For two centuries, the western world has been dominated by the nation state, a concept which unites, under the banner of lawful, representative government, all of a country's peoples and faiths, traditions and institutions. While the nation state is prone to fostering dangerous skeins of nationalism in those it harbors, this downside is more than compensated by the extent to which it gathers up the disparate and forges of their factiousness a common cultural identity that is moored by the rule of law and equality for all.
Recently, however, the nation state has come under increasing strain. For the British Empire showed us all the power of the economy, that everpresent engine of innovation that advances our world while keeping our people employed. As the nations of the world have progressively given themselves over to this pursuit of profit, the companies nourished by this capitalist climate, have grown more powerful. Many have even shaken off their nationalist chains to become global entities which answer to no government and heed but one god; money. For good or ill, they are here to stay, bound to only grow in power in the years ahead. Exxonmobil is foremost among these international entities and this is Mr. Coll's vivid history of its life.
One of the many offspring of the 1911 dismantling of Standard Oil, Exxon has honored its Rockefellerian roots by becoming one of the 21st century's most profitable corporations. Infused by a potent strain of American Protestantism, it has deployed a mixture of ruthlessness and prudence to navigate some impossibly bleak nights on the way to prominence. The worst and most scarring of these calamities came in 1989 with the disastrous sinking of the Exxon Valdez. No matter how grim the circumstance, however, Exxon has endured, learning from its mistakes and writing its subsequent reforms into its very DNA in hopes of ensuring that, come the dawn, it will sail into clear skies and profitable seas. In light of the fact that Exxon's annual profits often exceed the GDP of entire countries, its capacity to find daylight cannot be questioned.
But just how has Exxon been so successful? Mr. Coll, an award-winning journalist, dives into the company's corporate culture, surfacing with a treasure trove of clues that lead back to the fateful 1989 spill which was nearly the company's ruin. In the disaster's aftermath, Exxon was a discredited institution, a humbled giant whose employees were the butt of late-night jokes and whose practices were the target of environmentalist scorn. In the years since, Exxon has been one of the world's most profitable companies with a sterling safety record, a propensity for avoiding some of the world's worst conflict zones, and record profits which gave it more than enough leverage to purchase Mobil, a sibling from the Standard Oil days. This turnaround, argues Mr. Coll, stems from the powerful leadership of Lee Raymond, a career Exxon man who rose to helm the company through the Spill's aftermath and the years that followed. A scientist by training, Raymond transformed Exxon's practices by ruthlessly demanding the absolute best from his employees, standards which culled the weak and the non-compliant from the Exxon herd, leaving behind loyal troops willing to follow in the wake of Raymond's abrasive but competent leadership.
Private Empire is first-rate journalism. Mr. Coll's clear, linear reconstruction of Exxon's history, its sins and its lessons, is as digestible as it is compelling. From the White-House politics to Exxonmobil's corporate culture, from insurgencies in Indonesia to dictatorships in western Africa, he walks us through the politics, the science and the realities of the world's biggest oil giant and the conflict-riddled regions in which it operates and competes. What emerges is a captivating portrait of a hyper-efficient company governed by an ethos that insists upon both excellence and conformity to the exclusion of all else. Nothing must interfere with its core principles, for which it is proud, or its core business, for which it is willing to stop at nothing to protect.
Private Empire is a vivid history of a fearsome multinational corporation, an entity so vast and so profitable that it cannot be shackled by government. For our world runs on oil. It provides the power that fuels our cars and the trucks that carry our goods, our food, our capacity to live as we do. Worse yet, oil is a necessity that, absent any breakthroughs in alternative energy sources, will only continue to grow in importance in the decades to come which, in turn, will only make companies like Exxonmobil all the more potent. How long before, in the face of attempts at government regulation, companies like Exxonmobil simply deny the right of government to interfere with them and declare themselves sovereign? How long until the nation state is replaced by the corporate state? It is both a chilling and a fascinating prospect which this captivating work makes seem imminent.
An outstanding read with any number of jaw-dropping moments... One of the best reads this year. (5/5 Stars)
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