No matter how brutal Macbeth was, he wasn’t devoid of conscience. Despite murdering king Ducan in cold blood, he confessed that “only Vaulting ambition, which” o’erleapt itself/ And fell “on the other,” made him commit the hideous crime. While confessing the gravity of his criminal act that left an indelible stain on his hands, he admitted that “…all great Neptune’s Ocean” would not “wash this blood clean from” his “hand”. Despite committing a continuous genocide of the Palestinians, the US and Israel have no such qualms. Macbeth was not as dark a devil as portrayed in the tragedy. Many others are darker than him
“The soul” Oscar Wilde states “is a terrible reality. It can be bought and sold and bartered away. It can be poisoned or made perfect. There is a soul in each one of us” and capitalism has turned it into a commodity. Everything containing congealed human labour power embodies value but with a condition of having a potential of getting sold in the market. Any commodity that fails to valorise itself no matter how much labour is invested in it has no value. But for Marx, many other things where labour power has not been invested such as conscience, pride, soul can become commodities. If on sale in the market they can fetch plenty of price- something different from value- may be much higher than value.
The concept of sole for sale is not new. Christopher Marlow’s Dr Faustus bartered his soul to Mephistopheles for a life of luxury and his luxury was somewhat similar to Epicurean kind, but more so, his inquisitiveness to attain more knowledge became his nemesis. Like biblical Adam, he was tempted not to avoid temptation, hence his curiosity took him to hell, though the philosophical definition of hell can be different for different scholars.
For Sartre “hell is Other people”. For Iqbal a state of mind and for the Palestinians it’s the real hell of fire broken upon them by Isreal, a frontline entity, whose people have en masse sold their soul, if they had any, to the US to steer the latter’s interests not only in the Middle East but making it difficult if not impossible for it to join ranks with East Asia and Europe. After the 2nd World War, Europe has left itself at the mercy of US. The US has always felt threatened by a strong Europe making relations and aligning their interests with Russia and the Arab World independently. In three spheres the US, Samir Amin says, commands complete domination on Europe and Japan, “the control over the globe’s natural resources, a military monopoly and the influence of ‘Anglo-Saxon’ culture”, through these instruments it “expresses the ideological domination of capitalism” over his other partners.
Capitalism contributes to polarisation on a world scale, the development in any third world region, for instance, the Arab region, will come into direct conflict with global expansion of capitalism. A developed, modernised, rich Arab world would call into question the guaranteed plunder of its oil resources by the US for the “continued wastage associated with capitalist accumulation”. This is where the US Israeli alliance becomes a necessity. For Samir Amin as for every student of dialectics the alliance has nothing to do with the Europeans’ antisemitic guilt or the crimes Nazis committed or the US culpability of not allowing Jews to migrate to US amid the Holocaust or upon the influence exerted by AIPAC but based on concrete foundations of common interests. Once the long-term dominant interests are served superficiality and fragility of the relations become obvious.
If Israel manages to eclipse the Palestinians from the world’s map, which it won’t, the Trump’s claims on Green Land, Panama Canal, and Canada can/will be used as a justification of the success of the might over the weak.
Europe, with its diverse cultural background had always been a battleground, for the forces of different social groups. Despite neo-liberal capitalism, the struggle to provide some form of relief to the people had always been at the core of their politics. The concept of a welfare state created to counter socialism was ingrained in the consciousnss of the masses that every attempt to curtail it met with serious and sometimes violent resistance from the masses. However, it was only possible as long as their defence was under the umbrella of the hegemonic force and its military wing, NATO.
The US acting as an Orwellian big brother kept the European under its wings and saved it from a manufactured enemy, either the Soviet Union or Russia though latter had no intentions to harm its European neighbours or after 9/11, apparently a successfully staged hoax, from the forces of obscurantism, another product of its own. De Gaulle was the only politician who kept France distinctly apart from the US and welcomed the USSR into European community. Gaullism ended in 1968, and France found it convenient to join the US camp.
In recent times, Trump has given a rude shock to the Europeans by humiliating Zelensky while appearing to make a truce with Russians on their terms. He also demanded 5% of the European GDP to continue to guarantee their security –against whom? Against Putin with whom he is pretending to make peace? The flabbergasted Europeans coming out of their slumber are investing heavily in their defence budgets. The cost will ultimately be passed on to the masses who will find their welfare rights massively reduced. European states ruled by proto-fascists directly or indirectly will face further anarchy, a gift of capitalism. By making truce with Russians, the US is not only looking to bury the possibility of a Eurasian block coming into being but also preparing to fight a battle against China, a real superpower of our time.
Unlike Europe, the history of development of capitalism in the US is entirely different. It didn’t develop through a process of Renaissance, enlightenment and/or under the influence of the French Revolution. It wasn’t an outcome of a struggle between feudal and capitalist classes, hence America Ideology Samir Amin says, is nothing more than “An unmitigated economic liberalism, masked by a parareligious discourse and packaged with insipid rhetoric about democracy”.
Both political parties in the US flaunt the flag of capital. The extremist Protestant sects, evolved from the genocide of the indigenous people, Africans’ enslavement, and the massive migration of ethnic communities have created a communitarian ideology where self-preservation and loyalty to family are the focal points. The migrated communities embrace the communitarian ideology and while pulling themselves from the laces of their shoes, they continue to live in their respective communities, a self-imposed ghettoization. It helps to promote racism that effectively counters class consciousness. In the absence of an alternative, democracy is limited to the electoral process with mass depoliticization.
Unlike Europe the US needs to invent an enemy that can be ideological or otherwise. Anyone impeding the process of accumulation and realization of capital becomes a savage needing to learn the American doctrine of domination. Europe partners the US in these wars to attain the exploits. During 1990s even a middle level power such as Iraq became a threat to the expansion of capital. Isreal could not have destroyed it; the job was taken up by the US. Libya, Syria met the identical fate, but Palestine, the weakest and most oppressed one, is left to be destroyed by Israel.
If Israel manages to eclipse the Palestinians from the world’s map, which it won’t, the Trump’s claims on Green Land, Panama Canal, and Canada can/will be used as a justification of the success of the might over the weak. Many conformists in Canada may be thinking about these lines. If both countries are Anglo-Saxons, with similar creed, culture, language-barring Quebec — and even currency what could be the hindrance in their merger. Tariq Ali has alluded to this phenomenon and the threat Trump’s statement poses, asking the people to reflect upon it instead of throwing it out of the window as a jest of the century.
Long time ago an exasperated Marcuse told Horkheimer “Let me write down my opinion in the most extreme way possible: I see in the United States today the historical heir of fascism.” Adorno saw fascism arriving in the US under the banner of democracy, but none of those philosophers stated a word about Israel, an entity born out of the womb of fascism, annihilating the natives with brute force.
However, another Jewish Marxist Rosa Luxemburg who refused to listen to the Jewish pangs knew a century ago that, “the accumulation of capital, seen as historic process, employs force as a permanent weapon, not only at its genesis, but further on down to the present day”. “World crises have always been”, Marx says, “the real concentration and forcible adjustment of all the contradictions of bourgeois economy”. The solution of the contradictions must be violent that is the reason, he adds “that bourgeois of whole world looks complacently on the wholesale massacre but after the battle is convulsed by horror at the desecration of brick and mortar”.
This is happening in Palestine. The “absolute humanism of human history,” wrote Gramsci, “does not aim at the peaceful resolution of existing contradictions in history and society but rather is the very theory of these contradictions”. “Hope is latent in them”, said Bertolt Brecht.
The writer is an Australian-based academic and has authored books on socialism and history. His Latest Work: “God’s Republic Making & Unmaking of Israel & Pakistan” is available in Pakistan & on Amazon.com. He can be reached at saulatnagi @hotmail.com