The Hypocrisy of NATO's Illegal War On Iran - Part 20

Unlike the UK, the US is a huge economy. Unlike the UK, the US, also, has long established trade with its neighbours in Canada, Mexico and Central and South America. So, the US can, within its own borders, do what the Brexiters ridiculously claimed that Britain could do. It can set its own rules, and those that wish to operate within the US, or to export to it, have to accept those rules, including the EU and China. Even so, the US was led to create NAFTA, before Trump blew it up, and was then led to replace it with the MCA. Because Trump sees himself as an old style King or colonial Emperor, rather than as a modern imperialist, he is driven in the same general direction, but using the old, abandoned methods of colonialism, land grabs, militarism and annexation. Its what his vulgar approach to Canada, Greenland/Iceland and so on reflects. No wonder his ideology fits seamlessly with the ethnonationalist/racist, settler-colonial ideology of Zionism.

From the perspective of industrial capital, in the abstract, all of these different rules and regulations are irrational, and an impediment to its free expansion. Its why industrial capitalism, in its first flush, had to get rid of all the multiplicity of rules and regulations of feudalism, and create the nation state. The railways provided another example of it, as they quickly required a standardisation of gauge for the tracks, which, also, meant a standardisation of the locomotives and carriages. It also brought about a standardisation of time without which train timetables would have been meaningless. The Bolsheviks, who had appreciated, all of this, and the scientific management methods of the Taylorists, as one of their first revolutionary changes in production, in the USSR, introduced a comprehensive standardisation of sizes and so on, down to the smallest component of production.

Not only did it make production of each component much cheaper, because they were now produced on a much larger scale, but the industries using those components no longer had to waste time in production, ensuring they had the right size of component, taken from the stock room. It also meant that the actual amount of capital held unproductively as stock was reduced. Without such standardisation, none of the advantages of assembly line production, or of time and motion studies could have been realised. When the US sent a delegation to the USSR in the 1920's, that lesson was quickly observed, and the US, in turn, implemented a similar process of standardisation. The example of the social-democratic/corporatist ideas of Herbert Hoover find a pale reflection in the ideas, as far as they can be discerned, of Andy Burnham. But, it also, shows why, if Brexit was a reactionary, delusional adventure, the growing claims about the benefits of breaking up even the nation state, and return to the divisions of regionalism, each ruled over by their own local Bonaparte, are even more reactionary and delusional.

US imperialism has discovered that, although it remains the dominant industrial capital, in many areas of production, having, as I noted earlier, moved away from the old labour intensive, manufacturing and extractive industries, and into new capital intensive spheres, it is China that now dominates global manufacturing industry, and as with the process of combined and uneven development throughout history, it is China and India that are rapidly developing in those areas of high-tech industries into which US industrial capital previously shifted. The rise of China as the global manufacturing superpower, over the last 40 years, had other consequences. It is that manufacturing industry that absorbs huge amounts of raw materials, and China developed global trading relations with many countries in South America, Africa, Australia, and the Middle-East that supply it with those raw materials, and primary products.

At a time when US imperialism was more concerned to have Dollars flowing back to the US to buy up financial assets, so as to keep its asset price bubbles inflating, Chinese imperialism, was paying for its raw materials, energy supplies and other primary products, by exporting not only vast amounts of cheap manufactured commodities, but also by exporting capital. It set up production in DRC etc., to mine the copper that was then exported to China, and those mines used Chinese machines and so on. Like British imperialism in India, in the 19th century, China invested in the creation of additional infrastructure in these countries, tying them ever closer to Beijing. By contrast, the US offered the opportunity to buy already inflated US financial and property assets, the attraction of which was undermined when that bubble burst in 2008, but being, also, another reason that having built its model around it, US imperialism had to reflate it. Alternatively, US imperialism offered to build luxury hotels and facilities for the global elite, in these, economies as with Dubai, which offer little benefit for the masses in those countries, other than the chance to work as a precarious labourer serving the wishes of that elite.

In Afghanistan, US imperialism exported its troops and weapons, to wreak destruction rather than construction. When it ultimately left, the Taliban simply returned, because, unlike with Britain's involvement in India, US involvement in Afghanistan resulted in no export of capital, no industrial development of the economy, no creation of a modern working-class, as the basis of modernising ideas. Once again, as US imperialism and its subordinates withdrew from Afghanistan, it is China that is establishing those kinds of relations, as it develops trade and investment.

Back To Part 19

The Hypocrisy of NATO's Illegal War On Iran - Part 19

So, as Marx noted, the laws of capital assert themselves in the end, even when these nuances act to delay and obscure them. On the one hand, the other side of the deindustrialisation of the western imperialist economies (which, also, should not be read too literally, as it really means a reduction in the size of the old, labour intensive, productive and extractive industries) was the industrialisation of large parts of Asia, Latin America and Africa, as well as parts of the old Warsaw Pact. The US and Britain, in particular, were content to take advantage of cheap manufactures and primary products, extracting their own portion of surplus-value, as commercial profit. In addition, many companies operating in these newly industrialising economies, were simply parts of global multinationals, based in the US, UK and EU. The shareholders and bondholders of those companies drew their revenues, and saw their share prices rise just the same.

But, 40 years on, China, Taiwan, South Korea, India and others are no longer simply playgrounds for these western multinationals to exploit available labour supplies, and for the shareholders to extract dividends/interest. They have become industrialised, and have their own multinationals. The scale of production for these industries in China and India, in particular, based on their own huge domestic populations, as well as on being used as manufacturing centres for global capital over the last 40 years, means that it is now, very difficult for industries in the old western economies to compete, including in the US, which is why the US was led to try to create its own larger single market with Canada and Mexico, prior to Trump blowing it apart.

The example of EV production in China illustrates the point, as I've set out, elsewhere. China is able to produce EV's cheaper than anywhere else, simply because it has the advantages of economies of scale. Those economies of scale, also, derive from the fact that China is the largest single car market in the world, and, also, the largest EV market. The latter is, also, a consequence of the fact that China has invested hugely in creating the charging infrastructure required if EV's are to be adopted and functional. China, has, thereby, enjoyed the economies of scale in battery production, and charging technologies, as well as in the other areas of renewable energy.

Rather than accept that, the US has dug itself further into a hole, by claiming that China is dumping, i.e. selling its EV's on the world market, at below cost prices. In so doing, they are also delaying the inevitable replacement of internal combustion vehicles by EV's, which will simply lead to a further destruction of US vehicle production, as it will be too small, and too far behind its global competitors, when it faces that reality. Trump's attempts to prop up the US producers with his campaign to “drill baby drill” to keep oil production going, and reduce oil prices, are just another delay and delusion, in that respect.

What it reflects is a belated recognition by US imperialism that the world has moved on, and that, in the end, it is still industrial capital that dominates, however much the delusion is clung to that fictitious capital is the only capital, and that it produces interest/dividends like a plum tree produces plums, or that inflated asset prices are a means of creating wealth out of thin air. The problem for US imperialism is that it now faces the reality that, not only does industrial capital dominate, but the main centre for that industrial capital, and for its accumulation is China. It is Chinese monopoly capitalism (imperialist capital) that is setting the pace, and via its economic (industrial and trade) relations with other industrialising economies, across the globe, is determining the regulatory and standards regimes upon which global production and trade takes place.

As has happened through history, those that set the rules are those that rule, and the implication of that is that US imperialism will have to become a rule taker, if it wants to trade with these other trading blocs, be it in Eurasia, or the EU. It is, again, why the idea of Brexit was even more absurd.

Back To Part 18

Forward To Part 20

SNNS 49

 

Northern Soul Classics - (She's) Some Kind of Wonderful - The Fantastic Johnny C

 

Blair-Rights & Soft Left Carry Out Their Counter Coup

The Blair-Right/Soft Left counter coup against the Blue Labour/Zionist faction that took control of the Labour Party in 2019, has now begun. In 2019, the Blair-Rights were not strong enough to displace Corbyn's supporters inside a massively expanded Labour Party. The soft-left were not going to actively support the kind of actions required to bring about the kind of blood-letting to achieve it, though, as in the past, they could be relied on to simply keep their heads down, and wait until it was over, rather than resist it. The Blair-Rights, allied with the petty-bourgeois nationalists and Zionists of Blue Labour, seizing upon the equation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism as a convenient weapon to first undermine Corbyn, and then launch the witch hunt in the party. They chose Starmer as a cypher for their coup.

At the time Starmer won the Leadership, I noted that, the Blue Labour/Zionist faction would inevitably drag him further and further into the swamp of the petty-bourgeois nationalist Right, and so it has been, with the inevitable disastrous consequences for Labour, leading to the situation, today, and the equally inevitable counter coup by the Blair-Rights and soft Left, who have now chosen their own cypher, in the form of Burnham. Its ironic that the pro-EU Blair, has himself, now, become an apologist for the petty-bourgeois nationalists, and for his rich associates in the Trumpf gang, whilst the once soft Left and anti-EEC Kinnock, has taken over that vacant slot. On Saturday, Kinnock was even heading up the speakers at the Rejoin EU Rally in London, and its no coincidence that as Starmer gave another empty speech announcing his departure, this morning, in Downing Street, the strains of Ode To Joy, the EU Anthem, wafted through the air, almost drowning him out.

The media pundits have talked about the fact that in the last ten years, Britain has had 7 different Prime Ministers. But, they fail to mention that between 1990, and 2005, the Conservative Party went through 6 different Leaders. The reason is the same. Superficially, that reason is Brexit, or the relation between Britain and the EU, but that is itself simply the manifestation of the real underlying cause, which is the division between the interests of the petty-bourgeoisie and those of the bourgeoisie and working-class. Again, the media pundits, at least the better of them, like to present this division, in electoral terms as that between a Left or “progressive” bloc of Green, Liberal and Labour voters, as against a Right or “reactionary” bloc of Restore, Reform and Tory voters, without considering that these divisions are not simply arbitrary alignments of voters within an amorphous electorate, but are themselves a reflection of aggregated class interests.

The media pundits have tried to claim that Makerfield was a classic seat in which Reform should have won, but they based that simply on the fact, of it being a “Red Wall” seat, and on the fact that in the recent local elections, Reform won every council seat. But, that was a typically lazy, and superficial analysis that was inevitably going to be proven wrong, as I pointed out before the by-election.

I noted,

“Its MP, between 1987-2010 was the Blair-right, Iain McCartney. Given Blair's enthusiastic support for the EU, during all that time, when, by contrast, the Tories were torn apart by their support for Brexit, goaded along by the likes of Farage, there was no indication that the voters in the constituency were put off voting for EU supporting Labour candidates, winning around 60% of the vote in each election. In 2010 and 2015, McCartney's successor in the seat, Helen Fovargue, secured around 50% of the vote, whilst the reactionary nationalists of UKIP/BNP and Tories never got more than a combined 42%. In 2017, under Corbyn's Labour, as it won over large numbers of young voters, opposed to Brexit, Fovargue secured an increased 60% of the vote, whilst the Brexit Party stood aside for the Tories, who still could only secure 31% of the vote.”

The idea that Burnham has, somehow, won over working-class Reform or Tory voters, is as ludicrous as the idea that the Tories or Reform won elections by winning over working-class Labour voters. That is only very marginally the case. Burnham won because he managed to get working-class Labour voters to turn out to vote for him, whereas, in the local elections, many of them simply didn't vote, or else have been voting for other progressive parties such as the Greens, Liberals and so on, as they have rejected the reactionary petty-bourgeois nationalism of Keir Starmer's Blue Labour/Zionist agenda.

As I have pointed out many times over the last ten years, the vote for Brexit, even in those “Red Wall” seats, was based, not on working-class, Labour voters voting Leave, but on a the petty-bourgeoisie voting for it, a petty-bourgeoisie that had grown by 50% since the 1980's, and which was also the basis of the internal strife inside the Conservative Party, of which it comprised the vast number of its members and voters. That the media, and the bourgeois political pundits confuse this petty-bourgeois mass of poorly educated, precarious and impoverished with the working-class is simply a feature of their superficial, sociological definition of class. The fact remains that despite having grown by 50% since the 1980's, as a consequence of deindustrialisation, that petty-bourgeois mass still only constitutes around a third of the population/electorate, and it is that which places a cap on its electoral fortunes.

The reality, however, is clear. Burnham will face the same economic realities that Starmer and Blue Labour faced. Starmer has tried to claim that, in the last two years, he has defied those realities. Its nonsense. His claim about stabilising the economy is only a claim that he has stabilised it in the same way a corpse is stabilised in a graveyard. As Kinnock pointed out, the claims about trade deals are hugely exaggerated, and do not come close to the deals the UK already had as a result of being in the EU. Does anyone who has had to use the NHS really believe the claims about its improvement? Likewise, a look at the continued crumbling of the roads, and other infrastructure give the lie to Starmer's claims in that regard to. In the meantime, inflation remains high, and is likely to rise, whilst government borrowing is rising, and interest rates are following suit.

That reality, drives towards the obvious course of action, of a rapid re-joining of the EU. Burnham should be open about that reality, and get it underway. The Labour landslide in 2024 was a fraud, with Labour getting a third fewer votes than Corbyn's Labour secured in 2017. But, it would be ridiculous for Burnham to ignore the fact that he will take over a huge parliamentary majority. The venality of the Blue Labour/Zionist faction is already being shown in their snarling comments, as they are hoist by their own petard. They may seek to undermine a Burnham government, but his majority will be such that they can be dealt with. Beginning the process of negotiation to re-join the EU is the best basis on which a Burnham government can rebuild the economy, and remove the constraints it faces, and on that basis, rebuild the voter base of Labour for the next election in 2028/9. A General Election fought in 2028, with a commitment to formally re-join, would leave the option for the UK holding EU elections in 2029.

SNNS 48

 

Northern Soul Classics - Tighten Up - Archie Bell & The Drells