An excerpt from: The political economy of American militarism
By Nick Beams 10 July 2003 World Socialist Web Site Review
What then is the way forward? How to fight the drive for global domination by US imperialism and all the catastrophes that flow from it? That is the problem history has presented us with.
History, however, as Marx noted, never presents a problem without at the same time providing the material conditions for its resolution.
The globalisation of production, to which the eruption of US imperialism is a predatory and reactionary response, has, at the same time, created the conditions for an historically progressive response through the unification of the mass of ordinary working people on an international scale never before possible, and only dreamed of in the past.
This was the objective significance of the demonstrations that erupted worldwide before the invasion of Iraq-demonstrations in which the participants correctly saw themselves as part of a global movement, and drew strength from that understanding. The mass mobilisations revealed that it is not only the productive forces that have been globalised, but the political actions of struggling humanity as well.
This new situation was the subject of a comment in the New York Times that there seemed to be two powers in the world-the United States and world public opinion. Or, as a recent comment in the Financial Times put it, Karl Marx may have the last laugh after all because global capitalism is "giving rise to pressures that may eventually globalise politics."
Lessons of global antiwar protests
But five months on we must make an assessment of what took place. The movement showed the vast potential that exists, but also the problems that have to be overcome for that potential to be realised. These problems essentially boil down to one: the crisis of political perspective.
What the demonstrations showed was the absence of a clearly worked out program and perspective. To the extent that one existed it was a sentiment that if enough pressure could be brought to bear then somehow war could be prevented. In that regard, the demonstrations were a kind of giant experiment to test out the validity of protest politics.
It was as if History had said: Despite the lessons of the past, you believe, not through any fault of your own, that mass pressure can decisively influence the ruling powers. Very well, I will organise a giant test for you in the form of the biggest global protests ever seen. Not only will I do that, I will also arrange it so that the United Nations refuses to give its vote for this war-the validity of this organisation will be tested as well-and we shall see if this can prevent the invasion taking place. But History would have also said: In return for this I only ask from you one thing: that at the conclusion of this experiment, you draw the necessary lessons from its failure.
What are these lessons? That the mass movement requires a coherent program and perspective aimed not at pressuring the ruling classes but at the conquest of political power.
There are no easy answers in the development of this perspective. It is not a matter of hitting upon some new or clever slogan or of organising still more powerful protests. The mass movement must be armed with the understanding that only with the conquest of political power by the international working class can the difficult and complex problems confronting humanity be overcome. That requires, above all, an assimilation of the history of the twentieth century. This task forms the basis of all the work of the World Socialist Web Site .
In order to clarify these conclusions, I would like to examine a recent article by George Monbiot, one of the leading British writers of what could be called the global justice movement. Writing in the Guardian of June 17, Monbiot correctly points out that while economic globalisation sweeps all before it, it also creates as well as destroys, extending to the world's people unprecedented opportunities for their mobilisation. This was precisely the point being made by the WSWS when Monbiot and others were denouncing "globalisation" as the enemy. Now, he writes, business, by expanding its empire, has created the conditions where the world's people can coordinate their challenge to it. This means that we may "be approaching a revolutionary moment."
The problem, however, is that the movement has no program and this he correctly identifies as its crucial weakness. Our task, he continues, is "not to overthrow globalisation, but to capture it, and use it as a vehicle for humanity's first global democratic revolution."
While one might be able to agree with these broad sentiments, the problems arise when we consider Monbiot's proposals for the content of this global democratic revolution.
He proposes two key measures. The first is the scrapping of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and their replacement with a body rather like that proposed by Keynes at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944, whose purpose was to prevent the formation of excessive trade surpluses and deficits. The second is the scrapping of the UN Security Council and the vesting of its powers in a reformed UN general assembly where nations would have votes according to the size of their population and their positions on a "global democracy index."
Viewing these proposals for "global democratic revolution" one can only say: the mountain has laboured and brought forth ... a mouse.
Monbiot is correct to insist that new democratic forms of global governance have to be established. But if democracy is to have any real meaning then it must signify that the giant transnational corporations, banks and global financial institutions are taken out of private hands and brought under public ownership, subject to democratic control. In short, genuine democracy-the rule of the people-can only be obtained by ending the rule of capital. They cannot co-exist.
Margaret Thatcher understood this very well. There was, she said, no such thing as "society" and summed up the operation of the "free market" in the phrase "there is no alternative". She was right.
But that is precisely the point: if there is no alternative, then there is no democracy. Democracy involves the making of choices between alternatives, in making decisions and then perhaps changing them, or refining and developing them. If there is no alternative then there is dictatorship, the dictatorship of capital and the subordination of the interests, needs, aspirations of the world's people to its unending drive for profit.
In conclusion, let me ask you to consider how different the situation would be today had the mass movement that erupted in February, having assimilated and worked over the bitter experiences of the twentieth century and drawn the necessary political lessons, been guided by the understanding that the key to the struggle against imperialism and war was the development of the international socialist revolution. The present political arena would be vastly different.
As it is, the imperialist powers seem to have gotten away with a monstrous crime, and there is something of a political lull. That will pass. New struggles will develop. But the key question remains: on what program and perspective? They will go forward to the extent that they are grounded on the conception that the task is not to pressure this or that government, much less the UN, or that it is possible to revive the parties and organisations which once commanded mass support, but to develop the international socialist movement of the working class of the twenty-first century, grounded on all the lessons of the twentieth.
The aim of the World Socialist Web Site is to provide the necessary orientation to this movement and construct the international revolutionary party to lead it. We envisage this conference as a step towards that goal.
Full article The political economy of American militarism
By Nick Beams
10 July 2003
