Against the War Psychosis of Capitalism: The Class War of the Working Class

The Bush Administration has eagerly embraced the public outcry over the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center as an opportunity to advance a long-term ruling class goal to strengthen the state by overcoming a problem that has plagued it now for three decades: the so-called Vietnam Syndrome

One of the central characteristics of the political situation over the last thirty some odd years, since the onset of the open economic crisis, has been the fact the bourgeoisie has confronted an undefeated working class that could not be counted on to rally behind the state, and permit itself to be mobilized for the carnage of global imperialist war. In the period prior to the outbreak of World War II the situation was starkly different. The world working class had suffered defeats of historic proportions that had rendered it incapable of resisting capitalism's inevitable drive towards imperialist war in the 1930s. These defeats including the failure of the revolutionary wave that began in Russia in 1917, and the ideological defeats that permitted it to be mobilized behind the state, such anti-fascism.or the physical defeats such as outright repression of the workers movement in Germany. It was these defeats that created a situation in which the working class could be mobilized behind the capitalist state and thereby opened a course towards global imperialist war.

The workers who came of age with the return of the global economic crisis in the late ‘60s had not experienced the same political, ideological and physical defeats as the prior generation and, unlike their fathers, would not be tricked into accepting the level of sacrifice, death and destruction that capitalism sought to inflict. In the U.S. the failure to successfully mobilize the population around the Vietnam War was the first notable example of that capitalism now confronted a proletariat unbent by defeat.

Since the 1960s, the American capitalist media has lamented the existence of what it has called the Vietnam Syndrome, a supposedly mass psychological disorder, in which Americans could not be convinced to accept the sacrifice of a long, protracted war. This problem contributed heavily to the necessity of the U.S. ruling class to rely on proxy wars for the past 30 years to advance its imperialist interests around the globe, supplying and financing its various puppets in smaller wars against its imperialist rivals or their proxies, or, alterenatively, to orchestrate short term military operations carefully designed to risk only minimal casualties, such as in Somalia, Haiti or the Persian Gulf. However, this problem, this so-called Vietnam syndrome, this resistance to being mobilized behind the state to march off to imperialist slaughter, was not a problem of social psychology, but rather a political consequence of the fact that capitalism had to contend with an undefeated working class. No matter how politically confused or disoriented it might have been at any given moment, the American proletariat, like its brothers throughout the world, was not ready to send its sons and daughters to march off to the slaughter for its exploiters imperialist interests, as was the case during World War II.

The Bush administration immediately seized upon the Trade Center disaster as the opportunity to prepare the population to rally behind the flag, behind the state, and accept the idea of a protracted war-- one that could last 36 months, as Secretary of State Colin Powell put it. For the moment this political offensive seems to be working. With a relentless, propaganda barrage, constantly comparing the current disaster to the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 that killed less than half the total missing at the Trade Center, patriotic fervor is at unprecedented levels since World War II. The hideous flag waving, the singing of mindless patriotic songs, the distortion of the genuine sense of solidarity for the victims of the tragedy into the basest nationalist chauvinism are all part of this campaign. The media, including the tabloid newspapers and especially television,with its constant, repetitious replays of the planes crashing into the buildings, and glib, are all contributing mightily to this effort.

However the long term success of this political offensive is not sealed. The strategy runs into difficulty because there is no “enemy” country to attack or invade. For the moment the “heroes” continue to be the firefighters in New York City who risked their lives to rescue the missing, not the Special Forces units who will soon raid Afghanistan, or the crews who will fire the cruise missiles that will obliterate thousands of lives, in what the bourgeoisie will excuse as “collateral damage.” But more importantly, the outcome of the ruling class political offensive won't be determined simply by conditions in the U.S., but depends as well on the experience, activity and collective political force of the world working class. The outcome of this offensive will be linked to the question of the deteriorating living conditions, shrinking wages and the acceptance of continuing death and destruction that the ruling class will attempt to inflict on the working class in the name of sacrifice for the good of the nation, and the proletariat’s response to these attacks. Whether the working class will abandon its own self-defense and acquiesce in the capitalist attacks is not predetermined.

The potential success of the capitalist campaign and the implications it could have on a long term basis for the class struggle raise truly serious issues for the workers’ movement, and the future of humanity itself. The present situation clearly poses the alternative of barbarism or socialism with inescapable clarity. Now as never before, revolutionaries and class conscious workers must speak loudly and unitedly against the war psychosis propagated by the bloody gangsters who wield political power. We must intervene as widely and effectively as possible against the rising tide of nationalism, against the racist attacks against Muslims, against the American bourgeoisie’s attempt to mobilize the working class behind the state. No matter how much of a minority revolutionaries might find themselves in at this crucial juncture, they have the responsibility, to their class, and to history, and to the future, of pointing out the general of march to communism -- to point out that the only way to build a future where wanton mass death and destruction are not daily barbaric social realities is for the working class to return to the class struggle, to fight for its class interests and to challenge the continued domination of capitalism that is leading us into barbarism. It is class war, not imperialist war, that holds the promise of a future for the human race.

Jerry Grevin

A central element in the current ideological offensive of the ruling class is the aggressive effort to gain public acquiescence in the strengthening of the repressive apparatus of the state, and the erosion of “civil liberties.”Of course this isn’t totally new.The Clinton administration had already presided over the greatest repressive offensive in a generation.The strengthening of the police forces around the country by the transfer of 100,000 laid off soldiers to local police agencies during the 1990s; the increase in the number of criminal offensives punishable by death; the closing of the doors to political exiles from oppressive regimes in South America and the Caribbean; repressive rulings by the Supreme Court that expanded police search and seizure powers, limited appeals by defendants; the explosion in the percentage imprisoned in the nation’s jails -- are all examples of this strengthening of the repressive apparatus overthe past decade.

In response to the attack at the Trade Center, the bourgeoisie is experience considerable success in gaining public acceptance for the imposition of road blocks, police check points, the shutdown of bridges and tunnels.One of the central elements in the current media campaign is the constant reminder that “things will never be the same,” that Americans will have to accept inroads on their traditional “civil liberties.”Already the government asks the lifting of legal restrictions on wiretaps and electronic surveillance, that had been enacted in the aftermath of the excesses of the Vietnam War and the Watergate crisis.The use of immigration law to detain people being questioned about their possible knowledge of the terrorist plot is hailed in the media, despite the fact that only one or two of these people have actually been arrested – and those as “material witnesses,” not conspirators.

The government even proposes to detain and deport people caught in its drag net without having to present evidence.The idea of imposing a system of identity cards for citizens and non-citizens has been broached.Proposed under the cover of the popular uproar over the Trade Center disaster, these repressive tools will serve the ruling class well in its future confrontation with the working class and its revolutionary minorities, for it doesn’t a rocket scientist to appreciate the basic lesson of history that its not a handful of terrorists—no matter how bloody and horrifying their actions—that poses the real threat capitalism, but is the working class, the only revolutionary class in society today.

Now matter how horrifying the events of September 11th, the strengthening of the state’s repressive apparatus offers nothing positive for the working class.The state does not exist as an institution reflecting the interests and needs of all of society, but rather it represents the dictatorship of the dominant class in society.The state exists in order to control a society wracked by social contradiction and class antagonisms, and ultimately to repress the social forces that threaten it historically.Cynically, the bourgeoisie uses the current disaster, which was provoked in the first place by the decomposition of its own system -- its own social and political relations-- more and more into the ravages of open barbarism against the working class.

The existence of such barbarism is demonstrable proof that capitalism is no longer fit to rule humanity, but paradoxically it is used by capitalism to propagate the notion that its rule needs to be strengthened, that even more repression, more capitalist dictatorship, is necessary for the safety and welfare of society. This hideous campaign seeks to gain acceptance for the increasing intrusion of the state of our class enemies into our daily lives, supposedly for our protection, when in the final analysis what the state is doing is strengthening its ability to suppress proletarian opposition and resistance. For the working class, the historic task is the destruction of the capitalist state, and its replacement by working class rule.The working class has nothing to gain from the strengthening of the repressive apparatus of the state, no matter what guise the bourgeoisie uses to serve it up.

Jerry Grevin

As the bourgeois media gave its gory accounts of the terrorist attacks in the attempt to rally the American working class behind its rulers’ war cry about the ‘necessity to unite behind the nation in its fight against terrorism’, it also subtly started to prepare the working class to accept sacrifices and belt-tightening of all sorts in the name of patriotism and the defense of the nation. For example early media reports following the NYC and Washington, DC carnage, conveyed the news that President Bush would have to put domestic policies on the back burner, and divert billions of dollars from Social Security and other social programs into the military effort. Numbed by the nationalist, patriotic propaganda blitz, this news was received without the least hint of opposition. The bourgeoisie wants to blame the accelerating economic difficulties on the terrorists, and to use patriotism to get the working class to accept the escalating crisis and its attacks on wages and the standard of living without a whimper. But this propaganda line just won’t wash.

True, the economy took a further nosedive after September 11th, as over 100,000 layoffs were announced in the airlines industry and at Boeing aircraft, and much economic activity ground to a halt for several days. But even before September 11, the economy was in dire straits. The economic situation was so grim that high ranking business leaders affiliated with the Republican party were clamoring for the president to ‘do something,” complaining that he was not showing a strong leadership style in the face of adverse economic developments.

What was the state of the economy before September 11th? Unemployment had risen to 4.9%. The number of layoffs announced up to September 11th totaled 1.1 million, a record pace. For three months in a row, private sector employment shrank in an increasing number of industrial sectors, and, in addition, workers with jobs were putting in fewer hours a week. Consumer confidence had taken a nose dive, as workers and other strata braced themselves to weather out the impending recession. A survey by the University of Michigan reported that nearly half of American households were using the Bush administration’s highly touted tax refund checks to pay day the burdensome debt that had accumulated before the bubble burst, rather than spend on new purchases to jump start the economy, as the government had hoped. There were a record number of bankruptcy filings in the second quarter –400,000 in all, a 25% increase. According to the American Bankruptcy Institute, ‘the figures for the first half of this year are alarming, if not shocking. (Washington Post Sept. 9). And the corporate sector was even in worse shape, the Standard and Poor 500 companies’ profits were down 39 percent in the second quarter, in what some bourgeois financial observers termed “one of the most severe profit recessions in 30 years.” Particularly hard hit was the high tech industry, which had been the darlings of the 1990s boom years, as corporations across the board cutback on spending on computer software by an annualized rate of 15%. This left many of the computer industry giants tinkering on the edge of disaster, as they choked “on billions of dollars in debt that they took on during the boom years to expand capacity and keep up with what then looked like never-ending demand” (Washington Post). The default rate on junk bonds will likely reach nearly 10%, similar to the rate in the 1991 downturn. Hopes that the seven interest rate cuts would stimulate economic revival had proved groundless.

The economic difficulties of the US economy reflect the global crisis of world crisis, characterized by an ever shrinking, saturated world market, one that is more and more involvent. For years the economic boom in the US, was largely a mirage, fueled by exploding debt levels and speculation on the stock markets, since there were no outlets for productive capital investments. Finally the economic bubble had burst, and the chickens were coming home to roost. The terrorists may present the bourgeoisie with a handy scapegoat for the recession, but in terms of economics, it’s nonsense.

The bourgeoisie is responding to this situation by resorting to the old ’anti-recession’ policies that have already proven a further poisonous ’remedy.’ On Thursday, September 13, the Fed bought $38.25 billion worth of government bonds from investment houses, when on a normal day it buys and sells no more than a few billion dollars worth of bonds. The Fed also cut interest rates to spur borrowing for investment. These ’remedies’ have proved in the past to be effective ways to create an artificial market and a speculative bubble which was inevitably bound to burst. Meanwhile $20 billion are being used for the military effort, just for starters, and the ’fight’ over whether or not to use the Social Security surplus is over, with Congress dipping deeper and deeper in it.

Revolutionary marxists have always insisted that the economic crisis is the best ally of the working class, because it’s the misery and threat to its own existence that can help the working class develop its struggles and consciousness of the necessity to destroy capitalism. But today the bourgeoisie will do its utmost to cloud any understanding by the working class of the real causes of its increased misery and the present danger to its own survival. In this sense, the attacks are a boon for the ruling class. The unions will gladly give the ruling class a hand. Already, in Minnesota, two unions representing 60% of that state’s government employees have agreed to postpone a threatened strike, saying the time is not right, after the terrorist attacks In New York City, teachers, who have worked for a year without a contract, can forget about any new agreement. The working class confronts increasing layoffs, greater economic uncertainty, and the growing threat their lives and the lives of their families, as the US unleashes its new aggressive militarism. But it is the working class alone which can put an end to humanity’s suffering at the hands of decomposing capitalism, by rejecting the capitalist flim-flam and returning to the class struggle to defend itself.

-- Ana