TOGETHER AGAIN
Exxon & Mobil play monopoly
By Gery
Armsby
Exxon and Mobil corporations are expected to gain Federal
Trade Commission approval for their $82 billion merger any day
now, pending an agreement on details about how many assets the
two oil giants would have to sell off for the merger to meet
full approval. The deal, initiated a year ago, will create the
world's bigest oil company by far.
Pro-capitalist ideologues may extol the glories of "free
trade," the "free market" and competition. But the Exxon-Mobil
deal--just the biggest in a long list of monopoly mergers--is a
more honest expression of today's capitalism.
Exxon and Mobil have combined oil reserves currently proved
at over 8.7 billion barrels, assets such as worldwide
refineries and offshore drilling facilities worth billions of
dollars more. The two oil monopolies are re-consolidating two
of the huge blocks of holdings severed in the breakup of the
Standard Oil Company in 1911 under the Sherman Anti-Trust
Act.
From 1870 to 1911, Standard Oil Co. and Trust formed the
industrial empire of John D. Rockefeller and associates. It
controlled almost all oil production, processing, marketing and
transportation in the United States. Despite its gigantic size,
the conservative company was unwilling to foot the bill for
technological advancement and industrial innovations needed in
order to meet the demand brought on by the introduction of the
motor car.
Such monopolies are never immune to changes in technology.
Therefore, during periods of rapid industrial growth and
change, they will split up and free their smaller former
subsidiaries to participate in the wave of cutthroat
competition with an eye toward re-consolidating those that take
a technological and productive edge in the competition.
This same type of competition and technological change is
what has led the former Standard Oil monopoly to re-form
itself. Now the big oil companies are involved in worldwide
competition over sources of oil. Vast capital
investments--along with vast bribery and intimidation--are
needed to win this competition. The dance from monopoly to
competition and back reveals the key contradiction of monopoly
capitalism.
Russian revolutionary V.I. Lenin wrote in his classic work
"Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism" that
"competition becomes transformed into monopoly. The result is
immense progress in the socialization of production. In
particular, the process of technical inventions and improvement
becomes socialized. ...
"Capitalism in the imperialist stage leads right up to the
most comprehensive socialization of production; it, so to
speak, drags the capitalists against their will and
consciousness into some sort of new social order, a
transitional one from complete free competition to complete
socialization.
"Production becomes social, but appropriation remains
private. The social means of production remain the private
property of a few."
Under Exxon Mobil, the vast machinery producing and selling
oil organizes hundreds of thousands of workers in many
countries around the world. That's the socialized production.
But profits and means of production are privately owned.
If in addition to being socially produced, oil were socially
owned, there would be enough oil to supply every industrialized
and developing nation. In addition, other more environmentally
sound sources of energy that may temporarily be more expensive
and unprofitable under capitalism could simultaneously be
developed.
Instead, the private ownership of these vast productive
forces and the capitalist drive for profit inevitably leads to
sharper competition among the remaining monopolies. The mergers
bring layoffs. The competition leads to overproduction, which
provokes the next capitalist economic crisis with mass layoffs
and bankruptcies.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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