by Dmitry Trenin - Wednesday, 30 July 2014
http://www.beoforum.rs/en/comments-belgrade-forum-for-the-world-of-equals/373-europes-nightmare-coming-true-america-vs-russiaagain.html
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/07/01/us-war-russia-already-underway-pcr-interviewed-voice-russia/
La guerra sta arrivando
Segnaliamo un articolo di un commentatore atipico. Trattasi di Paul Craig Roberts, economista, già assistente del Segretario di Stato al Tesoro sotto l'amministrazione Reagan, editorialista del Wall Street Journal e Business Week. Negli ultimi anni ha assunto una posizione critica verso l'esteblishment americano.
La propaganda straordinaria condotta contro la Russia dai governi statunitense e britannico e dai Ministeri della Propaganda, noti come “media occidentali”, ha lo scopo di portare il mondo ad una guerra che nessuno potrà vincere.
I governi europei devono scuotersi dalla noncuranza, perché l’Europa sarà la prima ad essere vaporizzata a causa delle basi missilistiche statunitensi che ospita per garantire la sua “sicurezza”.
Come riportato da Tyler Durden di Zero Hedge, la risposta russa alla sentenza extragiudiziale di un corrotto tribunale olandese, che non aveva alcuna giurisdizione sul caso che ha arbitrato, sentenza che ordina al governo russo di pagare 50 miliardi di dollari agli azionisti della Yukos (un’entità corrotta che stava saccheggiando la Russia ed evadendo le tasse), è molto significativa. Quando gli è stato chiesto come la Russia si comporterà riguardo la sentenza, un consigliere del presidente Putin ha risposto: “C’è una guerra che sta arrivando in Europa. Crede davvero che questa sentenza abbia importanza?”
L’Occidente si è coalizzato contro la Russia perché è totalmente corrotto. La ricchezza delle elite è ottenuta non solo depredando i paesi più deboli i cui leader possono essere comprati (per istruirvi su come funziona il saccheggio leggete “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” di John Perkins*), ma anche derubando i loro stessi cittadini. Le elite americane eccellono nel saccheggio dei loro connazionali e hanno spazzato via gran parte della classe media statunitense nel nuovo 21° secolo.
Al contrario, la Russia è emersa dalla tirannia e da un governo basato sulle menzogne, mentre gli USA e il Regno Unito sono sommersi da una tirannia schermata da menzogne. Le elite occidentali vorrebbero depredare la Russia, un premio succulento, e Putin sbarra loro la strada. La soluzione è sbarazzarsi di lui, come in Ucraina si sono sbarazzati del presidente Yanukovich.
Le elite predatorie e gli egemonisti neoconservatori hanno lo stesso obiettivo: fare della Russia uno stato vassallo. Questo obiettivo unisce gli imperialisti finanziari occidentali con gli imperialisti politici.
Ho raccolto per i lettori la propaganda che viene usata per demonizzare Putin e la Russia. Ma perfino io sono rimasto scioccato dalle strabilianti e aggressive bugie del giornale britannico The Economist del 26 luglio. In copertina c’è il viso di Putin in una ragnatela, e, avete indovinato, il titolo di copertina è “Una rete di bugie” (http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21608645-vladimir-putins-epic-deceits-have-grave-consequences-his-people-and-outside-world-web?spc=scode&spv=xm&ah=9d7f7ab945510a56fa6d37c30b6f1709 )
Dovete leggere questa propaganda per constatare sia il livello di spazzatura della propaganda occidentale, sia l’evidente spinta verso la guerra. Non viene presentata la minima prova per supportare le accuse estreme dell’Economist e la sua richiesta che l’Occidente smetta di essere conciliante con la Russia e intraprenda le azioni più dure possibili contro Putin.
Questo genere di menzogne incoscienti e di lampante propaganda non ha altro scopo che di condurre il mondo alla guerra. Le elite occidentali e i governi non sono solo totalmente corrotti, sono anche pazzi. Come ho scritto precedentemente, non aspettatevi di vivere ancora a lungo. In questo video, uno dei consiglieri di Putin e alcuni giornalisti russi parlano apertamente dei piani statunitensi per attaccare la Russia: http://financearmageddon.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/official-warning-u-s-to-hit-russia-with.html
* Confessioni di un sicario dell'economia http://www.minimumfax.com/libri/scheda_libro/469
articolo originale: http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/07/28/war-coming-paul-craig-roberts/
Nato, offensiva globale
Manlio Dinucci *
Niente ferie, ma superlavoro estivo alla Nato. È in preparazione il Summit dei capi di stato e di governo che, il 4-5 settembre a Newport nel Galles, fisserà le linee dell’«adattamento strategico» in funzione anti-Russia. Come già annunciato dal generale Usa Philip Breedlove (cfr. articolo successivo), Comandante supremo alleato in Europa, esso «costerà denaro, tempo e sforzo». I lavori sono già iniziati.
In Ucraina, mentre la Nato intensifica l’addestramento delle forze armate di Kiev, finanziate da Washington con 33 milioni di dollari, si stanno riattivando tre aeroporti militari nella regione meridionale, utilizzabili dai cacciabombardieri dell’Alleanza. In Polonia si è appena svolta una esercitazione di parà statunitensi, polacchi ed estoni, lanciati da C-130J arrivati dalla base tedesca di Ramstein. In Ungheria, Romania, Bulgaria e Lituania sono in corso varie operazioni militari Nato, con aerei radar AWACs, caccia F-16e navi da guerra nel Mar Nero.
In Georgia, dove si è recata una delegazione dell’Assemblea parlamentare Nato per accelerare il suo ingresso nell’Alleanza, le truppe rientrate dall’Afghanistan vengono riaddestrate da istruttori Usa per operare nel Caucaso. In Azerbaigian, Tagikistan e Armenia vengono addestrate forze scelte perché operino sotto comando Nato, nel cui quartier generale sono già presenti ufficiali di questi paesi. In Afghanistan la Nato sta riconvertendo la guerra, trasformandola in una serie di «operazioni coperte».
L’«Organizzazione del Trattato del Nord-Atlantico», dopo essersi estesa all’Europa orientale (fin dentro il territorio dell’ex Urss) e all’Asia centrale, punta ora su altre regioni.
In Medio Oriente la Nato, senza apparire ufficialmente, conduce attraverso forze infiltrate una operazione militare coperta contro la Siria e si prepara ad altre operazioni, come dimostra lo spostamento a Izmir (Turchia) del Landcom, il comando di tutte le forze terrestri dell’Alleanza.
In Africa, dopo aver demolito con la guerra la Libia nel 2011, la Nato ha stipulato nel maggio scorso ad Addis Abeba un accordo che potenzia l’assistenza militare fornita all’Unione africana, in particolare per la formazione e l’addestramento delle brigate della African Standby Force, cui fornisce anche «pianificazione e trasporto aeronavale». Ha così voce determinante sulle decisioni relative a dove e come impiegarle. Un altro suo strumento è l’operazione «anti-pirateria» Ocean Shield,nelle acque dell’Oceano Indiano e del Golfo di Aden strategicamente importanti.
All’operazione, condotta di concerto col Comando Africa degli Stati uniti, partecipano navi da guerra italiane anche con il compito di stringere relazioni con le forze armate dei paesi rivieraschi: a tale scopo il cacciatorpediniere lanciamissili Mimbelli ha fatto scalo a Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania dal 13 al 17 luglio.
In America Latina, la Nato ha stipulato nel 2013 un «Accordo sulla sicurezza» con la Colombia che, già impegnata in programmi militari dell’Alleanza, ne può divenire presto partner. In tale quadro il Comando meridionale Usa sta tenendo in Colombia una esercitazione di forze speciali sud e nord-americane, con la partecipazione di 700 commandos.
Nel Pacifico è in corso la Rimpac 2014, la maggiore esercitazione marittima del mondo, in funzione anti-Cina e anti-Russia: vi partecipano, sotto comando Usa, 25000 militari di 22 paesi con 55 navi e 200 aerei da guerra. La Nato è presente con le marine di Usa, Canada, Gran Bretagna, Francia, Olanda e Norvegia, più Italia, Germania e Danimarca come osservatori. L’«Organizzazione del Trattato del Nord-Atlantico» si è estesa al Pacifico.
(il manifesto, 29 luglio 2014)
Essence of neoliberal empire — Social chaos and world destruction
Alberto Rabilotta is an Argentine-Canadian journalist specializing in economic issues. Workers World is publishing this two-part article as a contribution to the discussion of contemporary imperialism and how to fight it. Translation from Spanish by WW managing editor John Catalinotto. This is Part I.
It’s hard not to feel that the world, humanity and our Mother Earth are being pushed to the brink of disaster by the neoliberal empire, that is, the United States and its NATO allies. This is as true if we talk about nature, about the accelerated extinction of the species and global warming, or of societies, or rather what remains of them in many nation-states that have shed or are being pushed to shed all national and popular sovereignty.
The current chaos is the result of imperialist policies that since the collapse of the Soviet Union have tried to maintain a unipolar world order to install neoliberalism globally and without any possibility of change; to make a reality of Margaret Thatcher’s “There is no alternative.”
But, as was demonstrated when the U.S. was forced to change its policy of aggression in Syria starting in September 2013, the unipolar world is no longer possible, not only because of the active role played by two great powers, which is what Russia and China are, but because most countries in the world support a return to multilateralism and oppose losing the national and popular sovereignty that allows them to adopt their own socioeconomic policies and integrate internationally or regionally in a manner consistent with their legitimate national interests.
The unipolar system was already compromised by the finding in the Middle East, Africa and Asia that the U.S. and its allies provoke wars they do not win — Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria — but they always leave chaos, deaths, refugees, economic and social misery and destruction.
In 2011, the two main allies of the [U.S.] empire in the Middle East, Israel and Saudi Arabia, openly criticized Washington for not launching a war against Iran and for having allowed the overthrow of President Mubarak in Egypt, leading to President Barack Obama’s message that you should “not abandon your allies.” Everyone knows, and Washington’s allies more than others, that the wars the U.S. and its allies launch are not won, that they destroy countries, economies and societies, and leave chaos. From Afghanistan to Syria, through Iraq and Libya — not to mention Pakistan, as well as Sudan and other African countries — they have left only destruction, bloody battles between religious communities and ethnic groups, and hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded and/or refugees, and enormous misery. The U.S. has nothing positive to show for these adventures.
Nearly two decades ago the Italian-American economist David Calleo wrote about the phases of final decline of the empires of Holland and England, describing them as “exploitative hegemony” in which the empire has nothing positive to offer (for example, economic development or military security) to the countries it rules and which make up the system, including the economy and society of the empire, and then it dedicates itself to squeezing them thoroughly and living off the income that it can extract by all means from those countries. The U.S. empire is in that phase.
As an example of this, in a private conversation Poland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Radoslaw Sikorski made it clear that his country’s alliance with the U.S. and NATO does not benefit Poland, and, on the contrary, causes dangerous points of tension with neighboring countries. (conversation with Radoslaw Sikorski, La Vanguardia, June 16.) This same thought must be shared by any honest person who managed to remain in the government created by the coup in Ukraine — the latest country that the U.S. and its NATO allies have brought to the brink of civil war to provoke constant confrontation with Russia.
At the same time, as a sign that the empire cannot control everyone all the time, Latin American and Caribbean states have been creating mechanisms for regional and subregional integration in which the U.S. neither participates nor can control. Meanwhile the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) continue to advance their projects to create a development bank and monetary and financial instruments outside the scope of the U.S. and the U.S. dollar, while we witness the strengthening of economic, trade and monetary links between Russia and China, among other regional processes in Asia and Eurasia.
None of this constitutes in itself an anti-capitalist alternative. Indeed, almost all countries operate within a capitalist system, even those that may have important state sectors in their economy and may be prioritizing forms of social ownership as a substitute for private property in branches of their economy. But — and this is a key detail — in virtually all the countries, state intervention in the economy is a fact.
Also, all these processes of regional integration include the participation and involvement of the state, its institutions and companies, as well as levels of planning sectorwide in the industrial, energy, commercial and service areas, and financial and monetary systems that are promised or envisaged as being outside the control of the empire and its allies. One form of this type of regionalism as an alternative to “universal capitalism,” which we now call neoliberalism, was proposed by the Hungarian intellectual Karl Polanyi in 1945. (Karl Polanyi, “Universal Capitalism or Regional Planning?” London Quarterly of World Affairs, January 1945. It is included in French in the book “Essais Karl Polanyi,” Editions du Seuil, pp. 485-493.) We will return to this subject in the second part of this article.
Without posing a socialist or anti-capitalist alternative, it is clear that these regional and multilateral processes constitute a formidable barrier to the plans of the empire, a barrier that imperialism is trying to knock down using all the instruments at its disposal, such as its offensive to conclude quickly and in complete secrecy “last generation” agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Economic Partnership, the Transatlantic Partnership on Trade and Investment and the General Agreement on Trade in Services — or by trying to disrupt regional agreements through the manipulations of politicians, bureaucrats, professionals and entrepreneurs who are at the service of the empire.
The above agreements aim at the elimination of national sovereignty and subjection of the signatory states to respect the terms of those treaties negotiated in secret, which respect only one law, that of the U.S., and which include mechanisms by which states that do not comply with the terms may be brought to arbitration courts by monopolies. These states become guarantors of foreign monopolies’ investments made to appropriate economic sectors that the monopolies have an interest in, including those that leave it to the states to privatize public services.
But those agreements are not a done deal, because rejection of them is growing among populations that do not want to abandon their legitimate national interests and feelings, and among local capitalist interests who know they will be crushed by foreign monopolies. And while regionalism progresses, the White House and Congress in Washington have no choice but to cling to their belief that U.S. rule is invincible and the U.S. can continue to act, along with its strategic allies, with the impunity which the (relatively brief) unipolar order gave it.
It is in this context that the July 1 speech of Russian President Vladimir Putin to Russia’s ambassadors should be measured, one where he reminded them that the U.S. is applying to his country the same policy of “containment” that it applied during the Cold War against the Soviet Union. Putin said he hoped that pragmatism will prevail, that Western countries would strip off their ambitions of trying to “establish a ‘world barracks’ and arrange everybody by rank, or to impose single rules of behavior and life.”
Putin said Russian diplomats know how dynamic and unpredictable international events can sometimes be. “They seem to have come together at a single time and unfortunately are not all of a positive character. The potential for conflict is growing in the world, the old contradictions are sharpened and new ones are being provoked. Very often we find this type of situation, often unexpectedly, and we observe with regret that international law is not working, the most basic norms of decency are not complied with and the principle of all-permissiveness is gaining the upper hand. … It is time we admit each other’s right to be different, the right of every country to live its own life rather than to be told what to do by someone else. World development cannot be unified. However, we can look for common issues, see each other as partners rather than competitors, and establish cooperation between states, their associations and integration structures.” And referring to the conflicts affecting various regions of the world, Putin stressed that “more new hot spots are appearing on the world map,” which are suffering from a “security deficit.” (Vladimir Putin speech to Russian ambassadors, July 1. For official English version, see eng.kremlin.ru/transcripts/22586.)
Hours earlier, in the Anti-Imperialist International Meeting organized by the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) and held in Cochabamba, Bolivia, Bolivian President Evo Morales said it is “important to identify” current instruments of domination of capitalism and imperialism, so that “at least in Latin America there are not coups nor as many military dictatorships as before,” but instead there are “peoples who defend democracies, people who very clearly pose programs and projects, political projects of liberation.”
In this context, according to the Bolivian president, you have to wonder what the empire is doing. “It is provoking conflicts in each country, financing confrontations within a people, a country and then with the pretext of defending human rights or the rights of children, of women, of the elderly, it intervenes with the Security Council — this so-called Security Council of the United Nations, which to me is an insecurity council, a council of invasion of the peoples of the world.”
To address this imperialist aggression, Morales asked WFTU delegates to develop “a new political thesis to free the peoples of the world,” going beyond “sectoral demands in order to deepen the crisis in and end capitalism, along with the oligarchies and the hierarchies.” (Bolivian Information Agency, www3.abi.bo/)
In short, for an observer who has not lost historical memory — which Putin said is merely an explanation to Russian diplomats of the conclusions of the Russian people and at least a portion of their leaders, after having suffered the experience of perestroika and the brutal application of neoliberal policies, and of living through current experience of how U.S. imperialism behaves when people want to find their own path, even if this path is within capitalism — without underestimating all that, these lessons should have helped revive just what imperialism sought to bury: the teachings of Lenin on imperialism.
It is not so easy to erase the historical memory of the peoples, and while I was thinking about that, I read the article “Looking Back” by Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada, former president of the National Assembly of Cuba, which concludes with the following sentence: “When turning your eyes back to those years of dreams, there comes to mind the warning of William Faulkner: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” (Chilean magazine Punto Final, edition #807 of June 27.)
A few days before the meeting of the WFTU, President Evo Morales hosted the meeting of the G77 + China, and no doubt registered there many feelings about the brutal actions of imperialism and the willingness of many governments to defend their legitimate national interests, something which is prohibited under the neoliberal empire. Again, when people who live under the imperial yoke recover their historical memory, it is logical that the need for an anti-imperialist strategy comes into play.
In a recent analysis entitled “America’s Real Foreign Policy — The Corporate Protection Racket,” U.S. intellectual Noam Chomsky describes the true historical goal of U.S. foreign policy: Protecting the interests of big business with an “economic nationalism (a protectionism) that depends heavily on massive state intervention,” and for this reason as a general rule has opposed by all means those policies of “economic nationalism” that other countries have.
This, which Chomsky based on documentary evidence, has been valid throughout the analysis of U.S. policy toward Latin America and the Caribbean. It is the background of the entire U.S. foreign policy throughout the period after World War II, when the world system that was to be dominated by the U.S. was threatened by what internal documents call “radical and nationalistic regimes” that respond to popular pressures for independent development. (Noam Chomsky, “How Washington Protects Itself and the Corporate Sector,” tomdispatch.com/blog/175863.)
What Chomsky documents fits with what Karl Polanyi anticipated in 1945, that the U.S. has been the home office of 19th century liberal capitalism and is powerful enough to pursue on its own the utopian politics of restoring economic liberalism.
And in that sense, with all the limitations that entails, regionalism is now the main anti-imperialist front, and the other will have to be built by the people, by their political, trade union and social organizations.
This article appears in the original Spanish atalainet.org/active/75106.
http://www.workers.org/articles/2014/07/26/anti-imperialism-left-part-2/
Anti-imperialism and the “to be or not to be” of the left, part 2
Alberto Rabilotta is an Argentine-Canadian journalist specializing in economic issues. This is the second installment of a two-part article that Workers World is publishing as a contribution to the discussion of contemporary imperialism and how to fight it. Translated from Spanish by WW managing editor John Catalinotto.
In the previous article (Social destruction and global chaos, essence of neoliberal imperialism), we proposed that the process of regional integration in Latin America and Eurasia, with the active participation of states and their institutions, is now the main anti-imperialist front, even given limitations arising from the fact that their strategy doesn’t plan a way out of capitalism. We concluded by noting that the other anti-imperialist front, that which Bolivian President Evo Morales demanded from the World Federation of Trade Unions, will have to be built by the people, by their political, trade union and social organizations (1).
Evo Morales hit the bull’s-eye when he demanded the identification of “the current instruments of domination of capitalism and imperialism” in order to develop “a new political thesis to free the peoples of the world,” which would go beyond “sectoral claims in order to deepen the crisis in capitalism and put an end to it, along with the oligarchies and hierarchies.”
This identification is crucial because neoliberal imperialism is more than the sum of its known and visible parts, such as NATO and the thousands of U.S. military bases present worldwide, or free trade agreements and protection of investments. This is a system of domination much more elaborate, destructive and totalitarian than it looks, and thanks to the conspicuous consumer society, control of the media and the promotion of anti-social individualism, it has the ability to “sneak in” everywhere, to contaminate cultures, to destroy all capability for opposition. The list of its dire consequences is too long to continue listing in this article.
For this reason, the “social intelligence” of the peoples, and of the left, should be directed to think of, analyze and formulate, in their respective fields, good questions to guide us in the search for the true image of neoliberal imperialism and to identify its allies, as well as classes and social groups that are its main victims and should be the protagonists in this struggle. They should designate the strategic aspects that make up their main objectives, and from there build a strategy to fight the anti-imperialist struggles on different fronts, a battle in which the peoples of the current or past periphery are already fighting — and it is extremely important to them that the peoples of the core countries of the empire wage this struggle and ensure that both converge on the common goal of overcoming capitalism.
In undertaking this task we must understand that a “regionalism” that includes the involvement of states in developing the productive forces of all national economies, be it under state, private or public ownership, will permit the continuous solution of the problems of social and economic backwardness, poverty and exclusion that were left by underdevelopment, which was in turn brought about by dependence and aggravated by the implementation of neoliberal policies in the last three decades of the 20th century, as is the case in most of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.
In the case of Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union, this type of regionalism — and to an even greater extent if complemented with one that includes China and other countries in Asia — will further develop the productive forces of all economies and reconstruction of states and institutions destroyed or dismantled by the application of neoliberal policies starting from the 1990s, which led to the mass impoverishment of peoples who had earlier achieved good standards of living, security and social justice.
China is a special case and model for the planned development of regionalism because it is a country that proclaims it is socialist and where socialist state property is dominant in basic economic sectors. This is combined with private property of a capitalist type — predominant in many branches of the economy, along with niches of community property. As such, China has allowed the entry of neoliberalism (through transnational corporations or trade agreements), but did not weaken significantly the capabilities of the state and its major institutions and companies, thus continuing a policy of defense of centralized state planning in this ancient country with its very long history.
China’s policy of enforcing state controls over subsidiaries of transnational corporations in the country has — as is indicated by sociologists Giovanni Arrighi and Beverly Silver — raised doubts in the U.S. about the “loyalty” of these subsidiaries to U.S. interests. (“Chaos and Order in the Modern World-system,” Akal, 2001) One can interpret along these lines the goals of socialist countries with a long and true anti-imperialism, such as Vietnam and Cuba, in inserting themselves in regional integration processes involving openness to the foreign capital market.
Analysts envision that the recent negotiations between Russia and China to increase their cooperation, trade and investment, and to carry out that trade in their national currencies to escape the dominance of the dollar — an objective that is set out in the BRICS’ agenda [The BRICS countries are Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa] — will create a critical mass for the expansion of regionalism with a robust state intervention to countries like Iran, India and Pakistan, creating or strengthening links with regional integration in Latin America and the Caribbean, and perhaps promoting something similar in Africa, as was the goal of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and probably the reason for his overthrow and murder in 2011 by the combined forces of France, Britain and the U.S.
However, all this depends on these experiences with regionalism materializing and showing results in the real life of the people, and that these countries resist the daily torpedoes launched by agents of neoliberal imperialism within these countries and the economic, financial and military aggression or subversion launched by imperialism and its allies from the outside.
An essential aspect of all these experiences of regional integration, it is worth underlining, is the manifested interest — visible in the speeches of many government leaders, among others those of Russian President Vladimir Putin — in “re-embedding” or keeping the economy “embedded” in society, which means that the economy reverts to being or remains subordinate to society; in that sense this is an attack on a central aspect of neoliberal imperialism, which British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher clearly defined in 1987, when she said “there is no such thing as society,” implying that since society doesn’t exist as such, one must implement the neoliberal slogan that “there is no alternative” to this system, as was also stated by Thatcher.
But we should clarify that the guarantee that these regional integration efforts will be more than episodic “anti-imperialist resistance” will depend on the level of participation and social and political pressure for development being directed towards the broadest possible social objectives, which the participatory democracies believe to be that which allows them to defend and deepen anti-imperialist policies. Following their class interests, the social, labor and political organizations of the working people, students and all social sectors that have been, are or may be the main victims of the neoliberal steamroller, should carry out this task.
Anti-imperialism in the core countries of capitalism
Under neoliberal imperialism it has become clear and beyond dispute that, collectively, the classes that live by selling their labor in the U.S., the countries of the European Union (EU) and other countries of the imperialist camp are quickly losing the benefits they won during the brief era (1945-1975) of welfare-state capitalism.
Unemployment and social exclusion increase, virtually no one has job security, and part-time and poorly paid jobs are the norm. And we are witnessing a phenomenon never seen before, a generation of young people with high levels of knowledge who remain largely outside the labor market, along with retired workers whose pensions decrease or are threatened with disappearing.
This is a result of policies applied in advanced capitalist countries to continue centralizing social wealth in fewer and fewer hands, causing the obscene income disparities we all know about, while in practice there has never been a greater capacity to produce socially necessary goods and services, thanks to the enormous development of the productive forces.
The transnational corporations of the countries central to the empire provide ever fewer jobs and pay ever lower wages in the societies in which they were founded and have transferred their operations to subsidiaries that have been created in countries near and far, where they employ poorly paid workers. From these operations come about half of the profits of these companies, arriving as differential income — the surplus value produced in another country comes home as a differential income [super profits] — to owners of the monopolies and the transnational corporations. This explains the increase in profits of transnational corporations, and the loss to wage labor is the key to the loss of final demand and the low growth of the real economy in the core countries.
There is no need to explain the social dramas that the majorities living in countries of advanced capitalism are going through. The rightists and leftists both know it in general and spell out its details frequently, but what is most amazing is the lack of deeper analysis of the structural change in the mode of production of capitalism and its effects on society and on the political system, which André Gorz and others described decades ago, and the little or no influence it has had on the thinking and programs of the main forces of the left.
However, it is in these countries where industrial capitalism has already run into systemic barriers that they are making a “leap into the abyss,” where they already cannot reproduce themselves as such and as a society, as Karl Marx raised, and where there already exist economic and social conditions for radical changes, to name what is so rarely named, to carry out the social revolution that completes the exit from capitalism in all its forms.
And if social revolution is in order, because the dominant capitalism has absolutely nothing positive to offer to societies and the people in the countries of central capitalism, we must note the serious absence of clear anti-imperialist politics worthy of that name in the speeches and programs of the parties of the radical left, because the U.S. neoliberal empire has many partners willing to participate in the plunder, as has been seen through the active participation of EU countries in military attacks in Libya and Syria, the support of the EU sanctions and harassment of Iran, and now support for the coup in Ukraine with the help of neo-Nazis.
And what about the support or the complicit silence of the radical left parties before these policies of the EU countries or directly from the EU itself?
The EU is a neoliberal project that is applying extreme neoliberalism in the countries that comprise it, and is part of the neoliberal empire. Its foreign policy, like that of Japan and other allies of the empire, is aimed at trying to grab the largest possible share of the “pie” of global exploitation, and in pursuit of that goal some EU countries or the EU itself are creating or exacerbating conflicts that are destroying the economies and societies of many countries in the Middle East and Africa.
Thus, instead of being denounced and fought as part of a policy to fight against imperialist policies “at home,” which is the first step to combat it on a world scale, it shines with its absence or does not have the place it should have in the programs and practice of many political forces and parties that are defined as part of the radical left.
Hence the importance of defining an anti-imperialist strategy that incorporates this reality, which erases the shameful ideological capitulations of the past and fully accepts revolutionary theories, that this anti-imperialist strategy should become the guide and the tool that orients political and social struggles at home and abroad, and helps give birth to effective international solidarity.
In short, to build a lucid and radical anti-imperialist policy, to call things by their name, is the “to be or not to be” question for the left and for other forces that struggle or claim to struggle, at this crucial stage of humanity and of our Mother Earth, to put an end to the neoliberal empire before it finally destroys civilization and the planet.
(1) Citation from Evo Morales speech taken from the Bolivian Information Agency, www3.abi.bo/.