>Yoshie:
>>Cuban socialists aren't opposed to genetic engineering per se, though
>>I don't know if they like eatin' tuna & doubt that they are sanguine
>>about trends in corporate genetic engineering. :->
>
>Cubans also use nuclear power. In any case, it does not make sense to
>extrapolate from the economic development model of a besieged island bereft
>of its main trading partner, except to say that you are always better off
>eliminating the profit motive--this despite the seething hostility of
>social democrats like Sam Farber who has written screeds against Cuba for
>New Politics.
>
>Louis Proyect
I'm not presenting Cuba as a model, however attractive & promising
its combination of organic agriculture & genetic engineering may be.
I'm simply saying that one-dimensional opposition to genetic
engineering (& science in general) is counter-productive. Genetic
engineering can be a very useful tool in socialist hands, whereas in
corporate hands it will be mainly used to further corporate monopoly
of intellectual properties.
More generally, the transition from capitalism to socialism (when
such transition is possible) will not take place according to a
blueprint of how to reconcile town & countryside: "What we have to
deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its
own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from
capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically,
morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the
old society from whose womb it emerges" (at
<http://csf.colorado.edu/psn/marx/Archive/1875-Gotha/>).
For instance, from the points of view that focus on impacts on health
& environment, it would have been correct for socialists not to
develop any nuclear power at all, much less nuclear weapons; however,
nuclear weapons did probably help to defend socialist states while
they lasted, though the burden of military production & conscription
-- & more importantly social control that went with them --
contributed to their eventual downfall, in addition to economic
difficulties. The same goes for the breakneck pace of
industrialization in the USSR, without which it wouldn't have likely
lasted either. With more freedom & democracy than existed in the
Socialist Bloc, they could have made production ecologically
friendlier & safer for workers than it was, but not to the extent
that would make most environmentalists happy, I suspect.
Yoshie
