Gasoline may hit $2.50 by Memorial Day, $3.00 in California

[phk]

First of all, prime responsibility for the oil crisis has to go to the fact that consumption exceeds production. Oil is a finite resource. Why are the consumers uninformed? Why are they so irresponsible?

Of course, one could go on and on about what's wrong with the media, one could mention critical theory: spectacular society, the culture industy, etc. One could say, simply, that it is a biproduct of liberal ideology. Or one could say, again, that the deficiency in the media (an apparatus of the ideological superstructure) reflects the limits of the economic base and so it functions to reproduce the means of production upon which the mode of production relies.

Thus the status-quo is reproduced. Whatever one wants to say, clearly the responsibility is structural, not individual. Forget about the paint and plaster. Forget changing the juridico-political superstructure. That'll have to change too, but that's not the goal. It doesn't matter who is in office. We have to have a revolutionary change in the relations of production rather than some simple political revolution, rather than some change in government. What we need to solve this problem is a revolution in the economic base that can then be followed through into the superstructures. It is the structure that has to go. And if the structure doesn't go, its going to fall down on top of us.

An energy crisis of this magnitude goes beyond the normal contradictions of capitalism.

The crises of the Capitalist business cycle cannot be overcome by either Keynesianism or Monetarism, but can only be postponed by imperialism. However, even if that weren't the case, the question of peak oil creates a different issue.

Do you think that the fundamentalists and Zionists who are in charge of global energy are particularly interested in the problem of the end of oil, in the face of the approaching end-times, which they welcome. Do you think your average level-headed and selfish (in the Ayn Rand sense) oil tycoon cares if the oil is gone after he dies, so long as he can make bank now?

History shows us that these people do not care about the future, that they are myopic, and so are consumers - the majority of whom are held in check by the media machine, the advertising state apparatus, and the culture industy. From the floor the dog can't see that he's only getting scraps. He thinks that's all there is on the table. He can't see that he isn't be treated justly. That he's being decieved. He only knows what he's told. Contrary to the Trotskyites' utopian wishes, the masses of the people are not by nature so wise and benevolent and will not rise up in an international, millenarian revolution. The birth pains of a new socialist society will be protracted, there will be false starts and missteps, and it will be accomplished one community at a time. But it is necessary.

Of course peak oil is a crisis resulting from the contradiction between productive forces and relations of production. Thus I hold that only through a planned, nationalized, socialist economy can this energy crisis (and it is a serious crisis), namely peak oil, be averted. Goff makes this point in his book, Full Spectrum Disorder - a book I highly suggest you read. Imagine the concequences of an end to oil without a planned and managed transition to a more sustainable energy source (wind or hydro-power for example). Do you think the anarchy of "free competition" is capable of making that transition? I don't, and we are all quickly running out of time. Can society "evolve" to fix this in fifty years? I very much doubt it. Can we make the revolution in fifty years? I think, and hope, that we can. At this point, socialism is survival. We simply must adapt or die.