Throw away those economics textbooks, turn away from society and start measuring the carbon to hydrogen ratio. Where Marx saw the limit to capitalist production as capital itself, Jones dreams up a physical limitation drawn from the natural sciences. Not the relative displacement of living labour by dead capital as Marx argued, but the falling rate of hydrogen to carbon is the cause of economic crisis.
Nowell:
Indeed, I would have to agree. Capitalism existed before the hydrocarbon era and I think it will do well enough without. But he and I have gone around on this one. During WWII Francer was short of gasoline and it did not, on that account, cease to be capitalist. "Gazogene" (wood-powered) units were hooked up to vehicles and off they went. Not nearly so well, of course, but it was clearly a kludge system. Environmental carrying capacity is more worrisome to me than resource depletion as such. Jones nearly always, as afar as I can see, extrapolates technology on a linear basis. We have X tons of steel per capita in the northern hemisphere, you'll never get that in the south, ergo no development. No discussion of prestressed concrete, plastics, whatever. It seems to me to be an attempt to substitute the crisis of resource exhaustion as a stimulus to the end-of-capitalism for the notion that the ultimate impoversihment of the working class would drive the revolution.
As for the Barron's article, resource depletion hysteria cyclically seems to be associated with periods of low prices. If one were conspiratorial, it would be that the oil companies like to push conservation in periods of low prices. But I think the concerns, whether the "coal depletion crisis" of the 1860s or the oil shortage crisis of the post-WWI period or the conservation movement of the 1930s (Texas RR commision) or the "moral equivalent of war" launched in the late 1970s as the 1973 price hikes ended in economic stagnation and overproduction are all able to draw upon serious and committed experts who are not part of a giant conspiracy. But I don't buy the argument that "this time for sure" this resource depletion argument is "the one that is right."
In terms of my personal interests, I hope Jones is right, because I think I would do well as an alternative fuels consultant in a world of diminishing oil availability. But the crises that will come are no different than the crises which hit banana production: social upheaval in the production zone, inter-bourgeois and international struggle for control of production. Price lows and price spikes as part of the characteristics of capitalist production and especially capitalist speculation.
But I personally think there are major changes coming down the pike in terms of transportation technologies. Jones does not. Nonetheless, the great passion and zeal which he brings to his analysis: well, I kinda like it. In academe ideas too often become like boxes of stale air that are moved around. So much "political science" is so hideous. I try to tell my students that what makes the field interesting is the passion, the clashes, the giant tidal movements of contending classes, the wars of nations: this is political science, as it ought to be, to me. But the usual run of the mill product is another study of how a bill gets through Congress. So even though I think Jones is wrong, I felt I owed it to him to point to a major bourgeois source which was supporting his argument, in particular because I don't think he has regular access to Barron's in the UK (maybe in a library but not at the corner store). I'm sure he'll make great hay with it.
There is an interesting issue here which is "what is the best pragmatic critique." As I say, I think Jones' point is that in a sense a cataclysmic loss of the resource base is the "final wall" of capitalism, not declining wages as once foreseen by KM. So his views represent an innovation of a sort. Paradoxically, however, this argument plays into the hands of the giant capitalist interests, who, in my view, tend to manipulate these arguments because their meta-game is the manipulation of prices, and to this end information is slanted. So in a sense we have two views of how "capital" is "out to get us", but Jones' line of reasoning is easy fodder for the great cartels. They love it, because the moral is: raise prices now, avoid even greater price hikes later. On the other hand, if one is critical of that view, it tends to align itself in a kind of anti-monopolism which is akin to traditional bourgeois reformist positions. So in a sense when I make the arguments that I make, I too am "playing" to a certain kind of capitalism.
Which is part of the insidiousnes of the system. At the end of every hedge that sends an LTCM belly up is a big winner on the opposite end of the straddle. At the end of every argument about how "capital" is screwing us is another segment of capital eager to leap in and turn the Joni Mitchell parking lot song into a kind of anthem to soothe you while you shop in a parking lot. I think this "system" is so all-pervasive and so all-permeating that in fact we cannot imagine what life would be like in the absence of capitalism.
Well to wrap up: I get less worked up about mineral type depletions then I do about biospheric depletions, such as fisheries. Broadly speaking there are alternatives to these "commodities" too: there are plenty of alternative foods, and some of the "might happens" of my 1960s youth (soy-based fake meats) are actually available and I do eat them. It may be that soy culture is bad, but it is far better to raise soy and eat it then feed it to a beast and then eat the beast. The beast route is worse on the health, as a rule, and requires far more resrouce consumption. But it is simply wrong to say that it's ok to hunt species to extinction because there are other things to eat. I don't even want top get into it. I have less of a problem with hunting liquid petroleum reserves to extinction, and even to some extent would like to encourage it, but from my personal point of view, all this stuff about running out is yet-another-run around the we're-running-out-tree. I view it as part of the systemic qualities of capitalism, like recurrent crises on employment, consumption, etc.
-- Gregory P. Nowell Associate Professor Department of Political Science, Milne 100 State University of New York 135 Western Ave. Albany, New York 12222
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