MIM's respect for antiwar.com has increased in the struggles of recent years. Antiwar.com calls itself "libertarian" and opposed to war as a matter of shrinking the state. It originated in the "isolationist" "America-first" wing of the Republican Party that existed before World War II.
Although the Republican Party is the home of the tax-cutters, libertarians have not really belonged there in the past 100 years. Today's Republicans and Democrats both would have been considered packs of traitors by the founders of the United States. The most pro-central government of the founders considered advocating regular budgets for a standing army treason. The whole distinction between the United States and England was supposed to be "freedom." Over the years, that word "freedom" has been abused to mean "a reason to bomb some Third World country." So it has happened that the central government has grown and grown and the libertarians are right to notice.
Here is how antiwar.com puts it:
"Non-interventionism abroad is a corollary to non-interventionism at home. Randolph Bourne echoes this sentiment: 'We cannot crusade against war without implicitly crusading against the State.'"
Antiwar.com really gained our appreciation when like MIM it jumped out in front on the Iran question. MIM was left in a position where isolationist libertarians and Lyndon Larouche supporters took a better line than most organizations calling themselves Maoist in the world, thanks to successful imperialist infiltration of our organizations.
No slouches at antiwar.com, they are also quick on the warmongering against Russia. Although largely immersed in the mainstream bourgeois politics, antiwar.com frequently shows an ability to make international comparisons calmly. Antiwar.com calls out the "War Party" when it whips up propaganda against Russia regarding things that the united $tates also does, sometimes worse.
The sentimental underlying ideological vision of antiwar.com is patriotism:
Currently, the antiwar movement against a war on Iraq is considered anti-American and left-wing. However, we are changing this perception by leading the cause of the patriotic peace movement, which understands the true costs of war.The real cost of the wars is a loss of freedom. This is something Americans knew in 1776--the connections among the standing army, taxes and tyranny.
Today we have a situation where professional spies and police of the state outnumber political activists on a regular basis. This was not always the case in U.$. history.
The analysis of antiwar.com is correct, but not penetrating enough. Antiwar.com admits that the "War Party" is better funded with countless slick media hacks on its side.
Lacking a centrally-coordinated leadership, without financial resources of any significance, and incredibly diverse, the organized opposition to the first Balkan war was unfocused and of limited effectiveness.
What antiwar.com has not admitted is the nature of capitalism, and why the central government has grown. Marx was correct to direct us to look at the surplus in society, and who appropriates it, and the U.$. surplus steadily increased. Marx was also correct that capitalism increases efficiency relative to previous modes of production. That "diverse" anti-war movement is not able to get its hands on the surplus and lead the country to peace.
The surplus of capitalism, especially U.$. capitalism generated economic crises, because the capitalist class was not able to invest it in a wide enough variety of projects for a profit. Depressions resulted and the opportunity arose for an expanded central government--FDR's "New Deal" for example. In a society with no surplus, a central government like the U.$. one would be simply impossible.
Lenin came along and added the theory of imperialism. Not only is there surplus beyond the capabilities of the capitalist class to handle in a beneficial way, but now the surplus goes to marvels of militarism Lenin noted, with special attention to the united $tates.
In 1776, a few farmers with shotguns could always overthrow their local government. Today such people would be suspected as "terrorists" or serial killers and professors lose their jobs for re-enacting serial killings or otherwise being slightly scary. In this we agree with libertarians and 2nd Amendment freaks: we understand the original intentions and connections of gun ownership to freedom. It's just that that economic situation where that worked is long gone.
The central problem of antiwar.com is the tension between its analysis and its sentimental ideology hankering for an economic context that cannot return: surplus is here to stay unless our antiwar movements fail and barbarism truly conquers the globe. We of the anti-militarist movement are always on the defensive, because it is easy to whip up fears to justify hiring of more spies, police, troops and weapons manufacturers for the central government. These people in turn turn around to justify their jobs, so the parasitic activity of the state increases and increases.
Antiwar.com has shown a great ability to follow its analysis where it leads. In truth, there will have to be a patriotic peace movement and it is all the better that it has some shrewd and analytical leaders like antiwar.com.
The fact is that the current bloating of the central government says something about the non-existent drive of the entrepreneurial class. Had the entrepreneurial class competed for the society's surplus to undertake non-government activities, there could be no half-a-trillion annual Pentagon. The facts as they are have to be taken as an indication, a reflection on the capitalist class, and in this, Lenin has to be deemed correct, that surplus does go to waste, decadence--especially militarism. Capitalism has reached its decadent phase.
When we make our patriotism deeper than our pursuit of freedom, it is inevitable that we will protect a society with a huge surplus against those with lesser surpluses. In practice, just from observation of the united $tates, England etc., we have to conclude that this means defending warmongers against countries with lesser states.
So this is an example where MIM says it is necessary for science to dispense with ideology. If capitalists cannot handle this kind of surplus, at least in some societies, then we should cease defending those societies and acknowledge that for example, Amerikkkans are the problem today, the biggest one.
Had the united $tates not been the imperialist society, had it faced other countries squandering the surplus on militarism, then MIM would not be anti-Amerikkkan. The terrible irony is that "Americans" no longer exist. Amerikkkans took over in the late 1800s, especially with the advance of central government. The settler impulse always existed and genocide of native peoples would have been a crime of U.$. capitalism, but that impulse combined with the surplus that came to exist brought us to our current position of the united $tates being the number one global monster.
The libertarians will say we communists are "statists," the worst ones. It is true that we favor conscious intervention to utilize the economic surplus of the society. Obviously the captains of industry were unable to persuade people that their activities were worthy of more economic support than the War Party's activities. Many captains of industry are now on the government dole--Halliburton, Blackwell etc. Of course it is easier to make money that way and also gain supporters to lobby for your side. There is no real political prospect inside U.$. borders of defeating the "War Party," when one-seventh of Amerikans with military experience are going to be its natural boosters and when so many people rely on military pensions for example. The game was lost when the surplus allowed the creation of so many jobs with the military. Military experience is now equal to all industrial experience in the united $tates for number of people involved.
The libertarian needs to choose what is worse. Is losing freedom worse than giving up patriotism? We say so. On this point, we have to confess to agreeing with Kasparov, who puts freedom above patriotism in Russia. There is simply no denying what Amerikkkans do with their surplus, their wealth looted from the world.
Is Halliburton the worst of both worlds--socialist and capitalist? We say so. In a communist system, no one can profit from militarist activities. Nor is there an incentive to restrict civil liberties to benefit the politics and contracts of the War Party. The worst of both worlds--capitalist and communist--is leaving the motivations for evil in place and then taking away the freedom of the press to criticize those activities. That is the direction the United $tates goes now and has long gone in its suppression of freedoms in other countries. The antiwar movement inside u.$. borders is powerless precisely because for some reason the captains of industry are undeniably unable to use the society's surplus in an attractive way, and instead find it easier to make a profit by squandering the surplus on worse than useless militarist activity. If this were not so, the population would not so easily part with its tax dollars for militarism.
By the antiwar.com's own libertarian reasoning, the Pentagon is the biggest boondoggle in the world. It is the largest enemy of freedom. Amerikkkans happen to be supporting it, so too bad for patriotism. We should not be loyal to a country of prison guards, troops and military contractors. We should support other peoples as having a greater impulse to freedom and therefore take up internationalism. The libertarians are correct that peace and freedom go together.