Ned K.
For several years
in the 21st Century there have been regional wars in the oil producing Middle
East. Imperialist powers compete for control of energy resources through
military repression of people's uprisings and by interference in internal political
affairs of most countries in the region.
At the same time,
US imperialism intensifies its rivalry to the East with China, demanding that
China 'control' North Korea. Both the USA and China need oil exported from the
Middle East. Any disruption to supply would see quick action by both US
imperialism and the Chinese bureaucrat capitalist controlling interests within
the Chinese government. What form such action would take is unknown but if
history is any judge, disruption of supply of oil would be the catalyst for
major upheavals in the economies of many countries.
The history of
British imperialism's response to the American Civil War in the early 1860s
between the emerging industrial capitalist states of the North and the slave states
of the South is a good example of the impact of the disruption of supply of a
key commodity. In this case, it was disruption of the supply of cotton to the
British textile manufacturing industry. By the time of the outbreak of the American
Civil War, British imperialism had put most of eggs in one basket - cotton.
Nearly a quarter of the British population was dependent on cotton factory
production for their livelihood. One tenth of British capital was invested in
cotton and just under 50% of British exports were cotton yarn and cloth.
Cotton was known
then as "white gold" and Britain imported 70% of its cotton to feed
its factories from the slave states of the South of the USA. The American Civil
War exposed this reliance on cheap slave labour for supply of cotton as Afro-Americans
deserted the slave owners in support of the anti-slave trade northern states.
For British imperialism, American slavery had begun to threaten the very
prosperity (profits) it produced and with the supply of cotton drying up, the
prospects facing British imperialism were idle textile factories and a sea of
revolting unemployed industrial workers.
The situation
for British imperialism became desperate when the southern slave states’
Confederate Government banned all cotton exports to Britain. Troops suppressed
protesting unemployed workers in Britain, while the largest cotton trading port
in Britain, Liverpool, threw its support behind the southern slave owners and
their Confederate Government
British
imperialism, though, had a way out, such was its dominance in the world at that
time. Its way out was to impose large scale cotton production in India, its
main colony in the East. The value of Indian cotton, mostly owned by British
interests, more than quadrupled in the first two years of the American Civil
War as cotton plantations emerged at a rapid rate on Indian land previously
reserved for important food production for the local population.
Whereas in 1860
India had only contributed 16% of Britain's supply of cotton, it contributed
75% in 1862 and about 70% of France’s supply. The effects of the Civil War on
global capitalism also reached the Nile Delta and northeastern coastal area of
Brazil where subsistence farmers abandoned their crops for the cash crop of
cotton for export to Britain and other European countries. Even in Western
Australia, cotton exports tripled by 1863 while Mexico, an emerging cotton
producer, increased its exports by eight fold in a decade.
Politically, the
British Government exerted as much pressure as it could to convince the
northern anti-slavery states (the Union) in the USA , led by Lincoln, to
abandon their policy of emancipation of slavery. For its part, the Union saw an
opportunity to weaken the southern Confederate states’ near monopoly position
in the international cotton trade market.
By the time the
American Civil War ended in in 1865 in a military sense, whole economies of
many countries had been transformed to meet the needs of the dominant imperial
power at the time, Britain. There were also positives for the workers of the
world in that the slave economy was defeated in the USA southern states, and in
other countries where cotton was produced in abundance, wage labour and an
agricultural working class emerged rather than slavery. In addition, the
American Civil War had unintentionally brought to the fore new global links,
not just between capitalists, landowners and merchants, but also between the
then developing international working class.
The lessons from
this short period of the history of capitalism are that the international
conflict today between US imperialism and other rising powers including China
is likely to set off unexpected changes in the economies of countries across
the globe as each imperialist power attempts to impose its will on smaller
powers.
The imperialists
will move quickly if their "black gold" (oil) supplies are cut off,
just as British imperialism reacted quickly when its “white gold” supply dried up.
Such a crisis
will be an opportunity for the international working class to build a stronger
movement against imperialism and to empathise with Marx's belief that he was a
"citizen of the world".
No comments:
Post a Comment