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The above capture the essence of the dispute. I actually have been
painstakingly specific. The issue is not "rationing to save people" but the "social relations" - in their entirety, of bourgeois society. ^^^^^ >> CB: Why not both ? << Reply: Agreed, nothing wrong with partial solutions and examining all sides of the issue of food production and consumption in relationship to population size. An examination of what is being produced will reveal that a host of commodities and products should be destroyed outright and not produced . . . not shared or rationed. Thousands of commodities, and each represents an energy tag, are artificially created needs that provide the inner logic of capital reproduction. The productive forces behind this wrong consumption and wrong production should be destroyed and the energy grid that sustains this wrong consumption would immediately begins to undergo partial change and modification. *******
>> CB: Why not both social relations and depletion ? "IF" oil will be
depleted
relatively soon, then you cannot say "depletion is not an issue. Social relations is the only issue. " For one thing, whatever specific changes in the social relations that must be made will be dictated in part by what is done in order to avoid the detrimental effects of the depletion to the population. << Reply: Perhaps I have overstated that the issue is "the social
relations" that create the universe of commodities we consume. I generally shy
away from using the concept "social relations" but it was introduced into the
discussion and not by I. Depletion concerns are generally stated in
relationship to "human need" and not the world of commodities that creates what
is considered human needs. Here is the real fetish that attaches itself to
commodity production.
I have been resistant to and very slow in embracing the idea that "oil" is
running out and probably will not accept the science behind reserve counting
until the oil actually runs out. I do not know what detrimental impact oil
depletion will have on the population. Really . . . here is the dispute in
relationship to oil depletion as opposed to the carrying capacity of the earth.
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.
I am extremely uncomfortable that the revolutionaries of the imperial
centers proceed from a logic that tend to protect their privileges and way of
life at the expense of the worlds people. We seek to "share" with the world
rather than abolish the basis of our despicable behavior and pay for our
historic crimes against humanity. World population is always looked at from the
lens that birth control is fundamental to resolution of what is called "the
carrying capacity of the earth" issue. An aspect of this cry and projection of
"birth control" is reactionary in my opinion because it runs counter to the
actual consumption patten of the imperial centers. Rather than demanding an end
to the production of what is basically garbage products, "we" are to decrease
consumption on the basis of population reduction and share in a more equitable
manner.
****
>> 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.
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."
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.
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: 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.
"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.
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.
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.
How does one prove that cheese is an artificial need? Its artificial
character is immediately observable when it is eaten and excreted as feces. The
problem is that our society believes that everything we excrete confirms
the metabolic process, when in fact what we excrete proves that most food stuff
we consume cannot be metabolized. It is not just cheese but 90% of everything we
eat in America that we call food. The specific character of the market pattern
is also called into question, especially when the concept "carrying
capacity of the earth" is raised.
The concept of the market pattern was borrowed from Polany's "The Great
Transformation" and recast as "the specific character of the market pattern" and
this is probably not the best way to approach the issue but the botanists have
not entered the sphere of communism as a mass or rather we have not
recruited them in sufficient size to properly articulate the issue.
I am not a botanists but had occasion to enter this sphere of social strife
and healing from wrong consumption. Cheese is horrible to eat as a society and
everyone senses this.
****
CB: How is it you conclude that Mark Jones is refusing to examining
the
universe of commodities and the energy tag they carry ? That's exactly what he did. Biologists and physiologists _have_ measured necessary food and water consumption for human individuals. 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? Current water
consumption for human individuals in America is conditioned by and driven on the
basis of the food stuff consumed. Drinking water is measured on the basis of our
pattern of consumption by the "Biologists and physiologists," who assume
this is "normal." Why accept their conclusions when their premise is based
on the bourgeois character of the general market pattern?
If our eating is defined as wrong consumption then the measure of water
consumption based on this wrong eating is not an authentic assessment of water
needs. The less food and wrong food one eats the less water the body demands.
Water consumption is understood on the basis of the specific character of our
market pattern or "the social relations" of bourgeois production.
Man as he currently exits is a pathological condition. Our healthy life
expectancy continues to fall, according to the World Health Organization. What
is being measured is the habits of the man who eats everything eatable. This man
is bourgeois but more than that he carries forth a history of centuries of wrong
consumption, that is a part of our bourgeois inheritance. The pressure on water
resources comes from the man who eats anything edible not the absolute growth of
the world population.
All the facts of water consumption point to the imperial centers. The
problem is that we lack a sense of "the way out" of the "crisis" that "makes
common sense."
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.
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.
90% of what we eat is "junk food" and everyone senses this and it is this
junk food - garbage being produced for exchange, that drives water consumption
per individual and as a society.
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.
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: 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.
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?
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.
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