Beyond Capital

To say that the US invasion of Iraq “was not all about oil” is nothing novel. The triviality of “all about oil” argument is perhaps most clearly shown in the works of Marxists like Cyrus Bina. When neoliberal economic journalists like Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar criticise this argument, they ultimately circularly reiterate the same argument - not all about oil, but still all about oil. So he in one of his recent gems published on 10 March 2007 starts with saying:

“Many Indians, including respected foreign policy analysts, believe that the US invaded Iraq and ousted Saddam Hussein in 2003 simply to grab his oilfields. “Its all about oil,” they said. Well, it’s now four years since the invasion. Yet, we see no sign of the US grabbing Iraq’s oilfields”.

And ends by:

“The US still has a strong interest… in seeing that oil production in the Persian Gulf is not disrupted or monopolised by any military power. This was one reason why the US forced Saddam out of Kuwait, which he had invaded and occupied in 1990. The US Navy has for decades patrolled the sea lanes to ensure security for oil tankers. So, oil matters. But it is somewhat ridiculous to think that oil alone matters. The US invasion of Iraq was a terrible mistake, but it was not “all about oil.”

That’s just “one reason”, but in Aiyar’s write-up it is the only “one reason”.

Definitely, we cannot ask him to comprehend the dialectics of abstract and concrete, essence and appearance etc - the complex relationship between economy and polity, where we cannot reduce any to the other. Also, we cannot expect him to avoid the circularity of bourgeois economics.

However the interesting aspect of his article is the details which he offers to prove his “not all about oil” argument - when he draws parallel between Indian and the US oil interests:

“Those familiar with India’s oil policy will find the Iraqi controversy over production sharing [contracts to foreign companies] mystifying, even comic. India has long signed production-sharing deals with private and foreign oil companies, and nobody regards this as a sellout.

The latest bidding round this year drew 32 domestic and 36 foreign bidders. In production-sharing deals, the foreign or private sector partner bears all exploration costs, but shares with the government any oil or gas that is found. The terms of production-sharing have varied in different rounds of bidding in India.

But typically the winning bidder whether Indian or foreign first gets enough oil to recover costs of production and exploration (called cost oil); then gets two to three times as much as profit oil; and then hands over most or all of the residual production to the government.

For instance, the government’s share in gas at Reliance’s Krishna-Godavari field starts at roughly 15% at the beginning and goes to 85% in later stages.

The most successful foreign explorer in India has been Cairn Energy, which hopes to produce 7.5 million tonnes a year from its fields in Rajasthan. British Gas has also experienced some success.

ONGC itself has entered into production-sharing contracts in no less than 15 countries, including Russia, Vietnam, Sudan, Venezuela, Canada, Brazil, Nigeria and Cuba.

Reliance Industries has also signed production-sharing deals in Yemen, Oman, East Timor and Colombia. Indeed, ONGC and Reliance have jointly signed a production-sharing deal in guess where? Northern Iraq. This is not Indian imperialism. Nor have these Indian oil companies encountered US resistance.

So, Indian foreign policy analysts who think the Iraq invasion was all about oil, need to brush up their knowledge of the oil business. They are living in the past.

There was indeed a time when the US used military power to back US oil companies. When Mossadegh in Iran nationalised oil companies, he was overthrown in a 1953 coup masterminded by Britain and the US. However, that was the last act in the history of oil imperialism.

This was shown when OPEC countries in 1974 nationalised all oilfields, converting oil multinationals from owners to just buyers of oil. Some US diplomats and politicians wanted military action to regain the fields. But the US Administration ruled that the days of oil imperialism were over, and it was time to deal with sovereign governents.

The US still has a strong interest as does India in seeing that oil production in the Persian Gulf is not disrupted or monopolised by any military power. This was one reason why the US forced Saddam out of Kuwait, which he had invaded and occupied in 1990. The US Navy has for decades patrolled the sea lanes to ensure security for oil tankers.

So, oil matters. But it is somewhat ridiculous to think that oil alone matters. The US invasion of Iraq was a terrible mistake, but it was not “all about oil.”

Here Aiyar has given some facts, ignored even by leftists suffering from third worldism. They are relevant for understanding the material base of India’s expansionist, even imperialist ambitions. Private (foreign and domestic) and State capitalist production sharing is nothing new. In recent years, India’s state oil companies like ONGC have been proactively involved in satisfying the energy requirements of India’s capitalist development by their overseas exploration and operation. Aiyar also tells us that now private capitalists like Reliance are increasingly being given space in this industry, where the State had been the pioneer.

However, for Aiyar, if “this is not Indian imperialism” then there is no US “oil imperialism”. But why do we presume that there is no Indian imperialism? In fact, let’s reverse the order of the argument - if all such facts have grounded US imperialist interests in the Middle East and elsewhere (even if not just for oil, but “oil matters”), then the parallel that Aiyar draws between India and the US must tempt us to probe India’s ambitions too, without precluding their possible imperialist nature. Definitely, the export of capital is not sufficient to make a state imperialist, but what makes it so is the state’s capacity and interest in defending that export through international political intervention, of which war is just a part, as Clausewitz taught us. Maybe if “Indian oil companies [in their outward expansion in the Middle East have not] encountered US resistance”, this is just another proof that India is a part of the imperialist coalition led by the US, or the US sees it as as an ally. This would give us a key to interpret the tremendous growth in the US-India-Israel relationship too.

Of course, in capitalism collaboration does not preclude competition - there will be moments when collaborating interests would clash too. But we should not presume that if collaboration between US and India is occurring, it is a patron-client relationship. Likewise, competition too is not liberation, India’s frequent amorous passes to Russia, China and others are not necessarily anti-imperialist or anti-US.

All over the world, the media projected the recent Ugandan agitation against the multinational acquisition of the country’s forest resources as racist. Indian media tout court led the wave by raising the ghost of Idi Amin. It seemed something like the Nazis’ holocaust. This is not for the first time that South Asians have raised similar metaphors. Post-1990 Hindu rightists have time and again used them to stress on the parallels between the Jews and Hindus, the uniqueness of Israel and India. Also, Indian governments have been proactively self-imposing themselves as protectors of People of Indian-origin (PIO) all over the world. World imperialism and its watchdogs which are ever ready to club Anti-globalisation movements, terrorism, fundamentalists - all their ‘evil’ enemies, “bad guys” together have found this Indian expansionism and its rising crossborder interests and concerns handy for their mission. This allows them to corner the ‘third world’ movements and regimes who pose threat to world capitalist interests.

One PIO MP in Uganda, Sanjay Tanna has clearly rebutted such propaganda. He “said it was unfortunate that the media had focused on the death of one Asian and portrayed Uganda as a racist country. He said two Ugandans lost their lives and many others were injured or lost property. He explained that Rawal’s death came from a sequence of events, which included an attempt by some Asians to drive through the demonstrators.” (New Vision, April 17 2007)

Regarding, the global imperialist usage of Indian expansionism, I wrote the following almost a year back during Bush’s India visit in February 2006 (Counterpunch), which might be relevant here too:

On the other hand, India’s mastery of ‘unreliable’, and ‘rogue’ polities, and its ability to forge indigenous clients in those polities make it a worthy partner for other global powers whose recent hyper-interventionism has reduced their own ability in this regard. Conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have further attested this inability of the US hegemony, at least–political forces against which wars were waged in these countries were erstwhile US allies. These conflicts are symptomatic of the crisis of the US hegemony more than the unipolarity of the post-Cold War era. Unlike the ideology of the “Soviet threat”, the post-Cold War ideologies of human rights and non-proliferation could not form the legitimate basis for forging international alliances, since the duplicity of the “global powers” on those same accounts are too apparent. In fact, the orientalist bases of these ideologies have further curtailed the First World’s ability to directly manipulate political forces in the “third world”. At this juncture, ‘mediocre’ powers like India could become relevant interfaces between the two worlds, for perpetuating and sustaining global capitalism and its political structure.

Joseph Stiglitz is counted as one of a few dissenting economists in mainstream academia, and for some time now his dissent has been attracting quite a number of activists. He is officially invited by the “Another World is Possible” people to their meetings. Naturally he will think himself authorised to tell people how another world is possible, and what will be that world. He precisely does this job in his March column, “The EU’s Global Mission” distributed through Project-Syndicate:

“Another world is possible. But it is up to Europe to take the lead in achieving it.”

So the revolutionary project already has a vanguard, the only job left for the foot soldiers is to convince him/her/it to lead. How insightful! Any pessimism in this regard is ill-founded as

“the European project has been an enormous success, not only for Europe, but also for the world.”

Of course, like our Indian monkey-god Hanuman, Europe lacks ready self-confidence and needs a bear bard for encouragement. Stiglitz’s article does that job. Questioning the economistic common sense, he tells Europeans not to feel unconfident before the warlords in the US, as their competitors’ supremacy is baseless and phoney -

“…while GDP per capita has been rising in the US, most Americans are worse off today than they were five years ago. An economy that, year after year, leaves most of its citizens worse off is not a success.”

Moreover, the European Union’s mission is distinct, which are not laws, regulation, or phoney prosperity, but “long-lasting peace”, “greater understanding, underpinned by the myriad interactions that inevitably flow from commerce”. And “The EU has realized that dream” - “neighbors live together more peacefully”, “people move more freely and with greater security”. Stringent immigrant laws for and policing of the people from the South (this identity is very broad since it includes Black and Arab French, Muslim Europeans…) etc are perhaps aberrations, or may be the Southerners are racially ‘uncountable’ “within a new European identity that is not bound to national citizenship”.

Furthermore, Europe has mastered the competitive art of giving, and has surpassed the US -

“Europe has led the way, providing more assistance to developing countries than anyone else (and at a markedly higher fraction of its GDP than the US).”

Do we need to tell our Nobel laureate the economics of Aid, even AIDS?

Stiglitz too feels (not unlike Bush) that the world has changed during the past six years. However, he finds “democratic multilateralism” being challenged, human rights abrogated. Obviously he ignores all the contributions in grounding Bushism that earlier US governments made, especially Clinton’s, of which Stiglitz himself was a part. What if NATO was not less active earlier, Iraq too was continuously bombarded…

Stiglitz feels the need for multipolarity, and that Europe

“must become one of the central pillars of such a world by projecting what has come to be called “soft power” – the power and influence of ideas and example. Indeed, Europe’s success is due in part to its promotion of a set of values that, while quintessentially European, are at the same time global.”

Does it really matter if this whole discourse of “a set of [quintessentially European, but universal] values” seems hardly any different from Bush’s? Moreover, what are these values? First is “Democracy” - not just elections, “but also active and meaningful participation in decision making, which requires an engaged civil society, strong freedom of information norms, and a vibrant and diversified media that are not controlled by the state or a few oligarchs.”

Which formally democratic country officially denies these, and how many countries, including the EU members, provide safeguards against corporate-state monopoly over information and media? Further, the whole logic of the European monetary integration was to insulate strategic financial and economic institutions from any “active and meaningful” democratic influence, as it was considered external and an economic nuisance.

“The second value is social justice”, which is just individualism, however realized “only if we live in harmony with each other”. Does Bush deny this? The issue is rather who will establish the rules for that “harmony”.

What else?

In Stiglitz’s dream, the White Man’s burden definitely changes shoulders, but it remains the white man’s burden all the same -

“For the sake of all of us, Europe must continue to speak out – even more forcibly than it has in the past.”

Back to the old world - while the “world” remains the same - a white man’s world.

Pratyush Chandra

The Bush-Blair duo’s statements immediately after Zarqawi’s death were very interesting. The adolescent victorious spirit that they generally display was clearly absent. Bush said: “The difficult and necessary mission in Iraq continues. We can expect the terrorists and insurgents to carry on without him. We can expect the sectarian violence to continue.” And Blair echoed: “The death of Zarqawi is a strike against al-Qaeda in Iraq and therefore a strike against al-Qaeda everywhere but we should have no illusions. We know that they will continue to kill, we know that there are many, many obstacles to overcome.” Evidently, the ‘optimism’ that they demonstrated after Taliban’s and Saddam’s defeats was nowhere to be seen.

There is only one reason behind this cautiousness in the imperialist camp, that the duo themselves makes clear, is that the death of all these “evil” symbols will not curb the continuity of insurgency. In fact, as these symbols are rubbed off the media lenses, the anxiety increases with the revelation of the continuous and mass character of the insurgencies in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

The presence of al-Qaeda has been a boon in the post-Cold War era, providing a definite target and rationale for the continued military expansion to cover up the political economic fragility of US-British imperialism. The domestic opinion was easily mobilized by this comic-strip type situation of the two Supermen countering the bearded and hideous aliens. With these aliens dying in their own fire, the Superiority of the “good” men diminishes. And that is dangerous. Thus we find Bush/Blair fumbling for words to characterize the ‘new’ insurgency, and to convince the public of continuing their own ‘noble’ mission. In fact, Blair in his statement on Zarqawi’s death went to the extent of completely shifting the subject to the irrelevant “domestic agenda”, which meant to tell the public that - don’t always stress on our gymnastics, we know we have landed in a thick soup, let’s talk about something else.

And we find them trying hard to convince their international allies, too: “And what I’ve always said about this is whatever people think about the original decision to remove Saddam — I mean, that happened now three years ago — our forces, American forces, other forces have been there with a full U.N. mandate, with the consent of the Iraqi government to do one thing, and that is stand with the Iraqi people in their desire for democracy.” (Blair)

Looming large on all these efforts to recompose the imperialist camp and its ideological campaign, the most formidable danger is the real danger of the increased and coherent insurgency. Al-Qaeda’s elitist character and its sectarian violence, despite its frequent use of pan-Islamic rhetoric to obtain legitimacy, curb every attempt by the colonized people of Afghanistan and Iraq to self-organize, thus helping the occupying forces in divide and rule. Al-Qaeda’s insistence to be the sole-contractor to “save Islam” in this world forces it to target civilians more than the occupants and oppressors, and indulge in sectarian terrorism replicating the same imperialist policy of divide and rule. It was thus that these ‘holy’ soldiers served the global masters during the Cold War, and after the Cold War they continue to serve them. In fact, throughout the Global South the ‘religiosisation’ and sectization of the nationalist and regional politics that we see today have been the immediate results of Post World War II neo-colonization that found post-colonial secular nationalism and regionalism as grave dangers to the imperial powers’ hegemony.

However, as these self-imposing vanguards vanish one by one, who indulge in physically removing the masses from the center-stage of insurgent politics with the help and for the benefit of the occupying forces, the spontaneous and organized nature of mass insurgency will be smoothly nurtured, which until now was always nipped in the bud after sectarian killings, bombings and kidnappings, forcing it to remobilize itself from scratch. The days are not very far when we might see an organized insurgency independent of all clans and sects, which will insist like the Algerians did in the 1950s - “Placing national interest above all petty and erroneous considerations of personality and prestige, in conformity with revolutionary principles, our action is directly solely against colonialism, our only blind and obstinate enemy, which has always refused to grant the least freedom by peaceful means.”

And the Middle East has a great history of anti-colonialist and nationalist uprisings. Even if the officials (both colonials and their local cahoots) have forgotten this, the Middle Eastern people can never forget it. They don’t need to “borrow history” from others. Zarqawi and bin Laden can inspire fear and admiration among those who have forgotten the brilliant struggle for decolonization, but the people throughout the Global South have continued to live this struggle every moment of their lives - against political and economic tyranny, against direct or semi-coloniality. As violence escalates in Iraq and Afghanistan, the natives are not at all afraid. They are not afraid and innocent; they too threw stones at the passing tanks and brigades in the streets of the Afghani towns. As Fanon aptly taught us -

“This atmosphere of violence and menaces, these rockets brandished by both sides, do not frighten nor deflect the colonized peoples. We have seen that all their recent history has prepared them to understand and grasp the situation…. The native and the underdeveloped man are today political animals in the most universal sense of the word.”

Herein lies the danger for imperialism. Afraid of relying on hired locals, as it increases its force and drowns in its own muck, there is a genuine hope for the organized rise in the aspirations of self-determination among the natives. As Sartre would put, all that these hired soldiers can do is to delay the completion of the uncompleted decolonization process that started long back, but ultimately, as Jesus commanded, “So the last shall be first, and the first last” (Mathew 20:16). Amen.

And thus the colonizers are anxious, and the colonized hopeful.

Countercurrents
March 29, 2006

John Atkinson Hobson (1858-1940) was an ‘economist’ who conceptualised modern imperialism for the first time. Though never formally accepted in academia, he could never be ignored, as he overwhelmed the discipline of economics by writing vociferously and touching every field of economic analysis. Although never consistent in his own political conviction, he influenced many diehard revolutionary internationalists and radical pacifists before, during and after the World War I. He is better known as a precursor to the Marxist interpreters of economic internationalisation, finance capital and European politics, despite his avowed liberalism. It is in line with this fact that we generally see him as an economist, giving ‘objective’ analyses of economic processes leading to the world war.

However, any cursory reading of his classic work, ‘Imperialism: A Study’ (1902) shows that he was far more than an ‘objectivist’. The tenor in his work on imperialism makes him a great persuader against the imperialist motivation of the British state, its policy of colonisation and militarism, and the interest groups driving these policies. The economic analysis is simply a part of this overall project. Even if his economic analysis runs out of gas in the changed circumstances today, and seems to be timed without much contemporary relevance, his powerful indictment of jingoism, militarism and “economic parasites of imperialism” makes him immortal.

Hobson photographs the whole imperial machine instituted by finance capital vividly where we find philanthropists, media and politicians complementing the military’s work. He notes the blurring of nationalism/patriotism and expansionism. His description in this regard vividly captures even the post-Cold War imperialist rage today.

THE SAME ROTTEN ‘IMPERIAL ENGINE’

Hobson was not a supporter of the pure economic interpretation of the imperialist expansionist drive. At least on this issue, he ‘dialectically’ linked up the ‘economic’ with the ‘political’, countering today’s reductionist interpretation - so prominent even within the left circles who reduce the recent wars in the Middle East to mere ‘oil politics’. It is true that oil politics is an important “determination” in shaping the direction of the imperialist moves and wars, but reducing the latter to the former is erroneous. Moreover, why only oil? It is still finance capital - an integration of industrial and banking capitals - that feeds into oil politics etc as in the days of Hobson, Hilferding and Lenin. But none of these ‘economic’ analysts at the morn of modern imperialism sought to reduce the imperialist politics to its economic elements.

For Hobson finance was not the “motor-power of Imperialism”, rather “the governor of the imperial engine, directing the energy and determining its work: it does not constitute the fuel of the engine, nor does it directly generate the power.” On the contrary, the question of hegemony in international relations is at the centre of imperialism and its coercive-consensual apparatuses. In our days, one radical Iranian political economist, Cyrus Bina has aptly described the genesis of the post-cold war conflicts in the Middle East in his 2004 essay, “The American Tragedy: The Quagmire of War, Rhetoric of Oil, and the Conundrum of Hegemony” in the Journal of Iranian Research and Analysis:

“History has proven that capitalism is not about self-sufficiency, security, and independence, much less energy and oil independence. It is rather about discursive mutuality and contradictory interdependence. The war-for-oil scenario obtains its lineage from an old, speculative, and ahistorical right-wing economic theory where the right relies on its anachronistic application of oil monopoly and the theory-less and clue-less left on its petty bourgeois interpretation. The oil, however, is the effect—not the cause—of the U.S. war in Iraq. The cause is the collapse of the Pax Americana, the loss of American hegemony, and the self-limiting conundrum of U.S. reactions, which so far the Bush administration portrayed most nakedly and which is a million times more dangerous for global peace and stability than the flimsy oil motive.”

Similarly, Hobson in his analysis notes that “the enthusiasm for expansion” issues from “the patriotic forces which politicians, soldiers, philanthropists, and traders generate”, and finance (and the “merged” industrial interests) harnesses this irregular and blind enthusiasm - “the financial interest has those qualities of concentration and clear-sighted calculation which are needed to set Imperialism to work”. The financial power is the “final determination” which invisibly rides and motivates the horses that “an ambitious statesman, a frontier soldier, an overzealous missionary, a pushing trader” ride.

Even the phraseology of imperialism is hardly different from Hobson’s days. “In the mouths of their representatives are noble phrase, expressive of their desire to extend the area of civilisation, to establish good government, promote Christianity, extirpate slavery, and elevate the lower races.” Of course, the open avowal of Christianity and racism in the official imperialist rhetoric is difficult today but it is self-evident in the eulogy of “ideals that have inspired our [the US'] history” (The National Security Strategy of the USA 2006) that in turn inspire every US leader even today to raise a medieval war cry “God Save America”. It is evident also in Bush’s “crusades”, in the rhetoric of “free nations” advancing “liberty” by occupying the “slave” nations. However, what seems restricted or covert in politics gets free vent and consistency in the media. Hobson was clear about the instrumentalisation of the media and the role that it acquires in the imperialist project:

“The direct influence exercised by great financial houses in “high politics” is supported by the control which they exercise over the body of public opinion through the Press, which, in every “civilised” country, is becoming more and more their obedient instrument. While the specifically financial newspaper imposes “facts” and “opinions” on the business classes, the general body of the Press comes more and more under the conscious or unconscious domination of financiers.”

As, in Hobson’s days, “Her Majesty’s Flag” was “the greatest commercial asset in the world”, so is the “Star-Spangled Banner” today. And the wars that we witness today are nothing but the desperation to preserve this status. Here lies the unity of the economic and the political in the imperialist campaigns.

THE SAME ‘RACIAL ENDOWMENT’

The second part of Hobson’s book starts with an exposé of the “political significance of imperialism”. Here his main target is the myth that “Britons are a race endowed, like the Romans, with a genius for government, that our colonial and imperial policy is animated by a resolve to spread throughout the world the arts of free self-government which we enjoy at home, and that in truth we are accomplishing this work.” We must admit that a century later, this sense of racial responsibility has not died down, except that it has now been transferred to the Americans. An official document, “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America” that was issued on March 16, 2006 confirms:

“There was a time when two oceans seemed to provide protection from problems in other lands, leaving America to lead by example alone. That time has long since passed. America cannot know peace, security, and prosperity by retreating from the world. America must lead by deed
as well as by example. This is how we plan to lead, and this is the legacy we will leave to those who follow.”

And Bush prefaces the document:

“America is at war…America also has an unprecedented opportunity to lay the foundations for future peace. The ideals that have inspired our history — freedom, democracy, and human dignity — are increasingly inspiring individuals and nations throughout the world. And because free nations tend toward peace, the advance of liberty will make America more secure.”

AND THE SAME KILLERS…

BBC recently reported on March 22, 2006, “US army dog handler Sgt Michael Smith has been jailed for six months for abusing detainees in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison from 2003 to 2004. Smith, 24, was convicted of using his black Belgian shepherd to menace prisoners for his own amusement. He expressed no remorse for his actions at the court martial, saying soldiers were not meant to be “soft and cuddly”. Prosecutors said he had competed with another handler to see who could make a detainee soil himself out of fear.”

Similarly, the Guardian reported on January 14, 2005 about another accused in Abu Ghraib case, Specialist Charles Graner, sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment. Graner said, “I feel fantastic. I’m still smiling,” during his trial. “Asked on the opening day of his trial if he felt any remorse for what went on at Abu Ghraib, the soldier rolled his eyes and smirked.”

What else do all these abuses demonstrate about the state of the American youth pushed into the war, if not that imperialism necessarily dehumanises its own citizens? They are transformed into Full Metal Jacketed soldiers, or as Hobson told more than a century ago:

“There exists an absolute antagonism between the activity of the good citizen and that of the soldier. The end of the soldier is not, as is sometimes falsely said, to die for his country; it is to kill for his country. In as far as he dies he is a failure; his work is to kill, and he attains perfection as a soldier when he becomes a perfect killer. This end, the slaughter of one’s fellow-men, forms a professional character, alien from, and antagonistic to, the character of our ordinary citizen, whose work conduces to the preservation of his fellow-men. If it be contended that this final purpose, though informing and moulding the structure and functions of an army, operates but seldom and slightly upon the consciousness of the individual soldier, save upon the battlefield, the answer is that, in the absence from consciousness of this end, the entire routine of the soldier’s life, his drill, parades, and whole military exercise, is a useless, purposeless activity, and that these qualities exercise a hardly less degrading influence on character than the conscious intention of killing his fellow-men.”

Countercurrents

Finally Dubai Ports World has decided to transfer US ports business to a “US entity”. Bush must have felt relieved along with his colleagues (both for and against the ports deal). They must have patted each other for effectively creating a drama around the deal that achieved two ends - it has homogenised and ‘jingoised’ the American opinion to a certain degree, while giving a softening touch to the warrior image of Bush.

Full Text: click COUNTERCURRENTS

COUNTERPUNCH

The Joint US-India statement issued after the meeting between President Bush and Prime Minister Singh on March 2 clearly reflects the Indian approval of the principles on which the US hegemony is established globally. The five sections, in which the statement is divided, to summarize the broad areas of cooperation, enumerate the basic concerns of the US hegemony, and India’s willingness to cooperate.

Full Text: http://counterpunch.org/chandra03032006.html

COUNTERPUNCH

A few days from now, Bush will go to India and reaffirm his newfound love, becoming the only Republican President to visit India after Nixon. Bush and his ‘mouthpieces’ are quite vocal about their need of India - to compete with the EU, to check China, to control unpredictable regimes and to expand the war on terrorism etc. But it is quite interesting to note how India’s consistent positive response to these advances is generally taken as paradoxical, or else simply as succumbing to ‘external’ pressures. However if we take notice of the transformation of Indian capitalism and of the aspirations of the Indian ruling class, we can easily find the reason behind this mutuality.

India has already expanded its interests beyond South Asia and other neighboring economies. It has business assets and interests to secure both in developed and underdeveloped worlds. In fact, Indian capital has been ‘flying’ through legal and illegal routes since 1956 when the Birla group of companies made a large-scale investment establishing a textile mill in Ethiopia. In the late 1970s-early 1980s, the phrase “third world multinationals” was popularized to differentiate them from the first world multinationals. It was generally perceived that unlike the latter, which were motivated by the firms’ internal growth process, third world multinationals were products of demand-side bottlenecks, the statist restrictions on monopolistic and trade practices, other imperfections and distortions created by the state and political forces. This argument is negated by the fact that the companies going abroad where mostly those who had profiteered in the phase of ‘interventionism’. They were firms having “a diverse and established presence at home”. As one scholar from that period, Rajiv Lall noted in his study “Multinationals from the Third World: Indian Firms Investing Abroad” (Oxford University Press, 1986): “These firms tend to be part of large industrial houses with a conglomeration of holdings that give them an imposing rule in the Indian market.”

However, until 1978, majority equity participation in firms abroad was generally prohibited. Despite this, the Indian firms investing abroad managed to retain management control. After that, the pace of capital export has been unceasingly maintained, with its tremendous unimpeded nature in the post 1991 phase. The post-1991 scenario has rendered new directions to the Indian “export of capital”. The State itself has emerged as a leading segment in this trade, concentrating on sectors that allow a smooth process of capital accumulation domestically and internationally–energy and finance, being true to its role of expressing the general conditions of accumulation and devising overall economic strategy.

The energy requirements of India’s economy have been constantly increasing and as a result indigenous corporate oil interests have evolved, which initially were restricted to brokerage in export and import. But as the regulation for the outflow of Indian capital for investment and acquisitions abroad has been eased out, there has been heavy investment to ‘proactively’ secure energy supplies from abroad. Indian oil companies, especially, Oil & Natural Gas Corporation­Videsh Ltd (OVL), are acquiring assets in oilfields in Russia, Latin America, the Middle East and ex-Soviet Central Asian republics. India is particularly using its erstwhile non-aligned image to gain access to the African oil and gas fields - Chad, Niger, Ghana, and Congo in particular. In Sudan, it has already made its largest investment acquiring the assets from a Canadian company, which left Sudan after human rights organizations charged it of committing genocide in Darfur region. On this front, once again, China is India’s main competitor and collaborator, as both have been trying to ’secure their energy supplies’ in the context of bigger players.

One may point out that these are still public sector endeavors. However, on the contrary, there have been increasing efforts to open up India’s energy market for private investment, and domestically it is already in place now with Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) and other private corporates expanding themselves in petroleum and power sectors. Further, at the present fluid state of India’s capitalist expansion, the public sector leadership provides a systematic character to the expanding tentacles of Indian capitalism. Because of the specific character of property relations and rent system involved in it, the oil sector is totally different from other industries and requires state-to-state relation for any negotiation to succeed. In the present state of uncertainty in the energy sector internationally, even if India further liberalizes this sector, its international expansion will remain largely a government affair. Further, especially after 1991, state companies in India have been increasingly corporatized, independently competing for the access to finance and capital markets, and strategizing on their own expansion. The corporatist character of the state-owned enterprise brings together several individuals, having interests and aims distinct from the State, who make contributions during the course of development of the enterprise in the capacity of managers and investors. The State is only the initial investor of the enterprise, while its subsequent expansion is dependent on factors internal to it and its presence in the market. Eventually the state’s ’share’ is effectively reduced, and the enterprise acquires an independent character similar to the private sector. This leads to crises–on the one hand, the state and the managers are frequently in conflict, and on the other, the state control is de-legitimized.

In fact, the crisis is already evident in India. The Indian government and the managers of its Public Sector Undertakings (PSU) are increasingly at loggerheads over risk assessment etc. For example, OVL’s commitment to corporatism and market is coming increasingly in conflict with its political directors. Recently, OVL had successfully bid a 45 percent stake in a Nigerian oil and gas field. It was the only case where it could beat the Chinese. But in the end it had to face, as some OVL officials put, “a huge embarrassment” and “a loss of credibility” because the government turned down its proposal at the very last moment on the ground of it being “risky”. This must be understood in the context of the political debate over divestment in the profit making PSUs. It remains a very contentious issue. Moreover, the left support to the present Indian government has moderated the Indian state’s intensive neo-liberalism, scuttling its recent vigor. Therefore, it needs to put stop to the statist expansion in the energy sector by other means, by playing the political game of calling the investments risky, and motivating the private corporate sector to come up. Besides this, a private-public partnership in the energy sector is already in place, domestically with private oil companies like RIL, while internationally with “diasporic” capital like Mittals.

Recently, some analysts have argued that India’s expansionary involvement with oil-producing countries for securing energy supplies itself is risky as these countries are in conflict with the United States over human rights or non-proliferation issues. And the latter will tolerate India’s alliances only to the extent they are trade-focused. A “diasporic” apologist of the Indian submission to the “American Imperium”, Economist Deepak Lal (Business Standard, November 15 2005) argued that this risk “could involve not merely putting the “Gurkhas” on the oil field, but in essentially taking over the country”. Quite unabashedly, he argues, “If these foreign investments are to be made on a commercial basis by an Indian oil company, it would be best to privatize the state-owned companies and let them then decide whether such investments are in their commercial interest.” However, he concedes, “The Indian government could justifiably use its diplomatic clout to help [a private investment project] fructify”. Does not this diplomacy include an employment of “gunboats and Gurkhas”?

Besides energy, another sector where the “public” is supposed to be in command in India is the banking sector. Indian banks too have been buying assets in Africa and Asia. Significantly, this expansion is a typical case of what was classically conceptualized as “finance capital”–a merger of banking and industrial interests. These state-run banks have been providing financial resources to overseas Indian projects, both private and public. More importantly, they are involved in giving loans, credit lines and other financial helps to fragile economies for infrastructure building and other industrial projects on the condition that they will employ Indian firms. In other words, the banking sector expansion has been an important vehicle in exporting Indian capitalist interests overseas, and also reclaiming the Indian “diasporic” interests, as they are increasingly using these financial institutions to their advantage. The “public” nature of this expansion gives it a ’systematicity’, which otherwise would have been lost in the global market. Further, it creates a direct linkage between the Indian state and capital.

However, “most outward FDI goes to the manufacturing sector, especially, pharmaceuticals”, and non-financial services that account for as much as 36% (UNCTAD, “India’s outward FDI: a giant awakening?”), and here it is the private sector that reigns. Definitely, whether “public” or “private”, they involve imminent “risks”. However, these risks can be India’s asset too. On the one hand, the unstable polities in countries hosting these investments legitimize India’s political intervention to secure its economic assets and interests. In the post-9/11 political parlance, this is what is termed as overseas “security interest” of a powerful country. The recognition of this ‘interest’, the ability to legitimize it by manipulating ‘global opinion’ and forming favorable international alliances constitute the criteria for becoming a power.

On the other hand, India’s mastery of ‘unreliable’, and ‘rogue’ polities, and its ability to forge indigenous clients in those polities make it a worthy partner for other global powers whose recent hyper-interventionism has reduced their own ability in this regard. Conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have further attested this inability of the US hegemony, at least–political forces against which wars were waged in these countries were erstwhile US allies. These conflicts are symptomatic of the crisis of the US hegemony more than the unipolarity of the post-Cold War era. Unlike the ideology of the “Soviet threat”, the post-Cold War ideologies of human rights and non-proliferation could not form the legitimate basis for forging international alliances, since the duplicity of the “global powers” on those same accounts are too apparent. In fact, the orientalist bases of these ideologies have further curtailed the First World’s ability to directly manipulate political forces in the “third world”. At this juncture, ‘mediocre’ powers like India could become relevant interfaces between the two worlds, for perpetuating and sustaining global capitalism and its political structure.

Answering some objections

There are two points that can be raised regarding the “export of capital” from India–that it is quantitatively insignificant, and that the biggest host of the Indian export is the United States and other First World countries.

Regarding the first point, the export is not so insignificant, as the ratio of outward to inward Foreign Direct Investment (OFDI/IFDI) is significantly high and increasing, amounting to around 20% in 2005, while in 1997 it was less than 6%. However, even if we concede this point what matters more is the ability and will of a State to defend the rising interests from this insignificant amount–how does this OFDI shape up the character of Indian capital and state, irrespective of its amount? How much it has affected India’s relationship with the Nepalese, Sri Lankan and other neighbouring economies and polities? How much it has defined India’s intrusion in the African economies (like Sudan, Libya, Nigeria)? How much it has helped in evolving India’s aggressive oil interest, especially since OVL has invested in many African and ex-Soviet Central Asian republics’, Vietnamese, even Cuban oilfields? How much it has defined the active Indian interest in the oil price war, in lowering the “differential oil rent” accrued by the oil economies, and hence how much it has shaped the Indian hobnobbing in the Middle Eastern politics, its vote on the IAEA resolution on Iran?

As far as India’s investment in the US, which hosts the largest chunk, is concerned, it makes the Indian economy (like many other economies) dependent on the ups and downs in the American market. Since Indian capital is just one of the many players here, the Indian state’s task as the protector of its capitalist class (Non resident Indian (NRI) or non-NRI) is to provide it an edge in the competition. This makes the Indian state, furthermore, subservient to global coalitions. On the whole, the OFDI brings Indian capital and state in the consortium of global imperialism, which is presently under the police administration of the US (this status of the US is defined economically, politically and historically.

Pratyush Chandra

The way the European press and politicians behaved on the issue of the publication of “anti-Islamic cartoons” can really be interpreted as, a Haaretz journalist puts, “a new breed of anti-Semitism. But the Semites, in this case, are not Jews.” (1)

It is worth pondering, why did these European “cartoonists” choose to indulge in this sort of “freedom of expression” at the time when they knew it would be volatile to do so. Either it was an act of sheer cheap commercialism, or it had a political meaning - a journalistic contribution in the hegemonist World ‘War on terrorism’. This “contribution” serves one major purpose - to provide an ideological sustenance to this war, by creating and homogenising “the enemy”, and of course its mirror image - a homogenised West, the land of the “advanced” people terrorised by the “backward” Orient. What is happening now seems to evidence the designs.

There might have been wider underlying international political economic reasons that brought Hitler to power, but the ideology of anti-Semitism was essential for its sustenance. Today’s Western mode of dubbing all movements of self-determination in the Middle East (which goes against the interests of the Western Powers) as “Osama’s conspiracy” is not very dissimilar to “the Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion”. The myth of “Osama” (if we separate it from Osama the man, if he is really one) itself can sustain the Western militancy and its regional cohorts throughout the globe for a long time to come, not only against the “Islamic” forces, but also, and more so, against any “rogue” states and movements (leftists or nationalists).

For example, already, now and then ‘journalists’ report about Osama’s “shadows” emerging in different places in the Indian subcontinent. One was sighted in Sri Lanka with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) just after 9/11.(2) Moreover, the Indians have traditionally found Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)’s involvement in every uncomfortable movement of ‘self-determination’ within its territory, and after 2001, it has become synonymous to Al Qaeda’s involvement. Interestingly, nowadays ‘reports’ regularly come about ISI’s role in the radical left movement of India too. It has already been ‘spotted’ in Nepal’s communist upsurge. And of course, through ISI, it’s Al Qaeda that operates!!! So the target is set and reasoned!

In the case of Hitler, anti-Semitism of one sort (with the ghost of “the Elders of Zion” and their protocols) could enable him to invade regions with negligible Jewish population or influence, and to be on continuous war. Now, it is anti-Semitism of another sort (with the ghost of Osama and his audiovisual tapes) that provides reason to the global ride of the international ‘security guards’ to wage their ‘crusades’. The time is not far when we will find Osama’s shadow roaming in Latin America too. Or, may be it has been already spotted, and the “investigative report” is awaited.

The timing of the publication of these cartoons is very important to understand their significance – the ongoing war in Iraq and the ensuing discomfiture, continuing embarrassment of the Europeans over their ineffectiveness in the Middle East (lately on the Iranian issue), humiliation in their efforts to outrun the Americans throughout the globe, the Hamas victory… The First World rulers have many reasons to be upset. Their anxiety is heightened by their inability to completely monopolise critical information, whose unhindered transmission despite all kinds of borders and boundaries erected through international negotiations, intellectual and material property rights have virtually recreated an alternative world of commons. The ‘ dynamic’ reproduction of the ruler’s real self in its ever-changing forms by the immense ‘horde’ of ‘commoners’ is bound to make him anxious, and this is what forces him time and again to aestheticise politics – to occlude critique. And what else is the ‘official’ function of the media? What else can be the function of these cartoons? To force the readers, viewers and listeners to “think with one’s blood’. And that’s what they are doing.

Note:

(1) Bradley Burston, The New Anti-Semitism, cartoon division, Haaretz (February 6, 2006)

(2) Osama hand in glove with LTTE, The Times of India (September 22, 2001),

Pratyush Chandra

Every ‘bold’ and ‘independent’ step by a ‘third world’ government is seen as congenitally progressive and even anti-imperialist. Any ‘third world’ alliance is welcomed on the ground that it will develop multi-polarity in the ‘unipolarising’ world. Today, in India at least the middle class “progressives” have the tendency to visualise every dinner party between Delhi, Peking and Moscow to be progressive and a step against imperialism. While trivialising the very notion of imperialism as a world system, this nostalgia for an “anti-imperialist” statist cooperation has made our “progressives” remarkably moody – the Indian state’s apparently contradictory, adulterous relationship with the US hegemony seems to negate the promise revived by Manmohan’s courting of Putin or the Chinese leadership. The simultaneity and intensity of all these relations put our “progressives” totally out of mind, making them giddy.

They must be really sick, if they come to feel the potentiality of anti-imperialism in business ties, as recently in the partnership between ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL) and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) for jointly bidding for promising projects. This particular partnership is definitely significant not only for the energy supplies to India and China, but also perhaps for global energy politics. But to consider it as challenging the global hegemonies is undoubtedly a maddening extrapolation.

It is true that India and China both are major players in the world market, and the global polity cannot be understood by ignoring their activities. But it must be admitted that their position is largely, if not solely, dependent on the cheap labour-force and its vast reserve army (regimented by the informalisation of labour markets along with the statist integration of ‘labour aristocracy’). Their underdevelopment has been a boon in this global rise of these economies. It has carried the segmentation of labour market to an unprecedented level, along with a multiple diversification of the demand structure. These are the gifts of the “differential of contemporaneousness”, as Sidney Pollard would call it. (1) Do we want to term this rise as “progressive”?

Further, the Indo-Chinese “collaboration to compete” is already in place in various international and regional trade, business and political forums, both struggling against the protectionist west and claiming low labour and environment standards as their comparative advantages. Even though global capital on the whole – western and indigenous capital and multi-nationals – is effectively using these advantages for its expansion, its identitarian heterogeneous configuration forces a competition that requires cornering of each other through shifting coalitions.

With regard to the Sino-India cooperation, three points are very important. Firstly, its political manifestation need not exactly pattern with the economic. In fact, all international alliances and cooperation in the phase of neoliberalism tendentially seek to ‘depoliticise’ the economic management. Are we not used to frequent statements from businessmen and politicians that call for not mixing ‘national’, ‘pragmatic’ economic interests with politics? However, “depoliticization is highly political” – it puts the economic management beyond the effects of political uncertainties that mar political systems today, especially democracy. In effect, this means putting economic instruments beyond the possibility of democratic control, beyond any reciprocal effects of the social fallouts of capitalist competition and collaboration. (2) There is a high probability that we will see political and border conflicts between India and China intensifying with the increasing economic cooperation. In fact, the reformist China has been very efficient in depoliticising its international relations and also its labour market, by carving a near-ideal panopticon (Bentham’s “confinement house”) out of the Chinese society, as “mechanism of discipline, secure management of a multitude and extraction of labour”. (3). Only a rampant depoliticization of all economic relations – i.e., by forcing labour to surrender – China could achieve its “global rise”. The said Indo-China cooperation is developing in this context.

Secondly, any global intervention on the basis of this cooperation will be more of a competitive-collaborative character designed to redistribute the booties gained in the areas where they compete, or more exactly for the “division of the rest of the world”, left by the “great powers”. They collaborate to compete, and their collaboration in the energy sector, where cartelisation is an inherent tendency, is exactly of this nature.

If we see counter-hegemony in India-China partnership, can we call the formation of OPEC as progressive, or anti-imperialist? OPEC was constituted by five oil-producing countries in 1960 to stabilise their own income against the earlier system of royalty arbitrarily fixed by the oil concessions. “The royalty rates …were exclusively geared to the extent of political domination of international oil companies and their governments with respect to this particular oil region.” (4) OPEC was formed as a collective body of rentiers to negotiate with Occidental companies, linking the oil rent system to oil price. However, at the time some did call it anti-imperialist, but considering its relationship with the non-OPEC ‘third world’ it hardly seems so. The collaboration of the OPEC countries individually and collectively with the global hegemony has been quite pronounced except over division of oil income, which is more like a conflict between landlords and capitalists, or an intra-capitalist class conflict, as there are local oil companies too. Further, there is hardly any political unanimity within OPEC except on oil dealings.

Similarly, the Sino-Indian collaboration internationally will be geared towards regions and sectors where they are unable to compete individually, and this collaboration does not require any mutual ‘political’ understanding, except a level of trust required for any business relationship. And, of course, a ‘political’ collaboration is required to the extent that it facilitates their collaborative business to fructify.

It is here that the last and most important aspect or implication of the ‘outward-oriented’ Sino-Indian relationship resides. The fruitfulness of this relationship as a rule will be determined by and will lead to an intensified intervention in the regions of this collaborative landing. It is nothing but chimera to imagine a peaceful Asia under the unlikely leadership of China and India. Particularly in the energy sector, the conflict between the ‘Indo-China nexus’ and OPEC will become more direct and intensive, which will be similar to the conflict between the West and OPEC, that of between ‘oil rentiers’ and oil companies. Nothing can prevent India and China, not even the ideology of “Asian Continentalism”, from collaborating with the West on the basis of this commonality of business interests, which does not take much time in getting politically translated into either active collaborationism or neutrality, or even armed conflicts (when intra-class conflicts intensify).

In some regions, the interventionist collaboration between India and China is already politically visible. In Sudan and other African oilfields, Chinese and Indian businesses have been remarkably coordinating with highly conflicting local hegemonies to stabilise their own interests, tempering and tampering the global aid and ‘humanitarian’ regime for these ravaged economies to their advantage. Further, these interventions are not totally devoid of militaristic component, as India (and China, too) has been involved in training local military personnel and supplying arms. In sharply fragmented and divided societies such interventions cannot have any other purpose but “neo-colonial”.

In South Asia, where India knows that any slackening on its part in any field can give the Chinese a tremendous advantage, and China is aware of the near impossibility of shaking off the Indian hegemonic influence on the region, the collaboration between them acquires a different level of intensity. Both require stabilising local polities and curbing any ‘nationalist’ hostilities for safe intrusion and spreading. More important in the region is to facilitate market integration and capital flow, for which infrastructure too should be provided for. China and India are aware of the futility of trying to negate each other in the region. Any attempt to shutting off each other is bound to fail and result into greater instability, as both have groomed their political agencies in all the regional societies for many years now.

Moreover, the nature of capitalist regulation from the firm level to the industry level, further up to the economy and to the global level has changed. It has transformed the character of “the division of the world between capitalist associations and great powers”. The corporate structure has intensified competition within a firm among diverse stakeholders and shareholders for greater share in profit. The same struggle is every moment transformed into greater collaboration that constitutes the firm. Similarly the “division of the world” is increasingly fluidised. Particular (national) capitals compete for attracting more and more profit, but they need to collaborate to compete with others or even to go on competing among themselves. The presence of India and China in South Asia and elsewhere too has acquired this dimension. They compete with one another, collaborate to compete with others, and collaborate with others to compete with one another. We cannot take one of these moments to be all defining as most analysts do when they analyse the rise of these two “Asian Powers”. Their analysis on the basis of one set of events is always negated by another, and they find India’s alliances with competitive powers contradictory.

Notes:

(1) Sidney Pollard (1992), Peaceful Conquest: The Industrialization of Europe, 1760-1970, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

(2) Peter Burnham (2000), “Globalization, Depoliticization and ‘Modern’ Economic Management”, in Werner Bonefeld & Kosmos Psychopedis (ed.), The Politics of Change: Globalization, Ideology and Critique, Palgrave, New York.

(3) Massimo de Angelis (2002), “Hayek, Bentham and the Global Work Machine”, in Ana C Dinerstein & Michael Neary (ed.), The Labour Debate: An Investigation into the Theory and Reality of Capitalist Work, Ashgate, Hampshire.

(4) Cyrus Bina (1985), The Economics of the Oil Crisis: Theories of Oil Crisis, Oil Rent and Internationalization of Capital in the Oil Industry, Merlin Press, London.