Oil and the Rest (2008)

Book review from the July 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Armed Madhouse’. By Greg Palast, (Penguin £8.99)

There are three main themes in this book: the relation of oil to the US invasion of Iraq, the plight of American workers, and the way in which US elections are manipulated. Despite its American emphasis, it’s well worth a read.

It is hardly original to claim that the Iraqi invasion was due to US concerns over oil supplies. Palast, however, goes much further than this and argues that there were two conflicting views within the American ruling class. The neo-conservatives wanted to sell Iraq’s oil fields to various private companies, leading to a massive increase in production. This flooding of the market would undermine OPEC, which operates by imposing production limits, and so bring Saudi Arabia to its knees. In contrast, the big American oil companies opposed a sell-off and wanted the oil to be owned by the Iraqi state. That would make it straightforward to restrict production and keep prices high, thus boosting their profits and the value of their own reserves. The invasion, then, would not be about gaining access to Iraqi oil but about controlling the world price of oil (which was difficult with the unpredictable Saddam in power). Palast argues that Big Oil and their State Department allies eventually won the day — the price of oil now would seem to back this up.

Domestically, American capitalism is becoming more and more unequal. One percent of US households own 53 percent of all shares in the stock market. Median wages have gone down by 4 percent under Bush, but the bottom fifth of earners have lost no less than 20 percent of their income. Between 2000 and 2006 output per worker in America went up by nearly one fifth, but workers get less and less of what they produce. Nearly three million are no longer entitled to overtime at time-and-a-half after working forty hours a week. Modern-day capitalism needs a certain number of highly-educated workers, but the rest need to be identified early so that little money is wasted on ‘educating’ them.

Lastly, attacks on the electoral system go well beyond the ‘hanging chads’ of the 2000 presidential election. Palast presents evidence that both then and in 2004 many votes were simply not counted or wrongly rejected as spoiled. Electronic voting machines often don’t work properly, and they exclude the possibility of recounts. Voting machines were removed from many areas likely to vote Democrat, leading to huge queues at voting stations. And many potential voters have been unable to register, perhaps because they are wrongly claimed to have a criminal record or have no authentic ID. Less than half of Americans earning below $15,000 a year are now eligible to vote, and generally poor, black and Hispanic would-be voters are given a hard time in both registering to vote and having their vote recorded.

It might be interesting to reflect on whether these last points have any implications for the idea of using the electoral system to demonstrate the existence of overwhelming support for Socialism when the time comes.

Paul Bennett