File spoon-archives/aut-op-sy.archive/aut-op-sy_2001/aut-op-sy.0111, message 2


From: "Harald Beyer-Arnesen" <haraldba-AT-online.no>
Subject: AUT: Re: RE: Hydrocarbons and a New Strategic Region: The Caspian Sea and CentralAsia
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2001 06:28:59 +0100


Massimo writes:

        My position is that this oil is part of the plot, just part of it,
        especially due to the fact that plenty of oilmen are
        in the administration (and oilmen must be thinking in oil terms).

Agreed. But I am sure you would also agree that the main reason
bombs are falling now is September 11. They would be falling
even without any pipelines on the agenda, while geopolitical reasons
beyond pipelines are also surely part of the thinking behind the
military campaign.


        The implication of this - to go back to herald I think - is not only
        that we "expose" the so called "real aims" of the war (there are
        others). the left generally always talks about the "greed"  for oil
        without linking it to the boundlesness of accumulation. maybe
        oil is just another entry point to the question of alternatives, of
        the world we want to build.

Agreed again. Oil is in these times for the US not foremost a question
about "greed" but order, securtity and stability. It does not in itself
really
matter who owns the oil and gas as long as the owner is willing to sell it
on a regular basis and safe transportation is provided. If some US
company profit can also be gained, that is a bonus. In this sense "greed"
also enter into the story, also as a possible reason for future military
intervention to reestablish order and "legitimate interests."
        Oil resources are worthless in money terms if not sold, and that
mostly still implies selling to places as USA, Japan and Europe. Iran,
might in fact "behave better" than what the Norwegian state does,
however much the later is a member of NATO.

Oil is today foremost about business as usual, and that is the real problem,
not if the shaiks are Texan, Saudi, Azeri or Norwegian.

You are of course correct in pointing to that getting out off "business as
usual"
–  or "boundlesness of accumulation" as you more precisely put it – should
be
our main focus rather than the schemes of inter-capitalist competition, and
in
that the former brings out the need for the globalisation of mutual
compassion,
critical dialogue and practical solidarity, as well as havens of shared
laughter.

As for the Empire debate, the question it seems to me, is not so much if
inter-
capitalist competition is still mediated through nation-states, but that
this
competition increasingly are mediated through and takes places within the
framework an emerging imperial order, a process similar to the one that
brought nation-states into life in the first place.

Far more crucial though: It is about time that the left reached a
"trade-union
consciousnes", meaning in this context that we end identifying with or make
into our main focus this or that company (read: nation-state) but address
how the capitalist enterprises (states) make up a whole standing in a
radical
opposition to our freedom. The center of the enterprise-system is never this
or that enterprise (state) but the enterprise system as a whole.
Its most vital  centre is here, there and everywhere it is reproduced, even
if
this reproduction is also mediated through enterprise (state) competition.
What we see emerging is a global employers' association imposing
discipline on its affilates and demanding "capitalist solidarity or else
..." on
everyone else. In doing so, they are also compelled to impose some limits
on the freedom of "mafia-enterprises," while making alliances with as a
weapon against others, integrating the former and their mode of behaviour
wholly or partially  into the normal order of things.

Two of the most interesting observation in this crisis has been the position
taken by the Russia and China in the ongoing "war against terrorism", and
the laters entrance into the WTO.

This whole agenda migh fail and break up, but that is hardly anything we
should find comforting as it most likely would do so over our dead bodies.

So our task must still be to plant the seeds of the future within the
framework
of the present. Part of this future can surely be discerned within the
morally
courageous struggle of the RAWA, however much some of its members will
find their places in the order following the Taliban.



Harald

PS. Not too important, but much of the left still cling to this strange idea
that
oil is sold cheap, while the opposite is the case in exchange value terms.
The ruling class in places like Saudi Arabia draw out what in marxists terms
often is referred to as a super-profit based on ground rent. Viewed from
Norway, which might still be the world's second largest exporter of oil (it
used
to be at least) this is all too obvious, in particular when taken into
account that the drilling is immensely more costly in the North Sea than
within the Arabian Peninsula.







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