Re: [Marxism] Marx and the natural environment

[brownh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Haines Brown)]

Aha, I snagged a reply. Thanks Louis.

> Unfortunately Haines Brown's emails don't get past my spam filter
> for some reason,

Since I use a simple text-based mail utility, I fear the reason may be
that my domain has been blacklisted. So many zombie machines use my
address that it has happened before.

> Haines wrote, " Marx and the classic Marxists said virtually nothing
> about the natural environment for obvious reasons."
> 
> Well, that's not really true. Engels wrote a book titled "The
> Dialectics of Nature" that included a section titled "The Role of
> Work in Transforming Ape into Man"

Yes, the labor theory of value seems to me the appropriate starting
point, but I still believe, as I indicate below, that Engels did not
develop an explanaton of our relation with nature, and Marx did not
offer one at all.

> Engels wrote:
> 
> "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.

What is Engels saying here? It seems that mankind and nature interact,
but, more than this, perhaps that this relation is a contradictory
one. I suggested exactly this in my last message, but it is a position
with which not many would agree today (those, for example, who advocate
a harmonious relation with nature). It seems like advocating
harmonious labor relations: they are a good thing as long as the
underlying contradiction is not forgotton. Engels goes on to offer
some examples of how our exploitation of nature tends to negate the
possibility that we can continue to exploit it; these are exampoles of
what we mean by contradiction.

While I had forgotten that Engels has made this point (thanks, Louis),
don't we really still lack an explanation of just why Engels' point is
true? (another thing I brought up in my last message).

> 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."

I suppose we would say today that all domains, including the human,
and including human consciousness, emerge from matter. Today that is
the conventional view in natural science, but in Marx and Engels' day
it was undoubtedly more contentious. But, still, merely saying this
(insisting on ontological monism) does not really offer an
explanation, but is merely a necessary precondition for one. That we
not merely adapt, but to some extent shape nature to accord with our
needs is not relevant here, but it presents a danger that someone
might infer from it that the human domination of nature means our
relation with nature need not be contradictory. But Engels had just
finished saying the opposite, and I would agree with him.

The real issue is, just why is our relation with nature contradictory?
Based on your quotations, Engels doesn't say, and at this point you
shift to discuss Marx. However, without elaborating, I get the feeling
that Marx's comments are really not relevant, and Engels' belief that
all production implies a contradictory relation with nature is about
as penetrating as Marxist discussion have ever (?) gotten.

> For his part, Marx was consumed with the problem of soil fertility

> as capitalist agriculture broke down the old organic interaction
> that took place on small, family farms. When a peasant plowed a
> field with ox or horse-drawn plows, used an outhouse, accumulated
> compost piles, etc., the soil's nutrients were replenished
> naturally. As capitalist agriculture turned the peasant into an
> urban proletariat, segregated livestock production from grain and
> food production, the organic cycle was broken and the soil gradually
> lost its fertility.

You are not only disagreeing with my position (that our relation with
nature is contradictory in all stages of history, not just under
capitalism), but appear to disagree with your own quotation from
Engels. True, capitalism aggravates the problem terribly, but that
does not imply that the contradiction did not exist before, right from
human origins, and (I'd argue) even under communism.

> The concluding paragraphs of the chapter on "The Transformation of
> Surplus Profit into Ground-Rent" in V. 3 of Capital are a succinct
> description of the problematic:

I won't belabor what follows because it does not seem to address the
basic issue: what explains our relationship with the environment, or
more specifically why or why not is it contradictory?

In the material you offer, Marx is suggesting that the conventional
criticism of the peasant economy also applies to large scale landed
property. The problem is that they are based on private property. I
doubt Marx is talking about real capitalist agriculture here, but
rather, latifundia. The dissipation of the natural environment is not
the result of capitalism, but of private property.

> Large-scale industry and industrially pursued large-scale
> agriculture have the same effect. If they are originally
> distinguished by the fact that the former lays waste and ruins
> labour-power and thus the natural power of man, whereas the latter
> does the same to the natural power of the soil, they link up in the
> later course of development, since the industrial system applied to
> agriculture also enervates the workers there, while industry and
> trade for their part provide agriculture with the means of
> exhausting the soil."

Yes, but was Marx talking about "industrially pursued large-scale
agriculture"? For Marx, surplus value in industry arose from
the dissipation of labor power, and as far as I can make out he does
not bring in a dissipation of the natural environment (such as limited
availability of raw materials, pollution, etc.) When he speaks of
agriculture, he seems to say that land is dissipated because of a
regime of private property, not because it is (yet) capitalist.

Perhaps I'm out on a limb in my interpretation of Marx on this point,
but the main thing is whether it engages the basic issue at all. I
tried suggest that a statement that we dissipate our natural
environment is only an empirical observation, is not specifically
Marxist and is not an explanation of mankind's relation with the
natural environment. It is merely a description. 

The fundamental difference between description and explanation is well
understood in the philosophy of science. Perhaps a simple way of
putting it is that explanation engages an element of necessity, which
description does not. Merely stating that capitalism is associated
with environmental deterioration is merely a descriptive
generalization, not an explanation.

-- 
 
       Haines Brown, KB1GRM
         Dialectical Materialist        
         
        

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