Hi Jay,
Jay Henson wrote;
> Joseph asks what effect "a direct seizure of foreign oil fields by the US
> military" would have on people.
>
> IMHO, the political backlash would be terrible and should be avoided if at
> all possible.
>
Actually, Jay, that's not what I asked. But maybe I didn't write
clearly.
So let me try to clarify things.
I tried to point out that we have entered a period of crisis and
"unexpected" catastrophes and I listed a number of things facing the world's
people. You, however, concentrate on one possible scenario coming from high
oil prices. I asked what you thought would be accomplished if "someone could
convince people that the government will do this [seizure of the oild fields]
several years from now". What I was trying to get at was: why do you
concentrate only on one speculative possibility, when we are faced with many
burning crises?
> After almost 20 years of research on the "endless economic growth in a
> finite place" problem, I am not optimistic. I believe that it will be almost
> impossible to avoid new world wars over the remaining energy resources.
> However, if we could separate our political system from our economic system,
> then perhaps worst might be avoided [ http://jayhanson.us/america.htm ].
So I looked at your reference. Your article says
"The 'bad news' is that 'peak oil' marks the beginning of the end of
capitalism and market politics because many decades of declining 'net energy'
[1] will result in many decades of declining economic activity. And since
capitalism can´t run backwards, a new method of distributing goods and
services must be found."
This indicates that you think that "peak oil" or high energy prices will
themselves doom capitalism. I think that's a mistake. The current crises
facing capitalism are going to force various changes. Neo-liberalism, while
being clung to by the bourgeoisie harder and harder as its bankruptcy is
more and more evident, is reaching a crisis. But capitalism can change its
form. Neo-liberalism is only one form of capitalism.
As to capitalism not running backward, that's just a phrase. In war-time, for
example, capitalism does often run backwards in some sense, and it remains
exploitative, horrible, full-scale capitalism, worse than ever. Capitalism
can do that with high energy prices too.
There is no way to fight the ravages of capitalism now, and prepare for its
overthrow later, while avoiding class issues. It seems to me that your
article attempts to find a way a la technocracy to avoid, or at least
mitigate, the class issues. So the "Abstract" ends up hoping that
"Corporations will become the public servants that they were [???] before
1860." And the article goes into the changes it wants to see in corporations.
So your article, which starts by saying that capitalism doesn't run backward,
ends by saying that, if we separate the economic and political, the basic
structure of capitalism will indeed run backward to before 1860 (i.e. to the
golden age when, oops, American financial swindling was already world
famous, slavery existed, and the country was building up to a devastating
Civil War). This is to be accomplished by separating politics into a sphere
of technocratic decision among "a selection of public 'goods.', while the
corporations behave properly. In short, this would be a sort of "market
socialism", albeit expressed in technocratic phrases.
But politics and economics can't be separated. And when the coming crises
lead to more regulation, it would, in my opinion, be a mistake to think that
political regulation of the economy on one hand and rich capitalists on the
other will live in two separate spheres. Instead the workers must be vigilant
to try to exercise as much pressure on the government regulation and planning
as possible, while fighting the direct exploitation of the corporations as
much as possible too. We need a class assessment of the coming changes in
capitalism, and we need to use that to encourage the struggle of the working
class, not only against the present neo-liberalism, but against the regulated
or mixed capitalism that will follow it. It is the class struggle, and the
develoment of an independent workers movement, not the separation of politics
and economics, or the reform of corporate structure, that provides a way out.
-- Joseph Green
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