No Blood For Oil!

“In this meticulous Marxist analysis of the role of energy within the class struggle, George Caffentzis' deployment of both the labor theory of value and detailed historical analysis provides us with vital, indeed, indispensable new insights. A follow-up to Midnight Notes Midnight Oil: Work, Energy, War, 1973-1992, this new set of essays, written over the last two decades, builds on the analysis contained in that earlier volume. The essays deepen and widen our understanding of the connections between capital's efforts to use both our own and natural sources of energy against us and our struggles to refuse both forms of exploitation. Some of these essays dive deep into Marx's theory, highlighting what remains essential, while not hesitating to point to lacunae. In the process, he takes up recent debates about the adaptation of old categories to new phenomena, such as the meanings and importance of commons in this period. Others analyze the forces driving key players in the class war swirling throughout the world, from wars in energy-exporting areas to battles within energy-importing ones, and from traditional hydrocarbon terrains of struggle to contemporary conflicts over the roles of alternative energy development. Both his theoretical contributions and his perceptive historical insights provide much needed weapons for our efforts to see beneath and overcome the illusions cloaking neoliberal strategies of austerity and war. The book is essential reading for all those engaged in the struggle against neoliberalism and for humanity.” — Harry Cleaver, author of Reading Capital Politically

“The papers in this collection are weapons we use to deconstruct the politics of war and oil, to uncover the multilayered class meaning of contemporary energy policy, and are the treasure that gives us a different sense of alternatives. Caffentzis’ critical understanding dissolves the fatalism of peak-oil arguments and posits our struggles to reclaim the commons as the real limit of capitalist use of energy.” — Massimo de Angelis, author of The Beginning of History