Re: [A-List] Main Contradictions behind War on Iraq

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

> The long-run interests of the capitalist system require the weaning from
capitalist dependence on oil. ... The USA must therefore strengthen rather
than weaken the worldwide reliance on oil.  In other words, it is leading
> the world capitalist system down a blind alley which will result in
serious upheavals when the oil is used up.  This
> too undermines the legitimacy of the USA as a world leader.
>
> (This is in contradiction to Mark Jones's basic theory that capitalism as
a system is by necessity based on oil.  If the
> above analysis is right, capitalism as a system can do without oil; but
the US cannot maintain its hegemony without
> oil.)

It may be in contradiction to the thesis that capitalism is necessarily
'dependent' on oil, but I still cannot get past the basic subject of
matter/energy.  How can anyone historically or geologically extricate
fossil fuel from really existing capitalist development?


Comment:

The question is posed incorrectly. Capitalism is a mode of accumulation of social wealth based on specific property relations. 

With all due respect to brother Mark Jones and the various theses of his which I have read concerning energy conversion, the "hole" in his proposition has to do with this stage in the development of the material power of production and whether or not society in the process of an evolution leap to a new mode of production. 

The historical question is not posed "How can anyone historically or geologically extricate fossil fuel from really existing capitalist development?"  The emergence of capitalism and the capitalist mode of the production of commodities are bound up with commodity exchange and not the energy source as the fundamentality, because human beings were the primary energy source. In history the words fossil fuel and oil are not exchangeable. 

The real question posed has as its genesis "industrial production" and industrial development and not simple the capitalist mode of accumulation. Without this distinction there is no basis to articulate the leap from industrial society to a new power in the material factors of production. This can be stated another way: the industrial production of commodities is giving way to a postindustrial production of commodities. 

In other words the fundamentality of my critique of the mode of production is not capitalism but the industrial mode of production - which both authors - Mark to a lesser degree, call capitalism. 

He is the political rub. I am from a section of the industrial proletariat that fused with the theories of Marxism several decades ago and we are pioneering a concept called the industrial production of commodities as distinct from what has been called the capitalist mode of production.
 
To get past this question of energy matter conversion as it relates to transitions in the mode of production in material life - not as an abstraction, one must look at what has changed in the productivity tools of society. 

Let us assume that oil will be used up in the next 25 years, which is impossible because there is no shortage. Then the basis of our current technology or rather the energy source driving our current technology would be compelled to shift to non fossil fuel sources. There is no immediate or long-term shortage of oil on earth, unless one is speaking in increments of times dealing with thousands of years.  The so-called hegemony of the US did not emerge on or is based is based on oil. Nor is the capitalist mode of accumulation of the wealth of commodity production based in oil. 

The capitalist mode of accumulation is based in and has as its genesis, the transition in the form of wealth from landed property to gold - things, and then the money form. During this period of time human labor in the form of the slave was the primary energy source fueling capital accumulation. 

Christ, one would think there was no such thing as mercantile capitalism or an era of manufacture. I can quote all of Marx statements on this subject for those inclined to Marxism, but it has never convinced anyone within Marxist about the essence of capital over the last century - except the small section of black workers in the industrial heartland of America. Capitalism is not dependent on oil, which is why Stan puts dependent in quotes - in my opinion. Industrial society as it evolved is most certainly dependent upon fossil fuel. 

Capitalism is dependent upon private property relations in the socially necessary means of production no matter what the energy source. This is so because capitalism is a mode of wealth accumulation in society. Capitalism is not a mode of production and this understanding can be fought out and won in this first decade of the 21st century. 

Melvin P.