Running out of oil?

Mark Jones, who often posts some insightful messages on WSN, does not see
the dialectic of the recent discussion on WSN the way I do.  The core of the
discussion is not whether the world can ever run out of oil. Or even how
much oil is left on Earth. Whether it is 10,000 gallons or
10,000,000,000,000,000 gallons is something that Marxist theory, or any
theory for that matter, cannot answer without having the data, the
information. Of course.

The dialectic of the recent struggle started out with a sociobiologist
practically imputing consciousness to "genes" and arguing, in essence, that
virtually all variance in social, cultural, political, and economic
processes can be rather easily reduced to his simplified version of
genetics. Tied in with this was some rather stale Malthusianism.  His
discussions about energy use, and his dire predictions that the world will
run out of oil in the next few years (five? ten?) are quite pretentious, and
are a corollary to his sociobiological beliefs rather than something which
independently is a matter of concern. His metaphors, examples, and evidence
for the five year or fifteen year depletion is not at all compelling.

Is oil the axis on which social change hinges in the near future? On that I
tend to say "YES." Most emphatically. Well, not exactly. It hinges on the
mode of production, on capitalism, on imperialism, on profits.  But oil is
most definitely KEY to profits in an immediate sense (selling oil) as well
as being the stuff that keeps industry and farm machinery and trucks and
cars and trains running. And buildings warm.  And there certainly could be
MAJOR WARS fought over CONTROL OF OIL, and CONTROL OF OIL PROFITS. But that
is not the same as saying that the fight would be over having the oil for
the working class to USE.  Marxism, and other theories as well,
differentiate between production for sale and production for use.

Does capitalism squander oil? Yep. Terribly. Does it produce ecological
disasters with pollution?  No doubt. Could it conceivably deplete the oil
supply to the point where it impacts on people's lives? Yep. But right now,
many millions of people are miserably deprived not because there is not
enough oil for their energy or food for them to eat, but rather because
capitalism A) won't let them have it; and (B) won't even produce what they
need if they believe that they can't make a profit from it.

There is a "real world" which existed before people and politics, and of
course, this sets certain limits. But until we resolve the social, political
and economic issues (which, to me, means the complete end of class
exploitation, class inequality, and the culture that goes along with it)  we
will also be seriously hampered in our ability to understand the natural
world.  We have to do our best, of course, but the struggle over politics
and economics, the social struggle, is what is key at this point in world
history.

As a final point, discussions on WSN have been a bit skewed of late. That
often happens right before a school year starts, and only a few people
dominate the discussion.  To withdraw from a list of hundreds of serious,
concerned social scientists because you don't like what two people wrote
seems a bit odd, but I guess that's everyone's choice.

Alan Spector


----- Original Message -----
From: M A Jones <mark@jones118.freeserve.co.uk>
To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
Sent: Thursday, August 26, 1999 4:49 PM
Subject: Re: Hanson


> This is silliness bordering on denial. Petroleum IS running out, as even
the
> IEA has recently acknowledged. Why do social 'scientists' like Stremlin
and
> Spectors have such trouble facing up to a well-attested and accepted fact?
> You may not want to believe Hanson but you can hardly continue this absurd
> ostrich performance in the face of expert opinion and the statements of
> international agencies tasked with dealing with the matter. Or perhaps you
> can, I dunno. Either way, it shows the utter pointlessness of even
debating
> you. I, too, shall be unsubbing.
>
> Mark Jones
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Boris Stremlin <bc70219@binghamton.edu>
> To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
> Sent: Thursday, August 26, 1999 9:49 PM
> Subject: Re: Hanson
>
>
> > I couldn't have said it better myself.  Off-list commentary used with
> > permission of the author.
> >
> > On Wed, 25 Aug 1999, Spectors wrote:
> >
> > > I'm about finished responding to Hanson. His comment:
> > >
> > > "It is not necessary to understand all the complexities of the social
> > > world."
> > >
> > > marks him as someone who actually is not concerned with investigating
> the
> > > world, but rather advancing his own science-fiction agenda.  His last
> > > response to you, complete with a 25 year old news article about oil
> > > shortages is very silly. One could argue that the shortage of fresh
air
> in
> > > parts of Mexico City prove that the Earth is about to run out of
oxygen.
> > > Furthermore, there were very specific political-economic factors that
> caused
> > > that uneveness of oil distribution, and  fact that the oil shortage of
> 25
> > > years ended is what completely discredits his argument. Usually
doomsday
> > > folks don't come back 25 years after they were proven wrong and say:
> "That
> > > proves I'm right!"
> >
> > By the way, Jay has yet to enlighten us as to how the obsolete "social
> > mentality" has led us to the energy crisis, when in fact prior to the
rise
> > of "physical world mentality" such crises did not occur.
> >
> > --
> > Boris Stremlin
> > bc70219@binghamton.edu
> >
> >
>