permaculture

["John Schinnerer" <john@eco-living.net>]

Aloha,

Good food for though, Bob.

>           Reproduction, Economics and Permaculture
>
> Bob Howard (c) 2002
...
> Mary O'Brien (The Politics of Reproduction) characterises reproductive
> work as different from productive work in three ways. (1) It is cyclical
> and not linear

Essential 'productive' work such as growing, harvesting, animal husbandry,
etc. is cyclical as well - or is that included in your definiton of
reproductive work?

In fact 'modern' industrial "productive" work (much of which is
counterproductive) is cyclical as well at most levels.  Just ask anyone
who's been laid off and rehired by Boeing three or four times, etc. etc..
Only the theories and the striving are about endless growth.

> The role of government
> in capitalist society is essentially one of taking on the reproductive
> tasks necessary for the society to function. This is because the market
> breaks down when it comes to reproductive tasks. In fact the growth of
> government in the last 200 years or so has been a response to the loss
> of the necessarily social activities that ensured that reproductive work
> is done.

Destruction, not loss, and often destroyed by the government/corporate
entities that are simultaneously claiming the role of savior.

> one nurse can only nurse so many patients and for both of them the task
> takes 24 hours a day. Increasing the number of patients or people
> rapidly leads to a collapse in effectiveness of nursing or policing or
> similar reproductive tasks.

These are being put hard up against your theoretical wall lately.  When
what we allow to be important is insurance company profit margins rather
than actual care of people, it is amazing how far the nurse:patient ratio
can be stretched.  Also the guard:prisoner ratio and the police:citizen
ratio.

> Class sizes cannot be increased beyond 30 or 40 without ceasing to be
> functional. No amount of efficiency improvements can change this fact.

They're already dysfunctional at 30, though that's the rest of the
educational system along with class size.

This rule doesn't apply to colleges, I assume, where undergraduate
lectures are imagined to be 'functional' with 100, 200, 300+ students in
them...

> J.K. Galbraith once pointed out that agriculture was the least
> susceptible part of the economic system to the concentration of capital.
> Farms could not be concentrated in one building but are spread all round
> the country side

All these farms can be owned by a handful of huge agribusiness companies,
however, and here they mostly are or soon will be.  Plus there's
increasing concentration of ownership of the other essentials, such as
seeds, and water.  Galbraith is out of date...

> and farmers of necessity self exploit and also develop
> a love/knowledge of the land that has economic consequences that cannot
> be met by farm managers or casual employees.

Agribusiness people don't seem to notice the supposed economic
consequences of this love/knowledge.  It's mostly the (relatively small)
farmers who are suffering the economic consequences of the concentration
of capital in farming.

> Similarly, nursing homes can double as creches.

The Amish have this down...the Amish home also serves as the Amish day
care, the Amish meeting house, the Amish old folks' home, etc...

> Marx's great failure
> was that he was a man in patriarchal society and reproduction was seen
> to be secondary to production. The political consequence of this is
> played out today in union support of logging and other
> unsustainable activities.

Logging per se is not necessarily unsustainable.  It's the where and when
and how of it.  Community-based forestry could provide regenerative
'income' more or less 'forever' to a community that stewarded their forest
ecosystems well.

As to unions, they are good and stuck in an antagonistic system ("labor
vs. capital", "workers vs. management") and show little inclination to
evolve beyond that.


John Schinnerer, MA
-------------------------
- Eco-Living -
Cultural & Ecological Designing
People - Place - Learning - Integration
john@eco-living.net
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