The various crisis processes in the economy that have manifested themselves in this 21st century are now finding their concrete expression in the military sphere. The price of human life is high, but so is useless spending and investment for world society.
Wars consume the resources necessary to meet the vital needs of man and nature.
War in all its manifestations is an expression of the dispute over the hegemony of the world order. It was the “trade war” declared by the US against China, like all the confrontations that arose from unilateral sanctions that have emerged recently, particularly from Washington and repeatedly from global partners.
The near horizon brings us further hardships for the impoverished majority of the planet, prompting a reflection on building an alternative.
The strategy to overcome the present moment of extended crisis, food, energy, economy, finance, culture, politics, more pandemics and more wars, challenges us to employ strategies that lead to capital’s offensive against labor, nature and society limit what we define as anti-capitalism.
We are aware that the situation of explicit wars leading to defined positions in world institutions presents us with the resolutions being dealt with in the United Nations, which seem to have no borders
an immediate future scenario of uncertainty with regressive perspectives. At the same time, fears of inflation resurfaced (8.5% yoy for March in the US and 7.5% in Europe) linked to a slowdown in the economy.
The sanctions and blockades due to the war in Ukraine affect the decline in production and circulation of goods and services in the world system. It is a reality that exacerbates the scenario of an economic slowdown in the world economy, offset only by the strong productive expansion of the so-called emerging countries, especially China.
The war situation in Ukraine, Yemen or Palestine, among other territories, is unfolding in a context of expanding global military spending and the arguments put forward make clear the need for “defense”.
Each country proceeds from the conflict hypothesis of the external threat, the result is an increase in military spending of each country with the ability to intervene in the world dispute. This defensive argument is fueled by intelligence strategies leading to increased military spending.
“The greatest growth in arms imports between world regions has occurred in Europe. In 2017-21, major arms imports by European countries were 19% higher than in 2012-16 and accounted for 13% of global arms transfers.”
It is of interest to review the territories that concentrate the flow of arms trade and to relate it to capital’s strategic interests in dominating world production.
This group of countries today defines the blocs of international alignment that other countries are dragging along, and challenges us to think in struggle against and beyond the profit regime, which means thinking about alternatives to the global order.
Commodity and Money is the portrayal of the capitalist phenomenon in Marx’s studies of “Capital”, so it is of interest for a strategy against capitalism to analyze the visible phenomena in the process of the expansion of commodification. An expansion dialectically hampered by the sanctions that unleash initiatives of new valorization cycles in the world.
The ways of commodification and valorization of capital are an ongoing process from the origins of capitalist accumulation, now defined with greater visibility in the military sphere.
The question raised by many points to a critical comparison of this growing military spending with another, alternative goal to tackle malnutrition and hunger.
The answer does not lie in “humanitarian” arguments or appeals related to the economic, social, political and cultural order, but in the sphere of profit and accumulation logic derived from the capital regime. In capitalism there is no humanism, only profit and accumulation.
To return to the beginning of the note, the humanitarian challenge of the present is therefore linked to the search for a civilizational alternative against and beyond capitalism. There is no room for reform, even if fighting for reformist demands can contribute to a prospect of profound, revolutionary change.
This frustrated search for anti-capitalism and socialism, which its followers say was inspired by the critique of political economy and capitalism itself, was based on the studies of Karl Marx.
With the fall of the USSR, the restoration of the original theory was made possible, with the developments of the new era, and therefore it motivates us, even in wartime, to think and propose strategic directions for the defense of man and nature. . .
It is about building collective, conscious social imaginations based on the decommodification of everyday life and an expanded practice of self-management and community work. It’s something that echoes notions of “living well” or “the good life” that have been restored by recent constitutional reforms in the region.