Struggle vs. supply and demand
The global class struggle was unfortunately absent from the analysis of expensive oil in “Oil dreams” (PWW 7/5-11). The article also failed to mention monopolization of the oil industry, its ties to the families that control the most important financial monopolies and the unfolding crisis in finance.
Oil prices have more than doubled since finance’s first “heart attack,” on Aug. 9, 2007. As capitalism’s contradictions deepen, the exploiters are impelled into efforts to cheapen and weaken labor. Expensive oil is a weapon in their arsenal.
Expensive oil has lowered wages and plundered billions around the world. Without struggle against expensive oil, labor organizations have suffered, including airline and autoworkers’ unions. Expensive oil also loots and destabilizes Chinese society, which was formed by a socialist revolution.
There is 160 years of work by Marxists on wages, prices, capitalist crises, monopolization, imperialism and other fundamental questions, from which “Oil dreams” could have benefited. Relevant work includes the Communist Manifesto, Lenin on imperialism, Gus Hall’s “The Energy Rip-Off,” Victor Perlo’s “Empire of High Finance” and subsequent Marxist analyses.
One key lesson is that prices are set primarily by struggle, not “supply and demand” as capitalist economics claims. Organizing struggle against expensive oil is vital to the defense of the interests of labor and 99 percent of humanity worldwide.
Wadi’h Halabi
Via e-mail
Answered
I must inform you of the experience I have had with the PWW here thanks to the Deutsche Post. The following is a translation of the letter I sent to the German Post Office.
“Since the year 2004 I have paid air mail charges to receive the People’s Weekly World which is being sent to me in an envelope postmarked with every Thursday’s date and the zip code in the USA. Unfortunately I cannot speak of the equally reliable punctuality regarding its delivery to me by the Deutsche Post. Instead of the paper being delivered on Mondays as it usually had been the first years, since 2006 the PWW arrived later and later in the week, and several times 12 days later.
“Written complaints and two phone calls have remained unanswered. On the phone I was only angered more through the reply: ‘There is no guarantee; it isn’t sent express.’ I kept hoping for corrections and an explanation as to what happened to my paper and why. This letter I shall send to the People’s Weekly World and to journals in this country.”
Hardly had I written this when the explanation came through the very PWW 6/28-7/4 with Doug Smiley’s column on DHL, “Restructuring put people on the streets.” I shall add some excerpts of this article to my letters to the German journals.
Thank you and love to you PWW!
Miriam Pandor
Berlin, Germany
Campaign financing
Your July 12-18 issue criticizes the U.S. Supreme Court decision which struck down the “Millionaire’s Amendment,” part of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. I feel the court’s decision is progressive and in conformity to civil rights ideals. The case is called Davis v. Federal Election Commission, and was handed down June 26.
The law said if a candidate contributes at least $350,000 of his own money to his own campaign, then the contribution limits for his or her opponents would be tripled. Furthermore, the opponents could get unlimited funds from a political party.
Having different restrictions on different candidates for the same office violates core principles of equality before the law, so I applaud the Supreme Court opinion. Furthermore, not everyone who donates $350,000 to his or her own campaign is necessarily a millionaire. One of the victims of the law was Oscar DeRossett, who mortgaged his house and emptied out his retirement fund, to spend that money on his congressional campaign. He was not a millionaire. Not only did he lose his primary, the FEC then fined him $59,000 because he had not reported to the FEC within 24 hours that he had donated his own money to his own campaign. Civil rights are safe when the principle of equal treatment under the law is followed for all candidates for the same office.
Richard Winger
San Francisco CA
Richard Winger is editor of Ballot Access News.
Armed robbery
The armed robbery of the Iraqi people’s oil is now complete. Big oil will move in like vultures and feed off the carcass of what is left of Iraq. First we bombed Iraq. Then we invaded and destroyed the country. Then when the Iraqi people resisted we genocided about 1.5 million Iraqis. Then this created 5 million refugees. Then we tortured the Iraqi people. Then when that didn’t work we paid off all the militias.
Meanwhile Congress never stopped the war money because 40 percent of Congress profited. All the American and Iraqi families and Iraqi refugee families that have died and been injured in the criminal war for oil should sue these oil companies for war reparations. What we have done to the Iraqi people is worse that what Nazi Germany did to Poland.
Daniel Gawain Waters
Troy MT
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