[PEN-L:29904] Re: Re: Re: Re: "Russia turns to yuan"

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 8/26/02 7:26:50 AM Pacific Daylight Time, lnp3@xxxxxxxxx writes:


> Shortage of oil? Not in this world. The shortage is in our vision and
> >imagination.
> >
> >Melvin P.
>
>
> Even under socialism, there would be dwindling supplies of oil just as
> there are dwindling supplies of water. Unless Melvin's "vision and
> imagination" includes serious and *measurable* proposals for how to
> conserve energy, water, etc., we can't be taken seriously as an alternative
> to the bourgeoisie. 125 years ago there was little difference between the
> bourgeoisie and Marxism over how to relate to nature. It was seen as both
> an unlimited tap for natural resources and a sink for industrial waste. We
> can no longer think in these terms. Socialism must first and foremost
> consider ways in which farming can be sustainable. This involves
> reintegration of the city and the countryside, just as Marx calls for in
> the CM. For some Marxists, this is an appalling prospect because it would
> sacrifice everything they hold dear such as Starbucks, McDonalds and other
> symbols of Empire. (Interesting, btw, that Hardt-Negri have zero to say
> about ecology.) It also requires us to reevaluate the use of automobiles
> and many other expressions of "civilization". In the final analysis, we'll
> all be better off because we won't have to go to war to fight over oil,
> water, etc.
>
>
>
>
> Louis Proyect
> www.marxmail.org



Reply

I agree with your underpinning concerning what to me appears to be a "leap" in the societal concern and estimate of nature, production and peoples interactive relationship. I most certainly agree with the need for a different vision of development, markedly different from that of the rising industrial epoch. The similarities of technical application between the capitalistic and Marxist industrial warriors whose shared and opposing visions of the same thing - societal reproduction, and man himself -  produced destructive consequences.

Even our "automobile culture" - mass transportation industry, is in need of complete overhauling. Not just transition to earth friendly and clean vehicles, but why 17 millions vehicles a year in the first place. Why continue to honor capital's vision of mass production and mass transpiration? A vast segment of the autoworkers supported Bush Jr. because they were opposed to replacing the internal combustion engine and believe in their head - not their heart, that automobiles for everyone is mass transportation. I would be repeatedly asked, "Why do you oppose your own job?" I worked in an engine plant.

I would endlessly explain that I am not interested in my job but working on the one hand and having the means to provide for my family and enjoy life. The fight was for a different vision of society.

The McDonald culture is horrible and produces "McPeople" who reproduce the McDonald's that reproduce the McPeople. The idea of consuming that, which cannot be assimilated by the body - at the molecular level, defines waste production that in turn cannot be assimilated back into the earth. We are slowly passing from producing material wherewithal's through consuming that, which cannot be assimilated or what is called biodegradable, to an era that will birth a new science of the law of assimilation. Assimilation as growth and evolution contains a distinct law system.

The word "McPeople" - which McDonald's would have taken me to court for using if it became a popular cultural term indicating insanity, was used to try and paint a picture of another reality - vision. Even the Burger King mentality - "The Whopper" or bigger is better, is part of the industrial framework of conception.

The seemingly innocent advertising slogan, "Aren't you hungry?" is the question of the social degenerate. The problem is that there does not exist a science that examines the law system governing consumption and the biology of consumption.

We are leaving the industrial echoic and these frameworks are beginning to collapse on a mass scale. Bigger is not better. I am not freaking hungry? Look at how our peoples are horribly disfigured and the modern glorification of fat and "big people" or the "full size figure."  The ideology of limitless consumption of that, which cannot be assimilated, has made our national cuisine that, which is nothing more than "heart attack on a plate."  And is an impulse used for war preparation and war purposes.

Here is the ideological and political problem I am grappling with: The immediate war danger does not grow out of dwindling oil supplies in the Middle-East or elsewhere, but rather the oversupply - glut, of oil on the world markets. Bush Jr. policy is to remove oil from the market and politically reconfigure the Middle East. In the final analysis, we'll  all be better off if  we won't have to go to war to fight over oil,
water, etc.

Each generation produces its own vision of society. The industrial warriors of the past - on the right and left, the capitalist, the Marxist and communist, were limited to producing what we recognize today, to a better degree, to be an industrial monstrosity.

The finite nature of oil and water is not measurable - at this point in history, not because of incomplete mathematical models, but because all the model are based on ideology of capitalist consumption and reproduction of the industrial product. Herein resides the rub with "Stan" and the finite nature of oil advocates.


Heck, the gasoline engine could have been regulated to antiquity - more than less, during the time of Edison and Telsa, as personal transportation devices.

"125 years ago there was little difference between the bourgeoisie and Marxism over how to relate to nature. It was seen as both an unlimited tap for natural resources and a sink for industrial waste," is part of my thinking and the "why" has occupied my thinking for several decades. This is some deep shit Lou that questions ones very conception of reality and the logic of reality conception production. In the last instance what is the internal compelling impulse for man to consume more than he can assimilate?

Not, on what basis and how does capital reconfigure this impulse to consume more than one can assimilate. Put another way, on what basis did the shared vision of societal reproduction coalesce between capitalist and Marxist of the industrial epoch and what is the modern - current, shared vision?  Put another way, not simply the path of destruction of the Native and indigenousness peoples and their culture with the advent of imperial authority, but what drives this destruction before and as it is reconfigured on the basis of capital formation?

From this vantage point your vision concerning the Native or indigenousness peoples is impressive, although race theory prevents many of us in America from advancing from a different paradigm to a radically different conception and standpoint in viewing life and man as environment. "A different paradigm" means the opposite of "a radically different conception." The notion called "a different paradigm" is bourgeois ideology or the ideology of the epoch of industrial production.

Here is the "real Marx" demanding that man be grasped at his root and not simply on the basis of the science of society. Modes of production do not created consciousness (cognitive functioning) - but rather, only shape the ideological forms. Mr. Lenin's "Materialism and Empiro-Criticism" has to be sublated, but this might be the task of another generation.

Man, or rather the individual as history is not just "wrong" but historically limited at every juncture in our evolution and either good or evil. Evil is not an intellectual construction but a material force that long ago constructed its intellectual presentation - form.

Lou, I think I experienced a genuine leap in thinking when working in the "alternative health movement," and it was characterized as passing from a conception of "man and environment" to "man as environment."

Lou, in my head I believe that every shortage of natural resources on earth is artificial and contrived. In my heart I know this to be true. Gluttony blocks our conception of reality, distorts the formation of conscious thinking and has been hurled on the stage of history as the fundamental underpinning of the ideology of the entire epoch of the bourgeoisie. Gluttony is not a mode of accumulation but rather, accumulation is gluttony's form of existence. Socialism arose during that epoch and its afterbirth was not pretty.

The conception of a shortage is deep and demands defining that, which constitutes "shortage"  and its parameters. Industrial man - communist and capitalist, will be considered insane 500 years from now and our insanity will be disclosed and flush out in the open for all to see and avoid.

The real shortage from the standpoint of the root of man and the leap from prehistory to history, is our historical limitation that confines and restricts our vision of a better world.

Melvin P.