Imperialism Hasn't Gone Away

As a materialist, i seek to establish the correlation between economic change and technological development with the manifested political and ideological situation.

At the present time, the underlying global economic situation is having profound effects on the ideological and political context. Polarisation is occurring at a rapid pace, and ideological and political positions are shifting. Reality is being distorted for political ends. Historically, similar periods have resulted in catastrophic wars. Propaganda will replace objective analysis. The main stream media (MSM) is already being used as a vector for transmission of fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD). Political opinion from US military and intelligence sources is being represented as fact, even though these sources have been exposed multiple times as being partisan and not reliable. It will be difficult for the true picture to be visible.

Overall, capitalism, with its many faces, suffers from stagnation globally. Despite continuing financialisation and digitalisation, capital's productivity has stalled. The real rate of profit is declining in many established sectors and inflation is but one of its symptoms. Monopoly capital is now doing all that it can to increase the rate of exploitation of labour. Globally, living standards are in retreat for the post boomer generations and class friction is consequently exacerbated. There are many national examples of increased social polarisation. Increases in the cost of housing are a manifestation
of labour exploitation as increases in rents and mortgages are returned as profit to owners of capital.

The contradiction is that the capacity for global production is continually increasing. Real economic growth continues because all of us work. The problem is the reliance of the capitalist system on an unsustainable rate of profit which distorts the distribution of production. Capitalism requires an inequitable distribution.

In the current era, communications and logistics entail that the impact of the capitalist economic system decreases national and regional isolation. However, there are clear divisions between the situation of the international working class dependent on national governments and whether the nation state is imperialist.

The imperialist core (the US, UK, some parts of the EU and US pacific allies, Japan, Republic of Korea (ROK) and Australia) continues to maintain trade and financial relationships that exploit and constrain the economic development of the Global South. The emergence of the People's Republic of China (PRC) as a competitor for global surplus value (profit) presents a threat to the status quo. Monopoly capital has mobilized to counter the threat with protectionist trade barriers, reinforced with the threat of military power. Similarly, the imperialist bloc will act to impede the export of capital from PRC to the global south.

Concurrently, the propaganda of the capitalist elites will deploy the term "Cold War 2.0" as a description of inter bloc rivalry to engage the national working class to support an arms war. Similarly, the capitalist elite will deploy the term "deterrence" as a justification for the diversion of resources to arms production. Already there is an increasing intrusion of "news" items in the MSM concerning new arms production programs justified as a response to "Cold War 2.0". (AUKUS is the overarching program in Australia)
It is important to be conscious of the institutional ownership of arms production corporations and the use of the respective national government to channel profits to these corporations. War and the preparation for war fuels the profits of monopoly capitalism free of market constraints

The enlistment of the ordinary people of the imperialist bloc nations in nationalist participation in the imperialist project is supported through the tolerance and encouragement of racism, unconscious colonialism and fear of losing the privilege of wealth resulting from citizenship. Border protection and selective immigration policies are entwined with the requirements of capital for labour supply. Notably, immigration is increased as wage demands become militant during periods of growth. Capital is free to cross national boundaries, whilst labour is restricted. Historically. elements
of the working class will be traduced by the the imprecations of nationalism, whilst the internationalist element adheres to international solidarity and humanitarian values.

Global warming and the consequent necessity to reduce carbon emissions is imposing significant change on capitalist production and demands for investment.

Existing capital invested in carbon resources is fighting a rear guard action to avoid being "stranded". The inability to establish energy policy in Australia over the past decade is a good example of the machinations of capital to protect profit in existing carbon deposits and impeding adoption of non carbon alternatives. The accumulation of individual capitalist investment decisions result in regressive outcomes at a national scale as the demand for profit trumps non profitable humanist values.

Globally, the foremost example of a number of threads for this article is the auto manufacturing industry. Production of both internal combustion and electric vehicles is now most efficient in the PRC. Automation and the installation of robotics in the PRC outstrips comparable competitors in the US and EU. Both the EU and the US are unable to compete with Chinese productivity. This is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future and trade barrier protections will increase the cost of transition to lower emission transport globally. It is unlikely that protection barriers will increase the productivity of EU and US manufacturing. It may increase the uptake of low emission transport in China and will also impact the global south as Chinese capacity looks for new markets, however it will slow transition to low emission transport in the EU and US at a time when it should be getting faster.

It should be interesting to watch how the Australian government will react to pressure from the US and the EU to increase protectionist barriers to Chinese vehicles as China remains Australia's most significant trade partner on the basis of volume. Falling in to line with that pressure will simply increase the cost of buying vehicles for Australian consumers with no offset benefit.

The MSM will be used to introduce questions of "national security" and create doubt about the reliability and trustworthiness of product sourced from the PRC, despite decades of consumption with no evidence
of ulterior motives. The more expensive product sourced from the imperialist bloc will be presented as benign despite the risk being equal. Paranoia will be fostered with no evidence in the service of profit.

More contentious though is computing chip production and the ongoing development of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The US leads in chip design and Taiwan and the Nertherlands, Japan and the Republic of Korea
are essential to the production at scale of advanced compute chips for the infrastructure of the internet, data processing, corporate productivity and digital communications. Increasingly important are specialist graphical compute chips that are used for AI. Current frenzied investments in AI and the data centres required indicates that AI is has been ordained as offering extraordinary profit potential. It is viewed as
a strategic capability for production and military purposes. Theoretically AI is based on the aggregation , distillation and storage of human skill and output alienated from the source and marketed in a consumable
product. The deployment of AI will revolutionize the conditions of work and types of work for large and important sectors of the global workforce. It is still in its early stages and so implmentations are not delivering
expected productivity, however, in the future deployment at scale by capitalism will degrade the value of labour for large sectors of the workforce..

AI software requires a rapidly increasing installed capacity of  advanced compute chips. This sector is now at the forefront of technological competition between the US led imperialist bloc and PRC.  As a result, the
US has applied considerable pressure on the Netherlands, Japan and ROK to limit exports of advanced chip manufacturing tools to the PRC.

Taiwan (ROC) has the most significant installed production capacity for advanced compute chip production. This manufacturing capcity and US reliance on its output is perceived by the US as a key supply chain vulnerability.

PRC also has considerable capacity for advanced chip production, however it trails the imperialist bloc at the leading edge development and production of the most advanced compute chips. Despite restriction in the export
of advanced technology from the imperialist bloc, PRC is closing the gap. The US views it as a strategic priority to maintain its technology lead.

This is the background to Taiwan being seen as a flashpoint for the US strategic posture. Strategic competition with the PRC is now official US doctrine.

PRC holds the position that Taiwan is historically a part of China and has a stated objective of incorporating the island nation as part of the PRC. The US does not recognise Taiwan as the Republic of China (ROC). The US does however supply weapons to ROC. This is known as the "One China policy" - historically the policy arose in the 1970's as Kissinger and Nixon first formalised diplomatic relations with the PRC.

The perceived or manufactured threat of the PRC acting militarily to incorporate Taiwan into the PRC is now used as the foremost element of the US threat scenario that justifies US sabre rattling and military build up. The PRC is the first nation since WW2 that can present as a credible rival to US military power. It has galvanised the US to pressure allied
nations to raise expenditure on arms. Japan has undertaken to increase spending on arms by 65% by 2027. Australia has signed up for nuclear powered submarines under AUKUS. Similar arms building has been initiated in in the EU nations and NATO has been expanded. The war between the Russian Federation and the Ukraine cannot be seen in isolation from US global strategy. Deployment of US military forces to Australia has reached its highest level since WW2.

The reality is that the US and its allies in the imperialist bloc are acting to contain the economic growth of the PRC to maintain their dominant position in the global economic order. Continuing arms race escalation and brinksmanship increases the risks of war. Strategic deterrence  may mitigate the risk, but the likely outcome is an increasing number of proxy conflicts that will be tolerated under the US rules based order as part of the strategy.

And as all of this goes on in the background, life seems to go on in the imperialist bloc even as two major wars continue in Palestine and the Ukraine. The war in the Sudan is creating a massive human catastrophe with untold human loss. The embedded racism and colonialism of imperialism means that the next Australian election will be determined by housing supply and not how to make a society that works to
make the world a better place to live for all of us.