tap the optimism that Trotsky talked about -
> convince people that we can triumph over climate change - then you're
> not going to get anywhere. You're not going to get many to sign on to
> the agenda of mutual ruin.
But that is the oppositie of what I just said! The *present* agenda is that of "mutual ruin," and its essential to get *off* it before we slip too far into the feedback loop we've already entered. To suggest that without a sharp turn very soon we can "triumph over climate change" is to suggest mindless, not revolutionary, optimism. It is like the SPD and KPD, in 1932, claiming that without a sharp turn very soon "we can triumph over Hitler!"
Shane Mage
"Thunderbolt steers all things...it consents and does not consent to be called Zeus."
Herakleitos of Ephesos
*correction: last night's fingerfehler: I typed "increased" instead of "decreased."