> >Hi Jay, > > > >In actual fact, corporations have been regulated in the past, certain > >environmental advances were accomplished in the past via regulation, and > >there are still certain social services too. And whenever the bourgeoisie > >felt sufficiently threatened, as in wartime for example, it will introduce > am > >additional amount of regulation, often of the harshest nature. This > >regulation will be, of course, capitalist regulation, that rewards > >capitalists and squeezes the masses. > > Joseph, > > Thank you for your comprehensive reply. I believe we are in general > agreement. I was not aware of Flannery's book and will get a copy. I have > read some of his other work and admire him greatly. > > I would like to ask this group one more question. You may have discussed it > before I joined the group... > > Here is the question: What will our government (the US) do when the price of > oil is high enough to prevent us from exiting an economic recession?
There are many problems that are going to face the government and the country as a whole in the coming years. The issue becomes how long will the bourgeoisie cling to neo-liberalism? And what will it be replaced by, and how will this affect class relations? At present, the more neo-liberalism goes into crisis, the harder the bourgeoisie clings to it. Eventually the time will come when the bourgeoisie will shift away from neo-liberalism to another form of capitalism. This doesn't mean the bourgeoisie will be abandoning capitalism, and or giving up rampant exploitation. But it will have to change the form. It can be remembered that before neo-liberalism there was the heyday of "mixed economy" and even a certain amount of regulated capitalism. The bourgeoisie won't necessarily go back to the forms of the past, but it has to be borne in mind that capitalism -- exploitative, brutal, and deceptive capitalism -- comes in many forms. The articles you referred me to seem to assume that capitalism must have the same form as today. Moreover, this is presented not simply as due to the entrenched capitalist interests, but as a matter of "our present way of life" or as "capitalism as usual". I think this obscures what is going on. "Capitalism as usual today" can be replaced by another capitalism tomorrow. It may not be a smooth process; it may involve devastating millions upon millions of people; but it still leaves capitalism in place. Indeed, change is coming, and oil prices are only one issue. There are also climate change, the rise in sea level, the fresh water shortage, the devastation of fisheries, the disruption to agriculture that can be expected, the growing numbers of environmental refugees that will eventually appear, and even possibly a nuclear exchange or two. And there's also the world overproduction crisis, the cancerous growth of financial capital of all sorts, the growing mass of desperate people, and so forth. We are entering a period of crises and "unexpected" catastrophes. It's not at all clear in what order they will hit, but clearly it is going to be a time of many crises. So the issue becomes, what is the bourgeoisie going to do as these crisies hit home? And even more important, what are the working masses going to do, and what are the prospects of developing an independent organization of the masses. For in the long run, this is the decisive factor, not the price of oil. As to what the bourgeoisie is going to do about the crises: it will cling harder and harder and more desperate to neo-liberalism, until it sees the necessity to jump to something else. The issue is that the bourgeoisie, when it jumps to a form of regulated capitalism and emergency measures, is not being socialist, but continuing its expoitation and expression under new forms. (It is common in many circles to mistakenly regard government ownerhip or even regulation as "socialism", and other people equally mistakenly regard capitalist government headed by social-democrats as "socialist".) It won't be the job of workers and activists to back the new bourgeoisie because it sees the necessity to do something, but to renew its class struggle. This is true even though the bourgeoisie may cloak itself in a green cloak, as many oil companies do today. The class struggle must be brought into the environmental issue. It should also be borne in mind that the loss of ability to generate large amounts of energy would be a catastrophe not just to, say, "consumer society", but to humanity as a whole. The amount of climate change that is already inevitable brings out that there is need not just to completely redo the energy infrastructure to radically reduce carbon emission, but there will be a need to redo a large part of the agricultural, transport, and industrial apparatus, and a need to accommodate millions of environmental refugees. So if energy becomes really restricted, it is not just "capitalism as usual" that will suffer. > > Will we simply send our military to "go fetch" (occupy the oil fields in the > Middle East or Africa and ship the oil directly home bypassing the market > altogether)? Wouldn't it be more meaningful to note the class nature of the response to the environmental and other crises being set forward by various forces? Wouldn't it be more important to show that there will inevitably be a struggle between bourgeois and working-class environmentalism, and that our task is to facilitate the growth of the working-class trend? Isn't it more vital to show that bourgeois environmentalism is in crisis, it's mired in neo- liberalism, its favorite market solutions won't work (carbon trading, carbon tax, etc.), and quite different solutions are required? But for the sake of argument, let's assume that the perspective of the military seizure of foreign oil takes place. What are you concluding from that? Or, if someone could convince people that the government will do this several years from now, what affect do you think this will, or should have, on the movement? -- Joseph Green > > Jay > ------- > > BACKGROUND > > See my earlier comments in this thread about the increasing energy cost of > energy. The increasing energy cost of energy is one component in the > "declining productivity of money" [ see the charts below ] > > Our (the US) infrastructure was built with the requirement for oil and > automobiles. Unfortunately, no combination of alternate energies can replace > oil and allow our present way of life to continue (see recent study below). > Moreover, not enough energy remains to rebuild our infrastructure around > alternate energy availability. > > Without enough oil -- plus a shortage of water on the horizon -- tens of > millions of Americans will probably have to relocate out of our deserts to > survive. > > Within a couple of years, the price of oil reaches a number ($140 bbl?) that > throws our economy back into a recession. Eventually it becomes obvious to > everyone that here the US, "capitalism as usual" is over because we cannot > produce enough goods and services to buy the oil we need to exit a > recession. > > DECLINING PRODUCTIVITY OF MONEY > > http://tinyurl.com/y9kc42r > http://tinyurl.com/2berho5 > http://tinyurl.com/2369c22 > > PEAK OIL > > http://tinyurl.com/33qz6rh > > RENEWABLES > > New renewables paper by Ted Trainer > > http://jayhanson.us/_Energy/TrainerRenewables.pdf > > a b s t r a c t > Virtually all current discussion of climate change and energy problems > proceeds on the assumption that technical solutions are possible within > basically affluent-consumer societies. There is however a substantial case > that this assumption is mistaken. This case derives from a consideration of > the scale of the tasks and of the limits of non-carbon energy sources, > focusing especially on the need for redundant capacity in winter. The first > line of argument is to do with the extremely high capital cost of the supply > system that would be required, and the second is to do with the problems set > by the intermittency of renewable sources. It is concluded that the general > climate change and energy problem cannot be solved without large scale > reductions in rates of economic production and consumption, and therefore > without transition to fundamentally different social structures and systems. > > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
