Oil Spill in the Gulf brought to you by the free market

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a catastrophe that is of great concern to the capitalist class and the Wall Street Journal today has an expose of the failings of the government agency, the Minerals Management Service,  that is supposed to regulate offshore oil drilling. *  The article begins with the following paragraph:"The small U.S. agency that oversees offshore drilling doesn't write or implement most safety regulations, having gradually shifted such responsibilities to the oil industry itself for more than a decade." The report adds that while the regulatory agency "sets broad performance goals for the industry. Oil producers and drilling companies are then free to decide for themselves how to meet those goals.."

When I read this, I was stunned.  I don't know why really as it doesn't surprise me, but still, when you see it in print, and especially in the Wall Street Journal, it shakes you for a minute; it also makes me very angry.  Not surprisingly, the U.S. safety record for this industry is dismal, as U.S. Oil workers face more likelihood of injury or death than their European counterparts. The Journal reports that a U.S. offshore oil worker is more than four times as likely to die than a worker in European waters and 23% more likely to be injured.

The head of the MMS, typical business minded person as he is, challenges the data on the grounds that the data on deaths is based on hours worked,  and "working hours could be underreported".  So just like the myth of US productivity when compared to other industrialized countries he passes the higher death figures off to US workers working longer hours; well, that's a relief.

Stephen allred, Assistant Secretary of the Interior who oversaw the agency from 2006 to 2009 comes to the defense of the MMS, "Their role is not to baby- sit the operators" he tells the WSJ.  The problem is that the agency is supposed to be a watchdog of the industry but also is a promoter of energy independence (fossil fuels of course) and the generation of government revenue from the process.  Not only that, the MMS has a fiscal 2010 budget of $342 million  with nearly half of that coming from the industry itself in one for or another. 

The WSJ points out that in 1996, Congress passed a law that "encouraged federal agencies to "benefit from the expertise of the private sector" by adopting industry standards." 

Left: picture of the oil slick   One can only imagine the environmental damage this is doing on top of the loss of human life.  And what say do we have in all of this?  What say do the smaller countries in the region have to say about this?  They are its major victims too.  This picture of that slick makes one so angry, especially as no individuals will suffer much for this.  Workers spend years in prison for petty crimes caused by unemployment and social desperation yet the executives and government officials responsible for what this spill will do will all get off.

The financial crisis, the mine disaster amid blatant disregard for safety and human life, Goldman Sachs' plundering of the economy and now this horrific catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, these are intensifying the calls for regulation.  The Wall Street Journal article points out that Offshore Operators Committee and the American Petroleum Institute  have opposed "new, stricter rules governing safety and environmental compliance."  The journal is not pleased. Marx explained that the state is but the executive committee for the capitalist class as a whole, and they will use their state to try to contain some of the excesses of their system and control the behavior of individuals in their class or the activities of sections of the class that threaten the long term welfare of the system. They are united in their war on workers, but this doesn't mean they are always in agreement on how best to accomplish this robbery.

But in the last analysis capitalism cannot regulate itself.  No matter what they say, whether it is their opposition to protectionism having learned the lessons of Smoot/Hawley, or their concern for the environment or the hunger and poverty in the former colonial world, they are driven by the laws of the system to wars, environmental destruction and to exploit workers whose Labor power is the source of their wealth.

The industry managers, the MMS regulators, these people are murderers.  New regulation might contain some excesses for a minute, but will not solve the problem, will not save lives and will not prevent them from destroying the environment and potentially life on earth as we know it.  Only through the collective ownership of the forces of production.  Only the collective ownership and management of what we produce to live in society and how we produce it will such catastrophe and environmental degradation be halted.


 * Regulators Ceded Oversight of Rig Safety to Oil Drillers WSJ 5-7-10