reversed. It is on the contrary being cemented into overarching political framework, which sets the parameters for domestic as well as international politics. Any coherent political framework has to do just this, or it is unsustainable.
In the post-1945 period in the United States the regulatory framework was based on a combination of mass consumerism, supported by a permanent arms economy, more recently called 'military Keynesianism'. Surplus capital was set to work generating arms production whose guarantor and consumer was the state itself.
This system was crystallised with the start of the Korean War, with a vast increase in defence spending, which! helped US capitalism pull itself out of its post-1948 recession. The ideological cement which held all this together, and indeed was crucial to sustaining the system, was virulent anti-communism domestically and the Cold War interna tionally.
It was this system which gave rise ideo logically to McCarthyism and economical. ly to the huge US residential suburbs, with their crushing domestic nuclear-family banality. All these things formed a seamless whole; and crucially the leadership of the American unions, the AFL-CIO, were pulled into the anti-communist, cold war consensus. Domestic and international
The system was shaken in the 1960s by black rebellion and the mass antiVietnam war movement, but re-cemented by the years of the Reagan presidency (1980-88) with the 'evil empire' Second Cold War and the restarting of military Keynesianism as a mechanism for shortterm economic growth.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union US capitalist leaders have lacked such an overarching framework. Now with the 'war on terrorism' they have it, but with profound consequences for domestic as well as international politics. Political reac tion is rampant and the weak-kneed Democratic Party liberals either silenced or drawn into support for permanent wal
This has gone, together with the trampling of democratic rights, mass arrests and indefinite imprisonment without trial. This, then, is what is at stake - the whole organisation and framework of American domestic and international politics.
If the war on terrorism ends in shipwreck, all the political cards internationally and in the US itself will be throw in the air again, with the grave danger of the strengthening of rivals and enemies across the board.
Events in the past year have highlighted crucial elements of the globalisation process.
First is the exposure of the claim that the weakkneed Democratic Party liberals either silenced or drawn into support for permanent war. national states are weakened to the point where the crucial world actors are nonstate institutions like transnational corpoinevitable process which states are powerless to resist.
In reality international trade is managed trade, as the new US tariffs on steel imports and European anti-US measures show. State action is crucial to managing the economy and setting the limits of its development in all major states, and state expenditure remains a huge part of every major economy.
Second, globalisation has been shown again not to be an 'automatic' process, but one which led and driven by the major imperialist powers and in particular the United States. The United States demands economic access everywhere, not on the basis of free' trade but on the basis of determining where the playing field is, let alone how level it is.
In other words the United States demands absolute subordination of the world to American capital. It turns out of course that this degree of globalisation requires that the world obey the United States politically, and vast amounts of mili tary might are there to attempt to ensure this. from an obvious Achilles heel Overwhelming military might is vulnerable to long-term political subversion. Sustaining the Axis of Evil military posture requires continued political support in key countries, including Britain and the United , belongs to its enemies.
Aircraft carriers and cruise missiles cannot exterminate the international working class or prevent class struggle or stop the rebuilding of the international left, which is gathering pace. Neither can they sink the global justice movement.
The war on terrorism' is an ideological empty vessel compared with antiCommunism and anti-Sovietism, which were based on the reality of an oppressive and powerful hostile state system in the east.
When in 1963-4 small groups of peo ple in the United States, very isolated and subject to anti-communist vilification, began the opposition to the Vietnam war, they could not have dreamed of the mass force the anti-war movement would eventually become or the influence on the outcome of the war which it would have.
Today the anti-war movement starts from a much higher level. In the next few years it will have enormous potential to politically undermine the permanent war project, expose the imperialist character of 'globalisation' and powerfully contribute In the end the whole project suffers to the rebuilding of the international left, especially among hundreds of thousands of young people becoming politically active for the first time
The present may be dominated by US capitalism's war machine, but the future