The character of Bush and Co is not contingent, it is not because such proto-fascism exists which has risen to the top and hence these policies. Rather, such characters are an essential expression of the contradiction that Imperialism as the dominate stage of capital development is over.
The common factor of Germany, Italy and Japan in their military fascism was that all had been cut out of any real Imperial possibilities by playing by the rules (so to speak). They because of WWI for very different reasons (Japan and ITaly being treated as not deserving much in the way of post-war carve up, and Germany being deprived of its small possessions), whipped themselves into a quasi-Imperial force when in fact the economic underpinnings of such a quest were not nearly developed enough to sustain such an adventure.
"Odd? Listen, an approximate equation may clarify things: Bush + Cheney = Hitler / 2"
Insofar as militaristic fascism and the present social fascism resemble each other they do so for similar apparent reasons and for very different historical reasons. Older style fascism placed an imperial agenda up which was beyond the capacity of those societies to realise it. Likewise with Bush and Co. But the former was because historically the imperial lead was taken elsewhere where the control of possessions and the level of productivity were in accord - the struggle was none-the-less exhausting and led directly to US supremacy. THe current dilema is different, in that Imperial strategy per sa does not match up with the most highly formed sections of capital (which by nature are internationalist). The reversion to fascist solutions and unilateralism is not therefore merely an alternative amongst many others but the only course left open.
"Were the Nazis imperialists? No, they were far too barbaric to be succesful imperialists like the British. Clinton was a very succesful imperialist. The current GOP administration, because of the growing cancer of racism, Darwinism, and anti-intellectualism in its ranks, has regressed almost to the point of fascism. It cannot think clearly because it is hampered by this proto-fascist ideology."
The ideology by my reading is a necessary one, it is a necessary illusion in order to gather the social forces for this struggle which cannot succeed (consider Hitler's conception of never-ending conflict as the final objective of the war - a realisation in a faulted mind of the unwinnable nature of the struggle). In this Clinton was more successful, but only in retreating, he attempted to stablise US imperial status and in a courtier like fashion carefully tune the international forces to balance against one another. Clinton's approach appeared to work but it could do so only by giving up more and more of the ground of unilateral force (the birthright of an imperial power is its ability to apply force unilaterally).
"I'll repeat what I said: The program for US hegemony formulated by Brzezinski is a bipartisan one, just like the Allon Plan (that Bryan mentioned) is for Likud & Labor in Israel. The only way to implement it is the way Clinton has done, through multilateral consultation. However, GOP fascists still think that there is a shortcut, that America doesn't have to say please. This is because of their fascist ideology and the limitless, impatient greed that fascism begets. The US has far better imperialist options, but the fascist disease prevents it from seeing them."
This is the difference, the contradiction. Imperialism cannot in fact be maintained through multilateralism, Clinton succeeded in making some room in this for the US, but it was a space that was bound to close in and do so towards one direction - the eviction of the US from Super-power status in favour of a collective of states regulating international affairs.
Bush is a man of the moment, he is propelled forward tro fill the only available space for the US in a struggle to mainatain its world dominion - and he does so not with weapons of his own choosing nor with any real hope of success (this is why such a movement has to be anti-intellectual).
"No, it's precisely a succesful multilateralism that allowed the US to be a world hegemon after the fall of communism. Unilateralism will weaken the US, disrupt its alliances, inflate the budget deficit, push up interest rates, deepen the world depression, and will end up making the US more hated than during the VietNam era. The possibility of US officials being arrested for war crimes is not a joke. The EU would be betraying its very purpose if it does not take some sort of action against the crime against humanity being perpetrated in Afghanistan, and which sooner or later - but certainly before the conflict is over - will be recognised as such."
The multilateralism with which you refer was that that evolved from WWII with the US being the head of a large alliance in competition to the USSR and "Communism". In this form of competition there was considerable common interest in the alliance and hence multilateral decisions had a firm place based on this shared interest. However the competitor has since died and left capital to more completely internationalise itself and this is where things are stood on their head.
The previous multilateralism included a contradiction which moved towards world governance as well as that which simply expressed a hierachical alliance, but its final shape was dtermined by the competition between the USSR and the West. With the main enemy gone, the hierachical alliance once based on a conjunction of necessary economic and political nexii lost part of both, especially the economic nexus. The alliance now is a more political, more a result of political relations with the US than co-economic interests of large capital, it is no longer strongt enough to support multilateral decisions, hence the US is forced to take unilateral decisions and simply force its erstwhile allies to fall into line.
In this the US has no choice, the alternative is being submerged in multi-lateral and internationalist decisions where its supremacy is slowly dismantled.
" || The real argument is
|| about the level of the dominant contradictions (never an
|| exclusive proposition).
Come again?"
The dominat contradiction is the decline of US imperial power as a historical necessity, it is not an exclusive proposition for the actions of the US temporarily free of multilateral constraints looks as strong, if not stronger than ever before. However the direction is unmistakable. The US alliance in the West is under strain, the campaign alliance is likely to topple all the carefully built up Middle Eastern regimes and it is possible that the Taliban once give the chance might militarily give the US an undeniable bloody nose.
Even in Afganhistan the US cannot escape the clawing forms of multilateralism and international civility especially on its weak humanitarian side. Nor is having a completely free hand militarily resting far to much reliance on the Northern Alliance to do the dirty work (which it is well aware of and skillfully forces the US to committ more and more up front). There is a unmistakable pull towards ground war involving US forces the Brit military have already strongly suggested a fire base outside Kabul in order to draw in the Taliban. The allies themselves are already split between the compliant political leaderships and the far more cautious military minds that know the US military is not up to the task, and want far more say in the campaign than the US is prepared to surrender (this is not unknown in the history of warfare and inevitable results in the allies becoming more and more cynical and less willing to fight - it is a recipe for disaster in the field as the allies sudde! nly become unrealiable - it is not a tension which will go away soon and is only partly curable by the US taking the ground initiative itself).
Again I stress none of this is contigent, none is the result of accident, nor is it avoidable in the historical sense. If the dominant logic is away from Imperialism then it makes clear sense that we are viewing an end-play. If Imnperialism is somehow an ongoing condition then this is a hiccup.
Greg Schofield Perth Australia
--- Message Received --- From: "Hakki Alacakaptan" <nucleus at superonline.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2001 18:48:28 +0200 Subject: RE: "Drawing the Enemy in Deep" A Speculation
|| -----Original Message-----
|| From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
|| [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Greg Schofield (...)
|| Now, the particular charactisation of the war as handled by the
|| great minds of the White House, if I am not stretching things
|| too far, would from your point of view be accidental and idiot
|| president served by a similarily endowed administration and
|| apparently by like limited military minds.
||
|| For me this is not incidental, but an essential characteristic.
|| It goes hand in hand with handling the intervention in a way
|| that destablises the very regimes so carefully fostered as oil
|| puppets. It also seems to follow on from the logic of the
|| Gulf-war where in the last instance the US was faced with the
|| possiblity of installing a new regime in Iraq and backed away
|| from the prospect in fright (odd because the very nature of
|| that war would have made this a fairly predictable problem).
|| Now in pursueing new oil inspired venture, rather than simply
|| straining these semi-colonial assets the US seems oblivious to
|| the obvious threat its actions are posing - more to the point
|| it seems committed to bringing them to breaking point.
||
|| In any Imperial policy this is usually avoided at all costs
|| (grab one piece but lose all the others, is not an Imperial
|| gamble lightly taken) moreso when there is not even another
|| imperial force to compete with. This is very very odd.
||
Odd? Listen, an approximate equation may clarify things: Bush + Cheney = Hitler / 2
Were the Nazis imperialists? No, they were far too barbaric to be succesful imperialists like the British. Clinton was a very succesful imperialist. The current GOP administration, because of the growing cancer of racism, Darwinism, and anti-intellectualism in its ranks, has regressed almost to the point of fascism. It cannot think clearly because it is hampered by this proto-fascist ideology.
|| He has to be bellicose and crude, he
|| has to be a runt fascist, for the essential cause is not oil,
|| but maintaining world dominion for a single state against not
|| other states, but an internationalising bourgeoisie. The
|| fundemental contradiction is between an old system not yet dead
|| and a new emerging system not yet fully born.
||
I'll repeat what I said: The program for US hegemony formulated by Brzezinski is a bipartisan one, just like the Allon Plan (that Bryan mentioned) is for Likud & Labor in Israel. The only way to implement it is the way Clinton has done, through multilateral consultation. However, GOP fascists still think that there is a shortcut, that America doesn't have to say please. This is because of their fascist ideology and the limitless, impatient greed that fascism begets. The US has far better imperialist options, but the fascist disease prevents it from seeing them.
|| In this the particulars of Afghanistan (the particular type of
|| conflict, the particular contradictions and gambles involved)
|| make sense. Unless the US can establish unilateral action as
|| the final judge, it is gradually being sucked into
|| international civility which will inevitably down-grade its
|| status (its freedom to be a super-power).
No, it's precisely a succesful multilateralism that allowed the US to be a world hegemon after the fall of communism. Unilateralism will weaken the US, disrupt its alliances, inflate the budget deficit, push up interest rates, deepen the world depression, and will end up making the US more hated than during the VietNam era. The possibility of US officials being arrested for war crimes is not a joke. The EU would be betraying its very purpose if it does not take some sort of action against the crime against humanity being perpetrated in Afghanistan, and which sooner or later - but certainly before the conflict is over - will be recognised as such.
|| US withdrawal without having resolved these deeper
|| issues is not peace, it is a pause in a much bigger battle.
||
|| Peace as an aim - and it is an achievable aim, is not the end
|| of war as such, wars will crop-up for a variety of other
|| reasons, but the end of unilateral super-power aggression. I
|| say this is achievable, not because capitalism has changed its
|| spots, but rather this particular form of force is in its death throws.
||
|| Hence the political conclusion that the US has but two
|| alternatives, wake-up to itself and embrace a real world
|| governance of international affairs, or suffer a defeat and
|| collapse of the whole Imperial enterprise (if not in Afganistan
|| then in some future conflict). I much prefer the former, but
|| unfortunately the latter seems to be what the US is locked into.
||
Yep, that's about how I figure it. The US has never had to own up to its fascism like Germany or France has, and therefore does not know how to control it. It is now spreading like Camus' plague.
|| The other thing to remember, is that the international
|| bourgeois class are not simply Americans transposed on a
|| grander vista, indeed the dominance of America has been a
|| burden on the other sections of this class which have a variety
|| of national backgrounds and residual loyalities. American
|| dominance in international politics does not serve them
|| particulaily well, American exceptionalism (one set of rules
|| for everyone except the US) does not give this capital
|| sufficient room to develop and the criticisms of it are not
|| difficult to hear, from Europe, Japan and elsewhere. It is true
|| that at the moment though much of capital has escaped the
|| confines of any particular state, a significant section of it
|| has its hind-legs planted in US soil and is advantaged by this
|| - this is the essence of the contradiction itself.
I agree. For e.g. French and Italian energy conglomerates have put their money on Iran, and are full well aware that US political opposition to Iran is just a front for unfair competition by their US rivals on the Tengiz oil field.
|| The real argument is
|| about the level of the dominant contradictions (never an
|| exclusive proposition).
Come again?