RE: [Marxism] Marx and the natural environment

["Mark Lause" <MLause@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I mentioned Charles Fourier (1772-1837) earlier.  There's a lot written on
him and his ideas, which were terribly influential in the U.S.  In
Fourierism, socialism was entirely about the reconciliation of humanity with
nature and the cycles of the natural world.  Capitalism represented
disharmony and its abolition would allow for further human
development...because it would allow for the further development of nature.

Carl Guarneri's UTOPIAN ALTERNATIVE offers a very good look at the
Fourierist movement in the U.S., though I think a focus on the movement per
se rather minimizes its broader influences.  It was essential for the kind
broader social critique abolitionists offered beyond slavery--one of the
really exciting areas that's historians have begun exploring relatively
recently.  It's emphasis on women's rights was broadly very important.  More
subtly, many of its ideas and language shaped the much larger spiritualist
movement, which was riddled with a radical critique of the role of
capitalism in the material world.

In terms of our movement here, the founding groups were surely as much
influenced by Fourier and others, as by Marx.

So, too, the various anticapitalist currents that have surfaced periodically
alongside Marxism often included insightful critiques of what the economic
system does to nature...particularly Henry George's Single Tax movement and
the various manifestations of what became Populism.

In the end, I think the real genius of Marx was largely synthesizing older
ideas and interpretations.  At least in the U.S., radicals who come along
later are heavily disposed to exaggerate their differences with those who
went before them (and did not succeed).  So, too, Marx and the
self-described "scientific socialists" exaggerate their differences with the
pre-Marxist "utopian socialists."

Solidarity!
Mark L.





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