One of the most intriguing questions at present is why Europe’s political leadership has become complicit in what appear to be US efforts at undermining European economies. The well-known American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, having already provided evidence that the United States was responsible for the blowing up of the Nord Stream gas pipeline, has now revealed that this blowing up was not even linked to the war in Ukraine; it was a deliberate move on the part of the Biden administration to ensure that Europe remained dependent on US gas despite its being far more expensive, rather than become dependent on the much cheaper Russian gas. The blowing up of the pipeline therefore was not just an assault on EU economies, especially Germany, whose costs of production would go up across the board because of it; it was also a direct subversion of a policy which the German government itself had launched. And yet there is not an iota of criticism, or even of disapproval couched in polite diplomatic language, by any German political leader of this act of economic sabotage directed against Germany.

While a proper answer must await further research, one element of the answer seems clear, namely, a large number of European politicians have been on the pay-roll of giant corporates of US origin; they are integrated into an international financial oligarchy associated with globalised capital, and they have little concern for national interests.

We are seeing the emergence of a new kind of politician, outside of the fascist fold, in the imperialist countries; and this is most evident in Europe, of which Britain’s Tony Blair was an early example. These politicians are often drawn from the corporate world, and often move back and forth between the corporate and political worlds. They have no ideology other than a commitment to neo-liberalism and a deep hostility towards the working class, even when they nominally belong to the Left or to Left-of-Centre parties: Tony Blair was a Labour prime minister, Emmanuel Macron was the finance minister in a “socialist” government, and Kasselakis has been elected to lead a “Left” party. And of course they have little concern for the interests of the nations they lead.

The unity of imperialist states appears particularly urgent to this new crop of corporate-bred politicians in a period of crisis for (neo-liberal) capitalism. What is often seen as a threat to metropolitan capitalism arising from the tendency towards “multipolarity” misses this context of capitalist crisis; closing ranks among imperialist states is seen to be essential as a means of surviving the challenge that is likely to arise, as much from the domestic working class as from the third world, in the face of this crisis.

This quest for unity among imperialist states, even at the expense of “national interests”, however, opens the way for the ascendancy of fascism in metropolitan countries, since the fascist elements still talk of “national interests” and hence still strike a chord with the working class. It is another matter that if they come to power they line up behind their domestic big business and hence pursue the same economic and foreign policies as the preceding liberal bourgeois governments had been doing; the case of Meloni in Italy only confirms this proposition. But when in opposition they invoke the nation and project themselves as its defenders.

This is globalised capital’s “heads I win, tails you lose” strategy in the metropolis in the face of the crisis. The idea is to cordon off politics in the metropolis within the binary of a “fascism-versus-liberal bourgeois” choice. The liberal bourgeois governments whose leaders are corporate executives themselves, rally to the defence of globalised capital through promoting a unity among imperialist states; if they get rejected by the people, then the only alternative that is presented before the people is the fascist alternative that invokes the nation but does the bidding of globalised capital. Its invoking of the nation takes the form not of opposing globalised capital but of opposing the immigrants, against whom, in typical fascist fashion, it arouses popular anger, holding them responsible for the travails faced by the majority of workers, owing to the capitalist crisis. It is for the authentic Left, not the one led by corporate executives, to expose and defeat this “heads I win, tails you lose” strategy of globalised capital.

Editor: Zhong Yao、Liu Tingting

From:https://peoplesdemocracy.in/2023/1008_pd/globalised-capital-and-national-leadership（2023-10-8）