‘Multipolar’ . . . but purely capitalist (2024)

From the March 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘We’re the United States of America, for god’s sake! The most powerful nation in the world, not in the world, but in the history of the world’. This was Joe Biden’s response in October to the question of whether the US could aid Ukraine and Israel at the same time. If George Bush Sr. or Bill Clinton had boasted similarly when they occupied the White House, many Americans might have nodded in agreement, but it rings hollow or even comical today. Signs that the ‘indispensable nation’ is in decline – militarily, economically, politically, and ideologically – can be seen everywhere.

The decline of US global power raises the hope among many that a new ‘multipolar world’ is emerging that would be more stable and just. The hope is understandable. No one likes a bully, and no country has acted more like one over the past 30 years than the United States of America (for god’s sake). Now that the US government is fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian and supplying Israel with the weapons to massacre civilians in Gaza, it seems clear to many that the world is a dangerous place when one nation wields too much power.

But even if the US is pushed off centre stage, or graciously decides to allow other actors to play a part, the working-class audience would still be watching the same old tragicomedy – a tale about unending conflict arising from unbounded greed – because multipolarity is premised on capitalism and its competitive logic.

History shows that countries united one day to oppose a hegemon, can be at each other’s throats soon after the bully has been cowed. After all, as William Morris pointed out, capitalism is a social system ‘based on a state of perpetual war’ – whether it be the struggle between classes, the competition between capitalists, or the conflicts between nations.

No friendships, just interests

In talking about a ‘multipolar world’ the adjective ‘new’ is often attached, but there is nothing new about multipolarity. It has been the norm throughout the history of capitalism. After World War II, when it seemed that the world was neatly divided between two great blocs, that ‘bipolar world’ saw conflicts within each camp, whether tensions between the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, China, and other ‘Communist’ states, or trade disputes between the United States and its allies. Behind the ideological smokescreen of ‘communism’ or ‘democracy’, each nation-state pursued the interests of its ruling class.

Even during the supposed ‘unipolar moment’ that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States was hardly able to impose its will everywhere (although it tried its hardest).US military power proved incapable of eliminating resistance in Iraq or Afghanistan, and the economic sanctions the US imposed around the world often did more to isolate itself than the targeted country. Much to its consternation, the US saw ‘unfriendly governments’ pop up here and there, including some that had the chutzpah to do so in ‘America’s backyard’ in Central and South America.

The more aggressively the US has wielded its economic and military power, the more it has created enemies and exposed the reality of ‘multipolarity’. However, even though the ‘project for a new American century’ only lasted about as long as Hitler’s ‘thousand-year Reich’ before the wheels started to come off, its neocon architects continue to act as if the whole world envies and fears the United States and is willing to follow its ‘rules-based order’ (Rule 1: Do as we say, not as we do.)

Much of the hope placed in ‘multipolarity’ could be described as a natural and healthy reaction against the aggressive and unpredictable foreign policy of the United States. Other nations cannot help but appear responsible and trustworthy in contrast. It would be naïve, however, to imagine that relations between nation-states can be founded on lasting trust. Nevertheless, cheerleaders for multipolarity do just that in assuming that the BRICs nations are bound by common values or that the ‘friendship without limits’ between China and Russia can be taken at face value.

Here again it helps to look at history, which provides many examples of alliances that were formed from the existence of common enemies or mutually beneficial economic interests, and then dissolved when conditions changed. A case in point was the falling out between the US and USSR after the defeat of Germany. Since no one denies that US foreign policy has pushed China and Russia closer together, it is not unlikely that the two could reconsider their relationship if the US retreats from Europe and East Asia.

The point here is not to predict that China and Russia will fall out of love, but to emphasise that each nation pursues its ‘own interests,’ which means defending the core interests of the capital class. There is no place for lasting friendship among states in this capitalist world.

Under a multipolar world nation-states will continue to pursue their interests and seek alliances with other states accordingly. The motto for the nation-state will remain (to paraphrase Lord Palmerston): ‘No eternal allies, no perpetual enemies: only the duty to follow our own (capitalist) interests.’

The Chinese model?

Another hope placed in multipolarity is that it might be a shift away from ‘neoliberalism’. This is the view that China, Russia, and other BRICs nations have economies centred on the production of material goods for the benefit of its citizens, while the ‘collective West’ has a financialised economy designed to benefit a tiny parasitic elite.

In a 2022 article titled ‘Finance Capitalism Versus Industrial Capitalism’, the influential economist Michael Hudson (a self-described ‘Marxist’), argues that the current rivalry between the United States and China comes down to a ‘clash of economic systems’, with ‘finance capitalism’ on one side and ‘industrial capitalism’ on the other. What is ‘at stake’ in this ‘new Cold War’ is ‘whether the state will support financialization benefiting the rentier class or build up the industrial economy and overall prosperity’.

Hudson describes ‘socialism’ as the ‘natural evolution of industrial capitalism’, attributing this view to Marx. Somewhere in Vol. 1 of Capital (Hudson doesn’t say where), Marx argued that ‘as industrial capitalism evolved toward more enlightened management, and indeed toward socialism, it would replace predatory usurious finance, cutting away the economically and socially unnecessary rentier income, land rent, and financial interest and related fees for unproductive credit’. Apparently, the United States was also on this evolutionary path to socialism until its system of industrial capitalism was undermined by the forces of ‘finance capitalism’ or ‘pro-rentier fascism’.

In Hudson’s interpretation, Marx explained that industrial capitalism makes its profits ‘by investing in means of production to employ wage labor to produce goods and services to sell at a markup over what labor was paid’. This view of profit as an arbitrary ‘markup’ typifies the way Hudson presents capitalism (or ‘industrial capitalism’) as an efficient means of producing material goods, rather than a system founded on the exploitation of labor. The culprit for Hudson is not the pursuit of profit but ‘finance capitalism’, which ‘has eroded [the] core circulation between labor and industrial capitalism’ in which ‘capitalist employers pay wages to their workers and invest profits not paid to employees into factories and equipment’.

A lot more could be said about Hudson’s understanding of terms like ‘capitalism’ and ‘socialism’, not to mention his freewheeling interpretation of Marx, but the important point is that his view that China and other BRICs nations are following a more progressive or socialistic economic model is shared by many others.

In reality, China looks a lot more like the capitalist past than a socialist future. Its manufacturing-based, export-driven economy is modelled in many ways on Japanese capitalism. Japan had the sort of ‘industrial capitalism’ that would earn high marks from Michael Hudson. Indeed, many observers at the time claimed that Japan had pioneered a superior model of capitalism. But in the 1990s, much as the United States had done a decade earlier, Japan offshored much of its industry and carved up its welfare state, in a bid to restore profitability.

Hudson seems confident that the Chinese system will not fall into the sorts of problems that have ensnared the US and Japan. He writes that ‘socialist China’ has been able to ‘keep down the cost of living and business’ by ‘keeping money and credit creation public instead of privatizing it’ and has ‘been able to avoid a debt crisis by forgiving debts instead of closing down indebted enterprises deemed to be in the public interest’.

So what would Hudson have to say about the recent forced liquidation of the property developer Evergrande? The collapse leaves the company’s creditors owed around $300 billion, not to mention the millions of Chinese homeowners who sank their life savings in properties now worth a fraction of their former value. The situation looks a lot like the ‘debt leveraging’ in the US that Hudson bemoans, which ‘makes investors, speculators, and their bankers wealthy but raises the cost of housing (and commercial property) for new buyers, who are obliged to take on more debt in order to obtain secure housing’.

These recent developments suggest that either ‘finance capitalism’ has already taken root in China, or that the clear distinction Hudson and others draw between that model and ‘industrial capitalism’ is nonsense.

The champions of multipolarity and the BRICs, like Hudson, would have us pin our hopes on capitalism gradually ‘evolving’ into socialism. This might seem plausible to the many who mistake ‘socialism’ for state capitalism, but the real solution lies elsewhere. Instead of the competitive, multipolar world of production to generate profit, we desperately need to move toward a cooperative, borderless world of production to meet human needs.

MS

Tit-Bits from the Press (1941)

From the October 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

The American Navy.

“When the day of Hitler’s defeat comes, sea-power will again be dominant, and the centre of it will not be in London but in Washington, D.C. Never again will we permit even the British to excel us in sea-power.”—(From a speech by Mr. Knox, Secretary to the U.S. Navy, quoted in Life, March 10th, 1941.)

* * * *

One Suit since the War.

Lord Dulverton, chairman of the Imperial Tobacco Company, is quoted in the Daily Telegraph, of July 15th, as stating that he had bought only one new suit of clothes since the war broke out. If the non-purchase of suits is a measure of patriotism, the writer of these notes can score one off Lord Dulverton, because he hasn’t bought a single suit since the war started. In his case, however, the reason is different. He couldn’t afford it.

Ramo.

Material World: The Changing World Power Configuration (2012)

The Material World Column from the March 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

American global hegemony continues its steady decline. The most striking recent instance is the overt shift of Pakistan, long a US client state, into China’s sphere of influence.

The US, unable now to supply its forces in Afghanistan through Pakistan, has no choice but to withdraw rapidly from that country. (We know from WikiLeaks that the US asked China to allow a new supply route through Chinese territory but was refused.)

Afghanistan will revert to its traditional status as a dependency of Pakistan, whose tool the Taliban was from the start. Eventually Afghanistan too, with its rich unexploited mineral resources, may be integrated into the Chinese sphere. Or there may be renewed Russian and Uzbek intervention (advocated by some Russian strategists), with north-south partition the probable result.

Illusions of grandeur

America’s vast military spending and far-flung network of bases are now hugely disproportionate to its diminished economic strength and real influence over events. Multiple wars have left its troops overextended and exhausted. Yet the idea of deep reductions in military forces remains taboo in mainstream American politics, while the US and Israel again gear up for war with Iran (for an earlier analysis see Material World, Socialist Standard, January 2008).

Neither the special interests of the military-industrial complex nor the insatiable thirst for cheap oil fully explain such insanity (even by capitalist standards). Like the rulers of all dying empires, the US elite is in the grip of illusions of grandeur. Indeed, there is less realistic discussion of waning American power today than in the years following the 1987 publication of Paul Kennedy’s The Rise and Decline of the Great Powers, when the process was much less advanced.

The US – China relationship

The emerging axis of the world power configuration is the relationship between the old hegemon and the only conceivable (though not necessarily likely) candidate for the role of new hegemon – China.

The US has lost considerable ground to China in the rivalry over the resources of regions where its sway was previously unchallenged – Africa and Latin America (once known as Uncle Sam’s “backyard”). For instance, China is now Brazil’s No. 1 trading partner.

Other sources of tension between the US and China include disputes over territorial rights in the South China Sea (MW, April 2009), restrictions on exports of China’s rare earth metals (MW, May 2011), intellectual property rights, and currency exchange rates.

Until recently, however, these tensions were counterbalanced by a symbiotic interdependence between the US and Chinese economies, requiring a certain level of cooperation. China’s industrial expansion was fuelled by American (as well as Japanese, South Korean and Taiwanese) investment and imports of Chinese consumer goods.

The symbiosis disintegrates

This symbiosis is disintegrating under the impact of the economic crisis. Much consumption of Chinese goods was financed by debt, and now the bubble has burst. Other longer-term factors are also at work. The recent successes of China’s workers in raising their wages make China less attractive to foreign investors, who are now moving their money to countries like Vietnam and Bangladesh where they can still pay rock-bottom wages.

As a result, the US – China relationship is becoming more conflictual. China is deploying more forces to the South China Sea, while America is beefing up its military presence in the Philippines and Singapore and even plans a base in northern Australia.

At the same time, the US adroitly manipulates understandable fears of China in the countries along its borders. In particular, it seeks close relations with India (traditionally a Soviet/Russian ally), which it encourages to pursue its own regional rivalry with China. India tries to surround China with its client states, while China tries to do the same to India.

So although China has strengthened its positions in more distant regions, its control over its immediate neighbourhood is slipping, as signalled by Burma’s decision not to cooperate with China’s dam construction program. This could lead to a highly unstable “sandwich” pattern of great power rivalry.       

The Russia – China relationship

The relationship between Russia and China is marked by similar rivalries and ambiguities. Like the US, Russia is losing ground to China in a region where it used to predominate – post-Soviet Central Asia with its oil and gas. There are also tensions in cross-border relations, notably over Chinese firms’ exploitation of timber, fish and other resources in the Russian Far East.  

Nevertheless, the cooperative element in Russian-Chinese relations is also strong, and perhaps more resilient than US – China cooperation. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) facilitates multilateral relations among China, Russia and the Central Asian countries, and this helps to mitigate Chinese-Russian rivalry in Central Asia.

In October 2008 this column suggested that the SCO might prefigure a Chinese-led bloc directed against US hegemony (MW, Oct 2008). Now it looks as if the conflict of interests between Russia and China may be too great to permit such a development.

An opaque multipolar world

Thus, in the foreseeable future there may be neither a new global hegemony to replace the US nor a new bipolar configuration. Rather, the current opaque multipolar world will continue to evolve in ways that are difficult to predict. This will occur in the context of enormous climatic change, accompanied by the scramble for the melting Arctic (MW, Sep 2007) and later on for the melting Antarctic.

Unless, that is, we can forge links of solidarity across all the actual and potential battle lines that scar our plundered planet. Unless we can dismantle all the rival state machines and set up a world socialist community.

Stefan

New World Order Comes to Iraq (1992)

Illustration by George Meddemmen.

From the November 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the Cold war ended, the USA found itself deprived of its anti-Communist card and could no longer use the “Soviet threat” as the pretext by which to intervene in defence of its interests in international affairs from Vietnam to Grenada.

The 1990 Gulf Crisis came just in time to arm President Bush with the excuse he needed to re-assert US international leadership at a time when its right to lead was being challenged, and when it was a third-place economic power behind Germany and Japan.

A US-led Gulf War would have many incentives for an economically-struggling superpower. As the Middle East was a major oil-producing region, it was important for the US to be seen as the champion of “liberty and democracy” here—at the end of the day there would be lucrative pay-offs, and it did not matter that both Kuwait and Saudi Arabia had abysmal human rights records. Iraq could also be used as something of a showroom for every type of hi-tech weaponry available. Thus it was little wonder that US firms secured Middle East arms sales worth $18 billion months after the shooting war ended, not to mention a further $9 billion contract to supply Saudi Arabia with 72 F-15s in early September this year.

Two years after the “Mother of all Atrocities”, the Allies are back in the Gulf, like the proverbial villains returning to the scene of the crime.

Mandate to kick ass

This time the pretext is that Iraq has breached UN Security Council resolutions 687 and 688, in which Iraq conceded to allow UN inspectors, charged with rooting out and destroying its weapons of mass destruction, access to key ministries, and to halt the repression of its civilians.

The US, in reality, never needed the breach of any resolution to intimidate any country. The US has UN cover to kick ass wherever it pleases. This was made clear by the UN Ambassador Thomas Pickering who pointed out to the Security Council in 1990 how Article 51 allows the US “to use armed force . . . to defend our interests”. In this case to prevent Panama from using its territory as a base for smuggling narcotics into the USA.

That a breach of UN resolution 687 is the reason the US is back in the Gulf is something of an irony. After all, it was the US who gave Saddam the money to buy the weapons at his disposal during their years of diplomatic courtship, and few would doubt that the US intelligence network knew where the money went.

Bush’s love-hate relationship with Saddam stretches back some ten years, for it was then that Bush, as a big voice on the National Security Council, argued that Saddam wasn’t all that bad, that Iraq should be encouraged as a block to the Islamic fundamentalists of Iran.

By 1984 Bush’s relationship with Saddam had developed and Iraq and the US were enjoying healthy diplomatic relations and intelligence sharing – even at late as 1990 the CIA was tipping off Saddam about a Ba’athist assassination plot. In 1984, Bush also talked the Export-Import Bank into pressing on with a dodgy loan worth $484 million to Iraq.

A further $5 billion Community Credit Corporation programme was underway in 1987, the same year Bush met the Iraqi Ambassador for talks about the easing of licences for hi-tech exports sought by Iraq, and the same year Iraq attacked the USS Stark killing 37 US servicemen.

In 1988, ignoring evidence from US officials that Iraq was subverting US credit programmes to purchase arms, and opposing congressional sanctions brought about by Saddam’s murder of 2,000 Kurds at Halabja, Bush pushed through further loans.

When FBI agents raided the Atlanta branch of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro in 1989, evidence was found of a $4 billion link to Saddam’s arms network. Bush’s own administration went on to prove Saddam was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. Bush, however, insisted that healthy diplomatic relations came first. As late as 1990, Lawrence Eagleburger and James Baker had pulled off a further $1 billion deal with Iraq through other government agencies, and days before the allied invasion, April Glespie, the US Ambassador to Iraq was telling Saddam how the US had no interest in his “border disputes”. What followed is etched in history forever.

Democrat Charles Schumer was right when he commented that Saddam was “President Bush’s Frankenstein . . . a run- of-the-mill dictator the President fed with US dollars”. (Guardian, 22 May).

Iraq’s breach of resolution 688 – the repression of Southern Shi’ites – is hardly something Bush should be losing sleep over. Wasn’t it the US which backed Saddam in his war against the Shi’ites of Iran – the same Shi’ites who saw the USA as the “Great Satan”?

As David Hirst pointed out: “During the Iran/Iraq war, the US backed Saddam as an instrument to contain Khomeinism and the dire threat it seemed to pose the oil-rich monarchies of the Gulf.” (Guardian, 28 August)

Strategic interests

Following the Gulf War came the “Great Betrayal”. Bush urged the Kurds in the north and the Shi’ites in the south to rise against Saddam. Thinking they had US backing they did just that, only to hear Bush point out that he would not mobilize ground troops in their defence; neither would he commit US aircraft to repel Iraqi sorties against them. Bush’s reason? He feared that Iran would capitalize on the Shi’ite backlash and spread the fundamentalist revolution to southern Iraq. Thus the US pulled back, fearing a strengthened Iran, now Iraq was disabled, would mean a greater threat to US strategic interests in the region. 

Of course, Saddam is just as big a hypocrite as Bush. In his war against Iran, Saddam heaped praise on the Marsh Arabs—Shi’ites who fought alongside Iraqi troops. Now Saddam sees them as “inferior and un-Iraqi, monkey-faced people”.

In reality, the second round of the Gulf crisis was a blatant piece of Bush electioneering – the latest instalment being the recently – announced sale of 72 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia. A deal that will secure 20,000 defence jobs and up Bush’s election chances in the key Mid-West state of Missouri.

Bush claimed that the jets were a reward for Saudi support during the Gulf War, believing the deal will not disturb the strategic balance in the region – if there ever was one – at the same time contradicting his own stated policy of scaling down arms proliferation in the Middle East.

Bush’s sidekicks, Baker and General Brent Scowcroft, welcomed with open arms a high level delegation of Iraqi opponents of Saddam at a meeting in late July. For the mixed team of Kurds, Sunnis and Shi’ites provided the Bush administration with just the pretext it needed to have another go at Saddam. A deal was quickly arranged whereby an air umbrella would be enforced north of the 36th Parallel bisecting Kurdistan, with a similar exclusion zone below the 32nd Parallel between Baghdad and Basra.

On 13 August Bush and Scowcroft hatched a further plan, whereby UN inspectors would attempt to gain access to key Iraqi ministries. The innocent UN inspectors, supposedly highly trained and acting on their own initiative, in fact depended heavily on US intelligence.

Three days later, Patrick Tyler of the New York Times, broke a story concerning the UN inspectorate’s demand for access to the Ministry of Military Industries.

One official told how the whole cat-and-mouse game “relates less to the importance of any documents that might be found in the targeted buildings than the conviction that the steps will provoke a confrontation that will serve as a pretext for military action and to help the President get re-elected”.

By mid-August the US was well prepared to bomb any ministry failing to open its doors, or to knock out of the sky any Iraqi plane that did not belong there – the US had 120 planes on stand-by in Saudi Arabia with more offshore. They had also brought along, for the sheer hell of it, the GBU-28, a bomb capable of penetrating 90 feet of soil and concrete.

The US, in recent years, has acquired something of a name for itself when it comes to bringing along more tools than are needed for the job. In 1991, the coalition had 2,000 combat aircraft in the Gulf, outnumbering Saddam’s 3-1. Allied ground forces in 1991 numbered 700,000–troops from 32 nations. Saddam, as was only recently revealed (but you can bet Bush knew all along), had 183,000 troops.

The Vietnam Syndrome had left deep psychological scars on the Pentagon. Bush wanted to hit Iraq hard and fast, ignoring arguments that sanctions should be left to work. Now, sanctions are indeed working. At present inflation of the Iraqi dinar stands at 4,000 percent. The war has left starvation and disease in its wake, with little prospect of international help. Hundreds of thousands of widows and orphans will carry the mental scars of the war for years to come. So who the hell needs another war? Iraq needs one like it needs the plague.

The present crisis is also wrapped up in that complex term “The New World Order”, about which much has been written in recent years. Back in January 1991, Noam Chomsky (Professor of Modern Languages and Linguistics Massachusetts Institute of Technology) had this to say:

  The NWO is real enough . . . its basic features were coming into force 20 years ago with the emergence of a tri-polar world as economic power diffused within US domains. The US remains the world’s leading military power, but its economic security has declined. . . . With the collapse of Soviet tyranny, the US is more free than before to use force . . . In the NWO, the Third World domains must still be controlled by force (Guardian, 10 January 1991).

The Bush administration is well aware of this. In March this year, the US Defence Department drafted a policy to:

  ensure that no rival . . . is allowed to emerge in Western Europe, Asia or the territory of the former Soviet Union . . . the US must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive position to protect their legitimate interests (Guardian, 9 September).

Peregrine Worsthorne was certainly thinking along the lines of US capitalists in the wake of the Cold War when he wrote that the task is to “to help build and sustain a world order stable enough to allow the advanced economies of the world to function without constant interruption and threat from the Third World”. (Sunday Telegraph, 16 September 1990).

Is it not a further irony that the US needs just this kind of “interruption and threat” to re-assert itself, exploiting its monopoly in the security market to reap economic rewards. Were the US to slash its defence budget by 25 percent in the next five years, as recently pondered by the Pentagon, it would face the prospect of pulling out of many of its bases in Europe and the Far-East. This would, as Francis Fukuyama pointed out “in turn stimulate real pressure for regional rearmament” (Guardian, 9 September).

But who would those nations wishing to re-arm buy weapons from? You guessed it and the US would always have the pretext to invade any up-and-coming tyrant who had a few too many weapons.

We should expect wars to be still on the capitalist menu in coming years.

John Bissett

‘Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World’ (2009)

From the October 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

The United States ‘intelligence community’ has recently produced a report giving a strategic overview of current geopolitical and economic trends, and mapping out potential scenarios by the year 2025. The U.S. is militarily and economically pre-eminent in the world, and the aim of the report is to guide strategic thinking and inspire political action on behalf of the U.S. ruling class and its allies.

To make it less incestuous, certain academics, consulting firms and think-tanks were invited to participate. These include the Atlantic Council of the United States, the Wilson Center, RAND Corporation, the Brookings Institution, American Enterprise Institute, Texas A&M University, the Council on Foreign Relations and Chatham House in London.

The report is declassified and available to read online (Link), which means it is considered safe for public consumption. The specific plans for action resulting from it will no doubt be on a strictly ‘need to know’ basis. There is enough material to fill several issues of this magazine, so we will look at one broad theme: increasing authoritarianism and its implications for democracy.

The Chairman’s preamble notes that the study seeks to “identify opportunities for policy intervention … (which) … can decrease the likelihood and severity of negative developments and increase the likelihood of positive ones.” So, what do they consider to be ‘negative’ and ‘positive’? The plans do not prioritise, for example, alleviating world hunger, preventing war or cutting the emissions that cause global warming (even though going over the climatic tipping point is recognised as a possibility). No. The ruling class concern is how they can continue to protect their interests as these disasters that their system is causing unfold. Their predictions are to some extent their intentions, and we can stand warned about what to expect from them.

Nation States
The global financial crisis is seen as accelerating processes already underway and the report calls for “long-term efforts to establish a new international system.” (p.11) As the Cold War era gave way to a unipolar order of American hegemony, in which the U.S. became the self-appointed policeman of the world, this too may have to give way and be replaced by a multipolar international system, with strong regional blocks centred in North America, Europe and Asia. China and India, in particular, are expected to have further economic growth and greater regional and world influence. However, this is also expected to cause (or exacerbate) certain problems. Concerning oil and gas resources, and also food and water (partly due to climate change), “demand is projected to outstrip easily available supplies over the next decade or so.” (p.viii) It is predicted that nation states will therefore be taking greater protectionist measures up to and including war.

Capitalism is based on ownership and control by the minority capitalist class, ruthless exploitation of the majority for profit, and thus competition. In this system, the nation state is a mechanism used by capitalists to protect – and extend – their dominion as owners and rulers, and this has always led to international strife. As resources dwindle, due to pollution, overexploitation and climate change - or easily accessible supplies (those that are profitable) are used up - competition and thus conflict can be expected to intensify.

The report’s authors “remain optimistic about the long-term prospects for greater democratization, but advances are likely to slow and globalization will subject many recently democratized countries to increasing social and economic pressures that could undermine liberal institutions.” (p.87) This is something the rich and powerful know all about. U.S. and U.K. governments have regularly intervened to disrupt and sometimes overthrow democratic institutions and to support the installation of military dictatorships when it has been considered good for making money/establishing strategic positions. Such foreign policy has frequently resulted in pro-democracy campaigners being beaten or shot in the street or hunted down, tortured, and imprisoned. U.S. supported coups (and attempted coups) specifically to remove elected governments include: Iran 1953, Guatemala 1954, Chile 1973, Nicaragua 1981, Grenada 1983, Panama 1989, Algeria 1992, Haiti 1994-2000, Venezuela 2002, and Bolivia 2008 (for a full list of interventions see here) Interestingly, in Venezuela and Bolivia the elected government has been retained due to popular pressure.

Democracy is used by the ruling class as both shield and sword: as a cover (legitimisation) for the continuing rule of the minority class, and when useful as a justification for aggression against other nation states. Whilst it was suddenly imperative for oil-rich Iraq to be ‘democratised’ by operation ‘Iraqi Freedom’, non-democratic regimes that are ‘friendly’ to U.S. business, such as Saudi Arabia, are not deemed to be a problem.

State capitalism
There is speculation in the report that economic success for China may lead to other countries adopting state capitalist authoritarianism; which means the state taking a more direct and prominent role in economic management. This might be a regional phenomenon, or become more widespread. It is suggested that a trade-off could occur with domestic populations; the promise of more ‘security’ and ‘economic success’ in return for less democracy. In a complex world of economic crisis, environmental catastrophe and war over resources, democracy may come to be (or is already being) regarded as too unpredictable and uncontrollable – and may come to be presented to the populace as such. The report notes a “questioning among elites over the ability of democratic governments to take the bold actions necessary to deal rapidly and effectively with the growing number of transnational challenges.” (p.87)

This “questioning among the elites” has long since gone over into action in the U.S. and elsewhere. The enhanced state powers that have been taken following the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001 marked a speeding-up of processes already underway. In the U.S. we have seen the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security, and the passing of the USA Patriot Act. The latter has legalised greater surveillance of telephone and internet users, searches of premises without consent or knowledge, access without a court order to financial records, library records etc. and indefinite detention of immigrants. This has been accompanied by an increasingly restrictive appeals process in the U.S. judiciary system.

Other countries have also been expanding their anti-terrorism legislation and law enforcement powers. Two significant trends are 1) the broad application of terrorist legislation and 2) moves that have been taken to exclude people who have been labelled as terrorists from having the protections conferred by national and international law such as the right to an open trial. Of course, a state of war – and the ‘War on Terror’ will do – anyway allows for martial law to be imposed by democratic governments on behalf of the capitalist class whenever they see fit.

The report says that “terrorism is unlikely to disappear by 2025.” (p.iv) Given that terrorism is an inevitable consequence of capitalist competition, this is no surprise. And the possibility as well as the actuality of terrorism is a useful propaganda tool. It serves to justify the diminishing of democratic rights – all in the name of defending democracy – and to keep domestic populations sufficiently supportive of state terrorism being carried out by certain liberal democracies (often the U.S. with the U.K. helping) in various parts of the world. We are also told that "counterterrorism and counterinsurgency missions increasingly will involve urban operations as a result of greater urbanization,” including domestically (p70). This accords with the present trend for an increasing percentage of civilian casualties in war.

The capitalist class (or significant sections of it) certainly seems to be preparing to deal with the kind of threats to their system that would be posed by the unrest and disruption that could result from greater societal dysfunction, and also perhaps from the growth of informed types of rebellion that locate the source of our problems as being the profit system itself. The burgeoning of information sharing through the World Wide Web may be something in particular that worries the capitalist class. For a considerable time in the West, propagating deception and distraction has helped to keep the majority of workers compliant, but we should not doubt that the more overtly violent and oppressive techniques that have been used to pursue ruling class interests elsewhere in the world will also be used to control people in the West if it is deemed necessary by the ruling class, and if they can get away with it.

And, to an extent, they are already getting away with it, including in the U.K. As well as the measures mentioned above – and in some cases in close association with them – trade union rights have been neutered or removed, local government has become even more geared to meeting central government targets than meeting local needs, restrictions have been placed on the right to protest, the incidence of ‘stop and search’ by the police has greatly increased and the length of time which people can be detained without charge has been extended. Generally in the West ever larger numbers of people are being criminalized and imprisoned. Hard-won civil liberties and human rights have been removed or limited by law at an accelerated rate during the last few years, and the process isn’t over yet. There are advanced plans for ID cards, yet more CCTV cameras, and further surveillance of telephone and internet use. For the capitalist class, enemies are not just rival capitalists, capitalist groups or states: the enemy also resides ‘within’ – it is us, the working class majority of wage and salary earners.

Alienation
The report notes that “surveys show growing frustration with the current workings of democratic government …” (p.87), which is not surprising given the current level of democratic deficit. Alienation from existing institutions has profound and diverse effects in society, and changes of popular mood and action may be unpredictable. This presents a potential threat to those in power, but for the moment they have been presented with an opportunity. Lack of democratic involvement has itself resulted in growing apathy and lack of political awareness, which in turn results in the unwitting acceptance of democratic erosions and a grudging acquiescence to authoritarian methods. Unfortunately, in capitalist style democracy, it is democracy that is often blamed for not fulfilling the promise, instead of the capitalist structures that place such severe limits upon its function.

Within capitalist limits, democracy exists in a state of flux; the balance altering according to the relative strength of the contending classes, and to the different forces in the capitalist class. Amongst themselves the capitalist class have found use for democracy in solving disputes. However, concerning wider democracy, the more quiescent we are and the more an alternative to the existing system is deemed to be unrealistic or impossible (the more that capitalist indoctrination is successful), the more we stand to lose that bit of democratic space we do possess. Where it exists, the right to vote has been won through direct pressure, and conceded by members of the ruling class who could see the potential of a more inclusive electoral process conferring legitimacy to minority class rule. Subsequently the use of the concept of democracy in the ideological struggle has helped to establish it around the world. However, since so much propaganda (and hypocrisy) has been expended on extolling its virtues, it might prove difficult to switch off.

Even the better democracies existing in capitalism come nowhere near to fulfilling the potential of what democracy can actually be. What we have presently is a system in which wealth is concentrated in the hands of a minority, who therefore have most of the power – including in the media. ‘Free speech’ in these conditions simply means that the wealthy – the rulers – still get to put their view foremost and have so far convinced the electorate to faithfully return capitalist parties to parliament.

Democratic theory
Democracy comes from Greek: ‘demos’ and ‘kratia’. It essentially means ‘people power’ or ‘rule by the people’, i.e. it is about the majority being able to make decisions and put them into effect. Mainstream political theory and practice tries to separate ‘politics’ from ‘economics’. ‘Political democracy’ is allowed in an approved form, but economic democracy is impossible because of economic inequality; the majority are deprived of ownership and control of the means of life.

As long as capitalism continues the working class will continue to be exploited for profit, and the system will continue to give rise to waste, war, poverty and famine. The capitalist class will continue to claim that the aim of their actions is to relieve us of these dire conditions, whereas in actual fact their profit-making policies only perpetuate them. For all the expected changes indicated in the report, what we see is business as usual. As such, there are tactical decisions to be made, and we can rest assured that other power blocs have similar concerns. What the thieves are bothered about is that other groups of thieves will take their booty – or at least take too great a share – or worse still, that the workers will recognise them for what they are and unite to emancipate themselves.

‘Global Trends 2025’ is the capitalist version of the immediate future, but we do not have to be passive recipients of this. It benefits the workers of the world to organise to defend and extend democratic rights; to widen the democratic space as much as possible. For democracy is the way in which we can unite to free ourselves from the insanity of the profit-system and domination by a minority ruling class. We can replace oppression with equality, waste of resources with production directly for use, and systemic competition with cooperation for the common good. We can create the world that we want, fashioned by the majority, in the interests of the majority.

LB/RW