Hello there. There is a prevailing review
that being left wing means being green.
We're all meant to be watermelons green
on the outside and red on the inside.
This is a view I totally reject and I
have covered the issue to some extent in
the recent video on economic growth.
Staking a claim to be the biggest
watermelons are people who call
themselves ecological Marxists. They
claim that if Marx were around today he
would be a greeny. In their view he would be
like them and support organic
agriculture and a steady-state economy
based on renewable resources that would
provide everyone with so-called
sufficiency. In such a world the
economies of the poor countries would
increase a bit while those of the rich
countries would shrink quite a lot. The
most notable exponent of this view is
John Bellamy Foster the editor of the
Monthly Review. He goes through the
writings of Marx and tortures them
until they deliver what he wants.
Foster draws our attention to a number
of Marx's views that you could use to
start building a case that he was a
greeny. Marx was concerned about the
destruction of natural stocks of fertile
soil, forests and fish that were needed for
future generations. He also commented on
how consumption often included
frivolities that reflected people's alienation
rather than real needs and that human
thriving requires more than increased
consumption. Foster also correctly pointed
out that when Marx talked about
mastering nature he did not mean
destroying it but mastering its laws and
harnessing it accordingly. However from
here on the argument begins to get
really weird. Fster tries to extract
greenness from the fact that Marx was a
materialist who believed we lived in a
material world where we depend on
plants and animals for food, water to drink
and air to breathe. This is a rather
silly argument given that you would be
hard-pressed to find someone who
disagrees with this view.
Foster also miscontrues Marx's
constant reference to the fact that
capitalists are compelled by the forces
of competition to accumulate capital in
order to survive. He tries to make out
that Marx actually disapproved of this
phenomena. In fact Marx's view was that
this is what made capitalism superior
to previous class societies where the
ruling class wasted all the surplus
value on conspicuous consumption. Instead
of being compelled to accumulate these
societies were compelled to stagnate. By
reinvesting most of the surplus value
capitalism delivers economic and social
progress. Foster also picks up on Marx's
analysis of the contradiction between
town and country. In the separation of town
and country Marx was concerned about two
things. Firstly it stuntedl the brains of
those in the country and ruined the
physical health of those in the cities.
Secondly It meant a break in the nutrient
cycle as human waste and food scraps
were not returned to the farm but instead
dumped in rivers or the ocean. This
transfer of people from the land to
cities was an inevitable part
of capitalist development. Capitalist
farming needed less workers and the
cost to the soil and to workers of
concentrating the latter in the cities
was of no concern to industrial
capitalists. However these contradictions
are being resolved without having to
spread the population evenly over the
landscape. High density living in large
cities can now be quite healthy and
comfortable. Living in the countryside no
longer means being cut off from the
world given modern modes of transport
and communications. This modern transport
can also truck in fertilizer, be it human
waste, animal manure or the synthetic kind
that is now produced in abundance.
Indeed the present concern is excessive
nutrients and resulting emissions in the
groundwater or the atmosphere.
The bestl hope for dealing with this under
present conditions is through increased
regulation and better management including
greater adoption of precision farming.
The greening of Marx of course requires
Foster to explain away how Marx and
Engels talked about communism unleashing
the productive forces. He claimed this
thoroughly un-green viewpoint was
confined to their youthful less mature
writings. This is simply not true. Marx
in Critique of the Gotha program of
1875 and Engels in Anti Duhrin of 1877
both express pro-growth views. I have provided the
relevant quotes in the comment section
below. In the video on growth I argue
firstly that far greater levels of
material output are needed for communism
because it has to be based on shared
prosperity rather than shared poverty
and secondly that there are no
environmental or resource constraints
that prevent us from achieving high and
increasing levels of growth global
prosperity. I've provided a link to that
video below. See you next time.
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