[lbo-talk] James McMurtry - "We can't make it here"??

Miles Jackson cqmv at pdx.edu
Mon Jul 4 21:54:30 PDT 2011


123hop at comcast.net wrote:


> I understand that we must be careful about what we ascribe to nature.
> But we cannot give up the understanding that we have become alienated
> from nature and that this alienation also exacts a price....of false
> consciousness....of believing that we are alone, of believing that
> everything must be owned, of ignorance of interdependence, of the
> inability to be silent or still.
>
> Joanna

We've not become alienated from "nature" at all. If a beaver's dam is "natural" then so is everything that humans have built. Everything we've created reflects what we've capable of doing in specific social conditions. Life in a NY apartment is just as "natural" as life in a hunting and gathering tribe.

Yes, I see the hyperindividualism, the commodification, the utter isolation: in my view, those are all obvious ideological consequences of life in a capitalist society. However, if we--somehow, in some way we can't imagine right now--manage to escape from this barbarism, we won't be "getting back to nature"; we'll be creating new social relations and new social institutions.

Miles



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