-----Original Message-----
From: M.A.&N.G. Jones <Jones_M@netcomuk.co.uk>
To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
Date: Thursday, February 26, 1998 7:28 AM
Subject: Immanuel Wallerstein's "Ecology and Capitalist Costs of Production:
No Exit"
>I have just been reading "Ecology and Capitalist Costs of Production:
>No Exit".
>This was by Immanuel Wallerstein's Keynote address at PEWS XXI, "The
>Global Environment and the World-System," Univ. of California, Santa
>Cruz, Apr.3-5. 1997.
----- snip ----
Actually, IW has been predicting the end of the system for some time now.
As I recall, the first limit was simply physical - the problem of
"broadening" (as I think it was called), namely, the world-system would
simply run out of new areas to incorporate. Later, the "deepening" of
capitalism - that is, the commodification of more and more areas of life
(the colonization of new life spheres) in the core countries, the
proletarainization of new groups and commodification of more realtions in
the periphery and semi-periphery - were seen as the solution to that
impasse. But, IW has, as far as I know, always maintained the inevitable
demise of capitalism on what can be called "logico"-historical grounds: .
capitalism, is a historical system and, as such, is finite, it has a
beginning in time and must also have an end.
The mechanism of the end however has always been somewhat problematic. Now,
it seems we have a new mechanism - eco-catastrophe on top of the rise in
wages in peripheral areas. I also don't buy either and agree with Mark
Jones on the first one - capitalism (and capitalists) are tricky - they are
not just going to sit by and watch the world-wide eco-collpase. Instead,
they are going to invest, and make profits selling, new green technologies.
Regarding the upward pressure on wages in the periphery - I think it will be
a very long time before that happens. There are huge numbers of
non-proletarianized individuals in peripheral areas which can be brought
into the work force and exert a downward pressure on wages. On the other
hand, the devaluations in many Easten countries are also exerting a
considerable downward pressure on wages.
BTW, I didn't know that Shell was lobbying to have PV (photovoltaic) panels
put on new homes in Britain. I have always advocated personal PV as a
solution. People should invest $5K to put a set of panels on their house
and sell the power back to the company at the same rate the compnay sells it
to them. $5K is nothing today in terms of an investment in real property
(or even toys such as snowmobiles or boats) and the payback has, in many
areas dropped to less than 8 years. After that, you are ahead of the game.
The nice thing about PV is that they produce the most electrcity when demand
tends to be the highest - hot days.
Lots of people don't want to call it Capitalism any more - Daniel Bell
thought becuase of the rise of the middle class, we should call it
"industrial society" (and like Galbraith and many other talked about the
convergence between industrial societies, regardless of who owns the means
of production). Names are unimportant what is important what matters is
that the existing society, whatever its calle, is a class society) where a
minority own or control the means of production and appropriate the majority
of surplus. How this surplus is generated - whether offerrings to priets,
agricutral products given as rent, surplus labor/value extracted in the
industrial process, or forms of surplus extraction which still need to be
identified and specificed - is immaterial. What matters is that the class
structure must be eliminated and not, as in the fomer Communist countries,
recreated on an new basis.
Mark Jones appears to ridicule IW observation that "we must raise the banner
of substantive rationality" but what does he propose as an alternative? As
far as I am concerned, IW is saying is that we must educate people, must
make people think, make them aware of their common and collective interests
(instead of letting them labor under the mytsification of individualism that
is so pervasive in American society) and have humanity move, collectively
and consciously, towards a future which offers benefits to all who inhabit
the planet and not just a small elite. After all, isn't a fundamental
tenet of all humanistic political and social philosophies (and Marx in
particualr) that mankind is capable of formulating rational (not as logical
but as "discurvely redeemable') goals for social life and the means to
achieve these goals.
Carl Dassbach
..