Crude Capitalism: Oil, Corporate Power, and the Making of the World Market

This expansive history traces the hidden connections between oil and capitalism from the late 1800s to the current climate crisis. Beyond simplistic narratives that frame oil as 'prize' or 'curse', Crude Capitalism uncovers the surprising ways that oil is woven into the fabric of our modern world: the rise of an American-centered global order; the breakdown of Empire and anti-colonial rebellion; contemporary finance and US dollar hegemony; debt and militarism; and the emergence of new forms of synthetic consumption. Much more than an energy source or transport fuel, oil has a foundational place in all aspects of contemporary life - no challenge to the fossil fuel industry can be effective without taking this fact seriously. Crude Capitalism maps the varied geographies of oil, including the rise of OPEC, the importance of revolutionary and Post-Soviet Russia, the crucial role of African upstream reserves, and the new petrochemical circuits that link the Middle East, China, and East Asia. The book provides an original and fine-grained empirical analysis of corporate ownership and control, including refining and petrochemicals. By exposing these structures of power and placing oil in capitalism, the book makes an essential contribution to debates around oil-dependency and the struggle for climate justice.

About the Author :
Adam Hanieh is Professor of Political Economy and Global Development at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies (IAIS), University of Exeter, and Research Fellow at the Transnational Institute (TNI). His most recent book, Money, Markets, and Monarchies: The Gulf Cooperation Council and the Political Economy of the Contemporary Middle East (Cambridge University Press, 2018) was awarded the 2019 British International Studies Association International Political Economy Group Book Prize.

Review :
The world's leading scholar of oil gives us a majestic account of how it became our daily bread. Read and run for your life. "The trail of the serpent reaches into all the practices of man," said Ralph Waldo Emerson, of chattel slavery, and "requires a certain shutting of the eyes." So too today does oil. It's everywhere and that's why everything feels greasy. Adam Hanieh's excellent Crude Capitalism forces us to unshut our eyes, to see the way fossil fuels penetrate all aspects of modern society, both concrete and abstract. An important book. Adam Hanieh is essential reading for anyone hoping to understand the role of oil in the global economy. In Crude Capitalism, he has provided a field guide for navigating the difficult terrain in which we now find ourselves: situated between an accelerating climate crisis and an economy structured around fossil fuels. His insightful dissection of the often invisible ubiquity of fossil fuels in our lives - reaching far beyond energy into the food we eat, the clothes we wear and the medicines we prescribe - is integral to understanding not only why we remain so stuck in our fossil-addicted present, but critically how we might move beyond it. Wait no longer. At last, we have a critical history of petro-power that brilliantly links commodities, capital, and climate change. Crude Capitalism is a truly stunning book, tracking the history of oil through war, imperial rivalry, global finance, and world ecology. The result is an utterly compelling work, one we urgently need both to understand the world-and to change it. Adam Hanieh's analysis of Crude Capitalism, written in the tradition of Andreas Malm's now classic work Fossil Capital, provides a powerful historical account of how the world oil economy is inextricably connected both to contemporary capitalism and to the current climate crisis. Following the penetration of fossil fuels into every part of the modern capitalist mechanism, Hanieh demonstrates definitively that there are no partial solutions to the planetary emergency, only ecosocialist ones. A rewarding reconsideration of oil's ascendance on the world stage. An essential contribution to debates around oil dependency and the struggle for climate justice. Excellent ... an invaluable read in the growing area of radical oil studies Crude Capitalism tackles its big, difficult themes with precision and attention to detail. It is beautifully presented and organised. Fascinating ... a masterful historical examination of oil's foundational importance to the restructuring of international financial and monetary systems at a time of acute crisis at the commanding heights of the globalizing capitalist market economy. A fascinating and enormously useful examination of the role oil has played in the development of global capitalism ... [Crude Capitalism] should be widely read, seriously studied and taken into the struggle for climate justice. An excellent book for understanding the fundamental causal connections between our economic system and the destruction of our environment wrought by the rise of oil. Importantly, Hanieh's book isn't limited to studying oil as a liquid fuel, but "what oil becomes as it circulates within capitalism" as a transport fuel, energy source and as petrochemicals, as well as its connections to food, financial systems and its centrality to the US dollar as the dominant global currency. A must read ... Crude Capitalism is withering in its critique of the oil industry's corporate greenwashing. Crude Capitalism provides an indispensable context for analyzing the world capitalist system and oil's peculiar role in producing and maintaining its geopolitical structure-thus challenging many of the truisms and shorthand assumptions of the global left. A compelling explanation of how this world of too much oil came to be ... Hanieh's book ... offer[s] valuable methodological provocations and tools to progressive lawyers. [A] densely packed yet highly readable history of our interaction with oil at every step from its extraction to its consumption. Highly interesting and informative..Hanieh has marshaled his considerable expertise to provide this summary and succeeds marvelously in giving us the historical background to why the oil industry has such a deadly grip on today's world and a clear-headed analysis in what that grip means for us and our descendants.