A-list message, Re: [A-List] Hydrogen power or hot air?

Hi Melvin,

On the issue of entropic waste, I suggest (available on the web) "Technology and Unequal Exchange," by Alf Hornborg. It does a very good job of describing the thermodynamic wall, of the inverse relation between value and order (Prigogene's definition of order), and has an interesting notion of a technomass/biomass ratio. Hornborg has the Marxist idiom, even though he reduces economics, a la classical econ, to exchange... though to be fair he focuses on exchange of value between core and periphery, as in differentiated SNLT. He grapples with Wallerstien, Frank, and Samin. He also shows a fetishization of technology that is more than a mere metaphor. My knee jerked a few times when I first started reading it, but it's worth the stay. In fact, I would venture to say that he partially succeeds in describing a deeper historical materialism.

As you can see, this whole arena caught my attention a couple of years ago, and hasn't let go of me yet. It may actually turn out that the labor theory of value has a very real thermodynamic (but not parallel) corollary. It will certainly provide some very surprizing new insights into the relationship between imperial power and its colonies. I believe you and I, with some of our disagreements, do share a committment to the Black nation, and this line of study - I believe - is going to give us many insights there; particularly on questions categorized as "environmental justice," and on the contradiction between rural and urban. For myself, the three tendencies that have most enriched Marxism have been left Black nationalism, eco-feminism (a la Mies), and thermodynamic ecology. Mark Jones introduced me to the latter, and I haven't slept since (-: They all have profound implications for our struggle in the near term, and the runaway train of late imperialism is headed diredctly for this thermodynamic wall... all the whistling in the cemetery by knuckleheads like Rifken notwithstanding.

Stay strong, brother. Hard rain agonna fall.

Stan