From: Waistline
-clip-
The problem from my particular standpoint is that we have never discussed in
a general way the metabolic impact of everything produced and eaten. Where
in comrade Jones presentation is need - in the Marxist sense, even
presented, although my notes were not directed at Mark Jones. In respects to
the issue of the carrying capacity of the earth and over population the
issue is "the social relations" expressed as needs, not the finite nature of
oil.
This is the essence of the dispute. None of the authors I have cited speak
of "social relations" as the material objects produced or material relations
of production . . . which tend to be reduced to class, rather than the world
of commodities. In respects to comrade Jones he did not deny the importance
of "social relations" but could not define the metabolic process and the
origin of human needs in society and their creation and shaping in history.
^^^^^^
CB: The shift in social relations must be from production for exchange to
production for use, with use defined based on the needs you refer to.
In bourgeois society , the definition of needs or "wants" as Marx terms them
, including distinguishing them from fetishs has been the work of history
and "the use-values of commodities furnish the material for a special study,
that of the commercial knowledge of commodities."
Here Marx call for the study you call for above. But what Marxists have done
this study ?
Block quote like Yoshie
The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production
prevails, presents itself as "an immense accumulation of commodities," [1]
its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin
with the analysis of a commodity.
A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by
its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another. The nature of
such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from
fancy, makes no difference. [2] Neither are we here concerned to know how
the object satisfies these wants, whether directly as means of subsistence,
or indirectly as means of production.
Every useful thing, as iron, paper, &c., may be looked at from the two
points of view of quality and quantity. It is an assemblage of many
properties, and may therefore be of use in various ways. To discover the
various uses of things is the work of history. [3] So also is the
establishment of socially-recognized standards of measure for the quantities
of these useful objects. The diversity of these measures has its origin
partly in the diverse nature of the objects to be measured, partly in
convention.
The utility of a thing makes it a use-value. [4] But this utility is not a
thing of air. Being limited by the physical properties of the commodity, it
has no existence apart from that commodity. A commodity, such as iron, corn,
or a diamond, is therefore, so far as it is a material thing, a use-value,
something useful. This property of a commodity is independent of the amount
of labour required to appropriate its useful qualities. When treating of
use-value, we always assume to be dealing with definite quantities, such as
dozens of watches, yards of linen, or tons of iron. The use-values of
commodities furnish the material for a special study, that of the commercial
knowledge of commodities. [5] Use-values become a reality only by use or
consumption: they also constitute the substance of all wealth, whatever may
be the social form of that wealth. In the form of society we are about to
consider, they are, in addition, the material depositories of
exchange-value.
<<Close block quote>>
****
>> CB: Humans have to have some kind of food to survive physiologically. If
you purport to go forward without the forms of food that bourgeois society
has
created, you must devise a new form of food to meet human minimum
physiological needs. _IF_ oil is headed to depletion, the type of new food
production you devise will have to be based on a different form of energy.
In doing this , you will have taken account of oil depletion ( not just
social relations)and so OIL DEPLETION WILL HAVE BEEN AN ISSUE, CONTRA YOUR
CLAIMS ABOVE. <<
Reply: The source of my claim concerning the metabolic process of man and
eating is Arnold Ehert's work; the theory premise of Acid and Alkaline and
the methodology of the Alfredo Bowman, although Ehert's methodology is
sound.
There is right food and wrong food. Proof of wrong food and wrong
consumption is obesity in America. Communists and socialists should be in
the forefront of this issue. Our society is obsessed with losing weight and
the bourgeois ideologist dominate the field. The issue can be looked at from
many sides of Marxism.
^^^^^^^
CB: Does the right food currently require petroleum raw materials and
derivatives at many points and processes of its production and distribution
?
^^^^^^^
Waistline:
The metabolic rift contained within the historic anti thesis between town
and country, where towns develop and are shaped as industrial production
centers and the country side is shaped as agricultural centers is one side.
What we produce and why we produce what is being produced and consumed is
important.
The issue is restoration, to whatever degree is possible of the "original
food" and diet of man and healing the metabolic breach. "Sun food" is the
original food of man because of its properties. The issue of food and human
population is first of all a question of determining what is being eaten and
its energy tag. Another issue is to ascertain if in fact human population is
outstripping the carrying capacity of the earth and the answer is no. Those
who say yes, point to the shape of bourgeois reproduction and say, "see we
cannot feed the growing population."
^^^^
CB: How is "Sun food" produced and distributed in sufficient quantities and
excellent qualities to feed 6 billion-plus ?
^^^^^
The first thing to do - on the level of theory, is to define the shape of
food reproduction as bourgeois and describe why. This is absent in all the
present articles on food and consumption. Not just comrade Jones but no one
has even thought about approaching the issue from the standpoint of carrots,
potatoes, celery, fruits, cookies, etc. and their origin and why they are or
are not harmful. This approach to the metabolic process came from another
direction of the social struggle.
Oil depletion ("if oil is headed for depletion") is another aspect of the
issue I promise to deal with separately because the issue is not fossil fuel
in my opinion but the energy grid to drive an infrastructure conceived
outside the logic of the industrial era and based on authentic human needs.
^^^^
CB: Collectively , we have the capacity on earth to do both at one time, a
sort of relativity of simultaneity .
^^^^^^
Back to the food question and whether or not the human population has
outstripped the metabolic capacity of the earth to feed us. Population
growth has not outstripped the carrying capacity of the earth and a doubling
of the earth's population probably would not either. I agree that science
can be deployed to create new kinds of food stuff based of differences in
the environment and weather patterns.
^^^^^
CB: What if science fails to do so ?
??????????
*******
>> CB: Food, as it has evolved, and to the extent it meets physiological
needs
is a use-value (or foods are use-values). It is exchange-values, not
use-values, that give the market pattern its specific shape and substance.
<<
Reply: I thought like this before circumstances allowed me to engage the
food question from the standpoint of the metabolic process and
detoxification from gluttonous consumption. How do we determine what
constitutes "physiological needs?" The concept of "food needs" has to be
freed from the concept of anything eatable.
^^^^^^
CB: See biological annthropological studies on the protein and other
nutrition in the diets of Bushmen and other hunters and gatherers. There is
a significant amount of study in medical physiology on physiological needs,
including nutritional needs. We also need to consume air and water ,
fundamentally. Here's a cite:
*******
Block quote>>Medical Historian Mark Cohen: Health and the Rise of
Civilization.
A common myth these days is that the development of agriculture and
civilization has necessarily resulted in a substantial increase in human
health and well-being. But as this excerpt from the book Health and the Rise
of Civilization by medical historian Mark Cohen shows, evidence from both
ethnographic descriptions of contemporary hunter-gatherers and the
archaeological record indicates that both the quality and quantity of human
diets have actually declined due to agriculture and civilization. As Cohen
puts it, "Even the poorest recorded hunter-gatherer group enjoys a caloric
intake superior to that of impoverished contemporary urban populations.
Prehistoric hunter-gatherers appear to have enjoyed richer environments and
to have been better nourished than most subsequent populations (primitive
and civilized alike)."
In addition to better nutrition, anthropological and archaeological research
also demonstrates that prehistoric hunter-gatherers also typically were less
afflicted by both infectious diseases and the many degenerative diseases now
so common in modern societies, such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
In short, we've been sold a completely phony bill of goods about how
civilization and "progress" have supposedly vastly improved human lives. The
truth is that we modern, "civilized" people work much longer and harder
hours and have poorer nutrition and worse health than so-called "primitive"
people.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Civilization has not been as successful in guaranteeing human well-being as
we like to believe, at least for most of our history. Apparently,
improvements in technology and organization have not entirely offset the
demands of increasing population; too many of the patterns and activities of
civilized lifestyles have generated costs as well as benefits.
There is no evidence either from ethnographic accounts or archaeological
excavations to suggest that rates of accidental trauma or interpersonal
violence declined substantially with the adoption of more civilized forms of
political organization. In fact, some evidence from archaeological sites and
from historical sources suggests the opposite. Full at:
http://eces.org/articles/000041.php <http://eces.org/articles/000041.php>
Waistline:
"Physiological needs" takes shape and develops within the framework of the
development of the mode of production, with the property relations within
and a historical consciousness further shaped by survival needs, ignorance
of the metabolic process (nutrient needs) and military objectives of the
ruling classes. "Big people" have been desirable as a factor in historical
conquest and the ruling classes tend to cultivate food stuff that increased
the circumference of man.
^^^^^
CB: So you oppose birth control , but favor girth control ?
^^^^^^^^
Food in relationship to human development is a spontaneous creation of the
earth and has no use-value or exchange value as such - in its genesis, as
serving a need. We cannot return to the man before the advent of means of
production but we can trace the evolution of needs and food consumption +
environment and here is what drove "Europe" to first conquer "Europe" and
then expand outward, in my understanding.
^^^^^^
CB: In Marx's terms, the use-values that spring from the stomach , i.e.
foods, _are_ sort of in relationship to human development as a spontaneous
creation of the earth.
^^^^^
I agree that it is exchange value that gives the market its general pattern
and circuit and by definition nothing without a use can enter exchange. The
question is posed different when one examines the metabolic properties of
that which is being exchanged and consumed (eaten). It is the specific
character of the market pattern or the metabolic property of that being
exchanged and eaten, which has finally come under inspection, especially
what we call "the world of food."
For example, if one was to examine the history of cheese production and
consumption the issue is not its existence as a commodity. By definition
commodities are produced for exchange. Commodity means a product produced
for its exchange value. Cheese as a product acquires the commodity form. Why
is cheese produced and consumed as a mass product? Where is the need or what
is the impulse demanding cheese production as a physiological need? Cheese
is not produced for its use-value property and its use value is not derived
from a spontaneous physiological need of human beings. Cheese is an
artificially created mass need and its artificial character is revealed in
actual consumption, which proves our historical ignorance of the metabolic
process.
^^^^^
CB: Cheese is produced for exchange and originates in the era of
domestication of milk producing animals such as cows and goats. The history
of this use-value is pre-capitalist. I don't think it is accurate to say
cheese has no human nutritional value at all. It has protein. However, it
might be that the optimum basket of nutritional treasures scientifically and
democratically defined by the world revolution diminishes or discards
cheese. Not sure.
^^^^^^^
-clip-
Reply: Well, the facts of the matter speak for themselves. Chocolate
production and consumption is a waste of productive forces and energy. Wrong
food is a serious problem. Food has not been examined. Sometime ago I did an
article on Pen-L about the automobile as the embodiment of the bourgeois
property relations and how it shaped not just the productivity
infrastructure and energy grid but outline our society housing pattern.
Let's look at water consumption.
What determines water consumption for human individuals?
-clip-
CB: This auditing of the fetishism in food commodities must also be made of
all commodities. Many non-food commodities use petroleum.
^^^^^^
Biologists and physiologists have NOT measured necessary food and water
consumption for human individuals, or rather "necessary" is based on the
specific character of the market pattern and current consumption, which is
bourgeois. I beg to differ.
^^^^
CB: Have you seen anthropological studies of nutrition and water consumption
in hunting and gathering and horticultural societies ?
See the following and references therein _Stone Age Economics_ , Marshall
Sahlins; and
Lee, Richard. 1968. "What Hunters Do for a Living, or, How to Make Out on
Scarce Resources", in R. Lee and I. DeVore (eds.), Man the Hunter. Chicago:
Aldine.
15. Lee, Richard. 1969. "Kung Bushmen Subsistence: An Input-Output
Analysis", in A. Vayda (ed.), Environment and Cultural Behaviour. Garden
City, N.Y.: Natural History Press.
16. Woodburn, James. 1968. "An introduction to Hadza Ecology", in Lee and I.
DeVore (eds.), Man the Hunter. Chicago: Aldine.
Waistline:
Things can be verified by any human being on earth in experiment. At 187 lbs
- 6', I required one and a half times more water consumption than at 150 lbs
because of the accumulated mass of wrong food, that generally decomposed
into a mucus like substance that accumulates in the lymphatic system and the
bowels. The body demands more water to help dissolves the accumulated
matter. The amount of fruit I eat alters water consumption. The intensive
character of work alters and shape water consumption per individual and
consumption as a society. Obese people carve more water and fluids than
people who are not obese and infinitely more than healthy people.
Our society is facing an immediate crisis of obesity that dominates the news
everyday.
Our society that has yet to cross over into the "undiscovered country."
Everyone in America senses that the food industry and pharmaceutical
industry are "wrong" and both are under massive spontaneous attack by the
citizens. In my opinion this is part of the real communist revolution
unfolding in front of us.
Water consumption has not been measured based on authentic needs but rather
on the basis of bourgeois consumption and reproduction and bourgeois needs.
In this sense the problem of "the carrying capacity of the earth" is in fact
"the social relations" or "the material relations of production," with the
property relations within, but this is not definitive enough or describes to
the individual the concrete problem. What the individual is compelled to do
by the logic of bourgeois reproduction is to eat and consume a set of things
that serves as the basis of bourgeois reproduction. This process appears as
the population outrunning the capacity of the infrastructure and its impact
on the metabolic process of the earth.
"All" we have to do is stop eating what we eat but this is more than a
notion because it creates another set of problems that are detoxification.
One has to experience the process to understand the issue in its
concreteness. This is not a theory solvable on the basis of false concepts
of the metabolic process and industrial ideology or what is in fact
bourgeois consumerism par excellence.
It is extremely difficult, if not impossible to starve to death in America.
However, mass withdrawal from eating would cause thousands, in not million
of deaths because the body would be outrun with toxins that could not be
excrete fast enough. One would need the oversight of a doctor or medical
authority or healer that understood the metabolic process of the body.
^^^^^
CB: This is Fast, Fast , Fasting relief to Socialism , no ? This would be
more than for Lent.
^^^^^^
Biologists and physiologists have NOT measured necessary food and water
consumption for human individuals, or rather "necessary" is based on the
specific character of the market pattern which is bourgeois or a pattern of
production and consumption that is the meaning of the American way of life.
^^^^^
CB: What about anthropologists ? As Sahlins says, in consonance with what
you say:
Hunter-gatherers consume less energy per capita per year than any other
group of human beings. Yet when you come to examine it the original affluent
society was none other than the hunter's - in which all the people's
material wants were easily satisfied. To accept that hunters are affluent is
therefore to recognise that the present human condition of man slaving to
bridge the gap between his unlimited wants and his insufficient means is a
tragedy of modern times.
There are two possible courses to affluence. Wants may be "easily satisfied"
either by producing much or desiring little. The familiar conception, the
Galbraithean way- based on the concept of market economies- states that
man's wants are great, not to say infinite, whereas his means are limited,
although they can be improved. Thus, the gap between means and ends can be
narrowed by industrial productivity, at least to the point that "urgent
goods" become plentiful. But there is also a Zen road to affluence, which
states that human material wants are finite and few, and technical means
unchanging but on the whole adequate. Adopting the Zen strategy, a people
can enjoy an unparalleled material plenty - with a low standard of living.
That, I think, describes the hunters. And it helps explain some of their
more curious economic behaviour: their "prodigality" for example- the
inclination to consume at once all stocks on hand, as if they had it made.
Free from market obsessions of scarcity, hunters' economic propensities may
be more consistently predicated on abundance than our own.
Destutt de Tracy, "fish-blooded bourgeois doctrinaire" though he might have
been, at least forced Marx to agree that "in poor nations the people are
comfortable", whereas in rich nations, "they are generally poor".
http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm
<http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm>
CB: And of course we can add, in rich nations they are generally fat, and in
poor nations they are generally thin ( big surprise).
*****
>>CB: One can imagine that we will keep some of the bourgeois stuff and
discard some of it. It is likely to be supercession, overcoming AND
preservation, not utter obliteration of all of the bourgeois derived
use-values.<<
Reply
We face a distinct set of needs inherited by bourgeois society and then a
unique set of needs that serves as the basis of bourgeois reproduction that
have to be looked at one by one.
"Bourgeois derived use values" obscures the metabolic process and the
bourgeois character of the general market pattern, which in the sphere of
reproduction follows the circuit of capital profitability. Town House
crackers have a use value as well as Smucker's strawberry preserves. As
forms of commodities they are produced for their exchange value not their
use value. There has never been a spontaneous mass instinctual demand for
Town House Crackers. There is no need to keep any of the "bourgeois stuff"
because the bourgeois stuff is precisely that which is historically
transitory.
^^^^^
CB: Well, the bourgeoisie have turned all the stuff of previous historical
periods into bourgeois stuff now. All stuff is bourgeois now. There's a lot
of congealed dead labor, physical and mental, up in here.
^^^^^^
What service or need do Town House crackers provide our society? "(N)ot
utter obliteration of all of the bourgeois derived use-values" . . . why
not? More than that why not obliteration of a historically evolved shape of
productive forces and infrastructure and underlying energy grid that has
long ago proved to be destructive to the earth and man?
^^^^^^^
CB: Depends on whether you are only referring to foodstuffs. I can't think
of any fundamentally new food that the bourgeois technology has derived,
though I might if I keep thinking. But there are some bourgeois derived
non-food use-values that will probably be preserved. It will be
supercession, overcoming and preservation.
^^^^^
Here is the thousand year war. And it is not going to go anyone's way, but
turned out to be something that is a composite of individuals as human
agency. Heck . . . the issue has yet to really be shaped clearly. I do not
have the answer but the approach is not that difficult. We are not going to
obliterate the modern vehicle but its bourgeois character - 520 million
world wide, is not a human need.
Waistline
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