Contents "The internationalist proletarian" n.13
INTER-IMPERIALIST CONFLICTS AT THE CURRENT CROSSROADS OF WORLD CAPITALISM
General context
Let us recall synthetically once again the context in which the capitalist system presently revolves. The post-World War II period saw the culmination of the bourgeois revolutions in Asia and Africa and the extension of capitalism all over the world. This worldwide extension of capitalism has happened, in the economic field, on the basis of the higher phase of capitalism described by Lenin as imperialism. In parallel, in the field of class domination of the bourgeoisie it has developed on the basis of fascism: state intervention in the economy, attempt at centralized world planning and control, integration of the labor union network within the bourgeois state for the control and suffocation of any attempt of workers' struggle, while maintaining in a general way the democratic-parliamentary narcotic.
The period in which the existing imperialist powers battled to prevent the revolutionary irruption of capitalism in their areas of colonial influence, which culminated in the defeat of the U.S. in Vietnam in 1975, was followed by the struggle to stop or slow down the development and interconnection of these new areas of the capitalist world.
It is a phenomenon derived from the tendency of the rate of profit to fall that the younger capitalisms accumulate at a faster rate than the older ones. For this reason, the end of the cycle of post-war reconstruction pushed the capitals of the – older – western imperialisms towards Asia, where they found a higher rate of profit. With this, the Western imperialisms kept the rate of profit afloat while, dialectically, they developed and strengthened their future competitor. The development of the process of capitalist accumulation since then has entailed the displacement of the center of gravity of capitalism towards Asia.
This development has led to the rupture of the post-World War II division of the world since the relative economic weights of the contending powers no longer correspond to those of the time. This rupture of the division of the world is also characterized by the fact that the United States has gradually lost its ability to play the role of world bully, bloodily and criminally accredited at the end of World War II with the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The extension of capitalism worldwide, the end of the cycle of post-war reconstruction and the scrapping of capitalism in the Eastern bloc has been followed by the deepening of the crisis of relative overproduction of capital, which has manifested itself especially since 2008 in the production volcano whose epicenter is in Asia and which floods the world market with commodities, overwhelming its competitors, as well as in a permanent global plethora of idle capital.
Epileptic resumption of circulation
It is in this context that the blockages and stoppages of capitalist production and circulation in 2020-2021 took place and were prolonged in time, as well as the subsequent epileptic resumption of world capitalist production and circulation. This electroshock applied to capitalism by the system itself allowed the economies of Western imperialism to temporarily emerge from the swamp of deflation in which they had been sinking for years.
The spasmodic effects of this electroshock reached their peak in 2022 and have been gradually receding, but just as its upward manifestation was gradually transmitted from the production base to the monetary surface, so too its downward process has first manifested itself at the base and only some time later has it been doing so in the most superficial part.
Thus, the prices of transportation or of certain raw materials (metals) or semi-finished products (semiconductors) were the first indicators of the seismograph that began to register the upward movement that was transferred to other industries and services with a certain time lag and, only later, to the monetary surface. The price of energy, kept high for a long period through the underproduction of OPEC+ countries during the resumption of world production and circulation, has been another important component. Similarly, when a significant number of the seismograph's needles were already subsiding, the more superficial needles began to rise, as in the case of interest rates. In this period, neither low interest rates generated inflation, nor have rising interest rates played a decisive role in the decline of inflation. In both cases, the evolution of interest rates lagged behind processes taking place in the process of reproduction of capital at world level, processes that generated an inflationary reaction that has since been deflating.
It is important to note that, in some of these needles of the economic seismograph, both direct and reflex phenomena overlap. Transportation prices are a good example. For example, in the rise in transportation prices at the end of 2020 and during 2021, a double phenomenon appeared, with the reflex phenomenon being the more significant of the two. The significance of this increase in transport prices did not lie primarily in the transmission of the increase in the price of transport to the price of commodities, although this does occur within certain limits. The evolution of the price of transport reflected another autonomous phenomenon, which was the demand for the transported commodities themselves, which was projected onto the demand for their transport. Thus, we could observe in "The Internationalist Proletarian" no.9 (April 2022, p. 10) that the price of transport was not symmetrical, and that the US had become a de facto exporter of empty containers. From the point of view of inflation, beyond the final price increase entailed by the higher cost of transport, the most important component in the final result was that of the demand for the goods themselves. Demand that was in turn the result of the over-ordering caused by the epileptic resumption of production and circulation, accentuated, in this context, by the increase in public spending and direct aid to companies and families. We will see that this was the case in transport inflation especially in 2021 but not in 2024.
With warehouses overcrowded due to the over-ordering, demand began to subside and thus the circulation inflammation began to decline ("The Internationalist Proletarian" no.11, April 2023, pp. 16 and 17), transferring deflation gradually and with a corresponding delay to the other indicators. For the time being, the Fed and the ECB have put their interest rate hikes on hold and are starting to talk about interest rate cuts. The trend is there: "The latest data collected by Bank of America reflects no less than 30 interest rate cuts globally in the last three months, the most since 2020." (Expansión, 21-11-2023).
Capital overproduction and debt
The paralysis and the spasms applied to the system have not been deep enough for the massive destruction of productive forces required by capitalism to get out of the swamp into which relative overproduction is plunging it in a lasting way. At the same time, global debt continues to grow in relation to world GDP.
This is the volume of capital parked in money market funds.
"Since the beginning of 2023, and until mid-December, the capital placed in this type of funds has jumped from $7.1 trillion to $8.4 trillion (about 7.6 trillion euros), attracted mainly in the United States. (...) Of the $8.4 trillion in these vehicles, $7 trillion are in the United States, $1 trillion in Europe and the rest in other areas of the world." (Expansión, 21-12-2023).
In this situation, the debt of Western imperialism continues to grow: “The US Treasury will issue around $4tn of bonds this year with a maturity of between two and 30 years (…) up from $3tn last year and $2.3tn in 2018. (…) In Europe, ten of the eurozone’s largest countries will issue around €1.2tn of debt this year, around the same level as last year.” (Financial Times, 08-01-2024).
It must be kept in mind that the basis of this debt is the role of currency, of hoarding currency, which the dollar and, to a lesser extent, the euro, have played. But as we have seen on several occasions in the pages of "The Internationalist Proletarian", this role will not last forever: “70% of central banks have expressed concern about the deterioration of liquidity in the US government bond markets (...) the supply of bonds continues to grow. According to forecasts by the US Congressional Budget Office, public debt could nearly double over the next decade, from $24.3 trillion at the end of 2022 to $46.4 trillion at the end of 2033, which could accentuate the market imbalance." (Expansión, 16-02-2024).
The development of US imperialism
Although the US was able to impose its conditions on the capitalist world after the Second World Slaughter, having already displaced England years ago in the hegemony of industrial production, with the end of the post-war reconstruction cycle and the culmination of the bourgeois-democratic revolutions, its hegemony gradually began to crumble. These initial rifts (from its first trade deficit in 1971) were already visible in the collapse of the Bretton Woods agreements but have been having an increasingly profound effect with the displacement of capitalism's center of gravity towards Asia. In the 1990s, the US was unable to prevent the reunification of German capitalism, but it was still able to impose contingency on the other loser of the world war, forcing Japan to return the leading industrial and financial positions it had snatched from the US. The US achieved this result by once again demonstrating its capacity as a world bully in the so-called first Gulf War.
After 2001, the subsequent attempt to repeat the same maneuver ended, two decades later, with the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq, whose causes and consequences we analyze in "The Internationalist Proletarian" no.8 (December 2021, p. 5). The difference between the two historical moments lies in the degree of development and interconnection of the productive forces in the world and particularly in Asia, including the Middle East. This development, around the production volcano whose epicenter has been China, has been imposing the retreat of the USA.
The economic contradictions are those that DETERMINE the actions of the different actors and their reflection is projected in the wills and explanations each current, pushed into action by the whirlwind of contradictory interests and under the compressive pressure of the withdrawal forced by the development of the course of world capitalism, is endowed with.
Let’s keep in mind that “(…) it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic – in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production”. (Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, K. Marx, 1859).
It is thus the retreat imposed by the development of the productive forces which reflected in the fantasy of a walled retreat of a series of currents of the US bourgeoisie, petty bourgeoisie and labor aristocracy (see "The Internationalist Proletarian" no.5, August 2020, p. 19), after which "America" would be "great again". The progressive isolation carried out by this current triggered, as a reaction, the regain of the control of the State apparatus by the most expansionist and militarist faction of the US bourgeoisie through a replacement of puppets, not without convulsions. In March 2021, we made the following assessment:
“The bulk of the US big bourgeoisie has seen with horror the effects of the abandonment of what had been its State policy and is forced to try to turn the wheel again in the other direction.
What the American bourgeoisie cannot see is that the effects it sees with horror are not only or not so much the result of the policy of walled-in withdrawal. They are above all the result of the displacement of production towards Asia, of the tendential fall in the rate of profit in general and more markedly in the countries of older capitalism, of the material impossibility of continuing to impose their parasitic conditions on the rest of the bourgeoisies of the world. The fantastic formulation of "America first" is no more illusory than the "Yes we can" was, the development of capitalism does not allow neither one nor the other.
For this reason, another thing will be what the laws of the economy allow or impose American capitalism to do. This will be what determines whether it can effectively return to its previous policy and partially recover the abandoned positions of influence, whether it will be forced to follow the current withdrawal dynamics or whether it can even reach a situation of collapse and internal implosion.” (“The Internationalist Proletarian”, March 2021, no.6, p. 18).
The evaluation so far of the plan of action attempted by the expansionist current can be summarized as follows. On the one hand, it has had to maintain part of its preceding isolationist line, for example, in terms of tariffs and sanctions against Chinese capitalism or the withdrawal from Afghanistan. On the other hand, the effort to try to recover positions at the international level, had some initial success, astutely playing with the emboldening of Russian imperialism to make it fall into the Ukrainian trap, managing to break the tendencies towards EU-Russia integration, sabotaging Nord Stream 2, managing to make war break out in Europe, resurrecting NATO and launching a circumcentric financial attack against Russian imperialism based on the (still) predominant role of the dollar as a means of payment and hoarding.
In the pages of "The Internationalist Proletarian", we have been presenting the limits and vicissitudes of this attempt of the most expansionist and pro-war faction, limits imposed by the same material constraints that are reflected in the current advocating the walled and isolationist withdrawal of the US.
The internal blockade suffered by the US at the level of its parliamentary circus is a manifestation of the material difficulties which restrict the US imperialism's action abroad and which impose on it, internally, a series of processes in which the important reduction of its capacity to act abroad becomes evident. The external LIMITS imposed by the material conditions translate into internal fracture even within each party faction (Democrat and Republican), into the blockage for the approval of the debt ceiling for the budget for the very functioning of the Federal Government itself, in the devaluation of its rating by its own credit rating agencies, into the blocking of the functioning of the House of Representatives and, very significantly, into the internal blockage of military aid for Ukraine or Israel.
The development of the productive forces in the rest of the capitalist world imposes on the US not only the impossibility of maintaining its army deployed throughout the world receiving blows from all sides, but even an INCAPACITATING BLOCKAGE to maintain a stable and sustained support for others to wage war on its behalf. As for NATO, although it has been formally resurrected with great fanfare, the immediate reality of this imperialist organization is that in practice it is inoperative, incapable not only of imposing itself but not even of acting, whose second army corresponds to a power (Turkey) that acts on its own at the international level, many times even aligned with Russia. The shadow of the isolationist faction of the US bourgeoisie appears in the declarations of its histrionic representative saying that "it would encourage Russia to do whatever the hell it wants with NATO allies who do not comply with their commitment to spend 2% of their GDP on defense". (La Vanguardia, 18-02-2024).
The US went from being a British agrarian colony to displacing the United Kingdom in the domination of the world's industrial production, to imposing its financial conditions on its competitors and to imposing its power on the world by force of arms. From there it has become the world's biggest debtor, unable to keep its army deployed in action and unable to sustain the military effort of other bourgeoisies, taking refuge in the ground rent and becoming the world's biggest oil producer. This does not mean that the US has disappeared as a world capitalist power nor that it has become simply negligible, but it would be completely illusory to continue to see it as in the 90's or 70's or 50's of the 20th century, without realizing the wide and deep modification that its position has been undergoing throughout these decades.
The development of European imperialism
One of the results of World War II was the definitive dismantling of the British and French colonial imperialisms in the years after its conclusion. In parallel, German capitalism was enucleating European imperialism, around the creation of the ECSC, the EEC and the EAEC, continuing its gradual integration despite the repeated opposition of the US.
With the fall of the Eastern bloc (which for Marxists has the value of the "GREAT CONFESSION" of the capitalist character of Russia and its peripheral area) the German bourgeoisie was able to impose: its state reunification, the recovery of its access to the Mediterranean sea through the scrapping of Yugoslavia and the creation of both the European Union and the Euro with the functions of means of payment and hoarding currency.
German capitalism, militarily defeated in the 2nd world slaughter, subsequently divided and militarily occupied, overcame obstacles in an ascending process of several decades in which it recovered and extended its area of influence. European imperialism has been able to maintain for a long period a position of equidistance and non-collision between the USA and the development of the productive forces in Asia. Despite the initial German predominance in the production of machinery, European imperialism has never succeeded in overcoming its lag in certain technologies, nor even in the military field. The incorporation of new members has introduced further contradictions (United Kingdom – today out of the EU –, Hungary and Poland) and points of support utilized by other capitalisms.
With some delay (see "The International Proletarian", no.6, March 2021, p. 26), European imperialism became aware that Chinese imperialism had not only spread throughout the world with its trade and infrastructure investment network, but was also strongly settling in its own backyard (Ukraine, Bulgaria, Belarus, Hungary, Slovakia, Balkans). This pushed European imperialism to reluctantly attempt joint action with its US ally/rival and to play harder, for example, in Belarus (see "The International Proletarian", no.7, July 2021, p. 16).
On the other hand, the EU has been overtaken by China as the second trading partner of Latin America (see "The International Proletarian ", no.9, April 2022, p. 29), while the development of the productive forces in Africa together with the Chinese, Russian, Indian, Emirati and Turkish capitalist penetration, have led to the collapse of the positions of European imperialism in the Sahel and its sequential expulsion from the region ("The International Proletarian ", no.9, April 2022, p. 21).
The development of British imperialism
British imperialism, which in 1870 represented 31.8% of world industrial production, was progressively ousted, representing 14.7% in 1910, 9% in 1956 and 1.8% in 2023. This gradual but long-standing decline was reflected in the belief of several sectors of the British bourgeoisie (a belief analogous to that of some sectors of the US bourgeoisie) that isolation would solve all their problems. The stark reality is that, in mature capitalism, the international division of labor and the world market leave no room for such isolation.
Three years after Brexit, "almost 30% of all the food the country imports comes from the EU" (Expansión, 01-02-2024) and more than half of its trade is still with the EU, only under worse conditions:
Two symptomatic manifestations of the aforementioned decline are: 1) on the military level: the reduction in a decade of the number of soldiers in the land army from 120,000 to 70,000, the reduction of the defense budget from 7.09% to 2.22% of GDP and the two aircraft carriers parked "in the port of Portsmouth for lack of sailors and spare parts" (La Vanguardia, 29-01-2024), 2) at the industrial level: after the planned closures of the last four blast furnaces, "it will be the only member of the G-20 without the capacity to produce the top quality virgin steel needed by the railway, automobile, construction, defense, wind turbine industries... What Britain does manufacture is scrap, up to 11 million tons a year, of which it exports 80% to countries like Turkey, Bangladesh and Pakistan, which turn it into low-quality steel that they then resell to London. " (La Vanguardia, 29-01-2024). The end of cycle of the former British Empire is that of being an exporter of scrap and buyer of low-quality steel.
The imperialist war in Ukraine
The outbreak of the war in Ukraine is one of the main achievements of the foreign policy of U.S. imperialism, which does not reap too many successes in the last decades (see "The International Proletarian", no.9, April 2022, p. 22). As we have recalled above, the war has broken the tendency towards Russia-EU integration, has allowed the covert blowing up of Nord Stream 2, has multiplied the sale of US LNG to Europe, has led to the resuscitation at least formally of NATO and to the imposition of a period of internal tensions and attrition on both Russia and the EU. Accessorily, the US is also acting against the development of Chinese capital penetration. However, this initial achievement is far from guaranteeing that the final outcome will favor US imperialism.
The US did indeed succeed in luring Russia into the methodically prepared trap in Ukraine, but, after two years, the war is essentially stalemated with the Ukrainian side showing the greatest signs of attrition. Western imperialisms fail to provide sufficient help to the Ukrainian bourgeoisie to retake the territory and, in fact, have difficulty even in holding it.
With the support of Western imperialism at half gas, the disproportion is increasing: "the Ukrainian artillery would be using 2,000 projectiles a day, while the Russian one has 6,000 daily" (El País, 02-02-2024). The European bourgeoisie "has not managed to send the million in artillery rounds committed last year" in addition the program "accumulates a debt of 7,160 million in reimbursements." (El País, 22-01-2024).
On both sides of the front, casualties require the mobilization of new proletarians to be sent to kill and die on the front. In Russia, in addition to the military recruiter shot in September 2022, there have been hundreds of Molotov cocktail attacks on recruiting offices. Demonstrations by relatives of reservist soldiers called to the frontline have evolved: "At first they complained that they were ill-equipped. Now they demand an end to the indefinite mobilization and that they return home." (La Vanguardia, 04-02-2023). On the Ukrainian side, the army which already has 880,000 employees seeks to mobilize 450,000 additional soldiers, which the Ukrainian bourgeoisie "quantified at 13.5 billion dollars" (La Vanguardia, 20-12-2023).
It has been announced “the dismissal of all the heads of Ukraine’s regional military recruitment centres in the latest drive to root out corruption after officials were accused of taking bribes.” (The Guardian, 11-08-2023). There have also been reports of attacks on recruiting offices and increasing pressure for forced conscription. A law is being processed in the Ukrainian Parliament that would "lower the age of military service from 27 to 25 years, an adjustment from the surprising average age of front-line troops, which is now 43 years" and whereby "every Ukrainian of conscription age (18 to 60 years) would be obliged by law to create an electronic account as a potential conscript (...). Failure to do so would result in sanctions. These sanctions would include a ban on the use of consular services abroad and the blocking of the recruits' bank accounts." (CEPA, 14-02-2024).
Statements by the Ukrainian army high command that the war was stalled and disagreements over the mobilization of more soldiers have resulted in the dismissal of the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and his replacement by another element, whose first decision had to be the surrender of the town of Avdiivka, near Donetsk.
The US, Germany and Poland have all made public statements indicating that it is not feasible to regain Ukrainian territory currently occupied by Russia.
Finally, although Russia has not succeeded in blocking the exit of Ukrainian grain by sea, it has largely benefited in this respect from the situation both by exporting its grain and by appropriating grain from the occupied territory: “About 6.4 million tons of wheat — similar to Bulgaria’s total output — and almost 1.5 million tons of sunflower seeds were harvested in Russia-occupied regions of Ukraine this year, research using satellite imagery shows.” (Bloomberg, 21-12-2023).
The development of Chinese imperialism
A couple of decades after the bourgeois democratic revolution whose banner was Maoism, China initiated relations with the US (while US planes were bombing Indochina) and joined the UN in 1971.
The US defeat in Vietnam in 1975 put an end to the last obstacle to industrial capitalist development in Asia. But of no small importance was also China's defeat by Vietnam four years later, in 1979. This defeat of Chinese imperialism by Vietnam imposed a change of course to leave behind the low productivity caused by the so-called "great leap forward" and "cultural revolution". In 1980, the first Special Economic Zones began to be created, which would be the spearhead of Chinese industrialization. This will take off riding on the backs of a Chinese proletariat forced into illegal internal immigration, deprived of rights thanks to the Maoist hukou system.
This internal industrial development put pressure on Chinese capitalism to equip itself with the means to flood the world with goods spewed out by the volcano of production. In 2001, China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) and in 2011 the first BRICS conference was held.
In 2013, China launched the Belt and Road Initiative which was followed by the creation of the financing instrument, the New Development Bank. The result, a decade later:
“Total BRI spending has already surpassed $1 trillion – an enormous sum China plans to recoup through various debt repayment plans. Today, BRI lending has made China the world’s largest debt collector. And while investment levels have fluctuated over the years and some countries have ended their involvement with the BRI, funding has increased in recent months. In the first half of 2023, over 100 BRI agreements were signed, valuing a total of $43 billion – a roughly 20% increase from the first half of 2022.” (World Economic Forum, 20-11-2023).
All the above has translated into a clear increase and growing predominance of the number of Chinese companies and banks in the top positions of world imperialism, as can be seen in the previous and the next figures.
“China has the second-highest number of banks in this year’s ranking at 140, behind the US with 196. But China’s five megabanks – Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), China Construction Bank, Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China and Bank of Communications – dominate the rankings, making up half of the top 10 biggest lenders.” (The Banker, 05-07-2023). For a comparative evolution of the world's leading banks, see "The Internationalist Proletarian" no.67, December 2021, p. 6.
It should be noted that the US has regained some positions in the rankings. It had 122 companies in the Fortune 500 in 2021 and has risen to 136. As for banks, it has incorporated 11 new banks in the top 1000 by assets. Both are mainly explained by the revaluation of the dollar based on the Fed's interest rate increase.
The most recent US attempts to curb the development of Chinese capitalism by means of tariffs and sanctions have only succeeded in making it more expensive for US industry to pay for the products it needs, and in making Chinese capitalism begin to equip with alternative means of production to circumvent the sanctions or to replace the products banned from purchase. For example: “Between July and November, China’s imports of lithography machines surged more than five times to $3.7 billion, according to Chinese customs data. China accounted for nearly half of ASML’s sales in the third quarter – compared with 24% in the previous quarter and 8% in the three months ending in March – as companies there rushed to import its machines before export controls take effect.” (Bloomberg, 01-01-2024).
On the other hand, the development of industrial ROBOTIZATION worldwide is accelerating faster in China than in the other competing capitalist countries: if in 2010 China had 3.2% of the world's industrial robots, by 2020 it had already reached 31%. Another glaring example is 5G: while China has 55% of the current 1 billion lines, its European competitors have only 9%. But beyond 5G at the individual user level, where this technology has an overwhelming advantage is in its industrial application (machine vision, artificial intelligence, remote control in real time over very long distances, etc.):
“According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China has built the world's largest 5G network, with 3.2 million base stations registered by the end of October. China's industrial internet sector is already valued at more than 1.2 trillion yuan (155 billion euros) and has more than 89 million connected devices.” (El País, 21-12-2023).
Notwithstanding all the above, in the country of FALSE Chinese socialism, the laws of the capitalist mercantile economy apply. Therefore, all this productive capacity has a destiny from which it cannot escape: the relative OVERPRODUCTION of commodities and capitals.
Let's take the statements of a Western capitalist company (Longi Green Energy Technology) whose production is mainly in China and which implores Western imperialisms not to "break up with China". The reason is as follows:” China dominates solar power equipment manufacturing and accounts for more than 80% of global production (...) Last year, solar production costs in China fell by more than 40%, to around 15 cents per watt, compared with 30 cents in Europe and 40 cents in the United States, according to Wood Mackenzie. The drop was partly due to lower material costs and oversupply. The Longi mill's current utilization rate has fallen to between 70% and 80% amid the excess.” (Expansión, 16-02-2024).
China's enormous productive capacity already generates a relative overproduction of commodities which leads to falling prices and under-utilization of installed productive capacity. This overproduction pushes Chinese capitalism to flood the world market with its commodities, something it will be able to do based on these low prices. If the Western imperialisms were to succeed in lifting the tariff dike dreamed of by several of their factions, the over-productive pressure would multiply inside China, plunging prices.
But this would only accumulate a higher pressure that would eventually overflow or collapse the raised dike. As the Manifesto of 1848, dialectically inverted, states: “The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate." (Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848).
This low-price scenario is effectively building up within Chinese capitalism, a prelude to its shock wave. “China’s consumer prices fell at the fastest annual rate in 15 years in January. (…) The country’s consumer price index fell 0.8 per cent year on year in January, according to official statistics released on Thursday, the fourth straight month of declines and the biggest contraction since 2009.” (Financial Times, 08-02-2024). Not only consumer prices but industrial prices are in deflationary territory.
As seen in the previous figure, this tendentially imposes a lowering of interest rates, the application of which the Chinese bourgeoisie is delaying as much as it can.
We will conclude this brief characterization of Chinese capitalism by recalling that overproduction is reflected in the ongoing real estate crisis, of which the two most recent relevant events are that “a Hong Kong court has ordered the liquidation of Evergrande” (Expansión, 30-01-2024) and that “Zhongzhi, the conglomerate at the center of China's shadow banking, worth $3 trillion (€2.7 trillion), has filed for bankruptcy, claiming it is 'seriously insolvent'.” (Expansión, 06-01-2024).
The oil parabola
In 1960, with the creation of OPEC, the dominance of the "seven sisters" of oil was broken. But sixty years later, the oil situation and the position of the OPEC cartel have also changed. Even with the unofficial addition of 10 more countries to the actual OPEC group, OPEC's position has changed: “the importance of OPEC+ in the global market has been declining significantly since the formation of this alliance in 2016, to the point where it now gathers barely 51% of global supply.” (Expansión, 15-12-2023).
The above graph was before Angola's exit, but it gives an idea of the relative importance of the OPEC+ components. The addition of Brazil (2.88 mbd) will compensate for the loss of Angola's share (1.1 mbd) but this does not reverse the trend whereby several countries have left the cartel in recent years: Indonesia (2016), Qatar (2019), Ecuador (2020) and Angola (2023).
The problem causing these exits is the internal tensions caused by the cuts necessary to maintain the price of oil, in the midst of the process of displacement of fossil fuels by other energy sources. “Of the 23 countries that comprise it, only seven assume an adjustment of their production, which, moreover, is to some extent forced by the circumstances in the Russian case. And, of this figure, only Saudi Arabia is responsible for almost half of the adjustment. Moreover, the forthcoming incorporation of Brazil in January of next year (with a production of 2.88 million barrels of crude oil per day) is made on the condition that it will not be subject to this cut.” (Expansión, 01-12-2023).
In fact, as seen above “the Brent price, adjusted for inflation, has not budged since 2005. (…) In real terms it is 42 per cent cheaper than it was a decade ago.” (Financial Times, 30-01-2024).
At the other extreme, the US has become the world's leading oil producer: “U.S. crude oil production reached a new all-time high of 13.2 million barrels per day in September, one out of every eight barrels of world production and more than any other country. (...) Natural gas production also reached a record high in the US, topping 3.54 billion cubic meters per day in September." (Expansión, 11-12-2023).
Soon after, counting OPEC+ cuts, “oil made in the USA already represents 20% of global production (...) with 13.3 million barrels per day in December, the US has never pumped so much oil." (La Vanguardia, 07-01-2024).
This US take-off in 2010 has the effect of relativizing the influence of OPEC+ (or rather Saudi Arabia) cuts: "the IEA forecasts a significant slowdown in demand growth, which this year will be an additional 1.2 million barrels per day compared to 2.3 million in 2023 (...) The IEA expressly referred to the United States, Brazil, Guyana and Canada, which alone will raise production by 1.3 million barrels per day, compared to the expected stagnation of OPEC and its partners, among which the sanctioned Russia stands out." (Expansión, 19-01-2024).
But not even Saudi Arabia can afford to maintain sales prices to its main market: “(…) prompting state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco to lower the February official selling price of benchmark light Arabian crude for Asia to the lowest level since November 2021." (Expansión, 09-01-2024). And it may have to reduce them further in the face of the autonomous progress of some of its customers. "Chinese authorities have discovered a crude oil field with about 107 million tons, equivalent to more than half of its annual production. (...) In 2023, China produced about 208 million tons of crude oil and imported another 564 million tons, so the import dependency rate exceeds 70%." (Banca y Negocios, 31-02-2024).
As explained in "Energy sources and capitalism" published in "The Internationalist Proletarian" no.10 (September 2022, p. 12), the existence of the capitalist mercantile regime imposes that the displacement of fossil fuels takes place through an intense commercial war and, indeed, a real commercial battle is taking place on several sides: on the one hand, between the countries producing the old energy sources and their current consumers and, on the other hand, between the countries that seek to acquire the new energy sources and compete with each other.
Part of this struggle is being fought against Russian oil. If we have seen that OPEC+ is having trouble enforcing its cuts, neither does Western imperialism manage to prevail over the laws of the market: "in October, 99% of seaborne exports of Russian crude were sold at prices above $60 a barrel. Of these shipments, 71% involved vessels and service providers from outside the G7 countries, compared to only 20% in April 2022" (Expansión, 12-12-2023).
The Middle East integration tendency
In the article “The imperialist tensions in the middle east flare up in Gaza” (“The Internationalist Proletarian” no.7, July 2021, p. 14) we analyzed the "extension of Chinese influence in the region". For example, with Iran, “China agreed to invest $400 billion (…) over 25 years in exchange for a steady supply of oil.” (New York Times, 27-03-2021), while trade exchanges China-Turkey (NATO's second largest army) reached $24 billion in 2020. (Belt and Road News, 26-03-2021).
We also saw that the extension of China's influence even over US allies had been permeating events in the region for years.
We then raised the question of the limitations that this Chinese penetration imposed on the ability of the US to keep on a short leash its traditional allies:
“The issue is whether the US threat to drop Israel can be hollowed out to the extent that China can prop it up on the other side, imposing its conditions on it. Something similar happens with another traditional US ally in the region: Saudi Arabia.” (“The Internationalist Proletarian” no.7, July 2021, p. 14).
After putting on record the agreements signed between Saudi Arabia and China in 2017 worth $65 billion, we recalled the series of clashes over oil since 2014 that had been souring and distancing US-Saudi relations. These confrontations include the so-called "Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act" passed by the US Congress to allow denouncing and prosecuting the Saudi government for its involvement in the 9/11 attacks, vetoed "after the Saudi government threatened to sell US Treasury assets" (Cinco Días, 17-05-2016), as well as the proposed "bill to establish measures to inhibit the development of nuclear weapons by Saudi Arabia" (La Vanguardia, 07-08-2020) or the publication of the report "implicating the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, (...), in the gruesome death of Kashoggi." (La Vanguardia, 26-02-2021) and "the end of US support for Saudi attacks in Yemen." (La Vanguardia, 05-02-2021).
Added to this comes the US' hesitant approach to Iran on the nuclear deal issue and it is topped off by the “positioning of China as its [of Saudi Arabia] first trade partner, with the signing of some thirty agreements on December 9th” in “one of the few visits outside China by the Chinese president, who met in Riyadh with thirty leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council. They also discussed making part of the oil payments in yuan instead of dollars and Saudi Arabia's request for observer status in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.” (“The Internationalist Proletarian, no.11, April 2023, p. 27).
As for Israel, the Chinese investment in the construction of the railroad to link the Israeli ports of Eilat (on the Gulf of Aqaba, on the Red Sea) with that of Haifa (on the Mediterranean, with cutting-edge technology and managed by the Chinese state-owned Shanghai International Port Group) comes from 2012. Other agreements initiated between the two sides at that time led to China becoming Israel's second largest trading partner in 2018. This pushed a U.S. Senate committee to pass, in 2019, a bill proposal expressly mentioning "serious security concerns" by the closeness between Israel and China, with a retired U.S. Fleet Admiral and Vice Admiral going so far as to declare that “Israel could be left out of America's trusted military, financial, commercial and technological networks unless it acts decisively," to limit Chinese investment.” (Middle East Eye, 17-07-2019).
Moving closer to October 2023, the tension between the US and Israeli governments was more than evident: "A journalist asked Biden if he planned to invite him [Netanyahu]. The answer was as improvised as it was curt: ‘No, not in the near term’". (El País, 02-04-2023). The rejection on the Israeli side is also evident: "Gvir, clarified that his country ‘is not another star on the American flag’”. A deputy from Netanyahu's party, “went so far as to blame the Obama administration for the death of 74 Israeli soldiers during the 2014 Gaza offensive." (El País, 02-04-2023).
As stated in "The Internationalist Proletarian" no.11: “The alternative facing a sector of the Israeli bourgeoisie is the following: any day now, the US may even drop Israel or, what is practically the same thing, force it to accept a Palestinian state. Then Israel would be swallowed up like a drop in the ocean. The only way to survive would be to integrate as one more Arab tribe, previously integrating the Arab-Israeli bourgeoisie in the administration of joint businesses.”
In this direction and under the pressure of the tendency towards the integration of the zone, were moving the so-called "Abraham Accords", promoted by the most isolationist faction of the US bourgeoisie. And these agreements were to be imminently extended through the recognition of Israel by Saudi Arabia, a recognition that by the statements made included some kind of "solution" for the Palestinian bourgeoisie.
The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, the Israeli State's permissiveness in allowing the attack to unfold in the most lethal possible way and the subsequent indiscriminate attack by the Israeli army against the population in the Gaza Strip, multiplying by thirty the initial death toll, constitute a reaction against this integration process in an attempt to block or derail it. There is abundant evidence that Israel was warned by Egypt, by its own volunteers, and "warnings from Israel's Combat Intelligence Corps, which guards the country's border with Gaza, were ignored" (Expansión, 10-11-2023), but this is ultimately irrelevant because accidentality occurs at the intersection of necessary processes and the manifestation of this accidentality in the wills, decisions and justifications of the actors is in turn determined by the necessity that prevails through their actions.
The obstacles to this integration
The Arab states need (and, therefore, want) the "normalization" of their relationship with Israel in order to develop their business in the area, expecting the consolidation of the passage through the area as a trade route, announced at the last G-20, and even more so in view of the prospect of the relative loss of importance of oil. With nuances depending on the ruling faction but with continuity in the essentials, the US has seen in acting as an advocate of this process a way of preserving some influence in an area from which it has been displaced.
Who would lose the most with this "normalization"? The fractions of the various bourgeoisies that maintain their influence and their reason for being based on the existence of the conflict that would be "normalized". This includes the bourgeois fraction of Israel represented by the settlers and the parties that support the current government, the fraction of the bourgeoisie linked to Hamas and at least part of the Iranian bourgeoisie that would lose part of its footholds and pawns to influence the area.
Major obstacles to this integration are the subsistence of groups of armed Jewish settlers who want to repopulate the "holy land", also that of the unproductive mass of the ultra-Orthodox and in general the lack of homogeneity of the multiple fragments of which the "Israeli society" is composed, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the existence of armed organizations that have a big business in the management of the Gaza concentration camp which they do not want to give up.
Dialectics of the historical situation
The tendency towards economic integration creates a polarizing effect as it approaches a tipping point, exacerbating the forces within Israel and Gaza and in the area that have interests opposed to this integration, pushing them into action to stop or delay it. The existence of these forces, in itself, was already an obstacle to this integration for which there was no clear and immediately viable solution, among other things, because of the armed character of several of them. These forces have collided with each other resulting in the sudden halt of the integration process. Israel was to be recognized by Saudi Arabia and this has been stopped, for the time being.
If the military conflict were to be abruptly stopped, the internal situation in Israel, and probably in Gaza, would return to the development of the contradictions that had accumulated with a great risk of social explosion. On the contrary, with the continuation of the massacre, an international tension is being generated which could end up imposing, even by force from outside, the recognition of a Palestinian State and the forced metabolization of the various sectors blocking the process.
Thus, it remains to be seen whether the phenomenon whose detonation has been determined by the need of some sectors to block the general integration process, whose immediate result has been the halt of this process, ends up being the phenomenon that dialectically generates the conditions and forces that eventually surpass and overcome the obstacles encountered by the integration process; whether the contrasting factor of the process, although produced by the process itself, may end up becoming its catalyst, even against the will of its actors. In any case, this process is developing itself amidst great turbulences, to which more turbulences resulting from the development of world capitalism are being added and may still be added. Therefore, the development of the situation may end up materializing in various results.
Reactions from other States in the region
In the days immediately following the Hamas attack, it was possible to read in Saudi social networks close to the government such illustrative and symptomatic messages as: “This is an attack on Saudi Arabia’s grand project for the Middle East and we must be in solidarity with the state of Israel.” (Bloomberg, 13-10-2023).
However, Saudi Arabia's first reaction was to communicate with Iran, resulting in these statements: ”Iran’s state news agency said the two leaders ‘stressed the unity of the Islamic world’ adding that ‘they considered the crimes of the Zionist regime and the US’s green light the cause of the destructive insecurity.’” (Bloomberg, 12-10-2023). It follows that it was sufficiently clear among them that the development of the situation was not the one envisaged by Iran either, whose main leader stated that “’Those who say that the recent saga is the work of non-Palestinians have miscalculated’ (…) Israeli officials have said publicly that they have not determined whether Iran, which provides funding to Palestinian militant groups including Hamas, which controls Gaza, was behind the attack. And the White House said on Monday that it still had no evidence that Tehran was directly involved in planning or executing the attack.” (The New York Times, 15-10-2023).
The position of the Arab bourgeoisies is seen in their actions and statements: “Saudi Arabia’s defense forces also intercepted a missile [aimed at Israel] in Saudi territory fired by the Houthis in the past few weeks.” (Bloomberg, 30-10-2023). ”Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Investment Khalid Al-Falih said talks toward a normalization of ties with Israel remain on the table, though they have always been ‘contingent on a pathway to a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian question.’” (Bloomberg, 07-11-2023). “The United Arab Emirates defended its decision to normalize ties with Israel via the Abraham Accords, and stressed that it will not walk back its moves over the Gaza war.” (Haaretz, 04-01-2024).
For the various Arab bourgeoisies, the prolongation of the war generates additional security issues by facilitating the recruitment of new militants by Islamist extremist groups that actually serve the interests of these bourgeoisies but sometimes act outside their control.
The actions of US imperialism
The first reaction of the US was to send warships and warplanes to the area, to make joint statements with Israel and to pledge all necessary support. From these first reactions to the present situation there has been an observable change.
The first round of the US Secretary of State's visit to the Arab countries was very significant in terms of the coldness of his reception. In Saudi Arabia he was not received until the day after and in the UAE the government "didn’t clear the roads for his motorcade, which was forced to stop at traffic lights." (Bloomberg, 17-10-2023).
This sent a message to the US that if it wants to maintain (not to say recover) part of its remaining influence in the region, it had to try to keep the Israeli State, which has historically been its dog of prey in the area, on a short leash. The Arab states, which were seeking the "normalization" of the area to guarantee their business, have clearly seen that the outbreak of the conflict is aimed at breaking this process.
On his second trip, in November, the statements of the US envoy and the President of Israel were already made separately. (Bloomberg, 03-11-2023).
In December, the US government momentarily halted the planned shipment of arms to Israel (Expansión, 15-12-2023), a prelude to a blockade which was later imposed in the Senate, with a Democratic majority, although the blockade comes from the Republican representatives. In the Senate, the package including both military aid to Ukraine and to Israel was blocked, in a very symptomatic internal manifestation of the retreat imposed on the US abroad. When, in February 2024, the Senate approved the budget item of 95 billion dollars which “includes $60 billion in war aid for Ukraine alongside funding for Israel, Taiwan and humanitarian aid for Gaza” (Bloomberg, 13-02-2024) the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has kept it blocked.
In December 2023, the US imposed "sanctions on Israeli settlers who have attacked Palestinian residents in the West Bank" (El País, 06-12-2023) consisting of banning them from entering the US. In February 2024, the US issued “an unprecedented executive order aimed at punishing Israeli settlers in the West Bank who have attacked Palestinian civilians. (…) will further allow the U.S. to impose sanctions on additional individuals and leaders of any entity, including government officials, targeting Palestinian civilians – whether through violence, intimidation, property damages or terror.” (Haaretz, 01-02-2024), adding the next day that "There are no plans to target with sanctions Israeli government officials at this time."
The answer within Israel has been the following: “National Security Minister Itamar BenGvir said Biden was ‘wrong about Israeli citizens and the heroic settlers.’ A settler council head called the order ‘an antisemitic plot.’” (Haaretz, 02-02-2024).
On a tour in early January, the US Secretary of State's (Blinken) message was as follows: "Virtually every country I have visited wants to pursue normalization [of relations with Israel]. Some have already taken vital steps towards it and others I believe are interested (...) and, finally, a Palestinian state." (El País, 10-01-2024).
At the end of February, the US “declared that Israeli West Bank settlements are "inconsistent with international law," reversing the so-called 'Pompeo Doctrine,' (…) US Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated that the decision was a return to ‘longstanding US policy, under Republican and Democratic administrations alike.’ (…) The policy change/restoration came as Israel announced it was planning to build thousands of housing units in West Bank settlements” (Haaretz, 23-02-2024).
The actions of European imperialism
After an immediate unconditional support from the President of the European Commission, the forced rectification and disavowal statements from several States and the EU foreign policy representative followed.
The previous statements of this hypocritical representative of European imperialism had been: "There are elements of this response that certainly do not comply with international law. I think this is the third time I have said it (...) there is an objective fact: that the rules of war say that these things should not be done" (El País, 14-10-2023), which he reiterated a few months later, "he regretted that (...) Israel continues to be supported by sending weaponry (...) Stop saying please and do something." (La Vanguardia, 13-02-2024).
And, in the same line as US imperialism, the following month he stated the position of European imperialism on the question: "Israel's own security requires the creation of a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem (...) One thing is clear: all my interlocutors in the Arab world have accepted the existence of Israel and want to commit themselves to it". (Expansión, 28-11-2023). The same representative for EU foreign policy also declared something that is an open secret: "Yes, Hamas was financed by the Israeli government in an attempt to weaken the Palestinian Authority, led by Fatah." (La Vanguardia, 20-01-2024).
France, Spain and the UK have begun to impose sanctions on Israeli settlers, following the US and Canada. In Holland, "the Court of Appeals gave a seven-day deadline to the Executive to stop exports of this indispensable material for the maintenance of the [F-35] fighters" (La Vanguardia, 13-02-2024). The EU agreed to maintain its support for the Palestinian Authority and "announced that it was allocating an additional 68 million euros ($74 million) to support the Palestinians through the Red Cross and Red Crescent, and proceeding with a payment of 50 million euros to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency." (Haaretz, 01-03-2024).
And if anyone says that all these acts and statements are impregnated with cynicism to the core because the massacre continues in Gaza, he would be absolutely right. But regardless of the degree of cynicism and hypocrisy they have, they are part of the movements of the various imperialisms in their interest as such imperialisms in the area.
Neither the US, nor the EU, nor even the Arab countries want the Israeli State to disappear or to be defeated without further ado, which would give excessive preponderance to Iran and even Turkey in the area. But neither do they want an Israeli state that acts with impunity without considering their (of the rest) imperialist interests, they need a more domesticated Israel that limits itself to play the role of counterweight and balance with Iran but does not destabilize the area excessively.
Israel's increasing isolation
The Israeli State is becoming isolated and the siege on the Israeli faction opposed to the "solution" of the two States is getting tighter and tighter. There is another faction within the Israeli bourgeoisie which, being completely Zionist, considers that the consolidation of its Israeli State project necessarily passes through the stability of such a "solution".
In the hypocritical world of diplomatic relations this isolation is manifested, in addition to what we have already seen, in the declarations of the UN Secretary General in favor of the "solution" of the two States (El País, 27-10-2023), the votes in favor of a cease-fire at the UN with 153 votes in favor, 23 abstentions and only 10 against (La Vanguardia, 13-12-2023), or the declarations of the head of the Vatican stating that "This is not a war, it is terrorism." (El País, 23-11-2023).
The G-20 meeting ended without a joint statement, but with declarations made in a context of apparent unanimity, in favor of the "two States".
For its part, Chinese imperialism also perceives Israel's actions as contrary to its interests in the region and ”hasn’t criticized Hamas in its statements, only saying that the Asian country is a ‘friend to both’ sides of the conflict” (Bloomberg, 12-10-2023), has been an early supporter of a cease-fire and has spoken out in favor of "the just Palestinian cause to restore their legitimate rights and interests." (La Vanguardia, 14-02-2024).
And, finally, the pantomime of the International Court of Justice with the genocide complaint filed by South Africa has been characterized by its lack of concreteness in any sense, but this does not prevent this instrument from being used later to pressure or remove from the equation a certain faction of the Israeli bourgeoisie that does not want to submit to the decision taken by the various world imperialisms.
The internal situation in Israel
The actions of Hamas and the Israeli state can also be explained by internal social unrest.
In "The Internationalist Proletarian" no.11 we explained in detail the development of the internal social fracture that was amplifying within Israel and which led the Minister of Defense to declare that: "The growing schism in our society is penetrating the Armed Forces and the security forces, which poses a clear, immediate and tangible threat to the security of the State” (El País, 26-03-2023). But the day after the Hamas attack, at least momentarily, national unity was made.
However, the Israeli State is anything other than a homogeneous bloc. It is rather a jumble of contrasting interests that fail to merge into a real unit, even from the bourgeois point of view.
The outbreak and development of the war has acted in several contradictory ways on this jumble. Whether it will result in consolidating "Israelization" or whether it will ultimately blow it out of the water is too early to say.
One of the underlying material tendencies is the "Israelization" of the "Arab" population (around 21% of the population, including in the same statistical package Palestinians, Druze, Armenians, Arab Christians, Bedouins, Circassians, etc.), sought by sectors of both the Arab and Jewish bourgeoisie. The Zionist newspaper Haaretz reported on the creation of a “some 600 volunteers, mostly from the Azazmeh tribe [a Bedouin tribe, ed.], who arrived with their ATVs and created emergency teams to search for missing Israelis” or “the establishment of a joint Arab-Jewish civil guard in Tel Aviv-Jaffa. Its goal: to protect local residents, regardless of religion or ethnic background, should clashes erupt among them. Within hours, some 1,000 people joined the guard’s new Whatsapp group. (…) Not only in Jaffa and Haifa are Arabs and Jews working shoulder to shoulder, but also in the arab city of Taibeh, in the central part of the country.” (Haaretz, 13-10-2023). In addition “Arab Israeli lawmaker Mansour Abbas, the chairman of the Islamist United Arab List, denounced Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel in a radio interview in Arabic, saying that the massacre was ‘against everything we believe in.’” (Haaretz, 07-11-2023). Remember that this Arab party was part of the previous coalition government to displace Likud. Another example is the request made to the government by “a list of 35 Israeli Jewish and Arab peace and human rights groups” (Haaretz, 06-11-2023). No pacifist grouping or any such petition is going to stop the military conflict, obviously, but what is relevant to what we are trying to observe is a given tendency towards the integration of Arabs and Jews within Israel.
On the other hand, the currents of the Israeli bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie reflected in religious Zionism are trying to take advantage of their stay in the government to strengthen their bases, while their spokesmen dispatch hallucinated appeals and statements: ”The rabbi at an Israeli military training base celebrated Israel’s actions in Gaza with messianic fervor and exulted over Israel someday controlling a swath of territory from Lebanon to Gaza in a video that went viral on social media Sunday. (…) ‘...the land is OURS. The whole country! All of it! Including Gaza! Including Lebanon! The whole promised land!’” (Haaretz, 05-11-2023). “Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu (Otzma Yehudit), said that dropping a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip is an option.” (Haaretz, 06-11-2023).
The concern of a sector of the Israeli State regarding the distribution of weapons and the paramilitary squads organized by the religious Zionist sector in the government is palpable: “Ben-Gvir’s ministry has established over 600 such squads since the start of the war, including many that are not close to the country's borders (…) provided 40,000 “combat packages” that included a personal rifle and other equipment. Some 25,000 guns have been purchased from Israeli companies so far, as well as ammunition and other combat gear. (…) Israel’s top cop warns Ben-Gvir's mass distribution of weapons could put them in ‘wrong hands’ (…) ‘No one is vetting the ones receiving the weapons. In the midst of all the panic, they doled out weapons to anyone, and it won’t be easy to collect them after the war,” senior police officials said." (Haaretz, 10-11-2023). In a situation that has certain similarities with the armed situation of the US petty bourgeoisie, these weapons are actually distributed to be used against the Israeli State forces when the time comes in which the need for the material dissolution of these currents that oppose the integration of Israel as one more state in the Middle East area will be imposed.
Additionally, 13% of the population (also the part with the highest demographic growth) is made up of ultra-Orthodox or Haredim. The exemption of this sector from military service has been one of the scenarios of the struggle between the State approach of the different Israeli factions. On an immediate level, the outbreak of the war had the effect that "approximately 3,000 men from the Haredi community, (...) volunteered to serve in the IDF" (Times of Israel, 08-11-2023) in addition to the recurring image of groups of “Haredim visiting Israel Defense Forces soldiers to show their support” (Haaretz, 16-11-2023).
This is how the "secular" Zionist sector speaks out: “(…) six weeks ago we were on the verge of civil war because of the issue of sharing the burden of army service (…)” (Haaretz, 12-11-2023). And a few months of imperialist war later, the same question is beginning to be raised again: "'we acknowledge and support those who dedicate their lives to the study of the sacred Jewish scriptures, but without physical existence there is no spiritual existence' recalled this week the Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant. (...) the Labor Party is leading the demonstrations for the religious to get involved" (El País, 03-03-2024). Despite the initial momentum following the Hamas attack, there remains considerable resistance to the compulsory enrollment of ultra-Orthodox students: "'If they force our kids to go to the army, they're going to stand up and not fight,' Shwarts concludes in a yeshiva (rabbinical school) in Mea Sharim, Jerusalem's ultra-Orthodox neighborhood par excellence." (El País, 03-03-2024). “Sephardi Chief Rabbi (…) waded into the controversy over the exemption of 66,000 yeshiva students from military service.
‘If they force us to go the army, we will all go abroad’, he said." (Haaretz, 10-03-2024).
As for the pre-war conflict between factions of the Israeli bourgeoisie, the material causes are still there and the war, even if it played an initial inhibiting role, could develop its subsequent revival through the attrition it generates. With some delay, the protests have been resuming and the direct repression of them by the State has also increased: “The first formal Jewish-Arab anti-war/pro-cease-fire demonstration (…) will be held in Tel Aviv on Saturday afternoon, after legal challenges and backtracking by the police under pressure (…) to cancel it.” (Haaretz, 17-11-2023). “Hundreds of protesters rallied in front of the houses of Israeli coalition members, calling for the overthrow of the government.” (Haaretz, 16-02-2024). ”Thousands protested on Saturday night across Israel against PM Netanyahu's government, demanding early elections and a deal to release the hostages held by Hamas. In Tel Aviv, police made heavy use of water cannons and mounted officers to disperse the protest, which they declared illegal.” (Haaretz, 25-02-2024).
On the other hand, in relation to the judicial reform sought by the government, "the Supreme Court decided yesterday to abolish its [the current government's] key law, the one that deprived the justice system of the power to annul decisions of the Government and ministers that they consider 'unreasonable'. It was approved by a very slim majority of eight to seven" (La Vanguardia, 02-01-2024).
The Israeli ruling faction that has been pushed into triggering the armed conflict also needs its maximum prolongation. The initial effect on the Israeli economy was as follows: "between 10% and 15% of their [Israeli technology companies'] workforces are among the 360,000 reservists who will be called up" (Expansión, 14-10-2023). Not only technology companies were affected, the "unprecedented mobilization of military reservists (...) has left without personnel the companies that are still open" (Expansión, 24-10-2023). This is how the impact of the first weeks of conflict is described in an agro-food company in Israel: "The brewery has halted production; 12 of its 14 restaurants are closed and in one of the two that remain open only five people entered during lunchtime on Thursday." (Expansión, 24-10-2023).
And this is how a representative of the Israeli industrial bourgeoisie bemoaned "'The government is abandoning the people,' says Ron Tomer, head of the Israel Manufacturers Association. Many have not been fully compensated for the loss of their profits" (Expansión, 07-11-2023). The Israeli bourgeoisie was not only deprived of called-up reservist workers but also of the Palestinian labor force by "the ban on the entry of some 200,000 Palestinian workers hired by Israeli companies" (El País, 23-01-2024) in which are included "21,000 day laborers from the Strip with a special entry and work permit" (El País, 14-10-2023). A part of the immigrant proletariat from other states also left after the Hamas attack.
However, the situation has been partially reversed. A significant portion of the reservists have been demobilized to return to work: “As 2024 begins, IDF withdraws 5 brigades from Gaza” (The Times of Israel, 31-12-2023) and, later on, the Israeli army “continues to scale down its presence in the Strip, leaving one reservist brigade within Gaza” (Haaretz, 31-01-2024). In relation to workers arriving from other states: “Over 12,000 new and veteran foreign workers have arrived or returned to Israel in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 assault on southern Israel, including 2,218 in agriculture, half of them from Thailand, (…) Local authorities in the African nation say up to 5,000 Malawians could go to Israel over the next few months. This is in addition to an expected 1,500 from Kenya. (…) announced the arrival of the first group of 100 workers from Sri Lanka out of what officials say will be an eventual total of 10,000, noting that efforts are also being made to attract laborers from countries such as Moldova. (…) discussed promoting a framework agreement to bring 25,000 workers from Ecuador to Israel in the fields of construction and agriculture.” (The Times of Israel, 20-12-2023).
The internal situation in Gaza and West Bank
As in Israel, before the war, there had been protests in Gaza, repressed in this case by Hamas:
“Several thousand people briefly took to the streets across the Gaza Strip on Sunday to protest chronic power outages and difficult living conditions, providing a rare public show of discontent with the territory’s Hamas government. Hamas security forces quickly dispersed the gatherings.
Marches took place in Gaza City, the southern town of Khan Younis and other locations, chanting “what a shame” and in one place burning Hamas flags, before police moved in and broke up the protests.” (AP news, 31-07-2023).
Once the military assault by the Israeli army began, with the displacement and forced overcrowding of the population towards the south, with the systematic bombing of the civilian population, which by the beginning of March 2024 had already resulted in more than 30,000 deaths, the evolution of the economy followed this course: "The cut in the salaries of public employees and the disappearance of the 400 million euros that cross-border workers injected each month into local demand have brought the Palestinian economy to the brink of collapse, while businesses are closing with empty cash registers and burdened by debts. (...) Israel has announced that it will hand over the withheld taxes, but not to the PNA, but to the Norwegian government (...) The taxes and VAT collected by Israel at customs account for more than 65% of all Palestinian revenues (...) Gaza's economy has collapsed by 85%, and almost all infrastructure has been destroyed with catastrophic results. In the West Bank, meanwhile, the drop in activity has been 30% in the last three months. (...) Palestinian workers in Israel provided a critical injection of income into the West Bank economy, where the unemployment rate has risen from 18% to 29% in three months." (El País, 23-01-2024).
The situation produced by the war has not only acted in the ill-fated sense of national unity, the grave of the working class, but has begun to make itself felt in the field of protest – although generically pacifist – of the Gazan proletariat, caught between the two bourgeois fires of Hamas and the Israeli Army:
“Thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip demonstrated against Israel's ongoing war on the besieged coastal enclave (…) They carried banners that said, "We want the war to end"(…) neither Israel nor Hamas cares about our lives, so I decided to raise my voice against the war and call on the people around the world to help us stop it (…) On Wednesday, a day prior, hundreds of Palestinians, primarily those who have been displaced, also demonstrated against the war.” (The New Arab, 26-01-2024).
The economic situation described above and the preparation of the further development of the situation has led "the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) government to announce its resignation yesterday to President Mahmund Abbas (...) The Prime Minister, Mohamed Shtaye, is calling for a new Executive with a broad national majority" (El País, 27-02-2024) and representatives of Hamas and Fatah were to meet “in Moscow on Thursday to discuss the formation of a unified Palestinian government and the rebuilding of Gaza, the RIA state news agency reported on Wednesday, citing the Palestinian ambassador to Russia.” (Haaretz, 28-02-2024).
For the Palestinian proletariat, no bourgeois State "solution" is going to be a solution to its exploitation. At the same time, any situation that would allow the Gazan proletariat to stop being literally in a concentration camp, that would allow a greater contact and interrelation between the whole proletariat of the area and a development of the class struggle with each ‘own’ bourgeoisie that would not be systematically inhibited by the regular or irregular attacks of the other bourgeois side, would be an objectively more favorable ground than the present situation. The persistence of the nationalist military conflict has so far been the convenient "solution" for the bourgeoisie on both sides of the Gaza wall to narcotize their respective exploited proletarians.
In any of the eventualities, which will end up being determined by the combined effect of inter-imperialist interests, the only way forward remains to work for CONFRATERNIZATION among the proletarians of the different nationalities and languages, the rejection of any kind of nationalism, and the joint organization of the entire proletariat both on the plane of the immediate struggle and of the communist struggle, for the transformation of the imperialist war into revolutionary civil war, for the social revolution: "It is in these fringes where peoples intersect, in these bilingual zones, that proletarian internationalism must give proof of its value, rejecting the flags of all homelands in favor of the red flag, the only flag of the social revolution." (The Proletariat and Trieste, Battaglia Comunista no. 8, 1950).
The irradiation of war in the Middle East
Since the beginning of the Israeli army's military operation on the Gaza Strip, there has been continuous cross-shelling between the Israeli army and Hezbollah on the border with Lebanon. The Israeli army has extended the radius of its action, bombing also Syrian territory, such as the airports of Damascus and Aleppo. And the US has done the same by bombing facilities linked to Iran in Syria, as well as in Iraq and Yemen. The US army deployed in the area has in turn been harassed by various militias and military groups, albeit with few casualties: "As of Friday there had been 158 attacks against US and coalition forces" (La Vanguardia, 29-01-2024). The Islamic State (which appears whenever the US needs it) carried out an attack with almost a hundred dead in Iran on the fourth anniversary of the US assassination of Iranian General Soleimani. And yet, the situation has not escalated into a regional or even global conflict, as all the actors stage a macabre but inconclusive choreography: "The spokesman for the Nujaba Movement, one of the most active armed groups in Iraq, indicated yesterday to the Associated Press that 'we do not want to increase tensions in the region'. Days ago, Kataeb Hizbullah, one of the main militias of the Axis, announced that it was ceasing military operations against the US (...) The Pentagon has also opted for prudence. Although there were some 40 dead, the militias were warned and were able to put their weapons in a safe place." (La Vanguardia, 04-02-2024).
On the one hand, the US has already demonstrated to the world and to itself that it does not have the strength to dominate the region. On the other hand, the various bourgeois groups in the area do not feel the urge to destroy it and destroy themselves for the umpteenth time, just when they were about to try to make a big business out of its development. The outbreak of the war between Israel and Hamas is an obstacle to this development. In fact, it is the consequence of the existence of material interests that see their demise within the context of this development. This is the material explanation why the macabre game does not go, for the moment, beyond choreography. But the capitalist world is a huge powder keg and any voluntary or involuntary spark could make it explode.
World trade disruptions
One of the irradiations of the conflict has been the attacks by the Houthis from Yemen on ships passing through the Bab al-Mandab strait on the Red Sea. This has had the result of choking the port of Eilat, which has seen its activity completely reduced. It has also resulted in the diversion of some (but by no means all) of the trade that previously flowed through the Red Sea to alternative trade routes such as the Cape of Good Hope, lengthening transport times and reducing Suez Canal revenues. In the next issue of this review we will look at the dialectical effects of the turbulence of world trade on the various trade routes, existing or new.
The main difference between the current situation and that of the epileptic resumption of production and circulation in 2021-2022 is that demand is currently contracted, stocks are elevated and, as we have seen a few pages above, the production volcano is flooding the market with commodities. On top of this, there is an overproduction in the maritime transport sector in particular, the result of a process that can be read at “The Internationalist Proletarian” no.9 (April 2022, p. 11) and at “The Internationalist Proletarian” no.11 (April 2023, p. 16). The current situation is that: “That will still leave global container trade growth at 2.5% to 4.5% for the full-year, Maersk said, (…) Maersk estimates that the global container fleet will grow 12% to 13% this year as new ships are launched, while sending vessels south of Africa only takes out 6% of the world’s capacity.” (Bloomberg, 08-02-2024). In this context of overproduction and productive overcapacity, the rise in transport prices does not reflect an increase in the demand for transported commodities, nor does it reflect a real shortage of means of transport in the medium term.
Overproduction leads to war
The relative crisis of overproduction leads to the necessity of the destruction of idle capitals and of the productive forces already created: “the loss is distributed in very different proportions and forms, depending on special advantages or previously captured positions, so that one capital is left unused, another is DESTROYED, and a third suffers but a relative loss, or is just temporarily depreciated, etc. But the equilibrium would be restored under all circumstances through the withdrawal or even the DESTRUCTION of more or less capital. This would extend partly to the material substance of capital” (Capital, Book III, Chapter XV, K. Marx). “And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced DESTRUCTION of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the CONQUEST of new markets, and by the more thorough EXPLOITATION of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.” (Manifesto of the Communist Party, K. Marx & F. Engels, 1848).
This need for destruction is what leads to military war, regardless of the will of the puppets who delude themselves to rule the world. In all parts of the capitalist world our words are the same as they were in 1920:
"‘Remember the imperialist war!' These are the first words addressed by the Communist International to every working man and woman; wherever they live and whatever language they speak. Remember that because of the existence of capitalist society a handful of imperialists were able to force the workers of the different countries for four long years to cut each other's throats. Remember that the war of the bourgeoisie conjured up in Europe and throughout the world the most frightful famine and the most appalling misery. Remember that without the overthrow of capitalism the repetition of such robber wars is not only possible but inevitable. (...) The imperialist war once again confirmed what was written in the statutes of the First International: the emancipation of the workers is not a local, nor a national, but an international problem." (Statutes of the Communist International, II Congress, 1920).
If it is true that capitalism leads inevitably to imperialist war, it is no less true that at this crossroads will not be missing the communists to turn this reactionary war into a revolutionary war that will be the tomb of capitalism. Ineludible condition: a single International Communist Party for all the states of the world, rejecting any ally, firmly founded on the integral Marxist doctrine.
This bourgeois world is sinking and threatens to drag us down with it, we have no patches or mending to put on it but a new society to fight and live for. And not a caricature of it with changed names but a truly communist society: without wage labor, without market, without anarchy of production, without private property, without State, without crisis or war... in which "the free development of each is the condition of the free development of all" (Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848).