Subject: Re: AUT: Re: Re: The fictitious capital debate
From: chris wright <cwright.21stcentury-AT-rcn.com>
Date: 23 Jun 2003 23:38:50 -0500


Hi Paul,
> 
> It is this possibility of change and the converse, the lack of its evidence
> in current capitalist cycles that interest me. I want to bypass the argument
> with technological determinists of the neo-con or primmie type over the
> possibility of such change to look at why it isn't happening at the moment.
> The best I can begin to conceptualise it is as a "techno-cultural
> composition" of society. For example the US in the post-WW2 period
> especially, has seen movement of people away from the urban centres to
> suburbia, the spatial dislocation of production etc. which means that both
> the individuals in society and the circulating commodities are travelling
> further and further each year. In the US this has been aggravated by
> worsening fuel efficiencies in the mode of travel as well (SUVs, increased
> air travel, decreased train and other mass-tran use). If we can
> conceptualise this trend as being conditioned by some system of
> techno-cultural composition (as in 308s rather than 808s) then we have to
> ask how such a system would be constructed and, having used the "c-word",
> how it relates to class composition. If you've followed this far, this is
> where I have to confess that I haven't even the beginning of any answers to
> any of these questions - yet. Worse still, I really think I should have read
> Midnight Oil before I started all this. I must cast my eye over it soon. On
> the other hand I may not have time because I've just thought of a brilliant
> invention inspired by the circle - I'm thinking of calling it "the wheel".
> Ho hum...

This is one of those places where class struggle is certainly an issue,
though not always in classical 'workplace' forms.  The increasing number
of African Americans in cities and their resistance to de facto and de
jure segregation, the movement to 'stretch out' a too compact and
therefore too powerful industrial working class into suburbia and the
industrialization of the countryside and into the South (in rather more
rural areas with far less public transportation), the development of the
auto industry into a mass consumption industry (see GM's impact on the
non-development of public transport in LA in the 1940's and the drive
for a massive car culture), etc. all play a large part in this process.

Oil has been part of the backbone of this, but there is no certainty
that oil is the only solution.  However, one might suspect that the
stakes would have to be pretty high for them to turn over on the largest
industry in the world.

Oil is also what is referred to as 'fungible', ie not that restricted in
location.  Reserves exist in many places, tho few so extensive and
easily accessible as the Middle East.

Suburbanization and car culture were huge parts of the resistance to
insurgent labor and to African American insurrection and the flight from
the cities of large portions of industry (who recognized in Black
workers the most militant in the 1960's and 70's) and of white labor,
seeking to retain the benefits of white supremacy, such as seniority,
less police repression, less need for social services, greater access to
college and to skilled labor, less likelihood of being laid-off due to
lack of seniority, etc.

Overall, a rather complicated situation which has only reversed as mass
single-company workplaces have been replaced with smaller sites, or
large office buildings with workers in multiple companies feeling little
or no connection to each other despite physical proximity (and a large
number of managers and professionals in ration to workers.)

The return of labor to the cities has not been quick and much
re-urbanization has made the city more a place for the middle classes,
as poorer layers of workers are driven outward to where the better off
sections of the working class already retreated.  As a result, in
Chicago for example, public transportation has been systematically
improved for riders in "yuppie" neighborhoods, and decreased service
given to poorer working class neighborhoods (as public housing is being
decimated.)

So oil may or may not be the key in 10-15 years that it is now, but
there is certainly no replacement in the short term for capital and the
decomposition of labor in oil certainly would increase the flexibility
and surplus-value production of capital overall.

Just some thoughts.

Cheers,
Chris



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