The Hypocrisy of NATO's Illegal War On Iran - Part 7

The ruling-class, its media, and the social-imperialists have continually tried to portray NATO as a “defensive alliance”, rather than what it actually is, which is the tip of the military spear of US imperialism. NATO was established prior to the Warsaw Pact, and numerous accounts show that, it was US imperialism, and its Western Allies that were quick, as WWII entered its closing stages, to bring an end to their connections with the advancing Red Army, which had born the brunt of the fighting in Europe. Similarly, in China, it was the US and its allies that ensured that Japan, handed over Formosa/Taiwan to Chiang Kai Shek, in order to keep it from the advancing forces of Mao's Peasant Army. Indeed, the US military engaged more openly in China itself, unsuccessfully, to support Chiang.

As every martial artist, let alone military strategist knows, there is no real distinction between defence and offence. One of the most obvious examples is the “tortoise”, used by the Roman army, in which it has the appearance of being a defensive shield, but is used to enable the ranks of centurions beneath it to continually advance. The “defensive” nature of NATO is exactly the same, as is the use, from 1947 onwards, of the claims of national self-defence by the Zionist state, which under cover of such hypocrisy, has continually expanded its own territory.

The Zionist state has had its own reasons for such expansion, on that basis, since it came into existence, in 1947, by seizing land from the Palestinians. As an ethno-nationalist ideology, Zionism is both inherently racist, and expansionist, and that is hard-wired into the Zionist state, whichever party is in office. It is Zionism, which is committed to extending the scope of Israel from the river to the sea, using the old biblical mythology, as its justification, and one, therefore, that sits, today, conveniently with the rise of the Christian Zionists, in the US, who see it as their duty to promote such a development, as the basis of Armageddon.

Of course, this mystical, religious claptrap is not believed by, or the basis of the motivation of, the ruling-class. Their interests and motivation are securely based on more earthly and material concerns, as previously described. For US imperialism, and its fraction of the global ruling-class, those concerns revolve around limiting the further growth of the global influence of China. It is simply that, in this context, the interests and expansionist nature of Zionism fits perfectly with the interests of US imperialism, and its subordinates in Europe. Everything that Trump has done in that regard, both in his first term, and now, his second term, was already begun under previous Presidents, both Republican and Democrat. Not for nothing did a, then, Senator Joe Biden say, “If Israel did not exist, we would have to create it.”

Biden and Hariis, as well as the likes of Starmer, and other European politicians, lied and lied again, in the most blatant manner, to deny that the Zionist state was committing genocide and other war crimes, and crimes against humanity, in Gaza, just as they have allowed the Zionist state, for nearly 80 years, to ignore, entirely, one UN Resolution after another, in relation to its expansionary wars, violence and occupation of Palestinian and other Arab lands. On the contrary, they have ideologically defended its explanations for such occupation, on the basis of its right to "defend" itself. At the same time, they have armed and financed its occupations, and, now, its genocide and war crimes.

Dragged in front of the international courts that were only intended to prosecute the tyrants and butchers of states opposed to western imperialism, the Zionist war criminals have, of course, claimed that they should not be there, that the courts have no jurisdiction over them. And, they have largely been supported in those claims by the western imperialist states. After all, the Zionist state, which would have to have been created if it did not exist, was, in the words of Chancellor Merz, in Germany, “doing their dirty work for them”, in the Middle-East. The US has even imposed sanctions on the judges of the international courts themselves, so affronted are they that the rules based international order, and international law should be thought to apply to them and their proxies.

Like Louis XIV, US imperialism believes “L'etat, c'est moi”, when it comes to the global order. Thomas Hobbes argued that the Sovereign once appointed had absolute power, and appointed its own successors. The permanent state fulfils that role, irrespective of what government is in office, whatever the nature of the political regime, be it an Absolute Monarchy, Constitutional Monarchy, Bourgeois-Republic, or Bonapartist regime. Trump sees himself as an Absolute Monarch, prompting the “No Kings” demonstrations across the US. But, King or no King, Trump or no Trump, the driving force of US imperialism, and of the imperialist state, would remain. Louis XIV, after all, on his death bed, said, "I depart, but the State shall always remain."

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Anti-Duhring, Part II, Political Economy, X – From The Critical History - Part 37 of 39

Adam Smith had abandoned his Labour Theory of Value, because he saw that wages did not equal the new value created by labour. He argued that, as soon as landed property and capital arise, the owners of these factors of production will demand a price for allowing their use. As Marx sets out, he need not have abandoned his Labour Theory of Value, and, in places, where he is being analytical, he reverts to it. Ricardo, indeed, did not abandon it, but was, then, presented with the same contradiction faced by Smith that wages did not equal the new value created by labour.

Smith had, in fact, done all the work required to understand, as the Physiocrats did, that surplus-value is created in production, and only realised in exchange. His error was in not distinguishing between the use-value/commodity labour-power, and the value creating activity labour. Had he done so, he would have seen that there is no need to abandon the LTV. The value of labour-power, bought by the capitalist, is, like every other commodity, equal to the labour required for its reproduction. The capitalist does not exploit labour-power, does not cheat the worker in the price they pay for it, but pays the worker its full price. The capitalist does not exploit labour-power, but exploits rather labour.

The value of a day's labour-power may be, say, 8 hours labour, and that is what the capitalist pays to the worker for that labour-power, as wages. But, having bought that labour-power for a day the capitalist can utilise it for a day, and that day might be 10, 12, or more hours in duration. In other words, the labour creates 10, 12 or more hours of new value. The difference between that and the 8 hours of necessary labour (value of labour-power) then forms the surplus-value/profit.

Smith, basically, took over the Physiocratic advances but went further with the LTV, in recognising that value is labour. But, like the Physiocrats, he recognises the contradiction seen in the fact that wages do not equal the new value created by labour, by arguing, as they did, that the owners of the factors of production – land, labour and capital – demand a price for their supply. Because capital is scarce, and labour plentiful, he says, capital is sold above its value, and labour below. His explanation of the falling rate of profit flows from this, as he says that, as capitalism progresses, and capital is accumulate, the supply of capital will rise relative to demand, and the supply of labour will fall.

I have examined these arguments of Smith and Ricardo and Marx's critique of them, elsewhere, in examining Marx's explanation of that tendency.

But, as Marx notes, by the second half of the 19th century, the functional role of the private capitalist had also disappeared, just as it had, earlier, for the landlord class. As the scale of industrial capital grew, it could only be managed and administered by a growing professional, middle-class army of managers, administrators, accountants, technicians and so on. They were drawn from the working-class, requiring an expansion of free, public education. They became the functioning capitalists, just as the industrial capital, itself became “socialised capital”, as the collective property of the “associated producers”, i.e. the workers and managers. The monopoly ownership of capital by private capitalists had become a fetter on the development of capital. The expropriators were expropriated.

The former capitalist owners were relegated to the role of suppliers of money-capital, owners of fictitious-capital, with no social role in production, as had happened to the landlords. They were, now, just a parasitic excrescence living off their ownership of money-capital. As with the landlords before them, if they ceased to exist, production would continue as before, but, now, with their revenues being used productively to accumulate additional capital.

The bourgeoisie and its ideologists, who recognised this, in respect of the old ruling-class – the landed aristocracy – of course, do not admit it when it comes to the redundancy of their own position.

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The Hypocrisy of NATO's Illegal War On Iran - Part 6

Whatever the actual form of this monopolistic competition, the underlying reality was that it required expanding markets, and those expanding markets meant the creation of multinational states, such as is in formation with the EU, and the various similar blocs across the globe. Global imperialist competition, now, takes the form of competition between these various large, multinational blocs. As with the previous shifting alliances between nation states, so too these blocs form their own shifting alliances as they jockey for position.

For a long time, after WWII, as US imperialism was hegemonic, and as the other imperialist states faced the USSR, they subordinated themselves to US imperialism, and its determination of what constituted “international law”. The US created NATO, with its subordinated allies in Europe, prompting the USSR to respond by creating the Warsaw Pact. Superficially, NATO acted to “protect” Western Europe from the threat of invasion from the USSR. But, in reality, Western Europe was not under threat of invasion from the USSR. It sought only to hang on to its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, assigned to it, at the end of WWII, in the conferences at Potsdam and Yalta, to assuage its fears of itself being, again, a victim of invasion from the West, as it had been repeatedly.

US imperialism stationed its troops in Europe for the same reason it created its military bases in 80 countries across the globe, not for any kind of altruistic, defensive reason, but to assert its own global reach, and interests. NATO was the means for US imperialism to spread the cost of its own military expenditure, to serve the interests of US imperialism, just as the US used the role of the Dollar as global reserve currency to pay for its expenditure with increasingly worthless, paper Dollars, which led to the inflation, and global currency crises of the 1970's. Europe acted as an unsinkable aircraft carrier, and early warning system, against any nuclear missile attack from the USSR, the form that any actual war with the USSR would inevitably take, as against any significant, conventional ground offensive.

European countries in NATO, whose real protection against the USSR came from their higher living standards, were obliged to spend money on weapons and weapons systems they were never going to use in Europe, but only ever in support of US imperialism in its militaristic adventures across the globe, for example, in South-East Asia, or Africa and the Middle-East. More than 60% of European military spending goes directly to US arms manufacturers, directly subsidising and justifying the large-scale production of those US companies, and further subordinating European states to the US. Another reason for US imperialism's troops in Europe, was to deter the working-class in Europe from advancing its own interests.

For so long as US imperialism was hegemonic, the role of international law was to represent the interests of US imperialism, and, to a lesser degree the interests of its subordinates in Europe and Japan. The global para state bodies designed to plan and regulate global capitalism, such as GATT/WTO, IMF, and the World Bank also fulfilled that function. But, even within those constraints, as soon as US hegemony began to break down, as US industrial capital went into relative decline, in the face of the rising power of imperialist capital elsewhere, in Europe, Japan, and most notably China, the façade began to erode.

As early as 1971, when France demanded payment of US debts in Gold, at the official exchange rate of $35 an ounce, the US, ended convertibility of the Dollar, bringing the Gold Standard crashing down, and initiating a decade of global currency instability. A surging Japanese industrial capital, dominated world markets, replacing the once dominant US multinationals, and amassing huge trade surpluses with the US in the process, leading to the US using its remaining dominance as global superpower to impose measures on Japan to limit its expansion. Trump is not the first to engage in such actions.

Over the last 40 years, the US has repeatedly imposed tariffs on imports to the US, as its domestic industry has continued to decline relative to its global competitors in Asia, and Europe. Whilst, its actions have been referred to the WTO, it has largely ignored the international rules based order it created, as soon as those rules ceased to operate in its favour. When it comes to other global bodies that has been even clearer. The US, never backed the creation of the International Criminal Court, for example, because it clearly saw, in advance, that its own global military adventures, its own record of military and paramilitary actions, would be a hostage to fortune. It has been its subordinates in Europe that did sign up to the ICC, and ICJ, that again, have been the ones left trying to justify the hypocrisy of an international law that only sought to put defendants from third world countries in the dock, whilst giving worse war criminals from the imperialist states a free pass.

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Anti-Duhring, Part II, Political Economy, X – From The Critical History - Part 36 of 39

“If it were not for this interest, the farmer—the chief agent in agriculture—would not advance the capital for investment in it. Already from this standpoint, the appropriation by the farmer of that portion of the agricultural surplus proceeds which represents interest is, according to the Physiocrats, as necessary a condition of reproduction as the farmer class itself; and hence this element cannot be put in the category of the national “net product” or “net income”; for the latter is characterised precisely by the fact that it is consumable without any regard to the immediate needs of national reproduction.” (p 321)

In other words, to use Marx's formulation, gross output is equal to c + v + s. C, the consumed constant capital (raw and auxiliary materials, and wear and tear of fixed capital) plus the variable-capital (the physical wage goods), must all be reproduced on a “like for like basis”, so that reproduction can occur. Only what is left over after that represents the net or surplus product. Of course, in class societies, the exploiting classes do not see things that way. They, after all, must consume to live, and they justify their consumption on the basis of their functional role in society. Landlords provide land, without which production could not take place; capitalists provide capital, without which production could not occur; money-capitalists provide money, without which some industrial capitalists could not accumulate capital.

The Physiocrats represented the ideas of the rising French bourgeoisie, and, in particular, the capitalist farmers. Like the rising productive-capitalists everywhere, they recognised that the old, aristocratic, landlord class no longer had any functional role. They played no part in agricultural production, as that function was now undertaken by the capitalist farmer. If the landlords didn't exist, then, what the Physiocrats saw as the mystical power of the land to create a surplus product (output greater than inputs) would still exist. If the farmers did not have to hand over that rent to landlords to consume unproductively, production not only would still take place on the same scale, but those rents could be used productively, to cultivate additional land.

In Britain, this same perception led the bourgeoisie's ideologists to argue for land nationalisation. If land was nationalised, they argued, rents paid to the aristocracy would instead go to the capitalist state, so that it would not need to levy as much in tax, which is a deduction from profit. That would leave more profit, and so a greater potential for capital accumulation and economic growth. This is the opposite to the Keynesian argument set out earlier, which argues that increased taxes by the state used, for example, in arms spending can act to increase capital accumulation, employment and growth. Keynes' argument was just a 20th century version of the argument put forward by Malthus as paid apologist of the landed aristocracy. Malthus plagiarised Sismondi's arguments in relation to the inevitability of an overproduction of commodities, and put forward as the solution, increases in the revenues of the landlords, clergy and state, so that the capitalists had less to use to increase production, and all of these other parasitic and unproductive classes had more to spend to increase demand.

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The Hypocrisy of NATO's Illegal War On Iran - Part 5

So long as capitalism exists, competition will exist. That competition is no longer the free market competition that existed even in the early days of capitalist production, let alone in the period of small-scale, independent commodity production that preceded it. It is globalised, monopoly-capitalist (imperialist) competition, but it is competition no less.

“In practical life we find not only competition, monopoly and the antagonism between them, but also the synthesis of the two, which is not a formula, but a movement. Monopoly produces competition, competition produces monopoly. Monopolists are made from competition; competitors become monopolists. If the monopolists restrict their mutual competition by means of partial associations, competition increases among the workers; and the more the mass of the proletarians grows as against the monopolists of one nation, the more desperate competition becomes between the monopolists of different nations. The synthesis is of such a character that monopoly can only maintain itself by continually entering into the struggle of competition.”

(Marx - The Poverty of Philosophy)

In the preceding era of free market competition, each producer sought to increase their market share by undercutting other producers. It was this plethora of small capitals, and petty-bourgeois commodity producers that determined the market-value of commodities, and it was the small number of larger-capitals that were, thus enabled to obtain, surplus profits/rent by selling at these market-values that exceeded the individual value of their own production. It was this same plethora of small private capitals, in conditions of all-out free market competition that led to the crises of overproduction of commodities, such as that of 1825.

By the latter half of the 19th century, it was already the large monopoly-capitalist (imperialist) producers that dominated the economy. It was their production that now determined the market-value of commodities, thereby, removing the conditions that enabled them to obtain, surplus profit/rent. It was now, the remaining small-scale private capitals and petty-bourgeois producers that had to sell at these lower market-values, and who, thereby, obtained lower than average profits, facilitating their ultimate dissolution and subordination to the large monopoly capitals. These large monopoly capitals themselves began to plan their production over the long-time horizons required to justify the investment in huge amounts of fixed capital equipment.

They found that the old free market competition of seeking to gain market share by price-wars was destructive.

“... if one firm out of a small group of firms raises its price, all the others, who at the old price were happy with the volume of sales they were enjoying, would see that volume of sales increase without their doing anything. Hence they might be expected to be reluctant to follow a price increase. On the other hand, one firm lowering its price would take customers from them, if they did not respond. Hence, to avoid this possibility these other firms would be likely to follow a price cut. And not only is there a priori plausibility here; there is also a certain amount of evidence from questionnaires circulated to firms that they do indeed tend to expect their competitors to react this way – not following a price increase, but following a price cut.”

(David Laidler - “Introduction to Microeconomics, p 69-70)

As I have set out, elsewhere, in conditions where social productivity rises by an average of around 2% p.a., the unit value of commodities, also, continually falls, which, if the standard of prices remained constant, would translate into continual falling unit prices. For, one thing, a consequence of that would be that firms would, also, need to reduce nominal wages, each year, which workers would resist. So, imperialist states created central banks in the early part of the 20th century, which presided over fiat currencies. In so doing, they could inflate the currency supply, and, thereby, depreciate the currency/standard of prices so that, despite falling unit values of commodities, prices themselves did not fall, including the price of labour-power/wages.

The monopolies rather than generally competing against each other on the basis of price, sought to compete on the basis of costs. If each firm maintained its prices in line with others, but was able to reduce its production costs, it would make bigger profits. Bigger profits facilitated increased capital accumulation, but that was only useful if the market itself was expanding enough to absorb the additional supply. Otherwise, this increased production could only be sold at the expense of other monopolies. One solution to that, if prices were not to be reduced, was to offer real or supposed improvements in what was being sold. The development of brands, was a part of that. But, bigger profits, if not used for capital accumulation could also enable larger dividends to shareholders, which, then, resulted in a higher share price for the company. A higher share price for one monopoly against another, transferred the competition between them to the stock market, enabling the more valuable company to simply buy-up a controlling stake in another's shares.

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SNNS 36

 

Anti-Duhring, Part II, Political Economy, X – From The Critical History - Part 35 of 39

Above, I set out that the real explanation for the existence of surplus value is the surplus labour undertaken by labourers. That surplus value is produced in industry as well as in agriculture, contrary to the belief of the Physiocrats. On the one hand, they could only explain the unequal exchange between town and country by claiming that it was a result of the town selling its output above its value. However, they have a similar problem with the surplus value produced in agriculture. Its output was 5 milliards, and only 2 milliards was required to replace its working-capital, which it did in natura. That left a surplus product of 3 milliards, of which only 2 milliards is handed over as rent to landlords.

“The third milliard of the surplus constitutes the interest on the total invested capital of the farmers, that is, ten per cent on ten milliards. They do not receive this interest—this should be carefully noted—from circulation; it exists in natura in their hands, and they realize it only in circulation, by thus converting it into manufactured goods of equal value.” (p 320-21)

The argument of the Physiocrats is that, were it not for this interest, the farmers would not advance the 10 milliard of capital required for production. In this, already, however, we see the need to distinguish within the productive class between the capitalist farmer and the labourers employed by them. It is the capitalist farmer that advances the capital not the labourer, who, in fact, is exploited by it. As Marx sets out in Capital and Theories of Surplus Value, however, this begs the question of where the surplus value of 1 milliards, which takes the form of this “interest” comes from. Moreover, why is it only this 1 milliard that is required as “interest”, rather than 2 milliard or ½ milliard?

According to the Physiocrats, the surplus product arises as a free gift of the land. Its on that basis that the landowner claims the 2 milliard of rent, but, again, why not, then, the whole 3 milliards? In fact, the argument is like that put forward by Duhring, which is stood on its head from the real situation. It would mean that the whole surplus of 3 milliards is due to the landlords, but that they “pay” to the capitalist farmer 1 milliard as the required interest to advance their capital!

The reality, of course, as Marx sets out in Capital III, is that the surplus value is produced by the agricultural labourers, and appropriated as profit by the capitalist farmer. Because of the lower organic composition of capital in agriculture/primary production, it produces surplus profits, i.e. profits above the average annual industrial rate of profit. This makes possible Absolute Rent. In addition, because some land is more fertile than others it produces even greater surplus profits, which are the basis of Differential Rent.

The capitalist farmers, having appropriated the profits produced by their workers, hand over a portion of it, the surplus profit, to the landlord. There is nothing, then, arbitrary in this amount, but, as Marx sets out, is now objectively determined. The landlord obtains these revenues, but without giving anything of equal value in exchange. That the landlord, or the state and church, then, hand back some of these revenues to the farmer, in exchange for actual commodities, does not change that situation. It is the original version of the ridiculous Keynesian argument, used today, that claims that economic expansion can be produced by having the state engage in arms spending. The opposite is the truth.

The state finances arms spending by taxes (even if it borrows to finance it, it must eventually repay the loan plus interest on it out of its tax revenues). Taxes, like rent and interest, are a deduction from surplus value/profit. So, that spending reduces the amount of profit available for capital accumulation, and capital accumulation is the basis of economic expansion. That the state spends some of that tax buying arms from some arms companies, who may, then, employ additional workers, does not change the fact that it has done so by reducing the profits available for capital accumulation in the rest of the economy.

What is more, unlike real capital accumulation, which creates new value (because more labour is employed), which goes back into the economy, arms spending does not create any new value that goes back into the economy. That is particularly the case, where, say, the UK government uses those taxes to buy US arms, fighter jets and so on, which creates jobs in the US, not Britain.

If the government uses tax revenue to build a bridge, the bridge itself is a use-value. It raises productivity, by reducing the time required to transport commodities. It feeds back into the economy. The same is true if the government uses tax revenue to build a new school or hospital. It takes part in the production and maintenance of labour-power, just as much as the food produced by a farmer that is then sold to workers.

But, at best, tax spent on arms, results in a stockpile of weapons that sit there and rust away! Non-use values. At worst, it is used destructively – means of destruction, negative use-values – and so further damages real capital accumulation. Obviously, as Marx sets out, in Theories of Surplus Value, states, sometimes, need to spend money on arms, and employing workers unproductively, as soldiers, where they fear invasion. But such diversion of resources is a reduction in its potential capital accumulation and growth forced on it, and the opposite of being a means of stimulating growth.

If Robinson Crusoe had the choice of spending his surplus labour hours building additional animal pens and stocking them, or building sea defences against an unlikely invasion, what do you think his rational choice would be? The ridiculous claims of the British government about the possibility of a Russian invasion of Britain – the same Russia that has spent more than 3 years just trying to advance a few dozen miles into Eastern Ukraine – are simply a means of it justifying its own additional arms spending, as part of NATO's global imperialist ambitions. The suggestion that such spending would have the benefit of creating jobs and spurring the economy is equally ludicrous. The money would be better spent on repairing the crumbling roads, rail network, schools and hospitals, which is where the real threat to the well being of British workers is to be found.

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