Workers Pay the Price as Oil War Enriches Finance Capital

Analysis of: Oil price tops $100 a barrel as US prepares strait of Hormuz blockade; Goldman Sachs posts rise in profits – business live
The Guardian | April 13, 2026

TL;DR

US naval blockade of Iran drives oil past $100/barrel, triggering a cost-of-living crisis that hits working families hardest while Goldman Sachs posts record profits. War serves capital's interests—workers pay at the pump and in their energy bills.

Analytical Focus:Class Analysis Material Conditions Contradictions

The US naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz crystallizes a fundamental dynamic of contemporary capitalism: geopolitical conflict serves the interests of finance capital while imposing material costs on working-class households. As Brent crude surges above $100 per barrel and North Sea Forties reaches a record $148.87, the class distribution of consequences becomes starkly visible. Goldman Sachs reports a 19% rise in quarterly profits to $5.63 billion, explicitly crediting 'heightened volatility' for increased client activity—in other words, profiting directly from the crisis affecting ordinary people. The material reality for British workers stands in sharp contrast: the Resolution Foundation calculates that the typical household will lose £480 in real income this year, with petrol prices rising for 43 consecutive days and energy bills projected to increase significantly. The class character of this crisis is revealed in the asymmetry of state responses: Germany announces temporary fuel tax relief, the UK Chancellor promises business support packages, but the TSSA union's call for free public transport—which would directly benefit workers—is treated as politically impractical. Former Chancellor Jeremy Hunt explicitly frames fiscal constraints as preventing meaningful household support, naturalizing austerity as inevitable. The contradiction between social production and private appropriation manifests clearly: oil extraction, refining, and distribution depend on thousands of workers (including the 20,000 seafarers trapped in the Gulf), yet the profits flow to shareholders while risks are socialized onto households. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon speaks of 'disciplined risk management' while workers face rising mortgage rates, higher food costs, and diminished living standards. The ideological framing throughout the coverage presents market reactions and investor sentiment as the primary concern, while worker impacts appear as secondary consequences rather than the central story.

Class Dynamics

Actors: Finance capital (Goldman Sachs, investment banks), Oil majors (BP, Shell), Working-class households, Transport workers and unions (TSSA), Seafarers trapped in Gulf, State actors (UK Treasury, German government), Central banks

Beneficiaries: Investment banks profiting from volatility, Oil and gas companies (BP, Shell shares rising), Energy traders and commodity speculators, Wealthy investors able to hedge positions

Harmed Parties: Working-class households facing £480 income loss, Lower-income households dependent on energy assistance, Seafarers trapped for six weeks in dangerous conditions, Small businesses facing energy cost increases, Airline workers facing industry uncertainty

The article reveals a stark power asymmetry where financial institutions and energy corporations benefit from crisis conditions while having state access to shape policy responses. Goldman Sachs' CEO speaks directly about 'geopolitical complexity' as a business opportunity, while unions must publicly beg for consideration of worker needs. State responses prioritize market stability and business competitiveness over household welfare, with Hunt's framing of fiscal constraints naturalizing the impossibility of robust worker support.

Material Conditions

Economic Factors: Oil price volatility ($95-$150/barrel range), Wholesale gas price increases (from 80p to 119.50p/therm), Rising mortgage rates (5.89% average), Inflation pressure on wages and benefits, Investment banking profit from market volatility, Currency fluctuations (dollar strengthening)

The oil commodity chain reveals classic capitalist extraction: workers at every stage—from Gulf seafarers to refinery workers to petrol station attendants—perform essential labor while surplus value flows to shareholders. The 20,000 seafarers trapped in dangerous conditions embody the expendability of labor under capital. Goldman Sachs' profits derive from facilitating capital flows and hedging activities rather than productive labor, exemplifying financialization's dominance. The threat to close Hormuz demonstrates how control over circulation chokepoints—not just production—constitutes strategic capitalist power.

Resources at Stake: Global oil supply routes (21% of world oil transits Hormuz), Iranian oil exports (approximately 2 million barrels/day), European energy security, Household disposable income, Government fiscal capacity, Central bank policy independence

Historical Context

Precedents: 1973 OPEC oil embargo and stagflation crisis, 1979 Iranian Revolution oil shock, 2008 commodity price spike preceding financial crisis, 2022 energy crisis following Russia-Ukraine conflict, Historical pattern of Gulf conflicts driving energy volatility

This crisis follows the historical pattern of imperial competition over energy resources generating costs socialized onto working populations while profits remain privatized. The comparison to Hunt's 2022 energy cap intervention—itself an exceptional state intervention to prevent social crisis—reveals how each successive shock further constrains state capacity for future responses. The article notes debt servicing now costs £110 billion annually, representing accumulated historical constraints on state action. This represents late-stage neoliberalism's contradictions: states have ceded fiscal capacity through decades of tax cuts and privatization, now lacking tools to cushion workers from crises their policies enabled.

Contradictions

Primary: The fundamental contradiction between social production and private appropriation: energy is a social necessity produced through collective labor, yet its pricing and distribution serve private profit, meaning crises that enrich capital simultaneously immiserate workers who depend on energy for survival.

Secondary: The contradiction between US imperial interests and Chinese energy security creates instability that harms all workers, The contradiction between state fiscal constraints (created by prior neoliberal policy) and the need for crisis intervention, The contradiction between 'free market' ideology and massive state military intervention to control energy flows, The contradiction between climate imperatives and fossil fuel dependency being reinforced by crisis

Short-term, the blockade functions as leverage for US-Iran negotiations, likely producing a temporary settlement that stabilizes prices while leaving structural vulnerabilities intact. The deeper contradiction—energy as privatized commodity versus social necessity—intensifies pressure for public alternatives. The TSSA's call for free public transport, while dismissed as impractical, points toward the kind of decommodified response that crises eventually force into consideration. Union demands for cost-of-living taskforces represent embryonic class-conscious responses that could develop further if material conditions continue deteriorating.

Global Interconnections

The Hormuz blockade illuminates how contemporary imperialism operates through control of circulation rather than direct territorial occupation. The US aims to pressure China—Iran's largest oil customer—demonstrating how energy markets function as instruments of great-power competition, with workers in all countries bearing costs of inter-imperial rivalry. The article notes China 'apparently played an important part in pressuring Iran to negotiations,' revealing how economic interdependence creates complex leverage relationships that transcend simple bilateral conflicts. This crisis also exposes the fragility of globalized production under financialized capitalism. The immediate impact on airline stocks, mortgage rates, and food prices demonstrates how tightly integrated circuits of capital transmit shocks across sectors and borders. OPEC's forecast that demand weakness will be 'compensated for' later assumes systemic stability that the underlying geopolitical tensions contradict. The 20,000 trapped seafarers embody the human cost of just-in-time global logistics—workers positioned at chokepoints bearing physical risk while capital flows around them.

Conclusion

This crisis reveals capitalism's structural tendency to socialize costs while privatizing gains. As finance capital celebrates volatility-driven profits and energy majors see share prices rise, workers face a direct assault on living standards with limited state protection. The ideological work of the coverage—centering investor sentiment while marginalizing worker impacts—naturalizes this distribution as inevitable rather than political. Yet the contradictions are generative: the TSSA's demand for free public transport, the Resolution Foundation's call for social tariffs, and workers' growing awareness of crisis-profiteering create openings for class-conscious politics. The key task is connecting immediate material grievances (fuel prices, energy bills) to systemic critique of an economic order that produces these crises while enriching those who caused them.

Suggested Reading

• Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism by V.I. Lenin (1917) Lenin's analysis of how finance capital merges with industrial capital and drives inter-imperial competition for resource control directly illuminates the US-China-Iran dynamics and the strategic importance of energy chokepoints.
• The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein (2007) Klein's examination of how crises are exploited to advance capital's interests while imposing costs on workers provides a contemporary framework for understanding the crisis-profiteering dynamic visible in Goldman Sachs' results.
• Wage Labour and Capital by Karl Marx (1849) Marx's foundational explanation of how workers' living standards are determined by commodity prices and wages illuminates why energy price shocks directly translate into working-class immiseration.