Re: The Vulnerable Planet (was Re: suburbia)

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

>  >>Yoshie:
> > > > Looking at the rise & decline of Mayan civilization allows us to see
> > > > the pre-capitalist dialectic of population & environment under a
> > > > tributary mode of production more clearly than looking at the Aztecs.
> > >
> > > No, Yoshie. The classic Mayan civilization had disintegrated long before
> > > the arrival of the Spaniards.
> >
> > That's exactly the point.
> >
> > Yoshie
>
> NO, Yoshie, this is not the point at all. You cited John Bellamy Foster
> about environmentally unsustainable practices in Mayan society and I
> corrected you with more recent research.

In your own words, "Not only is the archaelogical record subject to
multiple interpretations, the hieroglyphic language is not entirely
decipherable despite the best efforts of scholars like Robert J.
Sharer," so there's no last word here.  My point is simply that if
you want to know the dynamic internal to the tributary mode of
production in the New World, it's best to study it before its contact
with the Europeans.  I'd be very interested in Sharer's own theory of
how Mayan civilization collapsed, despite the possibility that
intensive agriculture was practiced by the Mayas.  Also, I'd like an
explanation as to why intensive agriculture is necessarily a blow
against all "ecological disaster" theories.

Yoshie