>>Restraining the growth of consumption does not mean going back to living in caves and cooking over buffalo-chip fires. For decades in the rich nations increased consumption has not been correlated with increased satisfaction, and perpetuating Third World poverty is a luxury that the prosperous can no longer afford. Greatly enhanced efficiency, reduced consumption among today's superconsumers, more-sensible choices of energy technologies, and a halt to population growth followed by a gradual decline might, as John Holdren and others have clearly shown, lead to a closing of the rich-poor gap without an ecological collapse. Over the next century, with careful planning, mutual trust, and cooperation, humanity could create a sustainable global society with a higher quality of life for everyone.<<
Comment The above is taken from one of Comrade Jones articles and summarize a political and economic conception. Most folks within what is called Marxism, generally agree that consumption is a social act embracing production, reproduction, distribution, exchange and the property relations within. Others will add to this the significance of alienation, mystification and the fetish that attaches itself to commodity production and examine appearance forms and shapes. Others will go further in describing mans impact on nature as condition, precondition and result (interactivity and objectification) or affirmation of man essential powers and sense perception, which are formed (not created), shaped and altered by the object that is man and the object outside of man manifesting the essential power. Consciousness - that is lived experience, unfolds on the basis of the experience giving shape to a particular form of consciousness. Believing is also seeing. Generally, one ends up with the circle from which there is no escape. The circle is real because it arises as the affirmation of mans essential powers; but it is escapable, because it is a historical form and shape of consciousness/praxis. If over consumption is defined as the problem, the solution is to stop over consuming and defining consumption as reproduction. Man is not a machine, but a metabolic process. This cannot be proven to he who understands man as a machine. Marxism as such cannot solve the problem because it - the problem of over consumption, is also biological in its essence, but not in its appearance form as reproduction. Industrial society is its own shape and the word "machine" really means industrial machines and industrial ideology and industrial concepts. Industrial society by definition does not mimic nature's metabolic non can it. We have not hit the walls of the laws of thermo dynamics in my opinion. The earth is a perpetual energy conversion metabolism. Man disrupts this spontaneous process in his species activity as productive man. That is to say the earth is part of a system of energy conversion. The wall that has been hit is energy conversion on the basis of industrial artifices and shapes, with the property relations within. "Restraining the growth of consumption does not mean going back to living in caves and cooking over buffalo-chip fires" begs the question what is being cooked, why is it being cooked and what is the genesis of this cooking rather than the energy infrastructure of cooking and its shape. What is the origin of need? >>Over the next century, with careful planning, mutual trust, and cooperation, humanity could create a sustainable global society with a higher quality of life for everyone.<< If the above is true and I believe it to be, this means advancing to a radically different approach and understanding of authentic human needs. Marx provides the way forward. Authentic human needs begin with and has its genesis in man's metabolic process. Obesity is an extreme appearance form of bourgeois social relations or bourgeois property or society shaped on the basis of a system of reproduction driven by circuits of private capital. DMS was more correct than Comrade Jones in terms of the . Waistline. _______________________________________________ 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
