Oceania vs. Eurasia
In
the face of crumbling economic power, Washington is switching to a
strategy of military dominance in its confrontation with China
by Tomasz Konicz
[This
article posted on 5/16/2023 is translated from the German on the
Internet,
https://exit-online.org/textanz1.php?tabelle=aktuelles&index=37&posnr=863.]
It is quite possible that, in retrospect, the war in Ukraine
will be seen as the first act of a global major war, as a mere prelude
to the military conflict between the US and China that is looming in
Taiwan. The tensions in the Taiwan Strait seem to be becoming a
precarious permanent state of affairs, while the death toll of the
Russian war of aggression is now in the hundreds of thousands.
Both
conflicts can indeed be seen as moments in a global struggle for
hegemony, a struggle being waged between the fragile alliance systems of
the declining United States and the rising China. On the geopolitical
level, one could speak of a struggle between China-led Eurasia and the
United States' Oceania. Washington
is pursuing a containment strategy vis-à-vis the Chinese-Russian
alliance, in which alliance systems extending across the Pacific and
Atlantic play a central role. And Taiwan is an essential component of
this containment strategy in the Pacific region, in which Washington is
also seeking to involve South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam and
Australia.
This
containment strategy has several objectives: on the one hand, it is
intended to prevent the unhindered formation of the rapidly growing
Chinese military power. The global ability to intervene has formed the
military basis of US hegemony in the decades since the end of the Second
World War. Beijing is currently pushing ahead with a gigantic, rapidly
advancing naval armament program in order to outstrip the US Navy. By
2024, the number of Chinese combat ships is to increase from 340 to
around 400, while the US Navy has only just under 300 ships. However,
the effectiveness of this Chinese naval power would be undermined by US
bases, which Washington would prefer to establish in all of China's
neighboring states, which are watching Beijing's increase in power with
unease.
On
the other hand, this containment is also about making it impossible for
Beijing to extract raw materials and energy sources from the periphery
of the world system without hindrance, in view of the worsening
socio-ecological crisis. It is impossible for China to secure the
shipping lanes militarily as long as Washington has allies off the
Chinese coast.
Escalation dynamics in late capitalism
Where
do the borders of Oceania and Eurasia lie? This geopolitical question,
which is being fought out militarily in Ukraine, also arises in Taiwan,
which Beijing considers to be part of China. The Taiwan conflict is
therefore particularly strongly national and ideologically charged
within China, while an overwhelming majority of Taiwanese residents are
in favor of maintaining the status quo or even independence. The
hegemonic struggle between the US and China is also a struggle for
technological dominance. Washington is using increasingly far-reaching
sanctions to maintain its remaining technological advantage over the
People's Republic. And Taiwan is an important location for IT and
high-tech production. The most important manufacturing sites for
computer processors and chips are located on the Pacific island.
Washington wants to prevent Beijing from gaining access to these skills.
The
escalating dynamics unfolding in the Pacific, however, remain
incomprehensible if the increasing social, economic and ecological
crisis tendencies in the late capitalist world system are ignored. It is
the systemic crisis processes, the increasingly apparent internal and
external barriers to capital, that are driving the states into
confrontation. Russia's
attack on Ukraine, which resembles an act of sheer madness, also
remains incomprehensible if the uprisings in Belarus and Kazakhstan
shortly before are disregarded.
On
a global level, the USA finds itself in a similarly difficult situation
to Russia in its run-down and socially devastated post-Soviet backyard.
The
recent "banking earthquake" in the United States, which was triggered by
the collapse in the value of US government bonds that were actually
considered safe, is an expression of the systemic impasse in which
neoliberal globalization, centered on the dollar as the world's leading
currency, finds itself: the world system, which is suffocating in
productivity, lacks a new leading industrial sector in which wage labor
could be utilized on a massive scale; it is running on credit. Global debt is rising faster than global economic output.
This
global debt process took place through ever-larger speculative bubbles
in the financial sphere, with globalization leading to the formation of
deficit cycles. Export-surplus economies exported their goods to deficit
countries, which accumulated ever-larger mountains of debt. The USA and
China were closely intertwined in this process. In
the large Pacific deficit cycle, China was able to achieve huge export
surpluses vis-à-vis the USA, which it then invested in American
government bonds. China shipped huge quantities of goods to the USA
across the Pacific, while US "financial market goods" (mostly the
aforementioned government bonds) flowed in the opposite direction,
making China one of the largest creditors of the USA. (A
similar "imbalance" between the German center and the southern
periphery also characterized the eurozone until the outbreak of the euro
crisis.)
Conservative crisis policy in a trap
This
global financial bubble economy, which is running on credit, has become
increasingly crisis-prone in recent decades. The crises have become
more and more severe, the political efforts to stabilize the system have
become ever greater, and the intervals between the crises have become
ever shorter. With the onset of the inflation phase, the neoliberal era
of crisis delay seems to be at an end.
The
bourgeois crisis policy is caught in a trap: it would have to raise
interest rates to fight inflation, while at the same time it would have
to lower interest rates to prevent the inflated financial sector from
collapsing and the gigantic mountains of debt from collapsing. The
USA is no longer able to function as the "black hole" of the world
economy in the context of the collapsing financial bubble economy and
the aforementioned deficit cycles, which undermines the economic
foundation of US hegemony. With
the increasing shift away from the US dollar in the semi-periphery of
the world system, where a number of states are switching to bilateral
payment systems with China, the time of the greenback as the world's
leading currency seems to be coming to an end, which would relegate the
United States to a huge, militarily highly armed debtor state.
Business as Usual - On the ongoing madness of the capitalist mode of production
by Thomas Meyer
[This
article posted in 2017 is translated from the German on the Internet,
https://exit-online.org/textanz1.php?tabelle=aktuelles&index=39&posnr=865.]
It
is encouraging to see that the real madness of capitalism is actually
being recognized in the general analysis and, in particular, in the
crisis since 2007/2008, and that a critique of capitalism is being
formulated on this basis. This is attempted by Paul Mattick Jr.1 in his
book "Business as Usual - The Economic Crisis and the Failure of
Capitalism"2, which was written in 2011 and translated into German in
2012.
In
this book, Mattick outlines the history of economic crises and calls
for a concrete historical examination of capitalism. However, crises are
usually neither really explained nor understood, because people are not
able to relate them to the internal history and the logic of
exploitation of capitalism. This
is often because capitalism is perceived as natural anyway, and
consequently it is not even considered to be viewed historically.
Capitalism as an imposition and a crisis
The
situation is well known: the so-called financial crisis began with the
bursting of the real estate bubble in 2007/2008. Most commentaries
agreed in their actual lack of understanding of capitalism. The
mainstream of economics, mostly of neoclassical provenance3, was rightly
accused of being unable to formulate any reasonably reliable prognoses,
nor did it have any plausible explanations for the current economic
situation. Critics
of neo-liberalism, deregulation, etc. on the other hand were similarly
blind to history, as was the Keynesian Paul Krugman, because he did not
"deal with the reasons why Keynesian theory fell into disrepute in the
1970s" (25).
According
to Mattick, a fundamental problem lies "[...] in the prevailing
approach to current economic issues. Part of the problem is the terms
used to try to understand the social system in which we live" (30).
To
understand the current crisis, Mattick says, one must look at the
history of capitalism and its historical dynamics. In particular, one
should recognize the nature of the crises in capitalism, as distinct
from, for example, famines in pre-modern societies: "But
when the increasingly money-oriented economy led to the industrial
revolution and capitalism spread to such a large extent that it became
the dominant social system, a new phenomenon emerged: crises of the
social system as a whole. Of course, a wide range of disruptive factors
such as war, plague and crop failures had already affected social
production before that. However,
the establishment of capitalism brought something new with it: despite
good harvests and mountains of food, famines occurred [...]. Such
collapses were no longer caused by natural or political factors, but by
specific economic factors: there was a lack of money to buy the goods
needed, profits were too low to make investments in production
worthwhile" (35, emphasis in original).
If
these facts are acknowledged at all, it has always been the case that
bourgeois economists have sought the causes of crises in extra-economic
or extra-social factors, such as William Stanley Jevons, "who from 1875
onwards persistently endeavored to prove a correlation between economic
upturns and downturns and the sunspot cycle [...]." Marx, on the other
hand, took a completely different approach: "Marx
argued that the essence of capitalism was a tendency towards crisis,
which would be realized in constantly recurring depressions and would
ultimately lead to the downfall of the system. However,
his approach was so fundamentally different from the usual economic
theories that other theorists who dealt with the subject – including the
majority of those who called themselves Marxists – had difficulty even
understanding his thoughts, let alone finding them useful" (38f.).
Some
bourgeois economists, however, were able to recognize the obvious, such
as Wesley Mitchell (1874-1948) in his 1927 book on the business cycle,
in which he wrote: "It is not what a business makes, but what it makes
out of it, that is its business purpose. [...] In a monetary economy, the course of business is determined by current and anticipated profits" (43).
Mattick states that it is quite astounding that this realization has escaped most economists to this day.
However,
Mitchell is unable to provide a theoretical explanation for fluctuating
profitability. Nor does he ask himself, among other things, what money
actually is: "These are questions that even a historically oriented
economist like Mitchell did not think to ask, because the existence of
money seemed perfectly natural to him [...]. Asking
a citizen of a capitalist society is like asking a resident of ancient
Egypt why the water level of the Nile and thus the growth and decline of
agricultural yields are determined by Osiris. Answering it requires
sufficient mental distance from social conventions [...] to understand
money and thus also profit as historically peculiar social institutions
that have certain consequences for the way we live" (48f.).
Work,
i.e. the human being reduced to a labor force container, the bourgeois
gender relationship, i.e. the double idiocy of kitchen and career, and a
way of thinking that, above all in its practice, can recognize the
world only as a substrate for the realization of value, would still have
to be added.
Furthermore,
it is forgotten that most people "[...] in large parts of the world,
even in the very recent past, were rarely or never dependent on money
[...], that money occurs in many types of societies, but only in
capitalism does it play such a central role in production and
distribution [...]. In such a system, money has a different social
significance than in earlier societies. [...]
In capitalism, this distribution takes place by determining which
products are saleable in which quantities - and not through a social
decision-making process about what should be produced" (50f.)4.
Mattick
notes that crises have to do with the dynamics of capital accumulation:
on the one hand, the aim is to maximize "profitability" – because
making money is the driving force behind capitalist production – and on
the other hand, in order to prevail in the competition, costs must be
reduced, for example by increasing labor productivity: by reducing the
proportion of labor used relative to the quantities produced by it. The
general consequence of this is that the costs of the means of
production rise relative to those of wages, so that the individual
commodity becomes cheaper. This is expressed in saturated markets,
declining investment in means of production, etc., and rising
unemployment (59f.). The plight appears to be a lack of demand. This is
precisely where Keynesianism comes in. The
idea was that the state would generate demand through credit (e.g.
through large-scale infrastructure projects5), thus rekindling the
dynamics of utilization, overcoming the depression and finally paying
off the debts through increased tax revenues. Keynes'
model seemed to be successful, the depression was overcome (not least
due to the Second World War, 86f.) and parts of humanity were then
blessed by an economic miracle (the "golden age" as Mattick calls it).
Nevertheless, the Keynesian methods were continued after the actual
depression. The economic miracle was therefore hardly self-sustaining: "In
reality, crisis management turned into a permanent state-private 'mixed
economic system'. Far from being paid off, public debt in all
capitalist countries rose from the mid-1970s, both in absolute terms and
as a proportion of GDP [...] By the time Reagan left office, public
debt had tripled from $900 billion to $2.8 trillion [...]. In 1930, the US government's debt amounted to $16 billion; today it is $12.5 trillion and still growing" (69, 91-93).6
Mattick
also describes the genesis of finance-driven capitalism: "The decline
in productive investment meant that more and more money became available
for other purposes. [...] This 'massive shift to a speculative use of
liquidity [...] was expressed in a strong urge for legal deregulation? Deregulation
was thus a reaction to the pressure of speculation: it made risky
business easier, but was not the cause of the increasing speculation. It
is equally absurd to explain the increase in credit-financed corporate
acquisitions and other forms of speculation as a consequence of greed,
as is often done today: Not
only does this fail to explain why greed has suddenly increased in
recent decades, it also obscures the basic motive behind capitalist
investment decisions" (75 f.).
Mattick
also emphasizes that the financial crisis of 2007/2008 should not be
viewed in isolation from the crisis since the 1970s and its cause in the
logic of exploitation; nor should the smaller crises since the 1980s. Rather,
the current situation is "an expression of the depression that was
dramatically heralded in the mid-1970s, but which has been kept at bay
for over thirty years by state economic policy - partly by shifting it
to poorer regions of the world, but above all by a historically
unprecedented level of debt among states, companies and private
individuals in the richer part of the world" (82).
But
what is the fundamental difference between the current crisis and the
depression of 1929, apart from the skyrocketing national debt?
Unfortunately,
Mattick hardly develops this crucial idea. He does mention that
government spending "had counteracted the previous decline in profit
rates, but had not overcome it, [so] it is not surprising that firms
used the available funds less to build new factories to produce more
goods and more to squeeze more profit out of existing production: They
invested in labor- and energy-saving technologies and reduced labor
costs by relocating factories from high-wage to low-wage countries [...]
The results include the persistent rise in unemployment in Western
Europe and the Rust Belt in the United States" (73).
The
qualitatively new, the crisis of the labor society, the microelectronic
revolution and its still not fully utilized rationalization potentials
are not really clearly elaborated. Referring
to Marx, Mattick does, however, state that the dynamics of capitalist
exploitation must ultimately lead to its downfall (see above), although
he does not explicitly refer to the "Fragment on Machines" from the
Grundrisse, but only to the tendency of the fall of the rate of profit.
Another
inaccuracy regarding the question of why Keynesian methods cannot work
is his statement that "state-financed production does not generate any
profit. [...] The government does not have its own money, but pays with
tax revenues or borrowed money, which ultimately also has to be repaid
from tax revenues. [...] Government spending cannot solve the problem of
depression [...]. The
government can postpone the problem by providing financial and other
companies with the money they need to keep their operations going. It
can at least temporarily alleviate the hardship caused by it by
employing or supporting the unemployed, and it can build infrastructure
that will benefit future profitable production. [...] The fundamental
problem in a phase of depression can only be solved by the depression
itself [...]. The
depression can [...] increase profit rates by lowering the costs of
capital goods and labor, by increasing productivity through
technological innovations, and by concentrating capital ownership in
larger, more efficient units" (100f.).
The
counter-argument to this is that Keynesian methods are effective
precisely when they lead to production on an expanded scale; when state
measures of concentration and mobilization lead to a greater absorption
of living labor,
when the cheapening of goods leads to an expansion of markets, when, as
a consequence, there is an expansion of total capital, an increase in
the total value of society, whether or not this is mediated by war. This
leads to higher tax revenues, so that those loans that represented an
advance on the future that has yet to be earned can then be serviced
after all. As is well known, the fact that it worked out more or less is
due to the massive expansion of Fordist industries. Why do Keynesian
measures definitely no longer work today, even though they did at other
times?
As
already indicated, these methods no longer worked in the 1970s, because
the subsequent microelectronic revolution did not lead to a renewed
absorption of living labor, and therefore financial capitalism and
neoliberal ideology represented the historical form through which
capitalism, although completely blind to history and increasingly
resistant to facts, worked on this contradiction.
According
to Mattick, it is definitely wrong to think that the depression could
be solved by a market adjustment (which was averted by loans of an
unprecedented amount). A
further concentration of capital, further rationalization measures,
etc., would only increase the difficulty of people being able to
function as exploitable labor containers; likewise the mass of the
superfluous, "who gathered in the hundreds of millions in huge slums"
(81f.). Mattick's
somewhat imprecise definition of the crisis makes him seem a little
ahistorical, although he is well aware of the extent of the misery, as
Mike Davis' Planet of Slums makes clear. Fortunately, he does not
succumb to false optimism that lies to reality, as is often the case
with the bourgeois lumpen intelligentsia.
Furthermore,
Mattick writes, unlike many others, that China and India cannot be seen
as a beacon of hope for a restored capitalism, because "China's growth
remains [...] closely linked to that of the developed countries [...].
India, where the majority of the population still consists of poor rural
workers7, is even further away from being an independent economic
power. In
fact, the foreign trade of the Indian and Chinese economies continues
to consist largely of the re-export of end or intermediate products and
services produced by multinational companies based in Europe or the
United States" (110).
What to do?
What
can be done in the face of millions of people living in poverty,
environmental destruction and even man-made climate change? What
practical conclusions does Mattick draw?
According
to Mattick, it is hardly to be expected that the traditional left,
insofar as it is not already marginalized, will be able to transcend the
horizon of capital. The
traditional left (social democracy and real socialism) has definitely
had its day, since "the traditional labor movement was not a harbinger
of the overthrow of capitalism, but an aspect of its development, in
that it fulfilled the task of normalizing a new mode of social relations
through organizations that were capable of negotiation and willing to
compromise" (122f.)
The
demise of the traditional left is no reason to apathetically accept
capitalist madness: for it is precisely in times of crisis that the
difference between material and monetary wealth, as Karl Marx tried to
outline it, can become apparent to many, which could motivate people to
act. Mattick
also outlines this idea: money may be devalued, factories may be
closed, but material wealth is still within reach, so to speak: "While
they are still waiting for the promised return of prosperity, the
millions of new homeless people could, like many of their predecessors
in the 1930s, eventually look at foreclosed empty houses, unsaleable
consumer goods and state food depots and recognize in them the things
they need to live. However,
simply taking over living space, food and other goods breaks with the
rules of an economic system based on the exchange of goods for money,
and thus points to a completely different kind of society" (133).
The
independent appropriation of the means of production may be a first
step towards getting rid of capitalism and finding a different form of
society, even if humanity will have to struggle with the disastrous
legacies (environmental destruction, etc.) of capitalism for a long time
to come: "Whatever
it is called, it will have to begin by abolishing the separation
between those who control production and those who carry it out, and
replacing a social mechanism based on monetary market exchange
(including labor power) with some kind of social decision-making" (137).
However,
Mattick is to be contradicted here when he writes that the means of
production are under the control of certain subjects. It is true that no
other use than a capitalist one is foreseen for the means of production
and real estate, etc., and that this will therefore be defended by all
means of violence if people were to presume to wrest them from the
capitalist movement of valorization, as Mattick himself suggests: "No
different from totalitarian states, direct organs of power in
democratic states pose a threat to the powerful, however limited their
goals may be.8 Threats to the economic order will undoubtedly trigger
repression that
will go beyond the level of violence that the military and police have
already used in recent years against demonstrators in Athens, striking
public employees in South Africa, students in London and other cities
[...]" (135).
Nevertheless,
this basically traditional Marxist formulation suggests that certain
subjects would actually have a determining influence over production and
its contents. The functional logic of the dynamics of valorization
cannot be traced back to the determination of the will of subjects,
which does not mean, however, that nobody could be held responsible for
anything, because the imperatives of capitalism have to be mediated
through the subjects so that they can (or rather must) act in accordance
with these imperatives. This
does not mean, however, that people are the subject of the capitalist
system as a whole. This is where a subject- and ideology-critical level
of critique would come in, but this is missing from Mattick (apart from
an ideology critique of economics and various historical perspectives).
But
it would not be enough to simply appropriate them: it is the productive
(or rather destructive) legacies of capitalism and, in particular, the
business management form of their implementation that are to be
criticized and, consequently, not simply to be seen in a positive light.
It would be a waste of effort to appropriate the capitalist 'productive
forces' only to then simply continue to run them on one's own
initiative (as can be observed in occupied factories9). If
the mode of production is to be transformed, then the same applies to
the content of production, which of course includes the abolition or
scaling back of certain production contents, just think of the car
industry.
Incidentally,
this idea is not at all new as a basic concept. The anarchist Erich
Mühsam, for example, wrote in 1932: "The childish idea that the
revolution will have accomplished the transition to socialism simply by
workers occupying the factories and continuing to run them under their
own management is as nonsensical as it is dangerous. [...] Under
capitalist conditions, the facilities and organization of all types of
factories are adapted exclusively to the profit calculations of the
entrepreneurs. No
consideration is given to the needs of the people, no consideration to
the requirements of justice, reason, the lives and health of workers and
consumers. [...] an economy that leaves many millions without work,
literally starving, and at the same time burns important foodstuffs,
dumps them in the sea, allows them to rot in barns or uses them as
fertilizer, such an economy cannot simply be taken over and continued. It must be completely restructured."10
In times of 'failed states', appropriation occurs anyway, albeit in the sense of a plunder economy. That
appropriation occurs, as understandable as it may be in the respective
situation, can also mean that the appropriators see themselves as an
ethnic gang, a racist human breeding association or a religious
terrorist sect, etc., and consequently exclude other exclude
other people from their means of production (or the remains of it) and
thus continue the competition with other means; appropriation as a
blood-drenched mode of redistribution in the "molecular civil war"
(Enzensberger). As we have seen, Matticks's critique of capitalism is almost exclusively economic; the subjective element is left out. He
does mention that people are quite capable of spontaneous solidarity in
crisis situations, which gives us a little hope, but he does not
further address the fact that they can also prove themselves to be just
as capable of racism, sexism, anti-Semitism and anti-Gypsyism, not only
in their heads but also as a realized act, as a celebrated and applauded
pogrom. At
the latest here, it would be a mistake to leave out the level of
ideology and subject criticism when criticizing capitalism.
Unfortunately, Mattick largely leaves it at the practical conclusions
quoted above, without thinking about them further. An answer to Lenin's
question may be more urgent today than ever, but it should not be
demanded by shortening or even abandoning theoretical reflection.
Paul Mattick: Business as Usual - Crisis and Failure of Capitalism, Hamburg, Edition Nautilus 2012.
Paul Mattick Jr., born in 1944, the son of Paul Mattick (1904-1981), teaches philosophy at Adelphi University in New York.^
See also the interview that Paul Mattick gave to The Brooklyn Rail
in 2011. A German translation of the interview can be found at
kosmoprolet.org. ^
For an understanding of the incomprehension of capitalism in
neoclassical economic theory, see Claus Peter Ortlieb: "Markt-Märchen -
Zur Kritik der neoklassischen akademischen Volkswirtschaftslehre und
ihres Gebrauchs mathematischer Modelle" (Market Myths - A Critique of
Neoclassical Academic Economics and its Use of Mathematical Models), in
EXIT! - Krise und Kritik der Warengesellschaft Nr. 1 (2001), 166-183.
Online:https://exit-online.org/pdf/exit_komplett/exit1.pdf. Conventional
economic theory usually considers itself to be "free of ideology"
because it uses mathematics, which, given the obvious and historically
powerful success in the natural sciences, is supposed to guarantee
objectivity. However,
it is more a case of a methodological misuse of mathematics, cf.
Herbert Auinger: Mißbrauchte Mathematik - Zur Verwendung mathematischer
Methoden in den Sozialwissenschaften, Frankfurt 1995. Cf. also: Knut
Hüller: Kapital als Fiktion - Wie endloser Verteilungskampf die
Profitrate senkt und ,Finanzkrisen? erzeugt, Hamburg 2015.^
See, for example, Robert Kurz: Geld ohne Wert - Grundrisse zu einer
Transformation der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, Berlin 2012 and
Hartmut Apel: Verwandtschaft Gott und Geld - zur Organisation
archaischer, ägyptischer und antiker Gesellschaft, Frankfurt 1982.^
Cf. Wolfgang Schivelbusch: Entfernte Verwandtschaft: Faschismus,
Nationalsozialismus, New Deal. 1933-1939, Munich/Vienna 2005.^
At present (March 2016), US government debt, depending on the source, is between 19 and 20 trillion dollars. However,
according to various economists, the national debt is much higher: if,
for example, the constantly rising costs of social security are
included, see
http://deutsche-wirtschafts-nachrichten.de/2013/08/09/studie-deckt-auf-usa-haben-verdeckte-schulden-von-70-billionen-dollar/.
^
To be more precise, half of the population works in agriculture, 800
million Indians are considered poor, a third of the population is
chronically malnourished, and 92% of the working population works in the
informal sector without any insurance. Data in Dominik Müller: India -
The World's Largest Democracy?, Berlin/Hamburg 2014. Malnutrition
affects girls more than boys: It
is quite common for boys in a poor family to get more to eat than
girls, who are often never allowed to eat their fill. If they try to,
they are beaten up, and if there is not enough food, they are left to
starve (!), see Georg Blume/Christoph Hein: Indiens verdrängte Wahrheit -
Streitschrift gegen ein unmenschliches System, Hamburg 2014.^
Even self-organized homeless food programs are being fought by the state, see the material on nationalhomeless.org. ^
When factories were occupied in Argentina, there was also a
discussion there about material constraints and the expansion of night
shifts, cf. "Occupied Factories in Argentina - Movement against Capital
or Self-Management of Capitalist Misery?" in Wildcat No. 70 (2004). An
occupation can also mean a continuation of competition by other means!^
Surveillance and punishment – on democratic state terror in the age of neoliberalism
by Thomas Meyer
[This
article posted in 2017 is translated from the German on the Internet,
https://exit-online.org/textanz1.php?tabelle=aktuelles&index=38&posnr=864.]
In
the patriarchal system of commodity production, the individual is only
recognized to the extent that he or she can prove to be a productive
labor force. The rights granted to him or her by the state are therefore
only valid with reservations. It
must force itself into the form of bourgeois subjectivity in order to
then be able to strive for its "happiness" as the "agent of abstract
labor"1 (Robert Kurz); which, for the time being, means nothing more
than having to sell oneself lock, stock and barrel. In this process,
capitalist real categories such as money, goods and labor are regarded
by bourgeois common sense as ontological determinations of human
existence in general. At
the latest, when these categories are called into question in practice,
the much-vaunted bourgeois tolerance and plurality would reach its
absolute limit and the subjects would clearly feel the force of the
visible fist of the state (actually already clearly in purely
system-immanent social struggles, as history and the present show2).
However,
if the sale of one's own labor power does not succeed, the resulting
social catastrophes are perceived as a "security problem" even by the
most liberal constitutional state3. As Robert Kurz noted in the Black
Book of Capitalism, the reaction against the poor and those who have
fallen by the wayside in the third industrial revolution can only take
the form of a war against the facts, only the form of a crusade ("The
Last Crusade of Liberalism")4 .
As
far as the war against social facts is concerned, the French
sociologist Loïc Wacquant5 has analyzed the changes in criminal law and
prison policy in recent decades, and the causes of these changes, in his
book The Punishing of the Poor: Neoliberal Government of Social
Insecurity. These changes are expressed above all in the ever-growing
prison population6. Although
this book was published several years ago and was also reviewed at the
time, it is still worth reading, as Wacquant's findings are not obsolete
in times of internal barriers and permanent states of emergency, but
remain relevant and powerful. Wacquant primarily looks at the situation
in the USA, but also addresses parallel developments in Europe at the
end7.
From a state of charity to a prison state
At
the beginning of the 21st century, about 700 people in every 100,000 in
the USA were in prison, i.e. about 2 million in total. In
1975, the figure was just under 400,000.8 "Even in South Africa, at the
end of the civil war against apartheid in 1993, with 369 prisoners per
100,000 inhabitants, there were half as many people behind bars as in
the prosperous USA under President Clinton" (136, emphasis in org.).
What's
more, the penal system is now the third largest (!) employer in the
country. The neoliberal state also spares no expense when it comes to
financing it. In Texas, for example, "the budget for the penal system
was six times as high as the budget for the universities" (165ff.).
But
not only is the prison population exorbitantly high, so too are the
numbers of people under "criminal supervision", i.e. people "who have
been sentenced to probation or released on probation after serving the
majority of their sentence [...] Overall, the number of Americans under under
criminal supervision increased by more than four and a half million
within 20 years: it rose from 1.84 million in 1980 to [...] 6.47 million
in 20009 [...]" (149, emphasis in original).
Their
situation remains precarious; the probability that they will end up
behind bars again is high. Furthermore, they are treated like pariahs,
with a rigorous regime of measures and surveillance being imposed on
them: "In
addition to the introduction of 'intermediate sanctions' such as house
arrest and 'boot camps' (re-education camps), 'intensive monitoring',
daily (!) compulsory reporting to the police, community service and
telephone and electronic surveillance, [...] the access of the American
judiciary has also been considerably expanded thanks to the increasing
number of criminal databases [...] . The result is that the various
police authorities in the country [...] now have around 55 million
'criminal files' -
compared to 35 million ten years ago - on around 30 million people,
which is almost a third of the country's adult male population. Access
to these databases is regulated in different ways. Some may only be
viewed by the judicial authorities [...] . Others are not only
accessible to state bureaucracies [...] and welfare authorities, but
also - via the internet - to private individuals and private
organizations. These 'criminal records? [...]
are routinely used by employers, for example, to screen out job
applicants with criminal records. And they don't care much that the
information stored there is often wrong, outdated or irrelevant [...]
Once they are in circulation, not only criminals and suspects come under
the police's scrutiny, but also their families, friends, neighbors and
neighborhoods." (150ff., emphasis in org.).
These
measures are no longer intended to help these people to "re-socialize"
(a term that is itself problematic). These people are to be kept under
control so that as many as possible can be "caught" again (158).
Furthermore,
in numerous states, these people are not only deprived of their right
to vote during their time in prison, but in 13 states they are even
deprived of it for life (!), so that "about 4.2 million Americans are
excluded from exercising the so-called universal right to vote,
including 1.4 million black men, which is 14% of African-American
voters" (196)10.
As
mentioned at the beginning, civil rights are only valid with
reservations. The development outlined by Wacquant for the USA and
Europe is a prime example of this11.
But
how did it come about historically that the prison population increased
more and more, even though the rate of violent crime either remained
constant or even fell12? The
rapid increase in the US prison population cannot be explained by an
increase in violent crime; it is a consequence of the extension of
prison sentences to a range of street crimes [...] for which no prison
sentences were previously imposed, in particular minor drug offenses and
behavior that is described as a misdemeanor or a public nuisance; and
it is a consequence of the continuous increase in penalties13. From
the mid-1970s [...] when the federal government declared its 'war on
drugs', longer and longer prison sentences were increasingly being
handed down across the board, regardless of whether the offenders were
career criminals or occasional criminals, big-time criminals or
small-time criminals, violent or non-violent offenders [...]' (142f.,
emphasis in org.).
Contrary
to repeated conservative assertions, prisons are not filled with
violent criminals, but predominantly with non-violent petty criminals
(for drug offenses, for example), who mostly come from the lower classes
of society. Wacquant emphasizes several times that the main concern
here is to keep "the unruly 'street rabble'?" (148) under control. Moreover,
the prison population today14 is predominantly (in terms of its share
of the total population) of African American origin, whereas in 1950 it
was still 70% white (207).
The
reason for the rapid increase in the prison population, which mainly
affects the poor,15 can also be found in the dismantling of the welfare
state, or rather the "charity state", since the mid-1970s (68ff.). The
resulting social upheavals were countered by building up the penal
state; instead of "welfare", "workfare" and "prisonfare" were now the
order of the day – with the familiar explanatory patterns that the poor
are only poor or unemployed because of their dependence on social
benefits and their "moral depravity" (70). In any case, the numerous
reforms led to a new understanding of the state's relationship with the
poor: "According
to this understanding, the behavior of the destitute and dependent
citizens must be strictly monitored and, if necessary, punished by means
of rigorous control, deterrence and sanctioning protocols, not unlike
those that are usually applied to offenders who are under criminal
supervision. T[he]
switch[ing] from the carrot to the stick, from voluntary programs that
provide resources to mandatory programs that use fines, benefit cuts,
and benefit withdrawal to ensure that these rules of behavior are
followed, regardless of need, that is, to programs that treat the poor
culturally ,
as criminals who violate the civil law of wage labor, this [turning] is
intended to prevent the lower strata of the working class from claiming
state resources on the one hand, and on the other to force their
members to commit to conventional morality" (79, emphasis in org.).
A
preliminary high point of such reforms was the one passed under Clinton
in 1996: this "reform" did not really offer anything new in historical
terms, "but rather a reissue of instruments that originated directly in
the American colonial period, and this despite the fact that they had
already proven ineffective in the past: namely the introduction of a
sharp separation between the 'worthy' and the 'unworthy' poor, in order
to force the latter into the inferior segments of the labor market and
to induce them to 'improve' their supposedly deviant and questionable
behavior, which was in any case seen as the cause of their continued
poverty" (98). poor,
in order to force the latter into the inferior segments of the labor
market and to induce them to 'improve' their supposedly deviant and
questionable behavior, which was in any case seen as the cause of their
continuing poverty" (98).
The
criminalization of poverty also took on new dimensions under Clinton:
"The transformation of social assistance into a penal program extends
even to its material and atmospheric context. There is a striking
similarity between a post-reform social welfare office16 and a penal
institution, even on the surface [...]. The
compulsory activities designed to instill a work ethic in welfare
recipients and the range of incentives [...] and, above all, punishments
(escalating benefit cuts up to and including permanent withdrawal of
eligibility) bear a suspicious resemblance to the intensive monitoring
programs for those sentenced to probation or released on probation, or
to other 'intermediate sanctions' - educational camps, community
service, etc. And
seminars like the 'work readiness workshops' [...] or the 'life skill
trainings' [...] are strongly reminiscent of the empty resocialization
courses for prison inmates. [...]
Furthermore, if we disregard the fact that they are imprisoned, the
conditions of employment of prisoners are, on closer inspection, not so
very different from the poor working conditions that unskilled wage
earners find outside after the 'welfare reform' (120, 194).
When
the poor are treated like criminals, it is a sign that the former are
being denied the status of a bourgeois subject and reduced to their
"bare life" (Agamben). The state of emergency is imposed on them. As
those who have fallen through the cracks, they are the object of control
of the visible fist of the state, armed with clubs, guns and desk-bound
perpetrators. They
are thus practically turned into 'gypsies'; for their treatment is very
similar to the treatment of the Sinti and Roma - who for centuries
represented the antithesis of the civilized and industrious bourgeois
philistine - in anti-gypsy racism17.
What still needs to be clarified, however, is why there has been a change in penal policy since the mid-1970s. Wacquant
emphasizes at various points that at that time there was a
"fragmentation of wage labor" (291), a "dismantling of the labor market"
(80), and a "penetration of desocialized wage labor as a vector of
social insecurity" (285, emphasis in org.). Phenomenologically, Wacquant takes note of the precarization of labor, but without any theoretical foundation.
The
consequence of the economic upheavals since the 1970s was that, in
particular, blacks who had found work in the Fordist industries became
economically superfluous. For many, dealing in drugs then became the
most important source of income18, hence the proclaimed war on drugs,
since in this way poverty could be made invisible by the economically
superfluous disappearing behind bars. As Wacquant aptly writes, "prison is [a] repository for unwanted black bodies" (68).
For
Wacquant, however, the economy is not the only reason for the growth in
the prison population, as it does not explain the obvious racism; after
all, black people are disproportionately affected19. As a result of the
black civil rights movement, which also received support from parts of
the white middle class, the black ghettos in the cities were broken up
and social advancement seemed possible. However,
when Martin Luther King began to attack not only civil rights
inequality but also social inequality between blacks and whites, white
support began to wane. According to Wacquant, the dismantling of the
welfare state (which many blacks had relied on) should be seen as an
attempt to re-establish an exclusionary racism after the success of the
civil rights movement (205ff.). The accompanying policy of locking people up turned prisons into "legal ghettos" (214).
The perverts to the pillory!
However,
the black and the poor are not the only ones to fall under the yoke of
the new penal regime. The hysteria and the vindictiveness that the
bourgeois desire for harmony (of a Protestant nature) turns into are
clearly evident in another main target group of this regime: the
(alleged!20 ) sex offenders.
Wacquant writes: "People
who have been suspected or convicted of a sexual offense have, of
course, long been the object of intense fear and harsh sanctions,
because in a puritanical culture21 that is in the stranglehold of taboos
that until recently declared contraception, adultery adultery,
sex games (such as oral and anal intercourse) even between married
couples, as well as such banal autoerotic practices as looking at
pornographic magazines [...] were declared crimes, not to mention
mixed-race marriages, they are subject to a particularly vicious
stigma."
The hysteria surrounding sex offenders is nothing new. The
current hysteria has various historical predecessors: for example, in
the years 1890-1914, "sexual 'perversions' were identified for the first
time and singled out (!) for eugenic measures22 [...], and in the years
1936-57, when it
was believed that hordes of 'sexual psychopaths' were roaming the
country in search of innocent victims [and] were ready to strike behind
every corner", the current hysteria, fueled by the culture industry, was
anticipated (219).
Here
too, the "legislative activities" of the penal regime have nothing to
do with the actual "statistical development of these offenses". In the
1990s, for example, a whole series of laws were passed that were
summarized for the sake of simplicity as "Megan's Law"23. These include
measures that can only be described as totalitarian. In
Louisiana, for example, an ex-sex offender is "responsible for
notifying his landlord, neighbors, and the principals of neighboring
schools and public parks in writing of his status, under penalty of a
year in prison [...] Furthermore, the law allows 'all forms of public
notice' including press releases, signs, flyers, and bumper stickers on
the sex offender's car. Courts
can even require that a convicted (ex-)offender wear a certain clothing
(!) that indicates his legal status, similar to the star or the yellow
linen cap (!!) that Jews had to wear in the medieval cities of princes"
(226).
Of
course, ex-sex offenders are recorded in databases that are made
publicly accessible (and are available on CD-ROM). It goes without
saying that these databases are constantly growing; for example, in
1998, every 150th male adult in California was registered. However,
these "data, which no one bothers to check, turn out to be wrong in
many cases [...] What's more, Megan's CD-ROM does not give the dates of
the offenses - which can go back as far as 1944 - nor the fact that many
of these offenses have long since ceased to be punishable [...]" (229).
In
addition, numerous states have passed a "two strikes" law, according to
which recidivist sex offenders are automatically sentenced to life in
prison and can be forced to undergo chemical castration (!) (225). The
highly effective psychotherapeutic methods for sex offenders have also
been massively reduced (240). Even
after a prison sentence has been served in full, a permanent (!) forced
psychiatric admission may still be ordered, which is no different from a
high-security wing (solitary confinement, etc.). It is sufficient for a
person to be considered dangerous (!) on the basis of a "psychological
abnormality" (244).
In
addition, the media sensationalize individual incidents involving sex
offenders to such an extent that the middle-class idiot gets the
impression that there is a corresponding 'epidemic'. In this way, a
certain image of the sex offender is conveyed: The
sex offender remains deviant and dangerous, nobody talks about possible
rehabilitation and the sentences imposed are too lenient anyway
(220ff.). A lynch mob is not far away. But
if it then becomes known that a sex offender has moved in, it may
happen that he has to be relocated because of the bourgeois-Protestant
lynch mob, which is why "the California Department of Corrections is
considering creating a kind of 'legal reservation' in one of the
California deserts (!) where they could relocate paroled sex offenders who are rejected by the population" (232)24 .
It
should be emphasized that anyone who has committed or is alleged to
have committed a corresponding offense is categorized as a "sex
offender," with all the consequences that this implies25.
The
treatment of those who have fallen through the cracks in the USA is a
prime example of the war of neoliberalism against social facts. The
state of emergency potentially hangs over everyone. This is increasingly
becoming the norm and is being extended to more and more people.
Accordingly, the democratic state stick is being armed. State terror is
becoming a program that promises law and order. The
state has always used the stick and the lock-up as its ultimate weapon –
and this applies to Western democracies in particular – but the
difference from earlier times may be that today's penal regime, with its
surveillance measures, no longer sets itself any limits (and probably
can no longer do so). Wacquant writes: "In
February 1999, the Virginia state legislature was already debating a
bill that would make the complete list of all individuals, adults and
minors, with a criminal record, freely available on the internet, even
for minor traffic violations and violations of registration and
reporting laws. Panoptic punishment in the USA is entering a glorious
era." (245, emphasis in org.).
When
the crisis-ridden bourgeois state, with its struggle against reality,
with its practice of punishment and surveillance, fails to achieve any
success and a bourgeois paradise of virtue does not materialize, it
reacts only by further intensifying its practice of terror, which
escalates ever further into paranoid delusion. The
world, which is becoming more and more chaotic, remains misunderstood
by the bourgeois fanatic of punishment, and in his lack of
accountability he enacts measures and decrees that, although they
promise to save "security" and "freedom", increasingly turn society as a
whole into a prison and thus make every freedom and security a farce.
Crisis beyond the bubble
Stagnation as a permanent state? Outlook for the global economy after the end of the globalized financial bubble economy
by Tomasz Konicz
[This
article posted on 2/5/2024 is translated from the German on the
Internet,
https://exit-online.org/textanz1.php?tabelle=aktuelles&index=16&posnr=885,]
The speculative air is slowly escaping from the global exploitation machine - but so far hardly anyone seems to have noticed. At
the beginning of 2024, the World Bank warned of a "lost decade", as the
first half of this decade was about to show the worst economic
development in more than 30 years.1 Without a "major course correction",
the
2020s will go down in history as a "decade of lost opportunities",
concluded Indermit Gill, the World Bank's chief economist, when
presenting the forecasts for the current year.
And
according to the financial institution, the economic outlook is not
exactly rosy. Global economic output is expected to grow by 2.4 percent
this year, compared to 2.6 percent in 2023. If this economic forecast
proves true, 2024 would be the third consecutive year in which economic
growth was weaker than in the previous year. A
clear global trend towards economic stagnation is emerging: the gross
domestic product of industrialized countries is expected to fall from
1.5 percent last year to 1.2 percent in 2024. The eurozone, on the other
hand, can hope for a slight economic recovery at a very low level: from
0.4 percent in 2023 to 0.7 percent this year.
Global
trade growth is also expected to reach only half of the level seen
before the outbreak of the pandemic, which – together with high interest
rates – has contributed to the fact that annual economic output in
developing countries has averaged only 3.9 percent in this decade. This
is a full percentage point less than in the first decade of the 21st
century. Developing
countries need to achieve a much higher rate of growth in order to
improve the social situation of wage earners – or even just to maintain
it. The medium-term economic outlook is no better. As early as mid-2023,
the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned that the next five years
would see below-average global growth.2
The end of the bubble economy
The
crisis-driven stagnation that is spreading throughout the late
capitalist world system will only become fully apparent from a
historical perspective. As mentioned above, only the half-decade from
1990 to 1994 was characterized by a slightly worse economic development
(on average just over two percent per year) than the first half of the
current decade. However,
the early 1990s were characterized by the collapse of the Soviet Union
and Soviet state capitalism in Eastern Europe, which was accompanied by
massive economic downturns, leading to the miserable global average
values. Thus, the crisis shocks that began in 2020 (pandemic, war,
supply bottlenecks) left similarly strong economic skid marks as the
implosion of the Eastern Bloc.
Almost
all other five-year periods between the late 1990s and 2019 – the eve
of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine – saw much higher average global
economic growth of just over three percent. The
only exception is the period between 2005 and 2009, when the bursting
of the real estate bubbles in the US and Europe (2007/08) led to a
brief, sharp global economic crisis (2009), which was overcome from 2010
onwards by comprehensive economic stimulus measures and the
expansionary monetary policy of the central banks.
This
collapse in 2009, triggered by the bursting of the real estate bubbles,
points to the downright bubble economy that the globalized world system
has developed in the neoliberal age: from the dot-com bubble in the
second half of the 1990s, when the internet boom led
to a boom in high-tech stocks, to the bursting of the real estate
bubbles in Europe and the USA in 2008,3 and to the large liquidity
bubble that began to deflate in 2020 and was maintained by the expansive
monetary policy and money printing of the central banks.4
And
it was precisely these growing speculative bubbles that acted as the
most important economic drivers in the era of globalization driven by
the financial markets. The tendency towards stagnation in the 1920s,
which is lamented by the World Bank, is due precisely to the collapse of
this global bubble economy, which was based on a constantly growing
mountain of debt. The
inflation that central banks are combating with restrictive monetary
policies has made it impossible for new bubbles to form after the crisis
of 2020.
Chinese economic brake
The
connection between the economy and the dynamics of speculation, which
characterizes late capitalism as it suffocates on its own productivity,5
can currently be seen very clearly in Chinese state capitalism, where
the bankrupt Evergrande Group, one of the country's largest construction
investors, is facing liquidation - $3 00
billion dollars and millions of condominiums are at stake.6 The
gigantic real estate bubble7 that China developed in the wake of the
comprehensive state economic stimulus programs after 2008 brought the
"workshop of the world" double-digit growth rates for years.
But
now, despite all the delaying tactics of Beijing, the inevitable
deflation of this real estate bubble is upon us8 – and it is already
leaving a clear economic mark. According to the World Bank, China's
economy is only expected to grow by 4.4 percent this year.9 This
forecast is based on a best-case scenario in which an uncontrollable
crash of the real estate market can be prevented.
But
even a controlled devaluation and winding down of the overheated
Chinese real estate sector will have serious economic repercussions. This
applies not only to the export-dependent Federal Republic of Germany,
but also and above all to many developing and emerging countries that
are highly dependent on the People's Republic economically.10 China's
debt-financed speculative boom was an important factor in the economic
recovery after the major transatlantic real estate crash of 2008, but a
similar constellation is no longer possible in the current crisis phase.
On the contrary, China will contribute to the general trend of stagnation in the future.
Next crisis already "priced in"?
The
spreading stagnation is the result of the partially successful fight
against inflation by the central banks, which turned off the money tap
for the large liquidity bubble, but in doing so maneuvered themselves
into a monetary policy dead end, in which the goals of
fighting inflation, stabilizing the financial markets and stimulating
the economy are increasingly coming into conflict.11 This is
particularly evident in the USA, which was able to defy the general
stagnation in the centers of the world system in 2023 with economic
growth of 2.5 percent. However,
the World Bank is forecasting growth of only 1.6 percent for the United
States this year, which is due to "the restrictive monetary policy" of
the US Federal Reserve, according to Reuters.12
Fighting
inflation usually comes at the cost of a cooling economy, as the World
Bank's global economic review and outlook shows (the exception to this
rule was the US in 2023). Added to this are the destabilizing
consequences of the high-interest policy in the financial sphere. The
increases in the key interest rates and the end of the central banks'
asset purchase programs make the financial sector more susceptible to
crises, as bonds, stock markets and real estate sectors can no longer be
supplied with sufficient liquidity and/or credit to
continue the boom – there is a risk of crashes, slumps and financial
market shocks, as was the case in March 2023, when the slumps on the
bond markets led to a banking crisis in the USA.13
The
high-interest policy is thus like a balancing act on a knife edge, with
the bloated financial sector and the global mountains of debt being the
biggest risk factor.14 With the continued fight against stubborn
inflation, the risk of further crises in the unstable financial sphere
inevitably increases. In
order to minimize the risk of further crises, the Fed signaled to the
unstable markets in December 2023 that the first interest rate cuts
would be imminent in 2024 if inflation continued to fall.15 In doing so,
the central bankers triggered a short-term price fireworks on the stock
markets, which simply anticipated the potential end of the
high-interest policy in this bull market. The
end of the restrictive monetary policy is thus already "priced in" in
the price development on the stock markets - where the future is always
traded - as it is called in stock market jargon.
But
what happens if inflation does not move as quickly as expected towards
the two percent mark, which the Fed has set as the target for its
restrictive monetary policy? Then the monetary policymakers, who wanted
to calm the markets with their comments, suddenly find themselves in a
dilemma. At
the end of January, the US Federal Reserve hinted that there would
probably be no interest rate cut in March,16 after the US inflation rate
in December was slightly higher than in the previous month (3.1
percent), at 3.4 percent.17 This reversal of monetary policy put an
abrupt end to the fleeting boom on the markets, which saw sharp price
losses.
In
addition, cracks in the US banking sector were once again evident after
the share price of the regional bank New York Community Bancorp fell by
around 50 percent within two trading days.18 The bank, like other
regional banks, is suffering from the high interest rate policy and the
associated crisis in the commercial real estate sector in the US. The
financial institution, which was actually considered a winner of the
March 2023 crisis, now had to book around $552 million in loan loss
provisions and report a loss of $185 million.19 A repeat of the March
2023 banking crisis triggered by the high interest rate policy seems
possible. The
collapse in the price of Bancorp shares is also due to the fact that
regional banks in particular should benefit from the interest rate cuts
by the Fed that have been "priced in".
The center will not hold
By Tomasz Konicz / June 23, 2024
[This
article posted on 6/23/2024 is translated from the German on the
Internet,
https://www.konicz.info/2024/06/23/das-zentrum-wird-nicht-halten/.]
The
result of the European elections makes anti-fascism the central
battleground in the full-blown systemic crisis. The first major test
will take place in Essen at the end of June.
The
center will continue to erode, the political center of late capitalist
metropolitan societies will continue its fascist transformation. The
extremist right will continue to gain momentum. These processes are the
political expression of the insoluble systemic crisis in which
capitalism finds itself. The economic and ecological agony of capital,
in which the current functional elites must fail, is driving the masses
of voters to fascism.
The
whole secret of the success of the New Right and the rising tide of
fascism is that there is no secret here. Everything is in the open.
Fascism has no depth. It proliferates on the surface of crisis-ridden
late capitalist societies. It thrives in the gutters of the internet, in
social networks and in the opinion-forming culture industry, in talk
shows, in the comment columns and in the editorials. The
embarrassing arguments, the chatty tone and the common language with
which bourgeois moderators fail in their postulated "unmasking" of AfD
people in their pathetic talk shows,1 which achieve top viewing figures
every time a fascist misanthrope is invited, make it clear that it is in
fact the center of society that is talking to itself here.
Germany's
new Nazis are not from outer space, they are a crisis product of the
center of the Federal Republic of Germany. The Nazi is the middle class,
the bourgeois, the German worker, whose ass is on the line in the
unfolding systemic crisis of capital. There is no mystery here. The
existing late capitalist ideology in the center of society, the tattered
national identity, is being driven to barbaric extremes in reaction to
the crisis. Neo-liberalism,
with its social Darwinism and economic nationalism, provided the
springboards that the new right used. It takes the neo-liberal pressure
to compete to the extreme, both nationally and racially, by building up
corresponding enemy images in response to ever new crises.
There
is no ideological break between the capitalist center and fascism,
which in its ideology only legitimizes the crisis logic of capital,
which reacts to its socio-ecological utilization crisis by removing
boundaries and driving its utilization compulsion to extremes. The
veneer of civilization is now also peeling off in the centers, the
barbaric core of capitalist socialization is emerging in the crisis. Fascism
is the subjective bearer of this objective crisis tendency, which
produces an extremism of the center that is so successful in its
authoritarian revolt precisely because it does not want a break with the
circumstances, because everything remains in the well-worn ideological
track. In
its agony, capitalism is falling back, as it were, to its barbaric
original state, to the time of its "blood- and dirt-drenched" (Marx)
enforcement in the early modern period – only now billions, not millions
of human lives are at stake.
Auschwitz
threatens to become a mere prelude to what is accumulating in terms of
potential for destruction. Everything is in plain sight. The
Mediterranean, the border desert between the USA and Mexico – they have
long since become mass graves. Billions of people live in regions that
will soon be uninhabitable. The crisis is driving the eroding late
capitalist state monsters into a major war, into a nuclear exchange.
The
recipe for success of fascism consists of personalizing the crisis in
the victims of the crisis (the unemployed, southern Europeans during the
euro crisis, refugees, etc.) and externalizing it. The crisis always
comes from outside in the form of the victims of the crisis, who are
branded as the cause of the crisis, via the German Leistungsgemeinschaft
or Volksgemeinschaft, which is imagined as being without contradiction.
By
isolating and closing its borders, fascism wants to keep the crisis
outside, beyond the national community. The world crisis of capital is
to be "excluded" in a sense, since it has been personified in foreign
groups (marginalized population groups, people with a migration
background, Jews, minorities, etc.). In addition, there is a tendency to
eliminate these ideological personifications of the crisis at home:
with mass deportation and ultimately through extermination.
Fascism
follows an evil internal capitalist logic of crisis: sometimes it is no
longer necessary to actually believe in these ridiculous fascist enemy
images, that crisis victims are also the cause of the crisis. The deal
that fascism makes with the ordinary wage-earners is clear and
understandable: without the foreign groups, there will still be enough
for us even in the crisis. The
usual "work for Germans first" sums up this logic of crisis, which can
be extended to include everything else (housing, social benefits, health
care, etc.). The whole bourgeois-liberal "anti-fascism", which has
always argued with the economic necessity of immigration, is currently
breaking down due to the logic of the crisis.
In
the current pre-fascism, the New Right has largely achieved hegemony in
the discourse, and fascism is already, to a certain extent, in power.2
Germany's democratic parties are rushing to cast the delusion of
isolation into law, across the political spectrum. In some places, in
the east, in Saxony and Thuringia, fascism – together with its national
socialist Wagenknecht faction – can already hope for parliamentary
majorities. It
is a widespread liberal misunderstanding to believe that capitalist
democracy is an effective dam against the rising tide of brown.
The
democratic discourse in capitalism revolves around the irrational,
fetishistic end in itself of boundless capital utilization, around the
optimization of the infamous "economic growth" that must create as many
jobs as possible. As
soon as this framework of discourse, in which wage-earners discuss
their own exploitation in an Orwellian manner, threatens to break down
due to the crisis, the entire discourse tips over into extremes, its
logic of self-subjugation to the increasingly crisis-driven constraints
of the capital relation takes on a fascist character. The
right-wing majorities, who in reaction to the crisis only want to work
harder and longer, while they look for scapegoats full of hatred, set
themselves up democratically all by themselves. That is why it is also
easy for pre-fascism to make wage-earners ignore the ecological fallout
from the crisis of capital out of fear of the economic consequences.3
In
order to effectively combat fascism in the intensifying systemic
crisis, mere militancy is not enough. It is crucial to take a proactive
approach to the great lie of fascism: the crisis cannot be kept at bay
at the borders, it cannot be "excluded" because it is located in the
centers of late capitalist societies, in the escalating contradictions
of capital. It
is also immediately obvious that an endless compulsion to grow in a
finite world must eventually lead to disaster. Everyone understands
that. Fascism is thus a kind of death cult4 that seeks to maintain
capitalism in its self-destructive drive by means of an authoritarian
transformation. The objective tendency of capital to destroy the world
coagulates into a subjective fascist death drive. This
is the actual, unironic program of 21st century fascism, to which ever
larger sections of the capitalist functional elite5 are succumbing:
clinging to capitalism until death.
An
effective anti-fascism must therefore address the capitalist system
crisis, which is giving the fascist death cult a boost. Only in this
respect could one speak of a radical anti-fascism that reveals the root
of the crisis of fascism. The center does not want to hold, the late
capitalist world system will break down due to its internal and external
contradictions,6 precisely because the system transformation is
inevitable. Fascism,
in its lust for power, has long since understood this, speculating on
the seizure of power in the wake of crises and also developing a
corresponding structurally anti-Semitic crisis discourse.7 While
fascists publicly fantasize about a return to the "good old days", they
secretly prepare for the deportation and terror campaigns that will
follow the great crash.
Anti-fascism
must therefore not only address fascism as an outgrowth of the crisis
of capital, it must also emphasize the necessity of an emancipatory
system transformation that overcomes the capitalist regime of necessity.
Precisely because it is inevitable – and because fascism represents the
barbaric option of this inevitable and open-ended system
transformation. The
system crisis must be met with a search for system alternatives. This
conscious transformational departure, carried out in a militant
anti-fascist movement, would first take the wind out of the sails of
fascism with its extremism of the center and its repeated muttering
about the "decline of the West". Either
a broad movement consciously dares to embark on a post-capitalist
society, especially in the face of fascist crisis ideology – or the
fascists will sooner or later take over the increasingly brutal internal
capitalist crisis management.
The
broad-based protests from June 28 to 30 against the AfD party
conference in Essen offer some hope in this regard.8 In contrast to the
wave of protests against the fascist mass deportation plans at the
beginning of the year, which were carried by the crisis-related eroding
liberal consensus, the anti-AfD alliance in Essen is open to different
forms of protest, similar to the successful anti-fascist protests of the
1990s, which ranged from trade unions to autonomous groups. The
aim here is not only to develop a variety of forms of protest, but also
to incorporate a radical critique of fascism as a crisis ideology into
the protests, which also actively addresses the obvious need for an
emancipatory system transformation. Precisely because capital is
breaking down and threatening to drag the process of civilization down
with it, precisely because the center will not hold.
Protectionist escalation
By Tomasz Konicz / June 21, 2024
[This
article posted on 6/21/2024 is translated from the German on the
Internet,
https://www.konicz.info/2024/06/21/protektionistische-eskalation/.]
Export offensives and punitive tariffs – the US, China and the EU are heading for a trade war.
Here
we go again: in mid-May, the US government launched the next round of
trade disputes with China, which in some cases resulted in significant
increases in punitive tariffs. Import duties on Chinese electric cars
were increased from 25 percent to 100 percent, effectively closing the
US market to manufacturers who are suffering from fierce competition in
the People's Republic.
The
US government is not only concerned with reducing the Chinese trade
surplus. It seems to be continuing to pursue its strategy of so-called
nearshoring, which aims to decouple China and establish regional
production and supply chains.
In
response to domestic economic trends, the new Chinese economic strategy
is increasingly seeking an export-driven "green" economic model and is
already encountering protectionist barriers in the form of nearshoring
by the USA, especially in the automotive industry. According
to Western estimates, Chinese carmakers, which produced around 30
million cars in 2023, have annual production capacities for 40 million –
although around 25 million vehicles were sold in China last year.
The
aim is to eliminate this underutilization through exports, which the US
government is putting a stop to. According to a recently published
study by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, China has invested
billions in subsidies for its export industry; the leading carmaker BYD
alone received subsidies equivalent to 2.1 billion euros in 2022. In
statements, Chinese government representatives said that "domestic
policy considerations" had led the US government to take these
protectionist measures during the election campaign. The Ministry of
Commerce in Beijing said that it was reserving the right to take
"decisive measures" to defend its own "rights and interests".
But
the EU was also concerned about this development. We must be prepared
for the consequences of this trade war," warned Dirk Jandura, President
of the Federation of German Wholesale, Foreign Trade and Services (BGA),
shortly after the new US tariffs were announced. If
the People's Republic is no longer able to "sell its production
surpluses sufficiently on the American market" – as has been the case to
date within the framework of the Pacific deficit cycle – then the EU
market and "producers based here" would come under increased pressure
from the Chinese export industry.
Warning of a protectionist "spiral"
Nevertheless,
the BGA president, a "convinced free trader", spoke out against "EU
punitive tariffs", favoring temporary measures such as quotas. BMW CEO
Oliver Zipse argued along similar lines, warning of a protectionist
"spiral": "Tariffs lead to new tariffs." Ola
Källenius, the CEO of Mercedes, went even further in his response: he
said that the opposite approach should be taken and that "the tariffs
that we have should be taken and reduced".
In
fact, the EU member states are divided on the issue of protectionist
measures against China. The German Chancellor Olaf Scholz – in line with
the local automotive and export industry – pointed out that many
European carmakers are successful in China and can sell "a great many
vehicles" there. In addition, 50 percent of the vehicles imported from
China are manufactured there by Western manufacturers – accordingly,
German carmakers are also affected by the US tariffs.
In
France and the EU Commission, on the other hand, higher trade barriers
are advocated, which can be attributed not least to diverging economic
interests. France's vehicle manufacturers play virtually no role in
China, which is why President Emmanuel Macron is pushing for punitive
tariffs, as any Chinese countermeasures are likely to have only a weak
impact on the French economy. China has threatened, among other things,
to impose punitive tariffs on French alcohol products. The
threats from Beijing aimed at Germany, on the other hand, envisage
tariffs of 25 percent on vehicles with large engines – such as those
profitably produced by BMW and Mercedes. Added to this are German fears
that China could cut off the supply of essential industrial raw
materials such as rare earths, cobalt or graphite.
Further punitive tariffs on Chinese cars
Scholz
seems to have already lost this power struggle in the EU, in which
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also favors higher trade
barriers. On Wednesday, after the European elections, the EU Commission
announced further punitive tariffs on Chinese cars, which are to be
added to the existing tariff of ten percent.
The German leadership is also divided on this issue. Alongside
Federal Minister for Economic Affairs Robert Habeck, who wants to
protect the EU's "fair competitive conditions" against "dumping offers
from outside", the Cologne-based Institut der Deutschen Wirtschaft (IW),
which is close to employers, also called for moderate punitive measures
against Chinese state capitalism, whereby the level of the tariffs
could be based on "the level of China's competition-distorting
subsidies" in line with the principles of the World Trade Organization.
This
political and economic controversy over protectionist measures results
from the economic dilemma in which not only the export-oriented German
economic model finds itself after the exhaustion of the financial
market-driven neoliberal globalization. There is no generally
advantageous way out of this dilemma. Either
the EU renounces tariffs and engages in a "bottomless and ultimately
unaffordable subsidy race" with Chinese state capitalism, as the IW put
it, or the EU introduces tariffs "in order to restore a level playing
field". Free trade thus leads to financial disruption and ultimately to
the very deindustrialization that the increasingly protectionist US is
trying to reverse.
Tariffs lead to tariffs
If,
on the other hand, the EU does actually introduce the announced
tariffs, there is a risk of a full-blown global trade war – in other
words, a protectionist escalation that would not only affect the German
export industry in the medium term. Tariffs lead to tariffs, as all
major economic areas are keen to protect their industrial base – which
could ultimately lead to the collapse of globalization. Protecting
domestic markets ultimately ruins foreign trade.
This
impending reenactment of the crisis-exacerbating protectionism of the
1930s was decisively promoted by the recent inflation phase. This forced
the central banks to adopt a restrictive monetary policy, which removed
the monetary filling from the long-standing, large liquidity bubble. Since
the financial markets can no longer provide credit-financed demand to
industry by means of bubble formation – especially in China after the
bursting of the real estate bubble there – the disastrous protectionist
reflexes have set in, which are likely to result in the usual
nationalist or even fascist consequences.
Ultimately,
the protectionism of the 21st century, which is concentrated primarily
on high-tech and "green" industries, thwarts the politically postulated
goal of a rapid ecological transformation of the late capitalist
economy. In order to build up its own "eco-industry" in the long term,
even in the manifest climate crisis, tariffs are used to make the
cheaper products of competitors more expensive. The
protectionism of the US government is driving inflation, the FAZ
complained in a commentary in mid-May. In fact, the tariffs are tax
increases on imports that have to be paid by US consumers.
The
US government has not only made Chinese electric cars more expensive,
but solar cells have also been taxed at 50 percent. Even lithium-ion
batteries are now subject to a 25 percent tariff. This slows down the
mass application of these technologies – maintaining the recycling
process has priority over ordinary climate protection, even in the
manifest climate crisis.
Freedom for The Supply Chain
The German right wing liberal FDP has successfully sabotaged the European Supply Chain Law
Germany’s business associations have once again been able to assert their interests at the EU level. After lengthy negotiations, the EU’s Supply Chain Law, which was due to be voted on by the Council of the European Union on February 9, has been postponed. After Germany announced that it would not vote in favor of the legislation, several countries had doubts. As a result, a majority in favor of the legislation was no longer considered certain.
Link: https://exitinenglish.com/2024/06/06/freedom-for-the-supply-chain/
The directive, which had been in the pipeline for years and was intended to impose binding minimum civil standards on European companies when sourcing raw materials and manufacturing primary products outside of Europe, had already passed the European Council, the EU Commission and the European Parliament before it failed due to an objection from FDP ministers.
Germany’s abstention, which has the same effect as a rejection, is the result of a coalition dispute that erupted in January. FDP ministers Christian Lindner (finance) and Marco Buschmann (justice) opposed the new EU directive, saying it would be detrimental to the German economy. It would entail too much bureaucracy and legal uncertainty, which Germany could not afford in this time of economic weakness, the FDP leadership said.
The Liberals are thus in line with the German business associations, which are protesting “massively” against the EU directive, according to the Handelsblatt newspaper. Christoph Werner, CEO of the drugstore chain DM, even called the proposed legislation “intrusive” in an interview with N-TV.
Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) and Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens), who supported the EU law, had previously called on Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz to make use of his authority to issue directives and put his foot down – in vain. Anton Hofreiter (Greens), chairman of the European Affairs Committee in the Bundestag, also called for this and warned of a loss of European prestige for Germany: “It is unacceptable that Germany repeatedly abstains from important European decisions at the last minute.” Scholz must prevent this from happening in the future, Hofreiter demanded.
On February 7, however, the FDP announced that it would also block a fully negotiated EU regulation on CO2 reduction targets for trucks and buses at the last minute, forcing the postponement of what had been considered a mere formality. However, previous German governments have also pursued similarly obstructive, interest-based policies. Under Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU), for example, CO2 limits for cars were watered down for years to benefit the German auto industry.
Die Zeit expressed the opinion that the FDP’s approach was convenient for Chancellor Scholz, as the EU Supply Chain Law also went too far for him. Scholz could speculate that the liberal obstructionists would soften the EU directive to the point where it would come close to the corresponding German Supply Chain Act.
Germany already has a supply chain law that the German economy can live with very well. After all, if children are killed or entire regions are poisoned during the extraction of raw materials in a supply chain somewhere in the Global South, German law does not provide those affected with a basis for claiming compensation from German companies.
According to the FDP, the same should apply to the EU directive. Carl-Julius Cronenberg, SME spokesperson for the FDP parliamentary group, called in the Handelsblatt for a “safe harbor regulation” for the German economy that would significantly reduce civil liability of companies – making the EU Supply Chain Law as ineffective as the German Supply Chain Act.
The German Supply Chain Act, which came into force in 2023, requires companies with at least 3,000 employees and, as of this year, 1,000 employees to respect human rights and environmental standards, although these “due diligence obligations” have many gaps and loopholes – especially with regard to biodiversity and climate protection. However, the Federal Office of Economics and Export Control can impose fines on companies that generate billions in revenue if they fail to comply. Violations with a fine of at least 175,000 euros can even lead to exclusion from public contracts. Lindner told T-Online last week that he also wants to relax the German Supply Chain Act in the future.
Originally published in jungle world on 02/15/2024
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