Last post for the night, I promise. Regarding relative scale, it occurs to me that much of the action that is demanded on, for example, climate change is at the level of individuals. When domestic electricity use is so much lower than industrial use this seems wrong to me. I'm not against industrial development of course, but I think it's only fair that industry pays its way.
I might change the title, you could be right.
References aren't everything, but you will get them in due course. However, for tonight I ask you to take it as read that I being sincere, although I think I've been clear that I am.
It also occurs to me, rather belatedly, that my questions only make sense at all if you're a socialist. If one isn't then one wouldn't care about how the left of yesteryear compares to today's left. Environmentalism is usually presented as left-wing in nature but I don't think it is. Being charitable, I would say it's neutral and can serve many diverse agendas. However, if someone isn't at all interested in harnessing productive forces for the mass of humanity then everything that I've written is irrelevant. As strident as what I've written might sound, it's not new.
As Marx wrote: "Herr Daurner's cult of nature, by the way, is a peculiar one. He manages to be reactionary even in comparison with Christianity. He tries to restore the old pre-Christian natural religion in a modernised form. [...] We see that this cult of nature is limited to the Sunday walks of an inhabitant of a small provincial town who childishly wonders at the cuckoo laying its eggs in another bird's nest(Vol. II, p. 40), at tears being designed to keep the surface of the eyes moist (Vol. II, p. 73), and so on, and finally trembles with reverence as he recites Klopstock's Ode to Spring to his children. (Vol. II, p. 23 et seqq.) There is no mention, of course, of modern natural science, which, with modern industry, has revolutionised the whole of nature and put an end to man's childish attitude towards nature as well as to other forms of childishness. But instead we get mysterious hints and astonished philistine notions about Nostradamus' prophecies, second sight in Scotsmen and animal magnetism. For the rest, it would be desirable that Bavaria's sluggish peasant economy, the ground on which grow priests and Daumers alike, should at last be ploughed up by modern cultivation and modern machines."
Karl Marx, I. G. Fr Daumer, Die Religion des neuen Weltalters. Versuch einer combinatorisch-aphoristischen Grundlegung, Neue Rheinische Zeitung Politisch-ökonomische Revue, 1850
Meanwhile, what about housebuilding in the countryside, very much a hot issue at the moment?
Madeleine Bunting: "The hijacking of the countryside by the middle class, who used both conservationist and environmentalist arguments to defend their self-interest, is an untold story of the past century. They have used the planning system and, latterly, the housing market to create the kind of picture-book zones that cover large areas of Hampshire, Sussex, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire. They have become gated communities in all but name."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2063199,00.html
Now, a sirst reference, but you'll have to forgive me as it's quite parochial.
The book 'Land Matters: Power Struggles in Rural Ireland' by Ruth Crowley. As with any book on rural affairs, the central issues are those surrounding farming. Early on the author lays her cards on the table, critcising ‘productivism’, which she describes as “the relentlessy intensive use of land and natural resources, regardless of negative social or environmental effects." She goes on: “It is heavily influenced by the agri-scientific establishment, whose aim is to constantly reach new frontiers in order to conquer nature.” (p. 20) A less emotive description of this phenomenon might be rural capitalism. Orthodox Marxist thinking - for the record, it is Crowley who riases Marx’s spectre on page three of Land Matters - would enourage such ‘productivism’, pointing to it as a progressive development. Indeed, the use of the loaded term ‘agri-scientific establishment’ is worth noting. ‘Just who is this sinister cabal and what are they doing to our land and our food?’, the phrase seems to ask.
Unlike today’s anti-capitalists, Marx had plenty of positive things to say about capitalism. In the Communist Manifesto, for example, he wrote: “The bourgoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part. [It] has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pittilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his ‘natural superiors’ [...] It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-labourers.” If Marx’s so-called productivism isn’t clear enough, consdier the following, also from the Communist Manifesto: “It has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former exoduses of nations and crusades.”
Of course, Marx was no Adam Smith. He did have a trenchant critique of capitalism, but it wasn’t one of the folly of ‘productivism’. Marx’s criticism was that capitalism’s productive forces, though a vast improvement on what went before, were uneven due to the capitalists’ need to exporpriate surplus value as private profit and was therfore incapable of satisfying human need. He did not, however, want to preserve the past - or the present - in perperutity. Capitialism’s most trenchant critic wanted to tear society asunder once again in order to better unleash humanity’s creative and productive potential. |
