[Xmca-l] Re: Rio Tinto Zinc
robsub@ariadne.org.uk
robsub@ariadne.org.uk
Wed Sep 16 01:18:34 PDT 2020
Slightly off topic, but mental maps have always fascinated me. I wonder
what Marx meant by "western" Europe. Where was the boundary then between
"western" and "eastern" Europe? Was it just in Marx's mental map or a
common mental map?
Rob
On 16/09/2020 01:33, Andy Blunden wrote:
>
> This letter:
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/letters/81_03_08.htm__;!!Mih3wA!QibN3pMD6kHltZpaJGKtcksvv0LeyNnyYP0eU7NdP6PLKItwU1Ebt6Dy5i3HlhSI9HkaYw$
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/letters/81_03_08.htm__;!!Mih3wA!Wc7U2Qr5zMgrKKeh_jEXkdulE0GgE_Mf1JJ9xPU3T2lU6DpYFZfSmiQ9Rs0MpFuzxe_8fw$>
> is one occasion when Marx makes it clear that he makes no claim for
> the inevitability of a capitalist stage of social development, only
> that this was what was actually the case in Europe in his time. Note
> that Marx's correspondence with Vera Zasulich was published in Russia
> in 1924, so Vygotsky would have been aware of this.
>
> Andy
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> Hegel for Social Movements
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://brill.com/view/title/54574__;!!Mih3wA!Wc7U2Qr5zMgrKKeh_jEXkdulE0GgE_Mf1JJ9xPU3T2lU6DpYFZfSmiQ9Rs0MpFu6Xfct7w$>
> Home Page
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm__;!!Mih3wA!Wc7U2Qr5zMgrKKeh_jEXkdulE0GgE_Mf1JJ9xPU3T2lU6DpYFZfSmiQ9Rs0MpFttzS7DtA$>
>
> On 16/09/2020 1:58 am, Martin Packer wrote:
>>> capitalism, and hence the idea of nature as capital, is no universal
>>> stage (contrary to what Stalin taught).
>>
>> This happens to be something I’ve been thinking about recently — the
>> ‘evitability’ (avoidability, as opposed to inevitability) of
>> capitalism. I’ve been reading some of the work of Douglass North, who
>> won a Nobel prize in economics in 1993 for his analysis of the role
>> that institutions have played in economic ‘development,’ He thought
>> he was describing how the West achieved ‘progress’ and has been able
>> to ‘evolve’ further than other regions, but one can read his work as
>> describing alternative pathways in the formation of economic systems,
>> which in the West has led to an imbalance in which profit and growth
>> have become the only measures of societal and individual achievement.
>>
>> A neat illustration: the NY Times has been publishing reflections
>> upon an article written 50 years ago by Milton Friedman titled "The
>> Social Responsibility Of Business Is to Increase Its Profits."
>> Friedman wrote:
>>
>> WHEN I hear businessmen speak eloquently about the
>> “social responsibilities of business in a free‐enterprise
>> system,” I am reminded of the wonderful line about the Frenchman
>> who discovered at, the age of 70 that he had been speaking prose
>> all his life. The businessmen believe that they are defending
>> free enterprise when they declaim that business is not concerned
>> “merely” with profit but also with promoting desirable “social”
>> ends; that business has a “social conscience” and takes seriously
>> its responsibilities for providing employment, eliminating
>> discrimination, avoiding pollution and whatever else may be the
>> catchwords of the contemporary crop of reformers. In fact
>> they are—or would be if they or any one else took them seriously—
>> preaching pure and unadulterated socialism. Businessmen who talk
>> this way are unwitting puppets of the intellectual forces that
>> have been undermining the basis of a free society these past decades.
>>
>>
>> It will be hard to find a better statement of the ideology that has
>> got us all into the current mess.
>>
>> On the left, was it with Lenin that capitalism became viewed as a
>> necessary prerequisite to socialism? For example, as I understand it
>> after the revolution in Mexico, 1910-1920, the PRI (Partido
>> Revolucionario Institucional) worked hard to turn the indigenous
>> peoples into a proletariat. This was the only way they could imagine
>> societal progress: quickly moving the country into capitalism so as
>> to achieve socialism. I conclude that it was not only Stalin who
>> taught this.
>>
>> Martin
>>
>>
>>> On Sep 14, 2020, at 9:57 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com
>>> <mailto:dkellogg60@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>> If you click on the link that Henry, and before him John, offered,
>>> you get the pro-natural-capital side of a debate in the pages of the
>>> Guardian on whether or not "nature" can be valued as capital and
>>> whether it is good or bad for nature for humans to do this. I think
>>> that in CHAT, we are indebted to Marx for many things, but surely
>>> one debt we would do well not to disavow is Marx's insistence (in
>>> Critique of the Gotha programme and elsewhere) that nature is NOT
>>> capital: on the contrary, humans and all of their various property
>>> forms from communism to capitalism must be considered peculiar forms
>>> of nature. This is a discussion that CHAT needs to have if we are
>>> going to retain the AT in CHAT. I disagree with Peter Jones on many
>>> many things, but one thing I heartily agree with him on is the idea
>>> that Leontiev brings an intensely anti-naturalistic view of activity
>>> into activity theory--humans acting as subjects on passive
>>> environments to produce beneficial outcomes.
>>>
>>> Marx had a better idea: in the Ethnological Notebooks, he shows us
>>> that capitalism, and hence the idea of nature as capital, is no
>>> universal stage (contrary to what Stalin taught). Western
>>> capitalism, with its idea of nature as capital, is really just one
>>> extreme variant. In Marx's columns on the Sepoy rebellion and the
>>> Taiping rebellion, he even posits an "Asiantic mode of production"
>>> that had virtually nothing to do with feudalism. So to say that
>>> South Korea and Japan are equally capitalist societies is really a
>>> little like saying that China and the USSR were equally
>>> non-capitalist. Deus Sive Natura: and neither one is capital.
>>>
>>> David Kellogg
>>> Sangmyung University
>>>
>>> New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity:
>>> Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between
>>> Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky
>>>
>>> Some free e-prints today available at:
>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!QibN3pMD6kHltZpaJGKtcksvv0LeyNnyYP0eU7NdP6PLKItwU1Ebt6Dy5i3HlhRShCkjVg$
>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!W-RPX1ECIuKav0e-i1es3roVHR0WUtjgmoG2iARQqbybBsxElYTIACu53v3cWm487oUiBw$>
>>>
>>> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological
>>> Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology"
>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!QibN3pMD6kHltZpaJGKtcksvv0LeyNnyYP0eU7NdP6PLKItwU1Ebt6Dy5i3HlhQhPRBVQw$
>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!W-RPX1ECIuKav0e-i1es3roVHR0WUtjgmoG2iARQqbybBsxElYTIACu53v3cWm7NjX5sJQ$>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Sep 15, 2020 at 3:43 AM HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com
>>> <mailto:hshonerd@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Martin, John and Andy
>>> Thanks to Martin for kicking off this topic and John and Andy
>>> for following up. I has amazed me to find, for me, how the RTZ
>>> narrative resonates with both Navajo and Pueblo narratives here
>>> in New Mexico. How evil RTZ is, but how wonderful the courage
>>> of our native peoples!
>>>
>>> Chaco Canyon IS a tourist destination here in New Mexico. Though
>>> there has been no destruction of the site that, based on Native
>>> American narratives and the efforts of archeologists, is
>>> architecturally spectacular evidence of the pre-Colombian
>>> culture from which the present-day Pueblos come. What parallels
>>> RTZ activities on aboriginal lands in Australia is the drilling
>>> for gas and oil on Navajo lands surrounding Chaco and a rush to
>>> buy more rights while Trump is in power. There have been
>>> protests, though nothing as intense and effective as the
>>> Standing Rock protests to protect water on native lands to our
>>> north and east from gas and oil predation (the pipeline).
>>> Standing Rock was LED by Native Americans, many from the Navajo,
>>> Apache and Pueblo near me.
>>>
>>> I just saw yesterday a 30-year-old film that is one of the
>>> offerings of the Vision Maker Film Festival: Clear Cut. I
>>> recommend it, or at least a look at the wiki article about it.
>>> It couldn’t be more timely. It’s messy, where contention between
>>> environmental and logging interests and division WITHIN the
>>> native community (traditon vs. jobs) leave one stunned. What
>>> redeems a messy struggle is exactly what Andy says: The
>>> aboriginal people of the world do it for us! In the same way,
>>> when “our” Pueblos put on feasts and invite us in to witness
>>> their dances, they do it for us. Perhaps you recall the movie
>>> “Koyaniskaatsi”, la Hopi word that has been translated as "life
>>> out of balance". (The Hopis are a Puebloan people, descendants
>>> of the Chacoan culture. The Navajos and Apaches arrived here
>>> about the same time as the European colonizers, based on
>>> linguistic and genetic evidence.) If you live in New Mexico, you
>>> are around Pueblo people. If you are really lucky, and many of
>>> us are, you become friends with them and they invite you to
>>> share their food at the feasts! How generous is this? They do it
>>> for us.
>>>
>>> The RTZ narrative is not only destructive to cultural capital,
>>> it is implicated in natural capital
>>> (https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/nov/23/monbiot-natural-capital-wrong-conservation__;!!Mih3wA!QibN3pMD6kHltZpaJGKtcksvv0LeyNnyYP0eU7NdP6PLKItwU1Ebt6Dy5i3HlhQBfHKCMQ$
>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/nov/23/monbiot-natural-capital-wrong-conservation__;!!Mih3wA!SBdL369rv5LA2eUVglK7x1RO_gnzeKTtEL3aixjV1TAMOI-HkqMNbHUWvJAN5h7atm8Krw$>)
>>> via climate change. (The link here, to a Guardian article is
>>> available through the first link in John’s post). Here again we
>>> should look to our native peoples. There is credible research
>>> that concludes the climate change lengthens fire seasons but
>>> wrong-headed environmental policies make the fires more intense,
>>> hence less controllable. Add to this the incursion of housing
>>> into forested areas and the destruction is a doubly
>>> self-inflicted wound. And hold on for this one for the best CHAT
>>> connection: Native peoples of this continent used to set
>>> controlled burns to remove the kind of unburnt fuel to avoid
>>> such conflagrations. Today some of the best-trained and most
>>> effective firefighters in this country are Native Americans.
>>> Cultural capital. They do it for us, and their example from the
>>> past can serve us now. Cultural capital.
>>>
>>> I believe I have crowed before about New Mexico and our Native
>>> Americans. Australia has crowing rights as well. And, for
>>> standing proud, there’s nothing like an anthem. The best anthem
>>> music I have EVER heard comes from Australia: Yothu Yindi What a
>>> great project that brings together white people and people of
>>> color. What great creative collaboration. Andy, I am telling you
>>> again, project is a great unit of analysis, precisely because it
>>> brings together cognition and affect, because it embodies active
>>> orientation. In my country, it is pretty well agreed that the
>>> natives got screwed, across the political divide. Black Lives
>>> Matter is more complex, but there is hope that the question of
>>> race is now where LGBTQ issues were at the time of the AIDS
>>> crisis, in the last century. Back then we could never have
>>> guessed we would be where we are with non-gender-conforming
>>> acceptance now. Just saying, as much for myself as for anybody
>>> else listening.
>>>
>>> La Era Está Pariendo Un Corazón
>>> Henry
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> On Sep 13, 2020, at 8:09 PM, Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org
>>>> <mailto:andyb@marxists.org>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Er. " *NO *physical markers"
>>>>
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> *Andy Blunden*
>>>> Hegel for Social Movements
>>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://brill.com/view/title/54574__;!!Mih3wA!S5K6-3pAdjVKLQOipHOtp4mkhFhXR1sxkXKZDQnO0A7C1xQKXN0SUjkqI9KbXmCMTCf0iQ$>
>>>> Home Page
>>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm__;!!Mih3wA!S5K6-3pAdjVKLQOipHOtp4mkhFhXR1sxkXKZDQnO0A7C1xQKXN0SUjkqI9KbXmDbUUpHdA$>
>>>>
>>>> On 14/09/2020 11:43 am, Andy Blunden wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Firstly, an apology. I replied on the list before noticing
>>>>> that John had already responded, and John is much better
>>>>> informed than me about these matters, and yet I spoke as if he
>>>>> didn't exist. My apologies.
>>>>>
>>>>> These caves are nothing for tourism. They are too remote and
>>>>> there are others more accessible. I believe the caves have
>>>>> been under Native Title as a result of a bitter struggle to
>>>>> protect them by the local people in the 1990s. This means that
>>>>> RTZ had to get permission from the PKK people. The lawyers
>>>>> swindled them.
>>>>>
>>>>> In my view, all these sites which are not only part of
>>>>> Aboriginal heritage (there are places which have *NO *physical
>>>>> markers of their status but are sacred to the local people)
>>>>> but self-evidently of *world* heritage. But I don't think
>>>>> these caves were registered as World Heritage. I have not
>>>>> heard the discussion about this (John?). No-one wants to say
>>>>> this, I think, because it implies that Indigenous values are
>>>>> somehow less important than human values. For example, under
>>>>> the law as it stands the PKK Land Council would have a right
>>>>> to let RTZ destroy the caves and maybe a million dollars or
>>>>> two in the bank or a new school, would be enough. This is not
>>>>> a hypothetical. One of the reasons that the Indigenous people
>>>>> remain impoverished even where they have Native Title over
>>>>> large areas of land, is that they live, after all, in a
>>>>> capitalist country and Native title cannot be sold. It is not
>>>>> a commodity. Therefore it is not a form of wealth. You can't
>>>>> get a mortgage to build a house on land you own by Native
>>>>> title. You can't sell a block to a farmer so you can buy
>>>>> agricultural equipment to farm another block. In short, by
>>>>> blocking the Indigenous people from monetising their land
>>>>> rights we trap them in poverty. In general, the indigenous
>>>>> people are happy to forgo tourist income to protect their
>>>>> sacred sites (e.g. Uluru) and I don't doubt for an instant,
>>>>> that if they'd been properly consulted they never would have
>>>>> agreed to the destruction of the caves. Obviously. But they do
>>>>> have to have rights to trade with their land. But also the
>>>>> world needs to keep absolutely unique archaeological sites
>>>>> pristine and the local people should be supported by
>>>>> governments to do the work of protecting them on *our* behalf.
>>>>> Recognising the great cost entailed.
>>>>>
>>>>> Andy
>>>>>
>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>> *Andy Blunden*
>>>>> Hegel for Social Movements
>>>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://brill.com/view/title/54574__;!!Mih3wA!XARa5o_f0_F8FwoOvEi2G83w7OupjEw0Qs4sAopd9iMJNxF19MT9A4BOkNVcEAAZnw4ahQ$>
>>>>> Home Page
>>>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm__;!!Mih3wA!XARa5o_f0_F8FwoOvEi2G83w7OupjEw0Qs4sAopd9iMJNxF19MT9A4BOkNVcEABlTgxfKw$>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 14/09/2020 4:53 am, Martin Packer wrote:
>>>>>> Thanks, John and Andy,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I suppose that I am naive, for this event astonishes me in so
>>>>>> many different ways. I would have assumed that the land title
>>>>>> or native title granted to indigenous peoples over some
>>>>>> territory in Australia would have included the Juuken Gorge
>>>>>> caves. I would have assumed that these caves were a national
>>>>>> cultural heritage site, or even a world cultural heritage
>>>>>> site. I would have assumed that indigenous rights would have
>>>>>> more importance to the Australian government, and indeed to
>>>>>> the Australian people. I would have assumed that, while
>>>>>> mining is apparently of great economic importance to the
>>>>>> country, the government would have considered the economic
>>>>>> value of this site for tourism, or simply the impact that
>>>>>> destroying the caves would have on Australia’s reputation.
>>>>>> And while I suppose that unbridled rapaciousness on the part
>>>>>> of an international mining company is hardly a surprise, I
>>>>>> would have thought that Rio Tinto would also have considered
>>>>>> the negative publicity that their actions would create.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> How can we express our displeasure to the various parties
>>>>>> involved? Are there petitions that one can sign? Or Twitter
>>>>>> accounts to which one can tweet?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I wonder how much the salary is of (ex) CEO Jean-Sebastien
>>>>>> Jacques, if his bonus this year would have been A$4.9
>>>>>> million. Perhaps he could donate a few years of his salary to
>>>>>> establish a foundation that could work for indigenous
>>>>>> peoples’ rights.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> sadly
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Martin
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Sep 12, 2020, at 8:59 PM, John Cripps Clark
>>>>>>> <john.crippsclark@deakin.edu.au
>>>>>>> <mailto:john.crippsclark@deakin.edu.au>> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> The destruction of the Juunken Gorge caves (which I assume
>>>>>>> you are referring to) is a much more villainous act than was
>>>>>>> originally portrayed and reflects the venal racism not only
>>>>>>> of the company but also of the State Government. For those
>>>>>>> not familiar with this shocking crime, the $80b Anglo
>>>>>>> Australian mining company which on Sunday 24th of May blew
>>>>>>> up a site sacred to the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura
>>>>>>> (PKKP) traditional owners and occupied for 46,000 years at
>>>>>>> least, to extend iron ore mining. "“It’s one of the most
>>>>>>> sacred sites in the Pilbara region … we wanted to have that
>>>>>>> area protected,” PKKP director Burchell Hayes. The
>>>>>>> traditional owners tried desperately to stop the blast once
>>>>>>> they became aware it was impending.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> At the time Rio Tinto claimed "Clearly there was a
>>>>>>> misunderstanding" but and, after much outrage, the three
>>>>>>> members of the executive had their multi million dollar
>>>>>>> bonuses reduced. It has subsequently emerged that Rio Tinto
>>>>>>> had contracted lawyers to oppose any injunctions before the
>>>>>>> crime was committed. The chief executive and two of his
>>>>>>> underlings have resigned.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> The crime was legal and was made possible by State
>>>>>>> Government laws which are stacked in favour of miners.
>>>>>>> Assessments of the cultural and environmental significance
>>>>>>> are made with little investigation and remain in place for
>>>>>>> decades and have rarely been successfully be challenged. No
>>>>>>> permission to destroy heritage sites in WA has been refused
>>>>>>> (and there have been 463 applications).
>>>>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-31/wa-heritage-destroyed-by-rio-tinto-example-of-national-trend/12305298__;!!Mih3wA!Q80d_k7DkHBzzs0yi4W5IfiSTlRupZ8XOxiOsNcARSHE8ZZrLW7G-oWoAnKstsuUT5a7UQ$
>>>>>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-31/wa-heritage-destroyed-by-rio-tinto-example-of-national-trend/12305298__;!!Mih3wA!Q80d_k7DkHBzzs0yi4W5IfiSTlRupZ8XOxiOsNcARSHE8ZZrLW7G-oWoAnKstsuUT5a7UQ$>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> It is not as if we didn’t know that this would happen.
>>>>>>> Norway's pension fund divested their holdings in Rio Tinto
>>>>>>> in 2008: "Exclusion of a company from the Fund reflects our
>>>>>>> unwillingness to run an unacceptable risk of contributing to
>>>>>>> grossly unethical conduct. The Council on Ethics has
>>>>>>> concluded that Rio Tinto is directly involved, through its
>>>>>>> participation in the Grasberg mine in Indonesia, in the
>>>>>>> severe environmental damage caused by that mining operation."
>>>>>>> — Kristin Halvorsen, Norwegian Minister of Finance
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> A useful background briefing of indigenous rights in
>>>>>>> Australia:
>>>>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/rearvision/features/in-the-shadow-of-terra-nullius/__;!!Mih3wA!Q80d_k7DkHBzzs0yi4W5IfiSTlRupZ8XOxiOsNcARSHE8ZZrLW7G-oWoAnKstssDCtcsSw$
>>>>>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/rearvision/features/in-the-shadow-of-terra-nullius/__;!!Mih3wA!Q80d_k7DkHBzzs0yi4W5IfiSTlRupZ8XOxiOsNcARSHE8ZZrLW7G-oWoAnKstssDCtcsSw$>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On 13/9/20, 12:26 am, "xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
>>>>>>> <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Martin
>>>>>>> Packer" <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
>>>>>>> <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of
>>>>>>> mpacker@cantab.net <mailto:mpacker@cantab.net>> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Andy, what on earth has Rio Tinto Zinc been up to??
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Martin
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
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>>>>>>
>>>
>>
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