Me: <<<What the modern students and folks who drift into "Malthusianism" present is an equation that examines food production capacity and living requirements (human needs) as energy conversion and resource use and depletion and multiply this by an expanding population. They arrive at the conclusion that there are to many people on earth and the magnitude of people poses a serious problem to the carrying capacity of the earth. >>>>
^^^^^^^ >>>CB: And they are right. Again , just throwing in the word "Malthusianism" is Sartesian idiocy. Also, the chopped off phrase "there are too many people on earth..." is the same type of baiting. They don't just say there are too many people on earth, with the ominous implication that some people are going to have to be "offed". They assert that the number of people who depend vitally and critically on fossil fuels under the fossil fuel energy regime could mean catastrophic dieoff because fossil fuels are reaching depletion. "Too many people on earth" is your usage. Say it the way they do, if you want to represent accurately what "they" are saying. <<< ******* Me: "And they are right" . . . really. I respect your opinion but this is the dispute. Here is the argument. You say they are "right." I say they are "wrong." That is the dispute. This is what I call bad math and bourgeois ideology. I of course disagree with the theory premise. The theory premise uses the shape of commodity production as the basic multiplier. This means "they" multiply a box of Town House Crackers by 6.5 billion people and say . . . "gee, food production is being out stripped by population growth." This means that the Town House Crackers is not understood as the expression of a social relations of production or a historically evolved shape of production or commoditization par excellent. This commodity, not simply the shape as commodity is destructive to the earth by definition. The solution is not socialist Town House Crackers or sharing cracker consumption. My approach begins with an unraveling of what is actually produced and its metabolic impact on man himself as the environment that is earth. The impact of eating a carrot for instance cannot be solved in theory, unless one begins with its origin roughly 500 years ago and its reshaping as a commodity. The "need" for carrots reside in a misunderstanding of eating and nutrition. Mass production of wrong food and mass consumption comes later. Mass production and consumption of sugar is outright insanity and everyone instinctively understands this. Sugar use begins as a drug and military application. The mass consumption of milk by adults is more insanity. What is being produced as food evolved on the basis of a rudimentary understanding of the metabolic process of man and nature. My "Running Notes on Consumption, overpopulation and the carrying capacity of the earth. (1)" begins with an article "Eating Fossil Fuel" (http://billtotten.blogspot.com/) and states this "is a wonderful title. Why do we eat what we eat?" Why do "we eat what we eat" is a fundamentally different approach than multiplying what we eat by the number people on earth. Why do we eat what we eat rather than multiplying what we eat by the amount of people on earth is a path that takes Marx suggestion to go to the root of man. "Sartesian idiocy" approaches the issue from the social relations of production embodied in every single commodity as bourgeois production and bourgeois embodiment and challenged the estimates of oil magnitude and production and basically say's the problem is the social relations. This general approach is 100% Marxist. Food production . . . here is where the "Malthus thing" comes in . . . has to take into account the antithesis between town and country. The "antithesis between town and country" or the separation or compartmentalization of food production (not simply serfs and town folks or city versus country side, but their historical reality as institutions of human survival and consumption, with the property relations within) as a separate industry outside of the town, is the appearance form of the metabolic breach. That this historical breach is reshaped on the basis of capital is assumed. It gets deeper because what is produced for exchange is indifferent to the nutrient needs of man. The nutrient needs of man is hotly contested on the basis of a science that views consumption and metabolism on the basis of industrial concepts. Metabolism cannot be reduced to meaning change or chemical change. Human population has not out run the capacity of the earth to produce man's required nutrient needs. What is being produced and how it is being produced is called into question and not simply the basis - commodity production, or reproduction on the basis of circuits of capital. If in fact, we face an energy crisis as fossil fuel depletion, it is an act of insanity to produce 90% of everything we produce and consume on earth, especially what we call food. A donut is not food but rather an eatable substance. Actually, I did use the figures concerning food consumption per individual in America and challenged what is being consumed, its origin as a need and not simply how it is being produced. Then the obesity crisis and it is a freaking crisis was pin pointed. We make false assumption rooted in the social relations of bourgeois society and its industrial configuration. Our housing pattern is totally bourgeois with living space conceived on the basis of the individualism of the bourgeois as owner and ruler of his market share in the kingdom of capital. This totally bourgeois and industrial conception of "space" and living took shape on the basis of an advanced metabolic breach between town and country. Fruit trees and certain vegetation should be grown and exists in inseparable unity with our living quarter in all hospitable climates. This separation is a sharp expression of a metabolic breach, not simply the commodity form. Population is not outrunning the capacity of the earth to sustain us. Population has hit the wall of social relations of production and the historically specific shape of the market pattern, in my opinion. We have not hit the thermo dynamic barrier but rather the social relations of bourgeois society runs counter to the metabolic process of the earth. The solution to a problem - any problem, has to be present in the presentation and formulation of the issue. Now the issue is deeper in respect to the energy regime or energy grid that underlie our particular mode of production or the shape of the market pattern. The quest is not for a "perpetual motion machine," - a concept that reveals more about the users theoretical concepts. The concept of a machine that is perpetual is a mechanical conception of transformation and views the earth and the solar system as a machine rather than a chemical process. Energy transformation is not a mechanical process or rather the industrial concept of transformation is wrong because it is predicated upon a conception that begins as imaginative structures of a closed system. A "machine structure" is conceived that takes into it a substance acting as a catalyst and on the basis of mechanical principles something is produced or comes out as the end product. Perpetual motion concepts and devices have been deflating hopes and fleecing investors since the Middle Ages. This concept and imaginative shape of ideas is exactly how man's metabolic process is understood and the body is viewed as a machine that takes into it fuel and excrete feces. The body is not a machine, but rather machines are imaginative shapes of concepts of the body, or as it is said, an extension of the body. Man does not eat inorganic substances and on the basis of blood - metabolism, converts these substances into organic molecules. Such a feat is impossible and happens to be the role of plant life. Nor does what we currently eat as a society strengthens the electrical charge of our cell structure but in fact drives the breach. The breach is in the disruption of the electrical charge of the cells. Why do you and me and everyone else eat donuts, crackers, potato chips, meat, ice cream, cookies, and a thousand and one other things? It gets deeper because we actually believe on the basis of observation, that what we eat is converted into fuel with a "drop off" which is not usable or becomes unavailable to us as energy (feces) - entropy. The problem is that society only senses, but does not yet believe that we exist as a pathological condition, and our power of observation has been blunted and conditioned by industrial concepts and a radical misunderstanding (historically evolved) of the body metabolic process. How can population growth be said to be out stripping the metabolic process of the earth to feed us when 90% of everything we eat has no nutrimental value and is not food in the first place? The barrier is the social relations not the carrying capacity of the earth, which cannot be ascertained until man is brought into harmony with the spontaneous metabolic process of the earth. This is so obvious as to be taken as a "given" - starting point, within Marxism. Now the question in my mind is "how does one authenticate their conclusions?" I personally, have never been asked to authenticate my approach to man's metabolic process because most comrades proceed from an apparent truth of society and man, which is no more than the truth of bourgeois production. People who do not eat meat - and meat is not the worst things we eat as a society, already know that meat eating is not necessary for the vitality of the human organism. We tend to speak of mystification and the fetish that attaches itself to commodity production as an economic equation or social relations of production appearing as/is material relations of production detached from the earth and its metabolic process. Social relations are by definition historically specific shapes of metabolic processes. If the materialist conception of history begins with mans need to eat, do we have to wait another 100 years before we examine the history of eating? If the law of value pivots on the cost of reproduction of the workers and eating is fundamental to reproduction of the species, when do we tackle the metabolic of eating? This question of eating was solved years ago outside political Marxism. I have cited my source material repeatedly over the past three years. The problem of over population is the appearance form of something else because there are not too many people in the earth outstripping the ability of the earth to provide our nutrimental needs. The problem is the social relations. "Sartesian idiocy" is in fact the most elementary entry point of Marxism. One is never wrong factually or in theory to state the issue of over population is a question of the social relations of society. 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
