Re: Harvey and environmentalist movement (Re: Boucher's entire article
Nathan said: Yes, there are grassroots environmental groups with a broader consciousness, Earth First! being an obvious example, but they are so marginal to the broader movement that it's a bit like citing the United Electrical workers and saying the union movement during the Cold War was not hostile to leftists. Louis then said: /When Nathan speaks of the "broader movement," we must translate that into /plain English. This is nothing else but the liberal wing of the Democratic /Party, to which he is strongly attached. It is interesting that Nathan /attacks the Sierra Club for selling out the movement, when mainstream green /groups such as these are so cozy with the Clinton adminstration, which he /supports. The twists and turns of reformist politics are almost impossible /to decipher. Your statement makes clear that you do have no understanding of any politics that doesn't fit your ideological viewpoint, but the issue is how the environmental movement has become narrow (not "sold out"). The Sierra Club is holding a vote on whether to support restricting immigration. Whether it fits your ideological blinders or not, the California Democratic Party and most Democratic elected officials opposed Proposition 187. For the Sierra Club to be holding a vote to join the racists on the rightwing is not about "reformist politics" but about the fundamental narrowness of the environmental movement in regards to any broader progressive vision. As for the "liberal wing of the Democratic Party", the movement should be and usually is far more than an adjunct to party. Frankly, most progressive groups have little relationship to electoral politics. But most have strong relationships with other facets of the progressive movement, but aside from some alliances on trade issues, the environmental movement has been notably narrow in their approach to building broader alliances. My first political reading was SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL and Murray Bookchin, not Marx, and the disconnection of environmentalism from the broader vision of ecological justice promoted by those folks is a source of infinite disappointment. --Nathan Newman
Harvey and environmentalist movement (Re: Boucher's entire article
-Original Message- From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [Harvey's] latest book is a highly sophisticated attempt to set directions for Marxist participation in the green movement. Anybody who took his advice to heart would soon alienate green activists. It is filled with lectures about the need to break with green reformism. Deep ecologists are regarded with barely disguised hostility. The problem is that any social movement--feminism, gay liberation, black liberation--has its own dynamics. You can not project "correct" Marxist schemas on such movements from the sidelines. That is what the Spartacist League does. The great misfortune of the US Marxist left is that it treated this movement with disdain or hostility from its inception. This means that anti-Marxists, either of the liberal or anarchist variety, have had a field-day. Marxists should participate with an open mind and even attempt to learn from green activists. I certainly have. Harvey's book, unfortunately, is an agenda for trying to "correct" the movement. As someone who started out his political career in the mainstream environmental movement, as a student activist in the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group, and moved into a more "left" activism because of its failings, I think there is much to correct in the environmental movement from any position, left, right or center. As we speak, the Sierra Club is having a national vote on whether to restrict immigration as a core solution to pollution problems. The Wilderness Society has already passed a resolution defining immigration as an environmental problem. You don't have to be a Marxist to see those kinds of resolutions as profoundly anti-internationalism, racist and xenophobic. It is environmentalists who have continually split their own movement by systematically alienating whole blocks of people in often callous disregard for jobs, environmental racism and coalition-building. Not that there are not environmental activists of the highest caliber who are concerned about all of those things, but as a "movement", environmentalism has become largely a checkbook industry playing to the narrowest middle-class concerns possible in order to attract contributions. In my younger days, I was a telephone fundraising supervisor at a firm that did fundraising to members of: Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund, Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, Audobon Society and almost the whole list. To maximize their contributions, they divided environmental issues into bite-size nuggets they could specialize in while ignoring the deeper unifying issues at the root of environmental exploitation. Frankly, the middle class members on the phone were far more committed to broad alliances and ending artificial divisions than the "movement" leadership which enjoyed their individual fiefdoms. Emblematic of these problems is the secession of the environmental justice movement from those groups, in the form of the Southwest Network for Environmental Justice and a range of other regional and national network of primarily working class people of color committed to environmental survival and economic justice. At this point, you can set up a political coalition around any issue from welfare to peace to jobs and the civil rights groups will be there, the peace groups will be there, the unions will be there (usually), the religious community will be there, but the environmentalists will most likely say "that's not our issue" and stay in their little cubbyhole. I consideder myself an environmentalist and my early activism informs my work, but as a "movement", environmentalism is largely a decayed and rotting set of check-book fiefdoms with little commitment to any issue that doesn't keep the checks rolling in. Yes, there are grassroots environmental groups with a broader consciousness, Earth First! being an obvious example, but they are so marginal to the broader movement that it's a bit like citing the United Electrical workers and saying the union movement during the Cold War was not hostile to leftists. --Nathan Newman
Re: Boucher's entire article
From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Boucher's entire article A VISION OF ECOLOGICAL CATASTROPHE is becoming increasingly prominent in leftist thought. . . . Thanks for uploading this splendid article, though obviously you and others don't see it that way. The depiction of environmental problems as one of imminent crisis, or of certain limited damage (such as the loss of a species) as costly beyond reckoning propitiates an environmental movement which will necessarily and logically place such concerns before the mundane preoccupations of the working class with jobs and income. Thus the ecological prescriptions of the ruling class will be accepted, even while viewed as second best next to some unattainable red-green nirvana. So the environmentalists will (and do) tend to be anti-worker and workers, listening to equations of environmentalism with leftism, will (and have) turn right. We will end up with a marxism devoid of workers, beyond the occasional cheerleading for infrequent, albeit important labor actions like the UPS strike. The "left" will redefine as bourgeois greenies and we happy few PEN-L oddballs. Then we're really screwed, and so is the ecology. We've been here before. Out of frustration with the lack of any crisis or insurgency among the U.S. working class, some people -- the Weather underground being the most extreme example -- lost whatever grip they may have had on class. In the face of an infernal calm, in terms of the amoral workings of capitalism, we cast about for signs of economic collapse and now ecological catastrophe. As (if) the labor movement develops, it should become more environmentally conscious. But you can't get there from here, here being environmentalism as a movement. Green will never run into red. Imagining heroic deeds and epochal victories in a crisis is easy. More difficult is infusing such spirit and goals into the routine of everyday life and its struggles. Cheers, MBS "Save the planet. Kill yourself." -- bumper sticker sold in WDC === Max B. SawickyEconomic Policy Institute [EMAIL PROTECTED] 1660 L Street, NW 202-775-8810 (voice) Ste. 1200 202-775-0819 (fax)Washington, DC 20036 http://tap.epn.org/sawicky Opinions above do not necessarily reflect the views of anyone associated with the Economic Policy Institute other than this writer. ===
The Sins of Harvey (was Re: Boucher's entire article)
At 09:58 AM 2/23/98 -0500, Louis wrote: In "What is to be Done" Lenin cites 3 examples of what tasks a "vanguard" should undertake... Lous, why did you feel the need to cite Lenin chapter verse to argue that sectarianism is bad? Harvey draws a dichotomy between proletarian concerns: working conditions, wages, rights to a job, etc. He sneers at the "middle class" concerns raised on Earth Day in 1970. But it _was_ organized around middle class concerns--at least, that's what I remember back in elementary school, when I participated. :) And that was a real problem. Nice middle class people like me had legitimate concerns, but it was pretty elitist to push a strategy where blue collar jobs would be on the line middle class jobs weren't. Had someone pointed that out to me at the time and suggested a strategy that would save trees, dolphins, _and_ people, I would've been very happy (and I might have stayed active in the environmental movement). His latest book is a highly sophisticated attempt to set directions for Marxist participation in the green movement. Anybody who took his advice to heart would soon alienate green activists. It is filled with lectures about the need to break with green reformism. Deep ecologists are regarded with barely disguised hostility. The problem is that any social movement--feminism, gay liberation, black liberation--has its own dynamics. You can not project "correct" Marxist schemas on such movements from the sidelines. That is what the Spartacist League does. But criticizing green reformism or deep ecologists is hardly an outside activity. Various wings of the environmentalist movement fight each other all the time. I know plenty of environmental activists who think green reformism ala the cuddling up with Clinton turned out to be a real disaster and many who think that the deep ecology folks are off the deep end. Just because Harvey calls himself a Marxist (assuming he does these days) writes books that badly need editing is no reason to ban him from the intra-envrionmental fray. I look forward to seeing your close reading of Harvey--supplemented by that wonderful scanner of yours. In Solidarity, Anders Schneiderman P.S. For the record, I think Harvey is a very smart guy--one of the most interesting lefty theorists around. I just wish he wrote more clearly. However, Harvey is also one of the few theorists who gets down dirty in politics. I remember a prof at UC Berkeley who sneered at Harvey because he did door-knocking, getting-out-the-vote, and other unglamorous work, which in my book is a pretty cool thing for a theorist to do.
Re: The Sins of Harvey (was Re: Boucher's entire article)
R. Anders Schneiderman: Lous, why did you feel the need to cite Lenin chapter verse to argue that sectarianism is bad? Because I am in the process of collecting my thoughts for a more formal reply to Harvey. Harvey tries to stake out a classic Marxist position on social movements, but I will argue that it is only classic sectarianism. But it _was_ organized around middle class concerns--at least, that's what I remember back in elementary school, when I participated. :) And that was a real problem. Nice middle class people like me had legitimate concerns, but it was pretty elitist to push a strategy where blue collar jobs would be on the line middle class jobs weren't. Had someone pointed that out to me at the time and suggested a strategy that would save trees, dolphins, _and_ people, I would've been very happy (and I might have stayed active in the environmental movement). Earth Day 1970 was the brainchild of a Wisconsin liberal senator Gaylord Nelson, who while thumbing through a copy of Ramparts magazine focusing on ecology, decided that action was needed. He proposed a day of action. This is identical to what happened with the Vietnam Moratorium in the same year. 2 liberals proposed the action and Marxists got involved with it and pushed it in a left direction. If it hadn't been for Marxists, the Moratorium would have retained flabby, middle-class politics. Since Marxists have avoided the ecology movement, the results have been flabby, middle-class politics. But criticizing green reformism or deep ecologists is hardly an outside activity. Various wings of the environmentalist movement fight each other all the time. I know plenty of environmental activists who think green reformism ala the cuddling up with Clinton turned out to be a real disaster and many who think that the deep ecology folks are off the deep end. Just because Harvey calls himself a Marxist (assuming he does these days) writes books that badly need editing is no reason to ban him from the intra-envrionmental fray. The fight in the ecology movement is between grass-roots radicals and the corporate oriented mainstream groups like the Sierra Club. What is missing from the mix is socialism. There is not much of a socialist presence in the movement. I am not for banning Harvey. I am for fighting sectarianism. Louis Proyect
Re: Boucher's entire article
I'd be interested to hear your analysis of Harvey's position. Again, from what you cite here, it hardly seems like a sectarian sin. Isn't Harvey's complaint about exactly the kind of problem that led to the Environmental Justice movement? Anders Schneiderman In "What is to be Done" Lenin cites 3 examples of what tasks a "vanguard" should undertake. He says that the German Social Democracy of Kautsky was a model. It did the following: --defended the rights of artists to write or paint without censorship. --backed the right of a liberal politician to be seated in the legislature over the objections of the Junkers. --defended the rights of universities to select their own rectors. The point that he was making was that narrow, "economistic" demands should not exclusively make up the socialist program. He made these points in the context of a polemic with the Russian "economist" wing of the Social Democracy, but they remain true today. Harvey draws a dichotomy between proletarian concerns: working conditions, wages, rights to a job, etc. He sneers at the "middle class" concerns raised on Earth Day in 1970. While I regard Harvey as one of the most important Marxist theorists on the scene today--especially around the question of the role of "spatiality" in capital formation--, I regard him as a political novice. His latest book is a highly sophisticated attempt to set directions for Marxist participation in the green movement. Anybody who took his advice to heart would soon alienate green activists. It is filled with lectures about the need to break with green reformism. Deep ecologists are regarded with barely disguised hostility. The problem is that any social movement--feminism, gay liberation, black liberation--has its own dynamics. You can not project "correct" Marxist schemas on such movements from the sidelines. That is what the Spartacist League does. The great misfortune of the US Marxist left is that it treated this movement with disdain or hostility from its inception. This means that anti-Marxists, either of the liberal or anarchist variety, have had a field-day. Marxists should participate with an open mind and even attempt to learn from green activists. I certainly have. Harvey's book, unfortunately, is an agenda for trying to "correct" the movement. I have been reading selections over the past couple of weeks and plan to go through it systematically when I have the time. It has not gotten much notice in the left press and it is important to have a discussion over it. It represents an important contribution to the green-red dialectic and can not be ignored. Louis Proyect
Re: Boucher's entire article
Boucher's article seemed to be much weaker than I had expected. He seemed to be attacking straw men. What eco-Marxist would take a position that we should sit back then just deferred to science? What eco-Marxist would ignore politics altogether and stake her or his politics on some future catastrophe? In a sense, he seemed to be using the same critique of eco-politics that Russell Jacoby used to attack Kautsky and the politics of the third international some years back. In Jacoby's analysis, Kautsky and his group emphasized crisis theory because they preferred to wait for an economic crisis rather than to take political action. His second straw man seemed to be the notion that accepting scientific analysis of was tantamount to assuming that political and economic factors do not have significant effects. For example, a scientist may inform us that pesticides are having a harmful affect on our health. Of course, any sane person would realize the social and political forces that lie behind the application of the pesticides. No sane person would merely accept a purely scientific analysis and just wait for a catastrophe to unfold. Louis's comment about David Harvey working with the inner city people in Baltimore suggests a more serious critique all eco-Marxist. In fact, if Harvey is doing what Lewis said, then he is acting as an eco-Marxist in the best sense of the word. We should be critical of some of the oversight's environmentalists, as David Harvey suggests, but that hardly constitutes a reason to abandon eco-Marxism. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 916-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Boucher's entire article
Louis was kind enough to post Boucher's article. After reading it, I was a little confused about Louis' argument w/ Boucher. Although the piece has its problems, Boucher ends on what seems to me to be a respectable position for a Marxist: [snip] If it is possible that modern capitalism can continue to grow without causing the end of either the planet or itself, then we would be faced with a different kind of disaster: one of the gradual impoverishment of both the world's peoples and its biological diversity. The most dangerous error for the left would be to continue waiting for an historic global environmental catastrophe that would cause revolutionary change. For the left, the strategic error we need to guard against is awaiting a disaster that never comes. Rather than expect environmental degradation to build up to the breaking point, we should be recognizing the terrible damage it has done already, and continues to do as "civilization" continues to "develop." The principal reason to stop pollution, deforestation, overexploitation and the impoverishment of the biosphere is not the danger of future catastrophe, but the immense ongoing suffering they are causing, especially to the world's poor, right now. The economic and spiritual costs of environmental destruction need to be confronted and stopped, precisely because no ecological collapse is likely to come along and halt them otherwise. Things will simply get worse little by little, with a diminishing quality of life for succeeding generations. The ultimate danger, ironically, is that no global catastrophe will ever come -- that the health of both the planet and human society will simply decay, world without end. The task of preventing this by transforming society is not nature's, but our own. This doesn't sound to me like someone who, as Louis was complaining, is dismissing the importance of the environment. It sounds more like someone saying, we're in deep ecological shit right now, but that scaring people about an impending end of the world as a means to catalyze them into radical action is a bad strategy. I can see arguments either way; as someone who became a leftie during the anti-nuke campaign, I'm pretty skeptical about trying to change people by scaring them with end-of-the-world visions, even if (especially if?) those visions are true. But even if you disagree w/ Boucher's point, it's hardly the stance of someone who doesn't take the environment seriously. One more comment. In another post, Louis said: Harvey's position is rather interesting and I plan to discuss it at length when I get the chance. He works with black activists in the Baltimore area--to his credit--and he has absorbed their hostility to middle-class environmentalism of the Sierra Club variety. Harvey bitterly comments that such people cared more about chicken exrement run-off in poultry plants in the south than the horrible working conditions of the black employees. This is classic sectarianism. Socialists do not belittle one form of oppression against another. Sneering at the concerns that some people have over polluted water is not what builds a socialist movement. Socialists have to figure out ways to tie these struggles together and not apply such litmus tests. - I'd be interested to hear your analysis of Harvey's position. Again, from what you cite here, it hardly seems like a sectarian sin. Isn't Harvey's complaint about exactly the kind of problem that led to the Environmental Justice movement? Anders Schneiderman
