[Above: March 31, 2004: Three years ago today, Iraqis celebrate the deaths of four Blackwater USA soldiers in Fallujah.]
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The division of wealth in this nation and across the globe is obscene, tragic—it is, as a friend writes, RADICAL EVIL.
The end of utopia signifies the end of a certain impossibility, Marcuse notes—the impossibility of permanently alleviating global poverty and effecting an equitable distribution of wealth around the world. We have the means; however, deeply appropriated ideological desires keep us from making this a reality. The problem of political economy since the industrial revolution has been not the issue of scarcity—since scarcity has long been only an artificial scarcity—but the issue of surplus. Orwell notes that in order to maintain hierarchal control of society, the surplus wealth must be burned off so that it is never reinvested, and so that it never raises the general standard of living. The trick, though, is that the masses must be psychologically and emotionally invested in the destruction of this wealth—an investiture, Orwell notes, best secured through the mobilization of states for perpetual war.
For over a decade now, neoliberal trade policies have allowed the global shift of wealth into the hands of a concentrated few: Couched in a discourse of philanthropy and concern, neoliberal trade policies have accomplished exactly what they set out to do, and so from this perspective they never failed—the premises were just never honest. At least Adam Smith thought laissez-faire economic models would accomplish an equitable distribution of wealth—however naive and misguided this assumption came to be.
As we have seen, since Bush, the neoliberal deterritorializing of the globe—in the form of so-called "globalized free-market economy"—has undergone a neoconservative reterritorializing of the globe with the rise of a bold new perpetual state of war, a new concentration of arms across geopolitical borders, and the sinister rise of the private security industry.
Let us compare two stories from recent weeks that testify to this division of wealth:
1. Forbes magazine hails 2006 “the richest year in human history” [3.9.07]
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2341353.ece
2. US Economy leaving record numbers in severe poverty [2.23.07]
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0223-09.htm
We are caught up in a class war that we are finally beginning to realize was commissioned decades ago by the right-wing. Analysts complain that the Bush administration went to war in Iraq without a sufficient strategy, but if we read the Iraq war as another tactic in the broader globalized class war, then the war serves it purpose—mainly, to continue shifting radical amounts of capital from the people to the private corporations getting multi-billion dollar no-bid contracts from their cronies who designed the war.
Here, Orwell’s observation that the ruling classes must destroy the surplus wealth—through an emotionally organized perpetual war—to maintain hierarchal society does not go far enough: The so-called war on terror destroys surplus wealth in a way that further creates surplus wealth! Why did the Bush administration stage a “surge” in the Iraq war when everyone else in the world said no? In the last couple years of his presidency, Bush escalates the funding of the war and thus further shifts the wealth.
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The end of utopia signifies the end of a certain impossibility, Marcuse notes—the impossibility of permanently alleviating global poverty and effecting an equitable distribution of wealth around the world. We have the means; however, deeply appropriated ideological desires keep us from making this a reality. The problem of political economy since the industrial revolution has been not the issue of scarcity—since scarcity has long been only an artificial scarcity—but the issue of surplus. Orwell notes that in order to maintain hierarchal control of society, the surplus wealth must be burned off so that it is never reinvested, and so that it never raises the general standard of living. The trick, though, is that the masses must be psychologically and emotionally invested in the destruction of this wealth—an investiture, Orwell notes, best secured through the mobilization of states for perpetual war.
For over a decade now, neoliberal trade policies have allowed the global shift of wealth into the hands of a concentrated few: Couched in a discourse of philanthropy and concern, neoliberal trade policies have accomplished exactly what they set out to do, and so from this perspective they never failed—the premises were just never honest. At least Adam Smith thought laissez-faire economic models would accomplish an equitable distribution of wealth—however naive and misguided this assumption came to be.
As we have seen, since Bush, the neoliberal deterritorializing of the globe—in the form of so-called "globalized free-market economy"—has undergone a neoconservative reterritorializing of the globe with the rise of a bold new perpetual state of war, a new concentration of arms across geopolitical borders, and the sinister rise of the private security industry.
Let us compare two stories from recent weeks that testify to this division of wealth:
1. Forbes magazine hails 2006 “the richest year in human history” [3.9.07]
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2341353.ece
2. US Economy leaving record numbers in severe poverty [2.23.07]
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0223-09.htm
We are caught up in a class war that we are finally beginning to realize was commissioned decades ago by the right-wing. Analysts complain that the Bush administration went to war in Iraq without a sufficient strategy, but if we read the Iraq war as another tactic in the broader globalized class war, then the war serves it purpose—mainly, to continue shifting radical amounts of capital from the people to the private corporations getting multi-billion dollar no-bid contracts from their cronies who designed the war.
Here, Orwell’s observation that the ruling classes must destroy the surplus wealth—through an emotionally organized perpetual war—to maintain hierarchal society does not go far enough: The so-called war on terror destroys surplus wealth in a way that further creates surplus wealth! Why did the Bush administration stage a “surge” in the Iraq war when everyone else in the world said no? In the last couple years of his presidency, Bush escalates the funding of the war and thus further shifts the wealth.
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[Incidentally, McCain tells Obama this past wednesday that the new "surge" policy and command has changed the war—suggesting, "If Senator Obama could take a few minutes out of his day to examine the early progress made by General Petraeus [the new general in command], I think he would realize the status quo is changing." Meanwhile, the reality of the situation is that this past week has been a brutally violent week in Iraq—the bloodiest since the change in command—with 152 deaths and 347 wounded in the deadliest truck bomb incident since the war began. Twice as many US soldiers died this month than Iraqi security forces, and Sunni insurgents are now using chlorine gas attacks. These guys can't get a damn thing correct—ever.]
The massive shift in wealth, in an even more sinister development, is being reinvested into developing the rise of the private security industry—e.g. Blackwater USA.
[see Jeremy Scahill’s video to the right, or go here; also read Scahill’s article from The Nation]
Blackwater—like Halliburtion, Exxon, KBR, Bechtel, and others—continue to profit from the war in Iraq, the radical neoconservative privatization agenda, and intensified militarization of global trade policies; thus, they help to contribute to 2006 being the wealthiest year in human history.
Meanwhile, anticipating heightened operations in the Middle East, Halliburton moves their corporate headquarters to Dubai. At the same time, KBR, an ex-subsidiary of Halliburton and the Pentagon’s largest contractor in Iraq, will come under investigation by Congress for employing private security resources (Blackwater USA) at a greater cost to the American public instead of using the US armed forces. KBR thus helps shift another $400 million toward the rise of the private security industry.
Can we imagine a time in the near future where massive, stateless corporations will be backed by their own massive private armies? The private armies are never calculated in our death tolls; they are not beholden to international treaties protecting human rights; they are not held to the kind of fiscal scrutiny that regular national militaries are held to; and they operate with a general sense of impunity in their various theatres of operation. Will Blackwater USA follow Halliburton to Dubai and become Blackwater UAE after they’ve irreversibly secured their economic hegemony with the perpetual war we are funding—at the cost of a failed health care system, radical underemployment, education setbacks, and a record growth of “severe poverty” during the same year that claims a record growth of billion-dollar estates!
Finally, not so incidentally, the most audacious and sinister resort area in the world is being built off the coast of Dubai right out of the ocean—quite literally, they are building archipelagos in the Persian Gulf as the ultimate real estate development ever conceived, the ultimate in exclusivity.
