ABSTRACT
Sure thing. All those sycophants, supplicants, boosters, bros, wannabee Gruppenfuhrers, soon-to-be sonderkommandos, and all the mini-Murdochs were on the task like maggots on a rat’s corpse in summer: Iran 2026 and beyond is not the same thing as Iraq 2003 to date; and Iran is not the same thing as Venezuela 2026. They are very different. No kidding. After all, only one of the three is predominantly Spanish-speaking and only two of the three are predominantly Muslim and only one of those two an Arabic people. A real bunch of Sherlocks they are.
What generates the old déjà vu isn’t language or religion or folktales. That feeling, that same old brand new shocked and awed been there destroyed that before and will again feeling, is the product of capital, always capital, always acting out one more iteration of its eternal theme, the preservation of itself as capital, living forever on the expropriated, purloined time that once belonged to others.
The commodity, explains Marx, has-contains-possesses, exists, both as a use-value and an exchange value. All of capitalism’s struggles are the struggle to express the former in a manifestation of the latter.
However, there is in the production of the capitalist commodity a certain quantum of uselessness-that is to say an object becomes a commodity when it is produced, and is reproduced, without usefulness to its producer, its possessor. An article becomes surplus; a commodity is born as surplus—as an object for and to exchange; with value accessible and manifested only in that process, that mediation.
The uselessness immanent in the commodity originates in the condition of the labor that produces it. The laborers must find in their own power to labor no usefulness, save its value as and in exchange for a value sufficient to reproduce exactly the same condition of labor. Then labor-power yields a necessary labor-time, a necessary-value, and what was once surplus product is now surplus labor-time, surplus value.
Where, in origin, the value of an article in trade was determined by its usefulness; now, the condition of labor determined by capital flips the script. The social use, the access to use-value, is determined by its production as exchange value, by class relations. This causes Marx to “refine” his definition of the commodity from a use-value and an exchange value to a useful article and a value.
The condition of labor for the laborers is one of loss, the uncompensated extraction of surplus labor time. The accumulation of capital is the propagation of loss.
This primary exchange of capital with labor is veiled by wage-labor which distributes the compensation equivalent to the necessary labor-time over the entire period of labor. Beneath the veil is the default condition of capital, overproduction. The laborers cannot purchase all that is produced. Full compensation would negate accumulation.
The commodities circulating in the markets depend on the presence of a multitude of other commodities to manifest exchange value. The process of realization of the value embedded in the commodities appears to occur on an infinite number of individual platforms with money serving as both a medium and an end. In reality, exchanges are a social process. Realization is a product of distribution and allocation from the total surplus values brought on stream. While every commodity presents as private property, no commodity realizes its own “private” surplus value.
The distribution process is, in theory, governed by the socially necessary labor-time of reproduction—realized on a “micro” level as valorization; and realized on a “macro” level in the successful expansion of the totality of exchanges, accumulation.
What is true for the commodity is true for the means of production of commodities which are themselves commodities. These express their value only to the degree that they can command the living labor-power at a sufficient rate of exploitation, derived from that socially necessary labor-time of reproduction, to offset the declining profitability of production itself. The shrinking profitability results from the decreasing proportion of labor-power that animates the increasing proportion of already existing value embedded in the means of production, the necessary result of accumulation. “All overproduction is the overproduction of the means of production as capital,” writes Marx in Capital, Volume 3, in perhaps the most casual, condensed, brilliant assessment of the mode of production
Notoriously wasteful but cheap, extravagant but petty, the bourgeoisie run up the inside of the cage of their own existence.
The individual commodities are fractals of the capital. Overproduction is immanent to both the product and the process, the mode. Overproduction drives both.
Until it doesn’t. Then it’s the opposite identity of overproduction that steps forth and pretends it is something other than scarcity.
CONCRETE
Overproduction—US Energy Information Agency (EIA) Annual Energy Outlook Retrospective 2025 (oxymoron in the original)
Energy Consumption Grew More Slowly than Projected, Driven by Case Design and Structural Economic Shifts:
…actual energy use remaining relatively flat from the mid-2000s onward despite continued population growth. This result is due to a combination of regulatory and economic factors that result in slower growth than in our projections. First, later-released legislation and regulations (such as provisions from the Inflation Reduction Act, updated appliance and fuel economy standards, and modernized building codes) increased efficiency and reduced energy consumption relative to our assumption of unchanged laws and regulations. Second, slower-than assumed economic growth following the 2008 financial crisis, demand reductions during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020– 2021, and longer-term shifts toward less energy-intensive economic activity reduced energy demand relative to projections that assumed steady macroeconomic trends.
Efficiency Gains in Shale Gas Production and International Demand for U.S. Natural Gas Drove Natural Gas Production Higher
Beginning around 2008, unprecedented productivity gains in shale gas production, including longer horizontal laterals, improved hydraulic fracturing techniques, and higher recovery rates lowered production costs and increased supply beyond modeled assumptions. Faster coal retirements in the 2010s increased natural gas use in the power sector. At the same time, natural gas increasingly served as a balancing and reliability resource as renewable generation expanded, raising consumption. Higher domestic production reduced import needs more quickly than projected. Additionally, growth in liquefied natural gas export capacity and global demand for U.S. natural gas led to a more rapid decline in net imports than projected in most AEO vintages. Dry natural gas production rose more rapidly than projected across most cases. In some years, natural gas production exceeded projections in the High Oil and Gas Supply (HOGS) case even with the faster resource development assumed in that case.
Observed Natural Gas and Coal Fuel Prices Have Been Generally Lower than Projected
Real natural gas and coal prices were generally lower than projected, with observed prices declining more sharply following periods of elevated prices. For natural gas, efficiency gains from shale resources led to higher-than-projected production leading to lower prices beginning in the 2010s, while coal prices declined as demand contracted faster than projected.
Oil Production and Petroleum Exports Increased More Rapidly than Projected
Rapid growth in tight oil production, driven by technological advances such as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing substantially increased domestic crude oil supply beyond modeled assumptions beginning in the early 2010s. This rapidly increasing production drove the buildout of additional export capacity, and U.S. crude oil and petroleum product exports became increasingly important in meeting international demand. The repeal of crude oil export restrictions in late 2015 and growing global refining demand enabled exports to rise more quickly than earlier projections, accelerating declines in net imports. Earlier AEO projections assumed more gradual production growth and more limited export market development, which contributed to projected petroleum net imports remaining higher than realized outcomes. Comparing with the High and Low Oil and Gas Supply cases shows that while these scenarios generally bounded actual outcomes, even projections that assumed greater resource availability and faster technological progress underestimated the rapid production growth and the subsequent decline in petroleum net imports.
Leading to:
Scarcity—US EIA Short Term Energy Outlook March 9, 2026
- Crude oil price movements. The Brent crude oil spot price has risen sharply following the onset of military action in the Middle East. Brent settled at $94 per barrel (b) on March 9, up about 50% from the beginning of the year and the highest since September 2023. Crude oil prices have risen as petroleum shipments through the Strait of Hormuz have fallen, and some Middle East oil production has been shut in.
- Middle East oil production. We make the assumption in our modeling that the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz will cause oil production in the Middle East to fall further in the coming weeks. We assume this shut-in production will gradually ease as transit through the Strait resumes.
- Crude oil price forecast. We forecast the Brent crude oil price will remain above $95/b over the next two months, before falling below $80/b in the third quarter of 2026 and around $70/b by the end of the year. We expect prices to average $64/b in 2027. This price forecast is highly dependent on our modeled assumptions of both the duration of conflict in the Middle East and resulting outages in oil production.
Leading to:
Overproduction— US EIA Short Term Energy Outlook March 9, 2026
- U.S. crude oil production. Higher oil prices lead to more U.S. crude oil production in our forecast. We expect U.S. crude oil production will average 13.6 million barrels per day (b/d) in 2026 and rise to 13.8 million b/d in 2027. Our 2027 forecast is 0.5 million b/d higher than last month’s forecast.
- Natural gas prices. Although reduced liquefied natural gas (LNG) flows through the Strait of Hormuz have caused the price of natural gas in Europe and Asia to increase, we expect U.S. natural gas prices to be relatively unaffected by this development. In our forecast, the Henry Hub spot price averages about $3.80 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) in 2026, or 13% less than our forecast last month. Prices in the early part of our forecast are lower because of milder-than-forecast temperatures in February that left more natural gas in storage than we expected. The Henry Hub spot price averages nearly $3.90/MMBtu in 2027, 12% lower than our forecast last month. Lower prices in 2027 mostly reflect more associated natural gas production as a result of the recent increase in oil prices and the related increase in production later in the forecast.
- Natural gas production. Higher crude oil production results in more associated natural gas production. We expect marketed natural gas production to average 121 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) this year, an increase of 2% from 2025. Production rises by an additional 3% in 2027 to reach 124 Bcf/d. The 2027 forecast is almost 2 Bcf/d higher than last month’s outlook.
All circuits of capital lead to Iraq, Venezuela, Iran; to the creation of 2,3, many failed states.
S.Artesian
March 21, 2026
anticapital0.wordpress.com 
You conduct an analysis of commodities and capital (the abstract) and of the energy sector (the concrete). Okay, I won’t say anything of interest on two topics in which you seem to be an expert. I will say something about current geopolitics, acknowledging that you were right to expect Nero to set Iran ablaze. This American sociopath and his global neo-fascist hordes seem intent on setting half the planet ablaze. Cuba appears to be next. The reactionary movement triggered in the 1980s by the socialist C.E.R. cycle of 1917 is advancing at full speed. Regarding overproduction, you mention it in your analysis of the energy sector, and it’s a recurring theme in your studies of capitalism. I won’t delve into a proper debate on this topic now because I must leave it for when I finish my current book. But I will tell you that I have a different opinion on overproduction. Just a few scattered thoughts. It’s not the focus of my book, which deals with the long-term movement of capitalism. Specifically, regarding the long-term effect of revolutions on production and growth, and on the other main productive variables (capital accumulation, investment, productivity, profitability). I only mention overproduction for informational purposes within the context of short-term economic cycles—the Marx/Engels/Juglar/Mitchell cycles. These cycles are accepted by the NBER and found in the USA with periods ranging from 1 to 12 years. Overproduction occurs during the declining phase of the short cycle. My disagreement with your analysis is that I believe it is not caused by the efficiency of capitalist enterprises (more efficiency leads to more overproduction, as you state in another analysis), nor does it affect all companies. Dominant companies in a sector, oligopolies, do not experience overproduction. They experience the opposite: stockouts due to excess orders. Best regards.
Specifically, regarding the long-term effect of revolutions on production and growth, and on the other main productive variables (capital accumulation, investment, productivity, profitability). This text has taken on an excessively macro-capitalist appearance. And, above all, it lacks a clarification, a variable, that does not appear in capitalist production functions and growth models. That variable is Income Distribution. Capitalist economists (neoclassical and post-Keynesian) speak of it very lightly, almost without giving it importance. And they conceal the income inequality between capitalists and workers. Well, from a socialist macroeconomic perspective and from the theory of CERs (Consumer Equity Ratios), that is precisely the main productive variable. It is the one that precedes capital accumulation and immediately follows a revolution. The temporal sequence is: the revolution politically agrees to increase the participation of the dominated class in production and in the distribution of income, and the dominated class contributes more capital to the accumulation of productive capital. This will result in greater investment, productivity, and profitability. Therefore, revolution is the ultimate social cause, known to date, of a society’s growth. And it is NOT technology (this is a false, cover-up cause used by capitalist economists since Schumpeter) nor profitability (M. Roberts is mistaken on this point). Regards
Thanks for that I agree with the rational kernel of your comment– that it is the “elevated” social relation of production made practice-able by the revolution that is the source of society’s “growth.” But growth means a)the emancipation of labor from the restraints and necessity of capitalist accumulation, investment, productivity, and profit and b) towards both the satisfaction and expansion of human needs.
This requires the elimination of “scarcity” as a material and an ideological constraint on society. Yet, the very struggle against the old regime and through and for the power to realize that new relation will encounter and even recreate the conditions of scarcity, austerity, deprivation that weigh like a nightmare on the awakening of revolution. How do you defeat the conditions of inequality, privilege, hierarchy, your own practice absorbs and restores?
“How do we overcome the conditions of inequality, privilege, and hierarchy that practice itself absorbs and restores?” Let’s see if I can answer your question. My doubt about whether I can do so stems from the fact that you make extensive use of socialist (Marxist) economic principles. Abstract concepts such as, in this article, the notions of scarcity and austerity, and in previous articles, concepts like the relationship between commodity and capital, surplus value, etc. I haven’t delved as deeply into these fundamentals, as I’ve been highly specialized in the CERs (Centers for Economic and Social Research) for several years, although that doesn’t prevent me from being quite familiar with them. My answer: The conditions of inequality and hierarchy are overcome by de facto eliminating inequality in real practice. By eliminating class society. All concepts of scarcity, austerity, or the ‘constraints and necessity of capitalist accumulation, investment, productivity, and profit’ are merely false and nonexistent limitations imposed by the capitalist ruling class through its pro-capitalist economists (neoclassical and post-Keynesian) and even its daily media, to justify, through argumentation, its control and dominance over capital and its surplus value. By eliminating class society, you eliminate all these constraints. If we all participate in production with equal control and obtain the same or similar profit, profit and its corresponding sequence of capital accumulation, investment, productivity, profitability, and any other productive variable ceases to be a problem, ceases to be a limit. I have stated this simply in a comment on M. Roberts’ forum: the problem is not capital (nor its profit, accumulation, etc.) but its distribution. Capitalism results in an unequal distribution of wealth, and then, mysteriously, a multitude of restrictions (austerity, scarcity, need, etc.) appear, promoted by the ruling class solely to justify its greater capital. The ruling class did the same in Feudalism and Slavery, with limits and restrictions that were even more false and metaphysical, of a religious and moral nature, than those promoted and disseminated by Capitalism today. Socialism eliminates all current limitations on capital simply by redistributing it. Of course, this equal distribution of capital is not a simple or trivial matter. It could take 12,000 years, from a primitive Communism with productive capital distributed equally, to return to Communism. 12,000 years with many revolutions, since Slavery, and much blood spilled by the dominated classes. And tons and tons of public education with a thousand restrictions and limitations on production, profit, and capital. These restrictions have already been greatly reduced in the USSR and other countries of real socialism, but the final step towards total equality is still missing. Your One Big Wage is that practical egalitarian capital that eliminates all restrictions and limits on capital in a classless society. Today’s more egalitarian cooperative enterprises are also an example of unproblematic capital. Regards
a) The emancipation of labor from the restraints and necessity of capitalist accumulation, investment, productivity, and profit. Let’s see if I can answer your concern about capital based on what I know of the foundations of socialist economics. I’m not an expert, but I know something. In my view, labor doesn’t need to be emancipated from capitalist accumulation, investment, etc. That is, it doesn’t need to be emancipated from capital. Why? Because capital is labor, and labor is capital. You’ve already reached the point—I’ve seen it in your articles—that capital is only labor expropriated by the capitalist. It’s only unpaid labor. More could be said about this, but I’ll leave it at that for now. If you’ve reached that point, then you’re on the verge of, or already at, the point where capital is labor and labor is capital. If that’s the case, labor doesn’t need to be freed from capital. Because they are the same. They are the same at two different moments. Capital is past labor, the previous labor, fixed in space. It is labor-space. And labor is actual capital in motion, in action. By uniting the time dimension with the space dimension (the space-time continuum discovered by Physics), capital is united with labor. This is not new. Marx already referred to capital as dead labor. That is, past labor. You know this better than I do, due to your extensive reading of Marx. Interestingly, you make the same separation between labor and capital as capitalist macroeconomics. In most production functions (Cobb-Douglas, for example) and growth models (Solow), capital is separated from labor. But they do so for the opposite reason to yours. Capitalist economists make the separation to give value to capital. To capitalists. And thus help justify their privileges in the control of production and in surplus value. Another ‘capitalist’ anomaly that you should eliminate from your analysis of capital: capitalist economists use your ‘conditions of scarcity, austerity, and deprivation’ precisely to justify the capitalist’s privilege. They say that, unlike workers, capitalists are frugal in their spending. And that’s why they save more and have more capital. This is completely false. The capitalist’s savings rate is higher (that’s true) simply because they have more income. Income, surplus value, as you know, is obtained at a stage prior to saving. It’s obtained in production. Therefore, the capitalist reaches the consumption and savings phase with a higher income. And, this is key, when it comes to satisfying basic bodily needs (housing, food, clothing, etc.), these needs are physiologically limited; they are not infinite. Nor are they proportional to income. There is a limit to the consumption of basic needs. Once that limit is met, the rest is savings. Workers struggle to cover their basic needs because their income is low, and therefore they save little or nothing. Capitalists cover their basic needs with a small percentage of their income, and the rest is savings. It’s capital.
My apologies for the delayed response. My point here is that capital is NOT labor. Capital is a social relation derived from the organization, expression, mediation (and deformation) of labor as wage-labor. That is critical to the historical specificity of the class relations of the bourgeoisie’s order. Each, wage labor and capital, exists in the organization of the other. One cannot be abolished without the other. Both have to be overthrown in order to achieve the emancipation of labor– that is to say where labor is directly social, unencumbered, of benefit to all.
I will postpone this debate on the relationship between capital and labor. Along with a possible debate on overproduction, these two should be left until I have the book finished and published. I hope you understand. When I give you a copy, I will remind you that we can have those debates. As a preview of my idea, in addition to what I have already told you, I understand that the key to the differences lies in the fact that you characterize capital as a social relation. And, for that reason, you attribute to capital a malevolence that I only see in Capitalism. I will tell you, therefore, that I do not see capital as a social relation, but as a product (object). Within the social totality of producer-product-productive relation. Yes, I know that other disciplines (philosophy, sociology) see social relations in capital, but I only apply economics. Which I consider the most explanatory and predictive social knowledge. Scientific economics. In the socialist political economy (quite advanced, in my view) that I am familiar with, I have never seen capital described as a social relation. What is described as a social relation (or better yet, a productive relation) is CAPITALISM. Understood as a Mode of Production in which the dominant subject, unlike in Slavery and Feudalism where class privilege was expressed and explained based on religious, moral, political, and personal-hereditary criteria, today explains and bases its privilege on the possession of a material object called capital. This capital is not possessed by the one who offers their labor power as a wage laborer. But it is not the capital product-object that demands and imposes its superiority, its privilege, on the worker. That is done by the capitalist (the subject). And they do so not individually, but collectively. By uniting, as a class, with other capitalists (for example, today, through business associations) to demand that current governments maintain their privileges over the worker. Their two main privileges are: 1. Command and control over fixed productive capital (the means of production), which gives them power and decision-making authority over production (who, how, when, etc., especially regarding layoffs during times of crisis). 2. And control over their surplus value. These two privileges are the root of the evil of capitalism. By itself, the simple product called capital has no capacity for good or evil. Capital that has great value for a worker. But it has this value WITHOUT capitalism. It is the socialist productive relationship (of an egalitarian nature) that replaces the abominable and abolished capitalist relationship. But capital remains in socialism. Your “one big wage,” in an egalitarian socialism, inevitably leads its socialist producers to possess large amounts of capital. A common productive capital.