As we enter the fourth year of the war on Iraq, our grassroots antiwar movement faces a critical political conjuncture, here and abroad. How we respond to it means a great deal, most importantly to the people of Iraq, but also to all Americans touched by this unjust war.
There are four main factors of this turning point.
First, the U.S. invasion of Iraq is floundering, stalemated, and drifting toward defeat - but in a horrible way unleashing all the fury of sectarian violence and slaughter, and, beyond Iraq, a 'Clash of Civilizations' throughout the region that serves no one but reactionary zealots on all sides.
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The major change in today’s world is the shift between the national era of industrial production and the rise of transnational capitalism. This conflict between nationalism and globalization contains the main economic, political and social divisions in society and is manifested in a vast array of class and national conflicts.
The central transformation around which all else revolves is the universalization of capitalism to a globalized system of accumulation based on a revolutionary transformation of the means of production.
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What might a post-capitalist future look like?
That is the question David Schweickart has been writing about for a quarter century, most recently in his book After Capitalism (Rowman & Littlefield). Schweickart’s vision of an economy that democratizes both work and investment is a model of clarity and comprehensiveness - and might yet help inspire a genuinely democratic future. Schweickart, who teaches philosophy at Loyola University Chicago, spoke to Dollars & Sense following a recent speech to progressive activists in Boston.
There is a story told in the United States about a young man who has lost his way on the back roads of rural Kentucky. He pulls his car into the driveway of a small farmhouse and asks the farmer sitting on the porch, "What is the best way to get to Chicago?" The farmer draws on his pipe, then replies laconically, "I'm sorry, son, but you can't there from here."
Think of China as Chicago and any underdeveloped non-socialist country today as rural Kentucky. I will argue that you can't get to China from any of those countries. It is futile to look for policies derived from the Chinese experience that might allow other poor countries to develop as China has developed.
