This proposal to nationalize the fossil fuel companies is another case of something we have noted repeatedly: making a proposal that implies a much deeper and/or revolutionary transformation. I can’t be sure here but I find it very unlikely that the US government could bring itself to say ‘Boo!’ to the oil mafia but assuming that it is in theory possible it still wouldn’t solve the problem which is capitalism itself. The planetary economic system dominated by capitalism is the final culprit here and we need to nationalize the whole shebang, in the ‘nation’ viz US and internationally in a new International.
Short of full-scale transformation nationalizing the fossil fuel companies will hardly solve the problem and the US government in the midst of a general capitalist economy would inexorably compromise its ‘solution’.
We will discuss this in another post, but note that, even as we support this idea, that it is still another case of proposing something that is not going to happen without a revolutionary transform…
1848+: The End(s) of History 