Why U.S. is seen as 'capital of global arrogance'
By Ali Azad
In a Feb. 28 piece, New York Times columnist
Thomas Friedman admitted to some facts that ordinary people not
ideologically beholden to the capitalist ruling class have
known all along.
"[You] can't understand [the Iraq crisis] without reference
to some more modern political trends-namely U.S. hegemony after
the Cold War and globalization," he wrote. This is a frank
admission from a writer who cruises the globe interviewing
heads of state on five continents and advising the U.S. big
business class.
Friedman expressed frustration at obstacles facing U.S.
global domination: "What does Iran call the U.S. today? It's
not 'the great Satan' anymore. Iran says America is 'the
capital of global arrogance.'
"Well, guess what? That's what the French, the Russians, the
Japanese, the Chinese and the Arabs also call America behind
its back."
But what many bourgeois writers dub "globalization" is
really nothing new in capitalism's historical development. It
is a last-ditch attempt by U.S. monopoly capitalism to assert
itself over its imperialist rivals in the cutthroat competition
for world domination.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Workers World Party
Chairperson Sam Marcy analyzed the dynamics of capitalist
economic contraction in the United States at the time. He
explained that U.S. finance capital was driven to militarism in
order to beat out its imperialist competitors and dominate
world markets.
Marcy's analysis of the workings of U.S. capitalism in that
period is the best example of using Marxism to understand the
class nature of events-so the working class and oppressed can
draw correct conclusions in their struggle for social justice
and against war. In 1980 Marcy remarkably predicted the
dimensions of what is today called "globalization."
In the pamphlet "Reindustrialization: The Menace Behind the
Promise," Marcy wrote: "Now that the U.S. has been slowly but
surely losing its preponderant position in world trade and
commerce as a result of the inroads made by its imperialist
rivals, it has awakened to the need to retool and re-equip its
industrial apparatus. The dimensions that this entails are of
such proportions as to be beyond any one industrial giant or
industry. They involve a vast outlay by the capitalist
government and a huge intensification of the rate of
exploitation of the working class on a scale unparalleled in
U.S. history.
"There has rarely if ever been a declining empire built on
exploitation and conquest which has not dreamed of restoring
the old glory and splendor of its golden age of robbery and
oppression with just one more try."
In the last two decades, U.S. imperialism, in its last
attempt for world domination, has caused massive pain and
misery around the world.
It spent billions of dollars to overthrow the progressive
socialist government in Afghanistan, supporting the most
reactionary and feudal forces in that country. It aided and
abetted Iraq in its eight-year war against Iran, causing
hundreds of thousands of deaths on both sides and hundreds of
billions of dollars in economic damage. Then, in 1991, U.S.
imperialism turned around and unleashed an inferno of
destruction against Iraq, causing unprecedented misery, death
and economic devastation.
Washington spent billions of dollars propping up reactionary
armies against Nicaragua and Angola. By embarking on one of the
most costly military expansions in history against the Soviet
Union, it drained that country's much-needed economic
resources, contributing to its collapse.
At the same time the United States reinforced its military
position in Europe and helped fracture the united and socialist
republic of Yugoslavia. Now, once again, the Pentagon is on the
verge of creating more catastrophes and carnage in the Middle
East and the Balkans.
The Times columnist equates U.S. hegemony and globalization
with mod ernity. This is an absolute distortion of history.
The living experience of even just the last two decades
points to the foolishness of this claim. To billions of workers
and oppressed people around the world, the last two decades
have reincarnated some of the most ghastly chapters of medieval
times.
Only the working class and oppressed can genuinely lay claim
to the establishment of a modern age-by building a new,
socialist civilization based on people's needs and not on
predatory, monopoly capitalist interests.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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