Re Hans's [72ll]: > But in the external clash between > capital accumulation and the limited resources of our > planet, there is no such other side of the coin which would > provide a solution, exactly because this clash is external. > Perhaps this will clarify why I consider the distinction > between internal versus external contradictions relevant > here. On a political and a practical level, I think we are in agreement. I don't think, though, that the "internal contradictions" vs. "external contradictions" distinction really captures this relationship. Consider: a) We are all part of nature. Like all life, we are organic matter. Like all, we are matter and atoms. From that perspective there is *simple unity* and there is nothing that is alien to us. b) We struggle with and against natural forces for our survival. Our life depends on the lives of other species. We appropriate what is part of the rest of nature and claim it as our own (as do some other species but in more limited ways.) From that perspective -- which is the one that I think Marx emphasized -- we are in *opposition* to nature. So there is not simple unity alone, there is also *difference*. From the perspective of difference alone, it makes sense to conceive of this question in terms of "internal" vs. "external" contradictions. c) Both a) and b), though, are one-sided. We are neither just the same as all else nor is humankind just different from all else. Both sides express, in other words, only limited sides of this relationship. Thus, in our everyday lives we see capital just in opposition to the rest of nature where it seeks to appropriate nature as an external force and mould it to serve its purposes. Yet, capital can not defeat nature without the defeat of all life and with that the requirements for the reproduction of capital. Indeed, the logic of capital, and with it the unlimited thirst for surplus value by capital, if unchecked drives towards that end. Against this logic there is the logic of the working class. There is also even under capitalism a limited role for the state, i.e. reforms can be won through struggle which slow this drive towards self-annihilation. A *prerequisite* for this, though, is that since both a) and b) are one-sided we must grasp the question, not in terms of simple unity or difference alone -- but with greater complexity in terms of *unity-in-difference* Yet to grasp this we can not take the standpoint of conceiving of the contradictions between humanity and the rest of nature as "external". In solidarity, Jerry
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