>I'd be interested to hear your analysis of Harvey's position. Again, from
>what you cite here, it hardly seems like a sectarian sin. Isn't Harvey's
>complaint about exactly the kind of problem that led to the Environmental
>Justice movement?
>
>
>Anders Schneiderman
>
In "What is to be Done" Lenin cites 3 examples of what tasks a "vanguard"
should undertake. He says that the German Social Democracy of Kautsky was a
model. It did the following:
--defended the rights of artists to write or paint without censorship.
--backed the right of a liberal politician to be seated in the legislature
over the objections of the Junkers.
--defended the rights of universities to select their own rectors.
The point that he was making was that narrow, "economistic" demands should
not exclusively make up the socialist program. He made these points in the
context of a polemic with the Russian "economist" wing of the Social
Democracy, but they remain true today.
Harvey draws a dichotomy between proletarian concerns: working conditions,
wages, rights to a job, etc. He sneers at the "middle class" concerns
raised on Earth Day in 1970. While I regard Harvey as one of the most
important Marxist theorists on the scene today--especially around the
question of the role of "spatiality" in capital formation--, I regard him
as a political novice.
His latest book is a highly sophisticated attempt to set directions for
Marxist participation in the green movement. Anybody who took his advice to
heart would soon alienate green activists. It is filled with lectures about
the need to break with green reformism. Deep ecologists are regarded with
barely disguised hostility.
The problem is that any social movement--feminism, gay liberation, black
liberation--has its own dynamics. You can not project "correct" Marxist
schemas on such movements from the sidelines. That is what the Spartacist
League does.
The great misfortune of the US Marxist left is that it treated this
movement with disdain or hostility from its inception. This means that
anti-Marxists, either of the liberal or anarchist variety, have had a
field-day. Marxists should participate with an open mind and even attempt
to learn from green activists. I certainly have. Harvey's book,
unfortunately, is an agenda for trying to "correct" the movement.
I have been reading selections over the past couple of weeks and plan to go
through it systematically when I have the time. It has not gotten much
notice in the left press and it is important to have a discussion over it.
It represents an important contribution to the green-red dialectic and can
not be ignored.
Louis Proyect
