[PEN-L:28629] Re: Re: industrialized farming

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 7/26/02 10:00:15 AM Pacific Daylight Time, lnp3@xxxxxxxxx writes:


> >Here in California, we have industrialized farming, with chemical
> >fertilizers, pesticides, etc., but it's hard to describe it as involving
> >monoculture.
>
>
> Really? I was under the impression that lettuce farms grew only lettuce,
> while tomato farms grew only tomato, etc.
>
> >BTW, I think that "commercial" or "commercialized" farming is a better
> >term, referring to the profit-seeking motive. "Industrialized" focuses on
> >the technique, which glosses over the commercial causes of use of
> >destructive "industrial" techniques.
>
> No, I am actually referring to industrial in the sense of the factory
> system. In factories, we welcome new technologies that can improve
> productivity. But you cannot simply replicate this in the countryside
> because it introduces new contradictions. The "Green Revolution," which has
> been ballyhooed as farming based on the industrial model, has produced all
> of the ill effects that Marx was addressing in v. 3 of Capital.


Abolition of the antithesis between town and country, between industry and agriculture is a well known problem which was discussed long ago by Marx and Engels. The economic basis of this antithesis is the exploitation of the country by the town, the expropriation of the peasantry and the ruin of the majority of the rural population - in America small farmers, by the whole course of development of industry, trade and credit under capitalist relations of production.

The antithesis between town and country under capitalism must be regarded as an antagonism of interests.

The industrialization of agriculture is a specific historical phase of development that emerges with the transition from manufacture to industry proper. The use of dangerous chemical fertilizers, pesticides, etc., is criminal contempt for humanity and bloodlust for profits.

Nevertheless, industrialization of agriculture is historically inescapable. One may as well condemn the invention of the plow and the steel tip plow as spoiling nature. The major historical result of industrialization of agriculture is not the deadly chemicals but the displacement of the population and their conversion into modern proletarians.

Although Marx and Engels spoke of this problem of agriculture - town and country, in a general theoretical sense and based on the transition from feudal economic and social relations, the concrete resolution is a serious question immediately facing society.

If this was not enough we are facing a new level - stage, in the development of agricultural production with the advent of the biogenetic revolution and mass production of molecular incomplete food stuff (produce). The molecular incompleteness consist in the planned inability for spontaneous reproduction as "seed bearing fruit."  

As of yet, I have not run across any information of the net analyzing the alkaline content of this molecular incomplete produce and cannot abstract any theoretical conclusions.

However, we have reached a boundary in the evolution of the production forces to access the impact of industrialization on mankind and in terms of agriculture there is a profound "downside."

Less than twenty years ago an immense struggle erupted over PCB poisoning in Michigan and this was one of the corner stones of the last Vote Communist Campaigns in America.

It should not be forgotten that America is a country without historically evolved feudal social and economic relations and the attitude of the working class, and consequently Marxism, is devoid of a certain patriarchal striving.

Perhaps, I should have reformulated the last sentence in deference to large portions of the worlds people.

Sorry.




Melvin P.