[lbo-talk] The Planet is Fine

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Sat Dec 17 11:17:47 PST 2011


-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of lbo83235 Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2011 12:36 PM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] The Planet is Fine

On Dec 14, 2011, at 8:14 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:


> I haven't read any of the posts under this subject line because the phrase
> itself is silly. Of curse the planet is fine; it's always been fine. What
is
> in question of whether it is going to continue to be fine FOR human

Carrol, you're the only member of LBO-Talk for whom I would willingly take a bullet, and I know that your vision challenges limit your ability to engage with the list (and I know you know how seriously I take those challenges, because I have gone out of my way on more than one occasion to make sure information posted to the list was available to you in a form you would be able to read), but you've really missed the point here. Anthropogenic climate change is on track to destroy substantial portions of other life on the planet: non-human life that will have been destroyed *solely* due to human action and inaction, and life that in principle could, in principle and in time, give rise to even better species than what we are. I'm no hater of humanity - some of my best friends are humans (wink) - and I'm a committed revolutionary for the working class, but there is also a larger perspective from within which human responsibility can reasonably be viewed.
>From that perspective, as!

well as from any more mundane, anthropocentric Marxist perspective, we are fucking the shit up, big time. I'm personally biased toward humans - again, most of my best friends are humans, as well as most of my past lovers (wink) - but since any reasonable expectation for human fulfillment must include the affirmation of the countless and astonishing miracles of natural potential - birds, dogs, horses, spinach, garlic, tomatoes (tomatoes! from the garden!) - your intervention is both premature and unnecessarily crotchety.

======

Lbo is right that one should not be flippant on complex subjects, especially without first finding out what the immediate context is.

And I don't know whether the following should be introduced with an "And" or a "But."


>From everything I've read on this subject of climate change over the past
decade, we have already passed the slipping point. I say that presupposing that before serious efforts can be made in slowing down climate change there must be serious shifts in power _globally_ and not just in a few nations. I read Capital prior to any involvement in politics, and the thoughts it generated in me was a speculation that perhaps the best future would be a return to feudalism. That is, I was impressed by Marx's _negative_ critique of capitalism, but simp critique of capitalism, but simply did not take seriously a socialist program. (I knew nothing of socialism at the time, but let that pass.) The point is that even then, rather casually and superficially, I tended not to focus on "The Problem" (whatever the problem might be) but on the power relations required for 'dealing with' the problem. Gar and I have occasionally exchanged remarks on this going back to the earliest days of this maillist.

In other words, my occasional flippancy on the subject of climate change has been grounded in serious skepticism that under capitalism any significant change will be made. China, India, Brazil MUST continue to industrialize in order to remain (or to become) independent nations, and in capitalism remaining an independent nation is for various reasons imposed on peoples. And yet even slowing up let alone actually controlling climate change involves a radical reduction in energy use more or less worldwide but especially in the nations named in addition to Europe, the U.S., & Japan. So my flippancy is partly whistling past the cemetery. Secondly, a political observation: I have noticed time after time over the last 40 years (going back to Earth Day 1970) the way in which a focus on environmental dangers tended to turn people away from political activity and questions of power. Over 10 years ago, in a set of threads involving the late Mark Jones (I think I'm remembering the context correctly), Hans Eehbar (who occasionally posts here) acknowledged in a direct exchange with a question I posed that probably we needed dictatorships (presumably rightist ones) in the major industrial powers to adopt the necessary policies to reverse global warming. He may or may not still feel that way. A few years ago, however, responding to a post by me that called for cessation of all u.s. foreign aid (which is always aid for tyrants, never for people) he objected on the basis that the u.s. would have to underwrite green policies around the world. The question of whether the u.s. government would ever do that did not come up. He just claimed it had to. Farr too many Evnironmentalists seem to assume that all that is necessary is to continue screaming (truthfully, but that is not the point here) that we are heading toward doom: I kept asking Mark & Lou Proyect in that debate referred to above how we were to do something about it and they kept coming back with arguments that something needed to be done. I would say, yes I agree completely, but how should we acquire the power to do something and they replied with more detailed arguments giving the technical reasons something had to be done about it. I agree. But I'm pretty pessimistic that anything will, and I don't think arguments about the need for doing something really contribute to creating the social relations that would make that possible.

The struggle for "socialism" (however defined) is the struggle for social relations which will allow humans to cope as best they can under unfavorable conditions.

And I also feel that the best chance for capitalist states to make _some_ effort_ at bringing climate exchange under control is the simple existence of powerful social movements, independently of whether those movements make specific environmental demands or not. Until such movements are appear and grow, talk about the planet seems to me to be pretty much irrelevant. That's one of the reasons I occasionally emphasize that expectations of victory are not necessary to inspire the struggle. Why go meekly to our doom.

Carrol



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list