Waistline2 Comment
1. The concept of "the carrying capacity of the earth" as an aspect of what is called sustainability, is in my opinion fundamentally "Malthusianism," even in the hands of Mark Jones. Generally, the following is referred to: ^^^^^ CB: What's your definition of Malthusianism ? As I understand Malthus, he claimed that food supply increases arithmetically and human population increases geometrically. This concept does not appear in anything you have written here. Malthus doesn't use the term "carrying capacity". Referring to modern ecological scientists' concepts as "Malthusian" is to make a gratuitous insult. It is based on the vague idea that any discussion of "overpopulation" is Malthusian. ^^^^^ "Scientists define "carrying capacity" as the population of a given species that can be supported indefinitely in a defined habitat without permanently damaging the ecosystem upon which it is dependent." (What will it really take to tackle the human overpopulation crisis.) _http://billtotten.blogspot.com/2005/01/what-will-it-really-take-to-tackle.h tml_ <http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/2005-February/_http://b illtotten.blogspot.com/2005/01/what-will-it-really-take-to-tackle.html_> (http://billtotten.blogspot.com/2005/01/what-will-it-really-take-to-tackle.h tml) ^^^^^ CB: Malthus does not use the concepts of ecosystem , etc.. Ergo,this is not Maltusianism. ^^^^ Adding the words capitalism and the need for socialism to the above, does not unravel "the human overpopulation crisis." The material quoted in the notes on "Consumption, overpopulation and the carrying capacity of the earth. (1)" confirm that the authors view population density as a crisis. The crisis is Defined as a "population of a given species that can be supported indefinitely in a defined habitat without permanently damaging the ecosystem upon which it is dependent." The answer to this equation is fundamentally birth control with those within Marxism throwing in socialism for good measures. ^^^^^ CB: What do you mean socialism thrown in for good measure ? If you are not saying that socialist transformation of the technolgoical and energy regimes and economy,can support the given population by , then what are you saying ? When you say the problem is bourgeois property relations, you are saying the solution is socialism "thrown in for good measure." ^^^^^ 2. The crisis on today's earth and the fore seeable future, is not population density but rather "the social relations" and the species activity that violates the spontaneous metabolic processes of the earth. (I do not like the term "social relations" or rather how it is used.) ^^^^^ CB: There is a crisis of population density because of the capitalist form of social relations. Mere reference to "population density" does not Mathusian error constitute. Your reference to "Spontaneous metabolic processes of the earth" is too old fashion. Since Marx, there is a lot of learning in the sciences of biology, ecology , etc. Marxism develops with the development of the natural sciences. That's the Marxist method. ^^^^^^^^^ 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. ^^^^^^ 3. Socialism does not and cannot solve the problem because socialism is a political form of property relations and the question of human needs are regulated to the back ground. Human needs expressed in what is actually produced in society or the specific character of reproduction has to be examined. The solution to health problems of smoking is not the quest for a socialist cigarette but to stop smoking and on the level of political economy to dismantle the enormous infrastructure and productivity structures of tobacco production. ^^^^^^ CB: Socialism better solve the problem. The obvious idea is that capitalists do not pay attention to anything but the short term bottomline, do not concern themselves with the plight of future generations of the species. Socialists do. So, the difficult transition to an economy of rationed and reduced use of fossil fuels to delay the depletion...until we can discover alternative energy ( if we can) is better accomplished over mass human needs centered socialism, not private profit centered capitalism. ^^^^ The population size can easily be doubled provided human needs are recast and restructure to conform to the metabolic process of the earth and man. ^^^^^^ CB: I don't know about "easily" , but the idea is the recasting and restructuring will only occur under socialism. ^^^^^ Somewhere in Marx manuscript of 1844 he wrote that the goal of society is not communism but human needs. Socialism, since Engels has been understand as a transition form of society where the battle to restructure the shape and character of bourgeois production takes place as a historical phase. Stated another way, if the problem is Not the bourgeois property relations, but rather a mysterious capitalism, and socialism is no solution, then why is it that not one single author speaks of the historically specific needs created by the bourgeois property relations, that serves as the inner dynamic for the system of reproduction? ^^^^^^^ CB: A major part of the problem is bourgeois property relations (See above). But even with socialist and communist property relations, it is not guaranteed that, for example, science can discover a new basic energy source to replace fossil fuels. Thus, socialist revolution is a necessary condition for solving the problem, but it may not be sufficient. This is why Mark Jones was so "scared" for us. ^^^^^^^^^ Sartesian's description of the problem as the social relations and form of property is more correct, in my opinion than Jones because it is not enough to say capitalism is the problem. ^^^^^ CB: Capitalism _is_ a form of social relations and private property. Thus, Sartesians description is not more correct. It is the same thing as saying the problem is capitalism. ^^^^^^^^ What it is within capitalism that is the problem is the "social relations of production" which means the creation of a unique set of needs that become the precondition, condition and result of the actual process of reproduction. Sartesian description stays firmly on safe ground and cannot be wrong even if it lacks a certain definition. ^^^^^ CB: What's wrong with Sartesian is what he says about Mark Jones'position. Sartesian creates a strawman and knocks it down. Mark Jones doesn't say social relations and property relations are not the problem. He says they are. But then there's another potential problem beyond overthrowing capitalist social and property relations. ^^^^^^ 4. The quest is not for the world to be able to drink Coke Cola, coffee, eat tuna fish sandwiches, drive automotive vehicles, eat hamburgers or 99% of everything we eat in our current society. Ones right to eat straw berry's is not understood as a bourgeois right - a social relations of production, and such a right did not exist before the domination of bourgeois property. Eating straw berry's on a planetary scale is a social relations and material face of bourgeois property. ^^^^^^ CB: The trouble with all this is not that it's wrong, but in asserting it you seem to think that it is not part of Mark Jones' analysis. It is. ^^^^^^ What has caused the metabolic breach in the environment is not to many people on earth ^^^^^ CB: Again to keep using this phrase becomes wilful slander and misrepresention. "Too many " is always a relative term. "Too many" relative to what ? We may reach a point that there are too many people to keep warm, make food for relative to the amount of fuel by way of a fossil fuel based energy regime. The phrase "too many people" is too abstract. Too many people relative to what specifically ? Capitalism, with its private property relations, would more like let billions die than make a drastic rationing to save people as presumably socialism would with its people before profits approach. ^^^^^^ or burning wood or coal usage or fossil fuel's inherent nature, but the specific shape of the energy infrastructure and how it is deployed as reproduction on the basis of exchange of a universe of needs that violate the metabolic process or the social relations of production. When the social relations of production in society outruns the pace at which the earth converts the inorganic into the organic - the function of plant life, there is a problem. ^^^^^^^ CB: Yea, the problem being there are too many people relative to the resources necessary to take care of their basic, subsistence needs under the historically constituted technological regime. ^^^^^^^ In this sense Sartesian's refusal to abide by the runs set down and articulated by even comrade Mark Jones, places him on the "right" side of the equation in my opinion. China currently does not have to many people. Rather the social relations and the configuration of the productivity infrastructure is the salient feature of the problem. ^^^^^ CB: No, Sartesian, by use of slanderous misrepresentation of what others socialists ecologists are saying, poses as the only one focused in the need to change "property relations" or whatever, when in fact he is not the only one who takes account of that in his analysis. I for one have explicitly and pointedly said exactly what I say here to him several times, and he keeps on talking like he cannot read and understand what I say. He is therefore not "right" but a slanderer of others' positions in order, I guess, to pose as if he's the only one "right". I really don't know what he is doing. That' psychological speculation on my part. ^^^^^^^ 5. If in fact bourgeois property creates a set of needs unique and indispensable to its reproduction as capital and the productions of these needs strain the biosphere, causes and widens the metabolic breach, then one cannot set up the equation as society hitting the wall of the laws of thermo dynamics. The problem is that bourgeois reproduction - bourgeois social relations, is in its genesis is a violation of the laws of thermo dynamics. ^^^^^^ CB: I haven't really seen a demonstration of the "violation of the laws of thermodynamics. I don't think you can just "violate" a physical law anyway. It's simpler than that. Fossil fuels are finite. Just being finite does mean there is a problem now, because there _could_ ,abstractly speaking be enough for another 1000 years even at the current rate of use. But the whole discussion here gets going because some geologists have evidence that the depletion might be a lot sooner than 1000 years. ^^^^^^ It gets deeper and almost the entire left in the imperial centers that screamed bloody murder over the lack of consumer goods under Soviet socialism, were and remain anti-communist, totally bourgeois in their ideology and politics and on the wrong side of the political and economic solution. Consumer goods have to be grasped in its concreteness and one is not speaking of a washing machine which was being produced in the Soviet Union. Soviet socialism did not supposed to be geared to the production of the world of consumer goods characteristic of bourgeois industrial society. This battle was fought on the basis of the relative and absolute dominance of heavy industry over light industry. The revisionists and the entire left in the imperial center joined hands with all kinds of absurd theories about the "neglect" of light industry which all ways have meant consumer industries and creating an infrastructure for the production of a historically evolved set of needs peculiar to bourgeois property. ^^^^^ CB: I'm not sure what you mean by "the entire left in the imperial centers". Mark Jones was part of the left in an imperial center, and he did not hold these positions regarding the Soviet Union. ^^^^^^^ These very same people now assert that the problem is we hit the wall of the thermo dynamic barrier and violating the carrying capacity of the earth. I am going to get into this using Jeremy Rifkin's "The Hydrogen Economy" which summarizes comrade Jones approach and other's with remarkable clarity and intense bourgeois logic. In the past I have called their approach the metaphysics of properties and it is because it violates an elementary understanding of the metabolic process. Not to mention all that Marx has written on the origin of human needs and how the features of a given society is by definition embodied in its "social relations of production." Comrade Jones go as far as to state that Soviet industrial socialism reached its historical limitation in the 1940's based on its energy intensive (fossil fuel) infrastructure and other's claim that "socialist science" cannot solve the problem of the thermo dynamic barrier. One writer evens ask and projects the "fundamental contradiction" shifting from the antagonism of and between classes to the question of survival of the species. Survival of the species is the essence of class antagonism and the issue of historically obsolete social relations. ^^^^^ CB: For materialists, survival of the species is fundamental. With nuclear weapons and the potential for ecological catastrophe, revolutionary change of the social relations is becoming a necessary condition of survival of the species. Not just socialism or barbarism, but socialism or dieoff. ^^^^^ Well, the problem is right in front of us and it is not overpopulation by any stretch of the imagination. I would not call this "Malthusianism" but neo-neo-"Malthusianism." ^^^^^ CB: Your use of "overpopulation" and Malthusianism here is demogogic and slanderous. After hearing many times the differentiation between Malthusianism , which of course does not propose socialist revolution and the attendant reordering of social priorities to optimize the relations between people and subsistence resources, and what the Mark Jones are saying, it's just slander. ^^^^^^^ This is so because the fundamental problem is the bourgeois social relations and the apparent problem is the bourgeois property relations and an estimate of the dynamics of the energy regimes mean first of all beginning with the energy demand of every item produced and ascertaining why it is produced and the origin of needs. ^^^^^^^ CB: Yea, that's true but communist ecologists like Jones know and say that. You are setting up a Malthusiaan strawman and knocking it down. The reason communists ecologists are not Malthusians is exactly because the name "communist" (obviously) retains the intent to overthrow bourgeois property relations, which is necessary to empower public servants who will actually do such an energy audit on all use-values. 888888 More later. Waistline
