Note:
The "UNITE! (etc) Info" posting series (1995-) advocates
the political line of Marx, Lenin and Mao Zedong.
For all items, see www.rolf-martens.com (http://www.rolf-martens.com)

SECTION 1.

>From Info #004en, "A barbaric anti-industry attack", 21.03.1996
(part 1/2, part 2/2 and Appendix 2/2 - before my homepage was
set up in March 2005, "UNITE! (etc) Infos" were only posted to
newsgroups etc, sometimes then divided into two or more parts)


Note, Sept. 2007: This section, the first of five, already
contains a main part of my summary now. The other four are
filling in on some details and aspects.


The present assault in this country [a repeated one against
nuclear energy in Sweden then, in early 1996 - RM, 2007]
directly concerns people in several other European countries as
well, since these of course are connected to the same power
grid as is also Sweden. Only a couple of years ago, for
instance, a so-called Baltic Cable was completed, capable of
transferring the current of one reactor from Sweden directly to
Germany or vice versa. The workers, the unemployed etc in
Germany, too, are under direct fire here, as are others.

In Europe and of course in all countries, the machinations and
the terror of the present-day, "green", international
inquisition must be countered! People of different social
strata and of different political persuasions should form a
united front to do so, which is in the interest of all except
some extremely small, though today extremely powerful, cliques
of ultra-reactionaries.

Earlier this year, when there was cold winter weather in Sweden
as elsewhere, electricity rationing was imposed on some vital
industries - a phenomenon earlier unheard-of here. The
utilization of chemical-fuel reserve power plants and the
importation of electricity from as many as four neighbouring
countries still failed to meet all needs. The rabid
anti-industry, anti-technology, anti-science and anti-growth
forces already have managed to impose the beginnings of "East
European" or "third world" conditions in certain respects in
this country. This as you can see by no means has satisfied
their lust for destruction.

Precisely concerning of nuclear energy, precisely Sweden has
long been a particular example to all countries. This at first,
during a certain period, in a positive sense, in later years
however, above all in exactly the opposite direction, in a very
negative sense. In our small country with less than 9 million
people, a quite important battle has long been raging in what
is actually *a "green" stealth world war* waged by the main
forces of the international bourgeoisie against the people in
all countries. The new reactionary offensive here in Sweden
therefore merits international attention.

This war is not only over nuclear energy, although this energy
source has long been a particular target of attack, precisely
because it's such an important factor in all modern
development. The international ultra-rightist forces, quite
often operating under a camouflage of "leftism", of "Marxism"
even, since 20 or 30 years back in fact are attacking the
development of industry as a whole, particularly in the more
developed countries and particularly in Europe. This mainly out
of an increasing fear that the workers, if "allowed" to grow
"too" many and "too" strong, will eventually team up with the
oppressed peoples of the third world, together with them make
revolution and smash the entire long obsolete system of
capitalism and imperialism in the world, which is turning more
and more completely into an enormous obstacle against the
productive forces of today, a giant Berlin Wall against the
progress of all mankind.

In Sweden, between the years 1970 and 1985 a nuclear
electricity generating capacity of 10,000 MW was installed, in
four power plants totaling 12 reactors. This means that today
appr. 50% of all electricity in Sweden comes from nuclear
energy. Some countries, notably France, have a higher
percentage than that, but in overall nuclear-generated
electrical energy per inhabitant, Sweden is - still - the
internationally leading country.

There is of course great need for energy in such a country,
too, with its comparatively cold climate and long
transportation distances - the area of Sweden is bigger than
that of Germany with its 80 million people.

However, in the early '70s, the international campaigns against
industry, technology, science and economic growth were
stepped-up enormously, as a reactionary counterattack against
the radical youth and student movement in many countries
developing from 1967-68 on, which in France and West Germany
also came to embrace many young workers, and indirectly as a
counterattack against the then very massive national liberation
struggles in many third world countries as well, all
importantly inspired and supported by the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution in then socialist China, 1966-76.

These reactionary anti-industry etc campaigns were stagemanged
above all by the main forces of U.S. imperialism. In 1972 there
was published, for instance, a neo-Malthusian anti-progress
book entitled "The Limits to Growth" by the U.S.-based
so-called "Club of Rome", a kind of embryonic propaganda organ
for an international "green" Inquisition. In the West European
countries, also those superpower lackey forces which at that
time mainly favoured Soviet social-imperialism, such as the
openly revisionist parties and, more importantly, most of the
recently emerged small parties which, in words, supported Mao
Zedong's criticism of "modern" revisionism, started with
increasing fanaticism to support the rabidly anti-Marxist
anti-proletarian anti-liberation-struggle "green" ideology.

Among the second-world countries, Sweden was an early victim of
this escalated international stealth warfare. All second-world
countries in fact were, and are, more or less prone to the
infection of the "green" disease emanating above all from the
superpowers and their lackeys, because, since they participated
and still participate in the exploitation of the oppressed
peoples and receive(d) part of their riches from this, they
also were - and still are, even in the somewhat different
international situation of today - more or less dependent on
the superpowers in the capacity of the latter as "world
gendarmes" - a role which today of course is taken up mainly by
the USA.

For Sweden, which had earlier prospered, in part because it had
been in some respects a "canary" of both superpowers, this
dependence from the mid-'70:s on started to have exactly the
opposite effect economically. In 1972, the first UN so-called
conference "on the environment" was held in Stockholm. It was
in fact, on the part of the main international bourgeois forces
including the revisionist ones, a conference on the
strangulation of industrial development - as was, even more so,
the big "follow-up" event in Rio de Janeiro 20 years later.

In early 1973, initial decisions were taken by the Swedish
parliament to cut down the nuclear-energy programme and to
curtail other industrial development. This was even before the
international so-called "oil crisis" of 1973-74, which was in
part likewise caused by intentional efforts by the imperialists
to strangle industrial growth. From 1974 on, no further permits
were given by the government here for the construction of
nuclear power plants. The propaganda of the bourgeois mass
media in the '70:s became increasingly "green" and
neo-Malthusian.

>From late 1976 on, when the imperialists started hoping that
they would get the situation in China "under control", that is,
when they saw reason to hope that the rule of the proletariat
in China was being overthrown and that thus they needn't fear
public counterattack against their plans from that country,
they escalated their international "green" stealth warfare even
more.

In Europe, in particular the masses of West Germany and
Berlin(West), a potentially important factor in the entire
international proletarian revolution because of some obvious
geographical and historical facts, were doused with great
amounts of "Agent Green" propaganda. Ignorant or reactionary
strata of society were moved to take part in public
anti-nuclear-energy and other anti-industrial campaigns
supposedly directed "against" those very international
reactionaries who in fact were orchestrating them. In Sweden,
there was an equally sharp conflict over nuclear energy in
particular, resulting in the fall of one government in 1978.

In Germany however there at the time was also, as probably in
no other European country, a genuinely Marxist-Leninist party,
the KPD/ML(NEUE EINHEIT), which (until approximately the late
80:s) continued to adhere completely to Mao Zedong's correct
line. (See Infos #1en and #3en.) It counterattacked against
the "green" campaigns, exposing the motives behind them.
Although this party was very small indeed, the correct
propaganda emanating from it in Germany and in Sweden (here in
my rendering), which was based on some important findings by
Marx 100-120 years earlier, spread like wildfire among the
masses and in early 1979 had already achieved considerable
results against the counter-revolutionary "green" public
campaigns. We publicly "cut the throats" of some ultra-rightist
phoney"Marxist" forces of that time, who functioned as a
certain "ideological core" in them.

In March 1979, the main forces of U.S. imperialism manipulated
a nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, causing an
"accident" and initiating a new wave of anti-industrial public
propaganda and governmental strangulation measures
internationally. The bourgeoisie of notably one of the
comparatively highly-developed countries, France, didn't play
along, despite also a probably "follow-up" sabotage action with
explosives in early April 1979 against a Toulon storage of
nuclear equipment intended for export to certain European and
third world countries.

In Sweden, however, the politicians illegally refused
permission for two recently completed nuclear reactors to be
commissioned, increasing the number of scandalously idle such
new constructions here to four, and decided on a so-called
referendum on nuclear power to be held in March 1980. For
"safety", since they well knew the majority of people would
probably still favour nuclear energy despite the entire
reactionary propaganda, which at that time reached a truly
feverish pitch here, they only advanced (three) parallel "NO"
"proposals" between which to "choose" in this "referendum",
whose "result" was thus ensured with no "risk of accident due
to the human factor".


Note, Sept. 2007: On that fantastic "referendum" in Sweden in
1980, see Info #225en, part 1/2 and part 2/2. In Swedish, there
are several Infos on this including #276se, and in German,
#231de.


Behind this there was, visibly, massive superpower pressure.
This whole "referendum" plot was publicly exposed beforehand by
me in Sweden and by the KPD/ML(NEUE EINHEIT) in Germany, one of
the important other countries where the public was intended to
be "impressed" by the so-called "no" "of the Swedish people".
And this exposure probably importantly contributed to the fact
that the reactionaries didn't dare to scrap one or more of the
completed plants in Sweden at once, as had certainly been their
intention.

But the politicians here have taken the "result" of the 1980
"referendum", an event justly described by one prominent
nuclear-energy expert in Sweden as a "modern" counterpart to
the sentencing of Galileo in 1633 by the old Inquisition, as a
pretext for now directly banning the further construction of
nuclear power plants and for deciding that this entire energy
source is to be banned forever in this country from the year
2010 on, or "phased out", as is their "nice" Orwellian term for
it.

In 1987, after the murky Chernobyl incident in the Soviet Union
and the extreme, technically completely illogical, outcry by
the imperialists and social-imperialists against all nuclear
energy which followed on this incident, there in Sweden was
even enacted a law which prohibits the very research and
projection with the purpose of constructing a nuclear power
plant here, the illfamed "brainwash paragraph", which, even
under today's "green Inquisition" imperialism, as far as I know
has no counterpart elsewhere.

The reactionary fanaticism which shows up in these actions is,
as already pointed out above, by no means limited to enmity
against nuclear energy. It's a fanaticism which has grown out
of an increasing fear, by the main forces of the international
bourgeoisie today, of proletarian revolution. It's directed,
indirectly, against the workers and against the oppressed
peoples and nations, and directly against the further
development of industry in several countries. One main
preoccupation [aim] of the extreme reactionaries is that energy
should be intentionally made as scarce and as expensive as
possible.

This in fact all-embracingly important factor (as far as the
technical side is concerned) in every more-or-less modern
society today, energy, also in general is one over which the
bourgeois state has a certain control, as opposed to the
(non-state) industrial capitalists who are mainly concerned
with profit-making and who therefore still may tend to favour
industrial expansion and technological and scientific advance
instead of the opposite. With actions taken by the executive
body of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the state, against
the energy supply, industry can be strangled and a great number
of people forced into unemployment (and thus at least in part
"neutralized" politically), even against the will of some of
the capitalists.

This is also why in the last two decades not only the expansion
of nuclear (fission) energy in the world has been brought
practically to a standstill, with only some 400 reactors in
operation out of the 2,000 originally envisaged for the year
2000, and funds for nuclear fusion research likewise cut
drastically, but extensive measures have been taken and massive
phoney "environmental" propaganda made also against the
second-best energy sources, the chemical ones, oil and natural
gas, which at present of course account for a much greater part
of the total than does nuclear energy and therefore likewise
have become important targets for attack by the arch-enemies of
the peoples in their "green" stealth warfare.

In 1983-85, there was an international propaganda campaign over
the (non-existent) "forest death" allegedly caused by the use
of oil etc. As far back as in 1972, the above-mentioned early
Inquisition "Club of Rome" piece "The Limits to Growth" also
contained, in addition to its vilification of nuclear energy, a
so-called "theory" on an alleged "additional greenhouse effect"
supposedly due to human chemical-fuel utilization.

This "theory" obviously is not correct. Several arguments,
largely suppressed by the mass media, speak against it. (I
intend to post more on this later.) Despite this, the 1992
(actually anti-industrial) so-called "Earth Summit" in Rio
under the auspices of international imperialism i.a. set up a
so-called "convention" on the "limitation of carbon dioxide
emissions". The Swedish bourgeois politicians declared their
"ambition" to "take the lead" in implementing it, just as they
had already "taken the lead" in "referenda" against nuclear
energy (which they'll keep at least until someone comes up with
one returning more than 100% "no"s) and in truly medieval laws
against it.

Furthermore, the chemical fuels are always called "fossil
fuels" by all the media etc, by the entire present-day
inquisition. This implies that the theory of their being of
biological origin is correct, which would also mean that these
resources were comparatively scarce - another "reason" for
limiting their use. In reality, the hydrocarbons from which
these energy sources stem are of cosmic origin. The planet
Earth doesn't have such enormous amounts of them as do the
atmospheres of the outer planets, but still there's plenty of
oil and natural gas under large parts of the surface here,
mainly at great depths. This knowledge, too (another subject
for later postings), is being fanatically suppressed by the
main international bourgeois forces. This constitutes yet
another front in their particular "green" warfare against the
proletariat.

In Sweden, there in all probability is a very large oil and gas
deposit some 7,000 m below the ground in Siljansringen in the
province of Dalarna. But after the - much-delayed - exploratory
drilling of only two bore holes, both of which showed great
promise, the project of its possible utilization was finally
killed by political machinations in 1994.


Note, Sept. 2007: On this project in Sweden and on there being
enormous resources of oil and natural gas, not difficult to
extract quite cheaply, in many land and sea regions all over
this planet, see a long article in Info #267en.


In other parts of the world, e.g. in China when it was still
socialist, oil and gas have been extracted from crystalline
rock and from great depths, a fact which contributes to the
refutation of the "fossil" theory.

Here again, an important fact about the world today was clearly
demonstrated in Sweden: One reason why the proletariat and the
oppressed peoples and nations absolutely must topple the
present rulers of the world from power is that these
reactionaries today more and more are turning into a massive
plug preventing the use of those enormous natural resources
which the earth holds, a plug which must be pulled out if real
economic progress is to be achieved.

To all readers of this article, whether they are in agreement
with me on the above analysis and the above description of
certain recent events or not - and I realize the need for
further elaborations and evidence on many of the points made
here - I repeat the call: Please support the fight against the
present anti-industrial attack here in Sweden! An international
united front is sorely needed against the ultra-reactionaries'
"green" stealth warfare. Not least those friends who have as
their ambition to pursue a genuinely Marxist political line IMO
should carefully study the scientific and political questions
in connection with this, so as to be able all-sidedly correctly
to lead the struggle of the masses against their worst enemies.
...

SECTION 1. (continued)

>From Info #004en, "A barbaric anti-industry attack", 21.03.1996
(part 1/2, part 2/2 and Appendix 2/2 - before my homepage was
set up in March 2005, "UNITE! (etc) Infos" were only posted to
newsgroups etc, sometimes then divided into two or more parts)
...

>From The Heidelberg Appeal

This is a statement originally published on June 1, 1992,
immediately before the so-called "Earth Summit" in Rio de
Janeiro, as signed by 264 scientists, including 52 Nobel prize
recipients, from 29 countries.
...
Today the number of scientists who have signed this appeal is
well above 1,000.
...
I reproduce the text of the Appeal from the Fall 1992 issue of
the magazine 21st Century Science and Technology,...


[QUOTE:]

THE HEIDELBERG APPEAL

To Heads of States and Governments

¤ We want to make our full contribution to the preservation of
our common heritage, the Earth.

¤ We are however worried, at the dawn of the 21st century, at
the emergence of an irrational ideology which is opposed to
scientific and industrial progress and impedes economic and
social development.

¤ We contend that a Natural State, sometimes idealized by
movements with a tendency to look toward the past, does not
exist and has probably never existed since man's first
appearance in the biosphere, insofar as humanity has always
progressed by harnessing Nature to its needs and not the
reverse.

¤ We fully subscribe to the objectives of a scientific ecology
for a universe whose resources must be taken stock of,
monitored, and preserved.

¤ But we herewith demand that this stocktaking, monitoring,
and preservation be founded on scientific criteria and not on
irrational preconceptions.

¤ We stress that many essential human activities are carried
out either by manipulating hazardous substances or in their
proximity, and that progress and development have always
involved increasing control over hostile forces, to the benefit
of mankind.

¤ We therefore consider that scientific ecology is no more than
an extension of this continual progress toward the improved
life of future generations.

¤ We intend to assert science's responsibility and duties
toward society as a whole.

¤ We do, however, forewarn the authorities in charge of our
planet's destiny against decisions which are supported by
pseudoscientific arguments or false and nonrelevant data.

¤ We draw everybody's attention to the absolute necessity of
helping poor countries attain a level of sustainable
development which matches that of the rest of the planet,
protecting them from troubles and dangers stemming from
developed nations, and avoiding their entanglement in a web of
unrealistic obligations which would compromise both their
independence and their dignity.

¤ The greatest evils which stalk our Earth are ignorance and
oppression, and not Science, Technology, and Industry whose
instruments, when adequately managed, are indispensable tools
of a future shaped by Humanity, by itself and for itself,
overcoming major problems like overpopulation, starvation and
worldwide diseases.

[END OF QUOTE]

[So far Info #004en]



SECTION 2.

>From Info #165en, "The big 'greenhouse' hoax (1)", 22.02.2002
(part 1/4)


THE MOTIVES BEHIND THE PROPAGANDA

The "greenhouse" propaganda hoax and the corresponding measures
to curtail the use of oil, natural gas and coal are part of a
"green" stealth warfare which the main ruling bourgeois forces
in the world are engaging in, against the people in all
countries, since some three decades back now.

Briefly, the reasons for this warfare can be described as in
Info #4en in this series (21.03.1996):
...

Within US imperialism, it was always the forces of the Al Gore
type that were advocating this particular kind of warfare more
directly and openly that those of the George W. Bush type. One
rather well-known 1992 book by Gore, for instance, "Earth in
the Balance - Ecology and the Human Spirit", purportedly about
a number of "environmental" questions, precisely is full of
this spirit.

But it should not be thought that the Bush faction of
international exploiters, oppressors, war criminals and mass
murderers are not engaging too in this warfare, when now for
instance in their recent programme (mid-February 2002) for
energy provisioning in the USA itself, they have declared the
particularly extreme Kyoto programme for worldwide industry
strangulation, under "greenhouse" pretext, dead. The various
forces of US imperialism, and of other reaction too, on
principle are always using "double trouble" tactics. They will
say one thing officially which may sound "not quite so bad" and
at the same time, using a number of "unofficial" muppets of
theirs which they are always handling, pursue a different and
more sinister policy.

This last was the tactics, for instance, behind the 11
September 2001 terror attacks against the people in the USA and
in the whole world, with which the US imperialists, in the more
and more desperate situation for the reactionaries in all
countries, started a policy of also open warfare against the
people in all countries.

The war purportedly "against terrorism", in reality against the
people everywhere, waged jointly by the biggest terrorists in
the world, of course must be opposed. So must the "green"
warfare by those same forces, which continues too and which
internationally, continually, is causing even more destruction
and death than did for instance the recent bombings of New York
City, Afghanistan and Iraq.


A PROGRAMME FOR MAKING ALL ENERGY AS EXPENSIVE
AND SCARCE AS POSSIBLE

Such an agenda may seem "completely mad". And in a way, it is
too. But it's an important one of the main reactionaries' in
the world, and has been more and more so since some three
decades back. This is part of their "green" warfare against
practically everybody on earth.

Marx pointed out, in a speech way back in 1856:


"Steam, electricity, and the self acting mule were
revolutionists of a rather more dangerous character than even
citizens Barbès, Raspail and Blanqui."

Note, Sept. 2007: See Info #005en, #005de or #005se (this last
with a translation by me of that speech into Swedish), or
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/wo ... /04/14.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1856/04/14.htm).


That's how mainly some feudalists were seeing things, in the
mid-19th century. Today, with that enormous further development
of such productive forces which has taken place since then,
it's what the main political forces of the entire bourgeoisie
are thinking.

Don't the bourgeoisie want to make profits? Isn't that what
capitalism is all about? Yes, they do, and it is. But an
absolutely necessary prerequisite for the capitalists is that
they retain *political power*. Without this, they of course
cannot exploit one single worker, or internationally, a single
poor country. The "green" warfare of their main forces, of
their main *political* forces, precisely is intended to prolong
the rule of the entire bourgeoisie in the world.

Since this means curtailment of technological and scientific
advances and of the development of industry, indeed even the
mass destruction of some industries, of course some capitalists
owning certain types of such are complaining that it's costing
them a lot of money, and are sometimes protesting against the
"green" warfare, or against such parts of it as are hitting
"their" industrial branch.

They then are being told by their own politicians that they
should not be so "greedy" or so "consumerist" but must make
some sacrifices for the "common good" of the entire exploiting
class, which needs a suitable *political* "environment", of
stagnation and putrefaction today, of absolutely not "too"
cheap energy, for instance.

The "greenhouse" propaganda and the programmes connected with
it, of curtailing the use of oil, natural gas and coal so as to
replace this with *much more primitive* energy sources, or not
replacing it at all, are a campaign parallel to the one, by
more or less the same forces, against the peaceful use of
nuclear energy in the world.

In the late 1980s, the US imperialists and others, such as the
Soviet social-imperialists at that time, were fairly confident
that they, with their various overt and covert actions, had
been successful in "containing" nuclear energy in the world.

In practically all of the more industrialized countries, no
nuclear power plants were being built any more. A number of
experiments with the particularly promising breeder technology
had all been strangled. Most of the poorer,
internationally-oppressed and exploited countries had been
prevented from developing nuclear energy.

It was at that point in time, from 1988 on approximately, that
the "greenhouse" propaganda really got to be a big theme in the
international mass media. It had been there before, from the
early 1970s or so in some countries, but during a long time at
first, the arch-reactionary forces had concentrated above all
on combating that superior energy technology by far, the
nuclear one.

The "greenhouse" propaganda and corresponding curtailment
measures are a continuation and an extension of the reactionary
warfare against nuclear energy, now going after also the
second-best energy sources, the chemical fuels.

Among these, coal of course is not a very modern one, but its
use still is necessary in many less developed countries. Quite
another matter is it when a highly-developed one such as the
USA in the last two decades has built practically no further
nuclear power plants but has more than doubled its coal use
instead. This is a case of *retrogression*, very typical of
that imperialism which already Lenin in his time characterized
as parasitic, putrefying capitalism.

Of course this coal use of the US imperialists' comes into
conflict with the "greenhouse" propaganda. But their main
forces are continuing to pursue this anyway.

Another, though smaller, campaign parallel to the "greenhouse"
one is that of the last decade or so also against the
construction of hydropower dams and plants, in particular in
some poorer countries, using various "environmental" and other
pretexts. This too in reality has the aim of making energy
scarce and expensive, in the countries in question, and
preventing their industrial development, so that the people
there shall remain as extremely low-paid wage slaves for the
international big capitalist companies to exploit.

The importance, to the entire bourgeoisie in the world, of the
"greenhouse" propaganda shows up in the fact that in recent
years, some quite big international conferences have been held
in which this was a major theme, or even *the* theme:

That in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the biggest international
conference of all, so far, which was on so-called "sustainable
development" - a bourgeois catchword implying that the
development in the world had so far "not" been sustainable -
and later that in Kyoto in 1997, purportedly "on world
climate", in which a number of governments agreed on principle
on far-reaching targets for "reduction of emissions of
greenhouse gases", meaning in practice, most massive
Curtailment of the use of oil, natural gas and coal in the
world.

Were these conferences called together "in order to address
some vital problems confronting this planet and its people", as
the bourgeois propaganda said? Of course not. They were called
together, by the main reactionaries, in order to *subject that
people to some sneak attacks*. And the "need" for them also
shows how much the present rulers *fear* the people in all
countries today.

[So far Info #165en]



SECTION 3.

>From Info #245en, "How the industry strangulation began",
29.11.2005


CONSEQUENCES FOR THE SHIPYARDS

One branch of industry for which this international shift in
policy had immediate and disastrous consequences in several
European and other countries was that of shipbuilding. This
was the case not least here in Sweden, where it had earlier
made up a quite important part of the country's entire
industry. In the mid-1970s, Sweden (with less than 9 million
inhabitants) actually was building more merchant ships per year
than any other country in the world except for Japan, which in
this respect far out-distanced all others. The decline of that
industry from that time on in some of those countries where it
had earlier been an important one is shown in the table below.
...


Note, Sept. 2007: As it happens, I from 1975 on worked as a
welder at one of the shipyards in Sweden, the Kockums one here
in Malmö (population some 250,000), which then employed some
5,000 people and indirectly 15,000 more. I was "in on" the last
6 out of a series of 14 oil tankers built by that shipyard,
somewhat larger than the largest US aircraft carriers. Later,
it had to build other and smaller ships instead, and in 1987
its civilian ship production ceased altogether. From then on I
worked in a factory in the nearby smaller city of Eslöv
instead, which produced excavators, employing directly some
1,000 people, until 1999 when it too was closed down. Because
of my earlier university education, I on my part could soon
find other employment, but some of the consequences of the
"green" warfare I have in fact experienced personally twice.
For many others in this region and in Sweden as a whole, in
particular young people and also not least immigrants, it has
had much worse and quite serious consequences.


Efforts to make all energy scarce and expensive began already
before the 1973-74 "oil crisis". What the shipyards in the
world above all were building in the early/mid-1970s was bigger
and bigger oil tankers. In late 1973 and early 1974, the OPEC,
which was dominated by Arab countries, decided on important
increases in its selling price of crude oil, which had earlier
been very low, and on a partial boycott of the USA on account
of the US government's support of "Israel" in the war of
October 1973.

These actions, directed against the international oppression
and exploitation of several Middle East countries, were
completely justified. But they were taken as pretexts, firstly,
by the big oil companies for raising the price of that oil
which they were selling even much more and thus to increase
their profits, and secondly by several governments of the
"rich" countries, led by that of the USA, for increasing
enormously their taxes on petrol (gasoline) for the consumers
and for manipulating forth shortages of that important
commodity. This was a part of those efforts of theirs to
curtail industry production, for political reasons, which had
already started somewhat earlier.

The oil crisis of 1973-74 was not caused by the Arab countries,
which were then and later blamed for it by the main
international mass media but which had only set a quite
reasonable price on oil. The actual crisis then, that which
caused industry production in many countries to stagnate or
even decrease and not least hit the shipyards, was manipulated
forth by the imperialist bourgeoisie.

Here in Sweden, a country in which the really big-time
imperialists since long have had a large influence, those
efforts at making all energy scarce and expensive which began
in the early 1970s could be seen very clearly even before the
1973-74 oil crisis. In this country, a relatively large
programme for nuclear power reactors, envisaging 24 such to be
built, had been decided on in 1970. But in the spring of 1973,
in the wake of the 1972 so-called "Environment Conference",
there were several debates in the parliament here on some
invented "recently discovered drawbacks" of nuclear energy.

One of the parties represented in that parliament, the Centre
Party, already had turned into an opponent of that most modern
energy source after its leaders had been "inspired" in this
direction by some forces in the USA. And within other parties
too, as in the mass media, anti-nuclear-energy and anti-growth
programmes and propaganda were emerging. After continued
debates on these questions, the Swedish parliament in 1975
decided to cut down its nuclear energy programme to 13 reactors
and also made that most extreme anti-growth declaration that in
the future, energy use in Sweden "was never to increase".

Similar turnabouts took place in several other West European
countries at that time or somewhat later. Here in Sweden, the
turn towards retrogression was particularly sharp and extreme.
And in the following years, the working people in this country,
where wages had earlier been relatively high and the
unemployment rate low, were hit much harder too by wage cuts
and rising unemployment than were those in the other West
European countries.

[So far Info #245en]

SECTION 4.

>From Info #278en, "Bush and Reinfeldt agree on energy
strangling", 19.05.2007


THEME 1 WHICH BUSH AND REINFELDT DIDN'T TOUCH ON
IN THEIR MEETING: NUCLEAR ENERGY

This is a quite big theme, since many decades back, concerning
the country where I'm writing this, Sweden, and not least
concerning the relations between the politicians of that
country, on the one hand, and those of the USA, on the other.
...

On the history of nuclear energy in Sweden, from the 1960s on
and up until February 2005, there are some main points at the
"Background" page of the website of the (non-party-political)
Committee Save Barsebäck, of which I'm a member.

[http://www.save-nukeplant-barsebaeck.com/background.html]
...


Note, Sept. 2007: This is a small organization, created in 1997
for combating the efforts of the ruling reactionaries to close
the excellently-functioning nuclear power plant at Barsebäck,
not far from Malmö were I live, which earlier produced 6% of
all electricity in Sweden, down. Despite this being opposed by
at least some 90% of the people in Sweden, those reactionaries
managed to close down one of its two reactors in 1999 and the
other in May 2005. Our committee together with some other
organizations campaigned as strongly as we could in particular
against that latter closure but was not able to prevent that
serious crime either. (See also below.)


Another interesting thing, and this one an indubitable fact,
concerning US influence in Sweden on such matters, is that it
was from a longer visit to the USA that the Swedish physicist
Hannes Alfvén, whose specialty was nuclear fusion, returned in
1970 with his then new conviction that nuclear fission was "a
very bad thing", "what with the wastes and everything", and in
his turn convinced the then new leader of the Centre Party -
originally a farmers' party - Torbjörn Fälldin, of his new
Gospel, which it in the following decades was to become
Fälldin's and the Centre Party's "main mission in life" to
preach and to practice - in particular under Fälldin's
premiership in the period 1976-1982, and this has not been
abandoned today either - much to the displeasure of most
farmers, since agriculture today of course needs lots of cheap
and clean energy too.

One early book dedicated to "warning" people against nuclear
energy, in this case against breeder reactors quite in
particular, appeared in the USA too, in 1969,: "The Careless
Atom" by Sheldon Novick. Another party in Sweden, the so-called
"Leftist Party the Communists" ("VPK", as it was called then),
closely connected not only with the Soviet social-imperialists
but with the US imperialists too although this was less
obviously visible, went openly anti-nuclear-energy too
approximately at the same time, the early 1970s. In 1977 this
caused a split in that party, one pro-nuclear-energy and also
very pro-Soviet-social-imperialism faction breaking away from
it.
...


In 1973-74 there was the first international "oil crisis",
caused not at all in the main by the Arabic-speaking countries'
quite justified demands for a small raise in the price of
their raw material or their use of oil as a "weapon" against
some glaring international injustices, but mainly by the US and
some other other ruling reactionaries who took this as an
excuse to raise the price of oil enormously much more, so as to
curtail its use and hit at the industrial production in many
countries.

It was no coincidence that approximately that very same time,
actually beginning in the spring of 1973 and thus immediately
before the "oil crisis", there was a spate of articles in
Swedish newspapers attacking the use of nuclear power plants
and there soon began a debate in the parliament here on this
issue, in which the then prime minister Olof Palme played a
role no smaller than that of Fälldin in advocating "zero
growth", and which led to decisions by that parliament in 1975
not only to cut the nuclear-energy programme down radically,
from 24 reactors to 13, but also one actually envisaging that
in the future, Sweden's energy use was not to increase at all.

These quite extreme decisions by the Swedish parliament, very
much in accordance with the "Club of Rome" programme,
undoubtedly very much had to to with the considerable influence
of the US imperialists here in this country, At the same time,
the latter were criticized relatively severely by some of the
people who made these decisions, notably Palme, for their
ongoing aggression against Vietnam, but concerning energy,
their "commands" were obeyed by the politicians here, in part
because they also represented the common wishes of the
bourgeoisie as a whole.


THE CONSTRUCTION RESPECTIVELY NON-CONSTRUCTION AND
DESTRUCTION OF NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS IN SWEDEN
- BEFORE AND AFTER THE BIG TURNABOUT HERE

Because of the Swedish bourgeoisie's earlier
pro-nuclear-energy standpoint and because of some other factors
already mentioned above, more electricity-producing capacity
utilizing nuclear energy was built in this country than in any
other in the world, if you count capacity installed per capita.
(Sweden had and still has some 9 million inhabitants.) This
took place between 1970 and 1985. 12 nuclear power reactors
were built here then, in that 15-year period, with a combined
electricity production capacity of over 10 GW (10,000+ MW).

After the recent scandalous shutdowns of two of them, bitterly
opposed by a large majority of people here, namely both of
those at the Barsebäck plant, in 1999 respectively in 2005,
Sweden with 46% of all its electricity still coming from
nuclear power plants, compared to 78% in France today, has lost
that internationally leading position which it formerly had, in
the respect of functioning nuclear power electricity production
capacity per inhabitant, and is rather precisely on a par with
that other relatively modern capitalist country in this
respect, with some 1 GW (1,000 MW) of such capacity,
corresponding to one normal-sized nuclear power reactor, per
million inhabitants. But things since long are going downhill,
as to nuclear energy in this country.

The nuclear power plant construction here in Sweden now rather
long ago, in 1970-1985, anyway may be taken as an example of
what it's technically possible and not very difficult to do
today, as to such construction, in any country which has the
necessary technology. This is worth noting today, when the
bourgeoisie internationally already has retreated so far from
that very most modern of energy sources that any nuclear energy
programme in any country, calling for the construction of just
a few reactors, is being described by the media as a "big" or
even "radical" one.

This example shows, for instance, that in the USA, a country of
some 300 million inhabitants, which today has some 104
functioning nuclear power reactors, with not a single new one
built in the last 25 years and with only some 20% of its
electricity coming from nuclear energy, it would be quite easy,
technically, to build 300 such reactors, of 1 GW each, in the
next 15 years.

After Bush was elected president in 2000, he among other things
"promised" the people in the USA - where even according to
recent "opinion polls" (those are always "slanted" in a
reactionary direction), some 70% are in favour of nuclear
energy and where the industrial capitalists know quite well too
that this already today is the cheapest way to produce
electricity - that there would now be "a new stance" on nuclear
energy in that country, and in early 2002 a governmental
programme on this was decided on which its originators called a
"bold" one. So far, five years later, that programme has
resulted in the start of construction of - not one single
reactor.

China and India today, where some 30 respectively some 20 new
reactors reportedly are envisaged for the next 20 years, are
being said by the media to have "big" nuclear energy
construction programmes. And these construction programmes, in
those countries to which today, because of their cheap labour
power and for political reasons too, much industry is being
transferred from some of the "richer", imperialist-type
countries, something which also causes unemployment in the
latter ones, indeed to some small extent may alleviate that
raging energy crisis which there now is in China, in
particular, because of the long time revisionist rule there.

But, as the earlier example of Sweden shows too: Supposing that
China and India, with their 1,300 respectively 1,000 million
inhabitants, have one-fifth of the nuclear energy construction
capability of the relatively most highly-developed capitalist
countries, it would not be difficult, technically, to build
some 300 respectively 200 reactors in those countries in the
next 15 years. Their present construction programmes thus are
really quite small too, as reckoned by ordinary, normal,
non-bourgeois people.


THE "HARRISBURG" MANIPULATION IN 1979 AND THE
FANTASTIC "REFERENDUM ON NUCLEAR POWER" IN
SWEDEN IN 1980

On 28.03.1979, there occurred a so-called "accident" at reactor
No. 2 of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant not far from
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the USA. Nobody got hurt by it and
there was only moderately large material destruction, but this
event was taken as an opportunity for some even much louder
anti-nuclear energy howling by the mass media, in the USA
itself and not least here in Europe, than ever before.

At that time, I got a phone call from my then comrades in the
abovementioned, tiny but actually Marxist-Leninist party in
Germany, who said that they strongly suspected, not least
because of the point in time in which it occurred - the
international political situation which was a particular one in
several respects then - that this was not really an accident at
all but a manipulation by the US imperialists, in order to
create a certain diversion and not least in order to get the
anti-nuclear-energy "movement" going again, after the political
exposure of its real background and movers had brought it to
almost a halt in (West) Germany, for instance. (US president
then was Jimmy Carter, known among other things to be rather
extremely anti-nuclear-energy; he for instance quite openly had
tried to prevent the then West Germany from transferring
nuclear-energy technology to Brazil.) My comrades asked me to
help collect information internationally on the TMI incident.

And I did find, above all, a particularly "juicy" piece of such
information. I've earlier written about this in Info #034en,
entitled "US trickery on Barsebäck" and posted to newsgroups
etc on 27.05.1997, from whose part 2/3 I quote:

"After the anti-nuclear-energy campaign had been criticized and
the motives behind it disclosed, it was slowed down
considerably in Europe in 1978. Therefore and for some other
reasons, there for some [people] arose a 'need' for a 'serious
nuclear-energy accident'. And one such was arranged, in the
Three Mile Island 2 reactor south of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
USA, on 28.03.1979. The 'Harrisburg accident' is a whole story
by itself, one that I so far haven't gotten around to post much
about - I'm planning to do so later. The KPD/ML (NEUE EINHEIT)
in April '79 published a leaflet on it, disclosing several
vital facts, some of which had been discovered by me (who also
reproduced that leaflet in Swedish).

One detail which we found to be very telling was: One week
before the 'accident', on 21.03.79, a certain 'fantasy story'
appeared in the York Dispatch, a paper published in York, West
Virginia, a city just as close to the TMI plant as is
Harrisburg, only across the state border. The story, entitled
'The Total Meltdown', was about how, precisely one week later,
on 28.03, precisely the reactor TMI 2 'suffered a pump failure
and then [its core] melted down completely'.

'Here the parapsychologists have something in which to sink
their teeth', wrote the correspondent [in New York City, the
USA] of Sydsvenska Dagbladet, Malmö, the only paper - as far as
I know - that brought the information about this in Europe. In
fact all who read it must have understood what it clearly
pointed to. But nobody else but we Marx adherents ever referred
again to the 'strange coincidence' of this story told one week
in advance."

The background of that story in fact could only have been one
of two things: Either it was a "warning shot" in advance
against a manipulation of that TMI reactor which some people in
the USA had gotten to know was being planned and wanted to
prevent. Or else it was a scare story planted in advance by
people who intended to manipulate precisely that reactor
precisely a week later and wanted to make people in its
vicinity believe that its core indeed was to be made to melt
down completely - with then perhaps "a serious release of
radioactive substances" - and thus "hopefully" create a public
panic in that area (which in the actual event did not occur
anyway).

On the results of the US "Harrisburg" manipulation here in
Sweden, where it did "succeed" even more dramatically than in
any other country, I wrote in the same Info part:

"In several European countries, the 'Harrisburg accident' had
considerable repercussions, and in particular here in Sweden.
On 4 April, a day later called 'Mad Wednesday', several
politicians made a complete turnabout - it's known that in the
days before, a person employed by the US government had made
statements here about how they 'obviously didn't know what
significance this event had in the USA and were unable to draw
the correct conclusions from it' - and decided on a so-called
'referendum on nuclear power' in Sweden. This took place a year
later, on 23.03.1980, and was not just any 'referendum' either.
All three 'proposals' in favour of which you were allowed to
'vote' said squarely 'no' to nuclear energy, which according to
these 'proposals' was to be curtailed and eventually banned
completely in this country - which was then and which in fact
is still the one with the largest amount of all of electricity
from nuclear power plants per inhabitant (10 GW of installed
effect for somewhat less than 9 million people). And to this
day, all politicians in Sweden do 'stand by' the 'result' of
this 'referendum', the 'democracy' of which you must admit
beats even the one of the so-called 'elections' in, for
instance, Brezhnev's Soviet Union."

[So far Info #178en]



SECTION 5.

>From Info #258en, "The reigning system's weakness", 02.05.2006

And when Gorbachov became president in the Soviet Union in 1985
and wanted to pursue another, though likewise extremely
reactionary, policy, one of "green" strangulation of industry
together with the ruling persons in the USA, the then still
powerful military leaders in the Soviet Union tried to force
the Gorbachov group into accepting their own line of massive
threats and perhaps even aggression against West Europe, by
having their intelligence service the GRU assassinate Sweden's
prime minister Palme on 28 February 1986. A scapegoat first got
convicted of that murder but was later acquitted, after some
people within the establishment here on 24 August 1989 had
reported publicly on a certain result of a bugging of a GRU
agent in February 1986.

It's likely, in our judgement, that the largescale sabotage
later, on 26 April 1986, of a nuclear power reactor at
Chernobyl which was part of a certain military complex, among
other things was intended as a counterattack by the Gorbachov
group and/or its US friends, against those Soviet military who
among other things had then recently assassinated Palme. That
it was a sabotage and not an "accident" that killed 42 people
then and caused large material damage is obvious. No less than
6 different safety systems were shut off deliberately in that
reactor, where, incidentally, it was possible to cause an
explosion only because its moderator consisted of graphite, not
of water as in all nuclear power plants in for instance Sweden.
The largest damage in this connection has been caused by a
massive lie propaganda, which has maintained that those very
small extra amounts of radiation which arose in other countries
because of the Chernobyl sabotage were "harmful", and not, as
are such small amounts, actually good for people's health.

[So far Info #258en]


Note, Sept. 2007:

I'm repeating here two things which I already wrote in my "News
with brief comments" item 311 on 12.09, where the above from
Info #258en was quoted too and which was headlined "'The
Chernobyl disaster very probably a sabotage'":

This the blogger Alain wrote yesterday 11.09.2007 in his
important blog in French, mainly dedicated to the origin of
oil, at http://petrole-abiotique.blogspot.com/, which also
contains articles pointing out that those same powerful
reactionaries in the world who are making the oil price be so
high are also the propelling forces behind the massive
campaign, since many decades back, against nuclear energy. He
motivates what he is saying about Chernobyl above all with a
close look at the technical details of this disaster in 1986,
which cost some 42 people their lives.
...

Since the fact mentioned here concerning such small doses of
ionizing radiation as those mentioned above no doubt still is
unknown to many, and the international mass media since many
decades back very much are trying to scare people of all
radiation, even such at levels with which people in many
regions on earth have always lived, their health in general
being better and by no means worse than those with lower
levels of natural so-called background radiation, it may be
suitable to include here references to two actually scientific
websites on this question:

On low-dose ionizing radiation, a site managed by S. M. Javad
Mortazavi, Ph. D., Iran, and containing articles by scientists
in many countries: http://www.angelfire.com/mo/radioadaptive/

T. D. Luckey (USA) on beneficial effects of low-dose ionizing
radiation: http://www.giriweb.com/luckey.htm



This concludes my summary now concerning "green" warfare, with
its main elements and history roughly outlined and with some
aspects of it gone into in some detail too.

Your link didn't work for me.

Me thinks the writer doth protest too much. Okay, I've been blindsided by reality a few times in recent years, but this doesn't pass a smell test that I cannot define. Perhaps I'm a dupe, taken as a whole it screams of paranoia. Certainly some interesting points brought up about industrial policy and it's use as a stick and shakle for victim states.

TMI as a government anti nuke plot? That's worthy of some of the most farther reaches in 9-11 conspiracy land.

Nope, wrong headed "brown commie"(Joel Kovel's term) , a damn near caricature.

Or are you just pulling my leg?

Your link didn't work for me.

Me thinks the writer doth protest too much. Okay, I've been blindsided by reality a few times in recent years, but this doesn't pass a smell test that I cannot define. Perhaps I'm a dupe, taken as a whole it screams of paranoia. Certainly some interesting points brought up about industrial policy and it's use as a stick and shakle for victim states.

TMI as a government anti nuke plot? That's worthy of some of the most farther reaches in 9-11 conspiracy land.

Nope, wrong headed "brown commie"(Joel Kovel's term) , a damn near caricature.

Or are you just pulling my leg?

There's a . at the end of the link that you have to delete.

Anyway, no, forget the over the top CT stuff that doesn't matter either way.

Kid, I finally get it. Your point is that the people you keep quoting have nothing to do with Marxism even though they stridently claim to have such a connection. The depth and range of the people you find in this category is truly stunning and it is a bit daunting to think that there is an audience of young, naive, "theorists" who are detached from real life enough to provide a ready market for this jive. I suspect they are mostly those who have a predisposition for the obscure and whose perspective is abstract enough to simply dig the perverse constructs of this kind of "logic".

In any case, we are indeed in your debt. To think that you not only look for, but actually read through this kind of material, even as your own education awaits (on such matters as elementary as the difference between a church and a labor union), is truly a testimonial to your dedication.
.

Kid, I finally get it. Your point is that the people you keep quoting have nothing to do with Marxism even though they stridently claim to have such a connection. The depth and range of the people you find in this category is truly stunning and it is a bit daunting to think that there is an audience of young, naive, "theorists" who are detached from real life enough to provide a ready market for this jive. I suspect they are mostly those who have a predisposition for the obscure and whose perspective is abstract enough to simply dig the perverse constructs of this kind of "logic".

In any case, we are indeed in your debt. To think that you not only look for, but actually read through this kind of material, even as your own education awaits (on such matters as elementary as the difference between a church and a labor union), is truly a testimonial to your dedication.
.

Here's Marx:


"This antagonism between modern industry and science on the one hand, modern
misery and dissolution on the other hand; this antagonism between the
productive
powers and the social relations of our epoch is a fact, palpable, overwhelming,
and not to be controverted. Some parties may wail over it; others may wish to
get rid of modern arts, in order to get rid of modern conflicts. Or they may
imagine that so signal a progress in industry wants to be completed by as
signal
a regress in politics."

EDIT: and when did I write about Churches or Labor Unions? It feels like a set up for a joke but: Whats the difference between churches and unions?

Kid, I finally get it. Your point is that the people you keep quoting have nothing to do with Marxism even though they stridently claim to have such a connection. The depth and range of the people you find in this category is truly stunning and it is a bit daunting to think that there is an audience of young, naive, "theorists" who are detached from real life enough to provide a ready market for this jive. I suspect they are mostly those who have a predisposition for the obscure and whose perspective is abstract enough to simply dig the perverse constructs of this kind of "logic".

In any case, we are indeed in your debt. To think that you not only look for, but actually read through this kind of material, even as your own education awaits (on such matters as elementary as the difference between a church and a labor union), is truly a testimonial to your dedication.
.

Here's Marx:


"This antagonism between modern industry and science on the one hand, modern
misery and dissolution on the other hand; this antagonism between the
productive
powers and the social relations of our epoch is a fact, palpable, overwhelming,
and not to be controverted. Some parties may wail over it; others may wish to
get rid of modern arts, in order to get rid of modern conflicts. Or they may
imagine that so signal a progress in industry wants to be completed by as
signal
a regress in politics."

EDIT: and when did I write about Churches or Labor Unions? It feels like a set up for a joke but: Whats the difference between churches and unions?

"Anyway here's an open question. Consider auto-workers. Anax has no problems working with them, even though it is clear they do NOT currently have a revolutionary class consciousness and they're probably not (as a whole) very to close to attaining that either. How is that different from working with people within the Church? " ... KOBH

Explain again how "class consciousness" is the determinate? Maybe you can get the "crusty" guy to explain it to me since he also thinks that "socialism" comes from what people think and not from who they are.

After that, you can explain how your quote from Marx is remotely related to your extended quote above. (BTW, please do quote the old man in context).
.

Kid, I finally get it. Your point is that the people you keep quoting have nothing to do with Marxism even though they stridently claim to have such a connection. The depth and range of the people you find in this category is truly stunning and it is a bit daunting to think that there is an audience of young, naive, "theorists" who are detached from real life enough to provide a ready market for this jive. I suspect they are mostly those who have a predisposition for the obscure and whose perspective is abstract enough to simply dig the perverse constructs of this kind of "logic".

In any case, we are indeed in your debt. To think that you not only look for, but actually read through this kind of material, even as your own education awaits (on such matters as elementary as the difference between a church and a labor union), is truly a testimonial to your dedication.
.

Here's Marx:


"This antagonism between modern industry and science on the one hand, modern
misery and dissolution on the other hand; this antagonism between the
productive
powers and the social relations of our epoch is a fact, palpable, overwhelming,
and not to be controverted. Some parties may wail over it; others may wish to
get rid of modern arts, in order to get rid of modern conflicts. Or they may
imagine that so signal a progress in industry wants to be completed by as
signal
a regress in politics."

EDIT: and when did I write about Churches or Labor Unions? It feels like a set up for a joke but: Whats the difference between churches and unions?

"Anyway here's an open question. Consider auto-workers. Anax has no problems working with them, even though it is clear they do NOT currently have a revolutionary class consciousness and they're probably not (as a whole) very to close to attaining that either. How is that different from working with people within the Church? " ... KOBH

Explain again how "class consciousness" is the determinate? Maybe you can get the "crusty" guy to explain it to me since he also thinks that "socialism" comes from what people think and not from who they are.

After that, you can explain how your quote from Marx is remotely related to your extended quote above. (BTW, please do quote the old man in context).
.

To rephrase: other than anti-clericalism, why would working with Churches be different from working with any other group? The difference is not elementary simply because you claim it to be or by ideological decree.

If you have a particular formulation of what "socialism" is, it may be unique to yourself. It would certainly be helpful if you would state what it is.

The Marx quote is as self-explanatory as many of your offerings. It pertains to Marx's recognition that the bourgeoisie encounter contradictions within the capitalist mode of production and actual social production(s). Oil being a prime example. Thus, the above quote from Marx -- which comes from here http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/wo ... /04/14.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1856/04/14.htm) -- is a far better explanation for the permanent departure of cheap oil than 7 pages of Chlamor's bluster and arguementative shock and awe.

Wild theories aside, the above is an exposition of the place and impact of cheap energy withinin capitalism.

You continually accuse me of deviating from Marxism. Aside from the sticky issue of what that literally means (what does or doesn't count as a "deviation"?), I wonder what it means to this discussion? I am not clear on that point.

Finally, if revolutionary class consciousness is not a determinate, what is?

(And take your issues with Lebowitz to Lebowitz, hes easy enough to find)

Kid, I finally get it. Your point is that the people you keep quoting have nothing to do with Marxism even though they stridently claim to have such a connection. The depth and range of the people you find in this category is truly stunning and it is a bit daunting to think that there is an audience of young, naive, "theorists" who are detached from real life enough to provide a ready market for this jive. I suspect they are mostly those who have a predisposition for the obscure and whose perspective is abstract enough to simply dig the perverse constructs of this kind of "logic".

In any case, we are indeed in your debt. To think that you not only look for, but actually read through this kind of material, even as your own education awaits (on such matters as elementary as the difference between a church and a labor union), is truly a testimonial to your dedication.
.

Oh. Duh. Behind the curve again.

The Marx quote is as self-explanatory as many of your offerings. It pertains to Marx's recognition that the bourgeoisie encounter contradictions within the capitalist mode of production and actual social production(s). Oil being a prime example. Thus, the above quote from Marx -- which comes from here http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/wo ... /04/14.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1856/04/14.htm) -- is a far better explanation for the permanent departure of cheap oil than 7 pages of Chlamor's bluster and arguementative shock and awe.



So that's it Kid? That's your refutation of Peak Oil? That article combined with your faint stabs at pushing abiotic oil are as shoddy an attempt at, uh scholarship? about the matter as one could imagine.

Your "explanation" isn't anything of the sort it's just your blind stab that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt when it comes to taking the time and effort to actually study the matter you've chosen to be sloppy and lazy.

You're clueless bro, best wishes.

The Marx quote is as self-explanatory as many of your offerings. It pertains to Marx's recognition that the bourgeoisie encounter contradictions within the capitalist mode of production and actual social production(s). Oil being a prime example. Thus, the above quote from Marx -- which comes from here http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/wo ... /04/14.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1856/04/14.htm) -- is a far better explanation for the permanent departure of cheap oil than 7 pages of Chlamor's bluster and arguementative shock and awe.



So that's it Kid? That's your refutation of Peak Oil? That article combined with your faint stabs at pushing abiotic oil are as shoddy an attempt at, uh scholarship? about the matter as one could imagine.

Your "explanation" isn't anything of the sort it's just your blind stab that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt when it comes to taking the time and effort to actually study the matter you've chosen to be sloppy and lazy.

You're clueless bro, best wishes.

I don't say that I have all the answers or even any answers. I think its an interesting question what it is we're trying to "answer" in the first place. Something we (as a group) could discuss. What I've tried to produce (going back to page 1 of this thread) is an entirely different manner of considering the state of the world today, one that is more consistent with a scientific brand of socialism. Its not a game of oneupmanship or of scoring points. I am not presuming to call anyone clueless or sloppy or a diletantte. In this case I think your approach and methodoloy are mistaken and I am trying to elaborate why. I also detect a whiff of Malthusianism in the air, something that is contra to every type of socialist. I don't think that statement requires any more justifying or needs to be phrased as an opinion. Others may disagree. I don't speculate on anyone's individual motives but I think it is very important to decipher the motivations of reactionary groups as a whole.

I think my efforts on this thread will speak for themselves, whether they are up to the standards of Anax or yourself or anyone else is not something I can control. Obviously, I am not Karl Marx or even V I Lenin so Anax is unlikely to be receptive to my contributions. That is a burden I will have to bear I guess.

EDIT: In my opinion, abiotic oil has nothing to do with theories of Peak Oil. I hope I was clear on that, I'll try to improve on my clarity in the future.

BERLIN - The movement against global warming has turned into a new religion, an ideology that threatens to undermine freedom and the world's economic and social order, Czech President Vaclav Klaus said on Monday.

Klaus was speaking to reporters at the launch of the German translation of his new book, a sceptical look at the worldwide campaign to stop climate change entitled "Blue Planet in Green Chains: What Is Under Threat -- Climate or Freedom?".

snip

Klaus, an economist and former Czech prime minister who championed the free market, is one of the world's most vocal climate-change sceptics. On Sept. 24 he gave a speech to the UN General Assembly expressing doubts whether climate change was man-made. Several diplomats said the UN speech irritated some small island nations and may have cost Prague a hotly contested seat on the UN Security Council.


http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory ... /story.htm (http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/45904/story.htm)

I think it serves us well to separate the question of climate change(I really don't believe there's much question) from the "solutions" presented by a very self interested elite. Rather than attacking a pretty solid scientific consensus should we not be talking about egaliartian solutions? Lacking that, survival plans?

[quote=anaxarchos]Kid, I finally get it. Your point is that the people you keep quoting have nothing to do with Marxism even though they stridently claim to have such a connection. The depth and range of the people you find in this category is truly stunning and it is a bit daunting to think that there is an audience of young, naive, "theorists" who are detached from real life enough to provide a ready market for this jive. I suspect they are mostly those who have a predisposition for the obscure and whose perspective is abstract enough to simply dig the perverse constructs of this kind of "logic".

In any case, we are indeed in your debt. To think that you not only look for, but actually read through this kind of material, even as your own education awaits (on such matters as elementary as the difference between a church and a labor union), is truly a testimonial to your dedication.
.

Here's Marx:


"This antagonism between modern industry and science on the one hand, modern
misery and dissolution on the other hand; this antagonism between the
productive
powers and the social relations of our epoch is a fact, palpable, overwhelming,
and not to be controverted. Some parties may wail over it; others may wish to
get rid of modern arts, in order to get rid of modern conflicts. Or they may
imagine that so signal a progress in industry wants to be completed by as
signal
a regress in politics."

EDIT: and when did I write about Churches or Labor Unions? It feels like a set up for a joke but: Whats the difference between churches and unions?

"Anyway here's an open question. Consider auto-workers. Anax has no problems working with them, even though it is clear they do NOT currently have a revolutionary class consciousness and they're probably not (as a whole) very to close to attaining that either. How is that different from working with people within the Church? " ... KOBH

Explain again how "class consciousness" is the determinate? Maybe you can get the "crusty" guy to explain it to me since he also thinks that "socialism" comes from what people think and not from who they are.

After that, you can explain how your quote from Marx is remotely related to your extended quote above. (BTW, please do quote the old man in context).
.

To rephrase: other than anti-clericalism, why would working with Churches be different from working with any other group? The difference is not elementary simply because you claim it to be or by ideological decree.

If you have a particular formulation of what "socialism" is, it may be unique to yourself. It would certainly be helpful if you would state what it is.

The Marx quote is as self-explanatory as many of your offerings. It pertains to Marx's recognition that the bourgeoisie encounter contradictions within the capitalist mode of production and actual social production(s). Oil being a prime example. Thus, the above quote from Marx -- which comes from here http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/wo ... /04/14.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1856/04/14.htm) -- is a far better explanation for the permanent departure of cheap oil than 7 pages of Chlamor's bluster and arguementative shock and awe.

Wild theories aside, the above is an exposition of the place and impact of cheap energy withinin capitalism.

You continually accuse me of deviating from Marxism. Aside from the sticky issue of what that literally means (what does or doesn't count as a "deviation"?), I wonder what it means to this discussion? I am not clear on that point.

Finally, if revolutionary class consciousness is not a determinate, what is?

(And take your issues with Lebowitz to Lebowitz, hes easy enough to find)[/quote:3iydszou]

I sound like a broken record, don't I Kid?

Class determines class consciousness which in turn is the direct result of the social relations of production... i.e. who owns whom or what. It may seem like a minor point to you but the guys you quote get it upside down every time... as you do.

On the other thread you asked for a definition of "materialism". You can certainly get to that definition through negation and you seem to be well on your way to doing just that. The crusty guy (no, you can't get rid of him by simply pointing to his phone number) claims that "real" socialism requires workers to think and act in a certain way, lest they fail his threshold test. That his “test” comes directly from bourgeois secular religion (“democracy”? really?) is actually secondary to his certainty that it is not what is in life but what is in his brain which has primacy. If “real socialism” doesn’t look like what he would want it to look like, isn’t it more likely that he doesn’t like socialism and isn’t for it, rather than what he is looking at isn’t it? Isn’t that what a twelve year old would ask?

That’s not “materialism”, no matter how many words and quotations the crusty guy hangs on it.

The guy you quote above… he’s not “materialism” either. There is no doubt that the “green” movement is a class coalition and both the bourgeois and petit-bourgeois elements in it have their own reasons for adopting a Malthusian or neo-Malthusian stance. For the former, the simple explanation is the same as for Malthus himself. Nature creates a blanket escape clause from the obligations for “relief”. Since catastrophe comes from god (or “Mother Earth” – take your pick), how can mere humans be responsible for it? The earth plays the same role as sweetheart’s “reincarnation”… they had it coming to them. Why did they choose to live on the coastline, anyway? Why did they think they could live on potatoes?

For the PBs, the argument is somewhat different. In fact, it is exactly the same as the PB argument for everything else. Itself the product of one or another aspect of capitalist development, the PB always wants the world to stop at a moment in which conditions are most favorable to him. If the continued development of capitalist relations now threatens to undermine rather than to enhance his circumstances, he is against that progression. On the environment as on immigration or trade or feminism or on anything else, he is always the same. That is what makes the PB the source of both reaction and whining in all societies.

Yet, none of this makes expensive oil or starvation in Ireland a fantasy produced by a capitalist plot. Nor does it necessarily sum up everyone who is concerned with the environment or resource shortages or civil rights or the current state of democracy or many other issues. This is where “analysis” comes into the picture. What is the truth of the issue, where do the various interests lie and how do we form our own perspective if we cannot accept, readymade, what is given to us.

On these questions, the piece that you have posted gives us no help at all. Instead, we have the mish-mash of silly conspiracy theories and unsupported assertions which is qualitatively identical to the crappy conspiracies of PI or RI or DU. Dragging poor old Mao or Marx into this doesn’t help us at all, nor does it distinguish the “analysis” to say “ignore the conspiracy theory”. That is not where the problem lies and indeed is impossible on the face of it because nothing other than such stupid theories exist in the narrative. What is missing are facts and a recognizable superstructure of interests, incentives, and known practices which would integrate these into an alternative narrative which we could evaluate on its own terms. Instead, we have infantile contrarianism and a complaint that the writer himself was laid off from his welding job in a shipyard despite his university education. Gee, that’s tough.

As for the rest, it is true that Marx commented heavily on the revolutionary impact of industry and this, particularly in contrast to landed capital which despised that development and took a most reactionary position on the subject. In the United States, a Civil War was fought on that very issue. But how does that have anything to do with the present day? Are the bourgeoisie, who invented such a development, actually against it now? Do they use the “greens” as a fifth column to defeat “development? Do they sabotage their own nuclear power plants to prevent “progress”? Is it now the job of the proletariat to advance the latest technology because the bourgeois are against it… and all of this while we remain within capitalist society? And our explanation for this bourgeoisie which is omnipotent on the one hand and yet sneaks around because of its fear of “social upheaval” despite the fact that this is entirely unnecessary… Forgive me but this is a crock.

“You continually accuse me of deviating from Marxism.”

No, it is the people you choose to quote who are neither Marxists nor materialists. And, no, they do not “deviate”. In order to “deviate”, they have to have been there. “Deviant” might be a better choice of words.
.

Anax's most recent post should cut though all of the fog we have had around here recently. I recommend giving it a careful reading and some thought.

Ummm, Anax..some of what you say here I tried to elicit from you 6 pages ago (back when this was one thread). I looked for people who said something even remotely similar, without alot of concern that they also happened to be crazy. Most people are crazy in their own ways.

I'm not so clear on why you sit idly by while Chlamor posts page after page of material from the most reactionary elements that exist on this subject (Hubbert..areyoushitting'me?!) while my own attempt at throwing shit against the wall needs to be dissected point by point. Throwing shit against the wall keeps it interesting dude.

And no I don't know what materialism means. Obviously I am open to the quip that its my own ignorance at work. However, I find the literature and source materials rather opaque.

Lastly, the Marx quote I provided points to something other than the antagonism between landed and industrial bourgeoisie. He is discussing a contradiction within industrial capitalism. I think the context is clear on that.

I appreciate this response alot, it sorts quite a few things out for me.

Ummm, Anax..some of what you say here I tried to elicit from you 6 pages ago (back when this was one thread). I looked for people who said something even remotely similar, without alot of concern that they also happened to be crazy. Most people are crazy in their own ways.

I'm not so clear on why you sit idly by while Chlamor posts page after page of material from the most reactionary elements that exist on this subject (Hubbert..areyoushitting'me?!) while my own attempt at throwing shit against the wall needs to be dissected point by point. Throwing shit against the wall keeps it interesting dude.

And no I don't know what materialism means. Obviously I am open to the quip that its my own ignorance at work. However, I find the literature and source materials rather opaque.

Lastly, the Marx quote I provided points to something other than the antagonism between landed and industrial bourgeoisie. He is discussing a contradiction within industrial capitalism. I think the context is clear on that.

I appreciate this response alot, it sorts quite a few things out for me.

Hey Kid you're not only being illiterate and garbled here but you're plain lying.

First of all I've posted quite a bit from varied sources and have quite a bit more. For you to try to narrow what has been posted here as just from some "reactionary" sources, and you haven't even shown a shred of evidence that that is the case in the few mealy references you've attempted, shows that you're simply being a disingenuous asshole here.

Why are you bothering to attempt a cover-up of the fact that you don't know very much about the topic at hand? Please re-read the article you just posted. Then get to the nearest mirror and shake your head as you remind yourself, "That's one of the dumbest things I've ever posted."

I told myself I was going to desist from even responding to such absurdities but your accusations deserve a royal smackdown. At this point you're just making up some of the dumbest shit I've ever read regarding Peak Oil.

Hey Kid you're not only being illiterate and garbled here but you're plain lying.

First of all I've posted quite a bit from varied sources and have quite a bit more. For you to try to narrow what has been posted here as just from some "reactionary" sources, and you haven't even shown a shred of evidence that that is the case in the few mealy references you've attempted, shows that you're simply being a disingenuous asshole here.

Why are you bothering to attempt a cover-up of the fact that you don't know very much about the topic at hand? Please re-read the article you just posted. Then get to the nearest mirror and shake your head as you remind yourself, "That's one of the dumbest things I've ever posted."

I told myself I was going to desist from even responding to such absurdities but your accusations deserve a royal smackdown. At this point you're just making up some of the dumbest shit I've ever read regarding Peak Oil.

Isn't it against the forum rules to call someone an asshole here?

teehee

freshly banned again, I couldn't resist.

Don't make me force you to put that proxy app to work!

Y'all are my fav-o-rite assholes.


On edit to stir the pot, Kid are you talking about abiogenesis or more than just that? FWIW, which ain't much I find abiogenesis to be about as compelling as anything farted from the mouth of James Inhofe, but that's just me.

Abiogenic petroleum origin
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

The theory of abiogenic petroleum origin holds that natural petroleum was formed from deep carbon deposits, perhaps dating to the formation of the Earth. The ubiquity of hydrocarbons in the solar system is taken as evidence that there may be a great deal more petroleum on Earth than commonly thought, and that petroleum may originate from carbon-bearing fluids which migrate upward from the mantle.

Various abiogenic hypotheses were first proposed in the nineteenth century, most notably by the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev and the French chemist Marcellin Berthelot. Since that time, these hypotheses have lost ground to the dominant view that petroleum is a fossil fuel. The biogenic hypothesis for petroleum was first proposed in 1757 by Russian scholar Mikhail Lomonosov.

Abiogenic hypotheses saw a revival in the last half of the twentieth century by Russian and Ukrainian scientists, and more interest has been generated in the West after the publication in 1999 of The Deep Hot Biosphere by Thomas Gold. Gold's version of the hypothesis partly is based on the existence of a biosphere composed of thermophile bacteria in the earth's crust, which may explain the existence of certain biomarkers in extracted petroleum.[1]

Although the abiogenic theory, according to Gold, is widely accepted in Russia, where it was intensively developed in the 1950s and 1960s, the vast majority of Western petroleum geologists consider the biogenic theory of petroleum formation scientifically proven. Although evidence exists for abiogenic creation of methane and hydrocarbon gases within the Earth[2][3], they are not produced in commercially significant quantities, so that essentially all hydrocarbon gases that are extracted for use as fuel or raw materials are biogenic. There is no direct evidence to date of abiogenic petroleum (liquid crude oil and long-chain hydrocarbon compounds) formed abiogenically within the crust, which is the essential prediction of the abiogenic petroleum theory.

The abiogenic origin of petroleum (liquid hydrocarbon oils) has recently been reviewed in detail by Glasby[4], who raises a number of objections to the theory.

Hey Kid you're not only being illiterate and garbled here but you're plain lying.

First of all I've posted quite a bit from varied sources and have quite a bit more. For you to try to narrow what has been posted here as just from some "reactionary" sources, and you haven't even shown a shred of evidence that that is the case in the few mealy references you've attempted, shows that you're simply being a disingenuous asshole here.

Why are you bothering to attempt a cover-up of the fact that you don't know very much about the topic at hand? Please re-read the article you just posted. Then get to the nearest mirror and shake your head as you remind yourself, "That's one of the dumbest things I've ever posted."

I told myself I was going to desist from even responding to such absurdities but your accusations deserve a royal smackdown. At this point you're just making up some of the dumbest shit I've ever read regarding Peak Oil.

Isn't it against the forum rules to call someone an asshole here?

teehee

freshly banned again, I couldn't resist.

Don't make me force you to put that proxy app to work!

Y'all are my fav-o-rite assholes.


On edit to stir the pot, Kid are you talking about abiogenesis or more than just that? FWIW, which ain't much I find abiogenesis to be about as compelling as anything farted from the mouth of James Inhofe, but that's just me.

Abiogenic petroleum origin
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

The theory of abiogenic petroleum origin holds that natural petroleum was formed from deep carbon deposits, perhaps dating to the formation of the Earth. The ubiquity of hydrocarbons in the solar system is taken as evidence that there may be a great deal more petroleum on Earth than commonly thought, and that petroleum may originate from carbon-bearing fluids which migrate upward from the mantle.

Various abiogenic hypotheses were first proposed in the nineteenth century, most notably by the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev and the French chemist Marcellin Berthelot. Since that time, these hypotheses have lost ground to the dominant view that petroleum is a fossil fuel. The biogenic hypothesis for petroleum was first proposed in 1757 by Russian scholar Mikhail Lomonosov.

Abiogenic hypotheses saw a revival in the last half of the twentieth century by Russian and Ukrainian scientists, and more interest has been generated in the West after the publication in 1999 of The Deep Hot Biosphere by Thomas Gold. Gold's version of the hypothesis partly is based on the existence of a biosphere composed of thermophile bacteria in the earth's crust, which may explain the existence of certain biomarkers in extracted petroleum.[1]

Although the abiogenic theory, according to Gold, is widely accepted in Russia, where it was intensively developed in the 1950s and 1960s, the vast majority of Western petroleum geologists consider the biogenic theory of petroleum formation scientifically proven. Although evidence exists for abiogenic creation of methane and hydrocarbon gases within the Earth[2][3], they are not produced in commercially significant quantities, so that essentially all hydrocarbon gases that are extracted for use as fuel or raw materials are biogenic. There is no direct evidence to date of abiogenic petroleum (liquid crude oil and long-chain hydrocarbon compounds) formed abiogenically within the crust, which is the essential prediction of the abiogenic petroleum theory.

The abiogenic origin of petroleum (liquid hydrocarbon oils) has recently been reviewed in detail by Glasby[4], who raises a number of objections to the theory.

No not at all, I don't even recall if that came up in this thread before Chlamor mentioned it just now. Totally a different (and, really, uninteresting, discussion)

What I am saying is that there is not really an energy shortage (in this immediate moment that is beyond doubt, we are after all talking about prediction shortages in the future). I am also saying that arguments of geological scarcity are removing politics from the equatiopn *on purporse*.

Further, the prices we are seeing for energy -- ie the end of cheap energy -- is more a result of contradictions within the capitalist industrial mode of production than any real shortage. All of the attempts to introduce politics into the subject on the opposite basis strike me suspect at the very least.

Shit against the wall

*SPLAT*

EDIT: and no, the above does not constitute a capitalist plot per se, it is built into the logic of capitalism and the process of social relations we call class. I believe Marx makes this same case unequivocally, albeit at a different specfic point in time of industrial development and hence a different point in history.

Further, the prices we are seeing for energy -- ie the end of cheap energy -- is more a result of contradictions within the capitalist industrial mode of production than any real shortage. All of the attempts to introduce politics into the subject on the opposite basis strike me suspect at the very least.



Once again Kid you display your complete lack of understanding of Peak Oil. It has nothing to do with "shortages" per se.

Take a step back and 40 days in the desert to read up on the subject.

Not a soul who is taken seriously says that there is not quite a bit of oil out there, in fact copious amounts. But this doesn't speak at all to all that Peak Oil entails, Peak Oil merely being connected to so much else- yes politics too.

It's as facile to talk about Peak Oil being only about oil shortages as it is to say that Global Warming is simply about the Earth getting hotter.

Lastly, the Marx quote I provided points to something other than the antagonism between landed and industrial bourgeoisie. He is discussing a contradiction within industrial capitalism. I think the context is clear on that.

I appreciate this response alot, it sorts quite a few things out for me.

I was trying to nudge you into reproducing the entire speech which is quite short. You are not right about this. No contradiction in industrial capital is being described. The speech mimics the points about reactionary socialism and bourgeois socialism from the Manifesto, which was less than a decade earlier. You have to remember the context. This is from a time in which the industrial revolution was being generalized throughout Europe and throughout politics (only 150 years ago if that isn't enough to turn your head).

Much, much more importantly, this little speech captures the duality of the capitalist industrial revolution in a way that few other things do. If I were to come to Marxism from an environmental standpoint or from a generic confusion about the "duality" of modern development ("progress"), I would start right here. The speech is reproduced below with my emphasis added:


The so-called revolutions of 1848 were but poor incidents — small fractures and fissures in the dry crust of European society. However, they denounced the abyss. Beneath the apparently solid surface, they betrayed oceans of liquid matter, only needing expansion to rend into fragments continents of hard rock. Noisily and confusedly they proclaimed the emancipation of the Proletarian, i.e. the secret of the 19th century, and of the revolution of that century.
That social revolution, it is true, was no novelty invented in 1848. Steam, electricity, and the self-acting mule were revolutionists of a rather more dangerous character than even citizens Barbés, Raspail and Blanqui. But, although the atmosphere in which we live, weighs upon every one with a 20,000 lb. force, do you feel it? No more than European society before 1848 felt the revolutionary atmosphere enveloping and pressing it from all sides. There is one great fact, characteristic of this our 19th century, a fact which no party dares deny.

On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces, which no epoch of the former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman Empire. In our days, everything seems pregnant with its contrary: Machinery, gifted with the wonderful power of shortening and fructifying human labour, we behold starving and overworking it; The newfangled sources of wealth, by some strange weird spell, are turned into sources of want; The victories of art seem bought by the loss of character.

At the same pace that mankind masters nature, man seems to become enslaved to other men or to his own infamy. Even the pure light of science seems unable to shine but on the dark background of ignorance. All our invention and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life, and in stultifying human life into a material force.

This antagonism between modern industry and science on the one hand, modern misery and dissolution on the other hand; this antagonism between the productive powers and the social relations of our epoch is a fact, palpable, overwhelming, and not to be controverted. Some parties may wail over it; others may wish to get rid of modern arts, in order to get rid of modern conflicts. Or they may imagine that so signal a progress in industry wants to be completed by as signal a regress in politics. On our part, we do not mistake the shape of the shrewd spirit that continues to mark all these contradictions. We know that to work well the newfangled forces of society, they only want to be mastered by newfangled men — and such are the working men. They are as much the invention of modern time as machinery itself.

In the signs that bewilder the middle class, the aristocracy and the poor prophets of regression, we do recognise our brave friend, Robin Goodfellow, [1] the old mole that can work in the earth so fast, that worthy pioneer — the Revolution. The English working men are the firstborn sons of modern industry. They will then, certainly, not be the last in aiding the social revolution produced by that industry, a revolution, which means the emancipation of their own class all over the world, which is as universal as capital-rule and wages-slavery. I know the heroic struggles the English working class have gone through since the middle of the last century — struggles less glorious, because they are shrouded in obscurity, and burked by the middleclass historian. To revenge the misdeeds of the ruling class, there existed in the middle ages, in Germany, a secret tribunal, called the “Vehmgericht.” [2] If a red cross was seen marked on a house, people knew that its owner was doomed by the “Vehm.” All the houses of Europe are now marked with the mysterious red cross.

History is the judge — its executioner, the proletarian.


On a related matter, Dialectics of Nature is a curiosity for me. It is interesting but the guy whose research it is in part based on, Morgan, thought beavers were intelligent and he tried to converse with them. The history of the attempts to appropriate dialectical materialism directly as scientific method were mixed at best in the Soviet Union. As philosophy of science, it is clearly useful but as method, there is a lot of work to do and that work may yield little more than it has.

In this vein, the most brilliant example of dialectics ever is in the first 100 or so pages of Capital. The interesting thing about this is that this example did not pop up in Capital until a later version (3rd Edition, I think). In a place I've long forgotten, Marx writes that he reworked the beginning of Capital in order to achieve a dialectic presentation. He then adds that, "of course", the analysis underlying it was arrived at in a conventional way (something that is clear if one goes through his Outline or his notebooks).

Perhaps this is all heresey but so be it. There are no godheads in Marxism. If you read the above, it is clear that Marx was, above all, a revolutionary. This is the same as saying that dialectic materialism is "a weapon", and a weapon that lives primarily in the domain of social science.

It is only in the rarefied atmosphere of academic "Marxism" that such obvious observations are lost. There is no question that "dialectics" produce significant "lift" in such light airs. It is the "materialism" part that keeps this baby tethered to the ground... and thus, also reachable by the many.
.

Morgan, thought beavers were intelligent and he tried to converse with them.

QFT


More seriously, I thought that antagonism, like exploitation or expropriation, had a specfic meaning within Marxism -- meaning there was a contradiction that could not be dialectically reconciled. Two enter, one leaves.

http://www.thememoryhole.org/corp/gas-prices.htm

Gramsci in his Prison Notebooks on Trotsky (Lev Bronstein) and his theory of Permanent Revolution:


Bronstein in his memoirs recalls being told that his theory had
been proved true.. fifteen years later, and replying to the epigram with
another epigram. In reality his theory, as such, was good neither fifteen
years earlier nor fifteen years later.

..

It is as if one was to
prophesy that a little four-year-old girl would become a mother, and when at
twenty she did so one said: 'I guessed that she would' -- overlooking the
fact, however, that when she was four years old he had tried to rape the
girl in the belief that she would become a mother even then.

The Factors Behind Higher Oil Prices





By REUTERS





LONDON, May 17 (Reuters) - U.S. oil prices set another record on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Monday, reaching $41.85 a barrel, the highest [in nominal terms] since NYMEX launched its crude contract in 1983.

Average U.S. prices of just over $36 a barrel so far this year are the highest in nominal terms since 1981, according to BP.

Following are some of the factors behind oil's price surge.

-- LOW INVENTORIES, OPEC MARKET MANAGEMENT

Oil companies have sought to become more efficient and free up capital by holding lower stocks. This has given the industry less of a cushion against sudden supply disruptions.

A wave of mergers following 1998-1999's price crash also reduced the number of companies holding inventory. A series of supply disruptions last year -- the war in Iraq, Venezuela's general strike, and ethnic unrest in Nigeria -- cut into stocks.

OPEC, which controls around half the world's exports, has worked hard to stop stocks building, especially in the United States, during periods of seasonally weak demand. Ministers have announced plans to cut production before prices start to weaken, giving refiners no chance to replenish stocks with lower-priced crude or products.

The resulting lack of stock cover leaves refiners more vulnerable to supply disruptions and increases the likelihood of price spikes. This in turn has attracted heavy buying interest from big-money speculative hedge funds.

"OPEC strategy has shaped oil markets into a bullish machine in a tense international environment," said consultants PFC Energy. "This has caught the attention of speculators and hedge funds, who have magnified the current pressures in oil markets."

OPEC policy has helped create the conditions for a sustained price backwardation, pricing physical oil at a premium to future supplies. So refiners are discouraged from holding storage and buy at the last minute.

--POLITICAL TENSIONS IN OIL PRODUCING NATIONS

Political tensions in the Middle East and violence in Iraq have undermined traders' confidence in security of supply from the region, which pumps a third of the world's oil. Iraqi exports, not long back to pre-war volumes, have been hit by sabotage attacks. Traders fear there may be more disruptions in the run-up to the June 30 handover of power.

Traders fear Islamic militants could target oil infrastructure in OPEC's biggest producer Saudi Arabia. Shootings at a Saudi petrochemical plant fostered fears of a larger attack on the kingdom's tightly-protected oil facilities.

The post-September 11 chill in relations between Saudi Arabia and the United States has raised concerns that Riyadh may no longer be willing to act as a guarantor of cheap oil as it did during the 1990s.

"While the Kingdom remains the ultimate guarantor of oil supplies in case of emergency, it has given up its role of price moderator inside OPEC," PFC Energy said.

Venezuelan oil production is still suffering the fall-out of the strike 18 months ago that cut capacity. A possible August referendum on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez' rule could again destabilise exports from a big U.S. supplier. Civil unrest in OPEC member Nigeria is another flashpoint.

--STRATEGIC RESERVES BUILD

Supply security concerns have spurred many countries to increase strategic inventories, withdrawing supply from an already tight market.

The United States continues to fill its strategic petroleum reserve despite high prices. Other countries including India, South Korea, Taiwan and China are building reserves or plan to start soon.

--RISING DEMAND

China's economic expansion has given a dramatic boost to world oil demand, sucking in crude and refined products from all around the world. Unless China's economy overheats, traders expect its fuel demand to keep growing for the next two or three years, encouraging speculative hedge funds to bet that high oil prices are here to stay.

Chinese oil demand looks set to rise about 20 percent in the first half of this year, says the International Energy Agency, on top of 11 pct growth last year.

At the same time, sharper growth in the U.S. economy, which devours a quarter or all world oil, is driving competition between Asia and the U.S. for supplies.

The rate of demand growth has caught forecasters such as the International Energy Agency by surprise. Consumption forecasts have proved far too low, encouraging OPEC to keep supplies even tighter than needed to prevent stocks building.

Higher demand means that a shortage of refining capacity that has plagued the United States for the last four years has now spread to Asia, again leaving the global oil supply system more exposed to disruption.

--REFINERY BOTTLENECKS

Environmental regulations are pushing up the price of making fuel, forcing companies to build expensive new facilities and making it harder to ship supplies between regions.

In the United States, individual states demand an array of different gasoline blends. This makes it harder to transport supplies between states and to import supplies from abroad.

Environmental regulations have made it more expensive to build new refineries, and much harder to get the necessary permits.

The United States accounts for about 45 percent of world gasoline consumption. Demand is up because of the growing numbers of low-mileage-per-gallon sports utility vehicles on America's highways.

U.S. gasoline demand drives a growing requirement for high-quality light, low-sulphur crude. China is competing for those grades of oil to meet demand for transportation fuels, lifting the price premium for low sulpur crude. Most of OPEC's crude is heavy and high-sulphur.

--SCARCER OIL

Big oil reservoirs are becoming harder to find and more expensive to develop. Many of the oil provinces outside OPEC are mature, which means that finds are now smaller, need more costly technology to develop and fall faster from peak production.

Oil companies have also been cautious on spending since the '97-'98 price crash slashed their share prices and triggered a spate of mergers. They have focused on large-scale projects, which will give them good margins.

Many new ventures are in remote areas, which demand expensive equipment and are more susceptible to delays.

Non-OPEC supply growth outside Russia before the price crash averaged more than one million bpd. Since then it has been negligible.

Forecasts of non-OPEC supply growth, especially when the rebound in Russian production is stripped out, have consistently been overstated.

The increased cost of finding and developing non-OPEC oil has fuelled speculators convictions that oil markets are a good long-term bet. Royal Dutch/Shell's (RD.AS)(SHEL.L) reserves troubles have reinforced the view that oil is becoming harder to find.

In OPEC, which holds around two-thirds of the world's oil reserves, many of the bigger nations either do not allow foreign investment in oil, or have unattractive investment and legal terms.

This has slowed down production capacity growth in OPEC nations, meaning that most are already producing flat out. Only Saudi Arabia holds substantial spare capacity, giving it even more leverage over prices.