[lbo-talk] Output Falling in Oil-Rich Mexico...

James Heartfield Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk
Mon Mar 12 14:43:15 PDT 2007


Yoshie, I would not go overboard dismissing the technological questions altogether. There are technological issues. They are just different from the political ones. If I were to put in marxist terminology, I would say that capitalist reproduction is at the same time the reproduction of the technological basis of the means of life - (that is why, in volume two of capital, marx insists that there is at any one moment a given proportionality between the sectors creating consumption goods and production goods, quite apart from the value relations, but set by the technological conditions.)

I am not sure that the reasons that oil replaced coal are all political, for example. It might also be that oil is more convenient power source (not least because it can be piped). If a dollar spent digging coal produced less energy than a dollar spent drilling oil, then consumers will make the obvious choice. When Europeans shifted from coal to oil that was all mixed up with the struggle against the mine workers' unions, and with each other. But that did not mean that oil was not just more practical anyway - after all, they took a big risk making themselves dependent on an energy source that was outside their borders.

Similarly, I am not sure that you can reduce the Saudis pricing strategy to politics alone. Prices are not wholly voluntaristic, but represent objective values beyond the subjectivity predilections of the producers. If the Saudis can sell it cheap, then they will set the price. Why would they pass up the opportunity to grab more market share?

Yoshie wrote:

"Moreover, we need to face up to the fact that the question of oil vs. environmentally sounder energy sources is not a technological question but a political one. There is a lot of oil out there, unexplored and untapped, if a political choice is made to make it available for exploitation by those who have capital and technology. Also, if a political choice is made to invest in environmentally sounder energy sources, technological innovations in that field will really take off.

If there continues to be no political force to compel conversion to an ecological system of production and consumption, there will be more investment in both oil and alternative energy sources whose environmental impacts may be as bad as or worse than oil, like ethanol, nuclear power, liquefied coal, etc."



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