This evening, the Oxford Libertarian Society hosted Spiked Online‘s Brendan O’Neill to speak on the topic ‘Why Environmentalism is the Enemy of Liberty‘.
I think that O’Neill scored some good hits on the green movement: picking out the strong strains of misanthropy, paternalism and privilege attached to much environmental debate (and, it has to be said, George Monbiot provides rich pickings in this department). However, much of the power of his critique of environmentalism comes from his Marxism, not the later colourings of libertarian thinking that many of the Spiked authors have acquired.
Unlike Mick Hume (also at Spiked), O’Neill doesn’t seem to get around with volumes of Hayek and Nozick under his arm. He supports the NHS, and doesn’t seem to grasp the concept of moral hazard. Although, after explanation, he did understand how socialised medicine makes it easier for paternalists to police other people’s lifestyle choices, using a concern with individual well-being as a figleaf for their real concern with externalities (roughly translated here as ‘oh shit, we may have to pay for your obesity/smoking down the line!’). He also (quote unquote) ‘loves Lenin’, and spent half a pint’s talk time attempting to disassociate Lenin from Stalin and all his works and all his ways. He also tried to make an argument for the necessity of authoritarian rule immediately after a revolution, including a weird justification for The Terror.
Now my view of people who admit to Marxism in public has always tended to be ‘don’t touch that, it’s concentrated evil!’, so I did make some rather unkind remarks about Mr Lenin, and also suggested that there’s only been one good revolution. But that’s by the by.
One of the nicest bits of arguing he did concerned the conflation of environmental concerns with what would — in times gone by — have been seen as religious morality (‘Catholic guilt on stilts’ he called it, in a line that brought the house down). Some of his best commentary for Spiked has been on the shrill tone that much environmentalist rhetoric takes on resource-depletion, exemplified by the panicked reaction to the birth of octuplets in California (intersecting, as he notes, with with some very peculiar catastrophizing about class and gender). Some of his ideas are also fruitfully discussed on the Oxford Libertarian Society’s blog:
Porritt [senior government green mandarin] is not objecting to population growth because he fears it will lead to a diminution in human living standards, but because the impact of an increased number of individuals will harm the earth – whose preservation he treats as an end in itself. By some unexplained metric, Porritt has decided that 2 children (conveniently the number that he himself has) is an acceptable burden for the earth, but that 3 is intolerable and deserves ostracism.
All that aside, the real power of O’Neill’s Marxist (and it is Marxist, not Marxian) critique of environmentalism has its origins in an unashamed use of Marx’s optimism. Marx was optimistic about technology, about the capacity of human beings to overcome setbacks and difficulties through ingenuity and progress. Marx passionately wanted everyone to live good, fulfilling and agentic lives: lives over which they had control. He was statist, but only in the sense that the state was the initial vehicle to facilitate human progress. The point of life is to live it. Much environmentalism — which in its extreme forms denies human agency, suggesting that we are at the mercy of ‘mother nature’ — conflicts directly with Marx’s dynamism and hope. Of course, Marx’s pious belief that the state would wither away — would prove only temporary — turned out to be just that. As Milton Friedman suggested, there’s nothing so permanent as a temporary government programme.
O’Neill turns Marx on environmentalism, not as some sort of global warming skeptic, but as a believer in human progress. ‘Who says human beings won’t figure this out? Are you going to fall into the same trap as Thomas Malthus and assume that population grows while everything else stays the same? And are you asking me to abandon liberty in favour of the environment? I won’t, because it’s liberty that will give human beings the freedom to find their way out of all (or at least most) environmental thickets’. He has also — as one would expect of a Marxist, especially a British Marxist — been searing in his critique of the class basis of much environmentalism, and its tendency to want to police the pleasures of the lower classes:
Again and again, almost despite themselves, despite their defensiveness about coming across as wealthy snobs – the real privileged – attacking those chavs and slags who fly abroad on the cheap, Plane Stupid and its supporters return to the ‘scandal’ of cheap flights. They cannot help themselves. It really is cheap flights that they find most foul and offensive. Before yesterday’s closure of Britain’s ‘chief chav airport’, Plane Stupid forced the HQ of easyJet in London to shut down, on the basis that ‘binge-flying’ – a phrase that sounds deliciously like ‘binge-drinking’, that other famous pastime of ‘cheap people’ – is ‘choking the planet to death’.
Plane Stupid has also spent thousands of pounds taking out a newspaper ad attacking Ryanair; it was a spoof advert with Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary saying: ‘Let’s beat the climate to death. Book Ryanair today to ensure a real climate disaster.’ The dripping snobbery of Plane Stupid’s campaign comes through in its attacks on the kind of uncultured oiks who take Ryanair and easyJet flights from Stansted: ‘There’s been an enormous growth in binge-flying with the proliferation of stag and hen nights to Eastern European destinations chosen not for their architecture or culture but because people can fly there for 99p and get loaded for a tenner.’ [Footnotes omitted].
O’Neill calls himself a ‘Marxist Libertarian’, and his conflation of the two philosophies does involve some fairly serious cherry-picking. However, his Marxism also lets him see very clearly when a movement is ‘progressive’ in a genuine sense. I’ve always found it significant that ‘conservation’ and ‘conservative’ share a Latin root: there is often a broad hostility to change and progress, and the ‘watermelon’ greens — those who try to combine various forms of democratic socialism with environmentalism — are particularly vulnerable to O’Neill’s criticism.
Of course, conservatism/conservation is sometimes legitimate: I am a libertarian, but when it comes to the ‘majors’, I vote Conservative. This is partly because New Labour have utterly trashed the country (the Tories could not possibly be any worse), but it’s also partly because I accept the Tory argument that change for the sake of change often does more harm than good. As Hayek argues, custom has its uses.
And, it would seem, so does Karl Marx.
80 Comments
Dear SL
I think you misunderstand Marxism and a marxist analysis of the environment. Read Liz Ross on How capitalism is costing us the Earth. It’s reprinted in part on my blog.
Certainly Marx wanted to build the new society on the productive forces of the old, sweeping away all the fetters on production that capitalism imposed and all its institutions of rule. His vision of a democratic society in which production occurs to satisfy human need is relevant today. But that idea of human need is one that capitalism has trouble with — it produces for profit, not to satisfy human need. So if the conflict is between profit and the environment, the environment loses. Engels writings here might help too.
Certainly too Marx thought the state, as a tool of class rule, would wither away when classes disappeared. The Stalinist strengthening of the state shows in fact that the regimes in the USSR and Eastern Europe etc were class regimes. Indeed, as Tony Cliff argued, they were capitalist regimes, expropiating the surplus from workers to build industry in competition both industrially and militarily with the west.
The Red Terror was a response to the White Terror.
The problem with Marxists who bag out the environment movement is that they side with the bosses and allow themselves to be painted as the agents of destruction.
Capitalism has only one interest – profit. It is the enemy of a habitable world, not environmentalists.
Certainly there is an overlap between some species of Marxism and some species of environmentalism because capitalism is the perceived mutual enemy. Marxists fight the deleterious effects of capitalism on the lower class; environmentalists fight the deleterious effects of capitalism on the environment.
But this is a case (as so often) where the enemy of Marxism’s enemy is not necessarily its friend.
My fear with environmentalism has always been the reactionary element within the Green movement (reactionary being “an extremely conservative person or position that not only resists change but seeks to return to the “good old days” of an earlier social order.”) There’s a romanticism about indigenous societies and the pre-industrial age held by some in the Green movement which I believe is misplaced.
The thing about pre-industrial and indigenous societies is that they are often rigidly class-based. Hardly consonant with Marxism.
My fear is that if we listen to someone like Monbiot, and introduce carbon trading in the ways he suggests, the price of everything would be raised substantially for the average person, as corporations tend to pass on extra costs involved in transporting goods. Many people would lose their jobs. The poor would suffer. And if carbon credits were auctioned off to raise government revenue as he suggests, it would be the rich who could afford to travel and and to heat their houses during winter. The net effect of this could be to create a tremendous gap between “haves” and “have-nots”, with a new “carbon-friendly” elite.
I’ve noticed that many of those who decry the environmental impact of the masses on society are not averse to flying or using air-conditioning or having SUVs or stuff like that. It’s one rule for them, one rule for us (the plebs). I wasn’t aware of the whole Plane Stupid thing in the UK – it shocks me, but on another level it doesn’t surprise me. This sounds like precisely the sort of thing a Marxist should be railing against.
The Spiked crowd are interesting. Their stuff is always thoughtful, even when dead wrong. One of the things I most enjoy is how much they annoy Monbiot.
Josie Appleton’s http://www.manifestoclub.com is the Spiked progeny I am most in sympathy with and Claire Fox is always fun http://www.instituteofideas.com
“…and also suggested that there’s only been one good revolution. ”
I think that’s what really sticks in the old revolutionaries’ throats, sl. I made the point a few years back in a Quadrant article (not online anymore).
Josie Appleton was there last night, and yes, he is also very interesting. He’s had a great deal to do with O’Neill as well on this issue. And yes, the spiked crowd seriously irritate Monbiot — watching them spar is definitely worth breaking out the popcorn for.
No, no, I think Marx *was* right about the technology thing, even if I abhor the destruction it is wreaking. Why? Simple. Because we’re going to need the very best technologies, all the jaw-dropping geoengineering miracles if we are ever to build the artificial, enclosed and in all ways (particularly sensuous), unimaginably impoverished bubbles of habitation that (for how many centuries, or am I being too optimistic), will be humanity’s inescapable, abode.
Mainly as firelighters…
John Passant, what happens when environmentalists suggest the commodification of carbon? Essentially, Monbiot is suggesting we turn the air we breathe into a commodity in the capitalist system. How does that sit with a Marxist analysis?
Here’s some of the lovely shit-fight between spiked and Monbiot. I’ve learnt via the shit-fight that Monbiot is a Brasenose alum, although in his defence he does once seem to have been a fairly conventional High Tory.
Now he’s just a peculiar High Tory.
Ugh, High Tories. One reason why I never voted Conservative.
Communism has a dreadful record on the environment and on science (see Lysenko), so O’Neill seems to be continuing the tradition.
Tim, I was going to mention Chernobyl – an instance of where communism caused terrible environmental damage (as much as any capitalist regime, and longer lasting too).
Tim is right about Communism — and it’s more than just Chornobyl (relatively small on the scale of Communist environmental cock-ups). Whole seas have disappeared in the FSU thanks to idiotic agricultural policies and ‘planning’ in general (on which, see Hayek). Capitalism is much kinder to the earth, which I suspect is one of the reasons for spiked’s abandonment of Marxist economics.
LE, communism per se didn’t cause the terrible environmental damage in the former Soviet Union, did it? Isn’t saying so rather echoing the left mantra that capitalism has caused all our woes? A proposition with which I’m sure you’d disagree.
SL, what about Nauru? There’s an instance where the desire to exploit and profit from natural resources almost resulted in the disappearance of an island.
Communism has a dreadful record on the environment and on science (see Lysenko), oh and the 200 million dead copses
Tim asked me to apologize on his behalf as he was far too busy to add the little bit in and asked me to include it for him. LOL.
Nauru is still perfectly livable; it’s just not profitable (except, of course, when gratefully accepting Australian taxpayer dollars for the ‘Pacific Solution’). The areas around the Aral Sea, by contrast, have been depopulated thanks to environmental destruction, heavy metal contamination, biohazards — the whole nine yards.
Posey, yes, unfortunate choice of words. It’s not like the communists set out to say, “Let’s trash the environment”. It’s more that the way in which the former USSR operated created conditions that made events like Chernobyl possible.
And yes, the same could be said for capitalism – sometimes, it creates conditions which can lead to environmental disasters (people looking more towards immediate profit than towards the long term).
…there’s only been one good revolution
Only one.? And feminism? Wasn’t that more truly revolutionary than any of these so-called revolutions.
Naturally true Marxists dislike environmentalism. Their beef with industrialism comes down to who runs the show not the show itself.
But this sort of ideological warfare is foolish. It’s perfectly apt to describe the environmental movement as tainted by religious and anti-social fervour as it is. Albeit, it must be said, not wholly. It’s also entirely warranted to call bullshit on the stupid things so many groups do in the name of the environment.
But I do wonder when Marxists adopt a position of outright denialism. The lesson of Malthus isn’t that he was wrong but that at some points in history everything you know can go against you. It seems to me obvious that at some point in the trajectory of human economic activity we would have a global and adverse effect on the ecosystem and would have to deal with that. In my opinion the sooner we do the less it’ll hurt. Unfortunately thus far we’ve got corporatist scams, ineffective symbolism and eschatological cultist nonsense. Stpdfknmnkys.
I’d prefer the critics of deep Green and its fellow travelers develop sensible alternative modes of addressing these problems rather than simply convert to hysterical oppositionism.
Yeah. It’s necessary because there’s this thing called a power vacuum. And in it you find out that the notion that all you have to do to achieve social Nirvana is murder the ruling class is bullshit.
Great post Skeptic.
The Red Terror was a response to the White Terror.
.
To a certain extent, to a certain extent it was the result of the Russian way of doing things sans the disciplines built into the culture of aristocrats.
But fundamentally it had to do with the lack of the apparatus of the bourgeois state. No election = state not answerable to people. And that leads to repression. Marxism was utilized as a justification for that repression and a means to silence all criticism.
And Marxists in the West went along with that.
And yet it’s better at satisfying human needs than other systems? Funny old world innit?
The Terror O’Neill was justifying was actually the one immediately following the French Revolution. I think he’d have said something similar about the Red Terror, but that wasn’t the question he was asked and he didn’t opine on the topic.
“And feminism? Wasn’t that more truly revolutionary than any of these so-called revolutions.”
Stop trying to suck up, Adrien.
You know very well that “feminism” with some incidental exceptions has long been a pitiful train wreck.
I dunno, I think feminism has done well on some levels. I can own property, I can vote, I can gain an education. I have a choice as to whether to bear children, and a choice as to whether to marry and/or divorce. They’re all pretty big things.
And on that note, I’m going to give in to my inner child ™ and go and play in the snow. It is absolutely throwing it down at the moment, and Oxford looks even more like a movie set than usual. Pics later this afternoon if the Mac shop in Broad Street has ordered in my card reader.
The goals were originally understood as being way broader and more far-reaching than that, LE.
What does a relatively privileged position for a small minority of women in the world today mean in relation to the fact that least 923 million people in the world suffer from hunger, according to the FAO and that the UN World Food Program urgently needs US$ 5.2 billion for 2009 to provide minimal help to the starving in Haiti, in the Congo and elsewhere.
“My fear with environmentalism has always been the reactionary element within the Green movement (reactionary being “an extremely conservative person or position that not only resists change but seeks to return to the “good old days” of an earlier social order.”) There’s a romanticism about indigenous societies and the pre-industrial age held by some in the Green movement which I believe is misplaced.”
LE, I don’t think reactionary politics is an extreme of conservative politics. Reactionary politics is plainly stupid politics that can be found in any type of political party or thought., conservative, radical or liberal. It simply is a species of partisan politics.
Resisting change, as SL intimated, is not always or even typically reactionary. Resisting a change to our laws that potentially threatens to abridge our liberties without good reason is not at all reactionary even though it aims to preserve the status quo and is thus properly speaking conservative. For a sketch of the conservative disposition, you might like to read Oakeshott’s essay ‘On Being Conservative’ in Rationalism in Politics.
Also, I think you may be conflating nostalgia with romanticism. Now, I don’t think that romanticism or nostalgia are necessarily conservative either. Of course, you will find some ‘conservatives’ with nostalgic or romantic attitudes but generally the disposition among conservatives is towards scepticism in the realm of politics. There are also some famous radicals with nostalgic dispositions, Rousseau, for one. Leaving aside nostalgia, the romantic outlook in politics is personified by people like Marx. What could be a more romantic outlook then the idea that communism would be the end of history, politics, domination, alienation, etc., etc?
On this communist/ capitalist dichotomy and the environment, I think we should recognize that at least in ‘capitalist’ economies environmental degradation is somewhat mitigated by concerns that are not always subservient to the enterprise of exploiting the resources of the earth. This is not the case in communist economies. In order to understand what I mean here you’ll probably need to read the third essay of Oakeshott’s book, On Human Conduct.
LE, did feminism really deliver those choices and rights? Could we say similar things about liberalism? Or are feminism and liberalism, for example, the recognition of changes that are already afoot?
SL, I am deeply jealous of you at the moment. If I were you I’d hop on a train (if they’re running) to see London in snow.
Hey Dover Beach, how goes it? I’m afraid I still haven’t converted to Weinribianism yet.
Ah, caught out cutting and pasting from an old post into a comment. I was taking my definition of reactionary from the American Heritage New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy – should really have said that – tut, tut, naughty me.
If you look at my old post, you’ll see that I don’t equate conservatism with reactionary politics (at least, not necessarily – of course there’s some reactionary conservatives). I didn’t link to the old post initially because I’m not sure I like it or agree with it totally any more, but some of it still holds true for me.
There’s a time and place for conservatism. I agree that you shouldn’t just change for the sake of change. There’s definitely a time and place for conservationism too. Nor do I deny that radicals and the left wing have their share of nostalgia and romanticism too. I just get really irritated when people get too carried away by the idea that everything was better in the past, and that’s something I see more in the Green movement than in any other at the moment.
Still, sounds like I should read Oakeshott though.
Dover Beach @ 28, do you mean the Enlightenment?
What could be a more romantic outlook then the idea that communism would be the end of history, politics, domination, alienation, etc., etc?
What could be more romantic than the idea that free markets will facilitate wealth for all, end class division, protect the environment, domination ….
Wealth the free market will do nicely — the evidence is already in on that score. And the others? Well, they’re a bit harder, and achieving them will probably involve, I dunno, a fair bit of political effort from the rest of us
LE, #29, fair enough. Re #30, no, I mean liberalism, although I see what you’re hinting at. My point, however, is that these movements/ ideologies are themselves really only reflections of what is already afoot in people’s current manner of living.
JohnH, you should know me well enough by now; I’m the last person on the Cat who would think free markets facilitate perfection. Read my last para. in #27.
SL, where are those pics? Some of us have to live vicariously.
Hey Dover,
I was just having some fun. I know you don’t think like that but I was just pointing out that it is very easy for anyone to embrace beliefs that promise too much.
Like all extravagant thrusts of Faustian desire, techno-optimism, the view that science, technology and human ingenuity will save us and continue to satisfy – if only momentarily – our endless desires, needs to be leavened not only with environmental realism, the massive impacts of resource depletion, probably irreversible climactic effects, etc., but also by not forgetting the dark side of many new technologies and that they have the habit of becoming internalised in the circuits of capital through commodification, privatisation, enclosure, monopolisation, and the logic of uncontrollable accumulation. We are seeing exactly this process happen now with water, seeds, the human genome. In the current construction of markets for carbon offsets and trading we may be seeing the incipient commodification of the very air we breathe, air which may be increasingly noxious for all those that one day cannot purchase privately owned and distributed air.
A dystopian narrative that should be ignored? I don’t think so.
Revolutions are made by rebels who themselves are products of oppression, misrule and despotism under the anciens régimes. It is no use saying in hindsight that the sans-culottes were monsters or ignorant, misguided fools infected by an evil or wronghead philosophy which has been for ever more discredited. Walter Benjamin defined revolutions as “being not the locomotives of history, but humanity reaching for the train’s emergency brakes, before it falls into the abyss”. The French Revolution was the first case in the entire history of humanity of the successful revolt of the exploited poor. The correct answer to the question, what is one to make of the French Revolution is it’s too early to tell.
And its real lesson, never surprisingly, comes from an artist, not a politician. “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” (Beckett)
our endless desires, needs to be leavened not only with environmental realism, the massive impacts of resource depletion, probably irreversible climactic effects, etc., but also by not forgetting the dark side of many new technologies
Posey,
If you ever encounter an environmental realist please let me know, I’d love to meet one.
I have been tracking environmental news for many years now and it is obvious to me that Australians remain blissfully unaware of how serious the problems are. This is occurring because the MSM here consistently ignores bad environmental news. Here is a recent example:
An Italian study found that in those of equal obesity the risk of type 2 diabetes was 42 times higher for those with the highest levels of persistent organic pollutants against those with the lowest levels. In a rat study published early last year the addition of bisphenol A, which is everywhere, at levels comparable to that found in humans, made the rats fat. If you look at studies on obesity and type 2 diabetes there is no strong relationship between energy expenditure and intake. Thus current government initiatives to address obesity are probably misguided. Bisphenol A and associated compounds should be eliminated as quickly as possible. Won’t happen, too much money involved.
As to AGW, I’m withholding opinion on that for another 5 years. I expect by then we will have a much better idea of what is going on. Irrespective of the climate consequences, ocean acidification alone represents a huge problem.
As for genetic engineering, and this is for the lawyers, sometime ago my collaborator sent me a challenging paper which suggests that the fundamental assumption of one gene-one protein is a crock. Indeed, the very idea that genes “encode information” is highly suspect and in need for revision. Genes in different tissues, even from the same organ, will generate different proteins. Thus I continue to curse Richard Dawkins because his book “The Selfish Gene” has implanted in the lay public a completely erroneous understanding of genetics. As to his attacks on religious beliefs, he really should get over his hubristic scientism.
Mind you Georg Lukacs, the founder of Western Marxism condemned Beckett for his ‘decadent’ lack of realism. Says it all, really.
John, re “environmental realists”, yeah, but then I can’t in all truth even call myself that. And the real ones are otherwise occupied.
“…bisphenol A, which is everywhere…” Everywhere you say? Tell us, man.
On genes. That is the most hilarious and freaking welcome news I’ve heard in a long time.
Posey,
Bisphenol A is in a great many plastics. Golden rules:
Do not pack kiddies lunch in plastic wrap.
Do not microwave food in plastic containers.
Plastic kettles are probably a bad idea.
That nice “new car smell”: toxins being released.
Genes: and what is the bet Monsanto will push S uphill to protect their patents. Some of these are ridiculous. As one commentator said: patenting genes is the equivalent of patenting the periodic table elements. Monsanto tried to get a patent on a particular pig gene even though it is naturally occurring in wild pigs. Probably allowed in the USA but the EU rejected the patent.
John, right. Pity ain’t it (just a thought) that sometimes we can’t be disembodied souls, rather than the other way round.
I can only glimpse, as through a glass darkly, what “patenting the periodic table” might entail and mean, but I know in my bones this is a true equivalent to patenting genes, and that such a thing would be an abomination.
Patenting genes is absolute BS. Shouldn’t be allowed to happen.
Snow pictures coming this afternoon (UK time), I have had a few other things to do…
Posey – You know very well that “feminism” with some incidental exceptions has long been a pitiful train wreck.
Another joke?
My disagreements with feminist orthodoxy are precisely on this point. I think feminism has been on the whole successful. I don’t think it’s a complete mission, but many of its missions have been completed. Left-wing Utopians are of course disappointed that their particular brand of Heaven on Earth has not yet manifested.
I hope it never does. One person’s Heaven is Hell for the rest of us.
Sucking up?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
If you ever encounter an environmental realist please let me know, I’d love to meet one.
Me.
What could be more romantic than the idea that free markets will facilitate wealth for all, end class division, protect the environment, domination ….
Sorry about this it’ll be long, but not my words. I think it says it best:
Vaclev Havel
What I Believe
1991
It’s very much like Les Green’s argument that no-one can just be a legal positivist — taken in isolation the position is narrow and uninteresting. Arguments about what the relevant sources of law ought to be — well, that’s where jurisprudence gets interesting.
Excellent post, Sl. A really good one. I think Marx screwed the economics up, but I also think that if I lived in Continental Europe at the time and not the US or the UK, I would be more aligned with his views.
From what i recall Marx liked the US and was actually a keen supporter of Lincoln’s presidency and the GOP. Isn’t that an amusing tidbit?
http://www.marxists.org/history/international/iwma/documents/1864/lincoln-letter.htm
As you probably are aware there’s nothing I find more repugnant than the various green movements and I wholeheartedly agree with O’Neil’s view.
Let’s hope he continues bashing them with a sledgehammer.
The Marxist sytem was based on a false premise, namely that the industrial system of the early 1800s was inherently exploitive. In fact the factory system was delivering workers from the misery of farm labouring and improving their health and their life span. That is one of the best kept secrets of history. Check out Bill Hutt’s alternative account of the factory system and child labour.
http://www.the-rathouse.com/Revivalist4/RC_FactorySystem.html
And remember, Charles Dickens aged 12 supported himself by working in a small factory while his parents were in debtors’ prison!
As you probably are aware there’s nothing I find more repugnant than the various green movements and I wholeheartedly agree with O’Neil’s view.
Sigh.
But O’Neill’s view is based on the strategy of grasping at whatever slivers are lying around saying we don’t have a problem. He’s doing this because AGW is unacceptable to his ideology. That’s the problem with Marxists. They confuse ideology with science and believe it thus solves all problems for all time. 4 chances out of 5 say we do. What’s the rational thing to do then?
I agree that the Greens are a pain in the arse. But a sensible solution like a carbon tax will never become an alternative to Slapback’s n’ Getpaid if you lot keep tearing each other up over AGW.
I reckon some serious lobbying of Turnbull or Costello might pay off.
No I am lying.
The Marxist sytem was based on a false premise, namely that the industrial system of the early 1800s was inherently exploitive. In fact the factory system was delivering workers from the misery of farm labouring and improving their health and their life span.
Marx said that all hierarchical economic systems are inherently exploitative and he’s right. All of ‘em produce a hierarchy in which most people do the work and a few live large. He saw the advantages of this and regarded it as an historical necessity; the class system was, if you like, a necessary evil. Like a lot of nineteenth century progressives he wished for a world without this necessity. He saw the potential of industrial production to lift everyone out of poverty and produce a truly egalitarian society.
Thing is that farm labour might be miserable, I’ve done it so I know, but so is working in a factory – more so. Done that too. They’re both miserable enough in the 21st century. I can’t fathom the nasty conditions of c1830. But at least serfs get fresh air and can hang around with their families.
Didn’t you write a post at Catallaxy saying Dickens was scarred by a brief interlude with industrialization?
It was part of a great piece on Dickens, Koestler and the ‘English Working Class’, broadly construed. It was one of the best things Rafe has written and I did a little footstomping dance to ensure it went into BBP2007. More here.
I don’t know that Marx ever considered or called himself a Marxist. And if Brendan O’Neill fancies himself one then he would do well to use Marxist philosophy in the way Marx meant it to be used, which necessarily involves, to use his expression, being “ruthlessly critical of everything existing”. This would include, needless to say, being critical of itself.
Marxism today can have no greater role than the criticism of Marx’s technological determinism, his instrumentalist view of nature, in light of that history to which he had not been exposed: today’s ecological crisis.
I don’t know that Marx ever considered or called himself a Marxist.
Well that would be a tad egotistical of him.
He repudiated Marxism in its proto-social democratic form. He didn’t live to see what Lenin would do which is probably just as well.
And if Brendan O’Neill fancies himself one then he would do well to use Marxist philosophy in the way Marx meant it to be used, which necessarily involves, to use his expression, being “ruthlessly critical of everything existing”.
But Marxism is a religion so being critical’s out.
This would include, needless to say, being critical of itself.
(Sorry to everyone who already heard me say this three thousand times)
When Marx finally turned up with the manuscript for Das Kapital he recommended that Engels read a story by Balzac entitled The Unfinished Masterpiece. In the story an artist is possessed of sublime vision which he struggles to realize on canvas but the idea is too big. He can’t do it and instead produces a mess. Marx thought Das Kapital was a mess.
As a most intimidating Roman Senator of a professor of mine used to say: You know Das Kapital is not a good book. Look how long it is. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon now that’s a good book.
Unfortunately Engels was Marx’s first High Priest and didn’t take him seriously in the way he should’ve thus establishing the Marxist tradition of being too serious and not serious enough simultaneously.
Adrien, I found Das Kapital (only read Vols 1&2) was best downed with top-grade kif.
Marx was always whinging to Engels about how everything in his life was a mess. He just wanted Engels to keep forking up the dosh to support him and his brood and Engels being the top-notch gentleman and loyal Marxist that he was, always did.
Can’t say that Marxism was a religion. In fact I think Marx misunderstood and was too hard on religion. Some self-described Marxists are often religious-like in their (mis) use of Marxism and Brendan O’Neill, I agree, would appear to be of the true believer, stopped thinking ilk.
Das Kapital unt zer grossen schpliffe!!! Mein Gott!
Posey there’s better things to read when you’re shitfaced. Try some pornographic un-American trash. There’s an excellent political system described therein where politicians are only allowed to manage the indigenous population of highly obnoxious baboons.
Here in Australia, conversely, our politicians are the indigenous population of highly obnoxious baboons.
I wish the Commies would come back. It’d be like religious education classes at boarding school.
Thanks SL but I thought the best thing I ever wrote, apart from my Honours thesis on the penetration of clay by root hairs was this piece on the early international cricket tours http://www.the-rathouse.com/Revivalist4/cricketessay.html
or this one about the off-spinners’s take on reductionism in the social sciences
http://www.the-rathouse.com/EvenMoreAustrianProgram/OffspinneronReductionvsExistence.html
Eat your heart out Warnie!
“A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality.” Volume I, Chapter 7
Now I’ve always loved this. But I’m not so sure it’s entirely true. We don’t know for sure whether other animals pre-imagine, or pre-plan, as we do.
It’s said that Rosa Luxemburg was perhaps the only Marxist philosopher who evinced – in writing – any fellow-feeling for non-human animals. Not that this ecological sensibility was reflected in her politics. But in a letter to Sophie Liebknecht upon witnessing the beating of some buffaloes from her prison window, Rosa wrote:
“The other day one of these lorries was drawn by a team of buffaloes instead of horses. I had never seen the creatures close at hand before. … They are black, and have huge, soft eyes. The buffaloes are war trophies from Rumania. The soldier-drivers said that it was very difficult to catch these animals, which had always run wild, and still more difficult to break them in to harness. … Unsparingly exploited, yoked to heavy loads, they are soon worked to death. The other day a lorry came laden with sacks, so overladen indeed that the buffaloes were unable to drag it across the threshold of the gate. The soldier-driver, a brute of a fellow, belabored the poor beasts so savagely with the butt end of his whip that the wardress at the gate, indignant at the sight, asked him if he had no compassion for animals. “No more than anyone has compassion for us men,” he answered with an evil smile, and redoubled his blows. … The one that was bleeding had an expression on its black face and in its soft black eyes like that of a weeping child—one that has been severely thrashed and does not know why, nor how to escape from the torment and brutality of treatment …. I stood facing the animal and it looked at me: tears were running from my eyes … they were *his* tears. The suffering of a dearly loved brother could hardly have moved me more profoundly than I was moved by my impotence in face of this mute agony. … Poor wretch, I am as powerless, as dumb, as yourself; I am at one with you in my pain, my weakness, and my longing.”
# 19 on capitalism producing situations where pursuit of quick profits causes expoitation of resources. You can’t legislate to eliminate dumb acts and going for immediate profits rather than long-term gain is dumb, because the value of the asset is trashed. Exploitation is much more likely where the resource is not privately owned, and so people (even reasonable people) have no great concern about running down the asset. Compare the scale of care in (a) public housing (b) rented housing (c) owner-occupied housing.
In the USSR of course nobody had a stake in anything, exccept for small plots of private farmland which were immensely more productive than the collective farms.
There is now a huge literature on free-market environmentalism and the likes of Monbiot need to read some of it.
It should be clear from the post I’ve written that he’s not. He just refuses to take environmentalism seriously. Now he may be wrong in that, but that doesn’t mean all his criticisms miss the mark, either.
Kindliness (if not actual efficacy) when it comes to ‘greens’ and ‘green politics’ are the common coin of much modern political discourse, and this kindliness and lack of scrutiny allows Monbiot (among others) to make some extraordinarily illiberal proposals. He is addicted to a good deal of command and control, and Marxists who have (largely) renounced command and control are often best able to spot it.
Fair enough, SL. I’m an environmentalist (deep green tending towards mystical pantheism, but only in private and with other consenting adults) who also has time for a lot of Marxist theory. But I confess I haven’t much time for Marxists who think environmental politics and concerns are unnecessary and well, anti-Marxist. I think that is anti-Marxist, so guess it’s a stalemate between me and the Brendan O’Neill’s of this world..
Capitalist states too have always incorporated major command and control methods and structures. Indeed today the global (capitalist) economy is increasingly marked by a worldwide decentralisation and fragmentation of the production process alongside a growing centralisation of command and control through the operations of transnational capital.
Monbiot (among others) to make some extraordinarily illiberal proposals. He is addicted to a good deal of command and control…
Yeah I’ve read two of Monbiot’s books. One Captive State is a really good journalist’s rundown of corporate collusion to create mono-markets plus a great description of the Skye Island scam and campaign to stop it.
The other, the name of which I forget, had to do with creating a democratic world state. It was a lot more realistic than many such polemics but still well within la la land. Apart from the widespread reluctance to relinquish sovereignty, the absence of any really solid realpolitik rationale for a world-state, the problem of allocation of seats in a world parliament and the sad fact that most nation-states are still working on getting democracy right there’s the, um, fact that the UN’s in the way and it works about as well as a ten year old Trabant.
Often people are good at criticism and analysis, designing solutions? Another matter. Especially if they’re all-encompassing grand solutions.
Ahh yes, les grands projets as the French say. Heat is the horribly illiberal one — you can quote mine it and he comes out sounding like a less efficient Stalin (Mugabe, maybe). Horrible stuff, and O’Neill’s puncturing of many of its proposals was both amusing and necessary.
‘Transnational Capital’ and its movement is not an instance of ‘command and control’. What people do with their own money is their business. Deciding that henceforth everything of type p will be taxed at rate q is an example of command and control, and is not a stunt even very powerful corporations can pull.
Now taxing may be the right solution (not very often, but it can be). John Humphreys at the CIS has made a very strong case for a carbon tax as opposed to a carbon trading scheme, although if the latter goes on line I suspect there will be a few magnificent shorts to be had (as there was with the European carbon trading scheme — the price tanked in days).
Especially if they’re all-encompassing grand solutions.
Should not even be attempted, cannot be done. Humans have a remarkable capacity for imagining just how much they understand and incredible hubris in ignoring our ignorance.
Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction and Economics
Paul Ormerod
221
“These limits are a fundamental feature of the systems we have discussed, whether biological or whether in the realm of human social and economic organization, in which the individual agents are connected through networks which evolve over time. These limits can no more be overcome by smarter analysis than we are able to break binding physical constraints, such as our inability to travel faster than the speed of light. This is why things fail.”
“Capitalist states too have always incorporated major command and control methods and structures. Indeed today the global (capitalist) economy is increasingly marked by a worldwide decentralisation and fragmentation of the production process alongside a growing centralisation of command and control through the operations of transnational capital.”
Que?
Capitalist states too have always incorporated major command and control methods and structures.
Well that’s not true but there are command and control techniques being used in capitalist societies in the private sector.
For example advertising has long adopted the propaganda techniques of totalitarian societies, used them for their own ends and surpassed them. In fact Goebbels and Beria would be in awe of a humdrum performance of a reasonably successful PR firm.
Additionally consider the control of markets deployed by corporations who systematically exclude competition both from outside and inside. There are myriad examples of systematic efforts to close and control competition.
One of the reasons I find the usual debate between ‘liberals’ and ‘socialists’ so frustrating is that while they rehearse the same old lines economic activity is being increasingly concentrated by technocrats who tend to evade all scrutiny let alone accountability.
Have a look some time at the supermarket. Forget the brands and look at who supplies the products that come on to the shelves. Our choices are more restricted than you think they are. We think we have a lot of choice but it’s smoke n’ mirrors courtesy of people like me.
“Forget the brands.”
Hah. Many of us are congenitally and in passing proudly oblivious of brands. I never remember a brand name on principle. And it is the easiest principle to observe than any other I can think of. Memorising brand names takes up far too much mental space as well as being polluting.
Who needs it?
Lizzie, I agree; I’m hopeless with brands – have better things to fill my mind with. An advertiser’s nightmare.
I never remember a brand name on principle.
Consciously.
We are developing techniques – this is not bullshit – to deliver favourable associations between logos and warm and fuzzy feelings to you when you are an infant.
But my point viz brands is that they create the illusion of choice where none such exists.
Well, take me as sample one, Adrien. If you tortured me, mined my subconcious and married it to a orgasm machine, I would never, repeat never remember a brand name. I just can’t. Go figure.
I agree with you, Lizzie. Seriously, I did badly in the trademarks and passing off component of intellectual property law because I had no feel for branding AT ALL. In the first lecture, the lecturer held up brands and trademarks without names, and I think I only knew some of the really basic ones. Or I knew that it was a car brand, but not which one. I felt like I had some portion of my brain missing as compared to the rest of the class.
Reactionary politics? What could be more reactionary than poorly-educated Luvvies currently embracing Keynes as their next messiah!?
Lizzie/L’eagle – This reminds me of my Dad. He was a civil engineer – very literal. When I was a graphic designer I found it inmpossible to explain to him what that actually was.
.
I said “Y’know you’re car?”
He said: ‘Yes”
“Well it’s a Mitsubishi. There’s these three diamonds on the hood yes. Have you noticed?”
“No.”
“Well TIME Magazine, y’know how ‘TIME” is always presented in the same typeface?”
“No.”
What could be more reactionary than poorly-educated Luvvies currently embracing Keynes as their next messiah!?
Well jackboots down the street and attached clenched fists and mouths shouting unison syllables viz Race War come to mind.
Ha ha ha – sounds like your Dad and I would get along just fine. Although I do actually recognise Mitsubishi – possibly because of my knowledge that this means “three diamonds” in Japanese. It was only then that the brand name made sense to me. But I must say I’ve never really noticed the “TIME” magazine thing until you said it just then. Now that you mention it, yeah, it is always the same typeface.
I’ve never really noticed the “TIME” magazine thing until you said it just then. Now that you mention it, yeah, it is always the same typeface.
Goddamitt! L’eagle people like you are disrupting the Saatchi and Saatchi plan to rule the world!
Did you seriously just notice?
SERIOUSLY. It’s terrible, isn’t it? I haven’t looked at TIME very much anyway. Tell me, does it always have the same colour font too? Or does it vary? I can’t remember. I’m trying to think if it’s red or black or white.
Funnily enough, my husband and I were just discussing my very strange mind. He was commenting that I often notice details and make links between things that are unusual, but other things which normal people notice don’t impact on me at all. I do wonder sometimes if my brain is wired a bit differently to that of the average bear.
No idea what either of you are talking about. In fact the dissonance is more than a little disturbing (not).
If a thread stays on topic for 50 comments, then it’s done pretty well.
Now people are just propping the bar up, having a few quiet ones and a bit of a chat.
Hmm, there’s an archive of “TIME” magazine covers.
Lizzie, when you look at it, you’ll see what Adrien means about the font, although I do see slight variations on the theme over time. As I say, I never noticed it before, or if I did, I never bothered to retain it in my brain.
Apparently the magazine has a red border around the cover 99.9% of the time, but it seems the font colours vary from issue to issue. I only know about the red border thing from Wikipedia. I never noticed that before either.
I tell you what I am very good at noticing – interesting animals or plants. I saw a great grasshopper in our lawn the other day, as well as some black cockatoos up the road. And my best urban animal spotting moment was when this totally crazy stick insect walked past me at the bus stop once. I almost didn’t want my bus to come so I could keep on watching it.
My daughter seems to have inherited this – she’s found two small native frogs in our garden in the last year, and she’s only three years old. Her Dad didn’t believe her when she said “fog in bucket” the first time. The second time, we believed her when she said there was a frog in the sandpit (and there it was, swimming in the rain that had collected at one end).
I don’t know if it’s part of the same syndrome, but O’Neil has a revoltingly anti-Israel piece in the latest “American Conservative,” almost a new low even for that disgraceful – and utterly mis-named -sump of ratbaggery.