I think we, as the Kaldıraç Movement, began talking about the “new imperialist war of partition” in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Of course, then, this did not seem very realistic to many people. In fact, the situation was quite different from today.
In the 1990s, after the dissolution of the USSR, the US had begun to assert its global dominance, starting with a “unipolar world” and continuing with a “world empire.” But other imperialist powers, notably Germany, Japan, Britain and France, who had gotten used to working under the US leadership on anti-communist policies, began to challenge the US hegemony, first and foremost economically.
The economic sphere is the foundation, but once hegemony is established, it is not only an economic phenomenon, but also includes ideological, cultural, political and military hegemony. Once a hegemony is established, it is more likely that it dissolves through the political and military spheres. After all, the hegemonic power does not leave events to the flow of economic processes.
Perhaps there is a need to summarize this process of hegemony.
The rise of the US, which began in the early 1900s, progressed further after the First World War, and by the Second World War, the US hegemony, now called the “new world order,” had taken shape. This hegemony was based on institutions such as the World Bank, the IMF, the dollar as the international reserve currency (a system that began with the decision taken in the town of Bretton Woods when 46 countries in the Western world indexed their currencies to the dollar and the dollar to gold) and finally the war machine called NATO. Of course, there are other institutions. But these institutions are very important and symbolic. In other words, hegemony is not simply a spiritual state, it is a material entity, and it is fortified on many fronts.
The US took to new heights the business of printing dollars without a gold equivalent during the Vietnam war, and the G7 countries voiced various objections to this process. The crisis of 1971-73 witnessed Nixon’s confession of the process of printing dollars without an equivalent. And the US, in a new hegemonic offensive, introduced the petro-dollar system; so that the dollar, which actually should have become an ordinary piece of paper, regained power. The oil trade in the Middle East was tied to the dollar, and dollar-denominated revenues were forced to be kept in US banks. It seems it was precisely during this period that Qatar was transformed from a British colony into an “independent” oil well under US control. Some countries in the Middle East should be considered with the status of “oil wells.”
Thus (1) the US hegemony actually began to unravel economically much earlier. And (2) the economic unraveling of hegemony within the given imperialist organization is not enough by itself. It must also unravel politically.
Hegemony was based on the organization of war against communism. We know this intimately, just like those in South Korea. Both countries were organized as outposts in the fight against communism. The war against communism was also a tool that allowed the US to use its hegemony as brazenly as it wanted within the rest of the imperialist-capitalist world.
When the USSR dissolved, of course, all the imperialists celebrated. They shared common feelings about this. But at the same time, the other 4 imperialist powers, which were economically straining the US economy, were trying to break free from US control, and economic warfare began to emerge. The economic war was very clear in the mid-1990s and early 2000s. Many companies were being mutually penalized. Of course, this economic war (monopolistic competition turns into war in this case) could not remain in the purely economic sphere. Germany, Japan, Britain and France even began closing some military bases in order to get rid of US control. In Germany, the number of bases was reduced from 80 to 32. When there were demonstrations in Japan for the closure of some bases, the Japanese state, which today works under the US, did not intervene harshly against these demonstrations.
The US, of course, knew about this process.
In the 1990s, the US started some military operations for its world empire. War policies were put into action. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan should be remembered. In this way, the US was trying to cut off its imperialist rivals and maintain its control by putting its military power into action. It was eager to cut off its rivals quickly. But these war policies were not working.
This time, radical Islam, certain forces organized by the US as paramilitary forces of the anti-communist struggle, were put into the field as a threat to convince the Western world of US hegemony. We remember the bombs that exploded in Europe.
When Yugoslavia was divided, they all got a piece. But in Eastern Europe, Germany was more prominent than the US. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq put an end to that. But even so, the US did not get what it wanted. Libya was reintroduced as a Yugoslavia-style war of partition. This was some kind of concession to the whole West. So they would continue to remain silent regarding the US attacks taking place in accordance to these war policies.
And then the war was raised another level. The Syrian war began. Now a plan had been laid out. The Syrian war is proof of this. With the aim of colonizing and sharing China and Russia, the West started to show interest in US policies again. The Syrian war was not enough to complete the process. But the Ukrainian war resulted in Europe’s surrender to the US in its first months.
The most obvious result of the Ukrainian war is the surrender of Europe to the US, Germany being the most typical example, and the loss of the will of Germany and the whole of Europe.
After the war in Syria and Ukraine, the war between the five imperialist powers retreated and turned into a war against Russia and China with the aim of colonizing these two great powers. Thus, two fronts began to emerge. The West and the Russia-China periphery. In fact, in a controlled manner, the West has only withdrawn its internal conflicts and the war of partition. Otherwise, this aspect of the war has not disappeared.
The situation that existed 20 years ago when we, the Kaldıraç Movement, were talking about the imperialist war of partition, has now taken a completely different shape.
Many are still presenting to us what they want to believe, that “there is no war.” As if, if they say so, that is, if they “think well,” good things will happen and there will be no world war.
But there is war. You cannot say there is no war because bombs are not falling on your house, because it is not the bodies of your children coming home. In that case, how will you describe this war that exists? Or is it the work of “mad men”?
Today, there are extensive wars in many parts of the world. Ukraine, the Middle East, around China, inside of Europe have become and are becoming arenas of war. And the threat of nuclear war is not an ordinary situation as many think. For a long time now, depleted uranium is been used. This actually means small-scale nuclear war.
At this point a question arises: What are those who tell us that there will be no war, that if there is, the world will be destroyed, that these imperialist masters are smart men, that they are not that bad, etc., failing to see? Actually, nothing is more blind than the eye that does not want to see. But let us return to our question.
What they cannot see is what capitalism is, or what imperialist domination means, or what monopoly domination means. It is as if they think that war is the work of “irrational” people.
We revolutionaries, almost every one of us, are often confronted with the question: Why do these capitalists want to earn more and more and more, when they have a fortune that they cannot finish even if they spend it day and night? The question makes sense. But the question shows us that they do not understand what is called a capitalist. It is as if they think that the capitalist is a human being like us. If we are just going to eat soup, if we are going to just eat meatballs, etc., then what is with this greed? These reflect of the questioner’s own situation. But the capitalist is not a human being, he is capital in human form. And capital, by its very character, must grow, multiply itself, create surplus-value. This is the nature of capital. The growth of capital, the creation of surplus-value, is possible through the exploitation of workers. So if there is no exploitation of the working class, there is no capitalist or capital. Unless we understand this, we cannot understand why these capitalists are never satisfied. Is it not that the funeral shroud has no pockets and money is useless in the afterlife? But they don’t live for the afterlife anyway, they remind the working class, the majority of society, of the afterlife for their promises of paradise, because they have built paradise in this world. And millions of people live willing to go through hell in this world in order to find paradise in the next.
In the same way, because monopoly domination, monopoly rule, capitalist imperialism are not understood, war is seen as “illogical.” It is a childish way of thinking, and only in Anatolian wisdom it is possible to consider the positive thinking approach applicable to the relationship between two human beings and then apply it to the imperialist system and war. It is childish, unless one wants to be deliberately confused.
Monopoly, as is well known, is based on the control of the market. Control of the market is not an innocent business. For example, if there are no monopolies, there is no mafia. It is monopolies, monopolistic domination that gives birth to the mafia. In the same way, it is the monopoly era, monopoly domination that created the modern media. This modern media has become one of the main sources of production of imperialist ideology and is a highly developed tool of social manipulation. Without understanding what is called the monopoly control of the market, one cannot understand ideological and cultural hegemony or the control of people in every aspect through cell phones. The function of cell phones and the internet is not to make it easier for people to communicate with each other. On the contrary, it is to control all aspects of this communication under the supervision of monopolies.
Without monopolies, there can be no imperialism, that is, imperialism in the capitalist system. Colonialism in the capitalist period is different from colonialism in the feudal period. Of course both are colonialism.
Monopoly is also an armed mafia organization.
Monopoly is also a system of black money on a monstrous scale.
Monopoly also means domination and control.
Monopoly also means mass production and consumer society.
Thus, it also means the modern media system. Modern media includes not only the press, not only TV channels, not only social media, but also the gigantic gaming, entertainment and advertising industry. And this field itself is monopolistic in character. Google therefore monitors everyone, and this means that the capitalist state worldwide has become a monopolist police state. Here “monopoly” refers to the monopolies representing the entire bourgeoisie, and “police” refers to these modern means of control and the organization of the state for civil war. The monopolist police state, we emphasize, is bourgeois democracy in modern capitalism, in the age of monopolies, and this state contains the gears of fascism. It has not only adopted the methods of the Nazis. It also feeds neo-Nazi gangs in peacetime, as the war in Ukraine and Syria has shown. It is a conscious manipulation, if not blindness, not to see this; these Neo-Nazi paramilitary organizations in Germany, France, Japan, Britain and the US.
This is the organization of civil war. A part of the extraordinary state organization has become ordinary in this state. They no longer wait for extraordinary circumstances to organize rogue gangs as paramilitary groups. Is this not the Gladio-like organizations in all NATO member states? In the Western capitalist world, these organizations are surfacing today. To say that “democracy” has disappeared there by looking at these developments is an understatement. Because this organization exists in the entire Western system, and it existed yesterday as well. In colonized countries, this system already exists as an extension of the colonial state. That is to say, it is more layered and the colonized state is not an independent entity in the face of imperialist domination.
Imperialism cannot exist without colonies. When the USSR dissolved, many prominent “intellectuals” were asking “can imperialism exist without exploitation?” before saying that the working class was finished. It was an attempt to exonerate imperialism from top to bottom. Gorbachev was using these words and supposedly playing the role of a “positive” thinker. But it is clear that this is an attempt to exonerate imperialist hegemony.
What is called an imperialist country cannot exist without colonies. This must be known. An imperialist power is imperialist by the domination it establishes over its colonies. If they have no colonies, what is the point of these countries being imperialist? Simply say, gentlemen, “there is no imperialism” and be done with it. Let the masks come down.
Colonial policy in our times is not necessarily based on occupation. But force is always in play. There is no such thing as the purely economic, it cannot exist. We distinguish between economic, political and military aspects in order to explain and understand them. Otherwise, they are always intertwined to some extent.
The concentrated expression of economic interests is politics. This is what we call politics. Of course, the ruling classes first and foremost express their political policies through their own states. Therefore, they express their own economic interests, the economic interests of a handful of monopolies, as “national economic interests.”
Just as they present the state as the common state of all, as the “father state,” and express their sovereignty as “national sovereignty,” they express their economic interests as “national economic interests.” These interests are not, at any level, the interests of the people, of the working class. On the contrary, they are interests based on their exploitation.
Turkey’s economic interests mean the economic exploitation of the working class and the strangulation of the people. Many “experts,” whether they call themselves leftists, social democrats, democrats, republicans, nationalists, etc., if they start talking about national economic interests, they are in fact setting out to conceal, knowingly or unknowingly, the economic interests of the rulers.
There is no such thing as Turkey’s economic interests in Cyprus or Turkey’s economic interests in Syria. This is a veiled expression of the interests of the monopolies, of the monopoly capital linked to the imperialist masters. It can only be used in this sense. Otherwise, they do not mean the interests of the workers and laborers living in Turkey.
For example, if a person talks about freedom today, the following question must be posed: Whose freedom are we talking about? For example, are we talking about the freedom of the rich, of the money lords to plunder? Are we talking about the freedom of the capitalists to perpetuate the system of exploitation? For workers, this freedom means hunger, unemployment, harsher working and living conditions and so on. For women, it is to be murdered. Therefore, femicides are political murders created by the system.
It is not an innocent endeavor, as one might think, to make such analyses by “purging” words from their class context, and in fact those who do so always make good money. The reason is the incentive of the ruling class in this regard. You can even see this in literature and art. The fact that mystical metaphors are imposed on us as novels, one after the other, is part of this. All this is to confuse the working class, the peoples.
The intensification of economic interests is politics.
The intensification of political interests and their continuation with weapons is war.
Imperialism cannot exist without war.
If it did, the ruling class would not need repression and violence, i.e. the state, to maintain its system of exploitation. Isn’t the ability of a handful of capitalists to rule the vast majority of society another form of war?
When the ruler commits a crime, it is called “law.”
But when the working class stands up, they are called terrorists, outside the law.
Theft is law. But stealing bread is unlawful.
Women’s slavery is the law, but when she opposes slavery, it is considered rebellion.
While doing all this, the state, as the political instrument of the ruler, is actually waging a covert or overt war against society.
When the state commits murder, it is law, but rebellion against the state is considered terrorist activity. Don’t you think this is war?
Let’s come to the imperialist rulers.
The imperialist rulers turn countries into colonies through monopolies. This is not only an economic activity. It is also a cultural activity, it is also a political activity and it is also a military activity. When the workers, laborers and peoples of a colonial country take up arms, then war itself emerges without anyone needing to define it.
Let’s say that the state practice in Hatay after the earthquake is to protect the looting of the monopolies and this is protected by armed forces, laws, courts, press, etc. Otherwise nothing is done for the people.
Today, the organization called NATO is a war organization. Against whom is it waging war? We see, let’s remember Yugoslavia, it was dismantled, divided. Are there US bases on its territory for nothing? Do these US bases protect the people there? This is what the people in the countries where there are bases are told. However, no imperialist power has ever done anything for a people, never in history. They call this, colonization, freedom. Take Afghanistan, take Iraq. It is close to us, Saddam was their man and as a result 1 million children were killed or maimed. I wonder what did the US soldiers do in the mosques? How many Iraqi women were raped because of the occupation? Don’t forget Libya. Syria too. They brought democracy to Iraq. We have no doubt. This is what they call democracy. And when it comes to democracy, we must ask: democracy for whom? For the monopolies the world is a very democratic place. They are free because they are the rulers. They are free to plunder nature, they are free to pollute, enslave and exploit people, they are free to carry out all kinds of activities.
When we consider the hegemony of the US, we have to think of the same thing.
The ruler does not transfer its rule voluntarily, with consent. There is no example of this. When the world’s working class eliminates exploitation in a large part of the world, a weak capitalist country, if there is one, can be overthrown without large-scale war in a world where most of the world is socialist. Even this cannot be called a revolution without force.
The erosion of US hegemony should not lead us to imagine that it will disappear by itself.
The practice of war in Ukraine, around China, in the Middle East is not a policy of avoiding war at all.
The Palestinian genocide is taking place before the eyes of the whole world. The policies of massacre against the Kurdish people are taking place before the eyes of the world. The living conditions of the working class all over the world are clear. And while these are obvious, a propaganda that there will be no war that goes beyond “goodwill” serves imperialist aims.
NATO, with the US and Britain at the forefront and France, Germany and Japan in the loop, is not holding back from organizing nuclear provocations in Ukraine. The plan to take over the nuclear power plant is precisely this. And here, in fact, there is nothing of caution regarding war. On the contrary, Russia and China want to stop the war somewhere. The cowboy has come and wants to rape your neighbor and you, out of fear or because you are on the cowboy’s side, are propagandizing that, oh, don’t resist the neighbor, let him do it and this war will end. Is that really how peace comes? This is exactly the propaganda against Russia and China. We remember what those who more easily supported the war against Iraq, for the same reasons, did later on behalf of the US. Iraq was an easy target. It was clear that the US was going to win the war militarily and opposing the US aggression under these circumstances seemed very, very risky to these gentlemen. So they sided with the US.
War is the natural policy of the imperialist world. That is, war is a necessity of imperialist domination. Otherwise, the dream that imperialism can exist without war is about hoping one will be satisfied with the rapist, and one can no longer look for “good intentions” in that. This is an attitude that goes beyond childishness, it is the same as siding with the imperialists. It is the same as arguing that “peace” will come as a result of Israel’s total annihilation of the Palestinian people. Israel’s attacks should end, how, all Palestinians should be killed. This is what they advocate.
Imperialist domination depends on economic, political, even cultural, ideological and war policies. Because war is the continuation of economic and political struggle with weapons. The wealth of the masters and rulers is not enough for them. Because the capitalist is not a human being, he is the humanized form of capital. For the imperialists, there is no stopping. War policies are not temporary.
Imperialism cannot exist without war.
Imperialist domination requires the wider and deeper exploitation of the world.
US or Western imperialism has plunged the world into a new war and this war will continue until imperialist domination is overthrown by a wave of socialist revolution. Anyone who really wants peace has to fight against imperialism, against the ruler in one’s own country, by all means and tools. Therefore, the front for peace is also the front for the socialist revolution. And the socialist revolution will be realized with the rising of the working class.
It is seen that the war is expanding, spreading and gaining depth.
This is what is happening in the Middle East.
This is what is happening in Ukraine.
This is what is happening in Taiwan.
And this is what will soon happen in the centers of Europe. For this reason, those who protest against the war in Europe in one way or another find their own state against them. This is already an open expression of the war.
Every war is ultimately a civil war. More openly in some, more covertly in others. But eventually this civil war will show itself.
US imperialism, Western imperialism, NATO are operative in all fronts of this war. The presence of the US and NATO in all the wars experienced in the recent period is no coincidence. Talking about war, wishing for peace, without seeing the US and the West, who are instigating war everywhere in the world, without seeing NATO, means indirectly serving the imperialist masters.
The intellectuals who say, “I defend democracy, Western values, if the price of this is saying yes to NATO, yes” are actually unaware of what NATO is or they have been educated by NATO. In our world, let alone the rest of the world, there is no massacre or coup that NATO was not involved. The May 1 massacre, Maraş, Çorum, Sivas etc. They all occurred in Turkey, which is a NATO member. They are beyond count. Are these what you call democracy? Is this civilization, are these human values? What is the future of the working class, women, and youth in what you defend?
The resistance that is rising today around the world today is the most important force against the war. The world proletariat has not yet come together. But there is no way, no way to prevent war, except for the world working class rising. War will not stop unless imperialist domination is overthrown. The working class of the US, Europe, and the imperialist metropolises need to come onto the scene. And the future will take shape in their hands, the world proletariat.
Nazım says:
“Either we will take the life to dead stars
or death will descend on our world”
Putting an end to the exploitation of the human being by the human being also means the reconciling of the human being with nature (and of course of the human being with oneself, as nature that reached consciousness of itself) again and at a higher level.
The anthem of the world working class, “The International” says: “A red sun will rise on the horizon of this sea of blood.”
All workers of the world, unite under the flags of revolution and communism!
