World Capitalism: Hurtling towards a precipice with eyes shut.

Karl Marx. World's greatest critic of capitalism.

Sean O'Torrain

For some decades in the post world war two period there was the cold war and relative stability in world relations. There was of course the colonial revolution, the Chinese revolution, the 1968 French general strike, but overall there was a certain equilibrium in the world. As well as being referred to as the period of the cold war it was sometimes also referred to as Pax Americana. That is a period of US imperialist dominance. Then Stalinism collapsed in the early 1990's. US imperialism announced in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal: "We Won." It went on to announce that it would construct a new world order of "full spectrum dominance." That is US imperialist dominance in every phase of life on the planet. A new world order was going to be built. The architect was to be US imperialism. Things have not worked out quite as US Washington thought.

Out of the ruins of the Stalinist Soviet Union has arisen a militarily powerful Russian capitalist class, a powerful Russian imperialism.  This on the one hand challenges US imperialism in the Middle East and Europe and on the other hand seeks to cozy up to it on the front of oil and gas exploration and extraction. It looks like if Trump has his way his administration and Putin will seek to work together on oil and gas extraction and with this reduce the power of the Arab oil producing world. The Middle East is already being being blown to pieces. They will have no hesitation in blowing to pieces even more. At the same time the European Union is coming apart and this is encouraged by Russian imperialism.

Then there is China and other areas. The tensions grow dramatically between China and the US. US imperialism increases its fleet in the South China sea and tries to beat back the rising giant of China. Africa is being looted as if there was only a few weeks left to get everything out of it. Latin America after a brief period when things looked to be stabilizing a little is now once again plunging into the abyss. The world situation and world relations are heading into a period of enormous change and instability and conflict.

Into this situation steps the degenerate backward demagogue Trump. The authors of this Blog initially thought he would not get elected as the big bourgeois in the US, the financial bourgeois, the military industrial complex, the new high tech bourgeois would stop him. This almost happened. In fact if there were democratic elections in the US, that is one person one vote and no gerrymandering, Trump would have been defeated. He received over two million votes less than Clinton. But he won the undemocratic electoral college. There are accidents in history which can have serious and significant affects. The election of Trump is one of these.

What is likely to happen with the Trump regime. There are a number of possibilities. The big bourgeois might be able to tame and control him. This is what they are trying to do for the moment. He is being advised by people like James Baker, Condoleezza Rice two former secretaries of state, Stephen Hadley a former National Security adviser and Brent Scowcroft one of the most authoritative Republican foreign policy voices. Scowcroft who initially supported Clinton now sings a different tune. He calls on his fellow Republicans to move to Trump as : "This man needs help." This is the situation at the moment. The heavy hitters in the US bourgeois are going to try and make it work with Trump.

They might be successful. They might not. Trump is so stupid and arrogant that he might get into such a conflict internationally which could lead to such serious consequences that the US bourgeois might decide they might have to get rid of him. This could be either through impeachment or or other more drastic means. It looks too late now to defeat him in the electoral college.

US and world affairs have entered a new period. World relations are on the way to losing their equilibrium. Class relations are on their way to losing their equilibrium. At some stage the big battalions of the working class will step forward and seek to put a new order on things. In the meantime we will continue to see world capitalism hurtling towards a the edge of a precipice with its eyes shut. The morons such as Trump have no idea that this is what is happening. The more astute ones who do know that this is what is happening have no idea how to stop it.

Only the international working class organized independently as a class and conscious of the need to over throw capitalism can show a way forward. There are some good signs. In the recent elections for the leadership of the mighty Teamsters union in the US and Canada, the old guard Hoffa leadership only managed to hang on by a thread. The time of the working class will come. A real new world order will then be possible. A working peoples world.