> On this I totally agree with you. The only problems that capitalism can't
> solve by its very nature - leaving aside the contingencies of politics and
> such - are polarization and cyclicality. There's no fundamental reason why
> it can't "solve" the environmental problem. That's not to say that
> capitalist politicians will be able to manage the transition properly - but
> there's no necessitous reason they can't.
Ahhhh, now we're getting into my territory, my apologies for not keeping up with the earlier stages of this thread... and, Carrol, apologies also for not having read Postone...
Yet, since a later set of comments engage Postone's take on the Frankfurt School, and a great deal of critical theory is engaged with critiques of reification, it seems to me - trained by Jim O'Connor, that Carrol's (and Postone's?) take on the environment - nature-with-a-capital-N - rather seriously reifies the modern/liberal dualism that keeps causing "environmentalism" and, to my mind, a great deal of red-green thought to implode.
If we engage in the kind of ideology critique and the materialist conception of historical Marx introduced us to it seems to me that we end up in two places. The first is an argument like that of Neil Smith, in Uneven Development, where "nature" - a relation, not a bunch of rocks and trees and birds and things (with apologies to America, the 1970s folk pop band) - is a qualitatively different phenonenon following its production under/by/within capitalism than previously. Smith argues that we have a second, capitalistically produced, natures... one that is relationally inextricable from new forms of capitalistically producing space and human natures.
The reason to raise ideology critique at this point is to stress - as R.G Collingwood, Leo Marx, Raymond Williams, Keith Thomas and too many environmental historians, historical geographers and socialist ecofeminists to mention have argued - that the production of external nature, human nature and the nature of society are part and parcel of one another.
It is for this reason that Thoreau wasn't really writing about nature but about God, that Roosevelt was working on nature but on manliness and efficiency, and that the innovation 60s environmentalism contributes is anti-pollutionism - in the name of suburban aesthetics and public health more than ecological sustainability, which is later extended by environmental justice activists and "Third World" political ecologists into the built environments and social justice.
For all that I think that neither the levels of analysis nor the dynamic relationships within O'Connor's second contradiction thesis ever got sufficiently developed, for all I think his strategic choice of Polanyi proved a mistake and that N. Smith - which he was about to have me read when the first number of CNS came out - would have been a far better choice, and for all that I think his own work and the name of the journal overemphasized ecological conditions (of production, or life) over personal and communal conditions, Jim's argument - that the reification of nature-as-Nature radically misunderstands the way capital engages in formally similar fashion all three of the "fictitiously commodified" conditions of production it naturalizes - remains sound.
I can't agree with Postone/Carrol that the environmental problem can't be solved, and I can't agree with Doug that it can be, because both positions abstract the ecological problems capitalism engenders from its contradictory relation with public health and species being, and its contradictory relation with public space and material culture. By abstracting such problems from the others, all that is necessary to defend environmental politics is good science and while I'd be the last one to argue for pretty much any kind of politics or policy that rejects science, the argument that science and scientific expertise ought to dictate policy has proven far, far to undemocratic to be likely to generate the kinds of complex mass movements we need.
Just about everyone misinterprets the second contradiction by arguing that "ecological crisis can't and don't cause capitalist crises of underproduction" but - and, again, Jim did a poor job of insisting on this - that's not the argument. The argument is that, sufficiently degraded, intertwined ecological, personal and communal crises can generate such a crisis... it is for this reason that capital and the state (when not forced to do otherwise by mass movements) are so successful at playing environmentalists, outdoorspeople, labor unions, identity politicians, cultural producers and those in need of re/new-ed infrastructures against one another... and why individuals and movements that combine these things and those concerned with them must be immediately bought out - see Bush I and Clinton admins on environmental justice - or squashed - see Chico Mendes, Ken Saro-Wiwa and others.
Apologies for the rant, its been working its way out for some time.
Alan (who probably shoulda started a new thread)