Re: Re: My looniness

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Charles Brown wrote:

> >>> cbcox@xxxxxxxxx 06/28/00 05:27PM >>>And Rod also wrote:
>
>  It's just that as
> a point of departure global warming will not work.
>
> )))))))))))))))))
>
> CB: I don't think the facts of the recent history of party formation support you here, Carrol. The biggest new party in the world in the last 40 years is the Greens. We are a long way from Lady Bird's "Don't be a litterbug" campaign.

Long range threats to the environment will, I admit, energize many people, but
there seems to be at least two limits: (a) the issue itself reverberates at all
for only a relatively small number of people and (b) within that constituency
too many flake off in weird directions (witness Dennis Redmond on the
Marxism list putting whales before Indian literation. My original point was
that *within* larger movements otherwise generated concern for the
environment and the long range health of humanity will further energize
those movements, but that they will never emerge from a primray focus
on the environment. I think the rest of your post supports my point.

> Another example, the one demonstration held in conjunction with the Detroit BRC meeting was to protest a polluted dump on Wabash street. A leader of Detroiters for Environmental Justice was a co-chair of the BRC host committee.

Two big points here. First, the BRC did not arise from environmental concern but
(and rightly so) has incorporated environmental concers into its program. The
second point in a way is even bigger. The particular action you cite fits David
Harvey's picture of environmental action, and David Harvey is categorized by
Lou as a "Brown Marxist." I doubt that the protestors would have taken time
out from more important business (political or personal) to leaflet on Wabash
Ave. not about the local dump but on the dangers of Detroit drowning in
Lake Erie 50 years from now.

>
> I think a lot more people than explicitly express it now, have by common sense in the back of their mind a concern that they can't just keep "partying" at this level without paying  the piper eventually.

I agree. That is why I believe environmental and energy concerns should figure
prominently in any left program. But the program has to be founded on other concerns.

> It is like smoking cigarettes. If given a way and if everybody else starts stopping,  they would like to stop.

Tsk Tsk Charles. Do I perceive methodological individualism raising its sinister
head. :-)

>
> Also, to me , the struggle against nuclear weapons is half an "environmental" struggle.

Granted. That is abstractly true. But I am talking about the tasks of *building*
a working-class movement. I argue that environment can be an important but
still subordinate part of that movement. The movement against nuclear weapons
did gather to it many people from many different walks of life and political
perspectives -- but frankly I dout it would have come into existence to reach
that movement were it not for the various CPs linked to the USSR.

What I'm arguing for is more consideration of the way various issues and
potential issues link to each other and world conditions now. I think that,
temporarily at least, Mark and Lou are so focused on global warming
and energy depletion that (even assuming them to be correct in that
concern)  they are losing their political senses. Lenin remarks on the
common fact of petty-bourgeois youth driven to a frenzy by the horrors
of imperialism. He should have said conscious people from all classes
being so driven. I fear that Lou and Mark are similarly being driven to
an (unthinking) frenzy by the environmental horrors they perceive.

Carrol