[Peace-discuss] Re: Population control

Tue Jan 24 00:00:16 CST 2006

Ricky,

  In your postscript, you write that "the practice of tree-spiking gets a bad rap."  Deservedly so!

  In its defense, you claim that  "in fact spiked tree areas were generally posted with warnings --- the purpose being to protect the trees not to injure the workers."  Even if there were "generally"[!] warnings, your justification posits a false dichotomy.  Of course, the purpose of the spiking was to save trees, but how would it do so?  By the credible physical threat to the bodies of those who would harvest and process the tree.      

  Your next line implicitly places the responsibility for injury or death on lumberworkers:  "Unfortunately a very few workers either chose to ignore these warnings or were coerced into doing so by the boss, and injuries resulted."  Unfortunate indeed!   

  And attempting to invoke the memory of Bari as a means to show why tree-spiking "gets a bad rap" doesn't work, in since Bari was part of a section of Earth First! who sought to distance the movement from direct action methods that could potentially hurt people, and in particular tree-spiking.  She correctly understood that the backlash against the environmental movement caused by such tactics far outweighed any potential good it might do. 

  Finally, whether or not you have no moral qualms with tree-spiking, I think that in the end it's best to judge based on resutls.  What would a historical balance sheet on tree-spiking tell us?  (1) Whatever short-term victories might be attributed to the practice, if any, the destruction of old growth timber and the deforestation of the world continue, no doubt more rapidly than before; (2) The practice has discredited the entire environmentalist movement in the eyes of working people in lumber producing states.  Coming from Northern Minnesota, I can attest to that myself.  There were few instances of tree-spiking, but at least there the anger that those "militants" created have damaged their cause beyond repair.  And in states like MN, Oregon, Washington and elsewhere, the far right has used such tactics as "wedge issues" to break apart the old labor-liberal alliance.  That was no doubt inevitable for a number of reasons, but I'm sure that Earth First! had not planned on
 accelerating the process.

  Tom    

Ricky Baldwin <baldwinricky at yahoo.com> wrote:
  Looks like I missed another doozy. 

But before I launch into how the problem with
population control is in who's doing the controlling,
etc., etc., (I agree with most of what I've been
reading anyway) is it possible to find out what
exactly the proposal was and what the thinking was
behind it?

Ricky

P.S. The practice of tree-spiking gets a bad rap, but
in fact spiked tree areas were generally posted with
warnings --- the purpose being to protect the trees
not to injure the workers. Unfortunately a very few
workers either chose to ignore these warnings or were
coerced into doing so by the boss, and injuries
resulted. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
worked with both loggers and environmentalists in the
Pacific NW during the 1980s and 90s, since they both
had the same enemy: big capitalist logging companies,
which were the ones eliminating both logging jobs
(thru mechanization) and forest (sometimes old growth
and sometimes clearcut). Judi Bari gave her life for
making the connection. 

--- Tom Mackaman wrote:

> Sorry to get in on this late, but this particular
> discussion raises in acute fashion the need to
> struggle for socialism.
> 
> The political outlook of organizations that make
> population control (btw, sounds a bit too much like
> "pest control") the center of their activity or the
> central global problem is indeed Malthusian and
> reactionary to the core. The great ecological
> catastrophe confronting humanity is not the result
> of population growth. Instead, it arises inexorably
> from the capitalist profit system, which
> subordinates human need--including the need for a
> clean, healthy, and beautiful environment-- to the
> profit imperatives of rapacious corporate bodies and
> national governments. We in the Socialist Equality
> Party and at the World Socialist Web Site insist
> unequivocally that there is enough for all, but that
> resources will continue to be needlessly squandered
> and the environment destroyed so long as economic
> decision-making remains confined to the thouroughly
> irrational and chaotic private profit system.
> 
> This is a problem that needs to be clarified on
> the left, and beyond just the organizations
> mentioned in this discussion. There is a Malthusian
> left in the US, much of which is found in the upper
> of the environmentalist movement. Dave Foreman of
> Earth First (and later to sit on the Exectuive Board
> of the Sierra Club) it may be recalled, welcomed the
> 1980s Ethiopian famine that killed millions because
> he ludicrously believed that it would reduce
> pressure on African resources. He also defended the
> practic of tree-spiking, an act which could
> potentially lead to the killing or injury of lumber
> industry workers. His was a struggle not against
> American capitalism--the world's greatest threat to
> both people and nature--but against workers and the
> poor. 
> 
> And of course, there is a significant, if
> minority, section of the Sierra Club that joins the
> far right in calling for greater immigration control
> in order to lessen the burden on the American
> ecosystem, or so the argument goes.
> 
> Much of the Green Party as well as Ralph Nader
> attempt to pawn off as good coin the notion that
> some sort of sustainable, eco-friendly capitalism
> can be built. "Green capitalism" is the slogan, I
> believe. Or that a new, sustainable economy can be
> built in commune fashion, one town at a time. And a
> great many reduce the question of ecological
> disaster to personal guilt. In this view, problems
> such as global warming are reduced to an aggregate
> of individual consumer choices. There could not
> possibly be a view more accommodating to the status
> quo and impervious to the need for social change. 
> 
> The salvation of the environment, like the
> struggle against war, requires first and foremost a
> complete political break with both parties of big
> business and all those political formations that
> seek to pressure capitalism and capitalist
> politicians from the left. The last several decades
> have rendered ample historical testimony to
> demonstrate, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that
> pressure politics and the politics of personal
> choice only serve to divert sincere environmental
> concerns into a blind alley.
> 
> Required, instead, is the building of an
> international movement of the working class that
> holds as its aim the reorganization of society under
> the democratic control of working people, in order
> to meet pressing human and social needs. Central
> among these needs, and of increasing urgency daily,
> is the defense and restoration of the ecosystem.
> 
> Regards,
> Tom
> > _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>
http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
> 

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