Supply Chain Wars
From helium, to aluminium, to naphtha... A non-exhaustive list of the critical supply chains being disrupted by the Iran war
Earlier this week, I was reading the FT when I saw a piece about the impact of the Iran war on helium production. That sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole researching the manufacturing processes that use helium – from semiconductors to MRI machines.
I love learning about unusual inputs that go into producing the things we rely on every day, and how these inputs are produced and transported around the world. It really helps you get a sense of how intricate and globalised capitalist production has become – and how shockingly easy it is to throw sand in the wheels of this delicately balanced machine.
Learning about vulnerabilities in capital’s supply chains is obviously of use to socialists. Labour movement organisers have long sought to identify such bottlenecks, as doing so allows them to use scarce resources to more effectively disrupt production. Just think about the dock workers who refused to load shipments headed for Israel in protest over the genocide.
But studying these chains of production also helps you to learn about how inherently fragile global capitalism has become. We’ve seen this fragility exposed at least twice in the last five years, with the wars in Iran and Ukraine.
These wars were not random events – they were produced by a fossil capitalism. As climate breakdown continues, and fossil capital reacts, wars like these will become more common. The election of more reckless right-wing populists by voters sick of an establishment promising them nothing but stagnation and decline will only make matters worse. The wars causing this fragile system to break down are – in other words – very much a part of that system itself.
We’ve chanced uponn one of those fascinating ‘contradictions’ in capitalist production that Marx wrote so much about. Globalised fossil capitalism is a delicate system - and it is constantly creating shocks that throw that delicate system off balance.
This week, I’ve decided to go even further down the rabbit hole by looking into the most important – and less discussed – supply chains that this war is disrupting. It took a pretty long time, so that part is for paid subscribers only (remember, I offer solidarity discounts for those who can’t afford the full sub). If you haven’t already, make sure to check out my free piece from earlier this week on the importance of helium to global chip production – and why the Iran war might burst the AI bubble.
