Global Capitalism and War

13th Conference of the European Sociological Association «(Un)Making Europe: Capitalism, Solidarities. Subjectivities»

Abstract: In the work «Imperialism As the Highest Stage of Capitalism» (1916) V. Lenin demonstrates that the wars are the driving force that encourages development of financial and industrial capitalism that regularly has to search (to conquer) new sources of raw materials, of cheap workforce, new sales markets and new spheres of influence. Therefore, transnational corporations periodically "organize" local, regional or world wars to solving their problems. Besides, the capitalist mode of production is prone with permanent economic crisis, out of which often becomes a war.

Keywords: capitalism, war.

There are many changes has been happened after 100 years Lenin's statements, but it hasn't changed nature of capitalism. In the era of globalization appears a super-community, a super-civilization of the Western world the United States-led, which is trying to take control of all the world's resources. The countries that somehow prevent the distribution of this control become the objects of the aggression of the Western World. It's can be a direct military aggression, as happened in Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, or indirect aggression, aimed at the overthrow of legitimate government and coming to power of the regime loyal to the West, as happened in Ukraine.

Accordance to A. Zinoviev, "The social nature of globalization is the most grandiose planned in details and managed of Western World' war not just for world domination, but also for the conquest of the control for the evolution process of humanity and managed it in their own interests” [Zinov'yev A.A, (2001)]. The main aggressor in this war is the global "Western super-community", which united to conquer the planet. Already now the super-community controls more than 70% of the world's resources and imposes to other people their own "rules of the game" on most countries. The same opinion adheres Panarin: "Globalism does not go outside the frames of appropriation global (planetary) resources by greedy intervention of "chosen", who consider the rest of humanity as not worthy of this community [Panarin A.S. (2002)].

Periodic interference of the United States in the affairs of other sovereign countries Zb. Brzezinski tries to justify the instability of the global process, which often connects with violence. In these conditions, in his opinion, the United States has a special messiah - supporting international stability and "to operate interventions in local wars promptly and effectively, on regardless the territorial remoteness from the United States of the epicenter of the conflict” [Bzhezinskiy Zb. (2005)]. Practically, the United States distributes the violence and chaos in different regions of the world. Herewith, the victims of these conflicts, as a rule, becomes the countries, which maintain close mutually collaboration with Russia and China - potential geopolitical opponents of the United States. Thus only in the last fifteen years, the victims of the "peacekeeping policy" of the United State and its allies have become such sovereign states as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

About other reasons for the emergence of the wars writes E. Toffler. In his opinion, the main reason for the emergence of wars is the separation of the modern world into three opposing (conflicting) civilizations: the first, the second and the third waves (agrarian, industrial and post-industrial civilizations). Each of these civilizations has its own economic, political and other interests, its own ideas about the world order, its value orientations. Therefore, the main contradictions on the Planet deploys between the East and the West, not between the North and the South and not between different religious or ethnic groups, but between the potentially conflicting civilizations. Even civil and local interstate wars E. Toffler considers as manifestation of a global conflict between competing civilizations [Toffler E. (2005)]. But in this case, the initiator of wars is the Western super-community expressing the interests of transnational capital.

There is an opinion that in the nuclear age the global wars between the nuclear powers are impossible, since they can lead to the death of all humanity. For contemporary international relations there are typical conflicts of "low intensity" and "surrogate wars." However, E. Toffler guesse that the "era of small fights" can only become a prelude to a great geoinformation war [Toffler E. (2005)]. On the whole, the threat of a new global world war, including the use of nuclear weapons, will be exist as long as there is a world capitalist system. Therefore, the problem of looking for alternative political and socio-economic world order to capitalist world order is becoming more acute for mankind.

References:

• Zinov'yev A.A. (2001) Globalizatsiya kak voyna novogo tipa // Lichnost'. Kul'tura. Obshchestvo. 2001. t. 3. Vyp. 3 (9). S. 274 (In Russian)
• Panarin A.S. (2002) Iskusheniye globalizmom. M. 2002. S. 14 (In Russian)
• Bzhezinskiy Zb. (2005) Vybor. Global'noye gospodstvo ili global'noye liderstvo. M., 2005. S. 35 (In Russian)
• Toffler E. (2005) Voyna i antivoynaZH Chto takoye voyna i kak s ney borot'sya. Kak vyzhit' na rassvete XXI veka. M., 2005. S. 45-51 (In Russian)