Re: Mark Jones Still Among the living (was titled Wrong)

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In a message dated 6/22/2004 1:31:37 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: My point, precisely! All I suggest is picking up another symbol, out of my respect to his "virtual" memory. Best, Sabri   Comment   Bingo.   It gets worse or rather more intense when a fluctuation in the price of oil takes place - a rise, and folks feel compelled to state "Mark J. was right" based on the price form, when in fact he dismisses the price form - in my opinion, as an accurate gage of the finite limits of fossil fuel source.   Changes in estimates of "provable" reserves by various corporations become another reason for the "Mark J was right symbol" to be raised. I understand his writing to be a tad bit more complex.   No one in their sane mind denies the finite nature of "oil." The earth is finite for Christ sake. The solar system has a life span and various theories are put forth on its contractions and expansion. Human life has its genesis and "ending" - probably, in as much as it has a beginning.   One of the questions that come to the fore is whether or not humanity has reached the zenith - nodal point or the top of the bell curve, in which the finite limit of fossil fuel - oil, reorders - change or specifically externalized, what was considered the fundamental contradiction driving the evolution of the mode of production and the property relations within.   Can one speak of the reasonable possibility of capitalism collapsing as a property relations based on the finite nature of fossil fuel? Or can one speak of the intensification of the class struggle - the struggle between property holders and non property holders, achieving new dimensions - a new qualitative feature or character, because humanity has hit the thermodynamic barrier?   Mark raised this issue within Marxism.   One can of course read the presentation of this question in a concise manner in Jeremy Rifkin's "The Hydrogen Economy."  Chapters 2, 3, and 4, are respectively called: "Sliding down the Bell Curve," "Energy and the rise and fall of civilizations" and "The fossil fuel era."   T^o the degree that Mark J. thesis concerning fossil fuel and thermodynamics is called Marxists or a contribution to Marxism, I profoundly disagree with it. The contradiction that is productive forces and relations of production will never be altered - and this includes alleged possible alterations on the basis of the underlying energy grid.   The fundamental contradiction humanity faces is not the environment and the destruction industrial man has reaped upon earth. Not very long ago one author wrote about the dwindling supply of oxygen and who this changes the class struggle or the contradiction that if the material power of production and the relations of production, with the property relations within.   In my opinion the questions are posed incorrectly and one ends up in a very bourgeois ideological argument called sustainability. The bourgeois property relations is not sustainable and how we understand our current way of living has to be unraveled on the basis of a series of unique needs inherited and created by the bourgeois property relations. Sustainability is a property question first and foremost and not an abstract question of humanity, except to the bourgeoisie who believes his property relations to be the final form of the economic evolution of humanity or "the end of history."   Mark J left the arena of theoretical Marxism because he failed to unravel the evolution of need, or the needs that are trying to be sustained by bourgeois property. These needs that appear on earth as real commodities serve as the basis of reproduction and is the economic logic of capital as property.   I further disagreed with Mark J who states clearly that Soviet socialism reached its historical limitation in 1945. My disagreement was not based on ideology as such but defining the meaning of "Historical limitation."   Here I consulted Karl Marx and arrived at the conclusion that historical limitation means "all the room for the development of productive forces" and then I asked what in fact was Soviet socialism? The answer was obvious.   Soviet socialism was above all an industrial formation and an industrial economy. What are the historical limitations of the industrial economy as electromechanical production? On the level of theory I abstracted the property relations to unravel the meaning of the industrial mode of production as distinct from say manufacture or handicraft.   Every economist and political theorist in the American Union agrees that we are leaving the industrial era or have entered the post industrial era and this has been debated since the 1970s book "Future Shock," and in 1980 "The Third Wave."   If the revolution in the mode of production - the industrial system, drives the transition from industrial production to post industrial production then one can define "historical limitation" as emerging in the 1970s and becoming increasing visible in the 1980s. Soviet industrial socialism did not hit the barrier of historical limitation in 1945 because historical limitation means all the room within the quantitative boundaries of a given mode of production.   Then I traced the development from the old tube transistors and circuit boards to the semiconductor and the evolution of advanced robotics and came to the conclusion that Mark J. misunderstood - posed, the question incorrectly on two levels: first in the sense of the material developments that qualitatively change and begin the reconfiguration of industrial production property. Second on the level of theory and establishing the material meaning of "historical limitations."   If oil runs out tomorrow at 12 noon it cannot alter the contradiction that drives society forward - the spontaneous development of the mode of production and the stagnate nature of relations of production that appear as a historically distinct superstructure. Marxist have always called this the driving force of the class struggle as antagonism.   If oil runs oout tomorrow what is altered is the field of what is produced. Nor will running out of oil tomorrow alter the buying and selling of labor power that is the basis of bourgeois production relations.   It gets deeper because Comrade Marx - an unyielding champion against tyrants, advanced a specific proposition concerning what he called the bureaucracy.  After over thirty years engaging the industrial bureaucracy in the flesh - as a way of life, I took exception and called the industrial bureaucracy  . . . the industrial bureaucracy. Mark J did not define the bureaucracy as the industrial bureaucracy proper and this was my disagreement.   If industrial society is undergoing an evolution leap in the same manner that feudal society under went an evolution leap, then the industrial bureaucracy and industrial superstructure has to be in crisis.   For me personally, my life experience repudiated many propositions put forth by Mark J. and I considered them the most elementary Marxist conclusions for an American worker schooled in industrial society and having read a little bit of Marx.    It gets deeper because many of the comrades putting forth the Mark J. thesis - which is not really a thesis but recycled bourgeois ideology, speak of the carrying capacity of the earth, which is the modern way of saying "the crisis of overpopulation."  "The crisis of overpopulation" means the exact same thing as bourgeois sustainability.   Until one defines exactly what it is that is being sustained or unravel the origins of our current needs that appear in the real world as the sum total of commodities on the market for sale, . . . why scream sustainability in harmony with the bourgeois ideologists of money accumulation? The argument spirals out of control and the champions of the Mark Jones thesis retreat into what they consider the Marxist concept of the "law of population."   Ask them exactly what "the law of population" is or of what it consists or how its character is changed with every change in the means of production and silence reign supreme.   Here I intend to make no theoretical and ideological concessions and will not offer the way to pose the question of population growth. It is sometimes best to let the ideologists of the Mark J. thesis stew in their own juice.   What they put forward is correctly identified as Thomas Malthus all over again.   This does not mean the energy grid is not undergoing revolutionization and the bourgeoisie has plans for its Generation 4 nuclear power plants and fuel cell power packs are slowly hitting the market today. G-4 is to be commercially available in 2030 and being in Texas gives me a chance to follow material on this subject because Texas A&M is a major intellectual player.   My dispute is that Mark J and the adherents of "this thesis" leave the bounds of elementary Marxism and theory of political economy - with the property relations within.     Comrade Mark J. is not looking down on us pondering the controversy. What he is doing is looking and demanding a good editor to clarify points in the context of a new revolutionary mode of communication that is one thousand times faster and more interactive than what Marx faced.   I of course reserve the right to revise and adjust anything I write and admit faulty thinking.     Peace     Melvin P.