Press Action ::: There's More Than One Way Out of Crisis

Sunday, January 01, 2006

There's More Than One Way Out of Crisis

By Earl Silbar

The New York Times recently summarized the debate between different wings of the foreign policy establishment in the U.S., what I think of as conventional vs. radical. It also illustrates the limits of modern political science. The author of the Times piece, Andrew Bacevich, professor of international relations at Boston University, opens the door to the battle between two historic approaches to power—the ideological (read Bush 2nd & neocons) and the realistic (read Bush 1st and NY Times, State Dept.). He concludes that we are all to blame (see the last two lines, for example), which holds “human nature” responsible for today’s tragedy in Iraq rather than the managers of the current system or their system itself. How convenient for both.

When trying to untangle the mess of current American foreign policy, the author does not even consider the economic drives for expansion arguably inherent in the capitalist system itself. Instead, we are presented only the two competitors with not a word about the monster driving them. It’s like a salesman describing a car without mentioning the motor.

The author simply dismisses the idea that the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq is simply for cheap oil. Not a word about the growing economic crisis and the consequent increased competition worldwide, including competition to secure energy resources of which Iraq is a strategic part.

The debate within the establishment, the ruling class, is very real. We can see it played out today over torture, yesterday over indictments for revealing CIA “spooks,” and yesterday over invading. At bottom, two wings are fighting over how best to make their way with enormous pressures and opportunities driving the system they manage. Ideas are a key part of this real and potentially useful division.

Many writers today refer to the “irony,” the contradiction, that the U.S. invasion/occupation of Iraq is giving more power to its enemies and competitors such as political Islam, the Iranian regime, the Russians, Chinese, Germans, et al., I read the Chicago Tribune almost every day along with the Financial Times of London. They’ve both got columns, articles or editorials nearly every day denouncing and opposing the Bush neocon approach in the U.S. and abroad. Both argue for the conventional approach vs. the radical. They think the radical, neocon approach only undermines the capitalist interests it’s designed to serve.

Of course, it means overcoming with more brutal subjugation, oppression and hardship for most people worldwide, with more direct ruling class power here and overseas. Both sides find the “war on terrorism” a useful ideological framework to use toward their goals, just as they united in the war on communism of the Cold War. The neocon radicals prefer the battering ram, the conventionals prefer the traditional alliances to share the cost and the rewards. Different strategies toward the same goals.

Writing of crisis, here’s one little factoid I ran across in the Financial Times: world economic production is 1/10 the “wealth” invested in derivatives, which are bets on the direction of everything from corn prices to interest rates. (Roughly 500 trillion in derivatives: 50 trillion in global production of goods and services, all measured in dollars) That’s ten dollars in betting to every one in production! Just like increased gambling here shows the decay of opportunity for working class people.

This means tons of money chasing relatively few opportunities for productive profits, thus fueling tremendous competition for investment opportunities. This great and growing pressure to find productive investment avenues means heightened competition for these opportunities. We can see this as capital flows into China and India, with their highly exploited ("cheap") labor and willing governments and growing capitalist classes. We can see it even as Boeing makes record sales while it “outsources” production of those very planes to increase its profitability.

Since, there are no adequate places to invest compared to available capital, the tendency is toward exterminating, wiping out vast amounts of what Marx called “fictitious capital,” as in stock prices that have little actual productive investment beneath their prices and in productive facilities that are productive and profitable, but not profitable enough. In this case, it would mean tumbling stock prices and companies going bankrupt, getting bought at “fire sale prices,” with huge layoffs, etc. While this process is as old as capitalism itself, the 10:1 gap between gambling and real production shows how deep it is now. We’re seeing this today in the airlines and auto industries here in the U.S., for example. Of course, there are opposite, contradictory tendencies at work too, as with the creation of vast new production that will absorb some of this ocean-like paper wealth, as in China and India …and will generate growing class struggles in these countries as a consequence.

Thus, we see the old pattern of destruction and creation, only in much magnified form. Capitalism thus creates new relations of exploitation out of the very process of crisis and decay. This very regeneration shows that it is unrealistic to think that it will destroy itself. At the same time, this destruction/creation process does generate struggle from the old and the new sections of the working class and new possibilities for change. And that does leave the possibility that sections of the increasingly exploited working class, with allied intellectuals and oppressed groups, can lead the way out, that another world is possible.

We can see this tendency at work in South America and China today, for example. Also with the quiet but growing awareness here that the system is rotten, that it’s not just Bush or the Republicans. There’s more open dissatisfaction with capitalism now than I remember during the 60s. Of course, there’s more than one way out of crisis, as Hitler and others have shown and as the neocons also realize.

Still, for someone to write about “the realist persuasion” in politics without even dipping into this economic reality shows just how limited are the choices for modern political science divorced from the economic foundations and drivers of “our” current system.

Earl Silbar is a union organizer in Chicago. He can be reached at Red1pearl@aol.com.

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