Re: No revolution will be needed to...

In a message dated 7/11/2003 2:57:02 PM Eastern Standard Time, KenRichard2002 
writes:
> The US promised to threaten the Arab world with a democratic showcase of a 
>new Iraq.  What the US is in fact doing is positioning itself to mortgage 
>Iraq's future oil production,  so they will be in a position similar to the 
>one Angola finds itself in.  The interests of the dominant, US and 
>international capitalist class, the WASP and their monied friends,  is to make 
>sure that weaker countries are buried in a sea of debt so that the wealth 
>which is plundered from those countries, in the form of interests payments, is 
>always equal to or greater than the wealth these countries can transfer to the 
>West in the form of raw materials.  In that way,  the poorer countries, who 
>are in no position to negotiate,  lose money on the sale of their natural 
>resources.  They come up owing money from the sale.  In order to prevent 
>complete collapse within those economies,  the US transfers about 1/10th of 
>the plundered wealth back to those countries, disproportionately, of course, 
>on condition that they adhere to certain *market conditions*.  The market 
>conditions they want to impose on Iraq are similar to those they impose 
>elsewhere, naturally, they have a successful formulae and it makes America the 
>wealthiest country on earth.  Iraq's national assets are to be sold off.  If 
>people are doing without water and electricity in Iraq it's because the US 
>does not want to repair or restore these basic commodities.  The US would 
>prefer to sell off all state assets and then grant license to American 
>corporations to develop these resources, restore them to the  condition they 
>were in before the US destroyed the facilities, and then permit them to sell 
>these commodities to the Iraqi people at a profit.  Anything which turned a 
>profit and was national property of the Iraqi people will become the private 
>property of and turn profits for US corporations.  That isn't to say that 
>after a good fleecing,  some of these US corporations won't declare 
>bankcruptcy after the shareholders experience a fleecing similar to the one 
>they anticipate giving the Iraqi people.  > They're two sides of the same coin 
>and always were.   > > KR


Capital accumulation is not some seamless process bereft of contradictions or 
politics.  The US very much would like Iraq to turn into some sort of 
'democratic showcase' which could be used as the wedge for privatization and 
pro-American regimes throughout the Middle East.  Unfortunately, the US has not 
mobilized enough of its army for the task (because its politically difficult to 
do so in the US) and the US does not appear to have a working strategy to 
demolish Iraqi resistance.  I think the US would love to have running water etc 
in Iraq.  As everyone can see, support for the US is rapidly declining among 
the Iraqis as a result of these failures. The lack of running water et al is 
likely to due to the official reasons--poor planning by the US, and Iraqi 
resistance intended (apparently successfully) to weaken support for the US. 
Although it is certainly not over yet, and the US may manage to gain control of 
the situation, if the US should leave Iraq in chaos, far from reorganizing the 
Middle East, it will strengthen both anti-Americans in the region, the 
Europeans who stayed out of this war, and the global anti-war movement.  The 
challenge for the Bush administration is to figure out how to get things moving 
in the US' direction without violating the contract with the American public 
that wars will be won at minimal cost.  So Rumsfield is now apparently begging 
Germany and France for troops, but they are playing hardball, insisting on a UN 
mandate before they would even consider this.  Such a mandate would preclude a 
transfer of Iraqi resources to US corporations, among other things. 
Ganesh--my apologies for the way quoting came out in my post yesterday. 
The process of splits in the capitalist (or, more generally, ruling) class 
leading to revolutionary situations is a dialectical one.  Intensified class 
struggle may lead to splits as to strategy for dealing with subaltern classes, 
thus opening room for intensifying the struggle further...
Steven Sherman