As Above, so below

The Age of Crises
Farooque Chowdhury

It is an age of crises. Capital ism in its crisis-ridden history has never faced a similar situation like now. Many crises have "come down" on this earth, have joined together, are acting together and also, are acting against each other, aggravating all, and are threatening not only humanity, with which capitalism's relation is antagonistic but which is essential for the survival of capitalism, but also the world system capitalism has constructed over centuries.
Now it is not only the proletariat, the grave diggers of capitalism, but also the edifice the world system capital has devised in its process of accumulation and globalization that is threatening the world capitalist system. The relationship, opposites uniting together and opposing each other, built up by capitalism is the show of its crisis generating efficiency. But, alas, none of the market mongers are there to celebrate this efficiency!

Crisis creating capacity of capitalism is being reaffirmed by the present state of the world. The world system is riddled with crises: The Great Financial Crisis, the Great Hunger, the environmental crisis, the energy crisis including the peak oil reality. The crisis in democracy is not limited in the periphery only. Advanced capitalist states are also showing signs of crisis in their body-politic. The issues of equity and equality, in the realms of distribution, access, entitlement, rights and resources, remain a far cry in the entire world system, and thus constitute one of the biggest crises.

The crises, on the one hand, are hindering the progress of humanity, and on the other, have appeared as a threat to world peace, to the peace in the lives of billions, to humanity's quest for prosperity and happiness, to their efforts for a stable life. Thirst for accumulation, adventures for profit, hunger for expansion, and wars—propaganda, trade, diplomatic, and military—for empire have brought these crises that have been and are being designed and directed by a few. The triumph of capital in its globalization expedition has aggravated the situation.

The adventure began since capital enthroned itself on the barbarous dream of appropriating all the resources and labor centuries ago, since capital crowned itself as the master of the entire world, of all the human beings, and of all life and dead, of history, philosophy, and science. Thus it sowed the seed of crises in all spheres of and related to life—nature and society, economy and politics, ideology and education, institutions and relations.

It has no capacity to resolve the contradictions, antagonistic and irreconcilable, between the few indulging in unimaginable luxury and humanity striving for survival, created with its greed and cruelties, with its power for accumulation and appropriation, extortion and exploitation, with its energy to destroy and deface. The consequences of aggrandizement now are engulfing the entire earth with all the crises humanity is experiencing.

Has ever the earth experienced so many crises simultaneously? Has any of the societies, slave owning or feudal, occidental or oriental, created any parallel to these crises? Had any of the empires, from the east to the west, the power to create any of the crises of this magnitude, global? Have all the civilizations of the past days ravaged resources of the earth to this level and thus created crises that now threaten the entire humanity? Were the crises created in the pre-present world system periods entwined together like the present, one influencing the others, and thus accelerating the speed and velocity towards the earth's journey to its destruction? Can a single such crisis be identified there in the domains of savages and warlords, in the paths of conquests by conquerors and marauders? Are there crises in all the past phases of the world that joined together, that increased the magnitude of the rest? Not a single instance is there in the annals of human history, and thus the all powerful capital stands unparallel.

But, it has gone to its limit, bankrupting itself of all creativity, but the power of destruction that now even threatens itself, and it still plans to reap profit by capitalizing on the crises, the climate change, the environment crisis, the food and energy crises, etc., despite the looming demon of destruction over its fate. It has ignited fires of conflict and strife, and is increasing tension in geopolitics. But, it is failing to escape the fundamental contradictions, the contradictions that are embedded in its accumulation adventure.

Fundamentally, two crises have been generated by the present world order: the crisis of capital and the crisis of environment, and these two are connected to each other. The Great Financial Crisis has been generated by the monopoly-finance capital in its speculation venture, its speculation with finance, with bubbles that it built on the base of profit and manipulated prices, that it built with manipulated financial instruments, even with imagined possibilities of risks, with manipulated and corrupt ratings, and thus with all the financial instruments and transactions the financial commodity was created. The finance-commodity has weakened its relations with other commodities, historically determined socio-production relations, and with the manufacturing sector. A contradiction was generated that has weakened the capital engaged in speculation with financial commodities.

It tried to resolve the contradiction by intensifying class war, a part of which was pressing down real wages, and by intensifying the process of appropriating societies in the periphery. Nevertheless, that attempt has intensified competition and the already existing contradictions, and has generated new contradictions, in the market, the market that depends on consumption for regeneration of capital, in the ranks of the wage earners, and at the global level, in the sectors related to food and fuel production, and with the other centers of monopoly-financial capital. The later one, in the form of competition and politics, made impact in the politics of other countries, and in geopolitics. The higher rate of profit resisted the monopoly-finance capital from getting engaged into research and development also.

A combination of crises in agriculture, class interests, capitals involved, distribution, ecology, energy, speculation has generated the food crisis. The politics related to the food crisis comes out from the involved capitals, and has played its characteristic role, standing by the capitals and against the producers and consumers until the crisis took the form dangerous to the rule of capital. Food, agriculture, and energy are parts of environment.

The crisis in agriculture is a combination of crises in soil and water management, of contradictions in class interests, of manufacturing and trade interests, the interests involved in manufacturing, trading, and transportation of chemical products and implements used in agriculture, and trading of fuel.

The agriculture crisis has increased because of capital's adventure for appropriation from agriculture, for appropriating soil, and to resolve energy crisis. Thus, capital created a new crisis in agriculture in its effort to fly away from the clutches of energy crisis. But, it failed to forget its driving motive, profit, while it stepped into the world of agriculture to escape energy crisis. This is inherent in capital.
It cannot operate in some other way other than a predestined path determined by its nature. Energy-oil, natural gas, renewables, nuclear, etc.—is part of environment and affects environment. But, involvement, type, sector, sub-sector or level, of capital in energy is determined by rate of profit. Over-exploitation, indiscriminate use and misuse, investment, R&D, etc. are determined by profit, and these have impact, immediate and long-term, on environment. Trading is also involved there. The "way of life", not only in the metropolis of the world system, but also in the periphery is determined by capital and capital behaves on the basis of profit, relating it to the "way of life" all over the world, and in the speculation bazaar. This in turn makes impact in the environment that -is pushed to dangerous level by snapping the relationship between human society and nature and by making nature subservient to profit.

The issue of climate change needs no explanation after looking into these businesses of capital. With the domination of speculation market the entire situation aggravates.

This reality exposes the inefficiency of capital that undermines the survival of human being. It shows capital's inability to resolve the contradictions generated by itself.

The trajectory of the crises goes through politics, mainly harming and/or threatening or posing to harm and/or threat the ruling machine, the world system, the dominant classes and their ideology. Geopolitics for domination of the world by sections of the world system and security of dominant powers are also influenced by these crises. This in turn sharpens contradictions in the dominant camp and creates possibilities for weakening of the machines for dominance.

Profiteering from the crises and putting the burden of crises on the dominated is the way capital seeks to get out of the crises, an inherent capacity and incapacity of capital that increases the magnitude of the crises, and creates new crises including eroding credibility and acceptability of dominance with the possibilities of emergence of newer factors in politics, sometimes at a slower pace, but at times, faster than imagination, as steps by history are dependent upon and relative to contradictions within economy.

Society, politics, ideology, philosophy, and culture including education and science get impregnated with these contradictions that in turn make capital's capacity to resolve the contradictions difficult and thus worsen the situation. Capital cannot resolve the contradiction between limited resources and equitable distribution as profit; stands in between these. The entire process threatens the existence of humanity as humanity with its common interest stands at the opposite pole of capital that owns only its own narrow interests. Other than opposing capital there remains no alternative available to humanity for its existence. This age of crises brings forth this reality, where compromises embolden capital in its last ditch attempt.

Extent and power of crisis grows with the expansion of capital's power to subdue all in this planet, and thus capital's triumphant globalization finds crises spread across the globe. Each of the crises has overwhelming power over the other. The globalization by capital thus turns globalization of crises.

The analyses, explanations, and ideas, the structures and approaches capital tried to sell over the decades were and are being refuted and rejected broadly with the same force and speed by the reality emerging out of contradictions; a number of allies it tried to nourish and bring into own fold started competing against it; regions it tried to control and appropriate were torn into pieces with strife and bloodbath. A few of the examples are: smallest possible government, least possible state intervention, crowning the economy with privatization, structural adjustment programs; Saddam, China, Russia, religious extremists; Iraq, the Balkans.

The funniest example of the dominating capital's failure in the realm of knowledge is the "brightest" idea on the termination of "history". No other idea, most probably, has been mocked and refuted so repeatedly and within so short time by reality and by people concerned with the humanity's journey like the famous idea of "end of history". The money invested to sell the idea and the power of corporate media and corporate academia upholding it tell the power of rejection, and the power of satire the idea faced.

On the other hand, there is also capital's rejection of ideas/analyses that were not fanning the financialization process. Internationally respected economists John Eatwell and Lance Taylor in their book Global Finance at Risk, written 10 years ago, mentioned the risks and failures created by financial liberalization. But those analyses were ignored by the mainstream. The reason : those were not serving the interests of the dominant factions. George Soros informed in an interview on Bloomberg TV that Edward Gramlich, one Fed governor, warned of a coming crisis in subprime mortgages in a speech published in 2004 and a book published in 2007. But, Soros said: "the authorities didn't want to see it coming. Analyses by Paul Baran, Harry Magoff, Paul Sweezy, decades ago, and by John Bellamy Foster, and Fred Magdoff, years ago, gathered bitter experience: unheard, unconsidered by the mainstream.

This is the fate the power of dominance creates for itself. It creates a complete blindness; class interests throw away knowledge when knowledge does not serve the interests, and thus the class prepares its downward path. Decline of dominance starts in the realm of theory, and the "end"-theory unhesitatingly, probably without any sense of shame, stands down there on the slope of history.

The militarism Toynbee mentioned in his A Study of History as "the commonest cause of the breakdowns of civilizations during the last four or five millennia" is not the militarism the world is now experiencing and apprehending to experience more. "Militarism," to him, "breaks a civilization down by the local states into which the society is articulated to collide with one another in destructive fratricidal conflicts." The militarism of today comes from different sources than the sources of "the last four or five millennia" ago. But, it acts in the way that hurts civilization today. Its acts of barbarity today are transmitted from generation to generation; its signatures of destruction are difficult to wipe out from the face of the earth; its marches to invasions and occupations damage environment irreparably. Thus it stands against humanity creating a crisis that most of the time spreads out crossing frontiers. The economy, broadly, of the world system, and specifically, of the centre of the centre compels it to enter into the theatres of wars. The economy cannot survive and flourish without militarism, with or without war, with hot or with cold war.

No ancien regime or modern day colonial power, no empire prior to the emergence of military-Keynesianism in the centre of the centre of the present world system had that military power that now threatens the entire planet, even its outer space. (See, Foster, et al, "The US Imperial Triangle and Military Spending", Analytical Monthly Review, October, 2008). And, contradictions among its subordinate allies are no less insignificant. The contradictions and competitions related to this regime of weapons are connected to profit thirsty arms manufacturers and traders. An equation with this military "game" and poverty, disease, ignorance, etc. makes the face of crisis crueler.

Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 21, Dec 2-8, 2012

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