Contribution for the Anti-imperialist Camp in Italy, 2003
The forthcoming camp is scheduled for the first week of September1-6.
The US and their allies are about to unleash an inferno over Iraq. It will mark a new climax of the ongoing genocide against the descendants of the demiurges of civilisation. In a delirium of omnipotence they no not bother much to cover their intentions. The credibility of their arguments such as human rights and democracy justifying their aggression vanished as it was the US to drive the appalling embargo and to support dictatorial puppet regimes in the entire region. Their main concern seems to be to preserve their monopoly for holding and using arms of mass destruction. In order to keep their supremacy they have threatened to apply them – and history shows that they are prepared to do it. For the broad masses it becomes easier and easier to discern behind the veil of “national security” the pure imperialist interest.
The aggression on Iraq is part of the “permanent, pre-emptive and global war on terror” announced after September 11, 2001. The attack on the symbols of the American empire marks a turning point. Only ten years after the end of history, meaning the endlessness of US global power, has been heralded the myth of invulnerability was strikingly destroyed – and history experiences even an acceleration. The New World Order inaugurated as Pax Americana after the Golf war promising peace, democracy and prosperity rapidly turned into World Disorder. Driven by the unprecedented social injustice and misery, which the majority of the planet is condemned to, everywhere new contradictions, wars and rebellions are erupting. In the war against Yugoslavia, that did not obey to the imperialist dictate imposed on Eastern Europe, their were still able to suffocate significant opposition under the guise of humanitarism as the intelligentsia has been fully intoxicated by the ideology of post-modern liberalism. But the outbreak of the Palestinian Intifada dealt the final blow the this dream world. It revealed both the brutal colonial Apartheid reality as well as resurrected resistance. To defend their increasingly shaken and undermined predominance the American empire resorts to a global military tyranny not hesitating to inflict terror and genocide on any force not willing to subordinate. Regardless of their overwhelming military superiority any war they wage is increasing the contradictions within their system as has been shown by the attack on Afghanistan. The bombing of the World Trade Centre was only the most spectacular expression of the asymmetric character of the conflict.
The anti-imperialist forces of the world are gathering not only to forge an alliance against the US but also against their allies in the ruling classes of Europe who were both unwilling and unable to implement the will of the vast majority of the Europeans to impede the war against Iraq. The European bourgeoisie is allying and subordinating itself to the US as they know that only the their big brother is able to continue imperialist exploitation on which they live. They simply are granted a part of the neo-colonial spoils. That makes them so subservient that they apply the liberal dogmas against the popular masses in a way outdoing even their masters on the other side of the Atlantic ocean.
But we are not fighting only the military, political and economic predominance of the US. We are combating an entire system of cultural and ideological hegemony which, despite the loss of influence in the south, still retains a powerful grip first of all in the Western countries. The American way of life is based on unchained individualism, consumism and hedonism while consciously denying the vast majority of the world´s population the most elementary social rights. Radical, savage liberalism is advocating that only by giving free hand to personal egoism and thus unleashing the forces of the market human salvation can be achieved. The former right with its open advocacy of social Darwinism and the law of the jungle joined hands with the former left with their post-modern arbitrarity and relativism excluded any universal approach, a pre-condition for politic action. Any attempt for a collective intervention into human society in order to change the course of history has been condemned as totalitarian. The human strive for solidarity and community is being suppressed with its very roots. The void left is filled by a cult of technology and science on one and the growth of esoteric movements striving for individual salvation on the other hand. That scientism and irrationalism is not opposed to each other but is complementary is proved by the Raelian cloning sect. A constitutive element of imperialism always was the firm conviction of the civilizing mission of the West which have to be forced by fire and sword on the totalitarian barbarians of all proveniences. With the intensification of the conflict and the declaration of a new crusade the cultural chauvinism has turned into open racism of the chosen people. Protestant fundamentalism represented by Bush, which gives the rich the blessing of god to exploit transforming them into a global superior caste, is the quintessence of Americanism.
As the rulers of the American empire are neither willing nor able to mitigate the abysmal social inequality unprecedented in history of mankind which in the final instance are at the very base of the explosive contradictions they keep accelerating the spiral of wars and rebellions. Neither the Roman empire nor the Third Reich were able to overcome the contradictions of their global power claim and finally perished. Also America is doomed to perish – but the question is at what costs and whether humanity will resurrect from this apocalyptical scenario.
Therefore the fate of humanity depends on the capacity of the anti-imperialists to unify all forces opposing, resisting and attacking the American Empire in a broad front in the same way as it had been necessary against Nazism, the precursor of Americanism. Within this front the wretched of the world, the billions of “misà©rables” must and will be the driving force and play the leading role. We not only have to respect but even defend and further their rich cultural diversity against American uniformism and totalitarism. The civilizing mission of the West – also in its Marxist variant – has failed once and for all. Now it is the turn of the “uncivilised” to save civilisation from being annihilated.
To nevertheless defend the tattered project of freedom, equality and fraternity formulated in the French revolution in the looming storm we have to affirm that individual liberty – which we regard as inviolable – can only be effective by abolishing exploitation of men by men. Democracy implies not only social equality but also the same rights for all the people and the respect of national sovereignty. Felicity and welfare are just ethic goals as long as they are not based on the immoderate accumulation of commodities. We have to explain that socialisation is possible without ending up in poverty. Science and development are necessary but any fetish of technology must be refused and the balance with the ecosystem kept. The collective will of the people, politics, must command economy and the development of society in general.
Not only US imperialism has to be defeated as soon as possible to leave behind the catastrophe into which it has precipitated humanity but capitalism has to be overcome altogether. Anti-imperialist politics must be conceived as the struggle for social revolution based on mass action being developed from within the culture of those resisting with the final aim to create the base of a new human community. If we want to proceed in the only civilizing project worth this name we have to find a modern formulation of objectives as old as civilisation itself: social equality, popular democracy and human emancipation within collectivity.
