Am I missing something coded in the language here? Would anyone on this list
expect redistribution to happen without struggle? Those sorts are all on Santa
Claus-L.
And, putting what was a discussion of world living standards and carrying
capacity into terms of class struggle simplifies the question so much that I no
longer understand it. Mark was talking about the material impossibility of the
rest of the world consuming in the manner of the average American. Yoshie
responds with class struggle. I don't see how that addresses the question Mark is
raising. Even allowing that a stronger, organized working class in the US would
lead to better collective services (such as public transport), energy
conservation and sensible land use planning, I can't see it producing a
substantial reduction in automobile or air conditioning use in the near future.
The US is simply another planet (but sadly only in a figurative sense) where
resource use is concerned, and the US working class participates enthusiastically
in that. That's why Kyoto is politically impossible for the US. Don't blame
Dubya: carbon emission increases under Clinton/Gore had already rendered Kyoto
impossible by the time Bush took office.
Fred
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> I'm afraid it is not me but you who are thinking in terms of
> "redistribution and 'social justice'" -- hence your suggestion that
> *before* there could be a rise in living standards in the periphery,
> there would have to be "the abandonment of the towns and suburbs of
> America by their multimillioned inhabitants." We must, instead,
> begin to think in terms of class struggle between capital & labor,
> rather than trying to figure out a way to redistribute energy from
> the working class in rich nations to the working class in poor ones
> in today's world, because any *major* global redistribution of wealth
> to the periphery is *impossible* unless & until the working class in
> rich nations overthrow their ruling class. That means, first of all,
> the working class in rich nations, be they in cities, suburbs, or
> rural areas, have to learn to get better organized & *extract more
> from capital* -- higher wages, more free time, better working
> conditions, more social services, more environmental clean-ups, and
> so on -- in order to build their collective strength. The same goes
> for the working class in poor nations. As long as the working class
> are resigned to *neoliberal belt-tightening* demanded by capital, as
> they have been for the last couple of decades, they are far from
> taking even the first step toward social revolution.
>
> Yoshie
--
Frederick Guy
School of Management and Organizational Psychology
Birkbeck College
Malet St.
London WC1E 7HX
+44 [0] 20 7631 6773
+44 [0] 20 7631 6769 (fax)
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