by PRABHAT PATNAIK
In The Junius Pamphlet written from jail in 1915, Rosa Luxemburg had said that the choice before mankind was between barbarism and socialism. Liberal opinion would contest this, arguing thatthe barbarism that marked the two world wars and the period in between was unrelated to capitalism; indeed the liberal tendency that comes to the fore under capitalism, it would claim, fought against the barbarism of that period. Capitalism, it would assert, has been characterised by the ascendancy of humane values to an unprecedented extent, as the post-war years have shown.
To talk about humane values coming to the fore under capitalism however is to ignore the phenomenon of imperialism altogether. The inflicting of famines in India under British rule are well-known: this rule began with a famine in Bengal in 1770 that killed ten million persons, a third of the populationofthe province, because of the rapacity of its revenue demands; towards the end of this rule there was yet another famine in Bengal in 1943 because of the utterly cruel war-financing policy pursued by the government that again killed at least three million persons. German rule in (today’s) Namibia had introduced death camps that exterminated large numbers of the tribal population and constituted the “models” for Hitler’s concentration-cum-death camps in the 1930s. Belgian atrocities in the Congo under Leopold’s rule involving the mutilation of human beings are too well-known and too gruesome to recount. And European settler colonialism in the temperate regions of the world eliminated local populations on a vast scale, herded those who survived into reservations, and took over their lands and habitats. One can go on with this litany of cruelty; what is important is thatthe motive forthis cruelty was plain material gain, which is what characterises capitalism.
It would of course be argued that loot and plunder have provided the motive for wars and conquests even earlier, longbefore capitalism came into being; so why should one drag capitalism into it? The answer is two-fold: first, all talk of capitalism advancing humane values, it follows, is just hyperbole; at best it is no better than what had preceded it. And second, loot and plunder of the earlier periods were very different from what happens under capitalism. The earlier loot still left something with those who were plundered, or at least allowed them to recoup their losses over time (even though this might invite further plunder later); but under capitalism there is a permanent expropriation of the oppressed.
Capitalism had projected this image of itself, as humane force that fought all barbaric tendencies, in the post-war period. Using in particular Hollywood movies, it sought to give the impression that the second world war was essentially a fight between western liberal democracy and fascism, and downplaying the decisive role of the Soviet Union in the war. As a result, the immense sympathy that had existed for the Soviet Union all over the world, including in the west, was systematically made to diminishamong the people of the advanced capitalist countries. They were given the impression that they were living within a humane system the like of which had never existed before. Rosa Luxemburg’s remark was portrayed as lacking any relevance, notwithstanding the Vietnam and other wars that marked the post-war period, not to mention the depredations of the CIA all over the world in effecting regime change and acts of terror during those years.
This illusion of capitalism being a humane force however is now over. The barbarity of capitalism is evident at present like never before, and the most heart-rending, the most incredibly cruel instance of it is the genocide of the Palestinians that is currently occurring with the combined blessings of all advanced capitalist countries. At least 28,000 of the civilian population have been killed, of whom almost 70 percent have been women and children; in factmore than 1,00,000 are missing, a large number of whom are believed to have been killed, taking the toll well above 28,000. Much of the population has been bombed out of their homes and even relief operations have been impaired with the UNRWA funding being suspended by the capitalist powers. The Economic and Social Commission for West Asia, a UN body, has called what is happening in Gaza the “deadliest 100 days in the 21st century”. We are in short witnessing a human catastrophe, which is unleashed by an utterly inhumane and aggressive Zionist regime with the active support of the big capitalist powers.
The aggressiveness of the Zionist State is so blatant that it even threatened the South African foreign minister with dire consequences for herself and her family, when South Africa went to the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide. The court upheld the substance of South Africa’s case, and asked Israel to desist from any genocidal actions, though it stopped short of ordering an immediate end to its war in Gaza. What was striking was that everyone of the advanced capitalist powers supported Israel, with the US calling the legal action “meritless”, and France and Germany arguing that accusing Israel of genocide is to cross a “moral threshold”.
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