👉The table of contents so far is here.
Chapter 7: Economic Planning and Energy Supply
7.1. Transnational Management of Energy Sources
The fact that advanced industrial societies are based on energy as a physical foundation remains the same regardless of the mode of production. However, the ideas and methods of energy supply are closely related to the mode of production.
In capitalist industrial societies, energy is merely a means of material production activity. In other words, "production comes first," and attempts are made to supply energy commensurate with the anticipated material production activity. Moreover, these production activities are not based on an overall plan, but are competing business plans aimed at the pursuit of profits by individual capitalist enterprises, so setting limits on energy supply is avoided.
The idea of a communist sustainable planned economy is the opposite. That is, "energy comes first," and production activities are carried out within the framework of an energy supply plan that takes environmental sustainability into consideration. In other words, the starting point of the economic planning process under a sustainable planned economy is energy planning.
Energy is produced from energy sources (here, this refers to energy sources in the narrow sense, i.e., primary energy sources), so the premise of a sustainable energy plan must be sustainable energy source management, that is, sustainable natural resource management.
In capitalist society, the idea of "energy source management" does not even exist in the first place, and energy sources are permanently subject to development until they reach their limit of depletion, and at best development is only indirectly controlled by the governments and state-run development companies of countries with natural resource deposits.
In recent years, even such indirect control has relaxed, and resources have even become the subject of speculation. The result is economic instability due to fluctuating prices of oil and other energy sources, and the waste and depletion of resources.
A sustainable planned economy is linked to the transnational management of energy resources, which is the polar opposite of this "energy anarchy." Transnational management of energy resources means breaking away from the international common sense of "resource nationalism" that states that energy sources such as oil belong to the country that reserves them, and instead regarding energy sources as ownerless property, placing them under the joint management of all humanity.
Simply put, this means that "natural resources belong to no one." However, in order to make the transnational management of natural resources more than just an idea, but actually possible, it is necessary to build an effective joint management system that is based on the premise of a global planned economy.
👉The papers published on this blog are meant to expand upon my On Communism.
