By David North
At the Turn of the New Century
The capitulation of Serbia to the US-NATO onslaught brings to an end
the last major strategic experience of the twentieth century. Its bloody
conclusion endows the century with a certain tragic symmetry. It began
with the suppression of the anti-colonial uprising of the Chinese Boxers.
The century closes with a war that completes the reduction of the
Balkans to the status of a neo-colonial protectorate of the major
imperialist powers.
It is too early to appreciate the full extent of the devastation wreaked
upon Serbia and Kosovo by the missiles and bombs of the United States.
The number of military deaths suffered by the Serbs is estimated at
5,000. Military casualties are thought to be twice that number. At least
1,500 civilians have been killed. In the course of nearly 35,000 sorties,
the US air force—abetted by its European accomplices—shattered a
vast portion of the industrial and social infrastructure of Yugoslavia.
NATO estimates that 57 percent of the country's petroleum reserves
have been damaged or destroyed. Nearly all the major highways,
railways and bridges have been extensively bombed. The electrical
transformers, central power plants and water filtration systems upon
which modern urban centers depend are functioning at only a fraction of
their pre-bombardment capacity. Several hundred thousand workers
have lost their livelihoods because of the destruction of their factories
and
workplaces. Several major hospitals have suffered extensive
bomb-related damages. Schools attended by a total of 100,000 children
have been damaged or destroyed.
The estimated cost of rebuilding what NATO has demolished is between
$50 billion and $150 billion. Even the lower figure is far beyond the
resources available to Yugoslavia. It is expected that the country's gross
national product will decline by 30 percent this year. During the last
two
months consumer spending fell by nearly two-thirds. Economic
researchers have already calculated that, without outside assistance,
Yugoslavia would require 45 years to reach even the meager level of
economic prosperity that it knew in 1989!
The bombing of Yugoslavia has exposed the real relations that exist
between imperialism and small nations. The great indictments of
imperialism written in the first years of the twentieth century—those of
Hobson, Lenin, Luxemburg and Hilferding—read like contemporary
documents. Economically, small nations are at the mercy of the lending
agencies and financial institutions of the major imperialist powers. In
the
realm of politics, any attempt to assert their independent interests brings
with it the threat of devastating military retaliation. With increasing
frequency small states are being stripped of their national sovereignty,
compelled to accept foreign military occupation, and submit to forms of
rule that are, when all is said and done, of an essentially colonialist
character. The dismantling of the old colonial empires during the late
1940s, 1950s and 1960s appears more and more, in the light of
contemporary events, to have been only a temporary episode in the
history of imperialism.
The assault on Yugoslavia can be defined more appropriately as a
massacre than a war. A war implies combat, in which both sides are
exposed to at least some significant degree of risk. Never in history has
there been a military conflict in which so great an imbalance existed
between the contending forces. Even Hitler's bloody and one-sided
attacks on Poland, Holland and Norway exposed German forces to a
measurable level of danger. That element of military risk was for the
United States entirely missing in the latest war. Without losing a single
life
to so much as a stray bullet, NATO pilots and the operators of its
computerized missile launch systems laid waste to much of Yugoslavia.
This imbalance in the military resources available to the opposing sides
is
a defining characteristic of this war. At the end of the twentieth century,
the economic resources commanded by the imperialist powers guarantee
their technological supremacy which, in turn, is translated into
overwhelming military advantage. Within this international framework, the
United States has emerged as the principal oppressor imperialist nation,
utilizing its technological dominance in the sphere of precision-guided
munitions to bully, terrorize and, if it so chooses, lay waste to virtually
defenseless small and less-developed countries that have, for one or
another reason, gotten in its way.
From a military standpoint, the bombing campaign has again
demonstrated the lethal capacities of the United States' war-making
machine. Its defense contractors are congratulating themselves and
smacking their lips in anticipation of the revenue stream that will flow
from purchase orders as the Pentagon replenishes its arsenal of weapons.
But the capitulation of Serbia is a Pyrrhic victory. The United States
has
secured its short-term objectives in the Balkans, but at tremendous
long-term political costs. Despite the bombastic propaganda campaign to
portray its destruction of Yugoslavia as a humanitarian exercise, the
international image of the United States has suffered irreparable damage.
In the atmosphere of political confusion surrounding the collapse of the
Soviet Union, the prestige of the United States rose to heights not seen
since its glory years of World War II. Illusions abounded in America's
“democratic” and “humanitarian” role.
Much has changed in the course of this decade. The endless series of
cruise missile attacks against one or another defenseless enemy has
provoked a sense of revulsion among the broad masses. All over the
world the United States is perceived as a ruthless and dangerous bully
which will stop at nothing to secure its interests. The rage which erupted
in the streets of Beijing after the bombing of the Chinese embassy was
not merely the product of the Stalinist regime's propaganda and
incitement of chauvinism. Rather, it is now widely understood that what
was happening to Belgrade could happen within the next few years to
Beijing. More astute representatives of American imperialism fear that
the
deterioration in the international image of the United States will carry
with
it a serious political price. In a roundtable discussion on the ABC news
program Nightline following the initial announcement of Milosevic's
acceptance of NATO's terms, former Secretary of State Lawrence
Eagleburger opined: “We've presented to the rest of the world a vision
of
the bully on the block who pushes a button, people out there die, we
don't pay anything except the cost of the missile ... that's going to haunt
us in terms of trying to deal with the rest of the world in the years ahead.”
Even among its NATO allies, there is nervousness over the international
appetites of the United States and its willingness to use all methods to
get
what it wants. Publicly, European presidents and prime ministers
genuflect obediently before the United States and proclaim eternal
friendship. Privately, among themselves and in “safe” rooms that they
hope are not bugged by the CIA, these leaders wonder where, or against
whom, the United States will make its next move. What happens if and
when the interests of Europe collide directly with those of the United
States? Last year the covers of Time and Newsweek ran mug shots of
Saddam Hussein. This year, of Slobodan Milosevic. Next year, who will
it be? Whom will CNN proclaim to be the latest international villain, the
first “Hitler” of the new century?
Far more significant than the proclamations of NATO's solidarity was the
announcement by the leaders of 15 European countries, on the very day
of Yugoslavia's capitulation, that they will transform the European Union
into an independent military power. “The union,” they declared in an
official statement, “must have the capacity for autonomous action,
backed up by credible military forces, the means to decide to use them,
and a readiness to do so, in order to respond to international crises
without prejudice to actions by NATO.” Underlying this statement is the
conviction of the European leaders that the ability of European capitalism
to compete with the United States on a global scale—that is, to
survive—depends upon a credible military force that is able to secure
and defend its own international interests. For the European bourgeoisie,
it is intolerable that only the United States should have the capacity
to
deploy military power in pursuit of geopolitical strategic advantages and
economic interests. Thus, the competition among the major imperialist
powers is now poised to assume, in the immediate aftermath of the
onslaught against Yugoslavia, an overtly militaristic coloration.
Far from representing a humanitarian break with the past, the Balkan
War of 1999 signals the virulent resurgence of its most malignant
characteristics: the legitimization of the naked use of overwhelming
military power against small countries in pursuit of strategic “Big Power”
interests, the cynical violation of the principle of national sovereignty
and
the de facto reestablishment of colonialist forms of subjugation, and the
revival of inter-imperialist antagonisms that carry within them the seeds
of
a new world war. The demons of imperialism that first arose at the
beginning of the twentieth century have not been exorcised by the
international bourgeoisie. They still haunt mankind as it enters into the
twenty-first.
The Media and the War against Yugoslavia
Propaganda plays a critical role in all wars. “Think of the press,” the
Nazi
propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels once said, “as a great keyboard on
which the government can play.” But the scale, technological
sophistication and impact of modern-day propaganda exceeds anything
that could have been imagined even during the era of World War II. All
the mind-numbing techniques employed by the advertising and
entertainment industries find their consummate expression in the
“marketing” of war for a mass audience. The entire sordid enterprise
depends upon the effective use of a single emotion-laden phrase that can
be relied upon to disorient the public. In the 1998-99 bombing campaign
against Iraq, that phrase was “weapons of mass destruction.” To mobilize
public opinion behind the attack on Yugoslavia, all the contradictions,
complexities and ambiguities of the Balkans were dissolved into a single
phrase that was repeated day after day: “ethnic cleansing.” The American
and international public was bombarded with the same unrelenting
message: The war is being waged to stop mass murder. The video clips
of ethnic Albanian refugees streaming out of Kosovo were broadcast in a
manner which left viewers entirely in the dark as to the historical and
political context of what they were being shown. The fact that the loss
of
life in Kosovo had been relatively small, at least in comparison to
communal conflicts occurring in other parts of the world, until after the
bombing began was simply glossed over. As for the actual number of
Kosovan Albanians killed directly by Serb military and paramilitary
forces, the wild claims by US government and NATO spokesmen, which
placed the figure at anywhere between 100,000 and 250,000, were
entirely unsubstantiated and bore no relation to reality.
The comparisons routinely made between the conflict in Kosovo and the
Holocaust were obscene. Those made between Serbia and Nazi
Germany were simply absurd. When the World Court finally issued its
politically-motivated indictment of Milosevic, the number of deaths for
which he was held officially responsible was 391. No one would argue
that Milosevic is a humanitarian, but there are people responsible for
far
more deaths than he, including America's own Henry Kissinger, who
went on to win the Nobel Peace Price. The entire propaganda campaign
seemed at times to be buckling beneath the weight of its own mendacity
and inanity. Still, that there existed any reason for the war, other than
the
official humanitarian motives claimed by the Clinton administration, was
never acknowledged in the American mass media even by those who, in
the most timid terms, raised questions about the decision to bomb
Yugoslavia.
The media made no effort whatsoever to examine the historical
background of the conflict. Critical issues such as the relationship
between the economic policies imposed upon Yugoslavia by the
International Monetary Fund and the resurgence of communalist tensions
were never discussed publicly. Nor was there any critical review of the
disastrous contribution of German and American policies in the early
1990s—specifically, the recognition of Slovenian, Croatian and Bosnian
independence—to the outbreak of civil war in the Balkans. That the
Serbs had any legitimate reason to be dissatisfied with the political and
economic consequences of the sudden dissolution of Yugoslavia—a state
that had existed since 1918—was not even mooted. No explanation was
offered by the United States and the Western European powers for the
glaring contrast between their attitude toward the territorial claims and
ethnic policies of Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia on the one hand, and
toward those of Serbia on the other. Why, for example, did the United
States actively support in 1995 the “ethnic cleansing” by Croatia of
250,000 Serbs living in Krajina province? No answer was forthcoming.
As a general rule, the media suppressed all information that lent even
the
slightest legitimacy to the actions of the Serb government. The most
notorious example of deliberate falsification was the media's treatment
of
the proceedings at Rambouillet. First, it referred continuously to the
Serb's rejection of the Rambouillet agreement —though all those who
were familiar with the proceedings understood that there had been neither
negotiations nor an agreement at Rambouillet. What the Serbs rejected
was a nonnegotiable ultimatum.
Even more dishonest, the American and Western European media
withheld critical information that might have prejudiced public opinion
against the attack on Yugoslavia. The media simply did not report that
the “agreement” included an annex that demanded that the Serbs accept
the right of NATO forces to move at will not only through Kosovo but all
portions of Yugoslavia. The significance of this clause was obvious: the
United States deliberately confronted Milosevic with an ultimatum that
it
knew he could not possibly accept. Even after this information seeped
out over the Internet, it was generally ignored in the mass media. Not
until its edition of June 5, after the capitulation of Serbia, did the
New
York Times finally report and even quote the crucial codicil. It even
acknowledged that the removal of this codicil from the terms proffered
by Chernomyrdin and Ahtisaari was a critical factor in persuading
Milosevic to agree to the withdrawal of Serbian troops from Kosovo.
Imperialism and the Balkans
To the extent that the media maintained its monomaniacal focus on the
theme of ethnic cleansing, it deterred an examination of the more
substantial and essential reasons for the decision of the Clinton
administration to launch its assault against Yugoslavia. Unfortunately,
with
only a few honorable exceptions, US academic experts in the field of
Balkan history and international politics showed little inclination to
publicly challenge the propaganda campaign. Indeed, they lent a degree
of intellectual credibility to the US government's humanitarian posturing
by dismissing the very suggestion that any significant material interests
were at stake in the Balkans.
As even a cursory study of the region reveals, this is certainly false.
Kosovo is rich in marketable resources. Finally breaking its long silence
on the subject, the New York Times—that pillar of the US State
Department—carried an article on June 2, 1999 entitled, “The Prize:
Issue of Who Controls Kosovo's Rich Mines.” It began: “A number of
unofficial partition plans have been drawn up for Kosovo, all raising the
question of who would control an important northern mining region. The
bombing has made up-to-date production figures difficult to come by.
Experts say the resources include large deposits of coal, along with some
nickel, lead, zinc and other minerals.”
Of course, the presence of such resources cannot, in and of itself,
provide an adequate explanation for the war. It would be too great a
simplification of complex strategic variables to reduce the decision to
launch a war to the presence of certain raw material in the targeted
country. However, the concept of material interests embraces more than
immediate financial gains for one or another industry or conglomerate.
The financial and industrial elites of the imperialist countries determine
their material interests within the framework of international
geopolitical calculations. There are cases in which a barren strip of
land, devoid of intrinsic value in terms of extractable resources, may
still
be viewed—perhaps due to geographical location or the vagaries of
international political relationships and commitments—as a strategic asset
of inestimable value. Gibraltar, which consists mainly of a large rock,
is
precisely such an asset. There are other regions which possess such
extraordinary intrinsic value—notably the Persian Gulf—that the
imperialist powers will stop at nothing to retain control of them.
The Balkans do not float above a sea of oil; nor is it a barren wasteland.
But its strategic significance has been a constant factor in imperialist
power politics. If only because of its geographic location, either as a
critical transit point for Western Europe toward the east, or as a buffer
against the expansion of Russia (and later the USSR) toward the south,
the Balkans played a critical role in the international balance of power.
Events in the Balkans led to the outbreak of World War I because the
ultimatum delivered by Austria-Hungary to Serbia in July 1914 (shades
of the US-NATO ultimatum 85 years later) threatened to destabilize the
precarious equilibrium between the major European states.
Throughout the twentieth century the attitude of the United States toward
the Balkans has been determined by broad international considerations.
During the First World War, President Woodrow Wilson's decision to
champion the right of national self-determination was partly motivated
by
the desire to utilize the national aspirations of the Balkan people against
the Austro-Hungarian Empire. One of the famous “Fourteen Points”
formulated by Wilson as a basis for ending the World War championed
the rights of Serbia, including the right of access to the sea (which is
now
threatened by the United States' encouragement of Montenegrin
secessionism). After the conclusion of World War II, the deepening
confrontation with the Soviet Union was the decisive factor in determining
US policy toward the new regime in Belgrade led by Marshal Tito. The
eruption in 1948 of a bitter conflict between Stalin and Tito had a
dramatic impact upon Washington's assessment of Yugoslavia's role in
world affairs. Viewing Tito's regime as an obstacle to Soviet expansion
via the Adriatic Sea into the Mediterranean (and, thereby, toward both
southern Europe and the Middle East), the United States became a
determined advocate of Yugoslavia's unity and territorial integrity.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union altered Washington's relations with
Belgrade. Without the specter of Soviet expansion, the United States no
longer saw any need to retain its commitment to a unified Yugoslav state.
American policy reflected a new set of concerns related to the rapid
reorganization of the economies of the former USSR and the Stalinist
regimes in Eastern Europe on the basis of capitalistic market principles.
After some initial hesitation, American policy makers were won to the
view that the process of economic denationalization and the penetration
of Western capital would be facilitated by the breakup of the old
centralized state structures that had played so great a role in the
Soviet-style bureaucratically-directed economies. The United States and
its Western European allies then proceeded to orchestrate the dismantling
of the unitary Yugoslav Federation. This was done, quite simply, by
officially recognizing the republics of the old Federation—beginning with
Slovenia, Croatia, and then Bosnia—as independent sovereign states.
The results of this policy were catastrophic. As Professor Raju G.C.
Thomas, a leading expert on the Balkans, has pointed out:
“There were no mass killings taking place in Yugoslavia before the
unilateral declaration of independence by Slovenia and Croatia and their
subsequent recognition by Germany and the Vatican followed by the rest
of Europe and the United States. There were no mass killings taking
place in Bosnia before the recognition of Bosnia. Preserving the old
Yugoslav state may have proved to be the least of all evils. Problems
began when recognition or pressures to recognize occurred. The former
Yugoslavia had committed no ‘aggression' on its neighboring states.
Surely then, the real ‘aggression' in Yugoslavia began with the Western
recognition of Slovenia and Croatia. The territorial integrity of a state
that
was voluntarily created and which had existed since December 1918 was
swept aside. In 1991, new state recognition policy provided a method of
destroying long-standing sovereign independent states. When several rich
and powerful states decide to take a sovereign independent state apart
through the policy of recognition, how is this state supposed to defend
itself? There can be no deterrence or defense against this form of
international state destruction. Indeed, the West led by Germany and
later the US dismembered Yugoslavia through the policy of state
recognition.”[1]
The international strategic implications of the dissolution of the USSR
provided yet another reason for the United States and NATO to
encourage the dismantling of the old Yugoslav Federation. The United
States was anxious to exploit the power vacuum created by the Soviet
collapse to rapidly project its power eastward and assert control over
the
vast untapped reserves of oil and natural gas in the newly-independent
Central Asian republics of the old USSR. Within this new geopolitical
environment, the Balkans assumed exceptional strategic importance as a
vital logistical staging ground for the projection of imperialist power,
particularly that of the United States, toward Central Asia. Herein lay
the
ultimate source of the conflict between the United States and the regime
of Milosevic. To be sure, Milosevic was neither opposed to the
establishment of a market economy in Yugoslavia nor, for that matter, to
the elaboration of a working relationship with the major imperialist
powers. But the dissolution of the Yugoslav Federation, contrary to the
initial expectations of Milosevic, worked to the disadvantage of Serbia.
One need not sympathize with the program of Milosevic to recognize that
imperialist policies in the Balkans were shot through with a hypocritical
double standard that weakened Serbia and endangered the entire
Serbian community living in different parts of the old Federation. While
actions taken by Croatian and Bosnian Muslim military forces—which
included what came to be known as “ethnic cleansing”—were largely
viewed as legitimate measures of national self-defense, those of the Serbs
were denounced as intolerable violations of international order. The logic
of Yugoslav dissolution tended to criminalize every measure taken by
Serbia to defend its national interests within the new state system.
Recognition of Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia transformed the Yugoslav
army, in the eyes of the imperialist “international community,” into
aggressors who threatened the independence and sovereignty of new
independent states. The actions of Serb minorities outside the borders
of
what remained of the old Federation were likewise viewed as examples
of Yugoslav aggression. To the extent that Serbian dissatisfaction with
the
result of the carve-up of the Balkan peninsula proved disruptive to the
far-reaching strategic aims of American imperialism, it aroused the ire
of
Washington and led it to conclude that Serbia had to be taught an
unforgettable lesson.
The Global Eruption of US Imperialism and the Second
“American Century”
The assault on Yugoslavia was undertaken by the combined forces of
NATO. But in its planning and execution, the war was an American
enterprise. Not even Prime Minister Tony Blair's somewhat comical
impersonation of Margaret Thatcher could conceal the fact that the
United States, in the most literal sense, called the shots in this war.
When
the first cruise missiles were launched against Yugoslavia on March 24,
it
marked the fourth time in less than a year that the United States had
bombed a foreign country. Earlier in the year, in pursuit of Saddam
Hussein's phantom “weapons of mass destruction,” the Clinton
administration initiated a ferocious bombing campaign against Iraq.
Indeed, the bombing of Iraq has become by now a permanent and
routine feature of American foreign policy. The record of American
military activity during the last 10 years is by any objective standard
cause for astonishment and horror. A country that proclaims ad nauseam
its love of peace has been engaged almost continuously in one or another
military exercise beyond the borders of the United States. There have
been no less than six major missions involving ground combat and/or
bombing—Panama (1989), the Persian Gulf I (1990-91), Somalia
(1992-93), Bosnia (1995), Persian Gulf II (1999) and
Kosovo-Yugoslavia (1999). There has been, in addition, a series of
occupations—Haiti (1994-), Bosnia (1995-) and Macedonia (1995-).
The number of human beings who have lost their lives as the direct or
indirect result of American military actions during the past decade is
in the
hundreds of thousands. Naturally, each of these episodes has been
presented by the US government and media as benevolent peacemaking.
They are, in reality, objective manifestations of the increasingly militaristic
character of American imperialism.
There is an obvious and undeniable connection between the collapse of
the Soviet Union and the arrogance and brutality with which the United
States has pursued its international agenda throughout the 1990s.
Substantial sections of the American ruling elite have convinced
themselves that the absence of any substantial international opponent
capable of resisting the United States offers an historically unprecedented
opportunity to establish, through the use of military power, an
unchallengeable position of global dominance. Unlike the earlier
post-World War II dreams of an “American Century,” which were
frustrated by the constraints placed by the existence of the Soviet Union
on the global ambitions of the United States, policy makers in
Washington and academic think tanks all over the country are arguing
that overwhelming military superiority will make the twenty-first century
America's. Unchecked by either external restraints or substantial
domestic opposition, the mission of the United States is to remove all
barriers to the reorganization of the world economy on the basis of
market principles, as interpreted and dominated by American
transnational corporations.
It is only necessary, they argue, for the United States to overcome any
inclination to squeamishness over the use of military power. As Thomas
Friedman of the New York Times put it shortly after the outbreak of the
war against Yugoslavia: “The hidden hand of the market will never work
without the hidden fist—McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell
Douglas, the builder of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the
world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is called the United States
Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.... Without America on duty,
there will be no America Online.”[2]
The Future of War and the Cult of Precision-Guided
Munitions
An unabashed and detailed elaboration of this perspective is to be found
in a recently-published book, entitled The Future of War, by George
and Meredith Friedman. The basic argument of the Friedmans—who are
both specialists in strategic business intelligence—is that America's
arsenal of precision-guided munitions has given it a degree of military
superiority that will ensure world dominance for decades, if not centuries,
to come. They write:
“While warfare will continue to dominate and define the international
system, the manner in which wars are being waged is undergoing a
dramatic transformation, which will greatly enhance American power.
Indeed, the twenty-first century will be defined by the overwhelming
and persistent power of the United States. We are arguing that the rise
of American power is not merely another moment in a global system
spanning five hundred years but is actually the opening of an entirely
new global system. We are in a profoundly new epoch in which the
world that revolved around Europe is being replaced by a world
revolving around North America”[3] (emphasis added).
According to the Friedmans, this world-historical shift in the locus of
global power was heralded by the Gulf War of 1991. “Something
extraordinary happened during Operation Desert Storm,” they proclaim.
“The sheer one-sidedness of the victory, the devastation of the Iraqi
Army compared to a handful of casualties on the American side, points
to a qualitative shift in military power.” The reason for the overwhelming
character of the American victory was the deployment of
precision-guided munitions, the first weapons whose trajectory is not
controlled by the laws of gravity and ballistics. Capable of correcting
their own course and homing in on their targets, “precision-guided
munitions transformed the statistical foundations of war and with it the
calculus of both political and military power.” The Friedmans declare that
the introduction of precision-guided munitions is an innovation that “ranks
with the introduction of firearms, the phalanx, and the chariot as a
defining moment in human history.” As Europe “conquered the world
with the gun,” the emergence of precision-guided munitions marks the
beginning of a new American-dominated epoch of history.[4] The
Friedmans conclude:
“The twenty-first century will be the American century. This may seem an
odd thing to say, since it is commonly believed that the twentieth century
was the American century and that, with its end, American preeminence
is drawing to a close. But the period since American intervention
determined the outcome of World War I to the present was merely a
prologue. Only the rough outlines of American power have become
visible in the last hundred years, not fully formed and always cloaked
by
transitory problems and trivial challenges—Sputnik, Vietnam, Iran,
Japan. In retrospect, it will be clear that America's clumsiness and failures
were little more than an adolescent's stumbling—of passing significance
and little note.”[5]
Quite apart from the validity of the Friedmans' estimate of the historical
implications of precision-guided munitions, the fact that their views reflect
the thinking of a substantial layer of the policy-making elite in the United
States is, by itself, of considerable objective significance. There is
nothing
more dangerous than a bad idea whose time has come. As has already
been shown by the decision to confront Yugoslavia with a “surrender or
be destroyed” ultimatum, the strategists of American imperialism have
convinced themselves that precision-guided munitions have made war an
effective, viable and low-risk policy option.
The idea that military force is the decisive factor in history is hardly
a new
one. But examined theoretically, it expresses a vulgar and simplistic
conception of the real causal relationships in the historical process.
The
politics of war and the technology of weaponry are not the essential
factors in history. In reality both of these arise on the basis of and
are
ultimately determined by more essential socioeconomic factors. The
introduction of a new weapon system can certainly influence the outcome
of one or another battle, or even, depending on the circumstances, a war.
But in the broad expanse of history, it is a subordinate and contingent
factor. The United States presently enjoys a “competitive advantage” in
the arms industry. But neither this advantage nor the products of this
industry can guarantee world dominance. Despite the sophistication of its
weaponry, the financial-industrial foundation of the United States'
preeminent role in the affairs of world capitalism is far less substantial
than it was 50 years ago. Its share of world production has declined
dramatically. Its international trade deficit increases by billions of
dollars
every month. The conception that underlies the cult of precision-guided
munitions—that mastery in the sphere of weapons technology can offset
these more fundamental economic indices of national strength—is a
dangerous delusion. Moreover, for all their explosive power, the
financing, production and deployment of cruise missiles and other “smart”
bombs are subject to the laws of the capitalist market and are at the
mercy of its contradictions. The production of these weapons involves
extraordinary expense; and, it should be remembered, their use does not
involve the creation of wealth, but rather its destruction. For years to
come, the wealth generated by productive labor will be used to pay off
the debts that were accumulated to pay for the building of bombs that
were exploded in the Balkans.
We doubt that Madam Albright troubles herself with such subtleties.
Indeed, the infatuation with the “wonders” of weapons technology and
the “miracles” they promise is most common among ruling elites who
have arrived, whether they know it or not, at a historical dead end.
Bewildered by a complex array of international and domestic
socioeconomic contradictions which they hardly understand and for
which there are no conventional solutions, they see in weapons and war
a
means of blasting their way through problems.
When viewed through the prism of practical political relations, the abiding
faith in precision-guided munitions appears dangerous and reckless. No
period in history has witnessed so rapid a development of technology.
Each advance, no matter how spectacular, sets the stage for its rapid
transcendence by even more extraordinary innovations in design and
performance. The revolutionary advances in communications and
information technology guarantee the more or less rapid diffusion of the
underlying knowledge and skills upon which precision-guided munitions
are based. The US monopoly of nuclear power—which President
Truman and his associates believed, back in 1945, would form the
military foundation of the “American Century” that was promised at the
end of World War II—lasted less than five years. There is no reason to
believe that the technology of the new weaponry will remain the exclusive
property of the United States. But even if the United States is able to
maintain its leadership in the development of precision-guided munitions,
this will not guarantee that the wars of the next decade will prove as
bloodless for Americans as those of the 1990s. The outrages committed
by the United States inevitably intensify the pressure felt by those nations
that consider themselves threatened to prepare a significant counterblow.
Even in those cases where the costs of developing or purchasing
precision-guided munitions technology prove prohibitive, cheaper but
very lethal chemical, biological and, let us add, nuclear alternatives
will be
found. Russia already possesses ample stockpiles of all these alternatives.
China, India, Pakistan and, of course, Israel also have substantial
arsenals of lethal weaponry.
Though the resources of economically backward countries are not
sufficient to compete with the US in the sphere of high-tech weaponry,
those of Europe and Japan certainly are. Although they are careful to
couch their statements in terms that do not indicate hostility to the United
States, European analysts are stressing the need to substantially increase
the EU's military spending. “Europe's dependence on the US,” wrote the
Financial Times of Britain on June 5, “has been uncomfortably
exposed.” Stressing the “urgency” of the European Union's plan to
develop its own military program, the FT stated: “It is not that Europe
should aim to match the US missile for missile and fighter for fighter.
But
it should have the technology, the industrial base and the
professional military skills to ensure at least that it can operate side
by side with the US rather than as a poor relation” (emphasis added).
Back to the Future: Imperialism in the 21st Century
The first half of the twentieth century witnessed the most terrible waste
of
human life in world history. It has been estimated that more than 100
million people were killed in the course of World War I (1914-18) and
World War II (1939-45). The origins of these wars, as the great
revolutionary Marxists of the time explained, lay in the fundamental
contradictions of world capitalism—between the essentially anarchic
character of a market economy based on private ownership of the means
of production and the objectively social character of the production
process; between the development of a highly integrated world economy
and the national state system within which bourgeois class rule is
historically rooted. The world wars were directly precipitated by conflicts
between the ruling classes in different imperialist countries over markets,
raw materials and related strategic interests. The United States emerged
out of World War II as the preeminent capitalist power. Germany, Italy
and Japan had been vanquished. England and France were devastated
by the cost of the war. The old inter-imperialist antagonisms did not
disappear, but they were held in check in the face of the Cold War
conflict between the US and the Soviet Union.
The collapse of the USSR in 1991 removed the political constraints upon
inter-imperialist conflicts. The competing ambitions of the United States,
Europe and Japan cannot be reconciled peacefully forever. The world of
business is one of relentless and ruthless competition. Conglomerates
which, for one or another reason, find it necessary to collaborate on one
project today may, depending on the circumstances, be at each other's
throats tomorrow. The relentless competition among conglomerates on a
world scale—the eternal bellum omnium contra omnes (war of each
against all)—ultimately finds its most developed and lethal expression
in
open military conflict. The global integration of production processes
does not lessen the conflict among imperialist powers, but, paradoxically,
increases it. As the Friedmans write, for once correctly: “Economic
cooperation breeds economic interdependence. Interdependence breeds
friction. The search for economic advantage is a desperate game that
causes nations to undertake desperate actions, a fact that can be
demonstrated historically.” [6]
The increasing frequency of military outbreaks during the 1990s is an
objective symptom of an approaching international conflagration. Both
World War I and World War II were preceded by a series of local or
regional conflicts. As the major imperialist powers seek to expand their
influence into the regions opened up for capitalist penetration by the
collapse of the USSR, the likelihood of conflicts between them increases.
At stake in major disputes—such as those that will inevitably arise over
the allocation of booty from the oil of the Caspian and Caucasian
regions—will be life-and-death issues of world power and position. Such
issues do not, by their very nature, lend themselves to peaceful resolution.
The basic tendency of imperialism moves inexorably in the direction of
a
new world war.
The Balkan War and American Public Opinion
Despite all the efforts of the media to manufacture support for the war,
the response of the American working class—that is, the overwhelming
majority of the population—has been notably reserved. To be sure, there
have been no significant manifestations of opposition to the war. But
neither have there been any substantial displays of popular approval of
the assault against Yugoslavia. In contrast to the unrestrained pro-war
enthusiasm displayed by media personalities, the sentiments most
commonly expressed by working people have been confusion and
apprehension. The war has not been a popular topic of conversation.
When asked how they feel about the war, working people generally reply
that they do not understand what it is really all about. Naturally, they
do
not like what they have heard about “ethnic cleansing.” But at the same
time workers suspect that the causes of the fighting within Kosovo and
throughout the former Yugoslavia are more complicated than they have
been led to believe by the media. Far from exciting patriotic fervor, the
obviously unequal character of the conflict and the impact of American
bombs have contributed to the general sense of unease within the broad
public. This assessment is supported by the measures taken by the
Clinton administration, with the complicity of the media, to restrict as
much as possible news about the death and destruction caused by
American bombings. The decision to bomb the principal Yugoslav
television station in Belgrade was taken after its coverage of the first
major incidents of NATO bombings with serious loss of civilian life. In
the weeks that followed that bloody event, live coverage by American
correspondents of the impact of the intensifying bombardment of
Yugoslavia all but ceased. The televised reports of Brent Sadler, perhaps
the last CNN correspondent with a modicum of personal integrity, were
brought to a halt. The administration clearly did not want the public to
be
too well informed about its use of cluster bombs and other real “weapons
of mass destruction” against the Serbian people.
An even more important indication of the Clinton administration's
estimate of the popular mood was its obvious belief that the public was
deeply opposed to placing American lives at risk in Yugoslavia.
Certainly, there is nothing particularly edifying about a state of popular
consciousness which is prepared to accept the killing of the people of
another country as long as it does not cost any American lives. However,
a war for which people are not prepared to accept any degree of
sacrifice is not one for which the government can claim deep public
support. It is worth recalling that more than 25,000 American soldiers
had already been killed in Vietnam, and several hundred thousand
wounded, before public opinion shifted decisively against that war.
There is nothing more intellectually barren and politically superficial
than
the type of pseudo-radicalism that confuses jargon with analysis and
insists on interpreting such a complex and contradictory phenomenon as
mass public opinion in naively “revolutionary” terms. It would be
misleading and self-deluding to equate the relative absence of pro-war
sentiment—that is, the mood of passive acquiescence that has prevailed
throughout the bombing campaign—with a politically-conscious
opposition to the imperialist assault on Yugoslavia. However, it would
be
no less incorrect to draw from the present confused state of popular
consciousness pessimistic conclusions and to discount the very real
potential for a change in the political orientation of the working class.
Rather than superficial pessimism or optimism, it is necessary to
investigate the objective state of class relations that has conditioned
the
response of different social strata to the Balkan War.
The Financial Boom and Imperialism's New Constituency
Among the most remarkable features of the attack on Yugoslavia has
been the leading role played by individuals who once opposed the
Vietnam War and participated in anti-imperialist protest movements.
With the exception of Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain—who had
virtually no political history until he was selected by Rupert Murdoch
to
head the Labour Party—all the other major leaders of NATO's war
would have claimed, earlier in their lives, to be opponents of imperialism.
President Clinton, as everyone knows, avoided the draft, puffed
marijuana, and publicly proclaimed his hatred of the US military. Javier
Solana, the social democrat who had opposed the entry of Spain into
NATO, is now the general secretary of the military alliance. The German
chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, spouted Marxist phrases as leader of the
Social-Democratic youth movement and opposed the deployment of
Pershing missiles only 15 years ago. Joschka Fisher, his foreign minister,
headed a group of self-styled revolutionary street fighters in the 1970s,
and later, as a leader of the Green Party, proclaimed his intransigent
commitment to pacifism. A recent portrait of the German foreign minister,
published by the New York Times, reported that “Joschka Fisher
vociferously defends the very policies he once denounced, infuriating the
fundamentalists in his own Green Party.” Massimo D'Alema, Italy's prime
minister, led the Communist Party before it was transformed into the
Democratic Party of the Left. The political history of these individuals
is
not merely a confirmation of the well-known French adage, “Before 30 a
revolutionary; afterwards a swine.” It typifies, rather, the evolution
of a
broad social layer in contemporary bourgeois society.
The social structure and class relations of all the major capitalist countries
have been deeply affected by the stock market boom which began in the
early 1980s. Perpetually rising share values, especially the explosion
in
market valuations since 1995, have given a significant section of the
middle class—especially among the professional elite—access to a
degree of wealth that they could not have imagined at the outset of their
careers. Those who have actually grown rich comprise a relatively small
percentage of the population. But in numerical terms, the “newly rich”
represent a substantial and politically powerful social stratum. Capitalist
governments devote much of their time and energy to satisfying its
expanding appetites and ever more exotic tastes. Virtually freed from all
conventional worries about personal budgets and available cash, the
newly rich enjoy a level of opulence in their personal lives that the
overwhelming mass of the population knows of only through movies,
television and popular magazines.
The New York Times recently carried an interesting study of an
important new trend in the United States real estate market: “The
million-dollar mansion—or multimillion-dollar mansion, in some cities—is
emerging as a high-profile badge of the gilded late 1990's, not just in
the
traditional pockets of wealth, but also in Middle American cities like
Memphis where such homes have been rare.”
These mansions, the Times noted, “are emblematic of an economic
divide: the wealth generated in the boom that began in late 1995, while
touching many people, has gone disproportionately and in huge quantities
to the richest 5 percent of the nation's households. They have pocketed
most of the gain from the stock market run-up, which has created
thousands of multimillionaires overnight. And they have conspicuously
channeled a big chunk of their gains into mansions.”
Citing a study by New York University economist Edward N. Wolff, the
New York Times reports that “Rarely in history has there been such a
rapid minting of rich people.... While the number of American households
rose by 3 percent over the three-year period, the number of
million-dollar households jumped 36.6 percent. Make the wealth cutoff
$10 million or more, and 275,000 households qualified in 1998, up from
190,000 in 1995, a 44.7 percent increase.”
The other side of this process is the deterioration of the economic
position of the overwhelming majority of the American people during the
same period. “From his analysis of Federal Reserve data,” writes the
New York Times, “Mr. Wolff gleans another insight: While net worth
grew for the richest 10 percent of the nation's households in recent years,
the remaining 90 percent lost ground.”[7]
The account cited is only one snapshot of the social inequality that is
ubiquitous in contemporary America. The widening social chasm within
American society is fast approaching—if it has not already been
reached—the point at which even the pretense of a broad-based social
consensus, rooted in core democratic values, cannot be maintained. This
situation is not only a product of the sheer scale of the difference between
the average annual income of the top 10 percent of the population and
that of everyone else. The specific character of the wealth-generating
process—that is, enrichment through rising share values—quite naturally
produces social and political attitudes that are of a deeply anti-working
class and pro-imperialist character. The policies which have made
possible the explosive rise in share values—the relentless pressure on
wage levels, the constant demands for greater productivity, the massive
cuts in social expenditures, the relentless use of “downsizing” to maintain
high levels of corporate profitability—have undermined the social position
of the working class in the United States.
The international consequences of the policies that have sent the Dow
Jones and NASDAQ averages skyrocketing have been, for the vast
majority of the world's people who live in the less-developed countries,
deeply tragic. The stock market boom has been fueled and sustained,
above all, by the deflationary (or disinflationary) environment that has
depended on the protracted decline of commodity prices for raw
materials. The decline has not been simply the product of objective
economic processes, but of ruthless policies pursued by the major
imperialist powers to undermine the ability of “third world” producers
to
raise commodity prices. The successful destruction of the pricing power
of the OPEC oil cartel—in which the Gulf War of 1990-91 played a
major role—is the most significant example of the relationship between
the accumulation of wealth in the imperialist countries and the intensifying
exploitation of the less-developed countries. Those in the advanced
countries whose wealth is based on rising share values have benefited
directly from this process. This does not, of course, mean that every
individual who has invested in the stock market is a supporter of
imperialist policies. But it is impossible to deny the broad social and
political implications of these objective economic processes and
relationships.
In the midst of World War I, Lenin noted the link between the
superprofits extracted by imperialism from the colonies and the political
corruption of a section of the middle class and the labor bureaucracy.
While the economic conditions and international relations of 1999 are
certainly not identical to those of 1916, an analogous social process has
been at work. The objective modus operandi and social implications of
the protracted stock market boom have enabled imperialism to recruit
from among sections of the upper-middle-class a new and devoted
constituency. The reactionary, conformist and cynical intellectual climate
that prevails in the United States and Europe—promoted by the media
and adapted to by a largely servile and corrupted academic
community—reflects the social outlook of a highly privileged stratum of
the population that is not in the least interested in encouraging a critical
examination of the economic and political bases of its newly-acquired
riches.
The State of the American and International Labor
Movement
The growing chasm between the privileged strata that comprise
capitalism's ruling elite and the broad mass of working people denotes
an
objectively high level of social and class tensions. It may appear that
this
assessment is contradicted by the absence of militant labor activism in
the
United States. But the low level of strike activity and other forms of
mass
social protest do not indicate social stability. Rather, the fact that
the last
decade has seen so few open manifestations of class conflict, despite
rapidly growing social inequality, suggests that the existing political
and
social institutions of the US have become unresponsive to the
accumulating discontent of the working class. Established social
organizations such as the trade unions no longer function even in a limited
way as conduits of popular grievances. The Democratic and Republican
parties, which have virtually no direct contact with the popular masses,
do not even acknowledge, let alone propose, solutions to the basic
problems of working class life. The longer the grievances of the working
class are ignored and repressed, the more explosive they ultimately
become. At some point social tension, as it approaches “critical mass,”
must erupt on the surface of society.
The protracted decline and demise of the American trade union
movement is one of the most fundamental changes in the social life of the
United States during the last two decades. As recently as the 1960s the
Johnson administration could not conduct the Vietnam War without
constantly taking into account the impact of its policies on the working
class. President Lyndon Johnson resisted demands from the Federal
Reserve and representatives of big business that he meet the rising costs
of the war by cutting the level of social expenditures. He feared that
austerity policies would further intensify the already high levels of class
conflict and social disorder. In 1971 the Nixon administration attempted
to resist workers' demands for better living conditions by establishing
a
Pay Board and an annual 5.5 percent limit on wage increases. To give a
sense of the social climate of that era, let us recall that even a man
like
George Meany—the septuagenarian president of the AFL-CIO who was
viewed as the most right-wing figure in the American labor
movement—denounced Nixon's efforts to control wages as “the first step
towards fascism.” Subsequently Meany, despite his rhetoric, agreed to
collaborate with the Pay Board. However, in the face of overwhelming
popular opposition and a mounting wave of strikes, Meany was
compelled to quit the Pay Board and Nixon's wage control scheme
collapsed.
Beginning in the 1970s, however, a combination of economic and
political developments fundamentally altered to the advantage of the
American ruling class the domestic and international environment within
which it operated. First, the major international economic recessions of
1973-75 and 1979-81 brought to an end the long post-World War II
boom. Against the backdrop of rising unemployment—which the
government promoted by raising interest rates to unprecedented
levels—the corporations seized the opportunity to launch a sustained
offensive against the trade unions. The signal for this attack came in
August 1981, when President Ronald Reagan fired 11,000 striking air
traffic controllers. Despite mass popular support for the
controllers—which found expression in an anti-Reagan demonstration of
500,000 workers in Washington, DC in September 1981—the
AFL-CIO took no action to force the rehiring of the strikers. A pattern
that would continue throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s was
established. The union bureaucracy, which had long viewed rank-and-file
militancy as a threat to its own privileged position, welcomed the defeats
as an opportunity to deepen its direct collaboration with the employers.
By the end of the 1980s, after an unbroken series of defeats in one
industry after another, the trade unions had ceased to function as genuine
defensive organizations of the working class in any meaningful sense of
the term. Strikes, until the mid-1980s a persistent and explosive feature
of American social life, fell year after year to record low levels. Wage
cuts and mass layoffs, which had been traditionally met with bitter
resistance, became commonplace throughout US industry.
Notwithstanding certain historical weaknesses of the American labor
movement that made it exceptionally vulnerable to attack—such as its
lack of independent political organization, the absence of any substantial
socialist tendency, the generally low level of class consciousness and,
last
but not least, the disgusting extent of the corruption and gangsterism
of
the labor bureaucracy—the collapse of the trade unions in the United
States was part of a broader international phenomenon. All over the
world the old political parties and trade unions of the working class
entered into a terminal crisis from the mid-1980s on. What was the
essential objective cause of this worldwide process of decay?
The Emergence of the Transnational Corporation
The global recessions of the 1970s and early 1980s led to a fundamental
change in the basic forms of capitalist production. While there had been
an immense growth in international trade following the end of World War
II, the process of production proceeded, for the most part, within a
national framework. While the multinational corporation did business in
many countries, its manufacturing facilities operated on a national basis.
For example, a US corporation, like Ford or General Motors, would
have manufacturing facilities in different countries. But these facilities
were
intended to build products for the market of the country in which they
were located.
The revolutionary developments in transportation and computerized
communications technologies made possible an historic change in the
organization and techniques of capitalist production. The multinational
form of corporate organization was transcended by the transnational
corporation. The essential significance of this change was that it had
become possible to organize and coordinate manufacturing and services
on a directly international basis. Nourished by massive daily movements
of both capital and information, transnational corporations were able for
the first time to establish globally integrated production systems. This
allowed them to bypass the labor force in their “national homeland” and
effectively exploit regional and continental differences in wage levels
and
social benefits.
None of the existing mass organizations of the working class were either
prepared for or capable of developing an effective response to the
revolutionary advances in technology and their far-reaching impact on the
capitalist mode of production. Regardless of their official titles and
formal
political affiliations—whether they called themselves Socialist,
Communist, Labor, or, as in the United States, openly proclaimed their
loyalty to capitalism and the parties of big business—the old labor
organizations based themselves on the national state as the unalterable
framework of production. Assuming the eternal dependence of capitalist
corporations on the directly available national labor force, the trade
unions believed their own position to be impregnable. To the extent that
they controlled the national supply of labor, they would retain in
perpetuity the ability to extract concessions from the employers. The
entire reformist ideology of the labor movement was based on this
complacent nationalist perspective.
This national reformist perspective was ultimately rooted in the material
interests of the bureaucracy. Therefore, the collapse of this perspective
did not undermine in the least the bureaucracy's loyalty and subservience
to capitalism. Rather, the bureaucracy devoted its energies to preserving
its own privileges within the national state by attempting to force the
working class to accept a lower standard of living.
The Collapse of the USSR
The disintegration of the Soviet Communist Party (CPSU) and the
collapse of the USSR were only the most extreme and explosive
manifestations of the breakdown of the old bureaucratic and reformist
parties of the working class. Of course, the Soviet Union represented a
far greater historical achievement of the international working class than
the trade unions of Western Europe and the United States. The CPSU
held state power and ruled on the basis of the nationalized property
forms that had been created in the aftermath of the October Revolution
of 1917. But despite this significant difference, the program and ideology
of the ruling Stalinist bureaucracy—which had long before usurped
political power from the working class and exterminated the entire
generation of Marxists who had led the socialist revolution—was
essentially the same, in two fundamental respects, as that of the labor
bureaucracies in the advanced capitalist countries.
First, the official Soviet doctrine of “peaceful coexistence” was the
Kremlin's version of the class collaboration practiced by the labor
bureaucracies in the West. Contrary to the hysterical propaganda of the
American media, Marxism played no role whatsoever in the policies of
the Stalinist leaders of the USSR. The attitude of the typical Soviet
bureaucrat toward the very possibility of revolutionary upheavals—both
beyond and within the borders of the USSR—was a combination of
personal fear and political revulsion. Desiring nothing so much as to enjoy
in peace the luxuries to which their positions in the bureaucracy entitled
them, the Stalinist leaders sought not the overthrow of world imperialism
but an accommodation to it.
Second, the economic and social program administered by the
bureaucracy was a peculiar version of the nationalism practiced by their
reformist counterparts in Western Europe. The so-called “socialism”
espoused by the Kremlin regime based itself mainly on the resources
available within the USSR. The Stalinist bureaucracy aspired to nothing
more ambitious than a Soviet version of a national welfare state. The
basic fallacy of this program was that the development of the Soviet
economy depended, in the final analysis, upon the resources of the world
economy and its international division of labor. It was not possible to
maintain on the basis of national self-sufficiency a viable social welfare
state, let alone an advanced socialist society. The introduction of
globally-integrated production widened the gap between the advanced
capitalist countries and the Soviet Union. The problem was not merely
technological: there was simply no place in the Stalinist system for
transnational forms of production. Even between the USSR and the
Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe, economic relations remained on an
extremely primitive level. By the time Mikhail Gorbachev came to power
in 1985, he had no better answers for the challenge posed by the
globalization of capitalist production than his opposite numbers in the
bureaucracies of the American and Western European labor movements.
All his desperate efforts to improvise a solution to the deepening social
and political problems came to naught. The catastrophic Stalinist
experiment with “socialism in one country”—which had from the
beginning represented a repudiation of the principles of socialist
internationalism upon which the October Revolution had been
based—came to a disastrous end with the dissolution of the Soviet Union
in December 1991.
A Crisis of Leadership and Perspective
The present political disorientation of the working class is much better
understood when placed in the context of the global economic
transformations, political catastrophes and organizational collapses of
the
last two decades. Imagine an army of soldiers surrounded on all sides by
powerful enemies. In the midst of battle its leaders have deserted, taking
with them arms and supplies. The working class finds itself in an
analogous position. It has been betrayed by the parties and organizations
to which it had given its support and upon which it had relied.
Complicating matters is the fact that the worthlessness of its old
organizations and leaders is not merely a matter of subjective errors and
personal corruption. Rather, it is deeply rooted in objective economic
processes that have dramatically affected the mode of production and
class relations. Therefore, what the working class requires is not merely
a
change of faces in the old organizations—or, to be more precise, in what
is left of them. There is no “kiss of life” that can resuscitate the moribund
and reactionary bureaucratic trade union and political organizations of
the
past. The sooner they are kicked aside, the better. What the working
class now requires is a new revolutionary international organization,
whose strategy, perspective and program correspond to the objective
tendencies of world economy and historical development.
There are, we know very well, legions of pessimists who are convinced
that there exists no possibility whatsoever of building such an international
revolutionary movement. One might note that the most incorrigible of
these pessimists are to be found precisely among those who not so long
ago placed full confidence in the trade unions and believed deeply in the
permanence of the USSR. Yesterday they were convinced that
bureaucratically administered reformism would last forever. Today they
believe with no less conviction in the eternal triumph of capitalist reaction.
But underlying the giddy optimism of yesterday and the demoralized
pessimism of today is a certain type of intellectual and political
superficiality, whose characteristic features are an unwillingness and
inability to examine events within the necessary historical framework,
and
a disinclination to investigate the contradictions that underlie the highly
misleading surface appearance of social stability. There are other
characteristics—especially among those who draw their paychecks from
university bursars—that contribute to and aggravate these intellectual
weaknesses, namely, a certain lack of personal courage, integrity, and
simple honesty.
Confidence in the revolutionary role of the working class and the
objective possibility of socialism is not a matter of faith, but of theoretical
insight into the objective laws of capitalist development and knowledge
of
history—particularly that of the twentieth century. The last 99 and a half
years have seen no shortage of revolutionary struggles of the working
class—Russian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Chinese, Chilean,
Argentinean, Vietnamese, Hungarian, Austrian, South African, Ceylonese
and, yes, American. This short list is far from complete.
What then, is the objective basis for a resurgence of revolutionary
struggle by the working class as we enter the twenty-first century?
Paradoxically, the very changes in the objective processes of world
capitalism that contributed to the disorientation and weakening of the
working class during the last two decades have laid the foundation for
a
renewal of open class struggle, but on a far broader basis than was
previously possible. The principal weakness of the previous forms of
class struggle lay in their national insularity. Even where the international
unity of the proletariat was proclaimed and celebrated, objective
conditions worked against the development of the class struggle as a
unified international process. But the possibility of transcending this
limitation is present in the process of globally-integrated production.
This
development of capitalism not only confronts the working class with the
objective necessity of conducting its struggles on an international basis;
the economic transformations have also created the objective means of
effecting this international unity. First, the activities of the transnational
corporations and the fluidity of global capital movements have led to an
immense growth of the working class on an international scale. In
countries and regions where, only 30 years ago, there hardly existed a
working class, the proletariat has since emerged as a mass force. The
proletariat of East Asia, which comprised a mere fraction of the region's
population only a generation ago, now numbers in the tens of millions.
Second, the communications technology that underlies transnational
production will inevitably facilitate the coordination of the class
struggle—both in terms of strategy and logistics—on a global scale.
Internationalism and Nationalism
The impediments to the globalization of the class struggle and the
international unification of the working class are less of a technical
than of
a political and ideological character. The protracted crisis of the
international workers movement found perhaps its most reactionary
political reflection in the upsurge of nationalism. The loss of political
confidence in the revolutionary capacities of the working class and the
prospects of socialist revolution contributed to a resurgence of nationalist
programs and ideologies. In many cases, the historically retrograde
character of this tendency was disguised by the pseudo-left demagogy of
“national self-determination” and “national liberation.” Seeking to evade
the difficult task of combating all forms of chauvinism—whether based on
language, religion or ethnicity—and effecting the unity of all sections
of
the working class within countries with heterogeneous populations,
innumerable petty-bourgeois tendencies have chosen instead to base
themselves on one or another national community. The cynical and largely
ignorant use of Marxist jargon does not change the fact that the essential
content of their policy has been the elevation of national or ethnic identity
above class consciousness and, flowing from this, the subordination of
the objective interests of the working class to the political and financial
interests of the national bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie.
There is reason to believe that the high tide of the nationalist resurgence
may have already been reached. Indeed, the impact of the events in
Yugoslavia must contribute to undermining the prestige of nationalism and
the political credibility of the demand for self-determination. The horrors
of the inter-communal conflicts that have ravaged the Balkans have
exposed the reactionary implications of nationalism. What has been
achieved by the dissolution of Yugoslavia? The sordid machinations of
Milosevic in Serbia, Tudjman in Croatia, Kucan in Slovenia and
Izetbegovic in Bosnia have cost the lives of tens of thousands, and for
what? The entire economic and cultural level of the Balkans has been
lowered immeasurably. “Independent” Bosnia is a miserable imperialist
protectorate. “Independent” Croatia lives off whatever crumbs the
imperialists are willing to throw it. Serbia has been devastated. And as
for Kosovo, it has been divided into several zones of occupation. Its
“national liberation movement,” the KLA, has no future except as the
designated gendarmerie of the United States. All of the national and
religious communities have been victimized by the civil wars. All the
events surrounding the dissolution of Yugoslavia stand as a bitter
indictment of nationalism.
There is yet another aspect of the Yugoslav experience from which the
international working class will be compelled to draw lessons. The
one-sided nature of the military conflict will serve to undermine the myths
that have surrounded the perspective of wars of national liberation—i.e.,
that the defeat of imperialism is to be achieved principally on the basis
of
military conflict, rather than through the methods of world socialist
revolution. Petty-bourgeois radical romanticists were enraptured by the
Guevarist perspective on “One, two, many Vietnams.” That delusion has
turned into “One, two, many Iraqs.” And what about Vietnam? For all
the heroic sacrifices of the Vietnamese masses, their wars of national
liberation, spanning 30 years, did not free them from imperialist
domination. Nearly 25 years after the capture of Saigon, the IMF is able
to exert more influence over the policies of Hanoi than Nixon and
Kissinger ever could with American B-52s.
As long as there is imperialism, there will be armed struggles conducted
by oppressed nations. But the basic and decisive form of the struggle
against imperialism is the revolutionary political struggle of the working
class. Within this framework, to emphasize the immense historical
importance of the class struggle in the advanced capitalist
countries—above all, within the United States—does not suggest any
degree of arrogance or disdain toward the workers and oppressed
masses in the less developed countries. Rather, it flows from a realistic
appraisal of the international balance of class forces and an understanding
of the explosive character of the social contradictions within the
imperialist centers. Those who deny the possibility of socialist revolution
in the United States are not only denying, as a practical matter, the
possibility of socialism anywhere. They are actually abandoning any hope
for the future of mankind. However complex the interaction of world
struggles and however unpredictable the actual sequence of events, there
can be no doubt that their final outcome will be decisively influenced
by
the development of the class struggle in the United States.
For the present, it is an undeniable social fact that the level of political
consciousness within the American working class is very low. Let it be
said, however, that this is not a failing that is only to be observed among
the workers. Consciousness is influenced by events—not only for the
worse but also for the better. The underlying contradictions of American
society will, in the final analysis, result in profound and, for many,
unexpected changes in mass consciousness. Nowhere is it written that the
social tensions which are so deeply embedded in the structure of
American class relations can only express themselves in such tragic and
demented forms as the shooting at Columbine High School. These
tensions can and will find more humane, democratic and revolutionary
forms of expression.
The Role of the World Socialist Web Site
The advent of globally integrated production has, as we have already
explained, created not only the objective conditions for the international
political unification of the working class, but also the means. The
extraordinary advances in computerized communications
technology—above all, the creation of the World Wide Web—have the
most far-reaching historical implications for the development of the class
struggle. In a manner and at a speed which could hardly have been
imagined even at the start of this decade, the innumerable obstacles that
limited communications between socialist and progressive political
tendencies among intellectuals, students and workers have been swept
away. The monopoly of the capitalist media over the dissemination of
information has been gravely weakened. The possibility of reaching a
mass audience is now available. The Yugoslav war revealed the
enormous potential and political significance of the Internet. Even after
Yugoslav television broadcast facilities were bombed, information about
the impact of NATO attacks continued to reach an international audience
via the Internet. Many critical pieces of information, such as the secret
annex to the Rambouillet agreement, found their way to an international
audience because of this remarkable communications technology.
In February 1998 the International Committee of the Fourth International
founded the World Socialist Web Site (www.wsws.org). We recognized
in this technology the potential to present to a broad international
audience, on a daily basis, a Marxist analysis of world events. We were
convinced that the WSWS could play a decisive role in the development
of that which has been lacking for so many decades—a genuine
international Marxist political culture. What was needed, we believed,
was not simplistic slogans and jargon, but a serious examination of
events. The long history of our tendency—whose origins date back to the
struggle conducted by Leon Trotsky against the Stalinist perversion of
Marxism and its betrayal of the October Revolution—provided the
necessary intellectual substance to sustain daily commentary. Confident
in
the strength of our ideas, we were anxious to encourage a dialogue with
readers reflecting a wide range of viewpoints. We continue to believe that
such a discussion will facilitate a crystallization of socialists from
all over
the world around a genuinely internationalist revolutionary program.
The experiences of the past year have demonstrated the importance of
the work that has been undertaken by the World Socialist Web Site to
thousands of readers in dozens of countries. In the aftermath of the war
against Yugoslavia, there will be an even greater and more urgent need
for political discussion and theoretical clarification. The editorial board
of
the WSWS calls on its readers to participate in this discussion, to do
everything in their power to extend the influence of the World Socialist
Web Site, and in this way lay the foundations for the growth of the World
Party of Socialist Revolution.
Notes:
1. “Nations, States and War,” in The South Slav Conflict, edited by Raju
G.C.
Thomas and H. Richard Friman (New York and London: 1996), p. 225.
2. New York Times, March 28, 1999.
3. The Future of War: Power, Technology & American World Dominance
in the
21st Century (New York: Crown Publishers, 1996), p. ix.
4. Ibid ., p. x.
5. Ibid ., p. 1.
6. Ibid ., p. 4.
7. New York Times, June 6, 1999.