Letters

US hegemony

Arthur Bough lives in an alternative universe, where the European Union is actually challenging US hegemony, and in order to try and bring himself back into reality he jumps through incredulous hoops, such as arguing that the EU are comitting suicide because of its continued lack of belief in its own position in the world - as if the EU was some stroppy teenager listening to old records by The Cure.

He uses a few carefully selected econometric statistics to ‘prove’ that the EU is the USA’s main competitor, but not only are these stats inadequate to form such a conclusion: they also miss out numerous other stats that show US imperialism has not been unencumbered by EU competitors. The biggest challenge to US hegemony and extending its markets has always been those pesky natives, both at home and abroad.

But back in our world ... The EU is not the main competitor of US imperialism, because it is not interested in constructing an alternative model to US hegemony, which has served both hemispheres handsomely thus far. Therefore, the EU is a collaborator with US imperialism and not a competitor, as all their actions clearly demonstrate. If this were world wrestling, then the US and EU would be a very formidable tag team and, given their control of world institutions, the global market is every bit as rigged as those wrestling bouts.

China and Russia are competitors to US hegemony, because they seek to build an alternative system, and form new alliances, and they can no longer afford US domination of key global institutions and technologies. They are also culturally, historically and, dare I say, racially very different - at least in the eyes of the empire. I mean, is there any other reason why Australia should back the US empire to the hilt, other than white supremacy and all that Anglo-Saxon history?

We have already seen Saudi Arabia - sick to the back teeth of being morally lectured to by the plundering, thieving west - start to edge toward this new alternative. One good thing about the demented liberal ideology that has taken firm root in the west, at least in official society, is that it will surely blow apart old alliances, and ultimately weaken the imperialist centre.

But here is the obvious truth: the US cannot wish away China and Russia, any more than Russia and China can wish away the EU and the USA. The imperialist centre knows the age of plunder is coming to an end. This presents the imperialist nations and its strategists with a multitude of problems. They have constructed a world economy which privileges their citizens, and this privilege is based upon plunder, superexploitation and a tight grip on global institutions. The strategists at the imperialist centre must surely know this state of affairs is coming to an end and have to manage it.

There are two ways to do this: the rational way and the anarchical one; and, given we have bourgeois rule, then the anarchical way it is. This is why the main objective of the conflict with Russia and China is to create inflationary conditions, trigger a cost-of-living crisis and conveniently blame the whole thing on evil Putin. In other words, the system is in the process of immiserating the citizens at the imperialist centre, and destroying value in the classical sense.

In the UK this is obvious - Liz Truss saying British workers need to graft more, Rees-Mogg railing against working from home, projections that savings will be decimated, that more and more people will be forced to return to work. The International Monetary Fund saying inflation will be a good thing because it means people will use less energy! Etc, etc, etc (I have written about this numerous times here, providing plenty of other examples and arguments).

In other words, all the complaints from the boss class about the great resignation, about skills shortages, and so on, are to be solved via immiserating the productive classes and getting them to work harder - giving them no choice but to kneel before their masters. Government policy has all been about ‘rewarding’ current wage-slavery, and obliterating past wage-slavery (in the form of the savings and investments of the middle classes).

We should never lose sight of the fact that the ultimate competitors to the bourgeois are the productive classes, and the bourgeois have decided to crack the whip in no uncertain terms. It is by no means certain that the miserable, servile wretches (sorry - EU workers) will not sit idly by. Let us be honest: the only time these people don’t sit idly by is when the bourgeois need some foreigners liquidating.

Arthur Bough also mentions a class outlook. Well, it is about time that the left woke up to the fact that the war in Ukraine is a proxy war against the middle and working classes, and that the so-called cost-of-living crisis is the actual goal of the bourgeois and its primary policy. This is being driven by the logic of the system, which is manifested in these policies. Of course, this has to be managed to some degree and policies will be tried and tested on the hoof (see the latest budget for example) and, if it doesn’t work … well, I would start building those fallout shelters again.

Steve Cousins
email

Less optimistic

Arthur Bough is, of course, correct when he says that the US war drive in eastern Europe is targeted against the EU, and particularly France and Germany, as much it is as against China (Letters, September 22).

And he is right that the EU has the economic potential to be a replacement for the US as a global hegemon. But I stress ‘economic’ because, like the US before the 1861-65 civil war, or Germany before the wars of German unification (Prusso-Danish war of 1864; Austro-Prussian war of 1866; Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71), it is held in practical subordination to the hegemon (the US was subordinated to Britain through the comprador character of the slaveocracy and its control of the federal government, Germany through Britain’s ability to manipulate the small states against each other). The EU is held in tighter control by the US than its potential rivals were by 19th century Britain: Brexit does not eliminate the Atlanticism of Poland, etc, or the US ability to take Atlanticist control of the Greens, and of Die Linke through the ‘anti-Semitism’ story, US military bases in Germany, and so on.

The EU could emerge to replace the US, as Britain replaced the Netherlands in the 18th century and the US replaced Britain from 1940. But only on condition that (1) the EU is turned into a real state by a Lincoln or Bismarck by overthrowing the rights of states in its constitution, and (2) the US becomes embroiled in a full-scale war with China (which would play the role of the kaiser/Reich in 1914) that does not end in generalised nuclear exchange. (That, of course, supposes that the US’s present war of conquest of Russia does not end in generalised nuclear exchange …) At present, although, as comrade Bough indicates, the leading EU countries are uncomfortable with the US’s global manoeuvres to keep them in subordination, there is no sign of anything like a Lincoln or Bismarck in European politics.

The situation of the workers’ movement is even weaker, divided as it is between Atlanticist liberals committed to the constitutional mechanisms of US control of Europe, on the one hand (more of them since the Ukraine war), and ‘exiteer’ advocates of socialism in 1860s Massachusetts, or in Saxony, or ‘in one county’ (sic).

So I am a bit less optimistic than comrade Bough in his final comment. The mass of the working class no doubt will be driven to resist impoverishment; but without party organisation, this mass resistance will tend to lead merely to the political victory of far-right nationalism.

Mike Macnair
Oxford

Vermin

I would like to thank Harlow MP Robert Halfon and his Conservative colleagues for their new budget, which will cut the taxes of the rich and cut the benefits of the poor.

It is estimated that those with an annual income of £1 million will each be better off by £55,000 per annum, whereas some low paid workers in receipt of universal credit will have their incomes reduced. It is only right that poor people with trivial concerns, such as feeding their children, should make sacrifices in order that rich people can continue to afford to pay for private school fees for their children, holiday homes, and yachts.

I was a little concerned a few years ago when Mr Halfon was claiming that the Conservative Party is a workers’ party. I would be grateful if he would thank his colleagues in the government for confirming that the Conservative Party is indeed the political wing of the bourgeoisie.

Nye Bevan, the founder of the national health service, once described Conservative politicians as “lower than vermin”, but I am sure that he would revise this opinion, were he alive today.

John Wake
Harlow

Useful idiot?

In the days since Kwasi Kwarteng’s ‘mini-budget’, much has been made of the new chancellor’s incompetence, given the massive slide in value of British government gilts and global currency markets trashing the pound sterling.

The Guardian’s September 27 editorial complained that “the invisible hand of the market has grabbed [Kwarteng’s] plans by the scruff of the neck and shaken them mercilessly”, and even the fascist rag, the Daily Mail, has led with a number of headlines weighing in on bankers “betting against UK PLC” (September 27). This week’s leading article in Socialist Worker opened with: “You know the Tories are in trouble when bankers, traders and bosses hit them with the sort of punishment usually reserved for leftwing governments.”

However, the smallest scratch at the surface suggests things may not be quite as we are led to believe. Kwarteng is by no measure unfamiliar with currency crises, having obtained a PhD in economics from Cambridge in 2000, with a thesis entitled ‘Political thought of the recoinage crisis of 1695-7’. Upon graduation, he took up a Kennedy scholarship at Harvard. In the following nine years, before becoming an MP, Kwarteng managed to squeeze in positions as a Telegraph columnist, and a financial analyst for JPMorgan Chase, WestLB and hedge fund Odey Asset Management.

Kwarteng’s later employer, Crispin Odey, is a major Tory donor who the Sunday Times Rich List values (jointly with his wife) at roughly £825 million. Odey himself has been quite vocal in the papers since Kwarteng’s “fiscal event”, telling the Financial Times that the smart money is on sterling reaching parity in value with the dollar, and has described his short selling against UK government gilts as “the gift that keeps on giving”.

And so we have it: the far right of the Conservative Party, which wasted no time during the Covid pandemic to engorge themselves, and their friends and family members, by awarding billions of pounds of public money for phoney service contracts, is now enriching its closest allies by engineering a crisis of its very own making. Presumably when your personal wealth amounts to a small country’s GDP, insider trading rules do not apply.

Don’t be so easily fooled that Kwarteng is some useful idiot of A Level economics textbook monetary policy. It remains to be seen which franchises of international capital will profit the most from this fire sale of British commerce and property, but it would hardly be a surprise to find evidence of Kwarteng’s own hand in the cookie jar.

Al Thomas
Glasgow

Get stuffed

With regard to last week’s article, I think the fact that Dan Lazare lives in the belly of the beast has very much reduced his ability to see the world as it stands now rather than as it did (‘America’s “great game”’, September 22).

It is not Russia that is in decline, but the USA, which might seem to him to have a purpose, however perverted. But in fact the US has long shown it doesn’t know what it’s doing at home or abroad and doesn’t know why it’s doing it - the essence of retardation. Dan Lazare seems already to have forgotten Afghanistan, which was such a tremendous success for his country.

It’s easy to pick quotes left, right and centre of what China said or India did, especially since the media system is at hand to provide him with them aplenty. But we must keep focused on substance, not on airy-fairy commentary, which exists in the demented heads governing the US, EU and UK. China has not and never could fall for the psychopathic threats or head-banging approach of embassies/diplomats. It exists objectively and sanely as a nation of 1.4 billion people, with its work and social fronts being the dominant factor in its external relations. Russia has never been closer to China in every regard and that’s what counts and matters. India is a determined external and observant state, which, despite unholy pressure by US thuggery, continues to thrive in its economic dealings with Russia. It has stayed neutral throughout.

The US is a country ruled by gangsters and terrorists, and its economy as a share of the world economy has fallen significantly since the halcyon days of the 1950s and 60s. Its currency is counterfeit and the only reason it is waging war in the world is out of fear, not strength. It is a dumb beast that is ruled by two parties who are at each other’s throats - reflecting the failure and fear of its domestic population in a world that cares not one jot about it. If any country in the world faces a break-up into rabid states and absolute irrelevance thereafter, it is the satanic beast itself, America.

So stop praising the US by default. It is its future which is grim. It no longer serves any useful purpose in the world. Get stuffed, America.

Elijah Traven
Hull

Which ‘expert’?

In the editing process in last week’s Weekly Worker, some of the sense of what I wrote was lost (Letters, September 22). The ‘expert’ in anti-Semitism that I mentioned was not Luciana Berger - she is an expert in nothing but her own suffering.

The person I referred to was political journalist Steven Bush, who quoted a survey as saying that a vast majority of Jews thought Jeremy Corbyn was anti-Semitic. A mixed-race Jewish journalist, Bush wrote for the New Statesman and various newspapers and at one point was chair of the Board of Deputies of British Jews’ commission on racial inclusivity within the Jewish community. He believes that during the heady years of 2015-19, the “positions of pro-Corbyn Jews was over-covered” - ie, too much air time (‘Once the word “Jew” was whispered. Now it’s up in lights’, The Guardian September 21).

I’m not surprised that’s what someone so close to the Board of Deputies says, but it’s certainly not what I saw at the time.

Gaby Rubin
email