THE RESOURCES OF ECONOMICS

Abstract

The 1973–1974 oil crisis has been called a textbook case of the law of supply and demand. This article examines the work that had to be done to make such a description viable. The work included bringing together a series of conflicts into a single field of political concern known as the ‘energy crisis’. It also included forms of confrontation and acts of sabotage in the Middle East that made it possible to transform the networks that transported oil supplies into a political instrument. This instrument served a dual purpose: redirecting the flow of profits from oil, and attempting to the settle the Palestine question. Parties to the crisis used market devices in an attempt to frame its causes and possible solutions.

However, the events of 1973–1974 exceeded the attempts to contain them as a matter of market forces. The question of supply opened up new fields of doubt about the possible limits to reserves of oil; the increasing difficulty of forecasting future demand and prices opened up new ways of mapping the future; and the inability to prevent catastrophic oil spills helped trigger the emergence of new matters of concern, in particular the preservation of the environment. Yet the events of 1973–1974 also triggered the unraveling of Keynesian economics, attacked by market technologies developed from the mid-1970s.

Keywords:

• oil
• energy crisis
• environment
• economics