Marx tells us that our class position should dictate how we see the world. This is certainly true for the bourgeoisie – they never fail to recognize what will best further their class interests. Unfortunately this isn’t always true of the working class which, infected with false consciousness, often ends up, contrary to its own class interests, in the camp of its enemies.

Here is an example. According to The New York Times of October 31, 2004, New York State has 'one of the worst cases of drinking water pollution in the nation.' This is because a gasoline additive called M.T.B.E. (methyl tertiary butyl ether) was in the gasoline supply starting about 12 years ago. It was supposed to cut down on air pollution. But after six years it was discovered that M.T.B.E. causes cancer and that it had gotten into the water supply. The Times says there are over 13,000 spills. The spills are primarily from trucks and gas storage facilities. Your local gas station has big tanks under it full of gasoline waiting to be pumped into your car. But these tanks leak and so the M.T.B.E. gets into the ground and from there to the water table, and then into you.

Besides New York, 27 other states have this problem, and it would cost around $100 billion to clean all this mess up. Who should pay? The working people or the oil companies? The working people will pay if the government cleans up using tax revenues as most of the taxes are paid by working people.

In 2003 the Bushoids backed a bill in Congress that 'would have protected the oil companies from having to pay for the clean up.' This sounds like par for the course. Tom Delay’s office (he is the Bushoid majority leader in the House) claims its not the oil companies fault. They put the M.T.B.E. in the gasoline because it was Congress that passed a law requiring them to use additives that cut down on air pollution. Delay’s district just happens to have a lot of big M.T.B.E. manufactures in it. (The bill hasn’t been passed).

So are the Republicans right? Were the oil companies innocently trying to do their civic duty under the law? Were they simply obeying Congress as Rep. Delay’s office says? 'Those who produced it [M.T.B.E.] were fulfilling this mandate and therefore they deserve protection.' It is reassuring to know that, at least, if corporations (if not citizens) need protection the Congress is there to provide it. But the truth, as is usual with the Bushoids, may be quite different.

'There are reams of documents,' the Times quotes Paul J. Granger of the Plainview, N.Y. water system (who is suing Exxon-Mobile) as saying, 'indicating that oil companies knew of the dangers of M.T.B.E., but these companies opted to use M.T.B.E. because it was the cheapest.' That sounds right. So Congress wants us to add something to our gasoline to cut down on pollution. Well, lets just put in the cheapest stuff we can find regardless of the threat to the environment and people’s lives. Don’t mess with our bottom line. Anyway, if it doesn’t work out Congress will protect us.

Meanwhile, the New York state Bushoids have also been part of the problem. After finding out, six years ago, that M.T.B.E. fouls the water table and causes cancer, they finally got around to banning it – in 2003! Five additional years of this serious pollution, thank you.

And the state clean up crews don’t really clean up. They closed the cases on 6000 sites they 'cleaned up' (the oil companies must love this) – by just doing some superficial contaminant removal, but which actually left the pollution in the soil and still heading down to the water table.

None of these Republican politicians, on the national or the local level, could get elected without some working people voting for them. Why should working people vote for politicians who use their power to protect the big oil polluters and to actually damage the interests, health and lives of the very people who put them in office? They shouldn’t!

I’m writing this on the eve of the Presidential election, and I hope the current gang of war criminals and election stealers will be kicked out of office. But in any case, we will have to redouble our efforts, especially in circulating both the PWW and PA to get our ideas across to working people in this country. As long as the mass media and mainstream politicians lie, miseducate and misinform the people the problem of false consciousness will remain.



--Thomas Riggins is book review editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.



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