I think you miss the point. In both Ireland's potato famine and the dustbowl collapse there was a surplus of food over population needs, but for the fact that the surplus was denied to those who needed it. Environmental exhaustion simply was not the issue, and until now, only those who sought to excuse the exploiters have said that it was.
>I suppose you
>could argue that humans are infinitely clever and thus will
>always be able to reconfigure themselves politically so as
>to thrive on any level of resources, including zero, but
>history doesn't appear to be your witness.
On the contrary, history bears witness to the fact that available resources increase over time, and in tempo with the growth of productivity. (take the resource, electricity, for example)
>
>"Balances" and "crashes" are common ecological lingo;
Yes, because they are concepts drawn from the economic theory of equilibrium that have been artificially relocated into biology (transforming biology, thereby, into a value-laden commentary upon human behaviour).
>I doubt if the animals in question enjoyed starving.
I doubt if animals had any feelings at all on any level that one might transliterate them into human concepts like joy.
>
>The Soviet Union replaced one bourgeoisie with another, with
>the same need to preserve scarcity.
'Bourgeoisie' - hardly. The ruling elite in the Soviet Union rose on the basis of abolishing the market mechanism, and the bureaucratic organisation of production. (Soviet news media were very pro- environmentalist.)
> It is in the West where
>we observe that (thus far) no amount of technological advance
>can overcome scarcity, because one effort of technology is
>precisely to preserve and enhance scarcity.
Now you are missing the point. Technology does not create scarcity (to the contrary, it creates abundance). It is capitalist social relations that artificially sustain scarcity as a form of coercion.
>
>I think it's possible that the accelerating progress of
>technology _will_ cause the bourgeoisie to lose control,
Interesting viewpoint, but it is not one that I ever considered. Technology will not do anything to the bourgeoisie. But technological advance is the precondition for socialism. -- James Heartfield
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