Commentary No. 114, June 1, 2003
"Lunacy, or Policy?"
When the very Establishment, very responsible Financial Times, the representative newspaper of big capital, runs an editorial whose title is "Tax Lunacy" and whose subtitle is "The US administration throws prudence out of the window," you know that they must be very upset. The editorial concludes on this somber note: "For [the more extreme Republicans], undermining the multilateral international order is not enough, long-held views on income redistribution also require radical revision. In response to this onslaught, there is not much the rational majority can do: reason cuts no ice; economic theory is dismissed; and contrary evidence is ignored. But watching the world's economic superpower slowly destroy perhaps the world's most enviable fiscal position is something to behold."
So while Bush and company are crowing about their victories in Iraq and in the U.S. Congress, and much of the world left writes in a tone of desperate dismay about these successes, perhaps we should look at the deep fissures within all those forces that might be termed "right of center" - worldwide, in the United States, and among the capitalist strata.
First the signs of the fissure. Henry C.K. Liu, chair of a New York-based investment group, writes in Asia Times an article entitled "US dollar hegemony has got to go." The director of investment research for Citigroup Private Bank notes that the ASEAN + 3 countries (Southeast Asia, Japan, China, and South Korea) are in the process of developing so-called "cross-border debt instruments" (which means debts denoted in their own currencies rather than in U.S. dollars), and calls this a "massive hammer poised above the U.S. economy." He foresees that creating an Asian Currency Unit could force the United States into a "major debt workout," and actually lead the U.S. Treasury eventually to issue bonds not in U.S. dollars, but in Asian currencies.
On the European front, Christoph Bertram, the director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, and a previously strong Atlanticist, writes an article, again in the Financial Times, entitled "Germany will not become America's vassal." He charges George Bush with full responsibility for this shift in German opinion, and foresees that the European Union will have to "[tie] members together irreversibly in defence, as the euro has done in monetary policy."
And in the United States, James Carroll, writing in the Boston Globe, talks of the weather change in America, "a nation so adrift that it dares not look twice at its real condition." The latest peroration of Senator Byrd (who up to two years ago was never considered a radical or even a liberal Democrat) ends with: "And mark my words. The calculated intimidation which we see so often of late by the 'powers that be' will only keep the loyal opposition quiet for so long. Because eventually, like it always does, the truth will emerge. And when it does, the house of cards, built of deceit, will fall."
Senator Byrd made his speech on May 21. Just six days later, Secretary Rumsfeld, in his speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, made his now widely-noted observation that Iraq's alleged stock of weapons of mass destruction "may never be found." Rumsfeld said that perhaps the Iraqis destroyed them "prior to the conflict." Since the U.S. and the U.K. predicated their entire case for speedy and unilateral action on the menace these weapons posed, this is quite an admission, forced no doubt by the reality that the weapons simply have not been found so far. It may take a while for U.S. public opinion to absorb this admission and react to it. But Tony Blair found himself immediately in trouble. In the British system, it is a cardinal sin to "mislead" Parliament, and he is currently under fire (and perhaps more than that) for just this as a result of Rumsfeld's speech. His response thus far is, wait some more. Blair needs to find those weapons far more than Rumsfeld.
The question is then whether this is really lunacy, or deliberate policy. I believe it is deliberate and intended, although I agree it is lunacy. To understand how the U.S. hawks and their allies think, we have to go back two centuries. The French Revolution really shook up the world cultural scene. For here was a group which came to power dedicated to the proposition that the government had the right to, and should, impose radical change on the social system, in the name of the "people" who were "sovereign." Furthermore, these two ideas - that political change was a "normal" phenomenon and that it was the "people" who were sovereign, caught on rapidly throughout the world, and indeed have never gone away since.
There was an immediate reaction to these disturbing concepts (and linked actions). This is where we get the term "reactionaries." Edmund Burke in England and Joseph de Maistre in France wrote books fundamentally challenging the whole doctrine, and asserting the enduring social and moral value of "traditional" authorities. The Jacobins were ousted after a few years, but Napoleon continued the Jacobin thrust, albeit in a very distorted form. At last, in 1815, the Counterrevolution had definitively won. It was the time to restore order in Europe and the world. Prince Metternich constructed a Holy Alliance whose policy was to meet all disorder with massive repression.
Not all the forces of order agreed with Metternich. In England, slowly but effectively, Sir Robert Peel led the Tories down the path of timely and limited concessions, notably the Reform Act of 1832. And there were similar attempts in France, notably the Revolution of 1830 which ousted Charles X and brought Louis-Philippe, the "citizen-king," to power.
The decisive turning-point was the world revolution of 1848, which came as an enormous shock to the "reactionaries." The now elderly Metternich was turned out of office. A "social" revolution occurred in France, seeking to assert the rights of the "workers." And throughout central, eastern, and southern Europe, it was the "springtime of the nations." Of course, as we know, these many revolutions all failed within a short time, and were then met with renewed and very strong repression. But the forces right of center had learned their lesson. They decided to go down the path of Peel, and accept the necessity of "concessions" in order to forestall worse. The following decades saw the rise of what historians call the "enlightened conservatives" - Disraeli in Great Britain, Napoleon III in France, Bismarck in Germany.
From then on, conservatives became merely a somewhat more prudent version of centrist liberalism. In fact, in order to head off the growing strength of "radical" left movements, conservatives were often more ready to use the state to enact changes than the centrist liberals: the extension of the suffrage by Disraeli, the restoration of trade-union rights by Napoleon III, the beginnings of the welfare state by Bismarck. These policies prevailed among conservative political groups until the world revolution of 1968, which dethroned the dominant centrist liberals, and "liberated" those who considered themselves the "true" right from the heavy hand of the "enlightened conservatives." The rise of the "true" right may be found in the very partial Thatcher takeover of the British Conservative Party and the very partial Reagan takeover of the U.S. Republican Party. The current Bush regime has transformed this partial takeover into a total takeover.
The U.S. hawks are the revival of Metternich and his unabashedly reactionary policies: their macho unilateralism on the world scene, and their truly serious attempt to dismantle the welfare state in the United States. This is why the Financial Times says that "reason cuts no ice" with them. And this is why the heirs of Sir Robert Peel worldwide are so very upset. For just as Metternich's policies led to the disaster for the world's conservative forces that occurred in 1848, so Peel's heirs fear (and expect) that Bush's policies will do the same, and worse. And that the disaster is on the horizon.
Maybe one day in the future, there will be an Armageddon between left and right. But in the immediate present, look for a showdown between the Metternich faction and the Peel faction of the forces right of center. The Metternich faction think that the stake is world order. The Peel faction think that the stake is the survival of a capitalist system.
Immanuel Wallerstein
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These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen
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