New Marxism – the Earth has rights
Stephen Marx, lives off the grid in Vermont and he’s angry.
Thirty-two years ago, Marx moved out of New York City to the end of a long dirt road, beyond the reach of power lines. The retired literacy teacher and gardener bought a couple of modest-sized, 20-year-old solar panels and times his use of appliances to coincide with topped-up batteries.
Yet he says he’s only recently become anything like an environmental activist. The 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision in favor of “corporate personhood” (in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission) tipped the scales.
“It was really bothering me. I was getting angrier and angrier,” Marx remembers. “I tend to shut down when I’m angry, so I walked up the hill with May (his dog). I said to myself, ‘Wait a second — corporations have rights. We gave them rights; I gave them rights’ — I mean, I vote; I accept responsibility. It means that corporations can do whatever they want, but the Earth can’t. And that was it.
Everyone had been saying ‘We can change this,'” Marx continued. “And then it came to me: We can’t change this — no one’s going to change multinational corporations. But maybe we can make it an even playing field. It became something positive, instead of a negative.”
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