Re: Re: Re: Marxism and ecology

[Tim Bousquet]

http://halltravel.com/general/13.shtml

--- Ann Li <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> He still is? I recall coming across something about
> that in the 80s.
> 
> BTW, I just got back from a conference where
> displaced media workers from
> silicon gulch and silicon valley refer to themselves
> as "dot-communists".
> 
> Ann
> 
> - Original Message -
> From: "Michael Pugliese" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2001 8:20 AM
> Subject: [PEN-L:14019] Re: Marxism and ecology
> 
> 
> >Lee Baxandall, who edited a collection on
> marxism and aesthetics in the
> > 70's, now edits a nudist magazine.
> > Michael Pugliese
> >
> > - Original Message -
> > From: "Keaney Michael" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2001 1:07 AM
> > Subject: [PEN-L:14001] Marxism and ecology
> >
> >
> > > Chris Burford wrote:
> > >
> > > Marxism is neither sentimental humanism nor
> sentimental naturism.
> > >
> > > =
> > >
> > > I had a hunch those Nudists for Nader were
> suspect.
> > >
> > > Michael K.
> > >
> >
> >
> 


=
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Re: Re: Re: Marxism and ecology

[Doug Henwood]

Ann Li wrote:

>BTW, I just got back from a conference where displaced media workers from
>silicon gulch and silicon valley refer to themselves as "dot-communists".

The term has been around for a while. See Richard Barbrook at 
.

Doug

Re: Re: Marxism and ecology

[Ann Li]

He still is? I recall coming across something about that in the 80s.

BTW, I just got back from a conference where displaced media workers from
silicon gulch and silicon valley refer to themselves as "dot-communists".

Ann

- Original Message -
From: "Michael Pugliese" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2001 8:20 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:14019] Re: Marxism and ecology


>Lee Baxandall, who edited a collection on marxism and aesthetics in the
> 70's, now edits a nudist magazine.
> Michael Pugliese
>
> - Original Message -
> From: "Keaney Michael" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2001 1:07 AM
> Subject: [PEN-L:14001] Marxism and ecology
>
>
> > Chris Burford wrote:
> >
> > Marxism is neither sentimental humanism nor sentimental naturism.
> >
> > =
> >
> > I had a hunch those Nudists for Nader were suspect.
> >
> > Michael K.
> >
>
>

Re: Marxism and ecology

[Michael Pugliese]

   Lee Baxandall, who edited a collection on marxism and aesthetics in the
70's, now edits a nudist magazine.
Michael Pugliese

- Original Message -
From: "Keaney Michael" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2001 1:07 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:14001] Marxism and ecology


> Chris Burford wrote:
>
> Marxism is neither sentimental humanism nor sentimental naturism.
>
> =
>
> I had a hunch those Nudists for Nader were suspect.
>
> Michael K.
>

Marxism and ecology

[Keaney Michael]

Chris Burford wrote:

Marxism is neither sentimental humanism nor sentimental naturism.

=

I had a hunch those Nudists for Nader were suspect.

Michael K.

Re: Marxism and ecology

[Chris Burford]

At 25/06/01 14:02 -0400, Louis Proyect wrote:

>No kidding.


>Geez, I did not know that.


>Recent reading has convinced me that it is time to reconsider dialectical
>materialism, the unjustly maligned attempt by Marx and Engels to provide a
>unified analysis of society and nature.


That is not what dialectical materialism is.


>an
>updated version can provide insights into the environmental crisis that
>historical materialism simply can not.


Always assuming the update is accurate and not an adaption of something else.



>(By the
>way, there's an essay by this guy named Michael Perelman titled "Marx and
>Resource Scarcity" in there as well. It's pretty gosh-darned good.)



>Vaillancourt singles out Engels's "Anti-Duhring" and the "Dialectics of
>Nature" for special consideration since they are more directly concerned
>with nature and ecology than any of the previous writings of Marx and
>Engels. They are also considered bulwarks of dialectical materialist
>thought. The "Dialectics of Nature" contains the famous chapter "The Role
>of Work in Transforming Ape into Man."

I cannot comment on the work by Vaillancourt but Louis Proyect dwells on 
this particular article by Engels to imply that the "Dialectics of Nature" 
is an ecological work.

It is not.

It is the last of a collection of articles with titles about Motion, Heat, 
and Electricity. It is followed by other notes and fragments covering 
themes like Mathematics, Mechanics and Astronomy, Physics and Chemistry. 
The last fragment, Biology, might be most likely to portray an ecological 
perspective if that was a general theme of this work, but it does not.

The article known as "The Part Played by Labour in the Transition form Ape 
to Man" is an extremely creative work which is rightly quoted to show the 
compatability of marxism with ecological concerns but it would be quite 
wrong to go away with an unquestioned assumption that "the Dialectics of 
Nature" is about ecology.  The particular article was originally written as 
an introduction to a more extensive work entitled "The Three Basic Forms of 
Slavery" but this was not completed.


After one of the most famous passages Louis Proyect goes on to quote the 
next passage:

>"And, in fact, with every day that passes we are acquiring a better
>understanding of these laws and getting to perceive both the more immediate
>and the more remote consequences of our interference with the traditional
>course of nature. In particular, after the mighty advances made by the
>natural sciences in the present century, we are more than ever in a
>position to realise, and hence to control, also the more remote natural
>consequences of at least our day-to-day production activities. But the more
>this progresses the more will humanity not only feel but also know their
>oneness with nature, and the more impossible will become the senseless and
>unnatural idea of a contrast between mind and matter, humanity and nature,
>soul and body, such as arose after the decline of classical antiquity in
>Europe and obtained its highest elaboration in Christianity."


If Louis Proyect had continued still further, he would have read:

"But if it has already required the labour of thousands of years for us to 
learn to some extent how to evaluate the more remote *natural* effects of 
our actions directed towards production, this has been even more difficult 
in regard to the more remote *social* effects. ... The men who in the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries laboured to create the steam engine 
had no idea that they were preparing the instrument which more than any 
other was to revolutionize social conditions throughout the world. 
Especially in Euorpe where it helped to concentrate wealth in the hands of 
a minority and to make the huge majority propertyless, this instrument was 
destined, first to give social and political domination to the bourgeoisie, 
but then to give rise to a class struggle between bourgeoise and 
proletariat which can end only in the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the 
abolition of all class antagonisms."

Louis Proyect does not understand that the previous chords were to prepare 
for this key change. Instead he dwells on Engels' formulation about our 
"oneness with nature".

[Apologies Michael, if this is a characterisation. Apologies to Lou if this 
is a *false* characterisation, but how can one argue against a serious 
misreading of an important text if one cannot say how one thinks it has 
been seriously misinterpreted?]


>When Engels states we will know our "oneness with nature", he is really
>hearkening back to the classical materialist roots of Marxism. After all,
>Marx wrote his PhD thesis on the philosophy of nature in Democritus and
>Epicurus. These philosophers are in the materialist tradition begun by
>Parmenides and Heraclitus, who lived a century before. This tradition is
>continued in the philosophy of Hippocrates, Aristotle and Theophrastus, who
>are the forerunners of the scie

Re: Marxism and ecology

[Michael Pugliese]

   Re; Diamat
"The Betrayal of Marx:Engels Contra Marx, " by
Bender, Frederic L.
early 70's. Not an Althusserian. "The Two Marxism's, " by Alvin Gouldner,
most definitely no fan of Althusser!

Marxism and ecology

[Louis Proyect]

Yoshie:
>rationing, & many Cubans depend upon access to dollars for 
>necessities.  In fact, it is probably very difficult for any one 
>nation to reconcile town & country, since the division between town & 
>country has an international dimension.

No kidding.

>
>And let's not forget that Marx also argued for "[e]xtension of 
>factories and instruments of production owned by the state," whether 
>you like it or not.

Geez, I did not know that.

>We can't destroy the planet but we can destroy our habitat -- through 
>war & pollution -- enough to make it largely inhabitable for humans. 
>I'm not familiar with Burkett's & Foster's "attacks" upon Jim 
>O'Connor's idea of "second contradiction."  You might discuss it here.

They think that capitalism will not go off the rails because of
environmental contradictions. In any case, I have my own views and allow
others to think what they want. That's what makes politics interesting.

Dialectical Materialism and Ecology

Recent reading has convinced me that it is time to reconsider dialectical
materialism, the unjustly maligned attempt by Marx and Engels to provide a
unified analysis of society and nature. Dialectical materialism has gotten
a bad reputation from its use in Soviet apologetics, but, despite this, an
updated version can provide insights into the environmental crisis that
historical materialism simply can not. 

Jean-Guy Vaillancourt's essay "Marx and Ecology: More Benedictine than
Franciscan" is contained in the collection "The Greening of Marxism"
(Guilford, 1996) raises this question in a most perceptive way. (By the
way, there's an essay by this guy named Michael Perelman titled "Marx and
Resource Scarcity" in there as well. It's pretty gosh-darned good.) 

Vaillancourt singles out Engels's "Anti-Duhring" and the "Dialectics of
Nature" for special consideration since they are more directly concerned
with nature and ecology than any of the previous writings of Marx and
Engels. They are also considered bulwarks of dialectical materialist
thought. The "Dialectics of Nature" contains the famous chapter "The Role
of Work in Transforming Ape into Man." 

Most people are quite familiar with the paragraph that describes how the
"conquest" of nature can have unexpected results: 

"Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human
victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on
us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results
we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different,
unforeseen effects which only too often cancel the first. The people who,
in Mesopotamia, Greece, Asia Minor and elsewhere, destroyed the forests to
obtain cultivable land, never dreamed that by removing along with the
forests the collecting centres and reservoirs of moisture they were laying
the basis for the present forlorn state of those countries. When the
Italians of the Alps used up the pine forests on the southern slopes, so
carefully cherished on the northern slopes, they had no inkling that by
doing so they were cutting at the roots of the dairy industry in their
region; they had still less inkling that they were thereby depriving their
mountain springs of water for the greater part of the year, and making it
possible for them to pour still more furious torrents on the plains during
the rainy seasons. Those who spread the potato in Europe were not aware
that with these farinaceous tubers they were at the same time spreading
scrofula. Thus at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over
nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing
outside nature -- but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to
nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in
the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able
to learn its laws and apply them correctly." 

What is less frequently quoted is the paragraph which immediately follows: 

"And, in fact, with every day that passes we are acquiring a better
understanding of these laws and getting to perceive both the more immediate
and the more remote consequences of our interference with the traditional
course of nature. In particular, after the mighty advances made by the
natural sciences in the present century, we are more than ever in a
position to realise, and hence to control, also the more remote natural
consequences of at least our day-to-day production activities. But the more
this progresses the more will humanity not only feel but also know their
oneness with nature, and the more impossible will become the senseless and
unnatural idea of a contrast between mind and matter, humanity and nature,
soul and body, such as arose after the decline of classical antiquity in
Europe and obtained its highest elaboration in Christianity." 

When Engels states we will know our "oneness with nature", he is really
hearkening back to the classical materialist roots of Marxism. A

[PEN-L:6017] Marxism and Ecology

[David Laibman]

Dear Pen,

 Letting you all know that the Fall 1996 issue of Science &
Society is now out.  It is a Special Issue on "Marxism and Ecology,"
guest edited by David Schwartzman, Biology, Howard University.
 Contents:
 Editor's Introduction
 Derek Lovejoy: Limits to Growth?
 Douglas H. Boucher: Not with a Bang but a Whimper
 John Vandermeer: Tragedy of the Commons: The Meaning of the
  Metaphor
 David Schwartzman: Solar Communism 
 Paul Burkett: Value, Capital and Nature: Some Ecological
  Implications of Marx's Critique of Political Economy
 P. T. Saroja Sundararajan: From Marxian Ecology to Ecological
  Marxism

The issue covers a striking range of topics, from population and 
energy studies to entropy, human-nature contradictions inherent
in the value form, to Helmholtz' parable on two-dimensional beings.
Much food for thought.

Sub and single issue info from Guilford Publications, 72 Spring
Street, New York NY 10012; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; 1-800-365-7006.
Subs (four issues) are (still!) $23.00.

 David Laibman
 Editor, Science & Society