http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2001/06/mooney-c-06-22.html
Libertarians are Right!
When It Comes to Promising Technologies Like Genetically Modified Foods,
Liberals Need Stranger Bedfellows
6.22.01
----- Original Message -----
From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, June 24, 2001 5:32 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:13915] John Zerzan: Future Primitive (was Re: Current
implications for South Africa)
> >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
>
