The newspapers have discreetly desisted from making an official announcement but it was quite evident. At the beginning of November, after a period of relative decline, Suckers International Ltd. is back on the scene: there has been widespread inebriation in connection with the election of the new US President and many, in the US and abroad, have seen another little piece of brain go up in smoke, proclaiming “new eras”, “historical turning points”, “giant steps forward”, “new chapters in history”, “more future New Deals”, “a return to the original ideals”, and so on. We communists see things quite differently, from a radically different point of view. With the election of Obama as President, the United States do, in fact, take another significant step forward towards the next world war. The same old paradox from the catastrophe-mongers? Let us explain patiently how things stand, to those who are not yet too drunk or whose brain hasn’t yet gone up in smoke.
The US economy is undergoing a serious crisis and this is not a new development. The crisis (which has had, and still has, its own pattern of development, inevitably linked to the predominant position of American capitalism as the absolute victor in the second world bloodbath) has followed the same trend as that of all the world powers from the mid-seventies of the last century onwards. The result, amongst others, has been the progressive weakening of the American economy (though still dominant) compared to the other powers, its historical rivals (Germany, Japan) or recent ones (China, India). To face up to this new and worrying situation, US capital has been obliged to play the card of “financialization” (the stock exchange and speculation) on all fronts (but, especially in the age of imperialism, all theatres are inter-dependent); abroad it has had to wage a savage commercial war against its competitors (monetary policies, cartelization, dumping, mergers, protectionism, etc.), which in more than one case over the past twenty years, has turned intoarmed warfare: there is no other significance to the bloody slaughter of the 1st Gulf War, the Balkan war, the 2nd Gulf War, the war in Afghanistan (not to mention the many episodes of wars fought by proxy, or more or less underground ones, conducted elsewhere, first and foremost in Africa). All these military interventions have aimed on the one hand to bring new oxygen to the choking home economy (the war machinery must operate at full capacity with an enormous production effort and positive effects on the various sectors), at the same time strengthening the control of strategic areas with a view to raw materials or their transport routes; on the other hand, the aim is to strike, more or less directly, at the more dangerous or … rascal competitors, excluding them from those areas or halting their expansion (the “best” example was to be seen in the Balkans themselves, where the expansion of German capital towards the south, the Mediterranean and strategic areas, was parried by a bloody war, desired and monitored by the Clinton administration – strong supporters of Obama).
At present, all these “remedies” (the only ones known to capital, ever since its origins) have, as predicted, not only proved to be insufficient to cure the patient but have had, both at home, as abroad, a whole series of “side effects” which have aggravated its death throes. The world economic crisis (or rather, its recent acceleration, within the cycle of crises beginning in the mid-seventies) is advancing at all levels and not one “expert” fails to declare that things are destined to go “from bad to worse”: the US economy is at a standstill, unemployment is growing at a giddy rate, particularly amongst certain sectors of the population (blacks, latinos, immigrants – not to mention the tragic condition of clandestine immigrants), the automobile sector is experiencing a profound crisis (with all the inevitable consequences), the middle classes are under increasing pressure, confidence has dropped to a historical low, the “ghost of 1929” has re-appeared with the risk of deep “social ill-being” – a combination of facts, both real and psychological, that puts US society in a similar position to the rest of the world. This means that the erosion of US capital’s world predominance is accelerating further, faced with the inevitable aggressiveness of other competing capitals also feeling the sting of the crisis. The acceleration is thus moving towards a further, keener commercial war, a squeeze by US capital towards other countries’ capitals; and consequently, as a future prospect, towards a new and necessary trial of strength, towards a new armed conflict, with dimensions and implications that are no longer local but worldwide. How is it to be prepared? And, most important, how should we prepare ourselves for it?
It is at this point that in the United States (and thus not only here) the “new President” comes into play. Here, too, it will be as well to explain things patiently.
We communists have always denied a) that individuals make history and b) that it is the institutional offices (such as the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister or anyone else) or democratic institutions (such as Parliament, rather than the local council) that “do politics” – being offices and institutions whose only purpose is, perhaps to amplify, like actual sound systems, a purely ideological line of “national” consensus, wholly functional to the interests of capital. It was never the demagogic oratories of Mussolini from the balcony in Piazza Venezia or Roosevelt’s “fireside speeches” on the radio (or, today, the parliamentary debates or TV talk shows, often undistinguishable one from the other) that “make history” – as far as capital is concerned, history, far less noisily but far more materially, was “made” and is “made” by the banks, the financial institutions, the cartels, the trusts … and, at the given moment, by the canons.
But the words and the speeches served and still serve to fill people’s brains: to reassure them and make them exalt, when and to the extent that it is necessary to smooth the path of the nation’s capital.
Now, in the midst of its crisis, the United States (as any other country undergoing a crisis) is also experiencing the crisis (domestic and foreign) of the ideological discourse of national consensus: that ideological glue capable of holding together the “body of the nation”, denying the interests of antagonistic or incompatible interests and preparing it to swallow its bitter medicine, whilst leading it by hand towards a progressive series of outside conflicts, first “cultural” and ideological, then diplomatic and finally in the form of outright warfare. Succeeding in making the ideological glue efficient on a wide scale again – this is the problem that faces the US ruling class (a model that will gradually be copied by the other ruling classes: the rhetoric that was broadcast in November in France and Italy on the first world bloodbath is a good example of the direction taken). The solution to this problem was certainly not to be found in Bush’s game (that of obtuse arrogance): it is instead far better served by the (exquisitely media-friendly) game played by Obama. He will be the one, with his neo-Kennedy charisma, his interclassist and intercultural message, his explicit symbolism (and blackmail: who can resist at this stage? only some exalted fringe faction, always of use to capital, but not at present) of the “long march of the black people” … And so the credulous all over the world will swallow the hook ecstatically and in their idiotic “let us dream at least a while”, distribute amongst themselves the tickets for the “Mister and Miss Sucker 2009” gala… Suckers International Ltd. returns to the limelight with drum-rolls, fanfares of trumpets, confetti and streamers.
In the meantime, the new President mixes the ingredients for the glue: one for the hare and one for the hounds. And there is no doubt that he will have to pass measures to “re-launch the economy” (the poor automobile!), to “cure social ills” (the disastrous healthcare! the growing poverty! the increasing unemployment!), “to re-organize the finance and banking system” (mortgages! speculation! shaky institutions!). He will have to do all this to avoid social rebellion. But (and here the “But” is truly monumental!) he will have to get hold of the money for all this: and he will get hold of it by a) greater exploitation of the American proletariat (who will thus lose three times as much as what is demagogically conceded to them), b) an increasing internal debt (which will be off-loaded onto all the countries that are already financing it now: virtually the whole world, including ... the suckers!), c) growing commercial, and thus also military, aggression. And it is here that the glue will have to prove itself, both at home and abroad. In other words, the period of “preparation for the new war” will begin, with all the necessary intellectual and psychological mobilisation (and with the valid assistance of Suckers International Ltd.): the “new New Deal”, the new “righteous wars”, the “threat from the current baddy”, the “war to end all wars”, the “war for democracy”, etc. etc. – the usual repertory that has become the whip of the dominant ideology, well experimented in two devastating pre-wars and in dozens of local “pre-scuffles”.
The new President is rolling up his sleeves right away and Suckers International Ltd. is promising its ecstatic support, forgetting (because its neurons have burnt out in eighty years of counter-revolution) that, in the ‘thirties, it was the New Deal that prepared the way for US intervention in the second world bloodbath.
It remains to be seen if the American proletariat will passively agree to being squeezed further and being sent to slaughter and be slaughtered: but the answer to this dramatic query is closely linked to the return to the limelight in all countries of the world of both the proletariat in arms and the revolutionary party capable of directing it.
International Communist Party
(International Papers - Cahiers Internationalistes - Il Programma Comunista)