Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil

[Joseph Tracy]

I've always thought he was talking about both , that summoning the image of living in dread of the rockets  mapped naturally onto American imperial warfare and the use of aerial bombardment in Vietnam. These can all be seen as surrogate resource wars by the cartels.   The spirit behind it moves around, Jews become Viet peasants, Central Americans, Chechens, Muslims, pretty Thai 12 year olds. Always the same lies, the same profits accrueing to the informed investors and  industrialists. Oil being the ultimate in fungible liquidity, an erasure of the past to control the future. 
On Jan 5, 2012, at 1:50 PM, rich wrote:

> a bit but you do learn abit of things you hadnt known if not abiding by his conclusions. i think the fault may lay in the fact that Hollander's critique seems to work more when  talking about post-war America/Vietnam and not specifically with the WW2 generation. at least I read GR that way; others may differ
> 
> rich
> 
> On Thu, Jan 5, 2012 at 11:53 AM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net> wrote:
> 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> wrote:
>> On Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 8:40 PM, Dave Monroe <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
>> 
> 
>