The real stakes revealed by the war in Afghanistan
Although the IBRP recognises that capitalism is in its historical period of decline, this theoretical framework is missing from its understanding of imperialist war today. Capitalism's fundamental need is still the accumulation of capital, but the relations of production that once ensured its fantastic development now prevent it from finding sufficient fields for expansion. Increasingly production is geared towards the destruction, rather than the reproduction of wealth. The understanding that war, while becoming more and more necessary for the bourgeoisie, has ceased to be profitable for the capitalist system as a whole, is therefore not a denial of Marxist materialism but an expression of its ability to understand the different phases through which an economic system passes, and in particular the passage from its ascendant to its decadent phase. In the latter phase, the economic imperative continues to push the bourgeoisie, all the more in the periods of open crisis, not toward war for immediate, or particular financial gain, but toward a global and ultimately suicidal fight for military supremacy among its rival national units.
Only by drawing out the implications of capitalist decadence for present day imperialist conflict can we show to the working class the enormous dangers represented by the war in Afghanistan, and by those wars which will inevitably follow it. The IBRP on the other hand tends to give the proletariat a false, reassuring picture of a system that is, as in its youthful phase, still able to subordinate its military objectives to the needs of economic expansion.
Moreover, with its misconception of a European imperialism, united around the Euro, the IBRP gives the impression of a relatively stable evolution of world capitalism toward two new imperialist blocs. On the contrary, the contradictory and antagonistic interests of the European powers towards each other as well as to the USA points to quite a different period of capitalism's decay. It indicates a terminal phase of decomposition, where, even if Germany is trying to assert itself as an alternative pole to the US, imperialist chaos has the upper hand; where military conflict threatens to generalise in a catastrophic way.
It is quite true that the war in Afghanistan is about the maintenance and reinforcement by America of its position as the world's only superpower. But this status is not determined by specific economic factors, like the control of oil, as the IBRP puts forward. It is rather dependent on geo-strategic questions, on the ability of the US to achieve a military supremacy in key areas of the world, and to prevent its rivals from seriously contesting its positions. Areas of the world like Afghanistan which proved their strategic worth to the imperialist powers long before oil became known as 'black gold'. It was not for oil that the 19th century British Raj twice sent armies into Afghanistan, and eventually succeeded in setting up a puppet ruler there. The importance of Afghanistan is not because it is a potential vehicle of an oil pipeline, but because it is at the geographical hub of the main imperialist powers of the Middle and Far East, and of South Asia, control of which will greatly increase US power not only in this region but in relation to the major European imperialisms.
The United States achieved its dominant imperialist position essentially by emerging victorious from two world wars. Fundamentally the key to its ability to keep this position also lies at the military level.
