Oil wealth in the Gulf represents hope for the developing world. Photograph Tom Fisk.

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Destroying and killing nationalist, sovereign opposition to imperialism is the métier of capitalism

by Phil Hall

The destruction of alternative sources of energy, and of infrastructure in Central Asia, the Gulf and the Middle East represents the logical conclusion of the strategies of the US administration. If global corporate capitalism cannot control the flow, then it will annihilate its competitions access to energy resources and put the kibosh on the possibility of autonomous development in the Arab world and Central Asia.

One of the features of capitalism is that it lives by making profit from scarcity. Free-flowing water, and all the wealth of the planet, belongs to no one, and it is of no use unless there is a scarcity. It is a common trick of people who want to drive prices higher to create artificial shortages, so that commodities become in high demand. The other trick, of course, is either to control the flow of key resources through a monopoly, forcing people to pay whatever you decide they will, or to destroy alternative sources.

The wealth of the Middle East exists/existed between five spaces: Africa, the Arab countries and Central Asia on the one hand, and the metropolis of global corporate capitalism in the USA, in London, and in parts of Europe on the other. As such, the wealth of the Middle East and North Africa (Libya) represented the possibility, should accountable democracies be installed in these countries, that the resulting wealth could, potentially, be diverted into regional development, development in solidarity with other formerly colonised states elsewhere in Africa and Asia.

When Saudi Arabia used its control of oil supplies to start OPEC (after the USA deployed its proxy, Israel, against the nationalist leadership of Egypt that threatened to start a pan-Arab regional bloc) the Saudis were severely punished with the assassination of their king as a warning, and at the same time their nationalist instincts were subverted and corrupted. Because the way to handle comprador regimes like Saudi Arabia, that threaten to become independent national entities acting in their own interests and in the interests of their neighbours is—see what we see now in the naked actions of global corporate capitalism centred in the USA—either to corrupt, to blackmail, to threaten to kill, or to kill.

Destroying and killing nationalist, sovereign opposition to imperialism is the métier of capitalism. Two million people dead in Vietnam. Two million people dead in Indonesia, fascist dictatorships supported in Latin America, right-wing and fascist groups supported in Eastern Europe and on and on and on. Even when it comes to to Europe there is constant subversion. Countries like Yugoslavia have been broken up for scrap because they represented strong pluralistic socialist models that people admired, even the people of advanced social democracies. Yugoslavia represented an alternative development model for Eastern European countries who might have chosen it over gangsterism and austerity. Yugoslavia, was the only European country to effectively liberate itself after the Second World War.

Capitalism suffers from internal contradictions. If it has no Lebensraum, it has nowhere to go. The contradiction of capitalism is that its push forward is about increasing profits, but profits can only be increased in a state of constant expansion. The solution to that, as people like Joti Brar have accurately pointed out, is to have a war.

As Marx identified, crises stem from “the contradictions inherent in the process of capital accumulation”. The accumulation process generates its own impediments, and crucially, “the solutions to these impediments generate further impediments”. Central to this is what Marx called “the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall”. As capitalism develops, each worker uses an ever-increasing quantity of machinery and means of production, what Marx termed the rising “organic composition of capital”, which exerts downward pressure on the rate of profit.

What the USA has now decided to do in the Middle East is to carry out a scorched earth policy. In other words, in an escalating war which will probably culminate in an exchange of nuclear weapons. Almost all the oil production facilities, and all the infrastructure will be destroyed, and hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions (they seem to like the number two million) people will die. Which will leave the USA consolidating itself in the Western Hemisphere through naked terror, over on the other side of the Atlantic in a strong position, safe and in full possession of supplies of oil and raw materials, with its technological base intact. Unlike the technological base of every country in the Middle East, that the revolting reverse Midas Donald Trump has touched. The capitalist corporate centre will be in a position to start moving forward again resetting the machine of capitalism, with captive markets in Europe and scarcity pushing the price up of every commodity. Once the Middle East is scorched the US will be in a position to force its high priced commodities and shitty obsolescent products down the gullet of all its vassal states – unless Europe has a rapprochement with the Russian Federation and the Nordstream pipeline is repaired and good relations are established with The People’s Republic of China.

At the same time, by scorching the Middle East and Central Asia, global corporate capitalism will deny its competitors access to the resources and strategic trading position of the Middle East and Central Asia, just as the Russians were treated from Napoleon, denying the resources to the French. The schadenfreude that people feel about Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states is a form of disgusting racist misunderstanding of what the Gulf countries actually represent. They represent hope for development to tens of millions of Arabs as they always have. To destroy their advanced infrastructure and oil processing and export destroys the hope of all the Arab peoples.  

In no way does it benefit Iran, nor any part of the Arab world, to have the entire productive capacity and infrastructure of the Gulf region and levant destroyed, and the potential for regional development set back twenty years. If capitalism has no Lebensraum, it has nowhere to go. The contradiction is that its push forward is about increasing profits, but profits can only be increased in a state of constant expansion. Yet expansion itself generates the conditions that depress profitability.

The correct response of the Iranians, of course, would not merely to be to target the oil refineries and infrastructure of USA global corporate capitalism’s captive Arab monarchies, and to attack the USA’s proxy Israel, but to target the USA itself and to destroy its productive capacity right there on the American continent. That would be a deeply unfortunate and unproductive, but entirely symmetrical response.

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Born into an exiled ANC family, Phil Hall spent his childhood in East Africa and India before settling in the UK. After a global education in languages, politics, and economics, he lived and worked across Europe, the USSR, Mexico, and the Middle East. Returning to the UK during the pandemic, he co-founded Ars Notoria Magazine and AN Editions, a publishing venture dedicated to Humane Socialist literature, art and philosophy.