Internationalist Perspective

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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