UNITE! Info #287en: |
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Reply to Dave W. - The "green" warfare must be countered!
05.08.2007 |
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Intro note:The below is a reply to David
Walters which I sent to the Modern Marxism
mailing list earlier today. For this Info I've edited it, only very
slightly.
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| Hello again
David Walters, I've now finally gotten around to really replying to something you wrote in your "Greetings all" message. Once again, as with my preliminary replies to some questions by Stig Ek, I'm finding this thing got to be awfully long. But once again, I want to make that same excuse, that the things I'm writing about, firstly, are so important and secondly, I'm guessing, they're still relatively unknown to many. I shall soon send this out also publicly, as an item (#286en, it will be - no, this comes as #287en) in my "UNITE! Info" series, in order to show others something of the discussion here on our Modern Marxism list. You wrote: "Hopefully, following Rolfs personal bent toward the issues of science and technology this could be a rather different Marxist oriented discussion list. We both are actively pro-nuclear energy, for example, but come at it from different directions. Like I wrote, should be interested."And also: "I think it's good to let the Stalin/Trotsky debate hold for other venues. ... I find it now far more satisfactory to place current issues in the class struggle and how we would respond to it..."- on which I absolutely agree. But no, it's not at all "a personal bent" of mine towards the issues of science and technology that has put the question of nuclear energy, not least - and many other issues of science and technology too - on the order of the day, actually since now some three decades back, or even more. It's some very much more of that decay and putrefaction of capitalism in its imperialist stage, already pointed to by Lenin, that has put these questions very much on the order of the day, as today most vital parts of the class struggle. Something relatively new, in the history of mankind, it is that's taking place. And it absolutely needs to be one of the themes of any actually Marxist-oriented discussion list. This one I'm intending, and hoping, to be a discussion list indeed very different from all those others - which I know of, at least - that are saying that they have something to do with Marxism. These are all banning every actual discussion of the most burning issues and, to me, appear to be in the hands of arch-enemies of the workers and of the oppressed peoples and nations. That, by the way, of course is a very big thing today too - the imperialists' more and more striving to act under a cover of Marxism, precisely in order to combat it, in their present so very desperate situation. But what about technology, nuclear energy quite in particular? You've seen my quoting the below lines from an important but "forgotten" speech by Marx, in London in 1856, several times before, haven't you, David. It's on that MIA website too, which you're co-managing - that speech at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1856/04/14.htm:and: "This antagonism between modern industry and science on the one hand, modern misery and dissolution on the other hand; this antagonism between the productive powers and the social relations of our epoch is a fact, palpable, overwhelming, and not to be controverted. Some parties may wail over it; others may wish to get rid of modern arts, in order to get rid of modern conflicts. Or they may imagine that so signal a progress in industry wants to be completed by as signal a regress in politics."Which is what we're experiencing today, on a giant scale. Back in 1856 of course, only some feudalist forces were thinking and acting in this way. But from the early 1970s on, or even from the late 1960s on, some big forces of the imperialist bourgeoisie started doing it too, the US ones quite in particular. And today, this is how the entire imperialist bourgeoisie is thinking and acting, pushing these things further and further, in a most massive attack against practically everybody on earth. What has made them do this, and in what circumstances did it start? It started out as more or less a direct reaction against that broad youth and student leftist movement in many countries in the late 1960s. In Germany and France, many young workers joined that movement; as you know, practically all of France was on strike during the entire month of May 1968, for instance, and in the USA, that movement was quite big too, wasn't it, and it was countered for instance by the CIA's (etc) pushing not only dope on a rather large scale - at Berkeley, I've read about, and there was such a phenomenon here in Sweden then too - but also an only purportedly "leftist" or "pro-environment", in reality reactionary, "new" ideology, the "green", anti-industrial, and at that time also openly anti-growth, one. What was the basis of that new leftist movement? Inspiration from the then ongoing Cultural Revolution in China, and disgust with the massive oppression and exploitation of the poorer countries, with the war against Vietnam in particular - in the USA, also disgust with the continuing racial oppression. And one important part of its basis was also the fact that the productive forces in the most "advanced" countries had developed enormously in the last few decades. People thus saw no reason why everybody, in the future, shouldn't lead quite good lives, which at the time was far from the case. The beginning utilization of nuclear energy, not least, was an important factor in this. You, for instance, David, happen to know about the - potential! - enormity of this thing, and so do I, having read about it as a teenager in the 1950s. As the well-known scientist Linus Pauling, for instance, wrote in 1954: "The discovery of the controlled fission of atomic nuclei and controlled release of atomic energy is the greatest discovery that has been made since the controlled use of fire was made by primitive man."And this discovery, which is making it possible to extract, very cheaply, practically limitless amounts of energy, the most important stuff - technically speaking - for the entire modern civilization, making it possible also, technically speaking, to eradicate all poverty on earth and this within only a few decades, was made when there still reigned that extremely oppressive system of capitalism in its imperialist stage on this planet. [Added in this Info: On nuclear energy, see websites I'm linking to under "On nuclear energy" and earlier Infos of mine under "anti-nuclear-energy campaign" in my homepage section "Subjects in postings".] So in the late 1960s / early 1970s, the capitalists' political representatives started thinking: "Now what have we done, what genie is it that we've let out of the bottle; that steam and electricity, of which such enormous amounts are coming from those nuclear power plants, for instance, indeed are turning out to be the most horrible revolution-inducing stuff! We cannot have that much of it!" Which is why they started doing something which has never been seen in history before - at least not on any similar scale - attacking the (by far, even) very most modern and efficient (and also clean) technology in that vital field, that of energy, striving for technical retrogression and not for development. It wasn't only nuclear energy that they started attacking at that time; it was several other modern things too, and even economic growth in itself they began to attack openly, with for instance that infamous publication by the "Club of Rome" in 1972: "The Limits to Growth". But the peaceful utilization of nuclear energy, that was the main target of those campaigns, their "flagship target". And they started "selling" some scientifically most absurd notions to the public - that nuclear wastes constitute a "serious technical problem", that "we're running out of oil", even "out of natural resources as a whole", etc, etc this of course combined with a deterioration (an even further such) of the science education in the schools etc. [Added in this Info: On oil, see the website managed by J. F. Kenney, the French-language blog "le pétrole abiotique" and/or my Info #267en. On natural resources in general, see John McCarthy's website "Progress and Its Sustainability".] That was a new form of class struggle. Today it has been employed by the main forces of the bourgeoisie for over 30 years, and of course has caused mass unemployment - much over and above that which capitalism entails anyway - in the more highly-developed countries, and enormously increased misery - in fact mass murder - in the poorer, internationally-exploited countries, by making modern, and thus cheap, energy technology largely unvailable to the people there. A "green" warfare, I'm calling this. It's directed, by the ruling reactionary cliques, against practically everybody on earth. In the last three decades, it has caused much more material destruction, and has killed many more people, than all the openly-violent imperialist aggressions combined - this including that most murderous one of them all, the one instigated against the DR Congo which has cost some 5 million people their lives. And those parties, groups and persons that have called themselves "Leftist" "Marxist" or "Marxist-Leninist" (or in some cases "Maoist"), what have they done against this? In practically all of the cases, nothing, nada, zilch, Or even worse, they directly have supported this arch-reactionary and counter-revolutionary warfare, in several countries actually supplying much of the storm-troopers for it, in "manifestations" etc "complaining" that the ruling reactionaries are "not destroying modern technology and modern industry fast enough", "are not creating enough of mass unemployment" and "are not preventing development of the poorer countries strongly enough". Now it's a fact that practically all of of the earlier existing Marxist-Leninist parties or groups, in the "richer" countries at least - and most of them were quite weak or even doubtful, to begin with - have been smashed completely by the imperialists. So individual Leftists, who have had little chance of getting to know what was really going on in this respect, cannot be blamed all that much for having been fooled into taking part in such reactionary things. And socialism in China was smashed also, in 1976-78, before the actual communists there (apparently) got to know what was going on - Mao Zedong, for instance, never did (re-)discover and expose publicly the main motive behind that "green" warfare which had begun in some countries already in his time. But in the long time since then, any party that really knew something of Marxism must have seen it; any party that in any way whatsoever was on the side of the proletariat and the oppressed peoples would have been obliged to counter that massive "green" warfare in the most decided manner. Only one - that I know of - did so, that small "NE" in Germany which I've mentioned. [Added in this Info: See "KPD/ML (NEUE EINHEIT)" in my "Subjects in postings section.] And it degenerated in the 1980s; very precisely its no longer combating that "green" warfare consistently was the first tell-tale sign of this. [Added in this Info: See Info #106en, part 3/7.] What should those - unfortunately still very few, in the world - people who know about the theory of Marx (etc) and also know about the reactionary nature of the campaign against nuclear energy, and the other and parallel anti-industrial campaigns do about this? They absolutely should combat those campaigns, and should demand that any organization which they're in and which is calling itself "a proletarian", "a Marxist", one do this too. I'm thinking about you, of course, David, who precisely are in that situation. You've told me, in our correspondence earlier, that you and some others in that organization in the USA which you're in have tried to make it at least begin to combat the campaign against nuclear energy, but have failed to carry the day on that point. Then the conclusion must be, I hold - at least if continued and consistent efforts in that direction turn out to fail too - that this organization in reality is controlled by the bourgeoisie, is really an adversary of the working class, since it's covering up that very serious attack against the working people in this manner. Such an organization then needs to get smashed, I hold; an actual Marxist cannot stay in it and help it perpetrate its hypocrisy and its backstabbing actions on such an important point, but must strive for the construction of an actually proletarian revolutionary party instead. If you were to do such a thing, David, would it not "leave you out in the most awful wilderness and isolation?" In a very difficult position indeed, yes. But in actual connection - though this may be difficult to perceive - with the masses of people, with the vast majority of people on earth. That is - NB - if you were to represent an all-sidedly correct line also in other ways. It's with such consistency that people really need to act. I was in a position similar to yours, David, back in 1974, concerning another and likewise vital question and concerning a certain phony"Marxist" organization here in Sweden, which kicked me out since I consistently insisted on its telling people the truth on that vital matter, after which I then had to act on my own - in my case, luckily, under those circumstances that I had the (small, but anyway) party of my then comrades from Germany in exile here in Malmö in support, and indirectly also the enormous CPC in China then, as led by Mao Zedong. Should I now suggest to you that you demand that that party which you're in combat the reactionary "green" warfare, and if it won't, then leave it to start trying to create a new one? No, I'm not doing this, and that's because I also hold that your adherence - which I gather that you have - to the basic theory of Trotsky will make any new party or party group that you might succeed in creating or helping create - an "anti-'green'-warfare" one, at least, then - still one that would not really represent the interests of the proletariat, since the basic theory of Trotsky is really a bourgeois one too. An alliance between you and me, and some others, for nuclear energy and against the anti-nuclear-energy campaign, yes, this I'm welcoming; such an alliance there already exists in practice. But this is on the level of a united front, such as the one that already exists locally here in southern Sweden and in Denmark, in the form of the Committee Save Barsebäck (concerning a now most scandalously closed-down nuclear power plant here), some of whose (quite few) members are Marx adherents, while some others are not. Thus for any genuinely Marxist line, not only a pro-nuclear-energy standpoint, and an anti-"green"-warfare standpoint in general, is needed, but such questions as that of Trotsky's ideology and line keep cropping up too. By this I don't mean mainly, those different standpoints concerning certain questions of history which Trotsky adherents, on the one hand, and Mao Zedong adherents, on the other, have. These I still think we need not debate just now. But, reflecting on what I'd like to see you doing concretely now, David, that would be - you as only one individual can do a little something also, as to counteracting the "green" warfare; one point of course included in my below suggestions is, explaining publicly what's the real (main) common motive behind the reactionaries' respective actions as follows: 1) Publicly attack sharply the ongoing anti-nuclear-energy campaign in the USA itself. Point out, for instance, that in the last 30 years, technically very easily some 600 new nuclear power reactors (of 1,000 MW or 1 GW each), in addition to those only some 100 now existing, could have been built in that country where you're living, which would have made electricity there very cheap - instead of that shameful retrogression back to coal, whose use has more than doubled in the USA in that time. You already have publicly pointed to the superiority of nuclear energy over all other sources, I've seen. But I think people need to know also what really serious attacks against them are the ruling cliques' actions on this matter. 2) Publicly attack the massive efforts by the US ruling cliques, likewise since more than 30 years back, to prevent all construction of nuclear power plants in other countries and even to get such closed down. (Well, it has seemed that you don't know all that much about this. I've striven to inform you and others on this point, though, with several articles both in the past and also some more recently; I shall write more about that later too. [Added in this Info: See in particular Info #278en.] 3) Publicly attack the continued massive anti-nuclear-energy campaign in the USA itself by the Bush administration too [added in this Info: see in particular Infos #248en and #249en], who ridiculously presented a "bold" nuclear-energy programme in early 2002, which has so far resulted in the construction start of how many new nuclear power reactors? - None, zero, zilch. Publicly attack the perverse construction of "wind power" plants, which require 5-10 times as much steel and concrete as do nuclear power reactors and are making electricity even more expensive. (This together with public explanation of why such construction is perverse.) [Added in this Info: See in particular my "News with brief comments" item 292, of 28.07.2007.] 4) Publicly attack the ridiculous "manmande global warming" scam. If you need to, inform yourself on that point too. [Added in this Info: See websites I'm linking to under "On purported 'manmade global warming'" and articles under "'global warming' propaganda" in my "Subjects in postings" section.] It's intended to curtail oil and natural gas use too, of course. 5) Publicly attack the ridiculous "we're running out of oil!" scam - after first, if needed, getting to know for certain what a ridiculous scam it is - and in particular, the criminal actions now undertaken to "replace" oil with biologically-produced ethanol, diverting farm land from food production and already causing food prices to rise dramatically both in the USA and elsewhere. These things I of course don't mean should "replace" other necessary actions by Marx adherents, but they absolutely should be included. Rolf |
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