crises and wars

May 25, 2022

Jorge Casals Llano

Granma

Those who provoke wars, as a militarized reproduction of capital, have to sell the idea that they do it for the good of the nation, in defense of freedom and progress, to justify state spending as a benefactor of the economy.

Impossible to write about fascism and war without remembering 1984, the Orwellian dystopia with Big Brother and its slogans, which, like the whole novel, can and should also be read backwards.

 When just a few days ago, on May 9, we grateful people celebrated Victory Against Fascism Day, achieved in 1945, we also think of June 22, the date of the beginning, in 1941, with Operation Barbarossa, of the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany, and with it, the beginning of the end of World War II, achieved thanks to the heroic struggle of the Soviet people and their more than 20 million dead.

The causes of this last conflagration must be sought long before its beginning, between the 19th and 20th centuries, when the world was reordering itself with the passage from pre-monopoly capitalism to monopoly capitalism and the birth of imperialism, hand in hand with the, by then, newest stage of capitalism, which would generate that world that Orwell would describe, increasingly similar to the one we live in today.

Already at the beginning of the 20th century, Germany's economic potential surpassed that of Great Britain and France, nations that in the 19th century had divided up much of the world. At the same time, other powers appeared that, like Germany, Italy, and Japan, aspired to a new global order. Nothing strange in that environment resulted in the reaffirmation of nationalisms that, attributing their own and exclusive singularities to the territories they occupied, and to their citizens, the countries that had arrived late to the distribution sought to obtain territorial and political privileges that generated tensions, political and military alliances and arms races, a breeding ground for the outbreak of the First World War, which Germany lost.

The onerous and oppressive terms of the Treaty of Versailles imposed on the defeated nation an unpayable debt that prevented it from recovering its war-torn economy, stripped it of its colonies and prohibited it from rebuilding its army, all of which plunged the country into deep crisis that triggered popular discontent, on which Nazism and Hitler would arise in Germany, and, in parallel, and in the search for a supposed recovery of past glories, fascism and Mussolini in Italy.

Of the Second World War, among its consequences are the more than 60 million deaths, although it was also the emergence of the United States as the first world power – the result of the wealth accumulated in the war – together with the weakness of the Europe destroyed, and by the decolonization that impoverished it and contributed to making it even more dependent on the so-called Marshall Plan for its reconstruction.

All accompanied by the conversion of Japan into a protectorate, after the crime of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the rhetoric of "liberal democracy"; also, of a destroyed USSR, although resilient and capable of opposing the superpower that had used the atomic weapon for the first time. Thus began the bipolar world, the cold war and military Keynesianism.

If all of the above turned out to be tragic for those directly involved in the confrontations, the others, those who caused (and continue to cause) the wars, took advantage (and continue to take advantage) of them, obtained (and continue to obtain) economic advantages and subjugating territories, seeking to increase and legitimize military budgets, produce, and sell new weapons that increase income opportunities.

Since to achieve this, they have to sell the idea that they are doing it for the good of the nation, in defense of freedom and progress, they justify state spending as a benefactor of the economy, as it is capable of curbing stagnation and promoting the growth that, by creating employment, reduces discontent and generates social peace.

We are on the brink of a third world war. We live in times in which uncertainty prevails in an economy that not only has not fully recovered from the impacts of the anthropological crisis generated by covid-19 but has also not learned – it seems to want not to learn – how to do it.

The crisis has been treated differently and even contradictorily between the different national, regional, and even transnational actors, and although rationality indicates that solutions should have been sought in multilateralism and collaboration, irrationality, unilateralism, and geopolitical competition prioritized old and false idea that war is the best option.

The facts, stubborn, and the review of the bibliography and the information available on the subject, allow us to appreciate that the crises continue to generate, (as in the 1930s) polarization and political extremism.

The current crisis – or rather, the current multiplicity of crises – which initially and in not a few aroused fears that the history of wars would repeat itself, only confirmed what was feared, when observing the current world, from the United States. to Europe (the so-called West) and in a particular way Ukraine: the resurgence of fascism.

Its promoters surely did not ignore the particularities of that country, its geographical position, its history and the internal factors, including the fascist background in the West and the ethnolinguistic divisions, which made it usable by a global power in decline, in its attempt to regain hegemony.

If it is about war promoters, and in particular the current war in Ukraine, the study presented by the RAND Corporation (already in 2019 and published on the institution's website) cannot be ignored, in which it is recommended to expand NATO towards the Russian borders, to force it to take action and compete in those fields in which the US has competitive advantages; forcing it, to unbalance it, to expand militarily and economically. 

Of course, this makes the recent g-7 statement ridiculous to say the least, noting that "we are steadfast in our solidarity with and support for Ukraine as it defends itself against the unjustifiable, unprovoked, and illegal war of aggression by Russia, a war in which Belarus is complicit.

In such a context it seems essential to refer, once again, if it is a question of war, to the idea that these provide a stimulus for the economy.

Of course, since those who think like this dispense with the analysis of the ethical aspects of the problem, it is also appropriate to focus on the economic aspects, which is the foundation in its evolution to military Keynesianism.

From the referred point of view, the crisis of accumulation, or rather of overaccumulation, is implicitly accepted, since it is admitted that the system produces much more than it can consume, since by maximizing microeconomic efficiency (which implies the maximum reduction of costs that does not affect quality, including wages) at the same time, its expression at the macroeconomic level, the reduction of demand, makes the system inefficient as a whole, and makes state spending essential to achieve equilibrium.

Following the aforementioned logic, capitalism needed the first and second world wars to get capitalism out of “the depressions”, in particular the second, to get it out of the Great Depression. It needed the Cold War to legitimize, for half a century, the expansion of military budgets. It needed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the longest in history, to help sustain the economy, and move it forward, after chronic stagnation in the first two decades of this century.

The same logic led to the transition from the anti-communism of the Cold War to the "war against terrorism", also to the so-called new cold war, and now to the provocations against Russia, to the point of forcing it to go to war against Ukraine.

In this current conflict, the transnational corporatocracy – led by Washington and which does not accept «the Russian upstarts» – has had to face any adversary, real or supposed, to guarantee the militarized reproduction of capital through violence, «midwife of every society old that carries in its entrails a new one” –said Marx–, and that –he also wrote in  Capital– is “by itself, an economic power”.