From: Hans Ehrbar (ehrbar@econ.utah.edu)
Date: Sat Mar 01 2003 - 13:45:28 EST
This posting is in response to Jerry's question on OPE-L how critical realism (CR) might help understand the war on Iraq. I am sending this also to the a-list, because the theory I came up with theorizes the link between oil and capitalism differently than Mark Jones does, and to the bhaskar list. I fully concur with Howard Engelskirchen's account of CR on OPE-L [8527]. CR and Marxism complement each other. Critical realism gives a more explicit reasoning than Marxism why the method used by Marxists is right. But CR does not have a specific analysis of capitalism, for this you need Marxism. Critical realists might begin as follows: the war, a concrete event, is the result of many different driving forces which themselves are invisible. Social science must identify these driving forces which are as real as the events themselves. In my mind this is very similar to Marx's "the concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, thus a unity of the diverse". (Introduction to Grundrisse). But while Marxists usually rely on Marx quotes to establish this, CR attempts a compelling derivation of these results (not given here). Another result of CR is that the relationship between the underlying driving forces and the observable events is tendential. (Again this is nothing new to Marxism, with its tendential fall of the rate of profit.) The world is not pre-determined but open, events may or may not happen although the driving forces are still there. The real world can therefore harbor contradictions: the underlying driving forces may pull in opposite directions. A war is a crisis which has to be explained dialectically. A (dialectical) critical realist might therefore look in the following direction: the world capitalist system suffers under certain systemic contradictions, which threaten to erupt in this war, but which exist as contradictions whether or not this particular war will happen at this particular time in this particular form. Again, this is similar to Marx who for instance says that "in world market crises, all of the contradictions of bourgeois production erupt collectively" (Theories of Surplus-Value, chapter 17). Of course, the form in which this contradiction plays out in events has to do with the personalities in power in Washington at the present time. The primary question is however: which basic systemic contradictions come to an outbreak in the Iraq war? Without this, the second question cannot be properly answered, because the primary question defines the environment in which the individuals in Washington act. Critical realist social sciences speak of a hiatus between individual and social levels. These levels cannot be reduced to each other, but the social level is primary, because the social relations pre-exist the individuals which may fill them. Again Marx's concept of "character-masks" and the ability of individuals to rise above these character-masks is a very similar view. Many contradictions come to a clash in the Iraq war, but the main one, in my view, has to do with the declining hegemonial power of the US. The US has been the prevailing capitalist power since the end of World War II, both economicaly and militarily. The contradiction is that its economic hegemony is eroding, while its military hegemony is more overwhelming than ever. Why is this a problem? As long as military and economic hegemony went hand in hand, the particular national interests of the USA coincided with the general interests of the capitalist classes all over the world. Therefore the USA could speak softly while carrying a big stick. It benefited from the dissolution of the colonial empires. It reaped immense special benefits from its hegemonial position, but it also served the capitalist system and led the fight against communism. Nowadays, its economic hegemony is challenged, and it responds by using its military superiority to prop up its economic privileges. In other words, the interests of the USA deviate more and more from the general interests of the world capitalist system. It no longer uses its military power mainly against socialism, while leaving its relations with other capitalist nations governed by the dull compulsion of market forces, but it must attack other capitalist nations in order to ensure economic benefits which would no longer be forthcoming by market forces alone. The Iraq war can therefore be subsumed under Marx's definition of crisis: a crisis is the forcible reconciliation of aspects which belong together but which have moved apart. Economic and military hegemony belong together but have moved their separate ways; the war is an attempt to reconcile them, an attempt which is bound to fail because political power cannot, in the long run, substitute for economic fundamentals. The economic privilege which this war is designed to bolster is the role of the dollar as the world reserve currency. Since 1945, the national currency of the USA has been accepted world wide as international money. Originally, there was a dollar shortage. The USA was the only industrialized economy emerging from World War II intact, and everyone needed American goods. This economic predominance is fading, as can be seen from its trade deficit. It still holds in certain areas. In biotechnology and arms technology, among others, the USA is still the undisputed leader. But in other areas (alternative energies) the USA is a dinosaur. The continued acceptance of the dollar has two reasons: (1) the USA is the overwhelming military power, and (2) the oil exporting countries have agreed to sell their oil for dollars, which are then invested back into the US economy. This link between oil and the dollar is the price which OPEC had to pay so that its management of the oil prices would be tolerated. But with the declining economic hegemony of the USA the dollar has become less attractive, and this link is at stake. Its mainstay is the collusion between the USA and one of the most reactionary governments on earth, that of Saudi Arabia. 9/11, carried out by Saudi Arab citizens with Saudi Arab money, demonstrated how tenuous this link has become. Iraq's switch to the Euro in 2000, and the bad example of Venezuela, where a populist government is trying to use the oil revenue for the benefit of the masses and which sells part of its oil in barter deals which cut out the dollar, are other symptoms indicating that the link between the dollar and oil is slipping. In order to maintain world wide acceptance of the dollar, the USA must demonstrate that it is willing to use its military power. From this point of view, war is always a good investment: it demonstrates to other nations that the USA is serious with its threat, and will therefore smoothen the way for US interests for many years to come. As I said, I consider the contradiction between military and economic hegemony to be the basic contradiction leading to the present assault on Iraq. The USA has truly become a "loose cannon", its military power is no longer anchored in the systemic interests of world capitalism. Other contradictions are involved in the war as well. The contradiction between an economic system which is blind regarding the use-values produced, and the de-facto predominance of the use-value oil in modern capitalism, makes it necessary to secure the access to oil by non-economic power. And finally the contradiction between an economic system which concentrates on one factor of production only, labor, and which treats nature as a free resource, comes in conflict with the actual character of the production process in which labor becomes less and less important compared to the environmental implications. (There is a Grundrisse quote about this.) The long-run interests of the capitalist system require the weaning from capitalist dependence on oil. But oil is one of the mainstays for the role of the dollar as world currency. The USA must therefore strengthen rather than weaken the world wide reliance on oil. In other words, it is leading the world capitalist system down a blind alley which will result in serious upheavals when the oil is used up. This too undermines the legitimacy of the USA as a world leader. (This is in contradiction to Mark Jones's basic theory that capitalism as a system is by necessity based on oil. If the above analysis is right, capitalism as a system can do without oil; but the US cannot maintain its hegemony without oil.) Although I said before that the personalities and styles of the people involved is a secondary factor, this secondary factor can have wide-ranging effects as well. Merely by its style, the Bush clique has sqandered one of the mainstays of the hegemonial position of the USA, namely, the goodwill the USA has enjoyed world wide. This is imperial overreach: at the height of their power, the individuals in power are no longer aware of the presuppositions on which this power is based, and therefore unwittingly undermine their own power. As in every crisis, the veneer is broken and the true ugliness of the underlying system is exposed. Hans G. Ehrbar
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