Detailed reply to a comment

Mr. Ross Wolfe made a comment that I feel deserves a more detailed response than Blogger allows for in the "comments" section.

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It's not a question of necessity. As Engels said, the passage into a post-capitalist society will be an emancipation, a passage from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom. It's an expression of human freedom that I can eat a banana in the middle of winter, a miracle of globalization.

Marxism stood for a global world system, international in character, with universal production and distribution and exchange. Lenin was personally somewhat ascetic, but he did not advocate an ascetic lifestyle. For the future society must be one of abundance, not of scarcity. Of freedom, not raw need.

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Let me respond with a question:

Let us suppose we are in a world where we have moved beyond money, the revolution is complete, we are in a society that focuses on the good of it's people, rather than unnecessary exploitation (of people or natural resources). In this society the price of something is measured in terms of the resources (man power and energy) required to provide the good or service.

So, in a very real sense you are now, for the first time, paying the full price of that good or service. Since bananas can be grown (with less COMMERCIAL viability) in California's southern regions we will use that as the geographic location as the source for our comparison. Let us compare the banana vs the local greenhouse banana vs hothouse cantaloupe.

Outdoor Banana

Amount: 1 tonne

Distance: 2,900 KM

Fuel (freight train with 250 KJ / tonne KM): 725,000 KJ (4.9 gallons of diesel fuel)

Fuel to grow: n/a (grown in the sun, outdoors)

Human labour to grow, harvest, ship: 18 months per tree, each tree produces about 40 pounds, thus 55 trees needed. Time per tree over 18 months: 2 days. Time for all 55 trees: 110 days.

Estimated energy of human labour: 17,245 KJ/day @ 110 days / tonne = 1,896,950 KJ

Total Energy use to bring bananas from California: 2,621,950 KJ

I have not included here the labour involved in inspections, borders, the construction and maintenance of the train and track itself, and so on. These are discounted for the purposes here. I have also not counted the pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers that are currently used because I would hope that in a society that focuses on efficiency, such things would be done away with in favour of more efficient natural systems.

Hothouse Banana

Amount: 1 tonne

Distance: 0 KM

Fuel: n/a (people come to the neighborhood greenhouse)

Fuel to grow: Heat from compost is free, and since each banana 'tree' only produces once, every 18 months there will be a great deal of compost. Furthermore, using insulating glass (these windows have R-value of 10 which is four times greater than fiberglass loose-fill) to you can greatly increase the heat retention of the greenhouse, and reduce the need for heat generation.

Human labour to grow, harvest: 18 months per tree, each tree produces about 40 pounds, thus 55 trees needed. Time per tree over 18 months: 1.75 days. Time for all 55 trees: 96.25 days.

Estimated energy of human labour: 17,245 KJ/day @ 96.25 days / tonne = 1,659,831.25 KJ

Total Energy use to grow bananas locally: 1,659,831.25 KJ

I have discounted the cost of the greenhouse itself and it's maintenance.

So, the local hothouse banana is only 63% the resource cost of shipping from California! That means that for the same cost as growing your bananas in California you can grow 37% more locally! Still think local is a crock? Even is the only savings were in the form of shipping, that is still 750,000 KJ, or 43.5 labour days!

Hothouse Cantaloupe

Amount: 1 ac of crop land (1 ac of hothouses) produces 18,000 pounds or 8 tonnes

Distance: 0 KM

Fuel: n/a (people come to the neighborhood greenhouse)

Fuel to grow: see hothouse banana

Human labour to grow, harvest: 2 days / ac for harvest time ( I am adding 2 day / ac for the rest of the life cycle)

Estimated energy of human labour: 17,245 KJ/day @ 4 days / ac = 68,980 KJ

Total Energy use to grow bananas locally: 68,980 KJ for 8 tonnes (8,622.5 KJ / tonne)

I have discounted the cost of the greenhouse itself and it's maintenance.

I could add to the hothouses the energy cost of electric lights for the winter, but since they would be solar and wind powered the cost would still be zero.

Another way to look at this is per pound, as fruit is purchased by the pound.

Outdoor Banana: 1,189.3 KJ/pound

Hothouse Banana: 752.9 KJ/pound

Hothouse Cantaloupe: 3.9 KJ/pound

Put into perspective in terms of the number of hours you would need to work to afford each of these items (1 hour = 2,155.6 KJ):

Outdoor Banana: 33.1 minutes/pound

Hothouse Banana: 21.0 minutes/pound

Hothouse Cantaloupe: 0.12 minutes/pound

The point behind growing local is to save resources. Not to deprive the selfish, pampered bourgeoisie of their luxury items. So if you want to spend your time / "money" on the luxury of a banana, that is up to you. No one is saying you cannot. But you can save yourself 10 minutes by shopping local.

Mr. Wolfe, I hope this answers your question / comment sufficiently. Also, to your comment about being eager to read more, I will be posting roughly once a week. I am squeezing the blogging time in between a number of other commitments. Be well.

Response to Mr. Wolfe prt 3 / 19: The Rural Ideal

This is part 3 in a 19 part series responding to a critique of the environmental movement by Ross Wolfe. His blog, with the original post is linked to in the title.
Covered in this post:

The environmentalist movement (EM) has a false, fetishized view of the rural life.

Points made to support your line of thought:

1. The EM wants a kinder capitalism (one of small, local business)
2. The EM views farmers as selfless and hard working
3. Marx and Engels called the rural ideal "the idiocy of rural life"

Firstly, the kinder capitalism is not false. It comes in many forms, all of them focused on the empowerment of the lower class / working poor (aka proletariat, to use wording you may be more comfortable with). Time Magazine cites the New Economics Foundation in stating that local purchases are twice as efficient at bolstering the local economy. In the blog Food System Factoids blogger Tim Crosby shows the economic impacts of a state supported food program called Jersey Fresh, outlining how the local food initiative has a 1:54 Return on Investment! The quality of life policy think tank livablecity did an economic impact analysis of local vs chain retailers and found a significantly positive impact can be made by spending the exact same amount of money in local retails that one would have at a chain store.

How does "local economy" empower the lower classes? By enabling them to compete on relatively equal footing when / if they go into business for themselves (aka acquire the means of production). This is also in line with Marx's theory of incremental revolution. The "kinder capitalism" is also known as "Socialism". Also, more money that stays in the local community the more money that will be (and is) invested in local businesses and start-ups. In other words a virtuous cycle of local investment and development / empowerment of the local lower classes.

Secondly, the concept that the EM believe farmers are working selflessly for the benefit of the masses is... well... unfounded. I have never come across / talked with / heard anyone in the EM talk about farmers as being "selfless". Everyone knows that farmers, like everyone else, need income, and have families to feed. No one I have spoken with expects farmers to give their produce away, nor do they expect to get it for at-cost. Everyone expects the farmer to make a profit when selling locally.

The examples Mr. Wolfe uses to show the evils of farmers (farmers agreeing to burn their cotton crops to increase the value, then each goes and grows it again hoping to capitalize on the potentially higher prices) are only truly effective when done on a large scale. This would require a handful of megafarms (the larger, industrialized farms commonplace today) or hundreds of smaller farmers. It is easy to get a handful of people on-board to price-fixing schemes, but when you start to look at hundreds, many of whom have personal relationships with their clients, the challenge becomes much greater!

Also, Mr. Wolfe, I am under the impression you have never worked on a farm a day in your life; I have. My mother was dating a farmer when I was 6 and 7; at 6 years old I was put to work on the farm. The work was crazy easy and very fun... feed the chickens. My mother helped me at first, but I quickly wanted to do it myself and grew to really enjoy watching the chickens scramble for their grain allotment. It was the kind of farm most people think of when they think "farm". It was a mixed farm with grain, cattle, chickens, and a home-quarter that supplied all the vegetables and meat for the household. I remember watching Walter (my mom's boyfriend) while he worked. From the time the sun was up until after it had set he was mending fences, tending animals, seeding, harvesting, tending the vegetable plots, etc. It is hard work, especially when you do it in a sustainable way. Farm owners are considered businessmen, and therefore have no health benefits, no time off, no sick leave, and no pension or retirement plan.

Mr. Wolfe, I challenge you: if you think you can handle 12-18 hour days with about the same net pay as you make as a Manager at McDonalds, go right ahead. Put your money where your mouth is. Otherwise, do not infer that an entire class of people are corrupt, lazy capitalists with little more concern than their next big scam. Such generalizations are unscientific, and thus un-Marxist.

That brings me to my final comment. Mr Wolfe states in his blog "But that doesn't stop activists from calling for a return to this paradise that Marx and Engels called 'the idiocy of rural life' ". The hyperlink it to the original text that Mr. Wolfe is MISQUOTING. The full context is as follows:

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The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.

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Given Marx's hatred of the "bourgeoisie" it can be inferred that anything they have done is "bad" in Marx's eyes. Also given Marx's propensity for biting sarcasm (as he was writing for a non-academic audience and therefore tried to keep his readers engaged), it is reasonable to assume that he is saying here that the country being subjected to the rule of the towns is considered a negative thing by Marx, and thus it is sarcasm when he mentions how the "bourgeoisie" "rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life." The rest of this quoted paragraph re-enforce the supposition of Marx's sarcastic tone when he refers to the "idiocy of rural life".

The paragraph directly following the one quoted above further re-enforces Marx's hatred for the towns, and therefore love of the rural areas.

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The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralisation. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier, and one customs-tariff.

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So, Mr. Wolfe has mis-quoted Marx to bolster his own views and claim it was backed by Marx. This is unprofessional and misleading. I will take this chance to mention another group that mis-quotes their philosophers and leaders to back up fringe or opposing views is the same group that Marx called the "opiate of the masses"(paragraph 4). Think about that for a moment Mr. Wolfe.