Louis Proyect has submitted a portion of a text designed to prove that the bourgeoisie are in fact driven by shortages of energy and that WWII was the first energy war. Careful reading of the full text makes it very clear, however, that neither the actions of the Japanese, nor the US were driven by a natural shortage of petroleum, but by economic competition, that is to say profit, exchange value, capitalism, commodity production.
Louis has confused the natural, or use value, with the social, or exchange value, and it is the latter that determines the directions of capital.
Not really. As I pointed out to you previously, oil has a twofold role in the modern capitalist economy. You see only its value as a commodity to be sold on the open market. I think that its military-strategic value, plus its use in capitalist production, transcends its role as a commodity. You can't fly jet bombers with coal. You can't operate trucks and tractors with wind-power. Such vehicles are necessary for the modern industrial economy.
It makes little sense to talk about the causes of WWII, or any war for that matter, without discussing the period leading up to that war. How a Marxist can pose WWII as a battle for scarce petroleum while ignoring the decade long economic depression leading up to the military conflict is baffling. To talk about that depression without analyzing the massive overproduction leading to that depression is equally baffling.
Resource wars can also occur during a time of a rise in the business cycle. When Great Britain launched the "guano wars", it was enjoying good times. Israel has been in a decade long water war, which will be necessary to continue no matter whether the economy is expanding or receding. Oil, water and fertile soil have a special place in the capitalist world economy. It is a big mistake to view them narrowly as commodities.
And so what's the difference? Just this (and this is where we get to "future trends" and practical differences)-- to posit the actions of capital as triggered by "natural" scarcity, a scarcity that is final, non-social, and not based on the production of exchange values, the expropriation of profit, makes AT BEST opposition to that process Moral, Ethical, and Ahistorical. The entire criticality of history, of revolution, the NECESSITY of revolution with a specific embodiment in a CLASS, disappears from analysis and program.
Why are you lecturing me about revolution? I have a 30 year activist history and an FBI file as big as a phone-book.
--
The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
