Workers World Party to Oct. 26 marchers:
Look for the motive
When a crime is committed, the first thing investigators
look for is a suspect. The second is a motive.
The whole world knows that the Bush administration is
preparing to commit a monstrous crime. It is assembling one of
the most powerful armies ever seen for a high-tech attack on an
impoverished, small country whose defenses have been destroyed.
The criminal, in other words, is already known.
The growing anti-war movement needs to understand the answer
to the second question: What is Bush's motive?
More and more, people are putting two and two together. They
are learning of this administration's intimate connections to
the oil industry. They are finding out that Iraq, though small,
has one-tenth of the world's proven oil reserves. Slogans like
"No blood for oil" have become very popular.
But the oil-producing countries all want to sell their oil
to the rest of the world. It's their major--sometimes their
only--source of for
eign currency. The U.S. doesn't have to go to war to get
oil. Sometimes it's those who want a war who talk the most
about our "need" for oil. They try to scare us with dire
warnings that we'll be lining up at the gas pumps or freezing
in our homes--in order to get us to support a military
adventure.
So the war is about more than oil. It's about the profits of
the oil companies. They're the ones pushing for a war. That's
who the Bush administration listens to.
But does that explain why Congress voted for the war? Does
it explain why the media help Ashcroft's scare campaign to gut
civil liberties? Are they all in the pockets of the oil
companies?
Some are. Some aren't.
The problem, really, is broader than just the oil companies,
as big as they are. The problem is this economic system that
has allowed so much power and wealth to be concentrated in the
hands of so few.
The system has a name--capitalism. It's not the first
economic system that human beings have had, and it won't be the
last. It developed out of commerce and trade centuries ago. The
exchange of goods for money spurred on production, which in
turn started a scientific and technological leap forward called
the Industrial Revolution.
This expanded production tremendously, and with it the
exploitation of labor. Much of the wealth extracted from the
workers soon wound up in banks and stock markets. Mergers and
bankruptcies concentrated capital into fewer hands. Free trade
was replaced by monopolies. The banks and other financial
institutions became top dog.
This transition happened in the U.S. and Europe over a
hundred years ago, and in Japan soon after.
This was the beginning of the imperialist era. The finance
capitalists now controlled so much wealth that they couldn't
invest all of it at home. Capitalism was yo-yoing up and down,
with "panics"--today we'd call them recessions--occurring about
every 10 years. The owners of capital needed to find markets
and workers to exploit in other countries.
In the war with Spain that began in 1898, U.S. finance
capitalists got their wish. The U.S. military grabbed Cuba,
Puerto Rico and the Philippines and the rich immediately set
about making money there. They invested some of the wealth they
had accumulated from exploitation here at home--including the
immense fortunes made off the forced labor of Black people in
the South.
Investment in ports and railroads abroad might have looked
like "development" at first, but it was only so they could take
out big profits later.
That was the first really imperialist war of the U.S. There
had been earlier wars just as brutal--against Mexico, against
the Native people--but they were for territory. The
Spanish-American War was so U.S. capital could expand into
"spheres of influence" and keep out competing banks and
businesses from other countries.
Now, a hundred years and many, many wars and interventions
later, the super-wealthy ruling class of the U.S. is totally
addicted to imperialism. A huge part of their capital is
invested in war itself--the military-industrial complex that
makes everything from fighter jets to sniper guns.
Then there are all the companies that pay super-cheap wages
around the world--while laying off workers here. And the banks
that gain financial control of whole countries through loans.
All these corporations and banks would go into a tailspin
without the immense profits they get from investments all over
the world. As they get richer and billions of people get
poorer, they're sitting on a powder keg of anger and
resentment, and they know it. But they have no answers--except
to send the military.
This explains why the politicians, whose campaigns are all
paid for by the moneyed establishment, voted for the war. It
explains why the media, which depends on corporate advertising,
gives the impression that almost everyone is for a war. You
know that's a lie. That's why you're demonstrating.
The war Bush is planning isn't something unique in U.S.
history. Unless we fight to change the system itself, the wars
will continue and grow ever more horrendous.
Back in 1898, a few brave souls who were horrified at this
country's imperial ambitions--they included the writer Mark
Twain--formed the Anti-Imperialist League. Today, more than
ever, we need to oppose U.S. imperialism. We need to show
solidarity with all those peoples around the world who have
been invaded, sanctioned, bombed and exploited so U.S.
companies could make huge profits off their land and labor.
We need to do this for ourselves, first of all. The more
these corporations get away with exploiting the rest of the
world, the more they try to grind down our wages to the same
level. They can't help it, either. Capital flows to where the
profits are highest. Those corporate executives who can't or
won't squeeze more out of the workers fall by the wayside.
We don't have to accept this dog-eat-dog system. We can
fight it. We can replace it with something infinitely better.
We can live in harmony with the rest of the world instead of
going with a gun in our hands to make the world safe for Exxon
and Mobil and The Gap.
The war we need to fight is the war at home for jobs,
pensions, healthcare, housing, equality, the environment and
all the other necessities of life being undercut by this profit
system.
We need socialism. It's a word that's been demonized by the
establishment, but it simply means an economic system where the
wealth is owned in common by the people and shared equitably.
Of course, this scares the rich no end. They see it as the end
of their world. It is--and the beginning of a truly human
world.
Reprinted from the Oct. 31, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe to WW by Email: wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Donate to
support pro-labor, anti-war news.
Email
this article
Printable
page