The terrible bloodbath on the 11 September was not a sudden bolt out of the blue by “Islamic fanatics”. On the contrary, it was a new, and qualitatively more serious, link in a long chain of wars, acts of destruction, developing militarism and arms build up.

The lie of a ‘New World Order’ is once again exposed

10 years ago the present American president’s father promised a “New World Order” because the collapse of what his predecessor � Ronald Reagan - had called the “evil empire” had brought about the victory of “democracy” and “Liberal” capitalism. This was supposed to lead to a society where military conflicts would progressively disappear and all nations would live under Right, Law and Justice, in capital letters. With the appearance of the first serious convulsions in the old Soviet bloc a completely different perspective was opened up “Far from encouraging peace, the disintegration of the blocs which emerged from Yalta, and the decomposition of the capitalist system which underlines it, implies still more tension and conflicts. The appetites of the minor imperialisms, which up to now have been determined by the world’s division into two major camps, will only increase, now that these camps no longer dominated by their leaders before” (‘Presentation to the Theses on the Economic and Political crisis in the USSR and the Eastern Countries’, International Review 60). We insisted that we were not going towards a “New World Order” but towards “A world of bloody chaos, where the American Policeman will try to maintain a minimum of order by the increasingly massive and brutal use of military force” (‘Militarism and Decomposition’ International Review 64).

The Gulf War in 1991 was the first episode in this; then came Yugoslavia, the Middle East, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Sierra Leon, Congo, Algeria, Angola, Afghanistan, Timor, Chechnya, Colombia, Burma, Kashmir� This succession of violent convulsions form part of the dynamic that led to the terrible assault on the Twin Towers. This dynamic is based on a historically unprecedented explosion of imperialist appetites amongst both great and small states - appetites that had been more or less contained by the discipline of the blocs. But over the past ten years, in the absence of this discipline, and in the general context of an ever-deepening economic crisis, we have been plunged into a chaotic spiral of confrontations, which, if the proletariat does not react, will end up leading to the destruction of humanity.

What lies behind this dynamic? Will it be possible to reach a point of equilibrium that will allow these tensions to be contained with a framework of negotiations?  The different factions of the ruling class clearly put forwards this idea. The official message of the Western governments is that the “democratic” great powers are seeking to set up just laws that will allow a “New World Order”. The only problem is that this praiseworthy effort is being torpedoed by a whole series of dark forces: dictators such as Saddam Hussein or Milosevic, international terrorism which now possesses terrible and secret weapons, the “rogue” states (North Korea, Afghanistan, Libya etc). In order for this much-promised “New World” to be achieved it will be necessary to mobilise behind the military crusade against these “new threats” and  “new forms of war”.

The explanations given by the left of capital, although they are more insidious, are no less fragile. They certainly see the need to “struggle against terrorism” and the “new forms of war” and are therefore very enthusiastic about the military mobilisation. But at the same time they add a twist of criticism about the “excesses” of “neo-liberalism” and “globalisation”, which are obstacles to a more just world order.

Lastly, the message of the factions that support the “rogue” states and “international terrorism” is no less repugnant than that of their “civilised” opponents. They justify acts such as the attack on the Twin Towers by saying that they are “an action by the oppressed peoples against imperialism” and that they are retaliation against the populations of the opulent metropoles for the suffering of the Palestinian and Arab masses.

All of these political currents are expressions of a capitalist system that is leading humanity towards barbarism. Their crude claims not only don’t explain anything, but have the aim of tying the proletariat and the great majority of the population to the yoke of capitalism and imperialism, of stimulating the most base instincts of hate, revenge and massacre.

Military barbarism in the phase of capitalist decomposition

Only the historical method of marxism, the most advanced expression of the class consciousness of the proletariat, can provide a coherent explanation of the murderous disorder that reigns in the world, and put forward the only possible solution: the destruction of capitalism in all countries.

In 1989, faced with the collapse of Stalinism and the imperialist bloc organised around Russia, we demonstrated that these events signalled capitalism’s entry into a new and terminal phase of its decadence: the stage of decomposition. In the document ‘Decomposition, the final phase of capitalist decadence’, published in International Review 62 we showed that its roots lay in a new characteristic of the period opened up by 1968: on the one hand, the proletariat had revived its class struggle but had not been able to go beyond the merely defensive level. Nevertheless, this made it difficult for the bourgeoisie to impose its response to the endless crisis of its system: generalised imperialist war. All of which sucked world society into a morass: “As crisis-ridden capitalism’s contradictions can only get deeper, the bourgeoisie’s inability to offer the slightest perspective for society as a whole, and the proletariat’s inability, for the moment, openly to set forwards its own historic perspective, can only lead to a situation of generalised decomposition. Capitalism is rotting on its feet”.

This morass has profoundly marked the evolution of capitalism at all levels of its existence “to such an extent that the contradictions and expressions of decadent capitalism that mark its successive phases do not disappear with time, but continue and deepen; the phase of decomposition appears as the result of an accumulation of all the characteristics of a moribund system, completing the 75-year death agony of a historically condemned mode of production. Concretely, not only do the imperialist nature of all states, the threat of world war, the absorption of civil society by the state Moloch, and the permanent crisis of the capitalist economy all continue during the phase of decomposition, they reach a synthesis and an ultimate conclusion within it” (ibid).

At the level of the evolution of imperialist tensions, the world scene has been dominated by a series of particularly grave and destructive elements:

* The United States, whilst being the only military superpower, has been faced with its authority being increasingly challenged, not only by nations with their own aspirations (Germany, France, Great Britain�) but also by an increasing number of other states.

* Each state follows its own policy and virulently affirms its refusal to submit to the discipline of the more powerful states. This is the explosion of what we call “every man for himself”.

* Alliances between states have become circumstantial and lost all solidity and continuity. They are ephemeral and temporary, forming and falling apart at a dizzying speed.

* Conflicts fester without any remedy, beyond any possibility of stabilisation. The conflicts inherited from the Yalta epoch have not been resolved but rather have become indefinitely prolonged.

* Imperialist strategy � as a coherent and long-term political and military orientation � has become increasingly less possible. It has been replaced by immediatist, contradictory tactics, without stable alliances, that have worsened the chaos and destruction even more.

* A consequence of the former is that the policy of all the great powers � and even more so of the smaller ones - consists more of destabilising the allies of its rivals than constructing its own network of loyal states.

* The great powers are implicated in the use of terrorism as a means of war; the world situation is characterised by “the development of terrorism or the seizure of hostages, as methods of warfare between states, to the detriment of the ‘laws’ that capitalism established in the past to ‘regulate’ the conflicts between different ruling class factions” (ibid).

All this has aggravated the chaotic nature of imperialist conflicts, because as we demonstrate in the Resolution on the International Situation from our 14th Congress, which took place in May 2001 “..the fragmentation of the old bloc structures and disciplines unleashed national rivalries on an unprecedented scale, resulting in an increasingly chaotic struggle of each against all from the world’s greatest powers to the meanest local warlord�The wars characteristic of the present phase of capitalist decomposition are no less imperialist wars than the wars of previous phases of decadence, but they have become more widespread, more uncontrollable, and more difficult to bring to even a temporary close” (International Review 106) .

The United States is the biggest loser in this situation. Its national interests are identified with the maintaining of a world order built for its own advantage. However all of the pillars upholding  such an order have been overturned by the evolution of decomposing capitalism:

* The threat of the Russian bear, which pushed the affluent bourgeoisies of Europe and Japan to voluntarily submit to American tutelage, no longer exists. This has encouraged them to pursue their own ambitions, and this can only lead to a widespread clash with American interests.

* The development of the economic crisis has whetted the imperialist appetites of all states, resulting in campaigns of conquest, in attempts to destabilise their rivals’ underlings, in risky adventures that can only end up by further spreading chaos.

* Social decomposition spreads through all countries, but above all the weakest ones. This generates all kinds of centrifugal tendencies and powerful movements towards dislocation and schism. All types of gangs and warlords terrorise the population whilst at the same time fighting against the central state. These fires have not only been fanned by neighbouring states but also by the world and regional powers through their thinly veiled support. Some examples of this situation are the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Russia, Colombia, Mexico, Sierra Leone, Liberia, etc.

Confronted with this blood-soaked mess, the world’s sheriff, the United States, has been obliged to carry out enormous displays of force, as we saw in the Gulf and Kosovo. These exhibitions of its overwhelming military power have forced its rivals to bend the knee and line themselves behind the great godfather. Nevertheless, when the effect of intimidation wears off, they all return to their old ways, forcing the US to react on an even bigger scale. It is certainly significant that just prior to September 11, tensions between Europe and America (over Kyoto, ‘Son of Star Wars’, the Euro-Army, etc) had never been so sharp.

The USA is compelled to use military force to reaffirm its world domination

It is difficult to work out who exactly was behind the bloody attack of 11th September. However, what is certain is that even while the bodies were still warm, the American state immediately began to loudly bang the drums of war. Taking full advantage of the terrible emotional impact of the massacre on the American population, it unleashed violent patriotic hysteria in order to carry out an unprecedented war mobilisation.

Simultaneously, the countries of NATO have had to stand to attention; not only that, they have also had to stomach the application of Article 5 of the Treaty that obliges them to show “solidarity” with any of the members countries that have been attacked. The United States has told them in no uncertain terms, through the words of a high-ranking diplomat, that “those who are not united with the coalition will be considered and treated as an enemy”.

Practically all the world’s regimes have unreservedly supported the USA’s plans. Only the Taliban, officially designated as being guilty of hosting the shady Bin Laden, have refused and called for a “Holy War”.

However, there are noticeable differences between the new military deployment being prepared by the US and the one carried out in 1991. Then it was fundamentally an exhibition of force, whereas today, as Bush has declared “it is not a question of vengeance, nor of a symbolic reaction, but of winning a war against barbarous behaviour”.  Therefore in his televised harangue he said that “we ask you for patience because the conflict will not be short. We ask you for tenacity because the conflict will not be easy. We ask you for all our strength because the road to victory will be long”.

What is being laid out for the coming weeks is a widespread military campaign which will encompass several theatres of operations. The choice of Afghanistan as the main target is not an accident or simply the result of Bin Laden’s presence. This country has a fundamental strategic importance. It is situated at the crossroads between Russia, China, India and at the same time its immense mountains can serve as an observatory and a platform for putting pressure on the Middle East � Palestine and Israel, the Arab Emirates, Arabia etc - which is a crucial centre for the control of Europe. The United States has not only forced all of the states and especially its former allies to follow its plans; it is also seeking out more stable and durable positions which will allow it to have a much greater control over the world situation.

The period ahead will see a dramatic aggravation of imperialist tensions:

* Firstly because an act of war has struck massively and directly at the workers and population of the world’s main city, New York. A tendency that has prevailed since 1945 has come to an end: the workers of the main industrial centres are no longer going to be free from the scourge of war; from now on they are going to be exposed to reprisals comparable to the attack on the Twin Towers that could result in thousands of victims.

* Secondly, because the response that the USA is preparing will take the form of a much more prolonged military operation. This will involve a much greater deployment of military force than during the Gulf war.

* Thirdly, because this is inevitably going to lead to costly and difficult operations involving the occupation of territory, with the consequent use of infantry and their involvement in bloody struggles.

The qualitative leap in the evolution of imperialist tensions is more than obvious. We are not on the eve of the third world war as alarmist announcements have claimed. Nevertheless, this is not any consolation because these events dramatically confirm the tendency that war has taken on in the period of decomposition; and this in the long run can be just as dangerous as a Third World War. As we say in the International Situation Resolution from our last Congress “The working class today thus faces the possibility that it could be engulfed in an irrational chain reaction of local and regional wars�This apocalypse is not so far from what we are experiencing today, the face of barbarism is taking material shape before our eyes�Humanity today does not merely face the prospect of barbarism in the future: the descent has already begun and it bears with it the danger of gradually eating away at the every premises of any future social regeneration”

In the second part of this article we will examine the effects of these recent events on the class consciousness of the proletariat.

The American bourgeoisie has exploited the catastrophe of 11 September to try and reassert its imperialist power on an unprecedented scale. The British bourgeoisie has also not missed the opportunity to play its own imperialist game, to advance its own military, diplomatic and political position on the world arena at the expense of its rivals, cynically exploiting sympathy for its ‘own’ victims in the terrorist attacks.

Of course the British bourgeoisie, like most of the rest of the world bourgeoisie, rushed to denounce the terrorist attacks, to solidarise with the United States, to support the declaration of democratic war on terrorism, and invoke, along with other major powers, the ‘mutual defence’ article of NATO’s constitution. But, beyond that ‘solidarity’, even more than during the Gulf War or the wars in the Balkans, the differences between the major powers remain - particularly their resistance to the US, the one super-power among them. Britain, despite appearing to be the US’s poodle, is no exception.

The massive riposte planned by the US following the terrorist outrages is precisely aimed.  Its target is not just Osama bin Laden’s network, an even feebler foe than Iraq was in 1991, but at the pretensions of other capitalist states, in particular the other major powers, that, since 1989, have begun to oppose and resist US world hegemony.

Britain, like France and Germany, in various parts of the world, but particularly the Balkans, have been trying to defend their own imperialist interests now that the threat of the Soviet Union no longer forces them to cower behind the United States. The planned European army, first proposed by Whitehall, is a barely disguised threat to the hegemony of US-led NATO in Europe. According to Henry Kissinger’s recent book, Does America need a foreign policy?, the most troubling threats to US dominance in the world are precisely ‘European developments’.(1) Conversely, Britain  has much to lose in terms of world stature by an overwhelming display of US military force in the Middle East.

Why Britain proclaims its loyalty

American imperialism is well aware of what British imperialism is up to. “Tony Blair was not the first European leader to visit President Bush. But he was the most fervent in expressing unreserved support and in trying to rally round the other Europeans. In this he is simply following half a century of tradition. Virtually every British prime minister since Churchill has leapt at an opportunity of reviving his partnership with the president of the United States. It plays well electorally and gives a sense of world leadership.” (International Herald Tribune, 26.09.01.)

The British bourgeoisie is hoping, by running alongside the American military juggernaut, to limit the scope of the latter’s impact on its own imperialist prestige and grab for itself more of the kudos out of the coming carnage than rivals like France and Germany. That’s why, shortly after his Washington visit, Blair informed a meeting of Labour MPs that the object of British foreign policy was to ‘restrain’ America. Much of the British bourgeois media has echoed this theme.

The reason that the ruling class in Britain sustains the illusion of a ‘special relationship’ between the UK and US is to disguise the existence of imperialist and nationalist divisions and use internationally-shared ‘democratic values’ to try and mobilise the population for the sacrifices to come .

But Britain’s characteristically perfidious strategy on the world arena is fraught with danger.

Despite Britain’s diplomatic experience on the world scale as a former ‘superpower’, especially in the middle East, it will be destined for disappointment if it hopes to cash in without the underlying military force.

Foreign secretary Jack Straw has made the first high level British diplomatic visit to Iran since 1979, ostensibly to galvanise support for action against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. He met with Yasser Arafat for the same purpose. But his trip was also a pitch to be, in the words of the 1997 October Labour Party conference, the ‘best’, if not the ‘biggest’ imperialist power. But, if you are going to ‘punch above your weight’, be prepared for a black eye. Straw’s visit turned into a fiasco as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon initially cancelled a meeting with him because of his “anger, outrage and disappointment” at an article written by Straw for an Iranian newspaper which was taken as support for the Palestinian cause. Bush, speaking from the position of US strength, subsequently told the world that a Palestinian state was always part of the US “vision”, hitting back at Sharon when he compared US behaviour to 1930s appeasement of Nazi Germany.

British imperialism will receive more diplomatic humiliations as a result of the gap between its pretensions and its relative military impotence on the world arena.

The British military has sent an armada  to Oman of comparable size to that used in the Falklands War. It’s officially on an exercise, but conveniently placed to intervene in Afghanistan. But the British military is far from integrated into the strategic plans of the Pentagon, as the assistant US Defence Secretary made clear at the recent NATO summit. The ‘allies’ will be called upon only when summoned by the United States. Despite its relative importance in comparison with the military strength of other European powers, the British armed forces are destined to be proved puny in comparison with those of the United States in the coming offensive. Not that this will stop it contributing as much as it can to the escalation of military barbarism and the growing chaos of international relations.

If there is one level at which British imperialism is still the ‘envy of the world’ it is in its propaganda expertise. The British media, particularly its newspapers, were exemplary in adding to the terror of the attacks on the US by giving them every conceivable echo. This was not because of any real human sympathy, but to help reinforce the passivity, fear and perplexity of  the population. In the name of humanitarian outrage, it led the world in drawing phoney lessons to reinforce all capitalist states, insisting that the world is faced with two fundamental alternatives: not socialism or barbarism, but democracy or terrorism, good or evil, for which no sacrifice is too great.

The US tells it straight

While President Bush has welcomed British ‘loyalty’, he’s also made clear US determination to make the ‘crusade against terrorism’  a one horse race. You are either for America or against it. Despite the talk of a ‘coalition’ of states, this will not be like the allied coalition in the Gulf War. This time round the only role for other states will be to obey the diktats from Washington.

As the Washington Post (20/9/01) made clear ...

“If Washington broadens the focus beyond bin Laden and perhaps Afghanistan, it will lose the support it needs to carry out the surgical plan effectively. This is the message Mr Bush will hear from President Jacques Chirac of France, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, the Saudi foreign minister, Saud Faisal, and others this week��Listen to their concerns, Mr President, and be your affable, charming self. But leave your visitors in no doubt that America’s losses will be avenged and America’s vulnerabilities minimised � whether they ride in the posse or not”. Como 4/10/01

Note

(1) When Bush targets those who harbour terrorists as much as the terrorists themselves, he is letting the European powers understand that he is not just talking about ‘rogue’ states in the middle East.  The revelations of the ease with which anti-US terrorist networks operated in Britain and Germany, for example, show that the European powers are not the allies of the US they pretend to be.

In response to the horrible war crime of 11 September, new and equally horrible war crimes are now being committed by the USA, which has come under direct attack for the first time in nearly two hundred years. Even before the first assaults were launched on an already ruined Afghanistan, tens of thousands of Afghan refugees were being condemned to death by starvation and disease. The death list will increase dramatically now the military strikes have begun.

We are being told that the coming war will be a war for the defence of democracy and civilisation against a network of Islamic fanatics led by bin Laden. But bin Laden and his breed, by deliberately setting out to slaughter as many civilians as possible, are only following the fine example already set by capitalist civilisation, which rules the entire planet today. For this civilisation, this mode of production, which has been in deep decay since the First World War, has already given us the terror bombing of London (the Blitz), of Dresden and Hamburg, of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of Vietnam and Cambodia; the majority of these slaughters were also carried out in the name of democracy and civilisation. In the last decade alone it has given us the massacres in Iraq and Kuwait, in Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro; in Algeria, Rwanda, the Congo, Chechnya and the Middle East. In every one of these horror-stories, it has above all been the civilian populations which have been held hostage, forced to flee, tortured, raped, bombed and herded into concentration camps. This is the civilisation we are being asked to defend - a civilisation which now lives in a state of permanent war, which is sinking deeper and deeper into its own decomposition, threatening the very survival of the human species.

The working class is the main victim of capitalist war

With the massacre of September 11 we have entered a new stage in global imperialist conflict, a stage in which war will become more permanent and more widespread than at any time since 1945. And as in all of capitalism’s wars, the working class and the poorest sections of society will be the main victims. In the Twin Towers, the majority of the dead were office workers, cleaners, firemen, in short, proletarians. In Afghanistan, it is the utterly dispossessed, press-ganged into the Taliban armies or fleeing for their lives from both the government and the US onslaught, who will pay the highest price.

And the working class is not only a victim in the flesh; it is also a victim in its consciousness. In the USA, the bourgeoisie is taking advantage of the legitimate outrage and disgust created by the terrorist attacks to stir up the worst forms of patriotic hysteria, to call for ‘national unity’, for solidarity between exploited and exploiters. Everywhere the Stars and Stripes is being used as a symbol of defiance against the bin Ladens of the world, tying the workers to the interests of the nation, and thus of the ruling class.

In Europe, we are being told that ‘we are all Americans now’, once again seeking to turn human sympathy for the dead into support for the new war drive. And if workers are not asked to take the side of civilisation against terrorism, they are asked to see bin Laden as a symbol of ‘resistance’ against oppression and to prepare for Holy War, as in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Middle East, or among ‘Muslim’ populations in the central countries. In this version of the events, the ‘Americans got what they deserved’. This is yet another way of preventing workers from seeing their true class identity, which cuts across all national frontiers.

Throughout the world, the proletariat is being subjected to state terror in the name of the fight against terrorism. Not only the terror imposed by the climate of national chauvinism, but also by the very concrete measures of repression being set up throughout the world. The very real fear generated by the events in the USA provides the ruling class with the perfect climate to increase its whole system of police controls, identity checks, phone-tapping and other ‘security’ measures, a system that will in future be used not against terrorist suspects but against workers and revolutionaries fighting capitalism. The issue of identity cards in Britain and the USA is just the tip of this iceberg.

The answer to war is not pacifism but the class struggle

The ruling class knows that it needs the loyal support of the entire population, but above all of the working class, if it is to take its imperialist designs onto a new level. It knows that the only real obstacle to war is the working class, which produces the vast majority of social wealth,  which is the first to die in capitalism’s wars. And this is precisely why the workers must reject any identification with any national interest. To struggle against the march towards war, they must revive and develop the struggle for their own class interests. The struggle against redundancies being demanded not only as a result of the recession but also as a consequence of the terrorist attacks. The struggle against sacrifices at work, imposed to strengthen the ailing national economy or the war effort. The struggle against repression justified by the hunt for terrorists and subversives. It is this struggle alone which can enable the workers to understand the need for international class solidarity with all the victims of capitalist crisis and devastation; it is this struggle which alone can open up the perspective of a new society free from exploitation and war. 

The proletarian struggle has nothing in common with pacifism, as exemplified by the new Coalition to Stop the War that has been set up in Britain by CND, the Trotskyists and others. The pacifists make their appeal to the UN and to international law; the proletarian struggle can only expand if it breaks the barriers of the law. Already in the most ‘democratic’ countries, any effective forms of struggle (such as mass or secondary pickets, decision-making by general assemblies rather than union ballots, etc) have, with the assistance of the trade unions, become illegal. The outlawing of the class struggle will become even more explicit in a period dominated by war.

The pacifists also make their appeal to ‘all decent minded people’, to an alliance of all classes opposed to the positions of Blair and Bush. But this is yet another way of drowning the workers in the population at large, at precisely the time when the number one problem for the working class is to rediscover its distinct social - and political - identity.

 Above all, pacifism has never opposed the national interest, which in the epoch of imperialism can only be defended by the means of imperialism. This goes not only for the ‘respectable’ pacifists like Bruce Kent, but also for pacifism’s ‘radical’ wing, the leftists, who always seek to get the workers to ‘defend’ one nationalism or another. In the Gulf war, they defended Iraq; in the Balkans war they argued about whether to support Serbia or the Kosovo Liberation Army (and thus NATO); today they are scrabbling around to find some ‘anti-imperialist’ faction to support, if not bin Laden and the Taliban, then the ‘Palestinian Resistance’ whose ideas and methods are exactly the same.

 Far from opposing war, pacifism is a necessary adjunct to the military coalition of the bourgeoisie, a way of delaying and diverting an authentic class consciousness about the meaning of war in this society. Humanity is not faced with the alternatives of war and peace. It is faced with the alternatives of imperialist war and the class war, of barbarism and the communist revolution. This was the alternative announced by Lenin and Luxemburg in 1914, and answered by the strikes, mutinies and revolutions which brought an end to the first imperialist world war. After almost a hundred years of capitalist decadence and self-destruction, that alternative stands before us with even sharper clarity. 

WR, 8.10.01