On the off-chance that somebody else might be reading Charles Brown's posts, I thought I would speak for myself and allow that/those somebody elses to determine where the slander is and who's the idiot.
My argument with Mark Jones was based on his allegiance to, and "parroting" to use Mr.Brown's term, of Hubbert's peak oil theories. The readers, if there be any, can look at the Marxmail archives, and The Wolf Report at http://thewolfatthedoor.blogspot.com for details of my position. In summary, there is no shortage of oil or natural gas; production has not reached a peak; supplies have not been depleted; and capitalism is not being driven into war and destruction due to resource scarcity. The predicament of oil production is the predicament of capital, namely overproduction and declining rates of return. To argue as Mark Jones and his followers do, that this is the manifestation of absolute geological scarcity is to set the stage for an ideological alignment along lines of overpopulation, i.e. Malthus. And if you read the followers of Hubbert, Campbell, Deffeyes, etc. they are most certainly Malthusian. If you read the followers of Mark Jones, Stan Goff, Bill Totten, Jon Flanders, etc. they also become Malthusian. Even little LouLou Proyect thinks there is much to be explored and developed in the work of Malthus. I'm not making that claim for them. They stake out that territory themselves. Read them for yourself and see. Now they may call themselves Marxists, but saying it is so, doesn't make it so. Jones for example doubted that overproduction analysis could be applied to oil production, which I think, makes it fair to say that oil then isn't produced as a commodity, doesn't conform to analyses of surplus value, and can't be explained by Marxist analysis. That's not slander. That's the fact inherent in such a position. Read it and weep. Or not. S. Artesian _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
