Re: [Marxism] Red-tail hawk sighting

[brownh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Haines Brown)]

> From: Haines Brown
> > I fully agree with you that Marxism is tied to the natural
> > environment (and hence, to ecology), but I've yet to see a cogent
> > argument as to just why.
> 
> I haven't got the time or energy to address this properly at the
> moment, but in note form:
> 
> 1. Marxism is profoundly concerned with the material conditions of
> human life. Air, water, food, fibre...  All these things are
> fundamental to our concerns.
> 
> 2. Ecology bears on these concerns both directly and indirectly. A
> healthy "nature for humans" is a healthy "nature in itself". You
> can't have the first without the second. I just made up those
> phrases in quotes, so they have no particularly deep meaning, but I
> hope my intention is clear enough.
> 
> 3. Aside from these directly material aspects, human life without
> "nature" is impoverished. We're not just a bunch of meat robots. Can
> you imagine living in a world without red-tail hawks or their
> equivalents?

You mean well, and I don't want to pillory you, but really your
response is far from adequate. In fact it is not really a response at
all.

(1) Everyone is concerned with their "material conditions". We depend
on materials that are available in our environment and on
environmental stability. This only amounts to the simple statement
that we depend on our environment. It has absolutely nothing to do
with Marxism. It is just a very simplistic example of functionalism.

(2) Same for your observation (2) that human wellbeing depends on
nature's being healthy. Not only is this a mere functional relation
having nothing to do with Marxism, but there no such thing as a
"healthy nature" except that it is a state of nature that happens to
be conducive to our own health. To suggest that nature in itself
can be healthy is to confuse physics and biology.

(3) I find your comment (3) hard to fathom. You seem to say that our
relation with the natural environment does not come down to just
social reproduction, but involves some kind of relation that is not
only material, but is spiritual in some sense. This may be true in
religious terms, but hardly seems Marxist and hardly seems
scientific. Here you seem to confuse physics and human psychology.

Let me restate my initial query in stronger terms. Marx and the
classic Marxists said virtually nothing about the natural environment
for obvious reasons. Contemporary Marxists say little if anything
about it, although hopefully I'm wrong here. That we depend on nature
and that capitalism is very destructive of our environment are just
platitudes and hardly represent an explanation of just why that is
so. Whenever I've feebly attempted such an integration of environment
and Marxism, people don't understand why I bother or think it only an
irrelevant diversion.

-- 
 
       Haines Brown, KB1GRM
         Dialectical Materialist        
         
        

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