oil and socialism

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

devine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 11/17/00 12:11PM >>>
The problem is that if one assumes that just because capitalism
historically _required_ slavery or oil it _always_ requires slavery or oil,
that makes one think that simply removing slavery or oil from the picture
will destroy capitalism. If you argue that just because capitalism
historically required slavery or oil, it doesn't always require slavery or
oil, then you're accepting my point.

((((((((((((

CB: First, while I agree with Lou's point that how actual, concrete capitalism has "gone down" in history must be kept in the forefront of the minds of every generation of Marxists because we must examine the facts to confirm or update Marx's theory, I think Jim is correct to examine capitalism "in general" in relations to its particular manifestations. This is inherent in a theoretical approach.

Jim and I discussed this "necessity of slavery" issue a little while ago. We looked at Marx's theoretical statements toward the end of Vol. I of _Capital_ in the Chapter on "The Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation".  I agree with Jim that it is best to interpret Marx there as using "slavery" metaphorically, except I would add the caveat that I think the metaporical use there includes the literal use of "slavery". In other words, literal slavery is one of the forms that the metaphorical slaveries take, as in the era of literal slavery under capitalism. The point is that it is the same fundamental mechanism in capitalism in general that produced the literal slavery as produces the figurative slaveries as long as there is capitalism. So, the varioius forms of oppressed labor other than literal slavery are the empirical confirmation of Marx's generalization that  capitalism's basic mechanisms have a historical tendency to produce oppressed labor ( "slavery") along side !
wage labor.

The "mechanism" is optimum accumulation and competition and some capitalists who will ruthlessly pursue any way to get an advantage forcing all capitalists to the most advantageous exploitation, i.e. a form of oppressed labor or "slavery".

This doesn't make the whole argument, because there is also the issue of if somehow the capitalists were prevented from creating and exploiting forms of oppressed labor before the end of capitalism ( which is not that "simple" to accomplish),  how would that lead to the end of capitalism period ? Won't go into that now.

Oil is a little different. If an alternative were found, I see no reason why a group of "alternative fuel" controlling capitalists couldn't take over from the fossil fuel capitalists.