| SHARED SACRIFICE THE JOURNAL OF PROGRESSIVE THOUGHT 29 JANUARY 2009 |
A BRIEF GENEALOGY OF FORDISM IN TWO PARTS
PART TWO: HOW THE FLOW AND CONSTRICTION OF OIL STRETCHES
INTO GLOBALIZATION
29 January 2009
by Kevin Douglas Kuswa
PART TWO: HOW THE FLOW AND CONSTRICTION OF OIL STRETCHES
INTO GLOBALIZATION
29 January 2009
by Kevin Douglas Kuswa
radicalgraphics.org
America’s domestic energy situation--and the extent of U.S. dependence on imports--could be just as important, if not more important, in shaping the future
political configurations in the Persian Gulf--and our future welfare--than direct security policies...The United States is, in effect, the Saudi Arabia of consumption.
It uses almost a third of all the oil consumed in the world every day. (Yergin, 1980, p16)
On March 22, 1980, Harvard’s Center for International Affairs hosted a Symposium on the Dependence Dilemma as part of the International Energy Seminar.
Daniel Yergin, the Chairman of the Symposium, opened with a brief history of the energy crisis and an assessment of some of the consequences and possible
solutions. Yergin’s comments speak to the importance of oil, but more importantly to the flow of oil from producer states and the multinational oil companies to
the consumers in the United States. Yergin provides an opening for part two of this brief genealogy of Fordism, particularly through his explanation of the
transportation sector in the United States and its dependence on oil. In 1980, The United States consumed about one third of its oil in the form of gasoline and
Yergin stresses that the consumption of gasoline in the U.S. exceeds the consumption of all petroleum-based products by any other single country. Explained
in another way: “One of every nine barrels of oil used in the world every day is burned as gasoline on American highways” (Yergin, 1980, p16). Even assuming
the desire to change, the transportation sector is heavily dependent on oil and gas relative to the rest of the economy and resistant to change. Yergin’s (1980,
p16) statement shores up the connection between American mobility and the flow of fuel: “The U.S. runs on gasoline; liquid fuels are the hub of the complex of
issues known as the energy problem; yet transportation is also the consumption area where it is most difficult to substitute non-oil fuels.”
1. Capturing energy
In the first part of this paper, we left Fordism in the midst of a transformation, a crisis in the American industrial position relative to the nation-state and the
global economy. The process of “capture,” whereby a given institution or machinic arrangement attaches itself to the operations of a similar entity in a parasitic
way, occurs through the trajectories of Fordism and the globalization of oil. During the 1970s, the threats that oil represented, particularly in relation to American
mobility, forced business interests and the government to take new forms and pursue new policies. Partially a ramification of the surging highway, over-
dependence on oil created new pressures on the economy and the state. Again borrowing from Yergin (1980, p25), it had become obvious that the mobility
afforded by the highway machine was increasingly reliant on oil from outside the United States: “We are a society that depends on a high degree of mobility.
Our over-dependence on an international energy system that is crisis-prone and accident-prone could create a crisis of mobility in this country in the 1980s.
Our over-dependence itself is a profound pressure on that system and, indeed, constitutes a threat to American security.” The context of this crisis in mobility
warrants elaboration. Yergin links the highway to the motions of energy, but how did the events of 1973 intersect the operations of Fordism and transportation?
In a word, the condition of dependency linked the highway as a means of circulation to the constriction of access to inexpensive fuel. The tightening oil market
was tied to the rapidly expanding consumption of the U.S. transportation sector, but the movements were multidirectional: changes in energy policies and
prices led to the retrenchment and containment of the highway machine as well. Despite signs of retrenchment, however, the very size and daily operation of
the interstate system ensured a constant need for millions and millions of barrels of oil. All told, these competing motions in relation to the events of 1973
marked a final phase in the maturation of Fordism in this country.
If the link had not been established by 1973, politics and economics were intertwined together at that point through motions of stability and security surrounding
oil. Dramatic fluctuations in the oil market translated into dramatic upheavals and conflict between states and cultures. The on-going conflict between Israel
and the Arab states in the region has been well-documented, a conflict that intensified in 1973 and helped to precipitate the oil crisis. The geopolitical
importance of the region did not emerge exclusively out of religious struggles for territory and recognition, but much of the region’s fragility can be attributed to
cultural tensions between groups of people such as those between “the original communities of mandated Palestine—the Arabs and the Jews” (El-Ayouty,
1974, p78). Cultural discord occurs on many planes, not least of which is territory itself and the resources that can be extracted from it. Moreover, land
becomes more valuable when it is scarce, as does the oil beneath the land (Manoharan, 1974; Chomsky, 1993, p59).
The topic of dependency signaled two related motions: retrenchment and saturation. Retrenchment began early in the 70s as the maintenance of the machine
took priority over extension and new construction. Particularly for the interstate, very few new miles were added after 1956 and most of the originally planned
mileage was constructed by 1973. As the highway consolidated and retrenched, Fordism was also reaching an impasse and a crisis of agency. The motion of
economic expansion and market saturation associated with oil and gas consumption hit a roadblock on October 17, 1973 when six Gulf oil states announced
an increase in oil prices and a reduction in production. Led by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, six members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
(OPEC) instituted an embargo on oil exports to the United States. Speaking of the October 17th embargo, Benjamin Shwadran (1974, p79) noted at the time
that “the producing countries have become dominant and powerful over the companies.”
The huge quantity of available oil in the Gulf combined with the voracious energy demands of the U.S. and other industrialized countries to heighten the need for
stability. The desire for a certain form of stability, regardless of the intent, did not ensure its presence--it may have even contributed to more tension and a more
precarious situation as the region became more and more militarized. The importance of oil in the Gulf established a link between domestic energy practices
in the United States and the state-sponsored push for political, military and economic security abroad. Oil and its finite nature created and magnified a crisis in
the smooth operation of global markets, industrial manufacturing, and the expectations of many consumers. Russell Stone (1977, p.xiv) commented on the
severe price hikes of the fall of 1973: “The ensuing worldwide fuel shortage, regardless of price, lasted approximately five months. Its memory and impact will
last much longer throughout the world.”
The memory of the crisis notwithstanding, that five month period designated a transformation in a series of axes: capitalism, modernity, the state, Fordism, and
the highway machine. The Cold War had firmly implemented its logics of global security, a global relationship that easily transferred itself and took on new
dimensions through the struggles over oil and land in the “Middle East.”
The energy crisis and its global ramifications, in part, centered on the region called the Middle East and the formation of OPEC. Even though OPEC is often
blamed for the events of 1973, OPEC’s existence may have actually delayed the political conditions necessary for an effective embargo and price hike. OPEC
itself was founded in 1960, but the contemplation of an organized pricing strategy may have begun earlier. In 1952, the Arab League Political Committee
“discussed petroleum as a weapon in the struggle with Israel” (Peretz, 1977, p21). The deployment of the “oil weapon” did not materialize until months after
the Six-Day war of 1967 when, in January of 1968, a group of oil-producing countries in the Gulf decided to suppress oil sales to artificially raise the price.
Following the Six-Day war between Israel and a number of Arab states in the region, the “Arab petroleum ministers” decided to form “a unique Arab organization
distinct from OPEC to develop their collective international political power” (Peretz, 1977, p21). During the months immediately following the Six-Day war, the
new sub-organization of OPEC refrained from instituting an oil embargo, choosing instead to collect short-term revenues for rebuilding efforts. The need for
short-term revenue was satisfied quickly, for this new oil alliance, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC), initiated the use of oil
resources for political purposes in January of 1968.
political configurations in the Persian Gulf--and our future welfare--than direct security policies...The United States is, in effect, the Saudi Arabia of consumption.
It uses almost a third of all the oil consumed in the world every day. (Yergin, 1980, p16)
On March 22, 1980, Harvard’s Center for International Affairs hosted a Symposium on the Dependence Dilemma as part of the International Energy Seminar.
Daniel Yergin, the Chairman of the Symposium, opened with a brief history of the energy crisis and an assessment of some of the consequences and possible
solutions. Yergin’s comments speak to the importance of oil, but more importantly to the flow of oil from producer states and the multinational oil companies to
the consumers in the United States. Yergin provides an opening for part two of this brief genealogy of Fordism, particularly through his explanation of the
transportation sector in the United States and its dependence on oil. In 1980, The United States consumed about one third of its oil in the form of gasoline and
Yergin stresses that the consumption of gasoline in the U.S. exceeds the consumption of all petroleum-based products by any other single country. Explained
in another way: “One of every nine barrels of oil used in the world every day is burned as gasoline on American highways” (Yergin, 1980, p16). Even assuming
the desire to change, the transportation sector is heavily dependent on oil and gas relative to the rest of the economy and resistant to change. Yergin’s (1980,
p16) statement shores up the connection between American mobility and the flow of fuel: “The U.S. runs on gasoline; liquid fuels are the hub of the complex of
issues known as the energy problem; yet transportation is also the consumption area where it is most difficult to substitute non-oil fuels.”
1. Capturing energy
In the first part of this paper, we left Fordism in the midst of a transformation, a crisis in the American industrial position relative to the nation-state and the
global economy. The process of “capture,” whereby a given institution or machinic arrangement attaches itself to the operations of a similar entity in a parasitic
way, occurs through the trajectories of Fordism and the globalization of oil. During the 1970s, the threats that oil represented, particularly in relation to American
mobility, forced business interests and the government to take new forms and pursue new policies. Partially a ramification of the surging highway, over-
dependence on oil created new pressures on the economy and the state. Again borrowing from Yergin (1980, p25), it had become obvious that the mobility
afforded by the highway machine was increasingly reliant on oil from outside the United States: “We are a society that depends on a high degree of mobility.
Our over-dependence on an international energy system that is crisis-prone and accident-prone could create a crisis of mobility in this country in the 1980s.
Our over-dependence itself is a profound pressure on that system and, indeed, constitutes a threat to American security.” The context of this crisis in mobility
warrants elaboration. Yergin links the highway to the motions of energy, but how did the events of 1973 intersect the operations of Fordism and transportation?
In a word, the condition of dependency linked the highway as a means of circulation to the constriction of access to inexpensive fuel. The tightening oil market
was tied to the rapidly expanding consumption of the U.S. transportation sector, but the movements were multidirectional: changes in energy policies and
prices led to the retrenchment and containment of the highway machine as well. Despite signs of retrenchment, however, the very size and daily operation of
the interstate system ensured a constant need for millions and millions of barrels of oil. All told, these competing motions in relation to the events of 1973
marked a final phase in the maturation of Fordism in this country.
If the link had not been established by 1973, politics and economics were intertwined together at that point through motions of stability and security surrounding
oil. Dramatic fluctuations in the oil market translated into dramatic upheavals and conflict between states and cultures. The on-going conflict between Israel
and the Arab states in the region has been well-documented, a conflict that intensified in 1973 and helped to precipitate the oil crisis. The geopolitical
importance of the region did not emerge exclusively out of religious struggles for territory and recognition, but much of the region’s fragility can be attributed to
cultural tensions between groups of people such as those between “the original communities of mandated Palestine—the Arabs and the Jews” (El-Ayouty,
1974, p78). Cultural discord occurs on many planes, not least of which is territory itself and the resources that can be extracted from it. Moreover, land
becomes more valuable when it is scarce, as does the oil beneath the land (Manoharan, 1974; Chomsky, 1993, p59).
The topic of dependency signaled two related motions: retrenchment and saturation. Retrenchment began early in the 70s as the maintenance of the machine
took priority over extension and new construction. Particularly for the interstate, very few new miles were added after 1956 and most of the originally planned
mileage was constructed by 1973. As the highway consolidated and retrenched, Fordism was also reaching an impasse and a crisis of agency. The motion of
economic expansion and market saturation associated with oil and gas consumption hit a roadblock on October 17, 1973 when six Gulf oil states announced
an increase in oil prices and a reduction in production. Led by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, six members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
(OPEC) instituted an embargo on oil exports to the United States. Speaking of the October 17th embargo, Benjamin Shwadran (1974, p79) noted at the time
that “the producing countries have become dominant and powerful over the companies.”
The huge quantity of available oil in the Gulf combined with the voracious energy demands of the U.S. and other industrialized countries to heighten the need for
stability. The desire for a certain form of stability, regardless of the intent, did not ensure its presence--it may have even contributed to more tension and a more
precarious situation as the region became more and more militarized. The importance of oil in the Gulf established a link between domestic energy practices
in the United States and the state-sponsored push for political, military and economic security abroad. Oil and its finite nature created and magnified a crisis in
the smooth operation of global markets, industrial manufacturing, and the expectations of many consumers. Russell Stone (1977, p.xiv) commented on the
severe price hikes of the fall of 1973: “The ensuing worldwide fuel shortage, regardless of price, lasted approximately five months. Its memory and impact will
last much longer throughout the world.”
The memory of the crisis notwithstanding, that five month period designated a transformation in a series of axes: capitalism, modernity, the state, Fordism, and
the highway machine. The Cold War had firmly implemented its logics of global security, a global relationship that easily transferred itself and took on new
dimensions through the struggles over oil and land in the “Middle East.”
The energy crisis and its global ramifications, in part, centered on the region called the Middle East and the formation of OPEC. Even though OPEC is often
blamed for the events of 1973, OPEC’s existence may have actually delayed the political conditions necessary for an effective embargo and price hike. OPEC
itself was founded in 1960, but the contemplation of an organized pricing strategy may have begun earlier. In 1952, the Arab League Political Committee
“discussed petroleum as a weapon in the struggle with Israel” (Peretz, 1977, p21). The deployment of the “oil weapon” did not materialize until months after
the Six-Day war of 1967 when, in January of 1968, a group of oil-producing countries in the Gulf decided to suppress oil sales to artificially raise the price.
Following the Six-Day war between Israel and a number of Arab states in the region, the “Arab petroleum ministers” decided to form “a unique Arab organization
distinct from OPEC to develop their collective international political power” (Peretz, 1977, p21). During the months immediately following the Six-Day war, the
new sub-organization of OPEC refrained from instituting an oil embargo, choosing instead to collect short-term revenues for rebuilding efforts. The need for
short-term revenue was satisfied quickly, for this new oil alliance, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC), initiated the use of oil
resources for political purposes in January of 1968.
Dr. Don Peretz, Professor of Political Science at SUNY-Binghamton, claims that the “political use of Arab oil” in 1968 was ineffective and may have contributed to
lower revenues for the states involved. The membership of OAPEC was not large enough at the time—missing “radical” nations such as Iraq, Syria, and Egypt
until 1972—and the move was primarily an economic ploy by the conservative regimes governing Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Libya to use anti-Israel sentiment in
the aftermath of the Six Day war as an opportunity to increase the market value of oil. The action in 1968 was not comprehensive enough to prevent consumers
from locating alternative oil supplies in the United States, Venezuela, and Iran. The Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ahmed Zaki Yamani stated later that year that the
oil embargo “hurt the Arabs themselves more than anyone else, and the only ones to gain any benefit from it were the non-Arab producers” (Mikdashi, 1972,
p85). The Oil Minister’s comments pointed to a series of opposing interests that had converged in the oil arena: the pro-Arab vs. pro-Israel forces, the oil
producers vs. the oil consumers, the Arab oil states vs. the non-Arab oil states, and the radical vs. the conservative oil regimes. The ideological struggles for
influence and resources are far from exhaustive in a diagram of the circulation of oil.
The circulation of oil and products had fully merged with the circulation of militarism and political influence, in no small part due to the consumptive tendencies
set in motion by the growing highway infrastructure. Reinforcing the breakdown of previously distinct arenas, Manoharan (1974, p83) noted that, “Oil itself is
forged as a weapon to further political ends,” and The Economist (July 7, 1973) reported that the first concept to grasp about “the oil business is that it is more a
political than an economic activity.” Immediately preceding OPEC’s Oct. 17 announcement that an oil embargo had gone into effect, a few events took place
which furthered the interplay between state-sponsored security and the energy market. On October 6, 1973, as Israel prepared for Yom Kippur, President Sadat
sent the Egyptian army across the Suez Canal and Syria attacked the Golan Heights in an attempt to win back land taken by Israel in the 1967 war. Following
Egypt’s raid on oil wells in the Sinai Peninsula and Israel’s attack on a Syrian oil refinery, Nixon contacted Brezhnev, the Soviet leader, to discuss the threat of
war in the region (Manoharan, 1974, p76). The United States and the Soviet Union attempted to broker peace through the United Nations, but their efforts were
shallow and short-lived. A cease-fire in one region precipitated the escalation of conflict in another. By October 13th that year, Israel had surrendered to Egypt
on the Sinai but the fighting between Israel and Syria over the Golan had re-ignited. Meanwhile, Nixon began to lobby Congress for additional military aid to
Israel. The day after Nixon’s request, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Algeria suspended all oil exports to the U.S. and many other nations soon followed suit.
Even before OPEC’s announcement, Iraq deployed oil as a weapon by nationalizing Exxon and Mobil on October 7th, not to mention cutting off pipelines to the
Mediterranean and reducing the flow of oil by over one million barrels a day. According to Manoharan (1974, p86), Kuwait, Qatar and several other countries
followed the lead of Iraq and Saudi Arabia by cutting production by 10 percent. Within a few months the overall flow of oil from the Gulf region was reduced by
almost 15 percent. On October 16th, foreshadowing OPEC’s announcement the following day, the posted price of oil from the Gulf went up 70 percent. As
these moves continued to constrict the supply of oil, the full impact reached the United States in the form of higher fuel prices, long gas lines, and rapid inflation
across the economy. The Petroleum Economist (January, 1974, p143) commented that, “Consumers of oil must certainly accept the fact that OPEC has now
evolved into what is probably the toughest cartel the world has ever known” and that this cartel has “the power to restrict supplies and hold the consumer to
ransom.”
To emphasize his claim that the U.S. had become hostage to “foreign oil,” Yergin offers a laundry-list of potential threats including drop-offs in domestic
production, supply interruption, political alliances hostile to the United States, regime changes, and even Soviet collusion. In sum, Yergin (1980, p18)
proclaims: “This over-dependence puts the United States into a position where it could be drawn into the vortex of a crisis with little choice or little
maneuverability.” The vortex requires mapping, though, for the flow of oil involves many diverse channels. To begin, who is being referred to when Yergin or
someone like him talks about the “United States,” the American consumer,” or “our interests and security”? What are these monolithic interests? Is oil really a
question of “us” vs. “them”? Fordism takes on nationalistic tendencies in many ways during the second half of the century, not least of which was the
dominance of the source of fuel over the highway infrastructure itself.
Milton Moskowitz, founder of Business & Society in 1968, asks the same questions in a short article published a few months after the October oil embargo.
Moskowitz claims to “have trouble these days with the pronoun ‘we’” in the context of the energy crisis. Moskowitz’s (1974, p14) read on the depictions of the
energy crisis at the time is that the “Arabs are clearly not part of ‘we’” because the crisis itself was “apparently touched off by the Arab world’s decision to play
politics with the oil in the ground.” And, in opposition to these Arabs, Moskowitz (1974, p140 senses a collective “we” on the other side of the crisis that includes
“virtually everyone else—President Nixon, the home owner that heats with oil, Exxon, anyone who drives a car, British Petroleum, the ordinary investor, Texaco,
the airlines….” Moskowitz makes the point that the common interests contained in “we” are actually diverse and complex, made up of Texas drillers, domestic
consumers, industrial producers, oil lobbyists, and so forth. As Moskowitz (1974, p15) cynically remarks: “The energy crisis has affected a miraculous
transformation….The oil industry program has become ‘our’ program. What they want, ‘we’ must obviously want. ‘We’ are all in the same boat, right?”
Taking Moskowitz’s critique of the all-purpose “we” into account, he helps to show how these exchanges are often personified, as are the interests of the
corporations and the governments. The Seven Sisters are but one example, the name given to the seven largest multinational oil companies. Five of the
companies started in the United States—Exxon, Texaco, Mobil, Gulf, and Standard Oil—and the other two from Europe—British Petroleum and Royal Dutch
Shell. All seven share sisterhood, though, because of their monopolistic control over the exploration, extraction, transportation, refining, and distribution of most
of the world’s known oil reserves. As multinational companies, their operations have diverged from the political interests of any individual government or set of
consumers. The personification of multinational corporations like the Seven Sisters leads back to the question concerning agency and interests. Should
individual consumers of oil, even American consumers, be considered a single entity? What are the effects of dividing producer states into those who support
the West and those who do not? Does America have one set of interests in the energy crisis?
If certain companies have interests that are at odds with the governments they operate within, it becomes doubly important to scrutinize any representation of the
energy crisis as an “us vs. them” scenario or a bipolar contest between those with oil and those who wish to purchase the oil. Yergin relies on an oppositional
frame, for instance, constituting “us” as a unified collection of reasonable Americans trying to maintain security for our energy needs. Yergin reminded “us” that
the two oil shocks that took place between 1973 and 1980 may have shattered our sense of invulnerability, but “we have hardly begun to take those steps that
are so manifestly in our own interest, and indeed required in the name of elemental self-preservation” (Yergin, 1980, p25) such as pursuing conservation
practices on a national level. Representative Les Aspin (1974, p210), a democrat from Wisconsin, also depicted the crisis in such a bipolar way: “In the final
analysis, Congress and the American people are left with only one choice if we are to solve the energy crisis: the excessive political power of the companies
must be brought under control.” Who does “we” refer to in Aspin’s remark? What does the imaginary of this “we” do to frame the energy crisis in a certain way?
Indeed, who is having the oil crisis? Who is hosting it? And, most importantly, what are the effects of its deployment and exploitation?
lower revenues for the states involved. The membership of OAPEC was not large enough at the time—missing “radical” nations such as Iraq, Syria, and Egypt
until 1972—and the move was primarily an economic ploy by the conservative regimes governing Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Libya to use anti-Israel sentiment in
the aftermath of the Six Day war as an opportunity to increase the market value of oil. The action in 1968 was not comprehensive enough to prevent consumers
from locating alternative oil supplies in the United States, Venezuela, and Iran. The Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ahmed Zaki Yamani stated later that year that the
oil embargo “hurt the Arabs themselves more than anyone else, and the only ones to gain any benefit from it were the non-Arab producers” (Mikdashi, 1972,
p85). The Oil Minister’s comments pointed to a series of opposing interests that had converged in the oil arena: the pro-Arab vs. pro-Israel forces, the oil
producers vs. the oil consumers, the Arab oil states vs. the non-Arab oil states, and the radical vs. the conservative oil regimes. The ideological struggles for
influence and resources are far from exhaustive in a diagram of the circulation of oil.
The circulation of oil and products had fully merged with the circulation of militarism and political influence, in no small part due to the consumptive tendencies
set in motion by the growing highway infrastructure. Reinforcing the breakdown of previously distinct arenas, Manoharan (1974, p83) noted that, “Oil itself is
forged as a weapon to further political ends,” and The Economist (July 7, 1973) reported that the first concept to grasp about “the oil business is that it is more a
political than an economic activity.” Immediately preceding OPEC’s Oct. 17 announcement that an oil embargo had gone into effect, a few events took place
which furthered the interplay between state-sponsored security and the energy market. On October 6, 1973, as Israel prepared for Yom Kippur, President Sadat
sent the Egyptian army across the Suez Canal and Syria attacked the Golan Heights in an attempt to win back land taken by Israel in the 1967 war. Following
Egypt’s raid on oil wells in the Sinai Peninsula and Israel’s attack on a Syrian oil refinery, Nixon contacted Brezhnev, the Soviet leader, to discuss the threat of
war in the region (Manoharan, 1974, p76). The United States and the Soviet Union attempted to broker peace through the United Nations, but their efforts were
shallow and short-lived. A cease-fire in one region precipitated the escalation of conflict in another. By October 13th that year, Israel had surrendered to Egypt
on the Sinai but the fighting between Israel and Syria over the Golan had re-ignited. Meanwhile, Nixon began to lobby Congress for additional military aid to
Israel. The day after Nixon’s request, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Algeria suspended all oil exports to the U.S. and many other nations soon followed suit.
Even before OPEC’s announcement, Iraq deployed oil as a weapon by nationalizing Exxon and Mobil on October 7th, not to mention cutting off pipelines to the
Mediterranean and reducing the flow of oil by over one million barrels a day. According to Manoharan (1974, p86), Kuwait, Qatar and several other countries
followed the lead of Iraq and Saudi Arabia by cutting production by 10 percent. Within a few months the overall flow of oil from the Gulf region was reduced by
almost 15 percent. On October 16th, foreshadowing OPEC’s announcement the following day, the posted price of oil from the Gulf went up 70 percent. As
these moves continued to constrict the supply of oil, the full impact reached the United States in the form of higher fuel prices, long gas lines, and rapid inflation
across the economy. The Petroleum Economist (January, 1974, p143) commented that, “Consumers of oil must certainly accept the fact that OPEC has now
evolved into what is probably the toughest cartel the world has ever known” and that this cartel has “the power to restrict supplies and hold the consumer to
ransom.”
To emphasize his claim that the U.S. had become hostage to “foreign oil,” Yergin offers a laundry-list of potential threats including drop-offs in domestic
production, supply interruption, political alliances hostile to the United States, regime changes, and even Soviet collusion. In sum, Yergin (1980, p18)
proclaims: “This over-dependence puts the United States into a position where it could be drawn into the vortex of a crisis with little choice or little
maneuverability.” The vortex requires mapping, though, for the flow of oil involves many diverse channels. To begin, who is being referred to when Yergin or
someone like him talks about the “United States,” the American consumer,” or “our interests and security”? What are these monolithic interests? Is oil really a
question of “us” vs. “them”? Fordism takes on nationalistic tendencies in many ways during the second half of the century, not least of which was the
dominance of the source of fuel over the highway infrastructure itself.
Milton Moskowitz, founder of Business & Society in 1968, asks the same questions in a short article published a few months after the October oil embargo.
Moskowitz claims to “have trouble these days with the pronoun ‘we’” in the context of the energy crisis. Moskowitz’s (1974, p14) read on the depictions of the
energy crisis at the time is that the “Arabs are clearly not part of ‘we’” because the crisis itself was “apparently touched off by the Arab world’s decision to play
politics with the oil in the ground.” And, in opposition to these Arabs, Moskowitz (1974, p140 senses a collective “we” on the other side of the crisis that includes
“virtually everyone else—President Nixon, the home owner that heats with oil, Exxon, anyone who drives a car, British Petroleum, the ordinary investor, Texaco,
the airlines….” Moskowitz makes the point that the common interests contained in “we” are actually diverse and complex, made up of Texas drillers, domestic
consumers, industrial producers, oil lobbyists, and so forth. As Moskowitz (1974, p15) cynically remarks: “The energy crisis has affected a miraculous
transformation….The oil industry program has become ‘our’ program. What they want, ‘we’ must obviously want. ‘We’ are all in the same boat, right?”
Taking Moskowitz’s critique of the all-purpose “we” into account, he helps to show how these exchanges are often personified, as are the interests of the
corporations and the governments. The Seven Sisters are but one example, the name given to the seven largest multinational oil companies. Five of the
companies started in the United States—Exxon, Texaco, Mobil, Gulf, and Standard Oil—and the other two from Europe—British Petroleum and Royal Dutch
Shell. All seven share sisterhood, though, because of their monopolistic control over the exploration, extraction, transportation, refining, and distribution of most
of the world’s known oil reserves. As multinational companies, their operations have diverged from the political interests of any individual government or set of
consumers. The personification of multinational corporations like the Seven Sisters leads back to the question concerning agency and interests. Should
individual consumers of oil, even American consumers, be considered a single entity? What are the effects of dividing producer states into those who support
the West and those who do not? Does America have one set of interests in the energy crisis?
If certain companies have interests that are at odds with the governments they operate within, it becomes doubly important to scrutinize any representation of the
energy crisis as an “us vs. them” scenario or a bipolar contest between those with oil and those who wish to purchase the oil. Yergin relies on an oppositional
frame, for instance, constituting “us” as a unified collection of reasonable Americans trying to maintain security for our energy needs. Yergin reminded “us” that
the two oil shocks that took place between 1973 and 1980 may have shattered our sense of invulnerability, but “we have hardly begun to take those steps that
are so manifestly in our own interest, and indeed required in the name of elemental self-preservation” (Yergin, 1980, p25) such as pursuing conservation
practices on a national level. Representative Les Aspin (1974, p210), a democrat from Wisconsin, also depicted the crisis in such a bipolar way: “In the final
analysis, Congress and the American people are left with only one choice if we are to solve the energy crisis: the excessive political power of the companies
must be brought under control.” Who does “we” refer to in Aspin’s remark? What does the imaginary of this “we” do to frame the energy crisis in a certain way?
Indeed, who is having the oil crisis? Who is hosting it? And, most importantly, what are the effects of its deployment and exploitation?
2. Fordism and the State
An important moment that becomes more pronounced during the events of 1973 involves the transformation from Fordism to globalization. Because Fordism
remained an industrial arrangement tied to the automobile as the basis for mass production, it reached an end-point (or transitional moment) as the post World
War II military complex and federal control of highway funding combined to capture certain economic and military logics for the state. Certainly a number of
components of Fordism infiltrated other industries and managed to find a niche for themselves alongside the apparatus of the state. The corporate quest for
growing markets and a new manufacturing structure also intensified as labor and the production process became more integrated. Many contradictory motions
pushed corporate entities in diffuse and uncertain directions—a capitalism contingent on political maneuvering, state diplomacy, and a constantly shifting set of
market parameters. The Cold War and its ensuing global chess game for influence also fueled the expansion of the state and the reach of government
institutions, whether those institutions exerted themselves in the name of democracy or communism.
By 1973, corporations are experiencing distinct transformations: they are breaking away from the state by creating new profit structures and diversifying across
borders to take advantage of abundant labor and tax incentives wherever they may be located, and they are incorporating themselves into the state or subordinating
their operations to the regulations and policies imposed by the state. Barlett and Steele lay out both of these transformations in succinct fashion. They talk about
the expansion of the corporate scope by reducing the United States to one of the objects of the large energy conglomerates: “In this period, the United States
became merely another customer of the American multinational oil companies which supply most of the free world’s oil” (Barlett & Steele, 1974, p332). Barlett and
Steele (1974, p333) also talk about the state’s use of the energy crisis to further political aims and attach themselves to business lobbies: “The Administration has
consistently overdramatized the extent of the shortage and helped create much of the panic seen today at the gas pump.” It was ultimately the war and the oil
embargo of 1973 that catapulted both of these capturing motions to the forefront. Once again, the motions of Fordism helped to generate a multi-dimensional
effect.
The oil effects of the highway machine were analogous to the duality of the freedom of driving and the immobility (including mortality) of the car crash. The crash on
the oil front, however, was global and all-encompassing. With vehicles and their passengers, the repetition and seriality of the car crash are its biggest threat—the
inevitability of a certain percentage of accidents occurring on the highway each and every day. With the oil crash, on the other hand, the regularity of price and
supply shocks was not as significant as the sudden rupture in October of 1973. As landmines are to an atomic bomb, so is the car crash to the oil crisis. All four
are crippling and destructive, but landmines and car accidents are insidious and relentless while atomic bombs and large oil shocks are quick and total. The
speed and scope of the energy crisis forced swift responses from the state and corporations. Having captured militarism in the name of nationalism (and atomic
weaponry), the state deployed its military to protect its security. Having captured the state in the name of economic growth, corporate interests capitalized on the
crisis by dodging taxation schemes and passing on higher prices to addicted consumers.
Clay Steinman and Robert Entman add contours to corporate lines of flight that have attached themselves to the flow of oil. Steinman and Entman, political science
scholars, published a short article in the January 26, 1974 edition of The Nation that outlines the oil hegemony of the multinational corporations entitled “The
Sovereign State of Oil.” Referencing the advent of joint ventures throughout the 1960s and 70s, Steinman and Entman (1974, p111) contend that joint ventures
have allowed interlocking directorates, exchanges of information, production planning, “and perhaps a general forum in which a climate of unanimity with respect to
such problems as scarcity, prices, political associations and other pertinent affairs can be developed.” Calling these monolithic oil companies the “energy
conglomerates,” Steinman and Entman (1974, p111), “have awesome power, whether it be the power to create shortages for their own private ends or the power to
alleviate them through their own private efforts.” A certain move foreshadowed and permitted the hegemony of the energy conglomerates: curtailing domestic
refining efforts and aligning themselves with political interests and institutions responsible for energy policy.
The slowing down of domestic refining and the expansion of refining efforts outside the United States contributed to the dominance of the energy conglomerates
as a whole. American companies had already become multinational, allowing shifts to take place in response to U.S. regulations and trade policies. Steinman
and Entman (1974, p112) cite this flexibility as a source of power and resilience for the energy conglomerates: “The crisscross concentration of cooperative power
in the oil industry seems undeniable.” The point here, and the necessity of tracing this articulation of the sovereignty of oil, is that the motion of capture is never uni-
directional. The two poles of public and private (or statist and corporate) constantly work together. The circulation that has arisen through the energy crisis revolves
around the interactions between a regulatory government wielding a military for enforcement and the capital concentration inherent in the large oil companies.
From one angle, that presented by Steinman and Entman (1974, p114), the need for secure energy supplies (to fuel the highway machine, the economy, and the
military in the United States) made Congress a mere foot soldier in the service of the oil companies:
This motion encouraged the movement of refining operations outside of the United States to circumvent the embargo. From the opposite angle, political pressures
were responsible for state actions that defied and contained the free reign of the oil companies.
Positioning and posturing between Israel, the United States, the Soviet Union, the Palestinians, and the Arab countries adjacent to Israel put new spins on the
circulation of oil. The Palestinian quest for legitimacy gave the United States the opportunity to both express support for Israel and to broker negotiations between
the two sides. And, by 1974, the United States started to “mobilize all its resources to find alternatives to Middle East oil” (Shwadran, 1974, p81). It took time to
develop viable alternatives, but the United States purchased oil from many sources as well as having access to fairly large domestic wells. The U.S. government
aligned with corporate forces in the energy arena in a more concerted attempt to find new sources of oil as well as encouraging the expansion of coal-based
generation for electricity and providing minor subsidies for energy sources other than fossil fuels (solar, geothermal).
From 1956 to 1973, the highway and Fordism rolled along while the government focused on construction of state-of-the-art roads at the expense of a flexible
energy sector. Even though the energy crisis had been forecast for years (Shwadran, 1974, p81), no directed state action was taken: “The United States
government was perhaps lulled into inaction and false security by the international oil companies and by its own ideological unwillingness to interfere with private
enterprise.” Soon after 1973, Nixon tapped the Highway Trust Fund for mass transit and conservation became a national goal, exemplified by the speed limit
reduction and the removal of daylight savings. The events of 1956 and 1973 are merely guideposts, for the practice of genealogy does not obsess over origins and
conclusions as much as it brings together certain events and arrangements. As Foucault (1984, p81) writes, “Genealogy does not resemble the evolution of a
species and does not map the destiny of a people.”
3. From Fordism to globalization
Henry Ford’s purposes, desires and hopes relied on a new industrialized city that would bring workers to the factories and prime the economy for individual
ownership of automobiles. In 1908, the Model T had to cater to the demands of a rural population, but Ford secretly “looked forward to the demise of the family
farm” (Flink, 1988, p114) and the fundamental principles of Fordism depended on a steady demand from the largest sector of the American population: the lower
and middle classes in urban areas. An ever-expanding assembly-line that emphasized uniformity and affordable production needed a broad-based market of
consumers with disposable income. In many ways, the circle completes itself as it struggles through energy supply to land back in the US, but with global
tendencies—an ever-expanding structure of Empire. The year 1973 marked the first major oil shock, the completion of over 80 percent of the Interstate (and the
initiation of 16 percent more, leaving only a few hundred miles to be completed in the 1980s and 90s), the imposition of a 55-mph speed limit across the nation’s
expressways, and the first diversion of funds from the Highway Trust Fund into intra-urban transit by Richard Nixon on August 13th (Flink, 1988, p372).
Nevertheless, Fordist market expansion carried with it new and intricate connections to the state: “Unlimited accommodation to mass personal automobility ended
as government came to recognize automotive safety, pollution, and energy consumption as major social problems and consequently to regulate the automobile
industry and to invest in mass transit” Flink (1988, p408).
U.S. dependence on oil combined with U.S. aid to Israel in the Yom Kippur War to encourage many of the Persian Gulf states to restrict and even prohibit the flow of
oil to the U.S. (McShane, 1997, p136). The 1970s and 80s balanced concerns over energy security and automobile safety with new machinic arrangements
stretching into the 90s and beyond. Oil and gas became crucial commodities to the stability of global capitalism, fed by both the demand for more and more fossil
fuels in the U.S. and the willingness of the American military machine to defend the corridors and pipelines of the market’s precious “black gold.” The key
transformation from Fordism to globalization is global production and consumption.
In addition to connecting the transportation sector in the United States to the inelasticity of the global oil market, Yergin also attaches the security of the U.S. and its
foreign policy as a whole to over-dependence on imported oil. Once more we borrow from Yergin (1980, p15) and an argument enmeshed in the knowledge
formation between energy security and international relations:
The turn that occurs here, and one that penetrates the subjects, places, and motions of the highway during this period, is conservation. Cars become smaller and
more fuel efficient as alternative modes of transportation become more attractive. From Yergin’s quotation and the explicit link between the operation of cars in the
United States and a global regime of security designed to protect the flow of oil, the issue of globalization attaches itself to circulation. The circulation of energy
resources, particularly the global nature of the oil market, resulted in an association between capitalism and the modernization of a global economy. It is important
to note that we have two notions of globalization at work here: the globalization of rhetoric and the globalization of capital and state-protected markets. Although not
intended by either use of the term, the two relate to one another in some interesting ways.
One sense of globalization refers to the expansion of rhetoric’s scope or object of analysis to a global or universal level. Appearing as the counterpart to the trap of
representation where rhetoric is limited to a descriptive or peripheral role in relation to a pre-conceived ideology, reality, or similar non-rhetorical structure;
globalization marks rhetoric as all-encompassing and beyond explanatory or analytical value. Positioned opposite to the quandary of representation and the
dependence of rhetoric on that which it represents, the globalization of rhetoric gives such range to itself that it cannot account for its outside or the elements that
might be external to a regime of signs. In other words, the globalization turn accounts for the circulation of rhetoric in such a way that it becomes difficult to talk
about elements that may produce specific manifestations of rhetoric or the effects of a given instance of rhetoric without simultaneously theorizing those elements
and those effects as themselves examples of rhetoric. Because rhetoric explains circulation and everything is circulating, it is argued, the analytical grip of rhetoric
can assert itself regardless of the uniqueness of the machine or the object in question.
Gaonkar talks about the globalization of rhetoric in terms of the slow dissolution of the object of rhetorical criticism. This occurs when all objects are distanced
from the act of criticism in the same way, making the object peripheral to the process of interpretation and devaluing the distinct “performative dimensions” that
circulate in tandem with the “materiality or everydayness of practical discourse” (Gaonkar, 1990, p308). Despite various attempts to recover or rescue the object by
returning to a “close” or “disciplined” reading of a given text, the tendency toward globalization in rhetoric has been sweeping. Few theorists take on expansive
objects, and even fewer theories will chart the specific ways that an object, machine, or even text moves in rhetorical and non-rhetorical ways. For Gaonkar (1990,
p308), the danger of such globalization is that the object will disintegrate into fragments, leaving only the hegemonic practices of interpretation: “The dissolution
continues…as the object is globalized into a message fragment.”
In addition, the effects and residual products of the machine circulate through its regime of signs, but may not always manifest as subjectivities and may not be
rooted exclusively in discursive formations. A preference for specificity, once again, draws attention to the role of circulation in the debate over rhetoric’s
globalization. To avoid the use of circulation as a mechanism for the globalization of rhetoric, the movement of a given regime of signs should be mapped as
circulating as well as penetrating. Penetration expresses that motion is not always freely circulating and that the unwanted extension of markets may be distinct
from an organic model of a circulatory system. The channeling of capitalism may be relatively smooth and organic, yet its effects are wounding and insidiously
penetrating: “A focus on circulation shows us the movement of people, things, ideas, or institutions, but it does not show us how this movement depends on
defining tracks and grounds or scales and units of agency” (Tsing, 2000, p337). The notion of exchange, central to communication as well as capitalism, links the
process of circulation to the condition of globalization. Tempering both circulation and globalization (and offering a solution to the globalization of rhetoric’s domain
of objects) must be the association of constraint and limitation with circulation as well as the association of segregation and corporate oppression with
globalization.
Arguing that the term comes to mean many things, Tsing (2000, p331) states: “globalization came to mean an endorsement of international free trade and the
outlawing of protected or public domestic economies.” As a conduit for globalization, then, Fordism expanded through the promise of unrestricted mobility and free
access, paving over local “highway markets” and toll-ways in favor of a national (global) machine. Anna Tsing talks about globalization in terms of planetary
interconnections, linkages that can further exploitation and inequality as well as linkages that can open up possibilities of globalist wishes and fantasies. For
Tsing (2000, p331), the process of invoking the global turn “is to call attention to the speed and density of interconnections among people and places.” For
example, it is important to note how people and places were shaped and influenced by the aftermath of Fordism as a manufacturing process that united with a
specific form of social organization programmed by the state and the state’s military needs. It is also crucial to mark the flow of energy resources as a corollary to
the flow of goods and services led by American consumers and the highway machine—a process in place across the world by the end of the 1970s.
Circulation itself must share the stage with temporality and spatiality. McKenzie Wark helps to tie together the motions of globalization by defining our terrain as
the “place where we sleep, work, or hang-out” (1994, p1). Similar to Morse’s (1990) idea of distraction and “distractedness” as an ontology for everyday life, Wark
traces various forms of circulation in the directed movement of people, places, ideas, institutions, and forces. The drive-ins, quickie marts, truck-stops, and other
roadside hang-outs are only one plane of the terrain. Those places are now being forced to share terrain with the flow and timing of images:
First, the separation is only partial, for any light of flight (site of virtual experience) must be grounded or located. Second, the virtual is limited by access and the
restriction of particular flows (energy, transport, etc.). As with Fordism and the highway machine, the motion of freely circulating people or products is always
mediating by competing motions of state security and economic exchange.
Providing a transition, the motion of circulation creates interconnections and “interconnection is everything in the new globalisms” (Tsing, 2000, p336). Rhetoric
assists in the meeting points on either end of circulation, in both coercive and liberating ways. Thus, we can map the ways that globalization itself enters modes of
circulation. The motions of globalization, for Tsing (2000, p336), are rhetorical because “global rhetoric” relies on circulation in the same way capitalism relies on
penetration: “the way powerful institutions and ideas spread geographically and come to have an influence in distant places.” This means that Fordism can
uniquely point to the boundaries of rhetoric’s circulation by diagramming the object of a flow as well as the social conditions “that allow or encourage that flow”
(Tsing, 2000, p337). Certainly by linking globalization and circulation, we can add the angle of penetration, not to mention the critique of “the use of the rhetoric of
circulation as a ruling image for global interconnections” (Tsing, 2000, p337). If we do want to trace Fordism to the globalization of rhetoric and the globalization of
capital, the arresting and releasing sides of circulation fashion a middle-ground that must be negotiated. Movement and the energy required to fulfill that
movement are both irresistible magnets for the apparati of state control and capital expansion, both linked to each other through this brief genealogy of Fordism
through globalization.
Kevin Douglas Kuswa teaches rhetoric at the University of Richmond
Works Cited
Aspin, Les (1974). “Big Oil and the Nixon Campaign.” The Nation, v218 n7, Feb. 16: 207-210.
Barlett and Steele (1974). America: What Went Wrong.
Castells, Manuel (1991). The Information City: Information Technology, Economic Restructuring, and the Urban-Regional Process. Cambridge: Blackwell.
Chomsky, Noam (1993). The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many. Berkeley, California: Odonian Press.
Chomsky, Noam (1983). The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians. Boston: South End Press.
El-Ayouty, Yassin (1974). “Difficult Negotiations Ahead for Palestinians.” Current History, 66. Feb.: 73-78.
“Energy Survey” (July 7, 1973). The Economist. p7.
Flink, James J. (1988). The Automobile Age. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Foucault, Michel (1984). “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.” ed. Rabinow, P. The Foucault Reader. New York: Pantheon Books.
Fromkin, David (1989). A Peace to End All Peace. New York: Avon Books.
Gaonkar, Dilip P. (1990). “Object and Method in Rhetorical Criticism: From Wichelns to Leff and McGee.” Western Journal of Speech Communication, 54.
Summer, pp290-316.
Hall, Edward (1982). The Hidden Dimension. New York: Doubleday Press.
Lewis, Bernard (1966). The Middle East and the West. New York: Harper Torchbooks.
Manoharan, S. (1974). The Oil Crisis: End of an Era. New Delhi, India: S. Chand.
McShane, Clay (1997). The Automobile: A Chronology of Its Antecedents, Development, and Impact. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.
Mikdashi, Zuhayr (1972). The Community of Oil Exporting Countries. Ithaca, New York: Cornell U.P.
Morse, Margaret (1990). “An Ontology of Everyday Distraction: The Freeway, the Mall and Television,” Ed. Patricia Mellancamp, in The Logics of Television.
Bloomington, Indiana: U. Indiana Press.
Moskowitz, Milton (1974). “Are ‘We’ All in the Same Boat?” The Nation, v218 n1, Jan. 5: 14-15.
Peretz, Don (1977). “Middle East Oil and Changing Political Constellations.” in ed. Stone, R. OPEC and the Middle East. New York: Praeger: 21-34.
The Petroleum Economist (January, 1974): 142-144.
Raoof, Abdul (1977). “Ideology and Politics in Iraqi Oil Policy.” in ed. Stone, R. OPEC and the Middle East. New York: Praeger: 211-224.
Shwadran, Benjamin (1974). “Middle East Oil.” Current History, 66. Feb.: 79-82.
Soja, Edward W. (1996). Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
Steinman, Clay & Entman, Robert (1974). “The Sovereign State of Oil.” The Nation, v2118. Jan. 26, pp111-114.
Stone, Russell (1977). “Introduction.” in ed. Stone, R. OPEC and the Middle East. New York: Praeger: xiv-xviii.
Tsing, Anna (2000). “The Global Situation.” Cultural Anthropology 15, 3: pp327-360.
Virilio, Paul (1997a). Open Skies. Trans. Julie Rose, New York: Verso Press.
Virilio, Paul. (1997b). Pure War. New York: Semiotext(e).
Wark, McKenzie (1994). Virtual Geography: Living With Global Media Events. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana U.
Yergin, Daniel (1980). “Overview.” ed. D. Yergin, Harvard International Affairs Symposium 43: The Dependence Dilemma. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, p1-28.
An important moment that becomes more pronounced during the events of 1973 involves the transformation from Fordism to globalization. Because Fordism
remained an industrial arrangement tied to the automobile as the basis for mass production, it reached an end-point (or transitional moment) as the post World
War II military complex and federal control of highway funding combined to capture certain economic and military logics for the state. Certainly a number of
components of Fordism infiltrated other industries and managed to find a niche for themselves alongside the apparatus of the state. The corporate quest for
growing markets and a new manufacturing structure also intensified as labor and the production process became more integrated. Many contradictory motions
pushed corporate entities in diffuse and uncertain directions—a capitalism contingent on political maneuvering, state diplomacy, and a constantly shifting set of
market parameters. The Cold War and its ensuing global chess game for influence also fueled the expansion of the state and the reach of government
institutions, whether those institutions exerted themselves in the name of democracy or communism.
By 1973, corporations are experiencing distinct transformations: they are breaking away from the state by creating new profit structures and diversifying across
borders to take advantage of abundant labor and tax incentives wherever they may be located, and they are incorporating themselves into the state or subordinating
their operations to the regulations and policies imposed by the state. Barlett and Steele lay out both of these transformations in succinct fashion. They talk about
the expansion of the corporate scope by reducing the United States to one of the objects of the large energy conglomerates: “In this period, the United States
became merely another customer of the American multinational oil companies which supply most of the free world’s oil” (Barlett & Steele, 1974, p332). Barlett and
Steele (1974, p333) also talk about the state’s use of the energy crisis to further political aims and attach themselves to business lobbies: “The Administration has
consistently overdramatized the extent of the shortage and helped create much of the panic seen today at the gas pump.” It was ultimately the war and the oil
embargo of 1973 that catapulted both of these capturing motions to the forefront. Once again, the motions of Fordism helped to generate a multi-dimensional
effect.
The oil effects of the highway machine were analogous to the duality of the freedom of driving and the immobility (including mortality) of the car crash. The crash on
the oil front, however, was global and all-encompassing. With vehicles and their passengers, the repetition and seriality of the car crash are its biggest threat—the
inevitability of a certain percentage of accidents occurring on the highway each and every day. With the oil crash, on the other hand, the regularity of price and
supply shocks was not as significant as the sudden rupture in October of 1973. As landmines are to an atomic bomb, so is the car crash to the oil crisis. All four
are crippling and destructive, but landmines and car accidents are insidious and relentless while atomic bombs and large oil shocks are quick and total. The
speed and scope of the energy crisis forced swift responses from the state and corporations. Having captured militarism in the name of nationalism (and atomic
weaponry), the state deployed its military to protect its security. Having captured the state in the name of economic growth, corporate interests capitalized on the
crisis by dodging taxation schemes and passing on higher prices to addicted consumers.
Clay Steinman and Robert Entman add contours to corporate lines of flight that have attached themselves to the flow of oil. Steinman and Entman, political science
scholars, published a short article in the January 26, 1974 edition of The Nation that outlines the oil hegemony of the multinational corporations entitled “The
Sovereign State of Oil.” Referencing the advent of joint ventures throughout the 1960s and 70s, Steinman and Entman (1974, p111) contend that joint ventures
have allowed interlocking directorates, exchanges of information, production planning, “and perhaps a general forum in which a climate of unanimity with respect to
such problems as scarcity, prices, political associations and other pertinent affairs can be developed.” Calling these monolithic oil companies the “energy
conglomerates,” Steinman and Entman (1974, p111), “have awesome power, whether it be the power to create shortages for their own private ends or the power to
alleviate them through their own private efforts.” A certain move foreshadowed and permitted the hegemony of the energy conglomerates: curtailing domestic
refining efforts and aligning themselves with political interests and institutions responsible for energy policy.
The slowing down of domestic refining and the expansion of refining efforts outside the United States contributed to the dominance of the energy conglomerates
as a whole. American companies had already become multinational, allowing shifts to take place in response to U.S. regulations and trade policies. Steinman
and Entman (1974, p112) cite this flexibility as a source of power and resilience for the energy conglomerates: “The crisscross concentration of cooperative power
in the oil industry seems undeniable.” The point here, and the necessity of tracing this articulation of the sovereignty of oil, is that the motion of capture is never uni-
directional. The two poles of public and private (or statist and corporate) constantly work together. The circulation that has arisen through the energy crisis revolves
around the interactions between a regulatory government wielding a military for enforcement and the capital concentration inherent in the large oil companies.
From one angle, that presented by Steinman and Entman (1974, p114), the need for secure energy supplies (to fuel the highway machine, the economy, and the
military in the United States) made Congress a mere foot soldier in the service of the oil companies:
- Thus the independent power that seems to have accrued in America to capital concentration and technological expertise may have rendered independent,
regulatory government a civics-book illusion. Congress holds hearings, but otherwise it seems ineffectual in the energy arena. The Administration is
closely allied with oil interests, and no previous administration could accurately be called anti-oil. Judicial remedies seem unlikely.
This motion encouraged the movement of refining operations outside of the United States to circumvent the embargo. From the opposite angle, political pressures
were responsible for state actions that defied and contained the free reign of the oil companies.
Positioning and posturing between Israel, the United States, the Soviet Union, the Palestinians, and the Arab countries adjacent to Israel put new spins on the
circulation of oil. The Palestinian quest for legitimacy gave the United States the opportunity to both express support for Israel and to broker negotiations between
the two sides. And, by 1974, the United States started to “mobilize all its resources to find alternatives to Middle East oil” (Shwadran, 1974, p81). It took time to
develop viable alternatives, but the United States purchased oil from many sources as well as having access to fairly large domestic wells. The U.S. government
aligned with corporate forces in the energy arena in a more concerted attempt to find new sources of oil as well as encouraging the expansion of coal-based
generation for electricity and providing minor subsidies for energy sources other than fossil fuels (solar, geothermal).
From 1956 to 1973, the highway and Fordism rolled along while the government focused on construction of state-of-the-art roads at the expense of a flexible
energy sector. Even though the energy crisis had been forecast for years (Shwadran, 1974, p81), no directed state action was taken: “The United States
government was perhaps lulled into inaction and false security by the international oil companies and by its own ideological unwillingness to interfere with private
enterprise.” Soon after 1973, Nixon tapped the Highway Trust Fund for mass transit and conservation became a national goal, exemplified by the speed limit
reduction and the removal of daylight savings. The events of 1956 and 1973 are merely guideposts, for the practice of genealogy does not obsess over origins and
conclusions as much as it brings together certain events and arrangements. As Foucault (1984, p81) writes, “Genealogy does not resemble the evolution of a
species and does not map the destiny of a people.”
3. From Fordism to globalization
Henry Ford’s purposes, desires and hopes relied on a new industrialized city that would bring workers to the factories and prime the economy for individual
ownership of automobiles. In 1908, the Model T had to cater to the demands of a rural population, but Ford secretly “looked forward to the demise of the family
farm” (Flink, 1988, p114) and the fundamental principles of Fordism depended on a steady demand from the largest sector of the American population: the lower
and middle classes in urban areas. An ever-expanding assembly-line that emphasized uniformity and affordable production needed a broad-based market of
consumers with disposable income. In many ways, the circle completes itself as it struggles through energy supply to land back in the US, but with global
tendencies—an ever-expanding structure of Empire. The year 1973 marked the first major oil shock, the completion of over 80 percent of the Interstate (and the
initiation of 16 percent more, leaving only a few hundred miles to be completed in the 1980s and 90s), the imposition of a 55-mph speed limit across the nation’s
expressways, and the first diversion of funds from the Highway Trust Fund into intra-urban transit by Richard Nixon on August 13th (Flink, 1988, p372).
Nevertheless, Fordist market expansion carried with it new and intricate connections to the state: “Unlimited accommodation to mass personal automobility ended
as government came to recognize automotive safety, pollution, and energy consumption as major social problems and consequently to regulate the automobile
industry and to invest in mass transit” Flink (1988, p408).
U.S. dependence on oil combined with U.S. aid to Israel in the Yom Kippur War to encourage many of the Persian Gulf states to restrict and even prohibit the flow of
oil to the U.S. (McShane, 1997, p136). The 1970s and 80s balanced concerns over energy security and automobile safety with new machinic arrangements
stretching into the 90s and beyond. Oil and gas became crucial commodities to the stability of global capitalism, fed by both the demand for more and more fossil
fuels in the U.S. and the willingness of the American military machine to defend the corridors and pipelines of the market’s precious “black gold.” The key
transformation from Fordism to globalization is global production and consumption.
In addition to connecting the transportation sector in the United States to the inelasticity of the global oil market, Yergin also attaches the security of the U.S. and its
foreign policy as a whole to over-dependence on imported oil. Once more we borrow from Yergin (1980, p15) and an argument enmeshed in the knowledge
formation between energy security and international relations:
- The United States finds itself increasingly challenged in the world today. Its foreign policy is constrained, its influence and security position eroding, its
economy vulnerable, its alliance relations under pressure. Among the important reasons--perhaps even the most important--is the over-dependence on
insecure imported oil. The reverberations of this over-dependence are directly felt in American foreign policy and throughout the economic and political
system. Thus, there is a fundamental relation between America’s problems in the world, and how 140 million vehicles are used on the nation’s roads and
highways.
The turn that occurs here, and one that penetrates the subjects, places, and motions of the highway during this period, is conservation. Cars become smaller and
more fuel efficient as alternative modes of transportation become more attractive. From Yergin’s quotation and the explicit link between the operation of cars in the
United States and a global regime of security designed to protect the flow of oil, the issue of globalization attaches itself to circulation. The circulation of energy
resources, particularly the global nature of the oil market, resulted in an association between capitalism and the modernization of a global economy. It is important
to note that we have two notions of globalization at work here: the globalization of rhetoric and the globalization of capital and state-protected markets. Although not
intended by either use of the term, the two relate to one another in some interesting ways.
One sense of globalization refers to the expansion of rhetoric’s scope or object of analysis to a global or universal level. Appearing as the counterpart to the trap of
representation where rhetoric is limited to a descriptive or peripheral role in relation to a pre-conceived ideology, reality, or similar non-rhetorical structure;
globalization marks rhetoric as all-encompassing and beyond explanatory or analytical value. Positioned opposite to the quandary of representation and the
dependence of rhetoric on that which it represents, the globalization of rhetoric gives such range to itself that it cannot account for its outside or the elements that
might be external to a regime of signs. In other words, the globalization turn accounts for the circulation of rhetoric in such a way that it becomes difficult to talk
about elements that may produce specific manifestations of rhetoric or the effects of a given instance of rhetoric without simultaneously theorizing those elements
and those effects as themselves examples of rhetoric. Because rhetoric explains circulation and everything is circulating, it is argued, the analytical grip of rhetoric
can assert itself regardless of the uniqueness of the machine or the object in question.
Gaonkar talks about the globalization of rhetoric in terms of the slow dissolution of the object of rhetorical criticism. This occurs when all objects are distanced
from the act of criticism in the same way, making the object peripheral to the process of interpretation and devaluing the distinct “performative dimensions” that
circulate in tandem with the “materiality or everydayness of practical discourse” (Gaonkar, 1990, p308). Despite various attempts to recover or rescue the object by
returning to a “close” or “disciplined” reading of a given text, the tendency toward globalization in rhetoric has been sweeping. Few theorists take on expansive
objects, and even fewer theories will chart the specific ways that an object, machine, or even text moves in rhetorical and non-rhetorical ways. For Gaonkar (1990,
p308), the danger of such globalization is that the object will disintegrate into fragments, leaving only the hegemonic practices of interpretation: “The dissolution
continues…as the object is globalized into a message fragment.”
In addition, the effects and residual products of the machine circulate through its regime of signs, but may not always manifest as subjectivities and may not be
rooted exclusively in discursive formations. A preference for specificity, once again, draws attention to the role of circulation in the debate over rhetoric’s
globalization. To avoid the use of circulation as a mechanism for the globalization of rhetoric, the movement of a given regime of signs should be mapped as
circulating as well as penetrating. Penetration expresses that motion is not always freely circulating and that the unwanted extension of markets may be distinct
from an organic model of a circulatory system. The channeling of capitalism may be relatively smooth and organic, yet its effects are wounding and insidiously
penetrating: “A focus on circulation shows us the movement of people, things, ideas, or institutions, but it does not show us how this movement depends on
defining tracks and grounds or scales and units of agency” (Tsing, 2000, p337). The notion of exchange, central to communication as well as capitalism, links the
process of circulation to the condition of globalization. Tempering both circulation and globalization (and offering a solution to the globalization of rhetoric’s domain
of objects) must be the association of constraint and limitation with circulation as well as the association of segregation and corporate oppression with
globalization.
Arguing that the term comes to mean many things, Tsing (2000, p331) states: “globalization came to mean an endorsement of international free trade and the
outlawing of protected or public domestic economies.” As a conduit for globalization, then, Fordism expanded through the promise of unrestricted mobility and free
access, paving over local “highway markets” and toll-ways in favor of a national (global) machine. Anna Tsing talks about globalization in terms of planetary
interconnections, linkages that can further exploitation and inequality as well as linkages that can open up possibilities of globalist wishes and fantasies. For
Tsing (2000, p331), the process of invoking the global turn “is to call attention to the speed and density of interconnections among people and places.” For
example, it is important to note how people and places were shaped and influenced by the aftermath of Fordism as a manufacturing process that united with a
specific form of social organization programmed by the state and the state’s military needs. It is also crucial to mark the flow of energy resources as a corollary to
the flow of goods and services led by American consumers and the highway machine—a process in place across the world by the end of the 1970s.
Circulation itself must share the stage with temporality and spatiality. McKenzie Wark helps to tie together the motions of globalization by defining our terrain as
the “place where we sleep, work, or hang-out” (1994, p1). Similar to Morse’s (1990) idea of distraction and “distractedness” as an ontology for everyday life, Wark
traces various forms of circulation in the directed movement of people, places, ideas, institutions, and forces. The drive-ins, quickie marts, truck-stops, and other
roadside hang-outs are only one plane of the terrain. Those places are now being forced to share terrain with the flow and timing of images:
- We live every day in another terrain, equally familiar: the terrain created by the television, the telephone, the telecommunications networks crisscrossing the
globe...This virtual geography is no more or less ‘real.” It is a different kind of perception, of things not bounded by rules of proximity, of “being there.” (Wark,
1994, p1)
First, the separation is only partial, for any light of flight (site of virtual experience) must be grounded or located. Second, the virtual is limited by access and the
restriction of particular flows (energy, transport, etc.). As with Fordism and the highway machine, the motion of freely circulating people or products is always
mediating by competing motions of state security and economic exchange.
Providing a transition, the motion of circulation creates interconnections and “interconnection is everything in the new globalisms” (Tsing, 2000, p336). Rhetoric
assists in the meeting points on either end of circulation, in both coercive and liberating ways. Thus, we can map the ways that globalization itself enters modes of
circulation. The motions of globalization, for Tsing (2000, p336), are rhetorical because “global rhetoric” relies on circulation in the same way capitalism relies on
penetration: “the way powerful institutions and ideas spread geographically and come to have an influence in distant places.” This means that Fordism can
uniquely point to the boundaries of rhetoric’s circulation by diagramming the object of a flow as well as the social conditions “that allow or encourage that flow”
(Tsing, 2000, p337). Certainly by linking globalization and circulation, we can add the angle of penetration, not to mention the critique of “the use of the rhetoric of
circulation as a ruling image for global interconnections” (Tsing, 2000, p337). If we do want to trace Fordism to the globalization of rhetoric and the globalization of
capital, the arresting and releasing sides of circulation fashion a middle-ground that must be negotiated. Movement and the energy required to fulfill that
movement are both irresistible magnets for the apparati of state control and capital expansion, both linked to each other through this brief genealogy of Fordism
through globalization.
Kevin Douglas Kuswa teaches rhetoric at the University of Richmond
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| "Dramatic fluctuations in the oil market translated into dramatic upheavals and conflict between states and cultures." |
| "...capitalism may be relatively smooth and organic, yet its effects are wounding and insidiously penetrating." |
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