Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil

[Paul Mackin]

On 1/5/2012 11:05 AM, rich wrote:
> is this the conventional wisdom re: GR. I'm not so sure anymore 
> myself. It doesnt factor in the motivating ideology that allows one 
> small section of humans to place another larger section of humans into 
> gas chambers or shoot women and children into hastily dug ditches. men 
> plotting in small rooms did this and it most definitely had a name
>
> I like the literary aspects that Mr. Hollander instigates; as history 
> though it falls short

Hollander makes Pynchon quite nutty sounding.

P
>
>
> the carbon democracy book does sound very interesting. thanks for 
> that, dave
>
> rich
>
> On Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 9:44 PM, Dave Monroe 
> <against.the.dave at gmail.com <mailto:against.the.dave at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     On Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 8:40 PM, Dave Monroe
>     <against.the.dave at gmail.com <mailto:against.the.dave at gmail.com>> wrote
>     :
>     > Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil
>     > by Timothy Mitchell
>     >
>     > http://www.versobooks.com/books/1020-carbon-democracy
>
>     For Pynchon, World War II was a monstrous holocaust, a cataclysm of 40
>     million souls, resulting from a competition among technologies. The
>     old dynasty, the J. P. Morgan dynasty, was built on the technologies
>     of coal, steel, and railroads; the newer Rockefeller dynasty on the
>     technologies of oil (petrochemicals, plastics), aluminum, and
>     aircraft. Pynchon says that World War II was a corporate war
>     reflecting those technologies, that for many their “first loyalty,
>     legal and moral, is to the estate [corporation] she represents. Not to
>     our boys in uniform [the nation-state], however gallant, whenever they
>     died” ( Lot 49, 53).
>
>     In Gravity’s Rainbow, Pynchon has to bring up the long ago
>     relationship between Standard Oil and the I.G. Farbenindustrie.
>     Standard Oil and I.G. Farben did arrange to share world markets in
>     1936, and as an act of good faith, they exchanged some 2,000 patents
>     just prior to World War II. Their multinational character forced them
>     to make arrangements for the contingencies of war.
>
>     When World War II erupted, their loyalties were so strongly with each
>     other that the US government had to bring legal action against both
>     the Standard Oil Co. (NJ) and I.G. Farbenindustrie (see Pynchon’s
>     list, Rainbow 538) for illegal monopolistic practices involving
>     gasoline, toluene, and synthetic rubber patents. The US government
>     seized many of these patents ultimately. Standard Oil, it seems, also
>     gave Farben the technology, personnel and equipment for the production
>     of tetraethyl lead, without which there would have been no high octane
>     aircraft fuel, no luftwaffe, and no war. Then Sen. Harry S. Truman,
>     the investigating committee’s chairman, viewed the relationship
>     between these multinational corporations as treasonable.
>
>     By referring to this multinational liaison as “the century’s master
>     cabal,” Pynchon is suggesting more than corporate cooperation. He is
>     suggesting that World War II was part of the “Plot Which Has No Name,”
>     the concerted effort by the new dynasty to bring down the old
>     dynasty....
>
>     [...]
>
>     http://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/inferno.htm
>
>

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