NOVANEWS
by Ahmed Sajjad Hashemy
Introduction
Western societies and states are moving inexorably toward conditions resembling barbarism; structural changes are in place which are reversing decades of social welfare and subjecting labor, natural resources and the wealth of nations to raw exploitation, pillage and plunder, driving living standards downward and provoking unprecedented levels of discontent.
Barbarism is most clearly evident in the genocidal wars, organized and directed by the US and Western Europe. Imperial destruction of entire societies is accompanied by the disarticulation, murder and exile of the modern scientific, secular and artistic core of Iraqi society and the fomenting of retrograde ethno-religious strife and satraps. Imperial barbarism is found in the systematic application of cruel and unusual punishment, government sanctioned torture and cross-border assassinations as official state policy. Barbarous imperialism is driven by militatists and Zionists who seek to destroy adversaries, their economies and societies, in contrast to traditional imperialists who seek to take control over and exploit resources and skilled labor.
Barbaric practices are the result of policymakers and their aides embedded in barbaric institutions: doctors and psychologists advise and participate in torture; academics propagate doctrines (“just wars”) defending barbarous wars; military officials design and practice crimes against humanity to secure promotions, higher pay and lucrative pensions. The mass media transmit the official triumphalist euphemisms in support of mass population displacements, attributing war crimes to the victims and lauding the executioners. In a word barbarism begins with the metropolitan elite and percolates downward to the provincial manual worker.
We will proceed by outlining the economic political and military processes driving the process of decay and decomposition and follow with an account of the mass popular responses to their deteriorating conditions. The deep structural changes accompanying the rise of barbarism becomes the bases for considering the prospects for socialism in the 21st century.
The Rising Tide of Barbarism
In ancient society ‘barbarism’ and its carriers, ‘the barbarians’, were envisioned as threats by outside invaders from outlying regions descending on Rome or Athens. In contemporary Western societies, the barbarians came from within, among the elite of society, intent on imposing a new order which destroys the social fabric and productive base of society, converting stable livelihoods into insecure deteriorating conditions of everyday life.
The key to contemporary barbarism is found in the deep structures of the state and economy. These include:
1.The ascendancy of a financial-speculative elite which has pillaged trillions of dollars from savers, investors, mortgage carriers, consumers and the state, siphoning enormous resources from the productive economy into the hands of a parasitic elite embedded in the state and paper economy.
2.A militarist political elite which is in a state of permanent warfare since the middle of the last century. Endless wars, cross border assassinations, state terror, the suspension of traditional guarantees has led to the concentration of dictatorial powers, arbitrary jailing, torture and the denial of habeas corpus.
3. In the midst of a deep economic recession and stagnation, high levels of state spending on economic and military empire building at the cost of the domestic economy and living standards reflect the subordination of the local economy to the activities of the imperial state.
4. Crime and corruption at the top, in all aspects of state and business activity – from state procurement to privatization to subsidies for the super-rich – encourage the growth of international crime from top to bottom, the lumpenization of the capitalist class and a state in which law and order have fallen into disrepute.
5. As a result of the high costs of empire building and the pillage by the financial oligarchy, the socio-economic burden has been placed square on the shoulders of wage and salaried workers, pensioners and the self-employed, resulting in long term, large scale downward mobility. With job losses and the loss of well paying jobs, mortgage foreclosures skyrocket and the stable middle and working class shrinks and is forced to extend its hours of labor and years of work.
6. As imperial wars spread across the world targeting entire populations, via sustained bombings and clandestine terror operations, they generate opposing terrorist networks which also target civilians in markets, transport and public spaces. The world resembles a Hobbesian world of ‘all against all’.
In reality the “western world” (the US/EU/NATO/Israel and their satellites) are engaged in a ‘total war” against the peoples of the world, resisting imperialists and Zionist subjugation. “Total war” as practiced by the West, means that (a) no distinction is made between military and civilian targets – all are routinely considered worthy of destruction. In a perverse sense of totalitarian irony, by bombing civilians the imperial powers turn a guerilla war into a “peoples war”: total wars unify communities, families, clans with resistance fighters. (b) Total wars use all means to annihilate the enemy – weapons of mass poison ( depleted uranium), death squads, summary executions, indiscriminate drone bombing of villages, mass roundup of adult males in regions of intense conflict. As a consequence of imperial “total war” as the standard of conflict, the opposition has followed suit, targeting civilians, including teachers, doctors and translators employed by Western agencies.
7.Rising ethno-religious extremism linked to militarism is found among Christians, Jews, Moslems, Hindus, replacing international class solidarity with doctrines of racial supremacy and penetrating the deep structures of state and societies.
One of the most egregious outcomes of the post-world war two period has been the unprecedented influence of the Zionist Jewish power configuration and its central role within the US imperial state, fusing US imperial and Israeli barbaric practices. These include systematic torture, economic sanctions, bombings of civilians and other crimes against humanity. Israel’s long wars against Arab and Muslim peoples – over 60 years and counting, is now matched by Zionist strategists in Washington who promote prolonged, serial wars which follow the Israeli agenda and who incite hysterical Islamophobia via the mass media and academia. Today Judeo-fascism is embedded in the Israeli cabinet (3 ministers), military,religious orders and substantial sectors of the population.8.The demise of European and Asian welfare collectivism – in the ex USSR and China – has lifted the competitive pressures on Western capitalism and encouraged them to revoke all the welfare concessions conceded to labor in the post World War II period.
9.The demise of Communism and the integration of social democracy into the capitalist system has led to a severe weakening of the Left, which the sporadic protests of the social movements have failed to replace.
10.In the face of the current large scale assault on workers and middle class living standards, there are only sporadic protests at best and political impotence at worst.
11.Massive exploitation of labor in post-revolutionary societies, like China and Vietnam, includes the exclusion of hundreds of millions of migrant workers from elementary public educational and health services. The unprecedented pillage and seizure by domestic oligarchs and foreign multinationals of thousands of lucrative strategic public enterprises in Russia, the ex-Soviet republics, Eastern Europe, the Balkans and Baltic countries was the greatest transfer of public to private wealth in the shortest time in all of history.
In summary ‘barbarism’ has emerged as a defining reality, product of the ascendancy of a militarist Zionized and parasitic financial ruling class in the US. The barbarians are here and now, present within the frontiers of Western societies and states. They are dominant and aggressively pursuing an agenda which is continually reducing living standards, transferring public wealth to their private coffers, pillaging public resources, savaging constitutional rights in their pursuit of imperial wars, segregating and persecuting millions of immigrant workers and promoting the disintegration and diminution of the stable working and middle class. More than at any time in recent history the top 1% of the population controls an increasing share of national wealth and income.
Myths and Realities of Historical Capitalism
The sustained, large scale roll back of social rights and welfare provisions, wages, job security, pensions and salaries demonstrates the falsity of the ideas of the linear progress of capitalism. The reversal, product of the heightened power of the capitalist class, demonstrates the validity of the Marxist proposition that class struggle is the motor force of history – at least, in so far, as the human condition is considered the centerpiece of history.
The second false assumption is that states based on ‘market economies’ require peace and the corollary that ‘markets’ trump militarism, is disproven by the fact that the premier market economy, the United States has been in a constant state of war since the early 1940’s; actively engaged in wars on four continents, to the present day.With new bigger and bloodier wars on the horizon. The cause and consequence of permanent warfare, is the growth of a monstrous ‘national security state’ which recognizes no national borders and absorbs the greater part of the national budget.
The third myth of ‘advanced’ mature capitalism is that it constantly revolutionizes production through innovation and technology. With the rise of the militarist – financial speculative elite, productive forces have been pillaged and ‘innovation’ in largely in the elaboration of financial instruments which exploit investors, strip assets and wipe out productive employment.
As the empire grows, the domestic economy diminishes, power is centralized in the executive, legislative powers are diminished and citizenry is denied effective representation or even a veto via electoral processes.
Mass Responses to Rise of Barbarism
The rise of barbarism in our midst has provoked mass public revulsion against its principal proponents. Surveys have repeatedly found
1.Profound disgust and revulsion against all political parties.
2.Huge majorities harbor profound distrust of the corporate and political elite.
3.Majorities reject the concentration of corporate power and the abuse of that power, especially among bankers and financiers.
4.There is widespread questioning of the democratic credentials of political leaders who act at the behest of the corporate elite and promote the repressive policies of the national security state.
5.A large majority rejects the pillage of the state treasury to bail out banks and the financial elite, while imposing regressive austerity programs on the working and middle class.