Re: [A-List] LRNA and energy

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 10/22/02 4:36:30 AM Pacific Daylight Time, sherrynstan@xxxxxxx writes:

> Hi Melvin.
>
> I mean no disrespect for the LRNA.  In fact, I know Jerome Scott, Michelle
> Tingling-Clemmons, and Walda Katz-Fishman, and have the greatest respect
> for the work each of them does.  What I am saying is there are assertions
> in this document that have not taken into account the rudiments of oil...
> which is not just a commodity.  The US pays around $250 a barrel (by some
> accounts) for the stuff, but $220 of that is disguised as "defense"
> spending or taken as imperial tribute in the form of interest from the
> global south.  It underwrites dollar hegemony, which in conjunction with US
> military power, is the very basis of US imperialism.  An important Marxist
> analysis of oil would begin with reviewing "rent," which describes, in
> part, the relationship between the US and Saudi, for example.  But even
> more basic, and this is where the left often substitutes anachronistic
> interpretations for doing their homework, are the material realities of oil
> that form the basis for the social relations of oil.  A good place to look
> over an outline of this material reality is at
> http://www.hubbertpeak.com/campbell/commons.htm
>
> Stay well.
>
> Stan


My writings are evidently a tad bit too combative. I do not feel you direspected anyone or the document in question. The issue of the glut was my focus as opposed to the mathmatics - underlying math, of the oil/dollar (petro-dollar/hegemony) question. 

Yourself and Mark have exposed me to another arena of literature I did not know exists and I am grateful. My point of view - generally speaking,  is similar to Jerome Scott  in as much as we have known each other for a little over 30 years and I use to babysit his children who are now adults and lived in his home in Atlanta during the time of the child murders in 1981/1982. Actually, I printed some literature for Jerome when he ran for a union position maybe back in 1970 or 1971 and saw him a couple of weeks ago in Detroit for the 35 year Reunion of the old League. 

This is not to say we are bound by the same theoretical underpinning, except maybe in the most general sense. Much of my thinking began radically shifting while staying in Jerome's home and working in the South and living in Atlanta. The question of industrialization and its energy source hit me very hard while in Mississippi's Delta area. It would take me 15 years to unravel what I initially thought Marx meant by mode of production and why at a "certain stage" the material factors - power, run into conflict with . . . . .etc. 

My underlying theoretical angle emerged and consolidated in another arena altogether. That is to say while I was involved in healing - doctoring, the sick and needed to consolidate a different modality concerning what is called metabolism and waste production in the human body. 90% of everything concerning healing and medicine has as its underpinning alchemy and this took years to unravel. 

What I initially thought was a European inheritance of philosophy has unfolded to be revealed as a bourgeois inheritance of philosophy/science and the need to overcome alchemy - what I could only describe as the chemical scientist 5 years ago. I do not mean to ramble but there is in my opinion another modality outside of the frame of references of the epoch of the bourgeoisie. 

My point is that the underlying math cannot substitute for a theoretical approach. In theory driving the price of oil down cannot and will not cause a boom in the economy or rather the economy is not the mode of production much less the tools - instruments. The question has many sides that cannot be answered here and now, but the social organization-tools- energy source-infrastructure are aspects of the mode of production, which is in transition. 

Stating there is no glut of oil in the market violates the most elementary ABC logic of capital. The strategic question of the underlying energy source of infrastructure is another matter. I think these two aspects of the issue were confused. 


I ain't mad at you at all. I'm late for work and don't want to be fired.

Peace

Melvin P.