Saturday, December 1, 2007

Thanks regarding The Perverse Imbalances between Town and Country

I wanted thank everybody who commented on the papers. Your contributions were very informative.

Thanks again,

Michael

1 comment:

Myrtle Blackwood said...

Thanks for posting your document, Michael. I found it an enjoyable and enlightening read.

I found an excerpt of Marx's writing that I thought you would appreciate. You probably have seen this before. It is entitled 'Marginal Notes to the Programme of the German Workers' Party'. He's clearly correcting a document.

With respect to the paragraph:
"1. Labour is the source of all wealth and all culture, and since useful labour is possible only in society and through society, the proceeds of labour belong undiminished with equal right to all members of society."

Marx corrects this and states:
"Labour is NOT the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labour, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labour power....And in so far as man from the beginning behaves towards nature, the primary source of all instruments and subjects of labour, as an owner, treats her as belonging to him, his labour becomes the source of all use values, therefore also of wealth.."

I felt uncomfortable with Marx's reported call for 'nationalisation of the land'. What IS 'nationalisation'?? If it means distribution of land to as many people as is possible with requirements for genuine stewardship then ok. However centralised powerful organisations (public and private) have proven themselves incapable of land management and of fair resource allocation.

Here in Tasmania a lot of the observations of the various writers you quote ring true. Things like:
- large organisational growth does not confer substantial benefits. (The forest industry is now predatory and parasitic here).

- the fire department being impeded from reaching targeted neighbourhoods. (Fire clearings are not maintained and multinational forestry corps have planted trees in a manner that blocks off access to local water sources and fire vehicle access to homes).

- Dispossession of self-sufficient people from the countryside. (There's an outright ban on the building of new dwellings on acreages less than 200 acres and those not engaged in agribusiness. Bans on more than one dwelling per title and other artificial impediements).

- It's clear that overproduction and overtrading is being generated by expansion of credit to businesses that would be clearly unviable at any other time.

- von Liebig said that labour spent in spoliation of the soil is worse than labour thrown away. This has been confirmed by the recent Millenium Ecosystem Assessment that determined that nations would fare better economically by leaving their forests intact than by subjecting them to industrial deforestation.

Marx's emphasis on 'mode of production' is interesting. Schumaker places repeated emphasis there as well. I can't recall Schumaker's exact words but he does say that our freedom to choose the outcomes of the production process is determined by the manner in which production takes place. He also says that agriculture is not amenable to industrial management regimes; it being a process that works with living things.

Thanks again.