>Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> writes
>
>'I'll interject the crude Marxist insight here: individual energy
>consumption in the U.S. is not some personal preference; it is the
>inevitable outcome of a society based on capitalist production. ...
>Of course Americans use lots of energy; it's an integral aspect
>of our way of life! But we shouldn't treat this "SUV culture"
>as the product of uninformed or deluded individual choices. The
>energy consumption choices people in our society make are constrained
>by powerful economic interests.'
>
>Oh come on, this is not Marxism, crude or otherwise, it's just bad
>faith. Marx understood that people make their own history, however
>much they inherit the circumstances.
>
>My point is not so difficult to understand: if there was any real
>popular feeling behind the hand-wringing over energy use, then
>people would at least attempt to cut back. But they don't. On the
>contrary. They increase their energy use at every opportunity - and
>why shouldn't they?
>
>You cannot dismiss the actions of 280 million Americans, and 350
>million Europeans (nor for that matter millions of Koreans, Chinese,
>and Latin Americans) as capitalistic brain-washing. People want to
>improve their lives, and make use of whatever resources are
>available to do so.
>
>There was a time when those on the left were supportive of working
>class aspirations for greater resources. I see from Miles' post that
>he, by contrast wants to see mass consumption curtailed. Why doesn't
>he just come out with it and demand a cut in wages.
To be a really fundamentalist Marxist, I would say that cuts in purchasing powers of those who consume gas, vehicles, etc. -- say, higher prices for gas, vehicles, etc. reducing consumption -- may be the result of rises in the prices of labor power for those who produce gas, vehicles, etc. Conversely, rises in purchasing powers of workers who consume gas, vehicles, etc., if the rises are merely the results of cheaper prices of the same, must be thought of as cheapening of their labor power. :->
Marx wrote:
***** Cheap food, high wages, this is the sole aim for which English free-traders have spent millions, and their enthusiasm has already spread to their brethren on the Continent. Generally speaking, those who wish for free trade desire it in order to alleviate the condition of the working class.
But, strange to say, the people for whom cheap food is to be procured at all costs are very ungrateful. Cheap food is as ill-esteemed in England as cheap government is in France. The people see in these self-sacrificing gentlemen, in Bowring, Bright and Co., their worst enemies and the most shameless hypocrites....
... The English workers have very well understood the significance of the struggle between the landlords and the industrial capitalists. They know very well that the price of bread was to be reduced in order to reduce wages, and that industrial profit would rise by as much as rent fell.
Ricardo, the apostle of the English free-traders, the most eminent economist of our century, entirely agrees with the workers upon this point. In his celebrated work on political economy, he says:
"If instead of growing our own corn... we discover a new market from which we can supply ourselves... at a cheaper price, wages will fall and profits rise. The fall in the price of agricultural produce reduces the wages, not only of the laborer employed in cultivating the soil, but also of all those employed in commerce or manufacture." [David Ricardo, Des principes de l'economie politique et de l'impot. Traduit de l'anglais par F. S. Constancio, avec des notes explicatives et critiques par J.-B.- Say. T. I., Paris 1835, p.178-79]
And do not believe, gentlemen, that is is a matter of indifference to the worker whether he receives only four francs on account of corn being cheaper, when he had been receiving five francs before.
Have not his wages always fallen in comparison with profit, and is it not clear that his social position has grown worse as compared with that of the capitalist? Besides which he loses more as a matter of fact.
So long as the price of corn was higher and wages were also higher, a small saving in the consumption of bread sufficed to procure him other enjoyments. But as soon as bread is very cheap, and wages are therefore very cheap, he can save almost nothing on bread for the purchase of other articles.
The English workers have made the English free-traders realize that they are not the dupes of their illusions or of their lies; and if, in spite of this, the workers made common cause with them against the landlords, it was for the purpose of destroying the last remnants of feudalism and in order to have only one enemy left to deal with. The workers have not miscalculated, for the landlords, in order to revenge themselves upon the manufacturers, made common cause with the workers to carry the Ten Hours' Bill, which the latter had been vainly demanding for 30 years, and which was passed immediately after the repeal of the Corn Laws....
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/01/09ft.htm> *****
In the case of 19th-century struggles over the Corn Laws, it made sense for workers to make common cause with manufacturers against landlords ("the last remnants of feudalism") in favor of free trade, but it doesn't make Marxist sense for workers today to make common cause with gas producers, auto manufacturers, etc. in favor of less environmental regulations.
Oscar Wilde wrote in _Lady Windermere's Fan_: "What is a cynic? A
man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing" (Act
III). Perhaps he was making an allusion to Marx's theory of value.
:->
--
Yoshie
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