Daily Times

The anarchy of capitalism is heading towards its climax, so is Obama’s position in his own country, which is turning rather precarious with each passing day. While addressing his underlings beyond the frontier of the US, his tone is becoming more assertive and aggressive. Over the last couple of weeks, the American president has travelled quite extensively in the Asia-Pacific region with stopovers in Australia, Indonesia, etc. It appears that China — the mighty economic power — has deliberately been omitted or perhaps snubbed by the empire. The message to the region seems clear: China is to be isolated and ring-fenced. This is the stuff of warmongering writ large. The poodle American press is mollifying these belligerent statements by making them more palatable for the people but the pungency in rhetoric is quite tangible. Clearly, the military-industrial complex has dismally failed to realise itself.

Both the wars thrust on the smaller nations and the so-called Arab Spring have abysmally failed to utilise the extent of armaments that ought to be consumed. To exact the capital from the surplus lying inert in its backyard, this over-production desperately requires a consumer market. The ghost of the Great Depression of the 1920s has revisited to haunt capitalism once more. To bail out the system, President Roosevelt opted for the ‘New Economic Deal’ while the German capitalists brought Hitler to power with the help of Wall Street through the Dawes Plan and Young Plan. Charles Dawes and Owen Young were both American bankers affiliated with J P Morgan banking corporation who knew too well that war is a tenet for realisation of capital. I G Farben, Ford Motor Company, Standard Oil, the Bank of Manhattan and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York built the military might of Hitler’s Germany. An amount worth $ 33 billion was paid to the German fascists through the bonds sold to the US public. People were deceived; they gleefully provided the logs and incendiary material for their self-immolation. An enticing slogan, a snare of the ‘Fatherland’ was laid by the hegemonic powers to beguile and ensnare the working class.

Capitalism is in crisis; hence, its apostles are stung by insomnia. The financial technocrats have once again stolen the limelight as the non-elected prime ministers of Greece and Italy. Goldman Sachs and the like are in full swing. In the US, the apparent contradiction between the State Department and the Pentagon over the withdrawal strategy from Afghanistan seems nerve-wracking, paving the way for blunders. The recent killing of Pakistani soldiers near the Afghan border may also be interpreted along those lines. The only worth mentioning potential enemy of the US exists in Asia whose patience is being teasingly tested. Asia-Pacific has been chosen as the future battleground. The US’s encirclement of China has been underway for quite some time. On the west flank of China, it is at war in Afghanistan and covertly with the people of Pakistan; it is buying support from India and Burma; it continues to interfere in the internal politics of the former Soviet republics; and it has been threatening Iran using one lame excuse after another. On the east flank, the Americans have escalated tensions on the Korean peninsula. The risk of war is engulfing the region. The US has bases in South Korea, Japan, and Diego Garcia and more recently, the Philippines. The excuse is to protect vital sea-lanes in the Asia-Pacific, including in the South China Sea. The Americans have conducted military exercises with a possible design of cutting China’s maritime trade routes. However, this is not the sole purpose. The South China Sea is important to the US for its large untapped oil and gas resources. To isolate China, the US is eager to prop up its once erstwhile foe Vietnam with material help as well. Whether Vietnam takes this bait — the chalice of venom — remains to be seen.

Australia, a country that has lately developed a penchant for attaining the status of an imperial power, was Obama’s willing victim. Canberra’s masochistic fantasies in this regard are so unrelenting that it is prepared to dwell even under a nuclear shield — the shadow of Hades. A baleful gift offered by the Empire! Darwin (Northern territory) has been re-baptised to hold US troops. Given that the economic relationship between China and Australia is based on symbiosis, both countries risk suffering if the situation deteriorates. The Americans look at the Australians as ideally placed to facilitate and strengthen the US’s hegemony over the Asia-Pacific. It is safe to say that thus far, the Australians have been quite obliging. The miners and the traders having a stake are not lost to reality; they have been voicing their concern about the apparent tactical folly by the state. Former Prime Minister Paul Keating has been particularly vocal in this regard.

Apart from these alliances, the US has recently conducted the first test flight of Advanced Hypersonic Weapon (AHW) concept vehicle as well. The idea is to develop and demonstrate technologies that allow for a precision conventional weapon strike anywhere in the world in the blink of an eye. Capitalism smells the scent of blood. US corporations stand to make a fortune from a new big war; a war, potentially nuclear, that could spread to the Middle East or even the entire world. It is the only panacea, a means to achieve realisation of capital through destruction and post-war construction. The biggest impediment to war apparently is the integration of the world economy. Both the US and China are so interdependent that none can afford to destroy the other. Both of them have a massive consumer class and large economies. One is the debtor and the other (China) is its biggest creditor. However, this does not rule out a war in entirety. Despite providing substantial support to Germany, the US plunged into the Second World War in order to get rid of overproduction of capital and overpopulation. These two factors are once again looming large but today the opponent is not as wantonly frustrated as was the case during WWII. Neither China’s economy is in the doldrums nor is it a Marxist state. China is no Soviet Union — the latter was at best a distorted socialist state, hence a reason enough to be isolated. The state capitalism of China is distinct from that of the Soviet Union. It has created a working class under the image of Mao but without imposing any larger-than-life figure. The Communist Party of China is under no illusion of building straightforward socialism without subjecting itself to the precondition of capitalism since being an agrarian society it never had the seemingly quintessential material conditions. However, it is now turning ripe for a class struggle though this will entirely depend upon the willingness of the working class to decide its future course: socialism or barbarism. A success at this end will release the tempest of change for all the have-nots of the globe. A failure, however, will again make humankind hostage to relentless capitalistic jingoism. Once again then Eric Hobsbawm will be found lamenting in these words, “The world may yet regret that, faced with Rosa Luxemburg’s alternative of socialism or barbarism, it decided against socialism.” However, yet again it will not be an irrevocable decision.

The writer is based in Australia and has authored books on socialism. He can be reached at saulatnagi@hotmail.com