Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to think that the American dominant class is paralyzed in the face of this contradiction. On the contrary, in the context of its strategic objective of defending its world hegemony, the US bourgeoisie has repeatedly responded to the challenges of its competitors not only politically, but also militarily, increasingly relying on its terrifying MILITARY MIGHT as its main tool. This could be seen in the first Gulf war, the Balkans wars, Afghanistan and presently in the war in Iraq. This headlong rush into war also implies for the bourgeoisie the need to manage more and more its economy as a war economy at the same time that it confronts an historically undefeated working class that is unwilling to accept sacrifices in the name of the defense of the national interest.
Since the present Republican administration came to power in 2001, its preoccupation to defend by military means the US imperialist interests around the world has been so clearly at the center of its political agenda, that the extension of war will be seen as the main legacy of its 8 years at the head of the American State. According to Bush’s own rhetoric, he is a war-president, the representative of a country that is literally in a permanent state of war. Yet we need to underline that using military means to defend US imperialism is by no means the prerogative of the right-wing Republicans, in fact at the imperialist level there has been continuity between Republican and Democratic administration policies ever since the dominant class became conscious of the new situation open up by the collapse of Stalinism.
Just as the old system of imperialist blocks collapsed Bush, the father, while proclaiming the beginning of a “new world order,” put in place and lead the first round of devastation against Iraq -the so-called “Desert Storm”- in 1991. Three years later, the Democrat Clinton came to power with a pledge to reverse the damage to the US imperialist interest that had been caused by the hesitations of the Bush administration vis-à-vis the break up of Yugoslavia and the advances of Western European powers, mainly France and Germany in their imperialist influence towards Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Thus, during its two terms in power, Clinton kept up a permanent state of siege against Iraq, bombarding it at will throughout the years of his administration. While in the Balkans region, under the cover of the ideology of “humanitarianism”, the Clinton administration led the US military might into the imperialist war unleashed by the break up of Stalinist Yugoslavia.
In this sense, the current Bush administration's imperialist strategy laid out during the first months after coming to power—a more forceful and unilateral foreign policy, heavily dependent on the American military might—was not an aberration. On the contrary it was a valid response to the need to defend the imperialist interests of American capitalism. Bush’s colorful cowboy, shoot-first, ask questions-afterwards image attempted to portray American Imperialism as being more than up to the challenges of world imperialist supremacy. And in September 2001, under the cover of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, the dominant class, with very few exceptions, signed on to this strategy that would take the US in turn first to the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 and in March of 2003 to that of Iraq. And back then Democrats and Republicans alike, again with very few exceptions, went hand and hand into that war and celebrated together the “victories” of the American military machine.
Of course in hindsight the US bourgeoisie declared victory prematurely and today there is not much to brag about in those conflicts. After quickly overthrowing the badly outgunned Taliban regime and installing a client government, the US has accomplished little more in Afghanistan. Reconstruction has never really taken off and guerrilla war, drug trafficking and instability are rampant in many parts of the country. While in Iraq, the Bush administration is bogged down in a war that is rapidly becoming longer than other major military conflict in which the US has been involved – such as WWI, WWII and Korea.
Four years after it was launched under the cover of a mass of lies and grandiose promises, this war has become highly unpopular with the American population, tremendously expensive and with no winnable solution in sight. Internationally, the Iraq quagmire has been extremely costly to American imperialism. Its political credibility, so essential for its imperialist hegemony, has been greatly diminished, accelerating its historical crisis. Its real strategic objective in this war –the encirclement of Europe and thus the containment of its imperialist expansionist ambitions towards the Middle East – has been a total disaster. The war in Iraq War has not weakened the main imperialist powers of Europe. On the contrary, their political imperialist credibility and world influence has grown, just as the US's world standing has reached historical lows.
Domestically, the fiasco in Iraq, and, on top of that, the debacle of the so-called “war on terror,” has created growing tensions and mounting divisions within the bourgeoisie. The Bush administration itself is more and more isolated within the bourgeoisie and from its dominant fraction in particular. Already the Iraq quagmire has cost the jobs and influence of so-called “neo-cons,” the main architects directly responsible for the Bush administration's imperialist policies. Among those that have fled the sinking ship or were forced out are the number 2 in the Pentagon, Paul Wolfowitz, the ideologue credited for the so called “Bush doctrine.” In addition, the once much-admired (in bourgeois circles), abrasive and controversial ex-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Even Vice-President Dick Cheney has been involved in a flurry of political scandals that have ended with the conviction of Scooter Libby, friend and protégé of Wolfowitz and former top Cheney assistant. However, despite the dislike and lost credibility of Bush’s policies, the American political apparatus has great weaknesses in rectifying the situation. Unlike its European counterparts, with their parliamentary systems and votes of no confidence, the US can’t change a government outside its regularly scheduled electoral calendar, with the exception of some very destabilizing measures, like impeachment or assassination. Therefore, the most likely scenario for the immediate future is the continuation of the Bush clique in power at the head of the state apparatus until the 2008 election, albeit a very much watered-down version of the one that dominated in the first years of the administration.
With less than two years left in power for the Bush administration, the question is how will the dominant class try to manage the situation. Save dramatic events, such as an unlikely impeachment, the most likely course seems to be the one already put in place in the last couple years. This entails, on the one hand, pressuring the Bush clique to readjust its imperialist policy in Iraq and around the globe, even going as far as sabotaging its decision; and on the other hand, preparingtoa change the ruling team in the 2008 presidential elections, which could bring the Democratic Party to the White House or, at the very least, a reborn Republican party based on a total repudiation of Bush policies.
Since the failed attempt to change the Bush administration in 2004, we have seen it under constant pressure that in many instances has taken the form of juicy political scandals (see article on scandals in this issue), the ultimate goal of which is to push the administration to modify its disastrous handling of the Iraq war, and beyond that to revise its general imperialist policy in particular towards the Middle East and the Far East –particularly in relation to China and North Korea. As a result of this pressure, the core of neo-conservative hawks around Cheney and Rumsfeld, who were in large part responsible for setting the tone of the Bush administration's imperialist policy, have increasingly lost their dominant position within the administration to a more pragmatic “faction,” seemingly more in tune with the needs of American capitalism as voiced by many within the dominant faction of the bourgeoisie. This “faction” composed by career foreign service officers, part of the permanent foreign policy apparatus that has served past administrations, both Democratic and Republican, centered primarily in the State Department and is formally linked to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, has already achieved some so-called course corrections that were unthinkable just a few months ago. These have resulted in a de-nuclearization pact with North Korea, a new push in the Middle East aimed to revive the Israel-Palestinian “peace process,” and tentative moves towards negotiating with Iran and Syria about the future of Iraq. Even Latin America, which has been largely ignored by the Bush administration and where anti-gringo rhetoric has been mounting for years behind Venezuelan President Chavez and his populist/leftist buddies in other countries, seems to have suddenly appeared on the radar screens of American imperialist policy priorities. Furthermore, indicative of how discredited the old neo-conservative, unilateralist, take-no-prisoners rhetoric has become, there is a clear attempt to sound more multilateralist and open to diplomatic negotiations with the enemy. In other words, the Bush administration is responding to the pressure, reluctantly and without saying so, putting forward some of changes in imperialist policy recommended in particular by the Iraq Study Group, adjustments that it had just a few months ago largely rebuffed.
It is too soon still to say how far the Bush administration will go in the ongoing readjustment of its policies, because although the so-called neo-cons are in retreat, they have not disappeared from the scene. So far, against the Iraq Study Group recommendations, they have gone ahead with an expansion of the war in Iraq and starting to send over an additional 40,000 troops against the platonic opposition of the Democratic controlled Congress. In addition, just a few weeks ago they managed to wage a successful proxy war in Somalia (which of course, like Iraq, is now bogged down in continuing instability). The neo-cons also seem to be trying to open yet another war front in the Middle East, this time against Iran which has been already for sometime in the spotlight mainly because of its growing regional imperialist influence and refusal to give up on its nuclear ambitions.
In a speech in January, Bush accused both Iran and Syria of granting safe passage in and out of Iraq to "terrorists and insurgents" and accused Iran, in particular, of "providing material support for attacks on American troops." In response, Bush announced the deployment of a second aircraft carrier strike group to the Gulf and pledged to "destroy the network providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.” In early February, as the beating of war drums for military action against Iran built up, former Carter administration National Security Advisor Brzezinski sounded the alarm bells against the neo-cons in testimony before a Senate committee. After denouncing the Bush administration’s blunder in Iraq, he warned of possible Machiavellian maneuvers that could lead to war with Iran:
“ A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks, followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure, then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the US blamed on Iran, culminating in a ‘defensive’ US military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan".
The fact that such a denunciation came from a foreign policy expert from within the inner circles of the dominant faction of the bourgeoisie itself bears witness to both the discredit and dislike of the Bush administration, and to the mounting confrontations within the dominant class. Leaving aside the Brezezinski’s intentions to sabotage the neo-cons’ policies in the Middle East, this declaration totally confirms the ICC’s analysis of the September 11 events, the invasion of Iraq and the more general question of the Machiavellian nature of the bourgeoisie.
In the last weeks there has been a tamping down of the anti-Iran war rhetoric both in the Bush administration and the neo-conservative press. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates attests that the US has no intention of going to war with Iran. This has been echoed by top military commanders who acknowledge that the US military, already waging war in Afghanistan and Iraq, is spread too thin to be able to open another war front. This is a far cry from Mr. Bush earlier “all options are open” declarations and the calls from some neo-cons to launch tactical nuclear attack against Iranian nuclear research facilities. Of course this is not the end of the story, the difficulties of American imperialism in the Middle East and Afghanistan have had the unintended side effect of increased regional influence of Iranian imperialism. This puts Iran in a collision course with the US and its main allies in the region –particularly Israel and Saudi Arabia – and sooner or later the US will have to deal with this situation.
It seems that the bourgeoisie is more or less resigned to having Bush and company in power for the next 18 months and to the reality, as Bush himself predicted sometime ago, that the problem of withdrawing American troops from Iraq would be left for the next president to resolve. This is why almost two years before the next presidential election, the presidential campaign is in full swing. No wonder! This will be a very important event for the bourgeoisie. At stake is the need to repair the international credibility of American imperialism which has been badly damaged by a particularly inept administration, which in turn has become a case study on how decomposition has affected the bourgeoisie of the most powerful capitalist nation of the world. Its level of corruption and political favoritism, its gusto for manipulation and use of the state apparatus for its own benefit, and its narrow-minded president, heavily influenced by Christian fundamentalism’s ideological disdain for science and scientific facts seem unparalleled in the recent history of teams in charge of managing the American State. But then one can say that this is a decadent administration that fits well a decadent system of a historically bankrupt dominant class.
Internationalism, March 2007.
As this issue of Internationalism goes to press, details are still emerging regarding the senseless mass slaughter of 33 people-including the apparent shooter who committed suicide-on the campus of Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, VA. Based on what we can gleam from media accounts so far, this event appears to be but the latest in a long series of horrific school shootings that have rocked the planet over the last decade and a half. These killings serve as prime evidence of the complete bankruptcy of the capitalist social order, a system that puts the accumulation of profit and the interests of the imperial state before the satisfaction of human needs and the nourishment of human potential.
In fact, what these shootings really demonstrate is the decomposition of the very foundations of the capitalist social order itself, with its inability to offer the younger generation any real perspective for the future. More and more young people grow increasingly depressed and isolated as they are marginalized by unemployment, the ruthless competition of academic life-which foreshadows the future awaiting many of them in an increasingly precarious job market, the poor state of mental health care and the overall decline of social solidarity, as life under capitalism becomes an increasingly Hobbesian struggle for individual survival.
The shooter in this particular case, Cho Seung-Hui, appears to have been a very isolated and depressed individual who had extreme difficulty forming any social bonds with others of his generation. The capitalist media will inevitably seize on this and interpret his actions as the result of an individual mental health crisis resulting from his anti-social nature and his cultural isolation as a Korean immigrant. While these factors probably played a role in pushing this particular individual to take these desperate and senseless actions, the media will try its best to pass the shootings off as the actions of a lone "nut case" that no amount of foresight and intervention could prevent. Their goal is to make us all accept that events like this, as unfortunate and terrible as they may be, will happen from time to time and there is nothing we can really do about them. While some left-wing bourgeois politicians will raise the issue of gun control and argue for more restrictive legislation to prevent such tragedies[1] and those on the right will seek to hold a supposedly permissive and violent popular culture responsible, the main thrust of the media campaign will be to convince us that these murderous events-just like terrorism-are something we are going to have to learn to live with.
In fact, something of this very sense of inevitability was revealed in the video tape the shooter sent to the news media shortly before launching his killing spree. In the tape, which is mostly an incoherent mix of anarchist hatred of the rich and puritanical and misogynistic ravings, he laments the injuries that the privileged and depraved in society have inflicted upon him, but irrationally concludes that he has no choice, no option at all, but to strike back against random innocent individuals in the murderous way he did. The sense that there is no alternative but to resort to violence is the very argument the bourgeoisie uses to justify its own military barbarism. And in the U.S., this same argument is used constantly to explain why we must keep the troops in Iraq. According to this cynical view, no matter how much in error the initial decision to send troops may have been, we now have no choice but to stay the course.
It is no surprise that this mentality has penetrated throughout society and helped cultivate an increasingly pervasive sense among many disaffected young people that there is "no future" and thus "no alternative" for assuaging one's pain than to strike back against society with individualized violence. At least that way, one can gain some recognition and attention and make society take them seriously for once, even if it means going out in a hail of bullets or the blast of a bomb. We see this same sick logic play itself out in suicide bombings in the Middle East, as well as the senseless acts of destruction carried out by many young people in the supposedly politically aware anarchist milieu.
However, the fact of the matter is that an alternative does exist to this senseless spiral into hopelessness and violence-both state and individual-that is currently engulfing the capitalist social order. But this alternative will not be found by turning to the capitalist state to protect us with more legislation-they have already proven incapable of doing that-or to the religious hacks who try to comfort us with the absurd notion that such events are part of God's master plan.
Today, it is only in the struggle of the working class against capitalism that we can find a road to a different type of society, one that is based on the collective solidarity of all, rather than the private enrichment of a few. While we cannot say that all forms of mental illness will disappear under communism-this part of the human condition is still just too poorly understood today-we do know that the establishment of a truly communist society will require a level of social solidarity we do not have today. This solidarity, while not a panacea for all human problems, is something we communists think will go a long way to alleviating many of the psychological pressures that young people like Seung-Hui face in a decomposing capitalist society which itself has no future use to the human species and whose continued existence can only serve prolong human misery.
Internationalism
April 2007
[1] In fact, as soon as news of the shootings was released, the bourgeois media in Europe, Australia and Canada seized on the event to cynically berate the United States' "gun culture" and trump the superiority of their societies over that of the American hegemon. However, while it is true that due to historical reasons it is much easier for individuals to purchase a gun in the United States than elsewhere, this same type of irrational youth violence has occurred across the capitalist globe, from the 1989 shootings at the École Polytechnique in Montreal, which killed 15 people, to the 2002 school shooting in Erfurt, Germany which claimed 17 lives.
However, as we have frequently pointed out in the ICC press, these periods of economic expansion that capitalism likes to brag about, in no way reflect a healthy economy or represent a reversal of the global economic crisis that began in the late 1960s. The general tendency is for each economic downturn, or recession, to be deeper and for each recovery to be weaker than the previous one. So in fact the economic recovery of the past five years was more fiction than fact. For example, at the height of the current economic recovery, poverty in America was worse than it was in the bottom of the previous economic downturn. According to the Census Bureau in 2005, 12.6 percent of the population – 37 million people – were living in poverty. “That means that four years into an economic expansion, the percentage of Americans defined as poor was higher than at the bottom of the last recession in late 2001, when it was 11.7 percent” (NYT Apr 17, 2007). Of course the “official” poverty statistics seriously understate the problem. For example, an alternative method for calculating the poverty level suggested by the National Academy of Sciences would have put the poverty rate at 14.1 percent in 2005, or 41.3 million people. But these statistics are ridiculous and completely distort reality. According to the official government rate, the poverty line for a family of 2 parents and 2 children in 2005 $19,806, and for the Academy’s alternative it was $22,841. It’s impossible to imagine how any family of four could survive on such abysmal income.
In any case, recently even among bourgeois pundits enthusiasm about the economy has petered out. Five years after the last recession triggered by the bursting of the stock market bubble and the dot.com collapse in mid 2001, there are numerous signs of economic downturn, most notably in the collapse of the housing market.
The chickens are once again coming home to roost for the capitalist economy. To revive the economy after the 2001 recession, the bourgeoisie responded with its usual medicine: easy credit and federal tax manipulation. From mid 2001 to August 2004, the Federal Reserve lowered the prime interest rate repeatedly, so that it reached historical lows and drove down the interest rates charged by banks and mortgage companies for loans to purchase real estate. This cheap money created an artificial demand – not a solvent demand – that stimulated the housing market, and accelerated increases in real estate prices due to an undersupply of housing. This in turn triggered an artificial construction boom to create new housing stocks to satisfy the demand, thus creating the housing boom that was in large measure the motor of the economic recovery. Speculation fueled this boom, as “subprime lending” companies engaged in speculative lending practices like granting mortgage loans without down payments or credit checks on borrowers' income. But good times don’t last forever, and as soon as the Fed started tightening credit to supposedly head off inflation, the real estate boom began to run out of steam. New homeowners got a reality check and quickly realized they had accumulated debts that far exceeded their ability to pay. Mortgage loan defaults are soaring, home foreclosures are hitting record levels, and subprime mortgage lenders have cut back drastically on making loans or have gone out of business altogether. Even traditional banks have started feeling the impact of the real estate bust, and are tightening credit and imposing restrictions on their lending practices.
After an unbelievable upswing fueled by rampant speculation in which an average home’s value increased 54.4 percent between 2001 and 2005 across the nation—even reaching more than 100 percent in some locations, housing prices are dropping. Houses for sale are sitting longer on the market and inventories of unsold homes have hit historically high levels, further depressing sale prices. Some economists are predicting a “correction” in housing prices of up to 30 percent down from present levels. This will wipe out the nominal wealth of many home owners overnight. With an oversupply of houses on the national market, fewer units are being built. The number of new, privately owned housing units fell from a peak seasonally adjust level of 2.3 million units in January 2006, to just 1.5 million in October.
The decline in housing sales and construction affected not only people directly tied to the housing industry, such as construction workers, real estate agents and mortgage brokers, but also industries that supply material to the construction industry. Analysts estimate the housing slump reduced US GDP growth by approximately one percentage point in the second half of 2006. If the slump continues to worsen, the consequences for the national economy could become even more serious.
But the housing bust is only the tip of the iceberg. In recent weeks more bad news on the state of the economy has surfaced. The monstrous national budget deficit, driven up in particular by the war and sustained by an increase in foreign government ownership of US debt, shows the potential to damage the whole world economy According to some analysts, the recent stock market crash in China and other Asian countries, followed by a jolt that sent Wall Street reeling, was caused in part by perceived weakness in the American economy by America’s larger international creditors. The carnage in the manufacturing sector is another element that completely belies any optimism about the economy. This sector has lost millions of jobs in a flurry of plant closings and “restructuring” programs. And now the service sector has begun to experience a dramatic slowdown as well.
Bourgeois economists themselves, despite Fed Chairman Bernanke’s reassurances are increasingly convinced that the US economic situation is worsening and the only thing in question is whether it will be a soft or hard landing within the year. Bourgeois economists define a recession as two consecutive quarters of negative growth rates in the GDP. But this definition hardly touches the reality of what is going on at the economic level. It is clear that the American economy is preparing for a new plunge into the abyss of the world wide economic crisis of capitalism. The phases of the
”economic cycle” that the bourgeoisie uses to describe the ups and downs of its economy are nothing more than moments in the life of a bankrupt economic system, kept afloat by a pervasive state intervention characteristic of state capitalism. All the propaganda in the world about the bright future of capitalism and having nothing to fear from economic cycles, cannot mask the essential historic truth that the global economic crisis that began in the late 1960s with the end of the post war reconstruction period continues to deepen inexorably. The current generation of the working class no longer dreams of living a better life than their parents. The environmental crisis is being used to lay the groundwork for ideological acceptance of a cut in the standard of living. The working class, and indeed the entire society, is mired in debt. Any semblance of “prosperity” or “expansion” or “growth” is based solely on speculative schemes, which ultimately wind up aggravating the economic crisis even more. Eventually these deteriorating economic conditions will drive the proletariat to defend its class interests.
ES, 04/15/07.
The targets of scandals often complain that those who have launched the scandalous allegations are politically motivated, that what they are accused of doing was longstanding common practice, and has been done by others before them without public outcry, and in this they are generally accurate. Corruption, nepotism, cronyism, and illegal behavior are central characteristics of the capitalist class’s mode of functioning. Many of the revelations that become the focal point of media attention in various scandals have actually been known about for a long time and only become worthy of media attention because of political circumstances external to the subject matter of the scandal itself.
For example, the Watergate scandal that ultimately led to Richard Nixon's fall from power in 1974 is perhaps the most sensational political scandal in post war American history. Political dirty tricks, the surreptitious tape recordings, lying and suppression of information that were at the heart of the scandal were not unique in American political history. Indeed when the break-in at Democratic party headquarters in 1972 by operatives secretly working for the White House and Nixon’s re-election committee occurred, neither the media, nor the Democratic party made such a big deal out of it, as it was to become over the next two years. The reason the scandal mushroomed was nothing intrinsic to the Watergate break-in itself, but was related to larger political themes. The first of these was the Nixon administration's use of the state apparatus against members of the ruling class, an abuse that was unacceptable within the capitalist class. This included not simply the break-in, which in fact was a minor event, involving relatively unimportant information that was taken, but the use and abuse of the power of various government agencies at the behest of the administration against critics of the administration’s policy on Vietnam, including for example the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service.
Equally important was the Nixon administration’s inability to liquidate the war in Vietnam and consummate the alliance with China, which the Nixon administration itself had played such a central role in cultivating. The rapprochement with China was central to long term US imperialist objectives, much more important than Vietnam, as it would put Russian imperialism under pressure on two fronts, from the West and the East, and allow the US to focus attention on the strategically important Middle East. A precondition for the Chinese bourgeoisie to come over to the American side was the liquidation of the Vietnam War, something which, despite all their so-called “secret plans,” the Nixon team was incapable of delivering. It was the confluence of these two political concerns of the ruling class that led to the Watergate scandal assuming historically gargantuan significance. Nixon resigned in August 1974; American withdrawal from Vietnam was achieved by April 1975. Legislative measures were implemented to protect against the worst abuses of executive power within the ruling class, which were more or less effective until the current Bush administration began its policies of restoring presidential power to pre-Watergate levels.
Ronald Reagan was clearly of limited intellectual capacities, probably at the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, and his administration was surely corrupt and plagued by scandalous exposes in the press, but even the most significant of these, the Iran-Contra scandal, was relatively mild in its impact. This caused some media pundits to refer to Reagan’s regime as the “Teflon presidency” because nothing stuck to it. This telfon-icity of the Reagan administration had more to do with the political circumstances of the time, which required no significant pressure be brought to bear on the administration.
In the Clinton administration, as we noted in Internationalism’s pages at the time, the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, ostensibly triggered by his handling of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, actually had more to do with divergences within the ruling class over imperialist policy in the Far East than whether Clinton lied about having oral sex with a White House intern. Rightwing Republicans strenuously disagreed with the Clinton administration’s intentions to play a China card, and instead preferred relying upon Japan as our key regional partner in Asia. The Lewinsky affair simply became the pretext for putting pressure on the administration.
Likewise, the scandals that have led to a whole series of media campaigns in the last few years reflect the increasing political isolation of the Bush administration within the ruling class because of its inept handling of the Iraq War and its squandering of American political and moral authority on the international level. The refusal of the administration to respond to pressure only increases the intensity of the attacks. Even if they haven’t or cannot achieve a total revamping of administration policy, they can exert enough pressure on the administration to change personnel or abandon certain disastrous policy options.
So for example, earlier scandal-driven media campaigns (WMD, Abu Ghraib) forced the administration to remove first Wolfowitz, and then Rumsfeld, from responsibility for handling war strategy.
And more recently, the administration’s rejection of the Iraq Study Group’s central recommendations to salvage the situation in Iraq in January prompted a corresponding intensification of scandals. These include the trial and conviction of Scooter Libby, the Walter Reed hospital scandal, and the US Attorneys’ dismissal scandal, which have forced the administration for the moment to seem to abandon any intention of military action against Iran.
On a general level, the Walter Reed scandal, which exposed the horrendous living conditions and medical treatment for soldiers wounded in Iraq, not only cost the careers of several generals and a hardline deputy secretary of the Army, but also totally undercut the administration’s efforts to attack their policy critics within the bourgeoisie as disloyal cowards, who would abandon American soldiers in harm's way. This neutralized the administration's propaganda blitz against its opponents, and put it totally on the defensive for its hypocrisy in its treatment of wounded servicemen, and created the climate in which military action against Iran seemed to disappear as an immediate policy option. Of course there had been complaints for over two years about the unacceptable treatment of wounded soldiers, but only in the context of political considerations did it become cause for sustained media attention.
The trial and conviction of Scooter Libby, assistant and key adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney further eroded Cheney’s political authority, who remains the main remaining foreign policy hardliner in the administration.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, is on the verge of being driven from office in a scandal that has as its pretext his role in the dismissal of eight US Attorney’s around the country, but is more likely associated with his hardline war-related policies. As White House legal counsel, Gonzales played a key role in formulating administration policy on warrantless searches and wiretaps and on disregarding the Geneva Conventions on the torture and treatment of detainees at Guantanamo interment facilities. In January, Robert Gates, the new secretary of defense, who had served until November on the Iraq Study Group panel, proposed shutting Guantanamo down because it was so discredited in the international community. He was supported by Secretary of State Condolezza Rice, but opposed by Gonzales and Cheney. Each day, there are more and more revelations that put Gonzales’ ability to survive the crisis in doubt.
These recent scandals are seized upon with vigor by the media because there is essentially political open season on the administration within the dominant fraction of the ruling class which is totally dissatisfied with the administration and needs to put pressure on it to curb its disastrous policies and minimize any further damage until a change in ruling teams is possible in 2008.
Jerry Grevin, 04/15/07.
In any case, the publication of the latest report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IIPC) forced the administration to change course. The tactic of denying the existence of plausible scientific evidence is no longer viable. It is now clear that the scientific community is near-unanimous: the ‘debate’ on whether global warming is caused by ‘human activity’ is now over. There is now overwhelming evidence that climate change is being driven by greenhouse gases produced by factories, power stations, transport, and other sectors of the economy. Global temperatures could rise by as much as 6 degrees by the end of the century, with almost incalculable results: melting of the polar ice-caps, vast floods, droughts, famines, and a frightening possibility of ‘feedback’ mechanisms which could lead to an unstoppable spiral of catastrophe. A follow up IPCC report in April demonstrated that we are already seeing the impact of global warming on weather patterns even on the immediate level, and warned that nearly 30 percent of earth’s species faced the threat of extinction due to the climate changes associated with global warming. (A number of scientists involved in drafting this report complained that diplomatic negotiation actually watered this report down because of pressure from Saudi Arabia and China.)
Suddenly Pres. Bush pronounced his acceptance that global warming exists, that it is caused by “man,” and that something has to be done about. The president, who for six years slashed environmental standards and protections at the behest of the oil industry, now champions the development of alternative fuels and an end to the American addiction to oil. Of course this didn’t stop the administration from arguing before the Supreme Court against a law suit that would compel the EPA to take action against greenhouse gas pollutants, which had it steadfastly refused to do for the past six years.
So now the scientists and even President Bush agree on who’s to blame: mankind. In one sense, of course, this is true. These changes are not brought about by changes in solar radiation or other cosmic phenomena, but by the actions of human beings. It is human beings who build factories and power stations, fly planes and burn down rain-forests.
But this is an observation, not an explanation. The teams of scientists who are trained to analyze and interpret the natural world have no corresponding theory for explaining why mankind’s economic activity operates the way it does, with so little regard for its effects on the natural environment. And as a result they are capable only of identifying the existence of the problem, not of locating its causes and mapping out a solution.
For example: a great deal of attention is paid to the technologies used to generate power and to produce and transport goods. It is recognized that these technologies are unacceptably profligate in the production of greenhouse gases and that new technologies must be found. Power should be produced by wind and tide instead of coal. Cars should be powered by electricity or hydrogen instead of oil. And while the more short-sighted representatives of the energy industry continue to give big hand-outs to the dwindling band of scientists prepared to argue against the conclusions of the IPCC, more and more spokesmen for business express the confident hope that the search for new technologies will generate new markets and so allow them to preserve and even increase their profit margins.
No doubt, any solution to the gigantic environmental problems facing humanity will involve fundamental changes at the level of technology. But the problems, at root, are not to be found in technology itself. They are to be found in the very structure of present day society, in the basic motivation of economic activity. Present day society is not just ‘industrial society.’ It is a capitalist society, a system where for the first time in human history all production is driven by the competitive hunt for profit. It is this motivation which forces the system to grow and grow and keep on growing regardless of the human and ecological consequences. It is structurally incapable of producing for human need, of adjusting production to what is humanly and ecologically viable. For capitalism that would signify the end of accumulation – suicide, in other words. And since, to grow faster than your rivals, you must cut production costs as much as possible, you need to invest in the type of technology that does the job as quickly and as cheaply as possible, regardless of the damaging consequences for the generations of the future.
By the same token, as a system irredeemably divided into competing national units, it is equally incapable of acting in a truly cooperative way at the global level. On the contrary: the more national capitals are faced by economic difficulties and diminishing resources, the more they will be obliged to retreat behind their national barricades and look for military solutions to their problems. Well-meaning commentators may lament the fact that, instead of pouring resources into saving the planet, the world’s leading powers (and, proportionally, all other states) are pouring them into developing the weapons of war. From a human point of view this is indeed absurd and tragic, but it makes sense from the point of view of the ‘nation’, of the capitalist state.
The problem of the environment is indeed a problem for mankind – for the very survival of the human species. But it cannot be solved by the very institutions whose function is to guard and maintain the present social system. The dire consequences of global warming lead some well meaning militants to grasp at the false hope that capitalist society can actually do something about salvaging the environment .But capitalism is totally incapable of doing “good” by its very nature. The highly touted Kyoto Treaty which world governments hold out as the solution would only bring greenhouse pollution back to levels equivalent to what they were in the early nineties – still a disastrous level of pollution. Now capitalism, which caused and aggravated the problem in the first place, will take advantage of public concern to reap extortionate profits in developing new technologies, which will still leave the world in disastrous conditions.
To truly solve the problem of global warming, to make sure that technology serves the social needs of humanity and not the profit drive of corporations, requires a revolutionary transformation of society. It is yet one more reason why the fate of humanity lies in the hands of the working class and its ability to rise to the challenge of it historic task to destroy capitalist society.
Internationalism, 04/15/07.
(Based on an article that originally appeared in World Revolution 301)