Reflections: On the Energy Crisis

...Technologies requiring the use of oil have been especially favored because oil has been so cheap...

...Both blue-collar and white-collar workers today perform narrow, monotonous, and unfulfilling work...

...No individual company will assume the costs of new forms of production as long as it can hope to compel the resumption of older and more profitable modes...

...Frustration in work makes the American worker consumer-oriented...

...All of this is orthodox private-enterprise economics...

...There is ample evidence that workers' feelings of alienation on the job are growing...

...Even more than in the past, work has become something most workers desperately want to escape...

...Jobs have been progressively narrowed and deskilled to reduce labor costs and make the work force more tractable...

...Even the lower-level executive is often merely a pawn of corporate elites, with little real opportunity to make meaningful decisions...

...Why don't companies ever leave well enough alone and say, "We've got enough for the time being...

...Since 1946, total fabric production per capita has remained relatively constant, but natural fibers have been almost universally replaced by synthetic fibers, which can be produced by lower-cost technologies...

...Because decisions about products and production techniques have been made by private companies solely with reference to profits, our economy is tied today to intensive use of energy...

...One consequence has been a long-term movement from labor-intensive to energy-intensive technologies...

...The enormous growth of plastics in the years since World War II is an example of a line of products which has been promoted by corporations through massive advertising designed to convince us of our need for them, requires extremely energy-intensive production processes, and is, in itself, acutely damaging to the environment...

...The power to make basic economic decisions must be restored to society as a whole, and workers must regain control over the work process, and thus the chance for fuller lives...

...On the back of the company's energy conservation message I found a suggestion that we save human energy by purchasing another phone...

...President Ford is merely following these demands in calling for the construction of hundreds of nuclear power plants...

...Oil is expensive and in short supply, but fortunately the phone company is cooperating with the President by turning down thermostats, driving trucks more slowly, and using more efficient electrical equipment...

...Those who doubt these conclusions should consider how the telephone company spends some of that money it has saved by driving its trucks at slower speeds...

...Until recently, the cost of oil has not reflected its real value as an irreplaceable natural resource...

...There will be little concern about whether the price of such energy reflects its real social costs in terms of present or future damage to society...

...The economy will stagnate as our large corporations seek to compel resumption of business as usual— energy-intensive technologies and constantly expanding, profitable markets...

...Fabric production is one example...

...Calls for lower fuel consumption by motorists and wiser use of heating facilities would be fine were it not for a couple of facts: Our long-run environmental crisis is more than merely an "energy crisis," and the energy crisis itself is more than a mere matter of expensive or even finite gas reserves...

...Many of the celebrated technological changes in Twentieth Century industry, such as the assembly line and computerization, help management to extract more work from its laborers, but at the expense of making work ever more narrow and unfulfilling...

...The pollution of a river is a common example: No company in its right mind would build a waste-treatment facility if it could simply dump its waste products into the river...

...The policy maker will continue to operate within the confines of terrible choices as long as we maintain an economic system of massive private power and profit...

...The answer is, of course not, and we can see why when we take a brief look at how we got into this mess in the first place...

...We must be careful in our use of oil because our forms of production have become so oil-intensive and, more broadly, so energy-intensive...

...Corporate leadership will tell us that if oil is no longer cheap and plentiful, we must develop nuclear power...

...Corporations concerned with maintaining the profitability of huge investments in energy-intensive technologies, and in need of constant expansion of markets, will continue to seek cheap and expandable sources of energy...

...Barry Commoner has summarized the difference: "Nylon production involves as many as ten steps of chemical synthesis, each requiring considerable energy in the form of heat and electric power to overcome the entropy associated with chemical mixtures and to operate the reaction apparatus...

...By dumping the wastes, the company makes sure that the costs of waste treatment are paid for by all of us—and the company makes a bigger profit...

...Pacifying the work force requires an ever expanding economy (and greater energy use) regardless of the social costs...

...When workers have substantial knowledge of the business and control the structure of their own jobs, the prerogatives and legitimacy of bosses are more easily challenged...

...Given this reality, one must wonder whether the energy crisis will go away even if rationing or higher gasoline taxes lead to reduced consumption of oil...

...One could cite an almost endless list of corporate attempts to create new kinds of products through the use of energy-intensive technologies without regard to the ultimate consequences for the environment of the finite supply of certain forms of, energy...

...Its concern is to maximize profits by expanding production and reducing production costs...

...Every large corporation constantly seeks ways of displacing costs...

...Exploitation of Arab oil states by American corporations has been a major factor...

...We can begin by examining the behavior of any large company in a competitive private economy...

...consumption becomes one of the few satisfactions of life...

...The resulting isolation and loneliness can be exploited to create new markets for our big corporations: "The phone is the next best thing to being there...

...Up to the recent past, the price paid by American corporations to the oil states did not reflect oil's crucial economic importance to the West, nor did it take account of the fact that oil constitutes the only source of wealth to many Middle Eastern countries...

...It loses markets, its profits fall, the value of its stock declines, its management comes under fire...

...Workers know that they cannot expect to earn as much as their bosses, but their dissatisfaction and frustration are eased by the expectation that a growing economy will provide them with a higher standard of living...

...We need energy policies which reflect the potential social damage of energy consumption, but we will not have such policies as long as the power to make the most important economic decisions remains in private hands...

...Thus, we are subjected to elaborate overpackaging of our products as well as outlandish advertising campaigns designed to promote such dubious commodities as disposable wrappers and containers...

...When it cannot expand in a given market, it tries to create new markets...

...Though there can be no objection to easing oppressive forms of human toil, these new technologies often have made work dangerous and monotonous...

...Yet studies by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare have shown that workers want challenging and socially useful work situations, and perform productively in them...

...Yet, because labor can be replaced by cheap energy and the costs of production displaced onto the environment, corporate profits can be—and have been—increased by turning from natural to synthetic fibers...

...The isolation and fragmentation of jobs prevent real community from developing among workers...

...Beyond these concerns, American corporations have struggled desperately, in their pursuit of profits, to expand markets for various goods regardless of our real need for the products or the resources which are required to produce them...

...The energy crisis has come to a head not because government or industry are concerned about the effects of photochemical smog on the health of Americans, nor even because they fear that oil will run out (though many experts expect this will happen in the next thirty-five or fifty years...

...Yet our kind of economic system confronts the policy maker with a real dilemma: He hears Ralph Nader talking about the dangers of nuclear power, but he also knows that if such power is not provided, companies will lay off workers, build plants abroad, and spend millions to advertise the need for new forms of power...

...Corporations care only that energy be cheap and plentiful, regardless of the damage various forms of energy consumption may do to society...

...The crisis has come to the attention of economic and political leaders because the price of oil has increased so dramatically...

...But all too often we overlook one consequence of this process—the system's tendency to reward those enterprises which are most successful in saddling the public with the real costs of production...

...Upper-level management is always looking for ways to deskill the work force and improve the forms of control over it...

...Yet a major reason for the lower costs is that synthetic fibers require the replacement of human energy by chemical and electrical processes...

...In contrast, the energy required for the synthesis of cotton is derived free from a renewable resource, the sun—and is transferred without combustion and resultant air pollution...

...In a system where little real power over the conditions of work is present, the worker's desire focuses on more money...

...Perhaps we really can't get along without a phone in the bathroom—a plastic phone made from oil...

...It seems that the telephone company, like the President, is convinced that conserving oil is the key to our energy crisis...

...JohnBuell, who is doing post-doctoral work in'economics at the University of Massachusetts, was an editorial intern at The Progressive last summer...

...If corporate leadership needs cheap energy to expand, powerful labor interests want cheap energy—and expansion—to keep wages rising...

...Our energy crisis, therefore, will not go away if we manage to conserve a little more gas...

...Enormous sums have been invested in the development of products and technologies requiring substantial amounts of energy and reduced amounts of labor...

...While the answer may occasionally have something to do with the greed of individual capitalists, more generally it is a consequence of the system itself: The company which does not seek the lowest-cost technologies and the widest possible markets for its products is driven out of business or fails to attract the capital it needs to continue at a high level of operations...