- Introduction
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- Western societies and states are moving inexorably
toward conditions resembling barbarism; structural changes are reversing
decades of social welfare and subjecting labor, natural resources and the
wealth of nations to raw exploitation, pillage and plunder, driving living
standards downward and provoking unprecedented levels of discontent.
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- We will proceed by outlining the economic
political and military processes driving this process of decay and decomposition
and follow with an account of the mass popular responses to their own deteriorating
conditions. The deep structural changes accompanying the rise of barbarism
become the basis for considering the prospects for socialism in the
21st century.
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- The Rising Tide of Barbarism
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- In ancient society 'barbarism' and its carriers
'the barbarians' were envisioned as threats by outside invaders from outlying
regions descending on Rome or Athens. In contemporary Western societies,
the barbarians came from within, among the elite of society, intent on
imposing a new order which destroys the social fabric and productive base
of society, converting stable livelihoods into insecure deteriorating conditions
of daily life.
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- The key to contemporary barbarism is found
in the deep structures of the imperial state and economy. These include:
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- The ascendancy of a financial-speculative elite which
has pillaged trillions of dollars from savers, investors, mortgage carriers,
consumers and the state, siphoning enormous resources from the productive
economy into the hands of a parasitic elite embedded in the state and paper
economy.
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- The militaristic political elite overseeing a state of
permanent warfare since the middle of the last century. Endless wars,
cross border assassinations, state terror and the suspension of traditional
constitutional guarantees have led to the concentration of dictatorial
powers, arbitrary jailing, torture and the denial of habeas corpus.
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- In the midst of a deep economic recession and stagnation,
high levels of state spending on economic and military empire building
at the expense of the domestic economy and living standards, reflects the
subordination of the local economy to the activities of the imperial state.
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- Corruption at the top in all aspects of state and business
activity from state procurement to privatization to subsidies for
the super-rich encourages the growth of international crime from
top to bottom, the lumpenization of the capitalist class and a state where
law and order have fallen into disrepute.
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- As a result of the high costs of empire building and
the pillage by the financial oligarchy, the socio-economic burden has been
placed directly on the shoulders of wage and salaried workers, pensioners
and the self-employed resulting in long-term, large-scale downward mobility.
With job losses and the disappearance of well paying jobs, home foreclosures
skyrocket and the stable middle and working classes shrink and are forced
to extend their hours of labor and years of work.
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- As imperial wars spread across the world targeting entire
populations, via sustained bombings and clandestine terror operations,
they generate opposing terrorist networks, which also target civilians
in markets, transport and public spaces. The world resembles a Hobbesian
world of 'all against all'.
- Rising ethno-religious extremism linked to militarism
is found among Christians, Jews, Moslems, Hindus, replacing international
class solidarity with doctrines of racial supremacy and penetrating the
deep structures of states and societies.
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- The demise of European and Asian welfare collectivism
in the ex USSR and China has lifted the competitive pressures
on Western capitalism and encouraged them to revoke all the welfare concessions
conceded to labor in the post World War II period.
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- The demise of "Communism" and the integration
of social democracy into the capitalist system have led to a severe weakening
of the Left, which the sporadic protests of the social movements have failed
to replace.
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- In the face of the current large scale assault on workers'
and middle class' living standards, there are only sporadic protests at
best and political impotence at worst.
- Massive exploitation of labor in post-revolutionary capitalist
societies, like China and Vietnam, includes the exclusion of hundreds of
millions of migrant workers from elementary public educational and health
services. The unprecedented pillage and seizure by domestic oligarchs
and foreign multinationals of thousands of lucrative strategic public enterprises
in Russia, the ex-Soviet republics, Eastern Europe, the Balkans and Baltic
countries was the greatest transfer of public to private wealth in the
shortest time in all of history.
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- In summary, 'barbarism' has emerged as a defining reality,
product of the ascendancy of a militarist and parasitic financial ruling
class. The barbarians are here and now, present within the frontiers of
Western societies and states. They are dominant and aggressively pursuing
an agenda which is continually reducing living standards, transferring
public wealth to their private coffers, pillaging public resources, savaging
constitutional rights in their pursuit of imperial wars, segregating and
persecuting millions of immigrant workers and promoting the disintegration
and diminution of the stable working and middle class. More than at any
time in recent history, the top 1% of the population controls an increasing
share of national wealth and income.
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- Myths and Realities of Historical Capitalism
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- The sustained, large scale roll back of social
rights and welfare provisions, wages, job security, pensions and salaries
demonstrates the falsity of the idea of the linear progress of capitalism.
The reversal, product of the heightened power of the capitalist class,
demonstrates the validity of the Marxist proposition that class struggle
is the motor force of history at least, in so far, as the human condition
is considered the centerpiece of history.
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- The second false assumption is that states
based on 'market economies' require peace and the corollary that 'markets'
trump militarism, is disproven by the fact that the premier market economy,
the United States has been in a constant state of war since the early 1940's,
actively engaged in wars on four continents, to the present day, with new
bigger and bloodier wars on the horizon. The cause and consequence of
permanent warfare, is the growth of a monstrous 'national security state'
which recognizes no national borders and absorbs the greater part of the
national budget.
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- The third myth of 'advanced' mature capitalism
is that it constantly revolutionizes production through innovation and
technology. With the rise of the militarist financial speculative
elite, productive forces have been pillaged and 'innovation' is largely
in the elaboration of financial instruments which exploit investors, strip
assets and wipe out productive employment.
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- As the empire grows, the domestic economy
diminishes, power is centralized in the executive, legislative powers are
diminished and the citizenry is denied effective representation or even
a veto via electoral processes.
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- Mass Responses to Rise of Barbarism
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- The rise of barbarism in our midst has provoked
public revulsion against its principal practitioners. Surveys have repeatedly
found
- (1) Profound disgust and revulsion against all political
parties.
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- (2) Huge majorities harbor profound distrust of the
corporate and political elite.
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- (3) Majorities reject the concentration of corporate
power and the abuse of that power, especially among bankers and financiers.
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- (4) There is widespread questioning of the democratic
credentials of political leaders who act at the behest of the corporate
elite and promote the repressive policies of the national security state.
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- (5) A large majority rejects the pillage of the state
treasury to bail out banks and financial elite, while imposing regressive
austerity programs on the working and middle class.
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- Prospects for Socialism
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- The capitalist offensive has certainly had
a major impact on the objective and subjective conditions of the working
and middle classes, increasing impoverishment and provoking a rising tide
of personal discontent but not yet massive anti-capitalist movements or
even dynamic organized resistance.
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- Major structural changes require a coming-to-terms
with the current adverse circumstances and the identification of new agencies
and modes of class struggle and transformation.
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- One key problem is the need to recreate a
productive economy and to reconstruct a new industrial working class in
the face of years of financial plunder and de-industrialization, not necessarily
the 'dirty' industries of the past, but certainly new industries using
and inventing clean energy sources.
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- Secondly, the highly indebted capitalist
societies require a fundamental shift from high-cost militarism and empire
building toward a kind of class-based austerity that impose sacrifice
and structural reforms on the banking, financial and big retail commercial
sectors, substituting local production for cheap consumer imports.
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- Thirdly, downsizing the financial and retail
sector requires the upgrading of skills of the displaced workers and employees
as well as shifts in the IT sector to accommodate the shifts in the economy.
Paradigmatic shifts from the money wage to the social wage, in which free
public education to the highest levels and universal health care and comprehensive
pensions replace debt-financed consumerism. This can become the basis
for strengthening class consciousness against individual consumerism.
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- The question is how do we move from weakened,
fragmented labor and social movements in retreat or on the defensive, to
a position capable of launching an anti-capitalist offensive?
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- Several subjective and objective factors
are possibly working in this direction. First, there is the growing negativity
of vast majorities to political incumbents and, in particular, to the financial
and economic elites who are clearly identified as responsible for the decline
in living standards. Secondly, there is the popular view, shared by millions,
that the current austerity programs are clearly unjust having the
workers pay for the crises that the capitalist class brought forth. As
yet these majorities are more "anti" status quo than "pro"
transformation. The transition from private discontent to collective action
is an open question as to who and how, but the opportunity exists.
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- Several objective factors could trigger a
qualitative shift from passive angry discontent to a massive anti-capitalist
movement. A "double dip" recession, the end of the present anemic
recovery and the onset of a more profound and prolonged recession/depression,
could further discredit current rulers and their economic backers.
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- Secondly, a period of unending and deepening
austerity could discredit the current ruling class notion of "necessary
pain for future gain" and open minds and move bodies to seek political
solutions to achieve current gains by inflicting pain on the economic elites.
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- Unending and unwinnable imperial wars that
bleed the economy, and working class could ultimately create a consciousness
that the ruling class has "sacrificed the nation" for 'no useful
purpose'.
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- Likely, the combination of a new phase of
the recession, perpetual austerity and mindless imperial wars can turn
the current mass malaise and diffuse hostility against the economic and
political elite toward socialist movements, parties and trade unions.
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