Mark LeVine, an American Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at the University of California, Irvine, has written a most misleading book on modern capitalism (`globalisation'), reflecting the global peace and justice movement's anarchism.



He occasionally glimpses the reality of empire. He cites the Pentagon's Defense Science Board, which contradicted Bush by saying, "they do not hate our freedom, they hate our policies." He sees that chaos is not an accidental by-product of occupying foreign countries but assists the occupiers' strategic goals - profits, oil and repression - and he recognises that occupations are brutal, corrupt and incompetent.



He cites a World Bank study that concluded, "faster growth among the poor may indeed be obtained at the expense of slower growth among the rich", that there is `no evidence ... of mutually beneficial policies' and "At least in the short run, globalization appears to increase poverty and inequality." He also notes a United Nations Development Programme Report that summed up, "Trade openness (liberalisation) increased poverty and inequality ... Those countries liberalising most rapidly fared worst."



Yet after all this evidence, LeVine claims that culture not economics drives capitalism. So he claims, "Only building bridges between cultures can provide the chance to overcome both occupation and the violence it breeds." This bridge-building, he writes, gives the leading role to intellectuals - a little self-serving, one might think. He goes on, "if we can ... compose a truly world music - we can break down (`deconstruct', as some philosophers might say) the `iron cage' of neoliberalism". This is utopian drivel.



The `global peace and justice movement' pretends that working classes' struggles to seize state power from capitalist classes are old-fashioned, chauvinist and unnecessary. Yet he had cited World Bank President James Wolfensohn's praise of Cuba in 2001: "Cuba has done a great job on education and health." Cuba has continued to progress because its policies, based on class and nation, are the opposite of the Bank's policies and also of the movement's policies.

What success has the movement ever had that justifies rejecting the successful Cuban method of class struggle and revolution? By contrast, as LeVine admits, quoting voices like Susan George - "We haven't actually won anything" and Naomi Klein - "We have in no way reversed the flow towards privatization, let alone stopped it", the movement has never succeeded anywhere.



The main conflict in the world is not Islam against the West, but neither is it neoliberalism against the `global peace and justice movement'; it is class against class, within each nation, and each nation must solve its own problems.



The `global peace and justice movement' is a diversion, a waste of time and energy. Its members need to get jobs, if they haven't already, and join their trade union. Workers, including white-collar workers, are the majority in every country, and only the working class can defeat capitalism.

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