Internationalist Perspective

Among the clearest signs of capitalism’s obsoleteness, at least from the standpoint of humanity, is the  growing dislocation of people caused by its crisis, by the poverty, the wars and the hopelessness it creates.  The story is horrific from beginning to end.  Horrific circumstances at home prompt ever more people to flee. Horrific travel circumstances cause many of them to die. And when they do reach their destination, many are locked up and many are deported, while many others remain stuck on the lowest  rungs of society. Most are considered “illegal”.  Increasingly, they are terrorized by the state. The influx of refugees is used, like the threat of “terrorism,” as a lubricant for the militarization of society, a license for more state control and surveillance. It is also politically very useful. Power can be gained by scapegoating immigrants (especially Muslim immigrants who can be linked to terrorism); by giving even the poorest compatriots the satisfaction of standing above someone else.

If you can’t offer real hope to the masses, you have to give them at least that.

At least for now this strategy works, as the electoral victories of Trump, Orban and other creeps show.  The success of the populist right has also pushed more traditional parties in Europe towards “tougher” policies on immigration.  

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The centennial of the October Revolution has been a rather subdued affair. There were no parades in Red Square or Tiananmen, no demonstrations or festivities.  Even leftists gave it sparse attention, with the exception of those who dream that October will repeat itself, this time with themselves in the role of the Bolsheviks. To the minimal extent that the mass media mentioned the anniversary, it was to comment that communism had mercifully collapsed. Some gave it a bit more space.  The New York Times Book Review, in its edition of October 22, devoted seven articles related to the subject. Remarkably, for what was meant as a critique of totalitarianism, they all said the same thing. Communism is a failed experiment, we live in the best of all possible worlds. No debate. One of the authors was Francis Fukuyama, famous for his claim that the end of the “communist” regime in Russia heralded “the end of history”: inevitably the whole world would become capitalist and democratic. The alternative is gone.

Such scant attention is remarkable since, from any point of view, the October Revolution was an earthquake which left deep imprints on the course of history.  IP has published several articles about it in the past [1] but we don’t want to let this centennial pass without a few remarks on its relevance today.  

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Charlottesville was not the first time in recent memory the Nazis, the Klan and other “white nationalist” organizations have marched in the streets brazenly proclaiming their vile creed of white supremacy, anti-Semitism and race hatred. Yet, the events in Charlottesville seemed to mark a qualitative difference: A torch light rally accompanied by openly Nazi slogans of “Blood and Soil” and “Jews will not replace us” on August 11 was followed by a daylight rally of hatred which culminated in James Fields, a neo-Nazi who was photographed marching with the Vanguard America group, ramming a car into a crowd of counter-protesters murdering a protester, Heather Heyer.

The Klan was once a powerful force in American politics boasting over 4 million members with senators, governors and even a supreme court judge among its members. However a decades-long decline has reduced the Klan to squabbling factions; explicitly Nazi organizations have never been more than a momentary blip on the news feed. Yet, here were  emboldened rightists, seemingly in ascendance. What could account for this resurgence? Perhaps the belief that one of “their” supporters was in the White House. Former Klan Imperial Grand Wizard David Duke, who was present in Charlottesville, remarked that the neo-Nazis were in Charlottesville to “To take our country back.  

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The 1st of the month and rent is due!

Mortgage is due!!

Oh, you say you can’t pay??

What?? Can’t pay??

Haven’t been to work?

Flooding?

You say, Apartment is wet/stinky/moldy!

No electricity!!

Natural disaster, you say!

Sorry!!

Money is due!

Today is the FIRST!

 

CH

There isn’t a danger that any time soon a war could start between the US and North-Korea (except accidently, a possibility which can’t be entirely excluded).  But the very fact that leaders of these countries openly threaten to use nuclear weapons, to engage in total warfare and cause the destruction of an entire people is significant.  To hear such furious language from the North-Korean regime is not surprising.  It has been covering up its weakness with bluster as far as we can remember. But it’s rather alarming that its sounds not surprising that the government of the US affirms the possibility of the total destruction of a country.  Some eyebrows were raised of course, but there was no massive global outcry over the sheer madness of this scenario.

No nuclear war is imminent but the war of words with North-Korea serves to inoculate us against the idea that it is inconceivable. We’re getting used to the idea that “the national interest” may require it, that those who resist it are “bleeding hearts” or traitors.   It’s one more sign of the increasingly destructive trajectory of world capitalism.

Like a school-yard brawl, the conflict will de-escalate. But it will not go away. The position of North-Korean ruling class is defensive, expansion of its territory or markets is not its aim, but it wants to stay in power.  

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There was an interesting discussion on the discussion-list Meltdown recently, between Mac Intosh of IP and a Meltdown regular, GS. It started on democracy and continued on revolutionary defeatism and ended with Mac Intosh sighing that it boggled his imagination that GS could claim that in such a war, one must choose one imperialist camp against the other, and still profess to be a revolutionary internationalist. To which GS replied that his imagination was boggled too, as it seemed to him beyond discussion that any sane person would have ardently hoped that Nazi-Germany would be defeated. “I give up”, he wrote, and so it ended.

Asides from the fact that no credible scenario can be conceived in which Germany could have won the war, the consequences of such an unlikely outcome are unknowable: we are in alt-history here, in which the global extermination of entire races is as possible as a global uprising, or anything in between.  Intriguing perhaps, but not very relevant to our reality, it seems to me.

The essential point to make is that any hope to escape from the atrocities of war and genocide springs from the autonomization of the collective worker from capitalism. Identifying with “our own” capital in war against another does the opposite: it ties us to the interests of our oppressors.  

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Recent comments on the Intsdiscnet-list on “Fascists March on Berkeley” (4/27/17) raise that issue with which those committed to the struggle against capitalism have grappled since the 1930’s: anti-fascism.

Historically Antifa or anti-fascism within the worker’s movement became the clarion call of Stalinism, and then the veritable basis of the Grand Alliance between Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill to, yes, crush the Axis powers, and – yes – to divide the world between American imperialism, American capitalism and its British partner, and the no less imperialist ambitions of Stalinist Russia. The logic of Anti-fascism was played out on the streets of Barcelona and Madrid in 1936-37, even before the outbreak of World War Two as the Stalinists crushed the working class of Spain even before Franco and the fascists could then finish the job. Anti-Fascism then became the ideological basis for the mobilization of the working class for the second inter-imperialist war, first for its no-strike pledges in Britain and the U.S., and then for sending the sons of the working class in Britain and the U.S. to die for their national capital, for the demands of Anglo-American imperialism and its alliance with Stalin. Anti-fascism, then, was historically the ideological basis of capitalism’s response to the great depression and its accompanying sharpening of inter-imperialist antagonisms.  

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A few questions linger after these elections. Such as: is the new US president a psychopath or is he a sociopath?

Whatever the correct diagnosis may be, it can’t be denied that his election testifies to a considerable increase of discontent, disaffection and anxiety in a broad swath of the American population. Trump won, by adding to the traditional Republican votes, those of many in the white working class, who in previous elections voted for Obama or not at all. Let’s not exaggerate his appeal: only a quarter of the eligible voters voted for him; his opponent in fact got at least a million votes more than him but, as you know, he won in the Electoral College. ‘That’s what democracy looks like’, as protesters (unintentionally ironically) shout in American streets, while they’re being chased by the armed protectors of the democratic state.

There are good reasons for discontent, disaffection and anxiety in the American working class. Because of the sharp competition on the global labor market and the unstoppable march of automation, more and more people are unsure whether they will have a job tomorrow, and in what conditions. Hidden unemployment is rampant. The gap between rich and poor grows.  

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Capitalist states, whether they are defending local or regional economic and politico-military interests or seeking global hegemony, must constantly evaluate and re-evaluate their strategic interests, their alliances, and the threats that they confront.

For American imperialism, in the waning days of World War Two, before the atomic bombs led to Japan’s surrender, it seemed apparent that while Stalinist Russia was militarily essential if Germany and Japan were to be defeated, the outcome of the war raised the prospect that Russia might dominate large parts of both Europe and Asia, and thereby become a threat to the putative global hegemony of the U.S. The occupation of the Eastern half of Europe by Russia, and the danger that with powerful Stalinist parties in Italy and France too, the Western half might be brought into the orbit of Moscow, whether by elections or conquest, as well as the conviction that Mao was a puppet of Moscow, and that his “revolution” in China would extend Russian domination to much of Asia in the face of weak and declining European colonial powers, led Washington to adopt a strategy of containment of Russia, that included the Marshall plan, the formation of NATO, and two land wars in Asia (Korea and Vietnam) before the strategy of American imperialism was dramatically changed in the early ‘70’s by Kissinger and Nixon, with a Sino-American alliance that ultimately led to the collapse of the “Soviet Union” in the early ‘90’s.  

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