ByJohn Fisher
"The American people have a revolutionary tradition, which has
been adopted by the best representatives of the American proletariat"
- V.I. Lenin, Letter to American Workers
It has been almost a year since the open ended "War on
Terror" was launched by the American ruling class, and yet, just as we said then, it
has solved none of the problems of terrorism. Indeed, it isn’t designed to be a cure
for terror, but a shallow facade for the unrestrained and brutal tactics of U.S.
Imperialism. Yet it is also unlike any we have seen previously. It is a one-sided act of
aggression by the American imperialist war machine with no clear opponent or measure of
victory.
Let us examine what exactly has been achieved thus far. The Taliban is out of power, but
has been replaced by a regime just as corrupt and unstable. Thousands of Afghani civilians
have been killed. American troops are still stationed there. The "War on Terror"
has also given Sharon, that arch- Zionist, the green light to increase repression and the
use of state terrorism against the Palestinian people. Although it may appear on the
surface that the situation on the Indo-Pakistani border has cooled a bit, the festering
wound of Kashmir still remains, It is just a matter of time until this issue flares up
again.
So, without a single stable regime in the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent on the
brink of another war (this time possibly nuclear!), the Bush clique insists on opening a
new front on the "War on Terror" in Iraq! Here the economic interests of the US
capitalists are blatantly obvious. Iraq is the second largest oil producing country in the
world. With Iraqi oil firmly in their bloody clutches, the American ruling class will not
have to worry about their "ally" Saudi Arabia.
But a second Iraqi war with objective of a "regime change" will cost tens if not
hundreds of thousands of lives, and would mean a long-time occupation. The consequences of
this at home would be devastating to the ruling class as we will get to later. According
to the ruling class, the idea is to go in, take Saddam out and build a pro-U.S. Iraq,
which will be willing and happy to be exploited by U.S. Imperialism. There is also another
message behind this new war: fall in line behind our interests or be brutally destroyed
Regionally a new Iraqi war will lead to violent social upheaval, that is, war, revolution
and counter-revolution. The naive Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld trinity believes nothing can stand
in their way. The working class of the region is barely, if not even an issue in the minds
of these men. Alas, they are in for a rude awakening.
Meanwhile, here in the U.S. the class struggle is heating up despite lingering patriotic
sentiment. The dock-workers on the West Coast are threatening a massive strike that would
paralyze all ports there. Janitors in Boston are also threatening walkouts. Boeing workers
in Kansas, Oregon, and the state of Washington soon will vote whether to strike or not. In
Chicago, hotel workers have also approved a walk out. And don’t forget to keep an eye
on UPS in the near future. Some of the reasons? Loss of jobs, wages that aren’t even
enough to support a family, dignity, and lack of affordable health care. All genuinely
proletarian issues.
The strikes are the beginnings of a counter-attack by the workers against capitalism.
After the Enron collapse 4,000 jobs were lost overnight, After Worldcom folded an
additional 17,000 workers lost their jobs. In the past two years, two million jobs have
been lost, and over $7 trillion has been wiped off the stock markets. The retirement funds
of millions have been halved in value or worse. A brief note on the Enron, Worldcom, Tyco,
and K-mart "scandals"; despite the media’s claims, these happenings are not
the exception but the norm in this rotten socio- economic system known as capitalism.
After September 11, the contradictions and pressures within U.S. capitalism at home as
well as abroad reached a new level. At home workers’ rights are being increasingly
violated and attacked. The ruling class is calling any attempt to strike a "breach of
national security", or even "an act of sabotage against the war on terror".
Abroad U.S. Imperialism is lashing out like the blinded Cyclops from the Oddessey
in an effort to re-establish its authority.
In a recent New York Times article entitled "Workers are Angry and Fearful
this Labor Day", Ari Fleischer, the spokesman for the White House was quoted as
saying, "There’s a real split in the labor community, with an increasing number
of rank-and-file workers proud to support the president, and leaders of some labor groups
also showing signs of support for the president." Although many trade union
"leaders" are bendingover backwards to accomodate Bush and his anti-working
class policies, in many cases, the opposite is becoming more and more the case. Not only
are American workers beginning to see the real face of capitalism and showing their
discontent for it in the early beginnings of mass strikes, but some labor leaders are also
being forced to move to the left, at least in words. In the same New York Times article
John J. Sweeney, the president of the AFL-CIO said "People are really fed up and
furious with corporate America", he went on to say, "The Bush administration has
been the worst for working families in decades". This is only the beginning Mr.
Sweeney.
So what will a new war on Iraq result in here in the U.S.? If it is an extended war and
most likely it will be, the soldiers who come home in body bags will be the sons, brothers
and fathers of working class people. All patriotic sentiment will dry up like a puddle of
water on a hundred-degree day. Workers, youth, small business people, all layers of
society which are pulverized by capitalism will begin to mobilize against this blatantly
imperialist war and the rotten system that spawned it, even if in the beginning there is
support for it.
The "War on Terror" is an open ended and one-sided imperialist military conflict
and will last for an uncertain period of time. The only guarantee against more war and
systematic decline in living standards and eventually global barbarism is socialist
revolution. This may sound unrealistic or utopian to some, but the really utopian view is
to believe that peace, security and prosperity can come to be under capitalism. After the
collapse of Stalinism a little over a decade ago, the "theoreticians" and
"thinkers" of capital believed this. As events have shown and will continue to
show they are wrong. By the very nature of capitalism the vast majority of the global
population is left out in the cold. No matter how much rhetoric Bush, Cheney or Rumsfeld
churn out, or how many bombs they drop this will never change, and nor do they care or
want it to change!
Long gone is the period of general stability of the Cold War, as we have stated so many
times over we are in a period of global convulsions. A period of war, revolution and
counter-revolution.