Letters
Peakist win
David Walters’ reply to me on the issue of peak oil misses the point (Letters, January 29). Those who adhere to the peak oil thesis do not claim that oil in general is about to run out: rather their argument is that conventional, cheap oil production is near to peak. After peak, the annual decline in production will commence, resulting in enormous consequences for society.
The first thing that he gets wrong is when he refers to “new oil discoveries that keep pushing the ‘peak’ back on any chronological-prognosticational graph on when the oil will run out”. In fact, oil geologists have shown that there is about a 40-year gap between peak discovery of oil and peak production. For instance, America reached peak discovery in the 1930s and reached peak production about 40 years later: that is, by 1970. Worldwide peak discovery of oil was reached in the 1960s and discovery has been declining ever since, with mostly small fields, with a few exceptions, being found. Petroleum geologists do not expect to find any more giant fields like Ghawar in Saudi Arabia or Burgan in Kuwait.
Since discovery peaked in the 1960s, we can expect peak production some time this decade, or soon after. The peak will, of course, be hidden by the economic downturn, which many are now comparing to the 1930s, if it continues.
Geologists estimate that the world endowment of oil was about two trillion barrels. We have already pumped one trillion. The oil which remains is non-conventional, heavy oil: for instance, the tar sands in Canada or shale oil in the US. This material has to be dug up and turned into oil, a process that is expensive and difficult, with enormous environmental costs. No-one imagines that this material will come close to replacing conventional oil, in the sense of sustaining consumer capitalism.
The alternative energy technologies which exist will certainly contribute to the energy transition, but there is no evidence that they can replace the loss of conventional oil. Capitalism has to constantly expand to maintain a sufficient rate of profit over and above the cost of production, and cheap, conventional oil made this expansion possible. The problem capitalism faces is that attempts to climb out of the present downturn would soon drive oil prices up again, if, indeed, the world is at the point of maximum oil production.
James Schlesinger, a former head of the CIA, secretary of energy and adviser to oil companies, told a conference sponsored by the American branch of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil that peak oil was imminent and many CEOs of the oil companies, he said, secretly agreed with this view but don’t say so publicly. “It’s no longer the case that we have a few voices crying in the wilderness. The battle is over. The peakists have won.” This is the view of a conservative doyen of the American establishment.
Walters is wrong if he is trying to place me in the doomsayers camp, for, while I do believe that peak oil poses a serious crisis for industrial society, I do not think this will inevitably lead to the doom of civilisation, as some peak oil writers argue. For instance, when the Soviet Union collapsed, Cuba and North Korea lost their oil supply, but these societies managed to survive. The peak oil thesis suggests that what happened to these countries is going to happen worldwide.
Capitalism is production for profit and is premised on cheap, constantly increasing energy supplies. It is not easy to see how consumer-orientated petrocapitalism can survive the decline in oil production after the peak. What we will face with the decline of oil production is either socialism, run on ecological principles, or barbarism.
Peakist win
Peakist win
Half
Bob Davies says that the idea of the United States being described as a “half-democracy” in the 18th century is “somewhat generous” (Letters, January 29).
On the contrary, given the historical period, I think it is a spot on. True, no blacks, no women and no native Americans could vote. But ordinary male workers and farmers could and did. And, compared with Europe, Britain included, this made the United States a beacon of liberty.
For Marx, the US was “the most progressive nation”, a country where bourgeois society had developed, not from feudalism - rather from itself … and therefore could never make the pretence of being “an end-in-itself”.
The 1775-83 American war of independence undoubtedly “gave impulse” to the democratic revolutions in Europe - crucially the great French revolution of 1789, but also those of 1848. Marx called the US the “flawed republic”, “the defiled republic” - a country whose democracy was incomplete, soiled, because of the existence of slave labour and black unfreedom.
That is why Marx urged support for Abraham Lincoln and the north against the slaveholders’ revolt. His comrades in America campaigned for Lincoln in 1860 and a year later many enrolled into the US army in order to fight the southern slavocracy.
The hope was that, as the first American revolution and the 1791 bill of rights initiated the era of bourgeois ascendancy, the second American revolution of 1861-65 would do the same for the working classes through winning the battle for democracy. Marx had concluded as early as 1843 that, as long as social inequality - class society - existed, real democracy, the “sovereignty of the people”, was impossible.
As it turned out, the reconstruction was steadily reversed after 1867. Only with the 1960s civil rights movement were gains rewon. Nevertheless, winning the battle for democracy in America is a task that remains to be completed. Clearly that falls to the working class and the coming, third, American revolution.
Half
Half
Ashamed
I am a communist. I believe that a socialist Britain is the only way forward, now that we know capitalism is dead. But I am also Jewish and proud to say that the creation and the philosophy of communism was primarily the work of Jewish intellectuals.
I am ashamed of you for siding with Islam, which is philosophically the diametric opposite of everything communism stands for. What happened in Gaza was the result of 6,500 rockets fired indiscriminately into civilian areas of Israel. For the previous six months, the Quartet on the Middle East, together with Israel, tried through the good offices of Egypt to effect a peace, but Hamas refused to even recognise Israel, let alone be a party to a peace pact. Even during the so-called ‘armistice’, Hamas was firing an average of eight rockets a week into Siderot.
The founding protocols of Hamas may hold the answer, as they call for the total destruction of all Jews - not just Israel. Do you know that Hamas soldiers have also killed 1,500 members of Al Fatah - 400 of these deaths carried out by taking them to the top of the tallest building in Gaza City, blindfolding them and throwing them off into the street below?
Further, sharia law includes limb-lopping, torture, female persecution, blackmail and the chopping off of heads. Your kind of communism may wish to associate with this sort of thing; mine believes in the rights of the working people of both sexes to enjoy the fruits of their labour and the philosophy of that great Jewish man, Karl Marx.
Ashamed
Ashamed
Rusty
It is as if Alan Fox and myself watched different films, if we go by his review last week of Slumdog millionaire (‘No escape for the millions’, January 29). When I saw it at last year’s London Film Festival, it impressed me as head and shoulders above the other offerings and one of the best films of 2008. Artistic depictions, whether or not they move the viewer, involve her or him in their completion. Alan Fox’s idealisation is unrecognisable.
In this film, director Danny Boyle has taken the storyline, no matter how much it diverges from the book upon which it is based, and very definitely runs with it, to great effect. It has no pretence at being a “social commentary”, whatever that grotesquery might mean to comrade Fox.
Neither is this by any stretch of the imagination “pure escapism”, as any aficionado of mainstream Indian cinema will attest. And that is certainly not to disparage much that is produced in the commercial film studios of Mumbai and Chennai. This film is very far from being escapist: how could anyone who kept awake throughout suggest this? Two countervailing examples will suffice to demolish this suggestion: depictions of a sectarian Hindu pogrom against Muslims and the gangster mutilation of children, so that they can beg more profitably.
Instead, this is a work that does indeed allow the human spirit to soar. Not that this simplistically means that this “in the end enables us to overcome all adversity”, as comrade Fox alleges it propounds. That is his effort at completing the movie for himself, and garbling it for us. No, when the spirit soars it enriches potential; that is what such an artistic expression carries for us. And it is our soaring spirits, our boosted morale, that will in the end imbue humanity’s efforts at releasing itself politically, fortifying us with verve to carry through the revolution despite all vicissitudes. What more could you want from art if you contemplate only the crudely political?
It may well be that the Mumbai in Slumdog millionaire is not the Mumbai that the casual tourist will recognise. I cannot help that: it exists, more or less like that, for millions. Visceral stink and material poverty is what faces most Mumbai citizens daily and they have to deal with it. That is what the film shows: them dealing with crap (often literally). Whether it is wading through filth or standing up to routine police torture, human beings survive. The Dharavi slum has life; its one million people have their hopes and aspirations.
The Dave Spart approach to Marxist aesthetics does us no favours. Aesthetics and an ‘artistic’ approach does not mean inexactitude, as some comrades may think, but in a spiritual way can bring a nicely honed weapon into our armoury. This review was a rusted blade.
Rusty
Rusty
No disdain
Yes, comrade Chris Strafford, I have been discussing Obama’s election (Letters, January 29). On the Gaza demonstrations most considered the United States to be an imperialist power and Obama must, therefore, be No1 terrorist. However, lots, including SWP members, don’t want to say so openly. They fear upsetting or alienating so-called ‘ordinary people’.
True, many leftish-leaning people are overjoyed to see how much less important racism is in America now than it used to be. An American friend, and 1960s left activist, told me that it proved that everything she had done was “not a mistake, not a failure”. The Gettysburg spirit is alive and active amongst the masses and this is a cause for hope.
But there is another side to the election of Obama, symbolised by the vast amounts of corporate finance that went into his campaign. The ruling class has high hopes that Obama will sort out the mess left by George Bush and restore the image of American imperialism. Anyone who does not take this possibility seriously is badly mistaken.
My letter was not intended to express disdain towards the working class - the unevenness of consciousness amongst people is obvious and needs to be addressed: patently I agree.
The central illusion shared by many is that in democracies the people are sovereign; but in reality capitalism rules - not absolutely, but by gutting the democratic power of the working class. The core problem on the left is the underrating of the importance of democratic issues. This makes it incapable of fulfilling the role required of the vanguard.
No disdain
No disdain
Local jobs?
The ‘British jobs for British workers’ unofficial walkouts were prominently discussed at the January 31 Yorkshire and Humberside meeting of the National Shop Stewards Network.
The 50 union reps attending seemed mostly to be from Unison, but PCS, NUT, NUJ and CWU were others that were named. They heard a report from a comrade who had attended a workforce meeting of over 2,000 at Tillingham. He said there had been the odd union jack on display and nationalistic placards here and there.
Workers were bitter because, although the company claimed skills shortage as the excuse why the contract was not won by a local company, people were saying that two thirds of the Italian workers employed were less skilled than local workers. On top of that, some companies had announced redundancies in three weeks time, yet were employing migrant labour and saying the two were unconnected.
The speaker stated this situation will be exploited by the BNP, but it was Gordon Brown’s slogan, after all, and workers “are holding him to it”.
He suggested that we push the following position:
1. All labour employed in the UK must be on local/national union-agreed terms, conditions and pay.
2. Unions maintain a local register of the unemployed and their skills, so workers on it can take jobs as they come up.
3. Employers should be forced to invest in training to maintain “our” skills base.
4. All foreign labour should already be in their appropriate union or join one here.
It was suggested that the left should avoid accusing British workers of racism - it was fears of unemployment, caused by the actions of companies using EU legislation in a ‘race to the bottom’, that is the cause of this problem. It is the media that are playing up nationalism.
It seems to me that, a step forward though the above demands are, they will not resolve the problem. The reason why migrant workers are coming to Britain is because the company employing them is paying them less than union rates. Why would they join a union to price themselves out of a job? Even if they did, what do we say to unemployed British workers (black and white) - ‘Sorry, but you should accept competition from fellow British workers and from the world as well’?
And if they refuse to join a union - what do we do then? A scab is a scab, wherever they come from. Where is their display of international solidarity in undermining the pay of another worker in another country where there are unemployed workers ready to work? The left will have to be very careful here not to drive workers into the waiting arms of the BNP.
Local jobs?
Local jobs?