I
f you thought Marx’s economic determinism (economic relations determine the rest of human relations) was old hat or was not a serious topic of debate outside arcane academic journals, you’d be wrong. The musty century-old theories of a Victorian philosopher have been raised from the dead by post-modernists and transformed with the flick of a leftist wand into cultural determinism, which wields, potentially, a much broader socio-economic brush.
Since the publication of Edward O. Wilson’s Sociobiology, the cultural determinists have been on the war path against sociobiology and its successor, evolutionary psychology.
Lorna Salzman’s career as an environmental activist and writer began when the late David Brower hired her to be the regional representative of Friends of the Earth in NYC. Later she worked as an editor on National Audubon’s American Birds magazine and as director of Food & Water, an early opponent of food irradiation, and then spent three years as a natural resource specialist in the NYC Dept. of Environmental Protection. She co-founded the New York Green Party in 1984 and in 2004 she sought the U.S. Green Party’s presidential nomination. She is the author of Politics as if Evolution Mattered, which addresses the intersection of evolution with socio-political policy. More information: www.lornasalzman.com and www.neoenigma.blogspot.com