Reviewed July 1999

Anti-biotechnology Luddites need Maoist analysis & dose of reality

Farmer and publisher Brewster Kneen has written an up-to-date book against the power of the multinational corporations to bring about their brand of biotechnical "advance." It attempts to unite all opposition to biotechnology for profits while putting forward the "Luddite" side.

The Luddites were an English movement of workers during the Industrial Revolution. They destroyed the tools they used at work and became synonymous with opposing technological advance.

Today, there have been a number of successful Luddite struggles with regard to biotechnology. Ranging from England to India, (e.g. p. 33, 188-9) farmers and environmentalists have teamed up to destroy or "decontaminate" fields known to have experimental crops. Even within capitalist logic, the neighboring property- owners feel a threat to their property from cross-pollination from experimental crops.

In contrast with Luddites, we Marxists favor technological progress. We believe that technology is not inherently bad; it is used toward negative ends because of the profit motive that allows the small minority to benefit at the expense of the majority. The problem is not science, but the production of science.

Science vs. the production of science

Kneen also understands that science is corrupted by capitalism, both in the pursuit of profits and the careers of the scientists kowtowing to employers who can put them on payroll. We Maoists support "science for the people" and "serving the people." As it is under capitalism, no one is guaranteed a job, and that is a corrupting influence in science. "The government employees, [who are supposed to be regulating multinational corporations--ed.] for their part, are intelligently, if immorally, considering their own future employment in an age of privatization. The revolving door between industry and government means that government and industry employees are frequently on the move from one to the other."(p. 153) There are not enough government and academic jobs for everyone, and even in academia, research grants come from corporations. We believe science should be funded and conducted by the people for the people.

An initial ban on genetic manipulation research received its impetus from within academia. Within a few years, however, scientists rejected the ban. Corporations were interested in the research, especially to make the gigantic profits of being "first" and scientists wanted jobs, so they rejected federal regulation of supposed scientific autonomy.(p. 49) We Maoists reject the notion that scientists can or should pick what questions to pursue as an apolitical process. Such autonomy is a myth. Even the most abstract and basic research serves some interests more than others. At the very least, the most abstract science creates a basis to justify class divisions when some are certified with degrees in such abstraction and paid more than others without those degrees.

On occasion involving the environment and multinational corporations, we Maoists will be on the same side as the Luddites. The reason for this is that capitalism produces pseudo-science which is then opposed by back-to-nature mystics and post- modernists. It's not much of a choice, but there will be times when the pseudo-scientists are more correct than the Luddites and post-modernists for reasons they do not understand and there will be times when the Luddites are correct relative to the pseudo- scientists of the Monsantos of the world. Because capitalism confuses class with science and only favors the minority with an attempt at a scientific education, many political leaders will feel there is no way to mobilize the public against a Monsanto without appealing to pre-scientific back-to-nature mysticism. Monsanto will accuse its opponents of opposing science, but we will accuse Monsanto of being a prop in a system preventing the masses from becoming scientists.

Reactionary petty-bourgeoisie

In the end, Kneen's position is that of the backward looking petty-bourgeoisie. However, because he aims his fire at the profit-system and he concerns himself with the environment, we must consider him and his whole political tendency a vacillating friend of the proletariat.

Short of moving to a planet with pre-industrial tribal life, Kneen will not be happy. He starts the book idolizing small milk farmers who resist introducing multinational corporate milking practices and he ends the book with the illusory claim that the whole society could be similar: "Now is the time to replace the centralized command economy of the corporate world -- which seeks to embed itself in the most fundamental structure of life -- with a variety of decentralized democratic economies."(p. 191)

He does not say how he will prevent the formation of multinational corporations in his decentralized world. Yet, as far as MIM is concerned he proves with his description of the production process why production must be absolutely centralized.

He admits that as an individual farmer, it was easier to use artificial insemination of cows than other methods which involved having bulls nearby.(pp.2-3) In other words, even from the perspective of a small "decentralized" farmer there was something advantageous about introducing a technology Kneen now claims to abhor as too risky -- a stepping stone toward cloning. He claims that small farmers did not always want to do things that were more profitable, but he admits that the incentive is there for them too.

If adding hormones to cows for milk production is dangerous, it should be banned across the board in a centralized way and not left to "decentralized democratic economies." Likewise, if introducing new genes into various grains and vegetables is dangerous, it too should be banned, not left to individual small farmers one at a time. Currently, the governments of the United $tates and Canada do not require biotechnology companies to label their products as bioengineered. Thus "much of the canola oil on the supermarket shelf"(p. 7) is bioengineered without consumers knowing.

Petty-bourgeois extremism

The petty-bourgeoisie tends to believe that forming small independent institutions like "New Society Publishers" is good enough in its own right. The petty-bourgeoisie also believes in the power of abstaining, so we can win it to our side with slogans like "U.S. out of x, y, z!"

Yet, the petty-bourgeoisie distrusts both the monopoly capitalists and the proletariat. Kneen does not trust in proletarian science and so he advocates retreating far into the past as the solution. Although humyns have been farming for thousands of years, Kneen says "I started with the deep-seated feeling that I was not really farming until I plowed a field. . . It was a profound inherited cultural attitude."(p. 36) Kneen now rejects that idea as one favoring "control" of Nature. The petty-bourgeoisie chafes at "control," because it mistakenly believes in its own independence. Likewise the petty-bourgeois environmentalist thinks it is unnatural for humyns to probe nature.

Unwilling to support a "probing" science any longer and making mandatory pc obeisance to pseudo-feminism, Kneen now says "I have grown to prefer the science of observation to the science of intervention. The science of intervention seems so much more interested in achieving control than in achieving understanding."(p. 37) However, since the production of science now is governed by profit, Kneen will be left observing the multinational corporations intervening. It will require a socialist intervention to change that.

The title of the book refers to the fact that biotechnology companies constantly work with genes connected to death -- death for weeds and insect pests for example. "On March 3, 1998, the US Patent Office awarded a patent number 5,723,765 to Delta & Pine Land Company and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) for . . . a genetic engineering technique that disables a seed's capacity to germinate when planted."(p. 61)

Obviously companies are interested in such technology to force farmers to buy seeds each year. More importantly, the continued emphasis on technologically neat solutions through death raises the title of the book "Farmageddon." Should a Terminator Technology gene manage to breed into other plants, it is possible to wipe out agriculture. Already, weed resistance strategies backfire by producing and spreading genes that make weeds tougher to control. From the point of view of the multinational corporation, having to buy new technologies to deal with the problem just created guarantees a constant flow of business.

Other companies have experimented with materials that destroy the farm worthiness of soil. In contrast with Kneen, MIM sees this and does not reject all science. It is perfectly possible to express scientifically the potential risk and damage of such genetic engineering. Kneen is correct that even a small chance to destroy the soil or plant germination has to be examined with life-and- death seriousness with the interests of the proletariat in mind, and not just a few wealthy people content to live a few luxurious years and not be bothered by the long-term consequences.

Basic needs multinational corporations and proletarian noises

The most powerful capitalists of the world have always had reason to make proletarian noises to quell their opponents. In some cases, the capitalists seek to overthrow feudal elements with a little help from the proletariat, especially when the proletariat itself seems of little threat. In other situations, the capitalists talk reform when under threat by the proletariat directly.

The quintessential capitalist irony of globalization is the way in which the capitalists speak of opening borders the way the most visionary communists do. A second one is the World Bank championing the poor of the Third World -- most recently against supporters of the Dalai Lama seeking to hold back a World Bank development project in Tibet favored by the Chinese regime. Such would be an example of the bourgeoisie mobilizing the proletariat slightly to do battle with semi-feudal elements. It happened in Marx's day and has possibilities today, because the bourgeoisie believes communism is dead, perhaps rightly so compared with semi- feudalism.

Thirdly, depending on the industry a capitalist is in, that capitalist may also make proletarian noises. Capitalists in the businesses of farming and water purification are most apt to say that their work is for the good of the international proletariat. The potential exists for any capitalist working in a basic needs industry to do the same. Why not lobby the government to buy services for customers who could not otherwise afford to pay for them, the capitalists reason.

The communists may well guffaw at these proletarian noises coming from multinational corporate giants, the epitomes of monopoly capitalism. Yet, we cannot stand by idly when the imperialist country Luddites attack the proletarian noises! As an example, the Rockefeller Foundation funded Norman Borlaug in connection to the "Green Revolution," a multinational corporate publicity campaign claiming to end world hunger through seed technology. Borlaug said recently in re-embracing biotechnology, "I am particularly alarmed by those who seek to deny smallscale farmers of the Third World -- and especially those in subSaharan Africa -- access to the improved seeds, fertilizers, and crop protection chemicals that have allowed the affluent nations the luxury of plentiful and inexpensive foodstuffs."(p. 23)

As we warned readers already, Kneen is a petty-bourgeois thinker. We did not throw that label about lightly the way our individualist critics accuse us. Our individualist critics accuse us of labeling, because they do not believe in the existence of classes. Most such individualists come from the petty-bourgeoisie, the class most likely to have the illusion of being above the conflict between the proletariat and the imperialists. However, the truth is that everyone has a label: all views belong to that of one class or another.

Kneen has a recognizable constellation of views, a predictable one. When it came to feeding the world's hungry, Kneen attacked repeatedly for "moral blackmail." That is not how a proletarian writer would respond to the Rockefeller Foundation mouthpieces. The petty-bourgeoisie and its mythical "decentralized democratic economies" do not have a good record for feeding the poor. We Maoists have a good record and don't flee from defending it, because we uphold Mao's China as far outstripping the more than a hundred countries of similar levels of poverty whenever it came to anything affecting the basic health of the people. We do not sidestep the question with nihilism and chauvinism.

We seek to hoist the bourgeois internationalists on their own petard. We do not reject their rhetoric for open borders or feeding the poor. We seek to hold them to their rhetoric and prove how free trade and feeding the poor is linked to socialism and communism. Many corporations thrive by providing government services. In the long-run the capitalists and landlords will be defeated so that the hundreds of millions of starving peasants can feed themselves, but we also favor global social spending that guarantees all the right to eat. The multinational corporations in the basic needs industries may be in a position to lobby imperialist governments for such spending.

Animal rights angle

In addition to "animal rights" propagated by the mystical petty- bourgeoisie, there are now plant rights. "Does the canola compelled to contain herbicide-tolerant 'genetics' get angry at the violation of its integrity? Is its promiscuous tendency to spread its genes around, including those for resistance, its way of rebelling? Do the potatoes forced to replicate alien Bt genes object to their forced labour? Do the cows injected with rbGH object to the distortion of their metabolism? We bear a responsibility to engage in resistance on behalf of all the organisms that do not have the means to resist initially."(p. 184)

Since Kneen hinges his most powerful arguments on the accidents of cross-pollination it is silly for him to talk about "violation" of plants. Nature violates herself all the time. MIM does not believe in holy essences attributed to plants or animals including humyns. Such religiousness is a distortion of nature.

Nature does not have a way of pleasant survival for all species. As we said in our 1999 Congress resolution on the subject of animal rights, there is nothing a humyn can do or not do that does not impact some species negatively. To believe otherwise is to fail to see scientifically the many threads connecting humyns to their environments including other species. In contrast, Kneen talks about the realities of species history as if they were mere philosophies. He thus echoes the creationist Christians who believe their views are equally as valid as Darwin's. He criticizes the idea that "there is insufficient room and resources for all life, that life is competitive 'survival of the fittest,' and that the life of some requires the death of others."(p. 12)

We might favor genetic modifications. We only oppose the process by which some who gain much more from the risks decide for the rest of us how much is an acceptable risk. Change is permanent and any course of action or inaction involves risks. We do not share the petty-bourgeoisie's dream-world.

Victories

There are many forces at work in the movement against genetically modified foods. U.$.-based corporations also face pressures from protectionist-minded countries. The whole European Union has maintained a ban on importation of artificial hormone produced meat and dairy products despite a ruling against the European Union in 1998 by the World Trade Organization.(p. 93) Thus the haves of biotechnology will be forced to bribe the have-nots within the imperialist countries with jobs and ownership. For now, the United $tates has a prohibitive lead in biotechnology. As that lead dissipates and other imperialists pick up the ball, we can expect protectionist opposition to genetically modified foods to disappear.

After a prolonged public relations battle, Canada banned bovine hormone related milk in January, 1999.(p. 91)

And as MIM already reported, Europe has stepped away from genetically modified foods generally in the first half of 1999. (pp. 185-6)

In these regards, Kneen belongs to a winning movement. MIM seeks to politicize it further with the history of the Chinese Cultural Revolution as our reference point.

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