Does poverty cause terrorism?

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Does poverty cause terrorism?

by Chris Burford
06 November 2001 07:54 UTC

One of the crucial questions for the movement against global capital as it
adjusts to the excitatory terroristic attack on Sept 11, in trying to
maintain its own momentum is whether poverty causes terrorism.

Plenty of servants of international finance capital think it does, but the
progressive movement is dealing with a few critics who think this is both a
dangerous and an inaccurate argument. While the organisers of the movement
feel they have painfully to regather momentum by having nothing to do at
all with rowdy demonstrations, some even suggest that the above argument is
a justification for terrorism.

IMO this can only be analysed from a deeper (marxist?) point of view. It is
true that the most dedicated and effective islamic terrorists come from the
intelligentsia or new bourgeoisie in the developing countries. It is true
that totally degraded lumpen members of the global reserve army of labour
would have difficulty getting together more than a local act of arson.

But the point is this: competing rising bourgoisies need ideology and a
cause with which to go into battle. The poverty of the world is the moral
justification (in their eyes) for the battle. It is a moral justification
in our eyes too. But terrorism disarms mass struggle, whereas we need to
build the momentum again.

The other conceptual gap for which marxism is also needed is the question

- why does trade cause global poverty?

It seems to but this is counter-intuitive. After all it revolutionises and
cheapens the average cost of products of labour.

The answer which few articulate with theoretical clarity, is that under a
capitalist economic system economic development is always associated with
uneven accumulation of capital.

And also-

that the greater the mass of capital, the greater the reserve army of labour.

That is the truth on the global scale, but the progressive movement cannot
as yet find a way to popularise a quick propagandist understanding of this
relationship. Agitational good (I saw a poster in London at the weekend
"Drop the debt, Not the bombs!" ) Buit in terms of propaganda and theory
the movement is weak.

Unfortunately theoretical arguments alone will not solve this quickly enough.

It is true that nation states still wield power, but until we accelerate
the process of globalising Empire, the longer before the demands of the
global multitude for economic and political justice can be heard.

Poverty provides the soil for terrorism, which reactionary forces (forces
acting in mere reaction) may use.

We should not only oppose both.

We need to articulate better why the two tasks are intertwined.

Chris Burford

London

(((((((

Hear , Hear .

Charles Brown

Detroit