BY JACK BARNES
The following are excerpts from the article "The Working- Class Campaign Against Imperialism and War" by Jack Barnes, first published in the Dec. 21, 1990, Militant. The full article appears in issue no. 7 of the Marxist magazine New International, which also contains the article by Barnes "Opening Guns of World War III." These excerpts are copyright New International and are reprinted by permission. Subheadings are by the Militant.
BY JACK BARNES
The deepening crisis of the world's capitalist economies and of the imperialist system will keep driving the U.S. rulers and their allies to war, if not in the Middle East then in Asia, if not there, somewhere else. And the handwringing in Washington will continue.
Military power is the main advantage left to the U.S. rulers in their decline relative to their imperialist competitors and to the world's toilers. While U.S. capitalism still has enormous economic power, as well, its position has slipped substantially in recent decades vis-a- vis its German, Japanese, and other rivals. Moreover, the entire world capitalist system itself has become more vulnerable and crisis-ridden than at any time since the Great Depression.
Washington has not undergone anything approaching a comparable weakening of its relative world strategic military power, however. One fact is sufficient to illustrate the point: it is impossible to conceive of any other single imperialist power-or even any coalition of other imperialist powers-capable of mounting a military operation in the Gulf to take on the Iraqi regime and have a reasonable chance of a military victory.
British imperialism certainly couldn't. And Britain was the former colonial power in Iraq and Kuwait, as well as in Egypt and in Palestine (what is now Jordan and Israel)....
Moreover, there's not some clever trick being carried out by the German and Japanese ruling classes, who haven't committed any military forces to the Gulf. They aren't waiting in the wings to somehow grab part of the spoils of war when it's over. It's not for lack of desire that the German and Japanese ruling classes are not more involved. They are simply too weak politically to confront the consequences at home of trying to commit major military forces abroad for the first time in half a century....
Washington's preparations for previous wars in this century have not been characterized by any similar lack of confidence. In fact, prior to World War I the main protagonists on all sides thought they knew what was going to happen. They thought they were going to win and profit greatly from the outcome.
The same was true prior to the outbreak of World War II. In the United States, Wall Street and its bipartisan representatives in Congress had concrete goals that they were confident could be met by crushing their Japanese and German imperialist rivals. Of course, as it turned out they didn't exactly get everything they had hoped for, even with their victory over Tokyo and Berlin. They hadn't planned on being unable to crush the Chinese revolution, to cite just one example. Or on the scope of anticolonial struggles throughout Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas that received an impulse from the interimperialist conflict. Nonetheless, the U.S. rulers had been overwhelmingly united and confident in going into that war....
That is not true today. They are not confident they know how the war they are preparing will actually turn out. So both sides in the tactical disputes in the U.S. ruling class argue on.
The danger of denial
Right now, at this stage in the rulers' war drive,
perhaps the biggest hazard that faces the working-class
vanguard, including communists among them, is the danger of
denial.
These hazards are compounded for those who are buffeted by the day-to-day swings and tactical divisions reflected in bourgeois public opinion. One day the news covers a tough- talking press conference by Bush-war! The next day, a sharp exchange at congressional hearings between Baker and several senators-war has been pushed back. The UN Security Council adopts a new resolution-war! The Iraqi regime releases the hostages-war has been pushed back. Several returning hostages call for bombing Baghdad-war! And so on.
The political vanguard of the working class must steel itself against such impressionistic reflexes. The workers' movement has always faced a double problem leading up to every imperialist war.
On the one hand, the capitalists and bourgeois politicians who are themselves preparing the war always claim to be acting in the interests of peace-and of freedom, democracy, and national sovereignty as well. They are the most fervent opponents of war! They publicly agonize, as cameras roll and reporters fill up their notebooks. The bosses and politicians do this in order to maintain support for actions they must take to preserve their social system.
But it's not just the bourgeois propaganda that is disorienting. Individuals and currents from the petty bourgeoisie-sometimes because of the depth of their shock at the horrors of war, and their fears of its consequences-lose their moorings and get drawn into the undertow of one or another section of the war makers and their political parties. These middle-class currents have a bigger direct impact on layers of fighting workers and farmers since-unlike the employers and most bourgeois politicians-they frequently function in or around organizations of the labor movement and in broader radical politics.
They often make common cause with petty-bourgeois bureaucrats in the unions and other workers' organizations-whether social democrats, Stalinists, or the homegrown U.S. business-unionism variety. These middle-class layers, whether well intentioned or incurably corrupted, serve as a culture for the growth of all varieties of bourgeois ideas and pressures inside the working-class and labor movement.
Based on the facts, communists can provide an independent working-class answer to the question of whether the capitalist rulers are pushing us closer to war. The answer is yes. The danger of a bloody slaughter in the Middle East is greater today, and the need for a working- class campaign against the imperialist war drive is more pressing.
Danger of bloody war closer
It is closer, first of all, because Washington is nearer
to having in place in the Gulf the forces it needs to fight
a war and win it militarily.
There is a second reason as well. Marxists understand that economic relations-or more precisely, the social relations of production that constitute the economic structure of society-are ultimately the determining factor in the evolution of history. But the specific actions that make history at any given time are the product of political decisions by human beings.
While politics has correctly been called concentrated economics, there is no precise time in the ripening of economic and social contradictions that determines when or how a particular political decision will be made. Big events are determined in their timing and in the character of their outbreak not by the broadest economic and social factors underpinning them but by the political decisions of organizations and individuals reflecting the conflicting interests of various classes operating in the larger historical framework. And this includes accidents....
In this regard, there's something else we need to keep in mind as we follow Washington's buildup in the Middle East day in and day out, and its stiffening enforcement of the embargo. Just as politics is concentrated economics, military force is the carrying out of politics by specific means-by violent and explosive means that have their own momentum in the short run. In fact, over the past month the very weight, speed, and massive character of the order of battle that the U.S. government is putting in place in the Gulf pushes politics and conflicts in the region toward resolution by military means. Never in this century has an imperialist ruling class assembled such a gigantic military force without these preparations eventuating in a full-blown war.
The events pushing humanity toward carnage and devastation in the Middle East have already been set in motion by Washington. They have already produced permanent, and potentially explosive, shifts in the balance of class forces in the region. There is nothing pessimistic or fatalistic about recognizing this reality. To the contrary, only by looking at it and refusing to blink in the face of it will vanguard fighters in the working class in the United States and other countries be prepared to act in an effective way against the war drive....
This war drive and its results are being orchestrated by the bipartisan government of the United States. But the people in whose name this is being done-those whose economic livelihoods will be devastated and whose sons and daughters will die in combat-have no say....
That prerogative is reserved to the representatives of the twin imperialist parties that control the Congress and White House. After much argument and debate over tactical alternatives-and unanimous protestations of a desire for peace-those same parties have already dragged the people of the United States into four horrendous world wars this century: in 1917, 1941, 1950, and 1964. They are on the verge of doing it again, with all the unspeakable consequences it will entail in the Mideast and in the United States itself.