Re: (OPE-L) Re: The Amish in a fossil-fuel depleting world -- Nader/Camejo

From: Francisco Paulo Cipolla (cipolla@UFPR.BR)
Date: Wed Sep 29 2004 - 17:34:20 EDT


Paul, are you aware of Andriana Vlachou´s paper on Nature and Value Theory
(Science and Society Vol. 66, no. 2, Summer 2002, 169-201)?
If I were starting a course on environmental economics froma marxian perspective I
would certainly use it as a starting point.
Decades ago the author of the Fiscal Crisis of the State (I forget his name: James
O´Connor?) wrote something on ecology that stayed in my mind for a long while but
I wouldn´t be able to give you the exact references.
I hope you send your syllabus tothe list one of these days!
Paulo

Paul Zarembka wrote:

> Jerry,
>
> For the first time in my life I'm teaching environmental economics
> and becoming much more aware of fossil fuel depletion and global warming.
>
> I don't know how to fit the Amish into modes of production issues (inc.
> capitalism), but I do know that the recent book *Powerdown* offers the
> Amish as a lesson how at least some could simply survive the end of the
> fossil fuel era.  In any case, in no way was I suggesting the Amish form
> of production as a model within capitalism.  Capitalism is itself the
> problem.
>
> Sorry, but I don't have a big program to offer anyone; it's all too scary!
>
> Paul Z.
>
> *************************************************************************
> Vol.21-Neoliberalism in Crisis, Accumulation, and Rosa Luxemburg's Legacy
> RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY, Zarembka/Soederberg, eds, Elsevier Science
> ********************** http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PZarembka
>
> On Wed, 29 Sep 2004, Gerald A. Levy wrote:
>
> > Hi Paul Z.
> >
> > > Since Sept. 13, the Nader/Camejo web site carries every day a new
> > > 'featured national asset', today being The Amish.  Without saying so but
> > > connected to yesterday's press release for the Nader/Camejo Campaign --
> > > "Global Climate Change Requires Us to Break Our Addiction to Fossil
> > > Fuels", it offers a way forward as humanity destroys millions of years of
> > > fossil fuel build-up.
> >
> > While Amish communities can not be considered to be "Utopian
> > Socialist"  -- perhaps "Utopian Capitalist" might be a better description --
> > the belief that the Amish experience and lifestyle can be generalized
> > while the capitalist mode of production dominates and this "offers a
> > way forward" could be subjected to a critique similar to Marx's critique
> > of Utopians like Owen and Fourier, don't you think?  Of course,
> > many radical environmentalists -- including a lot of my anarchist
> > friends -- reject that critique of Marx and defend Utopianism.
> > The ideology of the Green Party is, at least partially, self-consciously
> > Utopian, I think.
> >
> > "Is small beautiful?" is a related question.
> >
> > In solidarity, Jerry
> >
> >
> >


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