From: Mark LaRochelle 
Subject: Re: Environmentalism is Marxism
Date: 5 Jan 1996 17:26:02 GMT
Organization: Putting People First

The green doctrine that nonhuman things have "objective value" may be descended from Marxist theory of objective value. This notion was exploded in 1871 by Carl Menger's publication of *Grundsatze der Volkswirtschaftslehre*, which exposed all values as radically subjective. As Aldo Leopold admitted, this is absolutely true for naturalistic aesthetic values.

To be accepted as an "environmentalist" nowadays, it is not sufficient to seek to implement the most effective means of conserving natural resources and minimizing environmental harm. It is necessary to accept the dogma that free people are self- destructive, and that statist aggression through global nationalization and totalitarian control of resources and behavior (including reproduction) is necessary to restrain their self-destructive tendencies (Not explained is why people suddenly become non-self-destructive when acting politically or as bureaucrats).

It is irrefutably demonstrated in the work of Coase, Posner, Breyer, Buchanan & Tullock and Olson that the common-law institutions of several property and strict liability are the most effective means of conserving resources and minimizing environmental harm, and that nationalization and bureaucratic regulation lead always to regulatory capture and the tragedy of the commons, as seen at Chernobyl, in the killing of Lake Baikal, and the burning of soft coal throughout Eastern Europe and China.

Yet to be an "environmentalist," one must pay obesiance to this command-and-control approach, regardless of the ecological catastrophe it engenders. The slightest hint of ideological deviance or pragmatism in consideration of exactly what types of institutions are most successful in achieving the purported goals of maximizing environmental health and the quality of life is enough to brand one as an "eco-villain."

The embrace of Greenpeace and Earth First! by such formerly orthodox Marxist journals as The Nation reveals a serious deterioration of the left. CPUSA National Chairman Gus Hall said as early as 1972 that "in the struggle to save the environment....we must be the leaders of these movements.... Human society cannot basically stop the destruction of the environment under capitalism. Socialism is the only structure that makes it possible." Likewise, Carl Bloice boasted last year that "The environmental movement promises to bring greater numbers into our orbit than the peace movement ever did."

(Note that West Germany and the Netherlands caught Greenpeace red-handed accepting KGB funding from East Germany to fund its unilateral "nuclear freeze" campaign in the 1980s.)

The problem is that the workers rejected the vanguard leadership of such folks. Weeds and bugs are unable to do so, and so form a more promising constituency. So the intellectuals turn their backs on the workers and appeal to suburban yuppies in the media and academia to spin their Edenic dreams.

Marxism was a fiercely industrial-rationalist faith that by nationalizing capital, productivity could be unfettered, unleashing an era of abundance. Ludwig von Mises poured cold water on that pipe dream when he demonstrated irrefutably in "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth" that nationalization of capital must lead inevitably to a crisis of capital consumption, progressive impoverishment and eventual collapse, as later happened in Eastern Europe. Environmentalism responds not by abandoning the command- economy model, but by abandoning the idea that productivity and abundance are good. If socialism produces penury, then penury is good, and prosperity will destroy the world. A fiercely industrial-rationalist faith has degenerated into mystical nature-cult, a kitchy romanticist holism of "Blood and Soil."

Note that "ecology" comes from Ernst Haekel and the idea of "animal rights" comes from Richard Wagner. Both were adopted by the Nazis. See Hermann Goring, "A Broadcast Over the German Radio Network Describing the Fight Against Vivisection and the Measures Taken to Prohibit It," August 28, 1933, *The Political Testament of Hermann Goring*, trans. H.W. Blood-Ryan (London: John Long, 1939), p. 73. It is not much of a leap from Malthusianism to eugenics, nor from neo-Luddism to primitivism.