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September 6 2007
The Iraq War is estimated to cost a trillion dollars. In return for that, money will go to buy weapons, tend to wounds, bury the dead, pay off insurance claims and facilitate a lifetime of care for the veterans. Because of the failures of the Iraq War, the prospects for species survival have decreased.
There is only so much surplus and so many chances that the economy's administrators have to squander before heading the world into the Dark Ages, if not extinction. Lenin was concerned about the declining skills and motivations of imperialists, as those skills are relevant to the people of the world and not short-term financial gains. Ideologically, we can say that the imperialist country so-called Left is to blame. It failed to adjust to changes in the global economy and allowed political correctness to substitute for an accurate understanding of the needs of internationalism. Politically, that meant the imperialists did not have to bring an "A" game to win. That winning became sloppier and sloppier, more wasteful. In the dialectics of struggle, to gauge the greatness of the Celtics, we also need the Lakers.
The united $tates is not good at social change in Iraq. It is only now getting around to rediscovering Saddam Hussein's way of doing things. So it pushed to stop de-Baathification after seeing where sectarian conflict was heading--against the U.$. installed government.
Truth be told, the answer for Iraq is not an Amerikan role in Iraq. On the surface, the idea of a modernized capitalist system for Iraq and the other Arab states had its appeal. If the goal was to create a divisive mess, then the united $tates has already succeeded. If the U.$. leaders really thought that Iraq would be a Korea, then that was their ineptitude behind a trillion dollar fiasco that may end up producing the people to bring about devastating terrorist attacks on a scale yet to be seen.
What a trillion buys
A trillion dollars is a million millions. Someone with a trillion dollars can create one million millionaires. In some countries, that would be enough to buy a land reform.
The World Bank thinks of ever larger projects with ever greater funds. What it really needs is simpler goals backed with greater political determination. Their projects do not impress communists much.
To be sure, the accuracy of the economists at the World Bank in their knowledge of the world exceeds that of politicians and the media. What we would call petty-bourgeois vacillation and intellectual eclecticism rules at the World Bank. Things are seen as a little of this and a little of that. The simple directness and prioritization of the communists is not allowed, even as World Bank economists often ponder the failures of the market and the wonders of land reform. The reason is political and career related. It's hard to make a living speaking direct truth if it ruffles too many feathers.
How to implement land reform
In Japan the political will and power connected to a war delivered land reform and other social reforms. Maybe some of the old Eisenhower hands are still alive. Hanging some war criminals was not just a matter of righting wrongs, but also a signal for the people of Japan to accept that the old way of doing things was not right anymore.
In China, of course it is now legend that Mao brought land reform the direct communist way.
With Japan and China already on board, the writing was on the wall in Korea. There was already a strong movement afoot before the U.$. troops showed up. That is the difference with Iraq. Even some major southern Korean landlords were for land reform themselves--meaning total confiscation of their own lands. The united $tates inherited a pre-smashed landlord class in Korea. That's why it seems to Iraq administrators today that no planning is necessary, just Amerikan willpower. U.$. colonialists never understood that the success of Korea in trade hinged on having that social movement going before the united $tates showed up.
Taiwan also eventually copied Mao on land reform, but there are still many countries that could benefit from doing the same. There have been far more global attempts at land reform that have failed than complete and total reforms, all of which have succeeded. For a land reform to work, it has to err to the side of radical fanaticism. Our desired image should be a landlord class running away as fast as possible. The Amerikans can make it possible for this class to survive without violence.
How to pay for land reform
Financiers know that wealth is related to flows of income. The question is whether financiers accurately invest. At the moment we see a housing market meltdown. Tirades by Ann Coulter and the Minutemen end up driving the interest rate down. The declining interest rate makes it more attractive to buy housing in the united $tates and therefore find some way around border controls and hostile neighbors to set up life in Amerika.
The Iraq War was not a good investment, because it was based on false political and economic premises, namely that Iraq could be reconstructed by Amerikan contractors using Iraqi oil money. The Iraqi people turned out not to be united behind that plan and now majorities believe it is right to kill Amerikans. Who knows if this needless strife will someday be a motivating factor behind some action in the final moments of our species.
Much better would be to start investing trillions in land reform. How does it work, the fiscal conservatives and even imperialist country so-called Left would wonder.
To buy a million dollar house, we take out a loan at the bank and just pay the interest plus a little bit of the principal as we go along. The trouble is that in poor countries, there is no one with a flow of income to buy out the landlord class and send it packing without violence. That's where the united $tates comes in. Either the communists organize to take out the old landlord class by force or far-sighted financiers from outside do what needs to be done without the violence. The poor man does not have bribery as a tool. It is the rich man who can be a strategic pacifist.
One thing there is starting to be is competition to the World Bank from China. If there were truly large-scale imperialist financing competition, there could be speculators shorting those governmental financial institutions that do not perceive the value of land reform. This does not occur, because we no longer have a colonial situation of trade blocs, in which financing of land reform could result in icing out other imperialists from a country's business. If China finances a land reform in a country, then the united $tates will also benefit from it. So there is a "free rider" problem in intra-imperialist organizational competition.
Currency speculators cannot short imperialist currencies because of a lack of land reform. They would have to flee to the countries with the problems created by a lack of land reform.
Imperialist financiers do not compete in such a way that imperialist financial institutions can receive a message about land reform, so it is left to the communists from below to suggest to the financiers how to get into the playoffs of the proletariat versus the bourgeoisie. Because of the free rider problem, financing has to be done domestically in order to benefit a country abroad socially.
How to implement land reform
The incipient bourgeoisie of the Third World is better to carry out land reform than Amerikans are. Amerikans are more advanced than the landlords that need replacing/ removal, but Amerikans are more backward than the non-landlord people in the countries that need land reform. This dictates that Amerikans do what they are good at and stay away from things they don't know about--a kind of comparative advantage of political life.
Inside U.$. borders we already have some reservations where the natives are not allowed to sell their land. They are allowed to use it and only leave it where it is. As long as they want to use it, they can use it. If they try to sell their land, the tribe and law prevent them.
Likewise, so should land reform be funded. The entire landlord class blocking political and social reform in a country should be relocated to the united $tates to landlord reservations.
These landlord reservations should be worth a million bucks per landlord or even more, so that there is no talk of "confiscation" or violence or political abandonment. However, landlords cannot take funds out of the country. They will receive "millionaire services," but only when they stay on the reservation. As soon as they leave, they become penniless.
The communists would do this removal of landlords from the scene by force, including killing of landlords if necessary. The capitalists can try to use the "golden parachute."
The imperialists have balked at supporting violent Maoist revolutions, even though they have ended up bourgeois every where in the world so far, and even though if the imperialists would see the light, the violence of conflict would be greatly reduced. We can see the media pundits saying, "why did you abandon your allies?" if the State Department started floating this idea. Ann Coulter would die from a blood vessel bursting, as she redbaits even a few State Department officials before they begin to think of a big plan like that.
The imperialists can afford to do this another way, in a way that stresses Amerika's comparative advantages. However, imperialists need to be sure to imitate the effects of communist revolution. Some effects are purely psychological. For example, if a major landlord is for total confiscation himself and has taken up some variant of Marxism, nonetheless, peasants may go on deferring to him in the old social ways. It would be better to take the most radical landlords and give them jobs in landlord reservation administration in the united $tates--spying on other landlords for example, to make sure they stay out of trouble. One of the goals of the land reform is not just turning over land, but social. Old customs associated with interactions with landlords need to be gone. Psychologically, this needs to be prioritized, which is why hanging some big landlords is a good idea. If executions cannot be arranged or stomached, then landlords should generally receive death sentences in absentia, so that if they return to their countries again, they will be executed. The people should know this to be the case so as to know that the old ways of doing things have been broken with. The landlords need to stay on their Amerikan reservations for the good of their old countries. The people need to know that the old elite is gone.
The politics of land reform
Every penny of the land reform expenditures will stay in the united $tates. So it may look like a one trillion dollar charity project, but in fact it is a one trillion dollar Keynesian project of the war on terror. The contribution of Amerika will be toward fixing a social problem, not subsidizing a Third World country. There is also nothing saying that these reservations for the millionaires cannot be built to be solar-powered etc., because it is after all government money going into it.
As a financier may know, a trillion in a year is a lot, but a trillion spent over a lifetime is nothing anymore. It is easy for the united $tates to handle the flow of money connected with a trillion spent over a landlord class's lifetime on landlord reservations. Fannie Mae can easily fund houses and attendant butler and chef services for a million millionaires for a lifetime.
It goes without saying that there is no point in attempting this land reform where there is not already such a movement organized in the Third World country needing land reform. It will end up in corruption and partial reforms, when what is needed is a total and uncompromising land reform like in Japan, China, Taiwan and Korea.
Should a country benefitting from landlord reform fail in its economic mission of development, there was no charity outside u.$. borders to blame. When the landlord and his children die, his house goes back to the government. If he wants to leave an inheritance for grandchildren he has to work and save the money. If he is caught back in the country of his origin, his assets are confiscated by the u.$. government.
The writing on the wall situation is the least violent way of accomplishing revolution. In Korea, millions still died when superpowers became involved. As far as land reform went, it did not have to be that violent. "The communists are coming" is good enough for most rational landlords to ask for the green card to the $tates. "The communists are coming" plus "we will provide you a millionaire lifestyle" in the united $tates should be sufficient to bribe out the landlord class in some situations where violence has not been sufficient alone.
Once in the united $tates, landlords should have every luxury they are used to, but they should not be allowed to vote. We suspect most will have little trouble staying apolitical, but the rest should be spied on as liable to be extremists.
Why to pay for land reform
The imperialists opted for a frontal assault in a place where they do not know how to make a difference, the Middle East. Much smarter would have been to focus where they know they can make a difference. A far-sighted imperialist financier and president could raise the game of the Celtics.
Societies needing land reform produce large scale violence influencing the whole world, but land reform is in the reach of imperialist financing as it exists today if there is a political will to achieve it.
The united $tates should not pay for land reforms just to get out of a temporary political problem. Such land reforms will end up partial and reversed with no contribution to the future economy. This in turn will undermine the political support for land reform. The land reform must be total and radical as previous successful ones have been. If a country needs $10 trillion to get a completely radical change of situation, then so be it.
Having a prosperous trading partner benefits anyone. It's having a prosperous "friend" who makes wars and coups in one's country that is of dubious value. As it stands now, rich people propagandize, extort and war their way through the world instead of seeing how they can make a contribution at the margin to social change that is needed.
If Amerikans succeed in funding colossal land reforms, they will quell violent movements in the short-run and reap the benefits of an expanded diversity of the division of labor in trade in the long-run. When Mao undertook violent social reform of land in China, he ended up benefitting the U.$. economy even more than China's, not just because his people now receive slave-wages, but because the united $tates undertook strategic trade with East Asia.
The communist way is the most direct way to accomplish what needs to be done. Imperialist financing still involves capitalist exploitation, because MIM proposes that landlords continue to have their food, housing and shelter taken care of by others. This capitalist exploitation is finessed over time by the benefits of trade accruing from countries improved by land reforms, but this exploitation also makes it politically easy to lose the point of the land reform in the first place, which is why there have been so many partial and failed attempts at land reform. Capitalist exploitation is to be preferred over the remnants of feudalism still choking some of the world today, but drawing the line between capitalism and feudalism or forward and backward is not always easy.
In the absence of imperialist financing to smooth over global social problems, movements of strong political will using violence will substitute. They will perceive the united $tates as the primary international obstacle. The long-run prospects of the species take a major hit if financiers cannot accurately determine the causes of economic development.
On the other hand, if the united $tates would start and just cease being a political obstacle (even if not an overt fan of radical social change), MIM would bet that other countries looking for an outlet for capital would imitate. The question of international land reform without the communists pushing people totally to the wall may seem too huge to tackle, but there is a snowball effect and another two-thirds of the imperialist economy outside the united $tates.