[lbo-talk] An age of transition

Charles Brown charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us
Sun Apr 27 14:15:06 PDT 2008



>>> "James Heartfield" <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk> 04/25/2008 4:30 PM
>>>
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.

Marx was sceptical of the argument that discovered the limit to capital

accumulation in *nature* when it ought to look for such barriers in the

system of capitalist production.

^^^^^

"economists like Ricardo, who take the capitalist mode of production as an absolute, feel here that this mode of production creates a barrier for

itself and seek the source of this barrier not in production but rather in nature". (Capital, vol. III, p. 350).

^^^^ CB: My thought on this is that Marx lived before oil was the main energy source, and before nuclear weapons. Marx ,as a dialectician, understood that there could be qualitative changes in anything. So, presumably he did not foreclose the possiblity that there could arise a qualitative change on the question of nature placing a limit on capitalism and its ever growing GDP; or that its ever growing GDP could exhaust its main source of energy; or that capitalist scientists, like sorcerer's apprentices, might let loose destructive powers in nature, like nuclear weapons, that might annihilate capitalism. In brief, Marx understood that things change, and that the fundamental material conditions and limits of capitalism could change.

In the new historical and material circumstances, Marx might well subscribe to the slogan, "Socialism or death ", with even more meaning than when the Cubans coined it.

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