What a day 'can we be bovered about climate change?' title says it all about the debate at a school with dodgy climate sceptics...all very 'yes but no but yes but' we don't think it is happening but it might be, but we don't give a toss! A little depressing even the Economist and every political party sees it is happening and wants action, we should be having a debate about what action to stop climate change is appropriate
then on to Marxism 2007 the Socialist Worker Party to hear Michael Lowy co-author of the ecosocialist manifesto (so yes he is a comrade), don't quite think the SWP get ecosocialism although had a nice chat with John Singha who I think does,
nice to see a bit of debate and disagreement amongst the swp comrades, argument is healthy, let5s keep off leaders.
Alex Callinicos is anti-car but admits air travel is a difficult one.
Still feel they haven't got there heads around why socialism isn't enough, Marx was green somewhat surprisingly but the left for the last hundred years haven't respected nature so if you say socialism is enough that really isn't enough for greens and rightly so.
lets roll a spliff and watch the Dr Who repeat, exhausting day, earning my money as Principal Speaker (well not that I am paid).
Weekly worker cpgb meeting and Doughty Street coming up next for me.
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Canvassing in Brighton back in 2017 to support Green Party MP Caroline Lucas’s re-election efforts, I knocked on a door and came acros... -
Derek Wall ’s article entitled Imperialism Is the Arsonist: Marxism’s Contribution to Ecological Literatures and Struggles , argues that Ma...
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Sat at a computer in the library, I am aware that the woman looking at the screen next to me is becoming increasingly agitated. ...
2 comments:
Good to meet you earlier Derek. You're quite right about the SWPers who spoke - largely clinging to some idea that socialism unrevised and uncontaminated, as if such a thing has ever existed, will solve our problems without recognising the emergent new crises of capitalism which M & E could only remotely and vaguely foresee, and without regard for the long history of Marxist prometheanism. In fact, of course if we take passages from Dialectics of Nature as 'unrevised and uncontaminated' then the old man himself was an ecosocialist - he just didn't have the language to identify himself as such! (In fact, despite owing more to Haeckel than he ever let on, Engels didn't employ Haeckel's new term - 'ecology' - either. If he had, maybe he would have termed himself, in the manner of the period, an 'ecological social democrat'!)
Hi Simon,
good to meet you too, please excuse my rough blog, long day and all that.
however the point is Marx and engels were surprisingly green, marxism in the 20th has not been.
1848 is much ahead of 1956! (although EP Thompson was great)
so what action we take cannot be read straight from Marx but Marx basically got what was going on while the far left are still well behind him.
ideas of agency, human creativy, etc don't just mean domination.
Prometheanism can mean compost bins rather than nuclear power stations.
In fact the late great Walt Sheasby wrote some good stuff on why prometheanism does not mean industrial productivism.
to some extent my disagreements with the SWP are the same as my disagreements with some members of the green party.
control, hierarchy, monolithic politics, etc...based on a fear of the libertarian spirit.
I think where we do agree is the SWP without just attacking them are a bit formulaic....ecosocialism does demand dealing with a range of questions creatively.
so join the party and fight for ecosocialism, ho ho!
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