Every incoming U.S. administration faces the problem of the relation between domestic and foreign policy.The capitalist media foster the impression that there is an inherent separation between an administration's foreign and domestic policy. But invariably, the ruling class reveals certain preferences with respect to the allocation of funds and resources in one or another direction. The conduct of an administration in foreign affairs and military expansion reveals its proclivities in the struggle at home.
The peace-loving masses, on the other hand, are opposed to war as a solution for political and diplomatic problems. They think the government should concentrate on uplifting the standard of living--a fair and reasonable stance.
The relation between domestic and foreign policy and the pursuit of peaceful solutions instead of war have always been proper domains for democratic discussion. Or at least that's the way it should be--if we could ignore the factor of class war and the element of class exploitation.
Clausewitz' military theories
The questions of war and peace have occupied the attention not only of politicians but of military leaders. A considerable number have concocted military theories regarding the prosecution of war and the imposition of peace. One of the most important writers on military strategy--whose theories have had wide influence in both the 19th and 20th centuries--was Karl von Clausewitz (1780-1831).
Clausewitz was not an armchair general. He participated in military campaigns against the French revolutionary army, and spent many years on garrison duty. That enabled him to devote a large amount of time to educating himself.
Like other Germans, Clausewitz entered the Russian service on the eve of Napoleon's invasion of Russia. He distinguished himself there and subsequently became a general in the Prussian army, where he was appointed head of the war college.
He used much of his time to study military strategy and write his famous work On War. This book was subsequently translated into many languages.
Clausewitz attracted the attention of not only Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, but also later of V.I. Lenin, who studied his work while in Switzerland during the first imperialist world war. In Lenin's writings against the imperialist war, he frequently quoted Clausewitz. In particular, he repeated Clausewitz' famous generalization: "War is nothing but a continuation of political intercourse with the admixture of different means."
Lenin often abbreviated the sentence to read: "War is nothing but a continuation of politics by other means."
Economics drives politics
What is politics? It is concentrated economics.
Any country's economy is in the hands of the class that owns the means of production. The ownership of the means of production determines a ruling class's politics and its relation to the oppressed class.
It is impossible for a ruling class to conduct a war abroad without also conducting a war at home. If politics is the concentrated essence of economics and the economy is in the hands of a specific ruling class, the war the ruling class is conducting abroad is merely a continuation of the war it is conducting at home.
This is what we have to learn once again relative to the incoming Clinton administration.
Now they're Clinton's wars
Clinton is already involved in conducting wars against Somalia, Yugoslavia and the Haitian people. He participated in the decision to send a flotilla of warships to block Haitian refugees from coming to the U.S. after he had encouraged them to do so and promised them justice. Above all, Clinton is now conducting the war against Iraq.
The wars being conducted abroad by the Clinton administration and the ruling class that Clinton now heads politically are an extension of the domestic policies pursued at home--what Clausewitz called "a continuation" of what is being done so cruelly at home.
The war at home takes the form of a massive assault on the living standards of the masses by means of a vast and complex restructuring of capitalist industry. It has mercilessly and ruthlessly thrown out millions of workers over the years--and continues to do so at a more rapid rate than ever.
It should go without saying that the racist character of the wars abroad is also a continuation of the racism practiced at home.
It is no wonder that Marx, Engels and Lenin valued the writings of Clausewitz. This was not because he was sympathetic to the oppressed. Far from it! But he bluntly summarized the nature of war without in any way embellishing it. Clausewitz demonstrated that wars are not fought for their own sake, but are a continuation of the politics of this or that warring group.
What's behind imperialist war
In his revolutionary writings against the world war of 1914-18, Lenin ceaselessly pointed out that capitalist war is a function of imperialism. By imperialism he meant more than military aggression. He showed in his book Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism that imperialist wars grow out of the monopoly character of capitalism, which itself grew out of an earlier competitive stage of capital.
Lenin demonstrated that the growth of monopolies generates aggressiveness in the struggle for world markets. That is true even more now than in Lenin's day, when competition among smaller capitalist units and establishments was the rule rather than the exception. Lenin understood the direction of capitalist development toward monopoly, however, and particularly promoted the concept of the relationship of the big banks to the capitalist state.
The capitalist state is not a mere arbiter between small, struggling capitalist competitors. On the contrary, the capitalist state is the captive of the very largest and most powerful capitalist monopolies. More often than not, they have the most direct influence in the inner councils of the state.
Marx and Engels wrote in 1848 in The Communist Manifesto that the government--that is, the state--was the executive committee of the ruling class. This generalization was all the more remarkable at that time, because the feudal and aristocratic elements still retained their hold in some European countries, including Germany and Italy. For the bourgeois state to become the executive committee of the whole ruling class, it still needed considerable development.
But it was not long in coming. Compared to the period of 1848, the modern capitalist state demonstrates wholesale degeneration into a tool of the largest corporations--especially those with the closest possible relations with the military industries.
Monopoly rule stifles democracy
In this light, expecting more democracy from the capitalist state is utopian. On the contrary, both monopoly finance capital and the capitalist state are continually veering in the direction of rampant reaction.
It's not only the latest developments of the union of finance with capitalist industry that demonstrate this. It was shown as long ago as 1912, when Rudolf Hilferding wrote the book "Finance Capital." In it, he analyzed the basic trends inherent in capitalist development in that period, which undoubtedly helped Lenin to formulate his own position.
Interestingly enough, Lenin made sure to critically appraise Hilferding's book in relation to his remarks about the labor movement. Hilferding didn't explain the basis for the opportunism that had grown up during the period, when working-class organizations were growing in breadth but at the same time were losing their militancy and revolutionary perspective to some extent.
Revolutionary defeatism
In a war among imperialist powers, it is not adequate to merely oppose the war. That doesn't provide the masses with a realistic program to stop the carnage. Working class revolutionaries have to explain to the masses that the lesser evil in such a situation is the defeat of their own imperialist ruling class--their direct oppressors.
Revolutionary defeatism was the successful program pursued by the Bolsheviks in World War I. It was on the basis of revolutionary defeatism that they won over the soldier masses who hated the war and the officer caste and who wanted to return to their homes and farms. These soldiers, most from peasant families, mutinied and then fought alongside the workers in ousting the government of the oppressing Russian landlords and capitalists. They then appealed to the German soldiers to do the same to their own ruling class.
If each proletarian party promotes a policy of revolutionary defeatism, then there is the possibility of developing genuine proletarian internationalism among the workers of the belligerent imperialist countries instead of allowing the ruling classes to promote rampant chauvinism.
Suppose, for instance, there were another imperialist war between the U.S. and Japan. It would be correct for the workers' parties in both countries to advocate and promote the defeat of their respective ruling classes and the strongest solidarity among U.S. and Japanese workers.
What class struggle boils down to
It has often been said that Karl Marx discovered the class struggle. But Marx himself denied this.
He repeatedly said that the class struggle was known to bourgeois writers and to earlier societies that described the class struggles of their time.
What Marx did was to show that the class struggle is connected with the material interests of the classes. It is not about abstract theories or morals, not just about liberty or freedom. The class struggle concerns the material interests of each class.
The struggle is between the possessing ruling class, which owns the means of production, and the working class, which is subjected to exploitation and oppression precisely because the means of production are in the hands of the exploiters.
Marx said this element of the class struggle--the struggle over the means of production--ultimately would lead to the dictatorship of the proletariat. In "The State and Revolution," Lenin took great pains to explain that that means the rule of the working class. It has nothing to do with the imposition of an autocratic or totalitarian authority over the workers. Rather, their freely elected representatives administer the workers' state.
Most important, as Lenin further elaborated, the dictatorship of the proletariat is a transitory period. As the working class develops the means of production and strengthens its position in society, the proletarian dictatorship will dissolve--wither away, so to speak--into a classless society, or communism.