The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico highlights the
real state of US capitalism today. While making a lot of noise, Obama
is not prepared to take on the oil companies in any serious meaningful
way. What he is doing is passing the buck to the US working class.
Deepwater Horizon on fire. Photo by US Coast Guard.On
April 20th of this year, the Deepwater Horizon Oil platform exploded
and sank into the Gulf of Mexico, unleashing a torrential leak of raw
petroleum and killing 11 platform workers. For weeks on end, millions
of gallons of oil hemorrhaged into the Gulf from the shattered
wellhead, poisoning that body of water and every form of marine life
therein for the foreseeable future. On top of that, tens of thousands
of gallons of Corexit oil dispersant, which oyster fishermen claim is
as much as four times as toxic as the oil, have been dumped in the
Gulf. The Gulf’s fisheries and other forms of marine industry – a way
of life for generations – will know incalculable economic impact for
decades to come.
The contracted manager of the rig, British Petroleum, as well as the
owner of the platform TransOcean (which collected $270 million in
insurance from the disaster), and sub-contractor Halliburton
International, have in the interim attempted a number of strategies in
order to counter this devastating oil spill. Among the means
implemented were the use of several undersea caps, the blasting of tons
of refuse into the breach, and filling the leaking well with mud. None
of these efforts met with success, in part due to the fact that they
were completely unprepared for such a disaster, having cut as many
corners as possible in their drive to maximize profits.
It was in the first week of June, when BP was apparently seriously
considering the use of a small undersea nuclear device to staunch the
flow of oil, that the company found some success with an effort called
a “lower marine riser package,” which placed a containment cap on a
freshly cut section of the gushing pipe. This has allowed them to
siphon some of the spilling oil up to the surface, making possible the
capture of as much as 90 per cent of the oil that is leaking. All in
all, this is a positive development, given that the leakage had reached
the loss of 500,000 gallons of oil a day by even very conservative
estimates.
However, in the days since the capping, some caveats have been made
by the oil company. It is conceded that the current cap, like earlier
ones, could also become encrusted with ice crystals and prevent
siphoning of the leak before relief wells can be successfully drilled.
The hurricane season, according to many specialists, could also
severely disrupt efforts to collect the oil and prevent it from washing
ashore.
it must be said there still seems to be very little recognition of the
scope of this disaster. Despite the partial “fix” of the leak, huge
plumes of oil continue to travel beneath the surface waters of the Gulf
of Mexico, wreaking unbelievable destruction upon that continental
shelf and its ecosystem. The Mississippi River Delta in Louisiana and
all of its attendant natural and human created values will suffer
hundreds of billions of dollars in damage, and oil is now beginning to
show up on the shorelines of Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. It is
widely acknowledged that the assets of BP will not be enough to cover
the damage they have caused, all while they contemplate handing out
billions in “earnings” to their investors.
As is the custom of global capital of late, the state has stepped in
to “assist” BP. This means, in effect, that the working class taxpayer
in the United States will shoulder the burden. Already, millions have
been spent by the government on efforts to clean up or prevent the
spread of oil, not to mention the time and money of thousands of
volunteers. It is true that the Obama Administration has compelled BP
to set aside an independently administered escrow account of $20
billion in order to pay compensation to fishermen, seafood processors
and tourist industries derailed by the ongoing effects of the spill.
But this is once again a case of Obama giving the appearance of doing
something, while in reality, nothing of substance has changed. BP was
going to have to pay out billions in claims anyway. Given that the
actual known and anticipated cost of the spill is believed to be in the
trillions, we can well expect that untold millions more in our tax
dollars will be paid out to cover BP’s rear, at the expense of the
working class and what little public infrastructure, health care,
education and social services we still have in this country.
It is naïve to expect anything else. After all, as Alaskan
Congressman Don Young, himself a beneficiary of oil company largesse
during his long tenure as that state’s lone congressperson, said a few
weeks ago, “When there’s a plane crash, we don’t stop flying.” All of
capital’s ideologues, from the open reactionaries of the Republicans,
to the so-called “progressive” Democrats, find humanity and the planet
expendable in the pursuit of profit.
kinds of disasters need not happen, certainly not on this scale. And it
is not just British Petroleum, TransOcean and Halliburton. All the mega
corporations on the planet make their obscene profits off the labor and
suffering of others, with complete disregard for the effects on the
workers, environment, and future generations. As with the banking
sector, they play games with the lives of millions, hysterically reject
any kind of government intervention when the profits are rolling in,
but are quick to pass the bill for the cleanup and the far-reaching
consequences of these avoidable tragedies to the public when things go
wrong. We have a straightforward proposal: if they want public money,
we want public control. It’s that simple.
This is yet another example of why the working class majority of
society needs to take political and economic control into its own
hands. This is why we are for the nationalization of the big oil
corporations and related industries under democratic public control.
The assets of these companies should be seized and used to clean up the
mess, launch a massive plan to create millions of jobs and build up
public transportation, and retrain oil and coal workers as we
transition to renewable energy. Of course, the two parties of Big
Business are not about to do any of this. Only a government that
represents the interests of the working class majority could even pose
the need for such measures openly.
future is with the independent political mobilization of the working
class, rooted in a revolutionary democratic and Marxist method, or
there is no future worth speaking of. As a first step in this
direction, we believe we need a new political party, one that
represents the working class majority of this country: a mass party of
labor based on the unions. Imagine if independent Labor candidates were
to run in the midterm elections on a program of nationalizing the big
oil companies. Unfortunately, the labor leaders are supporting the
Democrats who are bailing BP out. We can and must change this approach
in our unions.
Ultimately, only the socialist transformation of society can ensure
that we have truly democratic control over production, distribution and
exchange, in harmony with the environment. Those readers who are in
agreement with this perspective should join our effort to build such a
movement as members of the Workers International League.
Source: Socialist Appeal (USA)
