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RUTHLESS CRITICISM

“If we have no business with the construction of the future or with organizing
it for all time, there can still be no doubt about the task confronting us at
present: the ruthless criticism of the existing order, ruthless in that it will
shrink neither from its own discoveries, nor from conflict with the powers that
be.” — Karl Marx

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October 2023


DISSENTING VIEWS ON THE ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR


Once again Hamas strikes Israel, and this time succeeds in a bloody attack on
its heartland, which is otherwise successfully shielded from Israeli-Palestinian
hostilities, on a somewhat unusual scale. The first profound analyses range from
“completely unprovoked terror!” to “it was bound to happen eventually!”,
supplemented with anxious to hopeful expectations of an overwhelming Israeli
counterattack and questions about the “prospects for a rapprochement between
Israel and the Arab states,” which the Palestinian question has been so
thoroughly erased from. There is, of course, no room for the question of why the
“Palestinian cause” exists in this way and only in this way: as periodic
terrorism against Israel. The explanation for this can be found here:



Gaza War 2014: Israel’s Struggle for the One State Solution





Operation “Cast Lead” in the Gaza Strip



And in this latest edition of the orgy of violence in the Middle East, the
media, despite all the orchestrated horror, proves its astonishing ability to
distinguish between this act of violence and that act of violence, these victims
and those victims, these and those perpetrators of violence... The nasty,
nonspecific logic that sorts the violence of war in other countries into moral
categories, its relation to the actually valid political standpoint that the
state power here takes to the violence in the Middle East and the people there,
and the specific position taken by the Free World under the “indispensable”
(Biden) leadership of the USA toward Israel and its enemies, about which the
slogan “we stand with Israel!” says it all, is criticized in this article:

Notes on the general relation of war, war morality and war publicity

In addition, some basic knowledge about Israel’s unique reason of state:

An exemplary imperialist democracy with a Zionist mission

And on Israel’s most recent progress with regard to the de facto settlement of
the Palestinian question and the period of state crisis shortly before the
outbreak of the current war:

Turmoil in the home of the Jewish people:
Remarks on how Israel’s state crisis is connected with the success of its
no-state solution for Palestine







--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


THE USA WANTS WAR!

What else are we supposed to think when every day members of the government
declare the war in Ukraine to be our, i.e., America’s, cause? When what is
demanded at every opportunity is that more and heavier weapons be sent to
Ukraine and on an increasing scale? When it is the official government line to
support Ukraine’s ability to wage war as long as it needs it?

Of course, it is claimed that all this is about helping the Ukrainians. Help
them with what?

Of course, it is said that the purpose is to end the war. But what state wages
war so that it never ends? For all of them, including the US and its aid, there
is the self-evident constraint that the end will come only on our terms. It is
precisely the intention to get to this end as quickly as possible that
intensifies wars and drags them out.

Of course, no one explicitly wants the casualties. Except those on the enemy
side, even as many as possible; what else would the weapons being supplied be
good for? And the victims on one’s own side, the Ukrainian side in this case,
are called heroes, they die heroic deaths — isn’t that just a yes to war?

But what is there to prove anyway? America clearly and unambiguously states its
war goal: Russia is not allowed to win. It is to lose in such a way that it is
no longer capable of waging this kind of war. To this end, America and its
allies intend to contribute whatever is necessary and whatever they can provide.
Even if that takes months or even years.

*

The USA? Aren’t there also other expressions of political will? Yes, certainly.
There are those for whom the government’s will to wage war is never decisive
enough; they complain about delays and restraint in the delivery of ever heavier
weaponry. And there is a small right-wing opposition that does not reject war
from the get-go, and then does so with the argument: This is not our war. Is it
wrong to take this as saying: the problem is not the war, but its insufficient
yield for the American cause, whatever it may be? Maybe Kamala Harris just needs
to explain to Tucker Carlson how this cause benefits the nation, without
emphasizing morality.

And what do the “realist” academics, government officials, and military
observers actually criticize when they point out that NATO has also done its
share to escalate the conflict in Ukraine – which, by the way, is pleasing to
the right because it shows the war’s globalist, i.e. anti-national, character?
The war must not be blamed unilaterally on Putin; the West is also to blame. So
what? War always takes place only because all parties want it. All sides want it
because they find it necessary in the interest of their nation. Is that a reason
to plead extenuating circumstances for one, the other, or even both sides?
Perhaps in the sense of the question that those in power like to pose to a
skeptical audience: What else could we have done, given the wickedness of our
enemy? The only thing that really follows from the universally invoked
inevitability of war is the seditious insight: they are certainly right. With
their war, they follow a dictate of their reason of state. In other words:
political rule can’t exist without a cause, contained in its reason for being,
for asserting itself by trampling over corpses on its own side and especially on
the enemy side. For sovereign powers, war is – to put it politely – an option
they absolutely can’t do without. The dissidents with their vote for fairness in
the question of war guilt mean the opposite: nevertheless, this war would not
have been necessary. And they do not want to admit that the willingness of both
sides to wage war makes their diagnosis cringe.

*

What’s left? The USA wants war. And without Americans having asked for it. And
they don’t need to be; there is no place for that in the ruling democracy; here,
the elected officials decide and decree and execute what the nation wants
through orders and obedience.

Of course, this also means, don’t forget, that the USA did not start the war.
But what does that mean? Now that Russia has invaded Ukraine and the West has
responded to it, the USA wants to seal the deal; with the repeatedly declared
aim of a Russian defeat.

Sure, there’s been no true declaration of war from the American side in accord
with textbook diplomacy. And as much as the rulers in Washington DC and
elsewhere declare and make the war their business and contribute to its
escalation with arms deliveries: they do not want to be a war party in the
actual sense. So what are they then?

They are a non-actual war party and want to remain one – in plain language: the
USA wants the war, but not its real costs. Money and material are donated; death
and devastation pummel Ukraine and not its wildly determined sponsor. The USA
wants war against Russia – in Ukraine.

Morally speaking, this is cynicism of the highest order. Objectively, it’s a
contradiction of its own kind. Putin’s Russia is told that it – the reason of
state on which is acts, its existence as Moscow’s sovereign sphere of influence
– is absolutely incompatible with the USA’s reason of state. So no explanation
is necessary. For the judgment of incompatibility that follows, it’s enough to
refer to “our values” and the “crimes” that Russia’s president is committing
with his “war of aggression”; the idealism of values only stands for the
uncompromising nature of this judgment. Normal co-existence with the Russian
state is terminated. Conversely, the USA assumes that a corresponding notice of
termination will not follow from the Russian side, and certainly not a practical
encroachment that would really test America’s commitment to the ongoing war as
our cause. That works out, for now. The USA can afford the contradiction of a
unilateral termination of peaceful coexistence, accusing Putin of doing what it
does itself, only because – and as long as – Russia does not do the same against
the USA: end the state of peace. In other words, because and as long as Putin
sticks to the standpoint of a “special military operation” limited to Ukraine,
which Washington chalks up to his pure hypocrisy. In truth, it’s the contractual
basis of the USA’s will to wage war.

*

On this basis, the USA allows itself to increase its engagement, which is still
far from sufficient for the nation’s pro-war politicians. They see themselves
confirmed and encouraged by their own side’s successes in the Ukrainian theater.
There they have proof that, step by step, what they aim to do by equipping the
heroic fighters with better and better equipment for the common cause is
actually being achieved: they have harmed the enemy without him fighting back.
The USA takes this as a good reason to do more. The fact that the Russian
government feels compelled to order a partial mobilization, for now without
giving up the fiction of a mere “special military operation” and without
committing itself to the land war that it is actually waging, is acknowledged
with an offensive willingness to take risks and triumphantly evaluated in the
political public sphere as progress in the desired course of the war, which
obliges it to follow up. It’s as if they can’t wait any longer for the
substantial expansion of the war – and as if they do not need to reckon with any
further danger to themselves.

The danger, brought up every so often, that Russia could get serious about its
repeated threats to switch to the use of nuclear weapons of an unspecified
caliber is filed away in the same way, without fear. The fact that the USA and
the European NATO powers for their part reject any move in the direction of a
direct confrontation between the West and Russia and a Third World War that
would then be almost impossible to avoid is already seen as a precautionary
measure to ensure that this will not happen from the other side either. Above
all, what remains of residual risk awareness must not be an objection to the
nation’s readiness for war; in any case, the politicians and the media warn the
nation much more about signs of weakness, which any consideration of the enemy’s
nuclear arsenal could be misunderstood as, than they do against the scenarios
whose plans are in the drawers of both Russian and Western war planners for the
eventuality of an expansion of the war beyond Ukraine.

*

The US in its will to wage war is counting on the logic of military deterrence,
which simply goes: If war is to be waged, then it must be waged to be won, and
in the certainty that it can be done successfully. This requires the willingness
and ability to control the “fortunes of war,” i.e., to always be one step ahead
of the enemy in staging and escalating warfare. Anyone who wants an effective
deterrence must not even get into the predicament of having to resort to the
next highest caliber weapon out of a defensive position; in an emergency, he
must put his enemy in this predicament; at least until he no longer wants to
keep up, i.e. fight back; ultimately and in truth, until he can no longer defend
himself effectively. The type of warfare that starts with nuclear battlefield
weapons – those, that is, which destroy and render entire regions useless even
as battlefields – should not lead to the final strategic exchange of strikes and
is still rejected as impractical by the superpower and its main enemy because of
its unsuitability for any imperialist purpose; consequently, they only calculate
and prepare all the more carefully.

For the time being, the question that remains is how much the USA wants the war
against Russia that it is helping wage in Ukraine. The question is probably
already the answer: for the time being, as much as can be done in Ukraine.

Recommended reading:

The three reasons for the war in Ukraine

Russia is struggling to assert itself as a strategic power — America is
struggling to finish Russia off as a strategic power

Editorial


CRITICISM — WHAT’S THAT?

Shouldn’t criticism be constructive, helping to improve what it criticizes? Do
we just want to be negative? It is not our program to contribute
well-intentioned suggestions for the success of what we criticize:

 * that people have to work for an employer because they need money to survive,
   and anybody who seeks employment has to live under the constant pressure of
   making themselves completely suitable for the demands that a capitalist
   economy makes on them;

 * that if they lose their lousy job they don't have enough money to live on and
   need to find a new job right away – because employees gain nothing by working
   for others and their poverty is never escaped;

 * that this endangered existence is the necessary basis for wage labor;

 * that this dependence is reproduced on a worldwide level as the whole planet
   is subsumed to its logic and there is more and more absolute impoverishment
   as the free-market economy sorts out those who are useless for it;

 * that the entire globe is analyzed for what is good for business, so that some
   areas are useful for industry and four fifths of the world have no other use
   than supplying raw materials;

 * that nature and the sources of life are also resources for business, so the
   air, water, food supply and even the weather are ruined in a sustainable way.

These are not unfortunate side effects, “problems” that our politicians must
continue to work on. The causes are also not:

 * something called “neoliberal,” “financialized,” “hyper-,” or other hyphenated
   capitalisms;

 * a moral defect of the capitalists called “profit greed”;

 * corrupt and irresponsible politicians;

 * and certainly not the unwillingness in each of us “to begin with one's self”
   in order to improve the world.

All these are inevitable consequences of an economic system, the so-called free
market economy, which aims at nothing as trivial as providing for human needs,
but only and exclusively the accumulation of capital.

Because one cannot make this system better – on the contrary, it already
functions too well! – we have no suggestions for improvement. We insist that
these problems exist because of the system.




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