LETTERS, CRITICISM AND SUGGESTIONS
Imperialist World War Is Inevitable
The article in the last Red Flag on “Trade Wars, Capitalist Crisis of Overproduction” leaves the door open to a dangerous misinterpretation.
It quotes a commentator saying that out of sixteen cases in which a rising power threatened to topple a predominant ruling power twelve ended in war.
This could lead readers to think that today’s rising power, China, could displace the declining US without resorting to war.
As Lenin said, imperialist powers had already completely carved up the world by the end of the 19th century. Any re-division to accommodate a rising power requires world war.
The commentator, Graham Allison, cites four cases in which imperialist rivalry supposedly did not end in war. Two of these are bogus. Regarding the other two:
In the early 20th century, the US and Germany were rising to challenge England’s dominance. Allison says there was “no war” between England and the US. England saw Germany as being a more imminent threat and declared war on Germany, starting World War I. The US entered the war and was the main imperialist beneficiary. It took, however, a second World War to end British world dominance and for the US to take its place.
During the Cold War (1940s-1980s) the Soviet Union rose to challenge US global dominance. However, the Soviet Union never threatened the US economically. Its thrust was ideological and it fought the US over spheres of influence through proxies. Nevertheless, the socialist camp – Soviet Union, China, Eastern Europe, etc. – was excluded from the world capitalist market. This impeded the further expansion of Western capitalism, which was choking on a severe crisis of overproduction. The opening of China to western investments released the pressure, eliminating the urgent need for war.
Allison cautions: “War between the United States and China in the decades ahead is not just possible, but much more likely than recognized at the moment. Indeed, judging by the historical record, war is more likely than not. … The preeminent geostrategic challenge of this era is not violent Islamic extremists or a resurgent Russia. It is the impact that China’s ascendance will have on the U.S.-led international order.”
He doesn’t soft-pedal the possibility of war and we shouldn’t soft pedal the inevitability of world war. I think the Red Flag article does that when discussing capitalist crises of over- production.
This crisis, it states, “sharpens competition as capitalists fight for market share.” But it doesn’t say that a capitalist crisis of overproduction, with its uneven development, inevitably leads to war, and in the epoch of imperialism, to world wars.
It also says, “At other times, however, overproduction leads to capitalist growth.” Maybe. But today, growth (like China’s “Belt and Road”) means taking away market share from the US. That is, in today’s crisis, growth brings war closer.
The laws governing capitalism’s development dictate that at certain stage in the crisis of overproduction the excess productive forces, including workers, must be destroyed, so that capitalism can rebuild itself and restore a healthy rate of profit. The best capitalist vehicle for this is world war. We and the masses must be alert to the dangers and opportunities of world war.
—A Comrade