Without doubt, the use-value of a barrel of oil has not fallen from over $100 to negative value. What in fact happened? The use-value met artificial limits in the form of price-fixing in the automobile industry. The auto-giants can afford to make $1000 or $2000 safe gas-powered vehicles for the entire world, perhaps based on the Nano. Yet already, electric cars have surpassed gas powered cars in cost-efficiency. This has to do with the strangle-hold on transportation that the monopoly capitalists use to drain the workers of their paychecks. The post-war bargain between the labor unions and the corporations, banks, and the military provided stability while Capitalism recovered from the Great Depression and World Wars. As a Third World War approaches this deal cannot stand, and the capitalists must wage a ruthless war on the purchasing power of the workers in order to free up profits for accumulation and the endless expansion of war.

The negative price of oil exemplifies the hyper-deflation of all assets stemming from the overproduction of the dollar. What prevents the dollar from losing value against other currencies is the threat of war along with the overproduction of other currencies, in Europe allowing the mutual robbery of each other member-country’s treasury and in China creating an autocratic and opaque system of bad loans. In other countries, favorable military agreements allow an uninterrupted printing of money to maintain the political power of corrupt stooges. The varied means of providing economic justice under Capitalism now appear as hollow as the prices. Only a determined effort to break the chains of bourgeois ideology will provide for a revolutionary restructuring of the economy to meet the needs of the people while stabilizing production and growth on a sustainable and internationally equitable path.