21 - 27 February 2002
Issue No.574
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 21 - 27 February 2002 Issue No.574 |
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An accidental phenomenon?
Mohamed Sid-Ahmed wonders whether terrorism should be perceived as an accident or a development deeply rooted in the world system
Is the emergence of terrorism as a central feature of the present world system a freak occurrence, a sudden and apparently random aberration that burst onto the world stage out of nowhere? Or should it be seen, rather, as a phenomenon that is directly linked to contemporary global developments? In the answer to this question lies the key to understanding, and eventually overcoming, this new and deadly outbreak of a disease that has been with us since the Reign of Terror that came in the wake of the French Revolution, albeit never before so prominently.
Half a century after the French Revolution, Karl Marx emerged on the world scene with ideas that he described as "scientific socialism." He claimed that capitalism was not the end of the road, but carried within it contradictions that rendered its transformation into a superior, contradiction-free, world system inevitable. This system would unfold in two stages: a lower stage he called socialism, and a higher stage he called communism.
Though contending that the downfall of capitalism was unavoidable, Marx never tried to predict how and consistently refused to venture any guesses. While arguing that the contradictions in capitalism were bound to destroy it eventually, he admitted that how they reacted with one another remained a riddle whose ultimate outcome was unfathomable. If some scenarios were more plausible than others, or some better placed to ensure that socialism had greater chances of developing and blooming, all Marx had to say on the subject was that he believed developed capitalist societies like Germany, the United States and Great Britain were in a position to ensure the success of the Socialist Revolution, because socialism does not fall from the sky, but matures and develops its characteristics thanks to the interplay of the contradictions inherent in capitalist development.
But this is not what happened in history and, when social contradictions reached a critical peak following World War I, two events (both underscoring the role of the individual in history), had a decisive effect in shaping the future of humanity. The first was Lenin's return to St Petersburg via Germany, then a hostile state, from his exile in Switzerland. The second was the assassination of the two German Communist leaders Karl Leibnecht and Rosa Luxemburg. Thanks to Lenin's return, Russia's socialist October Revolution was a success. Because of the death of the two prominent German leaders, socialist revolutions did not extend from Russia to the advanced capitalist countries in the West. In the second part of the 20th century, they extended instead to underdeveloped countries in Asia, particularly to China. Thus socialism as implemented throughout the 20th century was not the product, or the antipode, of capitalist development. It took root in societies that were in pre- rather than post-capitalist stages of development, and hence lacking the attributes necessary for socialism to survive and flourish.
It is difficult to tell how the world would have looked if socialist revolutions had succeeded in countries like Germany, the United States or Great Britain. Would this have resulted in a unipolar global system led not by a capitalist but by a socialist pole having traits very different from those which have characterised socialist revolutions fettered with the bonds of underdevelopment? Or would it have resulted in a bipolar global system in which the socialist, not the capitalist, pole would have triumphed in the confrontation?
We are in no position to speculate on how history would have evolved if socialism had taken root, as Marx predicted, in developed capitalist societies rather than, as was the case, in underdeveloped pre- capitalist societies. But the collapse of the bipolar world order proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that although the pole made up of the initially underdeveloped countries which embraced socialism managed to stand up to the onslaught of the developed capitalist countries for a not inconsiderable period of time, at the end of the day it proved unable to prevail over the capitalist pole.
Indeed, it can even be said that world socialism in the 20th century did more to revitalise world capitalism than to precipitate its demise. On the one hand, the challenge it represented for world capitalism spurred the latter to fight even more vigorously for its survival. On the other, the initially underdeveloped environments from which the socialist pole emerged hampered its ability to surpass, or even to keep pace with, the developed capitalist countries. All of which meant that the world capitalist pole was equipped to use to its advantage the startling accomplishments of the contemporary scientific and technological revolution, as well as of the arms race and the information revolution. With world socialism objectively strengthening rather than weakening world capitalism, the socialist camp lost its raison d'être and eventually collapsed -- a development that one Western scholar described as "the end of history."
But the outcome of the confrontation between the two poles was by no means a foregone conclusion. Indeed, the emergence of the first Union of Soviet Socialist Republics so terrified the West that it encouraged the rise of National Socialism in the 1930s, only to have Nazi Germany emerge as a worse threat to the prevailing world order than communism. The confrontation between Nazism and the Western democracies, which culminated in World War II, weakened world capitalism as a whole (the sole exception being American capitalism), thus laying the ground for the upsurge of national liberation movements in the wake of the war.
After the failure of the West's attempt to use Nazism to bring down the Soviet Union, national liberation movements offered Moscow the opportunity to launch a counter-offensive aimed at encircling western imperialism. To that end, Khrushchev abandoned Stalin's slogan that "whoever is against communism is with imperialism" for "whoever is against imperialism is for communism."
The socialist camp relied on national liberation movements to tilt the balance of power to its advantage; the capitalist camp relied on "bourgeois" democracy and the rule of law to maximise the benefits of the technological revolution, especially in the field of information, and thus change the balance of power to its advantage. What is certain is that a variety of expressions of underdevelopment, notably in the field of social relations, greatly harmed the forces of socialism and national liberation. These lost their revolutionary enthusiasm, and frustration replaced self-confidence and hope. This degenerating situation reached a climax with the demolition of the Berlin Wall, which signalled the end of the bipolar world order.
Gorbatchev tried to correct these structural deficiencies through perestroika. But the West, and an important faction of the Soviet Communist Party, considered perestroika an abandonment of communism and an attempt to build relations of interdependence with the West, a step clearly beyond "peaceful coexistence" which did not obliterate the fundamental differences between the two poles.
Thus the way socialism was implemented in the last century did more to bolster capitalism than to undermine it. With socialism discredited on the world scene, the frustration, demoralisation, despair and anger of wide masses at the wave of unbridled neoliberal capitalism sweeping the world, and, to a lesser extent, at a process of globalisation they saw as favouring the haves over the have-nots, reached unprecedented proportions. Anti-capitalist movements were able to scuttle the meeting of the World Trade Organisation in Seattle and have staged huge protest demonstrations at every G-8 meeting since. The largest ever such demonstration, in which some 70 thousand protestors took part, was held a fortnight ago in the Porto Alegre World Social Forum meeting.
But opposition to the phenomenon of globalisation has triggered not only huge grass-roots demonstrations seeking an alternative world system, but also terrorism. Thus terrorism is not an accidental development but an integral part of the present world system, and will not disappear as long as the system remains what it is.
Terrorism is a collateral of unbridled neoliberal capitalism. It will be eradicated not through repressive measures directed against any specific group of terrorists but by addressing the root causes of the phenomenon and changing the world system accordingly. A system based on human solidarity should replace the present system based on pitiless competition and rivalry. Mechanisms for social complementarity should replace the present practices of mutual exclusion. For terrorism not to be part and parcel of the system, a totally new paradigm is to be invented.
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