On Wed, 13 Oct 1999, Max Sawicky wrote: > And if the doom foretold of ecological disaster some > 50 years away is the last straw supporting 'socialism > or barbarism' . . . well, that's rather pathetic, > isn't it? Even worse, it suggests the right politics > is to urge abstention from struggles in the present > (especially in the U.S./EU/Japan/NICs) and organize > red-green nursery schools. You do both -- plant seeds for the future, while struggling for the present. The socialism vs. barbarism rhetoric is often miscast as a question of the future, when it's really a question of the present: there are socialist elements in the world-system all around us (just ask LTCM, bailed out by their fellow rentiers), and decidedly barbaric elements, too (the immiseration of entire Continents, ecocide, etc.). One is the index of the other: you have to critique the notion of the civilized in order to critique the notion of the non-civilized. Doom is just a videogame. There are no words for the real catastrophes. -- Dennis
