by Dennis Gallie
I’ve been asked to write about Industry, in relation to the global energy crisis. Constructively, how can we inform ourselves and take action, as world citizens, to prevent the impending crisis of energy? The north polar ice cap is acknowledged to be melting, and the US just experienced the warmest 12-month period in recorded history. The vast majority of scientists recognize these trends as a scientifically proven result of human energy use, notably the burning of fossil fuels. Only the extreme right-wing and writers paid by the oil lobby still maintain that these are long term cycles not related to industrial world production and consumption activities. They are the only ones that say carbon dioxide emissions from our industrial plants and our cars will not lead to a planetary crisis in the near future.
But let’s start with the economics, rather than the science and technology of energy. We do not live in a global democracy. We cannot cast an informed vote at the WTO or World Bank meeting, at which the fate of the American auto worker, the Indian farmer, and the world environment are all decided. No ordinary citizen or worker in any country has that right.
Industry today is world industry, and is not controlled by the industrial worker; any more than farming is controlled by the farmer. More and more, industry is not even controlled by particular nations. We all live today in a globalized world where the vast majority of humanity has both its standard of living and its methods of production at the mercy of trans-national corporations and the families that own them. They work on the profit motive, and do not have to answer to any democratic body of citizens, consumers, or workers. Powerful organizations like the WTO are controlled by the governments of the North; the industrialized nations of European origin, led by the United States. These organizations act on behalf of particular corporations, and promote free trade in general. But free trade and market forces are subject to one very important condition: the status quo of private ownership in the means of production. In other words, if it suits the current owners of large energy and manufacturing companies to continue producing and using oil, then all the forces of finance and militarism will continue to push the world economy in that direction until it is no longer profitable, or until something “breaks”. The war in Iraq is an example of something breaking.
Our unions rights and our government entitlements such as pensions and minimum wage laws, (and even the lead-abatement regulations here in St Louis), are under attack from global sources. Downsizing and privatization impinge upon National benefits and regulations all the way on down to the state and local levels. This is a worldwide thing.
Energy is an adjunct, or helper, to human labor in the production process, since you can multiply your productivity many-fold by just having pneumatic or electric power available, and we take this almost for granted in the industrialized world. But energy is also, in the same sense a substitute for labor, because with large scale machinery and automation, workers can be laid off while output is increased. And since money talks in the market economy, capital is also interchangeable with energy. So the way all this plays out in the global South is that when world energy prices go way up, there is not just a loss to consumers at the gas pump, there is a plummet in production. There is mass unemployment in the city and starvation in the countryside.
So, in conclusion, we have to say that there is a tremendous energy problem. There is the impending scarcity of the traditional sources of energy, and the planet-destroying effects of that same energy use. But if there is an energy crisis, there is a crisis of labor. There is a worldwide crisis of human social organization. Personally, I see the problems of energy and environment the same way as the rest of our economic problem: they are problems of social control and democracy in the sphere of production.
As a laid-off auto worker, I am sure that if we had a vote of the co-workers ten years ago when Ford Motor Company was flush with cash, we would not have voted to buy the Volvo Motor Company. We would not have voted to continue producing a gas-guzzling SUV with a record of tipping over. We would have voted to invest that money in the gas-electric hybrid, and we would be working today. But we were not asked to vote on these things because that would contravene the rights of private property.
Finally, we have to relate our knowledge of what is happening to the environment to the forces of Patriarchy and misogyny which always accompany economic competition and endless war. I was at an anti-war conference at a church across from Soldan, several years ago, talking to an activist from Veterans for Peace about the slogan “No Blood for Oil”. I was still working at the time. And he said “Dennis, I think if those SUV’s you are making out there in Hazelwood ran on sand, we would probably be over there killing those people for their sand.” I think he was right, because if we don’t stop training our boys to fight, and our girls to acquiesce, we will never be able to resist the competition that is imposed on us by private property. If we can’t guarantee every child a free education and personal safety, we will never be able to resist the superstitious hold of the family.