Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2003-2004
War, resistance, and the need for a new alternative
We publish here our "Draft for Marxist-Humanist
Perspectives" to promote the widest discussion on the political,
philosophic and organizational challenges facing Marxist-Humanists. We invite
you to join in the process of developing our perspectives for the coming year,
as part of the effort to work out a new unity between philosophy and
organization.
The two-day-long rebellion of African Americans against
police abuse that broke out in Benton Harbor, Michigan on June 16-17 says more
about the state of this country than the recent global summits and photo-ops
meant to showcase the U.S. military “victory” in Iraq. The rebellion in
Benton Harbor, a city of 12,000 that is 92% Black, occurred after Terrance Shurn,
a Black man, died from injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident after being
chased through the town by white police officers.
Residents say that the outburst was a result of years of
police harassment against the African-American community. The depth of anger in
the community is reflected in the fact that even the arrival of hundreds of
police from around the state failed to “restore order” after the first night
of violence. Many residents were so angry at police misconduct that they
threatened to set the police headquarters on fire.
The events in Benton Harbor reflect the simmering unrest
that exists in African-American communities across the U.S. which could explode
at any time. Yet the news media barely mentioned the rebellion until 48 hours
after it began. It is one more reflection of the servility of the mass media
towards the prevailing powers in this country.
That servility is bound to get worse in light of the
June 3 decision of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to dramatically
relax limits on the ability of media conglomerates to own TV and radio stations,
newspapers and cable operations. The FCC’s ruling shows that the concentration
and centralization of capital in fewer hands that Karl Marx spoke of is neither
merely theory nor related only to relations in production. It is immanent in the
entire nature of the present stage of capitalism.
The key question facing us is whether the forces of
revolt will project a viable alternative to this stage of capitalism. The fact
that political protests have fallen off elsewhere in the U.S. since the end of
the Iraq war does not mean that the hundreds of thousands who participated in
anti-war protests have become quiescent. Many are thinking of what to do next
and do not buy George W. Bush’s rhetoric that outside military intervention is
the only way to “liberate” oppressed peoples. Yet the lopsided scale of the
U.S. victory, which was able to blunt much of the anti-war opposition, combined
with the failure to project an emancipatory alternative from the Left, is making
it more difficult than ever to envision a transcendence of the present stage of
capitalism.
If Marxist-Humanism is needed for anything at the
present moment it is to help break through the ideological notion that masses of
people cannot transcend capitalism, racism, and imperialist war through their
own ideas and volition. To see how we can meet this challenge calls for a full
confrontation with objectivity unseparated from being rooted in the body of
ideas of Marxist-Humanism.
I. After the Iraq war: What next?
The U.S. “victory” in Iraq was made possible not
only by massive military force. It also resulted from the fact that the Iraqis
did not try to defend Saddam Hussein’s regime. Instead, they welcomed the fall
of his genocidal dictatorship. Yet as one recent report put it, “In the space
of a few weeks, awe at American power in war has been transformed into anger at
American impotence in peace.” The joy felt by the masses of Iraqis over the
collapse of Hussein’s regime is giving way to growing resentment over the
chaos and destruction wrought by the U.S. occupation.
This is reflected not just in the protests engineered by
conservative Islamist tendencies that are trying to fill the political vacuum in
post-Hussein Iraq, but also in complaints being voiced by Iraqis of virtually
every political persuasion against the U.S. taking charge of everything from
determining university appointments to deciding how the country’s oil revenues
shall be distributed. Even leaders of the Kurdish organizations which allied
themselves with the U.S. during the war are complaining that its decision to run
the country indefinitely and delay the formation of a national assembly and
interim government may liquidate the de facto autonomy the Kurds have enjoyed in
northern Iraq for the past 12 years.
Most significant are the concerns being voiced by Iraqi
women, who are encountering efforts by secular and fundamentalist forces alike
to restrict their rights. One Iraqi woman said, “The Americans say they
brought us freedom. But freedom doesn’t mean much to me without the chance to
live my life.”(1)
The Bush administration initially wanted to topple
Hussein while keeping as much of the Ba’ath Party in power as possible. Yet
resistance from the Iraqi masses upset these plans. It is seen in street
protests against the U.S.'s effort to recruit Ba’ath Party officials to run
the new police departments; in opposition by workers to efforts to
“liberalize” the economy at the expense of their jobs and livelihoods; and
in resistance by Iraqi women to moves to restrict their access to education,
political office, and freedom of movement.
The Revolutionary Association of the Women of
Afghanistan stated on April 6: “Iraq might be overpowered by the military
might of the U.S. Who isn’t? But military might alone is not sustainable over
time. It is easy for the military to invade, but much harder and even impossible
to change the psychology of the ordinary people to submissively accept foreign
freedom or to endure a foreign imposed regime.”
Though the problems now being encountered by the U.S. in
Iraq are significant, we should be under no illusions about the long-term impact
that the war will have on the region and on the world as a whole.
The U.S. military victory in Iraq clearly gives the Bush
administration an opening to intimidate and invade other regimes. It has
threatened to attack Syria if it does not follow its dictates. It is issuing new
threats against Iran over its nuclear program and its support of Shi’ite
groups opposed to the U.S. in southern Iraq. The Pentagon is now providing aid
to the Mujahedeen Khalq group (even though the U.S. attacked it during the Iraq
war because of its support for Hussein’s regime) in order to make use of the
group for possible future military actions against Iran.
The administration is also moving closer towards a
possible preemptive strike against North Korea. On June 3 the Pentagon announced
that it will reposition most of its 37,000 troops out of the range of North
Korean artillery. This move, which was opposed by the South Korean government,
will make it easier to launch a preemptive strike against the North if the U.S.
chooses to.
Not to be forgotten is Latin America, where the U.S. is
pouring military aid into Colombia and keeping an eye on growing mass movements
in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru. Even Brazil, where Lula has gone out of his way
not to antagonize the U.S. since being elected president this year, is being
viewed with concern by members of the Bush administration.
The U.S. is also using its victory in Iraq to press
ahead with the development of a new generation of nuclear weapons. Last month
the House and Senate repealed the Spratt-Furse Amendment, which prohibits the
development of nuclear weapons with an explosive force of less than five
kilotons of TNT. The administration wants to be able to develop such weapons for
use as “bunker busters” against a number of potential adversaries. This is
occurring even as a host of states--from China to Pakistan and India and from
Iran to North Korea and beyond--seek to augment or develop nuclear arsenals of
their own.
No less important than such material factors is the
war’s IDEOLOGICAL impact.
Massive anti-war sentiment arose this year, not only
overseas, but within the U.S. A new generation of youth in high schools and
colleges joined in anti-war protests, as did feminists, environmentalists, and
gays and lesbians. African Americans were the dimension most opposed to the war,
as indicated in poll after poll.
Dissatisfaction with the overall state of living and
working conditions is also evident. Bush’s latest tax cuts for the rich come
in the midst of an economy that has lost three million jobs since 2000. State
governments are experiencing the worst fiscal crisis in half a century. State
governments have cut $50 billion in health, welfare, and education benefits in
2002, and expect to cut another $26 billion this year. The $75 billion in
cuts roughly corresponds with the cost of the war against Iraq. The rate of
unemployment is higher today than at any time in the last 10 years.
Growing dissatisfaction with these conditions on the
part of labor is seen from recent strikes by communications, hospital and hotel
workers against declining wages and mushrooming health care costs. Though prior
economic downturns mainly hammered workers in manufacturing, the present
“job-loss recovery” is affecting workers across the board, especially
service and government workers.
At the same time, an array of domestic spying and
harassment activities, from INS attacks against immigrants to the USA PATRIOT
Act and the “Terrorism Information Awareness program” (a renamed version of
the Total Information Awareness program headed by John Poindexter) is
undermining democratic rights. On June 5 Attorney General John Ashcroft asked
for even broader powers to detain suspects and deny them access to an attorney.
This will effectively jettison the First and Fourth Amendments. All of our
liberties are in severe danger, whether we see anything dramatic happening right
now or not.
Bush is also nominating the most reactionary judicial
nominees of any president in decades. And Congress’ recent vote to ban
late-term abortions is the beachhead the anti-choice movement had mapped out,
and can easily lead, with coming changes in the Supreme Court, to the outlawing
of abortion.
Bush’s drive for permanent war is in part intended to
stifle opposition to these conditions. The massive use of military might against
Iraq was intended not only to bring down Hussein but also to provoke speechless
wonder at the inability of ANY power to put up any effective resistance to such
a devastating onslaught. The sense of powerlessness and dependence generated by
the war on Iraq is intended not only for foreign consumption; it is also aimed
at convincing the American public that there is no alternative to the present
form of society and course of political affairs in the U.S.
A successful war does not necessarily silence
discontent, as Bush Sr. learned after the first Iraq war when a declining
economy made him a one-term president. However the present administration is
trying to prevent a repeat of history by making the “war against terrorism”
and the strengthening of the national security state a PERMANENT feature of the
political landscape.
That this is no idle threat is born out by the fact that
the war against Iraq has increased the threat of terrorist attacks by
fundamentalist forces. The war has provided new opportunities for Al Qaeda and
others to reinvigorate their terrorist networks, as seen from the recent
bombings in Saudi Arabia and Morocco. Even Senator Richard Lugar recently stated
that U.S. policy in Iraq is in danger of “creating an incubator for terrorist
cells and activity.”
The possibility of a continuous war between U.S.
imperialism and Islamic fundamentalist terrorism presents the liberation
movements in this country with a serious challenge--one that will become even
graver if another terrorist attack occurs inside the U.S. As we saw from
September 11, 2001, few things strengthen U.S. rulers more than such
attacks--just as Bush’s arrogance in invading other countries with
overwhelming military force provides a recruiting ground for terrorists.
This vicious circle of war and terrorism is providing
regimes around the world with an opening to crack down on the forces of
opposition. Ongoing mass struggles continue to show themselves, from national
liberation movements in Acheh and Palestine to anti-slavery struggles in
Mauritania and Sudan to movements against dictatorial regimes in Kenya and
Burma. These struggles have added new dimensions to the concept of freedom, as
masses of people seek to work out questions about the role of nationhood, the
possibility of providing for economic development for all, and creating genuine
democracy. Yet the rulers of Israel and Indonesia especially are seizing this
moment to try to silence their opponents by draping their repression under the
cover of a “war against terrorism,” knowing full well that in doing so they
will have continued U.S. support.
The suicide bombings by groups like Hamas and the Al
Aqsa Brigade have undermined Bush's "road map" plan for
"peace" between Israel and the Palestinians. At the same time, Bush's
insistence that all acts of violence against Israel must cease before a peace
plan can begin to be implemented makes it harder to resolve the crisis, since
not even the leaders of Hamas, let alone Palestinian Authority, have total
control over the actions of every potential suicide bomber. The parameters of
Bush's "road map" in effect gives Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
as well as the suicide bombers a veto over the peace process since Sharon uses
each suicide bombing as an excuse to initiate even more violence against the
Palestinians.
Whether it be in the Middle East or here at home, we
face the threat of a vicious circle of war and terrorism in which both sides,
for all their mutual animosity, end up reinforcing each other's reactionary
power.
II. State-capitalism and imperialism
A. The logic of capital
What can be done to break out of this vicious circle of
imperialist war and terrorism? What can Marxist-Humanists do to help the
movements against war, racism, sexism, and capitalist globalization project an
alternative to this situation?
First, we must emphasize what NOT to do. We must not
focus all our energy and opposition exclusively on attacking the U.S., even
though it remains the sole superpower and the force responsible for so much
global destruction. A one-sided opposition to U.S. imperialism that fails to
seriously oppose Islamic fundamentalism or dictatorial regimes like that of
Saddam Hussein’s or North Korea’s will not move us forward. It only plays
into Bush’s hands by enabling him to present U.S. militarism as the agency for
promoting “liberty” and “democracy” throughout the world.
The tendency to focus everything on a critique of the
U.S. while having little or nothing to say about its reactionary critics has
become especially predominant today--precisely because the U.S. has such
unmatched power. The problem with focusing everything on a critique of U.S.
actions is not only that it leaves the anti-war and other movements open to
tail-ending state powers who may for now oppose (for whatever reason) U.S. war
moves, as France and others in the UN did this year. The problem is deeper. Such
an approach diverts attention from the way U.S. imperialist actions are rooted
in the nature of globalized capitalism.
Imperialism is not the product of a cabal of right-wing
ideologues who have managed to take control of the Bush administration.
Imperialism is the expression of a determinant stage of capitalist production.
It can be stopped and uprooted only by abolishing the capitalist system as a
whole.
What Rosa Luxemburg wrote in her JUNIUS PAMPHLET in the
midst of World War I remains true today: “Imperialism is not the creation of
any one or of any group of states. It is a product of a particular stage of
ripeness in the world development of capital, an innately international
condition, an indivisible whole, that is recognizable only in all its relations,
and from which no nation can hold aloof at will.”(2)
The imperialism that Luxemburg, Lenin and others
analyzed at the start of the 20th century is of course very different from what
we now confront. However, like today, the “classical” imperialism of the
late 19th and early 20th century resulted from a new stage in the concentration
and centralization of capital.
As Marx showed in CAPITAL, the inner drive of the
capitalist mode of production is to concentrate and centralize capital in ever
fewer hands. The rise of cartels, trusts, and monopolies in the late 19th and
early 20th century put traditional laissez-faire capitalism to rest. Competitive
capitalism transformed into its opposite, monopoly capitalism. This provided the
economic basis of imperialism.
As Lenin showed, the rise of monopoly capitalism did not
annul competition; the two instead co-existed on a new level, as seen in
heightened international competition for markets in the technologically
underdeveloped countries. World capitalism became divided into five contending
imperialist blocs, which unloosed the holocaust of World War I in 1914.
An even deeper transformation into opposite took place
later when the Russian Revolution became a totalitarian state-capitalist society
under Stalin. Marx’s prediction in CAPITAL that the laws of capitalism would
not be changed even if all capital was “united in the hands of either a single
capitalist or a single capitalist company” came to life.(3) State-capitalism
was not restricted to Russia, however; it defined a new WORLD stage of
production in the 1930s, as seen in the rise of fascism in Germany and Italy,
the Co-Prosperity Sphere in Japan, and the New Deal in the U.S.
The rise of state-capitalism the world over meant also a
new imperialism, not alone for division of the world, but for single national
control of the world’s economy. This defined the bipolar conflict between the
U.S. and U.S.S.R. in the Cold War.
As Raya Dunayevskaya, the founder of Marxist-Humanism,
wrote in 1951: “Monopolization has been transformed into its opposite,
statification....Complete state capitalism reaching its tentacles from Russia,
into Eastern Europe, engulfing Britain, seeping into Western Europe and peering
out of the U.S....One strangles the revolution ‘for’ the masses’ own good,
and other for ‘democracy’s’ shadow.”(4)
By 1989-1991 the bipolar world came to an end, as the
East European nations freed themselves from Russian tutelage and the U.S.S.R.
broke apart. Though the U.S.S.R. collapsed and dropped out of the race for world
domination, the U.S. continued its drive for single world dominance, only now
unencumbered by competition from another superpower.
The U.S. drive for total military and political
dominance of the past decade flows from the same logic of capital that drove
earlier stages of imperialism. As Dunayevskaya wrote in 1960: “From the
capitalist point of view, private or state, there is an imperative urgency for a
single power to dominate the whole world which will, of necessity, include
totalitarian control over ‘their own workers.’”(5) She added: “The
reason that the capitalistic world, from its division into five power blocs in
World War I, came out of World War II with two, and only two, power blocs,
nuclearly armed, is that there is just no room for more if this madhouse of
‘production for production’s sake,’ where the dead labor of machines and
not the living labor of human beings has the decisive voice, is to continue. In
fact, there is no room for two.”(6)
The fact that the concentration and centralization of
capital has advanced so far that by now “there is no room” for even two
superpowers underlines the present effort by the U.S. to achieve global
domination through its drive for permanent war.
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 surely
enabled the Bush administration to openly proclaim its goal of achieving world
hegemony by means of absolute military superiority over any imagined or real
adversary. Yet much of what Bush is now promoting was earlier put forth, albeit
more tentatively, during the Clinton administration. Clinton refused to sign the
ban on land mines; he and the Congressional Republicans opposed allowing the
World Court to indict U.S. citizens for war crimes; and he launched his own
version of “preventive war” with missile attacks on Afghanistan and Sudan in
1999. Though few said so then, in response to those attacks we said in 1999 that
this constituted “a drive for permanent war.”(7)
What fuels U.S. rulers’ fantasies about their ability
to dominate the world is the size of the U.S. economy. The U.S. today accounts
for 31% of global economic output--about the same amount as during the 1950s.
The U.S. economy is larger than that of the next four largest economies
combined--Japan, Germany, France and Britain. This in part explains how the U.S.
can spend more on the military than the next 10 largest nations combined. Even
China--second to the U.S. in the size of its military budget--spends only
one-seventh of the U.S. each year on its military and is decades away from
catching up with the U.S.’s edge in high-tech weapons.
Yet even with the tens of billions that Bush has added
to the military budget (which is now over $400 billion) U.S. military spending
as a percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is only half what it was during the
height of the Cold War. As Paul Kennedy recently put it, “Being no. 1 at great
cost is one thing. Being the world’s single superpower on the cheap is
astonishing.”
The U.S.’s economic, political and military POWER does
not mean, however, that it has actually achieved total global DOMINANCE. Nor is
it the only state power with global ambitions. That became clear in the run-up
to the war on Iraq, when serious tensions erupted between the U.S. and some of
its closest European allies, like France and Germany. The G-8 summit of the
major industrial powers in Evian, France on June 1-3 did little to paper over
these differences.
France is trying to revitalize the European Union’s (EU)
Foreign and Security Pact as a way to enable EU countries to develop a military
force independent of NATO and the U.S. It has the support of Russian President
Putin in this, who like French President Chirac has talked of the need for a
multipolar world.
Russia is also trying to strengthen its relations with
former client states in Central Asia. One report noted: “In the aftermath of
the ousting of Hussein’s regime in Iraq many authoritarian leaders in Central
Asia feel threatened by the rise of U.S. unilateralism and are turning back to
Russia in search of security guarantees.”(8) The rulers of Russia, Armenia,
Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan recently agreed to establish a
“Warsaw Pact-style rapid reaction force.”
China also is moving closer to Russia (its largest arms
supplier), since it is nervous about the U.S. military presence in Central Asia
and its threats against North Korea. One report noted: “Spurred by their
shared opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq, China and Russia have moved to
beef up the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which includes Russia, China and
four ex-Soviet Central Asian nations, in hopes of turning it into a full-fledged
security alliance in the future.”(9)
The importance of such efforts to be independent of the
U.S. should not be overstated. Yet despite the EU’s effort to write a
constitution and have a single foreign minister by 2006, Europe is not a unified
entity, nor is it in the position to seriously challenge the U.S. As the EU
expands it is becoming more diffuse and less able to develop a unified stand on
international issues. And as the controversy over the Iraq war showed, the
leaders of the Central and East European nations that are about to join the EU
are more than willing to follow U.S. dictates, virtually at any price.
Russia and China are also in no position to seriously
challenge the U.S. on either the political or military front, despite their
efforts to forge closer relations. In many respects the interests of Russian,
Chinese, and U.S. rulers converge, as seen in Russia’s use of the “war
against terrorism” to continue its attacks on Chechnya and China’s use of
the same to oppose Muslim separatists in Western China.
That world politics is no longer defined by a SERIES of
superpowers contending for world domination, but by a SINGLE power--the
U.S.--does not negate the need to oppose ALL forms of unfreedom, WHEREVER they
are found. It only makes such a perspective all the more necessary. There are
two worlds in EVERY country.
B. Economics and ideology
Humanity is the actual principle of the state--but
UNFREE humanity. It is thus the DEMOCRACY OF UNFREEDOM--alienation carried
to completion. The abstract reflected antithesis belongs only to the modern
world.
--Karl Marx(10)
What is NEW about the present stage of state-capitalist
imperialism compared with earlier periods?
One thing that is different today is that the U.S. does
not seem interested in direct territorial control of the rest of the world, in
contrast to the classic stage of imperialist colonialism in the late 19th and
early 20th century. Ever since the rise of neo-colonialism in the post-World War
II era, the U.S. has preferred more indirect methods of domination, by relying
on local surrogates and economic compulsion.
In Afghanistan the U.S. relies on warlords and tribal
chiefs to do its bidding. In Iraq it wanted to make use of the Ba’ath Party
apparatus. Though the outcome of the war thwarted that, and the U.S. still has
150,000 troops in Iraq, it will eventually try to draw down their numbers as it
tries to find surrogates to enforce its dictates.
In other countries--like Saudi Arabia--the U.S. has
found that its interests are undermined by maintaining a permanent armed force
for an indefinite length of time. It is therefore withdrawing most of its troops
from that country, even as it builds new military bases in the Persian Gulf,
Central Asia and elsewhere.
Yet the fact that U.S. policies are not the same as
direct colonial occupation doesn’t mean world capitalism lacks a territorial
center of power. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri are mistaken to argue, “The
U.S. does not, and indeed no nation-state can today, form the center of an
imperialist project”(11) The U.S. is very much the center of such a project,
precisely because the state-capitalist matrix of our globalized world has not
been superseded.
This is especially reflected in the way U.S. capitalists
absorb massive amounts of surplus value and capital from the rest of the world.
Capitalists in Europe and Asia continue to buy up U.S. Treasury bonds and
ship capital here through speculative and direct capital investment. They see
the U.S., with its low wages and benefits and bloated military, as a safe haven
for their investments. The U.S. is now more dependent on foreign capital than at
any time in the past 50 years.
Surplus value and capital also flow into the coffers of
U.S. capitalists from technologically underdeveloped nations in Asia, Africa and
Latin America through payments obtained by financial capital from interest on
Third World debt; sweatshop conditions of labor which generate profits that end
up in the hands of U.S.-based multinationals; and the benefits that come from
the dollar’s hegemony as the global currency.
The human impact of this imperialist tutelage is nowhere
more devastating than in Africa. Africa’s share of global trade fell from 3.3%
in 1980 to 1.6% in 2000. It’s share of world investment has fallen from 4% in
1980 to 1.8% today. The annual capital growth rate of GDP in most African
countries has been falling for over a decade. Even oil producing nations like
Nigeria have seen their GDP growth decline in recent years. Non oil-producing
nations in Africa are experiencing a serious decline in world market prices for
their agricultural exports.
This has not stopped global capital from continuing to
strip the continent of raw materials and natural resources--often through the
mediation of local capitalists, regional states, and domestic elites--as most
tragically seen in Congo, where over three million have perished since 1998.
Added to this is Africa’s massive debt burden. The
debt which African countries owe Western banks accounts for 75% of the
continent’s total GDP. The service on this debt represents a massive transfer
of surplus value and capital from Africa to Europe and the U.S. New tax systems
and so-called new trade liberalization policies promoted by the IMF and World
Bank are also accelerating the rate of capital export from Africa to Europe and
the U.S. None of the industrially developed economies can claim that they are
committed to the development of the African continent.
Looked at in human terms, the present stage of
state-capitalist imperialism is no less rapacious than earlier stages of
imperialist expansion. If anything, the genocidal nature of imperialism is only
being accentuated. Global capital is returning to the conditions that
characterized the primitive accumulation of capital at “the rosy dawn of
capitalist accumulation,” as seen in increasing poverty, rising unemployment,
and a devastating health crisis, especially of HIV/AIDS, that is claiming
millions of lives a year.
Forces in the industrially developed West are not the
only ones responsible for this carnage. Capital is a WORLD system; it is as much
a part of the internal structure of Third World societies as it is of
multinational corporations. The disintegration of economies and societies that
have fallen into the web of local warlords and mafias ranges from Congo to
Afghanistan and Sierra Leone to Iraq.
Far from ameliorating these conditions through some
“compassionate conservatism,” Bush’s policies are accentuating them. This
was seen at the end of the G-8 Summit when the U.S. stripped from its final
declaration a statement of support for providing affordable drugs to developing
countries. Large drug companies in Germany and the U.S. opposed the measure as a
violation of their “intellectual property rights.” How many millions more
will now die as a result?
What drives this rapacious drive for the accumulation of
capital in ever fewer hands is global capitalism’s effort to overcome the
decline in the rate of profit that has seriously plagued it ever since the
1974-75 world recession.
The rulers may think they can stem this decline through
such technological innovations like labor-saving devices and high-tech
production. But as Marx showed over a century ago, in Vol. III of CAPITAL,
“The rate of profit does not fall because labor becomes less productive, but
because it becomes more productive.”(12) Despite all the mechanisms utilized
by capitalism over the last 30 years to increase the accumulation of capital at
the expense of living labor, it still has not been able to extricate itself from
the tendency of its rate of profit to decline which openly showed itself in the
mid-1970s.
Herein lies a difference between today’s stage of
capitalism-imperialism and that of the early 20th century. A century ago
imperialism HID the tendency in the decline of the rate of profit through the
extraction of super-profits from exploited lands overseas. So much was this so
that Marxists did not focus on the tendency of the rate of profit to decline
until the Great Depression in the 1930s. As Rosa Luxemburg put it in 1913, we
might as well wait for the moon to fall to earth as to expect capitalism to
collapse because of the decline in the rate of profit.(13) Today, in contrast,
the tendency of the rate of profit to decline OPENLY drives capital’s werewolf
hunger for lower wages, technological innovation, and imperialism.
Economics is not all there is to the present stage of
state-capitalist imperialism. Each new stage of capitalism has been accompanied
by an IDEOLOGICAL component. This is no less true today. The central ideological
component of the U.S. drive for single world mastery is the claim that its
military interventions are geared to promote “democracy.” The war in Iraq
was aimed in part to promote this.
Important as it is not to fall into one-sided critiques
of the U.S., it is just as important to oppose the notion that the U.S. has now
become the catalyst for promoting “democracy” in the rest of the world. To
do otherwise only feeds into the ideological pollution that masses of people
cannot free themselves from dictatorial regimes but need the intervention of an
outside force, the U.S. military, to do it for them. Such a standpoint closes
off the projection of what is sorely needed--the notion that a new society can
be created by working people, women, oppressed nationalities and youth through
their self-activity.
Opposing the illusion that the U.S.’s military
interventions are aimed at “democratizing” the world requires more than just
exposing the hypocrisy and brutality of U.S. policies. That is because the
ability of the rulers to appropriate the language of “democracy” is largely
a result of the Left’s failure to realize socialist democracy in its efforts
at social transformation.
We cannot underestimate the impact of the aborted and
unfinished revolutions of the past century. The Left’s failure to create a
truly liberatory alternative to capitalism, one which REALIZES the principles of
genuine proletarian democracy and socialist humanism, has created a void which
the rulers are taking advantage of by using the language of “liberation” for
their own nefarious ends. To fully combat this it is not enough to express what
we are against; we must unfurl a new banner of what we are for.
C. Questions facing the Left over Cuba, Argentina
The ongoing controversy over the arrests of dissidents
in Cuba underlines the importance of projecting a liberatory perspective. In
April, the Cuban government handed down severe jail sentences--ranging from six
to 28 years--to 75 dissidents and executed three Black Cubans who tried to
commandeer a boat to Florida. Some long-time supporters of the Cuban revolution
have sharply condemned these actions.
Eduardo Galeano recently wrote: “The Cuban government
is now committing acts that, as Uruguayan writer Carlos Quijano would say,
‘sin against hope.’ Rosa Luxemburg, who gave her life for the socialist
revolution, disagreed with Lenin over the project of a new society. Her words of
warning proved prophetic, and 85 years after she was assassinated in Germany she
is still right: ‘Freedom for only the supporters of the government, however
many there may be, is not real freedom. Real freedom is freedom for those who
think differently.’” He also quoted Luxemburg: “Without general elections,
without freedom of the press and unlimited freedom of assembly, without a
contest of free opinions, life stagnates and withers in all public institutions,
and the bureaucracy becomes the only active element.”(14)
The vitriolic response of many on the Left to such
criticism has hardly been reassuring. Responding to Galeano, Heinz Dieterich
Steffan wrote: “Whether Rosa Luxemburg or Lenin was right is a lengthy debate.
What does not require debate is the logical status of her famous affirmation of
the freedom of others. Just like Voltaire’s aphorism on liberty 150 years
previously, and Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative, these are abstract and
general pronouncements that do not serve to resolve concrete difficulties....if
one affirms that ‘freedom is always the freedom of others,’ it has to be
said that this axiom is valid when the others are called Adolf Hitler or Ariel
Sharon or George Bush and his subalterns.”(15)
It is not at all out of the question that Bush will add
Cuba to his list of the “axis of evil” and even try to invade the island. We
of course must oppose that as we would oppose a U.S. invasion of any land. But
the defensive reaction of some leftists to any criticism of Cuba, on the grounds
that it “plays into the hand of U.S. imperialism,” only helps reinforce the
central problem of the Left--the disconnect of the idea of freedom from the
struggle against capitalism.
Leftists who fail to stand up for freedom in Cuba (or
Iran or North Korea for that matter) do grave harm to the struggle for a new
society, since they come out sounding like apologists for the very policies
overseas that they routinely criticize at home. As a result, many drawn to
radical ideas end up concluding that the Left can’t be entrusted to stand up
for human liberation.
The fact that we oppose U.S. imperialism in no way
justifies muting our criticism of regimes that may oppose it. To do so only
concedes the idea of freedom to the Right.
The need to fill the void in the Left’s projection of
an emancipatory alternative is especially critical in light of events in
Argentina, where Néstor Kirchner, a right-of-center Peronist with a mildly
reformist agenda, was recently elected President.
After the collapse of Argentina’s neo-liberal
experiment in late 2001 a massive popular movement arose there, centered on
spontaneously-formed neighborhood assemblies and committees of the unemployed.
Hundreds of factory occupations also occurred, which threatened to create a
situation of dual power. The central demand of this new movement was “everyone
must go!”--a reference to the corrupt politicians who had helped lead the
country into bankruptcy.(16)
So how can it be that this year the national elections
ended up as a battle between different wings of Peronism, which had earlier
become discredited by their association with bankrupt neo-liberal policies? As
one recent report put it, “One year later, the movements continue, but barely
a trace is left of the wildly hopeful idea that they could someday run the
country.”(17)
Part of the problem is that various vanguardist
groupings of the old Left tried to infiltrate and take over the popular
assemblies, alienating many with their abstract programs and their insistence on
providing “leadership.” The political infighting and leadership battles
demoralized many who were active in the assemblies, which have shrunk from over
200 in Buenos Aires a year ago to about 50 today.
The project hatching of left-wing vanguardists was not,
however, the only problem. In response to the dogmatism of the vanguardist Left,
many independent radicals emphasized the need for the movements to stick to
autonomous actions and not engage in “abstract” discussions of theory or
politics. Though many of the factory occupations showed that workers could
manage their own affairs without the mediation of corporations or the bourgeois
state, few on the Left made a serious effort to spell out how such developments
can provide a systematic alternative to capitalism. For many, projecting the
need for “autonomous institutions” became a substitute for offering a vision
of a social alternative to the system as a whole. This failure “to offer the
country a competing vision of the future” left the door open for the political
old guard under the leadership of Kirchner to assume power.
This doesn’t mean the mass movement in Argentina is
over. Many factories are still occupied by workers and the neighborhood
assemblies and unions of the unemployed, though weakened, persist as well. It is
highly doubtful that Kirchner will be able to stem the crisis that led the
emergence of this mass movement.
Yet the critical question remains to be answered: will
the anti-vanguardist Left finally shed its disdain for a philosophy of
liberation and project a comprehensive vision of an emancipatory alternative to
existing society? That question is not only critical for those in Argentina. It
is critical for us all.
III. To the barbarism of war, we pose the new society
What distinguishes a Marxist-Humanist response to
imperialist war and terrorism is not just that we oppose both sides of the
conflict but that we take responsibility for projecting a vision of a new
society that transcends capitalism. What the founder of Marxist-Humanism, Raya
Dunayevskaya, projected at the height of the Cold War remains the fundamental
task and perspective for us to concretize today--namely, “To the barbarism of
war we pose the new society.”
By a new society we mean the TOTAL uprooting of the very
fabric of this racist, sexist, class ridden society--the abolition of capitalist
value production through the creation of new human relations based on the unity
of mental and manual labor. Marx’s humanism remains for us the measure of any
effort to create a new society.
Standing for a new society does not simply mean being
for practical struggles for a new society once they arise. Standing for a new
society also means theoretically discerning the elements for creating a new
society BEFORE such struggles arise.
As the Constitution of News and Letters Committees
says: “The necessity for a new society is clear from the working people’s
opposition to war. That opposition is based on a vision of a new society in
which they, to a man, woman, and child, control their own lives. Any opposition
to war, which is based on less than this, must end in capitulation to the
warmongers.”
Opposing the U.S. drive for permanent war does not only
entail (as Arundhati Roy put it in a recent essay) “isolating the Empire’s
working parts and disabling them one by one.”(18) That leaves untouched what
masses of people are hungering for but which radical theoreticians and parties
are doing little to address--the projection of a comprehensive alternative to
existing society. Instead of saddling the movements from practice with all the
responsibility for meeting that task, we need to confront our philosophic and
organizational responsibility for doing so.
The fact that this year corresponds with the 50th
anniversary of the philosophic moment that led to the birth of
Marxist-Humanism--the 1953 “Letters on Hegel’s Absolutes”--provides us
with an opportunity to become much more concrete about how we can meet this
challenge. In viewing this breakthrough with eyes of today, we can be greatly
aided by the new edition of Dunayevskaya's PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION: FROM HEGEL
TO SARTRE AND FROM MARX TO MAO (Lexington Books, 2003) and the collection THE
POWER OF NEGATIVITY: SELECTED WRITINGS ON THE DIALECTIC IN HEGEL AND MARX
(Lexington Books, 2002), which contains an array of writings by Raya
Dunayevskaya on the significance of the philosophic moment of Marxist-Humanism.
As our work this year in completing a new study on the
Black dimension has shown, the perspective of “To the barbarism of war we pose
the new society” is integral to the philosophic moment of Marxist-Humanism.
This can especially be seen from the difference between what C.L.R. James called
“the dialectics of the party” and what Raya Dunayevskaya developed as “the
dialectics of organization and philosophy.”
In his NOTES ON DIALECTIC (1948) and other works of the
late 1940s and early 1950s, James sought to explore dialectics as part of
developing a new relation between spontaneous struggles and revolutionary
organization. As he wrote in commenting on Hegel’s SCIENCE OF LOGIC in his
NOTES ON DIALECTIC, “We have to get hold of the Notion, of the Absolute Idea,
before we can see this relation between organization and spontaneity in its
concrete truth.”
Yet James’ NOTES said little about the Doctrine of the
Notion (which Hegel called “the realm of subjectivity or freedom”) and even
less about the Absolute Idea. But he did have a lot to say about organization. A
mass party fighting bureaucracy became his universal: “You know nothing about
organization unless at every step you relate it to its opposite, spontaneity. It
is meaningless without that co-relative, its Other, tied to it.”(19)
On the basis of this standpoint James later posed
spontaneous mass struggles embodied in a mass party as the ABSOLUTE opposite of
the vanguard party. Though he tried to rethink the relation between spontaneity
and organization through a study of Hegel, he leaped to an organizational
conclusion without working out the fullness of the dialectic. Everything got
reduced to the FORM of organization, while the need for a relation between mass
struggles and a philosophy of liberation was left aside, which left out the
question of what those mass struggles were for.
A very different approach began to be explicitly
developed by Raya Dunayevskaya with her 1953 “Letters on Hegel’s
Absolutes.” She there concentrated on the last chapters of Hegel’s SCIENCE
OF LOGIC and on the final three syllogisms of Hegel’s PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
(which no Marxist had previously explored) with the question of organization
very much in mind.
Yet by the end of the 1953 letters Dunayevskaya was no
longer concerned with what James called “the dialectics of the party”--that
is, defining the right FORM of organization irrespective of its philosophic
content. A historic breakthrough occurred as she dove deeply into Hegel’s
concept of “absolute liberation” at the very end of the SCIENCE OF LOGIC and
into the section on “Absolute Mind” in the PHILOSOPHY OF MIND.
She singled out Hegel’s statement in para. 575 of the
PHILOSOPHY OF MIND that Nature (or practice) is “implicitly the Idea,” as
well para. 576, where Hegel says that “philosophy appears as a subjective
cognition.” But she did not stop her commentary there. She went on to the
final para. 577, where Hegel points to a UNIFICATION of practice and philosophy,
of subjective and objective. She viewed Hegel’s statement in para. 577 that
“it is the nature of the fact, the notion, which causes the movement and
development, yet this same movement is equally the action of cognition” as a
philosophic anticipation of the end to the division between mental and manual
labor.
As she later wrote in the 1980s, in looking back on the
breakthrough achieved with the culmination of her 1953 “Letters on Hegel’s
Absolutes, “It becomes necessary to stress here, over and over again, that I
had not a word to say about the Party or the Soviets or any form of
organization. On the contrary, here is what I then concluded: ‘We have entered
the new society.’”(20)
The 1953 “Letters on Hegel’s Absolutes” gave birth
to the new concept that the task of a revolutionary organization is neither
“to lead” the masses through “the party” nor simply to foster the
development of spontaneous forms of mass organization but to philosophically
project a vision of a new society which the movements from practice are
implicitly reaching for.
As Dunayevskaya wrote on June 6, 1987--the last words
written by her --"'Dialectics of the Party'...was turned in my hands to be
Dialectics of Organization and that meant not only both Party and Spontaneity
but the New Society.”(21)
This year we need to concretize this perspective for all
of our philosophic and organizational work. We made a beginning on this with our
class series this spring on “Negativity and Freedom: Philosophic Alternatives
to Capitalism, War and Terror.” These classes, held in each local of News and
Letters Committees, explored how the dialectic in Hegel and Marx was re-created
in the development of Marxist-Humanism. We explored this in light of
contemporary philosophic alternatives, like that of Theodor Adorno, Michel
Foucault, Richard Rorty, Julia Kristeva and others.
What stands out from the left-wing philosophic
alternatives which are predominant today is that many of them have abandoned the
effort to conceptualize the transcendence of capitalist alienation. Whether it
be Foucault’s concept of the reproduction of power relations, Adorno’s
effort to free the dialectic of negativity of its “affirmative” dimension,
or Rorty’s pragmatic critique of grand narratives, radical theory has pulled
back from the effort to spell out a comprehensive alternative to existing
society. The ability of capitalism to reproduce racism, sexism, classism, and
social alienation is emphasized, but not the ability of humanity to transcend
them.
In a word, the central function of radical theory--to
break the chains of the present by showing that there is an alternative to
capitalism--has been largely left aside. The question which is on the minds of
workers and intellectuals alike--"can humanity be free" in an era
defined by both globalized capitalism and aborted and unfinished
revolutions--remains to be seriously addressed.
The responsibility of a revolutionary theoretician is
not just to critique various aspects of oppression and alienation. The
responsibility of a revolutionary theoretician is to show that a different world
is possible, not abstractly, but through the comprehensive projection of a
philosophy of liberation that is rooted both in spontaneous struggles of the
oppressed and in an ongoing dialogue on dialectical thought.
This is what makes the projection of Marxist-Humanism so
imperative. As the writings contained in THE POWER OF NEGATIVITY show,
Marxist-Humanism’s entire development represents a concretization of the
breakthrough achieved in the 1953 “Letters on Hegel’s Absolutes,” which
discerned a DUAL movement in Hegel’s Absolutes--a movement from practice
implicitly reaching for a new society and a movement from theory that makes the
vision of a new society explicit. Only in their unification is a new society
possible.
The dialectical essence of Marxist-Humanism is absolute
negativity as new beginning, that is, the total uprooting of the old and the
creation of new human relations. It takes the entire body of ideas of
Marxist-Humanism to discern the necessity for such a total uprooting. That is
why the publication of works like THE POWER OF NEGATIVITY must inform the very
reason for being of our organization.
For this reason we need to ask: Why should the theoretic
power of philosophy be only theoretical? Why shouldn’t we exercise that power
in class struggles, in Black struggles, in the anti-war movement, in youth and
Women’s Liberation struggles? In a word, why not project Marxist-Humanist
philosophy ORANIZATIONALY as the power that is both the form for eliciting from
the masses their thoughts and projecting Marxist-Humanist perspectives to them?
The fact that we make no pretense to being a “party”
hardly means that the organizational expression of Marxist-Humanism, or indeed
even the existence of News and Letters Committees, can be taken for granted, as
if it is not as critical to have a vital and growing Marxist-Humanist
organization as it is to engage theoretically in the battle of ideas. If
philosophy is to serve as the organization of thought that determines the reason
for being of a group like News and Letters Committees, philosophy must become
inseparable from organizational consciousness.
This defines our tasks and perspectives for the coming
year. We will soon have in hand a new edition of AMERICAN CIVILIZATION ON TRIAL:
BLACK MASSES AS VANGUARD, as well as a pamphlet entitled THE DIALECTICS OF BLACK
FREEDOM: A MARXIST_HUMANIST PERSPECTIVE ON THE NEEDED AMERICAN REVOLUTION. These
will greatly enhance our work in the battle of ideas as well as in the practical
struggles of the Black dimension, which remains the vanguard of the American
revolution.
We also face a critical moment now that all of the major
philosophic works of Marxist-Humanism--MARXISM AND FREEDOM, PHILOSOPHY AND
REVOLUTION, and ROSA LUXEMBURD, WOMEN”S LIBERATION AND MARX”S PHILOSOPHY OF
REVOLUTION--are in print, some of them in new editions. The projection of these
works in the battle of ideas as well as in practical developments in the freedom
movements becomes critical.
We also have a new pamphlet of Marxist-Humanist writings
on the Middle East, which can aid the rethinking underway in the anti-war
movements, as a new generation seeks new alternatives to imperialist war and
fundamentalist terrorism.
The development of all our tasks--from the monthly
publication of NEWS & LETTERS to building our local committees and
developing new international outreach--will be discussed in detail at our
upcoming national gathering. Critical for all of our perspectives is the need to
ensure the financial responsibilities for the concretization of our
perspectives. We invite you to participate in the process of discussion that is
vital to the continuance of Marxist-Humanism.
--The Resident Editorial Board
Notes
1. Quoted in “Women Losing Freedoms in Chaos of
Post-war Iraq,” by Anna Badken and Danielle Hass, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, May
24, 2003.
2. See “Junius Pamphlet: The Crisis in German Social
Democracy,” in ROSA LUXEMBURG SPEAKS (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1975), p.
306.
3. CAPITAL, Vol. I (New York: Vintage, 1975), p. 779. To
see how Marx’s view became a basis of the theory of state-capitalism, see THE
MARXIST-HUMANIST THEORY OF STATE-CAPITALISM, by Raya Dunayevskaya (Chicago: News
and Letters, 1992).
4. Dunayevskaya letter to C.L.R. James of March 2, 1951,
in THE RAYA DUNAYEVSKAYA COLLECTION (RDC), 9291. For excerpts of this letter,
see p. 4.
5. “Draft Resolution on War and Peace” (Aug. 1960),
RDC, 2750.
6. “On War and Peace” (Sept. 1960), RDC, 2789.
7. See “Right-wing coup at home, permanent war
abroad,” by Olga Domanski, NEWS & LETTERS, Jan.-Feb. 1999).
8. “Russia’s New ‘Warsaw Pact,'” JANE’S
INTELLIGENCE DIGEST, May 9, 2003.
9. “Budding Allies: Russia and China,” by Fred Weir,
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, June 4, 2003.
10. “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s
Philosophy of Law,” COLLECTED WORKS, Vol. 3 (New York: International
Publishers, 1975), p. 32.
11. EMPIRE, by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), pp. xiii-xiv.
12. CAPITAL, Vol. III (New York: Vintage, 1981), p. 347.
13. For a critique of Luxemburg’s theory of
imperialism and capital accumulation, see ROSA LUXEMBURG, WOMEN’S LIBERATION
AND MARX’S PHILOSOPHY OF REVOLUTION, by Raya Dunayevskaya (Champaign-Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1991), chapter 3.
14. “Cuba Hurts,” by Eduardo Galeano, THE
PROGRESSIVE, June 2003.
15. “Saramago, Galeano, and Fidel Castro,” by Heinz
Dieterich Steffan, GRANMA INTERNATIONAL, April 24, 2003.
16. For a detailed analysis of the events in Argentina,
see “Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2002-2003: Permanent War or
Revolution in Permanence?,” NEWS & LETTERS, July 2002.
17. See “Elections vs. Democracy in Argentina,” by
Naomi Klein, THE NATION, May 26, 2003.
18. “Buy One, Get one Free,” by Arundhati Roy,
OutlookIndia.com Magazine, May 26, 2003.
19. C.L.R. James, NOTES ON DIALECTICS (Westport, CT:
Lawrence and Hill, 1980), p. 115.
20. “On the Battle of Ideas: Philosophic-Theoretic
Points of Departure as Political Tendencies Respond to the Objective
Situation” [1982], in THE POWER OF NEGATIVITY, p. 240.
21. See “1953: The Philosophic Moment re:
Organization, and therefore also re: Paper,” in SUPPLEMENT TO THE RAYA
DUNAYEVSKAYA COLLECTION, Vol. 13, 11001.
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