[lbo-talk] An age of transition

Shane Mage shmage at pipeline.com
Fri Apr 25 20:19:31 PDT 2008


On Apr 25, 2008, at 4:30 PM, James Heartfield wrote:


> Charles cites http://www.monthlyreview.org/080401li.php , which goes
> on...
> "If world oil production and the production of other fossil fuels
> reach
> their peak and start to decline in the coming years, then the global
> capitalist economy will face an unprecedented crisis that it will find
> difficult to overcome."
>
> The radical dream of a deus ex machina to achieve what they fear
> they can
> not, the destruction of capitalism, lives on.

This is an untrue charge. The sentence criticized says "*difficult* to overcome," not *impossible* to overcome. If the environmental and economic crises precipitated by resource depletion and global heating turn out to be impossible to overcome, its true, capitalism would be destroyed--but only as part of what Marx called "mutual ruin of the contending classes."

Shane Mage

"Thunderbolt steers all things...it consents and does not consent to be called Zeus."

Herakleitos of Ephesos



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