>More seriously, in raising the very genuine problem of the loss of an
>idea of utopian, egalitarian abundance as a fundamental political
>problem for the left, in the part quoted, Lemisch does not address the
>equally real problem of severely dystopian dimensions to "actually
>existing abundance."
Exactly.
>Cars mean mobility, Lemisch says. Cars also, at present, mean dispersed
>settlement. Such settlement creates MATERIAL (not aesthetic)
>sustainability issues, as does the mass agriculture Lemisch also vaunts.
> Further, ex-urban development causes loss of farm land for any type of
>agriculture, mass or not.
Exactly.
>Meanwhile the upper-class negotiations for "new urbanist" urban renewal
>(it's baaack) usually involve details of the mix of mixed-use,
>ineffective gestures to moderate income housing (never mind low income,
>too many poor people around by definition means "not revitalized"), and
>destruction of low income housing & community displacement (too often
>once again "Negro removal," now extended to new immigrant communities as
>well).
Of course. The Sierra Club nearly came out in favor of a ban on immigration.
>Some of the "new urbanism" is Naderite, but lots of it is social
>democratic negotiation with sectors of real estate, commercial and
>finance capital. And it can have the same ugly class undertones as the
>patrician side of Naderism.
In other words, the coal miners union has just backed George W. Bush's
stand against the Kyoto protocols. Nader, the AFL-CIO bureaucracy that
social democrats orient to, et al, refuse to look at the underlying
economic causes of underemployment, unemployment and environmental
despoliation. By pitting one goal against the other, they provide wiggle
room for the bosses. That is why a class-based ecosocialist movement is
necessary. Against the green capitalism of Paul Hawken, an ardent Nader
backer, and the AFL-CIO "brown Keynesian" pact with the corporate devil, we
need an alternative.
>And yet I still hate it that in a few minutes I am going to go get on a
>bus that makes me take 40 minutes and a transfer at the apex of two
>sides of a triangle rather than a fifteen minute car trip on the third
>side, except that the suburban growth and limited number of bridges mean
>the rush hour car trip can get up to half an hour of stalled traffic.
>So I may get a bike, but probably if I do I should get a gas mask for
>riding alongside the nearly stalled cars on the Sellwood bridge.
This is the main problem with greens. It turns into questions of personal
choice under capitalism.
>And meanwhile, as in the Pacific Northwest we debate dam breaching to
>prevent salmon extinction vs. power generation and barge transport of
>grain in a context where the old railways have been torn up, due to
>liberal quasi-social democratic planning in the New Deal and Great
>Society, the Chinese are seeking to bring "abundance" by damning the
>three rivers and burning coal, coal, coal.
Things will get much, much, much worse.
>One third of Africans live in cities, their desperate poverty and the
>labor mobility that creates the speed of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, driven
>in part by the mass agricultural production Lemisch vaunts, surpluses of
>which drive government "free-trade" and structural adjustment policies
>while offering remaining family farmers prices NOMINALLY the same as
>fifty years age. But the real mass agriculturae is organized through
>corporate monopolies that are creating a new share-cropping ("contract
>farming") in KwaZulu-Natal and in Iowa. The same monopolies are part of
>the coalition seeking to create novel forms of "intellectual property"
>and minimally regulated rights to monkey with genetics and to use
>compiled biological data against us. To say nothing of bad effects of
>mass monoculture on soils, genetic diversity of seed lines etc. Or what
>a tomato tastes like.
Excellent.
>Karl Marx saw the ultimate contradiction of capitalism as a social one,
>that of the tendency of capitalism to polarize two great classes.
Don't forget the "metabolic rift" betwen the soil and its nutrients,
discussed in v.3 of Capital.
>But I'm not willing just to trash Naderites. Many of their foibles or
>problems have "old left" counterparts. "From each according to his
>abilities, to each according to his needs" has its ascetic as well as
>its cornucopian possibilities.
People don't make revolutions to bring slogans such as "From each according
to his abilities, to each according to his needs" to fruition. They make
them because the ruling class is embarked on a maniacal campaign to destroy
working people either through war, fascism, economic depression, etc.
>
>What I want to know is, can we re-imagine abundance in a sustainable
>way, AND persuade a large proportion of people who have one sort of
>concept of what makes for abundance and the good life, to think about
>quality of life in other ways. I don't think this has to be ascetic. I
>do think it probably means "less stuff" and substituting leisure,
>community, family and self-directed work/hobby time for paid work time
>to underwrite consumption.
>
>But I don't know how to get there.
>
>Chris Lowe
Certainly not by stumping for the Democratic Party.
Louis Proyect
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