The war in Ukraine is at a standstill. Not so the count of deaths and atrocities committed by both sides. And yet, the US bet, according to its leaders, is to prolong the war until Russia collapses and the whole South and East of Ukraine become nothing more than a gigantic wreck. But the war and its consequences are not confined to the Ukrainian borders. A great snowball of contradictory imperialist interests is underway. And only we workers have a real interest in stopping it.
Scholz asserts that Germany will stop importing gas from Russia “very soon,” but he is careful not to assume the 2024 target that the U.S. and Britain are trying to impose. No wonder. The consequences of a European blockade of Russian gas imports would be devastating. And not only for Germany and Europe.
The 2021 German elections tested Merkel’s strategy to revamp the political apparatus, to contain the revolt of the angry petty bourgeoisie which had uplifted the far-right (AfD) but also to prepare the apparatus to promote the Green Deal and a strengthened EU centralized around the interests of German capital.
Germany is raising its climate targets. It changes its Climate Law by committing to a 65% reduction in emissions by 2030. The formal cause, a Constitutional Court ruling. The real cause: competition with the US. The important thing: each push of the Green Deal increases economic contradictions, weighs down production and imposes an increasingly dark horizon on living and working conditions. In the increased competition, the state centralizes and looks for new ways to turn broken private companies into state-owned enterprises. There is nothing progressive about this. We are not closer to socialism, but to a war economy.