[Translated text of Freerk Husiken]
Imperialism today determines the economics and politics of every state in the world. The Soviet Union with its not completely voluntary renunciation of "real socialism" smoothed the way for the complete capitalistic world conquest by the capitalistic world power (G7). The "victory of freedom" complete, the capitalistic world revolution became a reality. The capitalistic great powers maintained their military alliance, NATO, and derived from their victory in the "cold war" the right to exercise supervision and control over the entire world of states under the leadership of the USA. And this right is exercised: No state in the world today can extract itself unpunished from the calculation methods of the capitalistic mode of production and the political requirements of the NATO powers. Any area of the world where they discover "conflicts," i.e. deviation from their imperial design, is set on the political agenda of the NATO powers. The rights of peoples and human rights are slogans that demand an order corresponding to western standards. States that oppose them or only excite the suspicion that they want to pursue their national state interests in their own region bring on this or that kind of "cause".
The war of NATO against the remnants of Yugoslavia proves the new boundlessness of imperialism. With Milosevic, whose "error" for the Western powers consisted of militarily resisting the dismantling of the regional power Yugoslavia by the west, a "trouble maker" in the Balkans is eliminated. By completely superior warfare, an exemplary punitive military action clarifies to the states of the world that NATO does not deliver empty threats. The completion of the partial surrender of Milosevic emphasized NATO’s new principles of order: first, neither Russia nor China are any longer accepted as rightful co-designers of the world order; second, the political truth about the meaning of the UN becomes obvious: the "United Nations" is relevant only in as much as the demands of the alliance -- particularly those of the USA -- give their blessing; third, an independent regional administrative policy by any state is immediately rated as an attack on "euro-Atlantic stability" and is a case for the NATO powers (India/Pakistan, China/Taiwan, Russia’s Chechnya war, Iraq ...).
In addition, voluntary subjection under the imperialistic cause of the world power brings the remainder of the state world neither security nor the hoped-for state wealth, but only progressive ruin. It proves that only the world market, determined by the most violent competition between the victors, not only does not maintain the economies of those states "converting to democracy and free-market economy," but flatly refuses their offer. It liquidates whole states (eastern central Europe, former Soviet states, among others): Functioning production facilities and useful products of all kinds in competition with western commodity capital that are not "suited” for the world market are not needed; and with the depreciation of their national currency, these states find that their national money notes are nowadays only as good as they maintain ground abroad, even domestically. And those citizens freed from the "yoke of communism" may themselves experience how state-administered communist poverty differs from capitalistic misery, which is completely surrendered to the "creativity and independence" of liberated private individuals.
The order of the world produced by agreements between the great powers does not only create in each region of the world recognizable "conflict areas," since NATO with its elevated requirements discovers "disturbances of the peace" everywhere and with each "intervention" stirs up new "instabilities"; it organizes only a competition of the winning powers. Imperialism today has an extra contradiction, i.e. as an alliance of supervisory powers that face each other on the world market as competitors. As a military alliance they together organize the security of a world of sovereigns that has to submit to their design. As competitive capitalistic powers they move against each other in order to use the world to increase their respective national property conditions. The contradiction expresses itself in a well-known way: Together they carry out "wars for world order" and wage parallel economic wars against each other. The necessary existence of political-economic supervisory bodies (IMF, World Bank, WTO...) on the one hand affirms and on the other hand denies the G7 states their mutual national use calculations. Occasionally the alliance is put up for re-arrangement, as when the USA introduces Star Wars or Europe takes from the Kosovo war the resolution to establish a great military power; although on the other hand it is known to the European countries that its special imperialistic demands (extension to the East, access to South America and establishment of the euro over it) require the further shield of NATO military power.
5.1. Under this protection, thus already during the "cold war," Europe ascended to the rank of second economic power. The national currencies of the European states – all behind the German mark -- attained validity worldwide: From the state-arranged worldwide comparison of state moneys, they emerged after the dollar and the yen as winners. The European Union however does not leave it there, but decides to seriously challenge the world money dominance of the dollar -- by the way, also under the far-reaching protection of NATO. The competition between the euro and the dollar -- the yen also still plays a role, with some reduction -- today summarizes the whole world market ("globalization”). This characterizes imperialism: The world market is completely determined by the competition between two to three currencies.
5.2. What began with the introduction of the free convertibility of national funds, thus with the final liberation of capitalistic business from the restriction of being connected to real capitalistic money wealth (gold as public treasury), can now be seen in its provisional result: The evaluation of the respective national moneys -- success is caused by the respective capitalistic companies holding it as relative currency value, which for its part is the result of the transactions of the available capitalists of all countries – led in the meantime to the establishment of only two to three currencies as world funds. That is, whoever wants to achieve business success today must earn dollars/euros, must have these currencies as means of purchase, convert other currencies into the world funds, speculate in them, borrow them and lend them to themselves, deposit them as reserves, etc. And the national states that create these state bank notes and “throw” them into circulation have brought them to the "money shitter": Their slips of paper are accepted world-wide as true capitalistic wealth, like quasi-gold, and the state bonds with which they provide additional funds will rapidly be rid of -- all this naturally only as long as they stand up in the currency comparison. By means of national indebtedness and the emission of -- in the long run worthless -- state bank notes, they order the sovereignty of capitalistic (money) wealth to an unrestricted level of magnitude. What they do with it -- from science to commerce to the defense department -- they leave to the national budget.
The victory of the two currency blocks (euro/dollar) accompanies a "supply" of businesses and/or the IMF-credited national economies with too much credit (=money) -- and this is not at all coincidental. This is because currency competition is now a test of the re-convertibility of the national value symbols. And that is inherent in it. Those currencies in which the most business takes place survive this test. However, this succeeds only if these debt notes already roam the world in huge quantities as credit, thus circulate as requirements on future business. That is now the contradiction of the competition of currencies. But around the test of insisting on the validity of their currency’s value, states must act in their monetary policy as if their value already exists. If they keep their money at home, it is never promoted to world money. It always proves only post festum which money possesses the form of world money, which means actually suited for the augmentation of capitalistic wealth.
In the meantime a considerable worldwide credit mountain accumulates that becomes altogether critical. It is an open question to what extent these credits will obtain real business, which money faces depreciation and what consequences the depreciation of a currency has for the corporations, financial capitals and the capitalistic nation states involved. What is no longer in question: Public funds of loser states are devalued up to the level of national bankruptcy (the late developing countries, Russia, Central and South America). What consequences this has for those countries and – especially – their people can be seen everywhere. But the loser currencies are not only depreciated. In addition, requirements on the actual winner must be dealt with; the winner currency embodies debts that are likewise irrecoverable, in large part. This is shown in business collapses and mergers, in business coming to a halt worldwide, i.e. in general over-accumulation, that is to say in the fact that there are more business means available on the world market than business opportunities exhibited. This shows up in capitalists using these ever more available means of business for speculation by finance capital as derivatives – it contributes to new money possibilities, they earn or lose in these. And it does not show up last in the fact that even a winner currency like the euro lost in one year approximately a fifth of its value in relation to the dollar, which robbed some of the euro states of their freedom of indebtedness. It is thus also obvious that in view of the shrinking business opportunities for the available capitalists, the dollar stands for the world at present as the comparatively "safer port" for interest in money.
When even the world funds are plunged into crisis, there is "common" debt handling between the imperialistic competitors, as required by the aggravation of their competition among themselves. Since both currency blocks are connected, for better or for worse, in mutual credit dependence, they know that the exclusive shifting of crisis burdens onto their competitors introduces the depreciation of their own currency and the destruction of parts of the wealth of their own national economy. This explains the efforts to organize depreciation, thus toward the "common" handling of developing countries, debt forgiveness, debt issuing, etc. At the same time their nationalism and/or (in the case of Europe) their supra-nationalism orders them to undertake substantial efforts in order to further decide real business against each other, in their own favor and to the disadvantage of their competitors. Because even if they are clueless agents of competition, the leaders of the capitalistic nation states already know that every upswing of industry or business in their national economy also positively affects their situation on the financial markets and with it the value of their currency. A large part of these efforts, whose restless subject is the respective national state, today has the name --
Domestically, a nation state uses its power purposefully, consistently and completely unimpaired in its favor. It is the task of finance capital, to which the relative evaluation of currencies was surrendered, to offer proof that it is worthwhile to set again on the euro and/or the dollar. These proofs are evidenced by efforts to set national "growth in motion," i.e. not only to create improved trading conditions for the already accumulating national capital, but to develop the location as a first-class address for those multinationals that invest in (location) competition. Thus today the pre-eminent capitalistic nation states move against each other and offer to all the large businesses of the world special offers for permanent changes of location: It is worthwhile to move -- for example -- to the German location because it gives them conditions that secure advantages in (price) competition against others on the world market.
It is no wonder that these special offers -- tax exemptions, generosity with licensing procedures, reexamination of environmental protection laws, promised credits and privatizations, etc. -- form an all-out attack on the standard of living and sustenance of the wage earning masses: Absolutely and relatively lower labor costs, lower benefits, new flexible work time models, regular additional work with less paid work, return of once abolished working conditions, introduction of a completely new low wage sector -- to name only the most important special offers. All these attacks on wages are connected to the intention of bringing about the beautiful capitalistic consequence of increasing the profitability of wage labor.
All this and more requires absolute state power for its implementation because laws must be changed and the changes must be implemented without those "affected" and their organizations making trouble for the state in its modern imperialistic calculations. In this connection, everything -- unfortunately -- runs like clockwork. And the additional attacks on the living costs of the wage earning class, which the state itself prescribes with its "austerity policy," brings honor to the no longer only ideal total capitalist: Because what takes place with the state savings program as a "reorganization of the welfare state" leads to higher burdens with lower benefits for every social insurance program, and includes the obligation to privately ensure the customary care from take-home pay now reduced by taxes. Most importantly, all this increases the power of extortion over the workers to make them accept any work at any wage. And the decision of the welfare state to manage expenses for an increasingly larger number of absolutely superfluous wage workers -- victims of firm collapses, victims of firm mergers and victims of firm upswings (rationalization) – allows capital to use the competition within the working class to lower wages. Thus today the living expenses of the wage-earning part of humankind are cut by the state and made available solely to its favorite citizens' concern with increasing money. The welfare state today -- as in the past -- is only a safety device for capitalistically useful poverty. Only today under Clinton, Schroeder, Blair and Jospin it is spelled somewhat differently – now that the "challenge called globalization must be successfully met." So the state stops for no "socially acquired rights" of the past; it needs "growth" in its location. The frontal attack on the wages of all wage earners was chosen as the means to promote it. This is to convince the agents of the financial markets that it is worthwhile to increase holdings in one currency and to flee another. On this the wealth of the state and capital hangs with its future imperialistic power.
Who the winners are will be shown. Who the losers are in the "north and the south" is certain -- the usual ones since the times of Victorian capitalism. As capitalism develops, this applies whether one expects it or not.