councilor.org
| Source | Louis Proyect |
| Date | 02/07/16/00:00 |
| A regime in crisis
The significance of the present crisis goes far beyond economics. It has profound political and psychological implications. Even before the present wave of scandals, many people in the USA were beginning to question the validity of the present system. The unprecedented level of abstentions at the last presidential election showed just how far ordinary Americans are alienated from the political establishment. Last September we had the spectacle of a President "elected" by fraud, declaring war against all and sundry. The events of September 11 had the effect of temporarily boosting Bush, but this process, as we predicted, was bound to turn into its opposite. It may be that this has already begun. In the past, Americans regarded the world of "private enterprise" rather as the Jews of the Old Testament regarded the Holy of Holies. But now the whole mood of society is beginning to change. There is a growing suspicion, even outright hostility towards big business. Now this is extending to the political establishment and the Presidency itself. This is the reason for the unprecedentedly harsh attacks of both Republican and Democrat politicians against corporate America. They have understood that if something is not done (or, at least, the impression given that something will not be done) the present scandals could lead to a crisis of the regime itself. As a result of these scandals serious questions are being asked: "America rewarded hard work and smart people. But now Americans are asking just how much of the great boom the country has gone through was real, or the result of corrupt executives enriching themselves at shareholders' expense with the help of complicit accountants and greedy bankers." (The Economist, July 11, 2002) All this is more than just an inconvenience. It is dangerous, because the doubts and questioning in America are not confined to the business sector. People do not believe that it is a question of just a few isolated cases. That might have been believable after the Enron scandal, but not now. There are too many scandals involving too many companies for that to be the case. The crisis in America has already spread far beyond the boardrooms of Wall Street. Like a shameful and highly contagious disease it has spread through the body politic, reaching the uppermost echelons of the state. With mid-term elections for Congress due in November, politicians in Washington DC are falling over themselves, trying to see who can talk the toughest over corporate wrongdoing. In a speech to Wall Street on July 9, Mr Bush proposed creating a new financial crimes "SWAT team" to catch and prosecute corporate wrongdoers. But this is mere window-dressing. A number of the plans proposed by Bush would require self-policing by companies and accountants. Needless to say, none of them tackle the underlying problems. Not to be outdone, the very next day, the US Senate proposed harsher penalties. The result? Immediately the panic on the stock markets provoked further falls. On Wednesday July 10, America's S&P index of leading stocks fell to its lowest level in four years. The slump was infectious, and on Thursday July 11 stocks experienced sharp falls across Asia and Europe. The Democrats, with one eye on the elections, point the finger at the Bush administration's close links to business. Both Mr Bush and his vice-president, Dick Cheney, are having to defend themselves against allegations of irregular dealings during their time as businessmen. The dirty water is slopping against the walls of the White House itself. Halliburton is an oil company that used to be chaired by Dick Cheney. The SEC is looking into how this company handled cost overruns on construction jobs. Judicial Watch, a conservative group, is suing both Halliburton and Mr Cheney for allegedly deceiving investors. Even more damaging is the issue of Harken Energy, a company in which George W. Bush was a director. In 1990 he sold shares in the Texan firm just eight days before it unveiled sharply-increased losses. As an insider, he ought to have told the SEC immediately, but notice of his sales was not filed for nine months. Mr Bush has blamed this on a "mix-up" by his lawyers. The SEC investigated at the time, but - naturally enough - never took any action. Bush himself is therefore in a highly vulnerable position. He has been forced to defend himself over his own links to big business and allegations of improper dealings. In the present climate, close links with big business is the kiss of death, as the Economist points out: "As the first American president with a masters degree in business administration, Mr Bush was always expected to be more than a little friendly towards corporate America and Wall Street. Unfortunately for him and other members of his administration, friendliness to boardrooms and financiers has become something of a political liability following the wave of accounting scandals. Mr Bush is giving his support to the chairman of the SEC, Harvey Pitt, who has come under fire from politicians on both sides of Congress. A number of leading senators have called for Mr Pitt's resignation as America's chief markets regulator. Ten months after being appointed to the job by Mr Bush, he has been attacked for dragging his feet. Mr Pitt, a former securities lawyer, is accused by his critics of conflicts of interest which have led him to put his former private clients - especially big accountancy firms - before the public interest." (The Economist, July 11, 2002) At present, financial crimes can be so difficult to prosecute that criminal charges may never be filed. Wealthy businessmen with slick lawyers can usually wriggle out of awkward situations. Patrick Leahy, a leading Democrat and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, pointed out that: "If you steal a $500 television set, you can go to jail. Apparently if you steal $500 million from your corporation and your pension holders and everyone else, then nothing happens." This is only saying what everyone already knows. Long ago Anatole France wrote about the "the majestic egalitarianism of the law, which forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." Everybody knows that there is one law for the rich and another law for the poor. However, the spectacular nature of the recent revelations must have brought home to many millions of ordinary Americans the close links between big business and the political and legal establishments. One blow after another On a world scale, capitalism is being shaken by one blow after another. New crises and convulsions break out even before the previous ones have been resolved. Slowly, a growing number of people are beginning to realise that something is fundamentally wrong. Old beliefs are being called into question. Old and deeply rooted faiths are being shaken. Old leaders are being weighed in the balance and found wanting. Those who conclude that the present crisis is merely of a transient nature are mistaken. They have not understood the real nature of the present epoch. It is asserted (even by people who have read at least a little Marx) that the crisis we see before our eyes is merely cyclical in character, and moreover, is superficial in character. What is superficial is an analysis that cannot distinguish between a cyclical economic crisis of capitalism and the organic sickness of a system that has entered into a long-term decline. In itself, it is true, the present crisis of the world economy is cyclical in character. But merely to state this does not carry us very far. It is necessary to put the crisis in its historical context. The nature of capitalist crisis, its depth, duration and above all the effects that it produces in the psychology of the different classes - all these are variables that differ according to the historical context in which they unfold. The cyclical crises of the period of capitalist upswing from 1948 to 1974 were so shallow that they were scarcely noticed. But the present situation is very different. The present crisis, which is far from over, has not yet expressed itself in massive unemployment. The measures adopted by Greenspan, which amounted to an increase in credit, and other measures (discount selling, the rundown of inventories, etc) plus the inevitable rebound of the economy after the sharp fall that followed September 11, had the effect of buoying up demand in the USA. This temporarily shored up the stock markets. But all this does not amount to a serious recovery. That will not happen unless and until corporate profitability is restored, and that is nowhere in sight. Many bourgeois economists have pointed out that recent recessions have usually followed the pattern of a "double-dip", where a temporary rally is followed after a certain delay by an even steeper fall in production, employment and share prices. That is quite a likely scenario at the present time. However, that is not the point. The point is that even at the present time, the recession has been the signal for an unprecedented crisis of confidence, doubts, questioning and global instability, which, as we have pointed out, is by no means confined to the economy. Bush's military policy is an expression of the fact that America has had the misfortune to have inherited the role of world hegemony at a time of general crisis of capitalism. On a world scale, there are clear symptoms that the capitalist system is suffering from an incurable sickness. The lives of millions of people are being turned into a living hell. Beginning with the weakest economies, which used to be called "emerging countries" there are signs of disintegration and social and economic collapse. This has nothing to do with the economic cycle! The so-called War on Terror is a cloak that is meant to disguise America's ambitions to tighten its grip on every continent. Yet despite all America's power, it has yielded no positive results. Victory in Afghanistan remains as elusive as ever. Instead of pacifying Afghanistan the USA has stirred up a hornet's nest everywhere. Instead of eradicating terrorism, it is creating the conditions for new and even worse monstrosities than September 11. New shocks are inevitable. The world crisis will have important repercussions in the USA. The very things that helped Bush to gain an aura of credibility will turn into their opposite. Everywhere we look we see only instability, crises and convulsions. Only the lack of the subjective factor is holding back the movement in the direction of a decisive showdown between the classes. The existing leadership everywhere is acting like a gigantic brake. But this cannot continue indefinitely. The working class will move into struggle again and again, in search of a way out of an impasse that has become intolerable. In Latin America there is a deep crisis from Tierra del Fuego to the Rio Grande. The mighty Brazilian economy is poised to follow Argentina into the abyss. The revolutionary developments in Argentina have been followed by social and political turbulence in Venezuela, Peru and other Latin American countries, in which the working class is coming to the fore. In Europe, after a period of quiescence, the workers are on the move in Spain, France, Germany, Portugal, Greece and Italy. Once they move into struggle, the new generation will learn quickly. Lenin said that for the masses an ounce of practice is worth a ton of theory. The new layers of workers and youth will be free of the scepticism and routinism of the old generation. They will be open to the ideas of revolutionary Marxism. Great events will provide them with a hard but effective school. Our task is to help them to draw the necessary conclusions. A decade ago the ruling class and its ideologists were full of confidence. Now they look to the future with dread. The present crisis is just a little warning of what the future holds. Those in the labour movement who, under the pressure of bourgeois ideology, drew pessimistic conclusions have been shown to be wrong. Far from the rosy picture of peace and plenty promised ten years ago, we have now entered into the most turbulent period in human history. The only thing that has saved capitalism, and which continues to save it, is the extreme weakness of the subjective factor. As Leon Trotsky pointed out on the eve of the second world war: "The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterised by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat." For a whole series of reasons, the forces of genuine Marxism have been thrown back a long way. This is the decisive element in the equation on a world scale. The contradiction between the maturity of the objective situation and the lag in consciousness has assumed an extreme character. It is the main reason why the crisis of capitalism is assuming a long drawn-out character. But this prolongation of the crisis does not mean that it will have a less violent character, but the very opposite. To the degree that an outworn and senile system still clings to life, it poses a deadly threat to human culture and civilisation. Despite everything, the new generation will learn. The youth is already beginning to draw revolutionary and anti-capitalist conclusions. If a real Leninist party and leadership existed, the process would be far quicker. The absolute priority is therefore to build a strong Marxist tendency that is able to give a conscious expression to the unconscious or semi-conscious strivings of the workers and youth. For a whole historical period the forces of Marxism were small and isolated, battling against the stream. But now the tide of history has begun to turn. In the coming period we will be swimming with the flow of history, not against it. It is necessary to redouble our efforts to build the Marxist tendency, to strengthen it, to educate the cadres and to build bridges to the working class and its organisations everywhere. In the next period, the mass organisations of the working class will be shaken from top to bottom. Ideas that today are listened to by tiny handfuls will be eagerly sought by thousands and millions. The stage is being prepared for the greatest class battles in history. Upon the outcome of this conflict the destiny of humanity depends. London, July 13, 2002 |
Copyright (c) 1998, Joongpil Cho