At 08:59 PM 2/23/01 +0100, you wrote:
>Stan,
>
>>Are you seriously claiming that the level of fossil fuel consumption we
>>presently have could have ever developed on this scale outside of... apart
>>from... in spite of... an historically specific mode of production?
>
>Of course this is not what I was suggesting. What I am suggesting is that
several
>historically specific modes of production can be imagined in which the
level of
>fossil fuel consumption is unsustainable.
Perhaps I am confused about why anyone would bother imagining modes of
production that never existed.
A lower consumption level than the one
>we have today is still unsustainable.
>I don't remember your position on the USSR and such countries if you ever
stated it
>here, but this is a system which seems to me very different from
capitalism as we
>know it and its creation did nothing to solve the fossil fuels and other
ecological
>problems. I'm not trying to say that anti-capitalism or even communism
aims at
>creating another USSR, but to say that simply overthrowing capitalism
won't be
>enough because it is only part of the problem.
The USSR was employing methods created by captialism for its economic
development. It was competing for its survival in a captialist milieu.
The USSR never originated any instruments or relations of production that
had not already been developed within captialism. The level of industrial
development that brought us to our current state is directly and
inextricably connected to the development of capitalism.
>
>>But to continually try to tease out an
>>escape for the capitalist system is either dishonest, disingenuous, or
denial.
>
>This is not what I'm trying to do. I don't care about capitalism. You can
blame it for
>every evil if you like for propaganda purposes.
Redbaiting is not only unnecessary, it is a distortion in this case.
Identification of a system within which the conditions, which we are
decrying here, exist is neither propaganda nor a moral pronouncement.
Anyone who knows me knows I don't go in a whole lot for "good and evil."
The very fact that you say you don't care about capitalism indicates to me
that you don't get it. This environmental problem does not exist in a
vacuum. And it is insoluble without consciously directed, coordinated
social action. The problem with capitalism is not that it's evil. It's
that it's in very essential ways undirected and uncoordinated. There is
quite simply no chance of gaining the kind of comprehensive control
necessary to confront the problem being discussed here without social(ist)
planning. That's not saying social(ist) planning is inherently
environmentally sound. It's saying that without social(ist) planning there
is quite simply no way to effect a solution at all.
Since this is not the goal of this list
>as far as I know, I'm simply trying to sort out real from imaginated
causes for our
>problems.
>
Then why do you continually discard any reason that can be interpreted as
systemic? Is the social order imaginary? Last I saw, the police and the
army were carrying real, not imaginary, guns.
>>Then why wasn't it? Why didn't those feudal barons have tenant-tended deep
>>drilling equipment factories on each of their feifdoms?
>
>Those feudal barons had no oil under their feet. They did not have the
technical
>capability for deep drilling. But why could no feudal baron have this
capability?
>BTW, despite this "tenant and feudal barons" cliche they were corporations
before
>1450, as well as urban proletarian revolts, finance, international trade,
etc.
But who held political power? This is a key point, then and now. It's not
an abstraction. Who held then and holds now the legal monopoly on deadly
force? And which class does this political establishment represent?
"...all truly great scientific abstractions are both universal and simple.
They are simple not because they explain so little but because they explain
so much. Generality does not arise because an abstraction represents
everything that could possibly happen, but because it remains valid no
matter what happens."
Alan Freeman
_______________________________________________
CrashList website: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base
