>Carrol Cox:
>>My understanding of capitalism is that it _must_ grow, regardless of
>>consequences, and that it simply is not worth considering possibilities
>>for constraining growth under capitalism, however desirable or even
>>absolutely necessary that may be.
>
>Right now I am reading "The Last Ranch" by the late Sam Bingham, which
>deals with the disastrous ecological effects of cattle ranching in
>Colorado, including desertification. This is the reality that Marxists have
>to identify to the masses. Saying that MacDonalds fast food is some kind of
>"conquest" of the working class because it makes meat cheap and eliminates
>the need to prepare meals is just the kind of thing that we have no
>business saying. The fact that so many young people associate Marxism with
>this kind of vulgar "modernization" explains why the anti-globalization
>protesters often call themselves anarchists. While anarchism attracts the
>young, we are ending up with a movement that revolves around bizarre sects
>or annual conferences attracting the enlarged prostate brigade. At the last
>Socialist Scholars Conference, the last I'll ever go to, young people got
>up during the discussion period of a talk given by Bogdan Denitch on the
>"future of the left" and told him that he was completely out of touch.
>Denitch's social democratic business-as-usual left-Gompers trade unionism
>is based on the notion that working people in the USA should have a bigger
>slice of the pie, the rest of the world be damned. As long as Marxism is
>perceived in this manner, we are in bad shape. As Marxists, our message is
>not just about "more". It is about equity. Most people in the imperialist
>countries have to understand that the life-style we "enjoy" is
>unsustainable. In exchange for a more modest life-style, we will live in
>world that enjoys peace and respect for the individual. If people in the
>imperialist countries can not rally to this message, then they (we) deserve
>the fate that awaits us: war, urban violence, cancer epidemics, drug
>addiction, alcoholism, FOX TV, and prozac.
>
>Louis Proyect
If the fundamental problem facing the world is that we are running
out of fossil fuels & that no alternative energy source will ever be
available due to technical impossibility as Mark argues, it appears
socialism won't be able to meet even the historically evolved basic
needs of all in the world, much less doing more than that. If that's
really the case, why not turn to John Zerzan?
*****
AAA
P.O. Box 11331
Eugene, OR 97440
On the Transition
Postscript to Future Primitve
by John Zerzan
...Who doesn't hate modern life? Can what conditioning that remains
survive such an explosion of life, one that ruthlessly removes the
sources of such conditioning?
We are obviously being held hostage by capital and its technology,
made to feel dependent, even helpless, by the sheer weight of it all,
the massive inertia of centuries of alienated categories, patterns,
values. What could be dispensed with immediately? Borders,
governments, hierarchy....What else? How fast could more deep-seated
forms of authority and separation be dissolved, such as that of
division of labor? I assert, and not, I hope, in the spirit of
wishing to derive blueprints from abstract principle, that I can see
no ultimate freedom or wholeness without the dissolution of the
inherent power of specialists of every kind.
Many say that millions would die if the present techno-global fealty
to work and the commodity were scrapped. But this overlooks many
potentialities. For example, consider the vast numbers of people who
would be freed from manipulative, parasitic, destructive pursuits for
those of creativity, health, and liberty. At present, in fact, very
few contribute in any way to satisfying authentic needs.
Transporting food thousands of miles, not an atypical pursuit today,
is an instance of pointless activity, as is producing countless tons
of herbicide and pesticide poisons. The picture of humanity starving
if a transformation were attempted may be brought into perspective by
reference to a few other agricultural specifics, of a more positive
nature. It is perfectly feasible, generally speaking, that we grow
our own food. There are simple approaches, involving no division of
labor, to large yields in small spaces.
Agriculture itself must be overcome, as domestication, and because it
removes more organic matter from the soil than it puts back.
Permaculture is a technique that seems to attempt an agriculture that
develops or reproduces itself and thus tends toward nature and away
from domestication. It is one example of promising interim ways to
survive while moving away from civilization. Cultivation within the
cities is another aspect of practical transition, and a further step
toward superseding domestication would be a more or less random
propagation of plants, a la Johnny Appleseed.
Regarding urban life, any steps toward autonomy and self-help should
be realized, beginning now, so that cities may be all the more
quickly abandoned later. Created out of capital's need to centralize
control of property transactions, religion, and political domination,
cities remain as extended life-destroying monuments to the same basic
needs of capital. Something on the order of what we know now as
museums might be a good idea so that post-upheaval generations could
know how grotesque our species' existence became. Moveable
celebration sites may be the nearest configuration to cities that
disalienated life will express.
Along with the movement out of cities, paralleling it, one might
likely see a movement from colder climes to warmer ones. The heating
of living space in northern areas constitutes an absurd effort of
energy, resources, and time. When humans become once again intimate
with the earth, healthier and more robust, these zones would probably
be peopled again, in altogether different ways.
As for population itself, its growth is no more a natural or neutral
phenomenon than its technology. When life is fatally out of balance,
the urge to reproduce appears as compensation for impoverishment, as
with the non-civilized gatherer-hunters surviving today, population
levels would be relatively quite low.
Enrico Guidoni pointed out that architectural structures necessarily
reveal a great deal about their social context. Similarly, the
isolation and sterility of shelter in class society is hardly
accidental, and deserves to be scrapped in toto. Rudofsky's
Architecture Without Architects deals with some examples of shelter
produced not by specialists, but by spontaneous and evolving communal
activity. Imagine the inviting richness of dwellings, each unique
not mass produced, and a part of a serene mutuality that one might
expect to emerge from the collapse of boundaries and artificial
scarcities, material and emotional.
Probably `health' in a new world will be a matter even less
recognizable than the question of shelter. The dehumanized
industrial `medicine' of today is totally complicitous with the
overall processes of society which rob us of life and vitality. Of
countless examples of the criminality of the present, direct
profiting from human misery must rank near the top. Alternative
healing practices are already challenging the dominant mode, but the
only real solution is the abolition of a setup that by its very
nature spawns an incredible range of physical and psychic
immiseration. From Reich to Mailer, for example, cancer is
recognized as the growth of a general madness blocked and denied.
Before civilization disease was generally nonexistent. How could it
have been otherwise? Where else do degenerative and infectious
diseases, emotional maladies, and all the rest issue if not from
work, toxicity, cities, estrangement, fear, unfulfilled lives - the
whole canvas of damaged, alienated reality? Destroying the sources
will eradicate the suffering. Minor exigencies would be treated by
herbs and the like, not to mention a diet of pure, non-processed food.
It seems evident that industrialization and the factories could not
be gotten rid of instantly, but equally clear that their liquidation
must be pursued with all the vigor behind the rush of break-out.
Such enslavement of people and nature must disappear forever, so that
words like production and economy will have no meaning. A graffito
from the rising in France in '68 was simply `Quick!' Those partisans
apparently realized the need to move rapidly forward all the way,
with no temporizing or compromise with the old world. Half a
revolution would only preserve domination and cement its hold over us.
A qualitatively different life would entail abolishing exchange, in
every form, in favor of the gift and the spirit of play. Instead of
the coercion of work -- and how much of the present could continue
without precisely that coercion? -- an existence without constraints
is an immediate, central objective. Unfettered pleasure, creative
endeavor along the lines of Fourier: according to the passions of the
individual and in a context of complete equality.
What would we keep? ``Labor-saving devices''? Unless they involve
no division of labor (e.g. a lever or incline), this concept is a
fiction; behind the `saving' is hidden the congealed drudgery of many
and the despoliation of the natural world. As the Parisian group
Interrogations put it: ``Today's riches are not human riches; they
are riches for capitalism which correspond to a need to sell and
stupefy. The products we manufacture, distribute, and administer are
the material expressions of our alienation.''...
<http://www.subsitu.com/kr/futurep.htm> *****
Ecoanarchists are wrong, but at least their primitivist political
solution is consistent with their analysis.
Yoshie
