Grayed Out Mao

There was electricity in the air today at the site of the Olympics in Beijing … well, okay, the residue of electricity.

fwiw, when TheWall = Iron Curtain fell, making Eastern Europe visible ~ i happened to be working with a group of (Democratic Socialist) scandinavians. Our ambition was to transfer sophisticated Linear Programming = resource optimization technology, as well as practical ‘know how’ from Jewish-American scrap recyclers : to European businessmen desiring to create a network of aluminium recycling plants of unprecedented scale, and profitability.
At that time, “recycling”, though practiced to some extent by such large companies as ALCOA, Reynolds and ALCAN was not profitable; and had never received the necessary capital investment, thus ~ to achieve “economy of scale” by virtue of mass production Capitalist tools and techniques.
We actually began financing our endeavour two years prior to the fall of The Wall… by secretly importing Russian Ingot through a middleman in Switzerland to Norsk Hydro in Norway (circumventing ‘protectionist’ restrictions then imposed on Russian imports by the EU: Norway being a non-member of that bloc The Russians all carried 9mm automatics ~ their image of American Capitalists was then, and to some extent remains today ~ an ironic composite derived from our popular culture: you know, those old B&W “The Untouchables” television programs, and “The Godfather” = The American Saga = what businessmen are
So when The Wall fell we were among the first crop of Westerners to tour the East. My god, what a wasteland it was! Beyond any dystopia ever realized or imagined (Blade Runner, Brazil, etc.) by the West. . . Communism . . . is not a pretty story, folks.
Marx’s Vision of Sustainable Human Development :

“…well known ecological economist Herman Daly, for example, argues that for Marx, a “materialistic determinist, economic growth is crucial in order to provide the overwhelming material abundance that is the objective condition for the emergence of the new socialist man. Environmental limits on growth would contradict ‘historical necessity’….”
The problem, says environmental political theorist Robyn Eckersley, is that “Marx fully endorsed the ‘civilizing’ and technical accomplishments of the capitalist forces of production, and thoroughly absorbed the Victorian faith in scientific and technological progress as the means by which humans could outsmart and conquer nature.” Evidently Marx “consistently saw human freedom as inversely related to humanity’s dependence on nature.”
Environmental culturalist Victor Ferkiss asserts that “Marx and Engels and their modern followers” shared a “virtual worship of modern technology,” which explains why “they joined liberals in refusing to criticize the basic technological constitution of modern society.”
Another environmental political scientist, K. J. Walker, claims that Marx’s vision of communist production does not recognize any actual or potential “shortage of natural resources,” the “implicit assumption” being “that natural resources are effectively limitless.”
Environmental philosopher Val Routley describes Marx’s vision of communism as an anti-ecological “automated paradise” of energy-intensive and “environmentally damaging” production and consumption, one which “appears to derive from [Marx’s] nature-domination assumption.”
. . . The under-utilization of the human developmental and ecological elements of Marx’s communist vision is also reflected in the decision by some Marxists to place their bets on a “greening” of capitalism as a practical alternative to the struggle for socialism. ”

MG, your bang-on and thanks to capitalism the grey days are increasing exponentially in China. I assume your familiar with Slavoj Zizek .
Modern-day China is not an oriental-despotic distortion of capitalism, but rather the *repetition of capitalism’s development* in Europe itself. In the early modern era, most European states were far from democratic. And if they were democratic (as was the case of the Netherlands during the 17th century), it was only a democracy of the propertied liberal elite, not of the workers. Conditions for capitalism were created and sustained by a brutal state dictatorship, very much like today’s China. The state legalized violent expropriations of the common people, which turned them proletarian. The state then disciplined them, teaching them to conform to their new ancilliary role. http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3425/chinas_valley_of_tears

I visited most of the major cities of China for two weeks in the summer of 2004. During the entire two weeks, I only saw blue sky for one day while we were traveling in the countryside between cities. It wasn’t raining or anything; the sky was just gray all the time. Sometimes the red ball of the sun would pierce through, but only occasionally.