Stationed in Iraq
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VIEW: History as the future —Rashed Rahman

History, not in the plebeian sense of the day to day unfolding of events, but as philosophy, far from ‘ending’ in Hegel’s final realisation of the Idea, still has a few surprises in store for the likes of Mr Fukuyama

In occupied Iraq, the resistance unfolds and grows stronger by the day. It has taken on the form of not classical, but contemporary guerrilla warfare. Classic guerrilla strategy relied on the countryside to encircle and finally take the cities. In Iraq’s specific conditions, it is the cities that are the centres of armed resistance since the beginning of the occupation. Many Iraqis have died and are dying. But Americans are dying too. How is this playing at home in the US?

The American electorate is due to deliver its verdict this November on the Bush administration’s rush to war in Iraq in the name of combating the spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and terrorism. No WMD have been found. Terrorism, instead of abating, has found a fresh lease of life in the embattled streets of Baghdad, Najaf and other Iraqi cities. The turning tide against the Bush administration is reflected in increasingly adverse opinion polls at home. Will the American electorate express its increasing disenchantment with the Bush administration’s lies, deceit, abuse of prisoners and mounting body bags returning home from the killing fields of Iraq? If it does, and elects John Kerry as president, it may well prove to be the saviour of whatever little is left of US foreign policy credibility.

The Iraq misadventure may not simply be ascribed to the dreams of a US empire conjured up by the neocons. Had a different set of rulers been in power in Washington, the strategy for controlling the oil reserves of the Middle East may have been different (for example, containment rather than forcible regime change). But the overall objective would have been no different. Fuel, the cheaper the better, is crucial to the health and rapid growth of capitalism. The US, as the leading capitalist country with the largest economy in the world and today the only superpower, remains wedded to securing the world’s oil resources for itself and its global partners. If that requires replacing traditional power extension through political and diplomatic means with recourse to military force, so be it. The US has done it in the past and will do it in the future.

Capitalism’s dynamic inherently compels it to continuously expand in order to maximise profit. Historically, when national boundaries proved inadequate to contain the growth of rapidly expanding mercantile capitalism, colonialism was the logical consequence. Colonial loot and plunder fuelled the industrial revolution in the West. This in turn provided the impetus for the emergence of a new stage of capitalism, described in the literature as imperialism. Its defining characteristics were the export of capital to the peripheries of the world economy, the tendency towards monopoly, and the aggressive drive to control natural resources and markets globally. The last produced two world wars and myriads of smaller ones.

When the convulsions of the twentieth century forced the colonial powers to roll back their empires, extra-economic means of control gave way incrementally to purely economic compulsions. The globalising world economy is simply the contemporary expression of the expansion of capitalism to all corners of the earth. In this enterprise to universalise modern capitalism, the bourgeoisie of the developed world has sought and found junior partners in the shape of local emerging bourgeoisies in the developing world.

Is this what Francis Fukuyama meant by the ‘end’ of history? That capitalism’s triumph over socialism in practice at the end of the twentieth century was the final and irrevocable achievement of the Hegelian notion of the self-realisation of the Idea as the ultimate goal of history? Fukuyama’s theory was largely misunderstood and derided by pointing to ‘history’ continuing to play itself out in practice. But that popular ‘critique’ missed the point. Fukuyama was arguing that all alternatives to capitalism had been consigned to the dustbin. That implied the Marxist critique of capitalism, its greatest challenge, was passé. So too was the idea of revolution as a panacea for capitalism’s warts and flaws.

But is this so? History, not in the plebeian sense of the day to day unfolding of events, but as philosophy, far from ‘ending’ in Hegel’s final realisation of the Idea, still has a few surprises in store for the likes of Mr Fukuyama. It is ironically precisely because Fukuyama’s is an ahistorical approach that he stumbles down the path of Hegelian abstraction. Mankind has by no stretch of the imagination achieved some imaginary final destiny, capitalist or other.

Capitalism in its unprecedented global form in the twenty-first century poses new problems and challenges. Contemporary critiques of the depredations of globalised capital on the peoples of the periphery, on the world’s environment, etc, could derive immense help from the methodology and rigour of Marxist thought. The Marxist critique of capitalism, irrespective of the fate of revolutions made in the name of Marxism and which are condemned as having ‘failed’, far from being old hat, is as relevant today in terms of method as ever.

The writer is currently a freelance contributor who has held editorial positions in various Pakistani newspapers

From: http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp