Militarism and the coming wars
If I had to modify Rosa Luxemburg’s dramatic words I would add to ‘socialism or barbarism’: ‘barbarism if we are lucky’
1.
It is not for the first time in
history, in our days, that militarism weighs on the consciousness of the people
as a nightmare. To go into detail would take far too long. However, here it
should be enough to go back in history only as far as the nineteenth century
when militarism as a major instrument of policy-making came into its own, with
the unfolding of modern imperialism on a global scale, in contrast to its
earlier – much more limited – varieties. By the last third of the nineteenth
century not only the British and French Empires were prominent rulers of vast
territories but the United States, too, made its heavy imprint by directly or
indirectly taking over the former colonies of the Spanish Empire in Latin
America, adding to them the bloody repression of a great liberation struggle in
the Philippines and installing themselves as rulers in that area in a way which
still today persists in one form or another. Nor should we forget the
calamities caused by “Iron Chancellor” Bismarck’s imperialist ambitions and
their aggravated pursuit later on by his successors, resulting in the eruption
of the First World War and its deeply antagonistic aftermath, bringing with it
Hitler’s Nazi revanchism and thereby very clearly foreshadowing the Second
World War itself.
The dangers and immense suffering
caused by all attempts at solving deep-seated social problems by militaristic
interventions, on any scale, are obvious enough. If, however, we look more
closely at the historical trend of militaristic adventures, it becomes
frighteningly clear that they show an ever greater intensification and an
ever-increasing scale, from local confrontations to two horrendous World Wars
in the twentieth century, and to the potential annihilation of humankind when
we reach our own time.
It is most relevant to
mention in this context the distinguished Prussian military officer and
practical as well as theoretical strategist, Karl Marie von Clausewitz
(1780-1831), who died in the same year as Hegel; both of them killed by
cholera. It was von Clausewitz, Director of the Military School of Berlin in
the last thirteen years of his life, who in his posthumously published book – Vom
Kriege (“On War”, 1833) – offered a still today frequently quoted classic
definition of the relationship between politics and war: “war is the
continuation of politics by other means”.
This famous definition was tenable
until quite recently, but has become totally untenable in our time. It assumed
the rationality of the actions which connect the two domains of politics
and war as the continuation of one another. In this sense, the war in question
had to be winnable, at least in principle, even if miscalculations
leading to defeat could be contemplated at the instrumental level. Defeat by
itself could not destroy the rationality of war as such, since after the –
however unfavourable – new consolidation of politics the defeated party could
plan another round of war as the rational continuation of its politics by other
means. Thus the absolute condition of von Clausewitz’s equation to be
satisfied was the winnability of war in principle, so as to recreate the
“eternal cycle” of politics leading to war, and back to politics leading to
another war, and so on ad infinitum. The actors involved in such
confrontations were the national states. No matter how monstrous the damage
inflicted by them on their adversaries, and even on their own people (just
remember Hitler!), the rationality of the military pursuit was guaranteed if
the war could be considered winnable in principle.
Today the situation is qualitatively
different. For two principal reasons. First, the objective of the feasible war
at the present phase of historical development, in accordance with the
objective requirements of imperialism – world domination by capital’s
most powerful state, in tune with its own political design of ruthless
authoritarian “globalization” (dressed up as “free exchange” in a
U.S.-ruled global market) – is ultimately unwinnable, foreshadowing,
instead, the destruction of humankind. This objective by no stretch of
imagination could be considered a rational objective in accord with the
stipulated rational requirement of the “continuation of politics by other
means” conducted by one nation, or by one group of nations against another.
Aggressively imposing the will of one powerful national state over all of the
others, even if for cynical tactical reasons the advocated war is absurdly
camouflaged as a “purely limited war” leading to other “open ended limited
wars”, can therefore be qualified only as total irrationality.
The second reason greatly reinforces
the first. For the weapons already available for waging the war or wars
of the twenty first century are capable of exterminating not only the adversary
but the whole of humanity, the first time ever in history. Nor should we have
the illusion that the existing weaponry marks the very end of the road. Others,
even more instantly lethal ones, might appear tomorrow or the day after
tomorrow. Moreover, threatening the use of such weapons is by now considered an
acceptable state strategic device. Thus, put reasons one and two together, and
the conclusion is inescapable: envisaging war as the mechanism of global government
in today’s world underlines that we find ourselves at the precipice of absolute
irrationality from which there can be no return if we accept the ongoing
course of development. What was missing from von Clausewitz’s classic
definition of war as the “continuation of politics by other means” was the
investigation of the deeper underlying causes of war and the possibility
of their avoidance. The challenge to face up to such causes is more
urgent today than ever before. For the war of the twenty first century looming
ahead of us is not only “not winnable in principle”. Worse than that, it is in
principle unwinnable. Consequently, envisaging the pursuit of war, as the
American administration’s September 17, 2002 strategic document does, make
Hitler’s irrationality look like the model of rationality.
However,
the chronological order in the current American military doctrine is presented
completely upside-down. In reality there can be no question of a “change of
course” posterior to September 11, 2001, said to be made possible by the
dubious election of G.W. Bush to the Presidency in place of Al Gore. For
Democratic President Clinton was pursuing the same kind of policies as his
Republican successor, even if in a little more camouflaged form. As to former
Democratic Presidential Candidate Al Gore, he declared in December 2002 that he
fully supported the war against Iraq, because such a war “would not mean a
regime change” but simply the “disarming of a regime which possesses weapons of
mass destruction”. Can one get more cynical and hypocritical than that?
I have been firmly
convinced for a long time that since the onset of capital’s structural crisis
at the end of the 1960s or the beginning of the 1970s we live in a
qualitatively new phase of imperialism, with the United States as its
overwhelmingly dominant force. I called it “the new historic phase of global
hegemonic imperialism” in my book on
Socialism or Barbarism: From the ‘American Century’ to the crossroads.
The critique of U.S.
imperialism – in contrast to the fashionable fantasies of ‘deterritorialized
imperialism’, which is not supposed to carry with it the military occupation of
other nations’ territories – constitutes the central theme of my book.
The long chapter entitled “The potentially deadliest phase of imperialism”, was
written two years before September 11, 2001, and delivered as a public
lecture in Athens on October 19, 1999. I strongly stressed in it that “the
ultimate form of threatening the adversary in the future – the new ‘gunboat
diplomacy’ [of past imperialism], exercised from ‘the patented air’ – will
be the nuclear blackmail.” (page 39.). Since the time of publishing
these lines, first in March 2000 in a Greek periodical, and then the whole book
in Italian in August 2000, the predicted gruesome military strategic shift to
the ultimate nuclear threat – which could initiate a military adventure
precipitating the destruction of humankind – has become no longer camouflaged
but openly professed official U.S. policy. Nor should one imagine that the open
declaration of such a strategic doctrine is an idle threat against a
rhetorically propagandized “axis of evil”. After all it was precisely the
United States which actually used the atomic weapon of mass destruction
against the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
When we consider these issues of
extreme gravity, we cannot be satisfied with any suggestion pointing to a
particular and shifting political conjuncture. Rather, we must set them against
their background of deep-rooted structural – economically as well as
politically necessary – development. This is most important if we want to
envisage a viable strategy to counter the forces responsible for our perilous
state of affairs. The new historic phase of global hegemonic imperialism is
not simply the manifestation of the existing relations of “big power
politics”, to the overwhelming advantage of the U.S., against which a
future realignment among the most powerful states, or even some well organized
demonstrations in the political arena, could successfully assert itself.
Unfortunately, it is much worse than that. For such eventualities, even if they
could come about, would still leave the underlying causes and structural
determinations untouched.
To be sure, the new phase of global hegemonic imperialism is preponderantly under the rule of the U.S., while the other would-be imperialist powers on the whole seem to accept the role of hanging on to the American coat-tails, though of course by no means for eternity. One can indeed unhesitatingly envisage, on the basis of the already visible instabilities, the explosion of weighty antagonisms among the major powers in the future. But would that by itself offer any answer to the systemic contradictions at stake, without addressing the causal determinations at the roots of imperialistic developments? It would be very naïve to believe that it could.
Here I only wish to underline a
central concern, namely that the logic of capital is absolutely inseparable
from the imperative of the domination of the weaker by the stronger. Even when
one thinks of what is generally considered the most positive constituent of the
system, competition resulting in expansion and advancement, its
necessary companion is the drive to monopoly and the subjugation or
extermination of the competitors who stand in the way of self-asserting monopoly.
Imperialism, in turn, is the necessary result of capital’s relentless drive to
monopoly. The changing phases of imperialism both embody and more or less directly
affect the changes of ongoing historical development.
With regard to the present phase of
imperialism, two closely connected aspects are of paramount importance. The
first is that the ultimate material/economic tendency of capital is for global
integration which, however, it cannot secure at the political level. This
is due to a large extent to the fact that the global capital system unfolded in
the course of history in the form of a multiplicity of divided and indeed
antagonistically opposed national states. Not even the most violent
imperialist collisions of the past could produce a lasting result in this
respect. They could not impose the will of the most powerful national state on
a permanent basis on its rivals. The second aspect of our problem, which is the
other side of the same coin, is that despite all efforts capital failed to
produce the state of the capital system as such. This remains the
gravest of complications for the future, notwithstanding all talk about “globalization”.
U.S.-dominated global hegemonic imperialism is an ultimately doomed attempt to
superimpose itself on all of the other, sooner or later recalcitrant, national
states as the “international” state of the capital system as such. Here, too,
we are confronted by a massive contradiction. For even the recent, most
aggressive and openly threatening U.S. strategic documents try to justify their
advocated “universally valid“ policies in the name of the “American national
interests” while denying such considerations to the others.
3.
Here we can see the contradictory
relationship between a historical contingency – American capital finding
itself in its preponderant position at the present time – and the structural
necessity of the capital system itself. The latter can be summed up as
capital’s irrepressible material drive to monopolistic global integration at
whatever cost, even if it means directly endangering the very survival of
humanity. Thus, even if one can successfully counter at the political plane the
force of the now prevalent American historical contingency – which was preceded
by other imperialist configurations in the past and may well be followed by
others in the future (if we can survive, that is, the present explosive
dangers) – the structural or systemic necessity emanating from capital’s
ultimately global monopolistic logic remains as pressing as ever before. For
whatever particular form a future historical contingency may assume, the
underlying systemic necessity is bound to remain the drive to global
domination.
The question is, therefore, not simply
the given militaristic ventures of some political circles. Militaristic
ventures, that is, which could be tackled and successfully overcome at the
political/military level. The causes are much more deep-seated and cannot be
countered without introducing quite fundamental changes in the innermost
systemic determinations of capital as a mode of social metabolic control – of
overall reproduction – which embraces not only the economic and
political/military domains but also the most mediated cultural and ideological
interrelations. Even the expression “military-industrial complex” – introduced
in a critical sense by President Eisenhower who knew a thing or two about it –
clearly indicates that what we are concerned with is something much more firmly
grounded and tenacious than some direct political/military determinations (and
manipulations) which could be in principle reversed at that level. War as the
“continuation of politics by other means” will always threaten us within the present
framework of society, and by now with total annihilation. It will threaten us
for as long as we are unable to confront the systemic determinations at the
roots of political decision making, which made necessary in the past the
adventure of wars. Such determinations were trapping the various national
states in the vicious circle of politics leading to wars, and wars bringing
with them intensified antagonistic politics which had to explode in more and
ever bigger wars. Take away from the picture, for the sake of argument rather
optimistically, the historical contingency of today’s American capital, and you
are still left with the systemic necessity of capital’s ever more
destructive production order, which brings to the fore the changing but increasingly
more perilous specific historical contingencies.
Militarist production, today primarily
embodied in the “military-industrial complex”, is not an independent entity,
regulated by autonomous militaristic forces which are then also responsible for
wars. Rosa Luxemburg was the first to put these relations in their proper
perspective, way back in 1913, in her classic book on The Accumulation of
capital, published in English fifty years later. She prophetically
underlined ninety years ago the growing importance of militarist production,
pointing out that
“Capital itself ultimately controls this automatic and rhythmic movement of militarist production through the legislature and a press whose function is to mould so-called ‘public opinion’. That is why this particular province of capitalist accumulation seems capable of infinite expansion.” (Routledge, London, 1963, p. 466.)
We
are, thus, concerned with a set of interdeterminations which must be viewed as
parts of an organic system. If we want to fight war as a mechanism of global
government, as we must, in order to safeguard our very existence, we have to
situate the historical changes that have taken place in the last few decades in
their proper causal framework. The design of one overpowering national state
controlling all of the others, following the imperatives emanating from
capital’s logic, can only lead to humanity’s suicide. At the same time it must
be also recognized that the seemingly insoluble contradiction between national
aspirations – exploding from time to time in devastating antagonisms – and internationalism
can only be resolved if regulated on a fully equitable basis, which is
totally inconceivable in capital’s hierarchically structured order.
Consequently,
in order to envisage a historically viable answer to the challenges posed by
the present phase of global hegemonic imperialism, we must counter the systemic
necessity of capital for globally subjugating labour through whichever
particular social agency can assume the role assigned to it under the
circumstances. Naturally, this is feasible only through a radically different
alternative to capital’s drive to monopolistic/imperialist globalization, in
the spirit of the socialist project, embodied in a progressively unfolding mass
movement. For only when it becomes an irreversible reality that “patria es
humanidad”, to say it with José Marti’s beautiful words, only then can the
destructive contradiction between material development and humanly rewarding
political relations be permanently consigned to the past.
Let me conclude by quoting what I wrote three and a half years ago on the so-called “third way”: so dear to the propagandists of the British “New Labour” Government and others like them. This is how I saw their claimed remedy then and how I continue to see it today:
“Those who talk about the ‘third way’ as
the solution to our dilemma of Socialism or Barbarism, asserting
that there can be no room for the revival of a radical mass movement, either
want to deceive us by cynically calling their slavish acceptance of the ruling
order ‘the third way’, or fail to realize the gravity of the situation, putting
their faith in a wishfully non-conflictual positive outcome which has been
promised for nearly a century but never approximated even by one inch. The uncomfortable
truth of the matter is that if there is no future for a radical mass movement
in our time, as they say, there can be no future for humanity itself.
If I had to modify Rosa Luxemburg’s
dramatic words, in relation to the dangers we now face, I would add to ‘socialism
or barbarism’: ‘barbarism if we are lucky’ – in the sense that the extermination
of humanity is the ultimate concomitant of capital’s destructive course
of development. And the world of that third possibility, beyond the
alternatives of ‘socialism or barbarism’, would be fit only for cockroaches,
which are said to be able to endure lethally high levels of nuclear radiation.
This is the only rational meaning of capital’s third way.
The now fully operative third and
potentially deadliest phase of global hegemonic imperialism, corresponding to
the profound structural crisis of the capital system as a whole on the
political and military plane, leaves us no room for comfort or cause for
self-assurance. Instead, it casts the darkest possible shadow on the future, in
case the historical challenges facing the socialist movement fail to be
successfully met in the time still within our reach. This is why the century in
front of us is bound to be the century of ‘Socialism or Barbarism’.”
(Socialism or Barbarism, Monthly
Review Press edition, pp. 80-81.)
This was a talk given at
the Critique Confernce, London in January 2003