Capitalism: rotten to the core (Part 4)

by Harpal Brar

Sections of the population in the rich countries are not immune either from 
the ravages of the "normal" working of capitalism. Here are a few 
facts.

Over 100 million people in OECD countries live below the poverty line. Over 
40 million of these are unemployed. The annual expenditure on narcotics 
alone exceeds the combined GDP of 80 developing countries.

In the US alone, 40 million citizens have no health insurance and one adult 
out of five is functionally illiterate.

According to a US agricultural department study released in October 1999, 
9.7 per cent of US households were "food insecure" (in plain language — 
suffered from hunger) during the three-year period between 1996 and 1998. 
This at a time of the greatest post-Second World War boom in the US, the 
richest and the most powerful imperialist country and self-appointed leader 
of the "free world".

In Britain, another powerful and rich imperialist country, 12 million 
people, out of a population of 56 million, live in "relative poverty", 
i.e., on incomes of less than half the average household income. Of these 
12 million, four million are children.

Monstrous growth of militarism

Although there are not many formal colonies in existence, and although most 
countries are endowed with the accoutrements of political independence, all 
the same the characteristic feature of the present-world is in essence the 
same as at the beginning of the 20th century, namely, its partition into 
spheres of influence among the various contending imperialist powers.

In fact, a frenzied struggle is already under way for the re-division of 
the world between the three imperialist blocs centred around the US, the 
European Union and Japan in the Asia-Pacific.

The war in Yugoslavia, the occupation of the Gulf, the daily bombing of 
Iraq by the Anglo-American imperialist forces, the war provocations on the 
Korean peninsula, the extension of the warmongering NATO alliance to the 
borders of Russia, the American bombing of the Chinese embassy during the 
Yugoslav War, the American spy-plane incident off the Chinese coast, the 
sale of sophisticated weaponry to the renegade province of Taiwan, the 
European attempts to build a European army, and the American decision to go 
ahead with Nuclear Missile Defence Programme in violation of the 1972 ABM 
Treaty — all these can only be explained in the context of a complicated 
but furious struggle going on right before our eyes for the repartitioning 
of the world.

Sooner or later, unless prevented by proletarian revolutions, the 
imperialist blocs — the US, the EU, and the Asia-Pacific must come to 
blows against each other.

It is precisely in the furtherance of the struggle for the partitioning of 
the world that the imperialist powers, notably the United States, have 
armed themselves to the teeth. US imperialism alone spends close to US$300 
billion a year on military expenditure, which accounts for more than a 
third of the military expenditure of the world as a whole.

Thomas Friedman, reactionary journalist, spoke with rare candour in the 
New York Times of March 28, 1999 when he wrote thus:

"For globalisation to work, America can't be afraid to act like the 
almighty superpower that it is. The hidden hand of the market will never 
work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell-
Douglas, the designer of F-15; and the hidden fist that keeps the world 
safe for silicon valley's technology is called the United States Army, Air 
Force, Navy and Marine Corps."

Parasitism and growth of opportunism

Following Lenin, we must devote special attention to "yet another aspect of 
imperialism to which most of the discussions on the subject usually attach 
insufficient importance, namely, to parasitism, which is one of the 
characteristic features of imperialism" (Lenin's Collected Works Vol 
22 p. 276).

Since imperialism is an enormous accumulation of money capital in a few 
countries, it gives rise to an enormous growth "of a class, or rather, of a 
stratum of rentiers, i.e., people who live by 'clipping coupons ', who take 
no part in any enterprise whatever, whose profession is idleness.

"The export of capital, one of the most essential economic bases of 
imperialism, still more completely isolates the rentiers from production 
and sets the seal of parasitism on the whole country that lives by 
exploiting the labour of several overseas countries ..." (Lenin, 
Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, LCW Vol 22 p. 277).

From the above Lenin concludes that opportunism in the working class of the 
imperialist countries was not an accidental phenomenon; that on the 
contrary, it had deep economic roots. Namely, in the super-profits received 
by the bourgeoisie of the imperialist countries from the plunder of the 
whole world, a part of which plunder could be, and is, used to bribe the 
upper stratum of the workers, the labour aristocracy, and thus engender a 
split in the working class.

This stratum of "bourgeoisified workers", thoroughly petty-bourgeois in 
their style of life, the size of their earnings and their world outlook, 
serve as the "principal social ... support of the bourgeoisie ... the real 
agents of the bourgeoisie in the labour movement, the labour lieutenants of 
the capitalist class, the real carriers of reformism and social chauvinism.

In the civil war between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie they 
inevitably, and in no small numbers, stand on the side of the bourgeoisie, 
on the side of "Versaillese" against the "Communards".

Lenin adds: "Unless the economic roots of this phenomenon are understood 
and its political and social significance is appreciated, not a step can be 
taken toward the solution of the practical problems of the communist 
movement and the impending social revolution."

The Gulf and the Balkan wars, and the attitude of the opportunists, from 
trade-union leaders to leaders of social democracy, constitute an eloquent 
proof of the correctness of the above observation of Lenin's.

In our own country, in Britain, with the sole and honourable exception of 
Arthur Scargill and one or two of his comrades; not a single trade unionist 
of any note condemned the imperialist war against Yugoslavia or the daily 
bombing of Iraq.

Conclusion

In the light of the foregoing, it is clear that capitalism in its 
imperialist stage is rotten to the core — it is decadent, parasitic and 
moribund capitalism, which has nothing to offer to four-fifths of humanity; 
it is a system under which speculative operations, amounting to US$3 
trillion a day, are devastating the lives of billions of people and 
shattering the economies of scores of countries around the world.

Such an architecture is beyond repair; it needs to be demolished and 
replaced by a system which gives primacy to production for the satisfaction 
of human need.

To a tiny minority of the world's population it offers riches and comfort, 
but it rewards the vast majority with unemployment, deprivation, agony of 
toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation and war.

Thus it can be seen that imperialism faces humanity with the choice: either 
revolution or war and barbarism.

It is our bounden duty to spread among the proletariat: "... the grim and 
inexorable truth that it is impossible to escape imperialist war, and the 
imperialist world which inevitably engenders imperialist war, it is 
impossible to escape that inferno except by a Bolshevik struggle and a 
Bolshevik revolution" (Lenin, October 14, 1921).

The Leninist theory of revolution and Leninist tactics and methods of 
organisation offer the only road to salvation open to the proletariat faced 
with the stark choice: "Either place yourself at the mercy of capital, eke 
out a wretched existence and sink lower and lower, or adopt a new weapon — 
this is the alternative imperialism puts before the vast masses of the 
proletariat. Imperialism brings the working class to revolution" (Stalin, 
Collected Works Vol 6 p. 74-75).

In its bid to maintain its profits, imperialism is confronting humanity 
with the dilemma: "either sacrifice all culture or throw off the yoke of 
capitalism by revolutionary means, eliminate the domination of the 
bourgeoisie and win a socialist society and lasting peace" (Lenin, For 
Bread and Peace).

At the same time, imperialism sharpens all the contradictions to their 
extreme — those between labour and capital, between imperialism and the 
oppressed nations, between the various imperialist countries, and the 
contradiction between imperialist and socialist countries. By riding 
roughshod it is surely spurring the working class and the oppressed people 
to effect its revolutionary overthrow.

Notwithstanding the colossal reverses suffered by socialism during the past 
decade, notwithstanding all the zigzags of the struggle and the tortuous 
course of events, nothing on earth can stop the victory of proletarian 
revolution on a world scale.

"Imperialism is the eve of the social revolution of the proletariat" 
(Lenin, Preface to the French and German editions of Imperialism, the 
Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin's Collected Works Vol 22 p. 194).

* * *

This is the final of a four-part series. Parts one to three were 
published in the last three Guardians