[Marxism] "Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy"

[Louis Proyect]

Bob Hopson wrote:
> Well, I'm supportive of Marxism (I don't call myself a
> Marxist since at this point of my life it's not
> feasible for me to have much of a political practice),
> and I generally agree with David's position on nuclear
> power, even though he comes from a very different
> political tradition that I do. 

Neue Einheit?

> Frankly, Marxists are a fringe minority in the U.S.
> anyway, and there is a wide range of views on nuclear
> power amongst Americans, so I see nothing unusual
> about that divergence of views extending to leftists.

I don't know about leftists, but Marxists are not really known for 
supporting nuclear power under capitalism. Except for the characters 
I've mentioned.

> These are lovely sentiments, and I largely agree with
> them, but as you and others have repeatedly written
> about, green house gas emissions are a danger to us
> all -- see the recent posts about the horrific
> pollution in China.  The health, ecological and
> climatalogical crises that result from fossil fuel
> consumption are occurring at a type when socialist
> ideals are only tenuously being reborn, and socialist
> reorganization of production and consumption are
> barely visible anywhere (even Cuba is looking into
> expanding oil production).

Frankly, given the news coming out of China lately with respect to 
poisonous pet food, etc., the last country in the world that I'd condone 
nuclear power for is China. I can just imagine an apocalyptic novel 
about nuclear power plants killing hundreds of millions end of people 
being set in China, where profit comes above everything else.

> Given this reality, I see nothing strange about
> advocating nuclear fission as a stop-gap form of
> energy production to keep industrial society rolling
> until the revolution comes along.  Otherwise we're
> just complaining about how bad things are without
> prosposing anything resembling solutions.

Okay, you and your group (whatever it is) can push for keeping 
industrial society rolling along. My priorities are elsewhere.

> Of course, there are folks like Alf Hornburg who argue
> that industrial society is inherently
> self-destructive, but that's an entirely different argument.

I don't know about Hornburg, but I do endorse these sentiments:

Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human 
conquest over nature. For each such conquest takes its revenge on us. 
Each of them, it is true, has in the first place the consequence on 
which we counted, but in the second and third places it has quite 
different, unforeseen effects, which only too often cancel out the 
first. The people who, in Mesopotamia, Greece, Asia Minor, and 
elsewhere, destroyed the forests to obtain cultivable land, never 
dreamed that they were laying the basis for the present devastated 
condition of these countries, by removing along with the forests the 
collecting centers and reservoirs of moisture. When, on the southern 
slopes of the mountains, the Italians of the Alps used up the pine 
forests so carefully cherished on the northern slopes, they had no 
inkling that by doing so they were cutting at the roots of the dairy 
industry in their region; they had still less inkling that they were 
thereby depriving their mountain springs of water for the greater part 
of the year, with the effect that these would be able to pour still more 
furious flood torrents on the plains during the rainy seasons. Those who 
spread the potato in Europe were not aware that they were at the same 
time spreading the disease scrofula. Thus at every step we are reminded 
that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign 
people, like someone standing outside of nature--but that we, with 
flesh, blood, and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and 
that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the 
advantage over all other beings of being able to know and correctly 
apply its laws.

Engels, The part played by labor in the transition from ape to man