Better red thai green

Scan page 11

I READ with particular interest this week's Science column in SO describing the need for a socialist science policy. A few months ago a comrade and I drew up a discussion document for Class Fighter arguing for an ecological perspective in the movement and was frankly very disappointed by the negative response it drew.

Due to our geographical isolation here in our village, the document was presented by a Manchester comrade, Jett Evans, to SO supporters in that city. I believe he also talked to SO supporters at a national level and received little encouragement from that quarter either.

Our main contention was: 1. There exists objectively the threat of a severe ecological crisis due to the nature of capitalist industrialism. This comprises a danger to humankind as serious as political oppression, war or economic crisis and all these phenomena are inextricably interrelated in the system of world imperialism.

2. The exploitation of humankind by humankind can therefore not be separated from the exploitation of nature.

3. There is a growing recognition of this reflected in the Green movement, Green CND, Animal Liberation etc., etc. Although these are presently petit-bourgeois led movements, they are at least responding to a manifestation of capitalism which the revolutionary left has not even recognised yet!

4. As Marxists we must continually re-analyse developments in the objective world, not just of socicty and production, but of the relation between production and nature.

There should be no Green movement. To be Green should mcan to be tighting. capitalism with a complete perspective of all that capitalist exploitation entails for our planetary survival.

5. This is also integral to our conception of socialism: Are we fighting just for a better means of "carrying the productive forces forward" or for a complete revolutionary transtormation of social and human-natural relations.

There is growing concern in the Labour Party and YS about these issues. It is not a petit-bourgeois trend. It is a growing awareness of the terrible implications of capitalism - radioactivity, acid rain, marine pollution, environmental: devastation, the irreplaceable loss of species.

SO should be in the forefront of this if it is to be in the forefront of the fight for socialism. Your column should be at least a page and act as a kind of "Doomwatch" on all the ecological consequences of capitalist science and technology.

This should also be the main role of the Science Shops. We should expose everything from industrial diseases to atmospherical pollution and portray people as part of the world ecosystem -not as triumphant' conquerors over nature.

We preface our document with a quote from Engels (Origins of the Family ,..") "Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of dar human victories over nature. For each such victory it takes its revenge on us." I do not have a copy available at present but if you are interested I will send you one.

I, and I am sure when we have an opportunity to discuss it, my comrades will be glad to help you in any way in hammering out a revolutionary Markist perspective on science, technology and the ecosystem:

Venceremos, ALAN BROOKE P.S. We will have to work out a position on our attitude to the Socialist Countryside Group, SERA, the Ecology Party., etc.