US retreats from “Free Trade”

In a previous article, I explained how “free trade” was nothing more than a cynical ad campaign designed to benefit the interests of the wealthy elite, to the detriment of the developing world. I explained that the dictatorship of Western capital is truly *principle-less* and is happy to subordinate every principle it pretends to cherish in order to maintain its wealth, power, privilege, and global supremacy. Everywhere one looks, it is obvious that principles of “democracy”, “freedom of speech”, “economic freedom”, “green energy”, “the rule of law” and “human rights”, are quickly and without hesitation thrown under the bus and subordinated to the geopolitical class interests of the ruling Western elite.

Today, the global class struggle that results from capitalism’s successful revolutionary victory over feudalism manifests itself in the struggle against Western imperialism. While the imperialists attempt to justify their rule and promote their economic and political interests behind a façade of high-minded principles, the reality is quite different. Actual policy is not determined on the basis of any principled approach to governance, rather policy is decided on the basis of a very narrow perspective of their own political and economic *class interests*. Western policymakers are realists, and they completely embrace the correct materialist observations of Marx, but they do so from *their own class perspective*. They understand and recognize that their true enemy and the true threat to their political and economic dominance, are the working-class masses whose interests are fundamentally in opposition to their own.

See: Mazaheri, Re-reading Glazyev: Europe’s been the battlefield for a century – liberalism has lost

So, in order to deal with the primary threat of working-class unity, the elites maintain a vast propaganda apparatus whose primary purpose is to confuse, divide, distract, and above all, disenfranchise their working-class enemy from engaging in any meaningful political activism that could pose a threat to the status quo. The innumerable narratives, perspectives, and opinions of “experts” (all working for their billionaire paymasters) are proliferated precisely to keep people from recognizing and acting upon the fundamental reality of class struggle.

Liberalism in all its appearances (In the US it’s primarily Democrat vs. Republican) is the ideology which they are happy to promote (as an antidote to class consciousness) and pretend to uphold, as long as their core class interests are not threatened. Once their core class interests are threatened, the mask comes off and the façade of principled liberal governance quickly gives way to the actual operative principle of oligarchy and the unrestrained and unprincipled pursuit of their class interest.

We can see this paradigm unfolding in real time as FED chairwoman Janet Yellen warns China that “economic freedom” will no longer be a principle promoted by the capitalist West. International institutions and the global economic system including the United Nations and the World Trade Organization that the US created, maintained, and benefitted from, for the past 75 years, are no longer serving the West’s interests. So, because of the West’s inevitable defeat in the competition it created and promoted, the “rules” will once again change in a way that benefits Western elites to the detriment of its rivals.

Don’t take my word for it, here is US Trade Representative Katherine Tai: “I think what we see in terms of the challenge that we have from China is… the ability for our firms to be able to survive in competition with a very effective economic system. …we know what’s going to happen… and it’s going to have significantly damaging economic and political outcomes for our systems.”

China is different from the West in that it decides policy based on the best interests of the working-class majority. This is a more effective and beneficial system because it is not constrained by the subordination of the majority interest to the interests of the wealthy elite minority. China does not mindlessly embrace policies that only benefit the wealthy elites while being detrimental to the working-class majority. For instance, China rejects the neo-liberal policies of austerity, privatization, and limited government. Many of China’s biggest industries, including China’s largest banks are state-owned and even the privately owned industries are subordinate to the five-year economic plans adopted by the ruling (nearly 100 million strong) Communist Party of China.

Too be sure, China is not reflective of the end-stage classical-Marxist “communist society” where all private ownership has been abolished and the state has withered away because material abundance has been achieved, and class antagonism no longer exists. Such a state of affairs is simply impossible to achieve until the global class struggle (which currently manifests itself as the struggle against Western Imperialism) has been won. But China is still communist despite her mixed economy because she is pursuing those material conditions (centralised planning, human needs in command, development, global peace, and sustainable material abundance) that are necessary for the end-stage communist society to be achievable.

So, it ought to be hilarious to folks when the primary rhetorical attack against China is that China is producing too many green products including solar panels and electric cars. The idea that China’s “overcapacity” is a threat that the US will aggressively respond to (in the form of tariffs, industrial sabotage, and war) is an outright admission that socialism has won and is in every conceivable way, superior to capitalism. This is nothing less than a total refutation and repudiation of decades of liberal economic propaganda that loudly proclaimed to champion economic freedom, because economic freedom was best for consumers and would result in lower prices and material abundance.

The hypocrisy is simply stunning. The liberal propaganda promoted by the imperialists over the last several generations insisted that “free market” capitalism was the best and most beneficial system for any society to adopt. In reality though, any country that refused to subordinate their own sovereign economic and political interests, to the interests of Western capital, were immediately attacked, demonized, subverted, and targeted for “regime change”. For generations, the US has exploited the developing world primarily through the forced implementation of free market policies. Essentially, the US would force a given nation to lower tariffs and allow in US exports that would be strategically designed to destroy that country’s domestic production. Once the domestic production capacity had been destroyed, that county’s market would become effectively captured and dependent on Western exports. If a government refused to go along with this plan, elections were rigged, politicians were assassinated, and sometimes an outright invasion would occur. This is how the US played the game for 75 years, and now all of a sudden, they cry foul because they are incapable of competing with China.

I was inspired to write this article thanks to Jeff Brown's excellent piece on this topic, which can be examined here:

https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2024/04/08/top-us-economists-admit-defeat-and-go-to-china-with-begging-cup-in-hand-colonial-capitalism-is-getting-its-butt-kicked-around-the-world-by-many-shades-of-communism-socialism-china-rising-radio-sinol/