ALB
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
“EROEI (energy returned on energy invested). This is what ultimately determines the ability to extract oil, not price. It can cost millions per barrel, and still no one will get into business of getting the rest of oil if it takes more oil to get it out than what you will receive in the end. “
That sounds an interesting concept but I imagine that, like Marx’s labour theory of value which talks about the labour-time value of a commodity being the amount of necessary labour embodied in from start to finish, it is difficult if not impossible to calculate. Obviously, nobody is going to use more actual oil to produce it if they are going to end up with less than they started with (and of course the oil industry doesn’t do this), so we are talking about converting the other materials used in producing oil into “oil” or “energy” equivalents (presumably the amount of oil or energy used in producing them from start to finish (are we?)
I wouldn’t have thought that this would be something a capitalist company would be interested in calculating before deciding whether or not to invest in producing (more) oil. They apply rather MROMI (money return on money invested), i.e. nobody is going to invest money in producing something if they’re not going to get more money back in the end. I suspect that, if at some stage of the EROEI calculation prices are used, then the two might in practice be the same. I don’t know. I’m asking you. How is the oil equivalent of a drilling rig or a nodding donkey calculated?
Don’t you remember the leaflet we issued at the time of the big Countryside Alliance march to protest against the ban on fox hunting, in 2002 I think it was, which we headed “The Right to Hunt Landowners” and which began:
“The good old English sport of sending hungry hounds to chase aristocrats through the woods, catch them and rip them to pieces, has been slow to take off as a popular pastime. Despite claims that these predatory parasites are a foul rural presence, serving only to infect the countryside with their conceited greed and indolence, it has been hard to find dogs with sufficient brutality to enjoy this so-called sport.”
and stated:
“Their protest for the right to hunt and murder animals for fun is no more worthy of support than a campaign to reintroduce slavery or to bring back the deportation of criminals.”
I don’t think it was distributed on the Countryside Alliance march though …
In the meantime China has started a “currency war” with America by letting its currency float down (devalue). This may force the US authorities to let the dollar float down (weaken) too. But why should we support either side in this currency war any more than we would or should in a real war — unless you agree with Lenin’s position that in a war you should always want “your” state to lose as the prospects for seizing power are better in a defeated state, Machiavellian schemer that he was? Which of course we don’t, but which you sound as if you might, Admice. Anyway, it’s not a question of indifference, but of opposing both sides.
I tried one of those vegan “sausage” rolls just to show I’m not prejudiced. Nothing wrong with them. They taste like stuffing. That’s alright.
“When shale oil industry finally goes belly up, it will trigger a huge price spike, and a worldwide recession.”
But that’s not what the link you give says. The US shale industry is in trouble because, apart from the easiest to extract beginning to be exhausted putting up costs, the price of oil has fallen. The news item talks about the present being “a time when oil prices more broadly are in freefall” and “oil prices languishing below $60 per barrel” and quotes a shale company executive as saying:
“Sheffield said that he doesn’t see global oil prices staying below $55 per barrel over the next few years. That would likely mean WTI would be under $50, which he says is just too low for shale companies to be making money.”
In other words, if the US shale industry does go belly up this will be because oil prices generally have fallen and remain low. Its demise would not trigger a huge price spike. In fact, if there was a huge increase in the price of oil (which, if it was sudden as with the outbreak of a war in the Persian Gulf, Gulf, could well trigger another world recession) this would make the shale industry profitable again.
The real price of most goods tends to go down over time due to increasing productivity. The exceptions are minerals extracted from the ground. The easiest seams are exploited first but, once these have been exhausted, productivity falls and costs rise as more difficult seams have to be exploited; the price rises.
Oil is in this situation. As the easier sources are used up, if demand remains the same, its real price rises. If demand increases, the price rises further and other sources become profitable. In fact it was precisely because the price of oil had risen that marginal sources like shale became profitable.
This is where the concept of “peak oil” is a bit dubious or at least needs careful defining. Of course the amount of oil on Earth is limited and so in theory could eventually be all used up but this is not an immediate prospect. What is is that, at some point, the cost of extracting oil will become so high that it will no longer be profitable to extract it rather than use other sources of generating energy (e.g. nuclear, solar, wind power, etc). This could be said to be the point at which “peak oil” was reached but it wouldn’t mean that all oil reserves had been exhausted, only that the reserves that could be profitably exploited start to decline.
Whether or not this point has been reached is a matter of controversy and in any event depends on the price of other sources of energy which can also fluctuate, though, not being based on a mineral, the cost and so the price of renewable energies such as solar and wind is decreasing all the time as productivity increases.
It only remains to add that, in a socialist world, energy policy would not be based on such irrationalities as the changing price of alternative sources of generating energy relative to each other, as it is today under capitalism. Given the fact that burning oil contributes to global warming, a socialist world will be in a position to decide to use it to make plastics instead of burning it to generate energy. A capitalist world can’t as long as it is profitable to burn it.
“… a dangerous belief. This is the same as when people say that personal choices of consumers are responsible for the environment. No, we are not responsible. When they build cheap fast underground mag-lev trains I will stop flying, but demanding that I alone stop airplane industry by refusing to fly is nothing more than capitalist propaganda, it is impossible. “
Good point, Schekn, but I’m not sure that all those around XR have understood it. While their campaign is aimed at pressuring governments to do more to tackle the problems caused by global overwarming, it would also seem to be aimed at pressuring ordinary people into not flying, not driving a car, not eating meat, etc. As an attack on people’s lifestyles, this will not win them support. Just the opposite. Coupled with disruptions to everyday life, it will create resentment and antagonism not just to them but to their aim and so provide a potential mass base for vested interests to manipulate. Completely counter-productive. I’ve got no problem, by the way, with kids taking a day off school. That doesn’t harm anybody. Good luck to them.
It is not as if people don’t already know about the dangers of global overwarming. Most do and are sympathetic to something being done about it. We shouldn’t be antagonising them but explaining the cause (capitalism) and the way-out (socialism as the common ownership of the Earth’s resources). Not so exciting but more effective in the long run.
Good stuff, Alan. Liked the bit about the important distinction between resources consumption per head (which includes all the waste of capitalism represented by everything to do with buying and selling and with the military) and personal consumption; which means that, with the abolition of capitalism, personal consumption levels can be maintained (albeit more rational in the absence of advertising and adulteration with sugar, etc) and even increased in the parts of the world without using up more resources.
We are of course all “ordinary people” but there is another aspect. At the moment, when socialists are so very few, a higher degree of understanding of the workings of capitalism and the course of history, are required of socialists (at least of organised socialists) than will be the case when the socialist movement takes off and begins to become a mass movement.
To be a socialist, all that is required basically is:
- To realise that capitalism does not work and cannot be made to work in the interest of the majority, those excluded from ownership and control of the means of life.
- To want socialism (as the common ownership and democratic control of the means of life, with production and distribution to directly satisfy people’s needs) and understand its implications.
- To realise that socialism can only be established democratically by a majority who want and understand it.
These are relatively simple propositions and do not necessarily require much reading or even being literate for that matter.
However, today, most people do not accept (1) and don’t want (2). So the few of us today who are socialists have to be able to convincingly argue that capitalism can’t be reformed to work in the interest of the majority. Yes, this does require some reading (though it is also evident on the basis of lived experience). With regard to (2), most people don’t think it possible; so, here again, some knowledge of “human nature” and past societies is required. As to (3), the disagreement here is generally with people who already largely accept (1) and (2) but refuting the view that socialism could be achieved through some other means (minority insurrection, gradualism, following leaders, dictatorship) does, again, require some knowledge of past attempts to escape from capitalism and why they failed. More reading.
So, yes, socialists today do need to be more well-read than most people are or need to be. But when the movement takes off, people who want socialism won’t need to have read up on economics, history, anthropology, etc. They will just need to want socialism. Then the time of arguing against capitalism and for socialism will be over; which, incidentally, won’t have come about purely from the arguments of socialists but also, even mainly, from external events making people really discontented with capitalism (even, who knows, some eco9logical catastrophe or war). It will be the time for the growing socialist minority to be discussing how to bring it into being.
So, no, we are not saying that to get socialism a majority will have had to have read Marx.
To blame popular consumption (what people consume) for exceeding the planet’s carrying capacity for humans is to assume that meeting people’s needs is the aim of production today whereas the actual aim is to accumulate capital out of profits.
Popular consumption is in fact a function of capital accumulation. The more capital accumulates the more people are employed or drawn into employment the more popular consumption increases. And vice versa as the drop in capital accumulation (slump) that followed the Crash of 2008 showed when greenhouse gas emissions slowed down.
If under capitalism people were to reduce their consumption or consume more efficiently the result would be more of what was produced would go to the profit-seeking and capital-seeking minority as profits.
Capitalism is an economic system governed by relentless economic laws from which there is no escape; which is why it can never work and can never be made to work in the interest of the majority or of the planet. It has to go and be replaced by the common ownership of the Earth’s resources before anything constructive and lasting can be done to tackle the threat of global overworking in a rational way. There is no alternative.
There is a chapter on “The Myth of Overpopulation” in one of our old pamphlets here. Although the sources are dated the basic argument remains.
In the meantime humanity’s technological capacity has increased more than population. After surveying these, Aaron Bastani concludes in his recent book Fully Automated Luxury Communism:
“[T}here is more than enough technology for everyone on Earth to live healthy, happy, fulfilling lives. What stands in the way isn’t the inevitable scarcity of nature, but the artificial scarcity of market rationing and ensuring that everything, at all costs, is produced for profit.’ (p. 156)
Meanwhile, as mentioned on another thread, Zeitgeist sympathiser Lee Camp tweets:
“There are millions who need food, healthcare, therapy, shelter, & education. There’s a society that needs saving from catastrophic climate change. Yet these problems don’t get solved because our economic system seeks profit over all else & that’s sociopathic.”
Ever since Malthus’s day “overpopulation” has been used as an argument against the possibility of a better society. It’s a shame that so many ecologists and Greens have fallen for it and so shooting themselves in the foot. It’s the profit system that’s to blame, not overpopulation.
“We need socialism urgently, so planning to sit back and slowly get more party members is not quick enough, we may be too late. XR movement people understand this. “ Yes, but that begs the question by assuming that something effective and lasting can be done about climate change outside of the socialist framework of the common ownership of the Earth’s natural and industrial resources, i.e under capitalism. Which it can’t be. So the best thing we few socialists today can do is to put over the case that socialism is the only way-out and whose establishment requires majority agreement and participation. There is the most effective thing we socialists can do now.
There is a methodological problem here. which the quoted statistics don’t take into account Currently, the Earth’s 8 billion people are living in a capitalist society much of whose use of resources has nothing to do with feeding, clothing, housing, etc the population but is used for capitalism’s huge superstructure of buying and selling and preparations for war. If this waste were eliminated, as it would be in a socialist society, then the impact of a population of 8 million (or more) would be far less. Logically, then, any overuse of the Earth’s resources should be attributed to the existence of capitalism not to the number of people. To deal with it, the answer would be to get rid of capitalism not reduce the population.
