Wednesday 6 November: Marx, Ecology and the Climate Emergency
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This looks interesting in view of some of the speakers:
https://www.imhojournal.org/events/marx-ecology-and-the-climate-emergency/
Kohei Saito is an expert on Marx’s scientific notebooks which have been discussed here.
It’s also a couple of days before our own meeting on the same subject:
A good opportunity for the feminists of the socialist party to recruit women and get new contacts One of the speakers has written extensively on feminism Personally I have participated in several women marches and I was a member of an organization which was conducted by women Truth is shown by practice not by theory alone
Three members went to this meeting to leaflet it for ours on the same subject on Saturday. We also stayed for the meeting and said something during the discussion. There were about 30 there.
It was a bit disappointing to hear Peter Hudis advocate workers cooperative producing for the market as an emergency measure to do something about climate change before the UN deadline of 2030, especially as he has written extensively against “market socialism”. His justfication was that, as socialism was not going to happen within 12 years, something had to be done to stop a climate disaster that would make socialism impracticable. But this is to beg the question by assuming that such a threat could be averted while retaining a market economy. Anyway, if workers could be persuaded to take over the market economy they might as well go the hold hog and establish socialism.
Kohei Saito was the most interesting on his conclusion, after studying some of Marx’s recently published scientific notebooks, that Marx was not a “productivist” but was concerned with the “metabolic rift” between production and nature that capitalist production caused by not returning to nature elements it extracted from it. We had a discussion with him afterwards in the pub.
Heather Brown did not speak on feminism (why should she) but on use-value and exchange-value.
A couple of Buddhists in the audience tried to argue that Marx was a bit of a Buddhist. We were tempted to ask if their solution to the “metabolic rift” was for humans to be re-incarnated as worms or even extinct species. But didn’t.
They can write a hundred books, and study Marx the whole day, but in the end, they always end up supporting reformism, Marx was a revolutionary intellectual. It is very sad to see Peter taking that route on cooperatives, and stepping on what he has prior written, now he agrees with Richard Wolf and the Vietcong leaders who also support market socialism.
There are many new things that are going to be discovered about Marx when they publish the longer MEGA edition, as Engels said: It was too much work for one man. Lenin also said that it was going to take a long period to establish socialism, but the thing is that they do not think that the working class can do it by itself, it is the same conception of the vanguard party to lead, it is very difficult to move away from that conception
https://newsandletters.org/essay-saitos-ecosocialism-rejects-marxs-philosophic-moment/. Saito ecosocialism, rejects Marx’s philosophic moment, N&L
https://monthlyreview.org/2014/06/01/marx-on-gender-and-the-family-a-summary/. Heather Brown has the same view as Raya Dunayevskaya and the same conclusion that they have had on Engels, regarding his book on the Family. Socialists for many years have said that the main objective of socialism is the liberation of mankind despite the colour of our skins, our nationalities, geographic origin, gender, sex, and sexual orientation. The important idea in this book is the conception of the state, its history and how it emerged
https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/510-marx-s-concept-of-the-alternative-to-capitalism. Personally, I think Adam Buick’s Alternative to capitalism it is a much better description of the alternative to capitalism, simple, concise, and objective
Under title of ‘Degrowth and Marxism: A Critique’, here is the CWO’s review of Kohei Saito’s ‘Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism’ (2023):
https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-07-25/degrowth-and-marxism-a-critique
(I see there are at least three different threads on this forum where Saito’s name comes up. I suppose this one is as good as another.)
One problem with “degrowth” is that it is linked to “growth” as currently defined as an increase in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This is a measure of the market price of all the goods and services that are newly sold in the course of a period, say a year. In other words, it assumes a common unit of account by which to measure what is produced — in the instance, money. (GDP also has other defects such as double counting government spending and not counting resources that are used but not to produce a product for sale).
Obviously in socialism the present concept of GDP can’t exist since money will not exist either as a measure of value or as a unit of account. But it is still clear that there will be a decrease in waste such as, in fact, anything to do with money and of course the armed forces and their armaments. That will represent “degrowth” as measured by the current definition. On the other hand, there will be an increase in the production of goods and services and infrastructure and amenities to meet people’s needs (though here too savings can be made through recycling, standard spare parts, etc.).
Since the main units of account (plural, since there won’t be a a single, general one) will physical units of particular products (calculation in kind) “degrowth” would be a reduction in the amount of some of these, eg fossil fuels, some types of plastic. But such degrowth could only take place rationally on the basis of the common ownership of resources and the ending of production for sale and profit and of the economic laws to which it gives rise.
For a socialist attempt to use the concept of general degrowth in terms of less labour time employed see:
ps I see that the CWO are arguing that capitalism is more likely to lead to a world war than to ecological collapse.
And here is the ICC’s review of that same Saito book:https://en.internationalism.org/content/17488/critique-saitos-degrowth-communism
Saito’s book “Slow Down: How Degrowth Communism Can Save the Earth” was published in English in January of this year. I guess that’s why he is appearing in places such as the Intellegence Squared podcast which do a have broad listenership. Can only be a good thing that some of these ideas, such as his conception of communism, are getting a wider airing.
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