The contradiction of space: Oil, imperialism and the accumulation of capital

This essay examines the relations between the production of oil and gas, the global expansion of capital and the territorial control and division of geographical space. The main argument is that the historical expansion of capital, and the subsequent inter-capitalist competition, has produced and has come to depend on a geographical contradiction between an open and integrated world economy and its division into exclusive economic territories. This contradiction is the result of the contradiction between the conditions for accumulation for individual (national) capitals and the conditions for accumulation for capital as a whole. The objective natural conditions of accumulation are of specific importance, and they gain more importance as capital accumulation comes to rely on more intensive and expansive exploitation of natural resources---specifically crucial resources such as oil and gas. The development of productivity and the concentration of capital cause the rates of profit to decline; the exploitation of natural resources at an increasing scale results from the increase in the mass of raw material required to counter the tendency of the rate of profit ton fall and to resume the accumulation of capital at an expanded scale. This is common to all branches of industry, including the extractive industry---the competition for natural resources is ultimately determined by the competition for increasing, or at least maintaining, the profitability of competing capitals.; The contemporary competition among US, Japanese, Indian, Chinese and Western European transnational oil and gas companies for investment in the oil and gas industry of Russia and Iran is examined against the ongoing competition among the US, Russia, China and India for the geopolitical control of the former Soviet republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus. This process is a development of the inter-imperialist competition that began in the late nineteenth century and which resumed in full force since the 1980s after being concealed for a while under the illusions of the Cold War. Certainly, oil and gas play an important part in this competition---particularly as domains for foreign capital investment---but the competition in Central Asia is irreducible to "geopolitics of oil".; Indeed, geopolitical competition itself in this context is part of a broader geoeconomic globalization---one means in the struggle among rivals for stronger positions in the world economy. This renewed inter-imperialist rivalry, not unlike its nineteenth century precursor that lasted until the Second World War, is essentially competition among capitals at different stages of development, only that the objects of the inter-imperialist struggles of past have become active participants in the competition. In Asia, the development of China, India and Southeast Asia as major global economic competitors has only made the competition more global and more intense. Access to oil and gas resources is crucial for determining the course and outcome of the competition among developed and developing economies---this essay is an attempt at determining why should that be the case.