[A-List] Re: Oil, Oil Everywhere

[CeJ <jannuzi@xxxxxxxxx>]

I enjoyed your posts on this topic MP and admire your bravery in
insisting on an analysis along classical Marxist lines as a starting
point while almost in the same breath using the 'fascism' word (on
every other list I've been on except Marxmail and A-list this would
lead to one sure thing: wrongful derision)

Also,  I would prefer to lose every argument about the issues of peak
oil and global warming if it meant that my pessimism about world
capitalism meeting such challenges could be shown to be unfounded or
at least the reasons for that pessimism could be overcome. I mean,
well what I mean is, I think the only way world capitalism could meet
such challenges would be for our global political economy to become
socialist. In other words, capitalism inherently CAN'T meet such
challenges as resource depletion and global warming.

I go to this point in your discussion, in order to reply:

> My point of contention is a perception that places and seek to place, oil
> and the peak oil contention at the center of world events. This contention has
> been around before my short seven year tenure on the A-List, Pen-L and >Marxism   list. I am extremely uneasy about this contention and at this point >cannot  accept the contention that the finite nature of oil ushers in and may define
> the  limits of the system of value production or change the internal limits or
> the  form of the contradictions ripping the bourgeois system apart and driving
> it to  war. This is one aspect to my different view - lens, on the peak oil
> controversy.

I agree except I really think it is possible that rather than be
overthrown world capitalism (with the US firmly as the base) will
destroy the world first. We saw more than hints of it with WWII and
the Cold War. So we might be at a time in the human history when we
are really looking at our own demise as a species and will be proved
correct (though there will be no one around to say 'they told you
so').


>  Producing all this crap in the  world
> today, solely to make money is the problem and this and this along drives  the
> real and imagined "oil crisis." The oil crisis spoken of in the context of
> peak oil does not arise because of the finite nature of oil.

Which is why I have been skeptical about peak oil arguments as being
effectively explanatory. One, capitalism can be at a crisis over oil
when the price of oil is low (this was the when the US backed Iraq in
a war against Iran, and held until the US waged its first war against
Iraq over the occupation of Kuwait). Two, capitalism can be at a
crisis over oil when the price is high, but that does not necessarily
mean that the conditions of peak oil and consciousness of peak oil
prevail in world capitalism.  When the price is too low for the
capitalists, it means that there is classic overproduction. When the
price is high, it gives them greater pricing power and a higher
percentage of profits, but this is only 'satisfied' by pouring more
capital into the production that is accelerating in profits. In the
current US and subservient Europe this also means unchecked militarism
in the ME and S. Asia.

 I am somewhat baffled currently as to whether we are heading into
classic overproduction or simply see a speculative bubble (and in
today's credit picture, I suppose both conditions could exist).

But the biggest source of my pessisism is that I deep down feel it a
waste of time to appeal to capitalists through admonition to improve
capitalism in order to make it 'perfect' (on social issues, on issues
of the environment, on demilitarization, etc.), even when the fate of
the earth is well at stake. And that is all people like Al Gore or
Bono Vox or Bill Mahrer are doing. On the other hand, all things being
equal in regards to my gene package and my health and my continued
life, I would rather live in Sweden (if I could be native born) than
in the US (if I could choose where I had been native born).


CJ