Dear editor,
Amidst the flurry of travel disruptions, high costs and global conflict, it is hard to see any positives. Is there anything to look forward to in these bleak times?
Sincerely,
Helen.
[Sent via email]
Hi Helen,
In Marx’s materialist conception of history, particular attention is paid to the “objective conditions” of individual life and social being.1 These conditions include available technologies, resources, level of accessible material comfort and productive employment that shape our governing ideologies, happiness and culture. In the present economy we are heavily dependent on oil and gas for energy, fertilizer and plastic byproducts.
This fossil fuel dependency has transformed the resource-rich Middle East into a site of economic competition between great powers. The result is a raging boil of oil money, ethnic strife and a vast quantity of weapons propping up systems of repression, resistance and neo-colonial extraction. What is happening in Iran right now is what happens when the pot boils over, just as it has previously boiled over in Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Sudan, Libya, Lebanon and Syria.
It is important for those of us in the West to appreciate just how much of our perceived progress has relied on managing the conflicts and resources of other nations. The capitalist world order was largely cemented by accident, when Old World European technologies collided with New World resources and societies. But its persistence is consciously maintained by way of corporate exploitation of capital starved countries and military containment of economic rivals. In other words, there is an intrinsic relationship between the riches of one country and the poverty of another.
Having survived the U.S. proxy war with Iraq, Iran became one of those rivals earmarked for “containment.”2 They were systematically marginalized from the global economy with sanctions and surrounded by American military bases. From the American point of view, this containment strategy was largely successful for decades and culminated with massive Iranian protests against the economic conditions of their country. The resulting crackdown only exposed the unsustainability of Iran’s trajectory.
Luckily for the IRGC, Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran allowed them to unleash the full force of their asymmetric power and they exploded out from the box that had previously contained them. Trump is now confronted with the stark reality that he won’t be able to contain them economically or militarily again. He’ll have to either destroy the country entirely or watch it become dramatically strengthened.
The bleak circumstances of war are a heavy burden to bear for this geopolitical competition over economic dominance. But if there is a silver lining to these clouds, Iran has plucked it from the sky and laid it at our feet. They have weaponized the global dependency on oil and wielded it to their great advantage; they have exacted a toll from the genocidal state of Israel; they have exposed limits to American militarism, inspiring defiance from tormented nations like Cuba.
Since the belligerent and cowardly attack on Iran, the world has turned to greener fertilizers, electric vehicles and renewable solar and wind power generation for energy needs. A helium shortage will put the brakes on a runaway tech sector and military-industrial complex. From the ashes of war, we may find the objective conditions of mankind gradually change for the better. Since a hegemonic power cannot sanction the Sun or go to war over wind, the foundation of a post-capitalist cooperative economy slowly becomes concretized.
Henri Lefebvre once said, “History puts its worst foot forward.”3 There is a duality to history, a tendency for progress to be paid up-front in coins forged by blood and fire. Iran is paying that price now in opposition to the oil-thirsty American establishment and Zionist lobby. As allies for a better world, we can always hope that Tehran is the rock where the wave of western imperialism breaks.
In sols.
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