Part 2 of this review can be found here: https://llco.org/dissent-science-and-a-healthy-world2/

Dissent, science, and a healthy world: comments on Judith Shapiro's Mao's War Against Nature (2001) Part 1 of 2

(llco.org)

Mao's War Against Nature (Cambridge University Press, 2010) by Judith Shapiro was published a decade ago. Even though the book is problematic in many ways, the issues that it raises are more important than ever. Since its publication, the ecological crisis caused by global capitalism has only gotten worse. There are only so many resources to go around. Capitalism has created a system where people in the First World get more than their fair share at the expense of people in the Third World, and at the expense of the Earth itself. Capitalism has created a system that not only consigns the vast majority of humanity in the Third World to incredible poverty and oppression, but also a system that is unsustainable ecologically. I once attended a campaign rally many years ago, Elaine Brown, ex-Black Panther Party celebrity and then-current Green Party activist, informed her audience that she sought a system in which everyone, presumably both in the First and Third Worlds, could be millionaires. The proposition, like many idealist fantasies, was met with applause despite the obvious problems such a solution to the world's problems would entail. How would this super-mall economy of the nouveau riche materialize? Who would toil away to produce the goods? Who would staff the mall? The current system is unsustainable as it is, imagine how unsustainable it would be if First Worldist rhetoric were realized and every human being was somehow magically granted the leisurely, consumerist lifestyle, opportunities and way of life of the American nouveau riche. Even continuing as it has, civilization itself is headed for ecological catastrophe. Not only does capitalism steal the livelihood and dignity of the vast majority in the Third World, but it threatens the future of much of the life on Earth. The Earth weeps. The masses cry out for an alternative. The need for total revolution, for new socialism and Leading Light Communism, has never been greater. The need for Leading Light, the most advanced scientific leadership becomes greater every passing day. Shapiro's book convincingly shows that the past attempt at an alternative, at socialism, at reaching communism, in China was flawed in important ways. Shapiro shows that errors abounded in the Maoist revolution's approach to intellectual dissent, green science and to the natural world. According to Shapiro, despite its pseudo-scientific pretense, the Maoist ideal to control, to dominate, to micromanage, almost every aspect of the intellectual and natural world to better serve human interests often ended in disasters that worked against both the interests of humans and the environment. The revolution, says Shapiro, veered to unscientific extremes due to Maoist fanaticism:

"Our story begins not in the physical world but in the political one — with a struggle among human beings. In the summer of 1957, just a few years after the 1949 Communist victory, hundreds of thousands of China's most distinguished scholars and scientists were criticized, harshly punished, ostracized, and silenced in an 'Anti-rightist movement.' By destroying those who sought simply to perform the Chinese intellectual's traditional duty to speak out in order to assist the country's leaders to govern better. China deprived itself of authoritative voices that might have cautioned against foolhardy schemes that ultimately destroyed the natural environment. People from many levels of society contributed to the events that will be described in the coming pages. However, as we shall see, Mao played a leading role in launching the Anti-rightist movement, as he did in numerous subsequent decisions that affected China's environment for the worse." (Shapiro 21)

Shapiro does not hide her distaste for the Maoist regime. She often fails to distinguish between very different trends within the regime. She lets it be known that she is not a fellow traveler or sympathizer with the Maoist project. She has no love of Maoism or the Cultural Revolution. If Shapiro had to pick a side during the line struggles within the Communist Party in the last decade of Mao's life, Shapiro would opt for revisionism and capitalism, even Western liberalism. Even so, her criticisms can be a starting place for our own revolutionary self-criticism over errors that occurred in those years. The Maoist history is our own. Their victories are our own, so too are their defeats. It is our burden to provide answers to the masses, to ultimately explain why socialism in China was defeated. These errors, both the demand to micromanage dissent and the natural world, ultimately aided the counter-revolutionaries in China, and also in the Soviet Union. Rather than ignore the kinds of problems Shapiro raises, we should use her work as an opportunity to examine ourselves. We must dissect the past attempts at social transformation in