"The new world order, with the United States as not only the mightiest
power on earth but also the heart of the entire international system, has
become a reality.
For better
or for worse, there is no stepping back from that now."
These words appeared in the
New York
Times on Wednesday in a review of a book about the
U.S. military.
For the sake of
argument, let's suppose they are true.
Whoever governs the US governs the world -- not, of course,
by the consent of the governed, but by economic and political arrangements
ultimately backed by the threat of military invasion.
Who is it, then, that governs the US and thus the world? Never have the words of Marx and Engels been more true: "The
executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs
of the whole [capitalist class]". More precisely, the executive branch
of government manages the world on behalf of the most politically powerful
sections of capital, the dominant corporate and financial interests. The political group that runs the
government, the Republicans in Washington, do what advances their own interests
and those of their corporate patrons.
They are not thinking small, and they are not thinking short term. They are aiming at long-range world hegemony.
They want an Empire that will last.
It's not yet clear that the US will succeed in its conquest of Iraq:
the resistance of many Iraqis to the American presence there is pretty fierce. But the goals of the conquest are clear.
A recent article by Bertell Olman in Z Magazine lays them out:
1)
Oil: The Bush oligarchy wants direct control over a country whose proven oil
reserves are second only to those
of Saudi Arabia. American oil giants own none of this oil now. How much do
you think they will own one year
after the war? Direct U.S. control over Iraqi oil will not only put the profits
of selling the oil and servicing
the oil fields into American hands, but will also put the U.S. Government
in a position to effect the price
of oil by determining how much of it is put onto the market at any one time
and to secure the dollar's position
as the currency of choice in the purchase of oil by other countries.
2) Secure the water
supplies - not often mentioned - with which Iraq is blessed and all surrounding
countries are to some degree
dependent.
3)
Establish American military and political power in a major Arab country in the heart of the middle-east for an indefinite
period to help ensure the existence of friendly governments and market economies throughout the region.
4) Provide a
rationale to expand the military budget
and with it the profits of the arms industry, which includes the oil industry.
5) Help make
Americans forget that we lost the war in Afghanistan, whose main objective was
not to remove the Taliban but to
destroy Al Queda and capture Ossama Bin Laden.
6) Upstage the media
attention given to the failure of the Government's economic policies (unemployment up 35%, stock market down
34 %, etc. and etc. since Bush took office) as well as the high level financial
scandals in which both Bush and Cheney have been implicated.
7) Create an
atmosphere of permanent crisis with its side-bars of fear and patriotism that
will help the GOP to push through
the rest of its ultra-conservative political agenda and win the next
presidential election.
Well what about that "ultra-conservative
political agenda" for the domestic front? The international and the domestic are,
of course, connected. An article
by David Moberg which was read recently on this program by the Well-read Red
makes this clear: How is the
war, the reconstruction of Iraq and the expansion of the military going to
be paid for? Not by the corporations
and the rich: the Republicans propose nothing but tax cuts for them, so guess
who's left with the bill? But
this shift of the tax burden to the less affluent has huge consequences. Government at all levels will have less
money to spend on programs—including education, health care, legal defense
for the indigent—as we know all too well here in Oregon. The money governments do have comes disproportionately from
those least able to pay. So state
and local governments are under pressure to cut costs and therefore programs.
Huge deficits could threaten even social security and Medicare. As government services deteriorate,
people are less willing to pay for them. And so it goes. The state withers away at the bottom,
as a provider of human services, while massively increasing its capacity to
project police and military power from the top to keep people in line both
at home and abroad. If the Republicans
now in charge continue down this road—and we are already a long ways down
that road—the Executive of the Modern State will have dropped all pretense
to be anything other than an instrument of class rule. Our job, as moles, must be to make this
clear to people, so that these words of Marx and Engels will become undeniable:
It becomes evident that
the bourgeoisie [that is, the capitalist class] is unfit any longer to be
the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon
society as an over-riding law. Society
can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is
no longer compatible with society.
