The discussion is about timing the bombing: is it far
fetched to link this to the stock market? That America
has to bomb is not an adventure, it is a must. The new
imperialism is like the old, only with more teeth
because the US enjoys more political hegemony. Indeed
the arrogance displayed in its diplomacy is solid and
verifiable, the US knows it, everyone else does too.
Plenty of examples are available. For it to be itself,
or to be the foremost imperialist power in a much
weaker global alliance arrangement is one and the
same. It is not about ethics in the first instance nor
is this meant pejoratively. It is about accumulation:
through peaceful or destructive realization. If
anything for that matter, the recent literature in
American ethical philosophy reworks the concepts of
“Just war and justice in wars,” to include as ethical
a war which secures “our way of life.”
Of course you have got the odd ball, ethicist James
Sellers who would swim counter current and say "Far
from being the World's lifeboat, America and the West
lacking any new self-understanding, will turn out to
be the world's Titanic, dragging down with us the
remainder of global society." As to how it will be
possible for the developing world to accept any of the
western values when it is being pillaged by it,
Sellers attaches the condition 'that America and the
western world must reinvent themselves as partners and
not enemies of humanity and, only then can such
healthy American cornerstones of democratic
experience, know-how, and voluntary association come
to be accepted by the rest of humanity as gifts no
longer suspect.'
But that is Sellers, and he is rare. Had he been the
rule rather than the exception, the two party system,
alias the American institution, will be overturned.
One vaguely recalls that a socialist movement in the
early twenties US got a higher percentage of the vote
than did Nader. The defeat of the left in the US since
then has been an excruciatingly painful experience
attributable more to the strength/BRUTALITY of the
right than to the weaknesses of the left. State
brutality was more than commensurate with the rise of
the left. Apart from the huge population in prisons
today, one sees little manifestation of outright
typical amaeriacn anti-left behaviour at home. So the
system is doing ok. One can freely say “it would not
be itself otherwise.”
As to the different group interests, I think this idea
reduces class to its economic content. True class
struggle occurred everywhere including the soviet
union, but this represents all the more reason to
weigh social classes not only in immediate economic
terms but also in social terms in which the economic
holds primacy. So gains are not solely immediate
economic gains per se, it may be a ladder of
priorities which secures the resilience of capitalism
in a badly divided world, including strategically
securing the way of life at home or the present
arrangement of the international division of labour.
What I object to is how can the stock market can be
irrelevant especially if it is overvalued. Unless one
is talking of little sums or an incidental short
lived fall, which is not the case, this flies in the
face of common sense.
In ending this, I think there is a high probability
that the US can time its bombings at its own
convenience if need be.
--- Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> At 10:49 AM 02/24/2001 -0800, you wrote:
> >Not long ago on the list, there seemed to be an
> agreement that a war could
> >take the US out of economic crisis. That is not far
> fetched, Mandel made a
> >point of it, the Marxist theory of war could be
> woven around it, insofar
> >as aggression remains the fifth facet of
> imperialism, and even Paul
> >Samuelson, in his introduction to economics, hints
> at certain crisis in
> >the cycle which were overcome by war.
>
> I've always thought that the idea that war was
> somehow an automatic
> consequence of economic crisis -- or would
> automatically solve economic
> crises -- was the hallmark of crude Marxism. Crises
> may encourage war by
> tilting the political balance toward warlike
> interest groups, but they may
> also cause civil war and the like. Similarly,
> sometimes wars solve crises
> (as World War II did for the US and its allies) but
> they can make things
> worse economically (as World War I did for the
> losers).
>
> The fact is under capitalism, policies such as war
> result from the
> competition of capitalist interest groups, usually
> organized as elites.
> Some benefit from militarism, others don't. [This
> vision is a bit like
> pluralism, but, crucially, some interest groups --
> e.g, those with the most
> money -- have the most influence. Further, the same
> thing happens in other
> types of society. The clash of interest groups was
> merely hidden in the old
> USSR.]
>
> >Now comes Michel Chossudovsky to pinpoint a
> specific incidence, the
> >bombing of Iraq, in which a calculus of happiness
> between stock market
> >performance and strategic imperialist objectives
> results in optimum gains
> >for uncle Sam; That the US has to bomb Iraq is not
> an issue: it simply
> >has to or it would not be itself...
>
> The US _has to_ bomb Iraq? Even if Nader had won the
> election? I don't
> think historical events are _ever_ predetermined.
> Maybe Nader's victory was
> extremely unlikely (actually, there's no "maybe"
> about it), but if there
> were a full-scale anti-establishmentarian movement
> in this country at this
> time, it might be able to block foreign-policy
> adventures.
>
> Optimum gains for Uncle Sam? the problem with this
> is that the "optimum
> gains" are defined differently by different elites.
> (Similarly, some
> interest groups prefer high oil prices while others
> prefer low ones.) And
> as Doug notes, the stock market isn't that
> important. And many gain when it
> goes down.
>
> >Ps. In some recent figure about stock ownership,
> the rich owned something
> >like 96% of all stocks. Of course that depends on
> what threshold was used
> >for the rich.
>
> Of course the lion's share of stocks are owned by
> the rich (they're the
> ones who can afford to take such financial risks).
> But different rich
> people often have different interests (except when
> the chips are down and
> their class dictatorship is threatened), while they
> often leave issues of
> foreign policy to professionals. The latter are all
> pro-capitalist, but
> there's a lot of debate within the establishment
> about what
> "pro-capitalist" means.
>
> Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &
> http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
>
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