Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has, almost inevitably, dredged up the only historical analogy most people are capable of making – that of the appeasement of Adolf Hitler before World War Two. Sun columnist Piers Morgan – who according to the adverts ‘says out loud what most people are thinking’ – has dutifully obliged with the Neville Chamberlain vibe. But according to many American politicians it’s just like 1938 all over again …. again.
Actually, and more worryingly, the most apt historical echo is not the Second World War but the First, when a group of states who had, ideologically much in common, slogged it out for four long years over a cause few could remember, resulting the deaths of around 20 million people.
On the eve of the 21st century, the Italian historian Domenico Losurdo recalled the 1910 funeral of Edward VII of England. It was, he wrote, “the occasion for a splendid procession which saw kings, hereditary princes and dukes, united by ties of kinship and common mourning, parade on horseback. Time seemed not to have made the least dent in the power and prestige of the European aristocracy. Nine monarchs, all descendants of William the Silent, occupied the stage …”
Yet a little over four years later, these same countries were dragged by a series of alliances into, at the time, the most destructive war in world history. These were resolutely capitalist nations – often officially led by people related to each other – that had, over the previous 30 years, taken possession of over 8.6 million square miles of Africa and Asia in the name of progress and trade. They were, on the surface, united by racial, economic, political and familial ties. Nonetheless these countries were plunged into insane nationalistic fervour and a seemingly endless fight to the death.
Of course certain ideological differences were stressed. Britain, France and, latterly, America – the Entente – were presented as bastions of liberalism in contrast to the militarism of the other side (Germany, Austro-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire). But the Entente was also allied with Tsarist Russia, an absolute monarchy, police state and profoundly anti-Semitic regime.
Likewise today, Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, has backed Putin’s invasion on the grounds that it is a “metaphysical” struggle against immoral Western values (such as LGBT rights and same-sex marriage). At the same time, however, Boris Johnson has scuttled off to Saudi Arabia to beg for more oil from that erstwhile British ally, which happens to be an absolute monarchy and beheaded 81 people prior to his arrival. And which, in addition to visiting hell upon neighbouring Yemen, is also probably the most anti-Semitic regime on earth. Such does history rhyme.
In the current world the ties that don’t bind are not based on monarchy, aristocracy or Empire. Rather the common denominator across liberal, conservative and authoritarian countries is the dominance and ubiquitous presence of the ultra-rich. In 2021, there were 2,755 billionaires in the world, 660 more than the previous year. During 2020, a new billionaire was created every 17 hours. Billionaires are, collectively, worth $13.1 trillion, up from $8 trillion just 12 months previously and less than $3 trillion in 2006. To give a sense of perspective, a billion is a thousand million.
Their mere presence inevitably dominates and skews the societies they inhabit – be it the U.S, Britain or Russia. It is widely known, for example, that Russian billionaires – the infamous oligarchs – were created after the collapse of communism through the process of “voucher privatisation” which enabled a small group of people to acquire former state assets and amass stupendous wealth. But the number of Russian billionaires has, in common with the rest of world, dramatically increased in the 21st century; from several to over 100. They are taxed at just 2 per cent more than the rest of the population (and this increase was introduced in 2020!), while the rest of the country is subjected to austerity.
Venerated Ukrainian war leader, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, posed as an anti-oligarch in order to be elected president in 2019. But his campaign was launched on the TV channel of billionaire Igor Kolomoyskyi. And his putative hostility to oligarchs hasn’t stopped him, together with the partners in his TV company, owning a network of offshore companies registered in the British Virgin Islands, Cyprus and Belize. Repressing the Left and gutting labour rights, which Zelenskiy has done in the middle of a war, is strangely in tune with the interests of the mega rich.
Controlling the state, and using it to amass and protect great wealth, has become almost customary in the 21st century. Ba’athism emerged in the 1940s and 50s as a pan-Arab, quasi-socialist ideology, though one which was brutally repressive of leftists. But under Assad in Syria, Ba’athism has simply become the means through which a small elite have enriched themselves through privatisation and neoliberal ‘reforms’ – a process which has notably intensified since the turn of the millennium. In China, the official communist ideology and an interventionist state has proved no impediment to the leadership and company managers accruing huge fortunes. The Panama Papers, for example, named the families of eight current or former members of China’s politburo. Levels of inequality are similar to those of South Africa, peasants are regularly stripped of their land and turned into proletarians and super exploitation of workers occurs.
The liberal heartlands of America and Britain – despite their ostensibly democratic institutions – exhibit the identical thumbprints of billionaire domination, manifested in the gravy train of privatisation, quantitative easing, political funding and control of the media. Oligarchs in Britain, George Monbiot said in 2020, “use their economic power and translate it into political power, which is what oligarchs do the world over”. And given that billionaires (oligarchs) have hugely increased in number in the first two decades of this century, the process will only get more explicit.
It may be objected, plausibly, that the interests of billionaires lie in a strong state that protects them and ensures the conditions for their continued accumulation of capital, but that they definitely don’t lie in the division of the world into warring blocs that impose sanctions on each other and confiscate wealth. This is undoubtedly true. But it was also the case that the so-called liberal ‘golden age’ of capitalism (1870-1913) degenerated into the internecine carnage of World War One despite it being in no-one’s interest that it do so. The pre-WW1 era and our own are remarkably similar in many ways. The resemblances include a commitment to a globalised economy, few cross border restrictions on the movement of goods, capital and people, and a belief in balanced government budgets. But the liberal age of capitalism can to an abrupt and brutal end in 1914. Ours can too.
Those old enough to remember the 1990s will recall the air of triumphalism around the collapse of Communism and the fervent belief that, now the world was entering an era of globalisation, free trade and liberal capitalism, countries would regard war as irrational and anachronistic. No two countries with a McDonalds’ franchise have ever gone to war with each other, it was said. Well Russia has – or had – McDonalds.
The question which now inserts itself is whether nationalism, racism, authoritarianism and war are the inevitable shadows of liberal capitalism and market fundamentalism. That despite many in the global elite not wanting a world of war and division, the world is inevitably predisposed to such a disaster because of the inequality and suppressed conflict inherent in a global economy designed exclusively around the needs of the rich.
If you ignore the noise about Hitler and appeasement, you can hear those chimes of history ringing now.
