[Marxism] Re: Oil & MJ

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

From Stan Goff:
> Reposted your oil piece at my blog, then one of Mark's right behind it
> http://stangoff.com/index.php?p=99
>
> Here is an archive that is working for Mark Jones.
>
> http://web.utk.edu/~jgulick/MarkJones


I don't know if John Gulick's archive is the same as mine, but it looks
very similar. As James O'Connor's last dissertation student, John was in a
position to judge Mark's best work.

Speaking of the Hubbert curve and Marxism, Stan Goff is certainly another
Marxist who agreed with Mark.

Quite honestly, I am not as familiar with the terrain as I am with other
questions, especially water, fish and soil depletion. Mark was the big
energy expert. Not only did he work for a state oil company in the USSR, he
would do research at the London library on a regular basis--even when he
was weak from radiation therapy. Mark was also very involved with
understanding global warming, an ancillary question.

Here's my take on the question. At best, the experts--even those who differ
from Campbell et al--think that oil will run out in a few decades. As
revolutionary socialists, we should be hitting away at the need to conserve
scarce resources and propose more rational ways of living with nature. This
involves first of all a reintegration of the city with the countryside, as
Marx and Engels called for in the Communist Manifesto.

I post items like the salon.com article not because I think they are the
absolute truth but because I think that we have to engage with them. The
only thing I won't post to the list is radical versions of Julian Simons
like the arguments we used to hear from Jim Heartfield.

One other thing, I post them because I still have a very strong connection
to Mark Jones, even after his death. As I told Stan Goff recently, when I
write something like the article on Jared Diamond and Chevron, I miss Mark
so much I can cry. Writing about these questions and keep his memory alive
is something that will be a part of Marxmail as long as I live--and after I
am gone for that matter.


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