Re: [Marxism] Paper on Japanese nuclear reactors and earth quakes

[Lajany Otum <lajany_otum@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

D. Walters writes:

<< Lajany is welcome to question how all this energy 
is being used. I?ve always tried to point out that
changing to CFB and other ?home conservation? methods 
are of limited effect. In my state, only about 20% of 
all electrical energy is used by ?people? at home 
anyway. The rest is commercial (building, schools, 
offices, etc) and industrial (food processing, refineries, 
commodity production, etc). People are still going 
to use electricity for the minimum at the very least 
but also some small luxuries:air conditioning/heating, 
a bigger TV, refrigeration, etc. Within this people 
can be efficient but growth is inevitable.

The growing of the India and Chinese economies is 
almost a force of nature. For sure it?s a force
of imperialism seeking new markets and developing 
old ones. But there is a ?base national? interest
in moving their economies forward. While a needed 
socialist revolution would be great in either country,
I doubt any such a revolution would do much to slow 
down energy usage. The degree of civilization in
a society, based on simply a ?better? use of the
productive forces for human need, is still going to
require massive amounts of electrical energy. There 
is no way around this. I believe nuclear energy is
the only way to provide even under the best of
circumstances (massive conservation along the structure
lines advocated by Joaquin) the energy needed to lift 
the worlds masses out of poverty.

The point is, right now, for the immediate future, 
the loss of those megawatts in Japan is going to be
felt not just by the Japanese, but by all of us for 
the megatons of carbon that is going to be shot into
the air as a result of those units being on line. 
That's a fact on the ground now.

David>>

The problem with this is that it takes what is necessary 
for the metabolism of the capitalist system today and 
projects it as being necessary for metabolism of human 
society for all time. An understandable confusion, since 
our thinking is subject to powerful conditioning forces. 
(Good to see you land such powerful punches on the straw 
man there, in the form of "household conservation" 
too David -- keep up the good work).

The reader will also note that I did not question "how" 
energy is used, since in principle we can break this down 
into, say concrete production, construction of highway 
infrastructure, vehicle manufacture, advertising, and 
other similar categories along these lines. The question 
I raised is to what purpose is this energy being used,
which is a different, though related issue. Let us take 
for example the construction industry in Japan which 
has been described by Gavan McCormack as playing the 
role sink of value that is occupied by the military--
industrial complex in the US economy:

Japan?s public-works sector has grown to be three times 
the size of that of Britain, the US or Germany, employing 
7 million people, or 10 per cent of the workforce, and 
spending between 40 and 50 trillion yen a year?around 
$350 billion, 8 per cent of GDP or two to three times 
that of other industrial countries. Naturally there
have been short-term benefits for many, not least in 
terms of soaking up unemployment during the long 1990s 
recession. Gradually, however, public-works infrastructure 
has been replaced by ?extrastructure??developments 
undertaken for their own sake, while the collusive 
alliance at the system?s core has corrupted both 
politics and society. Japan now has more dams and roads 
per unit of land than the continental US. Half its 
coastline and most of its rivers have been wrapped in 
concrete, 90 per cent of its tidal wetlands have been 
drained and lost, its ground-water is drastically 
depleted and its bio-diversity under threat.
Gavan McCormack, New Left Review, Jan-Feb 2002, 
http://newleftreview.org/?view=2365

In other words, construction which is the largest single sector
of the Japanese economy has to grow, not to meet social need,
but simply because it exists, and because the absence of
further growth would devalourize large amounts of existing
capital.

I should say, this is not to single out Japanese capitalism which is
hardly unique in its dependence on socially worthless and materially
wasteful patterns of production and consumption for its metabolism.

As for the brand of "realism" that argues that the parts of humanity
that have been so far "left behind" by capitalist growth have no alternative
but to attempt to reproduce the "success" of, say, Japanese capital,
and to reproduce all over the world the same social metabolism
that exists here, this is the realism of fools, a recipe for the collective
suicide of humanity.

Lajany Otum






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