[lbo-talk] Fwd: John Gray, Thatcher

[brad bauerly]

Shane wrote:
>How can agricultural productivity be measured without fully accounting
>for long-term exhaustion of soil and water resources and the polluting
>and climatic consequences of the fertilizer and pesticide inputs
>needed for that famous "productivity," not to mention the ecological
>and climatic consequences of the deforestation and monocultures
>required for the livestock industry component of your "productivity?"
>Isn't the lunacy precisely in the capitalist concept of agricultural
>productivity--the heedless plundering of all natural resources in
>order to increase "output" levels?
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Yes it did also create problems.  But saying that we benefited from it
with problems is different from saying that we would all be better off
without it.  Feudalism was pretty depleting of soils too, without all
the food to feed people.  I think the point is to look to transcend
capitalism's profit motives by seizing the productivity gains it made
but removing the drive toward exchange value and replace it with the
goal of democratically planning to meet human needs.  Marx is quite
clear that this is not really possible without the advances achieved
by capitalism.

The reason that the left has become more conservative in its
orientation is due to the fact that it has been on the defensive.
Searching for issues where the capital wage relationship is pushing
new boundaries and the resistance this creates has been the bread and
butter of the left for sometime.  These rearguard tactics have very
limited potential. It is only when we get on the offensive and offer
advances on the gains of capitalism, not looking backwards to some
better time, will we begin to capture the imagination of the masses.

Brad