The growing strength of an industrial labour movement and the pressure it was able to exert eventually played a crucial role in the emergence of the political project of the Keynesian welfare state and the different forms of anti-colonial state developmentalism in the postcolonial world. However, the class compromise of the post-war settlement also succeeded in preventing a further radicalization of labour movements. Again, the technical infrastructure built around energy played an important role. The shift from coal to oil, introduced in Europe through the Marshall plan, not only radically altered the structuring dynamics of industrial capitalism, it also negatively affected the power of organized labour. The production and transport of oil was much less labour intensive. Pumping up oil required workers to stay above ground, which meant they were easier to supervise. The expertise of the coalminer in exploiting energy resources shifted to the technical knowledge of geologists and engineers. Additionally, the invention of the pipeline reduced the ability of workers to interrupt the flow of energy. Furthermore, the invention of the oil tanker and large-scale container ships contributed to the restriction of unionized power. The oil tanker facilitated control over energy supply and made it more flexible. If a strike broke out in one place, an oil tanker could immediately change its course and supply itself somewhere else. Standard “containerisation” allowed rail, road, and over sea to transport goods without being too dependent upon human labour to unload, stack, and reload. A convenient form of economic rationalization as shipping and docking stations were among the most important sites for labour unrest. But the container did more than just limit the power of dockworkers. It contributed to the transformation of capitalist organization in fundamental ways: “Combined with the cheap oil of the 1960s, it made possible the moving of manufacturing overseas.”[2] Industrial production could now be outsourced more easily to low-wage countries.
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