From server@prairienet.org Thu Jun 22 02:50:48 1995
	id CAA02872; Thu, 22 Jun 1995 02:50:04 +0200
	id AA13007; Wed, 21 Jun 95 19:41:38 CDT
Subject: Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 5 Num. 27
X-Comment:  Conspiracy Nation



              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 5  Num. 27
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                    ("Quid coniuratio est?")


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THE GLOBALIZATION OF CAPITALIST PRODUCTION
[From *The International Workers Bulletin*, 10/25/93]
[Excerpts]

[...continued...]

(6.7) The bourgeois policy and think tank journals are replete 
with declarations that the present mission of the United States 
is to provide order to a disordered world. They already speak of 
Greater China, defined as south China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, as 
an emerging capitalist client state and potential threat to U.S. 
interests. One pundit called for the formation of an English- 
speaking union, embracing Australia, New Zealand, Canada and 
Britain and dominated by the United States. Another published a 
detailed proposal for the United States to annex Siberia and 
prepare it for admission as several new states into the union. 
These and similar scenarios are by no means considered within the 
bourgeoisie to be the ravings of crackpots. Steps in this 
direction are already underway. Over the past year Chevron has 
acquired the Tengiz oil fields of Kazakhstan and newspapers have 
leaked reports of Pentagon plans for the military occupation of 
parts of Russia. Without any public statement or explanation, the 
Clinton administration signed an order called "Directive 13" {2} 
that lays the basis for U.S. military intervention in border 
conflicts and ethnic strife within the boundaries of the former 
USSR.

(6.9) The basic article of faith of Clinton's foreign policy is 
that it must be driven directly by the need of American 
capitalism to reverse its decline in the global economy and 
expand the access of U.S. banks and corporations to markets all 
over the world...

(6.11) In sum, the policy of the Clinton administration is to 
accustom U.S. forces to carry out bloody aggression against 
peoples all over the world, and to inure the American public to 
the likelihood that on any given day in some part of the world 
American troops will be killing and getting killed.

(6.12) Today, even more so than when he wrote them 59 years ago, 
these words of Trotsky apply: "U.S. capitalism is up against the 
same problem that pushed Germany in 1914 on the path of war. The 
world is divided? It must be redivided. For Germany it was a 
question of 'organizing Europe.' The United States must 
'organize' the world. History is bringing humanity face to face 
with the volcanic eruption of American imperialism."

(7.1) But American imperialism's grandiose schemes rest upon 
rotten foundations. The debt-fueled boom for big business of the 
1980s has run its course, having further exacerbated the 
underlying crisis. This crisis is expressed in record budget 
deficits, chronic trade deficits, soaring debt and an ongoing 
hemorrhaging of jobs in virtually every sector of the economy.

(7.2) The huge budget and trade deficits of the Reagan and Bush 
years, in which the national debt went from $1 trillion to nearly 
$4 trillion, have further undermined the world position of 
American capitalism. Over the four years of the Bush 
administration, the U.S. economy experienced the slowest growth 
of the postwar period, an average of 1.2 percent per year. By 
that point the value of the American dollar had dropped two- 
thirds against both the mark and the yen, as compared to their 
relative values 20 years earlier...

(7.3) It is symbolic that Clinton's inauguration coincided with 
IBM's announcement of a $5 billion loss for 1992, the biggest 
yearly loss for any corporation in U.S. history. During Clinton's 
first week in office major corporations including Sears, Boeing, 
Pratt & Whitney, McDonnell Douglass and Kodak announced a total 
of 100,000 job cuts. The wave of layoffs and corporate downsizing 
has continued unabated, including the report of 10,000 job cuts 
at Proctor & Gamble, another 85,000 on the way at IBM, and an 
additional 50,000 jobs to be eliminated at GM.

(7.5) The changes in social relations produced by this upheaval 
at the economic base of society have profound implications for 
the political superstructure of the United States. American 
society has become sharply polarized. Over the past 20 years, 
there has been a huge accumulation of wealth within the 
bourgeoisie and the most privileged layers of the upper middle 
class.

(7.6) The greatest rewards have been reaped by those sections of 
the ruling class associated most directly with various forms of 
financial swindling -- real estate, currency, stock and bond 
speculators; specialists in corporate takeovers; etc.

(7.7) The same period has seen the general impoverishment of 
growing sections of the population. The working class has been 
devastated by plant closures and the permanent loss of decent- 
paying jobs. More than 10 million workers saw their jobs 
destroyed during the 1980s, and the process has continued in the 
1990s. Combined with the gutting of social welfare programs, 
housing, health care and education, and a government-backed 
campaign of union busting and wage cutting, the mass layoffs and 
plant closures have produced a drastic regression in the social 
position of the working class...

(7.9) Tens of millions of workers, and especially young workers 
and youth, have been reduced to the status of marginal, part-time 
or temporary labor, and forced to subsist on poverty-level wages. 
Temporary employment grew 10 times faster than overall employment 
between 1982 and 1990. In 1992 temporary jobs accounted for two- 
thirds of new private sector jobs.

(7.11) At the same time, growing sections of those who have 
thought of themselves as middle class are being displaced and 
financially ruined by the convulsive shakeout of basic industry, 
including the computer, telecommunications, aerospace and defense 
industries. White collar, professional and managerial employees 
are being hit by a sweeping cost-cutting drive to slash middle 
and lower management positions. Computer analysts and engineers 
by the hundreds of thousands, who thought they had lifetime jobs 
at firms such as IBM, are finding themselves on unemployment 
lines. Civil servants and government employees are facing budget 
cuts at the federal, state and local level. College graduates are 
finding that their degrees no longer provide entry to good-paying 
careers, and many face the prospect of long-term unemployment. 
The economic slump is driving record numbers of small businesses 
into bankruptcy. This crisis within the middle class has the most 
explosive and far-reaching implications for the traditional 
structure of capitalist rule in America. These are precisely the 
intermediate layers of society which are employed to administer 
the affairs of the bourgeoisie. The economic well-being and 
stability of the middle classes have provided a strong foundation 
for capitalist rule throughout the postwar period. These social 
layers have moreover served as a social buffer, helping to 
suppress the class struggle and smother any independent political 
movement of the working class.

(7.12) Working class living standards have been declining 
steadily since the early 1970s, but the growth of poverty at one 
end of society and accumulating wealth at the other sharply 
accelerated over the past thirteen years. The gap between the 
rich and the great bulk of the population reached levels unseen 
since the 1920s. In the course of the 1980s the top 1 percent 
increased its share of all stocks and bonds, real estate and 
other business assets from 20 percent to 36.3 percent. Today the 
richest 1 percent control more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. 
In 1992 the average income of the top 1 percent of the population 
was $567,000, almost twice what it was, in constant dollars, in 
1977. Corporate chief executives saw their average salary soar 
from $190,000 in 1960 to $549,000 in 1970 and $4,356,000 in 1992, 
for a cumulative increase of 2,188 percent. In the 12 years of 
the Reagan and Bush administrations, the annual incomes of 
corporate CEOs multiplied seven times over. In 1992 their total 
compensation reached 170 times the level of an average worker's 
paycheck.

(7.19) As all restrictions on the subjugation of the working 
class to the drive for profit are removed, the most barbaric 
forms of exploitation, such as child labor, indentured servitude 
and outright slavery, are once again gaining ground...

---------------------------<< Notes >>---------------------------
{2} "Directive 13":

  The August 8 assassination of CIA agent Fred Woodruff outside 
  the Georgian capital of Tbilisi has brought to light 
  extensive US interference in the affairs of the former Soviet 
  Union. A secret State Department memorandum, titled 
  "Directive 13," calls for the United States to become the 
  arbiter of disputes among the 15 states that have emerged 
  from the collapse of the USSR.

  According to a report in the Wall Street Journal August 18, 
  Directive 13 "proposes external mediation of disputes that 
  have arisen or might arise between Russia and other former 
  Soviet republics. It proposes internationalizing these 
  problems, under the auspices of the US and the UN."

[Excerpted from the August 23, 1993 issue of "The International 
Workers Bulletin." Article, by Bill Vann, entitled "Growing 
Danger of Imperialist War".]

 +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +

*The International Workers Bulletin* (ISSN 1068-6575) may or may 
not still be going. You can try writing to them at Labor 
Publications, The International Workers Bulletin, PO Box 5174, 
Southfield, MI  48086-9863. Subscriptions as of two years ago, 
$10 for 2 months, $25 for 6 months, $48 for 1 year; published bi- 
weekly. Check or money order payable to Labor Publications.

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Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et 
  pauperem.                    -- Liber Proverbiorum  XXXI: 8-9 

 Brian Francis Redman    bigxc@prairienet.org    "The Big C"
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    Coming to you from Illinois -- "The Land of Skolnick"        
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