Tuesday 18 September 2018

Paul Mason's Postcapitalism - A Detailed Critique - Chapter 9(1)

Chapter 9 – The Rational Case For Panic 

Malthus Lives

Paul begins Chapter 9 by setting out the same kind of catastrophist argument with which he ended Chapter 8. In this scenario, a hydrocarbon fuelled global economy continues to cause global warming, which leads to catastrophic climate change, which brings with it a variety of dire economic and social consequences. However, as I set out in relation to the previous chapter, although its true that we can see the early effects of climate change, its wrong to simply extrapolate from that to assume that those effects continue to accumulate, let alone accelerate. If we looked at the early stages of industrial capitalism, we would see the terrible conditions in the factory towns, the halving of workers' life expectancy, and so on, which if they had continued would have destroyed the working-class, and capitalism along with it. But, that didn't happen. As Marx puts it, the Factory Acts were just as much the product of industrial capitalism as the self-acting mule. And, as Engels points out, the capitalists and middle classes affected by poor atmosphere, polluted water, and so on, have every reason to use some of the increasing revenues at their disposal to also remedy some of these social evils. And, that has applied at further stages in the development of industrial capitalism too. 

One of the first nurses employed by the NHS recounted, as part of the 70th birthday celebrations, how, in places like Manchester, one of the treatments given to children was “daylight treatment”. In other words, because, in the late 1940's and 50's, the air in major British cities was so polluted, sunlight could not get through, and so kids suffered from various illnesses caused by lack of Vitamin D etc. I've related, in the past, how, when I was a kid, in the 1950's, every evening, the coke ovens would open at the previously mentioned Birchenwood Coal and Coke works. It was like the Gates of Hell opening, as the sky turned bright red, and a cloying, lung choking smell of sulphur blanketed the village. 

But, by the 1960's that had gone, though its effects in the lungs of those who grew up with it was not. Town gas made alongside the production of coke had been replaced by the much cheaper, and cleaner, natural gas from the North Sea. The potbanks and other industries switched to gas and electricity from the more expensive coal. Even miners, who had a monthly coal allowance, shifted to the more convenient gas fires, when the NCB gave them an equivalent allowance whatever form of heating they chose. 

For those of us who grew up during that time, of choking smogs, blackened buildings, and pungent dead waterways, of environments still scarred by the remnants of war, and the debris of the initial programme of slum clearance, there is a certain irony, today, in listening to complaints by environmentalists. 

Trump has committed to bringing back US coal mining jobs, but he will fail, because coal producers will replace labour with machines to reduce costs, but also because expensive coal is being replaced by cheaper, cleaner renewable energy, produced in the US, particularly solar. A large part of global carbon emissions comes from China's coal fired power stations, built in its early rush to industrialise, but China is putting itself at the head of the development of new renewable energy technologies. As stated in relation to the previous chapter, electric vehicles are likely to dominate the roads within ten years, and vehicle usage itself is likely to change alongside it, as self-driving vehicles, summoned on request, will replace the privately owned car. 

There will be a feedback loop, in the next decade or so, but it will not be one that leads to runaway climate change; it will be one that leads to a revolutionary transformation in energy production and use. That revolution in technology does not necessarily, or automatically push us beyond capitalism, but it does present new opportunities for the way in which we raise the property question, and it creates new possibilities for the way we propose answers to that question, by the development of worker owned and controlled forms of property. 

As I set out in relation to the last chapter, Paul's comments in relation to oil reflect a view of the future through the prism of catastrophism. So, he notes, 

“But the global oil and gas companies have declared the existence of 2.8 trillion tonnes of carbon reserves, and their shares are valued as if those reserves are burnable.” (p 248) 

That's like saying the value of a managed forest is determined by the value of wood for burning in stoves! A willingness to accept a catastrophist narrative here leads to a blindness to the obvious that oil, and gas are not just for burning. In fact, burning oil and gas is a very wasteful and inefficient use for them. As other parts of the globe are opened up to industrial scale agriculture, the requirement for additional fertiliser, pesticides etc., many of which are derived from petrochemicals, will increase. In addition, as 3-D printing, and the use of polymers increases, the demand for petrochemicals will again rise. It's likely that these increasing demands for oil and gas, will make it a far more valuable resource, in future, not less. Far too valuable, as with wood, to be wasted by just burning it! 

And, as I noted previously, BP have just bought one of the leading providers of fast-charging technologies. The oil empires, with their existing chains of service stations, will be ideally placed to provide for the needs of electric vehicles, whilst holding their existing raw material stocks. In the past, we had similar arguments that the big companies involved in the production of light bulbs would never introduce the long life bulbs they were reputed to have developed. But, in fact they developed and marketed fluorescent tube lighting early on, and here we are today not just with long-life bulbs having long since been introduced, but now with them being replaced by modern, long-life, low energy, LED lighting.

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